So this is the US and Israeli-backed Palestinian government the occupied should be loving? Dictatorship Inc. Shameful. Good reporting by George Hale in Maan: The Palestinian Authority has quietly instructed Internet providers to block access to news websites whose reporting is critical of President Mahmoud Abbas, according to senior government officials and data analyzed by…
Showing all posts tagged censorship
The vast, unprecedented web of American surveillance
We are being watched and monitored on a scale never seen in human history. National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney spoke to Democracy Now! last week and said that he… estimates the NSA has assembled 20 trillion “transactions” — phone calls, emails and other forms of data — from Americans. This probably includes copies of almost…
60 Minutes unafraid to tackle Israeli apartheid first-hand
The role of mainstream media in the West to shield the public from the realities of Israeli occupation is legendary. Occasionally there is a breakthrough, such as this 2010 piece on American 60 Minutes on East Jerusalem. Yesterday the same program and the same reporter, Bob Simon, returned to the subject and covered Christians leaving…
This is not what courage looks like over Israel/Palestine
There really isn’t much to be added to this short but incisive post by Phil Weiss on Mondoweiss except to agree with his sentiments; the lack of guts by so many mainstream American intellectuals to comment on Zionism and the Israeli occupation of Palestine, as it’s seen as negatively affecting the career. Grow a pair,…
Iran aims to create an internet cut off from the world
Is this the future for autocratic regimes that fear web-savvy youth calling for freedom and democracy? Sounds like a perfect weapon to silence dissent. Resistance will be essential: Millions of Internet users in Iran will be permanently denied access to the World Wide Web and cut off from popular social networking sites and email services,…
Guess which Western nation has right to detain journalists and equipment without warrant?
The US of A. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald with a terrifying story that should concern any person who believes in the concept of free speech: One of the more extreme government abuses of the post-9/11 era targets U.S. citizens re-entering their own country, and it has received far too little attention. With no oversight or legal…
Nothing is private in the 21st century
Our digital world is increasingly monitored by a range of state and non-state actors. Be afraid and be aware. A recent cover story in Wired showed how the US government, with no transparency, is building a massive listening station where everybody is targeted: Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data…
What serious media would have reported about Wikileaks (but did not)
So many stories and so much missed deliberately or wilfully ignored. Interesting extract from a new book, The phone hacking scandal: journalism on trial. This is by Justin Schlosberg and details how many key media outlets consistently fail to hold power to account (and no, it ain’t an accident): The performance of serious media in…
For those hoping China will be more benign super-power, think again
Reuters reports: A Chinese telecommunications equipment company has sold Iran’s largest telecom firm a powerful surveillance system capable of monitoring landline, mobile and internet communications, interviews and contract documents show. The system was part of a 98.6 million euro ($130.6 million) contract for networking equipment supplied by Shenzhen,… China-based ZTE Corp to the Telecommunication Co of…
Beijing as world leader in pursuing surveillance state
Since the release of my book The Blogging Revolution (latest edition just out in India) the use by China of Western and local security firms to monitor citizens has only grown. This piece in the New York Times signals the depth of the problem: Chinese cities are rushing to construct their own surveillance systems. Chongqing,…