Tag: censorship

There is a BIG difference between a protester and a separatist. A protester is a white man, holding a Tibetan flag, yelling, screaming and cussing at Chinese, a man ill-informed and stubborn. A separatist is a Tibetan man holding a Tibetan flag, yelling, screaming and cussing at Chinese, with the intent of separating the People’s Republic of China. In total, about 30 “protesters” came, and 2 “separatists” came. That’s right, only 2 Tibetans, and two or so dozens of ill-informed westerners.

Quote from text accompanying this pro-China YouTube of the protests surrounding the Olympic torch relay in Australia today:

Last night I was headed from Hyannis, Massachusetts back to the island of Nantucket on the Steamship Authority’s ferry boat, and decided to check my email and see what was happening on my favorite blogs.  I logged onto the boat’s WiFi service, typed in the URL for Docudharma, and then, to my horror, I was…

The New York Times famously writes that it publishes “all the news that’s fit to print.” But there’s a lot that doesn’t get published, even on the Internet. Let’s look at two examples.

Yesterday, the Pentagon made it official. According to a U.S. military study, Saddam Hussein had no links to Al Qaida. None. Nada. But like a pesky gopher that sticks its head up out of the ground, and then swiftly disappears down the hole into its dark tunnels, governmental truth made a very swift appearance yesterday. And now, it’s going to be snatched back out of the light and stuffed into a deep governmental shaft. Here’s the UK Guardian on subject (with a h/t to StuHunter at Daily Kos):

The Pentagon study based on more than 600,000 documents recovered after US and UK troops toppled Hussein in 2003, discovered “no ‘smoking gun’ (ie, direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al-Qaida”, its authors wrote.

George Bush and his senior aides have made numerous attempts to link Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda terror in their justification for waging war against Iraq.

Wary of embarrassing press coverage noting that the new study debunks those claims, the US defence department attempted to bury the release of the report yesterday.

U.S. Federal District Judge (Northern District of California, San Francisco Division) Jeffrey White, a Bush appointee, has ordered the Internet Service Provider Dynadot to shut down the important whistleblowing site, Wikileaks. In recent months, Wikileaks has published important documents related to Guantanamo’s Standard Operating Procedures, the heretofore secret Rules of Engagement of the U.S. in the Iraq War, as well as bank fraud in Kenya.

Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court.

The good folks at Wikileaks have anticipated something of this sort sooner or later, and have a number of mirror sites hosted outside the U.S., so they can still be accessed here and here. But this attempt at outright censorship must be overturned. This is not China censoring government critics, or some small corrupt country trying to hide its dirty laundry. This is a U.S. judge, at an ex parte hearing (no one from Wikileaks was even present or represented), acting like a totalitarian factotum.

…let me just tell you what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out — is this wrong?

Glenn Beck, May 17, 2005.

The well-springs of poison are about to open up…

Given the body count already of key Democrat politicians and American civil rights leaders and labor activists who have been assassinated in America, in the Americas and around the globe; given the levels of hostility and invective from the right this cycle already, I have a question:

Will Americans allow right-wing cranks to promulgate homicidal fantasies over the air-waves unpunished, as they have in the past?

What happens when, not if, Glenn Beck, Don Imus, Andrew Sullivan or some Fox crank ‘hypothetically’ discusses the assassination of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama or whoever the Dem candidate happens to be?

There was a diary titled: ‘Breaking: …. Dead’. Few laughed. We know what the wing-nuts are thinking. And it’s only January, the crap hasn’t even started yet.

Turnout for Dems has been fantastic. Americans, hungry for change, are registering and voting in record numbers. The world is paying attention. I watched HRC win on TV on a rush-hour train in downtown Tokyo.

Yet, for the frightened, the idea that a woman, a person of color, a liberal, a Democrat, might actually win the election in November is both an anathema and a blessing. While the prospect fills the wingnut with horror and self-loathing, it also offers the long-awaited opportunity to indulge in the sickest of fantasies. The one where the good guys have to shoot down the bad. For real.

Because, for the misogynist, this election isn’t about Hillary.  For the racist, 2008 isn’t about Barack or his religion. For the authoritarian, this isn’t about John. It’s about fear and hate, plain and simple. The idea that someone supposed to be lower on the totem pole might actually grasp the golden ring fills these sad, sick souls with grief, impotence and rage. It’s not like that’s a secret.

So when you listen to Sullivan and Reynolds fan the flames of Hillary hatred; or listen to Fox speculate about whether Barack is secretly a Muslim, be clear: Reynolds and the other so-called ‘responsible’ media types are tip-toeing right up to the edge of the line, pandering knowingly both to the worst instincts in us all, but also to the sickest in society, hoping/fearing something just might happen as a result.

Appealing openly to the murderous appetites of the right is a form of terrorism; and it’s a form of terrorism that works. A war was sold to America by playing on just such fears. And, lest we forget, that was no dream when Glenn Beck fantasized about murdering Michael Moore on the air two years ago.

…let me just tell you what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out…

That’s a major media figure fantasizing about murder. Next time, he might not ask if it’s wrong…

More at rattlesnakepoint…

In the past several days, the bits and bytes flowing between the participants on this forum constituting words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs and complete diaries have sometimes been formed in such fashion as to offend another. Is that a problem? To some, it may be. To others, probably not. In any case, should the actions of some be censored so as not to offend anyone who may read what transpires across this open medium? For the most part, the answer to my posed question is a resounding NO!

We have all heard the arguments on impeachment, pro and con.  We have all heard about whether or not we “have the votes.”  Whether or not this will ruin our chances in 2008 for a Democratic victory.  We have all discussed every possible permutation, and we have no consensus.  Ok.  I accept that.  My decision is to support anyone who is for impeachment, and that includes Kucinich, who I think is doing a great job getting this issue in the spotlight.

This diary isn’t just about impeachment.  It’s also about what can happen if we don’t impeach this crew, and asks the question of what we will do if any of these things come to pass.  As much as I’m pro-impeachment, if it doesn’t happen I’m not going to lay down and die — I want to know the consequences and take action.

One of the consequences has to do with the 2008 Presidential election.

None of this may come to pass, and I hope that is the case.  I am claiming no precognitive abilities here.

But I do think Naomi Wolf has some interesting things to say as far as these consequences, in her post over at Firedoglake, A “Presidential Coup,” The Continuity of Government, And Blackwater Watching Midtown Manhattan

I have argued that in the closing stages of a `fascist shift’, events cascade. I am hearing about them, even across the globe. Here in Australia I hear from the nation’s best-know feminist activist, and former adviser to Paul Keating, Anne Summers, who was also at the time this took place Chair of the Board of Greenpeace International. Summers was detained by armed agents for FIVE HOURS each way in LAX on her way to and from the annual meeting of the board of Greenpeace International in Mexico, and her green card was taken away from her. `I want to call a lawyer’, she told TSA agents. `Ma’am, you do not have a right to call an attorney,’ they replied. `You have not entered the United States.’

…

Increasingly, reputable figures are starting to talk about `a coup.’ Jim Hightower notes in an important essay, “Is a Presidential Coup Under Way?,” that a coup is defined in the dictionary as a sudden forced change in the form of government. (He also spells out the basis for a rigorously modeled impeachment and criminal prosecution.) Daniel Ellsberg’s much-emailed speech on recent events notes that, in his view, a `coup’ has already taken place. Ron Rosenbaum speculates in an essay on Slate about the reasons the Bush administration is withholding even from members of Congress its plans for Continuity of Government in an emergency – noting that those worrying about a coup are no longer so marginal. Frank Rich notes the parallels between ourselves and the Good Germans. And Congress belatedly realizes as if waking from a drugged sleep that it might not be okay for the Attorney General to say the President need not obey the law. Congress may realize why Mukasey CAN’T say that `waterboarding is torture’ – the minute he does so he has laid the grounds for Bush, Cheney and any number of CIA and Blackwater interrogators to be tried and convicted for war crimes. They are so keenly aware that what they have been doing is criminal that laws such as the Military Commissions Act of 2006 have been drafted specifically to protect them and the torturers and murderers they have directed from criminal prosecution. That is why insisting that Mukasey say that waterboarding is torture is, in spite of the alarming apparent defection of Feinstein and Schumer, an important tactic and even the perfect opening for the impeachment bid that Kucinich is bringing on November 6th to be followed by Congressional investigations into possible criminality.

Google video and youTube are releasing a beta software package that “allows” copyright holders to block clips.

http://www.youtube.c…
The 911 truth people are most upset as it means all those clips of original news footage of the day could be forever lost. Yes, we are backing up the good ones now.  Technicians will once again have to figure out a way to bypass this crap.

Today though those many websites I saw two years ago warning of the Orwellian dangers of DRM(digital rights management) and Windows Longhorn have disappeared and been replaced with the how wonderful Microshaft is.

Net neutrality was never a real issue, the real issue is will the net become just a cheap plastic shopping mall with streaming Faux News reports geared to a mental age of twelve.

Shit like this just sends me into my usual incoherent rage.