Image via WikipediaClampdown in Hungary
On January 1—the same day Hungary assumes the six-month, rotating presidency of the European Union—a media law, passed by the Parliament on December 21, goes into effect, essentially reinstating state censorship in Hungary. The law establishes a National Communications and Media Authority to monitor all forms of news media—newspapers, television, radio, even individual blogs. It can impose fines as high as $950,000 on coverage it deems unbalanced or “offensive to human dignity,” seize reporters’ notes, search editorial offices and demand confidential business information. An analysis of the draft legislation by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe warned that provisions of the law “simply cannot be described as being compatible with the basic principles of democracy.” Luxembourg’s foreign minister even questioned whether Hungary was fit to lead the EU.
Goodbye Internet, We Hardly Knew Ye?
Analysis: The Internet, as we once knew it, will be under renewed attack next year.
- WikiLeaks Attacks Illegal, Says Internet Society
- FCC Net Neutrality Rules: What the Future Might Look Like
- Uncle Sam's Dumbest Tech Buys
- Skype Outage: What You Need to Know
- Facebook Privacy: Secrets Unveiled
- AT&T's Perversion of 'Free Speech' Would Let It Control the Internet
A successor for Mussolini?
Berlusconi opposed the War on Terror-inspired tactic of domestic wiretapping only because wiretap transcripts implicated him and his colleagues in criminal and other dubious behavior.
Berlusconi unilaterally overturns popular referenda.
Berlusconi creates a stir at NATO summits by refusing to interrupt his cell phone conversation in order to greet the Chancellor of Germany.
Rise of Hindu fascism in India threatens Muslims
Image via Wikipedia"Muslims in India continue to live in fear and anxiety unsure as to when their Hindu neighbour will replace the sweets he brings with a sword. Hindutva is alive and raging and with Western nations tripping over themselves to cement links with a potential future superpower, do not be surprised if many more countries turn a blind eye to the ongoing genocide of India’s Muslims. After all, Muslims are dispensable when there are rich pickings to be made. Money talks and Muslims in India will be the sacrificial lambs for the rupee bonanza."
American Nightmare for American Indians
"If the Puritans, Freemasons, and their ancestors really believed in their value systems, they wouldn’t have committed such horrendous crimes of genocide and blatant theft of millions of hectares of American Indian lands. While Americans still benefit from these vast resource rich lands, Indians are placed on segregated lands. As such it is beyond doubt that America’s foreign policy is not guided by the Puritans, Freemasons or Liberal ideas of liberty, democracy and freedom. To be sure “the West won the world,” according to Samuel P. Huttington, “not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”
For the African-American and Indigenous populations millions were historically erased through slavery and mass murder via the conduits of racism and pandemic disease.
America's self-serving politicized double standard of 'Justice'
How on earth can anyone treat the US Secretary of State seriously when she comes out with this sort of pot, kettle, black rhetoric? This from a nation which is morally and financially bankrupt, a country which introduced words like rendition and water-boarding into common day usage...My advice to Clinton is do not lecture anyone about human rights and legal issues until you clean up your own backyard."
The USA is still squatting in Cuba overseeing the continuing festering mess caused by one of the biggest boil’s on the face of human rights – yes, Guantanamo is approaching a decade of incarcerating men without charge or trial.
Dr Aafia Siddiqui, was given 86 years for attempting to shoot US soldiers … the alleged incident happened while she was in US custody, in Afghanistan. She didn’t shoot anyone although she WAS shot at point blank range by the soldiers. The critically injured Pakistani citizen was then renditioned for a trial in New York. The hearing was judged to be illegal and out of US jurisdiction by many international lawyers.
Rise of Hindu fascism in India threatens Muslims
Will Muslim victims of the Gujarat massacre ever see justice?
British government promoting projects for the "de-radicalization" of Islam
The plight of the Uighurs: China's Muslims suffering as much as the Tibetans
Innocent Pakistani students face deportation from UK
When Pakistanis Matter
If Obama had wanted to accurately convey his views on when it is and is not appropriate to kill Pakistani civilians, he should have expanded his pronouncement to include the following stipulations:
Killing innocent civilians outside a World Food Programme distribution point is an affront to the people of Pakistan, and to all humanity, provided the killing is perpetrated by suicide bombers—or some other undesirable Arab/Muslim phenomenon justifying continued U.S. intervention abroad—and not by U.S. military drones.”
U.S. drone strikes reportedly killed over 700 Pakistani civilians in 2009 alone.
2010 : The Year I Gave Up on Afghanistan
It was that farce in Marjah that was the final straw for me. The Pentagon PR shops went into overtime and sold a Potemkin version of Marjah that had no basis in reality. They sold it as a normal Afghan city, and it is most certainly not. There was no Marjah fifty years ago, and I damned well know it because I have seen a numbered copy of the original CIA planning documents for the settlement.
Marjah was a creation of the CIA and USAID. It isn't so much a city as it is a settlement. It consists of a few thousand compounds of one to three acres each, interspersed among irrigation canals and poppy fields. The intent when Marjah was settled was for the Afghans to grow wheat, but as soon as the first wheat crop was harvested, the farmers switched to poppies and never looked back.When they launched the Marjah offensive, I abandoned support. Like the Afghan farmers, I never looked back.
Glenn Greenwald Schools Fran Townsend on CNN
Former homeland security advisor to George W. Bush turned CNN contributer Fran Townsend debates Glenn Greenwald (who also ended up debating host Jessica Yellin) about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. What ensued was a Greenwald-led lesson on US law and journalism for Townsend (a former attorney) and reporter Yellin.
More on Greenwald’s CNN Schooling Session
The Power List: 20 people who rocked science fiction and fantasy in 2010
Living Earth Simulator aims to predict everything that's happening on our planet
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