Linksunten Indymedia Announces “We Will Be Back Soon”

#Linksunten: “We Will Be Back Soon” – Greetz from #Streisand

Yesterday the German government shut down Linksunten Indymedia. But at the same day it already became clear that the German government did not fully control the website. Linksunten published a message yesterday morning, saying: “We are offline at the moment…”

Today the Linksunten collective published a new statement on their website (Important: Linksunten is now banned by the German government, so use Tor or a VPN connection before you click the link) saying: “We will be back soon…”

The Linksunten collective also published an image of Barbara Streisand with the statement. Below the image the media activists wrote: “Misery for De Mazière!”. Thomas de Mazière is the federal interior minister of Germany. On the image of Streisand, her mouth is masked with tape and it clearly refers to the Streisand effect.

The chances that Linksunten will come out stronger after the German government’s censorship on the website are pretty good. Apart from autonomous and other leftwing groups, many opposition parties, civil rights activists and some journalists criticized the repressive action of the interior ministry.

Many observers said the ban is a tactical election campaign move. In Germany there will be general elections next month. Of course the fascist AFD party welcomed the ban on Linksunten, many fascists were outed at the website.

Linksunten also added parts of the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace on their website, written by John Perry Barlow in 1996.

We will be back soon…

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

[…]

In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.

[…]

These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

[…]