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Comcast says no to anti-war ads of group
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) � The Comcast cable television company rejected ads that an anti-war group wanted to air during President Bush's State of the Union speech, saying they included unsubstantiated claims. Peace Action Education Fund had spent $5,000 to have six 30-second ads aired on CNN by Philadelphia-based Comcast beginning last night. The ads were to be broadcast in the Washington area. But Comcast's legal department notified the group yesterday morning that the ads would not air. "Comcast runs advertisements from many sources representing a wide range of viewpoints, pro and con," Comcast spokesman Mitchell Schmale said in a statement issued yesterday evening. "However, we must decline to run any spot that fails to substantiate certain claims or charges. In our view, this spot raises such questions." The statement did not specify what Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, objected to. The ads show citizens expressing opposition to war with Iraq and were to run twice yesterday, today and tomorrow night. The idea was to reach Congress members, Cabinet members and other Washington decision makers, said the Rev. Robert Moore, executive director of the 2,000-member peace group, which is based in Princeton, N.J. "This is an outrageous infringement on our First Amendment rights, in the center of our democracy, Washington, D.C.," he said.

*****But they'll be first in line to support Dubya's UNSUBSTANTIATED claims of WMD in Iraq!!! Go figure - or maybe it's not that difficult to figure out...But that's just his old Curmudgeon's opinion...******

posted by An Old Curmudgeon 12:06 PM

 

Dan Rather: Mainstream US Media Are Frightened and Timid
(The Memory Hole)
It is an obscene comparison--you know, I am not sure I like it--but you know there was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions, and to continue to bore in on the tough questions so often. And again, I am humbled to say, I do not except myself from this criticism.

What we are talking about here--whether one wants to recognize it or not, or call it by its proper name or not--is a form of self-censorship. It starts with a feeling of patriotism within oneself. It carries through with a certain knowledge that the country as a whole--and for all the right reasons--felt and continues to feel this surge of patriotism within themselves. And one finds oneself saying: "I know the right question, but you know what? This is not exactly the right time to ask it."

There has never been an American war, small or large, in which access has been so limited as this one. Limiting access, limiting information to cover the backsides of those who are in charge of the war, is extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted. And I am sorry to say that up to and including the moment of this interview, that overwhelmingly it has been accepted by the American people. And the current administration revels in that, they relish that, and they take refuge in that.

[Comment: Of course, Rather has no one but himself to blame for the cowardice of the mainstream media . . . do you remember him on the Letterman show shortly after 9-11 when he said something like, "All the President has to do is show me where to line up, and I am with him." . . . only the Internet is providing a forum where the truth can be found.]

posted by Lorenzo 8:20 AM

 

The King Has No Clothes: But Saying So Might Land You In Prison
(Paul Joseph Watson, EtherZone.com)
We should therefore be alarmed that a growing pretext is being set whereby it is either illegal or an act of political suicide to criticize President Bush. . . . Since the terrorist attacks, any questioning of Bush�s mental capacity is viewed as subversive activity. If you�re a politician, you must resign immediately. If you�re a member of the public, you may be subject to an FBI investigation. . . . �German Minister says Bush is new Hitler�. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, eager to childishly avenge German non-cooperation in the war with Iraq, responded by labelling the comments as "outrageous and inexplicable." Despite a public apology, Daeubler-Gmelin was subsequently forced to resign from office. . . . Francoise Ducros, a top aide to Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, referred to President Bush as "a moron" at the NATO summit in Prague. . . . Ducros apologized but was forced to resign shortly after.Just a day after Ducros quit, the British satirical cartoon show, 2DTV, were informed by the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) that an ad for their Christmas video had been banned. The commercial featured a cackling Bush mistakenly putting the videotape in a toaster instead of a video player. The BACC ruled that the ad was offensive to Bush�s intelligence. . . . The realization that the man supposedly leading the free world in a war against global terrorism was in fact quite stupid is just too hot to handle. . . . protestors thought they could rekindle the days where a Bush appearance went hand in glove with a chorus of boos from a sizeable minority. Not so, Richard Hollingsworth, Associate Vice President of Student Affairs [Ohio State University], warned the group that he was aware of their plans and that any protest would entail ejections and arrests being made. He also threatened undergraduates that their diploma would be stripped if they were to do so much as make a sound. . . . This enabled the Washington Post to state, "If there was a protest in the stadium, it was not visible to reporters." The Post could then concentrate on the sycophantic response of the audience to Bush�s every sentence with glee. . . . Richard Humphreys, a resident of Portland Oregon, was sentenced to three years in jail after he made a joke about President Bush during Bush�s March 2001 trip to Sioux Falls. The joke included the line "I said God might speak to the world through a burning Bush," which was taken as meaning Humphreys wanted to douse Bush in flammable liquid and set him ablaze. A bartender overheard and immediately alerted the police to the activities of this dangerous terrorist. [This story was originally reported by CNN, who mysteriously chose to remove the article from their website just a few weeks after its appearance.] . . . In the new America, the government watches the citizens and in turn the citizens are told to watch each other. Criticism of the government is outlawed and anyone that does so is either ridiculed or thrown in jail. If America is to be rescued from being the home base of a global fascist empire, we need put our foot down. We need to criticize the government more than ever.

posted by Lorenzo 10:06 AM

 

Digital Rights Reach Beyond Tech
(Lauren Weinstein, WiredNews.com, January 13, 2003)
People who try to rationalize stealing intellectual property, as defined by current laws, need to recognize that what they're doing is wrong and take responsibility for their actions. . . . But the entertainment industry must come to grips with the fact that its desire to shackle consumers with unreasonable usage and copy restrictions will ultimately secure the very outcome that firms so desperately seek to avoid: more widespread piracy of their products. . . . The ongoing and intensifying clash with media giants will create broad ill will among consumers and could poison the atmosphere for businesses in general. As we learned back in the '60s and early '70s, when a significant segment of society feels that its concerns are being ignored, the result can be bitter strife that goes far beyond technology issues. . . . Of course, back then the economy was weak. Budget deficits were on the rise. Civil rights issues and government abuses of civil liberties were increasingly in the spotlight. And concerns over highly questionable U.S. military involvement in distant lands overshadowed almost everything. . . . Thank goodness all that's different now!

posted by Lorenzo 5:13 PM

 

DVD-Cracking Teen Acquitted
(Associated Press, January 7, 2003)
A Norwegian teenager was acquitted in a key test case Tuesday of violating computer break-in laws with his program that circumvents security codes on Hollywood's DVD movies. . . . The three-member Oslo City Court found Johansen, now 19 and a household name as DVD-Jon in Norway, innocent on all counts in a unanimous 25-page ruling in the latest setback for the film industry's drive to prevent film copying. . . . Prosecutors had called for a 90-day suspended jail sentence, confiscation of computer equipment and court costs, all of which were rejected in the ruling. Johansen became a folk hero to hackers, especially in the United States, where a battle still rages over a 1998 copyright law that bans software like DeCSS. . . . Johansen's program [DeCSS], which pieces together security codes and other programs sent to him by fellow hackers, breaks the CSS barrier, allowing films to be played and copied on computers. The short program is one of many readily available programs that can break DVD security codes. . . . Johansen had claimed he posted the program for others to test it. Head judge Irene Sogn, in reading the verdict, said no one could be convicted of breaking into their own property, and that there was no proof that Johansen or others had used the program to access illegal pirate copies of films. . . . It found that consumers have rights to legally obtained DVD films "even if the films are played in a different way than the makers had foreseen." Johansen said that was the key part of the ruling. . . . "As long as you have purchased a DVD legally then you are allowed to decode it with any equipment, and can't be forced to buy any specific equipment," he said.

posted by Lorenzo 10:44 AM

 

Nike and Corporations Claim the Right to Lie
(Thom Hartman, Common Dreams, 1-1-03)
While Nike was conducting a huge and expensive PR blitz to tell people that it had cleaned up its subcontractors' sweatshop labor practices, an alert consumer advocate and activist in California named Marc Kasky caught them in what he alleges are a number of specific deceptions. . . . Nike instead chose to argue that corporations should enjoy the same "free speech" right to deceive that individual human citizens have in their personal lives. If people have the constitutionally protected right to say, "The check is in the mail," or, "That looks great on you," then, Nike's reasoning goes, a corporation should have the same right to say whatever they want in their corporate PR campaigns. . . . Nike isn't a person - it's a corporation. And it's not their "say" they're asking for: it's the right to deceive people. . . . In the next few weeks the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether or not to hear Nike's appeal of the California Supreme Court's decision that Nike was engaging in commercial speech which the state can regulate under truth in advertising and other laws. And lawyers for Nike are preparing to claim before the Supreme Court that, as a "person," this multinational corporation has a constitutional free-speech right to deceive. . . . The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Exxon/Mobil, Monsanto, Microsoft, Pfizer, and Bank of America have already filed amicus briefs supporting Nike. Additionally, virtually all of the nation's largest corporate-owned newspapers have recently editorialized in favor of Nike and given virtually no coverage or even printed letters to the editor asserting the humans' side of the case. . . . Corporate America is rising up, and, unlike you and me, when large corporations "speak" they can use a billion-dollar bullhorn. At this moment, the only thing standing between their complete takeover of public opinion or their being brought back under the rule of law is the U.S. Supreme Court. . . . Justices true to the Constitution and the Founders' intent may wake up to the havoc wrought on the American political landscape by the Bellotti case and its reliance on the flawed Santa Clara headnote. If the Court chooses in the next few weeks to hear the Kasky v. Nike case, it will open an opportunity for them to rule that corporations don't have the free speech right to knowingly deceive the public. . . . As humans concerned with the future of human rights in a democratic republic, it's vital that we now speak up, spread the word, and encourage the ACLU and other pro-democracy groups to help Marc Kasky in his battle on our species' collective behalf.

posted by Lorenzo 10:32 AM