All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. --Thomas Jefferson If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all. --Noam Chomsky People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat. --Rebecca West
Showing posts with label Free Speech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Free Speech. Show all posts
Friday, September 28, 2018
The Recent Defamation of #WikiLeaks and #JulianAssange, Part 1
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Tuesday, October 06, 2015
Our New Canada #StopBillC51
In 1933, Hitler established various policies both before and after he took absolute power. Some were:
1. Censorship
2. Gun Control
3. A Bill virtually identical to C-51 (as per Rocco Galati, Constitutional Lawyer)
4. A Bill virtually identical to the Barbaric Practices Act called the Malicious Practices Act
5. The only people considered German were those the Nazis deemed 'genetically' pure germans and German Citizenship was restricted to them.
1. Censorship
2. Gun Control
3. A Bill virtually identical to C-51 (as per Rocco Galati, Constitutional Lawyer)
4. A Bill virtually identical to the Barbaric Practices Act called the Malicious Practices Act
5. The only people considered German were those the Nazis deemed 'genetically' pure germans and German Citizenship was restricted to them.
And note, that these Bills recently passed in Canada make most of the crimes committed in this book LEGAL!
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Justice for the Zone 9 Bloggers #FreeZone9bloggers
Source: https://vimeo.com/126145975
Bloggers are citizen journalists.
The Final Posts of a Murdered Blogger
The following bloggers are not Zone 9 bloggers but the issue of protecting the free speech rights of bloggers on the web as citizen journalists is a general one. Many bloggers around the world have been imprisoned, murdered, executed, or persecuted for the opinions they are expressing. Everyone irrespective of their beliefs and whether anyone thinks their beliefs are offensive or not has a natural right to Free Speech, free expression of those beliefs. If that natural right is removed from some, it can potentially be removed on all on the same grounds. Dangerous beliefs are better expressed in the open than in underground because they can be challenged, refuted, and exposed as dangerous when they are out in the open. Hate speech laws are not a protection of citizen rights they are assault on all citizen rights even if we disagree with the opinions they are intended to 'protect' us from.
“No one with a free mind can limit themselves within the walls of narrow-mindedness,” Ananta Bijoy Das wrote hours before his death.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
CyberHarassment: Exploring Solutions
Online abuse is, unfortunately, a common problem. It seems that there are some people in this world who simply get a lot of pleasure out of abusing others and the online world is a fertile ground for finding vulnerable victims. By vulnerable I’m not really referring to people who have any particular physical, emotional , or psychological vulnerabilities but rather the fact that we are all vulnerable in the online world to having our personal and professional reputations injured or destroyed. All knowledge and information about us which is out there is available to be twisted, misrepresented, distorted, exaggerated, lies invented based on it, and otherwise abused to present us in a negative light, in public, amongst those who either don’t know us or only know us casually.
We are also vulnerable to this abuse in real life but it’s harder to do and requires more structure and organization. It’s also harder to prove that it’s going on in real life. In the online world where nothing ever really gets deleted (despite the harassers attempts to remove the evidence) it can almost always be located and therefore the allegations proven.
Someone, somewhere has almost always archived it for posterity.
So, while the lies never get erased, your refutations to the lies also never get erased. If you’ve done your job properly the truth can and will overwhelm the lie and the liars even if they outnumber you.
However, going through that process is time consuming and often quite painful because those who engage in cyberharassment and stalking often have nothing else to do. They can (and do) spend hours doing this because they are dysfunctional people living dysfunctional lives whereas those of us being targeted with this abuse are trying to lead active, normal lives and this nonsense takes us away from that.
While these stalkers and harassers are usually incredibly stupid people, they do excel at lying so you will be dealing with their false allegations with the police, social media sites, friends, family, etc. sometimes for years. In the case of psychopaths, it’s pretty much guaranteed that they’ll be on your case for years or until they get themselves incarcerated in prison or a psych ward.
This is one reason why this type of harassment can’t be ignored or swept under the carpet. The lies, if left to fester can and do take on a life of their own and become ‘truth’ by virtue of the fact that there is nothing out there refuting them.
When it comes to one’s personal and professional reputation these lies can have a deep and often immeasurable impact, especially vicious ones like the current ‘call everyone you hate a pedo’ rage.
The more seriously mentally ill the cyberharasser/stalker is, the further they will go with their abuse and lies.
If you:
- Challenge their story by challenging the fact that they have no evidence? Voila, evidence gets fabricated in the form of fake photoshopped screenshots, fake pedo web sites set up under the targets personal name as the domain, quoting known liars or people who have an obvious bias, etc.
- Expose their lies and their cowardice? Voila numerous false allegations/complaints filed with police, social media sites you’re a member of, government agencies, employers (past and present), schools, social service agencies (if you receive assistance), etc.
- Confront their lies? Voila they recruit other stalkers to spew them for them so that they can claim ‘they aren’t the only ones that hate you’. Suddenly you’re surrounded by a goon squad wallowing in its own filth of lies, the intent being to overwhelm the truth with the lies.
So, what are the solutions?
What can we do to deal more effectively with such lunacy online. Aside from having those who engage in this abuse carted off to their local Psych Ward in strait jackets or to prison. While that will certainly help resolve the problem, it isn’t the easiest thing to do and in the mean time we all have to survive the crazies.
While we can’t change the fact that there are seriously disturbed people out there in the world, many of whom have access to the Internet and are going to be problems… there are often small things that can be done that end up having a big impact.
This recent article from Wired provided some interesting examples and insight into this issue:
According to the article, a simple process like providing a specific and detailed explanation for why someone was banned reduced the recidivism of the bad behavior dramatically whereas not providing an explanation resulted in a ‘disturbingly high’ recidivism rate.
The team also found that it’s important to enforce the rules in ways that people understand. When Riot’s team started its research, it noticed that the recidivism rate was disturbingly high; in fact, based on number of reports per day, some banned players were actually getting worse after their bans than they were before. At the time, players were informed of their suspension via emails that didn’t explain why the punishment had been meted out. So Riot decided to try a new system that specifically cited the offense. This led to a very different result: Now when banned players returned to the game, their bad behavior dropped measurably.
–Extract from Curbing Online Abuse Isn’t Impossible
A solution like this actually accomplishes three things which are excellent for the consumer of the service.
- The user has a clear understanding of what the behavior that was considered negative is, and knows that if they want to stay on the site they can’t engage in that specific behavior again. This creates a solid deterrent for that negative behavior.
- The support staff are required to properly examine the issue and provide a specific reason, presumably with the evidence that the person did indeed violate the rules. This has the benefit of ensuring that Support staff do their jobs properly and can actually justify the suspension (or lack of suspension based on a complaint). That is they can justify it based on actual written policy rather than just an arbitrary spur of the minute, get this off my desk fast, decision or I feel sorry for person A, I’m on their side and will help them even though the person isn’t doing what person A says they’re doing, etc.
- Most importantly, any sense of injustice or unfairness at the decisions is also removed because everything has been properly explained and justified. This, in and of itself, can lead to self-correcting behavior. Justice has been done.
Of course, the person might find the standard itself objectionable which is a different issue but one that should be addressed by any social media site which actually wants to be a comfortable place for their users. They could have a special forum where these types of discussions can occur directly with Support staff or Development staff. Explanations will resolve 90% of the issues and the other 10% probably need to be fixed. If they can’t be fixed, people are kept informed and things are unlikely to get out of hand. Or, at least less often, than they would without these measures in place.
The reality is that the current recidivism rate for ‘bad’ behavior is disturbingly high on sites like Twitter and Facebook, and the decisions to remove or leave items being objected to are arbitrary, inconsistent, and frequently not based on the written site rules/policy.
Frequently items which obviously violate the social media site’s policy are left while items which don’t are removed and the posters suspended, banned or otherwise punished despite the fact that they didn’t violate any policy or rule.
I’m currently in a battle with Twitter and have been for a nearly a month to get my business Twitter account unsuspended. Twitter refuses to interact with me to provide any explanation, rationalization, or justification for their arbitrary (and unjustified) actions.
I have provided a detailed refutation to Twitter (in several emails now) including the tweets that I was tweeting at the time my account was suspended based on a false complaint, and screenshots of Twitters own interface showing that at least one allegation is completely bogus and without any merit. This has, so far, been completely ignored.
Not only is this frustrating to the user who is the target of cyberbullying / harassment and being further victimized by false accusations of allegedly doing what is actually being done to them, but it enables and encourages the cyberbullies and harassers to take things further and further. After all, their scam worked.
And you can rest assured they will be smugly gloating about the fact that it worked while coming up with ways to escalate things even further. Of course, they’ll blame you for the escalations. How dare you stand up to their abuse and do so publicly. That’s cyberbullying them according to their sick and twisted thinking. Lol.
To Facebook’s credit, they have banned Michael Babcock from Facebook because of his ongoing bullying and harassing behavior, defamations, lies, etc. They closed down over 20 Facebook sites set up by him for no other purpose than to personally attack, defame and spread lies about social activists on Facebook. Particularly anti-pedophilia social activists. Babcock is just one of a group of people that are part of this current harassment campaign and instigating numerous Tard Krews into senselessly targeting innocent people who are anti-pedophilia social activists.
All this accomplishes, of course, is to protect the real pedophiles since those who are going after them, the anti-pedophilia social activists, are being discredited and defamed by this group of people: Antonio F. Lopez /Kree Love Dallas, TX (impersonating UK teen Kree Love) et al, Thomas Schroeder aka Thomas Cook aka Juliet Biehl et al, Julie Ann Larson aka Rusalka Sireen aka Javeria Laila et al, Christopher Joseph Erwin aka Jason Steele, Michael Babcock aka N2KMaster aka CoderHyguru aka Coder Hyguru.
The article proposes the following and I agree because it’s focusing entirely on the behavior that’s exhibited rather than the content of what is said. What is said only matters when it leads to negative behaviors and on those grounds free speech has always had some limitations.
You can’t shout ‘fire’ in a theatre because of the impact that will have on behavior.
CyberBullying and harassment are the same. When you falsely call someone a Pedo or Pedo enabler and post it all over the web in numerous blogs, web sites, torrents, pastes, on DarkNet with personal information in Doxbin, etc. etc. there is an impact not only to the person targeted but to others who might decide to interact in negative ways with the target because of those false allegations.
So, this isn’t about free speech. It’s about bullying and harassing behaviors.
Extracted from the article:
What would our social networks look like if their guidelines and enforcement reflected real-life community norms? If Riot’s experiments are any guide, it’s unlikely that most or even many users would deem a lot of the casual abuse, the kind that’s driving so many people out of online spaces, to be acceptable. Think about how social networks might improve if—as on the gaming sites and in real life—users had more power to reject abusive behavior. Of course, different online spaces will require different solutions, but the outlines are roughly the same:
- involve users in the moderation process,
- set defaults that create hurdles to abuse,
- give clearer feedback for people who misbehave,
- and—above all—create a norm in which harassment simply isn’t tolerated.
–Extract from Curbing Online Abuse Isn’t Impossible
Update May 27, 2014: Babcock has returned to Facebook. Whether this is with or without Facebook's knowledge is unknown at this time. His usual game is to sneak around using socks. However, his pages and sock accounts are being closely monitored by quite a few people. Any defamatory libel, abuse or pathological lies about anyone will be immediately reported. Babcock created numerous pages whose sole purpose was to harass and defame innocent people with the lies he likes to fabricate. Facebook did the right thing to remove these harassment pages. There are no constitutional protections for people to lie and defame others. If he wants to call innocent people pedophiles or peophile enablers he should provide the evidence or shut the fuck up. While he claims to have Gigabytes of evidence, it's all nothing but misinterpreted nonsense which has for the most part been taken out of context and doesn't mean what he alleges it means. He's either a pathological liar, has extremely poor reading skills (elementary school level at best), or so mentally ill that he can't even interpret the written word correctly. His technical skills are so shoddy that he can't even interpret the simplest forensics software results correctly either.
Update May 27, 2014: Babcock has returned to Facebook. Whether this is with or without Facebook's knowledge is unknown at this time. His usual game is to sneak around using socks. However, his pages and sock accounts are being closely monitored by quite a few people. Any defamatory libel, abuse or pathological lies about anyone will be immediately reported. Babcock created numerous pages whose sole purpose was to harass and defame innocent people with the lies he likes to fabricate. Facebook did the right thing to remove these harassment pages. There are no constitutional protections for people to lie and defame others. If he wants to call innocent people pedophiles or peophile enablers he should provide the evidence or shut the fuck up. While he claims to have Gigabytes of evidence, it's all nothing but misinterpreted nonsense which has for the most part been taken out of context and doesn't mean what he alleges it means. He's either a pathological liar, has extremely poor reading skills (elementary school level at best), or so mentally ill that he can't even interpret the written word correctly. His technical skills are so shoddy that he can't even interpret the simplest forensics software results correctly either.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
HRC: Section 13. Hate Speech
"Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say Fuck the Government"
--Lenny Bruce
I'm not a white supremacist. I'm not even white.
I object to Section 13 because it amounts to convicting people of thought crimes.
I would rather deal with racist name calling than having my civil right to free speech curtailed on specious and possibly baseless grounds.
Section
13 put us on the slippery slope of where and how to define "hate"
speech. A definition which could mean anything to anyone depending on
their social and political perspective.
It's time it was removed and I'm glad the Canadian Harper Conservatives made it go away.
It's a good day for Civil Rights and Liberties in Canada. We won something for a change.
Now, if they would stop being such hypocrites and repeal the fascist laws they're trying to have implemented today ....
Now, if they would stop being such hypocrites and repeal the fascist laws they're trying to have implemented today ....
Friday, January 27, 2012
STOP SOPA in Canada!
The following is the content of an online Petition located at the Petition Site:
With SOPA and PIPA dead in the U.S., lobbyists may be working behind the scenes to pass similar legislation in Canada.
Because of the music industry's proposed changes to copyright reform bill C-11, Canada could be "a prime target for SOPA style rules," warns Ottawa law professor Michael Geist.
The main point of contention is the industry's push to expand and add statutory damages to an "enabler provision" that would target a wider range of websites and run liability into the millions of dollars for a target website. Other groups are pushing for language that some fear could be used to shut down sites like YouTube.
The massive public protest over the SOPA and PIPA provisions was due to their threat to the Internet and freedom of speech. The same protest is needed to stop SOPA-like changes to Canada's C-11 bill.
Don't let the U.S. Send SOPA to Canada.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Saturday, January 14, 2012
STOP SOPA and PIPA
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Educate yourself on SOPA and PIPA and find out why it matters to oppose these laws! |
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Facebook Page |
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Electronic Frontier Foundation |
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Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Occupy Toronto: To The CEOs
I caught a small part of a CBC Interview yesterday with a representative of an association that represents Canadian CEOs.
The CEO representative, when asked what he thought about the Occupy movement responded, a little defensively, that the democratic/capitalist model is the best one human beings have come up with because it’s the one that has been demonstrated to work.
He appeared to be implying that the Occupy Toronto movement was about eliminating capitalism.
In the interests of clarification, let me point out that the Occupy movement is about giving everyone a voice.
Not everyone is a communist, or even a leftist. A few are. Most are not.
Red-baiting is a strategy intended to discredit by using the logical fallacy of Guilt By Association. It’s a well-established form of Disinformation Propaganda.
I’m not saying that this CEO representative was engaging in the sleazy tactic of Red-baiting but his comments amounted to that, intentional or not.
Speaking for myself, I agree with the CEO representative that the democratic/capitalist model is the best one humanity has come up with and the most workable one.
That doesn’t mean that it can’t be undermined and corrupted and doesn’t need to be fixed.
This is the problem, in my opinion. It needs fixing and each and every one of us is going to have either the same or different opinions on what the fixes need to be.
In my opinion, when a few members of the wealthy elite hold an inordinate amount of power and influence over democratic policy making which is supposed to benefit all Canadians not just the wealthy elite then our democratic processes and our financial system are being undermined by that wealthy elite.
This opens the door for wide-scale corruption and abuse of power.
This is something we’ve been seeing in Canada for years now and which has never been seriously addressed other than having the occasional scandal where someone gets ousted from a political position.
This was the kind of stuff the old Reform Party used to talk about until they became the Conservative Party and appear to have changed their priorities.
I’m not saying that I agreed with the old Reform Party but I will say that they made some good points when criticizing the traditional political parties.
This is also the stuff that Michael Ignatieff has recently started talking about as well.
It’s probably a good thing for Ignatieff that he’s not leading the Liberal Party given the fact that the vast majority of corruption and abuse of power scandals that I am aware of, many of which were financial in nature, occurred when the Liberals were in power both Federally and Provincially.
Ignatieff is probably too ethical for the Liberals. They seem to prefer two-faced lying sleazeballs like Bob Rae (has anyone forgotten the hell he put Ontario through?)
Anyway, the Occupy movement has and is accomplishing one very important thing, amongst others:
The discussion of what is wrong and how it can be fixed is happening.
And that's what most of us want.
And that's what most of us want.
It’s a start.
We Are The Majority and We Have A Voice!
Watch live streaming video from occupytoronto at livestream.com
Bring Back Michael Ignatief and Dump Bob Rae!
Friday, October 14, 2011
Sunday, October 09, 2011
Occupy Toronto: Declaration of the Occupy New York General Assembly
Note to the traditional media which is claiming that the Occupy Movement is only about "financial" corruption. As you can see below it isn't. It's about ALL corruption including the corruption the traditional media itself is infested with when they try to misrepresent and misdirect with misinformation, what is actually going on here.
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments.
We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
*These grievances are not all-inclusive.
Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on september 29, 2011
Translations: French, Slovak, Spanish, German, Italian
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments.
We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
*These grievances are not all-inclusive.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
Occupy Toronto: A Pumps and Brogues Movement
“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.” – John Lennon, before his murder by Mark David Chapman
Why do some people find these occupations so incomprehensible?
One person was asked in a media interview, “what are you protesting? what do you want?” His response was, “if you have to ask you’ve got to much money.”
This is partially true but doesn’t quite nail it. It’s also about the complete disconnect that some have about the world we live in.
Call it naivete or gullibility or sheer stupidity or willful and self-serving ignorance. It exists. It’s a fact. And anyone who doesn’t get the Occupy movement suffers from this disease.
I got it right away. No-one had to tell me that the Occupy movement is about having a true Democracy. That was the point of the Arab Spring. It was a Democracy movement. That is also the point of the North American Autumn.
And no, many of us aren’t buying the deceptive delusion, the snake oil, that we’re being sold by the big media, big government which represents big corporate interests, the wealthy, etc. that we have a democracy, that we have rights, that those rights are protected.
We don’t have any of things. We have them on paper. We don’t have them in reality. If we did, there would be no need for an Occupy movement to push the envelope for a true Democracy. One that doesn’t just exist on paper. One that exists for each and every ordinary Citizen in reality.
The Occupy movement includes but is not limited to:
- the rights of the ordinary Citizen to have an effective say in our society.
- the economic protection of the wealthy and the economic abuse of the rest of us through the misuse and abuse of the tax dollars of those ordinary Citizens whose voices have been silenced.
- the rank moral bankruptcy and corruption that infests our governments, corporations, institutions, professional associations, etc. today.
- impunity of big corporations and the wealthy from being held accountable for criminal acts when they commit them.
- impunity of police, intelligence and other security agencies from being held accountable for enabling the rogue agents in their midst and their abuses of power, misappropriations of government funds, etc. by turning a blind eye to their abuses and criminal acts.
- the rights of ordinary Citizens that are violated with impunity regularly and those who are paid by ordinary Citizens through our tax dollars refusal to protect us from those violations or provide us with what we need to protect ourselves or criminally collude in those violations of the rights of ordinary Citizens.
- the silencing, marginalizing, smearing, harassing, malicious persecution, and other extreme and systematic abuses of ordinary Citizens who speak out against these criminal acts, this moral bankruptcy, abuse of power, etc. as well as innocent ordinary Citizens who are subjected to these abuses for no other reason than they can be.
Amongst other things ….
Just ask anyone who is there.
Most importantly, it's about giving the voiceless a voice which has an impact on our world.
Most importantly, it's about giving the voiceless a voice which has an impact on our world.
I'm a Web and Software Developer and I'm unemployed.
I'll be there in my Business Casual suit, office pumps and briefcase.
If I'm going to get arrested for peacefully protesting, that's the image I want the world to see.
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Friday, December 10, 2010
Shooting The Messenger: The Persecution of Julian Assange
"We support a cause that is no more radical a proposition than the citizenry has a right to scrutinize the state." --Julian Assange
The traditions of Western Journalism run deep and strong in Wikileaks despite the attempts of some to divert, dodge and evade the real issues that Wikileaks actions have brought to light.
What are those real issues?
1. Some Governments engage in corrupt, illegal, immoral and/or unethical acts.
2. Some Governments would prefer to create scapegoats to take the blame, rather than take responsibility for their own failures.
Let's look at Issue 1.
The citizenry of most democratic countries elect their representatives. In order for us to elect them responsibly transparency in government is required.
Too much secrecy takes away from that transparency and enables those who are corrupt. It enables those who wish to abuse their power by committing illegal acts against those they don't like or misappropriating government funds or any of the many other crimes that corrupt people in positions of power tend to commit.
As much transparency as possible is necessary to prevent this.
That's not to say there isn't such a thing as legitimate secrets. However, these should be few and far between and it's the Government's responsibility to protect them. No-one else.
Frankly, looking at some of the Wikileaks documents marked Secret I can only conclude that many governments go way too far when it comes to identifying and defining what they think the population shouldn't know or see.
Frankly, looking at some of the Wikileaks documents marked Secret I can only conclude that many governments go way too far when it comes to identifying and defining what they think the population shouldn't know or see.
That said, let's look at Issue 2.
According to many Government Officials and Elected Representatives around the world Julian Assange is a criminal, a terrorist, a spy, has committed treason, should be assassinated (yes someone actually said that and it was a Canadian government official), etc.
And yet, what crime has Julian Assange actually committed? None.
The only crime that was committed, was committed by the person who actually took the documents and gave them to Wikileaks.
Julian Assange and Wikileaks are doing nothing more than acting in the tradition of Western Journalism, creating a news feed of material they receive and releasing that material to other Journalists and the Traditional Media much like AP (Associated Press) does.
Do Journalists have any obligation or responsibility to keep Secret material obtained secret? No they don't. If they did, Watergate would never have happened and corrupt government officials would never have been held accountable for their crimes.
Do Journalists have any obligation or responsibility to protect their sources? Yes they do. If they didn't no-one would ever come forward to expose corruption, abuse of power, fraud, etc. from high places. We need them to be able to do that in order to protect, maintain and keep our democratic system strong.
Do Journalists have any obligation or responsibility to protect their sources? Yes they do. If they didn't no-one would ever come forward to expose corruption, abuse of power, fraud, etc. from high places. We need them to be able to do that in order to protect, maintain and keep our democratic system strong.
This feature of traditional Western Journalism needs to be protected if we want to protect our democratic system. They work hand-in-hand.
For that reason, our democratic system has a duty and obligation to protect any Journalist who is acting in that tradition from persecution and abuse. Not doing so weakens our democracy and enables corruption.
For that reason, our democratic system has a duty and obligation to protect any Journalist who is acting in that tradition from persecution and abuse. Not doing so weakens our democracy and enables corruption.
And sadly, it's that very tradition that's been lost in the modern traditional Media. We can no longer count on that Media to do their job.
So, along comes Wikileaks to fill in that gap and perform the Public Service that the modern traditional Media abandoned.
And Governments around the world want to suppress them, scapegoat them, kill them. Corporations they do business with are withdrawing services they have legitimately paid and contracted for.
And Assange has been personally victimized with specious charges of "sexual assault", the timing of which make them appear to be more about discrediting and smearing him, than any actual criminal act on his part.
Why is all of this happening? Because Assange and Wikileaks are doing their job!
The end result of which is the potential embarrassment and exposure of abuse of power, corruption, immorality and unethical behavior at the highest levels of the government and corporate world.
And Governments around the world want to suppress them, scapegoat them, kill them. Corporations they do business with are withdrawing services they have legitimately paid and contracted for.
And Assange has been personally victimized with specious charges of "sexual assault", the timing of which make them appear to be more about discrediting and smearing him, than any actual criminal act on his part.
Why is all of this happening? Because Assange and Wikileaks are doing their job!
The end result of which is the potential embarrassment and exposure of abuse of power, corruption, immorality and unethical behavior at the highest levels of the government and corporate world.
In other words, this is what these Governments really consider a crime and "treasonous":
Free Speech and an Independent Media that acts as a Watch Dog over Government and Corporate corruption and crime.
In my opinion, the only real crimes here are Government incompetence at maintaining their own security and their shooting of the messenger by persecuting and scapegoating Julian Assange.
If you want to help Wikileaks and have a Unix box, mirror their site to ensure the material remains available.
Let's protect Free Speech and an Independent Media that acts as a Watch Dog over Government and Corporate corruption and crime!
If you want to help Wikileaks and have a Unix box, mirror their site to ensure the material remains available.
Let's protect Free Speech and an Independent Media that acts as a Watch Dog over Government and Corporate corruption and crime!
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