Slashdot Mirror

What's wrong is that the premises make it a waste of money.

"software that would let the government monitor negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas.

Such a 'sentiment analysis' is intended to identify potential threats to the nation"

Intelligence gathering is wasted if the audience doesn't know the difference between negative opinions and threats.

It's also creepy if the people running it have been known to drop bombs on news outlet offices, allegedly plan to bomb a TV station's headquarteres, launch an air strike on their office and kill their bureau chief, and shell a Reuters office with a tank.

Some clarifications:
  - I am totally European

  - I am not saying we should muzzle ourselves so as to not offend any community, I'm only saying it is a hypocrisy to claim that we tolerate no censorship, when "our" (occidental) media censor themselves all the time. Feel free to say that your country shall be free to impose its own standards - but don't use "freedom of speech" as a justification, as it would be a hypocrisy. A couple of weeks after that story, for example, French radio stations refused to broadcast a new Rap song entitled "Chirac en Prison".
  - I remember protests and some of our theaters being put to fire when Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ" came out.
  - Next to self-censoring, there is "revisionism": even reputable institutions like Time magazine have been known to give into it [see at the end of http://mediastudy.com/articles/av12-11-03.html, I was able to verify the existence of that article].

  - Congrats for the cursing, but it's easy on Slashdot. Make up a good story around it, and you might get airtime on a Jerry Springer-style show. But if you have strongly dissenting opinions about politics or society, it is more difficult to be heard. I am somewhat disappointed that political debate on TV has become more and more chastised over the years -- while you get more and more of the lowly and clueless "shocking" debates and reality shows. How can true democracy work if people are not adequately educated?
  - Was it in the UK that more than half of respondents to a poll agreed that "Creationist theories should be thought as part of *science* classes alongside Darwin's theories", and almost as many did not believe in "Darwin's theories" ?

Again, all I want to say is that we should not forget to check ourselves in a mirror.
These rumblings were simply triggered by this quote included in the original story:
>>

No censorship in America ???

A composition instructor at the University of California at Irvine got a disturbing email from a friend who was searching Time magazine's digital archives looking for a certain article written by George Bush Senior and his Defense Secretary, Brent Scowcroft. In that article, the two men purportedly explained why they decided not to occupy Iraq in 1991. Their reason was that such an action would have exceeded the UN's mandate to remove Iraq from Kuwait , and would have destroyed the precedent of an international response to aggression. They went on to argue, in the March 2, 1998 article, had they chosen to occupy Iraq in 1991, the US would probably still be occupying a bitterly hostile land.

The article, in today's light, seems like a clear rebuff to junior's invasion. But the article is gone. It's no longer in Time's digital archives - as if it never existed. The Irvine instructor decided to charge her students with the task of verifying the existence or nonexistence of the article. As it turned out, the article was in fact real, and was still archived by a number of subscription-accessed library research databases - but it was no longer in the Time archives. Interestingly, none of her digital-age students thought to look for the paper copy of the magazine in the library. The instructor did, finding not only the missing article, but also finding that editors changed the titles on many of the articles remaining in the Time archives.

Time's post-facto editing is especially disturbing since it shakes the very foundation of library sciences. An archive is a collection of past works. By definition it must be left intact. Archive managers have no right to edit history. In this case, Time blew their chance to censor this story in 1998.

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=113222911236 7 http://atheism.about.com/b/a/220978.htm http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jul2001/fait-j23 .shtml http://mediastudy.com/articles/av3-28-02.html http://ethics.lacity.org/EFS2003/index.cfm?fuseact ion=lobreports.clientbyfirm&year=2001 Search for Salvation Army, check later years too. http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/legislative/b_thr ee_sections_with_teasers/clientlist_page_D_E.htm Search for Salvation Army

Don't be so confident

http://www.mediastudy.com/cm.html

• state by state comparison
• by county in Florida

I've heard that Kerry is considering retracting his concession, and that if you've personally observed "voter disenfranchisement" in Ohio, you should phone the DNC (202) 863-8000 or send email to: CKerry@Mintz.com.

(Interestingly enough, the Green Party is also legally allowed to demand a recount: the catch is that they've got to be able to pay the $100,000 price tag...)

Cleansing Time Magazine

As paper libraries and archives give way to electronic data collections, history is becoming ever more frail. A composition instructor at the University of California at Irvine got a disturbing email from a friend who was searching Time magazine's digital archives looking for a certain article written by George Bush Senior and his Defense Secretary, Brent Scowcroft. In that article, the two men purportedly explained why they decided not to occupy Iraq in 1991. Their reason was that such an action would have exceeded the UN's mandate to remove Iraq from Kuwait , and would have destroyed the precedent of an international response to aggression. They went on to argue, in the March 2, 1998 article, had they chosen to occupy Iraq in 1991, the US would probably still be occupying a bitterly hostile land.

The article, in today's light, seems like a clear rebuff to junior's invasion. But the article is gone. It's no longer in Time's digital archives - as if it never existed. The Irvine instructor decided to charge her students with the task of verifying the existence or nonexistence of the article. As it turned out, the article was in fact real, and was still archived by a number of subscription-accessed library research databases - but it was no longer in the Time archives. Interestingly, none of her digital-age students thought to look for the paper copy of the magazine in the library. The instructor did, finding not only the missing article, but also finding that editors changed the titles on many of the articles remaining in the Time archives.

Time's post-facto editing is especially disturbing since it shakes the very foundation of library sciences. An archive is a collection of past works. By definition it must be left intact. Archive managers have no right to edit history. In this case, Time blew their chance to censor this story in 1998.

I do not find his position alramist or "slippery" at all. A LOT of civil liberties in America have been usurped since Bush declared war (oddly though, I thought only congress could do that) on terrorism. This is FACT, not fiction or a statement made without evidence. As an example: It used to be that in order to get a wiretap, a JUDGE had to grant it and there had to be reasonable cause. Now, any state's attorney can grant one without a shred of any evidence required to prove WHY it's needed.

I do not think it unreasonable to assume our (s)elected president and his posse^H^H^H^H^Hcabinet might consider cracking a form of terrorism.

It takes little for a cracker to then be labeled as an "enemy combatant" and all this stuff to play out in closed military tribunals.

No constitution will stop The Whitehouse of Evil!

getting all the pleasure I need from my wife.

maybe not in history, but we are the current world leader according to: this.

Ok--now go read about the deaths of 80 innocent civilians in their own homes at the hands of US Defense and the FBI in 1993; read how the United States is the world leader in incarceration, with many of the jailed being casualties of the War on Drugs; read about the victims of racial profiling in the US ("Driving while black"); read about prison labour in the United States; or police brutality; perhaps even the many violations of international law by the United States.

Go read all of those links (and while you're at it, brush up on your history; for instance, slavery in the United States), and come back and tell me that you welcome the US as a power any more than China. Take off your rose-coloured US-media-manipulated glasses, and realize that America is as affected by propaganda convincing its citizens that their country faultless as China is.