14 DAY TRIAL // A brilliant man, Eddie Izzard, once said that Great Britain managed to conquer its mighty empire "with the cunning use of flags." The technique was to show up and tell the natives that their country was claimed in the name of the great British Empire:
"I claim India for Britain!" "You can't claim us, we live here. 500 million of us!" "Do you have a flag?" "We don't need a bloody flag, it's our country!" "No flag, no country! You can't have one! It's the rules that I've just made up."
Flags are a symbol of power; they represent a nation in its fullest pride and dignity. Well except for Canada, whose flag is a leaf, that is. Throughout the entire history they have been used to bring people together against a common cause or to stand for something they truly believed in. Starting with Rome and its Eagle, going through the Crusades with the white background/red cross banner and out to today's ceremonies at the raising of the flag, they have all been recognized as symbols of great conviction and principles.
A lot of history talk, but it actually has a point. The common battles waged by us are not armed, but rather touch the realm of belief and words being used as old days' swords. Censorship is one of these problems that humanity is struggling to get rid of and people have been imprisoned and even died in the course of time for the right of free speech. Nevertheless, many countries like India, China or a number of South American countries still exercise censorship.
In order to get a better view of the world regarding this aspect, Sami Ben Gharbia from Google Maps Mania blog announced today that a Global Web 2.0 Censorship has been rolled out. It has numerous options for viewing data about freedom of speech right infringements and it is an interesting idea to toy around with and get some additional info from.
"In order to shed light on the battle being waged between state censorship and anti-censorship groups, I've created the Access Denied Map, an interactive Google Maps mashup that provides information about the censorship efforts targeting various online social networking communities and web-based applications. Each marker on the map highlights the situation in a specific country that is barring access to major websites. Clicking on the marker opens an information window containing text, images or video describing the nature of censorship and the efforts to combat it", says its creator.
Censorship? Flagged!