....LMB: "Yesterday's News Today"....

November 15, 2002

Well, all of this could have been cutting edge, if I'd've had the time to post them this morning. My actual paid workload has jumped up several notches, so the blog will not be top priority for a while.

White House Wages Stealth War on Condoms- slimy motherfuckers. Presumably to appease crazed Christian moralists, Bush is filling federal public health positions with doctors that believe that abstinence is the only way to prevent AIDS.

Daschle Criticizes Bush Terror Plan- the new version of Bush's Homeland Security bill tosses out a planned investigation into the flaws that brought about 9-11. The White House has been opposing this very reasonable measure for quite some time now. My personal theory is that they oppose this investigation because Bush wants us to believe that the USA Patriot Act corrected any of the intelligence problems that might have allowed the 9-11 attacks, and that an investigation will show very little correlation between the new governmental powers granted by the Patriot Act and the pre-9-11 errors.

House Approves Domestic Security Bill- Congressional Republicans tossed in a few corporate welfare measures into the Homeland Security Act. It "would reverse an earlier measure and allow American companies that have moved offshore in order to evade taxes to contract with the Homeland Security Department. It would also extend protection against liability suits for airline screening companies and many other businesses that contract with the department, and adds a similar provision protecting the makers of smallpox vaccines."

Torie, Meet John- either the Defense Department is unaware that the Government has hired propaganda masters The Rendon Group, or the Defense Dept. is lying to reporters again. I'm guessing the latter. And while we're at it, here's an older article with some background info on Rendon.

For whom the Liberty Bell tolls- rich UK investor class explains how citizens all over the world have lost civil rights in the wake of 9-11. Note the handy chart.

Blair broadcasts message to Iraq- Tony Blair broadcast a message over Iraqi radio to Saddam Hussein and "warned the Iraqi leader he would be disarmed by force if he failed to co-operate with United Nations weapons inspectors." Good going, Tony. He didn't already know that.

Catch 'em- animated cartoon by Mark Fiore about the new CIA "assassinate terrorists" strategy.

Microsoft giveaway drowns out India's open-source software movement- Bill Gates donates $40 million to India in hopes that it will prevent the country from using free, open-source software like Linux. Like you don't already have enough money, gotta try to milk more from people who make $400 a year. Asshole.

Carmakers savor GOP rule- auto companies in the U.S. hope that the new Republican Congress will help them by easing back on environmental regulations and giving them big tax breaks.

Afghanistan: Police Beat Students in Hospital- I'm so glad we went into Afghanistan and made it into a peaceful democrac-- did that article say that police beat students, put them in the hospital, and then went to the hospital to beat them some more?

You Are a Suspect- "If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you: Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as 'a virtual, centralized grand database.' To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you — passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance — and you have the supersnoop's dream: a 'Total Information Awareness' about every U.S. citizen," says conservative columnist.

Forget Radio: Video Games, TV Ads Are Where You'll Hear New Music- insightful MTV News piece about the rise of non-radio means of promoting music. New artists allowing their songs to be featured in TV commericials is sometimes paying off big as consumers dash off to buy that song from the Volkswagen ad or whatever. Doesn't explicitly say it, but is part of a growing trend of symbiotic advertising (e.g. "Halle Berry, who stars in the new James Bond movie--which premiers nation-wide this weekend!!--wears Cover Girl makeup").

Posted by Jake at 01:07 AM
Comments

Jake,
Hi. So, this nonchalant line that popped out at me on the 14th seemed to dissapear to history. AP story, url http://www.american-blue.com/artman/publish/article_1046.shtml

Quote "Unmanned spy planes equipped with cameras and Predator drones fitted with Hellfire missiles have been used by CIA operatives. In one instance, they killed a tall man gathered with others under a tree. DNA analysis of his remains later showed that it was not the 6-foot-4-inch bin Laden, officials said."
......
ummm... he was a TALL GUY UNDER A TREE. Are the planes programmed to hit tall men? Maybe he looked tall because of the BABY on his shoulders... ugg...

Posted by: Christina at November 17, 2002 01:43 PM
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Lying Media Bastards is both a radio show and website. The show airs Mondays 2-4pm PST on KillRadio.org, and couples excellent music with angry news commentary. And the website, well, you're looking at it.

Both projects focus on our media-marinated world, political lies, corporate tyranny, and the folks fighting the good fight against these monsters.

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Media News

November 16, 2004

Tales of Media Woe

Senate May Ram Copyright Bill- one of the most depressing stories of the day that didn't involve death or bombs. It's the music and movie industries' wet dream. It criminalizes peer-to-peer software makers, allows the government to file civil lawsuits on behalf of these media industries, and eliminates fair use. Fair use is the idea that I can use a snippet of a copyrighted work for educational, political, or satirical purposes, without getting permission from the copyright-holder first.

And most tellingly, the bill legalizes technology that would automatically skip over "obejctionable content" (i.e. sex and violence) in a DVD, but bans devices that would automatically skip over commericals. This is a blatant, blatant, blatant gift to the movie industry. Fuck the movie industry, fuck the music industry, fuck the Senate.

Music industry aims to send in radio cops- the recording industry says that you're not allowed to record songs off the radio, be it real radio or internet radio. And now they're working on preventing you from recording songs off internet radio through a mixture of law and technological repression (although I imagine their techno-fixes will get hacked pretty quickly).

The shocking truth about the FCC: Censorship by the tyranny of the few- blogger Jeff Jarvis discovers that the recent $1.2 million FCC fine against a sex scene in Fox's "Married By America" TV show was not levied because hundreds of people wrote the FCC and complained. It was not because 159 people wrote in and complained (which is the FCC's current rationale). No, thanks to Jarvis' FOIA request, we find that only 23 people (of the show's several million viewers) wrote in and complained. On top of that, he finds that 21 of those letters were just copy-and-paste email jobs that some people attached their names to. Jarvis then spins this a bit by saying that "only 3" people actually wrote letters to the FCC, which is misleading but technically true. So somewhere between 3 and 23 angry people can determine what you can't see on television. Good to know.

Reuters Union Considers Striking Over Layoffs- will a strike by such a major newswire service impact the rest of the world's media?

Pentagon Starts Work On War Internet- the US military is talking about the creation of a global, wireless, satellite-aided computer network for use in battle. I think I saw a movie about this once...

Conservative host returns to the air after week suspension for using racial slur- Houston radio talk show host (and somtime Rush Limbaugh substitute) Mark Belling referred to Mexican-Americans as "wetbacks" on his show. He was suspended for a couple of weeks, and then submitted a written apology for the racial slur to a local newspaper. But he seems to be using the slur and its surrounding controversy to boost his conservative cred with his listeners.

Stay Tuned for Nudes- Cleveland TV news anchor Sharon Reed aired a story about artist Spencer Tunick, who uses large numbers of naked volunteers in his installations and photographs. The news report will be unique in that it will not blur or black-out the usual naughty bits. The story will air late at night, when it's allegedly okay with the FCC if you broadcast "indecent" material. The author of this article doesn't seem to notice that Reed first claims that this report is a publicity stunt, but then claims it's a protest against FCC repression. I'd like to think it's the latter, but I'm not that much of a sucker.

Posted by Jake at 04:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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