Turkish PM Erdogan Bans Twitter – Usage Soars

“The international community will say this and that [about the ban], and it doesn’t concern me one bit. [The world] will see the power of the Turkish Republic.”  Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister, Turkey, March 20

Things didn’t work out as planned for PM Erdogan when he tried to shut down Twitter in Turkey on Thursday, March 20.  However, the world did see the power of the Turkish people who boosted Twitter usage from 4.54 million to 6.04 million messages in the period after the government ordered the service banned according to the Somera Social Media Rating service.  In addition to the 33% increase in message traffic, Somera reported a 17% increase in users.  Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, sent a message to Turkish users offering alternatives to access the service.  (Image:  Twitter) 

Gary Webb: An American Hero

By Volaar

Eight years ago, December 10, 2004, respected and award-winning investigative journalist Gary Webb was murdered by a conspiracy of an apathetic citizenry, corporate malfeasance and government corruption.  The Sacramento County coroner, Robert Lyons, publically, if hastily, characterized the gunshot wounds in Gary Webb’s head three times before finally ruling the double-gunshot wound to Webb’s face a “suicide,” noting the use of a .38 caliber revolver, the presence of a suicide note and Webb’s close friend and ex-wife, Sue Bell, claiming that Gary, “had been depressed about being unable to obtain employment from another major newspaper for some time.” The San Jose Mercury News, on orders from “on high,” had terminated Gary Webb’s career progression after they claimed they had discovered errors in trivial matters of fact in his career-capping exposé, “A Dark Alliance” (ADA).

He’s Back: Internet censorship must be stopped

By Chris Pratt
COTO Report

After failing to get COICA (Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act) passed in 2010, he is back again this year with PIPA (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and the Theft of Intellectual Property Act).

Do not forget PIPA is the son of COICA.  Back then (2010) while the Vermont ACLU was nominating Senator Patrick Leahy as the Civil Libertarian of the Year, the national ACLU office was writing him a letter in opposition to COICA legislation.  Senator Wyden from Oregon subsequently tabled it.

The Smothers Brothers and I

By TheOncomingStorm

Our household has spent several nights watching compilations of the “best” of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, courtesy of Netflix and the E channel. Some things struck me as, well, funny. Verrry funny. I was always a fan of their show, and was sorely disappointed when it was cancelled for pissing off the censors. Then again, a whole lot of things struck me as sad, and I am sure that some of these pissed off the censors as well.

These were the kind of compilations in which Tommy and Dick Smothers give you a scripted studio introduction to what you are about to see (with dates and guest list) and then after the show’s “best of”, come back and give us a trip down memory lane for the two of them regarding what one has just watched.

Chemtrail article in Project Censored’s Top 10 most censored stories

By Rady Ananda

For the past 35 years, Project Censored has published an annual collection of the top 25 censored news stories. In the 2012 book edition, just released this September, my article, Atmospheric Geoengineering: Weather Manipulation, Contrails and Chemtrails, ranks as the 9th most censored story in the United States.

Originally published at the Centre for Research on Globalization in July 2010, an updated version at COTO Report has seen over 15,000 page views as of this writing. The article is widely posted across the world in several English and non-English speaking countries, giving it far broader readership than we’ll ever know, but likely over a million.

A thought police for the internet age: the dangerous cult of the Guardian

By Jonathan Cook
Redress

Jonathan Cook looks at how Britain’s Guardian newspaper is trying to maintain its role as gatekeeper of information and controller of public debate by vilifying, smearing and defaming those who test the bounds of permissible thought and challenge established truths, including musician and writer Gilad Atzmon, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, journalist John Pilger and academic Noam Chomsky.

There could be no better proof of the revolution – care of the internet – occurring in the accessibility of information and informed commentary than the reaction of our mainstream, corporate media.

For the first time, Western publics – or at least those who can afford a computer – have a way to bypass the gatekeepers of our democracies. Data our leaders once kept tightly under wraps can now be easily searched for, as can the analyses of those not paid to turn a blind eye to the constant and compelling evidence of Western hypocrisy.

Blackberry agrees to join UK censors during civil unrest

By Avril Ormsby
Reuters

BlackBerry said on Thursday it would close down its hugely popular messenger service in Britain if ordered to at times of civil unrest, after police singled out the system as a key tool used in last month’s riots.

Appearing before politicians investigating the large-scale disorder that swept Britain in early August, executive Stephen Bates of Blackberry-owner Research in Motion said the company would comply with orders given in special circumstances such as threats of terrorism or mass criminality.

How We Doin’?

By Rady Ananda

Following the widespread banishment of all radical elements on a certain “progressive” website, which included yours truly, several of us started other sites.  Akin to AA thinking that asks, how do you start an AA meeting (“all it takes is a coffee pot and a resentment”), we did just that.

Hence, Coalition of the Obvious, Food Freedom and, a month later, COTO Report were born.  My buddy, Patrick, runs the first site, and I run the last two. That’s only possible with a dedicated crew who keep the engines going with original essays, artwork, news tips, and shares on social media sites.

Though COTO doesn’t draw as many visitors as Food Freedom, it gives an outlet to radical thought.  Given the corporate-government’s propensity to censorship, more outlets are better than fewer, I figure.  Here are the stats since inception:

Japan Officially Orders Censorship of Truth About Fukushima Nuclear Radiation Disaster

By Alexander Higgins

The government of Japan has issued an official order to telecommunications companies and web masters to censor reports which contradict the state media reports that the Fukushima nuclear radiation disaster is over.

The supposedly free democratic nation of Japan, which supposedly values and promotes freedom of speech, has officially issued orders to telecommunication companies and webmasters to remove content from websites that counter the official government position that the disaster is over and there is no more threat from the radiation.

16 ‘Anonymous’ hackers arrested in PayPal takedown

By Elinor Mills
CNet

Sixteen people were arrested in the United States today in connection with hacking attacks by the Anonymous group of online activists, as well as one person in the U.K. and four people in the Netherlands, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

An indictment filed last week in San Jose, Calif., names 14 people accused of conspiring to intentionally damage protected computers at PayPal last December in retribution for PayPal suspending WikiLeaks’ account to prevent supporters from donating to the whistleblower site.

An Anonymous Message to NATO

Good evening, NATO.

We are Anonymous.

It has come to our attention that a NATO draft report has classified Anonymous a potential „threat to member states’ security”, and that you seek retaliation against us.

It is true that Anonymous has committed what you would call ‘cyber-attacks’ in protest against several military contractors, companies, lawmakers, and governments, and has continuously sought to fight against threats to our freedoms on the Internet. And since you consider state control of the Internet to be in the best interest of the various nations of your military alliance, you therefore consider us a potential threat to international security.

So we would like to make it clear that we, in reality, pose no threat to the people of your nations. Anonymous is not a reckless swarm attacking the websites of governments and companies out of hatred or spite. We fight for freedom. For ourselves, and the people of the world, we seek to preserve the liberty granted to the millions of people who have found it on the Internet.

Beating MasterCard at its own game

Living in the Shadows: A World of Black Ops and Cyber Wars

The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings. — John F. Kennedy

By John Galt
Activist Post

A shadow has descended on freedom worldwide:  Congress is in the dark; sovereign foreign nations are in the dark; and the average American can’t imagine that a world of espionage, black ops, psy ops, and the apparatus of a surveillance-industrial complex run by globalists has them in the crosshairs.

When exiting CIA director, Leon Panetta, openly admitted that shadow wars and black ops should be a strategy employed through direct military control by the CIA, it marked a new Dark Age.

The Patriot Act: When Truth Becomes Treason

By Susan Lindauer

Many Americans think they understand the dangers of the Patriot Act, which Congress has vowed to extend 4 more years in a vote later this week. Trust me when I say, Americans are not nearly frightened enough. Unfortunately, Bradley Manning is also subject to some of these rules, so it’s important for his supporters to understand what he’s facing.

Ever wonder why the truth about 9/11 never got exposed? Why Americans don’t have a clue about leadership fraud surrounding the War on Terror? Why Americans don’t know if the 9/11 investigation was really successful? Why the Iraqi Peace Option draws a blank? Somebody has known the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden— or his grave—for the past 10 years. But nobody’s talking to the people.

In significant part, that’s because of the Patriot Act— a law that equates free speech with sedition. It’s got a big agenda, with 7,000 pages of Machiavellian code designed to interrupt individual questioning of government policy. In this brave new world, free speech under the Bill of Rights effectively has been declared a threat to government controls for maintaining stability. And the Patriot Act has become the premiere weapon to attack whistle blowers and dissidents who challenge the comfort of political leaders hiding inconvenient truths from the public. It’s all the rage on Capitol Hill, as leaders strive to score TV ratings, while demogauging their “outstanding leadership performance” on everything from national security to environmental policy.

The 10 Tools of Online Oppressors

By Danny O’Brien
Committee to Protect Journalists

The world’s worst online oppressors are using an array of tactics, some reflecting astonishing levels of sophistication, others reminiscent of old-school techniques. From China’s high-level malware attacks to Syria’s brute-force imprisonments, this may be only the dawn of online oppression.

In reporting news from the world’s most troubled nations, journalists have made a seismic shift this year in their reliance on the Internet and other digital tools. Blogging, video sharing, text messaging, and live-streaming from cellphones brought images of popular unrest from the central square of Cairo and the main boulevard of Tunis to the rest of the world.

COICA 2.0 = Protect IP: US wants to scrub browsers of websites it opposes

By Demand Progress

Tell Congress to Kill COICA 2.0, the Internet Censorship Bill

(Full text of Protect IP below) We knew that members of Congress and their business allies were gearing up to pass a revised Internet Blacklist Bill — which more than 325,000 Demand Progress members helped block last winter — but we never expected it to be this atrocious.  Last year’s bill has been renamed the “PROTECT IP” Act and it is far worse than its predecessor.  A summary of it is posted below.

Senators Leahy and Hatch pretended to weigh free speech concerns as they revised the bill.  Instead, the new legislation would institute a China-like censorship regime in the United States, whereby the Department of Justice could force search engines, browsers, and service providers to block users’ access to websites, and scrub the American Internet clean of any trace of their existence.

5 Ways DHS Violates the Constitution with Website Domain Seizures

By David Makarewicz
Activist Post

Last week, Bryan McCarthy, the 32 year old operator of ChannelSurfing.net, was arrested on charges of criminal copyright infringement.  ChannelSurfing.net was one of the streaming sports sites that had its domain seized by federal authorities shortly before the Super Bowl as part of the “In Our Sites” program, run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  Prior to the seizure, McCarthy reportedly made more than $90,000 from advertisements on his site.

This arrest has once again raised questions about the In Our Sites program, in which the Government has seized thousands of domains accused, but not convicted, of copyright infringement, illegal streaming of sporting events, selling black market goods and distributing child pornography.  Critics ranging from bloggers to individual rights advocates to Senators have questioned the constitutionality of these seizures.

New Google Algorithm Is Live: News Aggregators Will Be Punished

Eric Blair & Michael Edwards
Activist Post

Just over a month ago, Google announced that they were changing their algorithm in order to weaken the search engine rankings of sites they deem to be “content farmers.”

Whereas most of Google’s algorithm changes are barely noticeable, the current change that they have been working on since last January will affect 12% of U.S. searches.

There has been much debate about what “content farming” is, and Google has done little to offer a clear explanation, simply stating, “low quality” or “shallow” sites would be affected.  This is similar to the vague definition of pornography — you’ll know it when you see it.

Silent protester Ray McGovern brutalized by cops at Hillary Clinton talk on free speech

By Rady Ananda

Walking like an Egyptian pharaoh more than an Egyptian, during Hillary Clinton’s talk on free speech on Tuesday at George Washington University, she allowed the arrest and brutalization of a silent protester, Ray McGovern, who since his retirement from the CIA has been actively protesting war. The university’s newspaper, GW Hatchet, reported Clinton’s words:

“What happened in Egypt and what happened in Iran, which this week is once again using violence against protesters seeking basic freedoms, was about a great deal more than the Internet,” Clinton said. “In each case people protested because of deep frustrations with the political and economic division of their lives.”

Try looking in the mirror, Clinton.

First ever mass meeting of all US ambassadors

Wikileaks, Arab revolution, internet kill switch… when so many imperialists meet at one time in one place, we can be sure that evil will be done.

AP: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is convening an unprecedented mass meeting of U.S. ambassadors.

The top envoys from nearly all of America’s 260 embassies, consulates and other posts in more than 180 countries will be gathering at the State Department beginning on Monday. Officials say it’s the first such global conference.