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Category Archives: Transhuman News

Palestinian Kid Killer Censorship & BeautifulgirlbyDana Surprise PLEASE re-upload – Video

Posted: September 3, 2014 at 2:41 pm


Palestinian Kid Killer Censorship BeautifulgirlbyDana Surprise PLEASE re-upload
The video won #39;t stay up for long, Youtube is 100% controlled someone within their community is trying to Censor his lies!!, so PLEASE download re-upload this video on your Yt channel to...

By: connectingdots2

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Bloomberg: LinkedIn Reviewing Censorship Policy In China

Posted: at 2:41 pm

LinkedIn Corp. (LNKD: Quote) is reviewing its censorship policy in China so that content from its Chinese members that is not allowed in the Communist nation can be viewed globally, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

LinkedIn, the world's largest online professional social networking company, had expanded into China this year and adopted policies in line with that country's censorship rules. However, the company is now said to be strongly considering changing its censorship policy, according to the Bloomberg report.

The company is said to be informing people when content deemed inappropriate by the Chinese government is blocked. If a LinkedIn user in China shares a post that is in conflict with the Chinese government's rules, the content is blocked not only in China, but around the world, Bloomberg reported.

However, LinkedIn is said to be worried that the practice may end up preventing Chinese users who want to spread their messages outside their country. LinkedIn rolled out its Chinese website in February this year after earlier having only an English-language site there for more than a decade.

Other social-media companies too have struggled in China. Facebook Inc. (FB) remains banned in China, but was reportedly considering opening of a sales office to work with local advertisers there.

Facebook may open an office in the world's second-largest economy within a year to cater to the growing customer base there.

China is one among the relatively untapped markets for Facebook, whose social-networking service was banned by the Chinese government in 2009. The company uses an office in Hong Kong, and sells ads to Chinese customers who want to reach global audiences.

LNKD closed Tuesday's trading at $225.00, down $0.75 or 0.33 percent on a volume of 1.60 million shares. However, in after-hours, the stock gained $0.10 or 0.04 percent to $225.10.

by RTT Staff Writer

For comments and feedback: editorial@rttnews.com

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Censorship can be a quirky business.

Posted: at 2:41 pm

Unfold a 1944 map of San Diego County by the Automobile Club of Southern California and look for Lindbergh Field, the port, Point Lomas Naval Training Center or Marine Corps Depot. You wont find them. Nor can you locate Fort Rosecrans, Camp Kearny, Navy Hospital and the Ship Repair Base, Camp Pendleton, or the 29 other military installations in the region nicknamed Defense City No. 1 during World War II.

Now, unfold a second 1944 map of San Diego County by the Auto Club. It has the same cover and legend box as the first, but every airfield, military base and pier is clearly marked and indexed.

Youve stumbled across a little-known relic of World War II on the American home front. In an era when Google Earth and GPS offer instant mapping worldwide, the idea of map censorship in the United States comes off as ludicrous. Yet, 72 years ago, following the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, map masking as the practice was called became official wartime doctrine for road maps and others issued in the U.S. for non-military use.

Under a voluntary code distributed by the Office of Censorship in early 1942, map-makers along with journalists and other purveyors of information were asked to remove details that would disclose locations of ammunition dumps or other restricted Army or Navy areas along with the locations of forts and other fortifications. The code was self-policing: media were to ask themselves, Is this information that I would like to have if I were the enemy? and act accordingly, says historian Michael Sweeney, whose book Secrets of Victory examines the bureau.

For the Auto Club, which worked closely with West Coast defense authorities to craft maps for the military, its cartographers were often able to print two sets of maps: fully detailed renderings of the state, counties, and cities for the armed forces; and censored editions for civilians thus the contrasting 1944 San Diego County versions.

For other map-makers, especially those producing consumer maps for gasoline brands to distribute, masking proved inconsistent, quirky, and even darkly humorous.

Most U.S. oil company road maps were drawn by H.M. Gousha of Chicago/San Jose, by Rand McNally of Chicago, or by General Drafting of New York. These often colorful maps had exploded in popularity during the 1930s with the growth in motoring. Americas December 1941 entry into the war, however, generated wartime paper shortages, gasoline rationing, and a crimped market for tourism. The companies nevertheless issued 1942 maps for most states and cities, as they had already begun production, but not until 1946 did updated maps again appear broadly. (Maps from 1942 were occasionally reprinted during later war years.)

So, while the Auto Club could derive ongoing civilian issues from its military versions, the major map companies had to choose what to eliminate on each of their prewar issues within a one-time span of a few months. Depending on the cartographer, their wartime maps of the same area differed as to which, if any, airfields, ports, dams, oil fields, military bases, and related facilities disappeared. Even among maps drawn by the same company, the level of masking varied based on the gas-brand label.

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WorldViews: LinkedIn thinking twice about its adoption of Chinas aggressive censorship

Posted: at 2:41 pm

An image from LinkedIn's Chinese-language Web site.

After complaints and clear examples of bowing to Chinese censorship diktats, LinkedIn says it may have acted too hastily in friending Chinas government.

LinkedIn executives said Tuesday that they are reconsidering their policies, after seven months of censoring content from China deemed too sensitive.

"We do want to get this right, and we are strongly considering changing our policy so that content from our Chinese members that is not allowed in China will still be viewed globally, Hani Durzy, a spokesman for the Mountain View, Calif.-based company, told Bloomberg.

The professional social networking site is just the latest to wrestle with the moral quandaries that come with doing business in China amid the government's paranoia about the Internet. Facebook, Twitter and Google are largely blocked here.

LinkedIn, however, thought it could make it work. In February, the company launched its Chinese-language Web site and set up operations in China. In return, it promised to follow Chinese government rules and started self-censoring content.

But spokesman Durzy insisted back then that the company would do so only when legally required.

Then, in June, came the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. The anniversary, a perennial headache for Web users in China, is marked by a clampdown on search terms, Internet speeds and intense government scrutiny.

LinkedIn users reported posts about Tiananmen being blocked even in Hong Kong, which lies outsides Chinas censorship firewall. LinkedIn said at the time that it was an accident.And it said that although such content was self-censored in China, it would remain accessible elsewhere in the world.

But some users said that wasnt true.

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LinkedIn Considers Changes After China Censorship Revealed

Posted: at 2:41 pm

LinkedIns censorship practices in China were brought into the open Monday after a Shanghai-based journalist released an email from the company notifying him that one of his articles would be blocked in the Communist state.

The June email to Rob Schmitz, a reporter for Marketplace.org, showed how LinkedIn is deciding what to censor based on guidelines handed down by Chinese officials.

The email revealed another little-known LinkedIn policy: Content prohibited in China that is posted from within China is censored everywhere in the world not just in China.

A LinkedIn spokesman said the policy was designed to protect people in China from retribution from government officials, who might notice the content outside China.

The spokesman said LinkedIn is considering changing the policy, which has been criticized by human-rights groups.

The incident highlights the challenges for social networks in the worlds most populous country, where media are strictly controlled. Facebook does not offer its main service in China, and maintains only a small ad-sales office there.

When LinkedIn launched its China site in February, CEO Jeff Weiner said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that some content might be censored, and that he wasnt sure how the censorship would work.

We are strongly in support of freedom of expression and we are opposed to censorship but recognize that in order to obtain a license [in China], there will be requests to filter content and thats going to be necessary for us to achieve the kind of scale that wed like, he said at the time.

The LinkedIn spokesman said the company did not receive a request from China to censor content until June, more than three months after it launched there. The request, which listed several specific areas LinkedIn was instructed to ban from its site in China, coincided with the 25th anniversary of the Chinas bloody suppression of protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The LinkedIn spokesman would not specify the taboo subjects.

According to Schmitz, LinkedIn in June blocked an article he posted to the network about the anniversary. He said LinkedIn also blocked another article, by a journalist for The Australian, about Guo Jian, a Tiananmen Square protester and artist detained by Chinese officials shortly before the anniversary.

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Is This the Libertarian Moment?

Posted: at 2:41 pm

Earlier this month the New York Times wondered aloud if the libertarian moment had arrived. A good question, to be sure.

To answer it, though, Times reporter Robert Draper sought out not quite the top libertarian thinkers in the world, but instead those people most easily reached within a ten-minute walk from the Capitol or the Empire State Building.

Draper begins with an ex-MTV personality and proceeds from there. None of the people whose work and writing have shaped the libertarian movement, and who have converted so many people to our point of view, make an appearance. Ask the hordes of young kids who are devouring libertarian classics how many of them were introduced to libertarianism, or even slightly influenced, by the figures on whom the Times chooses to rely. You already know the answer.

The movements major thinkers have rather more intellectual heft behind them, which I suspect is why the Times would prefer to keep them from you. Far better for libertarianism to seem like an ill-focused, adolescent rebellion against authority per se, instead of a serious, intellectually exciting school of thought that challenges every last platitude about the State we were taught in its ubiquitous schools.

Economist and historian Bob Higgs shared my impression of the Times article:

Of course, its easy to ridicule libertarians if you focus exclusively on the lifestyle camp. Easy, too, to accuse them of inconsistency, because in truth these particular libertarians are inconsistent. Easy, too, to minimize their impact by concentrating heavily on conventional electoral politics, as if no other form of societal change were conceivable. Easy, too, to ignore completely the only ones the anarchists who cannot be accused of inconsistency or ridiculed for their impotence as players in the conventional political game, a game for which they have only contempt. Finally, its easy, too and a great deal more interesting for general, clueless readers to focus on the hip libertarians.

As Bob points out, the Time reporter says he finds inconsistency among libertarians, because some want to cut only this much, or abolish only those things. But this is what he gets for focusing on the political class and the Beltway brand of libertarianism. Libertarianism is about as consistent a philosophy as a Times reader is likely to encounter. We oppose aggression, period. That means we oppose the State, which amounts to institutionalized aggression.

We have zero interest in public policy, a term that begs every important moral question. To ask what kind of public policy ought to exist in such-and-such area implicitly assumes (1) that private property is subject to majority vote; (2) that people can be expropriated by the State to whatever degree the State considers necessary in order to carry out the public policy in question; (3) that there exists an institution with moral legitimacy that may direct our physical resources and even our lives in particular ways against our wills, even when we are causing no particular harm to anyone.

Still, I note in passing, political consultants are doing their best to make a quick buck on the rising tide of libertarianism. A fundraising email I receive from time to time urges people to get involved in the political process, since simply educating people (contemptuous, condescending quotation marks in original) isnt enough. Instead, theyre told, its more important to spend their time supporting political candidates who occasionally give a decent speech but who otherwise deny libertarian principles on a routine basis, in the spurious hope that once in office, these candidates will throw off their conventional exteriors and announce themselves as libertarians.

The Times, too, thinks primarily about politics, of all things, when assessing whether the libertarian moment has arrived. The article is fixated on the political class. But why conceive of the question so narrowly? Why should we assess the growth and significance of libertarianism on the basis of political metrics alone?

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The 7 strangest libertarian ideas

Posted: at 2:41 pm

Few movements in the United States today harbor stranger political ideas than the self-proclaimed libertarians. The Rand Paul school of libertarianism is at least as far outside the mainstream on the right as, say, a rather doctrinaire old-school form of Marxism/Leninism is on the left. The difference is this: The mainstream media isnt telling us that were in the middle of a Marxist/Leninist moment. Leninist politicians arent being touted as serious presidential contenders. And all the media chatter were hearing about a Libertarian moment ignores the very harsh, extreme and sometimes downright ugly ideas that are being disseminated under that banner.

Its great to have allies like Rand Paul working alongside other Americans to defend our right to privacy, restrain the NSA and reduce the military/industrial complexs grip on foreign policy. Its possible to admire their political courage in these areas while at the same time recognize that we may not care for the environment they inhabit.

Theres another reason to challenge libertarians on the extreme nature of their ideology: A number of them seem determined to drive competing ideas out of the free market for ideaswhich isnt very libertarian of them. There has been a concerted effort to marginalize mainstream values and ideas about everything from workers rights to the role of government in national life. So by all means, lets have an open debate. Lets make sure that all ideas, no matter how unusual they may seem, are welcome for debate and consideration. But lets not allow any political movement to become a Trojan horse, one which is allowed to have a moment without ever telling us what it really represents.

Obviously, not every self-proclaimed libertarian believes these ideas, but libertarianism is a space which nurtures them. Can the Republican Party really succeed by embracing this space? Why does the mainstream media treat libertarian ideas as somehow more legitimate than, say, the social welfare principles which guide Great Britain or Sweden?

Here are seven of modern libertarianisms strangest and most extreme notions.

1. Parents should be allowed to let their children starve to death.Were not making this up. From progressive writerMatt Bruenig(viaSean McElweeat Salon) comes this excerpt from libertarian economist Murray Rothbard:

a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children,but also should not have alegal obligationto feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so.But the parent should have the legal rightnotto feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die.

Note the repetitive use of the word it to describe the child. This linguistic dehumanization of helpless individuals is surprisingly common in libertarian literature. (See Ayn Rand and the young Alan Greenspan for further examples.)

Rothbard is a member of the so-called Austrian School of economics, cofounded the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and is widely admired among libertarians. He continues:

The law, therefore, may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or to keep it alive.(Again, whether or not a parent has amoralrather than a legally enforceable obligation to keep his child alive is a completely separate question.) This rule allows us to solve such vexing questions as: should a parent have the right to allow a deformed baby to die (e.g., by not feeding it)?The answer is of course yes, followinga fortiorifrom the larger right to allowanybaby, whether deformed or not, to die. (Though, as we shall see below, in a libertarian society the existence of a free baby market will bring such neglect down to a minimum.)

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Afghanistan: NATO states urged not to shirk on rights

Posted: at 2:40 pm

London, Sep 3 (IANS): NATO member countries should support human rights protections in Afghanistan beyond the end of the NATO combat mission post-2014, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

The Sep 4-5 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Summit in Casnewydd, Wales, is slated to discuss future alliance support for the Afghan government.

The failure of the outgoing government of Hamid Karzai to institutionalize rights protections, the current electoral crisis, and inroads by Taliban insurgents pose a threat to the rights of women, the treatment of people in custody, and other areas of rights reforms since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, Human Rights Watch said.

"The political and military turmoil in Afghanistan over the past year has shown the need for renewed international support for human rights," said Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

"NATO governments need to make solid commitments to protect rights by supporting good governance and rule-of-law initiatives long after NATO combat forces leave the country at the end of 2014."

Increased fighting in Afghanistan highlights the security concerns for much of the population, Human Rights Watch sid.

The UN recorded a 24 percent rise in civilian casualties for the first six months of 2014 compared with 2013, most caused by insurgents, with the Taliban deliberately attacking civilians they consider to be supporting the government.

The long-drawn-out election process for Karzai's successor as president, still unresolved, adds to concerns of unstable governance.

At the Casnewydd summit, NATO countries should call for strengthened human rights monitoring and effective prosecutions for gross abuses by security forces, Human Rights Watch said.

Despite consistent and compelling evidence of torture, the Afghan government has not prosecuted any police or intelligence officials for the abuse of detainees.

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Robonaut Performs Hose Jacket Inspection – Video

Posted: September 2, 2014 at 10:44 pm


Robonaut Performs Hose Jacket Inspection
Robonaut 2 (R2) showcases significant advances in robotic manipulation of materials and common tools used aboard the International Space Station. Recent experiments highlighted how a teleoperator...

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Training at JSC – Video

Posted: at 10:44 pm


Training at JSC
ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen updates us on his latest training in preparation for his mission to the International Space Station in 2015. Andreas has spent the past month at NASA #39;s Johnson...

By: European Space Agency, ESA

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