Half of my life I lived under a regime of dictatorship. As a kid I didn’t feel it that strong, growing up I have discovered it being insane. Beside any stupidities concerning the rulers, censorship is what I hated most. When Gorbachev launched his transparency in politics platform, people started to see hope in the near future. An apparent lack of censorship begun to manifest after December 1989, when CIA with help from key Romanians overthrown Nicolae Ceauşescu, the “King of Communism”. They fixed it to appear a spontaneous spasm of the oppressed society, but it was no such a thing. People who stayed on streets felt something, the others, hiding in front of their television set, embraced almost immediately the manipulation. Anyway, there’s a long story, it hasn’t stopped yet, but what I want to say is that for a few months, official, political censorship was dead.
Censorship in Turkey
In our days, Turkey, a country viewing itself as very democratic, tightened control over the Internet and expanded the powers of its telecoms authority, augmenting the government’s web censorship regime to allow it to more quickly block content without legal delays. A bill passed by parliament on Monday handed the telecoms authority the power to shut immediately any website deemed to threaten national security or public order.
The move effectively broadens February legislation that allowed regulators to block websites without a court order according to the more narrow definition of privacy violation. I don’t mention again the ban they put on Twitter early this year, and on YouTube, several times before, myspace.com, bestFM and not only them. The bill will certainly be signed by the new Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Herman Van Rompuy and Mark Zuckerberg
[source]: actually it is AP
Censorship in Modern Times
Erdoğan himself has been a victim of censorship, he was detained for publicly reciting some Islamic verses, a minor event, I assure you. So minor, that it was his national political start to stardom. From Mayor of Istanbul, to President of the Republic. Now, his accomplishments to suppress the free flow of information in media, social media and everywhere, aren’t going to do any good. He is an observant Muslim, and this is not a bad thing. Being against alcohol is not a bad thing at all. People confuse Islam with terrorism, and that is what puts Turkey in oblivion. I understand very well what happens there, and I still admire him for his accomplishments, because unlike his predecessors, he seems a real patriot.
The censorship I wanted initially to refer at here is this sort of censorship, applied by social media moguls. I am sorry, but I disapprove of something like this. Look at the following screenshot:
Dick Costolo’s statement on Twitter
[source: Twitter]
It is about Costolo’s announcement of suspending the Twitter accounts who link to the cruel Foley decapitation. He didn’t dare to suspend New York Times’ account, but he’ll suspend yours, (almost) whoever you’ll be. That’s censorship.
In a human world, one doesn’t have to take sides. There is no real need for conflict to stimulate growth, the conflict is created to stop the growth and to create unidirectional wealth by “wisely” using scarcity resulted during the armed conflict.
In the picture with Herman Van Rompuy near Zuckerberg, they were at a conference to discuss the regulation of Internet, conference where Bilderberg attendee, Eric Schmidt was present as well. It’s not recent, even the source I’ve taken from put it in the article to make fun somehow of Facebook founder’s suit. This is frivolous. They make fun of his suit, we laugh, and he will implement the real screw over your “liberty of expression”, the modern censorship, because it’s better like this.
Nothing changed. We think we live better now than before… I don’t think so. It’s all the same, only you can be more easily distracted.
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