Seeking and Finding Wholeness

I had no idea, but thanks to Wikipedia, now I do and so do you. Some people hate the FREE internet, the free internet doesnt serve the elite, power hungry, and profit-minded interests.. But, the free internet is so crucial, it allowed humanity to connect, share, and offer an age of knowledge and free exchange of ideas… We dont want to lose that. Read on:

To: English Wikipedia Readers and Community
From: Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director
Date: January 16, 2012

Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate—that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.

This will be the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public protest of this nature, and it’s a decision that wasn’t lightly made. Here’s how it’s been described by the three Wikipedia administrators who formally facilitated the community’s discussion. From the public statement, signed by User:NuclearWarfare, User:Risker and User:Billinghurst:

It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.

Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a “blackout” of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.

On careful review of this discussion, the closing administrators note the broad-based support for action from Wikipedians around the world, not just from within the United States. The primary objection to a global blackout came from those who preferred that the blackout be limited to readers from the United States, with the rest of the world seeing a simple banner notice instead. We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a blackout preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns about similar legislation in other nations.

In making this decision, Wikipedians will be criticized for seeming to abandon neutrality to take a political position. That’s a real, legitimate issue. We want people to trust Wikipedia, not worry that it is trying to propagandize them.

But although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not. As Wikimedia Foundation board member Kat Walsh wrote on one of our mailing lists recently,

We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression. For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and collecting the world’s knowledge. We’re putting it in context, and showing people how to make to sense of it.

But that knowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use it. Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikimedia. Where you can only speak if you have sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or, if your views are pre-approved by someone who does, the same narrow set of ideas already popular will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access to.

The decision to shut down the English Wikipedia wasn’t made by me; it was made by editors, through a consensus decision-making process. But I support it.

Like Kat and the rest of the Wikimedia Foundation Board, I have increasingly begun to think of Wikipedia’s public voice, and the goodwill people have for Wikipedia, as a resource that wants to be used for the benefit of the public. Readers trust Wikipedia because they know that despite its faults, Wikipedia’s heart is in the right place. It’s not aiming to monetize their eyeballs or make them believe some particular thing, or sell them a product. Wikipedia has no hidden agenda: it just wants to be helpful.

That’s less true of other sites. Most are commercially motivated: their purpose is to make money. That doesn’t mean they don’t have a desire to make the world a better place—many do!—but it does mean that their positions and actions need to be understood in the context of conflicting interests.

My hope is that when Wikipedia shuts down on January 18, people will understand that we’re doing it for our readers. We support everyone’s right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. We think everyone should have access to educational material on a wide range of subjects, even if they can’t pay for it. We believe in a free and open Internet where information can be shared without impediment. We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA—and PIPA, and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States—don’t advance the interests of the general public. You can read a very good list of reasons to oppose SOPA and PIPA here, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Why is this a global action, rather than US-only? And why now, if some American legislators appear to be in tactical retreat on SOPA?

The reality is that we don’t think SOPA is going away, and PIPA is still quite active. Moreover, SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem. All around the world, we’re seeing the development of legislation intended to fight online piracy, and regulate the Internet in other ways, that hurt online freedoms. Our concern extends beyond SOPA and PIPA: they are just part of the problem. We want the Internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone.

Make your voice heard!

On January 18, we hope you’ll agree with us, and will do what you can to make your own voice heard.

Sue Gardner,
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundationfrom: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout

More info:

United States Justice Foundation 932 “D” Street, Suite 2 Ramona, California 92065 760-788-6624 USJF.NET 01/16/2012

Dear …. ,

Congressman Darrell Issa has scheduled an emergency hearing of his Oversight and Governance Committee, in a last ditch effort to stop H.R. 3261, the House version of the Internet takeover bill. The hearing will be held January 18th.   Please send faxes to EVERY member of the Committee IMMEDIATELY.  This could be our last chance to stop this vile and unconstitutional bill in the House of Representatives! And, please forward this email to EVERYONE that you know who doesn’t want Eric Holder and Barack Hussein Obama taking control of the internet. I cannot stress this enough.  You must contact Members of Congress today. A collection of House Republicans and Democrats are planning to move this bill forward as early as next week.  If they are successful, you will have no free speech on the internet.  Your favorite conservative forums and websites could be shut down. H.R. 3261, called “SOPA”, is the most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in Congress.  It will give corrupt U. S. Attorney General Eric Holder the power to blacklist or shut down any website, or any internet forum, that is merely accused of being linked to “online piracy”. Fact won’t matter.  There will be no hearings.  There will be no trials.  An anonymous “tip” to Mr. Holder’s Justice Department is all that the Obama goons will need in order to pull the plug, and shut the website down. They will be able to ban conservative websites from the internet.  Government agents will have the power to order Google, Miscrosoft, and Yahoo! to “sanitize” search results, so that anti-Obama information can’t be found. They will even have the authority to issue huge, crippling, fines to any website that doesn’t “toe the line,” and screen its content to please the new government censors. …, please understand that I am not joking.  This bill is that bad and that dangerous.  If it passes, Barack Hussein Obama will have the same power over the internet that the Communist dictators do in China! Please fax every Member of the House Oversight and Governance Committee NOW.  And ask EVERYONE that you know to do the same.  Feel free to forward this email around to all of your friends and family. But, please do it quickly.  Congressman Issa’s emergency hearing is happening on January 18th.   The American people must rally behind him to stop this bill. Things are moving so fast on Capitol Hill right now that the situation is very hard to follow.  The U. S. Senate is scheduled to vote on its version of this internet takeover bill on January 24th, and USJF is fighting hard there to stop that bill as well. But, right at this moment, the House of Representatives is where the action is. Supposedly conservative Republicans have teamed up with ultra-leftist Congressman John Conyers, and they are trying to ram this bill through the House as fast as possible. The left-wing mainstream media companies are fighting hard for this bill, too.  They are spreading campaign contributions all over Congress.  They want the government to shut down all the blogs, political forums, and independent news sites, so that they, once again, will have a monopoly on the news that we are allowed to see. Just imagine if your ONLY source of news was liberal CBS, or radical MSNBC! Well, that is what we will get if H.R. 3261 passes.

Eric Holder will be ruthless in using this new authority.  The Tea Party movement could be wiped out overnight.  Conservative candidates for public office won’t stand a chance.

Write your congressman/woman now:

Dear Congressman <>:

I demand you STOP H.R. 3261, the Internet Takeover Bill.

This bill is not an “anti-internet piracy” bill. It is a government power grab that violates the First Amendment. It gives extraordinary and unconstitutional power to the federal government to censor and control the internet.

H.R. 3261 will allow our government to shut down websites and online forums with the flip of a switch. It will give the federal government the same power to control the internet that the Communist Chinese government uses with such brutal efficiency in that country.

I demand that you do everything in your power to stop this bill.

So, apparently, conservatives and liberals both do not want this.. then why the heck is congress introducing bills the people dont want? simple.. follow the money.

In the name of piracy, terrorism, and fear mongering crap like that they want to change how the internet is.. I vote for freedom, openness, privacy, equality, no censorship, no favoritism, only for an OPEN internet as it has ..

I want my open and free internet no matter what the cost is. I belong to the Internet generation, I went online for the first time when I was 11yrs old and have been online since.

Thanks to my open and free internet I learned half what I know about the world, it has helped me in priceless ways, it has evolved me as a human being and helped me shape myself into the person I am today… and it should remain as it has been. When something works, dont break it!

It is time we the people made our voices heard. Protect my free and open internet! keep it free and open! please!

.

I vote for freedom, no matter the cost!

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“Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself” ~ FDR’s First Inaugural Address

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Meditate on this:

“Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. “  ~  Hermann Wilhelm Göring, during his trial in Nuremberg