October 24, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
According to a new report from Reporters sans Frontiers, the United States is tied for 36th in the world for press freedom, with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cape Verde, South Africa, Spain and Taiwan. Of the nations that rank above the US, the report lists Mali, Ghana, Namibia, Jamaica, Surinam, as well as states formerly controlled by the Soviet Union such as the three Baltic states —Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—, and Slovakia. France ranked 35th, just ahead of the US.
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September 2, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The Republican party kicked off its nominating convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, last night, with a heavy focus on the plight of those displaced by Hurricane Gustav. Fortunately, the storm did not turn out to be “the storm of the century”, but it did leave over 1 million homes and businesses without electricity along the Gulf coast. So in an effort to avoid anything resembling the perceived indifference with which the catastrophic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was met, the GOP has devoted significant time to voicing its support for efforts to send aid to the Gulf coast.
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March 25, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
We are on the verge of a major communications and global economic revolution, in which major media, technological advances, cloud computing and dispersed optimization, adapt to and take over new models for living and producing in human society. The New Scientist magazine reports in its March 15-21, 2008 edition that “web 3.0 will be about making information less free”.
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January 24, 2008 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
The potential for broad-scope “electronic agents” —preprogrammed service aggregators and self-organizing databases with proactive marketing capability—, aiding in everyday information-related activities, will require a new security standard to prevent identity theft, which could become one of the gravest threats to economic performance and individual liberty.
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January 9, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Sibel Edmonds was a translator at the FBI when she overheard, in taped wiretaps, conversations that involved US officials at high levels organizing and taking bribes in exchange for dealing nuclear secrets to the black market. The Sunday Times, a London-based Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, has now broken the story, after years of Edmonds being turned away by the US press, due to an unprecedented “state secrets privilege” gag order. The world press is taking note, while US media outlets continue to keep quiet or not investigate.
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January 9, 2008 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
PLANNED FILTERING WOULD END OPEN INTERNET AS IT HAS EXISTED UNTIL NOW, REPLACING IT WITH STRATIFIED, PREMIUM-BRAND CONTROLLED CONTENT FORMAT
AT&T is proposing the implementation of new filtering technologies “at the network level” that would essentially interrupt in a definitive way the public’s freedom to access online content. The concept known as ‘net neutrality’ refers to [...]
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September 24, 2007 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
WAS HE ELECTROCUTED BY POLICE FOR USING OBSCENITY OR FOR ASKING UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS OF A POLITICIAN? WHICH OF THE TWO IS MORE UNCONSTITUTIONAL?
Last week, a journalism student attending a speech by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), at the University of Florida, was cuffed, electrocuted and detained by police while posing a series of hard questions to [...]
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August 14, 2007 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
When Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder asked Pres. Bush to “leave this world alone” in song, online viewers watching Lollapalooza via AT&T’s ‘Blue Room’ webcast were not able to hear it. The company cut the political lyrics from the webcast in what band-members, fans and net-neutrality advocates have called blatant censorship. AT&T blamed an outside contractor and apologized for the ‘mistake’.
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August 9, 2007 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
THE OPEN INTERNET IS A FORCE FOR DEMOCRACY & OPEN GOV’T, NOW IT IS UNDER THREAT FROM THOSE WHO WISH TO BOTTLENECK THE FREE PRESS
The concept of ‘net neutrality’ refers to the current state of affairs in the free democracies of the world, where those who control the physical infrastructure of the Internet are not [...]
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May 25, 2006 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Is the United States an “English-speaking nation”, or a place where all cultures are welcome to converge, mix and evolve? To answer this question, we must consider that there is a natural human tendency to fear what is perceived as the definite and invasive “other”, that which is different and which we feel can be categorized in a way that fits our worries.
The push to establish a single national language can only be sustained on the basis of a number of false premises. We will explore seven such lies and misperceptions here, all of a particular sort, having to do with a way of rationalizing one’s aversion to difference or to change. And, in each case, it is fairly easy to illustrate how the lie works against the interests of both a democratic society and American tradition itself.
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May 17, 2006 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
NSA EXPERT HISTORIAN EXPECTS INTERNET COMPANIES ALSO COOPERATED WITH DOMESTIC SPY PROJECTS
Historian and expert NSA researcher Matthew Aid has told Salon.com that he believes it will be revealed in time that Internet service providers and cellphone companies also cooperated with the NSA spying and data mining programs. He offered no proof, but cited past examples [...]
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