1. erebh

    erebh Banned Contributor

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    Political Censorship and Online Witch-Hunting

    Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by erebh, Jun 29, 2013.

    Turkish authorities are now scouring Facebook and Twitter looking for anyone who 'insulted' public figures online during the recent protests. What is meant by the word 'insulted' is up to the prosecutors. Sites such as wordpress, youtube and BlogSpot were, or are still banned or blocked. http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2008/10/news-after-blocking-youtube-and.html Sites that contain some English words are banned, those that include "gay" “beat,” “escort,” “homemade,” “hot,” “nubile,” “free” and “teen" and even the number "31" because it's Turkish slang for masturbation! https://opennet.net/blog/2011/05/turkish-telecommunications-directorate-bans-138-words-turkish-internet

    The US have been monitoring everybody's social networks looking for so-called trouble makers. Facebook even gone as far as creating shadow accounts for all of their users. These shadow accounts gather information from your internet activity not connected to facebook so for instance they have your email address, their spiders/trawlers scour the net looking for more info on you. This was accidentally revealed last week when they let it slip by exposing over 6 million of these shadow-profiles. http://www.zdnet.com/anger-mounts-after-facebooks-shadow-profiles-leak-in-bug-7000017167/

    Ireland has just put a blanket ban on thepiratebay and are currently composing a list of sites to control or ban outright.

    France have just banned an internet user for 2 weeks setting a precedent, for illegally downloading music after the French supreme court just a year ago said no French citizen can ever be banned from the internet which is considered a basic human right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Internet_access

    California hit a chalk protester with a possible 13 years in prison plus a thirteen thousand dollar fine for writing, with kid's washable chalk, anti-bank slogans on sidewalks. Slogans such as "Stop Big Banks". No bad language, no insults were scrawled. Jeff Olson cited the first amendment freedom of speech for his actions, normally a misdemeanour. The judge has since banned him and his attorney of even mentioning any of the following terms/words "the First Amendment, free speech, free expression, public forum, expressive conduct or political speech" during the trial - he has also been banned from talking about the trial. http://rt.com/usa/chalk-olson-diego-san-404/ Will little girls playing hopscotch be targeted next for vandalism?

    Australians sarcastically "celebrate" National Censorship Day on Dec 15th each year with a nationwide show of black armbands, at present over 10,000 sites are banned. "But about half of the sites on the list are not related to child porn and include a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist."
    This follows Norway, Denmark and Thailand. who ban sites that are not 100% in favour of their govts or royal families http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Leaked_Australian_blacklist_reveals_banned_sites

    Belarussians are banned from accessing any sites not Belarussian! http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml

    The Danish police came from another angle and opposed internet censorship, instead they tried to give everybody a personal ID for internet access from remote locations such as internet cafes or from any device with a static IP that couldn't be traced back. And sites with "dodgy" content such as terrorism or child porn would almost be promoted in a bid to catch people logging on. http://boingboing.net/2011/06/23/danish-police-propos.html

    Do you think all of this control is just that? Another way to control us, to make us think twice before we air our feelings/emotions on govts, public figures, politicians. To keep us all down, from preventing the use of the web for anything even considered rebellious? Is free speech, on the web at least, a thing of the past?
     
  2. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Free speech is like a vacuum. There's the theoretical perfect vacuum, which doesn't really exist, and then there's the imperfect approximation of vacuum that we accept as vacuum because there's nothing better. We idealize free speech, but humans have an innate need to control. It's a feature of our species lineage as pack animals. When in our natural state, isolated groups of 20-ish, we function in the same way as any other pack animal. It's part of our programming to recognize, apply, and accept hierarchies. There are alphas that control (chiefs), betas that aid (warriors) and then a complex array of other relationships that orbit around currying favor with the alphas and betas. All the things you mention are the alphas and betas of the group applying the rules of the pack to a pack that has grown into a giant herd.
     
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  3. Garball

    Garball Banned Contributor

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    If I may take this time to quote one of the most inspirational rhymesters of the late twentieth century, Mr. Ice Cube, "F*ck the police."
     
  4. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    And who do you imagine is behind this effort?

    I think there are advantages and disadvantages with the Social Networks and e-communication.

    First, I think the chalk incident is one of many bad laws ignorantly enforced, just like some of the ludicrous cases of 'no gun tolerance' that have been made in US schools against kids who bit their graham crackers into an L shape and pointed it at someone.

    Different countries have differently ignorant governments about their political sensitivities. I often wonder if some of it is more ego that political oppression. Powerful men (mostly, don't have enough women examples but they may be the same) don't like seeing/hearing personal insults and they react like children.

    And then there is the real political oppression, lying to the public to garner acceptance to start and maintain a war epitomizes the problem. But it's hardly the really powerful means used in the US (I can't see the rest of the world well enough from my vantage point) to gain and maintain political power.

    That is done through marketing science, gerrymandering, powerful (aka heavily financially back) lobbying, and voter caging and other means of voter suppression.

    The US currently using massive data mining to flush out leakers of political information the government prefers to control more tightly is indeed a problem, I don't mean to down play it. But it's not some massive one world government and, in the US, it's not political dissent the current administration fears so much as fear of Toto pulling the curtain back.
     
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  5. erebh

    erebh Banned Contributor

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    Rothschilds and Rockerfellas are probably the families Toto is about to expose.

    You think this is some over-exuberant cop? The Graham Cracker Gun got a kid thrown out of school. The chalk protest is getting a guy 13 years prison. You don't think it has anything to do with the megabank, the target of his ire, financed the mayor's campaign?

    You make it sound like kids in a playground, "He called me a name first" sob sob snot bubble, when it in fact is just more and more control.

    We'll save war for another day.

    Who do you think is masquerading as the Wizard of Lolz?
     
  6. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    What? Not Murdoch and the Kochs?

    Did you not read the article or are you just not familiar with the US legal system?

    The news media totals up the maximum sentences served consecutively to sensationalize the story. No one ever gets that kind of sentence.
    Do I think there is corporate overreach in this case? Very possibly. The HSA gave information gathered on the OWS groups to the banks the protestors planned to target, this is the same stuff. It sucks, but it's hardly 1984 totalitarianism. The more stupid arrests of 'Occupiers' the more public attention they get. Hopefully the arrest got more attention than the chalk messages. The news media owners making money off sensationalizing such arrests are competing with the banks trying to stop the Occupy movement. It's more useful for the protestors to be arrested and noticed than to protest and be ignored.

    Yes, that is how some powerful people act.

    That was specific to the Obama administration which is following in the footsteps of past administrations with the belief the public doesn't need to know certain things which really have more to do with arrogance re their governing choices than national security. If they thought a little more about why it was embarrassing for certain information to get out, maybe they'd see it was because the information was embarrassing for a reason.
     
  7. erebh

    erebh Banned Contributor

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    mere pawns to the aforementioned.

    being from Ireland I can't say I'm overly familiar with the US legal system. Only because the guy doesn't have previous it is unlikely he'll get 13 years. If this was his secnd offence of chalking sidewalks he'd be in trouble right?

    stating the blatantly obvious

    abuse of power, more control because they can

    You don't think Obama, Bush Jr, Clinton, Bush Sr, and Reagan have the same attitudes to public knowledge because the same manipulator pulls the strings no matter which marionette has the keys?
     
  8. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    Humans aren't capable of the conspiracy as you imagine it. We've had this discussion before. You believe in the imaginary movie version of how it works I think the power of big money works quite differently than that.

    As for the chalk guy, he won't get any jail time. He'll get a wrist slap, maybe a fine and community service.
     
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  9. erebh

    erebh Banned Contributor

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    yeah the OP was nothing to do with who pulls the strings, just complete control - from every govt in every country.

    I feel sorry for all the little girls who want to play hopscotch...
     
  10. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    You could write a fiction book that has your truth thinly veiled in the plot.
     
  11. erebh

    erebh Banned Contributor

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    You don't think every country is being controlled tighter and tighter everyday, that people all over the Western world aren't losing more and more liberties everyday, that people aren't being monitored and censored more and more every single day?

    Look at the NGI and how that's being abused already.
     
  12. jazzabel

    jazzabel Agent Provocateur Contributor

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    They are doing it because they can. Precedant after precedant has been set, around the world, eroding our basic human right to due process, free speech, right to protest, right to assebly etc. This is just a stage towards total tyrannycal dictatorship which is the preferred social order for the rich (with them in charge, of course). And people, pacified by extra weight, or lack of proper nutrition, and stupefied by their screens and what's coming off them, are doing nothing to stop it. But it won't stop until someone does something, to make the arrogant power trippers think twice. Such as this:
    http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rrTeBDetcfw
     
  13. erebh

    erebh Banned Contributor

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    Careful jazz, Ginger will have us both hospitalised.

    What's it going to take to stop it? People like Assange and Snowden and Manning trying to alert the world? Is there anyone listening?
     
  14. jazzabel

    jazzabel Agent Provocateur Contributor

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    ^:D Yes, well, some people have the luxury of living in ignorance. I can't, I've seen too much.
    I know what you mean, but people are listening. They're just scared and tired. So they try to go along with it, until they've seen too much too. It's always a painfully slow process.
     
  15. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    How did Russia Today escape the tyrants? (the source of the video) Why hasn't that news outlet been shut down? Maybe it's secretly there to make you think something's being done, to satisfy the distressed?

    By the way, they show the Russia Today news broadcast on my standard cable package now, same channel Al Jazeera English is on.
     
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  16. erebh

    erebh Banned Contributor

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    just watched that video - WOW! I thought it was old till I saw Clare Daly (Irish TD) - I watched her speech during the week, Someone should send Bush to Switzerland, tell him there's free cheese or something although I'm sure he knows where it is or at least knows he has money stashed away there.
     
  17. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    Yeah, The Daily Kos covered that story last month.

    SUN MAY 13, 2012 ...
    Bush, Cheney, etc. Convicted of War Crimes by Malasyian NGO
    But the Kos entry ends with:
     
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  18. erebh

    erebh Banned Contributor

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    Originally Posted by erebh View Post

    just watched that video - WOW! I thought it was old till I saw Clare Daly (Irish TD) - ....

    Irish TD Clare Daly gave the speech on June 21st. The Daily Kos are true visionaries.
     
  19. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    I see now that I read 2012 as 2013. This calls for more sleuthing.

    Near as I can tell the video is reviving a recycled story.

    The new trial and latest conviction just seems to be an extension of the same one that went on a year ago.

    Malaysia's Hague envy
     
  20. Cogito

    Cogito Former Mod, Retired Supporter Contributor

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    What people choose to slap down on the very public Internet is their own choice, and is therefore fair game.

    However, the real issue is a rising tyranny about what is actionable. People are sued, or wrongfully terminated from employment, over opinions.

    Now, I agree some opinions should have consequences. Anyone who endorses kiddie porn deserves whatever public backlash they get. Likewise bigots get no sympathy from me when they fall into disgrace as a result.

    But losing one's teaching job for saying some unnamed other teachers are merely putting in their hours and collecting a paycheck is deplorable. And prosecution in the court of public innuendo is nothing short of despicable.
     
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  21. erebh

    erebh Banned Contributor

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    And silly kids posting sillier shit that hangs round their neck like a noose for life...
     
  22. Cogito

    Cogito Former Mod, Retired Supporter Contributor

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    For sure. If you are planning or have committed a criminal act, don't be so colossally stoopid as to post a Youtube video about it.

    What amazes me is that that even needs to be said.
     
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  23. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    Since we're on this tangent, sometimes it's not the fault of the persecuted. Take those two teens that were IDed in the Boston Marathon images as being suspects when they were no such thing.
     
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  24. JJ_Maxx

    JJ_Maxx Banned

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    Thought this would interest you:

    'LOL, JK': Texas teen faces 8 years in prison for making 'terroristic threat' online...
    Have we lost all common sense? Seriously?
     
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  25. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    Yes. I think we have.

    About political censoring on the internet all I can say is this 'HA! With Anonymous around I'd like to see them try that shit forever'. Groups like Anonymous are amazing things, and a reason we should all really appreciate the internet. It's the dark side of Democracy, and I absolutely love it. :D

    All it needs is a common enemy, it now seems to have just that.
     

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