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Newspapers are trying to get back some of their lost audience by allowing "citizen journalism" as corporations call it. They know the future of the newspaper is online, so they need to get people back to visit their website. Fact is unless they really start to tell the news and not censor it, it will never work.

They lost a lot of people and will never get them back, simply because we cannot trust them anymore.

In the meantime I'll stick to indy and underground news sources such as Guerrilla News Network. They tell the stories the corporate media wont tell and wont let "citizen journalists" report.

Alcoholics generally have a lot of hidden anger. They see things in an angry, adversarial way. For example: Bush Wanted To Invade Iraq If Elected in 2000.

One thing was accomplished in Iraq. The oil profits that went to Saddam Hussein before now go to associates of Bush and Cheney in the United States and Britain. That's a huge conflict of interest.

The point of my comment is that there is a wide-ranging lack of attention to politics on the part of the people in the United States. The people are not doing their job effectively. If they were, small things like the subject of this Slashdot story could not have happened, and big things like killing Iraqis for oil profits could not have happened, either.

Yeah, that's the thing... they're testing right and centrist persons and not necessarily any left (or libertarian).

Genocide doesn't need an ID card at all. The jews were much easier identified by the markings they had to wear.

Suggest you find about IBM and the Holocaust.

No need for an ID card. People in Darfur get killed in a Genocide without an ID card.

So you don't need a database to kill indiscriminately. You do need one to persecute distinct groups. Can you believe that the government are already considering putting everyone's ethnicity in their database?

My point is that using this argument goes against what you like to achieve, because people stop taking you seriously then. You have an ID card anyway which is your passport (or driver's license). What if the government just declares that everybody has to carry their passport from now on? Same effect without the new ID card.

You obviously have little idea of what the government is proposing. I wish you were unique in that regard but most people are clueless.

Currently, government plans are that the card need not be carried.

Until recently, access to this database was restricted to government employees, their friends, their friends' neighbours etc. The only real concession Blunkett has made to the damning criticism is allowing you to find out (all of?) what they've stored about you.

The database will also publish a unique number for you, which banks & flight companies will obviously use, hence allowing any future government to discriminate against you based on your finances and travel.

Once you and your unique ID number are interchangeable, it will be used in every single database logging your activities (currently including internet access, phone records, store cards & congestion charging).

Of course, by the time any really dangerous government gets in, this database will also hold your medical records, DNA & movements tracked by CCTV.

You better hope that government likes what it finds.

I don't think we'll see action on this area until people start sending annonymous copyright takedown notices to the ISP's of members of congress, as well as the heads of major corporations, showing them the folly of giving others full control over your life and business without due process. Of course such a thing would be illegal and dangerous, and a person would have to be crazy to do such a thing. After all, laws are a social contract, which we must obey in order for society to function. In a society ravaged by terrorism like ours, sending mixed messages is the last thing we can afford.

What is a trademark?

A trademark is an identification of goods or services which may be a word, phrase, acronym, logo, or other symbol. Manufacturers use trademarks to distinguish their products from others. A trademark does not give exclusive rights over the product to its owner; it merely prevents others from using the mark in commerce.

In the U.S., a trademark can be registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for 10 years and 3 months, and can be renewed every ten years.

I wasn't aware of the alleged Coca-Cola-paramilitary connection, but it's an interesting (and scary) one.

Thanks for the heads-up.

On that note, the fact that I hadn't heard about it (not that I've heard about everything, but something like this seems like a rather *huge* thing to cover up. Even so, there's too much news for which I simply haven't time anymore to read/watch/digest, although I try) suggests a problem in the communication between the people making the claim and the people -- like me -- who are interested in hearing about it (regardless of the truth of the claim, at least in my case).

With that in mind, boycotts would be more effective if more people hear about it, and in Coke's case, if the paramilitary claim is true, IMO that's something that would be universally-condemned. International boycotts could (and if true, should) be organized, just as international protests against the war in Iraq were staged (and while those were unfortunately ineffective at the time, today increasingly-more Americans see that the protestors were right)...

That said, because the demand for Coke is nearly-constant ("inelastic," to use the $5 economic term), it'd be hard to get people to stop buying Coke on ethical issues alone, I think. Still, there *are* major alternatives - Pepsi, RC, and store brands being the obvious choices. The trick is getting people to care about corporate-funded paramilitary death squads, and doing that requires informing them that the problem even exists. :-/

Corporate ethics are a relatively-popular issue these days. Make the point known to Coke shareholders - at least, those who would rather not support corporate paramilitary-hiring.

I'm drinking Diet Coke (ironically) as I write this, but mostly for the small-but-useful caffeine hit it has. I'll keep the issue in mind next time I'm buying soda; I mean, I could just as happily drink Diet Pepsi... (I already have a problem w/ Coke for other reasons, but in that case I'm even-more disgusted with Illinois' famously-corrupt politics, and, apparently, judicial system).

I guess my point in all this is that while corporations which globalize -- which is the trend, of course -- will increase their insulation from the poor performances of any singular market (e.g. if Americans boycott Coke for some reason, Coke still has Asia, Europe, etc.), there is simultaneously no reason why boycotts cannot also globalize and creep into those same markets. Especially now, with the Internet making communication so cheap and efficient. :)

The boycotts may require better management to compete against the corps on a global scale, but I believe it's still entirely-possible to do it -- again, just like the anti-war demonstrators did during Bush Jr.'s illegal and stupid second "Avenge Daddy!" war in Iraq.

Business controls the supply, the consumers control the demand. Businesses exercise their control all the time; so should consumers...

*SMACK* We're all well aware of our expansionist goals, but I hardly see what those have to do w/ Soviet expansionist goals, especially since the parent post was slightly ambiguous on that.

It may not matter. Spoiler: It goes beyond the voters.

Here are a couple of anti-GM videos to check out.
One from Krafty.org
And another from GNN.TV

Here are a couple of anti-GM videos to check out.
One from Krafty.org
And another from GNN.TV

Anyone want to guess one of the CIA's main sources of income? This site has ongoing related coverage, a documentary on the subject, and of course Google will tell you more, since the one attempt to cover this in the mainstream media resulted in the journalist being slandered and the paper denouncing its own article (more on that).

I'm not usually much of a conspiracy theorist, but this is a little odd.

They play fair (no browser interstitials, no sneaky crap, no registration necessary...etc)

I real interesting case concerning copyright and the courts is Coca-Cola v Bob Kolody. This is a long article and delves into some of the problems that individuals face in going up against large corporations. It is a very interesting story that contains many aspects of the way the law works (or fails to) in reality. Not the way some of us idealistic slashdotters who have read the Constitution think that the law works.

Who could forget Joshua Pearson and Emergency Broadcast Network?? Some of the early pioneers of video scratching-

Catch some of their videos here http://www.guerrillanews.com/ebn/

Live video mixing is nothing new

A couple of years ago a friend of mine went to a weird multimedia show at a club where they hung sheets up on the wall and did live video/music mixing. He bought their CD which had video mixes on it for about half the songs, I think.

Anyway they were called Emergency Broadcast Network. The album was Telecommunications Breakdown and it used clips from news broadcasts and infomercials. There's a very small clip from one of the songs one that album here. There also some better resolution clips of some of their other songs here, and a better resolution download of "Rock This Base" here. I don't think any of those sons are as good as the stuff on Telecommunications Breakdown, but check it out, I'm not sure if that album is still available anywhere right now.

From the wired article:

Video scratching was pioneered by a U.S. multimedia crew called Emergency Broadcast Network in the late 1980s, and refined by Coldcut and Hex, a pair of U.K. collaborative multimedia producers and musicians.

Does anyone else remember EBN? They were sorta Negativland-ish music (later Negativland, that is... dispepsi-ish stuff that had a beat and wasn't as abstract as their earlier stuff) and had all these cool videos where they did video sampling.

Their live show was one of the coolest I've ever seen. They had three huge video screens behind the stage playing sampled video, and this this weird podium thing that had two arms... On the front of the arms were TVs with yet more sampled video, and then later in the show, they arms spun around and had lasers or something on the other side. This was a long time ago, so I don't remember exactly, but it was incredibly impressive. They had re-edited all this footage, so they had Connie Chung, Dan Rather, et al. saying "This is EBN Nightly News!" and stuff. They also had a real gun shooting blanks during "Shoot the Mac 10". I grabbed some of the bullets of the stage, and I think I still have them. Amazingly, they were just the opening act for Banco de Gaia, who I also like, but come on... Toby Marks (BdG) was just sitting at a mixing board. It didn't even compare.

You can find some of their videos around the net. We Will Rock You shows them re-working (elder) Bush speeches, similar to the Bushwhacked that's been floating around the net.

They also had this tricked out station wagon with a satellite dish and video monitors all up and down the roof. It looked pretty cool, though I only saw pictures, not the real thing.

Later I saw them in "concert" opening for someone else, and they just played a video. I don't even think there was anyone from EBN there. It was totally disappointing.

Coldcut and Hex are cool, too, but I've never seen a show like the EBN one since.

I found the first place I saw this:Questions Dont have time to look at em now, but ill check it again later. And yes I realise this is a pretty weak source.

"Yes, because after all, IBM's "history" is flawless, right? "

In fact, IBM's history is bloody:

see http://www.guerrillanews.com/ibm/

republicans, democrats, that part is almost irrelevant. we're getting way off topic here, but the video clips at this site particularly the one entitled "The Corporate Globe" may provide quite a bit of insight into the situation as a whole.

CNN, arguably, is the whore of a news network.

Goto GNN instead.

You are such a tool
Why don't you open your eyes. Get a new perspective of what's really going on

It wouldn't be for anything other than that he is a good guy

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), is now in full swing with a "Biodefense project" that seems to be a mixture of Star Trek meets Private Ryan. In an article featured at Guerrilla News, author Cheryl Seal criticizes the program which seems to have terms like 'Brain Interface Program' and 'Engineered Tissue', and there is an extensive write up on the ethics of this sort of testing on animals titled 'Roborat Ethics'. Browsing over DARPA's site I found BIODYNOTICS aka Biologically Inspired Multifunctional Dynamic Robots. According to DARPA the BIODYNOTICS Program represents a new thrust area for DSO that will comprise a multidisciplinary, multi-pronged approach with far reaching impact on robotic capabilities for national security applications. Borgs anyone?

While I agree that indie news operations would cause dissonance from readers who want to stick to the familiar (if stale) old media brands, the fact that indie sites tend to offer niche news and subjective news might work in their favor over the long term.

Indymedia, for example, offers a subjective slant to political news (just as the increasingly popular Fox News does on the other side of the political spectrum). Whether it's Guerrilla News Network, The Car Place, Theme Park Insider, Consumer World or others, all such indie news sites offer solid personal journalism and community journalism often not found on institutional news sites beholden to commercial interests.

I don't see how user participation is "dangerous because common sense would dictate, somewhere along the line information will be misconstrued." That's where the Internet community's self-correction mechanism comes into play.

A conversation may be noisier, but it's much more fulfilling than a perpetual one-way lecture from the media.

-- JD Lasica

Here is a recent interesting guerrillanews article.

"Let me let you in on a little secret about Bill and Melinda Gates so-called ?Foundation.? Gate?s demi-trillionaire status is based on a nasty little monopoly-protecting trade treaty called ?TRIPS? ? the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights rules of the World Trade Organization. TRIPS gives Gates a hammerlock on computer operating systems worldwide, legally granting him a monopoly that the Robber Barons of yore could only dream of. But TRIPS, the rule which helps Gates rule, also bars African governments from buying AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis medicine at cheap market prices. "

Unless Forbes knows something about influence peddling in this case along the lines of that alleged in Guerilla News' story about one artist vs. Coke, they would be well advised not to make comments without sending one of their own to one of SCO's "Ask-but-don't-tell" disclosure parties.

Check out the full story

and you're reading my mind, which is why I will still tell you about Guerrilla News.

insteading of spewing what sounds like second-hand drivel.

You pretty much hit the nail on the head with that one. I have never understood why I get moderated the way I do on slashdot, really. My best posts usually get a 3 or less, while my ranting and drivel is either a one or five. The moderation was much better when it was a smaller site.
The only person I was truly trying to get through with this particular post was the parent (abcxyz). I went about it in the wrong manner, as you pointed out. I should have pointed them to newssites like Guerrilla News and articles relating to why this is bad other than spewing what I gleamed from them.
Again, I don't understand why some posts are moderated the way they are. I definitely agree with you on one thing, if I make a point and want to be taken seriously, I must bring out facts, and have them lined up to back up my hypothesis.

Now if this post gets moderated past 5 hell is truly freezing over.

Dr. Linda Peeno is a former medical reviewer for Humana, a large health insurance provider based in Louisville, Kentucky. While working for Humana, Dr. Peeno had an epiphany when she discovered that a sculpture of a tall, thin woman by Alberto Giacometti - which was displayed in the rotunda of the company's Louisville HQ from 1987 to 1994 - cost $488,000. It was roughly the same amount as the cost of a heart transplant for a Humana patient for which she had recently denied payment on a technicality, according to a recent article in The New York Times.

They've never done you any harm. And except for recent accusations of revenue massaging, they don't lie.

Well, friend. It's time you learn that nothing is sacred. Yes, Virginia, even Coca-Cola lies and squashes people to keep its bottom line intact. Read the sad and infuriating tale of judicial corruption and corporate fraud of Bob Kolody vs. Coca-Cola. I was outraged for days.

This discussions seems to be more or less wrapped up and writing your Congressman and / or voting different seem to be good options. So all that's left for me is to throw in some comment.

Everytime I read about Big 'Cons heavily influencing laws that undermine basic human rights and invalidating democratic structures, in order to grow bigger and bigger, I only wait for the awakening of magic in 2012.

It's as if everyone in power in this world read the shadowrun books and thought "wow, thats a great world to live in".

The US needs to reform their electoral and governmental system fast or they'll be run down the drain by all these corporate whores.
That's what bothers me most with the eff and aclu: they just take the conservative approach of "everything has to stay the way it is" instead of calling attention to the things that IMHO need serious fixin.
If you look at the eff's site, the news section is just full of battles in jurisdiction but on the legislation side of things, it's just "state has passed this, congress has passed that".

Where is the support for a legislative proposal that actually strengthens consumer/citizen/human rights?
Where is the proposal for a system that allows for more than two parties to gain power?
Where is the continous lobbying effort to keep the politicians in line with common sense?

Number of American citizens slain by "fundamentalist Christian militias" since Sept. 2001: approximately 0

Actually, that is incorrect. Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there.

Do not fight the symptoms (these bad laws). Cure the disease. Corporations are more and more taking control of the legislatures all over the world. In some places, they are taking over the judicial system as well.

You can also watch as corporation-like entities such as Church of Scientology take over all three branches of government (in the United States). They have police, judges, and legislators in their pockets.

Only a putridly small mind couldn't look ahead far enough ahead.

That's not a nice way to talk about Reagan, Bush Sr., Rumsfeld and Cheney. (I'd include Bush Jr., but in his case it's true)

Here is the full story. Why couldn't any of them look far enough ahead? Or does your narrow mind only apply that to people you don't agree with? When will the blackshirts hit the streets to rid us of the "Liberal Menace"?

Bush made 911 happen

Watch Bush Sr. talk about the coming New World Order

Questions never answered about 911"

Did you sources tell you that, evil as Saddam is, his administration isn't the most brutal dictatorship around? Or that the US was actively supporting him when he was gassing his own people? (See GNN for details). If they didn't, then your sources certainly are not helping you critically examine Bush's claims.

Of course Hussein is an evil brute and we'd all be better off if he'd drop dead, but that's one thing and illegal invasions based on misleading claims are another.

Where are the mod points when you need them... *sigh*

Taking the risk to be modded "redundant" at best, "troll" at worst, I'd like to underline the feeling here in Europe, that US Americans are fed with disgusting propaganda, cloaked as democratic truth (whatever this might be...).

It is sickening to see the world being pushed towards war by a madman, who wants to even the scores on behalf of his daddy. I remember the times where Reagan was tought to be the worst president ever, but if the internet had exisited back then as it does now, I hardly think that a search in Google for "[name of the preseident]" and "madman" would product that much results. The way the Bush Junta is abusing the US is heart-breaking. Visit http://www.guerrillanews.com for less biased news.

Hey beavis. It's like funny and stuff when countries have wierd power problems and stuff after american corporate interests try and cripple their economies by instituting a lock-out, calling it a strike, and trying to overthrow their democratically elected president.

Don't those stoopid assmunches know that they are supposed to have the business candidate swept into office by keeping the ethnic minorities out of the polls?

Searched Google for for "Osiriak", like you requested. this is one of the articles I found. Was that the support you wanted for your point?

I check out slashdot, anandtech and other tech and science links. Also news.google.com and csmonitor.com (Christian Science Monitor). These to get an idea of the mainstream. I can't stand CNN and such so I skip those. Then I move on to my far left political links:

From the Wilderness http://www.fromthewilderness.com/
What Really Happened http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/
Centre for Research on Globalization http://www.globalresearch.ca/
Center for Cooperative Research http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/home.htm
Independent Media Center http://www.indymedia.org
Emperor's New Clothes http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/911page.htm
9-11 the people's investigation http://www.911pi.com/
Guerrilla News Network http://www.guerrillanews.com
International A.N.S.W.E.R. http://www.internationalanswer.org/
UK: The Observer (John Pilger) http://www.observer.co.uk/
UK: Independent (Robert Fisk) http://argument.independent.co.uk/

As a side note, I rarely use browser bookmarks; I keep my own index.html that I update daily, putting in references to articles I like and updating the top portion, of which the above are a subset. Then I can keep a copy of this on the internet in case I ever need it from a remote location.

--

EBN was doing this stuff, much better, I might add, in the early 90's.

I qualify that slightly because afaik, it might even be some or all of the founding members of EBN that are behind GNN. Their original stuff, however, was far more deft and sarcastic. This 11-minute clip was fairly boring bore none of the medium-bending antics of the previous group.

Can't say that I take all this at face value, but for the most part, tin-foil hats are not required at this site. If nothing else, the Bush/Skull and Bones connection is an interesting read.

TIA won't save us. If everyone had access to it, maybe. There will always be someone who can buy/legislate their way out.

"All animals are equal. Some are more equal than others." - Animal Farm (required reading for our present administration)

I would have hoped you also saw the result of NOT using force when it should have been...like keeping Hitler from rearming after WWI.

Of course, Hitler didn't do it alone. He had help. Lots of help.

Hindsight may be 20/20, but this is a lesson the American aristocracy can't seem to learn - realpolitik is a great way to create trouble down the road.* I fear Dubya and his grand viziers are going down this road again to take care of problems left by previous administrations, although one current Administration member was directly involved in creating the current problem.

It is hypocrises such as this that cast great doubt upon the current intentions of the US government, and why so many people distrust the rhetoric coming out of Washington these days.

* More frightening is that a few powerful American industrialists and entrepeneurs sympathized with Hitler - Hearst and Ford among them. That goes beyond realpolitik, which I don't think had been coined at that point; powerful people made money off Hitler's aggression and slaughter of Jews, Romani, communists, homosexuals, etc., and still benefit from it today.

as opposed to the enlightened, freedom-loving united states of america? I don't know what country -you-'re from, but the united states, where I hail from, is responsible for bombing and napalming civilians (including children), toppling democracies when they don't like the elected leader, and engaging in covert acts of terror around the world, while skillfully duping it's populace into giving away it's civil liberties. disinfo.org - guerrillanews.com

Remember, the united states is an exremely oppressive government that uses whatever it can get its hands on to harm people. I hope we fail.

>Coke does not try to screw people out of their money, or use heavy-handed sales tactics like some people allege.

Tell that to Bob Kolody.