When Barak Obama says he wants to “clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation’s spectrum,” maybe he’s trying to be Bush III: URL and URL
Oct 222008
Free speech
Oct 092008
James Corsi, The author of an anti-Obama book was detained in Kenya and deported. He may (or may not) be a crackpot and his book may be full of lies, but this response looks a lot more like government censorship than a case of, “I may disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Here was a chance for Obama to prove that he means it when, as his web site says, “Obama supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.”
OK, he’s not president yet but he probably could have some influence in Kenya anyway. Here was a chance for him to call up the President of Kenya and say, “I appreciate that you don’t like this Corsi guy any more than I do, but that’s not how we do things.” He could provide a sample of the diplomacy that he plans to use with leaders of Iraq and other countries to convince Kenya to let the guy be heard. And he would come out looking to Americans like a true defender of civil liberties, allaying those suspicions of those who fear his administration will be one of reprisals against dissidents.
Aug 072008
Important announcement:
Here is my decision in the matter of Ezra Levant and the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission:
I. Pardeep S. Gundara in his capacity as a private individual is hereby authorized to send a communication to Ezra Levant informing him that he respects his rights to free expression of opinion. Such communication must be made using his personal letterhead, personal e-mail, or personal phone.
II. Pardeep S. Gundara, in his capacity as Southern Director, is PROHIBITED from sending such communication, because it would have an intimidating effect suggesting that Ezra Levant may speak and publish only with government permission. No such communication may be sent using official government letterhead, official e-mail, or government telephone.
III. If Pardeep S. Gundara wishes to appeal my decision, he may post a request for review to this blog within 30 calendar days.
Also cross-posted to the Conservatism community on LiveJournal
Edited pronouns to show that Pardeep Gudnara is male, not female
Jul 042008
This article inspired me to see if the domain name swiftbloggers.com is available. The old Swift Boaters have such piddling amounts of money to spend on their work, and I don’t have much to add. And I’m not interested in supporting the McCain campaign. I don’t think I’ll even vote for him. (I got in the habit of not voting for his type when I didn’t vote for Bush – twice.)
But I could come up with ten dollars for a domain name to honor the work of democracy as was undertaken by the Swift Boaters four years ago.
Unfortunately, the name is already taken.
SwiftBicyclers.com might be a good alternative, except that my riding is far from swift.
Jun 272008
Ezra Levant has added a necessary word to our vocabulary: Grantrepreneur. So I’m adding him to my blogroll. How else am I going to keep up with the human rights violations of Canada’s Human Rights Commissions? Go to Google News and search for information on Ezra Levant or Steve Boissoin. You get absolutely nothing from those people who used to criticize George W. Bush for not paying any attention to what people in other countries think.
Apr 122008
The usually reliable Wall Street Journal editorial page seems to be carrying water for Comcast in the net neutrality issue. I could agree that there are problems with some versions of the net neutrality rhetoric, but that’s not what the WSJ discusses. Instead it defends Comcast’s behavior wrt its throttling of BitTorrent, saying it comes under the terms of “reasonable network management techniques.” But if what Comcast was doing was reasonable management, why did it lie about about what it was doing and what it was selling to its customers? (I’m still irritated about the way it lied to me and to others of its customers about what it was doing wrt blocking port 25.)
In addition to defending Comcast, the WSJ attacks Google. But if the WSJ wants to attack Google on net neutrality, maybe it would do better to point out that Google itself has been far from neutral in carrying traffic. It blocks traffic on behalf of the Chinese government, and at home it refuses to sell pro-life ads that have a religious connection. Just as Comcast did, it tells lies about what it’s doing, saying it doesn’t sell ads that mix “abortion and religion-related content.” But the Christian Institute, which is suing Google, points out that that’s not true at all. It sells pro-abortion ads that have religion-related content. It’s only the so-called “pro-life” side that it censors.
Net neutrality, indeed.
Apr 092008
Some of my fellow conservatives used to think I was over the top when I talked about how abortion is becoming the Holy Sacrament of the secular left. I predicted that soon no nominee would get past the Senate Judiciary Committee without personally performing the sacrament in front of the assembled senators.
Well, look at this. Google will put up with a lot in the name of free speech, subject to Chinese government veto, of course. But one thing it will not tolerate is abortion ads if they also include religion. That is blasphemy and cannot be allowed.
But to be fair, it isn’t quite as bad as their stated policy makes it sound. Google will relent and accept PRO-abortion ads for sites that ATTACK religion.
Apr 012008
This is sick. Google defends its practice of pre-censoring content for the Chinese government, but in the case of a gang rape that was put on YouTube, it doesn’t want to perform the same role. There it wants to be treated as a communications tool rather than a broadcaster. Though it may all seem hypocritical, Google is actually being very consistent. It consistently follows the route of greatest greed. (“Google mistake over YouTube ‘rape’ video“)
Mar 132008
Well, I guess that’s cutting to the chase. Here in the U.S. some of us have been worrying about how hate crime laws could eventually be used to shut down dissenting political views.
Now we see that Russia is making a Great Leap Forward. No messing around with “eventually”. A blogger is being charged with hate crimes for making a post critical of the government.
Link: Blogger Charged in Russia
And it’s interesting that Putin wants to regulate bloggers who get more than 1000 readers a day, treating them the same as newspapers. Keep in mind the extremely high death rate among journalists who were critical of the government, and you can see that Putin hs painted a bullseye on his country’s bloggers.
And by asserting control over those who get more than 1000 readers a day, he’s effectively asserting control over the small ones, too. Small ones will have to jump through govt hopes in an attempt to convince the govt that they are too small to submit to censorship. That in itself will induce plenty of self-censorship.
Mar 062008
James Fallows at atlantic.com makes an interesting point about internet censorship in China, in an article titled The Connection has been Reset.
“The presence of censorship, even if easy to evade, promotes self-censorship.” The point is that a regime doesn’t have to assert a 100-percent effective prohibition in order to accomplish its object. A moderate amount of government censorship will cause people to censor themselves in order to avoid trouble.
And he concludes: “How long can the regime control what people are allowed to know, without the people caring enough to object? On current evidence, for quite a while.”