by David Rosen
“Broadband Internet is the new electricity,” proclaimed president Joe Biden when he introduced the American Jobs Plan, a $2 trillion infrastructure plan that includes broadband upgrades. The White House statement noted: Continue reading
Hitler, pre-mustache change.
100 years ago yesterday — on July 29, 1921 — Adolph Hitler was elected leader of the Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ Party, later known as the Nazi Party. The combustible Army corporal succeeded the party’s original leader, Anton Drexler, whom Hitler originally been sent to spy on, but whose ideas he came to admire (he may even have shaved his mustache to emulate his predecessor). The 533-1 delegate vote set in motion a series of events that would dominate the next two and a half decades of world history.
10 July 2021 — Moon of Alabama
Ransomware attacks continue to disrupt many businesses. Earlier this month an attack through Kaseya VSA, a remote managing software, disabled several managed service provider and some 1,500 of their customers. Their data was encrypted and will only be restored if they pay the demanded ransom.
23 June 2021 — The New Dark Age
Eric Zuesse
On Tuesday, June 22nd, the U.S. regime blocked the Iranian Government’s TV news (equivalent to BBC in Britain and PBS in America), PressTV, so that, from now on, this is what Americans can see:
12 June 2021 — MintPress News
How and why did a hawkish young mandarin hothoused at elite universities and in the halls of state power end up an executive at an anarchic messageboard site with an anti-establishment reputation?
By Alan Macleod
5 June 2021 — The Electronic Intifada – Jonathan Cook
[Note: Jonathan Cook’s website is currently offline (as is his domain) and this has happened a couple of times over the past weeks. Accident or design? WB]
By Jonathan Cook
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has tried to shut down social media posts critical of Israel – Amir Cohen Reuters
Israel’s caretaker prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, sought to shut down all use of the popular video-sharing app TikTok in Israel last month.
The attempt to censor TikTok, details of which emerged last weekend, is one of a number of reported attempts by Israel to control social media content during last month’s military assault on the Gaza Strip.
24 May 2021 — Mint Press News
MintCast is joined by Mickey Huff, Suhair Nafal, and Jessica Buxbaum to discuss censorship and Israel’s collusion with Google and Facebook.
The ongoing assault on Palestine has captured the world’s attention. The latest violence was sparked by an attack on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem by Israeli security forces, resulting in over 300 casualties, as Muslims had gathered to celebrate Ramadan in the region’s holiest place of worship. Outside, far-right groups cheered as the mosque was damaged, and launched pogroms against non-Jews inside Israel.
Continue reading
14 May 2021 — Big Brother Watch
The emergence of a free and open internet was one of the greatest achievements of liberal democracies. The creation of a decentralised web allowed ordinary citizens in countries all over the world to share and receive information. Now, fears about crime and moral panics about disinformation mean that many liberal democracies are making the web a smaller place for everyone.
6 April 2021 — Swiss Policy Research
Former NKVD chief Nikolay Yezhov got removed from a photograph with Stalin, though not for asking questions about vaccine adverse events (Read more; source of meme)
During the coronavirus pandemic, the well-known manipulation and censorship on major US internet platforms Google/YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia has reached unprecedented levels. The platforms generally claim to enforce WHO and ‘local health authority’ guidelines, not because they are correct – they were mostly wrong – but because they are deemed “authoritative”.
3 May 2021 — Caitlin Johnson
The emergence of the internet was met with hope and enthusiasm by people who understood that the plutocrat-controlled mainstream media were manipulating public opinion to manufacture consent for the status quo. The democratization of information-sharing was going to give rise to a public consciousness that is emancipated from the domination of plutocratic narrative control, thereby opening up the possibility of revolutionary change to our society’s corrupt systems.
2 May 2021 — RT
Alarming new research into the online economy has found that just 10 domains command the majority of the world’s attention and are on course to grab even more in the coming years.
8 April, 2021 — Origin: New Eastern Outlook
PressTV’s own take on the deletion in its article, “Google renews attack on YouTube account of Iran’s Press TV,” would note:
Google has for the seventh time targeted Iranian broadcaster Press TV, blocking the English-language news network’s access to its official YouTube account without any prior notice.
The US tech giant shut YouTube accounts of Press TV late on Tuesday, citing “violations of community guidelines.”
27 March 2021 — Newsclick
‘…all countries have offensive and defensive capabilities and ‘stealing” data and knowledge from other countries are time-honoured tasks of spook agencies. It becomes an act of war only if it leads to physical damage to critical equipment or infrastructure.’
Two major hacks—SolarWind and Microsoft Exchange Server—have affected a whole range of computers systems. Both are supply-chain hacks, meaning what appeared to be a routine software upgrade to a particular component in the system, instead inserted malicious code. In the SolarWind hack a backdoor in one such component was downloaded to systems of 18,000 organisations, including even the US Treasury, Commerce, Homeland Security and State Department.
17 March 2021 — MintPress News
4 March 2021 — FAIR
The beginning of Sarah Roberts’ critique of Substack (Twitter, 2/28/21)
A debate rages in the media world about the trend of writers with substantial online followings moving away from writing for traditional publications and simply going to the website Substack, where writers sell content directly to their readers, untethered from any editorial constraint. (It’s like a less titillating version of OnlyFans.) Substack has a number of investors, including the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
24 February 2021 — Mint Press News
by Alan Macleod
Social media giant Twitter announced yesterday that it has deleted 373 accounts it claims were linked to Russia, Iran, and Armenia. In a blog post entitled “Disclosing networks of state-linked information operations,” it claimed that it had taken the decision to remove 69 Russian accounts primarily because they were “undermining faith in the NATO alliance and its stability.”The move sparked controversy on Twitter itself, with many users joking that their own fealty to NATO was insufficiently zealous.
Continue reading
25 February 2021 — Moon of Alabama
Yesterday the censorship department at Twitter went mad.
Twitter Safety blogged:
Disclosing networks of state-linked information operations
Today we are disclosing four networks of accounts to our archive of state-linked information operations; the only archive of its kind in the industry. The networks we are disclosing relate to independent, state-affiliated information operations that we have attributed to Armenia, Russia and a previously disclosed network from Iran.
…
22 February 2021 — The New Dark Age
You may have noticed the lack of Twitter and Facebook links in articles published here. There are two reasons for this: Firstly, WordPress have made embedding Twitter cumbersome and time-consuming with their latest ‘improvement’. But more importantly, I’ve decided to boycott so-called social media (I gave up my Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts years ago), which means removing links, made all the easier by WordPress’ latest change to the way the editor works.
[C]an we consider that the digital world in general has now reached the point (perhaps long past the point) where it serves the oppressors far more than it serves us? Has our habit of evaluating the benefits of technology in strictly personal terms been trumped by its use by empire for economic, political, social and militarized rule? – David Perez
So I noticed the latest Off Guardian piece is entitled, ‘ Liberation by Unplugging? https://off-guardian.org/2021/02/22/liberation-by-unplugging/ so maybe the idea of going Analogue is spreading?
This report was originally published by Mint Press News.
3 February 2021 — Off Guardian
According to a new report by Oxfam, ‘The Inequality Virus’, the wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by $3.9tn (trillion) between 18 March and 31 December 2020. Their total wealth now stands at $11.95tn.
The New Dark Age 