Google Censorship

You can Google for censorship and get a lot of information, but you aren’t likely to find much about Google’s own censorship actions.
No one should be surprised effective political dissent will get results, and those results aren’t the political reform suggested. The results are more oppression, usually targeted at the dissent. Savvy Net users already know Google was built on covert funding from the CIA. They lie about such things, but have a powerful connection with the US government. Effective dissent requires two things: content and traffic. Genuine flakes don’t get much traffic, and controlled opposition won’t have the content. Sites using Google’s services, particularly Blogger, run a high risk of being summarily shut down if they are effective in dissent.
Such is the case with Activist Post. A couple days ago, they were shut down and Google is not answering their contacts. If you really want that content, you’ll have to visit them at Before It’s News. As a side note, I despise sites like Before It’s News because they love heavy JavaScript and have refused to answer my complaints. Their front page is so loaded with ponderous scripting, it takes several minutes to load, not because of a slow connection, but every browser I have has to run hot and heavy to process that crap. I hate JScript, and I don’t think much of people who think it’s great stuff. The folks at Before It’s News are downright truculent about it, and all their content is controlled by it. You get zero content without allowing them to hammer your system through your browser. This is almost as bad as censorship. Let’s not forget, there are a surprisingly large number of blind computer users, and most of them user browsers which don’t process JScript, so sites like that are closed to them. The point here is, censorship by the government isn’t necessary when the site is crappy to begin with. Activist Post made a really bad choice using Blogger, but sharing through Before It’s News is little better.
(Update: The domain name for Activist Post now resolves, but they are struggling to get it working properly as of midday, Sunday 25 September 2011.)
But like the pirates who have been chased off the mainstream services before us, we who engage in truth seeking and hoping to be effective in our dissent need to start planning for hard times. While it’s possible the various governments will conspire to shut down the Net as we know it, more likely is they will simply wall off effective dissent from the masses.
Consider this: Most sheeple aren’t interested in truth, but they might enjoy some dissent. As long as their dissent is based on false impressions, it’s just fine with the government. The controlled opposition sites will advertise bogus censorship, but the real thing is actually quite effective. As with many other things, if you hear a lot about censorship, it’s not actually happening. Those who strive to bring genuine dissent within reach of the sheeple will be hammered quickly, as soon as the government bureaucracy gets around to them. It’s based on how the government evaluates the threat. I’m not sure what Activist Post did which triggered the shut down, or if it was just the case it was finally their turn. Those with real threatening information, like Cryptome and Public Intelligence are always at risk, and have fought this constantly since the beginning. Others are put in prison on trumped up charges, like Edgar J. Steele. His site is out of date, but you can use any search engine to learn more about his current status. A few dissenters, it seems, have been assassinated via covert ops, but you’ll never learn that from the MSM. Being too successful at breaching the consciousness of sheeple with elements of truth will get you in trouble. But we dare not stop.
Those of us who want to know the truth will have to work a little harder in the near future to keep up with this stuff. Those of us who want to tell our own truths need to keep an eye on the options. Even WordPress seems to have caved to political correctness from time to time, shutting down blogs for daring to be too controversial. But for now, Blogger and WordPress are the two biggest free blog services, and are the best place to get attention. There are lots of lesser known services, easily found with any search engine, but any use of free services like this runs a risk. Track record means a lot, and bad publicity against Blogger and WordPress has been censored, too. I also use My Opera for my my other blog, and they only censor truly alarming pornography or shocking content. It has to be pretty extreme, but I’ve never heard of them hitting mere political dissent. Then again, they’re based in Norway and most users are not American, and the site works best with Opera browser.
I have tried to use one other service: Free Conversant. They’ve been around for more than a decade, and are vociferously committed to free expression. However, the site is pretty obscure, and it requires some serious coding skill to modify, particularly CSS. Even then, the options are limited. However, they do offer a good chance to learn and they will respond to emails.
How long will such services remain? It’s hard to say. Economics is the main question right now. For example, can they afford the bandwidth for a surge in popular traffic? So long as the backers are viable, the service is likely to be there. You can always follow the pirates’ example in chasing down “bullet proof” hosting solutions, and not all of them are expensive. There are plenty of cheap hosting services which will tend to resist political pressure, and not a few will adamantly require a court order. Then the question is how likely are you to face such a thing. Most of us are safe right here at WordPress. I’d suggest Activist Post do a little research and take their domain name to another provider, someone with a greater degree of political independence, and perhaps with a strong Unix server package which is harder crack. The situation is fluid and we all would benefit from at least thinking about back-up plans in case things get worse.
Things will get worse, but I doubt it calls for paranoia. Still, if it’s worth doing, do it better.