Skip to main content

Home/ authoritarianism in MENA/ Group items tagged stasi

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Ed Webb

Machine pieces together the ripped secrets of the East German state - Times Online - 0 views

www.timesonline.co.uk/...article7070484.ece

secrecy Germany stasi pattern_recognition computers data information authoritarianism Totalitarianism

shared by Ed Webb on 22 Mar 10 - Cached
  • An astonishing 45 million documents were ripped up, and stuffed into rubbish bags
  • The reunified German state insisted that the files be reconstructed, and a team of 30 in Nuremberg set about manually sticking the documents together using old-fashioned puzzle methods, tweezers and lots of sticky tape. But in the course of 15 years, just 350 sackfuls of paper have been reassembled this way: completing the task, it was estimated, would take at least another 400 years.
  • the E-puzzler, the most sophisticated digital pattern-recognition system in the world
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • within a second, the document is assembled on the adjoining monitor
  • The East German police state — memorably evoked in the 2006 film The Lives of Others — remains an object of grim fascination for both Germany and the world. The BStU receives 8,000 requests a year from Germans anxious to uncover the past.
  • the technology promises to do more than the historical equivalent of reconstructive surgery. Museum curators and archaeologists have used it to help to reconstruct broken terracotta figures from China and papyrus documents from Iraq. Next month the files from the Jewish archive in Buenos Aires, badly damaged in a terrorist attack in 1984, will be brought to Berlin, where Fraunhofer technicians will begin the task of salvage and reconstruction. The equipment has played a role in a German tax fraud case.
  • Even documents that have shredded twice and resemble confetti can be digitally reassembled.
  • Ed Webb on 22 Mar 10
     
    via Wm Gibson @GreatDismal
Ed Webb

Anti-LBTQ backlash grows across Middle East, echoing U.S. culture wars - The Washington... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...dle-east-lgbtq-gay-transgender

Turkey Lebanon Jordan LGBT LGBTQ repression homophobia politics

shared by Ed Webb on 13 Dec 23 - Cached
  • Across the Middle East, LGBTQ communities face a growing crackdown, echoing efforts by prominent American conservatives to restrict the rights of gay and transgender people and erase their influence from society.
  • Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey have always stood out in the region on LGBTQ issues. All have queer scenes, all have hosted Pride parades or similar events. But in all three places, the community exists in a legal gray area — neither criminalized nor protected by the law. As anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment intensifies and is championed by some of the region’s most powerful figures, gay and trans people feel more vulnerable than ever.
  • Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council levied fines against streaming platforms including Netflix, Disney and Amazon Prime for showing “homosexual relationships” that are “contrary to social and cultural values and the Turkish family structure.”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Although the talking points about protecting the family echo those espoused by some right-wing politicians in the United States, there are other influences closer to home, specifically Russia.
  • Russian videos with Turkish subtitles were proliferating on social media, promoting a new law in Russia that makes it illegal to spread “LGBT propaganda.”
  • Tarek Zeidan, the director of Helem, a Lebanese LGBTQ advocacy group, told The Post of “a cloud of fear and anxiety among the community.” Last week, he said, the organization received “dozens of calls” from people asking for assistance in leaving the country and advice on what to do if they were attacked.
  • the moral panic over LGBTQ people is ultimately a deflection strategy, “to shift the tension away from the actual problems” in a region beset by economic troubles, political stasis and climate woes.
1 - 2 of 2
Showing 20▼ items per page