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pope speaks against use of islamic blasphemy laws as an excuse for violence and discrimination

“Salman Taseer's daughter Sara: "This is a message to every liberal to shut up or be shot"

“Pope Benedict XVI has called on Pakistan to repeal its blasphemy laws, which can carry a death sentence for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

“He said the laws served as a pretext for acts of injustice and violence against religious minorities." [Quoted from bbc.co.uk]

“ “The particular influence of a given religion in a nation ought never to mean that citizens of another religion can be subject to discrimination in social life or, even worse, that violence against them can be tolerated,” the Pope said."
—
“ Religious freedom is "the first of human rights," because it is about man's relation with his Creator, he said.” [Quoted from catholicnewsagency.com]

related material
islamic authoritarianism

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/civil-liberties01_2010.php#islamic_injustice_110111

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government interference in net freedom of speech

police in charge of .uk domain - allegedly

“Nominet – the quasi-private entity which controls the .uk part of the internet - plans to allow the police to take down any website without recourse to the Courts. This is at the request of the Serious Organised Crime Agency.”

american government seizing websites

“The U.S. government is shutting down websites suspected of copyrighted infringement or selling counterfeit goods as Congress debates a bill that would give feds more authority to do so.

“Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency within the Homeland Security Department, has seized more than 70 websites in recent days, according to the Wall Street Journal, and posted a notice saying that the domain name has been seized by ICE through court-ordered warrants. The notice also states penalties for willful copyright infringement and trafficking in counterfeit goods.”

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/civil-liberties01_2010.php#policing_domains_291110

google starts to publish data on government attempts to censor the web

data requests to google.com

“Like other technology and communications companies, we regularly receive requests from government agencies around the world to remove content from our services, or provide information about users of our services and products. The map shows the number of requests that we received between July 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009, with certain limitations.”

As well as data requests, Google is also showing the numbers of removal requests resulting from data requests.

removal requests to ggogle.com

If these figures are adjusted to reflect the different size populations of the countries, then rankings are different. For instance, the USA population is about 305 million and that of the UK about 61 million, about one-fifth that of the USA. However, the UK makes 37% more data requests and 68% more removal requests than the USA.

Note that there is no data for Iran, nor for North Korea, nor for China where, apparently their requests are regarded as state secrets.

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/civil-liberties01_2010.php#censorship_data_google_220410

on soft despotism

On the fundamental corruption that is socialism, about 35 minutes of interview with the author, in 5 parts.

Highly recommended.

An excellent description of the foolishness of socialist ‘new’ labour, and the basic differences between Brown the Clown and David Cameron.

Part 1: prime outline,

and then development in the other parts:
part 2 part 3 part 4

Finally, the alleged embedded self-destruction of socialism:
part 5

Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect
by Paul A. Rahe

£26.13 [amazon.co.uk] {advert}
$27.26 [amazon.com] {advert}

Yale University Press, 2009, hbk
ISBN-10: 030014492X
ISBN-13: 978-0300144925

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/civil-liberties01_2010.php#soft_despotism_1140110

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