geopolitics Archives - Page 15 of 59

Let’s Ban Anonymous Comments!

by cameron | May 24, 2012 | US politics

As the power elite continue to struggle to re-gain control of an increasingly rabid populace, we will continue to see all manner of bizarre suggestions. From Senator Conroy’s “Filter The Internet” initiative here in Australia to this one from New York:

Legislation is pending in Albany that would make illegal anonymous online commenting, City & State tweeted this morning. Looks like Wired was among the first to report on the measure.

The bill’s backers, according to the mag, want to curtail “mean-spirited and baseless political attacks” and “spotlight on cyberbullies by forcing them to reveal their identity.”

The legislation would make New York-based websites, such as blogs and newspapers, “remove any comments posted on his or her website by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post.”

via Disinformation: Everything You Know Is Wrong.

Personally I’ve always been more than happy to attach my name to my online opinions (which is why my ID is always “cameronreilly”), but I can fully understand why some people would like to be more cautious – people like Bradley Manning, etc. In this current era of “Kill The Whistleblower”, we need to provide anonymous avenues for concerned citizens to leak what they know about the workings of the power elite. And, of course, it stands to reason that the elite will want to destroy those avenues as much as they can.

Personally I don’t think they are going to succeed. For every website they shut down, for every piece of pseudo-fascist legislation they erect, there will be one hundred tools and channels invented by people like Assange that route around the control mechanisms.

The Propaganda Model

by cameron | May 23, 2012 | capitalism

The propaganda model is a theory advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that alleges systemic biases in the mass media and seeks to explain them in terms of structural economic causes.

The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

First presented in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media, the propaganda model views the private media as businesses selling a product — readers and audiences (rather than news) — to other businesses (advertisers) and relying primarily on government and corporate information and propaganda. The theory postulates five general classes of “filters” that determine the type of news that is presented in news media: Ownership of the medium, the medium’s Funding, Sourcing of the news, Flak, and Anti-communist ideology.

The first three (ownership, funding, and sourcing) are generally regarded by the authors as being the most important. Although the model was based mainly on the characterization of United States media, Chomsky and Herman believe the theory is equally applicable to any country that shares the basic economic structure and organizing principles the model postulates as the cause of media biases. After the Soviet Union disintegrated, Chomsky said terrorism and Islam would be the new filter replacing communism.

(Source: Wikipedia)

What Is Fracking?

by cameron | May 18, 2012 | energy, environment

This video posted today by Get Up! got me thinking about “fracking”.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYd5_u6ehlA]

What is this “fracking” that I’ve been hearing so much about lately? It’s something I’ve been meaning to pay more attention to.

According to this excellent site put together by the ABC, “fracking” is short for “hydraulic fracturing”. It’s all about “coal seam gas” (CSG) or “coalbed methane” as it’s known outside of Australia. CSG is methane gas that’s trapped deep down in the earth under layers of coal. The objective is to drill down into the layers that contain the CSG and bring it up to the surface. Mining CSG is a fairly recent phenomenon and there are lots of environmental concerns about how it is extracted, the amount of water the process requires and what happens to the water afterwards. It is estimated there will be 40,000 coal seam gas wells in Australia – mostly in QLD.

So what is “fracking”? According to the ABC:

In the process known as ‘fracking’, a mix of water and chemicals is pumped at high pressure down the well and into the coal seam. This process creates a network of cracks in the coal, releasing the gas and water trapped inside it. Not all wells need to be fractured. In some places, the coal is permeable, meaning it already has lots of natural cracks. In others, gas companies drill horizontally into the coal seam as an alternative to fracturing.

So is that a good thing or a bad thing? The answer is – we don’t know. There is a lot of debate between the various interested parties. The CSG industry claims the water that is extracted during the process will be available for irrigation but first it will have to be decontaminated and that’s a costly process. The environmentalists and farmers (nice to see them on the same side for once) are worried about the effect this entrance of this water will have on our water ecology. The bottom line is that this is a new industry that the mining companies are rushing into and I’m betting the majority of Australians have given little thought about what the long-term effect is likely to be on the country. A lot of money is likely to be made by a relatively small number of companies in the next couple of decades – but what will the long-term cost be to the country? To the farming industry? To the health of the people? As water is already a precious commodity in Australia, it’s something that needs serious debate and discussion before the government just hands out CSG licenses.

Obama Targeting Journalists

by cameron | Mar 19, 2012 | geopolitics, US politics

According to Jeremy Scahill, the Obama administration (and President Obama directly) is running a campaign against whistleblowers and journalists (see article at RT.com).

Now it has been divulged that Obama even appealed with the president of Yemen to ensure that one of their own journalists would stay behind bars for telling the truth. Journalist Jeremy Scahill tells RT that Yemeni reporter Abdulelah Haider Shaye was instrumental in exposing the falsities of a covert war in Yemen. In December 2009, Scahill says the press reported that a Yemeni strike had killed 34 members of al-Qaeda. When Shaye went to investigate though, he soon learned through spending time on the ground that the US was actually directly involved in the attack — an attack which took the lives of civilians. Shaye was eventually put on trial for exposing the truth behind the event and allegedly the court introduced false evidence, which in the end yielded a conviction that potentially carried a death sentence. But since the entire case against the journalist was fabricated by his government, the journalist got off with a relatively mild sentence of just five years. Under pressure, Yemeni President Saleh intended to pardon Shaye. This is when he got a call from President Obama himself, personally requesting that Saleh switch his stance on pardoning the reporter.

Is this the Obama people thought they were voting for in 2008? Chomsky says Americans should vote for Obama again in 2012 because he is “the lesser of two evils”. Perhaps. But it’s also important that they understand who they are voting for. Look behind the Hollywood-written speeches and shiny images and pay attention to what his administration actually *does*, not what it says.

Democracy Now has an excellent interview with Scahill who has just returned from Yemen.