TV LOBOTOMIE - La vérité scientifique sur les effets de la télévision

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English version info : TV Lobotomy  : The scientific truth about television

Sophie, 2 ans, regarde la télé 1 heure par jour. Cela double ses chances de présenter des troubles attentionnels en grandissant.

Lubin, 3 ans, regarde la télé 2 heures par jour. Cela triple ses chances d’être en surpoids.

Kevin, 4 ans, regarde des programmes jeunesse violents comme DragonBall Z. Cela quadruple ses chances de présenter des troubles du comportement quand il sera à l'école primaire.

Silvia, 7 ans, regarde la télé 1 heure par jour. Cela augmente de plus d'un tiers ses chances de devenir une adulte sans diplôme.

Lina, 15 ans, regarde des séries comme Desperate Housewives. Cela triple ses chances de connaître une grossesse précoce non désirée.

Entre 40 et 60 ans, Yves a regardé la télé 1 heure par jour. Cela augmente d'un tiers ses chances de développer la maladie d'Alzheimer.

Henri, 60 ans, regarde la télé 4 heures par jour. René, son jumeau, se contente de la moitié. Henri a 2 fois plus de chances de mourir d'un infarctus que René.

Chaque mois, les revues scientifiques internationales publient des dizaines de résultats de ce genre. Pour les spécialistes, dont fait partie l’auteur, il n’y a plus de doute : la télévision est un fléau. Elle exerce une influence profondément négative sur le développement intellectuel, les résultats scolaires, le langage, l’attention, l’imagination, la créativité, la violence, le sommeil, le tabagisme, l’alcoolisme, la sexualité, l’image du corps, le comportement alimentaire, l’obésité et l’espérance de vie.

Ces faits sont niés avec un aplomb fascinant par l’industrie audiovisuelle et son armée d’experts complaisants. La stratégie n’est pas nouvelle : les cigarettiers l’avaient utilisée, en leur temps, pour contester le caractère cancérigène du tabac...

Michel Desmurget est docteur en neurosciences. Après avoir fréquenté plusieurs grandes universités américaines (MIT, Emory, UCSF), il est aujourd’hui directeur de recherche à l’INSERM. Il est l’auteur de Mad in USA (Max Milo, 2008).

Subconscious War

dehypnotizeminds

New half hour documentary on media, reality & a culture of violence.

The Monetary Blind Spot

 http://www.scribd.com/doc/34641415/The-Monetary-Blind-Spot

This paper discusses several reasons why we are unable to see the nature and impact of our current monetary system on our behaviors and relationships.
http://www.lietaer.com/

Lawyers, Guns and Money: Wall Street Lawyers, Investment Bankers and Global Financial Crises

Over the last two centuries corporate lawyers and investment bankers have been central to the undemocratic consolidation of private corporate power.

"Wall Street lawyers, Investment Bankers and Global Financial Crises" download full paper here

Late 19th to Early 20th Century

Tom Reifer

Commenting that the "manufacturing aristocracy" was "one of the harshest that [had] ever existed in the world" Alexis de Toqueville cautioned in 1945 that "the friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed in this direction" predicting that this would be the source of any future permanent inequality and aristrocracy. And he was right.

In this paper, Reifer looks at the global financial crisis in a long historical context, drawing on the perspective of Ferdinand Braudel. In it we see how the legal ammendment in New Jersey that created the corporation in the 19th century led to the circumvention of barriers by private owners of capital, allowing them to play states off against one another in a neverending race to compete for mobile capital.

The lawyers themselves, de Toqueville saw as "bullwarks against democracy" for their role in enabling the removal of laws that would prevent consolidation of private corporate power and the formation of monopolies. We see how this led to the rise of Wall Street, and the cycles of financial crisis and instability that enabled further consolidation over the next century. The military budget and imperial conquests of the United States helped maintain surplus accumulation despite falling profits and overaccumulation, while neoliberal measures helped extend and deepend the reach of the market with globalization. The paper traces this long-term development, dicussing the role of corporate lawyers and investment bankers as key agents driving the consolidation of capitalism, and considers what lies next, the role of a "Beijing Consensus" and the implications this has for global inequality and possibility of alternative, more sustainable paths for the world economy.

Source:  http://www.tni.org/

«Dans un stade c’est un moment de communion, il n’y a plus de classes sociales»!

par Mohamed Belaali

« Le sport est une réponse à la crise, c’est parce qu’il y a des problèmes qu’il faut mobiliser le pays vers l’organisation de grands événements. Qu’est-ce qu’il y a de plus fort que le sport, et à l’intérieur du sport qu’est-ce qu’il y a de plus fort que le football » ? s’exclamait Nicolas Sarkozy. « Dans un stade c’est un moment de communion, il n’y a plus de classes sociales » déclarait Roselyne Bachelot (1). Le sport et plus particulièrement le football, voilà les remèdes miracles de la bourgeoisie et de ses serviteurs contre la crise du capitalisme. Ils permettent de surcroît d’abolir les classes et la lutte des classes ! Belle manière pour anesthésier la population et faire passer ainsi, sans trop de difficultés, des « réformes » douloureuses et réaliser des bénéfices fabuleux. Sauf que le football, tel qu’il est organisé aujourd’hui, est l’expression, le miroir d’une société capitaliste malade avec ses tares et sa brutalité : compétition à outrance, haine de l’autre, corruption, tricheries, racisme, chauvinisme, machisme, dopage, violence etc. etc.

En plus de la propagande quotidienne habituelle, faits divers, météo, burqa, sécurité, etc. l’annonce de l’Euro 2016 et la coupe du monde de football constituent une véritable aubaine pour les riches en ces temps de rigueur et d’austérité. Les luttes sociales deviennent difficiles à mener durant le Mondial. Ils savent que le foot fascine et tétanise les pauvres. Il leur procure, à l’instar d’une drogue dure, des moments de plaisir en oubliant un instant leur triste sort. Le foot les fait sortir massivement dans la rue crier la victoire de leur équipe : « on a gagné !...on a gagné ! ». Dans ce sens il leur sert d’exutoire aux multiples privations et frustrations. En les soulageant, le football les détourne en même temps de leurs vrais problèmes. « L’affaire Anelka » ne fait que prolonger, différemment, cette ambiance.

Les grands médias, jour et nuit, vont se charger de gaver le peuple d’images, de débats, d’interview et de commentaires liés au foot. Dans les foyers, les cafés, les restaurants, dans certains établissements scolaires, les stades, sur les places publiques... des écrans de télévision, petits et grands, transmettent en direct tous les matchs de la coupe du monde. Concerts, tournois, jeux, films, expositions et autres animations sont également prévus pour célébrer cet événement sportif qui se répète inlassablement tous les quatre ans. Tout est prêt pour que les pauvres « vibrent » ensemble et oublient les luttes sociales. Pendant ce temps là, les grandes multinationales, elles, gèrent et comptent tranquillement leurs milliards de dollars gagnés grâce à cette hystérie collective que représente la coupe du monde de football. Profitant, lui aussi, de cette anesthésie générale, le président de la République Nicolas Sarkozy annonce solennellement le 16 juin 2010 en pleine coupe du monde la destruction de ce qui reste encore du système de retraite par répartition. « Panem et circenses », voilà ce que les empereurs de la Rome antique offraient au peuple afin qu’il ne songe plus à sa misère.

Mais aujourd’hui ni les jeux ni le pain ne sont gratuits et les joueurs ne sont plus des gladiateurs. Le sport, comme la plupart des activités, est une vulgaire marchandise qui se vend et s’achète. Le sport, dans le cadre du capitalisme, est d’abord un marché, et un marché fabuleux. La dernière coupe du monde organisée en Allemagne en 2006 a enregistré plus de 26 milliards de téléspectateurs en audience cumulée à travers le monde. La liste des sponsors est interminable. Le chiffre d’affaire (ensemble des ventes) de la Fédération internationale de football (FIFA), l’une des organisations les plus corrompues au monde(2), a progressé de 60 % entre 2006 et 2010 (3). Les fabricants et les vendeurs de téléviseurs se frottent les mains. Sur seulement deux mois (mai/juin), leurs ventes peuvent atteindre les 200 000 postes. Les équipementiers sportifs comme Adidas, Nike et Puma s’arrachent à coup de millions de dollars des contrats avec les équipes nationales pour qu’elles portent leurs couleurs. Ils espèrent ainsi doper leurs ventes, en berne en 2009, de ballons, chaussures et autres maillots de foot. Les chaînes de télévision achètent à prix d’or les droits de diffuser les matchs afin d’ augmenter leur audience et vendre ainsi leurs spots publicitaires de trente secondes le plus cher possible.

Les corps des sportifs ne sont que des machines à sous. Les compétitions sont poussées à l’extrême afin que le spectacle soit rentable. Car seule la victoire, par tous les moyens, compte. Le dopage généralisé, dans ces conditions, devient indispensable. Le sport, paradoxalement, constitue ainsi la négation des qualités physiques des sportifs !
La bourgeoisie est donc gagnante sur les deux tableaux : endormir le peuple et faire des bénéfices.

Dans le cadre d’un capitalisme mondialisé, le sport en général et le football en particulier ne peuvent que servir la classe dominante qui les utilise comme un marché planétaire pour ses marchandises. Le football dans cette optique n’est, pour elle, qu’un instrument efficace pour faire des bénéfices. A cette fin, elle mobilise d’une manière hystérique tout son appareil idéologique et médiatique. La classe dirigeante exploite et exacerbe à l’extrême les passions et les comportements les plus grégaires et dressent les individus et les nations les uns contre les autres, les détournant ainsi des vrais responsables de leurs malheurs c’est à dire le capitalisme et la classe sociale qui le porte, la bourgeoisie.

Mohamed Belaali

Fonte:  http://www.oulala.net/

Nuestro Sueño: Un Mundo sin Pobreza”

El Banco Mundial tiene como lema en su edificio central en Washington: “Nuestro Sueño: Un Mundo sin Pobreza”.

Entre 1970 y 2001, la deuda externa de los países del Sur se multiplicó por 35.

El Banco Mundial es uno de los organismos encargados de gestionar los pagos de intereses de esa deuda multilateral.

Bien saben los economistas del Banco Mundial que ese “sueño” no llegará a cumplirse nunca.

Según las reglas del capitalismo, hay que maximizar los beneficios en el menor tiempo posible.

La desigualdad no es una consecuencia posible de este sistema, es una condición indispensable para que funcione.

Fonte: http://www.letra.org/spip/article.php?id_article=3381

Militainment, Inc.War, Media, and Popular Culture

Militainment, Inc.War, Media, and Popular Culture

Militainment, Inc. offers provocative, sometimes disturbing insight into the ways that war is presented and viewed as entertainment—or "militainment"—in contemporary American popular culture. War has been the subject of entertainment for centuries, but Roger Stahl argues that a new interactive mode of militarized entertainment is recruiting its audience as virtual-citizen soldiers. The author examines a wide range of historical and contemporary media examples to demonstrate the ways that war now invites audiences to enter the spectacle as an interactive participant through a variety of channels—from news coverage to online video games to reality television. Simply put, rather than presenting war as something to be watched, the new interactive militainment presents war as something to be played and experienced vicariously. Stahl examines the challenges that this new mode of militarized entertainment poses for democracy, and explores the controversies and resistant practices that it has inspired.

This volume is essential reading for anyone interested in the relationship between war and media, and it sheds surprising light on the connections between virtual battlefields and the international conflicts unfolding in Iraq and Afghanistan today.
http://rogerstahl.info/

Nada es nuestro, todo es prestado

La propiedad privada es una ficción, una creación ideológica. Nada es nuestro ya que todo cuanto tenemos es un préstamo que la naturaleza y la sociedad nos hace. El carbono es el ladrillo de la vida. La naturaleza nos ha prestado millones de estos átomos inmortales por un tiempo limitado procedentes de otro ente y que a su vez pasarán a forma parte de otro en breve. Primo Levi nos daja una breve historia de uno de estos átomos, quizás alojado hoy en un recóndito lugar de tu cerebro:

“Nuestro átomo de carbono, yace durante millones de años unido a tres átomos de oxígeno y uno de calcio, en forma de piedra caliza no lejos de la superficie de la tierra. En cierto momento un golpe de pico lo separa y lo envía al horno de cal, introduciéndolo en el mundo de las cosas que cambian. Es calcinado, y todavía colgado de sus compañeros de oxígeno, es expulsado por la chimenea y sale al aire. Su historia, antes inmóvil, se vuelve ahora tumultuosa. Llevado por el viento, precipitado hacia la tierra, y elevado diez kilómetros. Es respirado por un halcón, bajando hasta sus pulmones, pero no penetró en su sangre, y fue expelido. Se disolvió tres veces en el agua del mar, una en el agua de un torrente, y nuevamente fue expelido. Viajó con el viento durante ocho años: ahora arriba, ahora abajo, sobre el mar o entre las nubes, sobre bosques, desiertos e ilimitadas extensiones de hielo… y entonces fue capturado para la aventura orgánica.
El átomo del que estamos hablando fue llevado por el viento a lo largo de una fila de vides. Tuvo la buena suerte de rozar a una hoja, penetrarla y ser cosida allí por un rayo de sol. Ahora nuestro átomo forma parte de una molécula de glucosa. Viaja de la hoja al tronco, y desde allí desciende hacia los racimos casi maduros. Después intervino el vinatero. El destino del vino el ser bebido. La mujer gestante que lo bebió guardó la molécula…

Lo público, lo común lo compartido es el estado natural de todo cuanto somos y vemos. Todo lo demás son construcciones ideológicas al servicio de las élites.

Fonte: http://alterglobalizacion.wordpress.com/

Dangerous Minds Deer Hunting with Jesus: Joe Bageant

Richard Metzger interviews Joe Bageant, author of the (excellent!) book, Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War. Joe offers insight into American redneck culture and tries to explain Birthers, tea baggers and how Republicans have become so infernally adept at convincing working class Americans to vote against their own self-interest, like now, with the health care debate. Do not miss this one. Furthermore do not miss Deer Hunting with Jesus, it’s essential reading if you want to understand the deeply ingrained psychological complexities that make up modern America, whether you are American yourself or not.

Joe Bageant: Corporations, government are dehumanizing us

Dear Joe,

After 56 years or so of watching the "powers that be" in operation, I have come to the conclusion that slowly, but surely, big corporations and the government are dehumanizing us.

I can recall a time when those who dealt with employee relationships were called "personnel departments and employees were referred to by name. The first step was to take away our names and give us "employee numbers", (under the guise of simplifying accounting procedures) so that we would no longer be thought of as a real person. Then it was to change the corporation department that deals with employees from the "personnel department" to the "human resources" department, which takes away our humanity altogether. With time and constant hearing of ourselves referred to in this manner we've come to accept it when we should be screaming at the top of our lungs against it. Even our media, whom I truly believe are on someone's propaganda payroll, refers to us in this manner.

Continue reading "Corporations, government are dehumanizing us" »

Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars.

The demise of the dollar

In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading

By Robert Fisk The Independent

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.

The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.

The Americans, who are aware the meetings have taken place – although they have not discovered the details – are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs. Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan, China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security."

This sounds like a dangerous prediction of a future economic war between the US and China over Middle East oil – yet again turning the region's conflicts into a battle for great power supremacy. China uses more oil incrementally than the US because its growth is less energy efficient. The transitional currency in the move away from dollars, according to Chinese banking sources, may well be gold. An indication of the huge amounts involved can be gained from the wealth of Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar who together hold an estimated $2.1 trillion in dollar reserves.

The decline of American economic power linked to the current global recession was implicitly acknowledged by the World Bank president Robert Zoellick. "One of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations," he said in Istanbul ahead of meetings this week of the IMF and World Bank. But it is China's extraordinary new financial power – along with past anger among oil-producing and oil-consuming nations at America's power to interfere in the international financial system – which has prompted the latest discussions involving the Gulf states.

Brazil has shown interest in collaborating in non-dollar oil payments, along with India. Indeed, China appears to be the most enthusiastic of all the financial powers involved, not least because of its enormous trade with the Middle East.

China imports 60 per cent of its oil, much of it from the Middle East and Russia. The Chinese have oil production concessions in Iraq – blocked by the US until this year – and since 2008 have held an $8bn agreement with Iran to develop refining capacity and gas resources. China has oil deals in Sudan (where it has substituted for US interests) and has been negotiating for oil concessions with Libya, where all such contracts are joint ventures.

Furthermore, Chinese exports to the region now account for no fewer than 10 per cent of the imports of every country in the Middle East, including a huge range of products from cars to weapon systems, food, clothes, even dolls. In a clear sign of China's growing financial muscle, the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, yesterday pleaded with Beijing to let the yuan appreciate against a sliding dollar and, by extension, loosen China's reliance on US monetary policy, to help rebalance the world economy and ease upward pressure on the euro.

Ever since the Bretton Woods agreements – the accords after the Second World War which bequeathed the architecture for the modern international financial system – America's trading partners have been left to cope with the impact of Washington's control and, in more recent years, the hegemony of the dollar as the dominant global reserve currency.

The Chinese believe, for example, that the Americans persuaded Britain to stay out of the euro in order to prevent an earlier move away from the dollar. But Chinese banking sources say their discussions have gone too far to be blocked now. "The Russians will eventually bring in the rouble to the basket of currencies," a prominent Hong Kong broker told The Independent. "The Brits are stuck in the middle and will come into the euro. They have no choice because they won't be able to use the US dollar."

Chinese financial sources believe President Barack Obama is too busy fixing the US economy to concentrate on the extraordinary implications of the transition from the dollar in nine years' time. The current deadline for the currency transition is 2018.

The US discussed the trend briefly at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh; the Chinese Central Bank governor and other officials have been worrying aloud about the dollar for years. Their problem is that much of their national wealth is tied up in dollar assets.

"These plans will change the face of international financial transactions," one Chinese banker said. "America and Britain must be very worried. You will know how worried by the thunder of denials this news will generate."

Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq.

The Joy of Sachs CommonDreams.org

Published on Friday, July 17, 2009 by The New York Times
by Paul Krugman

The American economy remains in dire straits, with one worker in six unemployed or underemployed. Yet Goldman Sachs just reported record quarterly profits — and it’s preparing to hand out huge bonuses, comparable to what it was paying before the crisis. What does this contrast tell us?

First, it tells us that Goldman is very good at what it does. Unfortunately, what it does is bad for America.

Second, it shows that Wall Street’s bad habits — above all, the system of compensation that helped cause the financial crisis — have not gone away.

Third, it shows that by rescuing the financial system without reforming it, Washington has done nothing to protect us from a new crisis, and, in fact, has made another crisis more likely.
Let’s start by talking about how Goldman makes money.

Over the past generation — ever since the banking deregulation of the Reagan years — the U.S. economy has been “financialized.” The business of moving money around, of slicing, dicing and repackaging financial claims, has soared in importance compared with the actual production of useful stuff. The sector officially labeled “securities, commodity contracts and investments” has grown especially fast, from only 0.3 percent of G.D.P. in the late 1970s to 1.7 percent of G.D.P. in 2007.

Such growth would be fine if financialization really delivered on its promises — if financial firms made money by directing capital to its most productive uses, by developing innovative ways to spread and reduce risk. But can anyone, at this point, make those claims with a straight face? Financial firms, we now know, directed vast quantities of capital into the construction of unsellable houses and empty shopping malls. They increased risk rather than reducing it, and concentrated risk rather than spreading it. In effect, the industry was selling dangerous patent medicine to gullible consumers.

Goldman’s role in the financialization of America was similar to that of other players, except for one thing: Goldman didn’t believe its own hype. Other banks invested heavily in the same toxic waste they were selling to the public at large. Goldman, famously, made a lot of money selling securities backed by subprime mortgages — then made a lot more money by selling mortgage-backed securities short, just before their value crashed. All of this was perfectly legal, but the net effect was that Goldman made profits by playing the rest of us for suckers.

And Wall Streeters have every incentive to keep playing that kind of game.

The huge bonuses Goldman will soon hand out show that financial-industry highfliers are still operating under a system of heads they win, tails other people lose. If you’re a banker, and you generate big short-term profits, you get lavishly rewarded — and you don’t have to give the money back if and when those profits turn out to have been a mirage. You have every reason, then, to steer investors into taking risks they don’t understand.

And the events of the past year have skewed those incentives even more, by putting taxpayers as well as investors on the hook if things go wrong.

I won’t try to parse the competing claims about how much direct benefit Goldman received from recent financial bailouts, especially the government’s assumption of A.I.G.’s liabilities. What’s clear is that Wall Street in general, Goldman very much included, benefited hugely from the government’s provision of a financial backstop — an assurance that it will rescue major financial players whenever things go wrong.

You can argue that such rescues are necessary if we’re to avoid a replay of the Great Depression. In fact, I agree. But the result is that the financial system’s liabilities are now backed by an implicit government guarantee.

Now the last time there was a comparable expansion of the financial safety net, the creation of federal deposit insurance in the 1930s, it was accompanied by much tighter regulation, to ensure that banks didn’t abuse their privileges. This time, new regulations are still in the drawing-board stage — and the finance lobby is already fighting against even the most basic protections for consumers.

If these lobbying efforts succeed, we’ll have set the stage for an even bigger financial disaster a few years down the road. The next crisis could look something like the savings-and-loan mess of the 1980s, in which deregulated banks gambled with, or in some cases stole, taxpayers’ money — except that it would involve the financial industry as a whole.

The bottom line is that Goldman’s blowout quarter is good news for Goldman and the people who work there. It’s good news for financial superstars in general, whose paychecks are rapidly climbing back to precrisis levels. But it’s bad news for almost everyone else.

Paul Krugman is professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University and a regular columnist for The New York Times. Krugman was the 2008 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics. He is the author of numerous books, including The Conscience of A Liberal, and his most recent, The Return of Depression Economics.

This Little Kiddy Went to Market

The Corporate Capture of Childhood

by Sharon Beder

with Wendy Varney and Richard Gosden

This Little Kiddy Went to Market investigates the way that corporations are strategically shaping children to be hyperconsumers, submissive employees, and passive, unquestioning citizens as well as feeding a burgeoning pharmaceutical industry by ensuring children who cannot be shaped are given a psychiatric diagnosis.

It covers the way that corporations are targeting ever younger children with a barrage of advertising and marketing; the way that children’s play has been turned into a commercial opportunity; and how corporations have taken advantage of childish anxieties and insecurities, and reshaped children’s very identities. It shows how school funding shortages have opened the door to an influx of corporate materials into schools aimed at inculcating consumer and business values.

The book analyses school reforms in English-speaking nations to uncover the hidden agendas behind them including: shifting of responsibility for the consequences of funding shortages to school management; turning schools into competing business enterprises where children are drilled and constantly tested; producing submissive employees with basic literacy and numeracy skills rather than developing an informed active citizenry with critical thinking skills; enabling businesses to take control of more and more aspects of schooling; and eroding the ideal and reality of public schooling.

‘A chilling assessment of modern commercial culture and how it distorts childhood, corrupts civic institutions, and endangers the planet.’

Alex Molnar, Professor of Education Policy, Arizona State University

Ministers 'Using Fear of Terror'

A former head of MI5 has accused the government of exploiting the fear of terrorism and trying to bring in laws that restrict civil liberties.
BBC News

In an interview in a Spanish newspaper, published in the Daily Telegraph, Dame Stella Rimington, 73, also accuses the US of "tortures".

The Home Office said it was vital to strike a right balance between privacy, protection and sharing personal data.

It said any policies which impact on privacy must be "proportionate".

Dame Stella, who stood down as the director general of the security service in 1996, has previously been critical of the government's policies, including its attempts to extend pre-charge detention for terror suspects to 42 days and the controversial plan to introduce ID cards.

"It would be better that the government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism - that we live in fear and under a police state," she told the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia.

She said the British security services were "no angels," but they did not kill people.

"The US has gone too far with Guantanamo and the tortures," she said.

"MI5 does not do that. Furthermore it has achieved the opposite effect - there are more and more suicide terrorists finding a greater justification."

'Take stock'

Dame Stella's comments come as a study is published by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) that accuses the US and the UK of undermining the framework of international law.

Former Irish president Mary Robinson, the president of the ICJ said: "Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock and to repeal abusive laws and policies enacted in recent years.

"Human rights and international humanitarian law provide a strong and flexible framework to address terrorist threats."

The BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner said the ICJ report would probably have more of an impact than Dame Stella's remarks because it was a wide-ranging, three-year study carried out by an eminent group of practising legal experts.

Dame Stella appeared to be more restrained in her comments than the ICJ, he added.

She was keen to stress the risk of civil liberties being curtailed, while the jurists insisted that international law had already been "actively undermined".

Shadow security minister Baroness Neville-Jones said the Conservatives were "committed to ensuring that security measures are proportionate and adhere to the rule of law".

The Tories said the government's push to extend the detention time limit for terror suspects was the kind of measure condemned by the report.

Human rights campaign group Liberty pointed to a number of other recent developments it said represented "a creeping encroachment on our fundamental rights":

• Government plans for a giant database to record the times, dates and recipients of all emails and text messages sent and phone calls made in the UK
  
• The growth of Britain's DNA database - it is now the world's largest, per head of population, with samples from some 4m people
  
• The use by councils of laws designed to track criminals and terrorists to spy on ordinary citizens. In one case a family was watched to see if they were really living in a school catchment area


• The spread of CCTV cameras. Britain now reportedly has some 4m, the highest density in western Europe


• Proposals for "secret inquests," excluding relatives, juries and the media, which the government says would prevent intelligence details leaking out

Isabella Sankey, director of policy at Liberty, said she was "enormously heartened" by what Dame Stella had said.

"Over the last seven years, we've seen a number of measures passed, some of which affect very few of us in a horrible and terrible way, whether that's house arrest under control orders or rendition and torture in foreign states," she said.

"We've also seen many, many measures that affect all of us just a little bit and, most of all, which seriously impact our rights to privacy.

"We have very broad police powers which sweep the innocent up with the guilty."

'Effective safeguards'

A Home Office spokesman said: "The government has been clear that where surveillance or data collection will impact on privacy they should only be used where it is necessary and proportionate."

"This provides law enforcement agencies with the tools to protect the public as well as ensuring government has the ability to provide effective public services while ensuring there are effective safeguards and a solid legal framework that protects civil liberties."

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Ed Davey said: "This is damning testament to just how much liberty has been ineffectually sacrificed in the 'war on terror'."

Dame Stella became the first female head of MI5 in 1992.

CommonDreams.org

Guardians of Power

The Myth of the Liberal Media

David Edwards and David Cromwell

Synopsis
Can a corporate media system be expected to tell the truth about a world dominated by corporations? Can newspapers, including the 'liberal' "Guardian" and the "Independent," tell the truth about catastrophic climate change - about its roots in mass consumerism and corporate obstructionism - when they are themselves profit-oriented businesses dependent on advertisers for 75 per cent of their revenues? Can the BBC tell the truth about UK government crimes in Iraq when its senior managers are appointed by the government? Has anything fundamentally changed since BBC founder Lord Reith wrote of the establishment: "They know they can trust us not to be really impartial"? Why did the British and American mass media fail to challenge even the most obvious government lies on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the invasion in March 2003? Why did the media ignore the claims of UN weapons inspectors that Iraq had been 90-95 per cent "fundamentally disarmed" as early as 1998? This book answers these questions, and more.

John Pilger says...
“The creators and editors of Medialens, David Edwards and David Cromwell, have had such influence in a short time that, by holding to account those who, it is said, write history’s draft, they may well have changed the course of modern historiography. They have certainly torn up the ‘ethical blank cheque’, which Richard Drayton referred to [in the Guardian], and have exposed as morally corrupt ‘the right to bomb, to maim, to imprison without trial...’. Without Medialens during the attack on and occupation of Iraq, the full gravity of that debacle might have been consigned to oblivion, and to bad history.

“They have not bothered with soft targets, such as Rupert Murdoch’s Sun, but have concentrated on that sector of the media which prides itself on its ‘objectivity’, ‘impartiality’ and ‘balance’ (such as the BBC) and its liberalism and fairness (such as the Guardian). Not since Noam Chomsky’s and Edward Herman’s Manufacturing Consent have we had such an incisive and erudite guide through the media’s thicket of agendas and vested interests. Indeed, they have done the job of true journalists: they have set the record straight.

“For this reason, Guardians of Power ought to be required reading in every media college. It is the most important book about journalism I can remember.”

Noam Chomsky says...
"Regular critical analysis of the media, filling crucial gaps and correcting the distortions of ideological prisms, has never been more important. Media Lens has performed a major public service by carrying out this task with energy, insight, and care."

Edward Herman says...
"Media Lens is doing an outstanding job of pressing the mainstream media to at least follow their own stated principles and meet their public service obligations. It is fun as well as enlightening to watch their representatives, while sometimes giving straightforward answers to queries, often getting flustered, angry, evasive, and sometimes mis-stating the facts."

Reviews of the book

Interviews about the book

Extracts from the book

medialens.org

War Made Easy

How presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death

Norman Solomon

War Made Easy cuts through the dense web of spin to probe and scrutinize the key "perception management" techniques that have played huge roles in the promotion of American wars in recent decades. This guide to disinformation analyzes American military adventures past and present to reveal striking similarities in the efforts of various administrations to justify, and retain, public support for war.

War Made Easy is essential reading. It documents a long series of deliberate misdeeds at the highest levels of power and lays out important guidelines to help readers distinguish a propaganda campaign from actual news reporting. With War Made Easy, every reader can become a savvy media critic and, perhaps, help the nation avoid costly and unnecessary wars.

excerpts from the book War Made Easy Third World Traveller

Norman Solomon page

War Made Easy Media Education Foundation

Free Movies & Documentaries

Convergence Culture

Where Old and New Media Collide

Henry Jenkins is the DeFlorz Professor of Humanities and the Founder/Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. The author or editor of eleven books including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, Jenkins also writes a regular column for Technology Review.

Convergence Culture maps a new territory: where old and new media intersect, where grassroots and corporate media collide, where the power of the media producer and the power of the consumer interact in unpredictable ways.

Henry Jenkins, one of America's most respected media analysts, delves beneath the new media hype to uncover the important cultural transformations that are taking place as media converge. He takes us into the secret world of Survivor Spoilers, where avid internet users pool their knowledge to unearth the show's secrets before they are revealed on the air. He introduces us to young Harry Potter fans who are writing their own Hogwarts tales while executives at Warner Brothers struggle for control of their franchise. He shows us how The Matrix has pushed transmedia storytelling to new levels, creating a fictional world where consumers track down bits of the story across multiple media channels.Jenkins argues that struggles over convergence will redefine the face of American popular culture. Industry leaders see opportunities to direct content across many channels to increase revenue and broaden markets. At the same time, consumers envision a liberated public sphere, free of network controls, in a decentralized media environment. Sometimes corporate and grassroots efforts reinforce each other, creating closer, more rewarding relations between media producers and consumers. Sometimes these two forces are at war.

Jenkins provides a riveting introduction to the world where every story gets told and every brand gets sold across multiple media platforms. He explains the cultural shift that is occurring as consumers fight for control across disparate channels, changing the way we do business, elect our leaders, and educate our children. Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins