0 comment Monday, November 3, 2014 | admin
We knew this was coming. But all the same, it doesn't bode well, for obvious reasons.
THE ratings used for films could be applied to websites in a bid to better police the internet and protect children from harmful and offensive material, Britain's minister for culture has said.
Andy Burnham told Britain's The Daily Telegraph newspaper the government was planning to negotiate with the administration of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to draw up new international rules for English language websites.
"The more we seek international solutions to this stuff - the UK and the U.S. working together - the more that an international norm will set an industry norm," the newspaper reports the Culture Secretary as saying.
Giving websites film-style ratings would be one possibilty.
"This is an area that is really now coming into full focus," Mr Burnham said.
Internet service providers could also be forced to offer services where the only sites accessible are those deemed suitable for children, the paper said.
[...]
"If you look back at the people who created the internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that governments couldn't reach," Burnham told The Daily Telegraph. "I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now."
He said some content should not be available to be viewed.
"This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it."
[Emphasis mine]
We all know that the interpretations of 'offensive' or 'harmful' or 'hateful' will rest with the liberals and leftists who are now to be in the drivers' seat in Washington, D.C. as of January. And if ''our" government is to work hand-in-hand with the leftist British government, no good can come from that for either country.
Blogs like this one, and many other, far less politically incorrect blogs and forums will be filtered if not removed entirely. It may not happen overnight, but this is the direction in which we are headed.
The politically correct vigilantes will be ever more emboldened to silence anyone who fails to toe the line.
We should be thinking about ways to circumvent this effort to quash free speech. We will have to find alternatives, and I believe where there's a will, there's a way. We will have to find alternative ways to communicate and to speak the truth that needs to be heard.
I'm convinced that one of the first acts of our new overlords will be to pass the 'hate speech' and 'hate crime' laws that they have been itching to push through, but failed to do in the last session. I am convinced that this is a priority for them.
"The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing." - John Adams
"In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Who ever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." - Benjamin Franklin
"For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished freedom is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while there was still time. - Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland
"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no Constitution, no Law, no Court can save it...Where do you stand Citizen?" - Judge Learned Hand
'"Truth is hate to those who hate the truth" - quote from protester Arlene Elshinnawy, from the WND article linked above
THE ratings used for films could be applied to websites in a bid to better police the internet and protect children from harmful and offensive material, Britain's minister for culture has said.
Andy Burnham told Britain's The Daily Telegraph newspaper the government was planning to negotiate with the administration of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to draw up new international rules for English language websites.
"The more we seek international solutions to this stuff - the UK and the U.S. working together - the more that an international norm will set an industry norm," the newspaper reports the Culture Secretary as saying.
Giving websites film-style ratings would be one possibilty.
"This is an area that is really now coming into full focus," Mr Burnham said.
Internet service providers could also be forced to offer services where the only sites accessible are those deemed suitable for children, the paper said.
[...]
"If you look back at the people who created the internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that governments couldn't reach," Burnham told The Daily Telegraph. "I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now."
He said some content should not be available to be viewed.
"This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it."
[Emphasis mine]
We all know that the interpretations of 'offensive' or 'harmful' or 'hateful' will rest with the liberals and leftists who are now to be in the drivers' seat in Washington, D.C. as of January. And if ''our" government is to work hand-in-hand with the leftist British government, no good can come from that for either country.
Blogs like this one, and many other, far less politically incorrect blogs and forums will be filtered if not removed entirely. It may not happen overnight, but this is the direction in which we are headed.
The politically correct vigilantes will be ever more emboldened to silence anyone who fails to toe the line.
We should be thinking about ways to circumvent this effort to quash free speech. We will have to find alternatives, and I believe where there's a will, there's a way. We will have to find alternative ways to communicate and to speak the truth that needs to be heard.
I'm convinced that one of the first acts of our new overlords will be to pass the 'hate speech' and 'hate crime' laws that they have been itching to push through, but failed to do in the last session. I am convinced that this is a priority for them.
"The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing." - John Adams
"In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Who ever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." - Benjamin Franklin
"For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished freedom is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while there was still time. - Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland
"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no Constitution, no Law, no Court can save it...Where do you stand Citizen?" - Judge Learned Hand
'"Truth is hate to those who hate the truth" - quote from protester Arlene Elshinnawy, from the WND article linked above
Labels: Bloggers, Blogs, Censorship, Cultural Marxism, Free Press, Free Speech, Freedom Of Expression, Hate Speech, Internet, Liberal Intolerance, Liberals
0 comment Wednesday, June 4, 2014 | admin
In this article from the not-too-distant past, a blogger comments on a news story about -- what a coincidence -- blog wars.
...the kind of exchange that regularly lights up the blogosphere in varying degrees of nastiness. Feuds spill into vast corners of typo-ridden cyberspace as bloggers post and repost passages for paint-by-number demolition and incendiary comments fan the flames.
You can't help but think that Thomas Jefferson himself would be pleased to know that out there in the awesome equalizing social force that is the Internet, people armed with the power of free-flowing ideas are busy pummeling the crap out of each other.
More than that, they're doing it in public, with an often participatory audience. Blog fights are verbal steel-cage smackdowns with a revolving door. Says Ariel Meadow Stallings, a Seattle writer who posts her random musings at Electrolicious.com: "Bloggers are an inflammatory bunch."
It seems that even the innocuous topics, like parenting, often lead to ugly exchanges on the Internet. It isn't just politics that sparks this kind of thing. I was once on a message board discussion about a TV show that erupted into an ugly flame war.
So how does a blogger avoid being embroiled in this kind of thing, or defuse it once it's started?
Is it possible to unilaterally opt out of a blog war? Is it ended when one side stops fighting back?
...the kind of exchange that regularly lights up the blogosphere in varying degrees of nastiness. Feuds spill into vast corners of typo-ridden cyberspace as bloggers post and repost passages for paint-by-number demolition and incendiary comments fan the flames.
You can't help but think that Thomas Jefferson himself would be pleased to know that out there in the awesome equalizing social force that is the Internet, people armed with the power of free-flowing ideas are busy pummeling the crap out of each other.
More than that, they're doing it in public, with an often participatory audience. Blog fights are verbal steel-cage smackdowns with a revolving door. Says Ariel Meadow Stallings, a Seattle writer who posts her random musings at Electrolicious.com: "Bloggers are an inflammatory bunch."
It seems that even the innocuous topics, like parenting, often lead to ugly exchanges on the Internet. It isn't just politics that sparks this kind of thing. I was once on a message board discussion about a TV show that erupted into an ugly flame war.
So how does a blogger avoid being embroiled in this kind of thing, or defuse it once it's started?
Is it possible to unilaterally opt out of a blog war? Is it ended when one side stops fighting back?
Labels: Blogging, Blogosphere, Civility, Internet
0 comment Friday, May 9, 2014 | admin
These days I am not likely to doubt much that I read when it comes to the powers-that-be and their antics.
I think we've discussed similar things in passing here, the idea (which has been admitted in various places) that paid operatives or provocateurs or disinformation agents stir things up on blogs, forums and other places. Why not do the same in the most popular internet venues, the social networking sites?
''The US government is offering private intelligence companies contracts to create software to manage "fake people" on social media sites and create the illusion of consensus on controversial issues.
[...]
According to the contract, the software would "protect the identity of government agencies" by employing a number of false signals to convince users that the poster is in fact a real person. A single user could manage unique background information and status updates for up to 10 fake people from a single computer.The software enables the government to shield its identity through a number of different methods including the ability to assign unique IP addresses to each persona and the ability to make it appear as though the user is posting from other locations around the world.''
The impression is given that this new software is still in the development stage, when it appears that this kind of thing is being done already.
The article states that one of their purposes is to ''create the illusion of consensus'' on certain issues.
Peer pressure works on the Internet as in 'real life', after all. Too many people will simply follow the lead, taking cues from what 'the majority' seem to be saying on a given issue, and the bandwagon effect kicks in.
The article does not say this, but I say that there is also the opposite going on: people fomenting disssension, attacking other groups or viewpoints, so as to break up a developing consensus and set people against one another. I believe this serves their purposes very well. The technique of breaking up incipient activist groups is something that is well-practiced. And even the very act of discussing something like this serves the purposes of the sowers of discord; the fact that people may not be what they purport to be causes us to be wary and to distrust people more.
And there are individuals who are probably stirring up distrust and bad feeling on their own, out of malice or just to watch the fireworks when everybody starts squabbling and name-calling. There is something about the Internet, the anonymity perhaps, that encourages the worst instincts in some people, and makes them bold to say things that would not be acceptable in face-to-face contacts among people.
Thoughts?
I think we've discussed similar things in passing here, the idea (which has been admitted in various places) that paid operatives or provocateurs or disinformation agents stir things up on blogs, forums and other places. Why not do the same in the most popular internet venues, the social networking sites?
''The US government is offering private intelligence companies contracts to create software to manage "fake people" on social media sites and create the illusion of consensus on controversial issues.
[...]
According to the contract, the software would "protect the identity of government agencies" by employing a number of false signals to convince users that the poster is in fact a real person. A single user could manage unique background information and status updates for up to 10 fake people from a single computer.The software enables the government to shield its identity through a number of different methods including the ability to assign unique IP addresses to each persona and the ability to make it appear as though the user is posting from other locations around the world.''
The impression is given that this new software is still in the development stage, when it appears that this kind of thing is being done already.
The article states that one of their purposes is to ''create the illusion of consensus'' on certain issues.
Peer pressure works on the Internet as in 'real life', after all. Too many people will simply follow the lead, taking cues from what 'the majority' seem to be saying on a given issue, and the bandwagon effect kicks in.
The article does not say this, but I say that there is also the opposite going on: people fomenting disssension, attacking other groups or viewpoints, so as to break up a developing consensus and set people against one another. I believe this serves their purposes very well. The technique of breaking up incipient activist groups is something that is well-practiced. And even the very act of discussing something like this serves the purposes of the sowers of discord; the fact that people may not be what they purport to be causes us to be wary and to distrust people more.
And there are individuals who are probably stirring up distrust and bad feeling on their own, out of malice or just to watch the fireworks when everybody starts squabbling and name-calling. There is something about the Internet, the anonymity perhaps, that encourages the worst instincts in some people, and makes them bold to say things that would not be acceptable in face-to-face contacts among people.
Thoughts?
Labels: Divide And Rule, Divisiveness, Internet, Propaganda