censorship

Germany To Censor Press, Social Media and Internet Ahead of Elections

By Graham Vanbergen – It must be obvious to anyone watching political events across the Western world that the media is in big trouble. The availability of multimedia news platforms has accelerated a decline in the 21st century of traditional newspapers and even television news, a fact that is not new. The emergence of full blown state censorship in a modern democracy because of the change in news delivery is.

The demise of the mainstream media has of course been exacerbated by a lack of public trust in journalism and news outlets with only about one third of the public trusting it in America. With 18-49 years olds trust falling even further with barely a quarter accepting mainstream media as a source of reliable information, the story is pretty much the same in Britain and Europe more widely.

In America, Clinton’s loss at the ballot box ended with the establishment finger firmly pointed to Russia that somehow it put its “finger on the scale” to help Trump become triumphant. This has ended with public trust falling even further as the cold-war bogeyman is not new either.

However, what we are now witnessing is the very same strategy in Germany by Chancellor Merkel, who, fighting for her rapidly declining popularity is already adopting the Obama strategy by blaming Putin and Russian agents for what will be inevitable losses at the upcoming election in September 2017. Merkel suffered a sobering defeat in regional elections in her constituency of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) coming third behind the Social Democrats (SPD) and the rightwing populists Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) a few months back.

The consequence is that Merkel wants full censorship of not just the press but bloggers as well. In addition, Merkel’s government is now quite clearly taking absolute control of the public narrative. Journalists are told what to write, newspapers told what to print.

Political scientists and German journalist Udo Ulfkotte admitted that he repeatedly had to cooperate with the CIA and German intelligence agencies and was forced to put his name under biased publications under the threat of being fired. In several media interviews, Ulfkotte revealed how German journalists and politicians are recruited as CIA assets to write stories that were aimed at serving the geopolitical interests of Washington, and not the interests of the German people. It all sounds like some sort of excitable fictional novel. (more…)

New Social Network Based on Blockchain Technology Wants to End Censorship

June 9, 2016

By Carey Wedler

blockchainAs Facebook and other digital social platforms face repeated accusations of censorship, a new blockchain-based social networking platform is emerging — with the express purpose of combating censorship.

“We are basically living in an information age plagued by arbitrary censorship and digital amnesia, affecting every Internet user,” says AKASHA Project founder and CEO Mihai Alisie.

That digital amnesia, he argues, is a consequence of inefficient servers that fail to guarantee the permanence of information. As Bitcoin Magazine explains:

Information ‒ web sites, documents, email archives, video, etc. ‒ can be either purposefully deleted by the governments and/or corporations that control today’s Internet, or, more simply but equally tragic, just disappear for lack of maintenance of the central servers where it’s hosted.

The AKASHA Project, which aims to be a decentralized publishing platform akin to Medium or Reddit, is the result of various forms of technology intersecting to promote freedom of information and a free-flowing Internet — traits AKASHA’s founder, Mihai Alisie, believes are central to the digital age.

“We believe that freedom of expression, access to information, and privacy are fundamental human rights that should be respected on the Internet as well as in real life,” explains the AKASHA Project. AKASHA stands for Advanced Knowledge Architecture for Social Human Advocacy.

Moreover, we are a civilization transitioning to an information-based society, and as such we feel that the permanent storage of information for future generations is a critical issue we should be striving to solve as soon as possible.

Lamenting the fact that internet users have outsourced their “freedom of expression and collective memory to corporations that don’t always have our best interests at heart,” Alisie pointed out in a recent blog post that corporations often comply with government requests for private information around the world — and must do so to stay in business.

He largely blames the existing technological infrastructure that pervades most servers, arguing their “centralized architecture enables the companies to honor such obnoxious requests in the first place.”

Alisie first conceived of the social media project when he was working on Ethereum, a blockchain app he co-founded that challenges “traditional servers” that are often isolated.  “If a server goes down for any technical or commercial reason, or is taken down by the authorities, all the web pages stored on that server disappear,” Bitcoin Magazine explains. (Full disclosure: Alisie is also a founder of Bitcoin Magazine but previously left the company to start Ethereum and now, AKASHA.)

Ethereum describes itself as

a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference.

These apps run on a custom built blockchain, an enormously powerful shared global infrastructure that can move value around and represent the ownership of property.

Though the blockchain is generally more associated with Bitcoin and financial transactions rather than social networking, its technology is core to the AKASHA Project (and will also have “a built-in infrastructure suitable for micropayments”). The blockchain is useful for AKASHA in part because, as Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle has explained (as cited by Alisie), “Block Chain technology that enables the Bitcoin community to have a global database with no central point of control.”

Similarly, “With Ethereum we remove the need for servers, avoiding from design stage all the problems associated with censorship,” Alisie explained in a blog post for AKASHA, which was, fittingly, officially unveiled on May 3 — World Press Freedom Day. He also spoke about the widespread problem of censorship:

read more…

 

Turkey silenced 900 journos since January: Journalists’ association

Turkish journalists hold banners and shout slogans during a demonstration in support of jailed journalists Can Dundar and Erdem Gul on January 10, 2016, in Ankara. (AFP)

The Turkish government has dismissed hundreds of journalists so far this year and blocked tens of thousands of websites since mid-2015, says an association for journalists in Turkey.

According to the report by the Press for Freedom Project (ÖiB), which is affiliated with the Turkish Journalists’ Association (TGC), at least 160 journalists were sacked in April alone, raising the number of dismissed journalists in the Anatolian country to a total of 894 since January.

Journalists shout slogans and hold placards on January 10, 2016 during a march marking Journalism Day on Istiklal Street in Istanbul as they protest against the imprisonment of journalists. (AFP)

The report also set the number of blocked websites at 104,904 since the Turkish general election in June 2015.

Moreover, a total of 33 reporters were arrested from January to April, it further said, adding that 12 journalists faced charges over “insulting” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

 

STASI-veteran will assist German government in Facebook censorship

Anette Kahane – former Stasi agent who will assist the German government in monitoring and censoring dissenting citizens.

According to Vice Chancellor Sigmar approximately 1 million migrants will arrive in Germany this year alone and Chancellor Merkel says there is no limit to how many they will take in.

Politically incorrect Germans who voice their skepticism can look forward to censorship – at least on Facebook.

Minister of Justice, Heiko Maas, has had quiet enough of the uppity Germans who have the gall to criticize the ongoing population replacement so last week he sent an open letter to Facebook demanding that the social-media company commence systematically erasing “xenophobic” material.

On Monday Facebook sent a delegation to meet with the Minister who has set forth a plan – namely that a special task force scour Facebook and delete comments deemed inappropriate by the State.

“The goal is to ease identification of criminal statements” – says Heiko Maas to Bild.

The task force’s members are appointed by the government and Facebook, but the the left-wing organization Network against Nazis (“Netz gegen Nazis”) will also be represented.

The network was founded in the year 2007 by the Antonio Amadeu Trust, led by the Jewish-German left-wing activist Anette Kahne who, during the years 1974-82, worked as a secret agent for the East German Security Service known as Stasi.

Today Anette Kahane works as a professional anti-racist and last year proclaimed in an interview with RT that European countries must open their borders and adapt completely to immigrants from the third world.

“You have to really change the policy of immigration inside Europe. This is very important, you have to adopt the educational system and adapt all the self understanding of the states. They are not anymore only white or only Swedish or only Portuguese or only German. They are multicultural places in the world.”

That an ex-Stasi informant will be tasked with monitoring and censoring Facebook has been criticized by the site PI NEWS.

“25 years after German re-unification former East German citizens will, together with their West German brothers and sisters, be monitored by old Stasi cadres”.

According to Simon Wiesenthal who spent half a century hunting Nazi criminals the Stasi was much, much worse than the Gestapo.

“The Gestapo had 40,000 officials watching a country of 80 million, while the Stasi employed 102,000 to control 17 million.”

And as John Koehler, author of Stasi – The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police, points out:

“the Stasi spent four decades perfecting it’s machinery of oppression, espionage, international terrorism and subversion whilst the Gestapo lasted only twelve years.”

“Google Maps” censorship. How to defeat refugee housing map deletion


Google deleted a map with refugee housing centers in Germany. Initially, the zoomable refugee Google map still could be found in web archive.

MSM claim the censorship serves to prevent terrorist attacks on refugee centers 1 2. It is more likely that the censorship serves to hide the enormousness of the refugee center business from shocked Germans. Near refugee centers crime soars, and housing values plummet.

5000 yearly rapes in Sweden preventable! Australia’s Pacific Solution: No Way will illegals make Australia Home:

Web archived map that Google censored. Zoomed screen shot of Munich

Defeating Google map censorship:

Instructions to attain free speech online

How to use Google maps to spread the truth, avoiding censorship;

1. When the map is still up on Google maps, save .kml file of the map [7 Export a map ]

Specifically the Asylum seeker map can be downloaded here

2. Use the kml file

1. pass the .kml file to your friends. You can send it as email attachment, or post and download like here.

2. Open “Google My Maps” and import the file.

3. share with friends. Make the link public, or share only with selected friends

Make the link public, or share only with selected friends.

4. if you want to publish that map, you might be advised to do this in a new Google account, so your account does not get flagged or deleted

3. using Google api, one can create a web page with the map. Unfortunately, you need an api key.

4. there is also a way to import the saved kml file into bing, Google earth, and maybe other maps

via “Google Maps” censorship. How to defeat refugee housing map deletion.

Project Censored exposes top 25 most censored news stories of 2013-2014

Every year, Project Censored performs a valuable public service by researching and compiling a list of the most censored and under-reported news stories in the United States.

Started at Sonoma State University in 1976 and carried on by the Media Freedom Foundation since 2000, the project involves professors and students and journalists.

“During this year’s cycle, Project Censored reviewed 237 Validated Independent News stories (VINs) representing the collective efforts of 260 college students and 49 professors from 18 college and university campuses that participate in our affiliate program,” the project website states.

Here’s Project Censored’s list of the top 25 most censored news stories of 2013-2014:

1. Ocean Acidification Increasing at Unprecedented Rate

2. Top Ten US Aid Recipients All Practice Torture

3. WikiLeaks Revelations on Trans-Pacific Partnership Ignored by Corporate Media

via Project Censored exposes top 25 most censored news stories of 2013-2014.