YouTube Added: 20.11.2012
See also:
– Veterans Today’s Gordon Duff: Darkness Of Western Media Over Gaza
– Interview With John Pilger: Israel’s Gaza Rampage: It’s Not Just War
U.N. Calls For ‘Anti-Terror’ Internet Surveillance
United Nations report calls for Internet surveillance, saying lack of “internationally agreed framework for retention of data” is a problem, as are open Wi-Fi networks in airports, cafes, and libraries.
– U.N. calls for ‘anti-terror’ Internet surveillance (CNET, Oct 22, 2012):
The United Nations is calling for more surveillance of Internet users, saying it would help to investigate and prosecute terrorists.
A 148-page report (PDF) released today titled “The Use of the Internet for Terrorist Purposes” warns that terrorists are using social networks and other sharing sites including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Dropbox, to spread “propaganda.”
“Potential terrorists use advanced communications technology often involving the Internet to reach a worldwide audience with relative anonymity and at a low cost,” said Yury Fedotov, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
‘Obama Has Millions Of Fake Twitter Followers’ (USA Today)
– Obama has millions of fake Twitter followers (USA Today, Aug 24, 2012):
President Obama’s Twitter account has 18.8 million followers — but more than half of them really don’t exist, according to reports.A new Web tool has determined that 70% of Obama’s crowd includes “fake followers,” The New York Times reports in a story about how Twitter followers can be purchased.
“The practice has become so widespread that StatusPeople, a social media management company in London, released a Web tool last month called the Fake Follower Check that it says can ascertain how many fake followers you and your friends have,” the Times reports.
Read more‘Obama Has Millions Of Fake Twitter Followers’ (USA Today)
Twitter Wars: Obama And Romney Buying Fake Followers?
See also: Barack Obama And Mitt Romney Are Essentially The Same Candidate … 40 Facts
– Twitter wars: Obama and Romney buying fake followers? (RT. Aug 25, 2012):
While Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are neck in neck at the polls, another fight between the two presidential candidates has emerged — one that isn’t measured by votes but with retweets. Are politicians paying for their Twitter followers though?
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney made headlines with his Twitter account earlier this month after it was discovered that the presumptive GOP nominee for president magically accumulated more than 100,000 new social networking followers in only a single short weekend. Today, Romney’s 901,000-or so followers pale in comparison to President Obama’s nearly 19 million strong, but was the race to raking in an impressive online audience an easy one?
Read moreTwitter Wars: Obama And Romney Buying Fake Followers?
Social Media Panic In Italy: Black Monday Messages On Facebook And Twitter Have Gone Viral
Got gold and silver?
…
People should, rightly, have fear of having their money in paper instruments, whether it’s in a bank account or a bond. If they had any sense they would be buying (physical) gold and/or silver. That’s the only way to maintain your purchasing power.
– Social Media Panic in Italy: “Enough of this Agony; Give Us Back the Lira” (Global Economic Alalysis, July 23, 2012):
Black Monday messages on Facebook and Twitter have gone viral in Italy as people have had enough of austerity, job losses, and uncertainty. La Stampa reports on Panic in the Network.
What follows is a Mish-revised translation of select ideas and quotes from the article. My specific comments are in brackets.
Black Monday breaks early in the morning on websites across the world and social networking spreads alarm. “Withdraw money from bank accounts” is the appeal of Andrew to Facebook friends.
Pseudo-analysis on the alleged benefits of a return to the lira go around the net. “Enough of this sad agony. Bring back the old money”, Paul insists.
“In 2000 we had the lira. We were producing more, exporting more, and children were living better, the results of monetary sovereignty” says Magdi Cristiano Allam on Twitter.
“We are on the brink of the abyss and the top EU cazzeggiano [slang for F* around],” accuses Ivan.
The tones on social networks are apocalyptic: “This is not a crisis, it’s the end of capitalism.” On the forum of the economics of printing a black player sees: “Folks, we begin to pray, after Greece’s up to us. We are at the end titles, to every man for himself.”
Read moreSocial Media Panic In Italy: Black Monday Messages On Facebook And Twitter Have Gone Viral
SOPA Mutates Into Much Worse CISPA, The Latest Threat To Internet Free Speech
– SOPA mutates into much worse CISPA, the latest threat to internet free speech (Natural News, April 21, 2012)
Just because SOPA and PIPA, the infamous internet “kill switch” bills, are largely dead does not mean the threat to internet free speech has become any less serious. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), also known as H.R. 3523, is the latest mutation of these internet censorship and spying bills to hit the U.S. Congress — and unless the American people speak up now to stop it, CISPA could lead to far worse repercussions for online free speech than SOPA or PIPA ever would have.
CNET, the popular technology news website that was among many others who spoke up against SOPA and PIPA earlier in the year, is also one of many now sounding the alarm about CISPA, which was authored by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.). Though the bill’s promoters are marketing it as being nothing like SOPA or PIPA, CISPA is exactly like those bills, except worse.
Read moreSOPA Mutates Into Much Worse CISPA, The Latest Threat To Internet Free Speech
Journalist Yasumi Iwakami Tweets About His Recent Health Problems After His Fukushima Nuke Plant In February, Receives Nasty Response
– Yasumi Iwakami Tweets About His Recent Health Problems After His Visit to #Fukushima I Nuke Plant in February (EX-SKF, April 10, 2012):
(and boy he received some nasty tweets in response…)
Yasumi Iwakami is arguably one of the best known independent journalists in Japan covering the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident, particularly among net users. I happened on Iwakami’s live netcast of TEPCO press conferences on his USTREAM channel very early on in the crisis, and have followed him and his reporting since.
He was one of the independent journalists allowed inside the plant compound in February this year on the second plant tour for the press (first one was in November last year). And ever since, he seems to have been plagued with one health discomfort after another. He tweeted about them on April 10, and someone compiled a “togetter” – a string of tweets.
First, the translation of Iwakami’s 15 tweets as they appear on the togetter, with Iwakami’s express permission to translate:
Police And MI5 Get Power To Watch You On The Web
– Police and MI5 get power to watch you on the web (Independent, April 2, 2012):
Police and intelligence officers are to be handed the power to monitor people’s messages online in what has been described as an “attack on the privacy” of vast numbers of Britons.
The Home Secretary, Theresa May, intends to introduce legislation in next month’s Queen’s Speech which would allow law-enforcement agencies to check on citizens using Facebook, Twitter, online gaming forums and the video-chat service Skype.
Regional police forces, MI5 and GCHQ, the Government’s eavesdropping centre, would be given the right to know who speaks to whom “on demand” and in “real time”.
TRAITOR Goshi Hosono Is Now On Twitter
– Goshi Hosono Is Now On Twitter (EX-SKF, March 29, 2012):
The minister in charge of the Fukushima nuclear accident and the Minister of the Environment Goshi Hosono has just started tweeting.
You can follow him if you want, at @goshihosono54.
So far, only two tweets, following no one, and 1,097 people following.
Let him know what you think of his:
- “decontamination” scam that benefit largest construction companies in Japan;
- wide-area disposal of disaster debris that has been contaminated with radioactive materials, toxic chemicals;
- his handling of the Fuku-I accident, etc.
Just be aware that Twitter Japan is run by a person with ties to the Japanese government. (But at this point, who doesn’t have ties to the government, among TPTB?)
Rebel NHK Announcer To Be ‘Purged’, His Twitter Account With 100,000 Followers To Be Closed
– Rebelled NHK announcer purged (Fukushima Diary, Mar 28, 2012):
Following up this article..An NHK spokes man rebelled against NHK
NHK decided to close his twitter account.
Read moreRebel NHK Announcer To Be ‘Purged’, His Twitter Account With 100,000 Followers To Be Closed
After Joking Over Twitter About ‘Digging Up Marilyn Monroe’ And ‘Destroying America’ Homeland Security Detains And Deports A British And An Irish Citizen
DHS:
” … Mr BRYAN confirmed that he had posted on his Tweeter website account …”
– British tourists detained, barred from U.S. after tweet about “destroying America” (Social Beat, Jan. 30, 2012):
– US bars friends over Twitter joke (The Sun, Jan. 31, 2012):
TWO pals were barred from entering the US after innocent tweets joking about “destroying America” were picked up by the country’s anti-terror cops.
US special agents monitoring Twitter spotted Leigh Van Bryan’s messages weeks before he left for a holiday in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting.
Leigh, who also quipped about “digging up Marilyn Monroe” on Twitter, said they were treated like terrorists on arrival at a Los Angeles International Airport. The pair were held by armed guards and quizzed for five hours before being handcuffed, put in a van with illegal immigrants and locked up overnight.
Locked up
They spent 12 hours in separate holding cells and were then put on a flight home.
Leigh, 26, was kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers. The Department of Homeland Security flagged up Leigh as a potential threat when he posted a Twitter message to his pals ahead of his trip to Hollywood.
It read: “Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America”.
Despite telling officials at LAX airport the term “destroy” was British slang for partying, the pair were held on suspicion of planning to “commit crimes”.
SOPA: Google, Amazon, And Facebook Consider Unprecedented Internet Black Out
For your (dis-)information.
Anti-SOPA pop-up banners online protest a law that many argue will dramatically alter the Internet.
– Will Google, Amazon, and Facebook Black Out the Net? (FOX News, Dec. 30, 2011):
In the growing battle for the future of the Web, some of the biggest sites online — Google, Facebook, and other tech stalwarts — are considering a coordinated blackout of their sites, some of the web’s most popular destinations.
No Google searches. No Facebook updates. No Tweets. No Amazon.com shopping. Nothing.
The action would be a dramatic response to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill backed by the motion picture and recording industries that is intended to eliminate theft online once and for all. HR 3261 would require ISPs to block access to sites that infringe on copyrights — but how exactly it does that has many up in arms. The creators of some of the web’s biggest sites argue it could instead dramatically restrict law-abiding U.S. companies — and reshape the web as we know it.
A blackout would be drastic. And though the details of exactly how it would work are unclear, it’s already under consideration, according to Markham Erickson, the executive director of NetCoalition, a trade association that includes the likes of Google, PayPal, Yahoo, and Twitter.
“Mozilla had a blackout day and Wikipedia has talked about something similar,” Erickson told FoxNews.com, calling this kind of operation unprecedented.
Read moreSOPA: Google, Amazon, And Facebook Consider Unprecedented Internet Black Out
NHK Spokesman’s Rebellion Against NHK And Government Lies Using NHK’s Official Twitter Account: ‘We Can No Longer Expect Anything From The Government Or Organizations’ … ‘We Must Change This Country’
– An NHK spokes man rebelled against NHK (Fukushima Diary, Dec. 14, 2011):
NHK’s official twitter account is run by an announcer named Hori Jun.
Since 311, NHK has been spreading lies and has killed millions of people by making them too late to escape.
However, Mr Hori Jun tweeted comments that rebels against NHK.
Because it’s an official NHK twitter account, it’s causing confusion but generally his comments were welcome as rare sanity found in mass media.
nhk_HORIJUN ? ??Jun Hori
???????????????60??????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Translation:
A man (60) died during decontamination in Fukushima. Japanese government states it has nothing to do with decontamination, but they must show the basis to prove it really has nothing to do with decontamination. Even for Chernobyl accident, they are still studying the radioactive effects on humans. They must disclose information.
– End –
nhk_HORIJUN ? ??Jun Hori
???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Translation:
We can no longer expect anything from the government or organizations. No, no anymore. We must move by ourselves. Let’s think by ourselves. We must change this country. This is our nation. We shall stop giving the power to someone else. Let’s rule ourselves. We are the one. We have realized “something”, that’s why we are connected to each other like now. so, let’s move.
– End –
They are worried about his security.
‘Why Ron Paul Will Win Iowa’ (Forbes) – ‘If The 2012 Election Were Decided On Twitter, Ron Paul Would Be Our Next President’ – ‘Ron Paul To Expand Campaign Efforts To Five More States’
– Why Ron Paul Will Win Iowa (Forbes, Dec. 8, 2011)
– If the 2012 election were decided on Twitter, Ron Paul would be our next president (Yahoo News/The Cutline)
– Ron Paul to expand campaign efforts to five new states (Yahoo News/The Ticket)
Library Of Congress To Receive Entire Twitter Archive!
Listen:
Bill Lefurgy, digital initiatives program manager, Library of Congress
Download
– Library of Congress to receive entire Twitter archive (Federal News Radio, Dec. 7, 2011):
The Library of Congress and Twitter have signed an agreement that will see an archive of every public Tweet ever sent handed over to the library’s repository of historical documents.
“We have an agreement with Twitter where they have a bunch of servers with their historic archive of tweets, everything that was sent out and declared to be public,” said Bill Lefurgy, the digital initiatives program manager at the library’s national digital information infrastructure and preservation program. The archives don’t contain tweets that users have protected, but everything else — billions and billions of tweets — are there.
Lefurgy joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin and Amy Morris Tuesday morning to talk about the library’s digital mission.
Using new technical processes it has developed, Twitter is moving a large quantity of electronic data from one electronic source to another. “They’ve had to do some pretty nifty experimentation and invention to develop the tools and a process to be able to move all of that data over to us,” Lefurgy said.
The Library of Congress has long been the repository of important, historical documents and the Twitter library, as a whole, is something historic in itself.
“We were excited to be involved with acquiring the Twitter archives because it’s a unique record of our time,” Lefurgy said. “It’s also a unique way of communication. It’s not so much that people are going to be interested in what you or I had for lunch, which some people like to say on Twitter.”
Researchers will be able to look at the Twitter archive as a complete set of data, which they could then data-mine for interesting information.
“There have been studies involved with what are the moods of the public at various times of the day in reaction to certain kinds of news events,” Lefurgy said. “There’s all these interesting kinds of mixing and matching that can be done using the tweets as a big set of data.”
Read moreLibrary Of Congress To Receive Entire Twitter Archive!
US Judge Orders Hundreds Of Sites ‘De-Indexed’ From Google, Facebook
– US judge orders hundreds of sites “de-indexed” from Google, Facebook (Ars Technica, Nov. 29, 2011):
After a series of one-sided hearings, luxury goods maker Chanel has won recent court orders against hundreds of websites trafficking in counterfeit luxury goods. A federal judge in Nevada has agreed that Chanel can seize the domain names in question and transfer them all to US-based registrar GoDaddy. The judge also ordered “all Internet search engines” and “all social media websites”—explicitly naming Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and Google—to “de-index” the domain names and to remove them from any search results.
The case has been a remarkable one. Concerned about counterfeiting, Chanel has filed a joint suit in Nevada against nearly 700 domain names that appear to have nothing in common. When Chanel finds more names, it simply uses the same case and files new requests for more seizures. (A recent November 14 order went after an additional 228 sites; none had a chance to contest the request until after it was approved and the names had been seized.)
Read moreUS Judge Orders Hundreds Of Sites ‘De-Indexed’ From Google, Facebook
Icelandic MP And Former WikiLeaks Volunteer Birgitta Jonsdottir: US Court Verdict To Open Her Twitter Account To US Authorities ‘Huge Blow’ To Privacy
– US court verdict ‘huge blow’ to privacy, says fomer WikiLeaks aide (Guardian, Nov. 11, 2011):
Icelandic MP and former WikiLeaks volunteer Birgitta Jonsdottir has slammed the decision by US courts to open her Twitter account to the US authorities and is taking her case to the Council of Europe.
On Thursday a US judge ruled Twitter must release the details of her account and those of two other Twitter users linked to WikiLeaks. Jonsdottir learned in January that her Twitter account was under scrutiny from the Justice Department because of her involvement last year with WikiLeaks’ release of a video showing a US military helicopter shooting two Reuters reporters in Iraq. She believes the US authorities want to use her information to try and build a case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
“This is a huge blow for everybody that uses social media,” said Jonsdottir. “We have to have the same civil rights online as we have offline. Imagine if the US authorities wanted to do a house search at my home, go through my private papers. There would be a hell of a fight. It’s absolutely unacceptable.”
She said she would press for the Council of Europe to act on the case, which she believes sets a worrying precedent for private citizens and politicians across the world.
Internet Freedoms Under Attack (Video)
YouTube Added: 10.11.2011
Description:
TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES: http://www.corbettreport.com/?p=3110
In recent weeks the governments of Britain, Israel, the US, Japan, India and China have reported alleged cyber attacks by foreign militaries, hackers, and malicious software like Duqu, a virus similar to the Stuxnet cyber weapon constructed by Israel and the US for use against Iran’s nuclear program. Although the nature and origin of the attacks or even whether they took place at all cannot be independently confirmed, the supposed threats are being used to propose punishing new legislation aimed at stifling internet freedoms and are igniting new rivalries in what many see as the battlefield of the 21st century: cyberspace.
CIA Team Known As The ‘Vengeful Librarians’ Is Following Twitter, Facebook, Local Radio Stations, Internet Chat Rooms, Newspapers, TV News Channels
– CIA following Twitter, Facebook (AP, Nov. 4, 2011):
McLEAN, Va. (AP) — In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building, the CIA is following tweets — up to 5 million a day.
At the agency’s Open Source Center, a team known affectionately as the “vengeful librarians” also pores over Facebook, newspapers, TV news channels, local radio stations, Internet chat rooms — anything overseas that anyone can access and contribute to openly.
From Arabic to Mandarin Chinese, from an angry tweet to a thoughtful blog, the analysts gather the information, often in native tongue. They cross-reference it with the local newspaper or a clandestinely intercepted phone conversation. From there, they build a picture sought by the highest levels at the White House, giving a real-time peek, for example, at the mood of a region after the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden or perhaps a prediction of which Mideast nation seems ripe for revolt.
Yes, they saw the uprising in Egypt coming; they just didn’t know exactly when revolution might hit, said the center’s director, Doug Naquin.
US Government Aims to Build a ‘Data Eye in the Sky’
– Government Aims to Build a ‘Data Eye in the Sky’ (New York Times, Oct. 10, 2011):
More than 60 years ago, in his “Foundation” series, the science fiction novelist Isaac Asimov invented a new science — psychohistory — that combined mathematics and psychology to predict the future.
Now social scientists are trying to mine the vast resources of the Internet — Web searches and Twitter messages, Facebook and blog posts, the digital location trails generated by billions of cellphones — to do the same thing.
The most optimistic researchers believe that these storehouses of “big data” will for the first time reveal sociological laws of human behavior — enabling them to predict political crises, revolutions and other forms of social and economic instability, just as physicists and chemists can predict natural phenomena.
Read moreUS Government Aims to Build a ‘Data Eye in the Sky’
Internet Firms Such As Google, Twitter And Facebook Co-opted For Surveillance
– Internet firms co-opted for surveillance: experts (Reuters, Sep. 30, 2011):
Internet companies such as Google, Twitter and Facebook are increasingly co-opted for surveillance work as the information they gather proves irresistible to law enforcement agencies, Web experts said this week.
Although such companies try to keep their users’ information private, their business models depend on exploiting it to sell targeted advertising, and when governments demand they hand it over, they have little choice but to comply.
Suggestions that BlackBerry maker RIM might give user data to British police after its messenger service was used to coordinate riots this summer caused outrage — as has the spying on social media users by more oppressive governments.
Read moreInternet Firms Such As Google, Twitter And Facebook Co-opted For Surveillance
Federal Reserve Plans To Identify ‘Key Bloggers’ And Monitor Billions Of Conversations About The Fed On Facebook, Twitter, Forums And Blogs
I’ve already posted the article from ZeroHedge…
… but this issue needs more attention.
– The Federal Reserve Plans To Identify “Key Bloggers” And Monitor Billions Of Conversations About The Fed On Facebook, Twitter, Forums And Blogs (The Economic Collapse, Sep. 25, 2011):
The Federal Reserve wants to know what you are saying about it. In fact, the Federal Reserve has announced plans to identify “key bloggers” and to monitor “billions of conversations” about the Fed on Facebook, Twitter, forums and blogs. This is yet another sign that the alternative media is having a dramatic impact. As first reported on Zero Hedge, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has issued a “Request for Proposal” to suppliers who may be interested in participating in the development of a “Sentiment Analysis And Social Media Monitoring Solution”. In other words, the Federal Reserve wants to develop a highly sophisticated system that will gather everything that you and I say about the Federal Reserve on the Internet and that will analyze what our feelings about the Fed are. Obviously, any “positive” feelings about the Fed would not be a problem. What they really want to do is to gather information on everyone that views the Federal Reserve negatively. It is unclear how they plan to use this information once they have it, but considering how many alternative media sources have been shut down lately, this is obviously a very troubling sign.
You can read this “Request for Proposal” right here. Posted below are some of the key quotes from the document (in bold) with some of my own commentary in between the quotes….
“The intent is to establish a fair and equitable partnership with a market leader who will who gather data from various social media outlets and news sources and provide applicable reporting to FRBNY. This Request for Proposal (“RFP”) was created in an effort to support FRBNY’s Social Media Listening Platforms initiative.”
A system like this is not cheap. Apparently the Federal Reserve Bank of New York believes that gathering all of this information is very important. In recent years, criticism of the Federal Reserve has become very intense, and most of this criticism has been coming from the Internet. It has gotten to the point where the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has decided that it had better listen to what is being said and find out who is saying it.
“Social media listening platforms are solutions that gather data from various social media outlets and news sources. They monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria. They can also determine the sentiment of a speaker or writer with respect to some topic or document.”
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York intends to listen in on “billions of conversations” and to actually determine the “sentiment” of those that are participating in those conversations.
Of course it will be those conversations that are “negative” about the Federal Reserve that will be setting off the alarm bells.
“Identify and reach out to key bloggers and influencers”
Uh oh. So they plan to “identify” key bloggers and influencers?
What exactly do they plan to do once they “identify” them?
“The solution must be able to gather data from the primary social media platforms –Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums and YouTube.”
Here Comes FIATtackWatch: Ben ‘Big Brother’ Bernanke Goes Watergate, Prepares To Eavesdrop On Everything Mentioning The Fed
– Here Comes FIATtackWatch: Ben “Big Brother” Bernanke Goes Watergate, Prepares To Eavesdrop On Everything Mentioning The Fed (ZeroHedge, Sep. 25, 2011):
Two weeks ago, the media’s heart went aflutter when it learned that the president had borrowed a page right out of ole’ Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunt book with the launch of Attack Watch. The response by everyone, even fans of Obama, was immediate and brutal. Yet where Obama took about 24 hours to crash and burn, someone else has stepped in with a far stealthier method of ferreting out the traitors amongst us: none other than our old friends, the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States, which in a Request for Proposals filed to companies that are Fed vendors, is requesting the creation of a “Social Listening Platform” whose function is to “gather data from various social media outlets and news sources.” It will “monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria.” The Fed’s desired product should be able to “determine the sentiment [ED:LOL] of a speaker or writer with respect to some topic or document”… “The solution must be able to gather data from the primary social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums and YouTube. It should also be able to aggregate data from various media outlets such as: CNN, WSJ, Factiva etc.” Most importantly, the “Listening Platform” should be able to “Handle crisis situations, Continuously monitor conversations, and Identify and reach out to key bloggers and influencers.“ Said otherwise, the Fed has just entered the counterespionage era and will be monitoring everything written about it anywhere in the world. After all, why ask others to snitch for you and anger everyone as Obama found out the hard way, when you can pay others to create the supreme FIATtack WatchTM using money you yourself can print in unlimited amounts. And once the Internet is completely “transparent”, the Fed will next focus on telephone conversations, and finally will simply bug each and every otherwise “private” location in the world. Because very soon saying that “printing money is treason” will be treason, and such terrorist thoughts must be pre-crimed before they even occur.
All we can say is we welcome our new Chairsatan Voldemort overlord. For it is truly he who must not be named henceforth.
From the key section of the RFP, presented in its entirety below:
Japanese Government to Invite Foreigners Who Have Large Facebook and Twitter Followers to Tohoku So That They Can Tell Their Followers ‘Japan Is Safe’
‘Japan Is Safe’:
– Japanese Government to Invite Foreigners Who Have Large Facebook and Twitter Followers to Tohoku So That They Can Tell Their Followers “Japan Is Safe” (EX-SKF, Sep. 18, 2011):
It’s buried in my previous post about radioactive canned fish and wheelchair out of Tohoku as ODA, but this merits its own post because of its sheer absurdity.
(Who do you call someone who tweets, anyway?)
From Mainichi Shinbun (9/19/2011):
???????????????????????????????????????
Tweet “Japan is safe” to dispel “baseless rumor”: Japan to invite Twitterers from overseas
???????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????
Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs have started to make preparations for inviting people from overseas who disseminate information via the social media such as Facebook and Twitter, as part of the countermeasures against “baseless rumors” that have damaged sales of Japanese agricultural products and tourism industry. More than 500 million people in the world are said to use the social media. The ministry has seen the great impact of the social media in the revolutions in the Middle East, and decided to use the social media to counter the “baseless rumor” by having people disseminate the messages of safety and favorable impressions.
???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
In the second supplementary budget for the fiscal year 2011, the ministry obtained 1.5 billion yen for the countermeasures against “baseless rumors”. This plan to invite Facebook and Twitter users with large followers is part of the countermeasures.