"The Global Plutocracy Is Terrified of Dissent. In Some Places, The War On Dissent Is Being Fought With Bullets. In Others, The War On Dissent Targets Social Media And Mobile Communications"

Tuesday, August 16, 2011
many links on this post

The Most Liberal Part of the Country Takes a Page from Dictator's Playbook

The most liberal part of the country - the San Francisco Bay Area - is taking a page from Egyptian dictator Mubarak's playbook.

As leading free speech organization Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

This week, EFF has seen censorship stories move closer and closer to home — first Iran, then the UK, and now San Francisco, an early locus of the modern free speech movement. Operators of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) shut down cell phone service to four stations in downtown San Francisco yesterday in response to a planned protest.

BART said today that it had instituted the following rules, including:

No person shall conduct or participate in assemblies or demonstrations or engage in other expressive activities in the paid areas of BART stations, including BART cars and trains and BART station platforms.

What does that mean? We can't talk?

One thing is clear, whether it’s BART or the cell phone carriers that were responsible for the shut-off, cutting off cell phone service in response to a planned protest is a shameful attack on free speech. BART officials are showing themselves to be of a mind with the former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, who ordered the shutdown of cell phone service in Tahrir Square in response to peaceful, democratic protests earlier this year.
U.S. and Britain Attack Social Media

It's not just cell phones.

For example, the Pentagon is trying to manipulate social media for propaganda purposes. And the government is trying to censor any suggestions on the web and other media that powerful people might actually be acting in their own interests (and not necessarily in the interests of the little guy).

And in Britain, the government is blaming the protests in that country on social media (here are the two real causes).

But as professor of media psychology Dr. Pam Rutledge writes in a post entitled, "Social Media Did Not Cause the London Riots":

After four days of looting and rioting across the UK, people are looking for answers. The violence that started in London, spread rapidly across not only Greater London, but most of the country, not as single oozing mass, but more like an outbreak of the measles. Its speed and range is attributed to the rioters’ use of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Blackberry Messenger. Information and disinformation alike travel fast in social networks. As people try to make sense in the aftermath, an emerging theme is the culpability of social media. Focusing blame on social media is akin to killing the messenger and is both naïve and dangerous.

Social media is just a tool. It’s a powerful one, but a tool nonetheless. It can be used in good ways and bad ways, just like a hammer or a baseball bat.

Social media is an easy target. When you’re a politician, it’s great to have something to blame that can’t vote. Prime Minister Cameron almost immediately offloaded the blame onto social networking sites for fueling the riots and hinted at intervention. “When people are using social media for violence, we need to stop them.â€