MUSHARRAF ARRESTS OVER 3,500 LAWYERS, DISSIDENTS, ACTIVISTS IN NATIONWIDE MIILITARY ACTION

Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has signaled his willingness to resort to force to put a stop to protests against his exercise of power, suspending the constitution, rounding up opposition leaders, judiciary officials, human rights activists, and saying democracy will be restored upon his decree. Several days into a martial law decree, protests are mounting and police violence against demonstrators shows no signs of abating.

Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto has called on Musharraf to hold elections as scheduled in January, to step down as military chief and to restore the constitution and the judiciary. She has said she will stage mass demonstrations in Lahore, then march with thousands of supporters across the country to Islamabad to demand his resignation if the rule of law is not promptly restored. [Full Story]

FLAG ON THE LAPEL, A NO-ISSUE COMMENT

Flag on the lapel... the quality of debate in American political punditry has reached the near absurd, when months before any primary vote, nationally syndicated columnists and commentators on one of the most serious shows in political analysis attempt to assess whether or not a candidate is 'ready' based on the unserious question about wearing a flag on his suit lapel.

In examining the question of a 'flap' involving Senator Barack Obama and a television interview in Iowa, commentators on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopolous discussed whether the senator's response was adequately politicized. It was actually suggested that he was 'not ready' for the national stage because he did not craft a glitzy lie when asked about taking off the lapel flag he had added after 9/11.

Interestingly, his response was good political salesmanship: he detailed his belief that it was more patriotic to talk about the ideas he had for the nation than to cover up an unimaginative posture with a simple visual effect. He answered that for him the flag on the lapel was a kind of deceit at precisely a time when he felt it was tasteless to engage in such showmanship.

JOURNALISM STUDENT TASERED BY POLICE AFTER ASKING HARD QUESTIONS OF SEN. KERRY

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 the senator. He asked the 2004 presidential candidate why he conceded the 2004 election "on the day" when there were reports from several states of voter suppression. He went on to ask why Kerry does not push to impeach Bush for the Iraq war, and to prevent war with Iran, then finishes with a third question about whether Sen. Kerry was "a member of the same secret society as the president".

Police abruptly surrounded the student, before he could finish and while Sen. Kerry was beginning to answer. Sen. Kerry was heard faintly saying "That's all right, let me answer his question", but police ignored his request. As the student cried out "what did I do?" and "please help me!", police wrestled him to the ground, handcuffed him, then while he was pinned down, unarmed, under several officers, electrocuted him multiple times with a "Taser" device, designed to incapacitate violent or dangerous armed aggressors. [Full Story]

NET NEUTRALITY: A NECESSARY PRINCIPLE FOR MAINTAINING GLOBAL DEMOCRATIC STANDARDS

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 allowed to police its content or to charge for provider-user access. It is a vital ingredient in the make-up of the Internet, because it guarantees the freedom of information that makes the web so useful to free society and so valuable to those who do well what works in that open environment.

But the US House of Representatives last year voted to end net neutrality with the COPE Act (Communications Opportunity Promotion and Enhancement). The language of COPE would permit major telecommunications companies to control what content their subscribers would be allowed to see. It would allow them to charge content-providers for 'visibility', or for speed of bandwidth, favoring not the most interesting material or the most thorough of reporters, but rather the wealthiest corporations in the media game.

The result would be: independent voices would be nearly stamped out by major players; bloggers would not be able to compete with major sites like Yahoo! or MSN, which would (one imagines) easily be able to pay the extra 'bandwidth access' fees the telecoms would assess; information would suffer from a 'mainstreaming' effect, whereby all prominent sites routinely feed the same language, taken from the sames sources, into the same type of news content, marginalizing more analytical or academic materials; the Internet would belong to the ISPs and not to its users, be they content-creators or end-users.

Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) has pointed out in hearings on the Senate floor that the 'Bell companies' had "literally nothing to do with" creating the internet. AT&T even enjoy the unique distinction of refusing to participate in its creation. They already charge at both ends of the Internet experience: both end-users and content-providers have to pay access fees to have a connection to the world wide web, which, incidentally, has been the most profitable area of the telecom sector over recent years.

The direct effect of any legislation permitting the currently prohibited practice of stratifying bandwidth to direct pre-paid content to more users would be to 'bottleneck' the free press. The First Amendment to the US Constitution specifies that: "Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..." Any law permitting the constraint of the freedom of access of people connecting to the Internet to information available across its fibers would be a very direct abridging of the freedom of speech and of the press.

The Internet has allowed the 'press', i.e., all media whereby information is distributed from those in the know to the People, to expand its freedom to unprecedented levels. This has been good for all involved, has helped involve ordinary citizens in the political process, has helped create unimaginable profits for business, has created a new digital economy where freedom of information is a basic foundational component. To create an Internet bottleneck, where all traffic is partitioned into the (minority) high-priced high-speed service and the (vast majority) marginal, slower-access fibers, is to squeeze the vast new digital media culture into a space that cannot adequately serve its needs.

Net neutrality is the only way we can know that there are not more dirty tricks being played by political figures whose ideas we do not share, the only way we can ensure that research that is helpful to all people, but is poorly funded, be available to those in a position to use it for the good, the only way we can be sure that information which would not fit the predetermined 'official' chronicle of events be able to surface and play its necessary role in public life.

In short, without net neutrality, the Internet is just cable television with a very limited visual landscape and a slower pace. And cable television suffers from one fatal flaw: everything is bought and paid for, leaving nearly zero room for any content of a strictly humanitarian or civic nature. A free society needs that information to exist, and ours has not only created the platform to allow for it inexpensively and on a vast scale, but we have adjusted to the digital realm in such a way that we now require the Internet to maintain that type of information flow. [s]

RUPERT MURDOCH WINS BID TO BUY DOW JONES

BANCROFT FAMILY SHAREHOLDERS GIVE ENOUGH SUPPORT TO LET DEAL GO THROUGH, MURDOCH WILL CONTROL WALL STREET JOURNAL

Controversial media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, through his company Newscorp, has reportedly persuaded the Bancroft family, which holds a controlling interest in the financial company Dow Jones, to sell the firm for $5.6 billion, giving him control of the Wall Street Journal newspaper. Until now, there had been opposition from within the Bancroft family, based on concerns Murdoch would distort the editorial culture and diminish the Journal's reputation for journalistic independence.

Murdoch has reportedly employed a no-pressure method of persuasion, raising the offer, and giving time for the editorial environment of the Journal to express and debate all competing views on the matter. He has reportedly assured the current ownership and board of Dow Jones that he will not interfere with the editorial choices of the Wall Street Journal. [Full Story]

ECONOMY STRONG OR REPORTING WEAK?

IHT STORY SUGGESTS US ECONOMIC GROWTH SAVING WORLD MARKETS FROM TAILSPIN

I was amazed to see an article entitled "Strong U.S. economy helps slow drop in world markets", knowing that the dollar is falling, people are struggling to make ends meet, we're constantly hearing about bankruptcies on the rise, and the housing market is, well, in free-fall, with major lenders under investigation for lending-to-loot. The story was based on figures reported by the US Commerce Department, which had just reported (Friday) that the "US economy" (ostensibly, GDP) had grown by 3.4 % in the 2nd quarter of 2007, even as world markets looked down a steep slope due to fears of a global credit crisis.

I had just spoken to a friend whose husband and father work in real estate, who complained of the poor state of things, and the impossibility of selling anything that had increased in value in recent years. Just after seeing the story, I spoke to a financial professional who expressed surprise, telling me his assessment was that GDP could not have been far above 1.5 %, if taken as an annual measure. We discussed the tendency of federal agencies, over the past several years, to issue such reports, then some weeks later to (much less visibly) publish "revisions", normally cutting positive figures in half. [Full Story]