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Halliburton Pulling the Plug on GI Use of Internet
A week after a scandal broke involving photos of American troops torturing Iraqi prisoners, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, & Root is pulling the plug on private electronic communications with the folks back home, apparently at the request of the Department of Defence. . . . "I might be getting transferred within the next week to anotehr post. At the very least, KBR is not allowing any private computers on their system for the next ninety days. There might be one other option, but if you don't hear from me for a while" . . . Email from a friend with contacts among American troops in Iraq prompts me to wish some journalist would investigate reports that the military has ordered KBR, which provides net connectivity for US camps and bases in Iraq, to cut off all soldiers’ “inessential” access to email and the net for the next 90 days.

[COMMENT: This is a little-reported story. If anyone has more information about this, please leave a comment.]

posted by Lorenzo 11:40 AM

 

New York Times: we were wrong on Iraq
(Claire Cozens, The Guardian, May 26, 2004)
The New York Times today issued an extraordinary mea culpa over its coverage of Iraq, admitting it had been misled about the presence of weapons of mass destruction by sources including the controversial Iraqi leader Ahmad Chalabi. . . . In a note to readers published today under the headline 'The Times and Iraq', the editors of the newspaper said they had found "a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been". . . . "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," they continued. . . . The paper said it was encouraged to report the claims by "United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq". . . . But today for the first time it admitted that accounts of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq were never independently verified. . . . [The Times] said that when other journalists wrote stories that appeared to contradict claims of a WMD programme in Iraq, their reports were buried. . . . "Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all." . . . One of the New York Times' star reporters, Judith Miller, is known to have relied heavily on Mr Chalabi for stories about Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction, although she was not named in today's piece. . . . Recent research showed more than half of all national news journalists and 46% of local news reporters in the US "believe that journalism is going in the wrong direction".

[COMMENT: So the Times' editorial policy was influenced by "United States officials". I don't know how this sounds to you, but to me, this is government propaganda and censorship at its worst. Doesn't the Times call itself the nation's "paper of record"? I guess that means it is the US government's main propaganda arm. If it wasn't for the Internet, we'd be in even deeper trouble than the quagmire we are already in.]

posted by Lorenzo 10:11 PM

 

Rumsfeld bans camera and cell phones
(News.com.AU, May 23, 2004)
MOBILE phones fitted with digital cameras have been banned in US army installations in Iraq on orders from Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, The Business newspaper reported today. . . . Quoting a Pentagon source, the paper said the US Defence Department believes that some of the damning photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were taken with camera phones. . . . "Digital cameras, camcorders and cellphones with cameras have been prohibited in military compounds in Iraq," it said, adding that a "total ban throughout the US military" is in the works. . . . Disturbing new photos of Iraqi prisoner abuse, which the US government had reportedly tried to keep hidden, were published on Friday in the Washington Post newspaper. . . . The photos emerged along with details of testimony from inmates at Abu Ghraib who said they were sexually molested by female soldiers, beaten, sodomised and forced to eat food from toilets.

posted by Lorenzo 7:30 PM

 

NBC Blocking Use of Bush TV Footage for Film Critical of War in Iraq
'Unofficially, We Don't Think It Makes the President Look Good' says NBC . . . NBC is using its copyright protection to deny an award-winning filmmaker access to film of a recent appearance by President Bush on "Meet the Press," possibly because the network is trying to protect the President politically, a Stanford Law professor said today. . . . Lawrence Lessig, testifying before a House of Representatives subcommittee on proposed revisions in copyright law, said the network refused to allow the inclusion of a one-minute clip from Tim Russert's oval office interview with the President on February 8 in an upcoming film on the war in Iraq. . . . The footage was requested by film director and producer Robert Greenwald, who last year produced an award-winning documentary about the Iraq War, "Uncovered," in which CIA, Pentagon and foreign service experts detailed the lies, misstatements and exaggerations by the Bush Administration that led to the U.S. invasion more than a year ago. . . . "Greenwald was denied permission. The agent informing Greenwald's agent of the decision stated, 'Unofficially, we don't think it makes the President look good.'" . . . Bush appeared poorly prepared and uncertain in his responses to Russert's questions about the war, which now has claimed more than 750 American lives, and was widely criticized in the media. But NBC refused to allow any of the footage to be released and thus, said Lessig, put anyone using excerpts from the show under the "fair use" doctrine at legal risk. . . . "When permission cannot be secured, it forces the creator into an extremely difficult choice: whether to risk substantial exposure for copyright liability, or to remove the speech from the creator's work," Lessig said. He said presidential statements and actions should be considered public, not private, property.

posted by Lorenzo 9:14 AM

 

US Citizens Kept in the Dark by Media

Today the Free Press is refusing to look beneath the claim of an intention to grant 'sovereignty' and to transfer power to Iraqis on June 30th, to see the ways in which a US military presence and veto power and constraints on the Iraq constitution and law would give this country continued domination.
-- Edward Herman, "We Had To Destroy [Fill in Country Name] In Order To Save It", Swans.com, April 12, 2004

posted by Lorenzo 11:15 AM

 

Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush
(Jim Rutenberg, New York Times, May 5, 2004)
The Walt Disney Company is blocking its Miramax division from distributing a new documentary by Michael Moore that harshly criticizes President Bush, executives at both Disney and Miramax said Tuesday. . . . The film, "Fahrenheit 911," links Mr. Bush and prominent Saudis — including the family of Osama bin Laden — and criticizes Mr. Bush's actions before and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. . . . "We advised both the agent and Miramax in May of 2003 that the film would not be distributed by Miramax," said Zenia Mucha, a company spokeswoman, referring to Mr. Moore's agent. "That decision stands." . . . Disney came under heavy criticism from conservatives last May after the disclosure that Miramax had agreed to finance the film when Icon Productions, Mel Gibson's company, backed out. . . . Mr. Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, said Michael D. Eisner, Disney's chief executive, asked him last spring to pull out of the deal with Miramax. Mr. Emanuel said Mr. Eisner expressed particular concern that it would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush's brother, Jeb, is governor. [COMMENT: This is an outrage! In essence, this is a "reverse bribe." Instead of a business bribing a public official, it's a case where public officials can line the pockets of businesses who help them censor and manipulate the truth about what is really going on in this country and around the world.] . . . A senior Disney executive elaborated that the company had the right to quash Miramax's distribution of films if it deemed their distribution to be against the interests of the company. . . . Mr. Moore, who will present the film at the Cannes film festival this month, criticized Disney's decision in an interview on Tuesday, saying, "At some point the question has to be asked, 'Should this be happening in a free and open society where the monied interests essentially call the shots regarding the information that the public is allowed to see?' " . . . Mr. Moore said the film describes financial connections between the Bush family and its associates and prominent Saudi Arabian families that go back three decades. He said it closely explores the government's role in the evacuation of relatives of Mr. bin Laden from the United States immediately after the 2001 attacks. The film includes comments from American soldiers on the ground in Iraq expressing disillusionment with the war, he said.

posted by Lorenzo 11:47 AM

 

Soldiers' Mom's Letter to "Cowardly" Sinclair Broadcasting About Nightline
Dear Sir/Madam:

As a family member of two soldiers currently in Iraq, I am writing to express my outrage at your actions in refusing to air the soldier tribute this evening.

Your station's cowardly and biased censorship of the truth of what is really going on in Iraq is a perfect example of neo-con socialism. In your rhetoric-strewn "open letter" on your homepage, you claim to love this country and our soldiers. Well, a basic tenet of this country is free speech - and you can't just love it when it suits your own political interests. Our soldiers have fought and died for this foolish President's redneck foreign policies, and no amount of censorship (or as you euphemistically like to call it - "preemption") on your part can change that.

This kind of partisan censorship is shameful from a major broadcaster. No matter how much you may be fooled by George Bush's Iraqi war rhetoric, that does not mean that the rest of the country must suffer your same uninformed viewpoints. Since when does the American public only get to view what your company deems "appropriate" for us? Do you think so little of the American public's capabilities to form educated opinions?

If your general counsel had an ounce of common sense, he would realize that this blatant censorship is also perfect fodder for a major lawsuit, and I hope ABC, the ACLU or some other organization with the means to do so does just that. Just because George Bush's Patriot Act took away most of our basic civil liberties, does not mean you should add to that detriment by picking and choosing what we get to watch - this is eerily reminiscent of the book burnings in Nazi Germany!! (And the fact that your corporation has donated a great deal of money to the Bush campaign only further reinforces this very obvious political maneuvering)

I for one applaud Ted Koppel and ABC for taking a stand against The Bush Cartel and attempting to get the truth out to the American people. Whether you agree with the war in Iraq or not, it is not your company's place to water down the truth. As a broadcasting corporation, you have an inherent fiduciary responsibility to present the truth and let the public decide its own opinion regarding the Iraqi war. Not talking about it does not make it nonexistent, despite the hopes of our Boy Idiot King, George Bush. Yes, our soldiers are dying and, like it or not, hiding it from the public will not change that. Now if only partisan broadcasters like yourself would stop playing God and allow the American values of free speech and free thinking to occur.....after all, those are the very things these poor soldiers died to protect.

Thank you for your time.

A BuzzFlash Reader

[More about the values of FOX and the Sinclair Group.]

posted by Lorenzo 11:50 AM