Drinking Liberally in New Milford: Freedom of Speech

Showing posts with label Freedom of Speech. Show all posts

1/23/09

Some things are better left unlearned...

I never should have read this:

Big fun with programmable road signs
Source: polizeros.com
The fine folks at i-Hacked tell you how to make an ADDCO portable sign say whatever you want. Not that you should because, of course, that would be wrong.

/evil grin

1/21/09

Internet Censorship Act DEAD!

Via EFF, thus ends one of their oldest and longest running case s and causes:

In a victory for online free speech, the U.S. Supreme Court today refused to hear the government's appeal of a July 2008 ruling holding the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 (COPA) unconstitutional and enjoining COPA's enforcement. The case was brought by the ACLU, EFF, and a coalition of plaintiffs.
Today's decision marks the end of the road for COPA, a federal law that violated the First Amendment by imposing civil and criminal penalties on commercial website operators that publish sexually explicit material without also using credit card authentication or other technological measures to verify viewer age and block access by minors.
...snip...

COPA was passed after the Supreme Court struck down its predecessor, the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA), in its landmark decision ACLU v. Reno, the first Supreme Court case to apply the First Amendment to online speech.

10/7/08

McCain Campaign Media Free Speech Zones

Via Think Progress, a note on the slippery slope of freedom of speech in the United States of America:

Palin staff keep journalists locked inside press area to prevent them from writing ‘negative things.’

This is no different than the "free speech zones" that they are using to cage demonstrators in like animals. Are all of you journalists happy that you let the rights of citizens slip without speaking out?

Well? Here is your future headline if the media doesn't hit back hard on these things:

The incumbent kept the opposing candidates locked inside a challengers area to prevent them from saying "negative things."

Here is an opportunity for the media to take back the truth. And, even, to give some sense of freedom back to the people. Freedoms are being stolen from the people, the media...

Who will be next? And will there be anyone remaining to publicly stand up for their rights?

8/18/08

One Of Connecticut's Best...

... Takes a well deserved bow.

Litchfield author and Blogger Andy Thibault gets a little love from the Republican American:

He'll get in your face
Litchfield blogger always eager for a cause

Andy Thibault spends a lot of time in shorts and sandals watching rabbits nibble in his Litchfield backyard. When he feels up to it, he climbs the steep stairs of his Victorian home on a quiet, tree shaded street, turns on the computer and takes on the world.

Muckraking may seem misplaced in such a bucolic setting, but it works just fine for a 55-year-old man trying to recover from stage 3 colon cancer while waging a feisty campaign that could have national significance in the free-speech arena.

Through his news blog, "The Cool Justice Report," Thibault is the prime mover in an effort to challenge the punishment of Avery Doninger, a Lewis S. Mills High School student from Burlington, for critical remarks she made last year on her blog about school administrators.

It is always nice to see one of Connecticut's many great Bloggers get some well deserved respect. Especially a Blogger that - on this I am pretty darned certain - would gladly kick a hornets nest if he thinks it would fix things.

[update] Just a Blogroll edition in an effort to keep the links in the technoratie count of my faves since Blogrolls don't do as much used to anymore:
1percentmoreconscious
New Haven Independent
Politics in the Zeros
Tom Gogola
The Mad Liberal
Presidential Politics
Denis Horgan
Saramerica
Colin McEnroe
CT Smart Growth
CT Working Families
Drinking Liberally in New Milford
Hat City Blog
Cool Justice
CT Voices for Civil Justice
Without a Purpose
Politics Press
Laura Elizabeth
Irregular News
Jim Himes Blog
NB Politicus
CT Bob
New Britain Democrat
ConnecticutBlog
Main Street Danbury
Undercurrents
Savoir Faire Scribenoir
Spazeboy
Jaded Prole
My Left Nutmeg
CT Blue
Ravings of a Semi-Sane Madwoman
Caterwauled
Stop The raids!
FatMixx
Region 19 BOE Gazette
Orient Lodge
West Hartford Blog
Connecticut Local Politics
The 40 Year Plan
The Nutmeg Grater
CT Progressive News Wire
CT News Junkie

African American Politcal Pundit
An Inch at a Time
Arabisto
Blue Gal
Booman Tribune
Brilliant at Breakfast
Cannablog
Come Speak To Me 2
Demokat
Disabled Americans for Democracy
Dr Scotts Pulp Culture
Drinking Liberally in New Milford
ePluribus Media
Eternal Hope
Everybody Comes From Somewhere
Fetch My Axe
Firedoglake
Francis L Holland
Hahn at Home
Howard-Empowered People
Hypnocrites
Independent Bloggers Alliance (Blogspot)
Independent Bloggers Alliance (WordPress)
Intrepid Liberal Journal
jc's designs
June Revolution
Liberal Oasis
Mike the Mad Biologist
MWAPP
My Left Wing
Namaste
NG Blog
Pam's House Blend
Pharyngula
PSoTD
Pushing Rope
pyzch
Reno and its Discontent
Shadow of the Hegemon
Simply Left Behind
skippy the bush kangaroo
Surf Putah
Survivor Left Blogistan
The Blogging Curmudgeon
The Bonddad Blog
The Crone Speaks
The Field Negro
The Impolitic
The Strange Death of Liberal America
Thoughts of an Average Woman
Turn Maine Blue
Universal Health
Videot Speak
Waiting For Dorothy

2/18/08

US Judge Shuts Down Access to Whistleblower Site

But it isn't going over so well:

From the BBC:

Wikileaks.org, as it is known, was cut off from the internet following a California court ruling, the site says. The case was brought by a Swiss bank after "several hundred" documents were posted about its offshore activities.
Other versions of the pages, hosted in countries such as Belgium and India, can still be accessed.

However, the main site was taken offline after the court ordered that Dynadot, which controls the site's domain name, should remove all traces of wikileak from its servers.

Wikileaks has been the source for a number of revelatory documents, including the U.S. military's manual for Gitmo and the rules of engagement for U.S. troops in Iraq.

But see it for yourself, wikileaks.org is indeed out of commission. The Belgian wikileaks, however, is still up.

Wikileaks has released the following statement on the situation:

Wikileaks Press Release
WIKILEAKS.ORG DOWN AFTER EX-PARTE LEGAL ATTACK BY CAYMAN ISLANDS BANK
http://wikileaks.be/wiki/Wikileaks.org_under_injunction
Contacts: http://wikileaks.be/wiki/Contact
Mon Feb 18 00:00:00 GMT 2008
The following release has not been proofed due to time constraints.
Transparency group Wikileaks forcibly censored at ex-parte Californian hearing -- ordered to print blank pages -- 'wikileaks.org' name forcibly deleted from Californian domain registrar -- the best justice Cayman Islands money launderers can buy?
When the transparency group Wikileaks was censored in China last year, no-one was too surprised. After all, the Chinese government also censors the Paris based Reporters Sans Frontiers and New York Based Human Rights Watch. And when Wikileaks published the secret censorship lists of Thailand's military Junta, no-one was too surprised when people in that country had to go to extra lengths to read the site. But on Friday the 15th, February 2008, in the home of the free and the land of the brave, and a constitution which states "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press", the Wikileaks.org press was shutdown:
                    BANK JULIUS BAER & CO. LTD, a
              Swiss entity; and JULIUS BAER BANK
              AND TRUST CO. LTD, a Cayman Island                 ORDER GRANTING
              entity,                                            PERMANENT INJUNCTION
          
              WIKILEAKS, an entity of unknown form;
              WIKILEAKS.ORG, an entity of unknown
              form; DYNADOT, LLC, a California
              limited liability company; and DOES 1
              through 10, inclusive,
[..]
                             IT IS HEREBY ORDERED:
[..]
       Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting
 records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the
 domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or
 any other website or server other than a blank park page,
 until further order of this Court.
The Cayman Islands is located between Cuba and Honduras. In July 2000, the United States Department of the Treasure Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued an advisory states stating that there were "serious deficiencies in the counter-money laundering systems of the Cayman Islands", "Cayman Islands law makes it impossible for the supervisory and regulatory authority to obtain information held by financial institutions regarding their client's identity", "Failure of financial institutions in the Cayman Islands to report suspicious transactions is not subject to penalty" and that "These deficiencies, among others, have caused the Cayman Islands to be identified by the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (The 'FATF') as non-cooperative in the fight against money laundering". As of 2006 the U.S. State Department listed the Cayman Islands in its money laundering "Countries of Primary Concern".
The Cayman's case is not the first time Wikileaks has tackled bad banks. In the second half of last year Wikileaks exposed over $4,500,000,000's worth of money laundering including by the former president of Kenya, Daniel Arap Moi (see http://wikileaks.be/wiki/The_looting_of_Kenya_under_President_moi which became the Guardian's front page story in September 2007 and swung the Kenyan vote by 10% leading into the December 2007 election and http://wikileaks.be/wiki/A_Charter_House_of_horrors reported in the Nairobi paper The Standard and now the subject of a High Court Case in Kenya).
To find an injunction similar to the Cayman's case, we need to go back to Monday June 15, 1971 when the New York Times published excepts of of Daniel Ellsberg's leaked "Pentagon Papers" and found itself enjoined the following day. The Wikileaks injunction is the equivalent of forcing the Times' printers to print blank pages and its power company to turn off press power. The supreme court found the Times censorship injunction unconstitutional in a 6-3 decision.
The Wikileaks.org injunction is ex-parte, engages in prior restraint and is clearly unconstitutional. It was granted on Thursday afternoon by California district court judge White, Bush appointee and former prosecutor.
The order was written by Cayman Island's Bank Julius Baer lawyers and was accepted by judge White without amendment, or representations by Wikileaks or amicus. The case is over several Wikileaks articles, public commentary and documents dating prior to 2003. The documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion. The bank alleges the documents were disclosed to Wikileaks by offshore banking whistleblower and former Vice President the Cayman Island's operation, Rudolf Elmer. Unable to lawfully attack Wikileaks servers which are based in several countries, the order was served on the intermediary Wikileaks purchased the 'Wikileaks.org' name through -- California registrar Dynadot, who then used its access to the internet website name registration system to delete the records for 'Wikileaks.org'. The order also enjoins every person who has heard about the order from from even linking to the documents.
In order to deal with Chinese censorship, Wikileaks has many backup sites such as wikileaks.be (Belgium) and wikileaks.de (Germany) which remain active. Wikileaks never expected to be using the alternative servers to deal with censorship attacks, from, of all places, the United States.
The order is clearly unconstitutional and exceeds its jurisdiction.
Wikileaks will keep on publishing, in-fact, given the level of suppression involved in this case, Wikileaks will step up publication of documents pertaining to illegal or unethical banking practices.
Wikileaks has six pro-bono attorney's in S.F on roster to deal with a legal assault, however Wikileaks was given only hours notice "by email" prior to the hearing. Wikileaks was NOT represented. Wikileaks pre-litigation California council Julie Turner attended the start of hearing in a personal capacity but was then asked to leave the court room.
White signed the order, drafted by the Cayman Islands bank's lawyers without a single amendment.
The injunction claims to be permanent, although the case is only preliminary.
Wikileaks remains available publishing from non-US, non-Chinese jurisdictions including http://wikileaks.cx/ and http://wikileaks.be/. See http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Wikileaks:Cover_Names for more.
http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Bank_Julius_Baer_vs._Wikileaks
http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/images/Dynadot-injunction.pdf
http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Die_Akten_des_Hurricane_Man
http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Clouds_on_the_Cayman_tax_heaven

In case you are unfamiliar with Wikileaks, via dkos:

Created by several brave journalists committed to transparency, Wikieaks has published important leaked documents, such as the Rules of Engagement for Iraq [see my The Secret Rules of Engagement in Iraq], the 2003and 2004 Guantanamo Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures, and evidence of major bank fraud in Kenya [see also here] that apparently affected the Kenyan elections.
As of Friday, February 15, those going to Wikileaks.org have gotten Server not found messages. Today I received a message explaining that a California court has granted an injunction written and requested by lawyers for the Cayman Island's Bank Julius Baer. It seems that the bank is trying to keep the public from accessing documents that may reveal shady dealings.

As Time Magazine has said about Wikileaks:

“
... could become as important a journalistic tool
as the Freedom of Information Act.
„

— Time Magazine

Important enough as a journalistic tool that some, with shady dealings, seem to see a need to shut it down. Welcome to the bush and GOP created and corporate owned America.

This is just another chapter in a bigger battle, IMHO:

They Want To Rebuild the Internet

Whenever I read paragraphs like these, yanked from the Hartford Courant, I take note:

One challenge in any reconstruction, though, would be balancing the interests of various constituencies. The first time around, researchers were able to toil away in their labs quietly. Industry is playing a bigger role this time, and law enforcement is bound to make its needs for wiretapping known.

There's no evidence they are meddling yet, but once any research looks promising, "a number of people [will] want to be in the drawing room," said Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor affiliated with Oxford and Harvard universities. "They'll be wearing coats and ties and spilling out of the venue."

Do they want to rebuild the Internet for everyones' benefit or will this be the first steps towards a conservative's corporatist wet dream and extremely policed Internet?

The big telcoms have already shown a willingness to try and take control of the internet AND will sell out your right to privacy at the drop of an FBI letter.

Yeah... Ya gotta sleep with one effin' eye open at all times in this modern America. Freedom ain't Free, it'll cost ya a lot of sleep.

A little something you can do about this, as well as helping spread the word for Wikileaks, via Save the Internet:

You can help make the internet faster, more open and accessible to all. Tell Congress to preserve Net Neutrality and help ensure that the benefits and promise of the Internet are available to all Americans.

Tell your story to the FCC

Sign the petition and send a message to Congress

Call your members of Congress

Write a letter to your hometown newspaper

Support the SavetheInternet.com Ad Fund

Promote SavetheInternet on your blog or site

Tell five friends to join the fight for Internet freedom

Take action today!

12/23/07

There Is A Storm Brewing In NOLA

Some of you may not have noticed, as you do your last minute Christmas shopping, but there is a class war going on in this country... And the powers that be don't give a fuck if they have to use violence to stifle the voices of those that are willing to stand up against their brutal economic rape of the downtrodden in New Orleans.

Pepper Sprayed, Tasered and Determined in New Orleans

There was a tornado warning on Thursday, December 20th, with a cool front marching down south. The tornado that touched down though, was the incredible spirit, will and determination of those fighting for public, and affordable housing in this city, and taking on the NOPD and New Orleans City Council in the process.

We were prepared, Thursday, to challenge what we already knew would go down: the vote in the affirmative by the New Orleans City Council to demolish over 4000 units of critical, public and affordable housing in New Orleans. Our intent was to keep the meeting from happening, to prevent the vote, by peaceful, but loud, raucous protest. There was no intent to commit violence. Many of us were quite willing to be arrested. One of the principles decided on by public housing residents in this struggle is that it will be a non-violent struggle.

There were not now, nor have there ever been, plans to commit violence by any of our people. However, when people are physically attacked by police, sometimes you fight back. You can call it instinct, survival, or foolhardy, call it what you will, but human nature being what it is, sometimes people fight back. The first punch was thrown by the NOPD however, which you can observe by watching the above video.

I was one of those locked out that day. I brought my camera, fully intending to document even though locked out. We were behind and to the side of council chambers, locked out by virtue of a pair of handcuffs on the gate that encloses a covered driveway behind the chambers.

Police lined that covered driveway, and we knew there were significant numbers in the chambers. We received phone reports that our colleagues had prevented the meeting from beginning, by chanting and shouting and demanding that those locked out be allowed in.

Suddenly, from the outside, we saw at least 10 police officers rush into the building. We knew it was going down inside. We all began to scream and some of us shook the gate violently. We wanted in to help defend our sisters and brothers.

Duranta has a lot more on this. While Common Dreams has this up from Naomi Klein:

The Shock Doctrine in Action in New Orleans
by Naomi Klein
Readers of The Shock Doctrine know that one of the most shameless examples of disaster capitalism has been the attempt to exploit the disastrous flooding of New Orleans to close down that city’s public housing projects, some of the only affordable units in the city. Most of the buildings sustained minimal flood damage, but they happen to occupy valuable land that make for perfect condo developments and hotels.

The final showdown over New Orleans public housing is playing out in dramatic fashion right now. The conflict is a classic example of the “triple shock” formula at the core of the doctrine.

First came the shock of the original disaster: the flood and the traumatic evacuation.

Next came the “economic shock therapy”: using the window of opportunity opened up by the first shock to push through a rapid-fire attack on the city’s public services and spaces, most notably it’s homes, schools and hospitals.

Now we see that as residents of New Orleans try to resist these attacks, they are being met with a third shock: the shock of the police baton and the Taser gun, used on the bodies of protestors outside New Orleans City Hall yesterday.

Democracy Now! has been covering this fight all week, with amazing reports from filmmakers Jacquie Soohen and Rick Rowley (Rick was arrested in the crackdown). Watch residents react to the bulldozing of their homes here.

And footage from yesterday’s police crackdown and Tasering of protestors inside and outside city hall here.
That last segment contains a terrific interview with Kali Akuno, executive director of the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund. Akuno puts the demolitions in the big picture, telling Amy Goodman:

This is just one particular piece of this whole program. Public hospitals are also being shut down and set to be demolished and destroyed in New Orleans. And they’ve systematically dismantled the public education system and beginning demolition on many of the schools in New Orleans–that’s on the agenda right now–and trying to totally turn that system over to a charter and a voucher system, to privatize and just really go forward with a major experiment, which was initially laid out by the Heritage Foundation and other neoconservative think tanks shortly after the storm. So this is just really the fulfillment of this program.

Akuno is referring to the Heritage Foundation’s infamous post-Katrina meeting with the Republican Study Group in which participants laid out their plans to turn New Orleans into a Petri dish for every policy they can’t ram through without a disaster. Read the minutes on my website.
Read the rest of Naomi Klein's piece here.

12/12/07

Christian War on Chanukah

Eight men and two women are charged with assault, menacing and other mean 'n nasty things... In their unholy war on Chanukah, they may even have the charges upped to hate crimes:

The altercation erupted when Adler and his friends said "Happy Chanukah" to a group yelling "Merry Christmas" on the Brooklyn-bound train.

The 20-year-old Askari said he tried to fight off the 10 attackers, giving Adler a chance to summon police by pulling an emergency brake.

snip

"That a random Muslim kid helped some Jewish kids, that's what's positive about New York," said Adler, 23, who suffered a broken nose and a lip wound.

Some Christians can be the most hateful and despicable people on the face of the earth. Well? At least the fake ones that dishonestly claim America should be some kind of theocratic/fascist bastion of hypocrisy, going against the true meanings of the documents drawn up by The Founding Fathers.

Walter Adler called Hassan Askari a hero for stepping up. I say that he is a true Patriot AND a hero. The New York Post has more on this:

Walter Adler was touched that Hassan Askari jumped to his aid while a group of thugs allegedly pummeled and taunted him and his three friends. So Adler has invited his new friend over to celebrate the Festival of Lights.

The two new pals - Adler, 23, with a broken nose and a fat lip, and Askari, 20, with two black eyes - broke bread together and laughed off the bruises the night after the fisticuffs.

"A random Muslim guy jumped in and helped a Jewish guy on Hanukkah - that's a miracle," said Adler, an honors student at Hunter College.

"He's basically a hero. Hassan jumped in to help us."

The New York Post also has some video up on this story.

12/3/07

Fox News Won't Televise It...

So, it must be true:

Via emptywheel, over at her new firedoglake home:

CCR is one of the organizations that will go before the Supreme Court on Wednesday in hopes of restoring Habeas Corpus. At the same time, they're trying to raise awareness of Bush's attacks on our rights with ads like this and a cool campaign to send Bush a copy of the Constitution (what do you get the President who has everything??). But when they went to Fox to buy time for this ad, Fox asked for proof that Bush had shredded the Constitution.

Perhaps it's time to launch a campaign to inundate Fox with your favorite proof that Bush trashed the Constitution. Copies of the Risen-Lichtblau scoop on warrantless wiretapping, pictures of the "free speech zones" at Bush appearances, a copy of the report proving NYC spied on citizens and detained many illegally leading up to the Republican convention in 2004. Anyone else have some good ideas?

11/3/07

Revisiting the arrest of the protesters in NYC

Just some video for you to think about...

"Think our government wouldn't suppress our right to peacefully protest? Think again!"

"If you just can't bring yourself to believe that our government authorities would even think of suppressing the legitimate protests of peaceful demonstrators - look at the record of court cases recently coming out of New York."

10/30/07

An Offer That Scares the Hell Out of Washington D.C.

Via Lukery at the Booman Tribune and Let Sibel Edmonds Speak:

Former FBI translator and whistleblower Sibel Edmonds has promised to tell us everything she knows about treason at the highest level of the US government - with one proviso:
"Here's my promise to the American Public: If anyone of the major networks --- ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, FOX --- promise to air the entire segment, without editing, I promise to tell them everything that I know."
Edmonds, "the most gagged person in the history of the United States of America," has been trying to expose criminal activity, treason, at the highest levels of the US Government - Congress, Pentagon and State Dept - since she became aware of the crimes in 2001 and 2002.

Edmonds has exhausted every conceivable channel in the courts, Congress, and elsewhere, and is now willing to risk criminal charges to ensure that the American people learn how their government really 'works.'

BradBlog has the exclusive.

I am willing to bet, no matter how credible Sibel Edmonds charges have been decreed by those that have heard her testimony in Congress, there will be no takers on this blockbuster of a story because the CORPORATE OWNED MEDIA are just shills for the CORPORATE OWNED GOVERNMENT... Welcome to "Corporate America" run-amok under the guise of the conservative agenda of privatizing everything as a solution to problems that didn't really exist in the first place.

8/17/07

Bloggers Muzzled by Lawsuits in Canada

A CBC news report on how some Canadian Bloggers are being silenced by lawsuits:

Coming soon to an American court near you... Considering corporations have already tried it here. Remember the Blogger Spocko and his fight with Disney and ABC? But we enjoy a little more protection of our freedom of speech here, as the CBC report points out in their report, and a large chunk of the Blogosphere kicked into high gear spreading the word in Spocko's fight. Without that support Spocko might have been silenced by those corporations.

Drinking Liberally in New Milford