The modernized face of Western censorship

6 posts / 0 new

Thu, 2010-05-13 15:13

contrarianna

In the following 2 video segments, Julian Assange (of Wikileaks) reveals the modern face of censorship in the West where information is concentrated on the internet and, by that fact, proven vulnerable to erasure by state, corporate and individual interests.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYspXgSQTy4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S6002S8PTU

Here is a supplied description:

Quote:
OsloFreedomForum — May 12, 2010 — Julian Assange is a spokesman and advisory board member of WikiLeaks, a transparency website whose mission is to "open governments" and expose human rights abuses. It has a core focus on protecting dissidents, whistleblowers, investigative journalists, and bloggers who face state threats, and it largely operates by publishing leaks of sensitive documents. Winners of Amnesty International's 2009 Media Award for exposing extrajudicial assassinations in Kenya, Assange and WikiLeaks have recently launched www.collateralmurder.com, a website that hosts a leaked video of U.S. military forces in Iraq apparently slaying over a dozen people indiscriminately. In his speech, Assange chooses to focus specifically on WikiLeaks's work against censorship and human rights abuses committed by Western governments. Paraphrasing Orwell, Assange explains that he who controls today's internet servers controls the intellectual record of mankind. He warns us that Western governments, large corporations, and certain wealthy individuals are increasingly able and increasingly trying to remove material permanently from the historical record using sophisticated methods. Assange reviews WikiLeaks's work in uncovering human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo, and discusses the dangerous irony in the U.S. military's conduct as it decorates its detention centers with "Honor Bound to Defend Freedom" signs. If the West doesn't reverse its course of increased censorship and rights abuses, Assange warns, it will lose all of the ideals that it once stood for.

Issues Pages:

Civil Liberties Watch

Thu, 2010-05-13 22:15

NDPP

CBC to Study Whether Its News is Biased

http://www.ottawasun.com/news/canada/2010/05/13/13940176.html

"The CBC has commissioned a study to determine whether its news is biased..'Our job - and we take it seriously - is to ensure that the information that we put out is fair and unbiased in everything that we do,' CBC President Hubert Lacroix said.."

Mon, 2011-01-31 18:07

Fidel

[url=http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2378954,00.asp]WikiLeaks' Principles Are Like U.S. Founding Values, Assange Tells 60 Minutes[/url]

Assange is for real. I didn't believe it before. babblers like Cueball thought he was the real deal from the get go. I am more convinced of this now after the grilling he received from 60 Minutes interviewer Steve Kroft. Assange is only a publisher and conduit for whistleblowers in what should be a transparent society. If he was a US citizen, his right to publish should be protected by that country's first amendment under the Constitution. Assange is not a "spy" or even a traitor. Democratic societies do not have a right to intimidate whistleblowers or lock them in prison for 50 years as is the case with Bradley Manning, who Assange says is a prisoner of conscience.

Mon, 2011-01-31 19:28

milo204

well it is true that when info is digital or on the internet, it is more likely to be lost. replacement of technology, format shift, etc are all problems.

plus the internet is controlled by people that are subordinate to corporate/powerful interests. no telling what they might do with it, although shutting it down comes with a massive cost to them too, financially and logistically.

on the flip side, because of the internet info can be almost instantly passed to millions of people who can retain hard copies making the censoring after the fact useless. like with wikileaks, even if the government censored the whole thing, there are thousands of people with copies of their own and it would be next to impossible to do anything about it.

Mon, 2011-01-31 20:05

Fidel

It sounds like the barriers they've erected for Wikileaks have to do with Paypal, Interac etc blocking donations. Assange says they can shift their records to any of 2000 servers around the world. They can't survive financially for more than 3 months without public donations. That's about what the average unionized worker is said to be able to hold out financially in a strike situation.

Thu, 2011-02-03 00:34

Frmrsldr

Fidel wrote:

[url=http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2378954,00.asp]WikiLeaks' Principles Are Like U.S. Founding Values, Assange Tells 60 Minutes[/url]

Assange is for real. I didn't believe it before. babblers like Cueball thought he was the real deal from the get go. I am more convinced of this now after the grilling he received from 60 Minutes interviewer Steve Kroft. Assange is only a publisher and conduit for whistleblowers in what should be a transparent society. If he was a US citizen, his right to publish should be protected by that country's first amendment under the Constitution. Assange is not a "spy" or even a traitor. Democratic societies do not have a right to intimidate whistleblowers or lock them in prison for 50 years as is the case with Bradley Manning, who Assange says is a prisoner of conscience.

You've got it Fidel.

Welcome aboard on this issue!