The generational and cross-cultural refractions obscuring exactly what a T-shirt depicting Obama as a Chairman Mao is supposed to mean are positively cosmic. So the Chinese authorities decided to just ban the things outright. And they're taking this so seriously that security guards at a subway station, apparently aware of how Glenn Beck would use pictures of young Chinese people wearing T-shirts comparing our president to their great leader, detained a CNN reporter for two hours yesterday after she tried to tape a report about the banned T-shirts.

In China, according to the Christian Science Monitor, the shirts are popular with hipsters who get the joke of comparing Obama to Mao, and apparently like to mock Fox News:

In China, the image comes across as witty and cool.... [They are] popular with young people who admire Obama and who get the Andy Warhol-esque joke about icons.

"Mao is kitschy and cool," says Mr. Jenne. "He gets a pass" in a way that other 20th century dictators don't.

But in the U.S., some folks are importing them from China and selling them to the teabag crowd, who wear them to announce their genuinely held belief that Barack Obama is literally like Mao Tse-Tung and will soon begin collectivizing farms. So a shirt that Chinese kids wear ironically because they understand a) how silly it is to compare Obama to Mao, but at the same time b) how Obama has through his style and rhetoric become nearly as iconic as Mao, and c) that even though Mao was a monster, through the passage of time the imagery associated with him has taken on a different, more light-hearted meaning, is also worn in earnest by American teabaggers who understand none of the above and think "kitschy" is Hebrew or something. This reminds us of stories about Christmas displays at Japanese malls featuring crucified Santas. We can't quite wrap our heads around it.

Anyway, the Chinese government was so terrified Politico might see one of these T-shirts that they banned them, and detained CNN's Emily Chang for two hours when they caught her walking around with one in a Shanghai mall. How long before the same thing happens here?

Here's how The Twitter World Works, according to Kaus: Twitter needs celebrities on its service to attract millions of new users every month or quarter or whatever. Celebrities, in turn need adoring fans, but (key point) have very fragile egos. So Kaus suspects Twitter of keeping a secret team of interns in a back room somewhere, poring over the massive stream of tweets directed at celebrities, and deleting the mean nasty tweets from search.twitter.com. The offending tweets still appear on Twitter, but won't show up in search results.

Kaus knows this because he tweeted something mean about CNN president Jon Klein, and it never showed up in Twitter search. Plus, in Kaus' experience, searches on celebrity names "almost invariably turn up... pleasant comments." Pretty ironclad. Ahem.

But you know what? The conspiracy might just be real. (Cue sinister music.) Here's a chummy little conversation between Twitter CEO/co-founder Ev Williams (pictured above, left, with celebrity tweeter Michael Stipe) and known celebrity Alyssa Milano talking about Kaus' conspiracy theory. She called it "interesting," followed by Ev's slick — too slick! — non-denial denial of Kaus' allegations.

Williams could have knocked down Kaus' conspiracy allegations by simply saying "that's absurd" or somesuch. But he didn't. Now we're actually kind of intrigued, at Kaus' seemingly crackpot ideas. Tell us it ain't so, Twitter people. Or better yet confirm, preferably with a picture of your secret cabal of celebrity gladhanders.

(Top pic: via Ev Williams)

Bahari was released on $300,000 bail by Iranian authorities yesterday. It was initially unclear whether he would be allowed to leave the country, but Newsweek just announced via press release that he has arrived in London. We trust he won't return to Tehran for his next court date. Bahari's wife Paola Gourley is due to give birth in six days.

Evin Prison is a very, very bad place. Another Canadian-Iranian journalist, Zahra Kazemi, died there in 2003 after reportedly being tortured and raped. The Iranians said she suffered a stroke. Bahari was dragged before cameras not long after his arrest and "confessed" that the western media were deliberately trying to undermine Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. We are glad he is out, and hope that one day he can safely return to his homeland.

Erin Holland is a vice president and assistant general counsel at Goldman Sachs, which is apparently a really boring job, because she just posted this to her Twitter feed.

We're checking with other Goldman sources to confirm the blockage; Holland's Twitter presence certainly appears to be legit, though her Glee obsession seems somehow misplaced in a lawyer who specializes in credit derivatives contracts [pdf]. We'd be sort of surprised, given what we know about Goldman Sachs, if Gawker was ever available inside the building, but it sounds like Holland had grown accustomed to reading our trenchant wit and anti-Goldman jeremiads from the office.

But no more. [UPDATE: A source inside the building confirms that Gawker had indeed been previously available to Goldman employees.] We can't help but note that this ban follows closely on the heels of our announcement of the Goldman Project, our effort to catalog and track the profligate spending of the beneficiaries of Goldman's anticipated $23 billion in taxpayer-financed bonuses. But they can't kick us off the 3G network last time we checked, so to all the Goldmanites reading this in the bathroom on your iPhones: Leak to us! You have nothing to lose but your jobs. (Remember: Gmail is your friend! Also the phone: our tipline is 646-214-8138.) And to judge by Erin Holland's Twitter feed, Goldman is a horrible, horrible place to work. Except for the money. The money's great.

SECOND UPDATE: We've learned that the ban extends to company Blackberries, as well.

THIRD UPDATE: To those who've expressed concern that we jeopardized Holland's job by drawing attention to her Twitter feed: We have it on good authority that she's been "rebuked but [is] still employed." To Holland: Adjust your Facebook privacy settings.

This would be like Exxon getting a judge to bar the New York Times from covering a debate in Congress about the Valdez oil spill, and it can happen in England because they don't have a fundamentally free press. Trafigura is a multinational commodities firm that allegedly offloaded more than 500 tons of toxic waste in Nigeria in 2006, which was then dumped by locals around Port Abidjan in the Ivory Coast. Thousands were sickened, and according to the Guardian, at least a dozen died. According to internal company e-mails published by the Guardian last month, Trafigura executives knew about the toxic waste even as it was publicly claiming that the stuff was harmless.

It's a significant scandal in the British press, and Trafigura hired the law firm Carter-Ruck to strike back, which in England means getting a judge to prevent newspapers from reporting anything you don't like. This appeared in the Guardian yesterday after the paper tried to report on a written question, published by the House of Commons, that was due to be asked by an MP of Justice Secretary Jack Straw:

Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.

Since that's the sort of thing that's more likely to happen in Iran than in England, Twitter got involved. People figured out from the Guardian's invocation of Carter-Ruck that the question likely involved Trafigura, and the company's name was furiously Twittered about as outrage grew over the gag order. Earlier this morning, Carter-Ruck dropped it's request for an injunction and the Guardian was free to report the public agenda of its own Parliament. Here is the question Trafigura tried to gag:

"To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura."

Hahahaha! It was a question about Trafigura's prior attempts to suppress coverage of the spill. Ironic, no? The Minton Report, which is available here on WikiLeaks [pdf] and reproduced below, is a 2006 study of the dumping commissioned by Trafigura that found that it was illegal and likely caused a massive release of hydrogen sulphide gas. It's unclear to us what specific attempts to suppress that report were made by Carter-Rusk, but last month the Guardian published a raft of internal Trafigura e-mails demonstrating the firm's knowledge of the dumping, and had this to say about the company's efforts to bury the story:

Trafigura's libel lawyers, Carter-Ruck, recently demanded the Guardian deleted published articles, saying it was "gravely defamatory" and "untrue" to say Trafigura's waste had been dumped cheaply and could have caused deaths and serious injuries. Both the Dutch paper Volkskrant and Norwegian TV said they were yesterday also threatened with gagging actions.

Trafigura launched a libel action against BBC Newsnight, complaining Trafigura had been wrongly accused of causing deaths, disfigurement and miscarriages, and had "suffered serious damage to their reputation".

While we're outraged and incensed and filled with righteous anger about the ability of a multinational company to, however briefly, blatantly and unabashedly gag the press (not to mention that the press would submit—ever hear of disobeying a court order, Guardian? Or Financial Times, which also abided by the censorhip?), we have to admit that we're thrilled by the outcome here. We never would have heard of Trafigura if the idiots hadn't tried to pull this off, and chances are, neither would you.

Here's Trafigura's response to the Guardian's prior coverage of the dumping [pdf].

The censored memo in full:

How strange: Smith posted the video, which shows a smiling Obama surrounded by giggling aides as he makes clear that the remark was intended as off the record, at about 2 p.m. today. But within an hour or so, he took it down with this note by way of explanation:

UPDATE: Not so much: Wiser heads than mine at POLITICO made the call to take down the video of the "jackass" moment. Sorry about the tease if you missed it.

CNN didn't miss it. They grabbed the video and began airing it, complete with the Politico watermark.

Why would the heavies at Politico force Smith to take down a video that everyone wanted to see? Smith's commenters, as well as Business Insider and Mediaite, accused the site of "kissing up" to the White House, but that's unlikely given the fact that Politico's business model is based on enabling the ongoing—and now literal—demonization of the president. It's all very queer. We asked Smith for an explanation, and he responded, "You'd better ask those who made the call." He referred us to Politico's flack.

UPDATE: Smith has forwarded a response from Politico's managing editor, Bill Nichols:

We just felt upon reflection that it was more respectful to a fellow news-gathering operation to take it down. We had no complaints from ABC, CNBC, the White House or anyone else.

Nice to know that an online upstart like Politico has officially joined the Washington good ol' boy culture! And that they willfully acknowledge membership, apparently without realizing that it makes them look like snobbish insiders who would rather be in the good graces of their "fellow newsgathering operations" than publish shit that their audience cares about! Someone should tell their media reporter Michael Calderone, the guy they hired to report (respectfully?) on those fellow newsgathering operations.

While the disappearance of the video may have initially been a mystery, Smith's original take on its significance is not. As per standard Politico positioning, it was bracing blast of narrow-minded and defensive self-justification:

And here's that video, which shows, above all else, the president as a normal person — and moreover, a normal pol, utterly immersed in the cable-news frivolity he affects to disdain.

Affects to disdain? Barack Obama thinks something Kanye West did on TV makes him a jackass, ergo Barack Obama secretly loves everything on every cable channel and his sustained years-long critique of the mouth-breathing cable-news idiocy that Politico trades in is a lie and he really loves Ben Smith and he's just like everybody else and One of Us! One of Us! One of Us!

Why couldn't he take that sentence down, instead?

Crain is rolling the quarterly Creativity magazine into Ad Age. The Great Magazine Die-Off continues.


A high school newspaper scandal! That is always MONEY. A high school paper in the OC was totally censored by school administrators because it got a front-page scoop that the company the school hired to run its cafeteria is "a Christian company whose "mission" is to "serve God."" Outrageous! And the school was so skeered they pulled the paper! Good job young reporters. Expose these unscientific cockroaches wherever they may hide, especially within your cafeteria. We mean that.


A new study reports that America's best medical journals are plagued by "ghostwriting" from unaccredited contributors to medical studies. Yea, well. As long as they're not plagued by "making up science things."


Charles Pelton, the Washington Post marketing guy who came up with those brilliant paid advertiser-editorial "salons" that made the paper weep with embarrassment, has resigned from the WP because of some lie about his family and business or whatever.

Kai-Fu Lee joined the company back in 2004, when Google was beginning its adventure in earnest and became the giant's President of Google Greater China and vice president for engineering. Unfortunately, mean old Microsoft reared its head and sued Google, for Lee was bound by a pesky "no competition" contract clause. The companies eventually settled, and Google hoped to go full speed ahead into uncharted territories. China's government, however, had other plans, and soon lured the company into its controversial web of censorship and, to add insult to injury, favored competitor, Baidu.

Despite the uphill battle, Google has made a few strides in recent months and gained 6 percent on Baidu. But that means little, because Baidu still controls about 62% of search traffic, while Google has a scant 21%.

Now Lee has abandoned his post to pursue some hush-hush "new venture" in Beijing, and Google's attempting trying desperately to refocus its energies by splitting his duties between two executives while simultaneously double its sales force. After five years struggling to be the big wig, you would think Google would give up on imposing its capitalist ideals amidst an aggressive communist state. But that's the magic of the internet: it's a field of ambitious dreams rife with international and political barriers.

The blog's explanation for pulling the post:

Basically, we believe that parties who are the subjects of an extensive and sensitive post like yesterday's should know they are being written about. This is both the neighborhood-y, Local thing to do and simple journalistic ethics.

In this case, the author of the piece identified himself to several climbers but not to the people who run the space. We were unaware of this lapse. We had concluded, based on the author's initial pitch, that he planned to be upfront with everyone, and we neglected - our bad - to confirm this after the piece was filed.

Well that's all well and good and friendly, but it's really the type of thing to decide before you publish the extremely extensive post about "this bizarre hybrid of subterranean climbing gym and hippie speakeasy" in Fort Greene. Because the entire thing is, of course, cached by Google. All anyone has to do is click here to read the whole thing, or visit AnimalNY, where they put up a screen shot of it. Now, Jed Lipinski's post on "one of the best kept secrets in Brooklyn" is going to get far more readers than it would have had you simply left it up.

See: The Streisand Effect.
[The Local's 'Why We Unpublished" statement and the original post, via Animal NY

At left In this picture taken near Grand Central Station is an as-the-good-lord-made-her Bar Refaeli on the cover of Esquire. At right is dirty, dirty pornography. Below is the uncensored GQ cover. You can't even see his penis!The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

It was all a big misunderstanding though. It probably just got flagged for having "Michael Jackson memorial ticket" in the description. So then Ebay put it back. But now they've pulled it down again. "Ebay has told me that they need to consult with their legal department before allowing the painting to be relisted," says Lacey.

What are you afraid of, Ebay? Is the truth about the MJ-JJ-Pancake connection a little "too much" for the boardroom types? We wouldn't want material like this falling into the wrong hands, hmmmm? You cannot hold the people down, Ebay. We are legion.

In the meantime you can buy this other MJ-related painting by Dan Lacey, which is equally dramatic:

This whole argument is premised on the assumption that we must save newspapers. At the cost of making the internet into an inefficient mess! So Richard Posner, professional smart man and US Appeals Court judge who writes 23,000 words per day, floated the idea of banning links (and more!), so internet cannibals don't keep stealing newspaper content for nothing:

Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.

Periods, Richard Posner. Try them. To break up text. What you may notice here is that Posner proposes banning linking or paraphrasing copyrighted materials. The problem: this is America dude, we say what we fucking want, amirite?

You can copyright a news story, but you can't copyright the news. "The news" just means "things that happen in the world." What would it mean, in practice, to make it illegal to paraphrase a copyrighted news story? Summing up, for example, political events, or a sports controversy, or even a fashion trend, could be interpreted as paraphrasing copyrighted material. So let's ban talking about anything. And banning links will help us make our references even more obscure, by making it impossible for anyone to refer to source materials! Good idea, Posner. This gross oversimplification makes you look none too freedom-loving!

We all know journalism happens only at newspapers. Better to protect them at all costs than to invest in the murky "future."

This idea is supported by a newspaper columnist! Connie Schultz, a columnist for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer (who's married to a senator, btw, nothing to see here), also touts the idea of giving newspapers a 24-hour injunction on news they post, during which time it's all theirs, and can't be aggregated by others online.

Fine. You can have your injunction. But you can't stop anyone from discussing, and writing about, current events. As they happen. Go read all those "Twitter Generation" stories you guys are always writing! The idea that it's worth crippling the entire free flow of information on the internet in order to add to the bottom line of newspaper companies is prima facie idiotic. I guess you could also help save newspapers by passing a law that everyone has to buy one every day, or by making it illegal for TV news to exist. That doesn't make those things good ideas.

If Bill Gates pledged to make it so computers could not be operated properly until the user could prove they had read today's Cleveland Plain-Dealer that might save a reporter and he is a monster for not doing so, QED.
[Pic: Chronicling America]

How did breaking the rules finally net Wales some good press? The Times disclosed Sunday that Wikipedia helped actively suppress news that a Times journalist had been captured in Afghanistan. If the capture was widely publicized, the paper worried, the reporter would be more valuable to his captors.

Wikipedia editors actively froze out edits reporting the capture, and allowed Timesmen to do the same. The reporter eventually escaped. The ethics of the censorship are debatable. The benefits to Wales are not: The Times depicts him leading the suppression effort, even though a woman named Sue Gardner actually runs Wikipedia. Wales thus re-cements his image as the face of Wikipedia and gets another round of lucrative speaking engagements (he has historically pocketed the fees).

Better still for Wales, he can point his critics to the Times situation as an example of how Wikipedia rules should not be absolute. When you're busy saving journalists, who cares if you bend the rules for some nice young ladies while you're at it?

UPDATE: Wales wrote in to dispute an earlier version of this article, which stated he "nearly lost his job," citing a January Valleywag report that his Wikipedia board seat was renewed just three days before it expired. Wales said "I was never 'almost out of a job' last December" and that there was never "a board struggle and a struggle between me and Sue Gardner."

(Pic by Re: Publica)

The photo, which shows the daughter of reformist politician Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani speaking at a rally for Mir Hossein Mousavi, was taken from IRIB, Iran's state-controlled television network. It went out this morning on the AP's photo wire, and can be used by any of the news collective's subscribers to illustrate stories on the unrest in Iran. Except the subscribers actually in Iran. No such luck for them. The image—along with several other shots taken from IRIB—bears the following restriction:

** IRAN OUT — EDITORIAL USE ONLY — NO ACCESS BBC PERSIAN TV SERVICE/NO ACCESS VOA PERSIAN TV ** EDITORS NOTE AS A RESULT OF AN OFFICIAL IRANIAN GOVERNMENT BAN ON FOREIGN MEDIA COVERING EVENTS IN IRAN, THE AP IS OBLIGED TO USE IMAGES FROM OFFICIAL SOURCES

What that means is that the AP will not permit any Iranian subscribers—in this case BBC Persian and the Voice of America's Persian-language service, both of which are trying to cover the unrest on their web sites and need images to do so—to use the picture. The reason, according to AP spokesman Jack Stokes, is restrictions imposed on the AP and other foreign news services by the Iranian regime.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser."It's based on permissions," Stokes told Gawker. "All photos have information about who can use them and who's out. This picture is not for use by the ones who should not be using them, because of our restrictions. They're out on that particular photo."

Stokes then referred us to AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll's statement—to an AP reporter—about the difficulties of working under press restrictions:

"Clearly, when our journalists can't go out and see things and talk to people, our ability to tell the story is not as good as when we are able to go out to report and take pictures and video," AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll said.

When controls are imposed, "we work with those restrictions, keeping in mind our ultimate goal is to be able to do our jobs as journalists," she said.

Except this isn't about whether AP reporters can go out an do their jobs on the streets of Tehran. It's about whether the AP will distribute information within Iran that the Iranian regime has asked it not to. And in this case, it won't. Granted, the images in question were already broadcast in Iran by state-controlled media, and presumably either the BBC or the VOA could lift their own images from the IRIB. But for the AP to refuse to allow the BBC or the Voice of America to pick them up and redistribute them aids and abets Ahmedinejad's efforts to maintain control over the story as it unfolds.

In the AP's defense, the situation in Iran is obviously dicey. The news organization's priorities are the safety of its people, and ensuring their continued presence in Iran so they can cover the story. Caving—or perhaps, given the chaos of the situation and its coverage, merely appearing to cave—into a demand about who can get some of its photos might be a small price to pay in order to stay in the game. And remains unclear exactly what the AP would do if an Iranian news service picked up one of the restricted images in violation of the rules. In the end, trying to cover authoritarian regimes always becomes a negotiation about what you're willing to give up in order to stay on the ground. But people ought to know about precisely what you've decided to give up, and what you've gotten in return.

• Seven protesters were killed by the military Monday, according to Iran's state media.
• Ahmadinejad is asserting his iron grip on control of Iran by...leaving the country? Mahmoud declared victory and then immediately left town and is currently attending a global financial meeting in Russia, where he's been photographed chilling with Russia's president and looking quite relaxed.
• Just to make sure that word of this little "bad election" episode doesn't get out (that would be disastrous!), Iran authorities are "requiring journalists to obtain explicit permission before covering any story." They've also totally banned reporters from covering the street protests. Which feature hundreds of thousands of maddened Iranians and the aforementioned killings. Because they don't exist. Got it?
• And all that is just the sideshow, at least in the classic newspaper sense of covering the news. The real political story is the protests have worked, to some extent—the nation's Guardian Council has ordered a recount. Which supporters of Moussavi, the alleged loser, reject! They want a whole new election. So we can do all this over again. But yea, who's gonna do the recount?
• Ayatollah Ali Khameini, that's who!

It is important that what is happening in Iran is reported to the world, but it is even more vital that citizens in Iran know what is happening. That is the role of the recently launched BBC Persian TV which is fulfilling a crucial role in being a free and impartial source of information for many Iranians. Any attempt to block this channel is wrong and against international treaties on satellite communication. Whoever is attempting the blocking should stop it now.

Strong words. BBC's reporting of the election results has been nothing short of incredible: John Simpson and his cameraman were actually arrested before filing the following report:

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

And where's the American cable news media on this? Up until today, kind of absent. Flipping through cable news networks, you could've caught some sporadic coverage yesterday - as the events were unfolding - but really, not much more. As mentioned, other people noticed, too: a Twitter hashtag about the lack of MSM coverage on the Iranian elections ("#CNNfail") peaked this morning, and CNN's noticeably ramped up their coverage of the elections since yesterday.

Did the Twitteratti have the impact (and subsequent victory) on the big, bad cable networks they think they did? Normally, I'd say "no, not at all, they're Twittering," but the opinion on CNN's lackluster coverage was so unanimous, it could've been pointed to in a room somewhere as irrefutable evidence that people were turning to other outlets instead of them for the news. Meanwhile, according to Andrew Sullivan, Twitter users in Iran are organizing rooftop protests using the microblogging service. I'm still trying to figure out how to get a bag delivered using it, but to each their own.

Previously: Iran Going Apeshit After Fraud Election Produces Fraud Results

Stop the blocking now [BBC]
#CNNfail: Twitter Blasts CNN Over Iran Election [Mashable]

An unrepentant Yahoo won't say what, exactly, Johnson did wrong. His comments were about Barack Obama's support of a bill allowing the government to suppress torture photos. They were attached to seemingly relevant images from the president's recent trip to Cairo to ring in a new era of U.S.-Middle Eastern relations.

"I thought, this is an opportunity I can use to let the administration know how I feel about some of its policies," Johnson told us in a phone interview.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The Virginia man's initial 10 or so comments, which went up Wednesday night, were deleted without explanation by Friday. That night, Johnson posted roughly ten more to different White House photos, this time linking in another Flickr user's Abu Ghraib picture, as allowed by Flickr's comment formatting (see Johnson's reproduction of his comment, left, taken from his post to freedom-of-information hub Cryptome).

In the midst of this second round of commenting, Johnson found his account was gone. There had been no warning of any sort from Yahoo, he said. Johnson would later work his way up Flickr's customer service tree, eventually leaving a message for the vice president of customer service and other bigwigs. He even left a message for Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz — a noted fan of frank discourse — on Bartz's home answering machine.

Johnson, who lives outside Richmond, still has no answers. More crucially, he also doesn't have access to any of the 1,200 pictures he uploaded to Flickr under his paid "Pro" membership. Many of the pics, he said, were "completely irretrievable — I didn't back them up on any disks, I just spur-of-the-moment loaded it up and deleted the flash" memory originals.

Asked about all this, Yahoo issued us a statement (see below) saying its policies prevented it from discussing Johnson's account and pointing us to Flickr's community guidelines.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.But if the company expects people to move their data to its servers, via sites like Flickr and Yahoo Mail, it's going to have to do better than that. Users won't feel safe moving their data into Yahoo's "cloud" if it can vanish without a trace with no warning.

Similarly, Flickr's user base of photographers is notoriously sensitive to any hint of censorship, so the company would be well-advised to come up with a coherent explanation for why the most powerful man in the world needs to be so ruthlessly protected against a slightly aggressive internet commenter. Where's Carol Bartz's straight talk when you need it?

[via Cryptome] [top image by vanson on Flickr]

Flickr statement:

In accordance with Flickr's policy, we cannot disclose information to third parties concerning a member's account. However, in joining Flickr, all of our members agree to abide by our Community Guidelines. These guidelines require that all of our members be respectful of the community and flag content that may not be suitable for "safe" viewing. Our members have always done a great job of identifying inappropriate and offensive content on Flickr and bringing it to our attention. We encourage all members to continue to make Flickr a safe place to share photos and videos.


Flickr is a very large community made up of many types of members from all over the world, and we respect the viewpoints and expressions of all of our members. In crafting the Community Guidelines, Flickr weighed the rights of the individual vs. the rights of the overall community, and built a system that would enable members to choose what they want to view. As with any community, online or off, there are members who may disregard the Community Guidelines. When this happens, Flickr may have to take action accordingly towards building a respectful community. For more information: http://www.flickr.com/guidelines.gne

Max Blumenthal, the filmmaker who took the video, contributed to The Huffington Post previous to this, so it's not a one-off thing, nor a user-submitted video (like the Euna Ling issue at Current TV). He's a contributor. And he notes of his experience:

Within a few hours, I received an email from a Huffington Post administrator informing me he had scrubbed my video from the site. "I don't see that it has any real news value," the administrator told me. "For me it only proves that one can find drunk people willing to say just about anything. Especially drunk, moronic people." For the first time, the premier clearinghouse for online news and opinions had suppressed one of my posts.

...Bringing new meaning to the word "clearinghouse," certainly. Any request for comment has had us referred to Blumenthal's post on Phillip Weiss's blog regarding the fiasco, something it now officially is.

Much of the outrage over the video - which we've re-posted below - falls in line with what The Huffington Post issued: that the guys in the video are drunk, that the video could be a crafted political set-up used to further an agenda, that the entire thing is too outrage-provoking to consider as anything but outright propaganda. That's ridiculous, especially for The Huffington Post, though.

Even though they're mostly just used to aggregating the news of others (or as 30 Rock so nicely put it: telling us what we already know), they're a news site, and this is news, and it's their job to - at the very least - provide some kind of context for this kind of thing. The video's clearly not fake or staged in any regard: why would these very clear faces expose themselves to the world like that? It's the worst kind of "viral" there is. And yes, they're drunk, but as we all well know by now, being drunk doesn't necessarily invalidate the kinds of things you say when you're trashed. Sometimes, in fact: the opposite.

If anything, The Huffington Post's deletion of the video looks like a political maneuver on their part. Maybe they just don't want to be a part of something so hot-button as this, or don't want to chance it on any of the risk that this story may or may not hold. Or it could be agenda-based.

It's probably none of those things. It's probably the equivalent of some tight-assed S & P person over there who thinks they're taking the initiative with their job. What we want to know: Who is this person censoring things over at the Huffington Post? And what would Ariana think?

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Censored by the Huffington Post and Imprisoned By The Past [Mondoweiss]

As Evgeny Morozov wrote on the Foreign Affairs website, the ban marked the first time an entire social group was banned from contributing to Wikipedia. As such, the cult can now credibly argue it has been censored and repressed

We'll see a dozen anti-Wikipedia web-sites set up by Scientology to promote its own version of "censored truth". Unfortunately, Wikipedia's decision would only make their claims of unjust persecution easier to believe; after all, how else to explain that they were banned from a web-site that "anyone can edit"?

...The Wikipedia admins definitely need a primer on the Streisand effect.

A Columbia law professor, Tim Wu, told the Associated Press Wikipedia's decision should be closely examined.

"Wikipedia has more power over speech than many governments," he said. "We have to make sure that they're being reasonable."

Of course, things look quite different for those up against what one ex-Scientologist described as the group's "machine" of Web warriors, each creating a host of virtual identities from which to launch online campaigns. Wikipedia's arbitration committee voted in its ban unanimously, 10-0. Winning the war with determined Scientologists was presumably more important to Wikipedia than losing any one PR battle.

(Pic via)