Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You’ll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.
On Jan. 11, 2024 conservative US YouTuber Gonzalo Lira died in a Ukrainian prison, where he was held for the crime of criticizing the war, and the US and Ukrainian governments. Now, a FOIA request by Judicial Watch sheds stark light on the Biden Regime’s complete failure to stand up for a US political prisoner in a Ukrainian prison. The e-mails reveal the US Embassy was aware of threats to Gonzalo Lira’s life, which it considered “no rush.”
Back in March, Walled Culture wrote about the terrible job that academic publishers are doing in terms of creating backups of the articles they publish. We also mentioned there two large-scale archives that are trying to help, Sci-Hub and Anna’s Archive. Legal action by publishers against the former seems to have led to a halt to new items being added to its collection. This has resulted in the rise of Anna’s Archive as the main large-scale archive of academic papers and other material. It has also led to a lawsuit against the site, as TorrentFreak reports. The legal move is by the non-profit OCLC, which was originally the Ohio College Library Center, then became the Online Computer Library Center, and is now simply OCLC. It describes itself as follows:
Note: I’m not a fan of copyright. Any information inside my documents is free to use. If it’s an article or a blog post that I’ve written, please ask for my permission before using it.
A number of major sites covering the activities and the plight of the persecuted canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, including an official UOC resource, have been blocked in Ukraine.
The blocked sites include the UOC’s Information-Education Department (news.church.ua), the Union of Orthodox Journalists (spzh.media), Orthodox Life (pravlife.org), and Raskolam.net. This was reported by both the Union of Orthodox Journalists and Raskolam.net.
…
Last month, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) raided the homes and offices and arrested several members of the Union of Orthodox Journalists, who now face life in prison for a number of charges related to their reporting on the persecution of the UOC.
I’ve been using my VPN because I can’t access certain websites, for some reason. Websites from China-cn and Cuba-cu are two examples. I suspect that it’s my Spectrum internet because the websites work with my Verizon data (my internet connection is worse with Verizon than with Spectrum). Anyway, I found out that I can’t access the Philippines’ government websitewith my VPN set to certain locations (I usually use Chicago). Likewise, if I set it to Canada or Hong Kong, it doesn’t work. If I set it to Detroit, New York, Miami, Phoenix, Armenia, or India, it works. I haven’t tested every single location, though. I just find it interesting that they are blocking certain locations. It could be Surfshark, for all I know. 🤷🏼♀️
In the Reporters Without Borders (RWB) annual report on journalists killed in the course of their work in 2023, the deaths of two Russian journalists killed in the area of the special military operation were simply erased from the count, as if their deaths did not count. But after all, this is hardly surprising coming from an organisation that in 2022 was already calling for censorship of the Russian media on the pretext of protecting freedom of speech.
…
52% of RWB’s funding comes from governments, including the French Development Agency, the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the UK Foreign Office, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the European Commission, the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development and the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
…
But if we look at the non-governmental players, RWB’s Russophobic bias can be fully explained. Its partners include the Open Society foundations of George Soros, who has never hidden the fact that he wants to see Russia collapse, and who supports colour revolutions around the world in order to install pro-Western governments in key countries such as Ukraine.
The Ford Foundation is also a donor to Reporters Without Borders. This foundation is literally infiltrated by the CIA (one of its former presidents is none other than the architect of what later became the CIA, and he hired American intelligence agents to work for the foundation)!
And to top it all off, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is one of RWB’s supporters. The NED is an American organisation funded by the US Congress, which has taken on some of the tasks previously carried out by the CIA! Don’t waste any more time, we’ve got the trifecta!
We have covered the Protecting Kids On Social Media Act a few times, when it was first introduced back in April, where we highlighted how it was both unconstitutional and the rationale behind it was not supported by any actual evidence, and then again just recently when Senator Chris Murphy (one of the bill’s co-sponsors) wrote a ridiculously confused op-ed for the NY Times, claiming it was necessary because kids these days get too many music recommendations and no longer could discover new music on their own.
The Strategic Culture Foundation’s online journal was this week hit by a massive cyberattack. The assault resulted in the forum being shut down on its regular internet site. Readers who normally access the journal were informed that the site was no longer available.
On the night of 18 August, the “international domain name registry” blocked southfront.org without any warning or explanation. Despite the fact that this organisation has been formally independent since 1998, it is actually controlled by the US Department of Commerce. What they have done is an unprecedented action in the history of modern information society. This is the American way of democracy, freedom of speech and the rule of law.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
You must be logged in to post a comment.