Repressing the Internet, Western-Style

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Repressing the Internet, Western-Style

August 16th, 2011

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

EVGENY MOROZOV
Wall Street Journal
August 15, 2011

Did the youthful rioters who roamed the streets of London, Manchester and other British cities expect to see their photos scrutinized by angry Internet users, keen to identify the miscreants? In the immediate aftermath of the riots, many cyber-vigilantes turned to Facebook, Flickr and other social networking sites to study pictures of the violence. Some computer-savvy members even volunteered to automate the process by using software to compare rioters’ faces with faces pictured elsewhere on the Internet.

The rioting youths were not exactly Luddites either. They used BlackBerrys to send their messages, avoiding more visible platforms like Facebook and Twitter. It’s telling that they looted many stores selling fancy electronics. The path is short, it would seem, from “digital natives” to “digital restives.”

A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Technology has empowered all sides in this skirmish: the rioters, the vigilantes, the government and even the ordinary citizens eager to help. But it has empowered all of them to different degrees. As the British police, armed with the latest facial-recognition technology, go through the footage captured by their numerous closed-circuit TV cameras and study chat transcripts and geolocation data, they are likely to identify many of the culprits.

Authoritarian states are monitoring these developments closely. Chinese state media, for one, blamed the riots on a lack of Chinese-style controls over social media. Such regimes are eager to see what kind of precedents will be set by Western officials as they wrestle with these evolving technologies. They hope for at least partial vindication of their own repressive policies.

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One Response to “Repressing the Internet, Western-Style”

“Hideyoshi, mindful of his own rise to power, initiated the Great Sword Hunt in 1588, 4 years before the first invasion of the Asian mainland. It banned any farmers from possessing any sort of weapon and allowed only the warrior class of the samurai to possess weapons. Hideyoshi brutally enforced this policy and followed it up with the Edict on Changing Status. This document stated three things. Firstly, all warriors who had returned to village life were to be expelled. Secondly, all villagers were forbidden from becoming merchants or engaging in any sort of trade. Thirdly, the Edict on Changing Status prohibited the employment of warriors who had deserted their previous lords. Hideyoshi clearly drew a line between villager and warrior status; one which he brutally enforced. In a single stroke, Hideyoshi had destroyed social mobility and completely abrogated the concept of both ji-samurai and ashigaru.”

Hideyoshi was the Japanese leader who united the country during the nearly 250+ years civil war. To keep his power he banned farmers, those ashigaru that he had used before, from possessing weapons.

Learn from history and learn to identify the actions of the ruling class for what they are… legislation, decrees, edicts, etc. that take away power from the people are only meant to keep the tyrants in their cushy thrones.

Wake up planet Earth!