This is a disgrace and shows the utterly spinelessness of some in corporate America. We will not forget: The United States struck its first blow against WikiLeaks after Amazon.com pulled the plug on hosting the whistleblowing website in an apparent reaction to heavy political pressure. The main website and a sub-site devoted to the diplomatic…
Showing all posts tagged internet
Indonesian Jews learn traditions on YouTube
The idea of a small Jewish community in Indonesia pleases me and yet the blind adulation of an Israeli flag is sad. Is there knowledge how the Palestinians are being abused? A new, 62-foot-tall menorah, possibly the world’s largest, rises from a mountain overlooking this Indonesian city, courtesy of the local government. Flags of Israel…
Are we addicted or too pleased to notice?
Some startling facts: – There are now more than 500 million active Facebook users, with 50% logging on to the site on any given day. Worldwide, users collectively spend 700 billion minutes a month on Facebook. – Google’s email service Gmail ended July with 186 million worldwide users, a 22% increase from the same time…
Chinese are far more resourceful online than most in the West
The Columbia Journalism Review explains that China isn’t simply an authoritarian state where freedoms are suppressed: The resourceful ways that Chinese netizens have responded to the social injustices that surround them and to the limitations of their country’s carefully censored press, and indeed the sheer pace of change in this world, highlight one of the…
Wikileaks makes first steps to find home in Iceland
A true democracy would embrace Wikileaks to prove its commitment to transparency: Whistleblower WikiLeaks has registered in media-friendly Iceland its first known legal entity — a business that so far has no office or activity, the website’s spokesman said Friday. Wikileaks is now mulling whether to use the firm to fundraise or for information gathering,…
Damning Islam and not getting away with it in Palestine
Yet another taste of US-backed “democracy” in the West Bank. Armed, funded and backed by Washington and the international community. This is not a just Palestinian future: A mysterious blogger who set off an uproar in the Arab world by claiming he was God and hurling insults at the Prophet Muhammad is now behind bars…
Being young, cool and cluey means embracing Palestine
The idea of supporting Israel and occupation simply doesn’t wash with many young Americans, including Jews, and the generational split is growing (see here). Who wants to defend settlements and apartheid? Years ago, backing Israel was cool. These days, with the internet and satellite TV, increasing numbers of people know that Palestinian rights is one…
Hope, Votes and Bullets; documenting Iranian resistance
A wonderful new book has recently been released, Hope, Votes and Bullets (here’s an internet preview of the striking pages). It documents, through wonderful imagery, graphics and text, the millions of Iranians who took to the streets in 2009 during a period of intense political upheaval. The internet was integral to spreading the word. There…
Online dissent is being crushed (and we don’t feel fine)
My 2008 book, The Blogging Revolution, documented the rise of web censorship across the world and those fighting against it. Tragically, the problem is only getting worse in Asia and rest assured many Western web multinationals are involved: Governments across south-east Asia are following China‘s authoritarian censorship of the digital world to keep political dissent…
Censoring millions of Chinese posts daily
A revealing insight into the world of Chinese internet censorship. Massive and growing: According to the report at tech.163 on 13 of October 2010, the head of Baidu Tieba, an automatically generated forum through keyword search, Shu Xun said that the forum on average deleted 1 million posts every day. The report said: “During a…