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The 30-minute speech I gave last month at the Symphony Space in New York is now available on video, and is posted below in three YouTube segments (the first segment also contains the 4-minute introduction of my speech). The speech pertains to the evolution of my views on media criticism, the nature of media propaganda and what drives it, and what can be done to combat it. A DVD of the entire event -- featuring the three other speeches: from Amy Goodman, Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore -- is available at FAIR's website. I want to note one example, from today, that vividly illustrates many of the themes I discussed in that speech.  It is found in the following passage from this Reuters article on Obama's escalation of the covert war in Yemen and his targeting of U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki for assassination: A U.S. official confirmed to Reuters that a U.S. strike last Friday killed Abu Ali al-Harithi, a midlevel al Qaeda operative, which followed last month's attempted strike against Anwar al-Awlaki, the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Whether Awlaki has any operational role in Al Qaeda at all is a matter of intense controversy.  The U.S. Government has repeatedly asserted that he does, but has presented no verifiable evidence to support that accusation.  But what is not in dispute is the notion that Awlaki is "the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula."  He unquestionably is not, and never has been, as multiple Yemen experts have repeatedly noted.  The Reuters claim is factually and entirely false. Whatever one's views are on Obama's assassination program, targeting U.S. citizens without due process obviously raises extraordinary and vitally important questions.  As The New York Times' Scott Shane put it when confirming Awlaki's inclusion on Obama's hit list: "The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen. . . . It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an America

It's not your traditional ROI model. Back to the culture, it supports the fact that you don't need a hard number at the end of the day. It's the right thing to do, we want to listen to our customers, so let's do it.

Everybody knows that if you torture people you don't get good information. It was never about that. Disappearing people and putting them into orange jumpsuits, and into legal black holes and waterboarding them and freezing them and killing detainees was about signaling to the rest of world that you can not challenge or stand up to American power, because if you do, we will respond without constraints, and there is nothing anybody can or will do about it. It was about creating a climate of repression and fear to deter any would-be dissenters or challengers to American power. And that is what this war on whistleblowing and this war on Wikileaks is about as well.

You hear it again and again, varia­tion after varia­tion on a core mes­sage: if you tax rich peo­ple it kills jobs. You hear about "job-killing tax hikes," or that "tax­ing the rich hurts jobs," "taxes kill jobs," "taxes take money out of the economy, "if you tax the rich they won't be able to pro­vide jobs." ... on and on it goes. So do we rea­l­ly de­pend on "the rich" to "create" jobs? Or do jobs get created when they fill a need?

Science Online 2010, the annual meeting for cutting edge users of Web 2.0 technologies in science, was held last month. It filled the science blogosphere with coverage and allowed far-flung colleagues to meet in person.

I fear that ultimately crowd-sourcing is damaging the enterprise of dialogue and deliberation (D&D).

A recent study from Ruder Finn revealed that Americans are spending nearly three hours per day on their mobile phones. And what are they doing there? Educating themselves, conducting business, managing finances, instant messaging, emailing? All of the above, as it turns out, and then some. But perhaps the most interesting finding from the new data is the fact that more people are using the mobile web to socialize (91%) compared to the 79% of desktop users who do the same. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-study-shows-intent-behind-mobile-internet-use-84016487.html

Predictions about the appeal of cloud computing were on the money. We increasingly share, communicate, socialize and entertain ourselves with software and media on remote servers rather than on our own computers. But a big catch prevents more of us from investing much time or money in ephemeral digital media or constantly-changing online services: It can be difficult, if not impossible, to grab your stuff and split.

Assuming philosophy should be relevant to the way we choose to live our lives, three questions guide this paper. What are some moral foundations for revolution? Do you realize what is happening? Are you willing to do anything about it?

"If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about." Many Americans have said this, or heard it, when discussing the expanded surveillance capabilities the government has claimed since 9/11. But, it turns out you should be concerned. Just ask peace activists in Pittsburgh, anti-death penalty activists in Maryland, Ron Paul supporters in Missouri, an anarchist in Texas, groups on both sides of the abortion debate in Wisconsin, Muslim-Americans and many others who pose no threat to their communities. Some of them were labeled as terrorists in state and federal databases or placed on terror watch-lists, impeding their travel, misleading investigators and putting these innocent Americans at risk. The Fourth Amendment requirement that you must be suspected of wrongdoing before the government searches your private records risks becoming a quaint notion. Congress weakened the laws designed to protect our privacy, while the executive branch secretly re-interprets or simply ignores the law with no consequence. While your privacy is being sacrificed, there's little evidence the new spying programs are catching terrorists. The question should be, "If you're not doing anything wrong, why is the government snooping on you?"

If thousands of us hang in there day after day, week after week, we may be able to create a spectacular revolutionary experience that fires up the public imagination and eventually maneuvers Obama into doing something that he has so far not had the guts to do: agree to a bold, decisive stroke against the financial corruption of America. Now that would get the American people behind us and cheering us on from coast to coast. If we can achieve that, the sky will be the limit … further demands will follow and a new America will be born.

ABOUT THIS PROJECT For years, the Yes Men have been tinkering with side-splitting mischief as a way to fight injustice. Our latest film about those efforts, The Yes Men Fix the World, won lots of awards and was released all over the planet... but it simply did not fix the world.  So a year ago, we decided that showing what we do wasn't enough: we needed to help people to actually do it themselves. We called our idea The Yes Lab for Creative Activism. It's a factory for meaningful mischief, and a system for helping organizations and individuals carry out Yes Men-style actions on their own, to get media attention for important issues. But the Yes Lab is more than that: it also aims to help YOU take action on issues of social importance. Today, after a year of testing and nearly a dozen successes, we're proud to announce that the Yes Lab is ready for prime time! It's got a set of cool tools in development, that will soon help YOU get involved in new Yes Lab projects, and even to launch them. And it's got a new home at NYU, with space, lots of eager participants, and an ambitious new structure that will soon be cranking out many new projects. The trouble is that in spite of all that, we still have zero budget for the first round of projects themselves! And that's why you're reading this now. We're asking for $10,000, to make the all-new Yes Lab the lean, mean, change-making machine it can be. Any amount raised over $10,000 will bankroll projects beyond the first round.

We're building the future we want to see -- a new social web that keeps you in control of your data, giving you the freedom to do what you want and have fun. We're a tiny core team of developers working our tails off, and we're also a huge community effort, with more than 150 people having contributed code to our open-source software, hundreds of others engaged in community organizing and spreading the word, and thousands of people providing feedback and financial support. We can't do this without you. Please give what you can. Thank you.

Several cities have organized in solidarity with this call to action

European Commission sets out strategy to strengthen EU data protection rules

Drivers for open data

No. The government can limit such protests depending on several factors. First, violent protests are outlawed anywhere. The text of the First Amendment provides for "the right of the people peaceably to assemble." The key word is "peaceably" - violent protesting is not allowed.