Showing posts with label Censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Censorship. Show all posts

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Activist Daniel McGowan suing prison system for having been jailed for blogging

Daniel McGowan was jailed for having published a blog post in April 2013

Daniel-McGowan-by-Brandon-Jourdan photo Daniel-McGowan-by-Brandon-Jourdan_zpsa9db28ed.jpg

"Daniel McGowan may have been the first person thrown in solitary confinement for writing a HuffPost blog. Now he'll be the first person to sue the Bureau of Prisons over it." (The Huffington Post)

The government retaliated against McGowan "because he continued writing about politics and environmental activism after he was imprisoned."

After an environmental activist, Daniel McGowan, served a term in prison for charges related to a radical environmental protests that resulted in arson, he was released to a Brooklyn halfway house last year. While at the halfway house, Mr. McGowan published a post about his time in federal prison. That blog post triggered a retaliatory response from the prison system, which transferred Mr. McGowan from his halfway house to the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center.

The revocation of Mr. McGowan's freedom while he was living in the halfway house is the basis of a lawsuit filed yesterday in Brooklyn federal court.

RELATED


Environmental Activist Daniel McGowan, Jailed for Blogging, Is Suing the Bureau of Prisons (The Village Voice)

Photos : Several Arrested During March Against Police Brutality (The Village Voice)

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Is it time for Greenlight Capital to short stock of Sochi Olympic Sponsors ?

Hedge funds can probably make a killing by shorting stock of Sochi Olympic Sponsors

The marketing setbacks facing Coca-Cola's karmically-doomed sponsorship of the Sochi Olympics seem to be the tip of the iceberg.

Last year, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a highly-visible attack on super-sized sugary drinks, seeking to ban the sale of high-calorie drinks as a way to fight obesity and obesity-related maladies, like diabetes and heart disease. A court blocked Mayor Bloomberg's ban on large sugary-drinks, but Mayor Bloomberg's successor has vowed to fight to restore the ban. Efforts to improve its corporate image have also proved to be problematic for Coca-Cola after the corporation faced allegations that it was depleting ground water and contributing to pollution in India. Coca-Cola's role in creating water shortages in India have led some local authorities to suggest last week that they would take actions to demolish a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Uttar Pradesh.

Coca-Cola is still recovering from the shocking 2009 documentary exposé, The Coca-Cola Case, of its labour violations in Colombia, Guatemala, and Turkey.

Similarly, the damage that McDonald's is doing to its own reputation following it's own deadly silence on the violent Russian LGBT crackdown comes at a time when the world's largest hamburger chain is losing customer loyalty and is facing an embarrassing sales slump. "We've lost some of our customer relevance," CEO Don Thompson told Wall Street analysts during a conference call this week.

Separately, it's unclear how much the credit card issuer VISA stands to lose, if anything, from the recent spree of credit card fraud impacting several large American retailers.

Is it time for Greenlight Capital to create a bespoke basket of Olympic sponsor equities, and then short it ?

2014-01-27 at 21.44.49 Virtual Assistant Greenlight Capital Short Coca-Cola Stock Screen Shot photo 2014-01-27at214449VirtualAssistantGreenlightCapitalShortCoca-ColaStockScreenShot_zpsf71905ed.png

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Coca-Cola Removes Social Media Tool That Banned The Word "Gay"

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Coca-Cola Social Media Gimmick Censors "Gay" But Not "Straight"

Enjoy Coke, as long as you're not "gay" ?

In a startling new development, the world's largest sugary-drinks maker Coca-Cola has censored its social media followers from using the word "gay" in the company's new social media gimmick -- but not the word "straight."

The normally proud Sochi Olympics sponsor, Coca-Cola is expressing shame to its social media followers if they try to type the word "gay" into a meme generator that lets users affix brief messages on a blank red Coca-Cola can, but one that still bears the trademark white swoosh, or wave. The censorship is evidenced by a capture video of a computer screen's movements posted to YouTube by a user named Kaleb Sutra.

Social media followers who type the word "gay" are met with the following response : “Oops. Let’s pretend you didn’t just type that," the same as if followers had just typed in curse words, like "dick," "pussy," or "bitch."

Coca-Cola's association of "gay" with profanity comes on the heels of the proud Sochi Olympics sponsor trying to disassociate itself from the doomed marketing gimmicks of McDonald's, which launched a karmically-challenged social media campaign on Twitter with the hashtag #CheersToSochi in the face of a violent, seemingly government-sponsored crackdown against LGBT Russians following the passage of an anti-gay propaganda law last year.

That the tinge of censorship has now befallen Coca-Cola's latest social media campaign reveals the adverse advertising conditions the large sugary-drinks maker must confront in connection with this year's controversial Winter Olympics, set to take place in Sochi, a southern Russian coastal resort town across the Black Sea from Turkey. Russia's anti-gay law has sparked global outrage ahead of the Olympics, and many foolish corporations like Coca-Cola, which blindly paid large sums of money to sponsor the Sochi Olympics, must now account to their customers for the sponsorship of the games in a nation that is violently cracking down against its very own LGBT citizens.

Since last summer, Coca-Cola had become the target of protests based on its sponsorship decision, and last week one LGBT activism group released a brilliant YouTube video, mocking Coca-Cola's morally bankrupt brand for having once sponsored multi-cultural dignity and respect but which now supports Russia's violent anti-LGBT crackdown.

No word yet on how Coca-Cola's own Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Ally (LGBTA) Business Resource Group, or its other Diversity Advisory Councils, are able to reconcile the corporation's controversial sponsorship of the Sochi Olympics.

Is it time for Greenlight Capital to short some stock ?

These latest marketing setbacks add to Coca-Cola's growing problems. Last year, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a highly-visible attack on super-sized sugary drinks, seeking to ban the sale of high-calorie drinks as a way to fight obesity and obesity-related maladies, like diabetes and heart disease. A court blocked Mayor Bloomberg's ban on large sugary-drinks, but Mayor Bloomberg's successor has vowed to fight to restore the ban. Efforts to improve its corporate image have also proved to be problematic for Coca-Cola after the corporation faced allegations that it was depleting ground water and contributing to pollution in India. Coca-Cola's role in creating water shortages in India have led some local authorities to suggest last week that they would take actions to demolish a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Uttar Pradesh.

Coca-Cola is still recovering from the shocking 2009 documentary exposé, The Coca-Cola Case, of its labour violations in Colombia, Guatemala, and Turkey.

Similarly, the damage that McDonald's is doing to its own reputation following it's own deadly silence on the violent Russian LGBT crackdown comes at a time when the world's largest hamburger chain is losing customer loyalty and is facing an embarrassing sales slump. "We've lost some of our customer relevance," CEO Don Thompson told Wall Street analysts during a conference call this week.

Separately, it's unclear how much the credit card issuer VISA stands to lose, if anything, from the recent spree of credit card fraud impacting several large American retailers.

Is it time for Greenlight Capital to create a bespoke basket of Olympic sponsor equities, and then short it ?

2014-01-27 at 21.44.49 Virtual Assistant Greenlight Capital Short Coca-Cola Stock Screen Shot photo 2014-01-27at214449VirtualAssistantGreenlightCapitalShortCoca-ColaStockScreenShot_zpsf71905ed.png

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Media Pushing Back Against Obama Censorship and Propagandizing White House Communications

Reporter Bob Franken Blasts Obama on MSNBC: ‘Most Hostile’ to Press ‘in U.S. History’

Earlier today on MSNBC, during a segment moderated by anchor T.J. Holmes, the seasoned journalist Bob Franken described the Obama administration's efforts to control the media as the "most hostile to the media that has been in United States history."

This is not surprising.

Dana Milbank, from The Washington Post, spoke about a report published last week in which Mr. Milbank asserted that President Barack Obama is propagandizing White House communications.

Meanwhile, Amy Holmes said that the White House was trying to censor the media. She pointed out that Jay Carney had a media background, and now that he was the White House press secretary, he should know better about White House efforts to only get "happy talk" reported by the media.

Mr. Milbank pointed out that President Obama made promises of "new transparency." Instead, Mr. Milbank said that the Obama White House is now prosecuting reporters under the Espionage Act.

You can see the Obama administration's clamping down on the First Amendment in how it refuses to honor the Freedom of Information Act request filed in the case of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" hero Lt. Daniel Choi.

Read more : Reporter Bob Franken Blasts Obama on MSNBC: ‘Most Hostile’ to Press ‘in U.S. History’

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Cy Vance District Attorney 2013 Parody Campaign Video

How long will Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance allow the parody campaign video produced by the artist and blogger Suzannah B. Troy to be up on YouTube, considering what happened to the ''Dirty D.A.'' video, which had to go underground ?

Sunday, February 10, 2013

In response to Facebook.com censorship, can SumofUs.org rollout a social networking interface ?

So, Facebook.com likes to censor its users, who post information, links, or other media, such as photographs or videos, which are deemed too political in nature (or, more appropriately, too offensive to its advertisers or tax authorities). Facebook sometimes suspends user accounts for a period of time, mainly, for 30 days, according to recent examples of two of my "Facebook" friends. Considering how short-lived Myspace.com was, for all its clunky and anti-music file sharing obsession it became in its final years of relevancy, many users on Facebook.com look forward to the emergency of a new Web site, to which disaffected Facebook.com users can migrate.

For all those activists, who are "superusers" of Facebook.com, who use features like creating events for demonstrations or meeting planning, creating pages for activism campaigns, for creating groups of like-minded activists, and for creating public (or private) profiles for doing all this work, perhaps one emerging suggestion may make sense :

Seeing as how new Web sites, such as SumofUs.org, are emerging, where activists can participate in some limited function online activism, it might be fascinating to explore whether the owners-developers of Web sites, such as SumofUs.org, could add on social networking and other social app-like modules, extensions, or functionality, so that disaffected Facebook.com users can just abandon Facebook.com and just embrace one, fully-dedicated non-profit Web site, such as SumofUs.org, for their online activism and social media experience.

Imagine what online activists could do in a Web-based environment, which supported a safe space for online activism and social networking ? We wouldn't have to deal with the arbitrary censorship by Web sites, such as Facebook.com, we wouldn't have to deal with ever nebulous privacy policy changes to placate advertisers, there wouldn't be tracking, surveillance, or face recognition issues....

I imagine it would only take a small team of creative minds to mount an effort like this....

Then, we would have a newly, self-empowered community for online activism. And we could let our old Facebook.com accounts join our old Myspace.com accounts in the digital morgue of the past.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Guantanamo Farcical Military Sept. 11 Trial Feed Censorship


During Monday's military court proceedings in Guantanamo, the audio/video feed was shut off -- but nobody knows by whom ?

"Judge Col. James Pohl remains puzzled by an anonymous censor that cut the audiovisual feed during September 11 courtroom proceedings. Ryan Reilly joins Abby from the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba," reported Huffington Post.

And from The Washington Post :

David Nevin, one of Mohammed’s civilian attorneys, was discussing a defense motion to preserve any evidence from the secret overseas prisons where the defendants were held by the CIA. The motion had been declassified, but Nevin had barely gotten a sentence out when the audio feed to the media centers on base and at Fort Meade was smothered in white noise. Then the video of the courtroom was cut.

When the feeds were restored several minutes later, Judge James Pohl, an Army colonel, seemed perplexed as to not only why Nevin was censored but by whom. Pohl said he did not cut off the feed, and it did not appear that the court security officer who sits beside him did, either.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Suzannah B. Troy To Be Censored By YouTube and NYPD Intelligence Division

Suzannah B. Troy faces censorship yet again, this time by YouTube and the NYPD's Intelligence Division.

Following are the two videos, which face censorship :

"Mayor Bloomberg Yelled Down CityTime ECTP at Press Conference NYPD Intelligence Lt."

"Mayor Bloomberg Private Army NYPD Intelligence Det. Lynch Refuses to Identify Himself + Abusive!"

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2012) Trailer

The film examines this complex intersection of artistic practice and social activism as seen through the life and art of China's preeminent contemporary artist. From 2008 to 2010, Beijing-based journalist and filmmaker Alison Klayman gained unprecedented access to Ai Weiwei. Klayman documented Ai's artistic process in preparation for major museum exhibitions, his intimate exchanges with family members and his increasingly public clashes with the Chinese government. Klayman's detailed portrait of the artist provides a nuanced exploration of contemporary China and one of its most compelling public figures.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

2003 Iraq NYC protests Censorship ?

A Google search for news stories about this string : nyc war protest 2003 (without quotation marks) (which is broad enough to pick up the massive anti-war protest and rally, which took place in New York City on February 15, 2003) turns up no results. Why does Google provide no links to news articles to a simple search for this historical event ?

Monday, July 9, 2012

Suzannah Troy Joe Tacopina Censorship YouTube

A video about Joe Tacopina and the Baby Lisa story from Kansas City and posted on YouTube by Suzannah B. Troy was censored earlier today. After Ms. Troy's friends and supporters began an e-mail campaign to YouTube, her video was restored.

Here is the original video, which has been restored :

Sunday, March 20, 2011

True News From Change NYC Blog Has Been Restored

Breaking News ! Update on True News From Change NYC Blog

Gary Tilzer's blog, True News From Change NYC, about New York government corruption, political reporting, and other commentary about government transparency, has been restored. Earlier today, it had been discovered that the True News blog had been suspended by Google for inexplicable reasons overnight. The suspension of the blog had become a focal point of support today by many New York bloggers and activists. No reason for the suspension is yet known, but New York bloggers suspect political censorship might have been one motive behind the removal of the blog.

CENSORED : True News From Change NYC Blog

Update : True News From Change NYC Blog Has Been Restored

Google Blogspot Blog Has Been Removed For No Reason ; Blogger Community Suspects Political Censorship ; Call To Action

True News From Change,Blogspot,Google,Censorship,Gary Tilzer

Please send an e-mail to press@google.com and copy Gary Tilzer, the owner of the censored blog, at Gtprinter@aol.com -- demanding that the True News blog be restored.

True News is a blog dedicated to reporting about government scandals, politics, and transparency. (Here is the cached version of the True News blog.)

This is not the first act of censorship against Mr. Tilzer. Before the 2010 election, a YouTube video that Mr. Tilzer produced was banned by NBC/YouTube and had to be replaced with an edited version. In the last couple of years, others have faced incidences of cyber censorship or retaliatory activity. One and a half months before the 2009 election, the YouTube channel owned by the artist and political commentator Suzannah B. Troy was likewise censored, until bloggers and a lawyer intervened on her behalf. In 2010, this blogger was attacked by computer viruses 3 or 4 times, including on the day this blogger reported to the New York Department of State Committee on Open Government an act of censorship committed by Brad Hoylman.

Flashback : Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed Internet freedom as tool to ‘spread truth and expose injustice’

We need your help to keep courageous bloggers, like Mr. Tilzer, doing what they do. If you are reading this, it is because you are turning to the Internet for reliable information. For it to be here, bloggers, like Mr. Tilzer, have to be able to do their work without fear of retribution or censorship.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

NYC Protest Against Smithsonian Censorship of David Wojnarowicz Video

Hundreds of artists, patrons of the arts, free speech activists, and others gathered for a protest in New York City on Sunday, December 19, 2010, to demonstrate against what activists are calling an act of censorship by the Smithsonian Institution.

An exhibit called Hide/Seek, currently showing at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, has attracted controversy, because the Secretary of the Smithsonian ordered the removal of a video from the exhibit,

The video that was removed, entitled, A Fire In My Belly, is described as having an AIDS theme ; it was made by David Wojnarowicz. The video has garnered attention for its provocative images, including one scene where ants are shown to be crawling over a crucifix.

Since the video uses religious imagery in such a provocative manner, among other things, the Catholic League and Congressional Republicans have denounced the video, leading to a decision by G. Wayne Clough, the Smithsonian Secretary, to remove the video from the exhibit.

In response to the video's removal, other museums, foundations, and artists have decried the Smithsonian's decision. Today's protest in New York City was a demonstration against the video's removal, which activists described to be an act of censorship.