Friday 10 December 2010

 

WikiLeaks fall-out

'The fourth estate is dead' — Former CIA analyst   By Nathan Diebenow RawStory.com 10 December 2010 — Traditional lines of communication between the people and the press have fallen into such disrepair in America that a whole new approach is necessary to challenge the military-industrial-governmental complex, according to a former CIA analyst sympathetic to WikiLeaks. "The Fourth Estate is dead," Ray McGovern, of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, told Raw Story in an exclusive interview. "The Fourth Estate in this country has been captured by government and corporations, the military-industrial complex, the intelligence apparatus. Captive! So, there is no Fourth Estate." McGovern explained that the term the "Fourth Estate," known today as the news media in the US, was first coined by 18th century British statesman Edmund Burke. Burke is said to have pointed to the balcony in Parliament and lauded the print media of his day for being the safeguards of democracy. — Read the full article at RawStory.com, 946 words.

FBI whistleblower: No Iraq war if Wikileaks had existed   By Nathan Diebenow RawStory.com 10 December 2010 — A member of a group of former intelligence professionals that has rallied behind WikiLeaks suggested in a recent interview with Raw Story that the world would be a different and better place had the online secrets outlet come into existence years sooner. “If there had been a mechanism like Wikileaks, 9/11 could have been prevented,” Coleen Rowley, a former special agent/legal counsel at the FBI's Minneapolis division, told Raw Story in an exclusive interview. Rowley and her colleague Bogdan Dzakovic, a special agent for the FAA's security division, explained this position in an op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times in October. However, they admit no claim to the original idea of an established pro-whistle-blower infrastructure. It's purely the U.S. government's, she said. — Read the full article at RawStory.com, 878 words.

	Cartoon by Steve Benson, Comics.com, 10 December 2010.

'Illegal', 'likely unconstitutional' — Ontario Ombudsman

Secret G20 law was illegal, Ombudsman slams provincial government and Toronto Police Service

7 December 2010, TORONTO — It was “illegal” and “likely unconstitutional” for Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government to pass a secret regulation that police used to detain people near Toronto’s G20 summit of world leaders last summer, says Ombudsman Andre Marin.

In a scorching 125-page report entitled Caught in the Act, Marin said the measure “should never have been enacted” and “was almost certainly beyond the authority of the government to enact.”

“Responsible protesters and civil rights groups who took the trouble to educate themselves about their rights had no way of knowing they were walking into a trap – they were literally caught in the Act; the Public Works Protection Act and its pernicious regulatory offspring,” he told reporters. — Read the full article at the Toronto Star, 632 words.

 

Some Commissioner. Some integrity

Harper's choice: Integrity commissioner's actions 'unacceptable', says Fraser

From the Desk of Dennis Carr, Sustainable Development Editor

Dark past haunts present in Trail, British Columbia

First, we take Toronto ...

Ford plans to hire more cops, but police don't want them

Crime is down 30%, but true to his ideology, new Toronto mayor wants to hire 100 more cops even though Toronto police say they don't need and can't afford the extra man-power

Typo led to mistaken villification as company that shut down Wikileaks, Canadian web-host now serves Wiki's leaks

Remedial Media

Loony Night In Canada, brought to you by the CBC

7 December 2010 — I spent part of the weekend reading up on Don Cherry’s views on how this country is run and by whom. A bracing experience, with dollops of black comedy. Rather like watching the Leafs.

And it eventually occurred to me – who needs Sun TV News when CBC is unsubtly furthering a right-wing agenda? Thanks to CBC’s hands-off, shrugging attitude to Don Cherry’s political activism, the broadcaster is authenticating that activism.

In case you don’t live in the centre of the universe, you should know that today Cherry will “introduce” Rob Ford, the new mayor of Toronto, at the mayor’s first council meeting.

Why is Ford Don Cherry’s kind of guy? According to the Toronto Star: “Voters are ‘sick of the elites and artsy people’ running politics, says Don Cherry.” Cherry is also reported to be pleased by things “shifting around a bit to the right” and is further quoted as saying, “It’s time for some lunch-pail, blue-collar people.” That wouldn’t be Ford, exactly, as he’s a well-off career politician. Even just reading Cherry in the paper one can hear the tone of sanctimonious self-importance so familiar from Hockey Night in Canada. — Read the full article at The Globe and Mail, 972 words.

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ParkTales

Homeless in Parkdale but - Ottawa don't be so smug!

10 December 2010, OTTAWA — I left my multicultural Parkdale this week to visit friends in Ottawa. They happen to live in the Glebe, an upscale neighbourhood in Ottawa. There are trendy stores, many "fair trade" coffee shops, your choice  of upscale bars and restaurents.
 
But one thing the Glebe has in common with my Parkdale is homeless or disadvantaged people.
 
I was quite surprised to see in this middle and upper middle class neighbourhood, people asking for handouts on the street just as in my own back yard. — Read the full article inside, 256 words.

Looking forward ...

The decline and fall of the American Empire:

Four scenarios for the end of the American Century by 2025

Empires come and go, usually expiring far faster than they rise; there is no reason to expect the Pax Americana to be an exception

Rear-view Mirror

Vietnam: The Last Battle

3 December 2010 — The rain sheeted down; time washed away. I looked down from the rooftop in Saigon where, more than a generation ago, in the wake of the longest war of modern times, I had watched silent, sullen streets awash. The foreigners were gone, at last. Through the mist, like little phantoms, four children ran into view, their arms outstretched. They circled and weaved and dived; and one of them fell down, feigning death. They were bombers.

This was not unusual, for there is no place like Vietnam. Within my lifetime, Ho Chi Minh's nationalists had fought and expelled the French, whose tree-lined boulevards, pink-washed villas and scaled-down replica of the Paris Opera were facades for plunder and cruelty; then, the Japanese, with whom the French colons collaborated; then, the British, who sought to reinstall the French; then, the Americans, with whom Ho had repeatedly tried to forge an alliance against China; then, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, who attacked from the west; and, finally, the Chinese who, with a vengeful nod from Washington, came down from the north. All of them were seen off at immeasurable cost. — Read the full article inside, 2,534 words.
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From the Desk of Dennis Carr, Sustainable Development Editor

Cities need radical changes in the face of exploding population growth

'Show me a car that doesn't require a parking space'

From the Desk of Nick Aplin, Contributing Editor, Ottawa

200 countries, 200 years, 4 minutes — not all doom and gloom

Raul Castro attends celebration of Cuban Jewish community

Chicago learns to love (or at least live with) coyotes

We have tracked the coyotes day and night and located the collared coyotes more than 40,000 times. This allows us to peek into the hidden lives of urban coyotes. We use results from this unique project to answer common questions regarding coyotes in urban areas.

'Let's kill Julian Assange!'

WikiLeaks and the power of patriotism' 

'The role of a free press is not to serve the government or its diplomats. It is to serve the public who hold government accountable through information provided by the media.'

Last week, two prominent US columnists called for the death of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. This knee-jerk patriotism -- that loving your country means not embarrassing your government -- undermines the power of a free press, Stephen J.A. Ward writes. But for some journalists, "national security" trumps independent reporting. 

9 December 2010 — A narrow patriotism -- the psychological equivalent of a knee jerk -- is an under-recognized force in modern journalism ethics. 

It distorts our thinking about the role of journalism as soon as journalists offend national pride and whistleblowers dare to reveal secrets. Narrow patriotism turns practitioners of a free press into scolding censors. Suddenly, independent journalists become dastardly law breakers. 

Narrow patriotism is the view that “love of country” means not embarrassing one’s government, hiding all secrets and muting one’s criticism of foreign and military policy in times of tension. Narrow patriotism is an absolute value, trumping the freedom of the press. 

The Wikileaks saga proves, once again, that this form of patriotism is a powerful commitment of many journalists; often, more powerful than objectivity or independence. 

For instance, as WikiLeaks rolled out the American diplomatic cables, Jeffrey T. Kuhner of the conservative Washington Times called for the assassination of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a December 2 opinion piece. “We should treat Mr. Assange the same way as other high-value terrorist targets: Kill him”  

One day later, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said the WikiLeaks document dump was “sabotage” during a time of war. US Attorney General Eric Holder should “Throw the WikiBook” at the website, using every legal tool at his disposal.  

These vociferous comments are not nasty comments made by anonymous online “patriots.” They come from practitioners of a free press in the land of the free.  

Critical journalism as patriotism 

The Wikileaks controversy reveals tensions in our view of the role of journalism in democracy. 

We believe in the idea of a free press; but we oppose it in practice when the press offends our patriotism, or works against some vaguely defined “national interest.” 

The same narrow patriotism was at work among major American media when President Bush decided to go to war with Iraq on flimsy claims. TV anchors put flags on their lapels and reporters accepted too easily the existence of weapons of mass destruction. 

In times of conflict, the strong emotions of patriotism override journalists’ in-principle commitment to critical informing the public and to impartiality. The word “patriotism” rarely occurs in journalism codes of ethics but its influence on practice is substantial. 

So what’s the right view of the role of journalism? 

The role of a free press is not to serve the government or its diplomats. It is to serve the public who hold government accountable through information provided by the media.  

Throughout history, journalists have caused their governments trouble and embarrassment. Journalists are properly patriotic when they write critically of government, when they reveal their hidden strategies, when they embarrass their government in front of the world. 

Criticism and the publishing of important confidential data is the way journalists often serve the public, despite howls of outrage from some citizens. 

Of course, Kuhner and Krauthammer don’t represent all American journalists. Many journalists support WikiLeaks. For example, Anthony Shadid, foreign reporter for The New York Times in Bagdad, expressed enthusiastic support during a recent lecture at my university's Centre for Journalism Ethics. 

Cuban court changes death sentence to 30 years against Salvadorian terrorist

Granma

Science

Advanced civilization may have drowned in the Persian Gulf 8,000 years ago

9 December 2010 — Veiled beneath the Persian Gulf, a once-fertile landmass may have supported some of the earliest humans outside Africa some 75,000 to 100,000 years ago, a new review of research suggests.

At its peak, the floodplain now below the Gulf would have been about the size of Great Britain, and then shrank as water began to flood the area. Then, about 8,000 years ago, the land would have been swallowed up by the Indian Ocean, the review scientist said.

 

The study, which is detailed in the December issue of the journal Current Anthropology, has broad implications for aspects of human history. For instance, scientists have debated over when early modern humans exited Africa, with dates as early as 125,000 years ago and as recent as 60,000 years ago (the more recent date is the currently accepted paradigm), according to study researcher Jeffrey Rose, an archaeologist at the University of Birmingham in the U.K.

"I think Jeff's theory is bold and imaginative, and hopefully will shake things up," Robert Carter of Oxford Brookes University in the U.K. told LiveScience. "It would completely rewrite our understanding of the out-of-Africa migration. It is far from proven, but Jeff and others will be developing research programs to test the theory."  — Read the full article at LiveScience.com, 909 words.