Where exactly does freedom of expression begin? Perhaps the right question should be: What is the first motive for individuals to express themselves freely? The answer should be the motive to act against injustice and the things which mislead people by political pressuring. If you meet these two and wish to open a window for the truth, here you want to express your ideas freely. Because, you know that your freedom of expression is the foundation of freedom for the masses and even for the sake of humanity. If your opinion is leading to the truths, like John Stuart Mill says:
“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
When “the people are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth” happens, this is an evilness for the human race in the true sense and robbing as the same Mill said.
The humankind now lives in such a period of time that many disinformation are dictated by the mainstream media and also the communication laws of the governments which the big corporations have taken under control with the information age view. All these are selling to the peoples with democracy sauce. Democracy is a magical word, whoever hears this word cannot resist not to taste it. Determining what is right and what is wrong is a deterrent by creating a society of oppression and fear in line with these laws. So if and only if your desire to reach the truth is a very premise, you will sail to this terrible storm. Otherwise you’re in cyclical sleep into unconsciousness. That means, in this storm, you’re waiting for the person trying to make you wake up from your sleep.
Freedom of speech has a linear connection with freedom of thought and freedom of the press. Maybe if we draw a triangle and write each of these three in each corner, we’re not wrong. If you eliminate one of them, you will have a set of dots that won’t unite forever. If you want your ideas to be free, you need freedom of expression, and for progressing of your freedom of expression you need freedom of the press. Global press companies have many subsidiaries and affiliates in their business units; even their numbers are beyond measure. So there’s almost a single voice on the planet literally.
Those who break the singularity, that is, those who sail into the storm are of course present. These are also free lance journalists working in the free press. Maybe some of you are following them, and when you read their writings or watch their videos, a spark in your brain flares up. Because they tell you that many of the governments or media organizations that have organic or inorganic links with each other, are not what they seem to be. There are also bloggers. In WordPress or Blogger or others, you may encounter one of them. They can tell you, for example, “What can be endangered with the recent press law in Britain”. As same as in here.
But, what is that? This page no longer exists.
The Burning Blogger of Bedlam is one of my blogger friends, even he is one of my earthling friends. When I started to write on my WordPress blog(sorry, mine and WD blog:) I have found myself in a very big community. Of course, I don’t have the totaly same ideas with everyone here, but I’ve found a piece of myself in each of my friends. Some of them shared my anger, some my joy, some my opinion, some my concern, some my humor, some of them I shared my interest in only a certain point. I have also learnt many things from every one of them. Learning new things one of the best things for me! I found a piece of myself in each one with every share with every knowledge. Which is an incredible experience for an extraterrestrial; I cannot express this in words of the world languages. What I have been sharing with the people from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere are priceless for me. I hope our blog has been same for them too. The harmony here is, of course, first due to the result of these people being featured individuals and second the free expression environment that I think WordPress provides. Even if the first part still applies to me, I now have big doubt the second part. The reason is of course that the Burning Blogger of Bedlam blog was shut down with no warning to him. He had put these into words in one of his posts on August 28, 2018. These quotes were taken from here where his post was shared; you can find also same article in two other blog sites out of WordPress.
This is an article about censorship – particularly, in this latest instance, involving (unfortunately) the very platform I am publishing on right now: and whether it will continue to be as safe or as accomodating a space for blogs like this one as it has been until now…But first, I’m putting up this notification – because I suspect there’s a real chance this website/blog could get taken down at any time… I’m creating a back-up blog of all of this site’s archived content. I’ll explain why in the article below. But should The Burning Blogger of Bedlam be swept up in a censorship purge that appears to be occurring, I will activate the other site and begin publishing my current/future articles over there, at least as a temporary solution to what is – presumably – going to be an ongoing problem…Should this website suddenly cease to exist, the new (temporary) site will be under the name ‘Bedlam is Burning’: copy this link and keep it somewhere.
Why am I taking this measure? Well, because it’s looking like a censorship purge is happening: and right now it is difficult to tell how widespread that purge might end up being or how much it might expand in the future…Yes, even WordPress – that last bastion of free speech when it comes to big platforms – appears to have been unceremoniously taking down a number of blogs: and these all appear to be blogs in the ‘conspiracy theory’ realm…I’ve never actually considered this site a ‘conspiracy theory’ site (and also half of the content in my overall archive is about music, film, history or even comic books): but that won’t necessarily protect me if – or when – someone includes me on the delete list…My first alarm bell was when ‘Jay’s Analysis’ – a very popular blog – went offline and never reappeared a few weeks ago. My second alarm bell was about a week and a half ago when I first read about certain other take-downs. And my third alarm bell was discovering that the Willy Loman blog – or ‘American Everyman‘ – had been ‘disappeared’ all of a sudden…
From Tech Crunch, a fortnight ago: ‘WordPress.com has taken down a handful of blogs, according to several complaints from affected blog owners and readers who claim the sites were removed from WordPress.com, despite not being in violation of the company’s Terms of Service. Some site owners also said they were not notified of the shutdown in advance and have lost their work…These removals, it is reported, were due to a new policy that forbids bloggers from publishing “unauthorised, identifying images of minors”…However, all of the sites taken down also appear to fall into the nebulous category of ‘conspiracy theorist’ blogs. From what I can tell, these take-downs have all centered – in this instance – on ‘Sandy Hook’ related content…
Fellow W/P blogger, Wall of Controversy, wrote up a shocked piece a couple of days ago on this subject of American Everyman vanishing from WordPress. ‘The internet purge has begun in earnest — the last days of American Everyman’, he writes, warning that ‘his site is just one of a number of relatively small sites that WordPress has recently taken down, and doubtless this purge is set to continue…’ Wall of Controversy is right to question, as he does in the piece, whether his site could be next too.
Note that Scott Creighton, who wrote the American Everyman site, received NO notification from WordPress that his site was being removed, received no explanation for it, and was presumably therefore given no option or chance to retrieve his content before the site was terminated. And yet, as he says, he was in violation of NO WordPress terms. After a number of years of building up an archive, building up a readership and a community, his site was just suddenly gone. On American Everyman in particular, the same Tech Crunch article notes; ‘his site hosted 9/11 “truther” content and claimed that Sandy Hook was a staged event. These are generally repugnant points of view to a large swath of people,’; but the same article adds ‘but he’s correct in saying they weren’t views that WordPress.com had prohibited…’ Surely, if WordPress was updating its terms or policies in this regard, it could’ve sent out a warning or update to users/bloggers?
For the moment, Sandy Hook seems to be the catalyst: but that could presumably change or expand to other things at any time. I’ve never covered Sandy Hook – just like I’ve never touched ‘Pizza Gate’ or any number of other popular subjects. But I’m probably justified in suspecting my blog/website could be targeted at any stage. In laying out the justification for the take-downs, Tech Crunch notes (and the bold text is my highlighting): ‘While some of the affected sites – which include some extreme right blogs and those floating conspiracy theories – had already been flagged for other violations, many were hosting Sandy Hook conspiracy theories and other “false flag” content…’ Well, I’m clearly not extreme right or even mild right (or any kind of right) – but if “floating conspiracy theories” and “other false flag content” is a potential offense worthy of a take-down, then it might only be a matter of time before I wake up one day and find my site (with its archive of articles on false-flag terrorism) completely missing.
Or couldn’t he have been asked to *remove* the specific content, images or articles that were deemed to be an offense? Apparently not. Why has this started to happen?
It seems to have been pushed by the New York Times, which published an article on the 13th of this month (a few days before the FotM take- down), in which it specifically condemned WordPress and Automattic for allowing ‘conspiracy theorists’ to keep their content on its platform. Again, specifically they were focusing on the Sandy Hook business; but of course there is a broader implication beyond just that specific subject. The piece, titled ‘This Company Keeps Lies About Sandy Hook on the Web’, went out of its way to demonise WordPress/Automattic for its lack of censorship.
That’s Sandy Hook today. Tomorrow it could be something else – 9/11 perhaps. Because it seems odd to me that Sandy Hook would be the only issue – and that other conspiracy claims about other events will go unpenalised…I want to finish again with Sarah Gooding’s article from a couple of weeks ago at WP Tavern, because some of what she wrote is exactly right… ‘The New York Times raking WordPress.com over the coals for its refusal to censor its users is an egregious double standard. A publication cannot call for free speech for itself while eating up the rights of everyone else they don’t agree with. Principles aren’t principles if they only serve you when they are convenient… Forcing the censorship of offensive speech may feel like swift justice in the short term, but it weakens the fabric of a free society…’ But give it a while longer and I’m not sure there’ll be anywhere left on the Internet that hasn’t been massively censored and brought under control. Years from now, I wonder if typing something like ‘9/11 theories’ into a search-engine will yield *anything* other than the official, government-approved version of events. In the meantime, I’ll continue publishing articles here anyway. But it’s difficult to do it comfortably or enthusiastically anymore when you sense the Sword of Damocles might be poised over your head.
This is what I understood: Two journalists of The New York Times wrote an article in 13.08.2018, and the article’s title was “This Company Keeps Lies About Sandy Hook on the Web.” Mentioned “this company” in here is “WordPress”. So, WordPress was clearly pointed as a target. The ones who made WordPress’s writers target are two journalists. I’m sorry, but right now I barely hold myself not to laugh, because I called them journalist, haha!
Anyway, I think WordPress started off on a road such as removing mentioned contents to get rid of this pressure situation. So big internet purge started. But with which way? It chose the road without any warning to bloggers/users. I don’t know what’s worse here: Is it worse that a press organization (The New York Times) to target freedom of express of writers in very big social media blog platform (WordPress), or is it worse that WordPress to cut away one of the most important elements of WordPress without blink. What is one of these elements they expressed in own page:
“At WordPress.com, we’re committed to freedom of speech: our core mission is to democratize publishing. Our service allows anyone on the web to express their ideas and opinions, whether we agree with them or not — we don’t censor, moderate, or endorse the content of any site we host.”
Why I added WordPress’s freedom of speech policy, because there is a contradiction here. Because the method of subheading is really wrong. Here, if there is a freedom of speech, it needs to built into a dialog with bloggers of WordPress. But the way they do it, and the fact that they don’t inform any blog they close in here, it really points very dark days for WordPress’s future. Because WordPress was the one to appreciate and be loved, because since the very first day it had tried to achieve the impossible. WordPress had tried to show to many on whole world that the freedom of speech is not only numbered article which placed into European Convention on Human Rights.
Article 10 – Freedom of expression
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
However now…cutting away the labor without a question/warning with such an autocratic way in an instant means that there are other concerns and that it is no longer same WordPress.
Burning Blogger of Bedlam is also an example for this. He is saying the followings on his facebook page:
May 8, 2019: “In case anyone here didn’t know, WordPress shut down my site last week without warning. Apparently for a violation: though the ‘community guardians’ wouldn’t tell me what the violation was and said they ‘were under no obligation to specify’. I will therefore be out of commission for a while: but am looking at other options for the future. I will keep everyone here updated. Thanks to all of you for your support over the years…”
Jon Rappoport here says the same thing happened to him. “On May 11, 2019, WordPress suddenly took down my blog after 10 years of continuous operation. There was no warning or advance notice of any kind.”
I didn’t follow him but yes, I know many of you were following Rappoport, but his blog doesn’t exist on WordPress anymore. And in a short research on the internet, I have seen many of blogger have been affected and shut down after this destructive wave. Especially after 10 May, you can see many who say his/her blog shutdown via twitter.
I guess, this is only the tip of the iceberg. From August 2018 after that article of The New York Times, all days and nights you my earthling friends, and the ones who read that posts, also maybe shared the same opinions with them, you were caught by the storm. Because the one which was caught by the storm in reality is the house you are in, so WordPress. The storm has already begun, and seemingly WordPress thinks it will survive from this storm by shaking off the many things what were the reasons of it’s number one in its field; it’s a big mistake. This situation is really sad for WordPress. The only thing more powerful than money is knowledge. And the global powers that know it, apparently they did set their eyes on social blog platform like WordPress. Unfortunately, WordPress with this action is losing its greatest supporters/bloggers, who can have the similar ideals of this organization and who can step in every storm with it so, in a way it is a situation sort of shooting itself in the foot. Because in the most difficult case, this support will not come from the bloggers who write recipes or advertise cars. When planet internet media history is written, these dates will be written for it as a milestone. Because when everyone except WordPress was in collective chorus, WordPress was at least trying to make a difference, and it was a sound out of chorus, a body, or we can say it was a living organism. For example, as in the picture below while almost everyone was sharing the idea of eleven of birds in the same direction, WordPress was one of the rare places where the bird which is facing the opposite direction, could express what it thought.
Apart from all these, do you know what I don’t understand most in this act of WordPress? WordPress is a multilingual social media blog platform. So anyone can write in every language here. There are two languages I know outside of English as you know. One of them is such a flexible language that it can be made at least two-three kinds of meaning if you write an article in that language. I’m sure there are other similar languages like it too. If the people who use this language mention about any event, which is said to be the reason for the closure of the blog or other reasons that can be “shutdown justification” in future for WordPress, do WordPress have translators with the ability to translate in right direction and understand these articles? Because, without using any adjective to describe that event and without mentioning the name of the incident, an article can be written that tells the whole story, in that language.
Even those who native speakers of that language I mentioned can make two-three different meanings from an article like I said, how the WordPress translator team will handle it? How does WordPress really implement it in every language? That’s very confusing. Maybe at this rate to take everything under control and to avoid such a misconception, only the English writers can open a blog here at future, who knows. So there is no end to this; this area can become appropriate for almost any kind of censorship, if this is the way what they choose to continue. It’s such as pouring water on it to put out the fire.
As for me, after seeing that Burning Blogger of Bedlam was no longer in the page, I felt the following: First astonishment, then sadness, after anger, then emptiness. Because WordPress didn’t just close my earthling friend’s blog when it performed this action. I felt my memories in his blog were stolen. I have a huge database which is recording on unlimited storage in continuum as an extraterrestrial, but the others? I know that he had a lot of followers, I’m sure they felt great emptiness. Just like the followers of other blogs which shut down without any warning.
The most valuable thing in this universe is labour, my dear earthling friends. This labour can be in physical strength, or it can be on ideas. My concern for Burning Blogger of Bedlam and others, has been the crushing of their labours. Of course, they always can/will find a sound for themselves on anywhere. If I need to talk specific to Burning Blogger of Bedlam, this experience will be only a stage for him who prepared a large and special Libya file.
Besides, although I have never shared this Sandy Hook event and contents on WordPress, I don’t know what will happen to our blog after this post. I had even read what was the case of Sandy Hook in the post I’ve quoted above in very first time. The truth is, I don’t know even today exactly what happened in that event. I never write anything about something I don’t know about. And as Burning Blogger of Bedlam has pointed out, if the censorship focuses on conspiracy theory sites, there’s only one conspiracy theory we shared on this blog, and that one is WD’s talk of alien invasion every time he found; you know for WD, this is a mission that he needs to warn humanity, haha!
But one day they can shut down our blog without notifying us, and not letting us express ourselves. Even the reason might be to give a vague psychological support to an alien invasion that may be in the future, haha! WordPress’s policy from this point could be even in a way of “Server is mine, but they criticize me, look at that insolents; Dracarys!” in front of a criticism to them in here. It may be some day, you my earthling friends, can also see a big warning on my page and say to yourself, “So, even our alien friend Migo was kicked out; in the memory of him and WD, let’s call for a moment of silence!”, but as you know well, for WD at least 10 minutes of silence should be, not a moment; and don’t forget to mention how much WD handsome and intelligence is, haha!
While I was written this post, I have looked at our blog, in about 5 years, we’ve posted 452 posts, and there are 2400 comments under these posts. If half of these comments are ours, half of them is yours my earthling friends. So let’s admit, we are chatterers, haha! And I must say that we enjoyed every moment of being here among you. As you know, there was never hate, racism and discrimination in our blog. We all have generally had fun, haven’t we?;) You all made us very happy, you still do. I hope we did not offend you or give sadness. But if this happened, you can be sure we didn’t do it purposely. For WD and me each of you has a place inside us from the very first day. As I said, even if we don’t have any post on the mentioned censorship subject, if they close our blog with our current criticism right now, as you know, as being an employee of Galactic Council, I should continue to write somehow in somewhere else; otherwise my salary would be cut. And believe in me, to be unsalaried extraterrestrial worse than to be unsalaried earthling on the planet earth at this age.
You know that I would find you in everywhere again. Extraterrestrial promise! I always try to keep my promises, as you know. Already if I don’t find you, WD will find you, haha! You are the ones who caused us to love WordPress. Except Burning Blogger of Bedlam, if anyone between you had experienced same and your blog had been closed in the same way, I would have written the same post for you too. I know also you have read a long article until coming on these last lines, and thank you for your time!
Because of I and WD don’t know what will happen next, we thank you very much at this moment. In some way there has been a disrespect to labor without any warning in WordPress. Of course I don’t know what WordPress mainstay could be, but I see that they ignore their contradiction with the policies of freedom of expression of their own. A very ambiguous and misty weather prevails in here. It is unclear what kind of justification will be tomorrow. “Why” question is in the air. The non-answers are not even vague, because they don’t exist. Maybe WordPress will not shut down our blog by thinking “how dare you criticize us,”; maybe they are open to criticism, we do not know yet, we will learn. However we’re seeing the sword of Damocles hangs over on top, and it is hard to write while seeing it. When our fingers reach keyboard in every time, I guess I and WD should think twice after then, which is a heavy burden.
We don’t know that this is one of our last articles or last one. Even if it is not, we didn’t postpone the things we had to say for you in this way. We really loved all you, and we will continue to do. Sometimes, even if there are breaks and some endings, this is only the prologue of the future. We would continue always without fatigue, with the same pleasure and singing the beautiful songs together! You all made our days precious!
With respect and in peace always, my earthling friends!
-Migarium, the extraterrestrial
-WD, the earthling dog
unnecessary news from earth 