I was going to write another case study on the intrinsic hypocrisy in the rhetoric of freedom - how "freedom" is uttered when useful, and completely ignored when not - using Google's recent "firing" of an employee who had written a memo that some deemed not politically correct as a basis of discussion. But then I found that Paul Craig Roberts already wrote a good post on it … [Read more...] about Case Study on Freedom of Speech: Google Walking the Talk?
censorship
How would this story be reported if it were China asking Apple for a way to get into a Terrorist’s phone?
Interesting story from NYT today titled "Judge Tells Apple to Help Unlock San Bernardino Gunman’s iPhone." Here is an excerpt: WASHINGTON — A judge in California on Tuesday ordered Apple to help the F.B.I. unlock an iPhone used by one of the attackers in the assault in San Bernardino that killed 14 people in December. The ruling handed the F.B.I. a potentially important … [Read more...] about How would this story be reported if it were China asking Apple for a way to get into a Terrorist’s phone?
Behind the Great Western Firewall Is the Ugly Truth
I came across this article on the Vineyard of the Saker blog, which I think is worth reading (both the article and the blog in general). I don't know what fellow Hidden Harmonies bloggers think of other works by Jeff Brown (especially those related to China), but his description of information control methods in the West seems to be pretty spot on. By the way, my fellow … [Read more...] about Behind the Great Western Firewall Is the Ugly Truth
Shadows of Censorship? Really???
Two weeks back, Russia Today broke a story with the title "China employs 2 million analysts to monitor web activity." From that, we get a plethora of dark articles about how bad the Chinese government is. For example, from the BBC, we get an article titled "China employs two million microblog monitors state media say": More than two million people in China are employed by … [Read more...] about Shadows of Censorship? Really???
Rethinking the Freedom-Innovation Nexus
A lot has been discussed on this blog recently with regards to censorship, most of the discourse so far have revolved around the justice and standards of censorship. I want to take a different but related direction, and discuss yet another myth propagated by the democracy/freedom advocates - the notion that "free" societies are always more innovative than their "non-free" … [Read more...] about Rethinking the Freedom-Innovation Nexus