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Press freedom
GarconDuMonde writes "Reporters San Frontiers has released it's third annual worldwide index of press freedom. Although the majority of top-ranking countries are from northern Europe, it is perhaps more interesting to note where countries such as Switzerland, Italy, the UK and the USA fall (1, 39, 28 and 22, respectively)."
Comparing the Western European countries with vast freedoms of the press to the dictatorial or communist countries with outright persecution of journalists is eye-opening. What is most disturbing is that in this day and age that there still exists repression of thought in some countries. Control the media and you can control the minds of your subjects. To have a truly free thinking society means that the media cannot be controlled.
The only problem with this is that it leads to significant growth of tabloid press. Look at Europe again with its outrageous papers like the Sun or Pravda. Just because the press is free does not mean that the information is better, just more voluminous.
Like the internet, anyone in a free press country can publish what they like. Like the internet, it is up to the reader to filter out the gems from the trash.
The reason is that they allow themselves to be completely neutral. They don't care if they have George Bush's money in a bank account or Saddam Hussein's money, it's all the same to them.
When a country's government is neutral, it allows for the media to be more openly objective. These laws allow for equal treatment of everyone. The only problem with that is you are --I hate to sound cliche-- "helping terrorism."
That's nothing. You can be jailed anywhere in the world if the US president thinks you're a terrorist. Give me a Danish judge any day.
That sort of makes the OP's point for them.
:)
Guess what? There are many many other countries where that very same situation applies.
I think the OP was saying that Americans love to pretend they are the only country that gets it right when it comes to ensuring people's freedoms.
But the truth is that USA is actually behind a great many other countries for true freedom. Take it how you like, but when we see international reports on corruption, the free press, courts, fair trials, rights of citizens - we always see USA coming after about 10-20 other countries or more.
Some of us just get a little annoyed that the Americans are always talking the talk, but are falling behind when it comes to walking the walk
It's true that the Danish penal code has parts regarding libel, slander, threats, etc. just as many other countries (penal code - "Straffeloven" - 266). This paragraph also contains a note regarding the above issues aimed at groups because of their race, color, ethnicity, faith or sexual orientation. Personally I don't think it's that different from targeting individuals (but hey, I'm a Dane :). The paragraph has been discussed now and then in the public, but the borders are actually quite wide. It's nothing like Germany or France (.. I pressume)
Besides, this has nothing to do with press freedom. A Danish nazi party is actually allowed to run their own radio station at the ordinary FM-band.
We did have an interesting case though regarding a radio documentary in 1985, where an interviewer talked with a bunch of young, declared racists ("Greenjackets"), spreading their racism. At first the interviewer was convicted of spreading racism at a lower court, but after appealing through the system (and even losing at Danish supreme court), he tried his case in front of the European Court of Human Rights which concluded that even though some of the statements made by the Greenjackets would be racist, the broadcast itself wasn't. You can read the entire case online.
It's actually a bit surprising when documentaries like Fahrenheit 9/11 (or, on a more serious level, Control Room), show how news are presented in the US. I think that many Danes weren't that surprised viewing these documentaries, because the Danish press already used several sources, meaning that a lot of the "surprising stories" in these documentaries weren't that surprising at all, since a lot of the footage had already been shown in public media.
I am pretty worried of US citizens believing that each and every single thing about US is the best in the world. We have a more free press, less corruption, a head of government elected by popular vote, but since we live in a world where people appearently get their "entire facts" based on one or two incidents (which is pretty usual at Slashdot - think of all the posts regarding any topic, where one would find a random incident about a webserver, a company, a product and continuously beat that argument in a manner like "How can you say this product is good, since (link to some old event)?"), nothing of this matters. It only matters if people are able to use Google to find that little piece of information, they care about and judge the rest of the world by that.
- Peter Brodersen; professional nerd
Unamerican Tshirt
I got the quote a bit wrong, and in this case they were threatened with a charge of disorderly conduct, but in other cases trespass has actually been formally charged.
KFG
"A Saudi-American captured in Afghanistan, labeled an enemy combatant and held in U.S. solitary confinement for nearly three years without charge returned to his family Monday after agreeing to forfeit his U.S. citizenship for freedom."s sf?/base/news/1097578544287260.xml
http://www.cleveland.com/world/plaindealer/index.
Detainee forfeits U.S. citizenship for freedom
Fair trade?
Hi. Sorry, my friend. America is a great country, but Europeans have got us on social aid. Let's dissect your points one by one, shall we.
Social Security, Medicare, and Welfare are under constant threat from people right of center; in this case I'm being non-partisan in my evaluation. Democrats, obstensibly the American party of the left, has its share of people who believe in Horatio Alger's myth of the "American Dream". I'll get to that in a minute. First, some facts.
Medicare is divided into two parts, part A and part B. You are only eligible for Medicare if you are 65 or older, have certain (rare) disabilities, or have serious renal (kidney) problems. Medicare does not cover you at all otherwise, which means that for 99% of Slashdotters, for example, Medicare is completely useless. Furthermore, you are only eligible for free part A coverage if you have been paying Medicare taxes for an appropriately long period of time -- this may sound fair, but it means (for example) that it is often not economical for a young immigrant to bring his ailing mother with him to the States because she will not be eligible for medical care.
And then there's part B coverage, which costs $66.50 per month (that's not cheap, dude) and is only available, again, for people eligible for Medicare.
Contrast this to many European countries, where if you get into an accident, you walk into a hospital, and they fix it. Bume. You don't pay anything.
Medicaid, which is the general name for Federal funds given to the states for the purpose of health care, varies from state to state. Medicare is, IIRC, under the "Medicaid" blanket. Most people do not see a dime of this money. That isn't surprising; not much money is given.
What about social security? It's a slush fund that we all pay into that isn't protected at all. The government routinely uses this money for things not related to social security, and it hasn't been putting money back in as fast as it takes it out. Throw an aging baby boomer generation into the mix and you have a system that wasn't really adequate to begin with that is fiscally unsustainable.
Welfare, well, welfare would be a start if it weren't for the fact that all sorts of draconian elligibility requirements weren't in place. Most people on welfare in the US are single mothers. Did you know that in most states, if the state discovers that you have a boyfriend, you can lose welfare eligibility? No joke. Because if you have a man, obviously, you don't need a goverment check. Your man can take care of you. Heh.
Do you know how much money we give people on welfare? Not enough to survive, that's for sure. I know that in middle class America the popular steryotype of a welfare mama is a fat black woman doing nothing all day but having kids for the extra money, but reality is rather far from this. Most women on welfare are working two full time jobs and still can't make ends meet. Who's taking care of their kids while they work? Usually no one, because babysitters cost money. So you end up with latch-key kids. You see, we Americans don't feel that raising children is work that deserves compensation.
It's really easy for women to end up on welfare, you know. The US is also really bad about protecting maternity leave rights. So what happens is, a woman gets pregnant and takes time off to have her child, and while she's gone, she loses her job. Libertarians everywhere applaud. Anyone who's ever had a child knows how much work they are. So what do you do? Hand your kid over to your parents, and get another job, quickly, before the industry moves on and you're not elligible for much more than waiting tables?
Regarding freedoms in other countries, you are right that we have higher standards. In much of Europe, for example, hate speech is illegal; this looks good on the face of things but it is sometimes used with impunity to restrict criticism. An example would be police using French hate speech laws to censor Frenc