EU signs ACTA, global internet censorship treaty
By Rady Ananda
On Jan. 26, the European Union and 22 member states signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced. They have now joined the US and seven other nations that signed the treaty last October.
This signing ceremony merely formalized the EU’s adoption of ACTA last month, during a completely unrelated meeting on agriculture and fisheries, reports TechDirt.
PermalinkOccupy Wall Street protesters sue New York City
By Rady Ananda
After the New York Police Dept. arrested over 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge last Saturday, six of those arrested filed a class action lawsuit on Oct. 4, alleging constitutional violations for intentional entrapment and false arrest.
“The NYPD engaged in a premeditated, planned, scripted and calculated effort to sweep the streets of protesters and disrupt a growing protest movement in New York,” plaintiffs charged in the complaint.
SHIELDing the truth: WikiLeaks opponents aim to 'kill the messenger'
By Rady Ananda
UPDATE: Over 1,200 mirror sites now host Wikileaks.
On Dec. 2nd, extremist Senators John Ensign (R-NV), Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Scott Brown (R-MA) introduced a bill entitled the Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination Act (SHIELD), effectively criminalizing whistleblowers.
The next day, the Library of Congress confirmed that it blocked Wikileaks from its database, bluntly denying access by the Congressional Research Service. Not only is the public being prevented from viewing whatever Wikileaks has to say, but so are government researchers who advise Congress.
Writing for the Federation of American Scientists, Steven Aftergood said, "if CRS is 'Congress’s brain,' then the new access restrictions could mean a partial lobotomy."
Deceptions a brilliant clarion to save the Internet
By Rady Ananda
In Deceptions, filmmaker Chris Pratt briefly covers 911, but then explores Bush-Obama as puppets, and their masters, the banksters. He looks deeply at world government, and New World Order plans to shut down the last venue of free speech that remains: the Internet.
"I feel very strongly that the world needs to see, to consider, to be aware that there are some very dark and sinister forces at play shaping what we think is an independent opinion," he told me via email.
Joe Klein's Fatuous Fantasy
Time Magazine's Joe Klein is having an allergic reaction to free speech and public debate. The title of his latest column says it all: The Left's Idiocy on Health Reform. It's an ex cathedra pronouncement from a made man at one of the nation's oldest media properties.
What's got Joe so worked up?
Two things. He's upset at the lack of respect that internet based writers show for the mainstream media and Washington insiders. He's also beside himself that people are actually finding fault with the health care reform bill which many bloggers have the nerve to describe as just another government bailout for big business.
In the snarkier precincts of the left-wing blogosphere, mainstream journalists like me are often called villagers. Joe Klein, Dec. 30
That's some pretty nasty name calling isn't it. "Hey villager!" Accusing an entire class of people of idiocy pales by comparison. If I've ever read the term villager, I didn't pay enough attention to remember it. But let's take Joe's word that it's out there in all its rhetorical glory. According to Klein, leftist bloggers see villagers as "regurgitating spin spoon-fed by our sources or conjuring a witless conventional wisdom that has nothing to do with reality as it is lived outside the village." Now there's some idiocy – from Joe's keyboard to our screens.
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