Category Archives: News

YouTube Offering Citizen Journalism

by Editor

A fascinating development at YouTube: The Reporters’ Center, where you can get tips on effective journalism from prominent reporters. The new YouTube channel went live today and is already offering some interesting how-to videos like the one above by reporter Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times. He shows you how to be careful when trying to interview war lords with big guns, how to hide your money, and how to always be a little skeptical and double-check witness accounts and stories that sound too good. Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post has a video about the impact of citizen journalism best demonstrated by the recent uprising in Iran. During the past few weeks, the government of Iran tried to shut down the operations of journalists and restrict the use of internet and text messaging in order to suppress information about government violence against protesters. But they were not able to prevent people with cell phone cameras from making videos and sending them out of the country for the world to see. These people have also been reporting on the situation via Twitter to give real-time coverage of many events in Iran.

This movement toward citizen journalism is extremely interesting because it democratizes the press. Cameras in the hands of millions become a formidable tool for keeping an eye on government and limiting its ability to suppress information.  The press has always functioned like a fourth branch of the U.S. government, preventing the administrative, legislative, and judiciary from thinking they operate out of sight.  In fact, it probably wouldn’t hurt to constitutionally formalize the press as some kind of fourth branch!

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Iran Election Fraudulent Because of No Free Press and No Free Women

by Editor

The protests raging over the recent presidential election in Iran are an expression of distrust of the official election results that seem to declare the current and totally insane president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the overwhelming victor.  Riots are becoming extremely violent, with police beatings in the streets and clouds of black smoke rising above Tehran.  However, the arguments over whether or not the election was fraudulent are a complete waste of energy.  No election in any country that does not have a free press can ever be legitimate.  Without a free press to report on an election and possible election fraud there is no one to hold a sitting government accountable to the people.  You cannot have a democracy or an election in a country that does not allow reporters freedom to write whatever they want.  It’s impossible.  Iran’s election is fraudulent because Iran’s government is controlled entirely by Islamic clerics who have absolutely no respect for freedom of expression, freedom of information, freedom of religion, freedom of education, or freedom of women.

I define as barbaric any country anywhere on the planet that forces women to wear specific attire.  Iran is a barbaric nation with a population of extremely fearful males lacking in an essential self-confidence.  This is what drives male-dominated Islamic governments to require certain codes of conduct and dress for women.  In countries where elections are legitimate women wear shorts and makeup.  Think I’m just being glib?  Go check it out.

Iran has cut off internet services, cell phone service, and texting services in order to prevent discussion and organization of opponents to the religious government.  It has arrested journalists, shut down newspapers, and confiscated television cameras in a crackdown on activities of the international media in Iran.  These are the actions of a total dictatorship.

In fact, there is almost no hope at all for the protesters in Iran.  Even if they succeed in overturning the election, they would not be able or willing to eliminate religious control of their government.  Countries ruled by Islam are permanently and hopelessly barbaric.  It’s like a law of physics that’s completely unbreakable.

The root of the problem with Iran is the root of the problem for almost every single government in the Middle East: religious control.  There is no possibility of the slightest freedom of expression or freedom for women in any country controlled by a religious entity.  None whatsoever.

Photo from AFP/Getty

20-Year Anniversary of China’s Public Massacre

by Editor

Twenty years ago, on June 4, 1989, the Chinese government ordered its military to kill the unarmed peaceful student protesters for democracy gathered in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The army then shot the students and ran them over with tanks. In its murderous effort to suppress any form of free expression or protest, the Chinese government and its military murdered the people in Tiananmen Square while the entire world watched. China is now preventing any sort of commemoration or discussion of those events or the twenty-year anniversary by almost completely shutting down internet access to any material that could possibly mention the murder of Chinese people in Tiananmen Square.

You can see the police with umbrellas blocking the view of the BBC news cameraman in the embedded video. The entire square is closed to the press on this important day in Chinese history. The government does not want anyone in China to know anything about or understand what happened in 1989.

It is an honor to have a web site banned in China. Candlelight Stories receives a large number of visits from China and is actually used in English classes there. However, Candlelight Stories urges the citizens of China to wake up in the morning and completely overthrow and eliminate their oppressive government. It would be enlightening to see the government officials of China dragged by Chinese citizens into the middle of Tiananmen Square where the world could serve as witness to the end of this horrendous period in Chinese history.  Why any company or country does any business at all with the brutal despots ruling China is a complete and pitiful mystery to any rational thinker.  And people who site see in China would have probably been perfectly comfortable touring concentration camps in 1944.

Now, China, press the red button and ban me.

California Supreme Court Legalizes Bigotry

by Editor

The California Supreme Court has upheld a recent statewide vote that amended the state constitution to define marriage as only between a man and a woman.  This is the same court that only months ago ruled that any ban on gay marriage was a violation of rights.  Their recent ruling, however, focuses on the legality of the vote to amend the constitution to rule out the possibility of same sex marriage.  If it is legal for voters to take away the right for gay people to marry by passing a constitutional amendment, then it would be just as legal for those voters to amend the constitution to say that marriage is only between a white man and a white woman.  That’s what California’s Supreme Court has ruled in all its wisdom.  They have legalized rampant bigotry.

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President Obama Moves Toward Fascist Ideas

by Editor | 1 Comment

Watch liberal MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow in this video.  Watch the whole thing.  She’s leading us through what may amount to the most terrifying fascist speech ever delivered to the people of the United States.  The sitting president is moving toward setting up a legal structure that will place people in ‘prolonged detention’ BEFORE they have committed any crime or have even been charged with a crime if they are determined to be a possible danger to the United States.  Maddow points out how this is the exact premise of the science fiction film Minority Report which was based upon a Philip K. Dick story.  This is a well-known liberal commentator who says at the end of the video that this Obama speech is ‘one of the most radical proposals for defying the Constitution that we have ever heard made to the American people.’

The American Civil Liberties Union has responded with short statement.

The bottom line is that this president is shocking human rights and civil liberties organizations all over the world with his rapid move toward fascism.  These are largely liberal organizations that once looked upon Mr. Obama as a welcome change from eight years of assaults on civil liberties.  They and many liberal voters in the United States are profoundly disappointed and legitimately horrified at what they are hearing from this president.

So, if you write or say something that makes someone somewhere in the Obama administration decide that you might be some sort of danger in the future, you could be arrested and held in a new separate legal structure that could keep you imprisoned indefinitely – forever.

That is a profoundly un-American and illegal idea.

Guatemala Imprisons Man for Twitter Suggestion that People Withdraw Their Money From Bank

by Editor

The government of Guatemala has arrested and imprisoned a man named Jean Anleu Fernández who posted on Twitter yesterday the following message: “The first action people should take is to remove cash from Banrural, and break the banks of corrupt people. #escandalogt”

His Twitter message was in response to the suspected involvement of the Guatemalan president in the recent assassination of a prominent lawyer who was investigating government corruption.  What we are seeing here is the new power of words.  Their power to take down a government.  The outrageous action of Guatemala has created a worldwide eruption of blog and Twitter outrage in which Anleu Fernández’ original message is being reproduced countless times.  Boing Boing is doing excellent coverage of this story.

I agree with Mr. Anleu Fernández in his suggestion that people withdraw their money from a bank that people suspect of corruption.  I would withdraw my money if I were in Guatemala.  I also think the people should probably withdraw themselves from Guatemala if at all possible since it is quite obviously moving toward total collapse.  If Guatemala thinks I’m creating panic, then I would suggest that people actually run screaming from the country because panic is exactly what should be happening there.  When police start arresting people for telling other people to pull money out of a bank, then it’s all over.