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In 2003, French companies received over seven billion US dollars more foreign investment than USA companies. In the past few years, Airbus have overtaken Boeing in sales and shipments. If France isn't innovating, how come people are investing in French companies more than in USA companies?

The French are not afraid to use nuclear power, making them the most energy independent Western nation. France pollutes less than the USA, CO2 in particular. As far as energy goes, they are beating the USA.

Reporters Without Borders ranked France as 30th in the world when it comes to freedom of the press. The USA languishes down at 44th. So much for freedom of speech.

France has a 99% literacy rate. The USA has a 97% literacy rate. So much for education.

Yes, I know you didn't state that you are from the USA, but experience tells me only one country produces idiots like you in mass quantities. The rest have idiots too, but there's less of them, and they say where they are from.

but keep bashing Microsoft as the personification of evil if it helps you forget these things:

Google Bows to Chinese Censorship

How about Yahoo:
Information supplied by Yahoo ! helped journalist Shi Tao get 10 years in prison

and there is this on Cisco and China:
China's Internet: Let a Thousand Filters Bloom

Flickr site

Reporters sans Frontiere

I'm not an American, and initially when this story came out a couple weeks ago I agreed with handing over control to the UN. After letting it stew for a few weeks and considering the Pros and Cons, I don't think the UN is ready to take control. I believe it does in fact sit in good hands with the Americans, even when American liberty is at an all time low. (Of course I'd feel even better if some country like..
Denmark,Finland,Iceland, Ireland,Netherlands,Norway or Switzerland. Were in control... http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15333 Western democracies lose ground : the US falls more than 20 places

How about Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Trinidad or Bosnia and Herzegovina? They're all better than the USA when it comes to press freedom. As has been pointed out before, citing the worst alternative is not a valid argument.

The real answer is that no single country should be trusted with control of the Internet and that the UN didn't want to control but to manage the 'net.

"If you really think that Europe is for some reason "less free" than the US, than I would suggest you take a look at the http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15333"> Worldwide Press Freedom Index, which lists it in a solid 44th place on the index of freedom of the press, which is mainly what you are talking about when you discuss speech on the Internet, since it is a form of press."

If you think the rules of the press have any real stake on the internet, you're sorely mistake.

Worldwide Press Freedom Index? How the hell do you measure this? Is it quantitative? Does the U.S. get 7.9 units of free press, while France gets 8.3? No, they used a Questionairre...A questionairre that is not surprisingly missing from their site. I've seen this assinine reporters without borders joke show up in several posts, and it's pissing me off more and more everytime.

gmuller

Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Switzerland all score highest on the press freedom records, as listed here. The US comes in a rather dismal 22nd place.

It's nice to see that newly created Internet Governance is starting things off on the right foot!

Ahead of the summit, rights watchdogs say, both Tunisian and foreign reporters have been harassed and beaten. Reporters Without Borders says its secretary-general, Robert Menard, has been banned from attending.

Fantastic! I don't know about you, but I can't wait to for my new internet tax, limited connectivity, filtering, monitoring and suppression. w00t!!!

more goodness at reporters without borders
http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=20

It's nice to see that newly created Internet Governance is starting things off on the right foot!

Ahead of the summit, rights watchdogs say, both Tunisian and foreign reporters have been harassed and beaten. Reporters Without Borders says its secretary-general, Robert Menard, has been banned from attending.

Fantastic! I don't know about you, but I can't wait to for my new internet tax, limited connectivity, filtering, monitoring and suppression. w00t!!!

more goodness at reporters without borders
http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=20

I mean look at the critism that most Europeans have over the U.S. ... it is too easy to get guns, there aren't enough laws to restrict buisnesses, taxes are too low, "hate speech" is not punished, health care should be nationalized and controlled by a central authority, etc., etc. They are not complaining for the most part that the U.S. restricts freedoms, they are complaining that the U.S. is too free and a "cowboy culture"

No.

Europe is complaining how freedom of press is killed. Europe is complaining how freedom of life is restricted by people being imprisoned for years without trial.

Europe is laughing when a chick flashing some nipple causes a national scandal, and frightened when secret mass surveillance projects and torture facilities do not.

Europe is complaining that corruption and ridiculous massive secrecy restricts freedom. Europe wants things to be managed transparently, so at least abuses can be exposed.

Oh, and Europe is complaining that America's freedom to become better is restricted by automatic labeling of any not-in-Fox-News observations or suggestions as "anti-american".

If you want to see truly speech oppressive societies, just look at Europe and their numerous speech codes/laws.

Care to enlighten us as to which country has more freedom of speech?

Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Hungary, New Zealand, Sweden, Trinidad and Tobago, Austria, Latvia, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Canada, Lithuania, Portugal, United Kingdom, Benin, Cyprus, Namibia, El Salvador, Cape Verde, France, Australia, South Africa, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jamaica, Mauritius, South Korea, Japan, Mali, Hong-Kong, Spain, Costa Rica, Italy and Macedonia.

Here's the list.

Mainly due to the imprisonment of New York Times reported Judith Miller and judical action that is undermining the privacy of journalistic sources. Federal courts are getting increasingly bold about subpoenaing journalists and trying to force them to disclose their confidential sources.

• problematic human-rights records
• muted free-speech laws
• questionable taxation practices

USA ranks #44 on the Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2005...

While developing a woefully oppressive model of Internet management, Iran is participating actively in international talks about Internet governance that are being held as part of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the press organisation said.

We have obscenity laws on the books, right now, that are being used to prosecute citizens of the U.S. for exercising their dear 1st amendment rights. We have "free speech zones" outside of which protest is illegal. By comparison, some of the EU member states have laws against hate speech.

First, here's the 2004 list: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=11716
2005 should be coming out soon. Comparing the 2002 and 2004, the US has improved some, some european countries are a bit worse than before. Then you have some EU countries that are way below the US.

Best I can say is this. I have yet to see a successful prosecution under those "obsenity" laws in the US, most of the laws being struck down as unconstitutional under the 1st amendment quite quickly. Notice that Larry Flint and Hugh Hefner, among others, are not in jail. The only ones I have heard of lately with this happening to generally deal with sites that have been accused of having either minors or kiddy porn on them. If you can provide a link on one that is about a straight porn site, please provide it, along with any reasons the FBI/DA are providing for the reason.

The EU states have, aside from hate speech you can include a chunk of things having to deal with WWII in germany that, while not hate speech directly, is hate speech related. One other thing that is interesting are their libel/slander laws. Burden of proof is put on the defendant not the plantif.

Back to the US, the "free speech zones" as you reference them is somewhat missleading. They are only setup during major events and used as a way to keep the events flowing smoothly. As has been said, you can say whatever you want, but you can't force people to listen. If someone rents out an area for use, they should be able to deny access to that area to anyone they want to. I'd put it in the same category as keeping abortion protesters a minimum distance away from abortion clinics (usually across the street). If we want to depate the pros and cons of them, that is one thing. But they are essentially set up to keep the protesters away from those who don't want them around them. I seem to recall Richard Stallman complaining a few weeks ago about being ejected from an airport where he tried to publicize something. The Hare Krishna group have been pretty much barred from airports for similar reasons. Here's something similar from the UK. I'd personally say that it is more a point of controlling access to an area in most cases rather than limiting free speech. However, the ones where there are permanent ones I would say are another matter. Basically I see temporary ones for special events as crowd control and permanent ones as problems. Again, we can discuss the pros and cons of them if you want.

The main reason according to the 2002 report that the US is "so low" is:
Arrests are often because they refuse to reveal their sources in court. Also, since the 11 September attacks, several journalists have been arrested for crossing security lines at some official buildings. (Different complaints for the 2004 report)
The first reason is debatable. I have no problem with ones similar to the "Pentagon Papers". I do have problems with ones similar to the revealing of undercover CIA agents or other things of a similar nature, especially when it can/does get people killed. In WWII reporters were revealing what our military was going to be doing and the germans were reading the papers to find out. That got a lot of people killed. Also, it was said during the gulf war that Sadam Husein didn't need inteligence ops, he just needed to watch CNN. Th

Even the EU is more restrictive than the US.

Is that so? I keep hearing this parroted, but I haven't really seen a decent breakdown of what constitutes our incredible free speech lead. We have obscenity laws on the books, right now, that are being used to prosecute citizens of the U.S. for exercising their dear 1st amendment rights. We have "free speech zones" outside of which protest is illegal.

By comparison, some of the EU member states have laws against hate speech.

According to Reporters Without Borders, much of Europe kicks our ass at press freedom as well.

The United States has a stronger free speech than most of Europe (in that we allow racism and nazi speech)

When you say "most of Europe", do you mean "most of Europe", or do you mean "I heard about one European country doing this and assumed all the rest have done so too"? When you look at Reporters Without Borders' annual report, there are a lot of European countries ahead of the USA, including Germany, the country that's banned Nazi hate speech. In fact, the top eight countries on the list are all European.

Just because it says that you have free speech in your constitution, it doesn't mean you actually have it. And even if you did have it, it's meaningless unless you exercise it. The conglomeration of media in the USA is frightening.

United States of America (American territory) : 22
United States of America (in Iraq) : 108

Likewise, the United States has abuses (free speech zones, for instance) that would be completely illegal in other countries but are fine here.

Check out the Press Freedom Index and note our unacceptably low ranking (22nd out of 167). If you check out their report, you will find that one of the reasons for this poor ranking was the arrest of journalists during demonstrations against the government.

Sure, we're fairly high on the list, but we rank below Canada, Germany, and France (but above Italy). On the other hand, if we're going to claim to be some sort of beacon of freedom, anything less than a tie for first is an embarrassment.

Your rationalization fails the laugh test. If that kind of arbitrary limit on assembly were allowed then there would be no teeth to the article at all.

Treaties obviously have no teeth (except where they are used by a country as an excuse to attack another one). Rights are useful to the extent that they have to be restricted explicitly by law. The right only means that exercising the right, as a substantive fact, is not illegal (a strong permission) and that there should be some legal way of exercising the right (to vote for instance; the protective perimeter). Absolute rights are just political rhetoric.

In combination with other arbitrary facts exercising the right can be illegal: no assembly obstructing traffic (unless you have a license), no criminal organization, etc. Freedom of speech can be restricted in front of minors (for indecency), in commercial advertising (no advertising for pharmaceuticals), because of its insulting or libelous content, etc. It also does not give you permission to start a radio station without a license, for instance. You are free to express your opinions, but not anytime, to anyone, or by any means. You can also only exercise the right (to vote) in compliance with any legal procedures devised for that purpose.

We have all of the above restrictions in the Netherlands, and (fortunately) a pretty transparent constitution (compared to the vague and ambigous US one anyway) that in most cases explicitly states for what reasons basic rights can be cancelled. Since Finland and the Netherlands both usually rank very high in freedom ratings (example), we can safely assume that other countries do not interpret rights in a more comprehensive way in legal practice.

Notably, the Netherlands and Finland are also the only two Western countries with a written constitution, as far as I know, that have no form of constitutional review whatsoever. The constitution doesn't really seem to make a substantial difference. Prosperity and social peace creates freedom and democracy, and poverty and strife creates slavery and tyrrany.

• That his co-workers alerted the authorities so he was considered worth checking out. Possible, but seems unlikely to me given that the co-workers presumably wouldn't even know about the posting of the summary. And surely they'd have mentioned it in the verdict if this were the case
• That the Asia Democracy Foundation got r00ted by the Chinese govt. This would suck. Plausibility depends on the Chinese government's hacking capabilities and how willing it is to use them.
• That the Asia Democracy Foundation has a mole. To me this seems the most plausible explanation, in which case I sure as hell hope they catch the bugger and kick him out.

Perhaps American bloggers will now need Reporters without Borders Guide to Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents. Ironic that the land that once stood for "free speech" should need advice from a Paris-based organization on the topic.

Here is the handbook if you want to download it and read it yourself.

Kudos to RSF.org, a french NGO for their work. In addition to sticking up for journalists in harsh places (like Iran, China, but also occasionaly the US and Europe), they are doing a lot to introduce the notion of "cyber dissidence". This will probably help have the concept included in future human rights treaties. You can balk all you want at how slow the process is, and how difficult it is to enforce such treaties, but the reason many nasty regimes resist their signature is precisely because however imperfect they aren't entirely toothless and can be used to point out in a clear and unambiguous way that regimes are in breach of their international obligations.

These guys at Reporters Without Borders got guts -- on their website, they put the names and photos of the heads of states where there is no press freedom and call them "Predators of Press Freedom". Check it out at: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=1087

I figured I'd just point these links out... I immediately went and looked for them, so I figured others might want be curious too...

Handbook (PDF): http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/handbook_bloggers_cyber dissidents-GB.pdf
Reporters without Borders (English): http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=20

I figured I'd just point these links out... I immediately went and looked for them, so I figured others might want be curious too...

Handbook (PDF): http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/handbook_bloggers_cyber dissidents-GB.pdf
Reporters without Borders (English): http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=20

Shi Tao Aged 37, Shi worked for the daily Dangdai Shang Bao (Contemporary Business News). He was convicted on 30 April of sending foreign-based websites the text of an internal message which the authorities had sent to his newspaper warning journalists of the dangers of social destabilisation and risks resulting from the return of certain dissidents on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Chinese state security insisted during the trial that the message was "Jue Mi" (top secret). Shi admitted sending it out by e-mail but disputed that it was a secret document. He is still being held in a prison in Changsha to which he was sent after his arrest in the northeastern city of Taiyuan on 24 November 2004.

...but I'm sure this is just a coincidence. (From a Yahoo! press release, mysteriously dated August 11th, 2005.)

Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - News), a leading global Internet company, and Alibaba.com, China's largest e-commerce company, today announced a definitive agreement to form a long-term strategic partnership in China. Under the terms of the agreement, Yahoo! will contribute its Yahoo! China business to Alibaba.com and the two companies will work together in an exclusive partnership to grow the Yahoo! brand in China. Additionally, Yahoo! is investing $1 billion in cash to purchase Alibaba.com shares from the company and other shareholders. The agreement gives Yahoo! an approximately 40 percent economic interest with 35 percent voting rights, making it the largest strategic investor in Alibaba.com.

The combination will create one of the largest Internet companies in China, and the only Internet company in China with a leading position in the key growth sectors of business-to-business e-commerce, consumer e-commerce, online payments, communications and search.

By the way, here is the original press release from Reporters Without Borders, since I didn't see it linked anywhere else.

More detail for you: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/2005/09/ 06/warning-yahoo-wont-protect-you/

Officials from the Changsha security bureau detained Shi near his home in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, on November 24, 2004, several months after he e-mailed notes detailing the propaganda ministry's instructions to the media about coverage of the anniversary of the crackdown at Tiananmen Square. Authorities confiscated his computer and other documents and warned his family to stay quiet about the matter.

On December 14, authorities issued a formal arrest order, charging Shi with "leaking state secrets." On April 27, 2005, the Changsha Intermediate People's Court found Shi guilty and sentenced him to a 10-year prison term.

I'm sorry, but what a shocker. China tosses a journalist in jail for 10 years for a mislabled "crime". Here is a picture of this Chinese James Bond http://www.cpj.org/news/2005/China25aug05na.html

It should be of no suprise to anyone that Tao's appeal was rejected without reason nor public hearing. As is correctly pointed out at http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14884 does Yahoo! simply state they are just following a countries law? When do they have ANY ethical considerations? Can the law in China stipulate that child labor is lawfull and Yahoo could practice this under the same defense?

Yahoo is the ONLY American search engine that has agreed to self sensor it's search results. They have invested heavily in China and as a result bow to their every request. "Just follwing the law" is not a defense for Yahoo in my opinion. Self censoring your search results is one thing, cooperating with Chinese security officials to track down an IP address is another.

Here is Mr. Tao's verdict http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/Verdict_Shi_Tao.pdf

More detail for you: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/2005/09/ 06/warning-yahoo-wont-protect-you/

Officials from the Changsha security bureau detained Shi near his home in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, on November 24, 2004, several months after he e-mailed notes detailing the propaganda ministry's instructions to the media about coverage of the anniversary of the crackdown at Tiananmen Square. Authorities confiscated his computer and other documents and warned his family to stay quiet about the matter.

On December 14, authorities issued a formal arrest order, charging Shi with "leaking state secrets." On April 27, 2005, the Changsha Intermediate People's Court found Shi guilty and sentenced him to a 10-year prison term.

I'm sorry, but what a shocker. China tosses a journalist in jail for 10 years for a mislabled "crime". Here is a picture of this Chinese James Bond http://www.cpj.org/news/2005/China25aug05na.html

It should be of no suprise to anyone that Tao's appeal was rejected without reason nor public hearing. As is correctly pointed out at http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14884 does Yahoo! simply state they are just following a countries law? When do they have ANY ethical considerations? Can the law in China stipulate that child labor is lawfull and Yahoo could practice this under the same defense?

Yahoo is the ONLY American search engine that has agreed to self sensor it's search results. They have invested heavily in China and as a result bow to their every request. "Just follwing the law" is not a defense for Yahoo in my opinion. Self censoring your search results is one thing, cooperating with Chinese security officials to track down an IP address is another.

Here is Mr. Tao's verdict http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/Verdict_Shi_Tao.pdf

Oppose censorship? Put your monkey where your mouth is: publish this. (It was rejected by you and your esteemed colleagues.)
Slashdot advertiser Yahoo!(TM) has been identified by Reporters Without Borders as helping Chinese state security officials of convicting Shi Tao of "illegally providing top state secrets to overseas organizations." From [0]: "He was convicted on 30 April of sending foreign-based websites the text of an internal message which the authorities had sent to his newspaper warning journalists of the dangers of social destabilisation and risks resulting from the return of certain dissidents on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre." This continues the saga of Yahoo!(TM)'s complicity in censorship by repressive governments, well documented here and in the press.

Oppose censorship? Put your monkey where your mouth is: publish this. (It was rejected by you and your esteemed colleagues.)
Slashdot advertiser Yahoo!(TM) has been identified by Reporters Without Borders as helping Chinese state security officials of convicting Shi Tao of "illegally providing top state secrets to overseas organizations." From [0]: "He was convicted on 30 April of sending foreign-based websites the text of an internal message which the authorities had sent to his newspaper warning journalists of the dangers of social destabilisation and risks resulting from the return of certain dissidents on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre." This continues the saga of Yahoo!(TM)'s complicity in censorship by repressive governments, well documented here and in the press.

Was also poster earlier on Reporters sans Frontiere

Really?

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=11715

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14207

OMG. The US is probably the western country that puts most journalists in jail and repeatedly oppress free speech and free press and you try to say it's better than the UK?

According to Reporters Without Borders, the USA is joint 22nd in the world for press freedom, and the UK is joint 28th. Unless you are talking about the USA-controlled areas of Iraq, in which case they are 108th.

People seem to forget that the UK has been fighting terrorism a lot longer than the USA. Terrorism didn't begin in 2001, despite what many Americans seem to think. As such, the UK has got a few boneheaded laws too, although it doesn't seem to be sliding into a police state quite as rapidly as the USA is.

The architecture of the Chinese Internet was designed from the outset to allow information control. There are just five backbones or hubs through which all traffic must pass. No matter what ISP is chosen by Internet users, their e-mails and the files they download and send must pass through one of these hubs. China then acquired state-of-the-art technology and equipment from US companies. Cisco Systems has sold China several thousand routers at more that 16,000 euros each for use in building the regime's surveillance infrastructure. This equipment was programmed with the help of Cisco engineers. It allows the authorities to read data transmitted on the Internet and to spot "subversive" key words. The police are able to identify who visits banned sites and who sends "dangerous" e-mail messages.

Authorities declare war on unregistered websites and blogs

You are probably not in the US, where the media are the least controlled and the most diverse of any in the world.

Is that sarcasm or genuine ignorance?

The USA is ranked joint 22nd in freedom of the press.

When it comes to speaking your mind about almost anything, few countries or people have it as good as the people of the United States, even in this post-September 11 world.

This does not appear to be true. According to the Reporters Without Borders organisation, the USA ranks joint 22nd in terms of journalistic freedom. France and Germany, often criticised for their lack of free speech here on Slashdot, rank 19th and 11th, respectively. If you are talking about the USA-controlled areas of Iraq, over a hundred countries have more freedom of speech.

I get annoyed, however, at people, most notably the cults of personalities we call celebrities, who think that they have a right to make their words and comments louder or have them deemed more important than others.

I don't care. What really annoys me is the people that do treat them as more important or more credible than others. And as far as I can tell, most of the USA thinks this way.

vii) Have a free press.

Reporters without borders index has USofA @ 17th. Canada, 5th.

"Reporters without borders" has a VERY different view:
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=12368

Indeed, we're a good example of that. We in the Netherlands have laws against saying "God sucks",

This statement has never been prohibited in the Netherlands, even in the days before the blasphemy articles you are referring to (147-147a, Title 5 WvS) officially fell into desuetude.

and a prohibition on discrimination is actually set down in our constitution!. In fact, it's in Article 1.

Article 1 of the Netherlands constitution states that the governments treats all inhabitants of the kingdom equally. You do not understand what it says. Criminal discrimation provisions are found in Title 5 WvS.

In contrast, the constitution does not grant freedom of speech even in limited terms, contrary to what many people think is in art. 7. That article only states that prior permission is not required to publish something, whoopidoo. But once it's published, you can be persecuted for anything that crosses the law (like the ones against discrimination or blasphemy). It's sad, really.

Article 7 is much clearer about what 'freedom of expression' means than the first amendment in the US Constitution. The US Constitution is so underspecified on many points that it is almost useless as a protective device for citizens against government abuse of power.

Article 7 says that the government can not prevent you from expressing your opinion, and that any litigation must be based directly on formal law. This is a translation for anyone who is interested:

Article 7 [Expression]

(1) No one shall require prior permission to publish thoughts or opinions through the press, without prejudice to the responsibility of every person under the law.
(2) Rules concerning radio and television shall be laid down by Act of Parliament. There shall be no prior supervision of the content of a radio or television broadcast.
(3) No one shall be required to submit thoughts or opinions for prior approval in order to disseminate them by means other than those mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, without prejudice to the responsibility of every person under the law. The holding of performances open to persons younger than sixteen years of age may be regulated by Act of Parliament in order to protect good morals.
(4) The preceding paragraphs do not apply to commercial advertising.

You can (rightly) point out a lot of bad things about the USA, but at least they got the free speech thing right.

Is that why the Netherlands customarily scores very high on press freedom rankings (shared 1st place) and the US scores low (31st place)?

France is in 26th place, by the way.

I am not really impressed by a country that tolerates nazis because of "freedom of expression", but still succeeds in ending up in the 31st place in an international ranking.

Personally I think we should cut all their funding since they run advertisements just like any other station.

Canada has one of the most free press in the world. One of the reasons is that we provide an open INFRASTRUCTURE (cbc) to content. If you cut the funding for CBC, you will have a narrowing of discourse that will hinder our community's ability to communicate.

Free enterprise isnt concerned with truth or equality or insightfullness or universal access.

I would recommend Canada uses the BBC as a model and we Canadians implement a MORE usefull and worthwhile broadcast system.

Commercial interests are anethma to worthwhile broadcasting.

IF your goal is an army of mildly entertained, mildy informed consumers move Canadian Broadcasting regime towards the American model.

If your goal is an informed and engaged public, with a method to sustain a conversation for the participants in public arts and politics Canada should build a BBC-like system.

What do you feel our goal should be?

And before someone says "freedom", i'll provide the preemptive retort. The CBC is evidence that state-funded enterprise can have Freedom. AND that in other places, "a free-press is for those who own one" and therefore devoid of worthwhile Freedom.

Not at all. It was just a sarcastic comment on the state of American media. I'm not the slightest bit surprised most of the world considers US residents ignorant with the incredibly biased, blinkered and subjective output spoonfed by the fourth estate.

This isn't just me thinking this. For example, Dan Rather gave an astonishing interview a couple of years back on freedom of the press, and he gave it to the BBC rather than the American media, knowing it wouldn't get heard in the USA. In fact, BBC's Newsnight has found a lot of really nasty dirt on the current USA administration, the elections, etc. over the past few years (mostly courtesy of Greg Palast, an American working in the UK), and this material has been largely ignored by the US media as if criticism of the establishment is unpatriotic! [Incidentally, Reporters Without Borders does consider the UK less free than the US, but at joint 22nd, the USA isn't as high as it should be with the much-vaunted First Amendment.]

As far as I know, the majority of US citizens abroad are anti-Bush. It's hard to swallow the Republican line (or to be fair, the Democrat line too) with so many independent and vocal sources pointing out how insincere and wrong it is. From the viewpoint of anywhere outside the USA, the current administration is horrific. Blair isn't much better, but at least the media doesn't treat him like a messiah (like Bush). Here, everything Blair does is analysed, criticised and vilified by the mainstream media. It must be pretty harsh to be on the receiving end, but he knows he won't get away with half of the stuff he'd probably want to do. It is the job of the press, and the duty of every citizen to question their leaders, in the hope of building a stronger and better republic.

America, as an ideal, is a wonderful thing. The original implementation was okay, but this release sucks. It's a creaking theocrasy with a self-proclaimed messiah leading it. It butts into everyone else's business (eg. election rigging and coup d'etats in South America, illegal invasions such as the one in Iraq right now) and then gets all uppity when anyone else comments on the state of its internal democratic process (as if 2000 didn't highlight the need for independent foreign election observers!) American resident citizens have totally lost the rights they claim to have on paper, and more to the point they're not aware of it. While Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc. still say everything's okay, it must be, right? It's a real shame.

Of course, this is just my opinion. It happens to coincide quite a bit with a hell of a lot of other people out here in the free world.

"Reporters Without Borders announces its third annual worldwide index of press freedom. Such freedom is threatened most in East Asia (with North Korea at the bottom of the entire list at 167th place, followed by Burma 165th, China 162nd, Vietnam 161st and Laos 153rd) and the Middle East (Saudi Arabia 159th, Iran 158th, Syria 155th, Iraq 148th).

In these countries, an independent media either does not exist or journalists are persecuted and censored on a daily basis. Freedom of information and the safety of journalists are not guaranteed there. (...) But there are plenty of other black spots around the world for press freedom. Cuba (in 166th place) is second only to China as the biggest prison for journalists, with 26 in jail (China has 27). Since spring last year, these 26 independent journalists have languished in prison after being given sentences of between 14 and 27 years. "

I find that mentioning of "Sweden" a most unwelcome distinction, and I advise you not to take travel advice from that lethal loonie.

I consider the report on press freedom from Reporters sans frontières a lot more authoritative on the subject of freedom (even if it only talks about the press), and I still can't figure out why Sweden ranked 11, alongside Estonia and Germany, below all the other Nordic countries. I don't mind that listing; we probably deserve it, but it would be nice to know what is wrong so that we can fix it.

However, what was aired yesterday was a collective insult against human civilization, and if CNN gave me mod points I'd mod that tape -4711, Troll.

Coming from a psychology background, I agree that the relationship is probably very complicated. RSF has some figures on press freedom, and I've never heard anyone object strongly to them. As they note:

Wealth and press freedom don't always go together As in 2002, the ranking shows that a country's respect for press freedom is not solely linked to its economic development. The top 50 include countries that are among the poorest in the world, such as Benin (29th position), Timor-Leste (30th) and Madagascar (46th).

Conversely, the 50 countries that respect press freedom least include such rich nations as Bahrain (117th) and Singapore (144th).

While I know these numbers are for press freedom rather than personal freedom or anything more related to freedom of ideas, I think it's clear that greater freedom does not a GDP make. If anyone has any numbers on the GDPs of these nations, we can try to run the regression.

Ethan