I think it should go without saying (but of course, nothing does) that anytime someone wants to protect something from "denigration" or other forms of criticism, we should all grab hold of our rights and hang onto them with a death grip. To put this case most eloquently, I offer the following.
Well, it will if the Australian government gets its way on its internet censorship bill. That's right. The ACMA seems to have placed Wikileaks on its potential web blacklist and seems set on throwing fines of up to $11,000 at anyone who links to it. I'd happily go all out on this one, but a fellow Antipodean has already got this one in his sights:
I'm posting this on my American blog because the Australian government, through the Australian Communications and Media Authority is fining people on Australian sites who give the links below the fold $11,000/day. Pretty well everything I feared about censorship by the internet filter and heavy handed government action is coming true. First of all, it transpires that only one bureaucrat at ACMA is required to block and ban a site, with no further oversight or redress. Second, it turns out that yes, ordinary and popular pornography sites are being blocked, so that if the filter becomes mandatory, these legal sites will effectively become censored for no apparent reason (other than political whim or special privileges). Thirdly, the whistleblower site Wikileaks is blocked by the ACMA blacklist.John follows with the excerpt from a Crikey article:
Like New Labour in the UK, the ALP has now abandoned that [civil liberties movement], for a number of reasons. Once it committed itself to neoliberal economics ("social capitalism") Labo(u)r became freaked about the social dissolution and rupture, the desocialisation created by turning the polis into a giant market of winners and losers. The tough answer to this is genuine social democracy, in which people have a social being not entirely defined by whether they're a "winner" or a "loser". The easy answer is to let the market rip, allow it to change the culture, and then seek to control and reshape people's behaviour, selling it to them as "protecting the many against the few".
How can you easily spot religion in science clothing? According to New Scientist book review editor Amanda Gefter, look for these code words:
Here's what often happens when you videotape police. The priest who tried to videotape this incident eventually got his camera back, which is more than you can say for many other folks who have tried to photograph law enforcement officers in public places. Here's a related post dealing with threats of arrest for taking photos in public places. And be careful when you consider blogging about your First Amendment rights, especially when arrogant judges get wind of it.
Have you ever wondered what it is like to learn how to run a prison, you should check out this video: This Bureau of Prisons video has become public in an unusual way. It was part of a huge grab of "free" public records that was obtained then made much more accessible by two activists. The story is told here, and is close to my heart because it involves criticism of the enormously clunky PACER system, which contains all federal case filings. The activists decided to download all of the recent cases on PACER in order to make them more accessible. They were in the process of doing that when the federal courts shut them down. Fascinating stuff. They also obtained government videos that they've collected into "FedFlix,"
a growing archive of many films originally produced by the federal government, which he’s been uploading to the Internet Archive and a YouTube channel.
The 524 films in the FedFlix catalogue so far include such gems as “Sludge Management,” “Welcome to the Bureau of Prisons!” “Foreign Lottery Scams,” “(Motorola Presents) Atomic Attack,” battle footage and training films from World War II and Vietnam, and the Cold War classic “Duck and Cover” [starring "Bert the Turtle"].
Does the word "propaganda" come to mind when you're viewing any of these? For a lot more information, visit the activists' website, Public Resource.