Iranian Journalist Siamak Ghaderi: 2014 CPJ International Press Freedom Awardee

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Source: Committee to Protect Journalists

CPJ International Press Freedom Awards 2014

Siamak Ghaderi is an Iranian freelance journalist and a former editor and reporter for the Islamic Republic's official news agency IRNA.

Ghaderi made international headlines when he chose to rebut former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's claim in 2007 that there were no homosexuals in Iran by publishing online his own interviews with several gay Iranians. He later set up his own blog, called IRNA-ye maa (Our IRNA), in which he covered street protests and other developments following the contested 2009 presidential election.

In July 2010, he was arrested and, in January 2011, sentenced to four years in prison and 60 lashes on charges of "propagating against the regime," "creating public anxiety," and "spreading falsehoods." Pro-government news websites--including Rasekhoon and Haghighat News--called him a "seditionist" who was arrested for "immoral" acts. His blog was repeatedly blocked by authorities before he was detained, reports said.

Ghaderi was an editor and reporter for IRNA for 18 years until he was dismissed for writing about the 2009 election on his blog.

On July 14, 2014, Ghaderi was released from prison.

The text of Ghaderi's acceptance speech, as prepared for delivery, is below. For the Farsi-language version of the speech as prepared for delivery, click here.

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Iranian Journalist Siamak Ghaderi: 2014 CPJ International Press Freedom Awardee

Threat to freedom of expression a threat to media: PM Modi

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Guwahati, Nov 29, PTI:Prime Minister Narendra Modi today urged the media to accept the challenges of threat to freedom of expression posed by certain quarters.

"In a democracy, we realise the importance of freedom of expression only when it is denied to us just like the importance of breathing is realised when one cannot breathe for two seconds," Modi said.

Inaugurating the Platinum Jubilee celebration of North East's leading English daily 'The Assam Tribune' here, he said "it was Indira Gandhi who made us realise the value of freedom of thought, ideas and expression in a democracy by gagging the media during the Emergency."

"People refused to accept it and the country was united to assert its right for freedom of expression, though many editors and mediapersons were thrown into prison and faced innumerable challenges", Modi said.

"Whenever any person or organisation wants to assert their supremacy, their first attack is on the media and the most recent example is that of the ISIS who made journalists their victims by beheading them," he said.

It was not important for ISIS from which country the journalist belonged to, what language he spoke or what his colour was, but the fact that he was wielding the pen and fighting for the truth was enough to make him a victim, the Prime Minister said.

In the 21st century, "an attack on media is an attack on humanity and is a blot for the nation and the world alike", he said.

Modi said "the media faces immense challenge in a fast-moving society like ours. Earlier, we got news once in 24 hours but now we get at least 24 news in one minute and the challenge is to be trusted and remain credible".

Credibility is a major challenge for the media as, he said, "merely reading the news is not enough but one has to read between the lines to ascertain whether it is credible."

"Had we ever seen earlier any signboard at any shop saying 'pure ghee available here'? But now we see such things. Similarly, media, too, has taken to promotion in a big way with slogans like 'saccha (true) khabar and tej (fast) khabar which makes one wary about its veracity," Modi said.

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Threat to freedom of expression a threat to media: PM Modi

Bayfield Park for freedom camping?

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Nikau Moore (2), of Christchurch, enjoys the playground at Bayfield Park yesterday. The park could be the next site to be included in the Dunedin City Council's freedom camping trials. Photo by Dan Hutchinson

Bayfield Park is the latest site being considered by the Dunedin City Council for freedom camping, with a proposal to allow up to five vehicles a night to stay there.

Council Reserves and Recreation Planning team leader Richard Saunders said, due to the demand on the freedom camping trial site at Macandrew Bay, the council had asked staff to find additional sites.

Staff had identified Bayfield Park, in Shore St, as a potential site and had asked for submissions from the public through a notice in the newspaper.

Just two submissions were received. Both raised concerns about the effects of freedom camping in general and on the Bayfield Park site in particular.

''That will need to be considered before any decision is made,'' Mr Saunders said.

He said the issue was yet to be considered by the full council so he could not give a time frame on if or when the site would be up and running.

Better signs and additional security patrols were being put in place this summer to try to resolve the issue of too many campers using the sites at once.

There are already freedom camping trial sites at Macandrew Bay, Ocean View Reserve car park and Warrington Reserve. All sites will be reviewed after April 30 next year.

- by Dan Hutchinson

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Bayfield Park for freedom camping?

Threat to freedom of expression a threat to media: Modi

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Guwahati: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday urged the media to accept the challenges of threat to freedom of expression posed by certain quarters.

"In a democracy, we realise the importance of freedom of expression only when it is denied to us just like the importance of breathing is realised when one cannot breathe for two seconds," Modi said.

Inaugurating the Platinum Jubilee celebration of North East's leading English daily 'The Assam Tribune' here, he said "it was Indira Gandhi who made us realise the value of freedom of thought, ideas and expression in a democracy by gagging the media during the Emergency."

"People refused to accept it and the country was united to assert its right for freedom of expression, though many editors and mediapersons were thrown into prison and faced innumerable challenges", Modi said.

"Whenever any person or organisation wants to assert their supremacy, their first attack is on the media and the most recent example is that of the ISIS who made journalists their victims by beheading them," he said.

It was not important for ISIS from which country the journalist belonged to, what language he spoke or what his colour was, but the fact that he was wielding the pen and fighting for the truth was enough to make him a victim, the Prime Minister said.

In the 21st century, "an attack on media is an attack on humanity and is a blot for the nation and the world alike", he said.

Modi said "the media faces immense challenge in a fast-moving society like ours. Earlier, we got news once in 24 hours but now we get at least 24 news in one minute and the challenge is to be trusted and remain credible".

Credibility is a major challenge for the media as, he said, "merely reading the news is not enough but one has to read between the lines to ascertain whether it is credible."

"Had we ever seen earlier any signboard at any shop saying 'pure ghee available here'? But now we see such things.

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Threat to freedom of expression a threat to media: Modi

Keeping car washes eco-friendly in Williston

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WILLISTON Vt. -

Aaron Vincellette always had a thing for clean cars.

"When I was younger I couldn't wait to go through the carwash," he says.

And years later, he never has to wait. He owns his own.

Eco Car Wash in Williston is a place where you can get an environmentally friendly car wash.

"Coming from a service background I always had to make sure that the things we had available to us were used to the nth degree," he says.

After more than six years of development, Eco Car Wash opened late last spring.

"The building is pretty much totally recycled. All the green is made from decommissioned battleships. The glass, the polyacrylic roof on the building," he says.

The roof is pretty special. It allows sunlight to come through so that the lights are rarely used. Plus that sunlight helps keep the building warm during the cold months.

Even more important...

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Keeping car washes eco-friendly in Williston

MelonCats vs Cyborg Factory Game 1 | EU LCS Expansion Tournament Spring 2015 | MC vs CF G1 – Video

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MelonCats vs Cyborg Factory Game 1 | EU LCS Expansion Tournament Spring 2015 | MC vs CF G1
Cyborg Factory vs MelonCats Game 1 EU LCS Expansion Tournament Spring 2015 | CF vs MelonCats Game 1 | CF vs MC G1 VOD Next match of the day - MelonCats vs Cy...

By: EpicSkillshot

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MelonCats vs Cyborg Factory Game 1 | EU LCS Expansion Tournament Spring 2015 | MC vs CF G1 - Video

Spider-Man Unlimited l Character Review l l -Cyborg Spider-man- l – Video

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Spider-Man Unlimited l Character Review l l -Cyborg Spider-man- l
This Cyborg Spidey is a bug character which came out with other twos events , after the community hack . Most people thinks it #39;s hacked ! , but actually a bug . So I #39;m going to make a review . Enjoy !

By: Chesda Z

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Spider-Man Unlimited l Character Review l l -Cyborg Spider-man- l - Video

Astronomy – Ch. 17: The Nature of Stars (17 of 35) Wien’s Law, Star’s Color and Temperature – Video

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Astronomy - Ch. 17: The Nature of Stars (17 of 35) Wien #39;s Law, Star #39;s Color and Temperature
Visit http://ilectureonline.com for more math and science lectures! In this video I will explain the relationship between the surface temperature of a star a...

By: Michel van Biezen

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Astronomy - Ch. 17: The Nature of Stars (17 of 35) Wien's Law, Star's Color and Temperature - Video

Artificial intelligence: how clever do we want our machines to be?

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Alicia Vikander as the AI Ava in the forthcoming film Ex Machina. Photograph: Film4/Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar

From 2001: A Space Odyssey to Blade Runner and RoboCop to The Matrix, how humans deal with the artifical intelligence they have created has proved a fertile dystopian territory for film-makers. More recently Spike Jonzes Her and Alex Garlands forthcoming Ex Machina explore what it might be like to have AI creations living among us and, as Alan Turings famous test foregrounded, how tricky it might be to tell the flesh and blood from the chips and code.

These concerns are even troubling some of Silicon Valleys biggest names: last month Telsas Elon Musk described AI as mankinds biggest existential threat we need to be very careful. What many of us dont realise is that AI isnt some far-off technology that only exists in film-makers imaginations and computer scientists labs. Many of our smartphones employ rudimentary AI techniques to translate languages or answer our queries, while video games employ AI to generate complex, ever-changing gaming scenarios. And so long as Silicon Valley companies such as Google and Facebook continue to acquire AI firms and hire AI experts, AIs IQ will continue to rise

Isnt AI a Steven Spielberg movie? No arguments there, but the term, which stands for artificial intelligence, has a more storied history than Spielberg and Kubricks 2001 film. The concept of artificial intelligence goes back to the birth of computing: in 1950, just 14 years after defining the concept of a general-purpose computer, Alan Turing asked Can machines think?

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Its something that is still at the front of our minds 64 years later, most recently becoming the core of Alex Garlands new film, Ex Machina, which sees a young man asked to assess the humanity of a beautiful android. The concept is not a million miles removed from that set out in Turings 1950 paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, in which he laid out a proposal for the imitation game what we now know as the Turing test. Hook a computer up to text terminal and let it have conversations with a human interrogator, while a real person does the same. The heart of the test is whether, when you ask the interrogator to guess which is the human, the interrogator [will] decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman.

Turing said that asking whether machines could pass the imitation game is more useful than the vague and philosophically unclear question of whether or not they think. The original question I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion. Nonetheless, he thought that by the year 2000, the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.

In terms of natural language, he wasnt far off. Today, it is not uncommon to hear people talking about their computers being confused, or taking a long time to do something because theyre thinking about it. But even if we are stricter about what counts as a thinking machine, its closer to reality than many people think.

So AI exists already? It depends. We are still nowhere near to passing Turings imitation game, despite reports to the contrary. In June, a chatbot called Eugene Goostman successfully fooled a third of judges in a mock Turing test held in London into thinking it was human. But rather than being able to think, Eugene relied on a clever gimmick and a host of tricks. By pretending to be a 13-year-old boy who spoke English as a second language, the machine explained away its many incoherencies, and with a smattering of crude humour and offensive remarks, managed to redirect the conversation when unable to give a straight answer.

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Artificial intelligence: how clever do we want our machines to be?