  |
Some Chick
Not a Newbie
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Posts: 136
Location: EARTH
|
 Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 2:21 am Post subject: One Third Of Jailed Journalists Are Bloggers |
 |
|
|
One Third Of Jailed Journalists Are Bloggers
Increasing authoritarian trends as governments target Internet for regulation, censorship, control
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, December 7, 2006
A new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists warns of increasing authoritarian attitudes towards the free flow of information on the Internet as statistics reveal that of the estimated 134 journalists jailed for their work worldwide, a full third are Internet writers and bloggers.
Reuters reports,
"We're at a crucial juncture in the fight for press freedom because authoritarian states have made the Internet a major front in their effort to control information," Committee Executive Director Joel Simon said in a statement.
"China is challenging the notion that the Internet is impossible to control or censor, and if it succeeds there will be far-ranging implications, not only for the medium but for press freedom all over the world."
The past few months have produced a noted increase in the amount of negative rhetoric spewed forth by western governments over the so-called dangers of the Internet and its exploitation by "terrorist organizations."
What we are witnessing is clearly a chilling effect and an attempt to stifle people from feeling comfortable in openly expressing their feelings about the phantom "war on terror" and other political catastrophes via the forum of the world wide web.
As the implementation of biometric technology and its application to security becomes more widely used, we are not far from the day when we have have to thumb scan simply to use the Internet and only with government permission will we be allowed to run a blog.
It's already happening in China, where the government is about to force Internet users who wish to start a to a blog to register using their real name and ID card number. State licensing of blogging, combined with legislation that paves the way for the introduction of ID cards both in the US and the UK, are the cocktail for a cyber police state, where only those who express political opinions sympathetic to government policies will be allowed to keep their blog.
Add to this the state-imposed mental illness of political correctness brainwashing, whereby criticism of any individual, policy, group, gender, race or sexuality is treated as hate crime, and the last outpost of true freedom of speech will exist no more - replaced by a stifled, poisoned, controlled, censored, regulated "Internet 2."
They can't burn all the books but don't be so naive for a second to think that these control freaks won't go all out to try and pull the plug on all the characteristics of the Internet that made it such a God send in the first place.
Perhaps we bloggers should count ourselves lucky that we haven't been gunned down in our own homes for attempting to report the truth, because that's the fate the vast majority of those killed over the last 5 years covering the "war on terror" have met. Over a year ago the number of journalists killed in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003 surpassed the number killed during the entire 20 year stretch of the Vietnam War.
It shouldn't really come as a shock to anyone that the U.S. military, at the discretion of the Pentagon, would practice both indiscriminate and deliberate targeting of journalists, because that's precisely what they told everyone they would do before the war began.
Since that time we have witnessed numerous stories of reporters who got close to releasing sensitive information gunned down in cold blood. Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana filmed mass graves of U.S. troops covered in plastic bags in remote desert areas of Iraq and was about to release the footage in a TV special. He was ruthlessly gunned down near the Abu Ghraib jail despite having a permit to film the site from U.S. occupation forces and clearly wearing "press" emblazoned attire.
Bloggers make up a third of journalists incarcerated worldwide while the remainder also languish in forgotten hellholes for daring to simply do their job in the face of state attempts to stamp out any unfiltered, truly independent reporting.
Those imprisoned include Joshua Wolf, who was jailed on August 1 for refusing to turn over footage of a G8 protest rally to a federal grand jury. Wolf is being held on civil contempt in an effort to coerce him to testify and turn over his unpublished material.
Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein has been detained for the past 8 months in Iraq and Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj, who has been incarcerated for 5 years, is currently being held at Guantanamo Bay.
Hussein is being held by the U.S. military after they accused him of colluding with insurgents and has been rotting in a prison camp with no formal charges brought against him. An attempt to get information about Hussein by the Committee to Protect Journalists was brushed aside by the Pentagon in October.
Sami al-Haj was kidnapped by Pakistani border guards after he was accused of being a member of Al-Qaeda. The proof? Al-Haj had lost his passport two years earlier. Despite the fact that he had traveled around the Middle East with Al-Jazeera film crews on numerous occasions since obtaining his new passport, he was disappeared anyway, and now finds himself labeled and "enemy combatant" and is forced to spend most of his day in an 8 by 7 foot cage with 450 other "terrorists" who have never been charged. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
jusdeadphunky
Forum Elder
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Posts: 2222
|
| Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 5:36 am Post subject: |
|
|
|
thank you for posting this.
this country is in such a sad state. we all know how wrong it is to punish bloggers, and to deny people the right to habeous corpus. the sick, sad and scary thing about it is that this administration has been hammering themes like reporters and bloggers help terrorists, into americans for 6 years. there are so few of us who are aware of how terrible this and there are so many people who will never be able to overcome the terror and fear brainwashing that has gone on for so long.
i am in a terrorism class right now that has about 26 students in it. out of those 26 there are 4 who seem to have a clue and about 15 who are complete drones. this is what scares me the most. it reminds me of how certain people look at pot smoking. it is fact and common knowledge that marijuana is beneficial for medical uses, and it is known that marijuana is nothing like drugs like LSD, PCP, cocaine, meth or heroin. with this said there is still a percentage of people who will still act like smoking pot is on the same level as armed robbery because they have never been able to overcome anti-drug misinformation.manipulation. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
haywood
Newbie
Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 19
|
| Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 8:54 pm Post subject: |
|
|
|
| blogger are like boogers. they serve a purpose, yet to be known. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Xerxes
Forum Elder
Joined: 15 Mar 2007
Posts: 1564
Location: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
|
| Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 9:44 pm Post subject: |
|
|
|
Speaking of jailed.....I know that there are some out there that will refuse to read it just because it is Al Jazeera. That is fine, they have been accused every bit as much by the Arab world of being too pro-Bush as they were vice-versa. That indicates to me their neutrality. Using the amount of bitching on both sides as my neutralometer. I accept them as an acceptable news source on par with Reuters and AP. So, this is a follow up to the Downing Street Memo and how the guy that leaked it is in jail:
http://english.aljazeera.net/N.....A2AFC4.htm |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Turk
Forum Elder
Joined: 09 Dec 2006
Posts: 3340
|
| Posted: Sat May 12, 2007 2:15 am Post subject: |
|
|
|
| corporate media wants to silence independant media nuff said |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2002 phpBB Group
|
|
|
|
