China Pushes to Rewrite Rules of Global Internet @WSJ

Officials aim to control online discourse and reduce U.S. influence

ENLARGE

China is aiming to draw the world’s largest group of Internet users, such as these patrons of an Internet cafe in Fuyang, away from an unrestricted global Web. PHOTO:AN MING/FEATURECHINA/ZUMA PRESS

By 

JAMES T. AREDDY

July 28, 2015 3:49 p.m. ET

123 COMMENTS

SHANGHAI—As social media helped topple regimes in the Middle East and northern Africa, a senior colonel in the People’s Liberation Army publicly warned that an Internet dominated by the U.S. threatened to overthrow China’s Communist Party.

Ye Zheng and a Chinese researcher, writing in the state-run China Youth Daily, said the Internet represented a new form of global control, and the U.S. was a “shadow” present during some of those popular uprisings. Beijing had better pay attention.

Four years after they sounded that alarm, China is paying a lot of attention. Its government is pushing to rewrite the rules of the global Internet, aiming to draw the world’s largest group of Internet users away from an interconnected global commons and to increasingly run parts of the Internet on China’s terms.

It envisions a future in which governments patrol online discourse like border-control agents, rather than let the U.S., long the world’s digital leader, dictate the rules.

President Xi Jinping—with the help of conservatives in government, academia, military and the technology industry—is moving to exert influence over virtually every part of the digital world in China, from semiconductors to social media. In doing so, Mr. Xi is trying to fracture the international system that makes the Internet basically the same everywhere, and is pressuring foreign companies to help.

http://goo.gl/nv2osb

Please RT - THANKS!

WHAT CONSTITUTION? #Obama Plans To Muzzle Gun-Related Speech

Posted by Bob Owens on June 7, 2015 at 11:12 am

The foreign-raised President of the United States—who never set foot on the U.S. mainland until he was an adult—has proven throughout his rogue administration that he has no respect at all for the Constitution. He’s proving it yet again with a dual attack on both the First and Second Amendments, with an attempt to twist ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) regulations to ban online speech about firearms, claiming that information posted online is “exporting” data.

Even as news reports have been highlighting the gun control provisions of the Administration’s “Unified Agenda” of regulatory objectives (see accompanying story), the Obama State Department has been quietly moving ahead with a proposal that could censor online speech related to firearms. This latest regulatory assault, published in the June 3 issue of the Federal Register, is as much an affront to the First Amendment as it is to the Second. Your action is urgently needed to ensure that online blogs, videos, and web forums devoted to the technical aspects of firearms and ammunition do not become subject to prior review by State Department bureaucrats before they can be published…

…

…With the new proposal published on June 3, the State Department claims to be “clarifying” the rules concerning “technical data” posted online or otherwise “released” into the “public domain.” To the contrary, however, the proposal would institute a massive new prior restraint on free speech. This is because all such releases would require the “authorization” of the government before they occurred. The cumbersome and time-consuming process of obtaining such authorizations, moreover, would make online communication about certain technical aspects of firearms and ammunition essentially impossible.

Penalties for violations are severe and for each violation could include up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million. Civil penalties can also be assessed. Each unauthorized “export,” including to subsequent countries or foreign nationals, is also treated as a separate violation.

Gunsmiths, manufacturers, reloaders, and do-it-yourselfers could all find themselves muzzled under the rule and unable to distribute or obtain the information they rely on to conduct these activities. Prior restraints of the sort contemplated by this regulation are among the most disfavored regulations of speech under First Amendment case law.

http://goo.gl/gZRY7I

Please RT - THANKS! 

#PJNET #JPNET #Geller “If We Surrender Now, #FreeSpeech Is A Relic of History” ! @Atlas

Check out the interview I did with Dom Giordano on CBS radio:

“American Freedom Defense Initiative Pres. On Muhammad Cartoons: If We Surrender Now, Freedom Of Speech Is A Relic,”  CBS Philadelphia, May 27, 2015

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Pamela Geller, President of American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), spoke with Talk Radio 1210 WPHT midday host Dom Giordano about her organization’s new campaign to have cartoon depictions of the Prophet Muhammad on buses in Washington, D.C.
Geller says those who have fears about violence from outraged extremists who feel Muhammad should not be depicted should realize that these are very recent tactics, and that Muhammad has been drawn for the past 1,400 years without issue.

...

Read the whole entry »

VIDEO: Pamela Geller on #FreeSpeech vs. #Sharia ! @Atlas

If you missed my interview with Rick Amato on One America News Network, you can watch it here.

Freedom of speech is the foundation of a free society. Without it, a tyrant can wreak havoc unopposed, while his opponents are silenced.

Putting up with being offended is essential in a pluralistic society in which people differ on basic truths. If a group will not bear being offended without resorting to violence, that group will rule unopposed while everyone else lives in fear, while other groups curtail their activities to appease the violent group. This results in the violent group being able to tyrannize the others.

Speech that is offensive to some must not be curtailed, but protected.

If speech that offends a group is outlawed, that group...

Read the whole entry »

     

• Email to a friend • Article Search •

New Israel Fund President’s Husband To Be Tried For Treason

According to Israel National News yesterday:

“MK Yinon Magal (Jewish Home) has asked the Attorney General, Yehuda Weinstein, to file charges against the former Director of the Foreign Ministry, Alon Liel, on allegations of treason.

According to Magal, Liel has been working to get European parliaments to recognize a Palestinian state on 1967 borders, and in some cases has explicitly stated that such a state should have eastern Jerusalem as its capital.

In a letter to Weinstein, Magal noted that section 97b of the penal code, under the heading “Treason,” refers to “a person who, with the purpose of causing any territory to be removed from the sovereignty of the state or to enter the sovereignty of a foreign state, took action to...

Read the whole entry »

#SCOTUS Throws Out Obamacare Contraception Ruling ! @NewsMax

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday revived religious objections by Catholic groups in Michigan and Tennessee to the Obamacare requirement for contraception coverage, throwing out a lower court decision favoring President Barack Obama's administration.

The justices asked the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its decision that backed the Obama administration in light of the Supreme Court's June 2014 ruling that allowed certain privately owned corporations to seek exemptions from the provision.

Obama's healthcare law, known as Obamacare, requires employers to provide health insurance policies that cover preventive services for women including access to contraception and sterilization.

Vote: Do You Support Obama's Gun Control Plan? Vote Here Now.

Various challengers, including family-owned companies and religious affiliated nonprofits that oppose abortion and sometimes the use of contraceptives, say the requirement infringes on their religious beliefs.\

The high court threw out a June 2014 appeals court ruling that went in favor of the government. In March, the court took a similar approach in a case concerning the University of Notre Dame.

Latest News Update

Get Newsmax TV At Home »

The appeals court rulings in both cases pre-dated the Supreme Court's June 2014 ruling that family-owned Hobby Lobby Stores Ltd could seek exemptions on religious grounds from the contraception provision of the 2010 healthcare law.

http://goo.gl/msL7B0

Please RT - THANKS!

#Chinese Journalist Jailed for Exposing Ban on #Free Speech !

Elderly female reporter joins 44 journalists held by repressive regime.

China has just sentenced 71-year-old ace journalist Gao Yu to seven years in prison on charges of “leaking state secrets overseas.” And what are those secrets she is accused of leaking? They center on renewed efforts by the Chinese Communist Party under President Xi Jinping to suppress free speech.

We have here a sort of infinite regress of absurdities. If China’s authorities consider it a state secret that their policies are to smother free speech and punish dissent, then they themselves are broadcasting this secret by jailing a journalist for exposing it. Presumably, any Chinese journalist who might dare to delve into this could be accused of exposing the exposure of this secret — which is actually no secret at all.

But that’s the very point: To shut up other Chinese journalists, and chill discussion more broadly among those who cover China. Censorship is easier to practice when people are afraid even to suggest that it exists.

According to China’s Xinhua state news agency, Gao Yu was arrested in May 2014 on suspicion of “illegally obtaining a highly confidential document and sending an electronic copy of it to an overseas website in June last year.” Chinese authorities have not confirmed what document this was. But the Wall Street Journal reports that according to Gao’s  lawyer, Mo Shaoping, it was an internal Communist Party directive known as “Document No. 9,” which “identified ideological trends that the party should target.” Accounts from other sources, including Radio Free Asia, the BBC and the Committee to Protect Journalists, also point to Document No. 9, which the BBC describes as calling for “aggressive restrictions on democracy, civil society and the press.”

As the Wall Street Journal further reports: “Ms. Gao had admitted to the crime and apologized in a confession aired on state television in May, but she later retracted her confession, saying it had been made under duress after police detained her son.”

Read more: http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/chinese-journalist-jailed-for-exposing-ban-on-free-speech/#ixzz3XrPg3Yfx

Read more: http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/chinese-journalist-jailed-for-exposing-ban-on-free-speech/#ixzz3XrPENV27