Iraq Reverting to Police State.

In The Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein convincingly shows that the US following the 2003 invasion had no desire for Iraq to become a democracy and it was only by mass protests (that the western media ignored) that the Iraqis got democratic elections. Well Iraqis have been doing mass protests throughout the Arab Spring, albeit for improved conditions and not regime change. Again the western media have studiously ignored it, Iraq is "liberated" and "democratic" so to report on protests would show how inaccurate all their previous reporting has been. Even more depressingly US trained Iraqi security forces are cracking down on the free press within the country.

It would seem that the US is attempting to make Iraq into the puppet dictatorship they always wanted it to be. Though to be fair as Chomsky pointed out the US will endeavour to return all the rebellious countries in the region to client dictatorships.

Twitter censoring wikileaks hash tag?

This was indirectly linked by Wikileaks on twitter but its worth repeating. Basically theres a fairly compelling argument that twitter, for political reasons, is not showing wikileaks as a trending topic.

Freedom of speech only matters if it is related to regimes that are the enemy of America, such as Iran, it would seem.

Tories announce end to Net Neutrality in the UK

Companies will now not even need to maintain the pretense that all websites deserve equal bandwidth. Websites ISPs don't like will get short shrift and big companies will be able to pay their way to prominence. This means dissenting views can be marginalised on the internet and startup companies will now be even easier for corporate juggernauts to crush or "convince" to join their team so they get decent bandwidth.

I suppose it was inevitable but its annoying to live in a country on the vanguard of the end of the egalitarian internet.

The guardian have a full pdf of the speech where this was announced here: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Media/documents/2010/11/17/EdVaizey.pdf

Net Neutrality drifting away.

I can't be bothered to even act surprised or feign credulity in regards to the excuses given but essentially the Democratic dominated congress has backed away from any kind of legislation protecting people's rights. So now its all on the FCC heralding another round of secret meetings with those who oppose net neutrality and at best the FCC expanding its' remit which will then be undone by either the supreme court or the Republicans next time they get into power. Still who really though the plebs would be allowed to keep a medium that allowed such freedom of speech?

Depress yourself here.

Scientology still awful.

John Sweeney has performed another investigation into scientology three years after his first expose that was accompanied by an extensive campaign of harassment that culminated in a public outburst Scientology spread far and wide in an effort to discredit him. I don't think it succeeded particularly, it brought more attention to Scientology, something they don't want. Regardless his first investigation was interesting and got some of the unpleasant stuff Scientology does into the open.

Maybe he is a glutton for punishment but it is interesting the man who was in charge of harassing him the first time around, Mike Rinder, is now talking to Sweeney about the negatives of the cult. He was disgraced within the organisation for failing to undermine the first documentary and chose to leave rather than accept the severe punishment he was given for this. So his criticisms could be rooted in bitterness, nonetheless they are corroborated by more credible and long term critics such as Xenu.net.

Certainly Sweeney deserves credit for his perseverance.

A final thing I'd like to point out is a detail from this part of the BBC article.

That is why I was somewhat grateful to Scientology's UK lawyers at Carter-Ruck when they sent the BBC photographs of me hugging Amy Scobee at the end of a long and at times harrowing series of interviews about her experiences.
[...]
This was, oddly enough, welcome proof that the people who had been following and filming us in the States were indeed working for the Church of Scientology.

Scientology's favoured law firm in the UK is Carter Ruck, known to the excellent Private Eye as Carter Fuck. They are embody the awful culture of libel tourism to the nth term and love to help powerful entities cover up the truth. Perhaps the most famous suppression of free speech they were involved with was attempting to gag reports of the Trafigura toxic waste dumping in Côte_d'Ivoire. Truly delightful people.

Hip to be square?

Reading an article about comic books (this one)and I've just learnt about the 1954 comics code. Corporations sure do love free speech.

Blizzard getting rid of anonymity on their forums.

Blizzard will be requiring forum users to use their real names for all discussions from now on. Best of luck to all women who play blizzard games and want to discuss it at all. Also note how much dissent is tolerated, very few of the post numbers are sequential.

This is a prime example of why monopolies are a bad thing, now they have millions of players locked into their e-drug the company feels secure enough to follow regressive policies that are beneficial to themselves but extremely negative for their customers. For a further critique of the RealID system of which this is a part go here.

This likely has repercussions for the wider internet because if blizzard carries it off it will be copied. Anonymity on the net is a good thing for the individual and bad for big organisations and vice versa.

thanks jonny

French government finds holy grail; cut costs while weakening the press.

The Pax Americana is breaking down and European riders of America's coat tails are starting to have to foot the bill and commit military to areas they only recieve passive benefits from, this is expensive and offers little return on investment so unsurprisingly countries are looking to cut costs. (France's success at keeping its own little empire going in Africa on the downlow is a topic for another time but even that is threatened by weakening US power). The French government has proposed a law where those rescued from Somali pirates by commandos or from Colombian rebels via breaches of international law would foot the bill if it was decided it was their fault they got into the dangerous situation.

Now on the face of it this sounds pretty good, the tax payer shouldn't have to foot the bill for the rescue of rich bastards who decided to take their yacht through a dangerous area for a bit of a thrill or whatever but Sarko and his cronies are refusing to exempt journalists or aid workers from this legislation. So if aid workers go to an area and help people that French foreign policy doesn't want to be helped and they captured and need rescuing the charity has to pay. Of course if they were giving aid in one of France's client states its not impossible their kidnap and rescue could be arranged specifically to take funds from a disliked charity (or indeed journalistic organisation). Even if that isn't the plan it certainly will have a deterrent effect for charities and journalists to go to the world's dangerous places, especially if the French government doesn't want them going.

While I'd doubt the US would do this, it'd look too much like weakness, I wouldn't be surprised if similar legislation is proposed in other European countries, Canada or Australia.

Con-Dems move forward with plan to remove right to strike.

It is looking increasingly likely the Tory government and their Lib Dem lapdogs are going to do as the Confederation of British Industry asked and tighten Britain's already overly stringent industrial action laws to the point of absurdity. Currently in a ballot for strike action requires a simple majority of those who choose to vote, which seems entirely reasonable. Not to the CBI though, they want 40% of all those eligible to vote to have to vote in favour before strike action can be taken. This means they have to intimidate far fewer people to prevent a strike and conversely unions have to work far hard to be in a position to legally strike.

From the article union leaders Paul Kenny and Bob Crow sum it up far better than I could:

Paul Kenny, the general secretary of the GMB union, said: "It is a testament to the priorities of this government, led by two public schoolboys[Paul note: the term "public school" in the UK refers to elite private schools founded in the early modern period so called public because they were the first non-church schools], that they should consider attacking the rights of ordinary workers rather than the bankers who caused the recession. More and more we are seeing the well-to-do upper class targeting the lower class and make them pay for the recession. It is unfair and unacceptable."

Bob Crow, the general secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport union, accused ministers of "declaring war" on unions and of seeking to prevent workers from fighting back against cuts in jobs and public spending.

"The ConDems [Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition] know that by far the biggest campaign of resistance to their austerity and cuts plans will come from the trade unions. They are running scared and are now looking to tighten the noose of the anti-union laws around the workers' necks to choke off resistance. Under any proposals to raise the bar [for strike ballots] hardly a single MP in the UK would have been allowed to take up their seats."

Read about it here (its the second half of the article)

The Japanese really hate the ocean.

A documentary about Japanese Dolphin hunting filmed secretly by activists has not had a warm reception in glorious Nippon:

Chomsky on the Pentagon system.

The Pentagon system is a sort militarised Keynesianism that emerged in the US following WW2. Basically it means that the government funds research and then this research is handed off to corporations who profit from this research, essentially having the government subsidise big business. This is an early example of the now entrenched system of socialising the risk and privatising the reward. It is simply the biggest refutation of the ideologies of the two US political parties and shows just how fucking dumb libertarians are.

Anyway Noam Chomsky wrote a far better summary of the system in 1993 and examined where the system was going now the cold war was over. In spite of not knowing the War on Terror would happen it pretty much accurately predicted where we are today by infering how the Pentagon system would be used to make the poor poorer and the rich richer. He goes into much more detail of course. Read it here

The death knell of Net Neutrality

Among the many blatant falsehoods Obama stated in his bid to get elected was a pledge to support net neutrality. A series of backroom meetings between the FCC and big telecoms companies shows how much stock he placed in that promise. Of course the American people are being given no chance to have an input on this deal which will markedly affect their daily lives. So look forward to corporate friendly websites being given preferential bandwidth by your ISP.