Sunday, June 21, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Germany Prepares to Censor Internet
June 16, 2009
Germany is on the verge of censoring its Internet: The government – a grand coalition between the German social democrats and conservative party – seems united in its decision: On Thursday the parliament is to vote on the erection of an internet censorship architecture.
The Minister for Family Affairs Ursula von der Leyen kicked off and lead the discussions within the German Federal Government to block Internet sites in order to fight child pornography. The general idea is to build a censorship architecture enabling the government to block content containing child pornography. The Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) is to administer the lists of sites to be blocked and the internet providers obliged to erect the secret censorship architecture for the government.
A strong and still growing network opposing these ideas quickly formed within the German internet community. The protest has not been limited to hackers and digital activist but rather a mainstreamed effort widely supported by bloggers and twitter-users. The HashTag used by the protesters is #zensursula – a German mesh up of the Ministers name and the word censorship equivalent to #censursula.
As part of the public’s protest an official e-Petition directed at the German parliament was launched. Within three days 50,000 persons signed the petition - – the number required for the petition titled „No indexing and blocking of Internet sites“ to be heard by the parliament. The running time of an e-Petition in Germany is 6 weeks – within this time over 130,000 people signed making this e-Petition the most signed and most successful ever.
During the past weeks, protests became more and more creative – countless blogs and twitter-users followed and commented the discussions within governments and opposing arguments. Many mainstream media picked up on this and reported about the protest taking place on-line. A working group on censorship was founded and the protest coordinated with a wiki, mailing lists, chats and of course employing twitter and blogs. One website „Zeichnemit.de“ created a landing page explaining the complicated petitioning system and making signing the petition easier and more accessible for non net-experts.
Over 500 people attended the governments official press conference on the planed internet censorship – a number of whom used this occasion to demonstrate and voice their concerns. In fact, demonstrators began attending some of the Minister von der Leyens public appearances, carrying banners and signs to raise attention to the stifling of information freedom in Germany.
The net community did not only oppose the governments plans, but also made constructive suggestions how to deal with the problem of child pornography without introducing a censorship architecture and circumcising constitutional freedoms. The working group on censorship demonstrated the alternatives for instance by actually removing over 60 websites containing child pornographic content in 12 hours, simply by emailing the international providers who then removed this content from the net. The sites were identified through the black lists of other countries documented on Wikileaks. This demonstration underlines the protesters main arguments: instead of effectively investing time and efforts to have illegal content removed from the internet, the German government is choosing censorship and blocking – an easy and dangerous way out. The greatest fear of the protesters is that once in place, the infrastructure will be used to censor other forms of unwanted content, not only child pornography. German politicians already seem to be lining up with their wish-list of content to be censored in future – the suggestions ranging form gambling sites, islamist web pages, first person shooters, and the music industry cheering up with the thought of finally banning pirate bay and p2p.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Misfortune Cookies
knowledge and the only evil is ignorance." at some points in my life i
may have taken that to be true, but it seems to imply that babies and
children are evil... after all, they are pretty ignorant to most of
the atrocities of the world... and i know a lot of people that i would
consider good people who are also quite ignorant... and i know a lot
of people who are quite knowledgable and are assholes for lack of a
better term. i wonder how many people hold this fortune as a deep
truth... it certainly makes a lot of sense on the surface, but
ultimately it seems to be a very condescending and heartless point of
view... granted, a good person who is ignorant can be manipulated and
unknowingly cause harm to society and themselves, but more than likely
they are being manipulated by an asshole or a bunch of assholes with a
lot of knowledge. so who benefits from the philosophy quoted in my
fortune cookie? knowledgable assholes... i would like to present my
own fortune, "the greatest good comes from knowledge with compassion
and the greatest evil comes from knowledge without compassion." ... i
would also like to point out a delicious irony... the chinese give out
fortunes... if they were so wise to the point where they are giving
advice with their food, then how did they allow and support mao tse
tung as he was starving and murdering 60 million plus people? did the
chinese people not read their own fortunes? why did so many chinese
people come to america? it's not that i'm at odds with china or
chinese people, i feel a lot of sorrow for the way they are forced to
live by their government and the things that have happened to them, i
just find it funny that they give us fortunes with their cookies...
Friday, March 6, 2009
Fox Admits To Planting Political Brainwashing In Popular TV Shows
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, March 6, 2009
Rupert Murdoch’s Twentieth Century Fox corporation has admitted to planting political brainwashing within its globally popular TV shows and indeed boasts that it is proud of the fact.
A corporate video currently being showcased on another part of Murdoch’s media empire, MySpace.com, shows Fox executives and stars of its universally recognized shows bragging about how they use the platform of hit shows that are broadcast globally to implant messages about the supposed threat of global warming.
This is not the first time Fox have been enthusiastic in propagandizing for the establishment. In 2003, Rupert Murdoch himself admitted that the corporation had “tried” to help the Bush administration sell the war in Iraq.
The text accompanying the video states, “In 2006, News Corp. embarked upon a company wide initiative to reduce the size of its carbon footprint.”
The means by which this “initiative” was carried out is then made clear by a plethora of clips from Fox’s most popular shows - the Simpsons, King of the Hill, Family Guy, Prison Break - which are all loaded with messages about global warming and the need to do something about it.
“What could we do on a practical level to start making a difference,” asks one executive before another answers, “The biggest thing we’ve done is inserting messages about the environment into some of our content.”
In other words, Fox has embarked on a deliberate campaign, which could only have been done with the coordination of the script writers of each program, to force people to accept the pseudo-science of global warming by brainwashing them into accepting it as a reality. This has been achieved by weaving in messages about climate change and having popular characters in the TV shows embrace specific tenants of the global warming manifesto.
“The most powerful way we could communicate the commitment on behalf of our company, was to change the practices within the production, as well as work in a message about global warming, about environmental changes, about empowering people to take responsibilities,” states Fox chairman Dana Walden.
We’re also treated to the vomit-inducing sight of Kiefer Sutherland, who plays the torture loving Jack Bauer in 24, sounding about as genuine as a 3 dollar bill reading off a teleprompter about how Fox is committed to reducing its “carbon footprint”.
- A D V E R T I S E M E N T
This is key because of the process that people’s brains undergo when they are watching television. Political messages implanted in fictional television programs will always enjoy a receptive audience.
According to an Associated Content article, “Studies have shown that watching television induces low alpha waves in the human brain. Alpha waves are brainwaves between 8 to 12 HZ. and are commonly associated with relaxed meditative states as well as brain states associated with suggestibility.”
Experiments have shown that less than one minute after the viewer begins to watch television, the brain switches from Beta level consciousness, associated with active and logical thought, to Alpha level, which is associated with passive acceptance and suggestibility. This is why advertisers spend billions a year on commercials as well as product placement within TV shows themselves.
The scale of what Fox is admitting to here is staggering, and the fact that they even boast about what they are doing beggars belief. As Darryl Mason sardonically comments, “I never realised just how much I’d learned about the dire threats of global warming-induced climate change simply by watching immensely, globally popular Murdoch/Fox entertainments like The Simpsons and 24.”
Millions of people not just in America but globally are being educated, or should I say re-educated, about the highly complex and highly debatable topic of global warming, not through a reasoned public debate between advocates and skeptics, but through fictional cartoons, comedies and drama shows produced by a monolithic corporation that has its tentacles deeply embedded into the same establishment that is trying to sell global warming in order to introduce a CO2 tax and regulate people’s lives.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
I love my bail outs!!!
The New York Times
March 4, 2009
Americans awoke to the news on Monday that federal officials had spent yet another feverish weekend concocting yet another bailout. This time, the Obama Treasury Department — sounding a lot like the Bush Treasury Department — promised another $30 billion to the American International Group, the giant insurer.
In a joint statement with the Federal Reserve on Monday, the Treasury justified the move, saying that “the potential cost to the economy and the taxpayer of government inaction would be extremely high.”
That’s a textbook rationale for any bailout. What no one is saying — the Bush folks wouldn’t, and the Obama team seems to have taken the same vow of Wall Street omertà — is which firms would be most threatened by an A.I.G. collapse. The Treasury and the Federal Reserve noted in their statement that A.I.G. is a “significant counterparty to a number of major financial institutions.”
Posts
