2016-12-26 EU: Juncker vaatii väärien viestien vastaista taistelua

[P]

Avoimmuus on paras ase terroria vastaan

Junckerin logiikalla avoimmuus on paras ase myös koleraa, ebolaa, ruttoa ja isorokkoa vastaan.

Junckerin "logiikalla" paras tapa taistella AIDSia vastaan olisi kieltää kondomit?

Eurooppalaisista johtajista joko suuri osa on täysin sekaisin olevia dillejä tai täysin patologisia valehtelijoita? No osa voi olla molempia?

[Ernst]

Ei taida ihan täysillä käydä koko Juncker:

Ei käy, ei.

Mustan kirjan mainostaminen kertoo valistuneelle aika paljon mainostajansa arvostelukyvystä. Nuivilla on toki muutakin kokemusta ja havaintoja samaisesta kyvystä.

Olihan D. Koivulaaksoksollakin natsilistansa. Vissiin suosittu harrastus parempien ihmisten piireissä.

Aamuyöstä sumun seasta kadun varteen kääntyy auto. Koputus ovelle ja matka leiriin alkaa. Lista on täytttänyt Juncker-Koivulaakson tehtävänsä.

[JKN93]

Google alkanut suodattamaan yhä enemmän pääuutis näkymästään ja parhaista hakutuloksistaan pois "huonolaatuisia" valeuutis sivustoja,edistäen näin "luotettavien ja laadukkaiden" sivustojen näkyvyyttä.
Yhtenä esimerkkinä "valkoisen rodun" Stormfrontin holokaustin kieltosivuja on siivottu pois näkymästä ja toimia laajennetaan jatkossa muihinkin ongelmallisiin "ääriliike ja viha" sivuihin.Joten tulossa on paljon lisää karsintaa tämän muutoksen johdosta.
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-top-stories-algorithm-fake-news-23053.html
http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/google-holocaust-denial-algorithm/?tw=share

[Vredesbyrd]

Tämä tarkoittaa, että Hommaforum putoaa ja Suomen Uutiset nousevat.

[MW]

Tämä tarkoittaa, että Hommaforum putoaa ja Suomen Uutiset nousevat.

...eikä Junckerin "mustasta kirjasta" löydy kohta yhtään mainintaa.

Mutta onhan sekin yksi tapa taistella valemedioita vastaan...

Just YLE uutisoi, kuinka saatanallinen Venäjä pelottelemalla tuomioilla hiljentää blogaajia. Onneksi Suomessa ei ole tapahtunut mitään vastaavaa.

YLE. http://yle.fi/uutiset/3-9376439

Puistattavaa. Meillä Suomessa ei käydä blogaajien kimppuun, me luotamme siihen, että mielipiteellä vapaus, lukijalla on vastuu?

[JKN93]

Lisätäämpä tähän kahden muun Junckerin veroisen henkilön tuoreita mietteitä nyky tilanteesta mm.Euroopassa:

Guy Verhofstadt:
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/russia-hacking-europe-elections-by-guy-verhofstadt-2016-12?referrer=/Xl3AK7nqc

Russia's Hybrid War Against the West

BRUSSELS – The United States FBI and CIA have both concluded that Russia ran a hacking and disinformation campaign aimed at influencing the US presidential election in Donald Trump's favor. We may never know how successful Russia's cyber operation was, but we do know that the Kremlin got the result it wanted. Time magazine was wrong to name Trump its person of the year. Clearly, this was Russian President Vladimir Putin's year.

The attack on the US may have been a precursor to further electoral meddling in Europe, where officials are now racing to counter Russian cyber operations before a series of major elections in 2017, including in the Netherlands, Germany, and France. Past cyber attacks in Europe bear an uncanny resemblance to the alleged Russian-sponsored hack on the Democratic National Committee in the US.

In early 2015, a group with ties to the Russian government hacked into the German Bundestag, stole confidential files, and gave them to WikiLeaks, which published them. Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has accused Russia of orchestrating similar attacks on German government computer systems. Meanwhile, in November, the European Commission also suffered a large-scale cyber attack, and while the culprit remains unknown, very few people or organizations are capable of carrying out such an operation.

Cyber attacks are just one element in a broader hybrid war that Russia is waging against the West. Russia has also assisted far-right nationalist organizations and populist movements across Europe, such as by extending loans to Marine Le Pen's National Front in France, and furnishing UK Independence Party politicians with prime-time media slots on the Russian state-funded television network Russia Today.

US President Barack Obama has finally vowed to respond to Putin's assault on American democracy, but he should have done more – and acted much sooner. Europeans would be foolish to expect assistance from the incoming Trump administration. Trump's chief strategist, Stephen Bannon – a former executive chairman of the American "alt-right" disinformation website Breitbart News – has openly offered to help Le Pen win the French presidential election next spring.

Official Russian sources admit that they spent €1.2 billion ($1.25 billion) on foreign media campaigns just this year. In the EU, thousands of fake-news websites have appeared, many of them with unclear ownership: the number of disinformation websites in Hungary doubled in 2014; and in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, some 42 new websites are now polluting the EU's information ecosystem. And, less surreptitiously, the Kremlin has spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding propaganda outfits – such as the Sputnik "news" agency – even as the Russian economy implodes.

Russia's disinformation campaigns are complex and multifaceted, but the mission they share is to undermine trust in Western democratic authorities. Social-media trolling is one method. And social media is also a key vector for a Russian strategy that relies on historical revisionism (the claim that Russia alone won World War II is a staple of this approach); on conspiracy theories, promoted among European and American nationalist movements, which blame the West for, say, inciting the war in Ukraine; and denial of reality, such as the presence of Russian troops in Crimea and Ukraine.

To defend against this onslaught, the West should promote media freedom, reward accountability, and provide legal avenues to shut down systemic disinformation channels. It bodes well that the EU recently amended its 2017 budget to reinforce the European External Action Service's StratCom team, which had been badly underfunded, despite its critical mission of uncovering and debunking disinformation. But the EU and NATO should also take a lesson from the US election, by bolstering collective European cyber defenses, and pressuring member states to expand their own cyber capabilities. On the political front, Putin must be told that foreign interference in national elections will have severe negative consequences for Russian economic interests.

Beyond government action, the private sector and civil-society organizations should step up their efforts to verify whether online news stories are accurate, balanced, and credible. Organizations working together can make a difference. For example, Russia terminated its Swedish-language edition of Sputnik, because Swedish media organizations were not using its products.

But while Facebook has indicated that it will improve the vetting process for its content, voluntary measures may not be enough: some German lawmakers have suggested that legislation may be needed to clean up social-media platforms. Still, Europe's strongest defense is its free press, together with nongovernmental organizations working to expose lies.

Europeans must not become complacent about the current state of their free press. After all, Breitbart News is already in Britain and is planning to expand across the EU. Within days of Trump's election, the New York Times reported, "Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, Marine Le Pen's niece and a rising force in the National Front, tweeted, 'I answer yes to the invitation of Stephen Bannon... to work together."

Western democracies have entered a period of volatility, and Russia is no longer playing by the rules of the game that applied even during the darkest days of the Cold War. Putin is actively waging a hybrid war against the West, one that we are only just beginning to comprehend, let alone confront. It is time to defend our values. This year made us fully aware of the scale of the challenge Putin is posing to Western democracy. In 2017, we must confront – and defeat – his tactics head-on.

George Soros:
https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/open-society-needs-defending-by-george-soros-2016-12

Open Society Needs Defending

Open societies are in crisis, and various forms of closed societies – from fascist dictatorships to mafia states – are on the rise. Because elected leaders failed to meet voters' legitimate expectations and aspirations, electorates have become disenchanted with the prevailing versions of democracy and capitalism.

NEW YORK – Well before Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, I sent a holiday greeting to my friends that read: "These times are not business as usual. Wishing you the best in a troubled world." Now I feel the need to share this message with the rest of the world. But before I do, I must tell you who I am and what I stand for.

I am an 86-year-old Hungarian Jew who became a US citizen after the end of World War II. I learned at an early age how important it is what kind of political regime prevails. The formative experience of my life was the occupation of Hungary by Hitler's Germany in 1944. I probably would have perished had my father not understood the gravity of the situation. He arranged false identities for his family and for many other Jews; with his help, most survived.

In 1947, I escaped from Hungary, by then under Communist rule, to England. As a student at the London School of Economics, I came under the influence of the philosopher Karl Popper, and I developed my own philosophy, built on the twin pillars of fallibility and reflexivity. I distinguished between two kinds of political regimes: those in which people elected their leaders, who were then supposed to look after the interests of the electorate, and others where the rulers sought to manipulate their subjects to serve the rulers' interests. Under Popper's influence, I called the first kind of society open, the second, closed.

The classification is too simplistic. There are many degrees and variations throughout history, from well-functioning models to failed states, and many different levels of government in any particular situation. Even so, I find the distinction between the two regime types useful. I became an active promoter of the former and opponent of the latter.

I find the current moment in history very painful. Open societies are in crisis, and various forms of closed societies – from fascist dictatorships to mafia states – are on the rise. How could this happen? The only explanation I can find is that elected leaders failed to meet voters' legitimate expectations and aspirations and that this failure led electorates to become disenchanted with the prevailing versions of democracy and capitalism. Quite simply, many people felt that the elites had stolen their democracy.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US emerged as the sole remaining superpower, equally committed to the principles of democracy and free markets. The major development since then has been the globalization of financial markets, spearheaded by advocates who argued that globalization increases total wealth. After all, if the winners compensated the losers, they would still have something left over.

The argument was misleading, because it ignored the fact that the winners seldom, if ever, compensate the losers. But the potential winners spent enough money promoting the argument that it prevailed. It was a victory for believers in untrammeled free enterprise, or "market fundamentalists," as I call them. Because financial capital is an indispensable ingredient of economic development, and few countries in the developing world could generate enough capital on their own, globalization spread like wildfire. Financial capital could move around freely and avoid taxation and regulation.

Globalization has had far-reaching economic and political consequences. It has brought about some economic convergence between poor and rich countries; but it increased inequality within both poor and rich countries. In the developed world, the benefits accrued mainly to large owners of financial capital, who constitute less than 1% of the population. The lack of redistributive policies is the main source of the dissatisfaction that democracy's opponents have exploited. But there were other contributing factors as well, particularly in Europe.

I was an avid supporter of the European Union from its inception. I regarded it as the embodiment of the idea of an open society: an association of democratic states willing to sacrifice part of their sovereignty for the common good. It started out at as a bold experiment in what Popper called "piecemeal social engineering." The leaders set an attainable objective and a fixed timeline and mobilized the political will needed to meet it, knowing full well that each step would necessitate a further step forward. That is how the European Coal and Steel Community developed into the EU.

But then something went woefully wrong. After the Crash of 2008, a voluntary association of equals was transformed into a relationship between creditors and debtors, where the debtors had difficulties in meeting their obligations and the creditors set the conditions the debtors had to obey. That relationship has been neither voluntary nor equal.

Germany emerged as the hegemonic power in Europe, but it failed to live up to the obligations that successful hegemons must fulfill, namely looking beyond their narrow self-interest to the interests of the people who depend on them. Compare the behavior of the US after WWII with Germany's behavior after the Crash of 2008: the US launched the Marshall Plan, which led to the development of the EU; Germany imposed an austerity program that served its narrow self-interest.

Before its reunification, Germany was the main force driving European integration: it was always willing to contribute a little bit extra to accommodate those putting up resistance. Remember Germany's contribution to meeting Margaret Thatcher's demands regarding the EU budget?

But reuniting Germany on a 1:1 basis turned out to be very expensive. When Lehman Brothers collapsed, Germany did not feel rich enough to take on any additional obligations. When European finance ministers declared that no other systemically important financial institution would be allowed to fail, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, correctly reading the wishes of her electorate, declared that each member state should look after its own institutions. That was the start of a process of disintegration.

After the Crash of 2008, the EU and the eurozone became increasingly dysfunctional. Prevailing conditions became far removed from those prescribed by the Maastricht Treaty, but treaty change became progressively more difficult, and eventually impossible, because it couldn't be ratified. The eurozone became the victim of antiquated laws; much-needed reforms could be enacted only by finding loopholes in them. That is how institutions became increasingly complicated, and electorates became alienated.

The rise of anti-EU movements further impeded the functioning of institutions. And these forces of disintegration received a powerful boost in 2016, first from Brexit, then from the election of Trump in the US, and on December 4 from Italian voters' rejection, by a wide margin, of constitutional reforms.

Democracy is now in crisis. Even the US, the world's leading democracy, elected a con artist and would-be dictator as its president. Although Trump has toned down his rhetoric since he was elected, he has changed neither his behavior nor his advisers. His cabinet comprises incompetent extremists and retired generals.

What lies ahead?

I am confident that democracy will prove resilient in the US. Its Constitution and institutions, including the fourth estate, are strong enough to resist the excesses of the executive branch, thus preventing a would-be dictator from becoming an actual one.

But the US will be preoccupied with internal struggles in the near future, and targeted minorities will suffer. The US will be unable to protect and promote democracy in the rest of the world. On the contrary, Trump will have greater affinity with dictators. That will allow some of them to reach an accommodation with the US, and others to carry on without interference. Trump will prefer making deals to defending principles. Unfortunately, that will be popular with his core constituency.

I am particularly worried about the fate of the EU, which is in danger of coming under the influence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose concept of government is irreconcilable with that of open society. Putin is not a passive beneficiary of recent developments; he worked hard to bring them about. He recognized his regime's weakness: it can exploit natural resources but cannot generate economic growth. He felt threatened by "color revolutions" in Georgia, Ukraine, and elsewhere. At first, he tried to control social media. Then, in a brilliant move, he exploited social media companies' business model to spread misinformation and fake news, disorienting electorates and destabilizing democracies. That is how he helped Trump get elected.

The same is likely to happen in the European election season in 2017 in the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy. In France, the two leading contenders are close to Putin and eager to appease him. If either wins, Putin's dominance of Europe will become a fait accompli.

I hope that Europe's leaders and citizens alike will realize that this endangers their way of life and the values on which the EU was founded. The trouble is that the method Putin has used to destabilize democracy cannot be used to restore respect for facts and a balanced view of reality.

With economic growth lagging and the refugee crisis out of control, the EU is on the verge of breakdown and is set to undergo an experience similar to that of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Those who believe that the EU needs to be saved in order to be reinvented must do whatever they can to bring about a better outcome.

[hattiwatti]

Facebook, Twitter, Google Collude With German Government To Censor Discussion On Immigration
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/12/15/facebook-twitter-google-collude-with-german-government-to-censor-discussion-on-immigration/

    The two largest social networks, Facebook and Twitter, and the world's largest search engine, Google, have teamed up with German law enforcement to delete "hate speech" within 24 hours in what is being seen as a last-ditch effort to silence public dissent about a gigantic wave of Syrian immigration.

    The partnership to crack down on what Germany deems illegal speech comes after German law enforcement's reported concerns about "racist abuse" posted to social media after the country's huge and extremely controversial import of over a million Syrian refugees.

[Vredesbyrd]

Ei ole mitään esteitä, miksei tuo tule Suomeen pikavauhtia ja siihen yhdistetä ei-toivottaviksi viesteiksi EU:sta eroon tahtomista ryssätrollaamisena.

[hattiwatti]

Puheenjohtajan vaihdos persuissa luultavasti saisi sen puolueen oikein raivolla ajamaan asiaa. Tähän astisten näyttöjen perusteella. Siksi olen hieman varautunut.

[hattiwatti]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-30/italy-urges-europe-begin-censoring-free-speech-internet

First it was the US, then Germany blamed much of what is wrong in society on "fake news", and not, say, a series of terrible decisions made by politicians. Now it is Italy's turn to call for an end to "fake news", which in itself would not be troubling, however, the way Giovanni Pitruzzella, head of the Italian competition body, demands the European Union "cracks down" on what it would dub "fake news" is nothing short of a total crackdown on all free speech, and would give local governments free reign to silence any outlet that did not comply with the establishment propaganda.

In an interview with the FT, Pitruzzella said the regulation of false information on the internet was best done by the state rather than by social media companies such as Facebook, an approach taken previously by Germany, which has demanded that Facebook end "hate speech" and has threatened to find the social network as much as €500K per "fake" post.

Pitruzzella, head of the Italian competition body since 2011, said "EU countries should set up independent bodies — co-ordinated by Brussels and modeled on the system of antitrust agencies — which could quickly label fake news, remove it from circulation and impose fines if necessary."

In other words, a series of unelected bureaucrats, unaccountable to anyone, would sit down and between themselves decide what is and what isn't "fake news", and then, drumroll, "remove it from circulation." On the other hand, coming one week after Obama give Europe the green light to engage in any form of censorship and halt of free speech that it desires, when the outgoing US president voted into law the  "Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act", it should come as no surprise that a suddenly emboldened Europe is resorting to such chilling measures.

"Post-truth in politics is one of the drivers of populism and it is one of the threats to our democracies," Pitruzzella told the FT. "We have reached a fork in the road: we have to choose whether to leave the internet like it is, the wild west, or whether it needs rules that appreciate the way communication has changed. I think we need to set those rules and this is the role of the public sector."

Translation: it will soon be up to Brussles to decide what content on the Internet is appropriate for broad European consumption, because unless a bureaucrat intervenes "fake news" will lead to even more populism and not, say, years of failed political reform, and central bank decisions.

In short, it's all the internet's fault that Europe's legacy political system is reeling from an unprecedented anti-establishment backlash, which has nothing to do with, well, anything else.

As the FT notes, Pitruzzella's call comes amid growing concern over the impact of fake news on politics in western democracies, including in this year's UK Brexit vote and the US election. In Germany, which faces parliamentary elections in 2017, the government is planning a law that would impose fines of up to €500,000 on social media companies for distributing fake news.

Allies of Matteo Renzi, the former prime minister, have also complained that fake news contributed to his defeat in the December referendum on constitutional reform, which led to his resignation, even though he lost by a wide 20-percentage point margin. At least they haven't blamed Russian hackers... yet.

So even assuming limiting free speech is the answer, why not force potential offenders to companies to police themselves?

Well, according to Pitruzzella it would be inappropriate to leave this task to social media self-regulation. "Platforms like Facebook have created great benefits for people and customers: they are doing their part as an economic entity in adopting policies to modify their algorithms to reduce this phenomenon", he said. "But it is not the job of a private entity to control information. This is historically the job of public powers. They have to guarantee that information is correct. We cannot delegate this completely."

We know of at least one Italian who would agree.

[Rauno Murju]

Junckerilla onkin hyvä syy vaatia vääräksi määriteltyjen viestien estämistä:

Brittisanomalehti The Guardianin ja saksalaisen NDR:n haltuunsa saamien asiakirjojen mukaan Euroopan komission nykyinen puheenjohtaja Jean-Claude Juncker puuttui aiemmassa tehtävässään Luxemburgin pääministerinä Euroopan unionin yrityksiin lopettaa suurten monikansallisten yritysten veronkierto.

https://www.uusisuomi.fi/raha/211405-tietovuoto-eun-nykyinen-ykkosnimi-esti-veronkiertoon-puuttumisen-pitaisi-erota

[Vredesbyrd]

Farssimaisesti tuo Junckerin veronkierron kummisetänä toimiminen Luxenburgissa on juttu, josta iso paha aina väärässä oleva vihervasemmisto piti meteliä jo aika päiviä sitten.

[hattiwatti]

Eikös ECR äänestänyt brittikonservatiiveille tärkeän London Cityn rahanpesu & veronkierto lakiesitystä vastaan? Siitä taisi olla täällä jotain juttua.