Roseanne Breaks the Set

Abby Martin interviews television legend Roseanne Barr, discussing everything from Saudi Arabia's connection to 9/11, to her VIVID porn pitch, to her next US presidential run.

UK 'Porn' Filter Will Also Block Violence, Alcohol, Terrorism, Smoking And 'Esoteric Material'

The United Kingdom's new internet filters promise to block much more than just pornography, according to a report by the digital advocacy organization Open Rights Group.

Last week, Prime Minister David Cameron announced online porn would soon become automatically blocked in order to "protect children and their innocence." The filters will be implemented by the UK's major internet service providers, which encompass 95% of British web users.

Based on conversations with several ISPs, Open Rights Group says the new "parental controls" will reach far beyond pornography. By default, the controls will block access to "violent material," "extremist and terrorist related content," "anorexia and eating disorder websites," and "suicide related websites."

In addition, the new settings will censor websites that mention alcohol or smoking. The filter will even block "web forums" and "esoteric material," though Open Rights Group does not specify what these categories would include.

Huffington Post

'Attempt to ban porn' discovered in EU report

On Tuesday, members of the European Parliament will vote on the worthy yet mundane-sounding Report on Eliminating Gender Stereotypes in the EU. But bloggers this week pounced on an article in the report that calls for “a ban on all forms of pornography in the media”, and urged their supporters to bombard all 754 MEPs with emails condemning the “unacceptable political invasion of people’s bedrooms”.

While Tuesday’s vote in Strasbourg is merely an expression of support and would not be legally binding, critics worry that it could be the first step towards draconian policing of the internet in Europe. It comes after Iceland began drafting legislation to ban all online pornography, prompting cries of censorship.

Rickard Falkvinge, a founder of the libertarian Swedish Pirate Party, said the text coming before the European Parliament was a “horrendous attack on our fundamental freedoms of speech and expression” while a Pirate Party MEP, Christian Engstrom, warned that “the devil is in the detail” – in particular a call in the report for “a charter to which all internet operators will be invited to adhere. This is quite clearly yet another attempt to get the internet service providers to start policing what citizens do on the internet, not by legislation, but by ‘self-regulation’,” he wrote on his blog. “This is something we have seen before in a number of different proposals, and which is one of the big threats against information freedom in our society.”

More on The Independent

Iceland seeks internet pornography ban

In the age of the internet and globe-spanning viral videos, can a thoroughly wired country become a porn-free zone? Authorities in Iceland want to find out.

The government is drafting plans to ban pornography, in print and online, in an attempt to protect children from a tide of violent sexual imagery. The proposal by the interior minister, Ogmundur Jonasson, has caused uproar. Opponents say the move will censor the web, encourage authoritarian regimes and undermine Iceland's reputation as a Scandinavian bastion of free speech.

The Guardian

Ultra-Orthodox Jews Hold Rally on Internet

It was an incongruous sight for a baseball stadium: tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, all dressed in black suits and white shirts, filing through the gates of Citi Field on Sunday, wearing not blue-and-orange Mets caps but tall, big-brim black hats.

There was no ballgame scheduled, only a religious rally to discuss the dangers of the Internet.

The organizers had allowed only men to buy tickets, in keeping with ultra-Orthodox tradition of separating the sexes. Viewing parties had been arranged in Orthodox neighborhoods of Brooklyn and New Jersey so that women could watch, too. For the attendees, many of whom said they came at the instructions of their rabbis, it was a chance to hear about a moral topic considered gravely important in their community: the potential problems that can stem from access to pornography and other explicit content on the uncensored, often incendiary Web.

NYTimes.com – Vital, pointless, sexist, hilarious? New York’s ultra-Orthodox battle-the-Internet gathering goes viral (Times of Israel)

Ludicrous Bin Laden “Porno” Claim Harks Back To CIA Fakery

The US government must be quite disappointed with the fact that Islamic extremists have yet to attack the United States in “retaliation” for allegedly killing Bin Laden, because they seem to be doing everything in their power to rile up terrorists – this time with the claim that a significant stash of pornography was found in Bin Laden’s compound.

“A stash of pornography was found in the hideout of Osama bin Laden by the U.S. commandos who killed him, current and former U.S. officials said on Friday,” reports Reuters.

These “officials” were unable to explain how there came to be an “extensive” stash of electronic porn in a house that had no Internet connection. But the real story behind yet another ludicrous turn in the manufactured Osama fable is the fact that CIA spooks admitted to creating fake videotapes which featured an actor dressed up as Bin Laden bragging about how he liked to have sex with boys.

On May 25 last year, the Washington Post reported on how the Agency had dreamed up ideas of discrediting both Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. In Bin Laden’s case, the spooks, “Actually did make a video purporting to show Osama bin Laden and his cronies sitting around a campfire swigging bottles of liquor and savoring their conquests with boys,” a former CIA officer told the Post’s Jeff Stein.

Full story by Paul Joseph Watson on InfoWars