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Politician Forces German Wikipedia Off the Net
Stephan Schulz writes "A German Member of parliament for a left-wing party, Lutz Heilmann, has obtained a preliminary injunction against the local chapter of the Wikimedia foundation, Wikimedia Deutschland e.V., forbidding the forwarding of the popular http://wikipedia.de to the proper http://de.wikipedia.org. Apparently Heilmann is not happy with the fact that his Wikipedia article (English version) contains information on his work for the former GDR Stasi, the much-hated internal secret service. Wikimedia Germany displays a page explaining the situation, and has announced that it will file an objection to get the injunction lifted. The German Wikipedia has more than 800,000 pages, and is hosted, like all Wikimedia projects, by the Florida-based Wikimedia Foundation, and hence beyond the effective reach of at least German politicians and judges."
In fact, any google search returns de.wikipedia.org sites. You'd never notice wikipedia.de is down.
According to the page they have put up instead, the german company has been forbidden from forwarding to any site that contains the accusations against him. Not linking to the accusations, but any forwarding. Under that ruling, they definately couldn't forward to google.com either...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Mr Heilmann didn't have a problem with Wikipedia publishing information on his work for the former Stasi. It's one of few facts in the article he does not complain about. He had some problems with enemies in his own party and with the yellow press. And he insists he had never interrupted his university education.
Is there anyone here that can translate wikipedia.de's homepage for us?
Here you go, translation of wikipedia.de's current page:
In accordance with the injunction granted by the district court in Luebeck on Nov 13th 2008 to Lutz Heilman, member of parliament (Left Party), the Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. is forbidden from "redirecting the internet address wikipedia.de to the internet address de.wikipedia.org" as long as "under the internet address de.wikipedia.org" certain statements are published about Lutz Heilmann. Until further notice the service of wikipedia.de will have to be discontinued in its existing form. Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. will appeal this injunction.
The Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. is not the publisher of the "Wikipedia" which is published under de.wikipedia.org and has no influence over its content. Instead, Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. is a non profit organization to further free knowledge, which simply educates about the usage of Wikipedia. The operator of the Encyclopedia is the Wikimedia Foundation, a foundation that is incorporated in Florida, USA with headquarters in San Francisco.
If you want to support us, you can donate for us. More information under http://spenden.wikimedia.de/ That you for your help.
Our thanks go to JBB Lawfirm for the fast and competent help.
And the GDR was called the German Democratic Republic. That must mean it was a democratic republic right?
I wouldn't called extreme racism, homophobia etc. left-wing.
There's also the matter of his constant public speeches about how the left-wing movements were Jewish attempts to topple him and how socialists must be destroyed for Germany to prevail.
He arrested all trade union leaders and enforced a pay freeze on all workers.
Of course he did claim prior to the election that we would do just the opposite and give workers more control, but dishonesty seemed to be one of his faults.
Say, that word, nazi, what does it mean again ? Oh right ... it translates to "socialist".
It doesn't "translate" it is a contraction for "National Socialist."
Here's an interesting quote for you - "Nazism makes out is is subversive. The most terrible white terror against people and socialism the world has ever seen takes on a socialist disguise. To this end its propaganda must develop a revolutionary facade with trappings of the Paris Commune."
Looks like their pseudo-revolutionary cover suckered you right in, even 60 years later.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Hate speech is generally more than "politically incorrect." Usually hate speech is defined as being intended to incite violence against someone. For example, if I gave a speech and used an ethnic slur for each group of people I talked about, sure, I'd be in bad taste, but it wouldn't be hate speech. Now, if I gave that same speech minus the ethnic slurs, but was rallying the crowd and telling them they should kill these groups, that would be hate speech.
It is the same idea as not being able to yell fire in a crowded theater. You have the freedom of speech until it harms someone else.
Or at least misleading. While he MAY not like the fact that they link him to the Stasi, the reason for the injunction is that the German Wikipedia page claims he never finished his university degree, and was involved in pornography in some way or other. The fact that he was in the Stasi was well known, and caused a political shitstorm when it first hit the presses, though he somehow managed to evade impeachment. He denies having not finished his degree, as well as his involvement in a pornography business. Whether or not they are true is unknown to me, but it DOES say so on Wikipedia (without sources)!
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Being "left" or "right" has nothing to do with whether you're fascist or not. Fascism is an expression of total authoritarianism, which it is perfectly possible to combine with an attitude of socialism. They're two separate axes on the political compass.
Note that on the above chart, Dr. Angela Merkel (current German chancellor) is, in fact, "right". She's just not as right as most other Western leaders, leading to the impression that she is, in fact, "left".
Lutz Heilmann is even further left (his Party is called "The Left"), and on the Authoritarian/Libertarian scale doubtlessly up nice and high.
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
But the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission isn't.
There is no "East Yemen".
Correct. Because when insulting countries in your TV comedy, it's generally best to keep them fake.
"But everyone should know everything." -markab
To clarify a few things: This is NOT a final judgment. In Germany, we have a "Einstweilige Verfügung" (preliminary injunction), so if Mr. Heilmann wants to shut wikipedia.de down, he goes to a judge and the judge may approve in urgent cases, without asking the opposite side. This is only temporarily until there is a hearing with both sides arguing, and also, if it turns out that Mr. Heilmann was wrong, Wikimedia Deutschland has entitlement to damages that were caused by the "Einstweilige Verfügung".
So, cool down, this process is nothing special and it doesn't mean that Germany supports censorship.
Another detail: Wikimedia Deutschland is a nonprofit organisation, not a company. They work together with the American Wikimedia Foundation.
No, not really. Medicine is one of the strong industries in Denmark. By citizens Denmark produces more patents and earns more Nobel prices than the US in Medicine (by a factor of 4). Most of the large US medical companies has research centers in or near Copenhagen in the so-called "Medicon Valley", and Novo Nordisk one of the largst pharmaceatical companies is danish. One of the benefits of free education is a highly educated population ideal for research and development.
An example : in Holland you can get dialysis (if you need this, you die without). However once you turn 65, you cannot get dialisys anymore in any hospital, at any price. Anyone with kidney problems (which is a lot of people) ages to 65 years and 6 months or so in Holland, and not a day older. If you try to buy it, which is obviously not cheap, you run the risk of getting arrested, both the patient and the docter, and getting incarcerated WITHOUT dialisys. The one guy they did this to did not survive to see his trial. Isn't socialist healthcare grand ?
source: http://www.nierstichting.nl/ziekte/feiten_en_cijfers
Dialysepatiënten per leeftijdsgroep (2006)
Leeftijd Aantal Percentage
0-15 37 1%
16-44 812 14%
45-64 1.898 34%
65-74 1.439 25%
75+ 1.471 26%
2910 people disagree with you (out of the total of ~5600 Dutch people dependant on dialysis for survival).