American Buddhist Net

NBA .noos ereh taht yrt ot evah yam eW
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July 7, 2008 by Mark O'Neill
By Mark O’Neill

You have to hand it to Chinese bloggers - they are determined to get the truth out, no matter what. OK, they are not facing the death sentence like their fellow counterparts in Iran but nevertheless, they still face prison for their opinions. At the very least, their work will be deleted by faceless humorless bureaucrats.

So the bloggers are trying out new methods to evade Chinese government censors - the latest one is they are using tools and software to write backwards. Or write vertically instead of horizontally. This is apparently confusing the censors because they now cannot automatically track “objectionable phrases” (aw my heart bleeds for them). One such “text flipping” tool is here. Obviously the government will eventually find a way around it but the resourceful bloggers will probably have found another solution by then and will have moved on.

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Excellent piece, both for understanding the history of US mass media and for the kinds of forces that are now threatening a free, open, and "neutral" internet. This essay is short, clear, and straight to the point. ABN
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02 July 2008
by Bruce Dixon

The US broadcast media regime, in which greedy, amoral corporations enjoy completely free monopoly licenses to run their highly profitable businesses upon the scarce public property that is the broadcast spectrum is usually presented to us as the only “natural” and sensible media order. It is, we've all been told, the benign and logical outcome of democratic give and take and rigorous competition in a free marketplace. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Most Americans, right up to and including doctorate-level media scholars don't know that as late as the mid 1920's over forty percent of the more than 500 radio stations across the US were in the hands of not for profit, noncommercial broadcasters.

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See also this--Lessons of a Cyber Assault--about the cyber attacks in Estonia last year. Lithuania and Estonia are both very small countries that were once occupied by the Soviet Union and still have significant Russian minorities (often former Soviet military) living within them. Hence the tension over the Soviet symbols. ABN
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Hundreds of Lithuanian government and corporate Web sites were hacked and plastered with Soviet-era symbols and other digital graffiti this week in what appears to be a coordinated cyber attack launched by Russian hacker groups.

A New York Times story reports that Lithuanian officials did not directly accuse Russian hackers of initiating the attacks, but said they had come from foreign computers. However, iDefense, a security intelligence firm, based in Reston, Va., attributed the attacks to nationalistic Russian hacker groups protesting a new Lithuanian law banning the display of Soviet emblems, including honors won during World War II.

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What is happening right now is big ISPs and big content providers are merging their businesses. Soon TV and film will all come over the internet and there will be deliberate misrepresentations of basic issues--bandwidth, copyrights, appropriate content, etc.--designed to confuse consumers to ceding first amendment rights to the big corporations. Do you trust Congress or the FCC to help you? I don't. The weakness of all of the corporate arguments is the simple fact that the internet is working wonderfully well without their control. ABN
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By Mike Finch

A net-neutrality activist group has uncovered plans for the demise of the free Internet by 2010 in Canada. By 2012, the group says, the trend will be global.

Bell Canada and TELUS, Canada’s two largest Internet service providers (ISPs), will begin charging per-site fees on most Internet sites, reports anonymous sources within TELUS.

...“By 2012 ISPs all over the globe will reduce Internet access to a TV-like subscription model, only offering access to a small standard amount of commercial sites and require extra fees for every other site you visit. These ‘other’ sites would then lose all their exposure and eventually shut down, resulting in what could be seen as the end of the Internet,” Leysen said.

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Aaron Delwiche

Propaganda can be as blatant as a swastika or as subtle as a joke. Its persuasive techniques are regularly applied by politicians, advertisers, journalists, radio personalities, and others who are interested in influencing human behavior. Propagandistic messages can be used to accomplish positive social ends, as in campaigns to reduce drunk driving, but they are also used to win elections and to sell malt liquor.

"Every day we are bombarded with one persuasive communication after another. These appeals persuade not through the give-and-take of argument and debate, but through the manipulation of symbols and of our most basic human emotions. For better or worse, ours is an age of propaganda." (Pratkanis and Aronson, 1991).

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Daniel Libit Tue Jun 24, 7:17 PM ET

Jane Fleming Kleeb went on “The O’Reilly Factor” two weeks ago to talk about global warming, a topic on which, by her own admission, she’s hardly an expert. So who, then, is Jane Fleming Kleeb? Well, according to the Chyron that flashed across the screen after Bill O’Reilly introduced her, she is a “Democratic strategist.” But she’s hardly that, either.

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See also this: 911 Prediction Revealed at Lindauer Competency Hearing in New York City ABN
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By Michael Collins
24 Jun 2008

(The Intelligence Daily) -- The New York Times disgraced itself and betrayed the citizens of the United States when it repeatedly headlined misleading stories by reporter Judith Miller that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The paper issued a meandering apology well after the 2003 prompted by the inaccurate reporting of Miller, the self-styled "Miss Run Amok" reporter, and others. But it was too little and too late to correct the damage. And it seems the Times is still running amok at the expense of what's in the public interest.

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"Ignorance is Strength"--Ministry of Truth. ABN
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June 23, 2008
By BRIAN STELTER

...According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

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Sunday, June 22, 2008
By PHILIP BRASOR

...What's really disturbing is that no major news organization said as much, and Ofuji believes it's because the media and the political world have a "partner" relationship, when it should really be an adversarial one.

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Jun 20

It is unacceptable for China to block Internet content, a European Commissioner said Friday, calling the Internet a free and open medium.

"We say for instance to the Chinese, very clearly so, that their blocking of certain Internet content is absolutely unacceptable," said Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

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Jacqui Cheng | Published: June 19, 2008 - 01:49PM CT

China has only continued to tighten censorship of the Internet as the Olympics draw near, not loosen up as expected. That's the conclusion of activists who monitor the state of censorship in China. They say that a number of China-related that events, such as the unrest in Tibet and the recent earthquakes, have caused authorities to clamp down even further on what can be published online within the country, and what information can be accessed by citizens.

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What the ISPs seem to be planning (and this is speculation but there are many signs) is to turn the internet into a paid subscription medium that gives them control of content--which sites you can visit.

The internet is the greatest public forum in human history. Keep it free. ABN
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John Timmer | Published: June 17, 2008

This week, Seoul has been playing host to a meeting of ministers from the Organisation For Economic Cooperation And Development (OECD), focused on the expanding Internet economy. The meeting is serving as a chance for many groups to have their say about what they'd like to see that future look like; the Electronic Frontiers Foundation is one of the groups attending, and they've worked with the OECD's Trade Union Advisory Committee to craft a statement of principles (PDF) going by the name of the Seoul Declaration. The statement is wide-ranging, but hits many of the issues that the EFF has promoted in the past: free expression, balanced intellectual property policies, and 'Net neutrality.

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Good interview. Worth a listen. At one point during this show Reagan asks Dice repeatedly to tell him who did 9/11. Dice wanders a bit in his answer. The best answer is simply: "We don't know who did it and that's why we want a new investigation." ABN
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LINK TO AUDIO

Jason Bermas and Mark Dice after Reagan Interview

Media Blackout Shattered: Clearchannel's KFI Los Angeles Breaks Reagan Death Threat Story, Mocking And Laughing

By SAUL HANSELL
Published: June 16, 2008

The Associated Press, one of the nation’s largest news organizations, said that it will, for the first time, attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.’s copyright.

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16 June 2008

More bloggers than ever face arrest for exposing human rights abuses or criticising governments, says a report.

Since 2003, 64 people have been arrested for publishing their views on a blog, says the University of Washington annual report.

In 2007 three times as many people were arrested for blogging about political issues than in 2006, it revealed.

More than half of all the arrests since 2003 have been made in China, Egypt and Iran, said the report.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Decide for yourself. ABN
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Talk Show Host Calls for Murder of Mark Dice Anti War Activist

Here's some of Mark Dice's work:

Babes in bikinis say it like it is: 9/11 was an inside job

43 minutes

Australian journalist, author, film maker John Pilger speaks about global media consolidation, war by journalism, US military's quest for domination/hegemony in the post 9/11 era, false history in the guise of 'objective' journalism.

Good piece, worth reading. O'Shea's analysis is excellent but his conclusion is weak, as it encourages people to drop out altogether rather than than think for themselves. For now, good use of the internet is the antidote to corporate news on health, politics, war, and science. If corporations seize control of the internet, not sure what we will do. You can be certain they are trying. ABN
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by Dr. Tim O'Shea

We are the most conditioned, programmed beings the world has ever known. Not only are our thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded; our very awareness of the whole design seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased.

The doors of our perception are carefully and precisely regulated. Who cares, right?

It is an exhausting and endless task to keep explaining to people how most issues of conventional wisdom are scientifically implanted in the public consciousness by a thousand media clips per day. In an effort to save time, I would like to provide just a little background on the handling of information in this country.

Once the basic principles are illustrated about how our current system of media control arose historically, the reader might be more apt to question any given story in today's news.

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June 15, 2008
By Joshua Boak

The famously discreet Citadel Investment Group draws many of the shrewdest minds from Wall Street to Chicago. Shanghai too.

Unknown people in that Chinese city cloned Citadel's Web site, set up a link for investor passwords and exposed the $17 billion hedge fund to a "grave risk of theft of confidential information," according to a federal lawsuit that shut down the fake site.

These kinds of nefarious schemes have become shockingly routine for financial institutions, security experts say, and exhibit an increasing level of brashness by people using search engines and customer identities to hijack sensitive data.

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Buffalo native Tim Russert, host of NBC's "Meet the Press" and author of books about his family and experience growing up in Buffalo, has died from a heart attack.

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PARIS (AP) — The French state and Internet service providers have struck a deal to block sites carrying child pornography or content linked to terrorism or racial hatred, Interior Minister Michel Alliot-Marie announced Tuesday.

The plan, part of a larger effort to fight cybercriminality, is to go into effect in September when a "black list" will be built up based on input from Internet users who signal sites dealing with the offensive material, the minister said.

The announcement comes on the heels of a similar deal in the United States, also announced Tuesday. There, three service providers — Verizon, Sprint and TimeWarner Cable_ have agreed with New York state officials to block child pornography sites nationwide.

Alliot-Marie said all service providers in France have agreed to block offending sites but did not name them.

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Telus Leading "End of Internet" with PPV Spark Product

This is not verified, but worth viewing: Secret Plan To Kill Internet By 2012 Leaked?

This piece says a bit and is sort of balanced much of the way through, but it lacks depth and ends with the usual psychologizing of 9/11 truth, as if psychology can explain the evidence. It's yet another one of those 9/11 stories that subtly guides readers to align themselves with what is presented as the position "normal" people should hold. For mainstream media, it is better than most, which is not saying much at all. An unflinching look at the facts, this is not. Come to think of it, why is there never an unflinching look at 9/11 facts in mainstream news? Doesn't that speak volumes about their psychology? ABN
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By Peter Barber
Published: June 7 2008

When Cynthia McKinney speaks the words of Martin Luther King Jr, they resound through the church with some of King’s cadence. “A time comes,” declares the former US congresswoman from Georgia, “when silence is betrayal.” The congregation answers with whoops and calls of “That’s right!” King was talking about America’s war in Vietnam. More than 40 years later, before the packed pews of the Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, McKinney is speaking of the American government’s war on its own people. The shock and awe phase of this conflict, we had been told earlier, began on September 11 2001, when the Bush administration launched attacks on New York and Washington, or at least waved them through.

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An Evidence-Based Response to Peter Barber regarding his article, "The Truth is Out There", Financial Times, June 7, 2008

Well-worth reading. This story provides good background info on the recent history of TV and radio news in the US. It shows one of the reasons we now have such a weak and shallow press. This piece also offers good background for looming disputes over net neutrality and who gets to control the internet. The "Fairness Doctrine" was in effect from 1949 to 1987. ABN
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January/February 2005
By Steve Rendall

...The necessity for the Fairness Doctrine, according to proponents, arises from the fact that there are many fewer broadcast licenses than people who would like to have them. Unlike publishing, where the tools of the trade are in more or less endless supply, broadcasting licenses are limited by the finite number of available frequencies. Thus, as trustees of a scarce public resource, licensees accept certain public interest obligations in exchange for the exclusive use of limited public airwaves. One such obligation was the Fairness Doctrine, which was meant to ensure that a variety of views, beyond those of the licensees and those they favored, were heard on the airwaves. (Since cable’s infrastructure is privately owned and cable channels can, in theory, be endlessly multiplied, the FCC does not put public interest requirements on that medium.)

The Fairness Doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows or editorials.

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Washington, June 8, ANI: Clergies belonging to different religions and denominations have strongly come out in support of “Hindu brothers” and criticised Paramount Pictures for reportedly breaking its promise to pre-screening its upcoming Hollywood movie ‘The Love Guru’, to Hindus.

Here is the text of the signed appeal, titled “Clergy’s appeal to Paramount Pictures”:

“We have learnt that Paramount Pictures promised to screen the upcoming film ‘The Love Guru’ for Rajan Zed and other Hindu leaders once they had a finished print. We have also learnt that Paramount Pictures has now reportedly gone back on their promise and has not made any efforts to pre-screen the film for them before the public release, which is scheduled on June 20, 2008.”

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When Will US “Journalism” Be Held Accountable for Promoting War?

by Danny Schechter
June 2, 2008

Duh. The Bush Administration deployed a dishonest but very effective propaganda campaign to sell the Iraq War to the American people on virtually every media outfit. Their “Culture of Deception” is now acknowledged.

How do we know? Scotty McClellan told us so. It’s all in the former Press Secretary’s new book. And, happily, it’s all over the news.

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