'OBJECTIVELY VERIFIABLE TRUTH NOW SUSPECT'

REPORT ON MOUNTING CENSORSHIP, DENIAL OF FILMS TO U.S. AUDIENCE SUGGESTS NEWS MEDIA NOW TREAT FACT ITSELF AS INHERENTLY BIASED

1. The problem as such

The foundation of a free society is a press with the freedom to criticize instruments of power and influence and to reveal wrongdoing as it actually takes place. War is not a sufficient reason to institute a system of broad censorship criteria or to rein in the news media, as if they posed a direct threat to the wellbeing of the nation. But increasingly, it appears that American news media are intolerant of facts as such, waiting for members of the government themselves to come forward with complaints.

The film 'Iraq for Sale', a documentary by director Robert Greenwald, "tells a depressingly familiar tale of corporate corruption and war-profiteering in Iraq", according to the Guardian newspaper. Greenwald has made a career speaking out against corruption, and war profiteering is simply the ugliest face of a problem that seems at times too widespread to even begin to address in the normal news media.

Greenwald's films have won awards and acclaim but have had a significantly difficult time getting distribution in the United States, where he has taken on criminal or unscrupulous behavior by Fox News, Wal-Mart, Enron and disgraced former House majority leader Tom DeLay, as well as manipulation and fraud in relation to the 2000 election. The problem with Greenwald's films is that they tackle a specific group of interests, and the facts they relay to the viewing public are all-too-inconvenient for those interests.

In this case, Greenwald shows a system of corrupt management of contracts for military and reconstruction projects in Iraq, apparent theft of huge sums, running into the billions of dollars, and what appears to be a system set up precisely to facilitate this kind of behavior.

It is controversial only because there has been no full and transparent official investigation of the allegations; the evidence presented is all available through major news media, and Greenwald's work has been to gather the information in one document, which in this case happens to be a film. The result has been that, lacking an official allegation of widespread corruption, there appears to be little interest in major distribution across the US, even though recent years have shown a clear trend toward commercial viability of critical documentaries.

So, Greenwald gets shut out. In principle, it is not important that we know how or why. What can be said by those who have seen his work is that it is an effort to convey fact, as such, and then to frame those facts within the larger story of endemic corruption. This does not mean they are films with a political slant, nor does it mean the United States should become a country where only a slant toward the official story should be considered objective.

The conservative movement has been creeping toward an overwhelming hold on the official media story in American politics, using talk radio, vicious attack ads, often irrelevant in nearly every way to the individual they attack, and disinformation in the national news media, to alter the public discourse.

There is still an unresolved accusation that evangelist Pat Robertson used conflict diamonds trafficked to terrorist organizations to help fund his media empire, known first of all for its fundraising, as well as for prayer vigils calling for the death of Supreme Court justices, commentaries fomenting racial paranoia and claims the 9/11 attacks were divine punishment for a degenerate society.

The effect of this intense distortion on US news media has been a departure from the core work of locating and relaying the truth. As the Guardian puts it, this campaign against objectivity "won the war against reality a long time ago in the United States — and reality may no longer be in any condition to stage a comeback".

The US has a long and fabled tradition of modern journalism, creating many of the standards used the world over for measuring integrity and objectivity. It has the First Amendment to the Constitution, which empowers the press to challenge government at the highest levels at any time and on any issue, without any sort of official interference permitted, according to the choices of the editors and the reporters, regardless of how inconvenient it may be for those in power.

It is, then, urgent that the American people be able to see reporting that is acclaimed not for its political value, but for the weight of its reporting, and the truths it brings to light. A lack of access to such reporting, whether that trend is intentional or not, creates a distortion of lived experience and a common perception that there is more truth in the words of those in power than in the words of those who actually study the meaning of their acts. That sort of situation erodes the very ability of a democracy to function.

2. The Fallujah story

In November 2004, CNN viewers were treated to a colorful, spliced array of video from the 'Battle for Falluja', where in place of desperate screams, human agony and rapid automatic fire into private homes, viewers heard military theme music, designed to give the idea of a produced re-enactment of World War II heroism. It marked an incredible departure from CNN's traditional self-styled image of fact-gathering, and instant relay of vital, even when shocking, "real-time" information.

The screen was blanketed with colorful, even glitzy graphics, shimmering three-dimensional letters, a visual feast promised, in a sense, and the footage edited to show American soldiers behaving responsibly and heroically, as if that were the whole truth. This, despite Fallujah being one of the most confusing, brutal and bloody conflicts of the war. CNN brought the battle right to viewers' living rooms, but refrained from showing bodies torn apart, children on stretchers, or landmarks bombarded.

The effort to control the image of the war was evident, whatever the motive. Also evident is the fact that the Pentagon's increasingly well-known and well-established system of censoring reports on the war would have no problems showing what CNN produced for that landmark report.

CNN rejected in that purported documentary footage the very concept of objective reporting, and it is not a stretch to say that the theme music, which actually played while shots were being fired on screen, was a real insult to the soldiers themselves, who live and suffer the horrors of war first-hand.

CNN's online reporting, however, is more formal and more objective. For instance, in reporting on the level of success or strategy, CNN reported "American forces have pounded Falluja for months in an attempt to root out insurgents. U.S. warplanes, including AC-130 gunships, bombarded targets in recent days to weaken insurgent positions".

Their online gallery of scenes from the field also includes an image captioned as "U.S. Army doctors in Baghdad work to stabilize a 4-year-old with shrapnel injuries evacuated from Falluja", during the same period where the suspiciously over-produced battle footage was running on TV.

And, in the first days of the most intense combat in Fallujah, CNN did report that an "Iraqi official" deserted US forces after being given access to the battle strategy, but the report is dampened by military assertions that being a Kurd, he likely deserted in order to return home, having no known ties to the city or its insurgent leaders.

3. Politkovskaya: a crisis situation

In Russia, on Saturday, the 54th birthday of Vladimir Putin, the nation's increasingly authoritarian president and former spy director, the most acclaimed investigative journalist in the country, and Putin's most vocal critic, was shot dead inside an elevator in the building where she lived.

Anna Politkovskaya had just announced two days earlier that she was planning to reveal in an article, due to print on Sunday, proof that Chechen PM and Putin protegé Ramzan Kadyrov was involved in a kidnap and torture case. Kadyrov is controversial and has long been considered responsible for abuses in Chechnya, and had just turned 30, the age required to be appointed as Chechen president.

The Scotsman reports Politkovskaya "has repeatedly accused [Kadyrov] of running the province like a gangster fiefdom with systematic abuses ignored by Moscow in return for him keeping Islamic fighters on the back foot." The same report also suggests she had enemies throughout the "Russian security apparatus", having to flea to Austria in 2001, after learning that "a police commander she had written about was planning to assassinate her".

In 2004, on her way to cover the tragedy in Beslan, where hundreds of civilians died, she was drugged, putting her into a coma; she woke up later in a hospital, and eventually recovered. Mr. Putin's Russia has never been entirely safe for journalists, but attacks and killings are mounting. The murder of Anna Politkovskaya is only the most high-profile and flagrant example of a contract killing to silence a prominent and critical voice.

The result is that supporters, including journalists, human rights activists and ordinary citizens are reportedly massing in Pushkin Square, organizing a vigil and holding up signs calling for the prosecution of any official involved, accusing the Kremlin of undermining democracy and "destroying the press".

Politkovskaya had written in her recent book that Vladimir Putin, who has filled his government with current and former KGB operatives (an estimated 12 times as many as in the 1980s Soviet Union), has turned Russia's fledgling democracy into a dictatorship. The Sydney Morning Herald reports today that "Politkovskaya was the 12th journalist to die in a contract-style killing since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, said the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists".

The newspaper for which she worked, Novaya Gazeta, is mounting its own investigation, and one of its chief investors has offered a $1.25 million reward for her killers' capture. Poltikovskaya was known for her depth of investigation and for providing evidence of the abuses and corruption she reported. As such, the official state investigation, according to police, will also focus on her "professional activities", presumably meaning it would examine targets of her reporting as possible suspects.

Her reports were dangerous precisely because they were well-documented and pointed to the facts that demonstrate the accusation. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called for the staging of a rally outside the Russian embassy in Paris, where RSF is based, condemning the journalist's murder. A statement from the press freedom organization said "Her condemnation of state terror in Chechnya and her unwavering commitment to press freedom made her a beacon of independent journalism in Russia".

Anna Politkovskaya's death is a sign of the precarious position of serious journalists in many parts of the world, and part of a disturbing trend in recent years in which violence against journalists has steadily risen on a global scale. The Iraq war has seen a disturbingly high number of journalists seriously injured or killed, even while in their hotel rooms and/or fired upon by coalition forces. In the Philippines, the kidnap and disappearance of local journalists in remote areas has escalated amid a trend apparently tied to politicians seeking to silence corruption allegations.

On 3 October, just 4 days before Ms. Politkovskaya was killed, Reporters Without Borders expressed "concern about the health of Permsky Obozrevatel photographer Vladimir Korolyov, who was arrested on 13 September just after being treated for a heart attack, and was questioned without his lawyer being present. The charge against him was 'illegally gathering and publishing information about the local police.'"

Ultimately, any society must make a deliberate choice as to whether it supports the freedom of the press that reveals and records the truth of what is lived in that country. A free society requires that the press have this freedom, for the sake of a free market of ideas and for the sake of the liberty of the individual to protect the human sphere from the arbitrary rule of the state. [s]

• The Guardian: "As Not Seen on TV"
• SMH: "Kremlin remains silent on murder of top journalist"
• Scotsman: "Putin silent as murder outcry grows"
• RSF: "Call for rally outside Russian embassy in Paris in protest against journalist’s murder, international investigation demanded"
• RSF: "Raids on journalists’ homes in continuing harassment of Perm-based independent weekly"
• CNN: "Battle for Falluja under way" [2004]
• CNN: "U.S. Army doctors in Baghdad work to stabilize a 4-year-old with shrapnel injuries evacuated from Falluja" [2004]
• ABC News Online (Australia): "Iraqi officer deserts with Fallujah battle plans" [2004]

SECRET PRISONS, COERCIVE INTERROGATIONS UNDERMINE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

POLICIES THAT CIRCUMVENT OUR CONSTITUTION CONVEY A FUNDAMENTAL LACK OF FAITH IN THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS

Until 12 days ago, the Bush administration maintained that there were no secret CIA-run "black-sites", extralegal prison camps where accused terror suspects were held incommunicado and beyond any judicial process. On 6 September, Pres. Bush admitted to constructing and managing the prison system through the CIA, and now his government is demanding that Congress sanction a system which circumvents Constitutional law and permits "alternative" methods of coercive interrogation, presently banned under international law.

If the US Senate is persuaded to permit this re-interpretation of Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, to permit the administration to impose methods tantamount to torture in order to obtain confessions and evidence from terror suspects, not only will US military personnel face a vastly more grave danger of such treatment themselves, but a fundamental element of American democracy will be eroded: that principle by which the rule of law and due process, not executive fiat, governs the treatment of prisoners of war and determines their guilt or innocence.

It cannot be overstated that a departure from the legal principle that only through open and fair judicial proceedings —where no prosecutorial abuse has been imposed on the accused or on the process for adjudication— can we faithfully know the final truth of an alleged criminal act, is to in fact oppose, in principle, in law and in practice, the democratic ideals on which the United States Constitution is founded. [Full Story]

WARRANTLESS NSA WIRETAPS RULED UNCONSTITUTIONAL

FEDERAL COURT SAYS NO LEGAL OR CONSTITUTIONAL BASIS FOR ADMIN.'S CLAIM TO POWER TO DISREGARD JUDICIAL PROCESS

A federal judge in Detroit ruled early yesterday that Pres. Bush's NSA surveillance program, which uses wiretaps implemented with no judicial oversight, is unconstitutional. The ruling strongly enforced the point that there are "no powers not created by the Constitution" rejecting the AG's claim that the Congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force (in Afghanistan) as a legal platform for sweeping new domestic powers.

Judge Anna Diggs Taylor specified that because there are "no powers not created by the Constitution" available to the president, "all 'inherent powers' must derive from that Constitution". This specifically takes issue with the attorney general's much criticized counsel suggesting the president can derive expansive new prosecutorial powers from laws specifically enacting Constitutional processes designed to permit overseas military action. [Full Story]

BILL PRESENTED TO PREVENT GOV'T TAMPERING WITH SCIENCE

Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) is to introduce an amendment to legislation currently under debate, which would restrict the executive branch's ability to gag scientists, manipulate their findings or demote those who disagree with official policy. The legislation would also require that scientists appointed to investigatory panels be selected for their credentials, not their political views. Similar legislation is pending before the Senate.

The new legislation is an effort to prevent the executive branch from covering up or re-shaping scientific findings that do not match its preconceived political strategies. It also seeks to protect scientists who blow the whistle on government missteps or past scientific misconceptions. [Full Story]

THE ILLUSION OF THE DEFINITE & INVASIVE 'OTHER'

SEVEN LIES THAT INFORM THE PUSH FOR AN ENGLISH-ONLY UNITED STATES

The human space is fluid, adaptable, sensitive to evolving circumstance. This is why democracy is the only legitimate form of government. The identity of groups, or for that matter of individuals is not implacable, nor is it absolutely relative. It follows the vicissitudes of the human health and mind, and requires sincere dialogue with the other in order to reach its fullest potential.

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.

1. The first key false premise is that there is an irrevocable danger to one's identity, one's security, one's community and the integrity of one's culture, if confronted with difference, if —to use the logic of the open market— one is forced to compete in the realm of ideas.

This is not only patently untrue, as will be shown in the enumeration of the other misperceptions that provoke xenophobia, it requires that we reject both American history and the values of a democratic society. American society has never been uniform, has always had to find ways to bring harmony among disparate groups and from the Constitution forward has sought to defend the rights and the role of minorities in society.

During the Second World War, the most decorated division was comprised largely of Japanese Americans from the Pacific Northwest and Native American tribes have lent soldiers, code-readers and specialists to all the wars since then.

E pluribus unum, the national motto, meaning 'of the many: one', has long been interpreted not as a call to flatten and evacuate the richness of an immigrant and pioneer culture, but to harness it, to make a more vibrant and adaptable continent-wide market, rich in ideas, abilities, distinctive methods and innovations.

2. The second basic untruth to examine is that government sanction of a national language leads to greater unity and a stronger uniform sense of national identity. First, it's worth referencing the brief glimpse of American history above and the words of great leaders who defended the idea of a potent national character, stemming from the global origins of the US population, to see that this is not even the goal of American society.

But more importantly, there are clear examples that show that imposed uniformity does not bring a healthy sense of national identity. France has a national one-culture policy that proclaims French the national language and requires that immigrants assimilate seamlessly into that one culture, leaving behind the trappings and traditions of their homelands.

Children are forbidden from wearing culturally specific clothing in schools and the 31 other languages indigenous to France are simply ignored by the government as a matter of cultural policy. Foreign langauges spoken widely in people's homes, like Arabic, Berber, Lao and Vietnamese, are relegated to non-French status and communities that maintain close ties to their family culture often find themselves bunched into ethnic ghettoes.

The result of this one-language policy has been constant and oppressive tension leading to the near total isolation of communities lacking the resources or the opportunity to integrate into the larger officially French culture, despite being French-born for one, two or three generations.

The explosive tensions promoted by this policy, and reinforced by the tacit discrimination it appeared to permit, led eventually to last November's riots, which began in largely multigenerational immigrant ghettoes in the northern Paris suburbs and spread quickly to 20 such suburbs and eventually 70 cities across the country and into neighboring countries.

The French interior minister further inflamed tensions by suggesting that the young men involved were by nature "scum" and that he would deport everyone who was accused of participation, ignoring the proportion of French citizens involved, his view obviously obscured by racial considerations. He further pledged a comprehensive purge of immigrants; the one-culture policy fueled this irrational xenophobia, directed at communities invited into French society during the post-WWII period of rebuilding.

So, two evident problems with this lie of a sole unifying language: the declaration of a single culture does not erase cultural diversity —for this reason Europe pressured Turkey to eventually recognize its Kurdish minority, which it had officially labeled an historical fiction—, and in the case of Paris, most of the "immigrant" youths were French born.

It is not the difference in culture that creates cross-cultural tension, but the refusal of the majority to accept that their nationality is not diminished or degraded by the presence of people who think and behave differently, but who also identify with that larger national identity.

3. A third major false premise of the English-only movement is the belief in some sort of past golden age in which English was the sole unifying language, spoken by all and to the exclusion of all others. This is not only untrue —the gold rush of 1849 brought not only easterners to northern California, but also communities of adventurous emigrants from China and east Asia—, it is utterly ridiculous in its denial of historial reality.

Of the more than 300 languages currently spoken in the United States, at least 154 are indigenous languages, which predate the arrival of European colonists five centuries ago. Of those native languages still spoken inside the territory of the United States, about half are endangered, 7 have only 1 fluent speaker, and 42 have 10 or fewer speakers. [Full Story]

THE NET WIDENS: WHAT ELSE ARE THEY MONITORING?

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 of NSA overreaching and the key fact that the article exposing the collaboration of 3 major telecoms failed to explore the complicity or innocence of cable, cellular and Internet companies.

Aid is writing a comprehensive history of the NSA and has sources inside the agency, past and present. He noted that 30 years ago, as the nation was marking its bicentennial celebrations, the NSA scandal of the day was Project Shamrock, investigation of which had revealed that Western Union and other telephone and telegram companies had been passing information and content of communications to the agency, every day, for more than 3 decades. [Full Story]

DATA SHADOWS & IMPROBABLE CONSENT

NEW TRENDS IN 'COMPULSORY VOLUNTARISM' RAISE THE SPECTRE OF 'CONSENTING' TO INFRINGED LIBERTIES AGAINST ONE'S WILL

A contract is legally binding only when: all signatories freely and voluntarily agree to its provisions; all provisions are themselves legal; none of the provisions is inherently unreasonable or deceptively worded. Neither contracts nor "terms and conditions" including indemnities disclaimers, can be classified as legislation. They do not make or construct legal limits by themselves.

Obvious as this may seem, it is a necessary introduction to the problem of the trade in personal information and "soft surveillance". Another vital piece of information is the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which ensures "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects" and that such barriers cannot be breached except by judicial warrant, brought after providing evidence of "probable cause". [Full Story]