News, And The Tide Of Not-News

[steelcaver]

• The U.S. Military is now in the uncomfortable position of having to accept that a former Marine whom they consider to be a war hero is now openly homosexual...
• How to use the scientific method to disprove god's existence to theists.
• The Private War Of Women Soldiers:  Many female soldiers say they are sexually assaulted by their male comrades and can't trust the military to protect them. "The knife wasn't for the Iraqis.  It was for the guys on my own side" says one woman...  (originally posted here, but the full text is also available here).
• U.S. Conservative mouthpiece Ann Coulter has angered Republikans and Democrats alike, and her recent comments have incited a mass withdrawal of support from her sponsors... In other news, she still thinks that the Canadian Armed Forces took part in America's ill-advised invasion of Viet Nam, despite no evidence that a Canadian flag was ever flown over Viet soil (excepting consular and embassy grounds), or that we weren't accepting thousands of American draft-dodgers into Canada as refugees just to spite the American government.
• WIRED has published a 7-page article on so-called "New Atheism" (which appears to be a glorified title for anti-theism)...
• And, lastly, China, of all nations, has repeated what I've been saying all along about the U.S. invasion of Iraq.  Well, some of it.  They left out the bit about the Bush Regime probably allowing the September 11th Attacks to happen in order to justify the attacks, and that the Americans would probably be willing to invade and demolish every other country on this rock if only they could find enough troops.

It's a sad day when China is in a position to take you to task for your human rights record.  China, for all of it's violation of free speech and such, does not pose anywhere near the threat to world peace and other nations' sovereignty that the United States does.

I was having a discussion with wilderkrieger and trinityamber recently and came to the realisation that the emphasis that the U.S. places on "freedom of speech" is just a smokescreen to prevent their own citizens from scrutinising U.S. policy and laws - seriously.

China, which does not pride itself on allowing freedom of speech, isn't wantonly destabilising the Middle East or threatening to invade sovereign nations, either of which could spark a global war.  The United States, which talks far more than any country should have any right to, makes quite a great deal of freedom of speech and uses it as a (rather stretchy) yardstick to see how other nations measure up.  Any who don't can be invaded on the flimsy excuse that the U.S. means to "liberate" the people of such nations (with no mention of the oil wells, strategically valuable military installations, or human personnel that the White House is really pursuing).

Additionally, by enforcing freedom of speech to a fault, the United States has adapted the most effective methods of censorship known to man signal jamming and disinformation, to civilian airwaves.

Jamming works against radio communications, RADAR detection systems, mobile phones and the like by letting a flurry of noise fly in all directions; white noise is broadcast all all frequencies, obscuring the signal that such electronics are designed to detect.  More recently, internet services have been to be compromised by an overload of requests for data, and civil rights activists have begun to use e-mail jamming to thwart passive surveillance systems such as ECHELON.

In the United States, freedom of speech has guaranteed that important current events, scientific and news information can be lost among the hundreds of channels and sub-channels available on U.S. television, most of them showing badly-cobbled-together game shows, "reality t.v." shows, "infotainment", sports, and whatever other drek the American public is dumb enough to pay to see.  Freedom of choice has guaranteed that Americans are more concerned with the number of channels and programs available to them than they are with the number of quality programs being made and the integrity of the people making them.

This atmosphere has made it increasingly easy for the government of the United States to spread disinformation, further lowering the signal-to-noise ratio.  Pundits working for the Republikans spread op-ed pieces throughout the internet and television airwaves that have overwhelmed the actual news.  Thus, their own citizens were easily kept in the dark about everything in the lead-up to Gulf War II that constituted crimes committed by their own government.

I could deal with a little less freedom of speech and a little more integrity at the top levels of national governments.