Italian song "Viva La Pappa Col Pomodoro" in Heineken commercial

1965 hit in American TV commercial continues use of popular European songs as soundtracks

Viva la pa-pa-pappa / Col po-po-po-po-po-po-pomodoro The beer brewer Heineken has used an Italian song, "Viva La Pappa Col Pomodoro," popularised in 1965 by the singer Rita Pavone as the soundtrack to a cute new commercial. "Viva La Pappa Col Pomodoro" was also recorded by the European superstar Dalida. Here is the version of the song, recorded by Rita Pavone, which is used in the Heineken commercial. In 2013, a TV commercial campaign by Google for its Chromecast Web video and music interface for HDTV units used an instrumental version of one of French pop singer Dalida's most successful songs, "La Danse de Zorba," which, in turn, was a cover of Mikis Theodorakis's "Zorbas." Another 2013 major TV commercial for an American product used a hit French song for its soundtrack. Verizon Android Island commercial used "Comment te dire adieu" for its soundtrack. Still yet another 2013 TV commercial, this time for Netflix, used a song, "Hey Now," from one of French pop music's most successful disk jockeys, Martin Solveig. Solveig's hit, recorded in English, shows the broadening appeal of European music in English-speaking cultures.

RELATED Heineken | The Match, UEFA Champions League Commercial 2015 (YouTube) Dalida. Viva la pappa ! (YouTube) ♫ Rita Pavone ♪ Viva La Pappa Col Pomodoro ♫ Video & Audio Restaurati (YouTube)

Sprint Framily Commercial Uses French Version of Mötley Crüe's "Home Sweet Home"

The latest Sprint commercial features a French cover of Mötley Crüe's famous song, "Home Sweet Home." A young girl, portrayed by the actress Tatyana Richaud, sings in French as she plays piano.

The Sprint commercial, for its Framily Plan, is the latest major American TV commercial that features French music. A Verizon Droid TV commercial featured Françoise Hardy's big French pop song hit, "Comment te dire adieu." One of Netflix's TV commercials uses a song, "Hey Now," from one of French pop music's most successful disk jockeys, Martin Solveig. And a long-running Google Chromecast commercial features an instrumental cover of Mikis Theodorakis's "Zorbas," which had inspired a famous French song by Dalida, "La Danse de Zorba."

It's great to see these American advertisers embrace French music like this, a sharp contrast to the French-bashing in Cadillac's widely panned commercial for its 2014 Cadillac ELR Coupe.

Several years ago, Pepsi elevated the use of French music in its "pinball" commercial with the use of the song, "Ça plane pour moi" by the American alternative rock band, The Presidents.

Google Changes Sochi Olympics Home Page To Protest Russia's Violent Anti-LGBT Crackdown

Google has symbolically changed its home page to draw attention to the controversial enabling of the violent anti-LGBT crackdown in Russian by the International Olympic Committee.

• RELATED : International Olympic Committee praises 'magnificent' Sochi venues, dismissing concerns over law banning gay propaganda

Google's Olympics home page cited a section from the Olympic Charter that forbids discrimination :

"The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play." – Olympic Charter

The change of the "doodle" was also made by Google to its Russian homepage.

Google's digital action came on the day when activists in New York orchestrated their latest protest against the violent anti-LGBT crackdown in Russia. Activists acting in solidarity with the group Queer Nation NY staged a protest outside the Russian consulate in Manhattan one day before the opening ceremonies of the Sochi Olympics.

Ever since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a violent anti-LGBT crackdown in Russia, LGBT activists have been staging protests world-wide in the time leading up to the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

• RELATED : Queer Nation NY Protests Outside NBC's The Today Show Over Olympic Coverage And Silence On Russian LGBT Crackdown
• RELATED : Queer Nation NY protests against Russian LGBT discrimination enablers continue, this time at Carnegie Hall
• RELATED : London gay rights protest over Coca-Cola Sochi sponsorship
• RELATED : If Mylène Farmer were a real gay icon, she would denounce the Russian government's violent crackdown against LGBT community
• RELATED : New Activist Video Mocks Coca-Cola's "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" Over anti-LGBT Russian Sochi Olympics
• RELATED : After LGBT Twitter Bombs, Is Sochi Olympics Social Media Marketing Dead ?
• RELATED : Is it time for Greenlight Capital to short stock of Sochi Olympic Sponsors ?

Netflix TV commercial uses "Hey Now" by Martin Solveig

One of Netflix's TV commercials uses a song, "Hey Now," from one of French pop music's most successful disk jockeys, Martin Solveig. Solveig's hit, recorded in English, shows the broadening appeal of French culture in English-speaking cultures.

Here is the original song used in the Netflix commercial : "Hey Now" by the famous French DJ and his band : Martin Solveig & The Cataracs, featuring Kyle.

This year has seen a spree of American commercials featuring the music of successful French pop music artists.

Chromecast commercial featured "La Danse de Zorba" by Dalida for one commercial, and Verizon Android Island commercial used "Comment te dire adieu" for its soundtrack.

Chromecast commercial features "La Danse de Zorba" by Dalida

This year's TV commercial campaign by Google for its Chromecast Web video and music interface for HDTV units uses one of French pop singer Dalida's most successful songs, "La Danse de Zorba."

Here is the French song by Dalida used in the Chromecast commercial : "La Danse de Zorba," is a cover of Mikis Theodorakis's "Zorbas."

This is the second major TV commercial for an American product this year that uses a hit French song for its soundtrack. Verizon Android Island commercial used "Comment te dire adieu" for its soundtrack.

Candidate Barack Obama in 2007 on Warrantless Wiretapping

Excerpt from President Obama's speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center on August 1, 2007.

... This Administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom.

That means no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. That is not who we are. And it is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists. The FISA court works. The separation of powers works. Our Constitution works.

We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary.

This Administration acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance our security. It is not. There are no short-cuts to protecting America ... .

Read more : Illinois Senator Barack Obama, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, gave this August 2007 speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center.

Obama Video Taping Your Colonoscopy

From Salon :

"Now we know for sure: The Obama administration has presided over the most thorough expansion of the domestic surveillance state of any U.S. presidency. Even as the nation was still absorbing the news, broken by Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian on Wednesday night, that the National Security Agency has been routinely collecting phone call records for millions of Americans, the Washington Post and the Guardian published articles revealing even broader government snooping powers: Since 2007, the NSA and the FBI have had the power to watch nearly every aspect of our online life as well."

FBI ''secretly spying'' on Google users

The FBI used National Security Letters -- a form of surveillance that privacy watchdogs call “frightening and invasive” -- to surreptitiously seek information on Google users, the web giant has just revealed. (FOX News)

Google YouTube Censorship Warning

I had to write to Google tonight, because of a threat of censorship on one of my YouTube accounts. The timing is very interesting. Why all of a sudden now does one of my entire YouTube channels get flagged for deletion ? Hmmmmmmmmm.

In response to Facebook.com censorship, can SumofUs.org rollout a social networking interface ?

So, Facebook.com likes to censor its users, who post information, links, or other media, such as photographs or videos, which are deemed too political in nature (or, more appropriately, too offensive to its advertisers or tax authorities). Facebook sometimes suspends user accounts for a period of time, mainly, for 30 days, according to recent examples of two of my "Facebook" friends. Considering how short-lived Myspace.com was, for all its clunky and anti-music file sharing obsession it became in its final years of relevancy, many users on Facebook.com look forward to the emergency of a new Web site, to which disaffected Facebook.com users can migrate.

For all those activists, who are "superusers" of Facebook.com, who use features like creating events for demonstrations or meeting planning, creating pages for activism campaigns, for creating groups of like-minded activists, and for creating public (or private) profiles for doing all this work, perhaps one emerging suggestion may make sense :

Seeing as how new Web sites, such as SumofUs.org, are emerging, where activists can participate in some limited function online activism, it might be fascinating to explore whether the owners-developers of Web sites, such as SumofUs.org, could add on social networking and other social app-like modules, extensions, or functionality, so that disaffected Facebook.com users can just abandon Facebook.com and just embrace one, fully-dedicated non-profit Web site, such as SumofUs.org, for their online activism and social media experience.

Imagine what online activists could do in a Web-based environment, which supported a safe space for online activism and social networking ? We wouldn't have to deal with the arbitrary censorship by Web sites, such as Facebook.com, we wouldn't have to deal with ever nebulous privacy policy changes to placate advertisers, there wouldn't be tracking, surveillance, or face recognition issues....

I imagine it would only take a small team of creative minds to mount an effort like this....

Then, we would have a newly, self-empowered community for online activism. And we could let our old Facebook.com accounts join our old Myspace.com accounts in the digital morgue of the past.

2003 Iraq NYC protests Censorship ?

A Google search for news stories about this string : nyc war protest 2003 (without quotation marks) (which is broad enough to pick up the massive anti-war protest and rally, which took place in New York City on February 15, 2003) turns up no results. Why does Google provide no links to news articles to a simple search for this historical event ?

True News From Change NYC Blog Has Been Restored

Breaking News ! Update on True News From Change NYC Blog

Gary Tilzer's blog, True News From Change NYC, about New York government corruption, political reporting, and other commentary about government transparency, has been restored. Earlier today, it had been discovered that the True News blog had been suspended by Google for inexplicable reasons overnight. The suspension of the blog had become a focal point of support today by many New York bloggers and activists. No reason for the suspension is yet known, but New York bloggers suspect political censorship might have been one motive behind the removal of the blog.

CENSORED : True News From Change NYC Blog

Update : True News From Change NYC Blog Has Been Restored

Google Blogspot Blog Has Been Removed For No Reason ; Blogger Community Suspects Political Censorship ; Call To Action

Please send an e-mail to press@google.com and copy Gary Tilzer, the owner of the censored blog, at Gtprinter@aol.com -- demanding that the True News blog be restored.

True News is a blog dedicated to reporting about government scandals, politics, and transparency. (Here is the cached version of the True News blog.)

This is not the first act of censorship against Mr. Tilzer. Before the 2010 election, a YouTube video that Mr. Tilzer produced was banned by NBC/YouTube and had to be replaced with an edited version. In the last couple of years, others have faced incidences of cyber censorship or retaliatory activity. One and a half months before the 2009 election, the YouTube channel owned by the artist and political commentator Suzannah B. Troy was likewise censored, until bloggers and a lawyer intervened on her behalf. In 2010, this blogger was attacked by computer viruses 3 or 4 times, including on the day this blogger reported to the New York Department of State Committee on Open Government an act of censorship committed by Brad Hoylman.

Flashback : Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed Internet freedom as tool to ‘spread truth and expose injustice’

We need your help to keep courageous bloggers, like Mr. Tilzer, doing what they do. If you are reading this, it is because you are turning to the Internet for reliable information. For it to be here, bloggers, like Mr. Tilzer, have to be able to do their work without fear of retribution or censorship.

WikiLeaks Twitter Subpoena Scandal

UPDATE : The Guardian newspaper : WikiLeaks Demands That Google And Facebook Unseal U.S. Subpoenas

WikiLeaks is reportedly demanding that Google and Facebook unseal any secret court orders that the websites received in connection with the U.S. government's retaliation against WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks' demand followed news that was reported that a court in Virginia had issued a secret order to Twitter to produce personal information belonging to accounts of five individuals associated with WikiLeaks.

All of the secret court orders are providing ''strong evidence'' that the U.S. government has empaneled a grand jury to begin a broad, large-scale data mining operation that seeks to collect surveillance in a retaliatory act against WikiLeaks. In late November, WikiLeaks began a coördinated reporting collaboration with several respected journalism outlets, including The New York Times, to publish thousands of United States embassy cables.

In A Clear First Amendment Violation, The U.S. Government Has Issued A Judicial Order To Twitter In An Effort To Collect Information About WikiLeaks And Its Supporters.

Officials from the United States Department of Justice have applied for, and received, a judicial order that has been issued to the social media website, Twitter, in an effort to collect information about political dissidents. In some countries, activists are under constant harassment from their governments.

In growing numbers of mainstream media reports, the news has been reporting that the U.S. government has served Twitter with what are being described as ''subpoenas'' for the private messages, contact information, and other personal forms of information belonging to Julian Assange, who is the spokesperson and editor in chief for WikiLeaks. Other targets of the subpoenas include Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, and Birgitta Jonsdottir, who is a member of parliament in Iceland. Ms. Jonsdottir was also a former WikiLeaks volunteer. Also mentioned in the judicial order are other individuals currently or formerly associated with WikiLeaks, including Jacob Appelbaum and Rop Gonggrijp.

According to Salon.com, the information demanded by the WikiLeaks subpoenas issued by the U.S. Department of Justice is ''sweeping in scope.'' Salon.com has posted online the Department of Justice order for the Twitter information.