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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."
It's the same in almost every European state - most anti racism laws undermine Free Speech.
People may have doubted whether a former DDR Stasi employee would reform or continue with old ways of treating the public. Now all questions about this particular thug have evaporated.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
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
anti-racist-speech laws violate free speech
True.
and are bad laws.
Not necessarily so. Elevating free speech over other rights is a part of American ideology, however it is not universally accepted, certainly not in Europe or Asia.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Anyone editing his page should be careful to sticking to the facts, else they just justify its removal as well as degrading the stature of Wikipedia. German news agencies should get a copy of the wiki at the time when Heilmann complained and check all the info on it, then report on it noting the parts he specifically complained on including the findings of their own research. It wouldn't hurt for academia and the general public to join in on this as is their duty as citizens.
It needs to be made clear to politicians and bureaucrats everywhere that their very positions permit or even demand microscopic public inspection of their actions. If they are going to act to ban negative comments on themselves then the comments need to be at a minimum unprovable as facts or better yet provably false. If comments are found to be provably true then the response to the government official(s) involved should be harsh.
The longer a country's name is, the less likely it is to be true...
Germany serves as a reminder of what will happen to a country if you vote far-left too long.
Uhhh... what?
The head of state (and the chancellor) are from what is considered the center right. Far-left parties
never were in power. And last I checked, Germany was doing a lot better in this financial meltdown than
the US (which doesn't mean they are doing incredibly well, just a lot better).
I'm from Denmark.
Compared to many people from USA (not all), the majority of people in Denmark are "socialists" (again not everyone). All parties that we can vote for - even the ones we place on the far right on our own political scale, would belong among the democrats in USA. Nearly all political parties in Denmark, would be called leftish in USA. It has been like this for many many decades and I would say that we are doing pretty well, with our national health care system, common wealth, education, etc., etc. - I would even say we are doing better than USA. In Denmark, Nazis, racists and the like are almost always placed on the far right on the political scale.
Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao and others like them, might have SAID that they were socialists and making leftish policies. But they weren't/didn't. They were not anywhere near it. They would like people to think so - and I can see they even got to some of you too. A shame.
You are obviously terribly confused. A political party is defined by it's actions not by the labels it chooses to advertise under. So the German Nazi party was far right, as private corporations functioned and profited during that whole period. All the arms manufacturers were private none of them where nationalised, citizens retained private ownership of resources and assets (at least the single group approved of by the party).
As for any associations with the intelligentsia, I see you have failed to hear of junk science, people who basically will trade upon their qualifications and say or write what ever they are paid to say or write. Technically Bill Ayers in his youth put forward his own opinions and with the impatience of youth expressed them in a questionable manner, behaviour which he had long since matured out of.
Now as for the whole gamut of right and left political bias, technically in a global sense the US does not have a leading left wing political party as the democrats and centre right and the republicans are far right, to see actual centre left political parties in action running countries you have to look overseas, Canada, Australia, England, etc. The outer edges of right and left politics has always demonstrated itself to be destructive, a grand deceit based upon propaganda and lies to empower and enrich a minority at the expense of the majority, from Hitler and Stalin, to Bush and Cheney, some of course are far more destructive than others but they have all been equally self serving and, any limits upon their actions have been forced upon them by outside influences rather than their own consciences.
A good indication of how centre a party is defined by it's willingness and hence the politicians of the parties willingness to be open to criticism, open to questions and open to ideas and not resorting to censorship to protect the facade they have created to hide their true nature.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
In terms of free speech in Europe this is very minor, people are jailed for analyses of Nazi treatment of Jews during World War II that don't follow a set pattern. If people are being sent to jail for writing in Europe, I don't see why closing down a press or web site is that big of a deal. From my understanding of things, many Nazis tended to be barbaric, so I would be skeptical of apologetic books on how nice concentration camps were, but I don't think people should be jailed for it, or the books and presses even shut down.
Only an american could describe hitler as left wing....
The divided states of North America
The barely united queendom of small Britain and some part not really on Ireland
The party's one party state of China
The secular dictatorship of Iran
Someone who's 'far-right', anywhere else in the world, in America would be considered 'moderate' or 'left-leaning'.
Think about that for a few moments, and realise what that means.
That's because the term Fascist has become utterly misused in the United States. It pretty much has devolved to mean "bully", rather than a political-economic system.