‘TapDance’ Networking Technology Designed to Beat Censorship – Breitbart News

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Robinson announced the project aiming to fight global censorshipvia Medium, breaking down the way in which he and his fellow researchers are rewiring the Internet for freedom. To do this, they will use refraction networking also known as decoy routing through a utility known as TapDance to confuse and subvert national censors. They debuted it at this years Usenix Security Symposium, in Vancouver, British Columbia.

TapDance is a complex tool with a surprisingly simple explanation. Essentially, requests from a country in which a site is censored will be rerouted through, and then refracted from, a site that is deemed acceptable to whatever censors are in place. To do this, relevant internet service providers will need to employ TapDance within the core of their infrastructure. Once they have done so, TapDance will simply watch for any signals sent with a special, secret tag that signals the request is from a censored area of the world then disguises it for them in real time.

The test conducted employed popular anti-censorship app Psiphon, and involved more than 50,000 users. After its promising success, the creators of TapDance believe thatTapDance can be practically realized at ISP scale with good performance and at a reasonable cost, and that it could very well create further opportunities for long-term, large-scale deployments of TapDance or other refraction networking schemes in the future.

That said, no one is really sure how good TapDance will be at evading the robust national defenses of governments ruling in places like North Korea, let alone China. In fact,professor Ian Goldberg and Ph.D. student Cecylia Bocovich at Ontarios University of Waterloo believe that it is within the capabilities of more powerful censors to detect and blockTapDancetraffic in its current form, according to an e-mail received by CBC News.

To that end, Bocovich and Goldberg are developing their own solution, in Slitheen. Rather than employing refraction networking to hide censored requests, Slitheen actually disguises them as requests for acceptable content, and tailoring the traffic patterns to match the fake data requested. Unfortunately, it is also currently much more difficult to implement for ISPs.

If TapDance succeeds on a broader scale, it represents the worlds current best hope for a free and open internet. If ISPs along the very backbone of the information superhighway can implement such a simple tool, freedom of speech and information will be exponentially harder to hold prisoner.

FollowNateChurch@Get2Churchon Twitter for the latest news in gaming and technology, and snarky opinions on both.

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FCC Censorship Rules Vary for Broadcast, Cable, and Streaming – Variety

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Its about halfway through the fifth season of Orange Is the New Black when Elizabeth Rodriguezs recently un-incarcerated, always opinionated Aleida sums up the plight of female-forward broadcast television writers everywhere with one simple, well-crafted exchange.

Can I say bitches? she asks a local newscaster and then, when she gets the green light, immediately and involuntarily exclaims, s. The journalist, played by Thea McCartan, responds she cant say that, to which Aleida replies, What kind of fing bulls rule is that?

Although the writers may have simply been trying to show that Aleida was not as media savvy as she was street smart in this episode, which was written by co-exec producer Lauren Morelli, in a lot of ways, were all like Aleida, says writer-producer Carolina Paiz.

After years of working on broadcast TV, Paiz understands Aleidas frustrations. On network shows, she notes, Were constantly censoring or told to self-censor. Even before the FCC has a way to weigh in, Standards and Practices is all over us.

Paiz recounts her frustration from working on one unidentified show that had plenty of violence, but required the writers to go back and forth and come up with 20 different racial slurs to see which one was more acceptable than the other. She was also on ABCs Greys Anatomy earlier in its run when writers were told that they couldnt say vagina on a medical show but penis was OK thus resulting in terms like vajayjay entering our lexicon. (A representative for ABC confirmed to Variety that vagina is now acceptable language.)

Ron Simon, curator of TV and radio at the Paley Center for Media, notes that since 1934 over-the-air television and radio has been regulated, including a safe harbor period between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Although the First Amendment prohibits outright censorship or interference with broadcasters right to free speech, during these hours content the FCC deems indecent material may not be broadcast because kids are arguably most likely to hear it.

Simon says most of the recent viewer complaints have come from live events, such as CNNs decision to air the audio of Donald Trumps Access Hollywood hot mic interview during the election or Stephen Colberts late-night monologue where he claimed to know the only thing the president is good for. Neither were within the FCCs jurisdiction.

It seems very arbitrary, if you look at the complaints, Simon says. Hes not sure how much the average viewer has made a distinction between what is and isnt regulated by the FCC.

Of course networks have their own rights to self-censor and Paizs experience with broadcast Standards and Practices is not unique. Museum of Broadcast Communications television curator Walter J. Podrazik says he has seen a desire not to offend from the business side since the days of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, and Rob and Laura Petrie, sleeping in separate beds. He points to a scene in a televised production of the play No Time for Sergeants that aired in 1955 during The United States Steel Hour as an example. In the play, Andy Griffiths character, Will Stockdale, is on latrine duty and decides to make all the toilet seat covers stand at attention and flush when his superior walks though. But the gag was deemed inappropriate for television audiences, so an orchestra played instead. Even by 1971, Podrazik says, it was a big deal when audiences heard a toilet flush in one of the first scenes of All in the Family.

What is offensive or what is an imposition has sort of changed over the years, Podrazik says. But he adds that writers and directors are crafty enough to get around it and convey it without having to say the words.

Foxs Empire only used the most derogatory word for a gay man in the pilot (in 2015), since becoming more creative when reaching for terms an old-school music mogul might use to hurt his gay son. ABCs Modern Family made light of an emotional situation in 2012 by bleeping the tirade of f-bombs that the young Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons) unleashes during a wedding ceremony. But this year NBCs The Carmichael Show aired the n-word unedited during primetime albeit with a parental advisory notice appearing ahead of the broadcast. These examples all serve the argument that words can be hurtful, but hearing them can add to the authenticity of characters, diminish their shock potential and reclaim their ownership.

ABCs anthology drama American Crime, which ended with its third season this year, was never gratuitous with foul language, but it did incorporate it into the show to capture the reality of its characters vocabulary. Its work-around for the FCC? A short cut to black.

Michael J. McDonald, one of American Crimes executive producers, says early viewers thought something might be wrong with their screens, but now, people are used to it, and when you watch it, you just fill in the word. McDonald appreciates that ABC allowed these cutaways because it implies theyre not shying away from the language being spoken. Theyre almost saying, Were censoring this because we have to.

American Crime still had to fight battles for certain terms, though. Lollipop is not an acceptable euphemism for oral sex, according to the ABC S&P, and dick is banned as well, which McDonald says is innately misogynistic, considering you can say bitch as many times as you want in an episode. It is interesting to note, too, that when licensed on Netflix and airing in other countries, American Crime plays its scenes with the words intact.

Cable networks that are not as beholden to advertisers have slightly fewer censorship rules to which to adhere, but most are still selective with their language. Although shows on FX have used the f-word for years, and The People v. OJ: American Crime Story ran the gamut of racist and sexist commentary when depicting the infamous Mark Fuhrman tapes, its 2017 anthology Feud was the first to use the c-word.

Id like to get to the point where theres virtually no censorship, and were pretty close, FX chief John Landgraf told journalists during his executive session at the summer 2015 Television Critics Assn. press tour. Landgrafs policy is to use as few offensive epithets toward women and minorities as possible.

When they are used, they tend to be used in a context where you see theyre used by a character that is doing something wrong, and its pretty clear theyre doing something wrong, he says.

Oddly, this issue is compounded by something for which many networks have been commended: a push for diversity. As series push to include more characters speaking foreign languages, there comes the problem of what is inflammatory in one country isnt in another even if those countries speak the same language, as McDonald found on American Crime. Similarly, Paiz says she once worked on show that had a character named Jesus. S&P was fine with his name if it was used with the Latino pronunciation, but she says they dug in their heels that his friends were not refer to him with the Anglicized one.

I come from Latin America and they censor words that we say in Spanish in ways that make no sense, says Paiz. She was also told that under no circumstances could she use the Latino insult pendejo, which literally translates to pubic hair but can also be used pejoratively to call someone a stupid or contemptible person, because they had gotten complaints about it before.

Paiz understands the reasoning behind these rules, even if they do feel arbitrary, but McDonald points out that an hour on social media on which children spend a great portion of their day can bring up more scathing language than anything available on scripted television. He believes cursing and strong language definitely have their places on television, just not on all shows.

I dont think people are going to be watching American Crime and think, Oh, dear lord. They said the f-word!, McDonald says. You already have chosen to watch our show and know what the subject matter is. I think if you dropped the f-word and the n-word into an episode of The Middle, that might be a little more shocking to a family.

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FCC Censorship Rules Vary for Broadcast, Cable, and Streaming - Variety

In banning white-supremacist websites, progressive tech giants set a dangerous precedent. – National Review

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Last week, multiple major Internet corporations essentially cooperated to kick a hate site, The Daily Stormer, off the Internet. Cloudflare, GoDaddy, Google, and various other companies withdrew their services, and now one of the Internets most odious sites lives mainly on the dark web, largely inaccessible to the casual user.

This was an ominous development for free speech and not because there is anything at all valuable about The Daily Stormers message. Its an evil site. Its message is vile. Instead, The Daily Stormers demise is a reminder that a few major corporations now have far more power than the government to regulate and restrict free speech, and theyre hardly neutral or unbiased actors. They have a point of view, and theyre under immense pressure to use that point of view to influence public debate.

Its a simple reality that the lines of Internet communication are in progressive political hands, these progressive corporations look to left-wing activists to define hate, and a large number of leftists believe to the core of their beings that hateful speech should be censored and suppressed whenever possible.

For example, just this week ProPublica, a respected journalism outlet, decided to study how leading tech companies monetize hate. The article begins by highlighting not the Klan or a white-supremacist militia but instead Jihadwatch.org. And how did it choose Jihad Watch? It relied on the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that is notorious for supplementing its lists of white-supremacist hate groups with its own ideological enemies list, one that a university radical would love.

It singles out mainstream Christian organizations like the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom as hate groups because they defend and support orthodox Christian beliefs on marriage, sexuality, and gender identity. It challenges Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch because he argues that traditional Islam itself is not moderate or peaceful. Thats a highly debatable proposition (indeed, there are Muslims who agree with Spencer), but is it akin to white supremacy? After all, enormous numbers of people in the Muslim world believe in the death penalty for, among other things, blasphemy or apostasy. Those are mainstream Muslim views. Are those views moderate? Are those views peaceful?

The SPLC even calls American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray Charles Murray a white nationalist. Does that mean ProPublica is going to call out corporations that help AEI process its online donations? ProPublica does at least acknowledge the controversy over the SPLCs rankings but then waves it away by arguing that the SPLC documents its decision about the Family Research Council by citing the evangelical lobbying groups promotion of discredited science and unsubstantiated attacks on gay and lesbian people. But did ProPublica do its own research on the FRC? What about the many other mainstream groups the SPLC labels as hateful? From its story, it looked like ProPublica simply accepted the SPLC list and ran its analysis.

In fact, the SPLCs language about the FRC is so inflammatory and one-sided that in 2012 it inspired a man named Floyd Lee Corkins to attempt to massacre as many FRC employees as he could and stuff Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their dead mouths. In 2016, the SPLC inspired a violent attack on Charles Murray when he tried to speak at Middlebury College. A number of the protesters reported that they hadnt read Murrays work. They relied entirely on the SPLCs inaccurate summary of his views.

None of this is happening in a free-speech vacuum. In some progressive enclaves even the most ordinary and mainstream of assertions cause meltdowns. The examples are too numerous to mention, but who can forget the physical threats on Evergreen State College professor Bret Weinstein when he objected to a plan to exclude white students and professors from campus for a day? Who can forget the incredible, overheated response at Yale University to the suggestion that adult students should be free to choose their own Halloween costumes? And lets remember that it was just days ago that Google a company that claims to value free expression summarily fired an employee for making good-faith arguments about sex differences that are well-supported by large volumes of research across species, cultures, and history.

When Cloudflare terminated its relationship with The Daily Stormer, its CEO sounded a word of warning. In an e-mail to company employees, he said, Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldnt be allowed on the Internet. No one should have that power. In fact, he explicitly hoped that his actions would not set a precedent. But he has set a precedent. So has Google. So has GoDaddy. Its a precedent that activists will cite time and again its a precedent that ProPublica just cited to try to force the most powerful communications companies in the world to use their immense reach to restrict debate on the most consequential issues in public life.

Americans by default and without any meaningful choice are putting their trust in a collection of companies that are largely ideological monocultures disproportionately influenced by the social-justice Left. No one weeps for The Daily Stormer, but censors often start with the easy targets, and even a cynic like me was surprised at how quickly ProPublica started probing tech companies relationships with far more mainstream organizations. The move from The Daily Stormer to the Family Research Council isnt a slippery slope, its a plunge off a cliff of reason and rationality, yet its a plunge that all too many Americans are willing to take. They see no distinction between orthodox Christians and the Klan, and theyll pressure corporations to see the world the same way.

There are no easy answers to our cultural drift away from free speech, but the first line of defense is persuasion. There are people of goodwill at companies such as Google, Cloudflare, and GoDaddy people who understand the high cost of censorship and the dangers of ideological uniformity. They understand that the proper cure for bad speech is better speech. Indeed, they remain powerful enough that our online culture is still vibrant and largely free. They cannot and must not fall for the activism and hectoring of ideological opportunists.

David French is a senior writer for National Review, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, and an attorney.

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In banning white-supremacist websites, progressive tech giants set a dangerous precedent. - National Review

Trump campaign accuses CNN of censorship – The Hill

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President Trumps reelection campaign saidTuesdaythat CNN has denied its offer to buy air time for a campaign ad, marking the second time the network has refused to run a pro-Trump campaign spot.

The ad, called Let President Trump Do His Job, accuses the media of attacking our president and briefly displays pictures of news anchors from several news outlets, including CNN anchors Jake Tapper, Don Lemon and Anderson Cooper.

The presidents enemies dont want him to succeed, the ad states. Let President Trump do his job.

One of the many reasons that so many millions of Americans support President Trump is because of their complete mistrust of the mainstream news media, and the presidents refusal to allow their biased filter to interfere with his messages, Trump campaign executive director Michael Glassner said in a statement.

Today, CNN provided further proof that the network earns this mistrust every day by censoring President Trumps message to the American people by blocking our paid campaign ad, he continued. Clearly, the only viewpoint CNN allows on air is CNNS.

A spokesperson for CNN said the network asked for changes to make the ad "factually accurate" and that the Trump campaign declined.

"CNN would accept the ad if the images ofreporters and anchors are removed," a spokesperson said. "Anchors and reporters dont have 'enemies,' as the ad states, but they do hold those in power accountable across the political spectrum and aggressively challenge false and misleading statements and investigate wrong-doing."

Earlier this year, CNN refused to run a Trump campaign ad because it cast the mainstream media as fake news.

Trump and CNN are locked in an increasingly personal feud that has pitted the White House against the networks top on-air talent.

CNNs chief White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, has gained prominencefor his entrenched opposition to Trump.

Acosta has infuriated conservatives, who view him as a grandstander whose chief goal is buildinghis personal brand through viral clips of heated exchanges with White House spokespeople.

At a press conferenceon Monday, Acosta, who was representing the media through the press pool, shouted a question at Trump, who responded: Youre fake news.

Havent you spread a lot of fake news yourself, sir?Acosta shot back.

CNN has run its own ads with footage of anchors lecturing White House officials and talking about whether Trump will be impeached.

The network has attracted criticism for its relentless hostility toward the president. A Harvard study found that CNNs coverage of Trump was negative 93 percent of the time over the course of his first 100 days in office.

CNN's ratings are up, although the networkstill trails rivals Fox News and MSNBC.

- This story was updated at 1:06 p.m.

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Trump campaign accuses CNN of censorship - The Hill

Free-Speech Rights and Hate Groups – New York Times

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Photo White supremacists at a rally in Charlottesville, Va., last Saturday. Credit Joshua Roberts/Reuters

To the Editor:

Re The A.C.L.U. Needs to Rethink Free Speech (Op-Ed, Aug. 17):

K-Sue Park argues that the American Civil Liberties Union should rethink its approach to defending free speech after the tragic events in Charlottesville, Va. We are deeply sickened by the violence and mourn the lives lost there. The First Amendment is never a shield for violence.

There is no moral equivalency between the values of equality and justice promoted by Black Lives Matter, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and antiwar protesters, whom we have supported in our history, and the odious views of white supremacists. But we believe that the right of free speech, peacefully expressed, must extend even to those with whom we most vehemently disagree.

Ms. Park is correct that racist speech causes harm, and that speech rights, like property, privacy and liberty rights, can contribute to inequality. But allowing government officials to regulate speech based on their assessment of who is promoting equality or on the wrong side of history would be disastrous. How does Ms. Park think that Southern mayors would have used that power during the 1960s? How would President Trump use it today?

We devote the vast majority of our resources to the never-ending fight for equality for all, including communities of color, women, the L.G.B.T. community, immigrants, people with disabilities and political dissidents. But the freedoms to speak, associate and demonstrate are indispensable tools for advancing justice. We will continue to fight for equality and free speech for all.

DAVID COLE, NEW YORK

The writer is national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

To the Editor:

As an A.C.L.U. member, a Jew and a Charlottesville resident, I agree that the time has come for the A.C.L.U. to end its commitment to defend the free speech of Nazis and white supremacists.

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Free-Speech Rights and Hate Groups - New York Times

Schubart: Free Speech Revisited – Vermont Public Radio

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The principle of free speech is again being debated in the streets, in op-ed columns, and between opposing ideologies. Although principles are often deemed absolute, their legal application is most often contextual and therein lies the rub. The context often cited is that its illegal to yell fire in a crowded theater unless theres a fire.

Its also illegal to verbally incite the use of lawless force with intent to do violence and, just recently, to encourage suicide. Pornography has limited protection, but child pornography has none. And theres diminished protection for commercial speech such as false or misleading advertising. But the expression of ideas, no matter how repugnant, remains legal.

Courts have consistently confirmed the rights of Nazis, Klansmen, ultra-radical and fringe groups to associate and promulgate their beliefs. The First Amendment also protects the endless stream of partisan invective so riddled with alternative facts that fact-checking has become a growth industry. That said, the guarantee of free speech is constantly under legal challenge and review.

Perhaps, the most controversial application of the First Amendment was Citizens United in 2010. Its opponents are adamant about the essential difference between citizens and corporations. Those who support it, including the ACLU, contend that corporations are merely a body of citizens. But detractors question whether the interests of management and shareholders who control corporate messaging and campaign contributions are necessarily consistent with those of the rank and file.

The second point of contention is whether spending money on elections and lobbying constitutes speech. If money is indeed speech, its hard to see how a poor man has equal footing with a rich one or how a soapbox could possibly equate with a broadcast network.

After Charlottesville, the emerging question is whether white supremacy demonstrators brandishing automatic weapons capable of spraying bullets into a crowd in seconds constitutes speech? Does the confluence of enhanced first and second amendment rights create a new form of threatening speech?

And when amplified by vast media ownership, by millions spent in lobbying, or by the intimidating presence of military weapons, is speech still just speech?

The ACLU asserts that our right of free expression rests on the premise that the people get to decide what they want to hear, not government. The ongoing challenge is to sustain that right without compromising other principles like public safety, equal opportunity, and democratic process.

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Schubart: Free Speech Revisited - Vermont Public Radio

Is pointing a ‘finger gun’ at a cop a constitutional right? An ex-con just found out – Miami Herald

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Miami Herald
Is pointing a 'finger gun' at a cop a constitutional right? An ex-con just found out
Miami Herald
Bad action-movie dialogue and a finger gun pointed at a cop don't qualify as protected free speech just yet. A judge has ruled that a Florida law used to arrest a man accused of threatening a Hialeah police officer is perfectly constitutional. The ...

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Is pointing a 'finger gun' at a cop a constitutional right? An ex-con just found out - Miami Herald

A Debate Over Speech As A Boston Common Rally Is Cut Short – WBUR

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wbur

August 20, 2017 Updated August 21, 2017 10:20 AM

Police estimate that 40,000 people converged on Boston Common on Saturday to protest a few dozen people attending what organizers called a free speech rally.

Critics of that rally, including Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, said the event gave a platform to people who promote hate. The rally was cut short, and organizers of it said they were denied their right to exercise free speech.

'Don't Let Him Speak!'

The day was hot and humid, and mostlypeaceful. There was music, and all manner of free expression by counter-demonstrators. Some women dressed as witches, anda fewmen were wearingtutus. One person wore a gingerbread man costume. And everywhere, there were signs and T-shirts with slogans some nice, some nasty.One pregnant woman even wrote on her belly, "This baby hates Nazis."

Police were out in force, and bottles and weapons were banned in order to prevent violence like that which occurred last week in Charlottesville, Virginia. There, during a "Unite-the-Right" rally, neo-Nazis and alt-right demonstrators attacked onlookers and counter-demonstrators, and 32-year-old Heather Heyer was killed.

On Boston Common, there were added surveillance cameras, and undercover officers mingledwiththe crowd. Fences were set up to keep the fewpeople who wanted to get to the Parkman Bandstand to hear the speakers separate from counter-demonstrators, creating a 30-yard no-man's land in between.

No reporters or members of the general public were allowed in.

Counter-demonstrators lined the fence, blocking access to the bandstand.

One man, who would not give his name, tried to get into the area. He was surrounded and interrogated by the crowd.

One counter-demonstrator asked him, "What brings you here today?" As he started to answer, his reply was drowned out by people in the crowd shouting, "Don't let him talk!" "Don't let him speak!" "We don't want to hear him!"

Another person said: "You don't get a voice! You don't get to talk!"

Then, the counter-protesters broke out in a chant of "Shame, shame, shame."

Police stood behind the barriers. The man was followed by counter-demonstrators as he left the Common. He and others who wanted to get to the bandstand never made it.

A Message Debate

Boston Police Commissioner Bill Evanswas asked why some of the speakers that planned to join the free speech rally said they were not let through the perimeter.

"We had a job to do. We did a great job," Evans replied."I'm not going to listen to people who come in here and want to talk about hate. And you know what? If they didn't get in, that's a good thing because their message isn't what we want to hear."

The rally had a permit from the city to run for two hours, but it lasted less than half that time before police escorted those on the Parkman Bandstand into wagons and away from the Common.

John Medlar, organizer of the self-described free speech rally, was among those transported and protected by the police.

"This was mob rule today," he said on WBUR. "This was not justice." He added: "We had to get out of there because there were people out there trying to kill us."

In the days before the rally, several alt-right speakers were disinvited from the event, and Medlar publiclydisavowed bigotry, hatred and racism. He calls himself a libertarian and his group a coalition of classical conservatives, liberals and Trump supporters.

Medlar said that by blocking the gate to the Parkman Bandstand, counter-demonstrators were not exercising free speech or expression.

"You think honestlythat if we're not allowed to speak, then you'll be allowed to speak?" he asked. "The First Amendment applies to everybody. We're trying to defend everyone's right to speak here. Including the people who shut us down today."

Medlarsaid that Boston has not seen the last of him, or his coalition.

"I'm telling you, this is not going to be the last rally," he said. "We're not going to give in to threats of violence."

This segment aired on August 20, 2017.

Bruce Gellerman Reporter Bruce Gellerman is an award-winning journalist and senior correspondent, frequently covering science, business, technology and the environment.

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A Debate Over Speech As A Boston Common Rally Is Cut Short - WBUR

What Europe Can Teach America About Free Speech – The Atlantic

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Last Saturday, my adopted home was invaded by a throng of white nationalistsmany heavily armed. They were opposed primarily by area residents, like myself. The results of that protestthe violence, injuries, and deathare by now well known.

I have called Charlottesville home for six years. When I got an offer to join the faculty of the University of Virginia Law School, I was hesitant to leave my native country, the Netherlands, to move to a small town in the American South. But I am glad I did; Charlottesville has been a wonderful place to live: a friendly, cosmopolitan, and welcoming college town.

As images of armed militias and others waving and wearing swastikas made their way across the globe, many of my European friends and family messaged me to ask why the government was allowing this to happen. After all, events would not have unfolded as they did if Charlottesville were in my native country, or for that matter, in any European country. Europeans reject and criminalize certain types of expression they define as hate speech. Much of the speech that we witnessed in Charlottesville would have qualified as such.

This trans-Atlantic difference is largely the product of Europes own history with Nazism. Many Europeans share complicated histories of Nazism that current generations are still grappling with. My own family history illustrates this.

On the eve of WWII, my working-class great-grandparents, like a large number of Dutch, joined the National Socialist Movement (NSB), a Nazi-aligned Dutch party. My family was poor, and joining the NSB improved my great-grandfathers prospects for getting a factory job. Those who knew them insist that anti-Semitism did not motivate their decision to join the party. Still, they gradually started to buy into the partys sinister ideology. After the war my great-grandparents were imprisoned for their NSB affiliation.

My grandfather made a different choice from his parents: during the German occupation he joined the Dutch resistance. He was soon arrested and sent to a labor camp in Germany. He escaped the camp and ended up between enemy lines, where German soldiers executed his travel companions but spared him because of his blond hair and blue eyes. A German mayor helped him after he escaped the labor camp. After the war, he traveled back from Russia to the Netherlands with a girl named Stella who had survived Auschwitz but died giving birth to her first child. These stories were revealed to us in bits and pieces. My grandfather was an amateur poet and prolific writer, but the memories remained raw and painful, and it took him six decades to finally tell his story in a (still unpublished) book.

One ordinary working-class family ended up on different sides of one of the worst atrocities in human history. Our family never overcame those divides.

After WWII, western Europeansand decades later joined by their eastern compatriotsbuilt one of the strongest human-rights systems in the world. Within the framework of the Council of Europe they adopted the European Convention of Human Rights, which would be enforced by both national courts and the newly established European Court of Human Rights. This system protects free speech to an extent. European free-speech doctrine is based on the idea that free speech is important but not absolute, and must be balanced against other important values, such as human dignity.

As a result, freedom of expression can be restricted proportionally when it serves to spread, incite, promote or justify hatred based on intolerance. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, an international human rights treaty, reflects similar principles. This balancing of free speech against other values led Germany to ban parties with Nazi ideologies and recently, to prosecute Chinese tourists who performed a Hitler salute in front of the Reichstag. It led France to outlaw the sale of Nazi paraphernalia on eBay, led Austria to jail a discredited historian who denies the holocaust, and caused the Netherlands to criminalize the selling of Mein Kampf. It is for this same reason that many Europeans could not believe the open display of swastika flags in Charlottesville.

Since WWII, the United States has taken a different tack, exceptional from a global perspective. American free-speech doctrine protects a panoply of viewpoints, even when they target ethnic or religious groups, cause deep offense, or are false by consensus. One underlying theory for doing so is that bad ideas will eventually lose out in a well-functioning marketplace. Some go so far as to argue that it is valuable in itself for a society to tolerate even the most extreme viewpoints. Hence, speech can almost never be restricted on the basis of viewpoint. Most famously, that approach protected the rights of neo-Nazis to march through heavily Jewish parts of Skokie in a 1977 Supreme Court case. It is the approach that allowed neo-Nazis and other white supremacists to demonstrate in Charlottesville on Saturday.

Americans are generally proud of their free speech tradition, and many argue that the European approach is unprincipled or ineffective. Why is denying the Holocaust forbidden, but depicting the prophet Muhammedwhich is blasphemous to many Muslimscondoned? Many of these lines reflect majority opinion and national experience rather than neutral principles. And policing speech can embolden those being censored. When the far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders was convicted for inciting discrimination, he became even more popular among some groups.

Whatever its merits, the European position is rooted in its experiences that the free market of ideas can faildisastrously. Dangerous ideas can catch on quickly, especially when people holding power or influence endorse them. My great-grandparents were not like the protestors in Charlottesville last weekend; they were ordinary citizens who saw their economic lot improve and stayed silent because they benefited from, what some knew thenand nearly everyone knows nowwere toxic ideas.

America today is different from Europe in the 1940s. But Europes history raises the question: Can we count on the market of ideas to succeed? Is it possible for white supremacy and related ideologies to spread beyond the relatively small number of Unite-the-Right fanatics and their brethren? Some suggest that Donald Trumps election is one piece of evidence thats its already happened.

There are no easy answer to these questions. But I believe that in a system where government does not police vile ideas, as in the United States, a larger burden falls on ordinary citizens and other private actors. It is my (admittedly anecdotal) observation that, to some extent, Americans are already doing this. Americans who express objectionable views face harsher community judgement than Europeans who do so.

My American fiance has often expressed shock that the Dutch still commonly use the term neger (negro) although its usage is increasingly controversial. A team of all-black-faced helpers officially accompany the Dutch Santa before Christmas each year. And I have occasionally found myself surprised to learn that there are some things that I absolutely cannot say here, or that people can lose their jobs for what they say off-hours.

Americans long have been caught up in debates over whether there is too much political correctness. Though they are starting to emerge, there are many fewer such debates in Europe. To some extent that is understandable; when the government polices speech, ordinary citizens do not have to concern themselves with all the subtle ramifications of speech. What we may be seeing is a substitution effect: Ordinary citizens in the U.S. take it upon themselves to do what governments are doing elsewhere.

A minority of Americans believe that Donald Trump got elected in part because political correctness has gone too far. They believe that Trump is a healthy corrective in a society in which people are policing each other too much.

But the Charlottesville events, viewed through the lens of European history and its response in law, may teach us that we private citizens and residents in the U.S. need to work even harder to expose the rotten ideas being peddled in the marketplace. When leaders condone hate speech (as Trumps condemnation of both sides and his insistence that the alt-right protestors included some very fine people arguably did) and ordinary people acquiesce, the market can break down quickly. European history has shown this. In an unregulated marketplace of ideas, private citizens need to take up the burden of holding the line against racist extremism.

Kevin Cope, University of Virginia School of Law and Department of Politics, contributed to this article.

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What Europe Can Teach America About Free Speech - The Atlantic

The ACLU is half-right about Metro’s violation of free speech – Washington Post

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TWO YEARS ago, confronted with an inflammatory advertisement depicting the prophet Muhammad, the agency that runs Metro banned all issue-oriented advertising from the subway and bus systems. This March, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found the ban constitutional. You might expect this to be the end of the story but it turns out that defining issue-oriented advertising isnt quite as simple as it sounds.

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority is facing a new First Amendment lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union. And the ACLU has a point at least in part. While WMATAs policy bans advertisements advocating for any side of any issue, it has determined what counts as advocacy in a manner that privileges some viewpoints over others. And its guidelines are so vague that its hard to say what WMATA considers advocacy to begin with.

The ACLU is suing on its own behalf Metro rejected its effort to display the text of the First Amendment and on behalf of far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, the Carafem abortion clinic and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, all of whose advertisements WMATA rejected. In Mr.Yiannopouloss case, WMATA approved the advertisement only to remove it after receiving complaints from offended riders.

The ACLUs suit goes too far in arguing for WMATA to accept its advertisements and those of PETA, which encouraged veganism. Those really were issue ads prohibited by WMATAs legally acceptable guidelines.

But Mr. Yiannopouloss advertisement aimed not to broadcast a viewpoint but to sell his book. WMATA appears to have rejected the advertisement based on complaints about Mr. Yiannopouloss politics, when it does accept ads for other creative works; that amounts to the governments unconstitutionally selecting which ads to display on the basis of viewpoint. Likewise, WMATA rejected Carafems advertisement promoting the clinics services as advocacy because the ad implicated the abortion debate. The ACLU makes a persuasive argument that WMATAs choice to label all abortion-related advertisements as issue-oriented constitutes viewpoint discrimination as well.

WMATA must apply its guidelines consistently, even to products associated with contentious issues. It should also provide clear, objective guidance as to what constitutes advocacy. Of course, even advertisements for products often put forward a point of view to some extent. The vice president of Carafem, for example, has stated that the clinic hopes its ads will increase abortions social acceptability. A McDonalds ad might promote the consumption of meat.

Nevertheless, we can distinguish between advertisements that primarily promote products and those that promote only ideas. Legally, WMATA can prohibit the latter. But if it allows the former, it should approve advertisements for all products and services that meet WMATAs other guidelines, no matter how controversial the views behind those products may be. And while some ACLU supporters even one of its own attorneys have criticized the organization for representing Mr. Yiannopoulos, we should celebrate its willingness to remind us that the First Amendment also protects those voices we may find loathsome.

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The ACLU is half-right about Metro's violation of free speech - Washington Post

So, just how guaranteed is your freedom of speech online? | New … – New York Post

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Following the violence in Charlottesville, Internet businesses have been disassociating themselves from far-right political groups. PayPal decided to prohibit users from accepting donations to promote hate, violence and intolerance; 34 organizations were affected by the ban. Earlier, both GoDaddy and Google refused to host The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi site. Spotify announced that it would remove any streaming music that favors hatred or incites violence against race, religion, sexuality or the like. Dating site OkCupid deleted the profile of a white supremacist who was featured in a Vice TV segment about the Charlottesville, Va., rally, barring him for life.

Most Americans wont worry much about neo-Nazis losing access to the public forum we call the Internet. Their ideas are repugnant, and we did fight a war against their kind not that long ago. End of story?

Not really. Experts, such as Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, say that for technical reasons a small number of tech companies may soon largely determine what can and cannot be online. Some argue that Silicon Valley is abusing its monopoly power over the Internet to suppress free speech. These critics would have Congress regulate the companies as a natural monopoly in order to restore basic rights.

Is there truly such a monopoly over the Internet? After reading that Facebook employees were suppressing conservative articles, Andrew Torba created Gab, a social-networking service open to voices from the right. Gab isnt as popular as Facebook, but its existence does show that the dominant companies do not have a stranglehold on speech.

In any case, these decisions to deny service do not violate the freedom of speech. The First Amendment applies only to government actions. The man posting at @realdonaldtrump, arguably acting as a private citizen exempt from the First Amendment, may block comments critical of his posts. If the same man posts at @WhiteHouse, he is a government official and may not abridge the freedom of speech by blocking critics. PayPal and Google are private corporations, not the government. Moreover, in our nation businesses usually have no obligation to serve others if they do not wish to do so. That too is part of the free market.

Still, Americans in general and conservatives in particular have reason to suspect the tech companies might not be neutral toward content on the Internet. The James Damore case in which a Google engineer circulated a memo suggesting the tech giant hired and promoted based on gender and race indicates the leaders and employees of Google have strong leftwing political views. Indeed, Silicon Valley is known to lean to the left. Its not implausible to imagine that censorship of certain views might ensue.

What then can be done to protect free speech without the courts?

If [internet companies] use their power to exclude in an arbitrary and political way, the nation will be worse off and the companies may suffer and not just at the bottom line.

Markets will do part of the job. These companies are unlikely to deny service to mainstream political voices. After all, a person evicted from a service is no longer a paying customer, and their eviction might convince others to depart. Driving diversity critics out of Google would forego considerable revenue. Many people, not just extremists, have reasonable doubts about aspects of diversity policies.

Fear of the government will also constrain Internet censorship. Critics want to make Internet companies into public utilities because alt-right extremists have been denied service. Imagine what would happen if more legitimate voices were evicted from Google and the federal government responded by forcing the companies to behave better.

No one should want that. Law professor Danielle Citron has suggested several ways Internet companies can protect speech online.

First, affirm a commitment to American norms about free speech. The Internet giants operate globally, subjecting them to European regulations that offer less protection for free speech than does the United States. Europeans punish speech offensive to groups or religions (so-called hate speech) that we protect. American law draws the liberty line for speech at incitement to violence.

The companies mentioned promoting hate and violence as justification for evicting the alt-right. They seem to be following European norms. So far as the companies have discretion, they should affirm their support for the more liberal American norms. They should clearly define speech that will lead to being banned from a platform. That definition should focus on a close connection between problematic speech and violence and not on ambiguous terms like hate speech.

Second, companies should enact private due process for their regulation of speech. Clear definitions of the rules are essential in avoiding arbitrary and personal decisions about banning speech. The process of applying such rules should also be public. That could mean a formal public statement by the company of the rationale for banning some users of their social networks. It might also mean being public about how a company goes about identifying and prohibiting problematic speech. Such transparency about rules and methods will be open to public comment and inevitably criticism. It may also build trust among critics who fear arbitrary and politicized attacks on political speech.

Third, Internet companies should appoint an ombudsman to inform and report on their regulation of speech. They would act as a voice for free speech inside a company, a voice that should be dedicated to American norms on speech.

Internet companies are not the government. They can exclude speech from their domains without violating the First Amendment. But if they use their power to exclude in an arbitrary and political way, the nation will be worse off and the companies may suffer and not just at the bottom line.

John Samples is vice president and publisher at the Cato Institute.

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So, just how guaranteed is your freedom of speech online? | New ... - New York Post

Will Britain’s crackdown on internet trolls undermine freedom of speech? – RT

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Published time: 21 Aug, 2017 12:35 Edited time: 21 Aug, 2017 13:13

New measures designed to crack down on hate crime could have a chilling effect on freedom of speech, warn civil liberties campaigners.

Fresh guidelines issued on Monday by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) would see online abuse treated with the same robust and proactive approach used to address offline offending.

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However, in this attempt to protect users from abuse, the CPS risks undermining the fundamental right to freedom of expression, according to Open Rights Group Legal Director Myles Jackman.

Some offenses employ highly subjective terms like grossly offensive and obscene which could have a severe chilling effect on the more unpalatable but legitimate areas of free speech, if interpreted strictly, Jackman said.

The new measures, aimed at protecting people from online trolling, come as part of a bid to crack down on the corrosive effect of hate crime on British society.

Regional police forces reported a rise in hate crimes of up to 100 percent in the months following the EU referendum last year.

According to figures released by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, the rate increased fivefold in the capital following four terrorist attacks in the UK that killed more than 30 killed and injured many more.

The updated CPS documents state: Hate crime can be perpetrated online or offline, or there can be a pattern of behavior that includes both.

The internet and social media in particular have provided new platforms for offending behavior.

CPS Director Alison Saunders said tackling hate crime has become a priority for prosecutors because of the major impact it has on peoples lives.

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These documents take account of the current breadth and context of offending to provide prosecutors with the best possible chance of achieving justice for victims, Saunders said.

They also let victims and witnesses know what they should expect from us.

She hopes the new guidelines will encourage people to report hate crimes, with the knowledge theyll be taken seriously and given the support they need.

Britains Jewish and Muslim communities say a lot of offenses involve the internet.

Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of campaign group Tell MAMA, which monitors Islamophobic abuse, praised the new focus on social media.

Those who think that street-based hate crimes should have precedent over online ones, should realize there is no competition in getting access to justice, he said, according to the Independent.

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Will Britain's crackdown on internet trolls undermine freedom of speech? - RT

Hate speech v free speech: Where is the line? Part 1 – Aljazeera.com

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On Tuesday, August 22 at 19:30 GMT:

Are there limits to free speech? Recent events across the United States, including afar-right march at which one anti-racism campaigner was killed and more than a dozen people injuredin Charlottesville, Virginia, have left many asking that question. Free speech is said to be one of the foundations of American democracy, and one of its most venerated values. The First Amendment of the Constitution reads:Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.Its because of this law that Nazi signs and symbols were displayed freely in Charlottesville as the far-right groups marched through a university campus, shouting racial slurs. But does this purist defence of free speech actually legitimise racist views and allow hate groups to grow and spread their ideology?Many say it does, and that hate speech should not be protected under free speech laws.Some countries in Europe have taken this position, online and on the streets. Well look at the growing debate over hate and free speech in the United States. Should a line between the two be drawn, and if it is, will the court of public opinion value everyone's freedom equally? Join the conversation.

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The A.C.L.U. needs to rethink free speech- The New York Times Why even Nazis deserve free speech Politico What Europe can teach America about free speech The Atlantic

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Hate speech v free speech: Where is the line? Part 1 - Aljazeera.com

A KKK chief just threatened to ‘burn’ all immigrants freedom of speech has gone too far – The Independent

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To me, youre a N**ger. Thats it... and were gonna burn you out. These were the words of Ku Klux Klan member Christopher Barker to Afro-Colombian journalist Ilia Caldern. He threatened to burn her alive and called her a mongrel during an interview with the Latino TV media outlet Univision, which was aired last night.

What is most shocking about this incident is that Barker has not been arrested or punished for such words and threats. Like many who have incited hate before him, he is enjoying the benefits of the right to freedom of speech.

Barkers threat was not simply an opinion though it was a direct threat to a persons life. This is what freedom of speech looks like as the US Supreme Court keeps protecting racists and bigots like Barker. The first amendment of the US Constitution is allowing men like Barker to express themselves with violence and hatred without any repercussions. It is time for lawmakers to act and modify some of the laws that are protecting the wrong side of the country.

KKK leader calls immigrant journalist a n***er during interview

There are 917 hate groups active in the United States according to the Southern poverty law centre, an organisation seeking justice for victims of hate and bigoted acts. These groups are spreading their messages of hate using online platforms, holding rallies, burning swastikas in their backyards and holding the Confederacy flag on the streets. This is real.

Although these groups have been in the news this week, their presence is nothing new. Back in November last year after Trump won the election, Richard Spencer, a white supremacist, said to a room full of supporters Hail Trump, hail our people! They responded with cheers and the Nazi salute.

Richard Spencer was also one of the organisers of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white nationalists and neo-Nazis chanted Jews will not replace us. Blood and soil.

Under US law, it is completely acceptable for people to use this kind of language and hold demonstrations that put others in fear and danger.

The US government claims to protect peoples freedom, but by allowing hate speech and white nationalist rallies, they are promoting one groups freedom of speech at the expense of many other groups freedom to live in safety. A freedom which, although a right under UN law, is not found anywhere in the US constitution.

In fact, the reason these hate demonstrations keep happening is because of the Constitution. Part of the first amendment states that Congress shall make no law... abridging freedom of speech. What this means is that there should not be any kind of force curtailing the ability of men and women to express themselves, verbally or symbolically, even if what they are saying is hateful.

There are a few exceptions in which the first amendment does not protect some forms of speech. This includes exceptions for fighting words, obscenity, extortion, perjury, false advertising and true threat, but there is nothing targeting hate speech specifically.

But does saying to someone Were gonna burn (your people) out not count as a true threat?

The problem with Constitutional limitations is the lack of clarity among these forms of expression. The US Supreme Court has had trouble identifying what kind of hate speech could be considered as fighting words and therefore be punishable under law.

Back in 2010, the US Supreme Court concluded that it was completely lawful for activist Fred Phelps and members of the Westboro Baptist Church to throw homophobic insults to the family of marine Matthew Snyder during his funeral. Snyder died during the Iraq war.

The United States Courts explained that The Supreme Court's holding [Phelps] turned largely on its determination that the church was speaking on "matters of public concern" as opposed to "matters of purely private significance. The First Amendment offers special protection to speeches on public issues as they should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open."

This is why politicians need to change some of the language and be more specific in order to condemn hate speech in this country. It is not enough for elected officials to condemn the actions of these extremist groups. It is necessary and crucial to change the law and bring justice through our courts as well.

Countries like France and Austria hold laws that punish hate speech and public insults that are based on race, religion and ethnicity.

Meanwhile, groups like the KKK, the so called Alt-right, white supremacists and neo-Nazis will continue to do whatever it takes to protect their right to freedom of speech enabling them to spread hate across the country.

In his farewell address, Barack Obama once pointed to the importance of making laws that protect the commonwealth of every person in this country: We need to uphold laws against discrimination in the criminal justice system. That is what our constitution and our highest ideals require.

And that is exactly what President Trump should be advocating for. Instead of blaming many sides for the violence infecting this country, Trump needs to condemn these white supremacist groups and work with lawmakers to update the laws of this country. There needs to be laws that do not welcome this kind of hate and violence, or many people will continue to live in fear.

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A KKK chief just threatened to 'burn' all immigrants freedom of speech has gone too far - The Independent

Enrique Valds Pliego, Atheist Republic Oaxaca City Consulate – The Good Men Project (blog)

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen:Was there a background in atheism, in thefamily?Within that family background, was there a surrounding culture that brought forth a critical mindset towards religion? If so, how? If not, why not?

Enrique Valds Pliego:Myfathers background has a religious mindset. So I lived with him my first 9 years. I was a believer then, but at the dissolution of my parents marriage, I lived with my mothers family who is scientist and agnostics. At that point, I developed my critical thinking skills. They had a library, a big area to read. I had a lot of time to read. My mothers family never took to me to participate in any religious activity, but we used to visit museums and watch movies, theatre and a lot of other activities.

Jacobsen: Through these threads of family and surrounding culture, what made for the pivotal moments in development as an atheist?

Pliego:There were a lot of pivotal moments, but some of them were like moments of revelation, when a bunch of religious ideas had not sensed, or when a religious community used to act violently against free people, I disagree with religious events where Iobliged to shut up just because if I express my self it could be dangerous. but the most important pivotal moment was understanding some concepts like freedom, opinion, law, belief, respect, persuasion, and profit.

Jacobsen: Also, a- as a prefix in atheism means many things because it is both denial and affirmation. What is affirmed there to you? What is denied to you?

Pliego:In my mind, Ithink strongly its a free theme, so theres affirmed that even God in existence, people like me will defend always our rights when some people use that freedom to believe or not believeand is denied to leave our freedom on abuse or swindler hands.

Jacobsen: How did you find the Atheist Republic? What do you do for them? What are your tasks and responsibilities?

Pliego:Ifound AR because people need to talk about common themes, protection, people with common issues. Ido community links, produce messages, questions, replicate notices, and act as a community manager. We work with freedom. Our work is free. We just have a couple of easy rules. Respectis always a base. Our responsibilityis to build a web of free people, to guarantee it, not to fight against religious people, butbuild bridges toward civilization.

Jacobsen: How does an Atheist Republic consulate work? What are its daily operations? How do you make sure the operations function smoothly?

Pliego:Each civilization, each community, city or town grow up independently, even AR. so each consulate hassimilar rules, is part of a mesh that works as a train, lot of peoplego in and go out, if they needsomething we could offer them, with out fees, just because we are real people who want to give to our time the other opportunity to future, options. each one its different, each person has rights.

Jacobsen: Why volunteer for them? What meaning comes from it?

Pliego:Whyhelp people? why build better communities? why is the sense of build civilization a struggle? why make divisions? why disrespect other with same rights? why people arrive at the moon or finding lots of advances? A lot of meanings are inside people, each one of us, but even objective things, because its function, peaceful communities, educated communities are possible, even the opposite.

Jacobsen: How does the Atheist Republic, in your own experience and in conversing with others, give back to the atheist community and provide a platform for them even to simply vent from social and political conventions that hold them either in contempt or in begrudging silence for fear of loss of life quality?

Pliego:When people grew up inside a religious world, with lots of fears, even a tiny, little, very small opportunity of freedom is a great experience, thats why we want to provide a big community for religious refugees. We do not provide disrespect, we want to achieve the common place of meeting, brainstorming, options to kids, their parents, just people who need say any thing related to religiosity, what they feel, what they need, what they lived, what they could give to the community. everybody must live freely. everybody deserves it.

Jacobsen: What do you hope for the future of atheism? What are the movements next steps?

Pliego:Not hopes, its a reality, some places, some countries, towns, who known about rights, about liberty are convinced of taking care of it. the future is related to spread of liberty, with rights, not religious issues, an atheist is not a furious stubborn, is not a politician giving recommendations, is not a leader, is just common people who love freedom as anyone who had to prove it. the next step is the common objectives, freedom anywhere, and maintenance of it. even we have a local activities calendar and sometimes a common calendar at whole consulates. You could check with the consulates, some of them have a complete project while others are building

Jacobsen: Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

Pliego:No one deserves disrespect, abuse, lack of freedom; everybody deserves human rights anda healthy world. obviously, we must take decisions, but this kind of decisions could have sense between human rights.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Enrique.

Pliego:Good night.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Scott Douglas Jacobsen founded In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. He works as an Associate Editor and Contributor for Conatus News, Editor and Contributor to The Good Men Project, a Board Member, Executive International Committee (International Research and Project Management) Member, and as the Chair of Social Media for the Almas Jiwani Foundation, Executive Administrator and Writer for Trusted Clothes, and Councillor in the Athabasca University Students Union. He contributes to the Basic Income Earth Network, The Beam, Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Check Your Head, Conatus News, Humanist Voices, The Voice Magazine, and Trusted Clothes. If you want to contact Scott: [emailprotected]; website: http://www.in-sightjournal.com; Twitter: https://twitter.com/InSight_Journal.

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Enrique Valds Pliego, Atheist Republic Oaxaca City Consulate - The Good Men Project (blog)

The birth of atheism – Times of Malta – Times of Malta

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In his piece No afterlife (August 5), John Guillaumier seems to suffer from tunnel vision in all matters of the ultimate questions of being human. He is so convinced of his intellectual superiority he is incapable of reflecting deeply on survival after death, a subtle and complicated issue.

According to Immanuel Kant, the ultimate questions combine all the interests of human reason. What can I know? sums up the questions about truth. What I ought to do questions the norm. What may I hope questions the meaning.

One thing can be conceded to atheists of substance. It is possible to deny God, to deny the afterlife. Atheism cannot be refuted rationally. In The Christian Challenge, Hans Kung states: It is the experience of the radical uncertainty of every reality which provides atheism with sufficient grounds for maintaining that reality has absolutely no primal reason, no primal support or primal goal.

On the other hand, according to the same author, atheism is also incapable of positively excluding the other alternative: as it is possible to deny Him, so it is also possible to affirm God as the primal reason, the primal support and the primal goal of ones existence despite the ambiguities, the injustices, the contradictions of daily living. In essence, belief in God and survival after death is nourished by a substantial basic trust. This ultimate trust in God in no way isolates one from a deep commitment to others, to the environment and to all the fields of human learning.

What is needed is a genuine dialogue between believers in God and level-headed atheists. Atheism must be taken seriously, giving it its due weight to its causes and values. Believers can have more than a little to do with the birth of atheism.

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The birth of atheism - Times of Malta - Times of Malta

Sheila Gautreaux Highlights Importance of Forgiveness | Benzinga – Benzinga

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New book brims with insights how readers can traverse endure The Long Journey Home'

HOUSTON, TX (PRWEB) August 17, 2017

In the "The Long Journey Home" (published by Balboa Press), author Sheila Gautreaux offers a fresh look at one of the most powerful parables in the Biblethe Prodigal Sonas man's personal journey of evolution in consciousness. This book revolves around its central theme that forgiveness holds the key to reawakening love, peace and connection for all humanity.

"The Long Journey Home" takes a fresh look at one of the most widely-recognized and most frequently interpreted of the many parables taught by Jesus during his ministry. Using the process of metaphysical interpretation, along with the concepts of conscious evolution and quantum science, the Prodigal Son emerges from a great story about coming home and forgiveness to an exploration into how life experiences are valuable teaching points and may provide powerful catalysts for quantum shifts in consciousness.

The book helps readers make sense of the challenges, struggles and detours that define people's paths as they attempt to live and grow in a world that appears to keep them from finding the safe haven they seek from birth that inner sense of "home." What it seeks to highlight is that, "our painful experiences do not have to destroy us; that they are not happening "to" us but are happening "for" us to awaken us to the tremendous power within us to heal our lives."

An excerpt from the book: "The key to successfully living in this world of polar opposites is remembering that God exists within the light and the dark; that there is only God, only Truth, and all else is but a hoax perpetrated by our ego for its own glorification. Awareness is focused attention to the details of lifethe messages, spiritual meaning and lessons within everything around us and everything that happens to us. By recognizing that everything happens for a reasonhappens not to us but for uswe use life as a tool for conscious evolution and the route to home."

"The Long Journey Home" By Sheila Gautreaux Softcover | 6 x 9in | 162 pages | ISBN 9781504368704 E-Book | 162 pages | ISBN 9781504368797 Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author Sheila Gautreaux calls herself a "Spiritual Activist" and passionately carries the message of healing people and the planet through forgiveness. She is a Unity Minister, Licensed Unity Teacher, Certified Radical Forgiveness Coach and a 30-year student of "A Course in Miracles," and a 38-year student of Unity principles. She has written two books: "Praying Through a Storm" and "Messages." She is in demand as a highly-praised, exciting speaker who, as a retired Opera Singer, adds her vocal gift to her message. She has three children and four grandchildren.

Balboa Press, a division of Hay House, Inc. a leading provider in publishing products that specialize in self-help and the mind, body, and spirit genres. Through an alliance with indie book publishing leader Author Solutions, LLC, authors benefit from the leadership of Hay House Publishing and the speed-to-market advantages of the self-publishing model. For more information, visit balboapress.com. To start publishing your book with Balboa Press, call 877-407-4847 today. For the latest, follow @balboapress on Twitter.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/SheilaGautreaux/TheLongJourneyHome/prweb14610518.htm

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Sheila Gautreaux Highlights Importance of Forgiveness | Benzinga - Benzinga

Ambrosia: the startup harvesting the blood of the young – The Guardian

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The study is reminiscent of Robert Boyles 17th-century suggestion to replace the blood of the old with the blood of the young. Photograph: Science Photo Library/Getty Images

What we now call intergenerational fairness has suffered a lot lately, and its not about to be improved by the news that the Baby Boomers are sucking the blood of the young. Although, in fairness, they are only after the plasma.

In Monterey, California, a new startup has emerged, offering transfusions of human plasma: 1.5 litres a time, pumped in across two days, harvested uniquely from young adults.

Ambrosia, the vampiric startup concerned, is run by a 32-year-old doctor called Jesse Karmazin, who bills $8,000 (6,200) a pop for participation in what he has dubbed a study. So far, he has 600 clients, with a median age of 60. The blood is collected from local blood banks, then separated and combined it takes multiple donors to make one package.

Its no coincidence his scheme is based near San Francisco. The idea has become faddish in tech circles. While anti-ageing products usually hold more appeal with women, two-thirds of the more than 65 participants who have signed up for this trial are men. Mike Judges Silicon Valley sitcom recently parodied the notion, with arch-tech guru Gavin Belson relying on a blood boy following him around to donate pints of sticky red at inopportune moments.

That fictionalised account may well be based on the real-life adventures of Peter Thiel, the PayPal founder, who has expressed interest in having transfusions (Gawker even reported that he was spending $40,000 (31,000) a quarter on regular transfusions from 18-year-olds).He, and various other thinkers who radiate out towards the death-evading transhumanist movement, are fascinated by heterochronic parabiosis the sewing together of two animals in order to create a living chimera. Studies going back decades show the regenerative effects of one organism being joined to another. In the 17th century, Robert Boyle he of Boyles Law suggested replacing the blood of the old with the blood of the young.

In 2012, the University of Cambridges Dr Robin Franklin led a group that showed blood from young mice could replace myelin sheaths crucial for combatting MS in older mice. But it was a 2014 Harvard report that seems to have kickstarted the present revival of interest in transfusions. There, scientists injecting old mice with the plasma of a younger generation found it improved their memory and their ability to learn. Conversely, injecting old blood into young seemed to knobble the young rodents.

The scientific community has rolled its eyes at the trial element of Ambrosia. There is no control group and, with participation costing so much, no one involved is very randomised. Despite these criticisms of the science, Dr Karmazin is still reporting positive results. His team has found that levels of carcino-embryonic antigens fell by around 20%, as did the level of amyloids proteins involved in cancer and Alzheimers disease respectively.

Improvements in sleep seem to be the most glittering prize to emerge so far: As people get older, they have much more difficulty sleeping, Dr Karmazin noted. Improve that and you get benefits in mood, immune system, weight management and much else.

It answers the question: how do you sleep at night after leeching the blood out of busboys and students? Just fine, thanks.

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Ambrosia: the startup harvesting the blood of the young - The Guardian

NATO jets in Baltics scrambled three times to escort Russian aircraft – ERR News

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The Russian IL-20 reconnaissance plane.

NATO fighter jets serving in the alliance's Baltic Air Policing mission out of mari Air Base in Estonia and iauliai Air Base in Lithuania were scrambled three times last week in order to intercept Russian military aircraft in international airspace over the Baltic Sea, the Lithuanian Ministry of Defence said on Monday.

The alliance's jets took off twice on Aug. 17, first to identify and escort two Russian IL-20 planes flying from mainland Russia to the exclave of Kaliningrad and the second time to intercept an IL-20 headed for mainland Russia. The Russian aircraft had flight plans and kept in radio contact with the regional air traffic control center, but their onboard transponders were switched off.

A day later, on Aug. 18, an IL-20 reconnaissance aircraft was intercepted en route from Kaliningrad to mainland Russia. This aircraft also had a flight plan and kept in radio contact with air traffic control, however its onboard transponder was likewise switched off.

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NATO jets in Baltics scrambled three times to escort Russian aircraft - ERR News

Poland, NATO watch as Moscow, Minsk prep for war games – thenews.pl

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PR dla Zagranicy

Victoria Bieniek 21.08.2017 15:06

Warsaw and NATO are "closely watching" preparations for Zapad17, Russian and Belarusian war games which will take place near the Polish border in September, Polands deputy defence minister has said.

Deputy Defence Minister Micha Dworczyk said there are concerns about whether all of Russias military equipment will be withdrawn from Belarus after the seven-day exercises end on 20 September.

According to official data, some 12,700 troops, including 3,000 from Russia, are to take part in the drills, but Dworczyk said there might be more.

There is a lot of doubt and concern because of the Russian Federations hitherto activities, and it may turn out that not all forces and means will be withdrawn after the exercises, he said.

He added that there may be more equipment and troops at the war games than what Moscow and Minsk have indicated.

But he said Poles should feel perfectly safe.

Polish President Andrzej Duda and NATO Secretary-General Jans Stoltenberg are set to discuss Zapad17 war games in Warsaw on Thursday. (vb)

Source: IAR

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Poland, NATO watch as Moscow, Minsk prep for war games - thenews.pl