Is the Iranian regime trying to be a hypocritical laughing stock? A Twitter account believed to belong to Iran‘s supreme leader has triggered controversy among Iranians whose own access to social networking websites remains blocked. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the man who has the final word in Iran, has come under intense criticism from Iran’s many…
Showing all posts tagged censorship
Are Twitter, Facebook and/or Google monitoring Wikileaks?
We are entering an age where the complicity of internet companies in censorship is becoming clear to many. We have allowed them to become too powerful and now they can act like this. By the way, so much for the Obama administration being any different to the Bushies over human rights, secrets and intimidation: WikiLeaks…
Department of Justice selective outrage over Wikileaks
Here’s the hypocrisy. If Iran demanded Twitter release direct messages of a user, the US government would be outraged. But of course double-standards are the name of the game here: A member of parliament in Iceland who is also a former WikiLeaks volunteer says the US justice department has ordered Twitter to hand over her…
Israel looks at Iran approvingly
So here we are. As the Israeli Knesset starts investigations into left-wing groups that dare question Zionist occupation and war, web censorship is now happening at the country’s only international airport. Perhaps Tel Aviv looks at Tehran and would like advice how to block “offensive” websites: Internet sites of political organizations, both left-wing and right-wing,…
Earth to DC; world doesn’t want your piece of web imperialism
In my book The Blogging Revolution I explain with examples how the internet isn’t simply a tool that brings democracy and freedom in the Western style. Shock, horror, the US government isn’t listening to advice that aims to show how America remains viewed as a coloniser across the world (that’s a bad thing, by the…
If You Love This Planet (with Dr Helen Caldicott) on Wikileaks
The myriad of issues surroundings Wikileaks continues. I was interviewed in late December by Dr Helen Caldicott on her globally syndicated radio program If You Love This Planet to discuss the long-term ramifications of this new form of journalism. My previous appearance on the program from 2009 is here.
Ahmadinejad bitch slapped by even harder hard-liner
Oh my: The chief of the Revolutionary Guard angrily slapped Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in early 2010, as Tehran was still dealing with the fallout from last year’s election, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable. The cable, written in February, said Revolutionary Guard Chief of Staff Mohammed Ali Jafari blamed Ahmadinejad for the post-election…
New tools of dissent in the internet age
The always provocative Evgeny Morozov writes in Foreign Policy about the politics and ethics of online dissent in the form of civil disobedience. What are the limits? And why is it so different from the real world? This is the post-Wikileaks new paradigm: First – and I briefly touched upon this subject in my previous…
A litany of Wikileaks evidence that US behaves like rogue state
The Wikileaks stories keep on coming. One: The Drug Enforcement Administration has been transformed into a global intelligence organization with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies, according to secret diplomatic cables. In…
Shut down the web or face a Wikileaks inspired future
A wonderful piece by John Naughton in the Guardian from early December that perfectly captures this Wikileaks moment: What WikiLeaks is really exposing is the extent to which the western democratic system has been hollowed out. In the last decade its political elites have been shown to be incompetent (Ireland, the US and UK in…