doreen pei wrote: all this quoting without naming who's being quoted makes the conversation difficult to follow
Most of my posts have begun with So and so said:, but those that haven't you can assume reply to the post directly above them.
Why aren't people complaining that these issues are being censored?
For the most part, because they don't know about them.
Not my fault.
How can they know about them if they're being censored?
Let's put it this way. Follow the money: if your tax dollars are spent on _______, it's your responsibility to know that and why. This stuff is (mostly) public information, and not hard to find out. Not only that, but there's quite a lot of small media that doesn't black out what the corporate media does.
I truly respect your idealistic viewpoint that people should actually be TOLD what's happening in the world and what role their country is truly playing.
Actually, that's more naïve than idealistic, and not exactly what I expect. What I expect is that people
inform themselves as a basic principle of responsibility for
one's own role in the world.
The Don Imus Getting Fired story was all over the news for weeks. Hell, we're STILL talking about it here. Noam Chomsky may have written extensively about a corporate blackout during the Indonesion invasion but guess what? I didn't hear about it on the 7 o'clock news or on CNN or anything. Obviously the news reports don't tell us that the Taliban and similar groups are "under US oversight," right?
Why are your priorities to watch the 7 o'clock news instead of informing yourself about US imperialism?
I mean, come ON! "Free speech" is code for "racism" because certain stories aren't being told to the American public? No way!
No. That's not what I said. I said this: insofar as "free speech" campaigns center
almost exclusively on racist and bigoted speech, there is something else going on besides a concern for "free speech". Being that there are so much more pressing matters than whether Don Imus is out of a job, and that's what folks choose to focus on, I can see what the priority is, and I'm calling it what it is.
If the news media is censoring stories so the public doesn't know about them or slanting stories to lead the public to believe that the good old USA would never do things like this... AND.... if the news media is saturating the air waves with Don Imus Don Imus Don Imus, everybody talking about it as a free speech issue, well hell, what do you expect?
I expect people not to be slaves to the media.
People only know what they are told, for the most part. They don't go out of their way, like you do, to research and learn about the things they are not being told.
That's their problem. And it's a clear demonstration of their priorities.
We were told Don Imus got fired for saying "nappy headded ho."
It's a free speech issue.
No, it isn't. "Free speech" has
nothing to do with protecting your employment. This is the text of the "first amendment":
First amendment to the US Constitution wrote: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The issue may be about "corporate censorship" (I don't think it really is… but I also don't really think it's an issue).
I don't know about everything that's going on in the world because I haven't spent hours and hours trying to find out, but that doesn't make me a racist because I consider this a free speech issue.
Well, I didn't call you (or anyone in particular) a racist. But it's clear what your priorities are. Don Imus is more important than torture victims of the Saudi regime. Think about that next time you fill up the gas tank.
* * *
mnaz wrote:I don't have an "agenda"
Everyone has an agenda.
and I'm not trying to "frame" anything
Defensive much? You made a post expressing an opinion, and in so doing discussed the issue with certain ideas or points you found salient. That's all "framing" is, and that's all I meant by it. Everyone does this, by expressing any opinion more complex than "I like cheese."
Your whole framing of the issue seems to be that Imus clearly "violated" his contract and therefore got fired.
I'm assuming he did. I don't know what his contract said. You'll notice this isn't the crux of my role in the discussion. Frankly, I don't care if Imus was wronged, for reasons I've discussed at length.
You repeat this over and over and I question it, that's all.
And yet when I asked for proof you ignored me.
Imus disagrees and is suing over it.
Well, duh.
Am I reading this right? What's with all the tangential implied character assassination bullshit in these threads? Why do I seem to be assigned by implication all sorts of nefarious motives and "agendas" for simply asking difficult questions? Fuck that.
Maybe not everything I've said has been about you, and maybe what I have said has nothing to do with character assassination?
* * *
bohonato wrote: But to censor is an active action. So news on genocides, torture and oppression aren't really censored, but ignored.
Not so. All of the major news organizations issue deliberate, internal blackouts on certain subjects. They each have rules discussing what sort of language to use about certain topics (for instance, each has an internal rule whether to describe Palestinian fighters as "terrorists" or "militants"). There is a conscious effort to control which issues get discussed, and in what context and language. This is censorship.
These things come across the AP wire (and all the news wires), but they get discarded. The reporters report, the editors edit. That's an active action.
Because if the media was filled with overwhelming doom and gloom, people won't want to watch/read it
I don't think that's true, and I certainly don't think it's the reason behind what corporate media chooses to report. They have an agenda of their own, and it is much more in line with the common interests of corporations in a global economy (and secondarily with the common interests of corporations in America) than with viewership. For media, there's more to it than simply profits, they control the popular discourse. That's political.
And I don't think you're going to get far by attacking free speech advocates of racism when you're really upset by the media's lack of coverage of such issues. You can't get upset about things that you don't know about as Doreen points out
I'm probably not going to get far no matter what I say. But I can't be faulted for trying. It's not
my fault Americans can't be bothered to know what's going on in their own country.
As I said before, it would seem to be better to attack the media, not free speech advocates.
In case you haven't noticed, the media constitutes a lot of the "free speech" advocates I'm attacking. My position isn't to attack you or mnaz or doreen, it's to point out that there's more going on in the "free speech movement" (which is, actually, largely made up of neonazis, protofascists and other racists... check out
http://www.canadianfreespeech.com/portal/index.php for instance; poor Ernst Zundel!).
Oh yes he would. He came out very stongly against them and condemned those newspapers for printing them, and told American newspapers not to.
Of course he did. It's his job to appear as anti-anti-Muslim as possible. That doesn't mean he's not actually anti-Muslim (he is). My guess is he's got those cartoons up on his mirror to look at every morning.
For all you know about global events, I'm surprised you don't know about this. It happened only about a year ago, and wasn't a secret at all.
Er. What makes you think I don't know about it? I just disagree about Bush's motives. And I certainly disagree that issuing public condemnation has
anything to do with censorship, restriction of freedom of speech, or anything of the such. He simply went out and expressed "his" opinion.
It wasn't about the so-called religious intolerance of those comics. Its because, to put it lightly, it upset people. And talking about religious intolerance and free speech (which I still view as the main topic here, by the way) did you see the comics?
Yeah. Muhammed had a bomb on his head. Real tolerant.
What about Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. Muslims said that that was offensive. Iran even issued a death warrant for the author. Why? Merely because the Prophet Muhammed was a character.
Uh, I can't claim to have been particularly conscious at my ripe old age of 6 at the time
The Satanic Verses was published, but
it's clear to me that it's not that simple.
Should that book have been censored? Banned?
No... neither should any of the "offensive" things we've talked about, which I've expressed rather clearly. The fact that you're asking again makes me think you're trying to portray me as advocating something I'm not. This is called a "straw man" argument. Easy to win a debate when you are arguing with phantoms of your own creation.
And what about Andres Serrano's Piss Christ? Or even Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code?
What about them?
Is it different for Islam than for Christianity?
No? Is what different? I don't follow.
I disagree.
Why?
no, they [whose "free speech" advocacy centers around defending bigots] believe in equal opportunity free speech.
I've already outlined quite a lot of reasons that isn't the case.
as you know, I still think it is [a free speech issue]
Why? Who's right to free expression has been violated? Certainly not Imus.
yes, but that's no excuse to bush off other issues. The human mind can deal with more than one problem at a time, just society can as well.
Evidently not.
Though, I do get the sense that you don't think that censorship if it is towards racist/hate speech, or religous 'intolerance', or anything in that vein is a bad thing. I don't know if you do, but it sounds like it.
Well, then you're determined to draw your own conclusions contrary to what I've said. Oh well.
I can't see a greater hypocrisy than living in a nation that exclaims itself the 'land of the free' and promises freedom of speech and press, but then censors those it doesn't like (no matter how justified that dislike may be).
Well, "land of the free" is laughable. We have a greater prison population (either per capita or in pure numbers, take your pick) than any other country on the planet. Our "police" function as armies, and kill on average 5 Americans daily. They spend more time arresting tree sitters than rapists.
That aside, no one has given a single instance of the "nation" censoring anyone. A private institution culled one of its own, nothing more, nothing less. As I've said over and over, none of Imus' speech rights have been curtailed even a little bit. He can go out on the streets with a "nappy headed ho's" sign just like anyone else.
