NewsTrust - Freedom of Speech - Most Recent Stories: News (Independent)

New Report Shows Big-Money Politics and Broadcast Media Are Undermining Democracy

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

FreePress.net - Jan. 26 (Special Report) - On Thursday, Free Press released Citizens Inundated, a report that follows the money trail from big-spending political donors to the bank accounts of the nation's largest broadcast companies.

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Occupy Wall Street Journalist Arrests Cost U.S. Dearly In Latest Survey

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Jack Mirkinson - Jan. 25 (Special Report) - The targeting of journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street movement has caused the United States to drop precipitously in a leading survey of press freedom. Reporters Without Borders' latest Press Freedom Index was released on Wednesday, and the list reflected some of the tumult that took place in the world in 2011, as well as the impact that those events had on journalists across the globe.

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Key Senator Abandons The Protect IP Ship

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Zach Carter - Jan. 18 (News) - Home to the Disney World and Universal Studios theme parks, Rubio's Florida may be the most Hollywood-centric state outside California, and Rubio had been one of the first senators to sign on in support of Protect IP when Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) introduce

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Wikipedia, Reddit To Shut Down Sites Wednesday To Protest Proposed Stop Online Piracy Act

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jan. 17 (News Analysis) - Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia and sixth most visited site in the world, will join websites like the content aggregator Reddit to "go dark" on Wednesday in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its companion bill, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), which are currently being debated in Congress. "What these bills propose are new powers for the government and also for private actors to create, effectively, blacklists of sites that allegedly are engaging in some form of online infringement and then force service providers to block access to those sites," says Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "What we would have is a situation where the government and private actors could censor the net."

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“Internet Censorship Affects Everybody”: Rebecca MacKinnon on the Global Struggle For Online Freedom

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jan. 17 (News Analysis) - As protests mount against two controversial internet anti-piracy bills moving through Congress, we speak with Rebecca MacKinnon, author of the forthcoming book, “Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom.” “If we want democracy to survive in the internet age, we really need to work to make sure that the internet evolves in a manner that is compatible with democracy,” MacKinnon says, “And that means exercising our power, not only as consumers and Internet users and investors, but also as voters to make sure that our digital lives contain the same kind of protections of our rights that we expect in physical space.” She argues that for every empowering story of the internet's role, there are many more about the quiet corrosion of civil liberties by companies and governments. [Rush transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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Journalist Chris Hedges Sues Obama Admin Over Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens Approved in NDAA

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jan. 17 (News Report) - Sections of the bill are written so broadly that critics say they could encompass journalists who report on terror-related issues, such as Hedges, for supporting enemy forces. "It’s clearly unconstitutional," Hedges says of the bill. "It is a huge and egregious assault against our democracy. It overturns over 200 years of law, which has kept the military out of domestic policing."

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Newsvine - AP Impact: Right-to-know laws often ignored

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

NewsVine - By Martha Mendoza, AP National Writer,: Ravi Nessman from India, Charles Hutzler from China, Adriana Gomez Licon from Mexico. - Nov. 17 (Investigative Report) - In Mexico, the AP filed a query through a website and got all the information requested within two months. But in the U.S., the AP had to mail requests to six branches of the Justice and Homeland Security departments. After 10 months, 18 phone calls and 40 letters from the government, the AP ended up with two spreadsheets and a piece of paper with all names blanked out.

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WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Loses Appeal to Stop His Extradition to Sweden

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Nov. 02 (News Report) - London's High Court has ruled Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief, should be extradited from the United Kingdom to Sweden to face questioning over alleged sex crimes. Swedish authorities want to question Assange over accusations of rape and sexual assault made by two women. Assange's lawyers have argued the Swedish demand is legally flawed and that the sex was consensual. They are also concerned that the U.S. government will pressure Sweden to extradite him to the United States, where an ongoing investigation is underway about the source(s) who leaked classified U.S. diplomatic cables and Department of Defense files to WikiLeaks. They are now considering an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and the European Court of Human Rights. For more, we speak with Helena Kennedy, an attorney on Assange's legal team. We also air a statement made by Julian Assange this morning in London. [includes rush transcript]

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Fear of Repression Spurs Scholars and Activists to Build Alternate Internets

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Jeffrey R. Young - Sep. 18 (News) - one weekend each month, a small group of computer programmers gathers at a residence here to build a homemade Internet—named Project Byzantium—that could go online if parts of the current global Internet becomes blocked by a repressive government.

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Facebook's spam program catches activists

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

MSN.com - By Kevin Begos - Aug. 20 (News) - PITTSBURGH — Facebook has sent notes of apology and is changing automated systems that blocked environmental activists and other people from posting on like-minded Facebook pages. The activists weren't victims of censorship, but rather an anti-spam computer algorithm that was impersonally doing what it was designed to do.

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Domestic Spy Agency? 5 Outrageous Examples of FBI Intimidation and Entrapment

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Kevin Gosztola - Jun. 30 (Special Report) - Here are five cases of FBI abuse that show the FBI deserves more scrutiny, not a free pass to continue fighting the so-called “war on terror.”

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'The War You Don't See': A Film You Won't See

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Common Dreams - By John Pilger - Jun. 11 (Special Report) - John Pilger Dear Noam, I am writing to you and a number of other friends mostly in the US to alert you to the extraordinary banning of my film on war and media, 'The War You Don't See', and the abrupt cancellation of a major event at the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe in which David Barsamian and I were to discuss free speech, US foreign policy and censorship in the media. read more

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“Operation In Our Sites” Will Continue Seizing Domains

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

torrentfreak.com - By Ernesto - May. 13 (News) - ICE director John Morton has confirmed that the seizure of domain names that are alleged to be promoting copyright infringement will continue in the coming years.

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UAE: Civil Society Crackdown Widens

Wed, 04 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Human Rights Watch - By Hrw - May. 04 (News) - The United Arab Emirates expanded its crackdown on civil society on May 2, 2011, by dissolving the elected board of directors of the Teachers' Association, Human Rights Watch said today. This was the second prominent civil society organization to face a hostile government takeover in less than two weeks.

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IP-Address Is Not a Person, BitTorrent Case Judge Says

Tue, 03 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

torrentfreak.com - By Ernesto - May. 03 (News) - In the case VPR Internationale v. Does 1-1017, the judge denied the Canadian adult film company access to subpoena ISPs for the personal information connected to the IP-addresses of their subscribers. The reason? IP-addresses do not equal persons, and especially in ‘adult entertainment’ cases this could obstruct a ‘fair’ legal process.

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The 10 Tools of Online Oppressors

Mon, 02 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Committee to Protect Journalists - By Danny O’Brien - May. 02 (News Analysis) - Many of the oppressors’ tactics show an increasing sophistication, from the state-supported email in China designed to take over journalists’ personal computers, to the carefully timed cyber-attacks on news websites in Belarus. Still other tools in the oppressor’s kit are as old as the press itself, including imprisonment of online writers in Syria, and the use of violence against bloggers in Russia.

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The Shirley Sherrods of Academe?

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Inside Higher Ed - By Scott Jaschik - Apr. 29 (Special Report) - Videos posted by the conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart appear to have ended the teaching career of an adjunct at the University of Missouri -- even as university officials issued a statement backing the contention of the two instructors of the labor studies course that their comments in the class had been edited to present an "inaccurate and distorted" picture of what was said.

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OpEdNews - Article: This Is What Resistance Looks Like

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Op Ed News - Apr. 06 (News) - The big banks and corporations are parasites. They greedily devour the entrails of the nation in a quest for profit, thrusting us all into serfdom and polluting and poisoning the ecosystem that sustains the human species.

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Iran Burns Bibles, Condemns Quran Burning

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

National Review - By Paul Marshall - Mar. 24 (News Analysis) - Iran’s own Bible-burnings are only one part of its ongoing repression of Christians, Baha’is, Sufis, and others. Christian Solidarity Worldwide reports that, in two weeks, five Iranian Christians, who were recently sentenced in Shiraz to one year’s imprisonment for “crimes against the Islamic Order,” will be tried for blasphemy.

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Algeria: Protesters hurt as police try to halt demonstration

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Global Voices - By John Liebhardt - Feb. 20 (News Report) - Several people were injured as police and pro-government gangs in Algeria confronted protesters while trying to break up a demonstration organized by human rights Organizations and other civil society groups in Algiers on Saturday, February 19. There are conflicting reports on the number of protesters who came to May 1 Square for Saturday's demonstration. Al Jazeera English reported that hundreds of protesters turned out while a human rights groups placed the number at 5,000. Police used sheer numbers and occasionally clubs in an attempt to keep downtown Algiers open to traffic. The relatively low numbers of protesters — at least compared to last week's demonstration that brought an estimated 10,000 protesters and 26,000 riot police — were blamed on the fact the government has banned large demonstrations. The country's train service was almost completely shut down.

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How to Understand Rush Limbaugh

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Commentary Magazine - By Wildred M. McClay - Feb. 09 (Special Report) - It also points to a curious fact about Limbaugh’s standing in the mind of much of the American media and the American left. Even though they talk about him all the time, he’s the man who isn’t quite there. By which I mean that there is a stubborn unwillingness, both wishful and self-defeating, to recognize Limbaugh for what he is, take him seriously, and grant him his legitimate due. Many of his detractors have never even listened to his show, for example. Some of his critics regularly refer to him as Rush “Lim-bough” (like a tree limb), as if his name is so obscure to them that they cannot even remember how to pronounce it. ... He conducts his show in an air of high-spiritedness and relaxed good humor, clearly enjoying himself, always willing to be spontaneous and unpredictable, even though he is aware that every word he utters on the air is being recorded and tracked by his political enemies in the hope that he will slip up and say something career-destroying. Limbaugh the judo master is delighted to make note of this surveillance, with the same delight he expresses when one of his “outrageous” sound bites makes the rounds of the mainstream media, and he can then play back all the sputtering but eerily uniform reactions from the mainstream commentators, turning it back on them with a well-placed witticism.

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Egypt: Citizen Media Exposes Violence During Media Black Out

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Global Voices - By Hisham , Videos - Feb. 06 (News) - During the five-day long media and communications black out in Egypt, activists succeeded in circumventing censorship, filtering out videos that captured the violence occurring on the sidelines of the "revolution," away from the peaceful scenes of ordinary traffic in downtown Cairo broadcast by State TV. Videos are graphic in nature. Viewers discretion is advised.

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Mubarak intensifies press attacks with assaults, detentions

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

cpj.org - Feb. 04 (News Report) - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak unleashed an unprecedented and systematic attack on international media today as his supporters assaulted reporters in the streets while security forces began obstructing and detaining journalists covering the unrest that threatens to topple his government.

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Eliminate the Witnesses: Committee to Protect Journalists Criticizes Mubarak’s Policy of Attacking and Silencing Journalists in Egypt

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Feb. 04 (News Report) - The Mubarak regime's violent crackdown has included deliberate targeting of journalists covering the protests across Egypt. News outlets including Al Jazeera, CBS News, ABC News, Fox News, CNN, BBC, the _Washington Post_, the _New York Times_, Australian Broadcasting, Danish TV2 News and Swiss television have reported assaults, intimidation or arrests of their workers. We speak to Frank Smyth with the Committee to Protect Journalists, who reports there has been a record of 100 attacks on journalists, 30 detentions, 26 assaults, and eight cases of media equipment seized. “This is worst case of the most blatant violence against the press I have seen in my 24 years reporting and my 10 years at CPJ,” Smyth says. “Clearly the Mubarak regime is responsible. They are implementing a policy to eliminate witnesses to what is occurring. It seems that the Mubarak regime is attempting to literally unplug Egypt from the world.”

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Egypt Leaves the Internet

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

renesys - By James Cowie - Jan. 27 (News Analysis) - in an action unprecedented in Internet history, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet.

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