Hugh’s answer genuinely made me think this was an early April Fool’s joke. In fact I’m still not sure Medialens aren’t making me look like an idiot:

No proof, but circumstantial evidence and reasonable presumption of AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] involvement – very much their modus operandum. Suicide attacks are their signature method, and this was a dramatic detonation suggesting a lot of explosive – again, very AQI.

And…who else would do this?

So, process of elimination, history of AQI attacks in Diyala etc.

And the logic of it Sunni Arab vs Iraqi Kurds. As a man in Jalawla told Reuters:

“Al-Qaida is targeting the Kurds because it believes that
we are involved in the political process and collaborating
with the Americans.”

This blows my mind. “very AQI” and “a man in Jalawla told Reuters”. “Who else would do this?”

As Medialens point out, the BBC claim they are “committed to evidence-based journalism”. Except they pick and choose when their committment applies, such as when they refused to report the use of banned weapons by US forces in their November 2004 assault on Falljuah.

Past horrors and mistakes do not seem to have weakened a servile belief in the ultimate benevolence of the state and a willingness to grant it unlimited powers.

In this country, if you start to blame the system itself – and the men right at the top – you tend to get into all kinds of trouble.

Unsurprisingly though, he’s talking about China and not the USA or the United Kingdom.

The Open Rights Group are a UK based organisation fighting for our civil liberties in the digital age. DRM, e-voting, copyright term extensions, FOI, net neutrality, privacy, RIPA, creative commons etc.etc.etc.etc.etc. They’re like an English EFF.

They have a tiny staff and many other volunteers who are extremely dedicated to the cause and are working very hard for our freedoms.  They are funded entirely by donations which pays for the staff, an office and expenses of running campaigns and pestering politicians.  They’re currently hoping to push their income up so things are more sustainable.

So, please sign up and give them some money every month. Anything from £5 upwards would be super. If you use computers for pretty much anything, it will make your life better – or at least prevent it getting any worse.

The public can see for themselves the ‘neutral’ media language used to describe Israeli actions: ‘incursion’, ‘retaliation’, ‘military operations’. By contrast, Israel endures ‘terrorist attacks’, ‘slaughter’, ‘a bloodbath’. Careful analysis by Greg Philo and Mike Berry, of the Glasgow University Media Group, found a persistent, ugly pattern:

“In our samples of news content, words such as ‘mass murder’, ‘savage cold-blooded killing’ and ‘lynching’ were used by journalists to describe Israeli deaths but not those of Palestinians/Arabs. The word ‘terrorist’ was used to describe Palestinians, but when an Israeli group was reported as trying to bomb a Palestinian school, they were referred to as ‘extremists’ or ‘vigilantes’.” (Philo and Berry, ‘Bad News From Israel’, Pluto Press, London, 2004, p. 259)

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/08/080311_israeli_deaths_matter.php

A controversial website that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents has been taken offline in the US.

BBC News

WikiLeaks and its domain registrar for the wikileaks.org domain name, Dynadot, have been sued by the Swiss Bank Julius Baer, because of leaks claiming illegal activities at the bank’s Cayman Island branch.

The Judge order the DNS registrar to freeze the domain. The main servers are in Sweden though, so the cover names still work (such as the UK one: http://wikileaks.org.uk). There are also mirror sites. This is a good example of why you shouldn’t rely on US domain names (and why we need more diversity of root server control no doubt). Not sure how much better the UK system is though.

The Tor network has hidden services for this kind of thing and though not perfect, helps protect against this kind of attack (the Tor website is censored by my Vodafone ISP btw). A good time as any to volunteer to host a Tor router server.

Cryptome has a Wikileak archive and more information.

The dominant system of economics is unstable, inimical to social justice and lethally damaging to the environmental support systems on which we all depend. A major failure in professional journalism has been the refusal to analyse this; or even to report that real growth rates in the developed world have been declining since the 1970s. Instead, corporate-employed journalists and mainstream analysts frequently extol the alleged spectacular achievements of an ‘unparalleled’ rise in wealth.

Medialens – a UK based media analysis project.

That quote is from one of their latest alerts, “‘CREATIVE DESTRUCTION’ – THE MADNESS OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY”. Find it here: part 1 and part 2.  You can buy their book, Guardians of Power, from here.

This opens them up to cross site scripting attacks (XSS) and really is just stupid.  Lucky they aren’t the GUARDIANS OF THE LARGEST CACHE OF SENSITIVE INFORMATION IN THE WORLD or anything – *phew*.

Anyway, using this bug, I made a website where you can write your own documents and publish them on the CIA FOIA website:

http://geekz.co.uk/cia-foia/

I guess that from tomorrow, any mail for me should be addressed to Guantanamo Bay.

Actually, technically you’re the ones doing the exploiting by using the links my site provides – so, you know, at your own risk and all that.

An example here.

If you were counting a large number of something, you’d have to skip this particular number (or whisper it) because the AACS believe they control it.

Anyway, we don’t quite have the DMCA here in the UK, so I can write that number here:

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Without this work, you could not play legally bought HD DVDs with free software applications.  You could not play legally bought HD DVDs that were from another country.  You could not transfer legally bought HD DVDs to your hard disk for easy access, or to your portable movie player.

One might argue that you shouldn’t be purchasing goods from a company that is at war with you. Whilst I agree, it’s not that easy to find companies that aren’t at war with you and I support work like this to take back our freedoms.

“Pathologists will conduct an autopsy on Mr. Litvinenko’s body this week”

If they are to examine his body, where is Mr. Litvinenko now? Is he in a waiting room? Has he gone back to Russia, leaving his body here for analysis? Maybe he’s gone to heaven.

This statement raises many questions. When Mr. Litvinenko was alive, what was he if not his body? Where was he? How did he control his body? Where was he before his body was born?

Additionally, how come I’ve not heard or read the word “terrorism” anywhere in conjunction with this story? Is it because the Russian Government is involved? Governments can’t commit terrorism?

Why can’t we get on a plane with a tube of arse cream unless it’s in a clear plastic bag but these guys were able to carry radioactive material onboard with no problems?

• various government agencies including the police and social workers
• private investigators, media organisations and other commercial entities.

Well, you apparently have the legal right to opt out of this “data rape”:

In June 2005, FIPR developed an opt-out letter to send to the Secretary of State. People who sent this off have been fobbed off. We now recommend that you opt out via your GP. Ask your GP to enter into your record the code 93C3 (“refused consent for upload to national shared electronic record”). You can also ask for your address and phone number to be kept off the NHS internal directory, and for your hospital records also to not be uploaded to central systems: see here for details. We encourage you to opt out even if you have nothing to hide; if only people who do have something embarrassing in their records opt out, then doing so will carry a stigma.

• Light Blue Touch Paper: Opting out of the NHS database
• Foundation for Information Policy Research
• Guardian: Warning over privacy of 50m patient files
• Guardian: Ministers to put patients’ details on central database despite objections

“Electronically tagging passengers at airports could help the fight against terrorism, scientists have said.”

But the only explanation of how this will actually help the “fight against terrorism” is

“the tags could aid security by allowing airports to track the movement patterns of passengers deemed to be suspicious and prevent them from entering restricted areas.”

Which seems to roughly translate to

Step 1: Tag passengers electronically so you can track their movements

Step 2: ???

Step 3: Security!!

Oh, I missed step 0

Step 0: Get big fat grant from the government and impress your fellow professors

The BBC obviously don’t ask any pertinent questions.

The guy was charged under the Explosives Substances Act 1883 last Monday. Another guy has been charged with similar offences. Yeah, I read it in the Guardian.

It has been reported that police discovered a rocket launcher, a nuclear biological suit, chemicals and BNP literature. It was right there in the Independent.

I’m glad to see that our government and corporate media treat all acts of terrorism equally, be they committed by brown people or be they committed by white people.

• http://mathaba.net/news/…
• http://www.blink.org.uk/…
• http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news…
• http://www.burnleycitizen.co.uk/news…

Currently only the BBC is monitored, but it’s pretty easy for me to add support for any site with an RSS feed.

Some examples:

“Many Palestinians feel Mr Blair has ignored their suffering” changed to
“Mr Blair met with the families of captured Israeli soldiers”.
http://newssniffer.newworldodour.co.uk/articles/918/diff/12/13

On Cuba, the following quote disappears: “In the US, many investors are hoping for a share in the spoils of any future development”
http://newssniffer.newworldodour.co.uk/articles/874/diff/0/1

Ismail Haniya’s negative quotes regarding Blair disappear.http://newssniffer.newworldodour.co.uk/articles/890/diff/2/3

US sanctions responsible for Iran plane crash? Of course not!
http://newssniffer.newworldodour.co.uk/articles/114/diff/7/8

Accusations of US torture become claims of “clandestine CIA activity”.
http://newssniffer.newworldodour.co.uk/articles/661/diff/0/1

Iran may well claim its nuclear programme has the sole goal of generating civilian power, but the BBC would rather you forget that.
http://newssniffer.newworldodour.co.uk/articles/552/diff/2/3

I wonder what the threshold is that turns “a small number of protestors” into “Thousands”
http://newssniffer.newworldodour.co.uk/articles/462/diff/0/1

Negative quotes about the government disappear.
http://newssniffer.newworldodour.co.uk/articles/383/diff/8/9

It’s called ‘Watch Your Mouth’ and it’s part of my News Sniffer project, which will include other corporate media monitoring tools (coming soon).

It was broken for the duration of last week so no censored comments got detected, but it’s been working since and there is a large archive of censored comments too from the last few months.

I spotted some BBC ip addresses browsing the site already too.

…are scenes like this

Why won’t the British and American governments support the end of this violence? Why is America rushing to continue it’s arms supply to Israel? Why is the British government allowing the transport of these weapons through our country? In the face of mounting evidence, why don’t the corporate media challenge the claims that our governments support peace? Why do we let all of this happen? Do we not care? What is wrong with us?

“Israel has been pursuing a campaign in Gaza for almost three weeks, since Cpl Gilad Shalit was captured by militants on 25 June.”

-BBC News

“Gaza, itself, the latest phase, began on June 24. It was when Israel abducted two Gaza civilians, a doctor and his brother. We don’t know their names. You don’t know the names of victims.”

-Noam Chomsky interviewed on Democracy Now

“Nor have the press suggested that the one-sided nature of the killing in the weeks leading up to the capture of the Israeli soldier might have “sparked” Palestinian actions.

On June 8, the Israeli army assassinated the recently appointed Palestinian head of the security forces of the Interior Ministry, Jamal Abu Samhadana, and three others. On June 9, Israeli shells killed seven members of the same family picnicking on Beit Lahiya beach. Some 32 others were wounded, including 13 children.

On June 13, an Israeli plane fired a missile into a busy Gaza City street, killing 11 people, including two children and two medics. On June 20, the Israeli army killed three Palestinian children and injured 15 others in Gaza with a missile attack. On June 21, the Israelis killed a 35-year old pregnant woman, her brother, and injured 11 others, including 6 children. Then came the Israeli capture of two Palestinians, followed by the Palestinian capture of the Israeli soldier and the killing of the two other soldiers.”

-David Edwards in a Medialens alert

Research project of the day: Try and find mention of any of this relevant information in the mainstream media. Unlikely that you will. Try and find mention of it in relation to the current attacks by Israel.

I’ll get us started: BBC news do mention the capture (it’s only kidnapping when official enemies do it) of the two Gaza civilians in this article, which I had to dig around to find. I’ve not seen it mentioned being possibly related to the capture of the Israeli solders the next day.

The Guardian, as most mainstream media, make the vast majority of their income from advertising. And the majority of advertising revenue comes from the automotive industry. So, obviously, the Guardian cannot afford to discourage automotive advertising in its newspaper and on its website by taking global warming seriously.

The article reduces the film to “wooden vice-president and failed presidential candidate, wheeling his suitcases from town to town and presenting a slideshow about climate change”. It goes on to suggest that it’s only popular because it was produced by the same guy as Pulp Fiction (huh?).

“An Inconvenient Truth follows Mr Gore as he undergoes the daily indignities of emptying his pockets and taking off his shoes at airport security screens, sitting alone in hotel rooms working on his computer, and warning audiences around the world about the imminent danger of global warming.”

Sounds like reviting stuff eh? With the knowledge of The Guardian’s innate bias, this just becomes hilarious propaganda.

The interesting thing is that Al Gore really isn’t a serious dissenting voice by any stretch of the imagination. As one commenter put it: “The man is a demogogue and an immoral monster”.

As with Medialens, I pick on the Guardian primarily because people *know* the “right wing” news outlets are biased. The Guardian, the BBC and friends are portrayed as “left wing” and to be trusted by liberals and such. I don’t see how people can really believe that.

Fact-deprived attacks on Chávez in the Times and the Financial Times this week, each with that peculiar malice reserved for true dissenters from Thatcher’s and Blair’s one true way, follow a travesty of journalism on Channel 4 News last month, which effectively accused the Venezuelan president of plotting to make nuclear weapons with Iran, an absurd fantasy.

In contrast, Tony Blair, a patrician with no equivalent democratic record, having been elected by a fifth of those eligible to vote and having caused the violent death of tens of thousands of Iraqis, is allowed to continue spinning his truly absurd political survival tale.

John Pilger – http://informationclearinghouse.info/article13026.htm

The prosecution said “it was not Dr Kendall-Smith’s responsibility to question the legality of orders given to him”.

Well, actually, it is. In fact, by law, not only is he to question the legality, he is to question to morality of orders too. As was established before the Nuremberg trials, a soldier cannot use “just following orders” as a defense against criminal prosecution. The London Nuremberg Charter explicitly stated that. The US Uniform Code of Military Justice was ammended after World War II to reflect it. This was all part of the reformation of International law.

I didn’t happen to notice any of this relevant information in the BBC article. I guess they had diverted journalistic resources to covering the all-important Da Vinci Code trial.