Category Archives: Transhuman News

Profanity, Sex, Drugs, Violence, Censorship and probability Explained?
This is Just an observation I made. I could be wrong or overlooking something. If so please bring it to my attention.

By: Alec LaBoy

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Profanity, Sex, Drugs, Violence, Censorship and probability Explained? - Video

Censorship is the suppression of speech or other public communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by a government, media outlet or other controlling body. It can be done by governments and private organizations or by individuals who engage in self-censorship. It occurs in a variety of different contexts including speech, books, music, films, and other arts, the press, radio, television, and the Internet for a variety of reasons including national security, to control obscenity, child pornography, and hate speech, to protect children, to promote or restrict political or religious views, and to prevent slander and libel. It may or may not be legal. Many countries provide strong protections against censorship by law, but none of these protections are absolute and it is frequently necessary to balance conflicting rights in order to determine what can and cannot be censored.

Socrates defied censorship and was sentenced to drink poison in 399 BC for promoting his philosophies. Plato is said to have advocated censorship in his essay on The Republic. The playwright Euripides (480406 BC) defended the true liberty of freeborn men, the right to speak freely,.[2]

The rationale for censorship is different for various types of information censored:

Strict censorship existed in the Eastern Bloc.[9] Throughout the bloc, the various ministries of culture held a tight rein on their writers.[10] Cultural products there reflected the propaganda needs of the state.[10] Party-approved censors exercised strict control in the early years.[11] In the Stalinist period, even the weather forecasts were changed if they had the temerity to suggest that the sun might not shine on May Day.[11] Under Nicolae Ceauescu in Romania, weather reports were doctored so that the temperatures were not seen to rise above or fall below the levels which dictated that work must stop.[11]

Independent journalism did not exist in the Soviet Union until Mikhail Gorbachev became its leader; all reporting was directed by the Communist Party or related organizations. Pravda, the predominant newspaper in the Soviet Union, had a monopoly. Foreign newspapers were available only if they were published by Communist Parties sympathetic to the Soviet Union.

Possession and use of copying machines was tightly controlled in order to hinder production and distribution of samizdat, illegal self-published books and magazines. Possession of even a single samizdat manuscript such as a book by Andrei Sinyavsky was a serious crime which might involve a visit from the KGB. Another outlet for works which did not find favor with the authorities was publishing abroad.

The People's Republic of China employs sophisticated censorship mechanisms, referred to as the Golden Shield Project, to monitor the internet. Popular search engines such as Baidu also remove politically sensitive search results.[12]

Iraq under Baathist Saddam Hussein had much the same techniques of press censorship as did Romania under Nicolae Ceauescu but with greater potential violence.[citation needed]

Cuban media is operated under the supervision of the Communist Party's Department of Revolutionary Orientation, which "develops and coordinates propaganda strategies".[13] Connection to the Internet is restricted and censored.[14]

Censorship also takes place in capitalist nations, such as Uruguay. In 1973, a military coup took power in Uruguay, and the State practiced censorship. For example, writer Eduardo Galeano was imprisoned and later was forced to flee. His book Open Veins of Latin America was banned by the right-wing military government, not only in Uruguay, but also in Chile and Argentina.[15]

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Censorship - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John B Wells on Media Censorship

By: lord fec

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John B Wells on Media Censorship - Video

I am writing to you as a voter in your district. I urge you to vote "no" on cloture for S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act, on Jan. 24th. The PROTECT IP Act is dangerous, ineffective, and short-sighted. It does not deserve floor consideration. I urge my representative to vote "no" on SOPA, the corresponding House bill. Over coming days you'll be hearing from the many businesses, advocacy organizations, and ordinary Americans who oppose this legislation because of the myriad ways in which it will stifle free speech and innovation. We hope you'll take our concerns to heart and oppose this legislation by voting "no" on cloture.

The video above discusses the Senate version of the House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). In the Senate the bill is called the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). SOPA has gotten more attention than PIPA because it was moving faster in the legislative process. But PIPA is just as dangerous, and now it is moving faster.

PIPA would give the government new powers to block Americans' access websites that corporations don't like. The bill lets corporations and the US government censor entire websites and cut sites off from advertising, payments and donations.

This legislation will stifle free speech and innovation, and even threaten popular web services like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.

The bill is scheduled for a test vote in the Senate on Jan. 24th: We need to act now to let our lawmakers know just how terrible it is. Will you fill out the form above to ask your lawmakers to oppose the legislation and support a filibuster?

Originally posted here:
PROTECT IP Act Breaks the Internet - Fight for the Future

1. First, try a circumvention site like https://www.MouseMatrix.com/. Be sure to type https at the beginning of the URL, not 'http'. Even though this site has been widely known for months, many networks have their blocking software set up incorrectly so that sites beginning with https:// are not blocked, and https://www.MouseMatrix.com/ will still be accessible.

2. If that doesn't work, you can join our e-mail list where we mail out new Circumventor sites every 3 or 4 days. Of course, employees of blocking software companies have gotten on this list as well, so they add our sites to their blocked-site database as soon as we mail them out, but in most places it takes 3-4 days for the blocked-site list to be updated. So the latest one that we mail out, should usually still work.

3. If you have a computer with an uncensored Internet connection, you can follow these easy steps to set up your own Circumventor site. For example, if you want to get around blocking software at work, and you have a home computer with an uncensored Internet connection, you can install the Circumventor on your home computer. Then it will give you a new URL, and you can take that URL in with you to work and type it into your browser to get around the network blocking software.

4. If you're trying to get around blocking software that's installed on the local computer, and not on the network, use these instructions to boot from the Ubuntu Live CD. (These instructions include tips on how to tell the difference between blocking software that's installed "on the local computer" and software that's installed "on the network".)

Past news items that generated the most interest:

Report on double standards for anti-gay "hate speech" Peacefire created four pages, on free servers such as GeoCities, which consisted of anti-gay quotes copied from four different conservative Web sites: Dr. Laura, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council and Focus on the Family. Using anonymous HotMail accounts, we then sent the URLs of the newly created pages to six blocking software companies, recommending that they block the newly created pages as "hate speech". After the companies had agreed to block the sites we created, we told them that all the quotes on those pages had been taken from the four conservative Web sites, and asked why they didn't block those pages as well. The blocking companies did not block those Web sites and did not respond to our inquiries.

WebSENSE publishing daily porn links For five months, the makers of WebSENSE blocking software published a daily list of pornographic Web sites that were not blocked by their competitors, allegedly to show that their own product was superior. Students using the Internet in schools that were using those competitors' products, could access the WebSENSE site and get a list of unblocked porn sites, by clicking a link agreeing that they were over 18 years of age.

Human rights pages blocked In December 2000, Peacefire released Amnesty Intercepted, a report on human rights pages including Amnesty International that were blocked by blocking software.

Candidates' sites blocked during 2000 elections In November 2000, Peacefire released a list of political candidates whose sites had been blocked as "pornography" by major blocking programs. One candidate had carried the statement on his Web site, "We should demand that all public schools and libraries install and configure Internet Filters." He changed his position after finding out that his own site was blocked, and later became a plaintiff in the ACLU's lawsuit to overturn a law requiring blocking software in schools and libraries.

Pro-blocking site blocked In July 1997, librarian David Burt launched the now-defunct FilteringFacts.org site, advocating the use of blocking software in libraries. The site was later blocked as a "Drugs/Alcohol" site by SurfWatch (which has since been bought out by Cyber Patrol).

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Peacefire - Official Site

Mark Camilleri "loves the Republic" and has not shied away from endorsing the Republic Day honour awarded to him on Friday in recognition of his campaign against Malta's censorship laws which, as irony would have it, are yet to be changed and brought well into the 21st century.

It was not the only irony of the day.

Republic Day under the new Labour government was a celebration of a wide array of people who had served the country, from the Armed Forces' maritime unit to the winners of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest. But while it toasted transgender Joanne Cassar, who fought government in the European Court of Human Rights for refusing to recognise her right to marry a man, it handed an honorary honour to former USSR ambassador Valentina Matvienko, the Russian Federation Council speaker who approves the Saint Petersburg assembly law project, that penalizes gay propaganda.

Yet it was Alex Vella Gera's refusal of his own medal for service to the republic, that stole the show. Like Camilleri he was nominated for his role in the censorship debacle provoked by his short story 'Li Tkisser Sewwi', that embroiled the two men in an criminal obscenity case that illustrated much that was wrong with Maltese law-making.

"I cannot accept an honour from the Maltese political class which, apart from some exception, has been causing so much damage to my country," Vella Gera, who lives in Brussels, announced on Facebook. "I feel I've made the right choice not to involve myself in this farce, where someone who is given a national honour becomes a pawn in the insidiousness of the Maltese political game."

The 25-year-old Mark Camilleri rose to prominence when a student pamphlet he edited, entitled Ir-Realt, was reported to the police by the University of Malta rector Juanito Camilleri, specifically for the short story 'Li Tkisser Sewwi' penned by published author Alex Vella Gera. To the public's general outrage, the two men faced obscenity charges and faced jail, but they were acquitted by both the criminal court and the court of appeal. The subject of censorship became a TV mainstay in 2011 and 2012, and Camilleri fronted the Front Against Censorship.

Camilleri, a history graduate who is pursuing his academic studies, was not forgotten by the Labour government, accepting the role of chairman of the National Book Council earlier this year.

But although his absent-mindedness saw him failing to even attend Friday's award ceremony, Camilleri has defended his decision to accept the award Vella Gera renounced.

"I love the Republic and I say this with utmost moral and political conviction: this is a Republic founded on left-wing principles and on the struggle for freedom, against colonialism and poverty," Camilleri wrote on his blog yesterday. "I believe that we should celebrate the Republic in many ways possible, including by giving awards to distinguished individuals who have contributed in a way or another to the development of our Republic."

He said he accepted the award with profound humility, saying he did not consider himself either "distinguished" or able to reach the heights of the men and women who led the struggle that resulted in the Republic: Manwel Dimech, Guze Ellul Mercer, Dom Mintoff, Agatha Barbara and the Dockyard workers

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‘I love the Republic’, says anti-censorship campaigner