Media & Information

"U.S. broadcast media are failing to provide even minimal coverage of the ongoing crisis — some say genocide — in Darfur, Sudan, according to a new report, which concludes that media fixation with celebrity, as well as the Iraq war, is crowding out news of important events that deserve global attention 10 years after the genocide in Rwanda." [more]

"The Eco-village was the epicenter of brilliant tactical coordination. This was a result of months of reconnaissance work and a chaotic yet functional plan of blockading that provided both fluidity and agility. As soon as a report would come in that one blockade was breaking or being threatened by the police, the transportation team would have vehicles ready to take people to the location and reinforce the blockade." [more]

"I looked at IMC sites based in cities where I knew there were actions, and found nothing. Eventually, I found what I was looking for—on the BBC. The experience, unfortunately, is not uncommon. Each time I try and find news among the Indymedia drivel, I ask myself the same question: What happens when—in our attempts not to hate the media but to be it—we end up hating the media we’ve become?" [more]

"Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production. [more]

"But ad rates are set by circulation figures: As circulation drops, so too will the amount papers can charge advertisers. / The result can be a vicious cycle. As advertising declines, newsrooms find it more difficult to afford overseas bureaus, extensive national operations and other editorial additions that help produce an authoritative daily report. As they cut back, they risk sending readers elsewhere for news, leading to further circulation declines and lower ad rates." [more]

"Two stories posted in the last week on the CNN website, one on nukes in Iran last Wednesday, and another on nukes in North Korea on Saturday, both use the same aerial photograph of the same purported nuclear power plant. [...] A different news organization has published a story using a different photo of the same alleged nuclear facility that CNN used in both it's North Korea and Iran stories! That story was also about... North Korea! A detailed update later ..." [more]

"Or ratchet it way up and consider the possibility that, the next time he goes in for surgery to replace his current ICD, Vice President Dick Cheney upgrades to an implanted device that automatically transmits data to his cardiologist and permits the physician to remotely tweak the Veep’s ticker." [more]

"Then, one day, some focus group showed that people, particularly older people, react negatively to any connection between Social Security and the word private. For some reason, people like the sound of 'personal accounts' better than they do 'private accounts.' / So the Republicans, with their fabulous ability to march in lockstep, all about-faced and started referring to the privatization of Social Security as 'personal accounts.' This is the new political correctness." [more]

Leonard Asper, president and chief executive officer of CanWest, said, "We are pleased that this acquisition is moving forward as planned and are excited about working with our new partners in Israel in building on a great global newspaper brand. One of our first priorities will be to bring CanWest MediaWorks' expertise to bear in improving the profile and circulation in North America of the Jerusalem Post." [more]

"Last Thursday morning, Natalia Dimitruk, an interpreter for the deaf on the Ukraine's official state UT-1 television, disregarded the anchor's report on Prime Minister Viktor F. Yanukovich's 'victory' and, in her small inset on the screen, began to sign something else altogether." [more]

"There's a repulsive asymmetry of war here: not the much remarked upon asymmetry of the few thousand insurgents holed up in Falluja vastly outnumbered by the US, but the asymmetry of information. In an age of instant communication, we will have to wait months, if not years, to hear of what happens inside Falluja in the next few days." [more]

"I agree that Bush should be kicked out of the White House ... but I don't believe that will be meaningful unless there emerges in the United States a significant anti-empire movement. ... This doesn't mean voters can't judge one particular empire-building politician more dangerous than another. It doesn't mean we shouldn't sometimes make strategic choices to vote for one over the other. It simply means we should make such choices with eyes open and no illusions." [more]

"'While this information is critical to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities in the system, it can equally be employed by hostile actors to identify vulnerabilities for the purpose of exploiting them,' the DHS argued in an FCC filing this month. 'Depending on the disruption in question, the errant disclosure to an adversary of this information concerning even a single event may present a grave risk to the infrastructure.'" [more]

"Anti-virus experts have been warning for months that mobile phone viruses are set to multipy, given the increasingly diverse uses of mobile phones." [more]

People who get their news by skimming the front page, or by watching TV, must be feeling confused by the sudden change in Mr. Bush's character. For more than two years after 9/11, he was a straight shooter, all moral clarity and righteousness... [more]

"If that last paragraph meant nothing at all to you, look at it this way: the WRT54G with Sveasoft firmware is all you need to become your cul de sac's wireless ISP. Going further, if a bunch of your friends in town had similarly configured WRT54Gs, they could seamlessly work together and put out of business your local telephone company." [more]

In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge. [more]

"'Our daughter is adopted. Her DNA is different,'" Deirdre Sassaman said. 'We wouldn't have a sample without this program.'" [more]

"The latest allegations will be an unwelcome blow to Malaysia, which was also embroiled in a scandal over the nuclear black market earlier this year." [more]

"Arabs are angry when they see dead Iraqi infants with half their skulls blown away due to missile strikes. The Arab satellite channels convey this reality, they don't manufacture it. If Arabs are increasingly angry at the US - which they certainly are - this is almost totally due to the consequences of US military and political policies, not the reporting of these policies by Arab television." [more]

"'Tillman gave up millions of dollars,' Rall added. 'To that extent I think he's admirable, but the cause is not. ... He would have been a better person and a better husband if he took the $3.6 million and played football and left the poor and beleaguered people of Afghanistan and Iraq alone.'" [more]

"'This year, we found that press freedom globally had declined to a new low over the past two years. And this year was the second year of this trend that we saw. Overall, in terms of the global numbers, it looks like 5 percent less of the [world's] population has access to free media, while [the number of] people living in media environments that we classify as "not free"' has increased by 5 percent,' Karlekar said." [more]

"Six months before he faced a court martial, Frederick sent home a video diary of his trip across the country. Frederick, a reservist, said he was proud to serve in Iraq. He seemed particularly well-suited for the job at Abu Ghraib. He’s a corrections officer at a Virginia prison, whose warden described Frederick to us as 'one of the best.' The Army investigation confirms that soldiers at Abu Ghraib were not trained at all in Geneva Convention rules." [more]

"'It seems prejudiced to me,' said Abdul Bucky, 40, who works within sight of a camera at Deal Beauty Supply and General Merchandise in East Garfield Park. 'Why didn't they put them in all the neighborhoods?'" [more]

"Media reporting on the President's remarks amplified the administration's voice: When Bush stated that Americans were vulnerable to WMD in the hands of terrorists, the media effectively magnified those fears by prioritizing that news. Front-page and top-of-the-news stories led with the President's analysis. Where alternative perspectives were presented in the coverage, they tended to be buried. The net effect was both to disseminate as well as to validate the administration's message." [more]

"Iraq's national security advisor, Muaffaq al-Rubaie, a Shiite, also accused both channels of inciting violence among the country's ethnic groups with their reporting and warned that they, and any other 'irresponsible' Arab media, could be banned from reporting from Iraq." [more]

"If Hendon had his way, the cameras would be eliminated altogether because, he said, they stigmatize neighborhoods as crime-ridden ghettos--now called 'blue-light districts'--and are an intrusion into privacy." [more]

"The resulting machine, dubbed FlashMob, would have needed to perform a rigorous benchmark calculation called Linpack at a rate of at least 403 billion flops (floating point operations per second) to be ranked as one of the top 500 supercomputers. But FlashMob only reached a relatively modest peak performance of 180 billion flops." [more]

"Warren explained that his days with the FBI make him certain that the Bureau doesn't really think the FCC will give them what they want in their petition. Instead, he believes the FBI is angling to make their case before Congress next year, when the sunset provisions on the Patriot Act go into effect. 'If Bush is reelected, Congress will be primed for this,' he said. 'Expectations for privacy are being lowered right now. They'll have law enforcement behind them, and with congressmen and senators up for reelection, they'll feel pressured to have this in place to make up for what they'll lose when the sunset provisions go into effect.'" [more]

"This led to another CNN anchor, Kyra Phillips, showing the video later in the day reporting the footage of the boy was simply a joke. / 'We're told that the kid was there at that event, but not necessarily standing behind the president,' Phillips explained, repeating the report by Kagan earlier on CNN." [more]

"After many American threats to arrest Muqtada in the past, the American occupying forces accused al-Hawza of fomenting violence against them and closed its offices for 60 days, padlocking and chaining the doors, handing the editor a letter signed by US civilian administrator L Paul Bremer, explaining that the newspaper had violated a ban on fomenting violence." [more]

"I can't advocate a news blackout on these issues; the term 'marketplace of ideas' is engraved on each cell in my body. But I'd like the marketplace to be a real one: complex, thoughtful, diverse. And right now, the coverage is being increasingly circumscribed by the agenda of conservative groups bent on shutting conversation down, quelling dissent and the free exchange of ideas--while they simultaneously and hypocritically claim that their moves are based on the twin pillars of free speech and fairness. It's a clever argument the local media seem to have swallowed hook, line and sinker." [more]

"Utah is the 11th state to withdraw from the federal pilot program for either privacy or financial reasons, according to the New York-based American Civil Liberties Union. Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania are still participating. / The other states that have withdrawn from Matrix are Alabama, California, Georgia, Oregon, Louisiana, New York, Oregon, South Carolina Texas and Wisconsin, the ACLU said." [more]

"'We know for sure this is a fabricated story from A to Z. Would you believe that a 13 or 14-year old would agree to blow up himself in return for a hundred shekels which he would receive after his death?'" [more]

"Some exercises Kerry could try, according to Peabody, are to imagine he is talking in a church, then imagine he is talking to someone over the noise of a subway car, then to an audience of children, then to an ailing patient. Kerry should also do breathing exercises to "uncover parts of the voice that may be unfamiliar or covered by habit," Roth said. In giving a speech, she added, he needs to be willing to go "off the page" in the manner of Clinton or Martin Luther King Jr., adjusting to the audience." [more]

"Pastor Soares is the second person to die at a screening of the film. Peggy Law Scott, an American woman in her 50s, passed out last month during the crucifixion scene, when watching the film in Wichita, Kansas." [more]

"According to reports in the highly politicised press supporting President Gbagbo, the planned protest actions of the opposition and the Forces Nouvelles however aim at stopping just this UN deployment by creating political violence. The same media however are nourishing conspiracy theories against the opposition and the ex-rebels, strongly contributing to the increased level of conflict." [more]

"...Rupert Murdoch is a very powerful player in the media – and, because of his willingness to turn his properties into mouthpieces for the administration, in the politics of the United States. So it should probably not come as any surprise that, like the politicians in any number of countries where Murdoch has come to dominate the discourse, Bush Administration officials answer Rupert's call – even when they are supposedly preoccupied with national security concerns. Rice's willingness to brief Fox executives is especially intriguing in light of the fact that she continues to refuse to brief the bipartisan panel that is investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon." [more]

"Traditionally, when organizations want to secure 802.11b-based wireless networks, the only solution available to them is virtual private networking. But VPNs can be cumbersome to deploy and difficult to manage. And when, like DMLSS, the organization uses handheld devices to connect to the wireless network, VPN technology can be especially difficult to use." [more]

"Although it is clear that Telestreet begins as television, the centrality of social and technical networks in its development makes it a far more interesting hybrid. As the telestreet manifesto declared 'Television must be considered a new prosthesis and an extension of the net: but to avoid another media alternative 'ghetto', the horizontally of the net must meet the 'socializing' power of television.'" [more]

"The lists were previously made public by the media, but Internet users have been adding additional information, such as party affiliations, electoral districts, phone numbers, fax numbers, pictures and e-mail addresses, and uploading them onto bulletin boards and weblogs." [more]

"The jamming concept originated in Israel in the early '90s and is currently used by U.S. troops in Iraq. The United States has tested an air-dropped cell-phone jammer, WolfPack, that can knock out all cell-phone traffic in a combat zone." [more]

"Corrupt Russian army officers and local Chechen officials have a financial stake in keeping the war going, getting rich from black market deals on everything from oil to weapons sales. On the other side, many Chechen field commanders long ago stopped answering to Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov. With whom, then, can the Russian government negotiate?" [more]

"I'm George W. Bush and I approve this message." [more]

"What that means in simple English is that the US government has just bought the world's biggest RAM drive in order to speed up cross-checking across several vast databases." [more]

"Pentagon investigators charge that KBR charged for nearly four million meals that were never served. There is also the question of whether KBR paid as much as $61 million too much for fuel last year by buying it from a Kuwaiti source rather than from cheaper sources in Turkey. The billings now under review bring the total cost to the U.S. taxpayer to more than $176 million." [more]

"The analogy between the picket on the highway with piquetero TV is almost perfect, because it cannot be understood as simply an interruption of radio frequencies. It is not only about trying to take control of the space that is usually dominated by the communication monopolies but also creating a new relation between the common person and mass media." [more]

"For 51 weeks -- from the day that the Observer newspaper in London broke the news about spying at the United Nations until the moment that British prosecutors dropped charges against Gun on Wednesday -- major news outlets in the United States almost completely ignored the story." [more]

"In the period before the war, US journalists were far too reliant on sources sympathetic to the administration. Those with dissenting views—and there were more than a few—were shut out. Reflecting this, the coverage was highly deferential to the White House. This was especially apparent on the issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction—the heart of the President's case for war. Despite abundant evidence of the administration's brazen misuse of intelligence in this matter, the press repeatedly let officials get away with it." [more]

"It all started when EMI began shouting the odds about DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album, a mix compiled from Jay-Z's Black Album and The Beatles' White Album and which started showing up all over the Net, as well as offline." [more]

"Both liberals and leftists in the U.S. have had difficulty in believing that a much-discredited American film genre, the Western, could suddenly be structuring and mandating U.S. political rhetoric. It is -- from Bush's 'Wanted Dead or Alive' Bin Laden poster, to Colin Powell's insistence that 'time is running out' as we cut to the chase, to the numerous U.S. television and print media that report daily on the 'Showdown' or 'Standoff' with Iraq." [more]

"A key provision of the law bars the government from using the vulnerability information in any enforcement action against the company, or from using it as the basis for proposing new legislation or regulations on industry. And if the information does somehow leak out, it cannot be used in court against the company." [more]

"Although it has always been promised that the ubiquity of networked computing would enable a host of alternative information sources, what is found is that -- in practice and when push comes to shove -- the allegedly vast ocean of alternatives all say the same thing, with only minor variations, all drawing from the same text, the same myth." [more]

"Lebanese-born Arab-American Muaffaq Harb, news director of the new channel, appeared almost vindictive in the first discussion forum on day one. He ridiculed virtually every Arab government, chastising the Arab people for choosing to watch Aljazeera, and launching vitriolic attack on the Arab media. He was rebutted several times by Arabic Newsweek’s editor, who pointed out that many Arab dictatorships were seen to be protected by US interests in the region." [more]

"Al-Rashid warned Islamists of the fundamentalist, jihadist forums that replaced his website. He said that they are plagued with 'hypocrites and pins,' meaning intelligence organs." [more]

"He said that the US and UK governments 'must have known' that the evidence presented by their intelligence services about places in Iraq where there might be WMD 'was erroneous', because 'we made it known to them'." [more]

"Political parties are using enormous databases to learn everything about you so they can tailor their pitches for candidates just for you. Are campaigning and voting becoming just marketing and consumption?" [more]

"The American Civil Liberties Union issued a condemnation Thursday of St. Bernard Parish Sheriff Jack Stephens' plan to seek Homeland security grants to install cameras at the parish line to photograph motorists' faces and license plates as they come and go." [more]

"Monroe Community College in Rochester, N.Y., for example, has recently opened the Homeland Security Management Institute, run by a retired Army colonel who was a commander at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba." [more]

"The speech generated overall negative comment in 62 percent of the 274 editorials collected by US embassy staff and FBIS monitors in 70 countries." [more]

A selection of political highlights from the Central American press in early February 2004. [more]

"After 27 years as a CIA analyst, Ray McGovern knows a few things about propaganda. He notes that 'the "investigation" is slated to go past the election. Members will be picked by the president, and the scope is unconscionably wider than is necessary.' McGovern contends that 'the key question for 2004 is whether the administration's stranglehold on the media can be loosened to the point where the electorate can wake up, take away the president's driver's license and put an end to the reckless endangerment.'" [more]

"A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Pentagon has no constitutional obligation to provide the media access to U.S. troops during combat." [more]

"The vast majority of what we hear and see in the US is about suicide bombing, and in both programs we see the depth of pain inflicted on Israelis by Palestinian suicide bombings through footage of their carnage, and disturbing, emotional scenes ... Although these are appalling scenes, they are certainly no less horrific or newsworthy than an Israeli apache helicopter firing missiles into crowds of civilians, or Israeli tanks killing and wounding Palestinian men, women and children." [more]

"The decision to put the graphic five-minute, 38-second video on the Israeli Foreign Ministry Web site just hours after the Thursday morning explosion, which killed 11 people and the bomber, has unleashed an emotional public debate. Many Israelis are weary of a conflict that has turned buses, cafes and streets into targets and are increasingly frustrated with political leadership on both sides that has not stopped the violence." [more]

"Video surveillance is a key component of BEP security. Both the Fort Worth and Washington facilities have recently begun upgrading from analog to digital video surveillance systems and have chosen Loronix Video Solutions from Verint for the process. Benefitting from decades of experience with surveillance, BEP officials have crafted methods to use the new digital systems for far more than just security." [more]

"Almost as he spoke ... police were raiding Internet cafes in Phnom Penh, confiscating equipment for making Internet telephone calls. The cafes charged as little as 5 cents a minute to call the United States, far below the government-mandated minimum of 96 cents for phone calls using conventional technology." [more]

John Nichols takes to task the recent decision to ban commercials from MoveOn.org, a major anti-war player, and PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, from the Super Bowl, claiming they are too controversial. This has generated a major call-in and e-mail campaign against CBS. Howard Kurtz, a media expert with the Washington Post, states shutting activists groups out from broadcasting rights is the rule rather than the exception. Nichols explores the relationship between CBS and the Administration at a bit more depth. [more]

"Two days before he laces up his skates to take the ice with Boston Bruins legends this weekend, John Kerry today scored a 'hat trick' of endorsements from the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, and Boston Phoenix." [more]

" 'We had ours look into it and make sure it was OK,' said Sarah Beatty, senior vice president of marketing for USA Network. 'We thought this was a fresh way to promote a show, but we wanted to do it legally and responsibly.' " [more]

"Openness – as an organising principle and political ideology – has become an article of faith across networked social movements. From its role as a central tenet of free and open source software production to its current popularity within activist circles, the concept of openness is attracting enthusiastic adherence. Here, as part of our series on the politics of alternative media structures, JJ King takes a less credulous view of what lies beneath the dream of organisational horizontality." [more]

"This is the moment in which the language system sponsored by the sovereign is at its most violent; it seeks to efface historical memory by denying its constitutive or legislative relation with non-linguistic social energies; it casts itself and its unilateral doctrine as absolute and natural. For Deleuze, this is a psychomechanical production of social reality more than an organicity of community torn asunder by human alienation and the incursion of reactionary ideologies, false consciousnesses, and agents. Not that the latter do not exist, or are unimportant components in this matter, but that this technology of power cannot be simply seen as a neutral arrangement of tools misused by evil ones." [more]

"Information dominance, by contrast, sees little distinction between command and control systems, propaganda and journalism. They are all types of 'weaponized information' to be deployed." [more]

"Digitization of transactions and instruments has been central to this multiplication of types of derivatives and their increased complexity. The overall result has been a massive increase in the extent to which the financial industry has been able to securitize various forms of what were previously considered untradeable assets or were simply not considered as assets, e.g. many forms of debt." [more]

"The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) made news last year for its Total Information Awareness (TIA) project, which called for technologies to search commercial databases in order to identify potential terrorists. HSARPA Director David Bolka said his agency will research data mining but, unlike DARPA, will not seek to mine individuals' data." [more]

"The emergence of citizen reporters has broken down the monopoly of information control and ownership by political/economic elites and has significantly contributed to the democratization of the media. In fact, OhmyNews has changed the concept of the reporter. The old way meant becoming a professional journalist and getting a press card - a credentialed and somewhat elevated position in South Korean society. The new way, however, is that the reporter is the one who has the news and who is trying to inform others. Pay, however, is not an incentive. Pay for the ‘news guerillas’ varies from nothing to just under $16, depending on how a story is ranked by the editors - 'basic,' 'bonus' or 'special.'" [more]

"The fact that researchers could only get access to the Giuliani records through a laborious, time-consuming, and usually unsatisfactory process for three years was not well received by the research public or by citizens with evidential and informational needs for the records. These records included documentation of the City's response to 9/11, a subject on which the former mayor has already published a book - a book that no one has been able to effectively examine because the records are not available." [more]

"Ground Rule 9 for the media covering President Bush's presidential visit Monday sounded more like an edict from Beijing or a banana republic: 'Write positive stories about Ft. Carson and the U.S. Army.' " [more]

"Civil and governmental life is interrupted, due to a major loss of equipment, databases, and documents. There is so much destruction. Tom Twiss's compilation of the damage to the libraries and cultural centers is comprehensive and accurate, as I saw at the places I was able to visit and meet with staff, or talk to people who saw the sites I was not able to visit." [more]

" 'According to the most recent CBSnews/nytimes poll [sic], 77% of Democrats do not know enough about Dennis Kucinich. Since we can not expect the media to provide this information I decided to help them out,' the hacker page read." [more]

"This year’s survey is consistent with our observations of think tank citations after September 11, 2001: a decline in visibility of domestic policy think tanks, an increase in exposure for foreign policy think tanks, and an increasing focus on centrist to conservative voices, leaving progressives out of the debate. Given the events so far in 2003, there is every reason to believe that these trends will continue." [more]

"The tactics of appropriation have been co-opted. Illegal action has become advertisement. Protest has become cliché. Revolt has become passé. These disputes have reached the definition of rhetoric. They are the usual suspects. Having accepted these failures to some degree, we can now attempt to define a parasitic tactical response. We need a practice that allows invisible subversion. We need to feed and grow inside existing communication systems while contributing nothing to their survival; we need to become parasites. We need to create an anthem for the bottom feeders and leeches. We need to echo our voice through all the wires we can tap but cloak our identity in the world of non-evidence, and the hidden." [more]

"Only 5 members of the 23-member Senate committee offered any support for the commission; most of the rest, Democrats and Republicans alike, expressed deep dissatisfaction with at least some aspect of the new rules. While a majority of the Democrats on the committee criticized most of the package adopted by the commission, elements of it were also challenged by such Republicans as Ted Stevens, Conrad Burns, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Olympia J. Snowe and Trent Lott." [more]

"As expected, the commission said a single company could now own television stations that reach 45 percent of American households, up from 35 percent. The major networks wanted the cap eliminated entirely." [more]

"Commenters addressed the need to require more independent programming on our airwaves so that a few conglomerates do not act anti-competitively to control all of the creative entertainment that we see. These proposals should have received the serious attention they deserve in this decision. Over the past decade, we have witnessed a substantial increase in the amount of programming owned by the networks. Where once independent production accounted for much of what we saw, we now have huge vertically-integrated conglomerates that own the vast majority of the programming they deliver." [more]

To be reviewed by the FCC: "Newspaper/Broadcast Cross-Ownership Prohibition (1975) Television broadcast companies may not buy newspapers in communities where they own stations." [more]

"U.S. media outlets — operating in an environment in which anyone who questions the administration's foreign policy is accused of being unpatriotic — have taken it as their assignment to sell the war, not to present a mix of information that might call the justification for war into question." [more]

"The Office of Global Communications has been up and running for at least six months, quietly working with foreign news media outlets to get the American message out. It was an outgrowth of an earlier administration effort to build public support overseas for the war on terrorism." [more]

"'Two weeks after the attack, Parks personnel removed the materials and placed them in storage. The Municipal Archives received the items six months later. We continue to sort and catalog them. The Municipal Archives also received materials from a large memorial wall (260 feet long, 9 feet high) created by the victims’ families from September - December 2001. On September 11, 2002, we visited Ground Zero at 7:00 PM to gather the flowers and other items placed by the victims’ families during the day; we also photographed the small memorials left at the site.'" [more]

"Opposition to the war on Iraq was far greater, he said, than the opposition to the war in Vietnam at a similar stage. But he did not feel that this was reflected by the media. 'The anti-war movement does not have a voice in the national debate equal to our numbers,' he told the gathering. [more]

"Facts don't assist the conditioned media reflex of blaming everything on Saddam Hussein. No matter how hard you search major American media databases of the last couple of years for mention of the [US] spy caper, you'll come up nearly empty. George Orwell would have understood." [more]

"US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has issued a stern warning to his staff about the dangers of leaking military secrets to the media — in an internal memo disclosed to the media." [more]

" 'No one has ever seen pressure like this before,' said Jeffrey Dvorkin of NPR. 'In the last three months I've received 14,000 e-mails and 9,000 of them deal with the Middle East,' he said. 'E-mail traffic in the last month has overwhelmingly accused us of having a pro-Palestinian bias.' " [more]

"Washington's policy shapers, the US Congress and the Broadcasting Board of Governors unanimously agreed that the US needed to wage a specific and untraditional media effort to reach the 'Arab population' — not merely the political leadership." [more]

"Dan Rather, one of the most respected and well-known broadcasters in the United States said last night that the mood of extreme patriotism engulfing the country since 11 September had stopped the media asking difficult questions of America's leaders. He said he was personally guilty of self-censorship." [more]

"The only stone, it seems, the bureau hasn't been willing to turn over is its own investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing. Presumably, that's because the 1995 terrorist attack was the exclusive work of homegrown extremists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Or was it?" [more]

"'What I particularly liked was the way the movie portrayed how young most soldiers are who fight our country's battles,' Moore said. 'Most of the soldiers I served with then, and those in my company today, are 18 or 19 years old. As shown in the movie, they are not out trying to be heroes, but end up doing some pretty heroic stuff.'" [more]

"When the Pentagon can suppress satellite images of the war, CNN staffers can be warned not to discuss Afghan war casualties, and supposedly unbiased news broadcasters, such as CBS's Dan Rather, say things like 'Wherever [Bush] wants me to line up, just tell me where,' it seems clear that we are being fed shadows and not the truth." [more]

"So should the media highlight, not play down, this government's attack on civil liberties—the mass detentions, secret evidence, increased surveillance, suspension of attorney-client privilege, the encouragements to spy, the warnings not to disagree, the censored images, sequestered public papers, unexpected visits from the Secret Service and so on. And so should the media not parrot what the Pentagon says about the current war, because such prettified accounts make us complacent and preserve us in our fatal ignorance of what people really think of us—and why—beyond our borders" [more]

"For instance, one PSYOPS officer worked in CNN's satellite division. According to Intelligence Newsletter, rear admiral Thomas Steffens, a psychological warfare expert in the Special Operations Command, recently told a PSYOPS conference that the military needed to find ways to 'gain control' over commercial news satellites to help bring down an 'informational cone of silence' over regions where special operations were taking place." [more]

"Taken together Virilio's grey ecology and 'hyper-vigilance regarding immediate perception' constitute a bold reaffirmation not only the life of the planet, but our own lives, our memories, the anima of our souls; everything that distinguishes us from mere automata." [more]

"The result in advanced industrial cities seems to be the emergence of urban landscapes made up of many superimposed layers of surveillant simulation. Each layer has its own finer and finer mosaic of socio-spatial grids; its own embedded assumptions and criteria for allocating and withdrawing service access; its own definitions for specifying the "acceptable" presence of individuals in different "cellular" spaces; and its own cybernetic loops of system feedback, within which systems of surveillance become ever more integrated into systems of simulation. the broad result is the development of social control systems of unprecedented intensity and power which are virtually invisible and unregulated. What is most worrying is that the more disturbing aspects of these trends tend to be virtually ignored within public debates about cities and technology. In fact, many are actually being welcomed under the banners of "improved customer service" or the use of technologies to provide technical quick fixes to the complex urban social problems of crime and alienation." [more]

"Information has been defined as a 'compromise between presence and absence', since it represents a 'form of something without the thing itself' (Latour 1987, p. 243). Communication is, thus, 'being; persons literally occupy the media they use; their existence cannot be separated from these symbolic systems' (Adams 1995)." [more]

"This techno-voodoo rite constitutes the symbolic obliteration of a one-way information pipeline that only transmits, never receives. It is an act of sympathetic magic performed in the name of all who are obliged to peer at the world through peepholes owned by multinational conglomerates for whom the profit margin is the bottom line." [more]

"Computers with desktop publishing software offer many advantages to the modern billboard liberator. Fonts and colors can be matched precisely, professional-looking graphical elements can be added to your text message, and scale and spacing become much easier to calculate. There are many software packages suitable for producing overlays, including PageMaker, Quark Xpress, Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, and various CAD programs. Adobe Photoshop gives you the additional flexibility of being able to preview your hit - just scan in a photograph of the original board and apply your modification over it as an independent layer." [more]