" When there is a war, the BBC is the voice of the British Establishment,
no question about it. It will allow a few dissenting voices, but the overwhelming
bulk of it, of course, is the view of the government of the day."
--Tony Benn, former British Labour MP
"And
I asked her for her definition of journalism and she gave me the best definition
I’d ever had. She said, “Journalism is about monitoring the sources of
power.” I used to think it was about, you know, telling the truth and being
the first witness to history—which is true. But monitoring the sources
of power is what we should be doing. The American press doesn’t do it.
The Canadian press, unfortunately, largely doesn’t do it, the British press
largely doesn’t do it."
-Robert
Fisk on Amira
Haas,
of Israeli Daily
"So
does misrepresentation bother me? Sure, but so does rotten weather. It
will exist as long as concentrations of power engender a kind of commissar
class to defend them. Since they are usually not very bright, or are bright
enough to know that they'd better avoid the arena of fact and argument,
they'll turn to misrepresentation, vilification, and other devices that
are available to those who know that they'll be protected by the various
means available to the powerful. We should understand why all this occurs,
and unravel it as best we can. That's part of the project of liberation
- of ourselves and others, or more reasonably, of people working together
to achieve these aims." -Noam Chomsky
ALERT
Further movement
towards an Aussie police state...
(and
we now begin to see the real reasons behind the ridiculously ineffectual
and paternalistic banning of Australian-hosted pornography web content...
)
Secret web bans in FOI changes
Simon Hayes
OCTOBER 01, 2002
source
WEBSITES protesting against November's
World Trade Organisation meeting in Sydney could be secretly banned under
proposed laws.
Several websites that call for violent
disruption of the informal WTO summit have been targeted by NSW Police
Minister Michael Costa, who has referred them for possible banning under
federal internet censorship rules designed to rein in online pornography.
Suggestions to bring flares, marbles
and slingshots, and how to set fires with electrical timers and lob smoke
bombs at police lines have been promoted on some sites.
In addition to pornography, the
Broadcasting Services Act allows the banning of material refused classification
by the Australian Broadcasting Authority if it contains "detailed instruction
in crime, violence or drug use".
But such bans - which could take
the form of either forced removal, or adding the sites' addresses to internet-filtering
software - are likely to remain secret thanks to upcoming changes to the
Freedom of Information Act.
Cracking down on attempts to access
the list of banned sites, Canberra has slipped in changes to the act to
specifically exempt such information from FOI requests.
The Communications Legislation Amendment
Bill comes in the wake of Electronic Frontiers Australia's failed attempt
before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to force the ABA to release
the list.
Now the Government is moving to
put the secrecy of the list "beyond doubt".
"It's not in the public interest
to provide Refused Classification website material, including child pornography,"
said a spokesman for Communications Minister Richard Alston.
EFA chairman Kimberly Heitman said:
"If the Government doesn't say what it's censoring, we'll never know."
source: australianIT.com.au.
Also check out Dot
Com for Dictators
bearing in mind the propensity
of some western governments for similar strategies of authoritarianism...
|
| It is interesting to note
the different attitude of U.S. Vs. Australian courts when it comes to threatening
free speech upon the web...
US court blocks web libel case:
Larry O'Dell DECEMBER 16, 2002
Just days after Australia’s High
Court handed down a landmark internet libel ruling, a US federal appeals
court has thrown out a similar lawsuit against two Connecticut newspapers.
The court ruled against a prison
warden from Virginia who claimed he had been defamed by artcles posted
on the web by two Connecticut newspapers. The court found that the articles
posted were not aimed at a Virginia audience.
The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals
reversed a lower court's ruling that the warden could sue in his home state
because that is where he claimed his reputation was damaged.
Stanley Young claimed The Hartford
Courant and The New Haven Advocate falsely depicted him as racist in articles
about alleged mistreatment of Connecticut inmates who were sent to Virginia
to relieve prison crowding.
The articles were posted on the
newspapers' Web sites. The fact that the Internet postings can be viewed
by Virginians as well as others was not enough to support filing the lawsuit
in the federal court in Virginia, the three-judge panel ruled.
"The facts in this case establish
that the newspapers' Web sites, as well as the articles in question, were
aimed at a Connecticut audience," Judge M. Blane Michael wrote in the unanimous
opinion. "The newspapers did not post materials on the Internet with the
manifest intent of targeting Virginia readers."
The decision came three days after
Australia's highest court ruled that Melbourne businessman Joseph Gutnick
may sue Dow Jones & Co. for an article posted from New Jersey but accessible
in Australia.
Both courts based their reasonings
on targeting, but differed in how they defined it, said Michael Geist,
a University of Ottawa law professor who tracks Internet rulings around
the world.
"We have US courts that looked largely
at a commercial presence and the intended presence, while you got the Australian
court more concerned about where the harm was felt," Geist said.
Stephanie Abrutyn, attorney for
the Connecticut newspapers, said she was pleased that the court ruled "that
the principles of due process and jurisdiction should not be applied any
differently to the Internet than they have throughout the history of this
country".
She added: "We think that had it
gone the other way, it would have had a chilling effect on speech on the
Internet."
[emphasis added]
Mr Young's lawyer, Stuart Collins,
was out of his office and unavailable for comment.
Connecticut newspapers closely followed
the transfer of hundreds of inmates, most of them black and Hispanic, to
Virginia prisons. Newspapers reported inmate advocates' concerns about
harsh conditions at Wallens Ridge State Prison, a maximum-security lockup.
Mr Young, who is white, claimed
in his lawsuit that some of the articles suggested he "not only tolerates
but encourages abuse by his guards". He argued that filing the lawsuit
in Virginia was proper because the newspapers knew the articles would expose
him to public contempt and ridicule where he lived and worked.
"The focus of the articles, however,
was the Connecticut prisoner transfer policy and its impact on the transferred
prisoners and their families back home in Connecticut," Judge Michael wrote.
"The articles reported on and encouraged a public debate in Connecticut
about whether the transfer policy was sound or practical for that state
and its citizens."
A
moments thought will cast doubts upon the very possibility of sueing someone
based upon the location in which an item is read, considering the variance
in laws throughout the world's nations combined with the global nature
of the internet. It seems as if the Australian Judges that made this decision
gave it about as much thought as the Australian Politicians who banned
Australian ISPs from hosting adult materials... With such occurrences it
seems "The Clever Country" is becoming an ever more Orwellian term...
|
|
This section relates to media and
communication, including internet issues.
Links
See the international relations section of this site for plenty of links to alternative media & news websites.
related topic: Education
The Underground History
of American Education
Criticize Fox? Not on ABC
Fox
News may report only one side of a story, but at least critics have
always had creative license to lace into the roost of Bill O'Reilly.
Until now. AlterNet reports
that an episode of "Boston Legal" slated to air on Sunday night on ABC
has been "scrubbed" of all pejorative references to Fox News and
O'Reilly. Top ABC executives heavily censored an earlier version of the
script, in which a teacher calls Fox News "hate speech" and installs a
"Fox Blocker" on every TV set in his school. A side-by-side comparison
of the two versions of the script reveals it has been stripped of any
references to the network. The Sunday episode is, ironically, about
free speech.
Neither ABC nor
David Kelley, the show's creator, would comment on the changes. The
script also contained excerpts from "Outfoxed," an anti-Fox documentary
by indie filmmaker Robert Greenwald which argues that the cable channel
has an explicit conservative agenda. The "Outfoxed" excerpts will be
included in the episode, although ABC would not allow Greenwald to buy
ad time for his film to air during the episode. "The door has been
closed in our face," said the film's distributor.
-- Julia Scott
Source: Salon.com 15:26 EST, March 10, 2005 ] |
Conspiracies,
Plots and Other Anti-Democratic Notions
by
Peter Phillips
Paul Wellstone's plane crash wasn't
an accident. The CIA bought stock options on United Airlines before 9-11
making millions in profits. The military sprays low-level bio-weapons on
the public through airtanker contrails. The tobacco industry plotted to
deceive the public on the negative health effects of smoking. Lee Harvey
Oswald alone didn't assassinate John Kennedy. The FBI deliberately caused
the fire in the Branch Davidian compound. Planted bombs from within the
structure destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City. AIDS was created
in a government research lab. Mass inoculations are designed for citizen
mind control. General Motors and Firestone conspired to destroy public
transit in the U.S. The Bush White House interfered with FBI investigations
into the bin Laden family before 9-11.
Conspiracy theories abound in America
and are directly related to the lack of investigative reporting by the
mainstream corporate media. The public knows more about Winona Ryder's
shop lifting trial then about the weather conditions and circumstances
of Paul Wellstone's air crash. The Los Angeles Times printed 83 column
feet on OJ Simpson during his trial, but has ignored for decades the deliberate
and successful plot before World War II to dismantle LA's public transit
system by General Motors and Firestone. Oliver Stone's interpretation of
the Kennedy assassination has been mostly dismissed as "conspiracy theory"
by corporate media. Questions regarding the veracity or falseness of seemingly
important conspiracies and plots often go unreported by mainstream media.
The ten big corporations that now dominate media in America are principally
in the entertainment business. While the corporate media is narrowing its
content, with news reports often looking very much the same, the public's
access to the vastland of the internet is amplifying, and informational
snippets and unanswered questions leading to conspiracy beliefs are increasingly
available on-line.
The First Amendment provides for
freedom of the press and was established to protect our democratic process
by guaranteeing an informed electorate. Yet we just completed a national
election with an all time low voter turn out. Millions of voters refused
to participate in the electoral process. We denigrated and blamed non-voters
for being uncaring citizens, yet the corporate media has failed to address
core issues affecting most people in this country. Voter participation
levels are directly related to issues that the citizenry feels are important.
Many people no longer trust the corporate media to provide the full truth.
This opens people's susceptibilities to believing in conspiracies and plots
to explain unanswered questions. Cynicism has deterred voting for many.
How can we free ourselves from this
dilemma? First off, We can think of conspiracies as actions by small groups
of individuals instead of massive collective plots by governments and corporations.
Small groups can be dangerous, especially when the individuals have significant
power in huge public and private bureaucracies, but they can not possibly
be interlinked in a macro way bridging the gaps between thousand of corporations
and government bureaucracies. Micro-plots may well be the answer to some
of the conspiracies floating in our circles of cynicism. However, without
accurate through investigations we only stew in our distrust and experience
widening alienation from our democratic process.
Additionally, we can advocate strongly
for mainstream media to invest in democracy by supporting investigative
reporting on key issues. The Director of the Chicago Office of the FBI,
Tom Kneir, admitted on August 17 at the American Sociological meetings
that the FBI conducted an investigation into the pre-9-11 stock options,
but he refused to disclose who bought the stock. Mainstream media needs
to pursue this issue using our freedom of information laws to put the conspiracy
questions to rest. Finally, we can advocate for full and clear reporting
on the policies and plans emerging from the public and private policy circles
of the American corporate and governmental elites. Full analysis and disclosure
of the published plans of the Trilateral Commission, The Council on Foreign
Relations, The Hoover Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The Cato Institute,
The World Bank, and the Project for the New American Century, would go
a long way in showing the roadmaps that the policy elites are building
for the world. We don't need macro-conspiracy theories to understand that
powerful people sit in rooms and plan for global change with private advantage
in mind. If open debate on socio-political policies were offered nationwide
it would certainly draw widespread citizen voter participation. Imagine
a computer programmer thinking about social policies that would prevent
outsourcing of his job to foreign firms. Imagine his enthusiasm voting
for representatives that would work to protect his livelihood. Imagine
millions of reawakened citizens informed and active in a real democratic
process.
Published on Saturday, November
9, 2002 by CommonDreams.org
Peter Phillips is an Associate
Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and Director of Project
Censored.
|
One
night, probably in 1880, John Swinton, then the preeminent New York journalist,
was the guest of honour at a banquet given him by the leaders of his craft.
Someone who knew neither the press nor Swinton offered a toast to the independent
press. Swinton outraged his colleagues by replying:
"There
is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an
independent press. You know it and I know it.
There
is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did,
you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly
for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others
of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who
would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets
looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one
issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.
"The
business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to
pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country
and his race for his daily bread.
You
know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
We
are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping
jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities
and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
(Source: Labor's
Untold Story, by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, published by
United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, NY, 1955/1979.)
a quote for the insanity of values expressed by government, mass media and Hollywood ...
Luckless
is the country in which the symbols of procreation are the objects of
shame, while the agents of destruction are honored! And yet you call
that member your pudendum, or shameful part, as if there were anything
more glorious than creating life, or anything more atrocious than
taking it away. --Cyrano
de Bergerac (1619–55), French author, playwright. A “lunarian,” in The
Other World: States and Empires of the Moon, ch. 8 (1656).
The US Government only ships back it's dead from the Iraq war under the cover of night.
Fox News reported to TV watchdog
Gary Younge in New York
Wednesday July 21, 2004
The Guardian
Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel is being taken to the federal trade
commission over claims that its boast of being "fair and balanced" is a
fraud.
Two pressure groups - the liberal internet-based group MoveOn.org and
the historical non-partisan Common Cause say its news reports were
"deliberately and consistently distorted and twisted to promote the
Republican party of the US and an extreme rightwing viewpoint".
Fox
News's Irena Briganti told the Associated Press news agency that the
move was "clearly a transparent publicity stunt" by the pressure
groups.
In a statement, the commission's chairman, Timothy Muris, indicated that the petition stood little chance of succeeding.
This
is not the first time that Fox's motto has met with controversy. When
the liberal comedian Al Franken brought out his book Lies and the Lying
Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, Fox News
tried to block publication, claiming the book made unauthorised use of
the slogan.
The
judge in that case dismissed Fox's case, saying it was "wholly without
merit", and that the channel's trademark Fair and Balanced, registered
in 1998, was weak.
Since
then Fox's request to trademark the phrase has been challenged by the
Independent Media Institute, which claims the term is so prevalent as
to be generic, and is "entirely misdescriptive" when it comes to the
channel.
|
