Aram Zucker-Scharff

vicenews:

Protesters in Istanbul Rioted to Save Their Internet

This year, Turkey’s protesters have turned their attention from small, endangered urban parks to the slightly more on-trend issue of online freedom.

The reason is that a new law was announced over the weekend that would award the Turkish government tighter control over the internet, allowing it to block websites without seeking a court ruling first. Considering that the government already controls the country’s mainstream media, it’s no surprise that news of these restrictions on the country’s primary source of objective information didn’t go down very well.    

On Saturday, internet-freedom activists took their anger to Istanbul’s Taksim Square, the epicenter of last year’s Gezi Park demonstrations. Much like 2013’s protests, Turkish state police were out in force, spraying crowds with water cannons, trying to demolish their barricades, and chasing protesters off down Istikal Avenue with paintball guns. Yet the crowds regrouped and began building up more barricades down alleys and sidestreets, before police attacked them again with water cannons and gas bombs. The clashes continued late into the night, with demonstrators chanting, “Hands off my internet!”

“If I don’t stand here and protest, we will lose all our freedom,” said Ceren, a 24-year-old college student. “With Turkish mainstream media under [government] control, we only have the internet. If we lose the internet, nobody in the world would even be hearing about this protest.”

Continue + More Pics

thepeoplesrecord:

“To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?” David Gregory asked in Meet the Press yesterday.

Greenwald, who didn’t seem to bat an eye when responding to the puppet/reporter David Gregory, responded: “I think it’s pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies,” Greenwald said. “The assumption in your question, David, is completely without evidence — the idea I’ve aided and abetted him in any way. The scandal that arose in Washington before our stories began was about the fact that the Obama administration is trying to criminalize investigative journalism by going through the emails and records of AP reporters, accusing a Fox News journalist of the theory you just embraced — being a co-conspirator in felonies for working with sources. If you want to embrace that theory, it means every investigative journalist in the United States who works with their sources [and] receives classified information is a criminal. And it’s precisely those theories and precisely that climate that has become so menacing in the United States. It’s why the New Yorker’s Jean Mayer said investigative reporting has come to a ‘standstill,’ her word, as a result of the theories you just referenced.”

You can see just that segment of the interview here or you can watch the whole interview here (first 15 minutes are with Glenn Greenwald).

Greenwald tweeted about the exchange soon after: “Who needs the government to try and criminalize journalism when you have David Gregory to do it?”

Gregory responded: “This is the problem from somebody who claims that he’s a journalist who would object to a journalist raising questions, which is not actually embracing any particular point of view,” he said. He added that Greenwald’s actions were “part of the debate.”

What debate was that again? The debate about journalists and whether they are criminals? You mean, a debate about the criminality of journalism is the dominant conversation that surfaces after historically important government leaks regarding privacy and civil rights are released to the public?

MSNBC is terrible neo-liberal propaganda. These are chilling times…

Damn it MSNBC

Apple accounts for 20% of all 2012 US consumer technology sales revenue: parislemon:

The news will probably send the stock plummeting another 20%.
But really, some interesting NPD data here reported by Neil Hughes for AppleInsider:

Apple’s revenue…

shortformblog:

poptech:

futurejournalismproject:

Syria Deeply, Beat Page of the Future
It’s an incredible idea: one site, one beat. No front page. No sports, no business or finance, anywhere. It’s called Syria Deeply.
It’s about 25% original c…