Category Archives: pseudo-freedom

Jeremy Corbyn: UK can be better off out of the EU | Politics | The Guardian – The very definition of “pimping for votes” and “caving” to British racism.

He will say Labour’s priority in EU negotiations will remain full access to the European single market, but that his party wants “managed migration” and to repatriate powers from Brussels that would allow governments to intervene in struggling industries such as steel. Sources suggested that the economic demands were about tariff-free access to the single market, rather than membership that they argued did not exist.

Source: Jeremy Corbyn: UK can be better off out of the EU | Politics | The Guardian

Russia Requires Apple and Google to Remove LinkedIn From Local App Stores – The New York Times “Money first, Morals/Principles pfft!”

Direct blocking of websites has been done by China, Russia, Turkey and several other nations for years, usually through their state-run internet service providers. But civil rights groups say the pressure authoritarian governments are now placing on Apple and Google is a new wrinkle.“Apps are the new choke point of free expression,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, who leads a project on open internet tracking at New America.Increasingly, United States tech companies are complying with those demands.

Italy boat migrant numbers surge 20% in 2016 – The Local – “This is what greed, fear, war, hate, sexism, racism, profiteering brings all over the world!”

Migrants and refugees wait to be transferred from Malta’s Topaz Responder ship after being rescued off the coast of Libya on November 5, 2016.

Source: Italy boat migrant numbers surge 20% in 2016 – The Local

When Good People Don’t Act | Dame Magazine

History remembers us for our actions, not our intentions, after all. Do you want to be the one who trembled in the corner while someone suffered or the person who spoke up bravely, with a quaver in your voice, and made a difference?

Source: When Good People Don’t Act | Dame Magazine

Chilean court imposes heavier sentences on German cult leaders | News | DW.COM | 31.12.2016 “Wonder, how many more have not been identified? And who frequents them?”

A court in the Chilean capital, Santiago, has lengthened by one year sentences already imposed on three Germans found guilty of forming a criminal organization at “Colonia Dignidad,” a German colony located in the Andean foothills.The three men – Kurt Schnellenkamp, Gerhard Mücke and Karl van den Berg – were among the leaders of the commune, now called “Villa Baviera,” where systematic child abuse took place between 1961 and 1997. They have now been sentenced to five years and one day in prison.The 15,000-hectare (37,066-acre) settlement, sealed off from the rest of the world, was also used as a secret detention and torture center for political prisoners during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet from 1973-1990. Several opponents of the Pinochet regime were murdered there. Paul Schäfer was arrested in Argentina in 2005The court also handed down similar sentences to former Chilean intelligence agents Fernando Gomez and Pedro Espinoza. Four other defendants were released.”Colonia Dignidad” was founded in 1961 by cult leader Paul Schäfer, an ex-Nazi corporal, who fled Germany for Chile with 250 followers after authorities in his home country began to investigate him for sexual abuse of children.Schäfer was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2006 for his role at the “Colonia Dignidad,” and died in prison in 2010, aged 88.

Source: Chilean court imposes heavier sentences on German cult leaders | News | DW.COM | 31.12.2016

Donald Trump says US should let China keep the drone – Times of India – Those who voted for him and those who did not vote – time to cringe yet?

President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday on Twitter that the United States should let China keep the US Navy’s unmanned underwater glider that it seized in the South China Sea.”We should tell China that we don’t want the drone they stole back- let them keep it!” Trump tweeted a few hours after the US military announced it had reached an understanding with China for the return of the underwater glider.

Source: Donald Trump says US should let China keep the drone – Times of India

Twitter Says It Would Consider Banning Donald Trump’s Account: SFist – Facebook’s Zuckerberg would have not said no to Hitler? You bet he would not have…

“Our real goal is to reflect what our community wants,” he explained in a tech conference interview. “That kind of content, we would have thought previously that would make a lot of people feel uncomfortable, and people wouldn’t want that. But at the point where the person who’s elected president of the United States is expressing that opinion and has 60 million people who are followers, then the question is, OK, I think that that is mainstream political discourse that I think we need to be pretty careful about saying that that’s not a reasonable [inaudible].”

Source: Twitter Says It Would Consider Banning Donald Trump’s Account: SFist

Germany planning to ′massively′ limit privacy rights | Germany | DW.COM | 25.11.2016

Perhaps most contentiously, the draft allows the government to deny people the basic right to know what personal data is being collected if “the release of the data endangers public safety and order, or disadvantages the well-being of the country, or the state in another way.”

Source: Germany planning to ′massively′ limit privacy rights | Germany | DW.COM | 25.11.2016

US elections: A presidency of fear | In English | EL PAÍS

Put simply, one half of the United States has voted against the rights of the other half. The people celebrating Trump’s victory on Tuesday night were celebrating the triumph of boorishness, intolerance, fear, and ignorance. The only sure thing we know about Trump is that he will say one thing one day and another the next, depending on which way the political wind is blowing, or which side of bed he got out of. In a single day he has been for and against abortion rights, same-sex marriage and banning Muslims from entering the country. And when it suits him, he has no problem lying.

Source: US elections: A presidency of fear | In English | EL PAÍS