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UN Officials Remove Poster Mentioning Chinese Firewall
At a UN-sponsored Internet Governance Forum in Egypt, anti-censorship group Open Net Initiative was startled by a demand from UN officials to remove a poster mentioning Chinese Net censorship. When ONI refused the request, security personnel arrived and took away the poster. The group was promoting a new book, Access Controlled, a survey of Internet censorship, filtering, and online surveillance. A witness said, "The poster was thrown on the floor and we were told to remove it because of the reference to China and Tibet. We refused, and security guards came and removed it. The incident was witnessed by many." Here is a video of the removal.
The UN would be better than ICANN, right?
Anyone who thinks the U.N. exists in any way to help with human rights is insane. All you have to do is look at the list of nations on the U.S. Human Rights panel...
The U.N. exists to exert and expand U.N. control, wherever possible (just like any large organization, government or otherwise). Helping people is at best a secondary motive and sometimes not even not even a motive at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, I can. Unfortunately, it looks like kdawson can't.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Internet_blackholes_en.png
Is sooooo interested in your personal freedoms. ;-) Beware.
The UN prefers the interests of member governments over western ideals? I'm shocked! Shocked!
Seriously, imagine the Republican Party leadership, and/or the Democratic Party leadership, if they never had to stand for elections. How much would they care about our interests? Now, remember that most of the UN doesn't belong to our culture either. Why would a bunch of government employees, mostly from dictatorships of one kind or another, be opposed to censorship?
-- Support a free market in the field of government
So the United Nations established under Western ideals has averaged to the point where they are no better in protecting our values of plurality and free-thought than China? Really? Color me shocked, guess those trade balances are more important than whether or not some person gets their head smashed-in in the back room.
Shh.
from the can-you-spell-hypocricy dept
Well, someone here obviously cannot...
Posted by kdawson on 23:04 15th November, 2009
That explains it, I guess.
react to a poster about a book. :)
How do they react to torture ?
How about some freeze frames and a name/country of all the people?
Expose the Anglo and Francophone "just roll it" bureaucrats in their respective capitol cities. This is what your tax $ pays for.
With enough press, they might be recalled.
Protst the respective foreign ministries and demand a better quality of representative for your part of the world.
A minister for foreign affairs up for re election, remind the electorate of his/her track record.
Get close with a cam and ask them questions about this.
When their handlers lash out, some great fun for yourtube again
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
There are three ways to expand one's power:
1. Convince people to give you power.
2. Trade for it, which requires having something to trade.
3. Use violence or the threat thereof to get people to do what you want.
The UN doesn't have anything useful for #2, and "you and what army" for #3. #1 is the only option left to them, and sovereign nations are not very easy to convince to give up their power (except, maybe, for post-National Europe).
-- Support a free market in the field of government
One need only look at the "aid" money China lavishes on Africa in exchange for sweetheart deals to buy their natural resources to know why this happened.
Is anyone really surprised?
I fail to see the surprise.
If it exists to exert and expand UN control, it's doing an utterly terrible job of it.
We are all lucky that the natural state of bureaucrats is one of ineptness.
But the U.N. is doing a lot more behind the scenes than you realize, the recent inter-nation secret copyright treaty is one facet of that... people here care a lot about copyright issues which is why you know about it, but how many OTHER similar secret multi-national treaties are being drafted that you and I know nothing about?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The video itself was very mild in content. A bunch of people standing around looking at a poster that had been knocked down. But the awful moment came when the guard removed the poster and you can hear people actually clapping. It so reminded me of that quote "So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause."
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
"We condemn this undemocratic act of censoring our event just because someone is trying to impress or be in the good graces of the Chinese government.
That's what happens when you owe a lot of money to someone or want some of their money.
Up next: China takes back Taiwan and the US Government does nothing.
Now just remember that when you go to put all those Christmas gifts (Made in China) on your credit card (in a very circuitous route:Financed by China).
Yep! Now who's the Super Power, again?
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
That the UN itself has become an arm of the chinese government, in censoring anti-censorship advocates.
They really need to stop acting like children with regards to issues about Tibet. If enough of the Tibetan people want freedom, then give it to them, and the Chinese can pack up and go home and Tibet will end up screwed, or if enough Tibetan people want to remain a part of China because of the massive economic benefits then that's fine.
They need to talk about it though and stop trying to suppress it.
Posting anonymously because I'm off to China very soon, though there is almost no-chance they would care about some comment on slashdot.
Prove it.
No, i wasn't kidding. One of the dangers of having governmental entities in control of information, and most of it being recorded only digitally: "facts" are a variable commodity.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I mean, why are they even allowed?
That's not made clear in the article.
Also, it was very odd the way everyone stood around the poster on the floor, not touching it or picking it up, as though it were a diseased, dead body which no one was willing to touch. So they called the police to come an take it away.
Why didn't the folks promoting the book just stand it up again, I wonder?
The closer you are to the code, the happier you are. - Ancient Geek Proverb
I just can't *define* it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
When will the rest of the world wake up and realize that China is NOT your friend?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Is it at all possible that rather than it being "anti-censorship", it was simply that they didn't want someone trying to hawk merchandise? Is it possible that the witness jumped to a conclusion and filled in the details for what he thought was a reason?
I noticed in the video that the room didn't have any other posters advertising anything.
This foolish ideology occasionally conflicts with hard reality: the security forces (of the United Nations) under pressure from the Egyptian people tear down the posters condemning Beijing's censorship of the Internet.
The hard reality says that both Egyptian culture and Chinese culture are inferior to French culture and Germany culture. In Germany and France, freedom of speech is a basic human right. Anyone -- citizen and non-citizen -- in Germany and France is entitled to freedom of speech. If a Chinese agent attempted to tear down similar posters in Germany, the German police would arrest the Chinese nitwit and throw him into prison for a few days.
In China (and Egypt), a nitwit tearing down posters condemning censorship would be praised as a guardian of the "great" Chinese nation, and the brave soul who displayed the poster would be thrown into prison for a few years.
Buddha damn Chinese (and Egyptian) society.
Roosevelt's compromise to have ALL the countries in the United Nations wrecked it from day 1. The only way you can have a real UN is to have a league of democracies. The only way we would have a genuine and meaningful UN would be to have something like an EU + USA + Canada + Australia, and leave Asia and Africa out of it.
This is my sig.
Roosevelt's failure was that he actually thought utopia was possible. Only four years after WWII, the Soviet Union... one of the Security Council members... was bankrolling and assisting a campaign of conquest in Asia, starting with Korea.
The reason why utopias do not work, and can never work, is their ignorance of human nature. You can't change it, and you can't get rid of it, and in governments, national policies are the instruments of human nature. You can no more "eliminate" war than you can eliminate any other force of nature. You can only do your best to be prepared for it.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"We condemn this undemocratic act of censoring our event... "
The UN is a democratic organization and this act of censorship is completely democratic. It's wrong, but democratic.
That should be a lesson to those that confuse freedom and democracy.
yup. The fact is it takes a lot more in a person to pick up a gun and earn living. Provide equal opportunity for everyone, make pay differences more tolerable, and you'll have enough doctors and contractors to go around.
I, for one, thank the U.N. for their censorship in this case. I had never heard of this book. Were it not for this incident, I may never have learned of it. So I think the U.N. for bringing my attention to it.
Seemingly, the poster was removed because it ostensibly violated a rule prohibiting posters that depict or mention human rights abuses. The part of the poster that ostensibly violates this rule is the mention of the Great Firewall. Thus, there is the obvious admission by whoever demanded the poster's removal, that the Great Firewall constitutes an abuse of human rights. The poster itself does not suggest or imply that it is a human rights violation, nearly so much as the poster's removal does.
Right, these are the same people who removed the Guernica when Bush and Colin Powell were going to make their case to bomb the shit out of Iraq using bogus "intelligence."
Are you expecting the UN to be rational?
Cause we pay for wars anyway, might as well pay for the allied forces as well.
When the US provides the majority of the troops, and the UK provides the majority of the remaining troops, why bother? Besides, the international organization we have for military purposes is NATO.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
You must be listening to one of those entertainment\pretend news stations like FOX news. Or even worse it sounds like you may have been brainwashed by pill popping Limbaugh.
Everyone knows that FOX news and Rush Limbaugh are to be compared with the National inquirer when it comes to news.
> Helping people is at best a secondary motive and sometimes not even not even a motive at all.
The UN actually does a good job doing what they were designed to do. It is just that most people were misled as to what they were designed to do. Look at how the UN was organized, one nation state, one vote in a world where most were unfree hellholes. The UN is thus essentially a Parliment of Tyrants, by design. So look at it's output and you will see it is actualy doing a good job of advancing the march of tyrany and human rights abuse.
Turning the Internet over to the UN must, as night follows day, lead to the advancement of the goals of tyrants. Anyone shocked by this simply wasn't paying attention.
Democrat delenda est
Day's gonna come when those assholes'll a'gonna pay for it big time!
You just watch, fate's gotta way o'tearin' opressors assholes longer than the Chinese wall!
I read it as "the 14th haddock dot com." Just thought you'd like to know."
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Next?
malls cops won't let you set up a stand in a mall... unless you pay rent and sign an agreement.
Maybe these guys didn't do that.
It's the only thing that can stop future monstrosities like this. We can think about what exactly it's supposed to do later.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
A Internet Governance Conference in Egypt is like.... Vegan conference at a McDonald. You really expected the UN or Egypt to do something China might not like?
Wasn't that the term that big banks on Wall Street used to describe the ether-wind boundary between their consumer brokerage and investment banking divisions?
As in: our investment banking division may have just done a deal with Hewlett Packard, but management put a Chinese Firewall in place so there was no conflict of interest when our brokerage analysts suddenly upgraded HPQ from "Neutral - Hold" to "Strong Buy". And anyway, we think that the 3Com acquisition will give them strong networking products...
The UN prefers the interests of member governments over western ideals?
By western ideals, I take it that you refer to those taught to the kiddies in the U.S. during elementary school, just before lunchtime and after recess. The UN is a loose affiliation of a member governments. It's the governments that pay dues and send representatives. "Human Rights" are a nice idea that people like to talk about when it's convenient, but history shows that U.N. peacekeeping "forces" are sent merely as a political statement and deterrent to mass killing of refugees, and only when it doesn't conflict with the covetous desires of western business interest. (Oh, I meant, "National Security Interest.")
Currently in Africa supporting refugees is big business. The U.S. sends subsidized food at many times that cost of providing local farmers with seed, technology and infrastucture necessary to allow them to support themselves, in many countries. Oh, but wait... since refugees have been driven off their land by armed thugs, it would mean that someone would have to wage war against those who created the situation, anyway. And in order to do that the UN, or anyone else, might have to battle the armed forces of a sovereign government. And to what end?
The U.S. only wages war where there is an economic pay-off, and they consistently vote against allowing the UN to use lethal force if said force would piss off a potential IMF or World Bank partner/customer/unindicted co-conspirator. And the UN hasn't seen an armed conflict that I'm aware of since Kosovo/Bosnia. The only reason the West backed that was that it was in the backyard of the EU, and none of those nations wanted their own people get the idea that rule-of-law was a flexible for people who look like all the other caucasians. When the resources that belong to a country full of Latinos, Asians, Africans or Occidentals might fall under the rule of someone we don't know and who might support some equitable distribution of wealth to the locals, the U.S. may not support the UN but they aren't above the use of relatively indiscriminate lethal force.
By the way, I don't mean to imply that I think the U.S. is any worse than any other industrialized country in this regard. I'm just more disappointed with the behavior of my own country because I have taken the time to poke my nose into it's history. I'm sure there are plenty of dead bodies, skeletons and smoking guns to go around. And with 7 Billion people simmering in the pot, the sauce will be boiling over somewhere else soon.
--- Reporter: What do you think of Western civilization, Mr. Ghandi? Mahtma: It would be a good idea. ---
Stay tuned to your local news channel... unless you want to be informed and it's controlled by Murdoch, Berlusconi, GE, Disney, Vivendi, or some 3rd world dictatorship. I wish I could say I thought that the BBC or NPR was all that and a bag of chips, but increasingly I find that the meaningful content takes a backseat to sports and so-called, "Human Interest" pieces.... OH!! The Humanity of it all!!!
Someone please explain to me why China is getting treated with kid gloves? Their idea of human rights is atrocious and a billion+ people are living under oppression, with limited to no freedom of speech and no freedom of worship. They look the other way where child labor is concerned, and they have most favored trading partner status with several countries (meaning they pay little to no tariffs while not gtranting those trading partners the same privilege). Why we're in a race with China to the bottom is beyond me.
Okay, well, I do understand that is a few politicians in the industrialized nations with clout who envy the power the elite in China have and desire the middle class to be expunged from existence so that everyone is dependent upon big brother, but how do the politicians in those nations justify their actions when questioned? They certainly won't admit the truth, I'm sure.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
"The U.N. exists to exert and expand U.N. control, wherever possible (just like any large organization, government or otherwise). Helping people is at best a secondary motive and sometimes not even not even a motive at all."
The UN is about establishing One World Government
Everyone knows that FOX news and Rush Limbaugh are to be compared with the National inquirer when it comes to news.
That's roughly accurate, although saying "everybody knows" is silly. Now, do you realize that CNN and MSNBC, and yes, even NPR, are no better? Or do you think they're magically better because they correspond more closely to your beliefs?
The previous Internet Governance Forums have made it clear that there are a mixture of objectives
Internationalizing DNS is a fine thing to do; too bad ICANN and Verisign have chosen that appalling Punycode approach, which requires anybody who wants to use international names to write ugly hackish paradigm-breaking code to do it, instead of just using UTF-8 and biting the bullet on the upper/lower case problem. On the other hand, that code is pretty short, and IE, Mozilla, and a couple of other significant programs have done it.
Bridging the Digital Divide is a fine thing to do - capitalism is rapidly improving the computer costs, mobile phones with texting are enough to make a good start, One Laptop Per Child is a bit more expensive than it should have been. In most poor countries, the best way to deliver cost-effective Internet access is to get rid of the government telecom monopolies, which isn't an especially popular viewpoint at an inter-governmental forum such as the IGF, but the mobile phone business has often leapfrogged the wired infrastructure anyway, and there's a lot of undersea cable being built around Africa waiting for the monopolies and ex-quasi-monopoly telcos to get out of the way so it can be connected.
But if the only people who can talk about controlling what can and can't be said on the internet are the people who approve of controlling it, and you can't name them or talk against that, because the First Rule of the Internet Global Fight Club is that you can't talk about what IGF is for, then any meeting is a farce, and it ought to be stopped right away.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations was the utopian dream. The UN was much less that way.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
With all due respect to Esther Dyson, ICANN's been a total mess from Day 1, both technically and policy-wise, so I hate to have to say this, but No, the UN would be even worse than ICANN.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You can't spell unethical without UN.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
You've lost track of the Bush Administration's propaganda about the UN, because you're only remembering the most recent versions. In the early Bush years, he wanted everybody in the world to support his campaign for invading Afghanistan, and he had the backing of the UN to allow him to do it. It was only later on when the UN wasn't being helpful enough in generating support for whatever he was doing that he switched over to bashing them. (Admittedly, it's been long enough that I've also lost track of when that was - it was probably when he was forming the Coalition Of The Willing, aka Bush League Of Nations, that he used to attack Iraq, since there was no real legitimate way to get the UN to approve the invasion of Iraq, in spite of him bullying Colin Powell into telling them that the Iraqis had Weapons of Mass Destruction.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The US is an Empire. The war in Iraq was a war to secure resources; freedom (or so) for Iraqis is a non-necessary secondary result. The war in Afghanistan is the actual war against in-the-mud thinking but there is no money there so it is neglected. There was a time that the word Citizen meant something in the US. Now, congress-critters think of people in terms of "consumers". People at the trough diligently waiting for slaughter at the whim of their master. It is long past the time to question authority - in fact it is getting close to the time to shoot some authority around. This saddens me: the focus in government in the West is becoming what is good for a few not what is good for society.
Shh.
f I went to a dinner about abortion methods for doctors where the topic was to discuss efficient safe methods. And I brought a big ass jesus loves your baby poster to the event it sure as hell would get taken down.
You can eat while watching powerpoints about actual abortions being performed, but you can't handle a "god loves" sign?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
We now see who has more power in the world.. and it is no longer the US and its so called freedom.
(-)
in communist china sign removes you!
If African-Americans were not racist, then at most 65% of them would have supported Obama. At that level of support, McCain would have won the presidential race.
Funny, because according to the exit polls, 88% of African Americans voted for Kerry in 2004. I guess he must be black too!
Or maybe African Americans just vote strongly in favor of the democratic party in every (recent) election.
http://www.rsf.org/List-of-the-13-Internet-enemies.html
That's roughly accurate, although saying "everybody knows" is silly. Now, do you realize that CNN and MSNBC, and yes, even NPR, are no better? Or do you think they're magically better because they correspond more closely to your beliefs?
I stand corrected. I will agree that almost any news source will have a bias regardless of how neutral they claim to be. Back on topic, at first I thought that the UN was way out of control. Then after further consideration, I thought maybe the UN security official here was a bit unruly, but the actions of one official should not represent the entire UN.
I think that maybe they felt it was out of line because it targeted a specific country in a negative way and not just censorship in general. Many people do not agree with China's government. however it seems that because we all have these deals with China and many profit from them in some way we tend to turn a blind eye and try not to offend them so as to not hurt our relations.
After all China is not a communist country.. they are capitalists right?
I am not saying that this makes it right... i'm just saying that this is what happens.
In the grandparent post, you deliberately missed the comment about the African-American voting patten for Barack Hussein Obama and against Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primary. Both candidates are members of the Democratic party, but 95% of Afro-Americans voted for Obama due to the color of his skin.
Get over yourself and your conspiracy theories.
What "theory" is that? I didn't say just the UN, I said all organizations by nature grow as much as they can. Do you deny this to be the case? If so I maintain you've never worked in a company larger than three people.
Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity
Which bolsters my theory since organizations stupidly just grow larger even when it is not healthy to do so. The peter principal applies to groups equally as well as individuals, at one point the U.N. had a real purpose but they have grown far beyond that now.
If we want to improve it, we need to contribute to the process.
Otherwise known as "appeasement". Let's just ignoring dying protestors in Iran and locked up dissidents in China! Eventually they will just suddenly realize how wrong they were, just like a sitcom!
History has shown those taking this path... chose poorly.
And our complete apathy towards the largest international diplomatic body are helping... how?
Apathy would be awesome since it would imply not supporting them. Sadly, we have moved away from apathy and in the wrong direction. Pretending like it's OK China and other nations with terrible records are where they are in the U.N. is far from doing anything to improve things from the inside, it's merely providing justification for them being there since we are willing to accept their "leadership" on the matter.
You, like Obama, understand nothing of large group and international dynamics.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
To you and everyone else who cares enough to spew on and on about Tibet (as if such a mention should matter), but not enough to watch the tear-down video, read the poster for yourselves:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2537/4107431010_6b2a2a5858_o.jpg
There is NO mention of Tibet anywhere on that harmless poster, only a mention of the Great Firewall (a fitting note at a discussion of internet censorship and targeted accessibility deterrents).
Yeah, it's like the ridiculous "right" to own property, even though I don't know who will pay to keep other people from using the property, or the "right" to be protected from crime, as if police and courts just magically appear, without someone having to pay for them.
The most obscene "rights" of all are the crazy ideas that there's some magical protection of "free speech", that the government should be chosen in elections and that a huge military machine should be built up to prevent foreign invasions. All these things cost money, which means all the people who favour this socialist nonsense are thieves! Nobody should be forced to pay to defend someone else's so-called "freedom of speech", "right to vote" or "national defence". None of these are rights, just excuses for socialists to steal money from the hard-working, gun-owning population.
Obviously whoever has the most guns should decide what people are allowed to say, appoint the government and invade other countries before they have the chance to invade us. It's just common sense. And if these crazy socialists think they have some "right" to own property, let them pay for the guns to keep other people off of it. Let them pay for the guns to defend their so-called "right" not to be robbed, raped or killed.
You stupid piece of shit, do you understand yet what you have done?
By eliminating the posting privileges of the -1 default posters (LiT), you have shifted animosity to the AC-by-choicers (who default to +/-0). Not that the quality of AC posts have gone down; the intelligence of the registered has simply dropped, and they have nobody else to persecute to get their e-peens hard.
You are a fucking piece of garbage, Taco. So are you, parent AC. Go fuck yourselves in a burning house, and leave charred skeletons with your fists up your asses.
Everyone knows that FOX news and Rush Limbaugh are to be compared with the National inquirer when it comes to news.
Yeah! All three outsell the competition... Or is that the Star?..
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Does anyone else find it weird that this is on front page slashdot, with a link to the youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-kxYt2LwKc) yet youtube only says the video has been viewed 317 times?
I'm not here to do your social studies homework for you. I was able to debunk your main claim -- that Obama won the election solely because black voters are racist -- off the top of my head with 2 seconds of googling to verify it. If your research there is so poor that it wouldn't even pass muster in a middle school class, I don't feel it worth my time to attempt to debunk every single claim you made. Have you even looked into any other possible explanations? Policy differences, campaign strategies, correlation with income,...? Have you considered the proximity of the NC primaries to some of the "scandals" that were revealed about Obama? The Reverend Wright scandal, for instance, would be far less likely to upset black voters (particularly churchgoers) than white, asian, or hispanic voters who do not have a cultural familiarity with black churches.
Let me end on a piece of advice:
If you're being serious about this, then it would behoove you in the future to not stake the majority of your post on a bold claim without first at least doing rudimentary background checks on said claim. If you had taken even a moment to compare your "65%" figure with other recent elections you would have spared yourself this embarrassment and been able to bring up the more subtle question of apparent bias in the primaries without appearing disreputable.
If you're not being serious -- trolling, in other words -- then you still should not make a bold, important claim that can easily be disproven. You're far more likely to catch a live one -- get someone to actually do a large amount of research and waste a considerable portion of their day -- if you don't immediately scare them off with trivially false claims.
Have a nice day.
If the poster had stated banned facts about Tibet and China, like "prior to Chinese communist army's military invasion in 1950 and its continued brutally repressive and systematically genocidal policies, Tibet had always been distinctly different from its neighbouring states (like China) in culture, ethnicity, religion, language and its Sanskrit-influenced (like Hindi) script. Yet the Chinese communist (now fascist) dictatorship claims absolute colonial control and even sovereignty over their historical neighbour, with whom even the Imperial China had made an eternal peace treaty between equals", one could understand that a submissive economic vassal state of the increasingly powerful national-socialistic Chinese dictatorship would take action against such dangerous free speech.
However the poster in question only referred to the all-encompassing efforts of the Chinese dictorship to control their captive subjects' access to information outside the party machine's own pervasive propaganda efforts.
The fact that the Chinese, the already siniziced minorities and the occupied neighbouring peoples still struggling to retain some level of control of their own communities and lives are not given any opportunity to debate issues (like the facts above) even partially freely should certainly be part of the United Nations' "Internet Governance Forum". Instead they tear down participants' posters for simply referring to such controls (by the "People's Republic" of China)?
Oh yes, the image of the banned poster ...
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
yes, even NPR, are no better
NPR is substantially worse. If I don't want to support Fox News or CNN or MSNBC, I can simply not watch them. Presto, I'm not supporting them.
If I don't want to support NPR, I have to stop filing taxes.
Once you start accepting public funds, the amount of bias you're allowed to show should drop to none, but instead, NPR is one of the most biased news sources out there.
But don't take my word for. Instead take NPR's own admission of bias.
So that's what's not made clear in the article. It's kinda strange the way everyone stood around the poster on the floor and didn't even touch it or pick it up.
Almost as though it were an ebola victim just sitting there, dead and contagious. Crazy, right? And they called the cops to come and dispose of it.
Now here's my question--I wonder why the folks promoting the book didn't just stand it up again...
haha yeah that is a good story but does any one know if there is an alternate source to this vid because as you may know youtube is blocked in china. i find this ironic for me....
So it is impossible for anyone to consider him a better candidate than a woman?
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Is it at all possible that rather than it being "anti-censorship", it was simply that they didn't want someone trying to hawk merchandise? Is it possible that the witness jumped to a conclusion and filled in the details for what he thought was a reason?
I noticed in the video that the room didn't have any other posters advertising anything.
The word 'Tibet' came up in the conversation, to which the author responds that the word isn't even printed on the poster.
1- even if it's true, so what ? Democracy = people can vote for whomever they want, for whatever reason they want.
2- I don't know if I'm a democrat or republican, but I sure know I'm not in favor of father-son or husband-wife dynasties. Maybe that was a factor too ?
3- as yet, Obama has not started a war under false pretenses, let the banking system go to ruin, alienated most of the rest of the world, awarded billions in no-bid contracts to his VP's company... so he doesn't yet look as bad as the previous president.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Is it the custom in the US to use a person's middle name too, or just a way reactionnary focus groups have found to lump to gather Saddam and Obama ?
I'm asking because I only ever saw John McCain, Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton... but I keep seeing Barack Hussein Obama ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
That's roughly accurate, although saying "everybody knows" is silly. Now, do you realize that CNN and MSNBC, and yes, even NPR, are no better? Or do you think they're magically better because they correspond more closely to your beliefs?
With the exception of MSNBC which does have an unabashedly liberal bias in primetime, I'm not aware of either CNN or NPR promoting astroturf political rallies ("tea parties"), orchestrating the crowd. and promoting partisan language. To claim equivalency between Fox News and CNN and NPR just doesn't pass muster. There just never have been any blatant cheerleading on either of those. Complaints of "liberal bias" are limited to such wishy washy statement like "Postcards from Buster" having the audacity to show a lesbian family without commentary, the there being too many blue muppets on Sesame Street. Even a 2003 poll on perceived bias PBS revealed that only about 1 in 5 thought there was a liberal bias, lower than other networks or CNN. The only difference being that a third of Republicans thought there was a bias, versus 10% of Democrats.
The complaints of "liberal bias" against the mainstream media, have always been a canard. Rich Bond, 1992 chair of the Republican Party, said in an interview "There is some strategy to it [bashing the 'liberal' media]. If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one." In 1996, Bill Kristol said, "I admit it. The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures."
No. Black voters didn't have the opportunity to express their racism in 2004. Duh.
A few years ago, as a student, I got to go visit the UN's Geneva campus, sponsored by one of the various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that has a presence at the UN. While I was there, I got to go sit in on one of the meetings regarding the formation of the Human Rights Commission. (Committee? Council? I can't remember.) During the meeting, representatives from one of the other NGOs in attendance started to hand out flyers encouraging action in Darfur.
The representative from Sudan was not pleased with this, to say the least, and demanded they cease distributing the flyers. The NGO in question was informed that they were not to do that, and that they'd be removed if they continued to do so.
The UN is a farce when it comes to doing anything useful about human rights.
So why should it be trusted with governance of the Internet?
Now, do you realize that CNN and MSNBC, and yes, even NPR, are no better?
I would disagree with that, though 'better' does not mean good. They're better in the sense that breaking your arm is better than breaking your spine.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
I Void the UN - Government Imposters - New Internet Design Requirements - Quantum Internet Links?
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The US Constitution Requires all treaties to comply with it's
provisions and the UN Treaties are clearly outside of the limits the
US Constitution imposes on Governance - so I declare the UN to now be
not binding on the United States of America or the United States or
the Several States -- err there are actually many names we've had over
here as the US has morphed many times in it's corporate status.
I'm just sick of corporations like "The United States of America"
impostering as a legitimate government.
The Internet needs a new design requirement.... No Controls, No
Central Controls, No Identity Requirements.
Oh, and whiles we are at it... What about using quantum physics to
Internet Links? Imagine your blackberry being quantumly linked to
your office network and making calls via a sip client and TOTALLY
BYPASSING the microwave cell phone companies!!!!!
Nice!
- -Joey
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nPwAni/r61HGhoOd0vvbJIZoMyo6VPMu
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Everyone knows that FOX news and Rush Limbaugh are to be compared with the National inquirer when it comes to news.
That's roughly accurate, although saying "everybody knows" is silly. Now, do you realize that CNN and MSNBC, and yes, even NPR, are no better? Or do you think they're magically better because they correspond more closely to your beliefs?
Well, at least CNN and MSNBC don't just flat-out lie about the facts, report their own talking-heads points of view as news, or copy any political party's press releases as their own news reports the way Fox News does. From the looks of it, quite frankly, you'd think that Olbermann's and Maddow's teams do better fact checking than the Fox News newsroom does. Either that or Fox News newsroom simply ignore the results of their fact checking when it doesn't support the story they want to run, which quite often seems to be the case when they report on politics. Incompetents or liars, that's Fox News, take your pick.
My sig will be released in 2015 third quarter. Rating pending.
don't mention the wall?
WOWOWOWOWO.when you look at the beautiful woman,are you excited now and do you want to do something?,Gus,there is a convenient way to make you meet some women who are alone ======Matchcougar.com=====to make you meet some rich and lonely woman to go with you you just enter ======Matchcougar.com=====,and it is OK.BE FREE
People just don't show up at conferences with a stand ; they make appointments beforehand most of the time ....
And mall cops don't work under the UN jurisdiction for as far as I know.
To my opinion, this is pure censoring, make about it what you want ...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Even in US school speech is restricted to whatever the school want to restrict it to. One can argue to infinity whether freedom of speech should be universal and unrestricted , but it is NOT unbound. There are many example of restricted material of speech even in the US (try showing a boobs or yelling bad words in prime time). In France there is a law which say that school are SECULAR and no proselythism should be done. Whatever I always thought this was a very very good law.
And in France at least, there is an unspoken understanding between the press and the government. You don't say anything to embarrass government officials, and you get to keep your job.That is absolutely not true. So many scandal come out because PART of the press is not behold to their "master". That you do not read them or know them do not mean they do not exists. One such example I would citate is the "Canard enchainé" which poo-poo rightist, leftist, and centrist and do not mind earthing up scandal. Also Le monde at its time also unearthed a few political scandal. And a few other on TV radio I forget.
By the way, I know this because I'm French, I was born in France, and I've lived part of my life in France. Except that you are not right, and I am a french, I have lived there 25+ years. The only point where you are right is that we do not have "freedom of speech" as open and unbound as the US, but we *DO* have a liberty of expression.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I smell bullshit. Let's take a closer look at that document shall we?
-> women can not choose whether to marry, nor to whom
Wrong. Nowhere does it state this, though it does state "Men and women have the right to marriage, and no restrictions stemming from race, colour or nationality shall prevent them from enjoying this right."
So, a Muslim woman can choose to marry an atheist man? Did you miss the part where they didn't exempt religious restrictions in this right?
You should consider first observing a right, not enforcing it. All real rights are defined negatively - that is, to observe some right of yours, other people must abstain from some malicious action against you. An example would be property right: to observe your property right, other meople must not steal from you. Inaction (not stealing) as such doesn't cost anything and so does NOT have to be paid for. OTOH, the fake "rights" socialists like to invent are defined positively - to observe such "right" of yours, other people must actively take some actions beneficial to you. An example would be the "right" to health care: to observe that "right," other people have to provide you that care. This action (provision of health care) has an intrinsic cost associated with it and therefore has to be paid for.
Now, enforcing both a right and a "right" obviously costs money, but that is beside the point: only real rights - which are free to observe, as shown above - deserve enforcement.
Sorry for my possibly bad English.
Wow! 88% of black US citizens voted for Kerry! How could he not win? Or did you mean that 88% of black americans who voted, voted for Kerry which is very different? To make accurate statements about whether Obama being half-black got him extra votes, you have to also ask whether people who wouldn't have voted otherwise also voted for him.
I'm just trying to highlight flaws in the argument rather than reaching a verdict one way of another. Regardless of his race, I think the Democratic candidate would have won anyway. That's how US politics works. You have a party in power for a couple of terms, until they're so covered in shit that people are getting disillusioned with "the government" and might start thinking about taking care of matters themselves, dealing with the corruption, etc. And then a different party is swapped in and the old party goes away taking all the blame with them whilst the new party promise to change things. And the cycle begins again.
Economic disaster was coming. A party switch pretty much had to take place so that blame could be passed to a group that had already been "dealt with" by being deposed and thus there was no target for people who want to change things for the better.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I wonder when the U.N. is going to try to make You Tube take down that video??
The sad part is it could have prevented WWII, if only the US were to have ratified it and backed it solidly.
The League would not have prevented WWII. If the NAZIs had come to power the world would have found a way to try and ignore them the way they did, and Hitler would have invented some other reason to start to the war.
In any case, in order to have an effective League or UN, the only doctrine that CAN work is the Bush doctrine, which the world rejected. At this point, the UN is what it is, an overpriced relief organization.
This is my sig.
Legally they have done nothing wrong, and are not breaking the law, so when the goons came in and took down the posters, it was merely a show of force, and nothing that could not have been prevented....however...being sly enough, I would have thought a better rebuttal, would have been to plaster all the walls with the same poster, requiring a full day for the "goons" to take down, as well use the really hard glue to keep in place...or even fibreglass casings, with padlocks. In the end...if they want to keep that poster up, they can ...if they are willing to go the extra mile.
To prove the point, I would...but that is just me!
Is it the custom in the US to use a person's middle name too
Not at all.
or just a way reactionnary focus groups have found to lump to gather Saddam and Obama ?
Absolutely.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Instead of just providing meta-commentary on the incident, it might be helpful to inject some more information about what really went down with the UN folks.
According to Deibert:
1. We were told that the banner had to be removed because of the reference to China. This was repeated on several occasions, in front of about two dozen witnesses and officials, including the UN Special Rapporteur For Human Rights, who asked that I send in a formal letter of complaint.
2. Earlier, the same officials asked us to stop circulating a small invite to the event because it contained a mention of Tibet. They even underlined it in showing it to me. Because the event was just about to start, we said that we would not be distributing any more of these invitations so it was a moot point.
3. We asked repeatedly to see any rules or regulations governing this act. They did not give us any, only referring to the "objections of a member state."
4. There were in fact many posters and banners in many of the rooms that I attended, including others in our own. The video itself shows us, at one point, taking one of the other posters we have and offering to cover up the original one. They objected to that and told us this banner must be removed.
On another matter of clarification:
The UN officials did not throw the banner on the ground. They asked us to remove it and one of our staff placed it on the ground for us to consider what to do. That's where we had the discussion. When we refused to remove it, their security guards bundled it up and took it away.
coding is life
You never heard of Hilary Rodham Clinton? That's how she wanted to be referred to when Bill Clinton took presidential office.
You still see it in articles referring to her today.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Everyone knows that FOX news and Rush Limbaugh are to be compared with the National inquirer when it comes to news.
That's roughly accurate, although saying "everybody knows" is silly. Now, do you realize that CNN and MSNBC, and yes, even NPR, are no better? Or do you think they're magically better because they correspond more closely to your beliefs?
Well, at least CNN and MSNBC don't just flat-out lie about the facts, report their own talking-heads points of view as news, or copy any political party's press releases as their own news reports the way Fox News does. From the looks of it, quite frankly, you'd think that Olbermann's and Maddow's teams do better fact checking than the Fox News newsroom does. Either that or Fox News newsroom simply ignore the results of their fact checking when it doesn't support the story they want to run, which quite often seems to be the case when they report on politics. Incompetents or liars, that's Fox News, take your pick.
Citations please
Incompetents or liars, that's Fox News, take your pick.
There's no picking needed. It's liars, no questions asked.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Usually we defer to the preference of the person in question, and to a lesser extent the need to distinguish him from other living or historically significant persons. Think George W. Bush. Not sure where you're hearing BHO though. It has been emphasized to "link" him to Islam. But really that usage tends to come from a pretty small segment of conspiracy theorists who believe he is a crypto-Muslim. Mainstream political opponents of his avoid his middle name just to avoid being linked with those folks.
There was a series of "patriotic" songs that were given to school teachers to have their students learn that explicitly state "Barack Hussein Obama" within the song's context. They're pretty communistic in nature, and pretty scary imho. I don't feel that modern politics should have a place like that in elementary education, regardless of which side you are on.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Your president is in China discussing REAL issues, like the trade deficit, trade protectionism, the massive Chinese holdings in USD and the repeated buying of American debt by China. All while staying as far away as possible from "human rights".
Face it, nobody cares about human rights, and as much as the Western media likes to blow them out of proportion it was never a real issue and now even your leadership acknowledges it.
"You never heard of Hilary Rodham Clinton?"
Rodham is her maiden name. Her middle name, as near as I can tell, is Diane.
"That's how she wanted to be referred to when Bill Clinton took presidential office."
Good point; the reason people refer to her using her maiden name is because she expressed that preference. How does that relate to the question of why someone would conspicuously insert Obama's middle name?
"You still see it in articles referring to her today."
Yet not in the comment that GP was questioning.
In the dutch free newspaper "De pres" there was an article today about a British atheist/Muslim (he is an atheist but he is the son of Muslim immigrants).
Basically, he claims things went wrong when the left embraced the idea of a multi-cultural society. Suddenly people were no longer judged on who they were but on their background. So, you were no longer poor or rich, but Muslim or white. And then the old labels were still applied, all Muslims are poor and uneducated and all whites are rich and went to university. A silly notion but VERY true and not just with the PC crowd. Years ago I worked as a cleaner and I was asked by other cleaners who were all imigrants, why a white person was working there. Because it paid decent and they didn't care about qualifications, hold a mob the right way up on the second try and they paid you.
Rather then judge people on who they are, we know judge you on the group we label you as and damned if you don't fit that label. Not all fat people are lazy and not all skinny people got an eating disorder thank you very much.
By seemingly allowing people to be of a different culture we are in a way enforcing them to remain in that culture. In the movie "radioland murders" there is a simple gag, we see a radio play being recorded with a black and a white actor, then we HEAR but not SEE, some weird lingo being spoken, obviously some language by primitive bush people, THEN the camera pans back JUST as the hero starts say in posh english "easy for you to say, what". Joke: it is the black guy who says this, looking for everything but his skin color like an English noble man.
The multicultural society is very open to Muslims, as long as they act like proper Muslims. Claim: all Muslims in Denmark were against the cartoons. One Muslim: not all, I am not. Response: Oh yeah, but you are not a proper Muslim. It is the same with blacks, fine if they act black, but if they act white, they are sell outs, uncle Toms and what not. Blacks should listen to Rap music, that is good and shows a respect for the others culture, listening to Bach is NOT. Be honest with yourself, how would you react if a black guy strutted out and started playing a violin? How tolerant would you be?
We need to get back to our old ideals, judge people who they are, and be willing to say, "No, those believes/attitudes do NOT have a place in our culture". Multi-culturalism is dead, it could never exist. A true multi-cultural would HAVE to accept one culture destroying all the others because to deny that first culture is to deny that culture its right to exist. A multi-cultural would let pedo's room free because having sex with children is also a culture.
We need to get back to a honest open society were we judge all religions the same and all extremist the sames. So, no religious symbols in public spaces since there is separation of church and state. But this is a hard sell, especially since some parties, like the christians want to introduce their own extreme views by the efforts of Muslims. Prayers for Muslims open the door wide to prayers for Christians without ever the Christians having to lift a finger. Very convenient.
The left needs to give up the idea of a multi-cultural society and go back to its root. A society of one for all and all for one. Were you can be different as an individual but not as a group expect to be treated different.
It will be a hard change to make, as it takes real guts but right now right wing extremist are on the increase. Either the left deals with the problems or the right comes with their own solutions, and we all know how that tends to work out.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"It is of course nonsense to say that UN "exists to exert power"; that is just one of those sweeping statements that show that you don't know and don't want to know what you are talking about - you just want to spit your gall out on anything or anybody who isn't there to defend themselves."
UN Controls US parks
I don't think this analysis is accurate to the 2000 election. That election was so close because Bush was intentionally misrepresenting his views and running as the moderate, technocratic, sensible guy that his opponent actually was.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
did anyone else notice the clapping when the poster was taken away?
why would anyone have been applauding that? was it the chinese? the mpaa?
This is not true. Consider your first example of the right to own property (land). It is not a negative right. It is a positive right for you to take part of the commons away from all of the other members of society, and use it for your own exclusive benefit. In addition to the cost to society of the loss of use of part of the commons, there are administrative costs such as surveying the land, creating and maintaining ownership records, informing the public that the land is owned, etc.
For something closer to your second example of healthcare, consider the right to education. This exists in any modern society, and is almost perfectly analogous to the right to healthcare. In more advanced societies this typically includes basic and higher education. In more primitive societies, it is often limited to basic education, but is nevertheless there. Anyone who denies this is a right is centuries behind the times. In Scotland for example, state schools were established in the 17th century. One of the results of this was the Scottish Enlightenment.
Beyond your two examples, consider the right to life. Is your claim that this holds only for threats to life from other people? If so, would you say that the police or military ought to ignore, for example, an incursion by wild animals? Do you think the police/military ought to simply sit by if a mad elephant charges into a village and starts killing people? Unless you do, then this is also a positive right. Moreover, if protecting people from dangerous animals is an accepted public function, then why not protecting them from dangerous bacteria and viruses? It is nearly the same thing.
Like many libertarians (which you may or may not be), you are accepting an artificial distinction between harm attributable to other people and harm not attributable to other people. Protecting the lives of citizens from other people within society, other people outside of society (who are not bound by the social contract), animals, bacteria, viruses, etc all amounts to essentially the same thing. There is no logical basis for separating harm caused by humans from the others.
You dont mix freedom of internet with bad politics.
What Tibet have to do with it?
They got what they deserved.
Tibet have nothing to do with censorship. It is completely separate thing.
If they were there to promote freedom of speech an taking down internet censorship, then fine.
But mixing that with some bad politics does not comes together.