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Journalists at Pentagon Daily Barred from WikiLeaks
The Pentagon has banned journalists with the popular defense daily Stars and Stripes from consulting leaked diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks, prompting charges of censorship.
"The editorial independence of Stars and Stripes and its readers' right to news free of censorship are being threatened by an overly broad and misdirected response to the Wikileaks debacle," the daily wrote.
"Amazingly, the government wants to bar this newspaper's journalists -- along with most federal workers -- from reading information already plastered all over the public square."
In the article, the daily's ombudsman Mark Prendergast revealed that the Pentagon communications department had advised that "access to any classified information hosted on non-DoD systems from any government-owned system is expressly prohibited" even if it was now in the public arena.
Although Stars and Stripes is officially authorized by the Pentagon it is editorially independent and its journalists are guaranteed the right of freedom of expression contained in the US Constitution.
Established in World War II, the magazine has some 420,000 readers and is widely read by serving members of the armed forces deployed abroad. There are four daily editions in Europe, the Middle East, Japan and South Korea.
"I am no lawyer, but even if secrets in wide circulation remain 'classified' by legal definition, it simply cannot be held that information disseminated on a global scale a la Wikileaks is somehow not in the 'public domain.' That defies reality," Prendergast wrote in his opinion piece.
Stars and Stripes journalists may however continue to consult the websites of those dailies which have published the US diplomatic cables, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.
This week, the Air Force blocked all connections from its computers to the Internet sites of 25 media organizations that have published the leaked cables.
The move meant computers used by Air Force employees could not access newsites, including the New York Times, The Guardian and Der Speigel, that have posted the cables online, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan told AFP.
The Air Force took the action because classified information was posted on those websites, he said.
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Show AllThank you Amazon.com for standing up for free speech!
http://alturl.com/4wd48
I'm sure the Air Force wouldn't block a link like this.
Looks like they did
Can't have the cannon fodder made aware of the real reasons they're getting used up in military ventures that have about as much to do with "national defence" as they have with "freedom and democracy." Especially when they might ultimately be needed to quell domestic disturbances.
How does it feel to work at a news organization where you are not allowed to peek behind the scenes where everybody else has already been.
Just do your job flunkies!
Maybe these journalists will realize that they have ALWAYS been flunkies; printing what ever they were fed.
~~~~~
Well to be fair, I'm sure some really tried to do true journalistic reporting... WITH THEIR HANDS TIED!
In December of 2003, the Army times printed the US deaths in Iraq. On December 31st, I wrote the following.
-----------------
Eight pages of tiny photos in the Army Times.
Beneath each one a name, an age, a rank, a date.
Bush and his tame media would greatly prefer
That those five hundred be the nameless, faceless, dead.
Five thousand more (the numbers grow each day)
Missing arms, legs, blasted faces, lie out of sight,
Warehoused by a callous government trying to hide
The true cost of war.
Far beyond the billions squandered
On Bush's war machine and wealthy cronies,
This is the true cost of conquest,
The true cost of oil.
Each day these numbers mount.
Each day the "collateral damage" and collateral rage rises.
Each day this occupation continues, the numbers will continue to rise.
How many pages next year, in the Army Times?
------------------------
The Army Times never repeated the experiment.
The wars and escalation have continued, though, and now it is accelerating exponentially. I guess it is just a case of Heil Bush, Heil Obama, Heil the next puppet and, of course, Heil the puppetmasters.
Meanwhile, shut up, pay your taxes, look for work, try to feed your family and QUIT CRITICIZING THE GOVERNMENT. We know who you are!
It worked in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia and many other dictatorships. I'm sure it will work here.
This should bring home to any service person, if they ever had a brain, just who's freedom they have been fighting for.
Maybe a few still have a brain.
You should address this to the Democrats. Do they really have any brains and elected a dictator
Noam Chomsky's top 10 media manipulation strategies:
Renowned critic and always MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, one of the classic voices of intellectual dissent in the last decade, has compiled a list of the ten most common and effective strategies resorted to by the agendas “hidden” to establish a manipulation of the population through the media.
Historically the media have proven highly efficient to mold public opinion. Thanks to the media paraphernalia and propaganda, have been created or destroyed social movements, justified wars, tempered financial crisis, spurred on some other ideological currents, and even given the phenomenon of media as producers of reality within the collective psyche.
But how to detect the most common strategies for understanding these psychosocial tools which, surely, we participate? Fortunately Chomsky has been given the task of synthesizing and expose these practices, some more obvious and more sophisticated, but apparently all equally effective and, from a certain point of view, demeaning. Encourage stupidity, promote a sense of guilt, promote distraction, or construct artificial problems and then magically, solve them, are just some of these tactics.
1. the strategy of distraction
The primary element of social control is the strategy of distraction which is to divert public attention from important issues and changes determined by the political and economic elites, by the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information. distraction strategy is also essential to prevent the public interest in the essential knowledge in the area of the science, economics, psychology, neurobiology and cybernetics. “Maintaining public attention diverted away from the real social problems, captivated by matters of no real importance. Keep the public busy, busy, busy, no time to think, back to farm and other animals (quote from text Silent Weapons for Quiet War ).”
2. Create problems, then offer solutions
This method is also called “problem -reaction- solution. “It creates a problem, a “situation” referred to cause some reaction in the audience, so this is the principal of the steps that you want to accept. For example: let it unfold and intensify urban violence, or arrange for bloody attacks in order that the public is the applicant’s security laws and policies to the detriment of freedom. Or: create an economic crisis to accept as a necessary evil retreat of social rights and the dismantling of public services.
3. The gradual strategy
acceptance to an unacceptable degree, just apply it gradually, dropper, for consecutive years. That is how they radically new socioeconomic conditions ( neoliberalism ) were imposed during the 1980s and 1990s: the minimal state, privatization, precariousness, flexibility, massive unemployment, wages, and do not guarantee a decent income, so many changes that have brought about a revolution if they had been applied once.
4. The strategy of deferring
Another way to accept an unpopular decision is to present it as “painful and necessary”, gaining public acceptance, at the time for future application. It is easier to accept that a future sacrifice of immediate slaughter. First, because the effort is not used immediately. Then, because the public, masses, is always the tendency to expect naively that “everything will be better tomorrow” and that the sacrifice required may be avoided. This gives the public more time to get used to the idea of change and accept it with resignation when the time comes.
5. Go to the public as a little child
Most of the advertising to the general public uses speech, argument, people and particularly children’s intonation, often close to the weakness, as if the viewer were a little child or a mentally deficient. The harder one tries to deceive the viewer look, the more it tends to adopt a tone infantilising. Why? “If one goes to a person as if she had the age of 12 years or less, then, because of suggestion, she tends with a certain probability that a response or reaction also devoid of a critical sense as a person 12 years or younger (see Silent Weapons for Quiet War ).”
6. Use the emotional side more than the reflection
Making use of the emotional aspect is a classic technique for causing a short circuit on rational analysis , and finally to the critical sense of the individual. Furthermore, the use of emotional register to open the door to the unconscious for implantation or grafting ideas , desires, fears and anxieties , compulsions, or induce behaviors …
7. Keep the public in ignorance and mediocrity
Making the public incapable of understanding the technologies and methods used to control and enslavement. “The quality of education given to the lower social classes must be the poor and mediocre as possible so that the gap of ignorance it plans among the lower classes and upper classes is and remains impossible to attain for the lower classes (See ‘ Silent Weapons for Quiet War ).”
8. To encourage the public to be complacent with mediocrity
Promote the public to believe that the fact is fashionable to be stupid, vulgar and uneducated…
9. self-blame Strengthen
To let individual blame for their misfortune, because of the failure of their intelligence, their abilities, or their efforts. So, instead of rebelling against the economic system, the individual autodesvalida and guilt, which creates a depression, one of whose effects is to inhibit its action. And, without action, there is no revolution!
10. Getting to know the individuals better than they know themselves
Over the past 50 years, advances of accelerated science has generated a growing gap between public knowledge and those owned and operated by dominant elites. Thanks to biology, neurobiology and applied psychology, the “system” has enjoyed a sophisticated understanding of human beings, both physically and psychologically. The system has gotten better acquainted with the common man more than he knows himself. This means that, in most cases, the system exerts greater control and great power over individuals, greater than that of individuals about themselves.
http://www.thecompulsiveliar.com/top...trategies.html
These actions by the US government exacerbate the two-tier knowledge society that Fox, most of M$M, and the our elected politicians have already created.
Metaphorically speaking, we basically have a segment of our population now walking around with t-shirts saying, "I know what the Wiki-Leaks reveal about our Government. Do you?"
The folks that run the Pentagon (which they must think is the devil's mark) must eat shit for breakfast or they wouldn't think like they do. True ASSHOLES!
Stars and Stripes has always been a rag; at least since Vietnam. Sports info about it. Tony
makes no difference. prolly better off without them trying their spin-and-shill operation in the name of journalism.
THE ABOVE CONFUSION and backbiting is CD AT ITS WORST!
THE ABOVE CONFUSION and backbiting is CD AT ITS WORST!
The pentagon will soon be another aspect of our unenlightened past. It is the most powerful negative force in the world.
I've heard that many stories that would be well received by progressives are written, but rejected by their editors. They're very enthusiastic about cramming ideas into the masses minds that make them associate Mr. Assange with rape, but are keen to ignore things like the war crimes that wikileaks shared with the world:
Actual U.S. Military video footage of an unprovoked U.S. Apache helicopter attack in Iraq that killed several civilians, including two employees of the Reuters, plus an unprovoked rocket attack on a multi-story building in Iraq(see "full version" video) that killed many unarmed/innocent Iraqi people and passersby. (Wikileaks released this video in April 2010)
http://www.collateralmurder.com
Please contact your politicians and news media contacts urging them to investigate the material there.
P.S. Bank of America is not safe. None of the major banks are trust worthy. Credit Unions & Silver are probably good bets.
Roho_halcon777,
Ya gotta admit though, it was a marketing stroke of genius to rename the Department of War to Department of Defense. Who wouldn't want to pay for defense? If the average person thought their money was going to a War Department they wouldn't have been able to siphon off a fraction of the funds and resources.
These people have been defining the terms for so long now we as a nation almost do believe that up is indeed down.
Right on. The rats abhor the light. It's curtains for them.
They must change their ways or get the hell out of the way!
Back when we had a War Department, it was mainly used for defense, such as WW-II. When it became the Defense Department, we started making war on everyone in sight that didn't agree with us.
I would love for the government to have a "Department of Peace," but knowing what the government does with such things, it would probably be or become the Department of Genocide.
Until we contrive a way to take the profit out of war, the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex will never wage peace.
"...it was mainly used for defense..."
Defense? Defense of whom from what?
The two World Wars were about defending the British and French empires. The British and French were not even sure which side they were going to fight on in WWII until the last minute. Need we go into the hundreds of incursions into Latin America - defending the business interests of the wealthiest few - the genocide against indigenous people here, the war of aggression against Mexico and on and on?
Unlike most, I applaud what these people are doing barring access to all these sites. Simple reason is the same as any parent knows. Ban something and make such an overblown damn big deal out of it and you're going to make sure the kids find out what the big deal is.
The more they try to block it, the more they make people want to look at it - and look at it they will. In the barracks, on cell phones, in their houses.
Textbook case of how not to do something. If they would have just let it lie, most of those serving wouldn't be near as interested in seeing it.
==For until truth is established by two things known to be real, it is nothing more then an unknown waiting for reality to catch up with it.==
Reality is an hypothesis, but here's an attempt to meet your standard.
1) There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
-- Douglas Adams
2) The other day somebody stole everything in my apartment and replaced it with an exact replica... When my roommate came home I said, "Roommate, someone stole everything in our apartment and replaced it with an exact replica." He looked at me and said, "Do I know you?"
- Steven Wright
John...that thought, that Wikileaks might be a CIA creation, jumped into my mind a few weeks ago.
It just might be the way for them to kill net neutrality and put more controls over what we can view over the internet...aka China. Another 911 happening right now?
It really doesn't make sense to me why "Stars & Stripes" would comment like that. They did such a good job at following the script during all these WARS lately.
When something doesn't make sense, maybe your not looking at it from the correct angle.
The correct angle is almost always tied to MONEY.
Never believe in ANYTHING 100% in these times.
It's a perfect plan to distract the masses. Give them SOMETHING to believe in.
Of course all those secrets will be scrubbed of the real crimes if it's a wag the dog production.
The people are getting used to the elite criminals being criminals, they aren't too worried about prosecution.
This would be Chomski's first strategy:
1. the strategy of distraction
'It defies reallity" No Kidding ! Every Damn thing going on these days defies reallity. Our goverment has lost it's Mind ! We are in trouble, those Hitler TeaPeople, are very ignorant ,they don't even understand how they are playing right into the hands, of the derranged men, that want to take away all our Freedoms, the Hitler TeaPeople are following them right over the cliff, and going to drag us all down with them, if somebody doesn't stop this stuff ! The Army is full of Right Wing Religious Fanatics, that have been recruited to fight the Holy War...bunch of lost Souls...but very dangerous, to both the Muslims, and the Liberal Leftist Americans, including the Press !
I can't believe how the Entire Educated World, can sit back, and watch this happen all over again ! History was supposed to teach us lessons, so we didn't repeat our mistakes...why are we all sitting idle while the U.S. trys to rule the World, and dominate it's own people,the Patriot Act,No health care for the poor,Huge Education cut's ,Enviromentally poisening them ,Our Goverment is taking very bad care of us, and using all our money to fight Wars that can't be won, because there is nothing to win. Except with Iraq of course we got thier oil,but now we are stuck with them, we killed over one million of them, but there are still,20 million left, with no homes, or jobs, or electricity, water etc. Who are We ? What kind of People do this stuff ? We used to call them Monsters...
It is axiomatic that what is good for the Pentagon is bad for everyone else. That includes the rest of the world.
i have come to a conclusion about wikileaks, informed by facts and guided by my political philosophy.
the enemy of the people need no conspiracy to do what they do successfully every day without conspiring what some suggest, which leads me to believe that at least many of these conspiracy theories regarding wikileaks are poison pills by shills. not that there are no conspiracies, at all.
Free speech for corporations has now been enshrined in constitution law by the US Supreme Idiots {Citizens United}, but free speech for individuals? Fuhgeddabowdit.
Us The People see our rights diminish daily, while the power of government to act in ways that are contrary to the will of the people grows exponentially.
These are rather disturbing trends, don'tcha think?
Free speech? Hah! Anyone opening his or her window and shouting "I'm mad as hell and I'm NOT going to take it anymore!!" is now subject to arrest under suspicion of being a terrorist, then "disappeared" to a secret prison in Egypt to be, ahem, questioned while held underwater with electrodes attached to the genitals.
Back in the US, back in the US, back in the USSR!
The Pentagon's actions of censorship for "Stars and Strips" is merely the expansion of the predictable crackdown that the AmeriKKKan government has instituted during the past decade.
The warrantless wiretaps, invasive passenger searches at airports and the continued incremental dismembership of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is the goal of the AmeriKKKan dictatorshhip.
It is going to get much worse. If you are not terrified about what is happening in this nation, then you are in a coma.
vote any way you want, it wont matter, they all belong to club that hates America and Americans, and loves money and war,
Your not safe at all, the constitution is a Patriot Act joke, warrant less surveillance and fusion center gang stalking spyocrcy started by Bush/Cheney and now continued by Obama is a global cancer, hopefully soon to be revealed by wkileaks cables,
the only safe guards to freedom are freedom of the press, Assange, Wikileaks and Bradley Maning may all die a slow death , but the cat is out of the bag, and the rest of the worlds free press is either real or a government controlled stasi.
IMAGINE A GLOBAL EFFORT TO MAKE 1 IN EVERY 6 PEOPLE STASI GOVERNMENT SPYS, HOPE THATS IN THE CABLES, CAUSE A WHOLE LOT OF ELECTED ASSHOLES AND SUPREME COURT JUDGES WILL HAVE A LOT OF EXPLAINING TO DO.
Thank God for the 2nd Amendment , cause THE free press in the USA has failed to protect the constitution, our founding fathers left us a fail safe, and we may have to use it.