11 Thursday Feb 2021
Posted in 21st Century Modern, Free Speech, Philology
The World Wide Web provides plenty of opportunity for posting disinformation as well as licentious and illegal content (from 4chan to the “dark web”).
The Awesome Conversation on Facebook would seem to want a little more in the way of civility, decency, honorable intentions, and information delivered with integrity.
Enjoy the discussion (live or recorded).
–33–
09 Saturday Jan 2021
Why make much ado?
The cause: the emotional distress of reactionary conservative at the thought of responsible executive management and oversight of large (immense!) social networking platforms.
Here is reason.
Most platforms are only “common carriers” — they support communications / “content” and, if large, attend to some maintenance of normal community standards. The systems that support extremism include “dark web” and specialized communities that one has to know how to access via the “out there” or radical vines.
Of course the idea of self-proclaimed “patriots” invading the Capitol and attempting to disrupt the validating of possibly the most well observed and secured election in American history would be mind boggling but for the agitprop and disinformation industries and the self-selected “echo chambers” that surround those who fall into cult-like information traps.
Here’s another and related excerpt from today busyness, and it follows from an absurd and irresponsible statement of fact that wasn’t factual. From the Awesome Conversation –>
“Free Speech” is a right that Government cannot limit” — not true. Criminal law prohibits speech associated with conspiracy and incitement; tort law addresses libel and slanders. While we may enjoy a great bandwidth in expression, we treat adult sexual material differently than we do other content – I hope you don’t have a problem with that – and professional and responsible publications prove themselves sensitive to differentiating between valid-reliable information and bunk.
Most of the public understands differences between mainstream media and partisan publications.
The major common carriers – like Facebook – believe they have cultural, political, and social responsibilities that include the discouragement of disinformation and the encouragement of good civil conduct whatever the speaker’s beliefs and thoughts may be.
I’ve owned this one a long time and here own up to not having yet read it! đ However, I know of it and reviews may be easily found online:
###
31 Friday Aug 2018
Tags
Civil Democracy, Draw Muhammad, freedom of speech, Geert Wilders, Islamic extremism, liberal democracy, open democracy, Pakistan, Racial Sensitivity, Religious Intolerance, secularism, tolerance
Inspiration: commentary on Dutch conservative MP Geert Wilders call for a “Draw Muhammad” event. Related:
Mr Wilders, the firebrand leader of the Party for Freedom, has lived under round the clock protection for years because of his anti-Islam rhetoric. A 26-year-old man, reportedly from Pakistan, was arrested this week in The Hague after making an alleged death threat against Mr Wilders.
âTo avoid the risk of victims of Islamic violence, I have decided to not let the cartoon contest go ahead,â he said.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/31/geert-wilders-cancels-muhammad-cartoon-contest-pakistan-protests/ – 8/31/2018.
Should Wilders have pressed this old matter concerning civility, criticism, and freedom of speech?
Westerners don’t kill people over cartoons.
The “Draw Muhammad” fad goes back to the slaughtering of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/07/terrorism.religion (2004)
A civil, multicultural, and tolerant people have no need to bait those associated with any peaceful ideology, race, or religion; however, Islam has been saddled with some portion of extremists / hotheads / jihadists and the tolerant, generally speaking, chose to express that to the intolerant — and then the intolerant proved themselves exactly as depicted and expected.
The attack not so long ago on Charlie Hebdo offices: same thing.
A foiled attack in Texas involving Pamela Geller’s “Draw Muhammad” event: same thing.
There are powerful forces in the world rooted in criminality, power, and wealth that want to produce a feudal global society perpetually at war over small differences and one has most likely manipulated Islamic Terrorism to help install that “feudal mode”. The world would do well to see that clearly and follow up by continuing to diminish racial, religious, and other extremism, by embracing and promoting the benefits of liberal democracy, and by applying its better energies to other challenges and issues.
In the United States, the First Amendment / Freedom of Speech concept suggests the tolerating of hateful speech, and so we permit white supremacists and Black Panthers to _lawfully_ gather and express themselves in the public space without restraint.Â
That is freedom.
ose whose opinions are indeed hateful may suffer opprobrium for the same and social marginalization, and that is the way America has worked lo these many years since 1791.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
“Political Correctness” may diminish that freedom if and when the state attempts to codify what is acceptable criticism and what is not.
We don’t like hate speech, but we think so much of “domestic tranquility” — a term also embedded in America’s foundations — that we tolerate the presence of it in the open, and we then address it with counter-arguments and social behavior, i.e., we walk away from it and shun those who beliefs and attitudes are not what we ourselves in our collective American majority would wish to embrace.
Perhaps Geert Wilders has recognized that we are 14 years along from the assassination of Theo Van Gogh, and he has chosen a socially responsible route, not necessarily the best political stance. On the other hand, since September 11, 2001 the world has engaged in a great conversation about Islamic extremism and perhaps as progress has been made in diminishing the appeal of it — and motivation for it — the urge to condemn Islam for it has perhaps been diminished as well.
–33–
27 Wednesday Dec 2017
Tags
against "active measures", authenticity in speech, freedom of speech, honesty, information space, integrity, journalism, totalitarianism
In the New Age of Active Measures, the countermeasure is the conveyance of truth — not “alternative truth” or multiple possibilities derived from promoted fantasia — supported by great curiosity and integrity as married to equally great journalism and scholarship.
A friend promoted the Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty project as focused against deceptive and disingenuous political cant designed to whip up extremist emotion and stupidity in Asia as well as in its older domains.
In regard to information and integrity in speech online, BackChannels has published a few related posts that may convey an image about Potemkinism in political speech: there are those who project through language the way they might wish their followers would see the world and themselves.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/23/moscows-rules-a-module/
BackChannels really hasn’t an issue with political presentation and “show business” in general but rather with a depth in totalitarianism in which accusation (especially “reflection in the mirror“) and conflict (and related barbarism) would seem to have no point but of the completely artificial conveyance of image.
–33–
23 Monday Oct 2017
Tags
dictatorship, Fake News, freedom of speech, High-Integrity Press, open democracy, political psychology, press freedom
https://www.cjr.org/
http://ethics.npr.org/
http://handbook.reuters.com/index.php?title=Integrity
https://www.poynter.org/
https://www.publicintegrity.org/
https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
http://www.timewarner.com/company/corporate-responsibility/telling-the-worlds-stories/journalistic-integrity
https://www.britannica.com/topic/agitprop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007655
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17840134
For referencing other web content so often and so much, BackChannels has practically stopped expressing its own logic and sensibility. Â Therefore and herewith a few observations related to the now infamous and nationally degrading accusations aimed at the world’s — not only America’s — major high-integrity media (even the famed “Gray Lady” has been the target of somebody’s half-packed mud balls).
First, choose your own preferred mode in contemporary governance:
Feudal Political Absolutism
Modern Checked and Democratic Distribution of Power
That should be easy, but if you’re up to your chinny chin chin in loot, corporate or illicit (or both), and have been the object of generous favor by some singular power, then weighing the options (starting with making a little to a lot less money) may be more difficult.
Let’s move on.
Dictatorship should be oh so 20th Century by now. Â If a citizen of the old EU / NATO experience, you have seen it, defeated it — Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin et al. — lived through it, or at least heard about it and thought as much gone with the Cold War and done, finished, and dead in the west. Â If respectful of the American flag and those of others aligned with it in spirit, then perhaps you have been also respectful of the war dead whose sacrifice has enabled this very freedom to read and write with earnest and responsible intent.
In short, you may know and love freedom of speech — “Press Freedom” — as intended and practiced and appreciated.
And yet here I / you / we are confronted by an “information space” packed with the must vulgar of accusations: those institutions wholly devoted to reason and truth, so much has been inferred, have reverted to malicious invention.
It ain’t so, Joe.
Something has been sabotaged, gone wrong, thrown off course in relation to common confidence in America’s political discourse and news, but is that to be blamed on the many communities of best educated editors and writers and remarkably informed, sharp, and thoughtful readers?
An American homily may apply: “He who points the finger should point it back at himself.”
Klein, Linda A. “A free press is necessary for a strong democracy.” ABA Journal, May 2017.
Pomerantsev, Peter. Â Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia. Â New York: Public Affairs, 2014.
Posted to YouTube August 9, 2018.
–33–
18 Thursday May 2017
Posted in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs
Tags
anti-Erdogan, D.C., freedom of speech, melee, pro-democracy, protesters, Turkish Embassy, Washington
VOA – 5/17/2017
VOA – 5/17/2017
Turkish President Erdogan lies to his loyal subjects in Turkey — why should his subalterns not do the same here?
CNN’s coverage of Tuesday’s melee notes Turkish embassy claims that groups affiliated with the PKK, a once militant organization much changed from its Soviet communist aligned heyday in the late 1970s, provoked Turkish Americans eager to greet President Erdogan, but then it goes on to state, ” . . . that account differs greatly from the sequence of events described by protesters and video captured by the Voice of America Turkish service . . . .”
Among those assaulted were two American Secret Service agents and a Washington, D.C. Metropolitan police officers, who was injured.
From Mother Jones‘s coverage:
As the violence broke out, videos from the confrontation quickly emerged on social media appearing to show Erdogan’s security detail using force on protesters, even kicking multiple people in the face, while DC police officials attempted to intervene. NBC confirmed on Wednesday that Erdogan’s bodyguards were the ones beating protesters.
The Turkish embassy did not respond to requests for comment.
The thugs in suits retreated to Turkish Embassy grounds, which by convention and law is treated as sovereign and therefore safe from invasive pursuit.
A State Department official said the Turkish security that was involved appears to be a mix of Embassy and President Erdogan’s security.
vvvvhttp://www.cnn.com/2017/05/17/politics/turkey-erdogan-incident/
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/bodyguards-turkish-president-violently-clash-protesters-dc – 5/17/2017
Casting aside his predecessorâs concerns about human rights abuses and the suppression of free speech in another nation, Donald Trump lavished praise on another autocratic foreign leader on Tuesday, calling it âa great honor to welcome the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to the White House.â
Just hours after Trump focused his remarks on âthe exemplary valor of the Turkish soldier,â however, Erdoganâs presidential bodyguards were caught on video punching and kicking protesters outside the Turkish ambassadorâs residence in Washington.
https://theintercept.com/2017/05/17/trump-praises-erdogan-whose-bodyguards-assault-protesters-washington/ – 5/17/2017.
The footage shows local police shoving not only demonstrators but several men in suits. One of the men in suits can be seen kicking a woman who had already been knocked to the ground. Witnesses reportedly said that the protesters were demanding that a pro-Kurdish lawmaker, Selahattin Demirtas, be released from prison in Turkey.
http://www.snopes.com/2017/05/17/protesters-attacked-erdogan/ – 5/17/2017. Â Link added by BackChannels.
Posted to YouTube 5/16/2017
U.S. officials strongly criticized the Turkish government Wednesday as video appeared to show its president’s security forces pushing past police and violently breaking up a protest outside their diplomatic residence in Washington.
Attacking the small group of protesters with their fists and feet, men in dark suits and others were recorded repeatedly kicking one woman as she lay curled on a sidewalk. Another wrenches a woman’s neck and throws her to the ground. A man with a bullhorn is repeatedly kicked in the face. In all, nine people were hurt.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/hurt-arrested-altercation-turkish-embassy-dc-47460260 – 5/17/2017.
The jihadist dictator ErdoÄan is bent on expanding his powers both inside and outside Turkey. ErdoÄanâs temper recently flared against Europe when several European governments refused âto allow his ministers to rally Turkish expatriates.â He also declared that âEurope is collapsingâŚEurope will pay for what they have done in humiliating and oppressing Turksâ; and in response to a European headscarf ban in the workplace, he accused Europe of starting âa clash between the cross and the crescent.â
Now he is so bold as to allow his thugs to behave violently on American soil.
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/05/nine-injured-as-erdogans-bodyguards-violently-attack-kurdish-protesters-in-dc – 5/18/2017.
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/opinion/20170803/calling-erdogan-to-account – 8/3/2017
http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/14/breaking-us-marshals-arrest-two-in-turkish-embassy-brawl/ – 6/14/2017.
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-39979879/erdogan-watches-as-turkish-security-guards-attack-protesters – 5/19/2017.
http://www.nbcwashington.com/on-air/Protester-Says-Turkish-President_s-Bodyguard-Choked-Her_Washington-DC-423266384.html – 5/19-20/2017.
–33–
17 Wednesday May 2017
Posted in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Journalism
Tags
freedom of speech, information warfare, Latin America, media, political interference in speech, press freedom, South America, state-controlled media
After only a few minutes at the podium, however, the transmission of his speech was interrupted without warning.1 President Maduro had ordered a blanket broadcast across all radio and television stationsâwhat is known in Spanish as a cadena nacional. These presidential broadcasts resemble a US Oval Office address in style, but in Venezuela the law obliges both stateâowned and private media to carry the transmissions, which have lasted as long as eight hours. When Maduro invoked this law to interrupt Torrealbaâs speech, Venezuelans had no choice but to listen to Maduro or simply switch off their TVs and radios.
Source: Center for International Media Assistance – 5/15/2017
22 Wednesday Mar 2017
Tags
21st Century Feudalism, 21st Century Neo-Feudalism, anti-Jihad, Facebook, freedom of speech, Islamic Small Wars, Islamofascism, Islamopho, web censorship
You recently posted something that violates Facebook policies, so youâre temporarily blocked from using this feature. For more information, visit the Help Center.
To keep from getting blocked again, please make sure youâve read and understand Facebookâs Community Standards.
The block will be active for 2 days and 16 hours more.
If you think youâre seeing this by mistake, please let us know.
Nothing like waking up to an alert from Facebook! And having no idea why this time you have been blocked-from everything! Canât post or receive messages. Canât like or love a post. Canât post! Totally stifled.
I tried to find out why I was blocked. I sent a request-because I thought it was a mistake. I donât use foul language. I donât post pornographic photos or death threats. I donât attack people- I do attack their facts.
I received the usual response-Nothing.I was âdeletedâ either because of my latest post  Islam on the March:Part 1 or I may have insulted some Liberals (sadly so easy to do).
Read the whole response to Big Brother Facebook: Facebook Fascism | Diane Bederman- Your Passionate Voice of Reason – 3/22/2017.
–33–
BackChannels 