“Your true colors, shining through”

The religious crapnuts are again showing you what the world would be like, if they were in charge.

Ever heard of Fred Karger? He’s running for the Republican presidential nomination. He’s the candidate you never saw on the televised debates; he’s the candidate that the other candidates never chose to face.

Why? Because he’s moderate (gasp!), pro-choice (gasp!), and pro-marriage equality (gasp!gasp!). And he’s gay and open about it.

‘Nuff said, right?

Here’s his latest campaign video (for the California primary):

This video was posted on YouTube, and then taken down within 24 hours. Here’s the notice Karger’s campaign folks got:

Look through the video yourself, and try to see what “community guidelines” were violated.

The two guys smooching is my best guess. Should that give this video the old “heave-ho” at a time when you can see naked breasts and outlines of erections through tight underwear throughout YouTube?

Really?

Send the anti-equality wackjobs a message and do the viral thing with this video, ‘kay? Show YouTube the veracity of Great Internet Truth #12.

“Why should I believe *you*?” “Because whatever I say is *true*!”

UPDATE: They deleted my second comment as well. That’s the end of ThinkProgress as far as I’m concerned.

~~~

Never let it be said that conservative news sources are more censorious than liberal sources.

Case in point: I recently made a comment on this story posted in ThinkProgress.

I posted a comment questioning the source, which is Al Jazeera. AJ is known as a news source of questionable agenda; it acts as the mouthpiece for Muslim extremists and seems to think nothing of posting videos depicting graphic violence — including the beheading of Daniel Pearl. (Warning: the video of his beheading exists in the internet, but it is barbarous and frightening. Al Jazeera ran this and other such videos uncut.)

Al Jazeera has a habit of running stories that no one else can verify or confirm. As an example, they recently ran a series of stories on the reason why there are pirates cruising the waters off Somalia. The stories claim that developed-country industries are dumping toxic wastes off the Somalia coast, and the pirate are trying to stop the dumping by becoming pirates. No other news source has been able to verify or deny the story.

Anyway, the comment I posted is gone. It was removed last night, for reasons I can likely guess. I suspect that someone doesn’t like their news stories’ authenticity questioned.

Al Jazeera has the same level of veracity as Fox News and rt.com, and is fueled by similar political agendas.

(FWIW, I’ve placed another comment. Let’s see if that one stays — or not.)

Riddle me this, children.

I am doing work at a customer site, and I decided to scan through my favorite webcomics while waiting for a meeting to start.

When I try to go to the website that would show a cartoon like this

I get this instead.

However, the same customer allows this webcomic that contains material like this…

…and this.

The forbidden comic states a truth about apostasy in the Muslim world, and the second one contains obscenity.

I have no objection to obscenity itself, as long as it’s appropriate to the situation.

However, I also have no problem exposing uncomfortable truths about religions either.

But I’m guessing somebody does.

How can “Limited government!” and “No abortions!” be stated in the same (Republican) political platform?

Here’s one of the Doonesbury cartoons recently censored by several newspapers, and a message your friendly neighborhood white, middle-aged male Republican legislator doesn’t want you to read:

The Kansas City Star was one of the newspapers which refused to run the current comic thread concerning a new Texas law, heartily supported by Governor Rick Good Hair Perry, that requires intrusive sonogram examinations prior to receiving an abortion.

“He that doeth evil hateth the light…” of Google

Google makes an effort to be transparent about its interactions concerning governmental requests for content removal from various countries. Since Google owns YouTube, the remove request reports include requests for content removal of YouTube videos.

Here’s a screenshot of removal requests from the United States in the first half of this year (click to enbiggen):

Care to take any bets as to the locales that requested YouTube video removals? Occupy New York City? Occupy Oakland?

Inquiring minds would love to know.

Narrow-minded stupidity reigns, even on college campuses

University of Wisconsin–Stout theatre professor James Miller has a problem with censorship.

Gorram fascists.

He hung a poster of Serenity‘s Captain Malcolm Reynolds and a quote from Reynolds that illustrated one of his moral stances. The poster was removed by university police at the direction of Chief Lisa A. Walter. She claimed in an email to Miller that “it is unacceptable to have postings such as this that refer to killing”. She also threatened Miller with arrest if he put the poster back up.

Miller’s response was to put up another poster on his door:

This poster, too, was taken down by campus police. This time the excuse was that the poster “depicts violence and mentions violence and death“.

“And this time around, the university’s ‘threat assessment team’ was called in and concluded, in consultation with the University General Counsel’s office, that the poster could be reasonably expected to ’cause a material and/or substantial disruption of school activities and/or be constituted as a threat,’ and should therefore be removed. Raymond Hayes, the interim Dean of the University’s College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, has arranged a meeting with Miller on September 30 to address ‘the concerns raised by the campus threat assessment team.'”

PuhLEEZ. If this were true, every R-rated action movie ever shown on campus is far more explicit about violence and death and should be banned.

This is the result of bureaucrats with egos several sizes too large for their pinheads.

(Thanks for the tip, Kirk!)

A view from a century from 1910

Mark Twain wrote his massive autobiography just before he died, but instructed that it not be published until he’d been dead for a century.

He died in 1910. Guess what time it is?

The first volume is due out in November, but here’s a juicy excerpt:

About once a year some pious public library banishes Huck Finn from its children’s department, and on the same plea always — that Huck, the neglected and untaught son of a town drunkard, is given to lying, when in difficulty and hard pressed, and is therefore a bad example for young people, and a damager of their morals.

Two or three years ago I was near by when one of these banishments was decreed and advertised, and I went over and asked the librarian about it, and he said yes, Huck was banished for lying. I asked,

“Is there nothing else against him?”

“No, I think not.”

“Do you banish all books that are likely to defile young morals, or do you stop with Huck?”

“We do not discriminate; we banish all that are hurtful to young morals.”

I picked up a book, and said—-

“I see several copies of this book lying around. Are the young forbidden to read it?”

“The Bible? Of course not.”

(Of course nowadays Adventures of Huckleberry Finn gets censored and removed from school libraries because of Huck’s use of a then-common word: “nigger”.)

I can hardly wait for this one to come out.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

I got all atwitter (not that Twitter) when Google announced it was going to remove its censorship filters from Google China. I thought, “Wow! Here’s a high-profile corporation with some moral backbone!”

Wrong.

Google only did what they did because the company’s management was pissed off that someone or someones within the auspices of the Chinese government was cracking into Google’s systems to steal stuff. (Most of the illegal entries appeared to be through use of email attachments sent to Google staff that were dumb enough to open files from unknown sources.)

Google still quite happily censors content for various client countries, including

• France, Germany, and Poland (‘net content containing perceived “hate talk”)
• Australia (can’t have no talk about euthanasia or safer methods of drug use)
• Thailand (can’t be making fun of the king there, ya know)
• Turkey (apparently someone there likes to portray the country’s founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as gay–fer shame!)
• India (all sorts of things, including gasp! porn)

C’mon, Mr. Brin. No more more-righteous-than-thou chest-pounding from you, sir. You know full well Google’s real intentions, and real hypocrisy.

Moral backbone appears on the Internet!

Google has apparently lifted the censorship filters that the Chinese government  demanded as a requirement for doing business in their country.

This image is now available when you search ‘Tiananman Square’ on www.google.cn:

Hot damn! They actually did it!

This is also searchable at http://www.google.cn

Let’s see if Microsoft has the balls to follow suit with Bing. Anyone want to take a bet? I’ll offer 3-1 that they won’t.

YouTube needs your help (and doesn’t even realize it yet)

Wackadoodles (my new favorite synonym for wingnuts) have been able to take down YouTube videos that don’t meet their political or religious (read: power) agendas without a fare-thee-well or by-your-leave from anyone who might legitimately have a claim on said videos.

They are censoring material that you have a right to see.

We must fix this.

Go here and sign the petition to urge YouTube (read: Google) to institute a reasonable policy for reviewing complaints and cease-and-desist claims.

Do it now. (We’re at 4,000+ now.)

Thanks and a tip o’ the hat to Dr. P. Z. Myers at Phyaringula for bringing this to my attention.