Facebook puts Zeewolde data centre plan on hold after protests

DutchNews, March 30, 2022 

An artist’s impression of the site. Illustration: Gemeente Zeewolde

Facebook parent company Meta has agreed to stop work on setting up a massive data centre near the Flevoland town of Zeewolde, much to the delight of locals.

A majority of MPs on Tuesday urged ministers to stop the construction and one hour later, Meta said it was putting the project on hold. 

The dispute over the local council’s green light for the massive data centre took a new twist earlier this month when a political party opposing the project won an absolute majority in the local election. 

‘I never expected things would move so quickly,’ said Tom Zonneveld, leader of Leefbaar Zeewolde, after the Meta announcement. 

Zeewolde council had voted to amend the zoning plan at the end of December, clearing the way for the data centre to be built. 

However, part of the land is owned by national government which which still had to give its approval for the project. 

The data centre, or hyperscale, is controversial for several reasons, not least of which that it is being build on agricultural ground. There is also concern about the massive amount of energy needed to power the centre – the equivalent of a small city of 460,000 people. 

Anti-5G activists go to court to stop ‘gamble with public health’

DutchNews, May 5, 2020 

A Dutch courtroom. Photo: Odi Busman

A group of anti-5G activists went to court on Monday in an effort to stop the nationwide roll-out of the faster telecommunications system. 

The group, Stop5GNL, argues that the government is taking a gamble by sanctioning the roll-out even though it has not been established that the technology does not form any risk to public health. 

‘This is unethical. You do not gamble with the health of the public,’ lawyer Thom Beukers said during Monday’s hearing in The Hague. 

According to the foundation, ‘thousands’ of academic publications and research projects raise at least doubts about whether the electromagnetic radiation used by 5G services could lead to a risk to health. 

The foundation has also stressed it has no connection to the recent wave of arson attacks on telecom masts. 

Although the public health institute RIVM and the national health council have both said that 5G will not expose people to higher than permitted levels of electromagnetic radiation, the council is working on a new report, ordered by parliament, the Volkskrant has reported. 

The results of that report are due in July. 

And in January, Telecoms supervisory body Agenschap Telecom and the RIVM said that while radiation from 5G mobile networks testing sites in the Netherlands is within European limits, it does need to monitored as telecoms providers prepare to activate the new mobile core networks. 

Some 15 licences for testing sites have been granted in the Netherlands and random testing of five sites has not produced worrying levels of radiation, the report published by both organisations said. It is important, however, to ‘keep a finger on the pulse’. 

The court will rule on the case on May 25.

Lebanon protesters form nationwide human chain

Yahoo – AFP, Jean-Marc Mojon and Anwar Amro, October 27, 2019

Lebanese protesters hold hands to form a human chain (AFP Photo/
ANWAR AMRO)

Beirut (AFP) - Tens of thousands of Lebanese protesters successfully formed a human chain running north-south across the entire country on Sunday to symbolise newfound national unity.

Demonstrators joined hands from Tripoli to Tyre, a 170-kilometre (105-mile) chain running through the capital Beirut, as part of an unprecedented cross-sectarian mobilisation.

Tension has mounted in recent days between security forces and protesters, who have blocked roads and brought the country to a standstill to press their demands for a complete overhaul of the political system.

Lebanon's reviled political elite has defended a belated package of economic reforms and appeared willing to reshuffle the government, but protesters who have stayed on the streets since October 17 want more.

On foot, by bicycle and on motorbikes, demonstrators and volunteers fanned out along the main north-south highway.

"The idea behind this human chain is to show an image of a Lebanon which, from north to south, rejects any sectarian affiliation," Julie Tegho Bou Nassif, one of the organisers, told AFP.

Lebanese protesters formed a 170-kilometre human chain from the southern port 

of Tyre to Tripoli in the north to underscore their unity against sectarian politics 

(AFP Photo/Patrick BAZ)

"There is no political demand today, we only want to send a message by simply holding hands under the Lebanese flag," the 31-year-old history professor told AFP.

On the Beirut seafront, men, women and children held hands, some carrying Lebanese flags and many singing the national anthem, an AFP photographer said.

'Dignified life'

In the northern city of Tripoli, where more than half the population lives under the poverty line, some had painted the Lebanese national symbol of a cedar tree on their faces, an AFP reporter said.

"We're expressing our demand for a dignified life and our dream as youth for a decent future," 30-year-old participant Tariq Fadli told AFP.

In the southern city of Tyre, protesters standing in a line held the edges of a long Lebanese flag, local television showed.

A young boy played with it, making it billow up and down.

The protests have been remarkable for their territorial reach and the absence of political or sectarian banners, in a country often defined by its divisions.

Protestors join hands in Nahr al-Kalb, north of Beirut, in a symbol of 

anti-government protest and national unity (AFP Photo/JOSEPH EID)

The leaderless protest movement, driven mostly by a young generation of men and women born after the 1975-1990 civil war, has even been described by some as the birth of a Lebanese civic identity.

The army has sought to re-open main roads across the country, where schools and banks have been closed for more than a week.

In one of the most serious incidents, the army opened fire on Friday to confront a group of protesters blocking a road in Tripoli, wounding at least six people.

But the unprecedented protest movement has been relatively incident-free, despite tensions with the armed forces and attempts by party loyalists to stage counter-demonstrations.

Protesters have been demanding the removal of the entire ruling class, which has remained largely unchanged in three decades.

Many of the political heavyweights are former warlords seen as representing little beyond their own sectarian or geographical community.

An aerial view shows Lebanese protesters holding hands to form a human 

chain along the coast (AFP Photo)

Brink of collapse

The protesters see them as corrupt and incompetent and have so far dismissed measures proposed by the political leadership to quell the protests.

"We've had the same people in charge for 30 years," said Elie, a 40-year-old demonstrator walking in central Beirut on Sunday morning with a Lebanese flag.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Monday announced a package of economic reforms which aims to revive an economy that has been on the brink of collapse for months.

His coalition partners have supported the move and warned that a political vacuum in times of economic peril risked chaos.

But the protesters have accused the political elite of desperately attempting to save their jobs and have stuck to their demands for deep, systemic change.

In a now well-established routine, entire families of volunteers showed up early on the main protest sites Sunday to clean up after another night of protests and parties.

After dusk, the central Martyrs' Square in Beirut and other protest hubs in Lebanon -- including the relatively conservative city of Tripoli -- turn into a vast, open ground where protesters dance, sing or organise political meetings.

'We are reaching out across religions and locations.'

When the Lebanese government tried to tax WhatsApp's free call service they instead sparked protests that have grown to an unprecedented scale https://t.co/MjZYYkvUqo pic.twitter.com/BxN9NpTH9E

— AFP news agency (@AFP) 27 oktober 2019

Innovative Iraqis dodge net blackout to illuminate protest violence

Yahoo – AFP, Maya Gebeily, October 5, 2019

Protesters have used mobile phones to film against a backdrop of tear gas volleys
and live rounds during demonstrations that have gripped Iraq since Tuesday (AFP
Photo/AHMAD AL-RUBAYE)

Baghdad (AFP) - With secret satellites, pricey messages abroad and clandestine file transfers, young Iraqis are circumventing an internet blackout aimed at stifling several days of bloody protests in the capital and beyond.

Authorities restricted access to Facebook and Whatsapp after anti-government demonstrations began on Tuesday, before ordering a total network shutdown on Wednesday.

The termination of Wifi, 3G and 4G access left protestors with just regular phone calls and mobile messages -- a few notable exceptions aside.

Ahmad, 29, works at an internet service provider that helped implement the government's shutdown, but still has internet access at its headquarters.

"I go to the protests in the morning and shoot video on my phone, then use the internet at work to upload them to Facebook or send them to media outside Iraq," he said, using a fake name for fear of retribution or legal action by the government.

Protesters say the internet outage is an attempt to suppress reports of security forces using indiscriminate force including tear gas, live rounds and water cannons.

Ahmad showed AFP footage he planned to send to international media later that evening -- shots could be heard fired across a mostly-empty street in Baghdad as he and fellow protesters took cover behind a concrete barrier.

"Friends are even giving me the footage they shoot on flash drives so everyone outside Iraq can see what's happening here," he said.

Iraqi protesters take cover in Baghdad's central Khellani Square, while using their 

mobile phones - devices that have been key to citizen efforts to record alleged heavy 

handed tactics by security forces (AFP Photo/AHMAD AL-RUBAYE)

Before Tuesday, many Iraqis had taken to Facebook and Instagram to call for initial protests against a range of grievances: unemployment, mass government corruption, nepotism, poor public services, and more.

Images of young men and women marching towards the emblematic Tahrir Square flooded social media the first day, using the hashtag #save_Iraqi_people.

When restrictions on Facebook began, Iraqis acted quickly; many downloaded virtual private network (VPN) applications.

Others even began surreptitiously posting the details of the next protests in the comments section of Cinemana, a popular streaming service in Iraq.

But those avenues were shut off by the systemic shutdown.

Those that could afford to therefore erected costly satellites on their rooftops to get a window into the outside world.

'Follow the gunfire'

Nearly 100 people have died in the demonstrations since Tuesday, most of them protesters but also personnel from the security forces, according to authorities.

"They’re trying to fight us not just with arms, but with this blackout," said 31-year-old protester Osama Mohammad.

"We used to check the different neighbourhoods' Facebook pages to know where to go for protests. Now we just follow the sound of gunfire," Mohammad told AFP.

Live rounds have allegedly repeatedly been fired during the protests, which have 

evolved into calls for fundamental government change (AFP Photo/AHMAD AL-RUBAYE)

"If they cut off regular phone lines, we'll be completely blind," he noted.

For 25-year-old women's rights activist Rasha, taking to the streets carries too much risk, but she says she has found a different way to get involved.

Every day, her male friends text her dozens of updates from protest squares across the country, which she then texts and phones through to friends in the United Arab Emirates and Europe.

"I'm an intermediary. I can’t protest myself so this is the least I can do," she said, telling AFP the phone credit she buys has cost her around $100 (90 euros) per day for the last three days.

Rasha, who comes from Baghdad, is also saving videos and other unpublished material from one of the first protests that turned violent. She attended that initial demonstration.

"They think we'll forget they fired at us, they think people won't know. But I've got the videos and I'll publish everything I saw that day the minute the internet comes back," she said.

Jaafar Raad, an unemployed 29-year-old Iraqi who has frequently protested, is also storing dozens of images and videos to release once the blackout is lifted.

He even records voice notes from the protests themselves in applications like Whatsapp and Facebook, so that the audio messages will automatically send to friends abroad and international media outlets as soon as the internet returns.

"People must know what happened to us. This is so we can hold those behind the violence accountable," he told AFP.

#UPDATE The United Nations urged an end to violence in Iraq, after five days of anti-government rallies marred by the killing of nearly 100 people, mainly protesters https://t.co/BwOOH1xgzN pic.twitter.com/M919mR4vcP

— AFP news agency (@AFP) 5 oktober 2019

Related Article:

“The End of History”, Seattle, Washington, Nov 20, 2010 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll

“… The Internet - The first Worldwide Tool of Unification

Now I give you something that few think about: What do you think the Internet is all about, historically? Citizens of all the countries on Earth can talk to one another without electronic borders. The young people of those nations can all see each other, talk to each other, and express opinions. No matter what the country does to suppress it, they're doing it anyway. They are putting together a network of consciousness, of oneness, a multicultural consciousness. It's here to stay. It's part of the new energy. The young people know it and are leading the way.

I gave you a prophecy more than 10 years ago. I told you there would come a day when "everyone could talk to everyone and, therefore, there could be no conspiracy." For conspiracy depends on separation and secrecy - something hiding in the dark that only a few know about. Seen the news lately? What is happening? Could it be that there is a new paradigm happening that seems to go against history?  ... “

China's Weibo backtracks on gay content ban

Yahoo – AFP, Becky Davis, April 16, 2018

China's popular Sina Weibo microblogging platform reverses decision to block

'homosexual' content following storm of online protest

China's popular Weibo microblogging platform on Monday reversed a decision to block "homosexual" content, in an unusual concession to a storm of online protest at the weekend.

Sina Weibo said in a statement Friday it had begun a three-month-long "clean-up campaign" to remove "illegal" content, including "manga and videos with pornographic implications, promoting violence or (related to) homosexuality".

But the Twitter-like platform backtracked on Monday, stating on its administrators' official account: "This clean-up of games and manga is no longer directed at homosexual content, but is primarily to clean up pornographic and bloody, violent content."

It also thanked the public for "discussions and suggestions".

Weibo's decision on gay content had prompted a tide of protest from outraged users who rallied behind the hashtag "#IamGay", viewed some 240 million times before it was banned by the platform on Saturday.

Even the Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily jumped into the discussion, posting an essay promoting LGBT acceptance to its official Weibo account on Saturday. The posting was viewed nearly 6.5 million times.

"Everyone is unique and sexuality is just one side of us that differs, just like skin colour, height and weight," the essay said.

But it added that "even homosexual people are regular citizens" whose affiliated content was not above being subjected to censorship laws against porn and violence.

Monday's reversal was met with an outpouring of support.

"I support Sina in clearing out pornographic content, but it definitely must not do so as before and target homosexuality -- that kind of discrimination is wrong," wrote one user.

"Through everyone's unrelenting efforts, we finally got a basic right -- how rare!" wrote another.

A third said: "Although I still don't like you, I thank you."

Gay Voices, which has since 2009 been one of Weibo's major LGBT accounts with some 230,000 followers, had on Friday declared it would be forced to indefinitely suspend its postings.

On Monday it was back online and thanking supporters, saying: "Only by speaking up can we affect change."

Weibo's purge was the latest move in a crackdown by the ruling Communist Party to clear the Chinese internet of any content deviating from its "core values ​​of socialism", while stifling criticism of social norms and established policies.

The platform -- which has some 400 million active monthly users -- said in its original Friday statement that it was merely implementing China's new cybersecurity law and had already removed some 56,240 items.

'A step further'

Much of the homosexual content on Weibo is fuelled not by LGBT activists, who are quite low-profile, but by the large online community of "funu" ("rotten girls") -- heterosexual women who are avid fans of male gay romances and share comics or stories, frequently erotic.

The affair has highlighted the cultural gap between younger Chinese more open to LGBT issues and "China's older generation -- mostly very conservative 40-year-old men -- who are now the main force of our society because they control the resources," Xiao Tie, director of the Beijing LGBT Center, told AFP, using a nickname.

Xiao Tie said the homosexuality ban was a result of over-cautiousness in the absence of specific information from authorities on what kind of content should be censored.

"Sina Weibo doesn't want to make trouble, so they went a step further with their censorship before the government even asked for it," she said.

China has a mixed track record with gay themes in cultural products.

Last year it banned gay content from all online streaming platforms

Last month it pulled the Oscar-winning film "Call Me by Your Name" from the ongoing Beijing International Film Festival.

But after a two-year delay, Chinese theatres on Friday finally released "Seek McCartney", a film about a secret homosexual romance between Chinese and French lovers that has been hailed as the country's first gay movie.

Outcry as White House bars top US media from briefing

Yahoo – AFP, February 25, 2017

An empty podium is seen at an off-camera briefing held with a small group of
reporters and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer in the White House
February 24, 2017 (AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski)

Washington (AFP) - Major US media outlets condemned as "unacceptable" and an "insult to democratic ideals" a decision by President Donald Trump's White House to bar several organizations, including CNN and The New York Times, from a daily press briefing.

In an escalation in the administration's war on the media, the White House Friday excluded some outlets that have provided critical coverage from an off-camera event that replaced the traditional on-camera daily briefing.

Friendly conservative outlets like Fox News, the One America News Network and Breitbart News were allowed to attend, while the BBC, The Los Angeles Times and others were excluded.

Trump on Friday decried the media as the "enemy of the people," a day after his top strategist promised relations with the press will get "worse every day."

A number of news outlets that regularly cover the White House as part of the "pool," including newswires Reuters and Bloomberg, attended the briefing.

The Associated Press boycotted in protest. AFP protested being excluded, despite being in the "pool," and attended the briefing uninvited.

The White House Correspondents Association said it was "protesting strongly" against the White House decision, and promised to bring it up with White House staff.

During the off-camera briefing spokesman Sean Spicer said that the White House has shown an "abundance of accessibility... making ourselves, our team and our briefing room more accessible than probably any previous administration."

It is not uncommon for Republican and Democratic administrations to brief select reporters, but the event was initially billed as a regular briefing open to credentialed media.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper decried the move as "un-American."

"This is an unacceptable development by the Trump White House," CNN's communications department wrote on Twitter.

"Apparently this is how they retaliate when you report facts they don't like. We'll keep reporting regardless."

The New York Times wrote in an editorial that the exclusion was an "unmistakable insult to democratic ideals."

The White House Correspondents Association said it was "protesting strongly" 

against the decision to only allow a small group of reporters being briefed during an 

off camera meeting with Press Secretary Sean Spicer (AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski)

Several outlets refered to a December interview in which Spicer told Politico that the Trump White House would never ban a news outlet. "Conservative, liberal or otherwise, I think that's what makes a democracy a democracy versus a dictatorship," he said.

"Greatest threat to democracy"

Media organizations were not alone in defending the free press.

"Trump is supposed to be a public servant, and the truth is a public good," said Robert Reich, a UC Berkeley economist, former labor secretary and a prominent Democratic figure.

"But he continues to lie incessantly, and punish media that call him out," Reich wrote on Facebook. "These are the sort of antics we'd expect from a two-bit dictator but not from the President of the United States."

John Dean, the White House counsel for Republican president Richard Nixon in the 1970s, described the Trump media bashing as "more Nixonian than Nixon."

Nixon blasted the media as "the enemy" behind closed doors, Dean, 78, told the Democracy Now! radio show on Friday.

"The big difference is, Trump is doing this right out" and challenging the US constitution's first amendment that guarantees freedom of speech and of the press. He described it as "very startling and very troubling."

"Nixon failed, and he had a deep reservoir of ill will to draw on when he got himself in real trouble. And I think Trump is creating the same problem for himself."

Trump's hostility towards the press "may be the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime," said William McRaven, a retired admiral and Navy SEAL who oversaw the raid that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011.

McRaven made the remarks at the college of communication at the University of Texas at Austin, according to the student newspaper. McRaven became head of the UT system after retiring in 2014.

"Flaws and all, I believe the free press is our country’s most important institution," McRaven, who has a degree in journalism, added in a blog post Thursday.

The United States "has the finest press corps in the world, bar none," he wrote. 

Net neutrality activists score landmark victory in fight to govern the internet

FCC says ‘we listened and we learned’, and passes strict broadband rules that represent ‘a red-letter day for internet freedom’

The Guardian, Dominic Rushe in Washington, 26 February 2015

Protesters hold a rally at the FCC headquarters in Washington to
support net neutrality. Photograph: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images

Internet activists scored a landmark victory on Thursday as the top US telecommunications regulator approved a plan to govern broadband internet like a public utility.

Following one of the most intense – and bizarre – lobbying battles in the history of modern Washington politics, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed strict new rules that give the body its greatest power over the cable industry since the internet went mainstream.

FCC chairman Tom Wheeler – a former telecom lobbyist turned surprise hero of net neutrality supporters – thanked the 4 million people who submitted comments on the new rules. “Your participation has made this the most open process in FCC history,” he said. “We listened and we learned.”

Wheeler said that while other countries were trying to control the internet, the sweeping new US protections on net neutrality – the concept that all information and services should have equal access online – represented “a red-letter day for internet freedom”.

“The internet is simply too important to be left without rules and without a referee on the field,” said Wheeler. “Today’s order is more powerful and more expansive than any previously suggested.”

Barack Obama – who had pushed for the regulations – praised the decision and thanked the people who had protested for tighter rules. “I ran for office because I believed that nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change. That’s the backbone of our democracy–and you’ve proven that this timeless principle is alive and well in our digital age.So to all the people who participated in this conversation, I have a simple message: thank you,” the president wrote.

But Republicans and cable companies were quick to attack the move. The National Cable and Telecommunications Association said the rules would hurt “everyday broadband users” by raising costs and reducing investment.

Broadband providers will be banned from creating so-called “fast lanes” blocking or slowing traffic online, and the regulator will oversee mobile broadband as well as cable. The FCC would also have the authority to challenge unforeseen barriers broadband providers might create as the internet develops.

Activists and tech companies argue the new rules are vital to protect net neutrality – the concept that all information and services should have equal access to the internet. The FCC’s two Republican commissioners, Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly, voted against the plan but were overruled at a much anticipated meeting by three Democratic members on the panel.

Republicans have long fought the FCC’s net neutrality protections, arguing the rules will create an unnecessary burden on business. They have accused Obama of bullying the regulator into the move in order to score political points, with conservative lawmakers and potential 2016 presidential candidates expected to keep the fight going well into that election campaign.

Pai said the FCC was flip-flopping for “one reason and one reason only: president Obama told us to do so”.

Wheeler dismissed accusations of a “secret” plan as “nonsense”. “This is no more a plan to regulate the internet than the first amendment is a plan to regulate free speech,” Wheeler said.

“This is the FCC using all the tools in our toolbox to protect innovators and consumers.”

Obama offered his support to the rules late last year, following an online activism campaign that pitched internet organisers and companies from Netflix and Reddit to the online craft market Etsy and I Can Has Cheezburger? – web blog home of the Lolcats meme – against Republican leaders and the cable and telecom lobbies.

Broadband will now be regulated under Title II of the Communications Act – the strongest legal authority the FCC has available. Obama called on the independent regulator to implement Title II last year, leading to charges that he unduly influenced Wheeler’s decision that are now being investigated in Congress.

Broadband providers hit back immediately. The National Cable and Telecommunications Association said the rules would hurt “everyday broadband users” by raising costs and reducing investment.

“Today’s decision by the FCC to encumber broadband Internet services

with badly antiquated regulations is a radical step that presages a time

of uncertainty for consumers, innovators and investors,” said Michael Glover, Verizon’s senior vice-president for public policy and government affairs.

To illustrate what Verizon saw as the FCC’s old-fashioned thinking, the company put out its news release in typewriter font and dated it 1934. The release also went out in Morse code.

.@Verizon doesn't give a font. #NetNeutrality #FCClive http://t.co/Nu08lnMf6T pic.twitter.com/IrJYXV0d8T
— dominic rushe (@dominicru) February 26, 2015

Before the meeting on Thursday, a small band of protesters gathered in the snow outside the FCC’s Washington headquarters, in celebration of their success in lobbying for a dramatic U-turn in regulation. Wheeler and his Democratic colleagues, Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel, were cheered as they sat down for the meeting.

Joining the activists outside was Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who said the FCC also needed more power to prevent future attacks on the open internet.

“We have won on net neutrality,” Wozniak told the Guardian. “This is important because they don’t want the FCC to have oversight over other bad stuff.”

What a legend. RT @dominicru: @stevewoz outside #NetNeutrality vote. @FCC needs power to stop "bad stuff". pic.twitter.com/qxz1j2NOwR
— Craig Hitchings (@craighitchings) February 26, 2015

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, addressed the meeting via video, saying he applauded the FCC’s decision to protect net neutrality: “More than anything else, the action you take today will preserve the reality of a permission-less innovation that is the heart of the internet.”

“It’s about consumer rights, it’s about free speech, it’s about democracy,” Berners-Lee said.

Clyburn compared the new rules to the Bill of Rights. “We are here to ensure that there is only one internet,” she said. “We want to ensure that those with deep pockets have the same opportunity as those with empty pockets too succeed.”

The fight for net neutrality has been largely fought online. The millions of messages were sent to the FCC during its comment period on the rules before Thursday’s landmark series of votes.

Last year the FCC looked set to approve rules that would have allowed internet service providers to create “fast lanes” on the internet. Critics charged such a move would create a two-tiered internet and stifle competition.

Tiffiniy Cheng, co-founder of internet advocacy group Fight for the Future, said: “This is our free speech struggle in the digital age. Institutions of power should know by now: internet users will not stand idly by while anyone tries to take their freedom away.”

The FCC passed two new orders on Thursday. The first, equally controversial but eclipsed by the net neutrality debate, overturned bans on municipal broadband companies competing with private cable firms.

Municipal broadband companies in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina, pushed for the expansion plans, against which private cable and telecom rivals have been lobbied intensely. Twenty US states currently have limits or bans on local governments building, owning or partnering with others to give local businesses and residents a choice in high-speed internet access. That vote, too, fell along party lines, potentially opening many US cities to wider competition.

Voting for the municipality change, Clyburn said millions of people had been left in “digital darkness” because cable companies did not want to expand in their areas. The Republican commissioners, O’Rielly and Pai, called the change “appalling” and “un-constitutional”.

“Unfortunately for the Commission, all the lipstick in the world cannot disguise this pig,” said Pai.

Christopher Mitchell, director of community broadband networks at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, said Thursday’s vote could set “an historic precedent” that could “profoundly impact the lives of three-quarters of Americans who are without broadband or a choice in their service because of big cable underinvestment in their towns”.

The FCC was forced to rewrite its broadband rules after Verizon successfully challenged its authority to stop it creating fast lanes or to more broadly regulate the industry under its last set of regulations, the Open Internet Order of 2010. Legal challenges for the new rules are also inevitable.

“When internet users come together to fight for something they believe in,” said Fight for the Future’s Cheng, “nothing can stop them.”

Obama: ‘We cannot allow ISPs to restrict the best
access.’ Photograph: Reuters

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Wife of Lashed Saudi Blogger Calls for His Release

Jakarta Globe – AFP, Jan 14, 2015

Ensaf Haidar, center, the wife of the Saudi Blogger Raef Badawi, holds a vigil in
 Montreal, Quebec on Jan. 13, 2015 urging Saudi Arabia to free her husband who
was flogged in public on Jan. 9, 2015 near a mosque in the Red Sea city of Jeddah,
receiving 50 lashes for ‘insulting Islam’. (AFP Photo/Clement Sabourin)

Montreal. The wife of a Saudi blogger who was publicly flogged for “insulting Islam” called for his release on Tuesday.

“My husband, Raef Badawi, is imprisoned for simply expressing liberal ideas,” Ensaf Haidar, who sought asylum in Canada with her three children after Badawi was arrested, told a news conference in Montreal.

In September, a Saudi court upheld a sentence of 10 years in prison as well as the 1,000 lashes for Badawi, who has been behind bars since June 2012.

The 31-year-old received the first installment of 50 lashes last Friday and is expected to have 20 weekly whipping sessions until his punishment is complete.

“We’re here so that he won’t have to endure another 50 lashes next Friday,” said Beatrice Vaugrante of Amnesty International.

“We talk a lot about freedom of speech nowadays: I am Charlie, I am Raef Badawi,” she said. “This concerns Canada, it concerns all Western nations that advocate freedom of expression.”

The Canadian government has called the public lashing “inhumane” but said it was limited in what it could do for Badawi beyond expressions of outrage as the blogger is not Canadian.

Agence France-Presse

Protesters demand the immediate release of Saudi blogger,

 Raif Badawi, in front of the Saudi Embassy in The Hague.

Photograph: Martijn Beekman/EPA

Related Articles:

Pressure grows on Saudi Arabia over blogger facing second flogging - New

Saudi blogger lashed in public for ‘insulting Islam’

Hungary's protests are about more than Internet tax, says student protester

Deutsche Welle, 28 Oct 2014

Hungarians have taken to the streets again to protest a new Internet tax. It's the last straw amidst government shortfalls and a diplomatic crisis, one protester tells DW.

On Tuesday (28.10.2014), Hungarians will stage the second protest against their government's plans to introduce a tax for Internet use. If it is implemented, Hungarians will have to pay 150 forints ($0.60) per gigabyte - the government has promised to cap the tax at 700 forints ($2.92). Companies could pay a maximum of $20.31. Daniel Mayer, a 26 year old student Budapest, was among the 10,000 protesters who called for the government to withdraw the draft law on Sunday (26.10.2014).

DW: How would paying the Internet tax affect you?

Daniel Mayer: We are speaking of a maximum of 2.30 euros ($2.92) a month - that is nothing. This tax won't change the Internet habits of Hungarians or companies. No one will be reading fewer articles that are critical of the government. No company will shut down because of the new Internet tax. But everyone can feel and finally understand why this is a problem. This is why so many people took to the streets, who weren't protesting before.

Why is it so important to Hungarians?

It is symbolic, because the Internet is something which was free and not controlled or influenced by the government. Our print and traditional media is awful, and you have to pay for it. The average Hungarian under the age of 50 uses the Internet for a lot of things, maybe even more than in western Europe, because everything is free and easily accessible on the Internet. So Hungarians are now afraid that they can lose that or that something will change. My problem is not the money, it's the principle of it which makes me angry. There are countries like Finland, which say, Internet access is a fundamental right. There are countries where the Internet is subsidized by the government. So this tax would put Hungary back 10 or 15 years.

Do you think the government is trying to target a specific group with the tax?

No. The government just wants money and they have run out of ideas. They have a tax on banks, on grocery stores, on telecommunication companies, and now they have decided to tax the Internet. We already have 27 percent of value added tax (VAT) on everything, including Internet services. This is the highest in the EU. And now we will get an extra tax specifically on the Internet. 

Daniel Mayer studies sociology in Budapest.

Where is the money supposed to go?

We don't know. That is also the problem that I and a lot of protesters have. If the government would say, "we desperately need this to do x, y, z," then it could be a little more understandable. But the government doesn't take us seriously. They are not saying what they want to do with it, or why they need it, they just say, "we need it."

So is the tax about Hungary's economic difficulties or about a growing authoritarian approach by the government as the media report?

The government is becoming more authoritarian, but in this case it's more of a financial question. I also think it has something to do with distracting Hungarians from the scandal in which six high-ranking Hungarian officials were banned from entering the US.

If the Internet tax is largely symbolic, does it mean that there is a general sense of dissatisfaction amongst the people?

At the demonstration, there were a lot of posters and people shouting, "we don't want to pay money to the corrupt tax agency," "Russia go home," or "Europe we want you." So the demonstration showed that the people are well aware of the diplomatic crisis with the US and the shortfalls of the government. This was the last straw, and now they are demonstrating against everything. Although I don't think our protests will turn into a revolution, it is a little bit like in Gezi Park in Turkey: their main problem was not the trees, that was just the last thing which brought the people to the streets. It has become symbolic for Hungarians.

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