Daily Archives: February 13, 2013

Israel prison death shows censorship flaws

Posted: February 13, 2013 at 11:43 am

THE blanket ban on reporting details of the detention and apparent suicide of an Australian prisoner jailed in Israel has raised pressing questions about the relevance of censorship in a digital age.

The mysterious case of Prisoner X briefly emerged in 2010 in an online news report which was immediately taken down due to a gag order, only to resurface on Tuesday when Australia's ABC news said he was an Australian working for Mossad.

Although the news spread like wildfire across social networks, Israel's media outlets were uncharacteristically silent, gagged by a set of tight restrictions which barred them from even mentioning the ABC report.

The silence was only broken when three Israeli MPs used their parliamentary immunity to raise the issue in at the Knesset, forcing the censor to ease its grip and permit coverage of the ABC report.

Aluf Benn, editor of the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper said the case highlighted the old-world thinking among Israel's top intelligence brass.

"I imagined yesterday that I met Mossad chief Tamir Pardo and that I tried to persuade him to remove himself for a day or two from the cloak-and-dagger world he lives in ... But then I remembered that Pardo is still living in the previous century, when information is kept in regimes' safes," he wrote.

Shortly after the ABC report emerged, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called in the country's top editors to ask them to cooperate by withholding publication of information about an incident that was "very embarrassing to a certain government agency," Haaretz said, in a clear allusion to Mossad.

For Israel's security establishment, the press was simply an extension of the state which could be controlled at will, Benn wrote.

"They all find it hard to come to terms with the concept of a free media operating in a democratic state, and they try to recruit the press to work with them, offering journalists a combination of confidential information and the threat of arrest."

Under Israeli law, violation of a gag order is a serious offence, punishable by imprisonment.

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Special report: censorship in cyberspace

Posted: at 11:43 am

The global reach of the Internet was supposed to democratize information and improve the lives of millions. But as the sophistication of the World Wide Web has spread, so too have the tools of despotic regimes and other political groups to suppress freedom.

From blocking websites and social networks to monitoring text messages and arresting bloggers and journalists who post online, censorship of the Internet is on the rise, according to several monitoring agencies. And the ways and means of blocking political discussion, religious freedom, and reports of institutional corruption are getting more invidious, from China to the Middle East.

"Overall, it's getting worse," Jillian York, director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told FoxNews.com.

In fact, according to Freedom on the Net 2012 -- a survey by independent watchdog group Freedom House -- of the 47 countries covered "20 have experienced a negative trajectory since January 2011, with Bahrain, Pakistan, and Ethiopia registering the greatest declines" in Internet freedom.

- Sarah Cook, a senior research analyst at Freedom House

Far from leading to the spread of democracy and freedom online, the events of the 2011 Arab Spring led many authoritarian countries to clamp down more tightly, fearful of rebellious citizens inciting and organizing online. In other cases, such as that of Pakistan, religious restrictions were the reason for censoring so-called blasphemous speech online. Still in other countries, such as Mexico, threats and the killing of online reporters and bloggers by drug cartels has stifled reports of criminal activity.

Indeed, the real world effects of such censorship are alarming and getting worse. Last year, 144 journalists, media, and bloggers were killed for their activities, according to Reporters Without Borders. It was the deadliest year since the organization began tracking such murders in 1995, and nearly double the number of such killings -- 73 -- committed in the previous year. The most egregious offenders were Syria and Somalia, followed by Pakistan.

The goal of such violence is often to staunch the flow of information.

In Iran last November, blogger and cyber-journalist Sattar Beheshti was reportedly tortured to death by prison authorities for allegedly threatening Iran's national security on social networks. (Iran's state prosecutor later confirmed that Beheshti died in police custody and had wounds on his body.)

Far from leading to the spread of democracy and freedom online, the events of the 2011 Arab spring led many authoritarian countries to clamp down more tightly, fearful of rebellious citizens inciting and organizing online.

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Help Me Help Ron Paul! – Video

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Help Me Help Ron Paul!
**HELP SPREAD THIS VIDEO AND MESSAGE!** Links to everything I talked about in this video: Link to email contact: http://www.campaignforliberty.org Campaign for Liberty telephone number: 703-865-7162 Email me at: mathewlarson4citycouncil@hotmail.com Please Visit: fight4freedom.net http://www.facebook.com http://www.facebook.com http://www.facebook.com For Web Hosting or Design from a Liberty-minded company, visit http://www.GeekGhost.net and use coupon code MatLarson10 for 10% off any service or product.

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HYPOCRISY LEVEL: RON PAUL – Video

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HYPOCRISY LEVEL: RON PAUL
Ron Paul is a stunning hypocrite. If you enjoy my content, please follow me on: Facebook - http://www.facebook.com Tumblr - amazingatheist.tumblr.com Twitter - twitter.com Support my channel by buying my merchandise: PTFO shirt - http://www.rodeoarcade.com * * * All videos written and performed by TJ Kirk Additional writing by Scott Kirk Music and sound effects are provided by: Audio Micro Music - audiomicro.com Audio Micro Sound Effects - audiomicro.com Additional music provided by Kevin MacLeod, Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 * * *

By: TheAmazingAtheist

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Fox News: Ron Paul has NO Legal right to RonPaul.com – Video

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Fox News: Ron Paul has NO Legal right to RonPaul.com
Fox News: Ron Paul has NO Legal right to RonPaul.com

By: TheTheTruthChannel

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Fox News: Ron Paul has NO Legal right to RonPaul.com - Video

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Ron Paul Reacts to State of the Union Address – Fox Business 2/12/2013 – Video

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Ron Paul Reacts to State of the Union Address - Fox Business 2/12/2013
Former presidential candidate Ron Paul reacted to President Obama #39;s State of the Union address with John Stossel on Fox Business Network. Paul said in the speech, "certainly we didn #39;t get any answers tonight" to the key issues facing the nation. "Everything on the surface looks like it #39;s welfare-ism and warfare-ism forever. But I think underneath there #39;s a smoldering desire that is growing by leaps and bounds that #39;s saying that a lot of the people in this country have had enough of it. Tonight he talked a lot about gun control, I don #39;t think the American people are going to put up with that," said Paul. My Channel: http://www.youtube.com Fair Use Disclaimer: This video may contain copyrighted material. This material is made available for educational, research, and news reporting purposes only. This constitutes a #39;fair use #39; of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 USC section 107 of the US Copyright Law which allows citizens to reproduce, distribute or exhibit portions of copyright motion pictures, video tapes, or video disks under certain circumstances without authorization of the copyright holder.

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Ron Paul vs. RonPaul.com: How Coalitions Crack Up in the Internet Age

Posted: at 11:43 am

The retired representative is at odds with fans over a site bearing his name. As permanent political campaigns come to the web, expect more fights like this.

Reuters

The proprietors of RonPaul.com are not all pleased.Not only has their hero lodged a formal complaint against their ownership of their fan site, he's done it at the dread United Nations.

The UN's World Intellectual Property Organization handles domain name disputes for ICANN, and that's where the 12-term retired congressmanis arguing that the people running RonPaul.com, as well as RonPaul.org, are piggybacking off his good name. Citing Hillary Clinton's 2005 successful fight to claim HillaryClinton.com, the complaint argues that "the words 'Ron Paul' have been synonymous with Dr. Paul's political writings and discourse," and goes on to say that "the only difference between them is the addition of the TLD suffixes '.com' and '.org.' which is irrelevant for the purposes" of domain name dispute resolution.

The obvious -- if existential -- defense that the RonPaul.com folks aren't really making is that Ron Paul, public figure, and RonPaul.com, the website, are not the same thing. One is an ornery obstetrician, and the other is a grassroots movement inspired by him and willing to do battle on his behalf, whether that's generating money bombsto get back in the public eye time and again or defending him with an unmatched vehemence and wordcount in the comment section of any blog post or article that mentions his name.At times, the movement has seemed far bigger than the man. What Haile Selassie was to Rastafarianism, Ron Paul has sometimes been to small government, and RonPaul.com has been a gathering point for that movement.

If one had to bet, the odds are good that Ron Paul will get RonPaul.com. ICANN tries to work these things out without them blowing up into antagonistic battles; that's why the resolution process exists. And after all, it's the guy's name. But the kerfuffle points to an interesting moment when a campaign's most valuable resources aren't office space or three-by-five cards but digital assets that live in the cloud and can be had for as little as the 10 bucks it probably cost to register RonPaul.com in the first place. There are real costs, to be sure. Just not the dollars and cents kind:

Back in 2007 we put our lives on hold for you, Ron,and we invested close to 10,000 hours of tears, sweat and hard work into this site at great personal sacrifice. We helped raise millions of dollars for you, we spread your message of liberty as far and wide as we possibly could, and we went out of our way to defend you against the unjustified attacks by your opponents.Now that your campaigns are over and you no longer need us, you want to take it all away -- and send us off to a UN tribunal?

The closest that the group comes to making the case that they are an essential part of what makes Ron Paul "Ron Paul" is when they talk about how their cache of institutional knowledge is intertwined with the public consciousness of what it means to be him:

After careful analysis of the available data, we are convinced that separating our grassroots website from RonPaul.com would be counterproductive. There are literally hundreds of thousands of inbound links directed to specific articles, videos and blog posts at RonPaul.com that would all be misdirected if you put up a new website at the domain.

That said, after the good doctor raised the contested domain during a segment on The Alex Jones Show early last month, they told him they could part with RonPaul.com for $250,000, which would include a mailing list of about 170,000 addresses. There's a fair chance that that sort of brokering didn't exactly endear the group to Paul, even though they called it a "liberty package" and offered free use of RonPaul.org, another domain they own.

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Ron Paul Makes National Radio Debut With Courtside

Posted: at 11:42 am

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., Feb. 13, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --Courtside Entertainment Group announced today that former Congressman and Presidential Candidate Ron Paul will make his national radio and podcast debut March 18, 2013. Ron Paul's America will feature one of America's most popular public figures sharing his thoughts and opinions on the issues listeners care about in twice daily one-minute radio commentaries with radio veteran and bestselling author Charles Goyette as his sidekick. In addition to the daily commentaries, Ron Paul's America will also be available as a weekly podcast to satisfy the growing demand for on-demand digital content.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130213/LA59214)

"There's no questioning the fact that Ron Paul is one of today's most impactful leaders. His thoughts and opinions have created a significant and loyal following that has made its presence known throughout the country," said Norm Pattiz, Founder of Westwood One and Courtside Entertainment Group and Chairman of Launchpad Digital Media. "That following includes college campuses, corporate offices and everything in between. His new radio show for Courtside and his digital presence via podcasting create a platform that will be hugely successful."

"I am very excited to have this opportunity to take the message of freedom to more people than ever, especially now when our country needs it so much," said Ron Paul. "Radio and podcasting are a much more powerful means of communication than speaking on the floor of Congress. I welcome this chance to work with Norm and Courtside and interact with America in a new way, delivering a message that is timelier than ever and a philosophy that people are clearly hungry to hear more about."

About Ron Paul Ronald Ernest Paul is an American physician, author, and former politician who served as the U.S. Representative for Texas's 14th congressional district, which includes Galveston, from 1997 to 2013 as well as the 22nd congressional district for special term between 1976 and 1977, when he lost reelection in 1978, and for 3 later terms, from 1979 to 1985. On three occasions, he sought the presidency of the United States: as the Libertarian Party candidate in 1988 and as a candidate in the Republican primaries in 2008 and 2012. Paul is best known for his libertarian views and is a critic of American foreign, domestic, and monetary policies, including the militaryindustrial complex, the War on Drugs, and the Federal Reserve. Dr. Paul is the author of several books, including The Case for Gold, Liberty Defined, End The Fed, The Revolution: A Manifesto, Pillars of Prosperity, Gold, Peace, and Prosperity, A Foreign Policy of Freedom, and A Republic, If You Can Keep It.

About Courtside Entertainment GroupCourtside Entertainment Group produces and finances multi-platform, quality programming. Known for its high profile personalities Courtside is the radio home for Laura Ingraham, Bill O'Reilly, Dr. Drew Pinsky, Loveline and now Ron Paul. Through its podcast division, Launchpad Digital Media, the company offers some of the biggest names in on-demand entertainment including Adam Carolla, CBS News, Afterbuzz TV with Maria Menounos, Dennis Miller, Jay Mohr, Laura Ingraham, Dr. Drew, Tom Green, Mark & Lynda, Brian & Jill, Penn Jillette, Rooster Teeth and the Toad Hop Network just to mention a few. Courtside's radio offerings are represented for advertising sales and satellite distribution by Dial Global.

Affiliate Contact:Craig Whetstine (503) 975-6153 craig@courtsidellc.com

Press Contact:Peter Sessa (828) 351-4011 psessa@courtsidellc.com

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Individualism Libertarianism as a Western Civilization Phenomenon – Video

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Individualism Libertarianism as a Western Civilization Phenomenon
Roger Scruton

By: AustralianNeoCon2

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What is liberty and libertarianism? – Video

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What is liberty and libertarianism?
christian christianity enlightenment vision dream truth god kinnereth kinereth kenereth kennereth kinneret gennesaret lake tiberias ginnosar gennesar chinneroth gennesareth jew jewish rabbi talmud judaism infowars shakina shekinah shekhinah shechinah the force

By: TheKinnereth

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