Friday, June 19, 2009

Being ruled by morons

17. June 2009: German parliament commemorates the uprising in Eastern Germany of 1953. The uprising was called the start of a fight for freedom, which was successful in the end (resulting in the German reunification in 1990). Before 1990, the 17. of June was the national holiday in Western Germany.

18. June 2009: German parliament passes a law, which allows the federal German police agency to put together a blacklist of domains, which must be blocked by ISPs. This law violates many fundamental principles of German constitution like separation of powers, federalism, freedom of information and the prohibition of censorship.

Below you'll find some preliminary success stories regarding the latest developments:
  • As explained before, the actual target group of this law (producers and consumers of child pornography) can be more relaxed than before, because it comes pretty handy for them. You'll see none of them demonstrating against this.
  • Conspiracy theorists said from the beginning, that the fight against child pornography is just a bogus argument for installing a censorship infrastructure. Fortunately, some politicians were even stupid enough to admit this in public.
  • Before this madness started, there was no noticeable digital civil rights movement in Germany. This changed dramatically during the last months. Now they are many and perfectly organized. On Saturday, there will be coordinated demonstrations in at least 11 German cities.
  • An official online petition got signed by 134014 people, an all-time record in the history of online-petitions.
  • The German Social Democratic Party is one big step further in making itself superfluous. I predict that some of the last bright minds will leave the party before the next parliamentary elections in September.
  • Rulers of China and Iran no longer have to fear bothering remarks regarding their censorship policies from German politicians. Improved bilateral relations are good for German economy, which is highly dependent on foreign sales markets and energy resources.
  • Almost unknown a year ago, the German Pirate Party got 0.9% in the European parliamentary elections, with constantly rising popularity.
This is the start of a fight for freedom, which will be successful in the end.

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