Censorship and the battle for your rights. Berlin Wall and Arab Spring.

Oh do not trouble yourself so. It was called the General Assembly of the Internet Corporation for Names and Numbers.

I do not think I met a man or woman there that was not the equivalent of a doctorate in something. It was not pleasant there. Back then we worried about band width and accessibility. We actually limited posts so as to keep the developing nations input. Think of that! Just back as little as 1999 we limited discussion/emails so as to allow certain areas to participate. I do not think most people even understand what that means. It means that the dial up connections were so slow on data upload that 10,000 words would crush their ability to work the net for hours. Did you read that right "hours" yes hours. Back in those days I used 4 computers to monitor information from abroad. The four computers were not needed because of my brain power but because the uploading took so long that I would wait that long on one that I needed 4 to keep from just sitting there waiting.

Now granted I worked overseas a lot, meaning my data searches required me to get information from overseas. And my job at the time was a whole lot of current cultural anthropology for inter-contractual relations and development. (understanding a legal cultural framework and societal norms) And so I was doing a lot of reading on the first online newspapers and such so the stuff was data intense.

Let us break that down a bit.

In around 1989 there was this new thing called the international FAX. That was the ability for the phone lines to carry printed data from one country and print it out in another. FAX was a term we used to mean a reasonable facsimile of what we put in a machine here in the USA could in fact then be printed in the USSR. Wild idea isn't it? We had them and wiring type communications before that. But it was very expensive and really only for upper end business. Banks and countries were the primary users (along with lawyers of course) up until 1987-1989.

Think of this: back then when we sent stuff we actually monitored oceanic conditions. What!? Yes we did because if a big storm was happening it meant oceanic cables were disturbed and so the data went through satellites, about 1% of what we have now. And those satellites were all government and all "tapped". (I know what you are thinking - where were the dinosaurs? ;-) So let me get to the fun stuff!

One government was overthrown because of the FAX. Really! How bizarro is that?

So think of a world where people could not pick up a phone from the Ukraine and call a cousin in Baltimore USA. Can you imagine. They did not know what we were doing and we did not know what they were doing.

So I began Dierker Consultancy to use technology to inform businesses of the cultural nuances of doing business in foreign lands. To this day that company has never ever operated in the "red". Well yes it has in all reality. It started with the Red Commies of Russia and still works with the Red commies of Asia.

Keep reading here is where Arab Spring comes in.

With this new thing called the FAX we were able to communicate real time about events going on around the world. And the powers to be could not stop it. There was this hero named something like Lech Walesa and in the Round Table Agreement set Poland on a course to freedom.

You see the FAX became available to the everyday man. Oh my what we learned and they learned of our world. It was incredible. They had no food in winter. We had no culture but much freedom. Oh my!

And the Berlin wall came down and the USSR collapsed. You say this has nothing to do with the FAX machine. Think again. It was ideals that fell, false ideals and communication made it happen.

Do you think for one moment that the Arab Spring could have happened without cellphones? Well if you do then crawl back under that neanderthal rock.

I sent that fellow Lech about 100 faxes. He got about 25. Because the powers to be stopped them coming through. My faxes were about financial data regarding circumstances in some place like Gadansk or something, basically answering where a strike could do the most damage. I will never know if it helped or hurt. I do know I was paid to do it by Nationals out of Taiwan, go figure that. However just a few years later they were getting aluminum out of stockpiles in Vladivostok. Go figure that. And aluminum builds military aircraft and beer cans.

Well those faxes could have been censored and all like them. But they were not and Poland and the Ukraine are much more free today. Stupid faxes maybe or maybe not.

So someone here suggests not letting people write because because because I get a little squeamish. And when they tell me it is for the betterment of something I get real hard core. I wrote several forum and question posts and several hubs on this matter using references to Nazi controlled Germany. And I heard people object because it belittled Jewish suffering. I still have yet to hear from one Jewish person regarding the same. Except for words of thanks and encouragement.

Yes the most famous censoring led to WWII and that fact will not change and my family, the Dierkers will not forget it.

I will not forget. And I will stand against censorship in any form. I hope that you will too. Now we give prayers to those under censorship in North Korea, Iran, Syria and China. But do not worry for as long as we fight censorship here we will communicate with them and we will promote freedom and they will access our speech and become empowered and change lives.