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According to Bennito Musolini, "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power"

Now have a quick squiz at the 14 Defining Characteristics of Fascist Regimes

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.

4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.

5. Rampant sexism.

6. A controlled mass media.

7. Obsession with national security.

8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.

9. Power of corporations protected.

10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.

11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.

12. Obsession with crime and punishment.

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.

14. Fraudulent elections.

You figure it out.

I saw this "Breaking the Silence" report on the telly the other night... very well worth watching, and rather disturbing. I just wish he'd do something with his hair.

http://pilger.carlton.com/
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/09/272644.sh tml
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article48 51.htm

And consequently the most biased and unlikely to give you a reasonably balanced view of the events. This is the underlying problem with sites like Indymedia; they lean so far to one side that they make the conventional, corporate media look completely objective and unbiased in comparison.

Google has censored San Francisco Indymedia because of anti-Israel statements, but lets anti-Arab websites be listed.

I will never use google again.

Any search engine I feel like using at the moment, and this is why.

The only time I ever use google is if I absolutely can not find what I want on other search engines.

"References please. The two US citizens at Guantanamo Bay were released, and the Taliban have been granted POW status there. "

Ok you started out your post by lying so I probably shouldn't even respond but what the hell.

Fist of all nobody in Guantanamo bay is granted POW status. Rumsfeld argued vehemently not to let that happen because it would grant the prisoners rights under the geneva convention. See Human rights watch for a reference. While you are there also read up on how some have been transfered to other countries so that they could be tortured. There have also been reporting of beating and medical experimentation done on prisoners under the control of the US govt.

Also Jose Padilla who is an American citizen has been held without charges since June 9, 2002. No charges, no lawyers. John Ashcroft told Diane Sawyer on an interview broadcast on TV that he did not know the whereabouts of Jose Padilla and that he was in the hands of the military. Imagine that. Nobody knows where this guy is or what happened to him, not even the attorney general of the united states.

"The other "detainees" are a different story, they are not citizens and have in large measure been deported."

Lying again. There are currently over 600 prisoners in guantanamo bay alone. Who knows how many there are overseas and in the mainland us.

"Are you an immigrant violating your conditions for stay? Yes then you can be worried about detention. Otherwise relax."

As I said I am a citizen. The time to round up people like me is not here yet. You know the old saying. First, they came for the political opposition, but I was not political, and I did not object. Then, they came for the gypsies and homosexuals, but I was neither of these, and I did not object. Then, they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, and I did not object. One day, they came for me, and there was no one left to object..

"did Ann say "all swarthy people should be locked up?" Where?"

Here is the actual quote

"Congress could pass a law tomorrow requiring that all aliens from Arabic countries leave....We should require passports to fly domestically. Passports can be forged, but they can also be checked with the home country in case of any suspicious-looking swarthy males." Notice that zeroes in on skin color exclusively.

"Even simple things like accusing me of saying I don't know who David Horowitz is."

You said you didn't know who he was not me. I simply believed you when you told me that.

"You need a real break and re-evaluation before you turn into one of those monsters (if it hasn't happened already)."

You keep bringing up hitler as if that absolves the right wing of anything. It's a straw man and I am not going to fall for it. As I said before I will not simply lay down and die. I don't believe in turning the other cheek (after all I am not a christian). I believe that it's a dog eat dog and right now the republicans are eating the democrats. You are either a predator, a prey, or a pet; those are the only three options. I will not become prey or a pet. Sorry.

"Like I said I won't join in your crusade becuase I don't have faith in you, or your reasons."

I never asked you to. I never expected you to.

"It seems inconsevable to you that another rational, well versed intelligent person does not see the forming police state around you."

Why do you think I am the only person who thinks the US is turning into a police state? I assure you that there are millions of people who share my belief just

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

For some time, I've participated in a couple parts of a widespread participatory journalism project. Since participatory journalism can be anything from an open publishing system with editor collectives, to someone's soapbox with a comment system, it's a bit hard for anyone to call themself an expert or something. With that said, I'd like to toss in a few thoughts drawn from my own experiences.

First, I haven't read the comments, but I suspect more than a few people will cry "but what about objectivity???" Objectivity does not exist. Everyone, every reporter, every editor, approaches a story from an angle, whether a personal one derived from years of experience, or a collective one that comes from economic or political demands. It is essential that independent writers report and analyse truthful information without exaggeration, but there must be an open acknowledgement that different sources will skew descriptions based on their own opinions. One need only contrast, say, the Toronto Star, the National Post, and Socialist Worker's description of the same events to recognize this reality.

I find that the best articles, in corporate, state, and independent media report the facts, then provide analysis based on the writer's stated or perceivable mental framework. Journalism seems at its best when the writers go beyond reporting, placing events in a greater context. Obviously, context can be selective, which makes the necessity of varied sources even more important. Falsehoods and exaggerations need to be called out and corrected. However, the focus on "objectivity" has become a fetish that very few news services really pay anything more than lip service to. Far too often, objectivity is used as a cover for inserting yet another editorial viewpoint to an article or deleting a disfavoured view (or even an uncomfortable fact). The most obvious example of this that pops into my head is Fox News' "Fair and Balanced" slogan, and you can probably come up with many more.

Second, open-publishing sites will be just as influenced by concerns outside of pure reporting as the New York Times or the Islamic Republic News Agency. Editorial collectives or individual editors will post features based on an overall point of view. I doubt anyone will ever see a feature praising neoconservatives on Ontario Indymedia; likewise, I will never expect to see a headline praising anarchists on Free Republic. If there are forums or open-publishing systems, the collective/editors will likely retain some kind of control over the system. Some kind of editing capability is necessary to deal with spam, flames disguised as news, repeated postings, false info, legally questionable things (some sites will be more anal than others regarding legalities), etc. I've found that comments are best left untouched, since the debate can be useful and enlightening, such as many high-score posts here.

I've participated in two editorial collectives. One tended toward a freewheeling attitude, allowing practically anything that wasn't empty, an advertisement, a repeat, or blatantly inciteful. We almost never hid comments to articles, barring a nasty incident following the Netanya suicide bombing in 2001 and the Israeli military operation that followed it, where some knob decided to post anti-Jewish imagery as comments to every article on the newswire. The jerk, stopped, eventually, and the flood of crap that polluted the newswire helped spark a discussion about reorganizing the site and the abilities of the newswire clerks.

This leads to another point, regarding freedom of speech. Free speech does not mean every nutbar and arsewad can post whatever crap they want and cry "censorship" when it is removed. Even sites operated by anarchist collectives will have rules, since "anarch" translates as "no leaders," not "no rules". However, I've found that the most satisfying sites have an open membership policy. Anyone who is willing to put in the effort can join the edit

How many people who share thousands of mp3s do you think regularly purchase CDs from the RIAA?

Myself, for one, as well as most of my non-college friends.

...but those aren't the people who are sharing enough to get sued.

By sharing enough, apparently you mean more than five files.

Just because a law is in existance does not mean that no one has the right to challenge it's constitutionality, a practice that for decades has served well to overturn even the most ardunt of laws.

Without people to stand up to such pathetic excuses of legal bindings, where would the United States be today?

I can only imagine the very faint glimmer of hope trapped in the minds of the people enslaved in that future society. But alas, that "future" is not yet here, and we can all rest easy. Perhaps.

The DMCA and its ilk are tools driven to bring about a reality that no one wants to live in. If no one challenges the various aspects pertinent to how broadly the DMCA reaches into society, then there is no point in even discussing it here in this forum at all. Might as well just enjoy your coffee, shuffle along with the crowd to your nine-to-five job, and clock in another boring day.

Innovation? Deliberation? Thought? These concepts are unknown to most of the corporate figureheads who control the very media we rely on. Why play into their hands?

I want to provide a relevant url for anyone interested in seeing how a media system should act like:

http://www.indymedia.org/

Food for thought. Have a nice day. ;)

The CIA has put David Kay, a former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, in charge of the search for illegal weapons. Wolfowitz said Kay told him during a meeting Sunday that U.S. officials were having difficulty getting Iraqi prisoners to tell what they know about Saddam Hussein's chemical, biological or nuclear programs. The Iraqi government claimed prior to the war that it had destroyed all the weapons of mass destruction it once held, and U.N. inspectors were unable to find evidence of any. "I pushed him (Kay) a bit on why aren't these people talking. Why don't you, in effect, plea bargain with them," Wolfowitz said. "He said there is no concept of plea bargaining in this place. If you confessed you just got executed faster or tortured less." See for info on who this David Kay is.

We've done this at DC Indymedia, using a variety of wireless technologies. Including:

- live video streaming of a protest against the takeover of Pacifica radio using 802.11b

- live audio mp3 stream of the "Sorry State of the Union" event held in front of the Capitol during Bush's address. We did this using a 3G phone. This feed was carried live by full power FM stations. We also had people upload pictures from the event site and chatted on IRC w/ people listening to the stream.

- on the day the Iraq war broke out we had someone out covering the bridge blockages and protests at the White House w/ one of those Sprint picture phones. We had some awesome pictures up minutes after the events were happening.

Yes, They Do. And fuck you, capitalist/fascist fuckhead.

Independent Media Center is amazing in it that anyone can submit a story. This is much more likely to be read on the local versions; there are dozens of locals Centers, spread around the globe. IndyMedia has proved to be an important organizing tool for progressive groups in third world countries.

AlterNet, on the other hand, is more of a news analysis site, where the headlines of the day are tackled from different angles and where you can find information that the mainstream media "forgot" to report.

The importance of sites like these is that they allow you to see a different side of an issue. In a world controlled by the right-wing corporate media machine, this can be seen as a very good thing©.

The problem is that the various frequencies that are used by NPR around the country are not bought and sold like the rest of the FM spectrum

On the surface that would seem correct. But the reality is much different. Why is this spectrum different? It exists to serve the public, not corporate, interest.

There are two areas of concern (in reality excuses). The main "primary" transmitter and all the thousands of "secondary" translators in use.

To say that a 10-100 watt LPFM station would "interfere" with a 100,000 watt primary station is laughably ridiculous at best. That would leave the "translators".

The purpose of translator stations was to fill in gaps in coverage for the existing transmitting signal, not to EXTEND coverage of a single station across large regions They originate no programming. That is why they exist under a "secondary" purpose, not as a "primary" station.

The problem is that the various frequencies that are used by NPR around the country are not bought and sold like the rest of the FM spectrum.

This has nothing to do with it. What gives NPR the right to transmit over the whole nation?? You are absolutely right when you said "This is the frequency range between 88 and 92MHz and are reserved for non-commercial use." What makes NPR so "special" that they need to have every frequency in the "non-commercial use" spectrum?? What makes them so "special" that they need to have coverage over large geographical areas that commercial stations don't have??" What makes them so special that they have to have a "monopoly" on public radio???

This also begs the question if NPR is really "non-commercial." Have you listened to NPR recently?? They are filled with station breaks giving acknowledgements to corporations that "sponsor" programs that predominantly contain promotional announcements. I really can't tell the difference between what they broadcast and a regular advertisement on a "commercial" radio station. At least alot of the religous stations don't have that nonsense.

Maybe NPR needs to be kicked out of the "non-commercial" section of the spectrum and let them compete honestly with regular broadcasting corporations. Oh wait, NPR's "corporation for public broadcasting" isn't really a corporation. I see.

Does NPR really serve the public interest?? According to this link, not really. Not only by not representing a variety of viewpoints, but also by hoarding translator frequencies that they really don't need. They seem to be representing increasingly commercial interests. There are others who are noticing this also. NPR has even tried putting a bandaid on it. As can be seen, NPR takes out the "community" in "community radio".

After NPR goes dark from drives like the unpledge, those that love it can pick it up on satellite radio. NPR is not an irreplaceable resource. There are thousands of people ready to put up LPFM transmitters in its place that are really non-commercial.

I know that there are alot of of people who listen on NPR on slashdot, but it is time to realize that NPR no longer represents community interests. Sure their programming is fun and interesting to listen to at times. But the same could be said of any

move or be moved

I thoroughly enjoyed your take on those RIAA blood-sucking bastard assmonkeys (I'm not a journalist, and if I call them that on my website I am projected by the "22 year old college student" defence as HardOCP has dubbed the weblog freedom of speech ruling).

I would like to point out a little something that, although not very relevant to the US, is a thorn in our side up here in Canada.

I'm talking about a little legal wonder called SOCAN Tariff 22. SOCAN (The Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada) is pretty much like a Canadian RIAA, except controlled by the government (we're almost socialists up here, in case you didn't know, but don't hold that against me... I didn't vote for those bastards either). Anyways, Tariff 22 is currently being appealed and for good reasons. It introduced liability for ISPs for caches of material which violats copyright, specifically copies of musical recordings of SOCAN artists.

(What is SOCAN:
SOCAN is the Canadian copyright collective for the public performance of musical works. We administer the performing rights of our members (composers, lyricists, songwriters and their publishers) and those of affiliated international societies by licensing the use of their music in Canada.)

This means that your distributed user-controlled cache-reliant webcast radio scheme would (currently) land ISPs subject to Canadian law in hot water. Sucks, doesn't it?

The appeal is getting into full swing as factum are submitted, etc. The Tariff 22 ruling was based on the appeals court blatantly misunderstanding caching technology, the nature of the Internet, and the role that network infrastructure plays in communications, so things look good for those of us involved in protecting the ISPs' ability to provide service to Canadian consumers (I'm involved from a technical standpoint), however the act remains that Tariff 22 is currently on the books as Canadian law.

Here are some online resources you may find interesting on the subject:
Tariff 22 Intellectual Property laws meet the modern age

SOCAN's Tariff 22 will be the death of Canadian Internet Radio

I hope that the rabid RIAA legal minions don't pay too much attention to us up here, because that would be a way for them to go after litigation targets with really deep pockets... if Verizon thought they had problems with Court Orders to hand over customer data, wait until they get sued for merely being an ISP.

Indymedia has been doing this kind of stuff for years. Its a network of websites where people upload multimedia news content. It started off as an event based thing around protests (Seattle '99) but has grown into a network of over 100 sites worldwide, that try to provide community news coverage on an ongoing basis.

For most of the coverage is not done live, ie people take pictures, video, etc and then go back home or to a community media center and then upload it. There have been a wide variety of live wireless strategies used including:

- internet radio stream with live callins via cellphone (most popular)
- phone cams
- sms gateway
- onsite kiosk provided via 3G phone, for picture upload, live chat
- live 802.11b video streaming

Since Seattle '99 thousands of a/v clips, tens of thousands of photos and hundreds of thousands of text articles have been contributed to this collaborative news platform.

We've done some stuff with syndication of our content but the protocols don't exist yet to fully exchange multimedia content.

One thing that I think Indymedia has that blog culture doesn't is that its not "just a website". The websites function to allow anyone to participate but that's generally not thought to be sufficient. Each of the 100+ nodes in the network has a group of people that work to cultivate a liberated media space by doing things like provide training on how to do multimedia and reporting, holds film showings, provides technical support, publish newspapers, etc.

I work with DC Indymedia.

If you read about the data collection method it seems that they are creating a database that is a cross between what you could find on google and information submitted by anyone ala IndyMedia.

Hopefully it results in solid information and not this type.

If you read about the data collection method it seems that they are creating a database that is a cross between what you could find on google and information submitted by anyone ala IndyMedia.

Hopefully it results in solid information and not this type.

I wish someone would hook this up to a KU satellite and make it public. There's a lot of content that flows across there that's copyright clear. Heck there's even copyright clear stuff on DISH network satellite, a bunch of the stuff on Free Speech TV is available for noncommercial copying/viewing, like Democracy Now! and Indymedia Newsreal.

Indymedia has great coverage of most events and also has news about issues you would never here of through the main stream media.

IMNSHO, this will be the great privatizing of the profits and socialization of cost, and the nationalization of outfits like Clear Channel. I'm glad I'm starting a new newspaper right now, and I wonder if we'll ever get megaconglomerates trying to take us over. (I doubt it.)

What this will likely mean in the short-term is that medium-sized media companies such as Lee Enterprises will get bought up, essentially meaning that newspapers will generally recite only one line, which (through an amazing coincidence) will be the same line you hear on TV and/or the radio. That's just my opinion as a slightly informed media activist; I could be wrong.

It will be interesting to see if there's an upsurge in interest in Indymedia outlets if the FCC votes to allow this. And my feeling is that they will, by a party line, with son-of-Sec. of State General Powell, Michael Powell, giving the key vote allowing it to happen.

That democracy you thought we had actually has been comatose for some time now. This will shoot it in its paralyzed leg.

------

That said, here's a group that's making a difference in fighting the conglomeration: mediareform.net, a group concerned that is concerned how journalism has become dumbed-down entertainment and how shrinking the diversity of media ownership has muted much of the debate and placed an extraordinary degree of economic and social power in a very few hands. (Witness the recent rush to war.)

As always, start looking at your local Indymedia chapter. There's two new ones in Kansas City and Cincinnati that I don't think are on the main site yet.

And have fun.

rBGH, Fox News and Monsanto: "Milk it does Monsanto good." fired journalist

"They could not understand what was happening and told David Boylan,
a Murdoch manager sent by Fox to Florida, that a valid, well-sourced
news story was being stifled. Boylan's reply broke with all the traditions
of the Murdoch empire.
In a moment of insane candour, he told an unvarnished truth which should
be framed and stuck on the top of every television set.
"We paid $3 billion for these television stations," he snapped.
"We'll decide what the news is. NEWS IS WHAT WE SAY IT IS."

This kind of thing Long overdue in Austin

Tablizer writes:
"Okay, how about, "covers at least 2/3 of its expenses". The idea is to differentiate between people who do stuff for fun and/or hobby and those trying to make mula."

Alternet.org doesn't charge anything, how can they turn a profit? Indymedia.org doesn't charge anything either.

Besides, what gives you the impression that only sites that turn a profit are sources of good information? Are you aware that information websites that are commecial in nature are a relative new-comer on the net and almost unheard of if you pare them down to only the profitable or almost-profitable? Are you aware that most sites that charge for information are not going to get indexed (because you have to pay for that info) so their inclusion in Google's results is a non-sequiter because googlebot is polite and does not index sites the owner does not wish for them to index?

"If you don't like my definition, how about your own, btw."

This is sort of like a theist challenging an atheist to come up with their own definition of god if the atheist does not like the ones proffered. Or like asking what hair color "bald" is. You're asking me to defend a position I don't think is defensible because what is "useful" and "un-useful" information does not share a common boundary with "not-blogs" and "blogs." You've tried to draw the line at profitability which I think is almost the exact opposite of what you'd want.

Go ahead -- try and use Google but only clicking on hits that come from domains you have a good reason to suspect turn a profit.

I remember reading a study put out by back in '99 by Germany's Wupperthal (sp?) Institute that had calculated that 20 tonnes of raw materials go into your average laptop. Sorry -- don't have a link to it, but here's a useful link to an article on some of problems that are being shipped overseas, instead.

Why not just create a "-source" flag or, as has been suggested, "-noblog"? Why are blogs being marginalized as any less authoritative than other hits? Why is using "-" (eg: ["trading cards" -hockey]) utilized for weeding out certain criteria but not employed here when the goal is the same? Could we at least have a flag for combining the two results?

A comparison is being made between blogs and the newsgroups which are worlds apart in a number of different ways not the least of which is the thread-nature of the groups.

What defines a blog, anyway? What defines a not-blog? Is CNN.com a blog? Is it not a blog because many people write for it, because of the number of hits it gets or because it has press credentials? Which category does indymedia.org fit into?

Will I only get news results when I search for "ferret care?"

What if the source IS a blog? If the subject IS the blog, will a news site reporting on the blog wind up in the main search results while the subject itself -- the blog -- be only in the blog search?

Check out this aerial photo of the staged event

You can also check out any video feed of this event and see that it confirms the above picture. The cameras focused on a small group of people in the immediate foreground of the picture. As soon as the camera pulls back to any degree, the crowd thins out dramatically and immediately. Also, note the sparse crowds in the area behind the statue.

Those "crowds" you saw (and where did you see them, if you distrust the conservative media so much?) were a few dozen supporters of the guy that Bush Co. has chosen to lead Iraq in the new colonial era. A guy that hasn't even been in Iraq in about 50 years and who was convicted of bank fraud in Jordan. Should fit right in with Cheney and the rest of President Junior's "bidness" partners.

Well, those are the government's cameras, so they presumably can turn them off when they want to.

I don't agree. The government pays for the cameras with money collected from the people, no? If thats the case, then the people deserve equal access when the cameras are placed for civilian use.

But, as far as I know, it's not illegal (yet) for private citizens to own cameras and use them. Where are your cameras? Why isn't there some effort to provide private camera coverage of these demonstrations?

There is. It's grassroots, but we are out there. For examples of what I'm talking about, I suggest you look at indymedia.

If the opponents of a protest are smarter and better prepared than you, then who is really to blame? I know that organizing demonstrators can be like herding cats, but somebody has to think of these things and get the counter-surveilance implemented.

There are also real limits imposed by the police when people try to do this. They take your cameras, arrest you, beat you, etc. I'd like to get cameras mounted from above, where they are hard to get at, and broadcast in real time, but the costs plus the government censorship is really prohibitive here.

I'd even bet that they would consider that kind of observation as some kind of domestic terrorisim.

(sorry for the formatting of my last reply, btw).

As for legality. If protestors break the law, then arrest them. If they resist or fight the police, then sure, use of force is okay.

I'm not talking about those situations though.

I'm talking about situations where protestors gather peacefully, are 'ordered' to move, and when they start walking, they're shot in the backs at point blank range by wooden blocks, metal shot bean bags, and concussion grenades.

In no municipality in the entirety of the US is it legal to use deadly force against peaceful, unarmed suspects for noncompliance of police order. In most municipalities, in fact, it is illegal for an officer to even brandish weapons of deadly force in the same situation.

(and yeah, it does still happen. Happened in Oakland earlier this week. article here, good video actually showing the people peacefully walking away, and the police marching in pursuit shooting them here)

And pepper spray and mace? Its like were using chemical weapons on our own people! People get invaded for that kinda thing.

(sorry for the formatting of my last reply, btw).

As for legality. If protestors break the law, then arrest them. If they resist or fight the police, then sure, use of force is okay.

I'm not talking about those situations though.

I'm talking about situations where protestors gather peacefully, are 'ordered' to move, and when they start walking, they're shot in the backs at point blank range by wooden blocks, metal shot bean bags, and concussion grenades.

In no municipality in the entirety of the US is it legal to use deadly force against peaceful, unarmed suspects for noncompliance of police order. In most municipalities, in fact, it is illegal for an officer to even brandish weapons of deadly force in the same situation.

(and yeah, it does still happen. Happened in Oakland earlier this week. article here, good video actually showing the people peacefully walking away, and the police marching in pursuit shooting them here)

And pepper spray and mace? Its like were using chemical weapons on our own people! People get invaded for that kinda thing.

"Rally for Mike Hawash" planned this Monday April 7 at 8:30 on the steps of the U.S. Courthouse.

Check Portland Indymedia frontpage under "POLICE STATE | SOLIDARITY"

Rally for Mike Hawash (Intel employee detained for two weeks without charge)
http://portland.indymedia.org/

Direct link to article

"Rally for Mike Hawash" planned this Monday April 7 at 8:30 on the steps of the U.S. Courthouse.

Check Portland Indymedia frontpage under "POLICE STATE | SOLIDARITY"

Rally for Mike Hawash (Intel employee detained for two weeks without charge)
http://portland.indymedia.org/

Direct link to article

There are a bunch of posts farther down that nobody is going to see about this, so I'll go ahead and post here anyway.

The Manhattan Institute (hereafter the MI) made a name for itself with some books in the late 80's which changed the face of political debate on welfare reform and community policing. They used this fame to continue to get a lot of publishing attention -- endorsing law and order (and police violence) in their City Journal rag; skewing the meaning of statistics on race and intelligence in the infamous Bell Curve; pandering to naive religious simpletons by stating that the counterculture caused all our problems (in Myron Magnet's The Dream and the Nightmare).

But their problems start from the very beginning. The MI has always pushed the neoconservative agenda, and their entire agenda has tried to make room for negative stereotypes of people in poverty, plus loads of police profiling, violence, and brutality. A quick googling will show various allegations of connections to the CIA, from conspiracy theories to proven facts. Some of this you'd better believe, given that a Boston Globe article mirrored on their own website mentions how their founder went on to be Reagan's chief CIA spook (warning: this article crashes my mozilla for some reason; use lynx). I don't want to invoke godwin's law here, but with eerie similarities like these it's hard not to. And apart from the article linked from this /. story there's enough fearmongering there to make ready.gov look honest and tame.

Incidentally, our favorite simpleton George "Dubya" Bush is a big fan of their work (notice how "faith-based initiatives" are prominent on their front page) since he swallowed up Magnet's pandering, but that's another story. Remember, when economic conservatism is around, social intolerance is never far away.

In the last few months, there has been a spectacular achievement of government-media propaganda, very visible in the polls. The international polls show that support for the war is higher in the United States than in other countries. That is, however, quite misleading, because if you look a little closer, you find that the United States is also different in another respect from the rest of the world. Since September 2002, the United States is the only country in the world where 60 per cent of the population believes that Iraq is an imminent threat - something that people do not believe even in Kuwait or Iran.

Furthermore, about 50 per cent of the population now believes that Iraq was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center. This has happened since September 2002. In fact, after the September 11 attack, the figure was about 3 per cent. Government-media propaganda has managed to raise that to about 50 per cent. Now if people genuinely believe that Iraq has carried out major terrorist attacks against the United States and is planning to do so again, well, in that case people will support the war.

This has happened, as I said, after September 2002. September 2002 is when the government-media campaign began and also when the mid-term election campaign began. The Bush Administration would have been smashed in the election if social and economic issues had been in the forefront, but it managed to suppress those issues in favor of security issues - and people huddle under the umbrella of power.

This is exactly the way the country was run in the 1980s. Remember that these are almost the same people as in the Reagan and the senior Bush Administrations. Right through the 1980s they carried out domestic policies that were harmful to the population and which, as we know from extensive polls, the people opposed. But they managed to maintain control by frightening the people. So the Nicaraguan Army was two days' march from Texas and about to conquer the United States, and the airbase in Granada was one from which the Russians would bomb us. It was one thing after another, every year, every one of them ludicrous. The Reagan Administration actually declared a national Emergency in 1985 because of the threat to the security of the United States posed by the Government of Nicaragua.

My First Message To Them:

Subject: Infoshop News
Sender: PJ

Date: 3/22/2003 12:29 PM
To: News-Feedback@google.com

I am writing to encourage your editoral team to include in the new Google news feature, (which I use quite frequently throughout the day) the news reports and services of infoshop.org
If you continue to reject your users the right to use such a great service as Infoshop News, we will organize a boycott of google, which you should know, I have bought products thru your little in-search advertisements, but I am willing to give this up if google is going to be a nationalistic, plutocratic, indymedia hating group of individuals. I will do my searching elsewhere.
Thank you for your time,
--Paul Madore, Frequent Google User

Their First Response:

Subject: Re: Infoshop News [#1908026]
From: news-feedback@google.com
Date: 3/24/2003 6:10 PM
To: ph uck auth ority at maineindymedia.org

Hi,

Thanks for your email. Google News is highly unusual in that it provides a news service compiled solely by computer algorithms without any intervention from human editors. To ensure high quality content on Google News, we require the following criteria from our news sources: (1) the organization must be made up of more than one individual and (2 ) they must guarantee that all articles will be reviewed by their respective editors prior to publication on the web.

Infoshop.org does not meet these requirements. We appreciate your taking the time to provide feedback on Google News and hope you will contact us in the future with additional observations and suggestions.

Regards,
The Google Team

My Response To That:

Subject: Re: Infoshop News [#1908026]
From: PJ
Date: 3/25/2003 5:36 PM
To: news-feedback@google.com

Hi,
Here is my future observation,
Firstly, I have had articles rejected from infoshop's Inews section. So therefore THEY ARE REVIEWED. Secondly, Chuck0 is not the only person reviewing them, he is just the head editor. How does this sound to you?

"BOYCOTT GOOGLE, BOYCOTT FASCISM"

It's up to you.

Well Iraq's next door neighbour, Afghanistan has been conquered by the US, so it'll be CDMA instead of GSM.

And we all know Iran is next because it is part of the axis of evil (weren't they Iraq's enemies, and therefore our friends in the last war?). So it'll adopt switch US CDMA standard instead of GSM when it is flattened and rebuilt too.

In a couple years when the middle east becomes a little "USAsville" it is pretty clear the using the GSM standard because it is the international standard is pointless. Just pick whichever the American companies are using because they're the ones allowed to rebuild the conquered countries.

Even though it was us that destroyed them... Fortunatly for them they have oil to pay us for this rebuilding they'll need!

fuck yeah, I'll be back out in the streets tomorrow. NET STRIKE ON CNN PROTEST SWARMS

Tape the show and go outside!

There are numerous anti-war activities happening Around the Country.

Protests, vigils, bike-rides.

Just get outside and do something useful. Watch the show later, without the commercials.

www.takebackthemedia.com
www.gnn.tv
www.pbs.org/now/
disinfo.com
www.truthout.org
www.propagandamatrix.com
www.indymedia.org
www.rense.com
www.infowars.com

Check out this book titled "Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance," published in 1996, about Hitler's Blitzkreig. Sort of an unsettling set of circumstances (as if it weren't already)

Also, check out this article, which compares the rise of Hitler to the current U.S. administration. For example, Hitler used the attack on the Reichstag as an excuse for a pre-emptive strike on Austria.

I'm going to assume the author of parrent was suggesting non-commercial media (you know, those that aren't influenced by multinational corporations). Here are some suggestions:
-Independent Media
-Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
-The Nation

SF Indy Media has a very interesting live feed here . It's a nice alternative to the korporate controlled US media outlets.

...is over here.

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.

But it's much more useful than that - if they're able to collect all that information, they can correlate it with people who give money to the Green Party or peace groups or environmental groups (some of whom are already on the TSA's not-allowed-to-fly lists because of their political incorrectness.) Also, the increased "information sharing" between the US civilian police agencies, spook agencies, and military, plus the redefinitions of lots of forms of vice as "national security" issues means that they can use those hotel bills from Humboldt County, California to decide to give your luggage a lot of extra attention when you're flying back from Amsterdam, or ask the Internal Revenue Service to check out your tax returns after that trip to Las Vegas just in case you might have been "money laundering" or passing some cash to that suspicious Penn fellow.

Is this purple beam part of a missile defense system?

NASA orbiter struck by "electrical phenomena" - San Francisco Chronicle - "The pictures, taken with a Nikon-880 digital camera on a tripod, reveal what appear to be bright electrical phenomena flashing around the track of the shuttle's passage, but the photographer, who asked not to be identified, will not make them public immediately." - February, 2003

Orbiter hit by "purple lightning" - San Francisco Chronicle - "Investigators are combing records from a network of ultra-sensitive instruments that might have detected a faint thunderclap in the upper atmosphere at the same time a photograph taken by a San Francisco astronomer appears to show a purplish bolt of lightning striking the shuttle." - February, 2003

NASA admits photographs of "bolt of something" exist - NASA - "DITTEMORE: I have seen the photo. We have sent the photo off to be examined, to verify its validity. We have not completed that activity yet. We have invited some atmospheric scientists to come to the Johnson Space Center to help us understand is there any phenomena that they know of that might exist in the upper atmosphere." - February, 2003

Starfire uses a telescope for "sending and receiving laser beams" - CRN - industry newsweekly - "For the Starfire Optical Range (SOR), a division of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base, near here, measuring the effect of that air turbulence is critical to a project that uses a telescope for sending and receiving laser beams." - January, 2003

Directed Energy Directorate's "plasma projectiles" - Global Security - "Garcia said the directed-energy unit, which also is working on laser weapons, space-based optics and plasma projectiles some have likened to firing a bolt of lightning, has about 600 employees with an annual budget of about $120 million." - February, 2003

The curiously mislabeled document on NASA's web site. Check the title if you load this document.

Are they wussies or just a bit more thoughtful than you?
Are you will to kill her to get to Sadam?

we still owe Bush a favor for last year .