Is Australia trying to look foolish or do they truly want to look like a bumbling authoritarian state? The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has launched a stinging attack on Google and its credibility in response to the search giant’s campaign against the government’s internet filtering policy. In an interview on ABC Radio last night, Senator…
Showing all posts tagged censorship
Is Wikileaks the most important website in the world?
The latest Wikileaks drama: Whistleblower Web site WikiLeaks is planning to release a video that reveals what it’s calling a Pentagon “cover-up” of an incident in which numerous civilians and journalists were murdered in an airstrike, according to a recent media advisory. The video will be released on April 5 at the National Press Club,…
Google helps clarify what web freedom should mean?
Does the web need a bill of rights? Jeff Jarvis writes in the Guardian that Google’s recent move in China is significant: Google’s business strategy is dead simple: the more we use the internet, the more Google makes. If governments are allowed and enabled to restrict freedom on the internet to a lowest common denominator…
Wikileaks allows sunlight in a dark age
I’ve written for years about the invaluable website Wikileaks. It currently faces an unprecedented attack by Western governments and dictatorships across the world to shut down and not release supposedly important “secrets”. Glenn Greenwald explains the importance of the site and why it matters to fight.
The Age on Google’s move highlights the role of China’s censors
My following article is published today in the Melbourne Age: About 100 Chinese citizens gathered outside Google’s Beijing office this week to sing the popular tune Grass Mud Horse. They paid their respects to the web giant after it announced the closure of its censored Chinese search engine and redirected users to a Hong Kong-based…
Beijing is nervous and insecure and Google has made it worse
Evan Osnos, writing in the New Yorker, laments the rise of a supposed new super-power: As Americans living in China at this moment in its history, many of us have fashioned an image of a country that is moving—in its own shambling pattern of fits and starts—toward something better for itself and the world. Sure,…
Jews who seem to spend their time silencing other Jews
If you don’t believe the Zionist lobby still wields consideraable power in the US, think again. Norman Finkelstein feels the wrath of its insecurity and fear of open debate.
Iran did not have a Twitter revolution
The BBC World Service has published my following article about the internet in Iran (originally published on BBC Persian last week): The face of murdered Iranian woman Neda Agha Soltan, killed by a bullet in the Iranian capital Tehran, echoed around the world. Like this, the vast majority of iconic images that documented Iran’s disputed…
Google and China, a relationship that ain’t over yet
Not so fast in believing that Google has completely ended its censorship regime in China: Google’s operations and long-term prospects in China were shrouded in confusion , as it emerged that it is still censoring search services for its partners because of contractual obligations. The world’s leading search engine hoped to resolve two months of…