In Syria, thousands of troops are assaulting the northern town of Jisr al-Shughour where the government claims 120 of its soldiers and police were killed last week. Leaving aside exactly how they died, the government in Damascus is making it lethally clear that in future its opponents, peaceful opponents or not, will be treated as if they were armed gunmen. An extraordinary aspect of the Syrian uprisings is that people go on Read more…
Archive
Posts Tagged ‘censorship’
SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, & H.R. 1981 Vs Internet Freedom
January 26, 2012
Comments off
Categories: internet
ACTA, censorship, Europe, H.R. 1981, Internet, PIPA, SOPA, United States
Apparently, China is Trying to Buy Facebook
July 5, 2011
1 comment
Maybe it’s decided that Facebook is the lesser of two evils when it comes to Western social networks. Maybe it’s just Beijing buying itself a birthday present. Whatever the reason, it appears that China — or more specifically, one of China’s sovereign wealth funds — is trying to buy a significant stake in Facebook.
A Business Insider report cites “a source at a fund that buys stock from former Facebook employees” who was approached directly about helping to put together a stake big enough “to matter” and “a second source tells us there is a rumor going around the social network that Citibank is at this very moment trying to acquire as much as $1.2 billion worth of Facebook stock on behalf of two sovereign wealth funds – China’s and another from the Middle East.”
$1.2 billion isn’t going to be nearly enough of a stake to matter at a company whose value is pegged around $100 billion, but the news has caused some concern, given that Read more…
Categories: China, Facebook
Baidu, censorship, China, Facebook, Internet, Mark Zuckerberg
Hopes for democracy fade as civil wars grip the Arab world
June 13, 2011
Comments off
A Syrian soldier on a military bus near Jisr al-Shughour, where authorities said 120 soldiers and police were killed
The Arab awakening is turning into the Arab nightmare. Instead of ushering in democracy, the uprisings in at least three Arab states are fast becoming vicious civil wars. In the past 10 days, crucial developments in Syria, Libya and Yemen have set these countries spiralling into violent and intractable struggles for power.
Categories: Middle East
Ali Abdullah Saleh, Bahrain, censorship, civil war, Egypt, Libya, middle east, protests, Saudi Arabia, Sunni, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen
The Netherlands Second Country to Codify Net Neutrality After Chile
June 9, 2011
Comments off
I’ve been keeping you up to date about the situation around net neutrality in The Netherlands – and today, everything finally came to its logical conclusion. During a debate in our lower house, most of the kinks were ironed out, and our minister of economic affairs, Maxime Verhagen, will now turn net neutrality into law. This means that after Chile, The Netherlands will be the second country in the world to do so.
I already told you that Verhagen wished to comply with the lower house’s demands, but I failed to make the clarification that he just wanted to prohibit carriers and ISPs from throttling and blocking, without actually turning it into a law. During today’s debate, he faced an almost unanimous lower house asking for net neutrality to actually become a full-grown, big-boy law.
The only party against net neutrality was the Read more…
Categories: Netherlands
censorship, Chile, Internet, ISP, Net Neutrality, Netherlands
Iran Vows To Unplug The Internet
May 28, 2011
Comments off
Iran is taking steps toward an aggressive new form of censorship: a so-called national Internet that could, in effect, disconnect Iranian cyberspace from the rest of the world.
The leadership in Iran sees the project as a way to end the fight for control of the Internet, according to observers of Iranian policy inside and outside the country. Iran, already among the most sophisticated nations in online censoring, also promotes its national Internet as a cost-saving measure for consumers and as a way to uphold Islamic moral codes.
In February, as pro-democracy protests spread rapidly across the Middle East and Read more…
Categories: internet, Iran
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, big brother, censorship, China, government, Internet, Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, middle east, Myanmar, North Korea, Revolutionary Guard, Ya Hagh
32 Signs That The Entire World Is Being Transformed Into A Futuristic Big Brother Prison Grid
May 26, 2011
1 comment
Do you want your children and grandchildren to live in a futuristic “big brother” control grid where everything they do is watched, recorded, tracked and tightly controlled? Well, that is exactly where things are headed. We witnessed some really bad totalitarian regimes during the 20th century, but what is coming is going to be far more restrictive than any of the despots of the past ever dreamed was possible. Today, nearly every government on earth is tightening their grip on their citizens. Paranoia has become standard operating procedure all over the planet and nobody is to be trusted. Global politicians will give speeches about liberty and freedom even as they undermine them at every turn. There are very, very few nations on the planet where liberty and freedom are increasing. Instead, almost everywhere you turn the “control grid” is getting tighter. Governments don’t want us gathering together and interacting with one another. Instead, they want us to work our tails off to support the system, they want us enslaved financially and constantly drowning in debt, and they want us addicted to television and other forms of entertainment. They want us as numb and docile as possible. Meanwhile, all over the globe they continue to construct a futuristic “big brother” control grid that will ensure that they will always be able to control us.
Sadly, this is not the plot to some post-apocalyptic science fiction movie.
This is really happening.
When you read the list below, each of the 32 signs may not seem to be all that significant individually. However, when they are all taken together, they paint a truly frightening picture….
#1 The days of the free and open Internet are slowly coming to an end. Many nations around the world have implemented strict Internet censorship and many other nations are moving in that direction. With each passing year the level of freedom on the Internet diminishes.
Regulation of the Internet has even become a primary topic of discussion at G-8 meetings. According to The New York Times, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is leading the charge for a more “civilized Internet”…. Read more…
Governments Order YouTube To Censor Protest Videos
May 20, 2011
Comments off
Forget copyright infringement, You Tube is now complying with removal orders from governments to stop populist rage going viral
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, May 20, 2011
In a frightening example of how the state is tightening its grip around the free Internet, it has emerged that You Tube is complying with thousands of requests from governments to censor and remove videos that show protests and other examples of citizens simply asserting their rights, while also deleting search terms by government mandate.
The latest example is You Tube’s compliance with a request from the British government to censor footage of the British Constitution Group’s Lawful Rebellion protest, during which they attempted to civilly arrest Judge Michael Peake at Birkenhead county court.
Peake was ruling on a case involving Roger Hayes, former member of UKIP, who has refused to pay council tax, both as a protest against the government’s treasonous activities in Read more…
Categories: Britain, GOVERNMENT
Britain, censorship, freedom of speech, government, Internet, Internet kill switch, protests, United States, YouTube
Global Press Freedom at Lowest Level in More Than Decade
May 3, 2011
Comments off
Photo: Reuters
Journalists and activists participate in a rally calling for press freedom in central Ankara, Turkey, March 19, 2011 (file photo)
Freedom House, a U.S.-based group that monitors human rights around the world says the number of people with access to free and independent media has declined to its lowest level in more than a decade. In its newly released annual survey, the group says several key countries saw significant declines last year and that only one-in-six people live in countries with a press designated as free.
In this year’s annual index of global media freedom of 196 countries and territories, Freedom House says it rated 68 as “free” and the remaining two thirds as “partly free” or “not free.”
Freedom House Senior Editor Karin Karlekar says this is roughly an even breakdown, but a closer look reveals a different picture. “If you look at the population statistics, they are much bleaker, only Read more…
China Tightens Censorship of Electronic Communications
March 23, 2011
Comments off
BEIJING — If anyone wonders whether the Chinese government has tightened its grip on electronic communications since protests began engulfing the Arab world, Shakespeare may prove instructive.
A Beijing entrepreneur, discussing restaurant choices with his fiancée over their cellphones last week, quoted Queen Gertrude’s response to Hamlet: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” The second time he said the word “protest,” her phone cut off.
He spoke English, but another caller, repeating the same phrase on Monday in Chinese over a different phone, was also cut off in mid-sentence.
A host of evidence over the past several weeks shows that Chinese authorities are more Read more…
Categories: China, Technology
Beijing, cellphones, censorship, China, cyberattack, electronic communicatio, Gmail, google, government, Internet, North Africa, protest, WiTopia
Russia to Impose Internet Controls Like China?
February 23, 2011
Comments off
 |
| Russian Prime Minister Igor Sechin |
David Makarewicz, Contributing Writer
Activist Post
In a Wall Street Journal interview, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin has publicly accused Google executives of causing the Egyptian revolution by manipulating the energies of the people. Although he did not specifically address Internet freedom in Russia, these statements may signal growing concern among Russian hardliners about the Internet’s role in global unrest.
The Russian government does not control the Internet the way it controls other forms of media. However, analysts say there are close allies of Putin who would like to impose controls similar to China’s in order to silence the criticism of the Russian Read more…
Categories: Big Brother, China, internet, Russia
censorship, China, Egypt, google, Igor Sechin, Internet, Jasmine Revolution, middle east, Russia, Shanghai, Vladimir Putin
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](https://i0.wp.com/www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/gold/t24_au_en_usoz_2.gif)
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](https://i0.wp.com/www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/silver/t24_ag_en_usoz_2.gif)
crisisboom
CRISISBOOM 
You must be logged in to post a comment.