Anarchy Phone

U.S. Works to Deploy Secret Internet, Mobile Phone Systems for Dissidents

New details have emerged about a secret U.S. effort to deploy shadow internet and mobile phone systems overseas to give political dissidents a way to communicate with the world free of government censorship. The New York Times reports the project involves developing what has been described as an "Internet in a suitcase" that would allow dissidents to use “mesh network” technology to create an invisible wireless web without a centralized hub. Part of the effort is being led by Sascha Meinrath, director of the Open Technology Initiative at the New America Foundation. Meinrath described part of the project on Democracy Now! in April.

Sascha Meinrath, New America Foundation, Open Technology Initiative Director: “So we’ve been working on a number of technologies to develop distributed communication systems, so that you can turn cell phones, for example, into a medium that doesn’t need to go through a cell tower, a central location, but communicate in a peer-to-peer manner, directly with one another. And so, you can imagine if you daisy-chain a lot of these together, you can actually have an entire network built out of the already existing hardware that doesn’t need a central authority.”

The Lululemon Killings: When Bad Things Happen to White People?

By: Latoya Peterson

Posted: March 31, 2011 at 12:10 AM

The slaying of a white worker at the upscale yoga store in a D.C. suburb was made for the media -- particularly once her black co-worker was charged with her murder. Four ways of looking at the reaction to the crime.

On the night of Friday, March 11, Jayna Murray and Brittany Norwood both entered a well-trafficked Lululemon Athletica clothing store in the tony suburb of Bethesda, Md., where they both worked. They'd returned there after hours because Norwood had left her wallet.
The following morning, Murray was dead and Norwood was found tied up in the back of the store, which specializes in yoga apparel. Police said both women had been raped. The crime terrified the Bethesda community, which feared that two brutal killers were in their midst. Stores shuttered early; proprietors installed security cameras in their businesses and hired security guards to walk employees to their cars at night.

The Lululemon Killings: When Bad Things Happen to White People?

By: Latoya Peterson

Posted: March 31, 2011 at 12:10 AM

The slaying of a white worker at the upscale yoga store in a D.C. suburb was made for the media -- particularly once her black co-worker was charged with her murder. Four ways of looking at the reaction to the crime.

On the night of Friday, March 11, Jayna Murray and Brittany Norwood both entered a well-trafficked Lululemon Athletica clothing store in the tony suburb of Bethesda, Md., where they both worked. They'd returned there after hours because Norwood had left her wallet.
The following morning, Murray was dead and Norwood was found tied up in the back of the store, which specializes in yoga apparel. Police said both women had been raped. The crime terrified the Bethesda community, which feared that two brutal killers were in their midst. Stores shuttered early; proprietors installed security cameras in their businesses and hired security guards to walk employees to their cars at night.

As Public Broadcasting and Community Media Face Potentially Massive Cuts at Home, Hillary Clinton Calls for Increased Funding for U.S. Propaganda Overseas

Domino Theory, Tunisia Style

It takes 29 days to topple a 23-year old regime. At least that’s the mathematics Tunisia taught the rest of us on January 14th.

It seemed to come out of nowhere. Tunisia was a stable, relatively prosperous, moderate Muslim state in North Africa. Its GDP per capita was the highest in the region and it had one of the lowest poverty rates in Africa. Its main trade partners were France, Italy and Germany. It had been a secular state since its independence from France in 1956, and the majority of the Islamic population was considered moderate [1]. Even those of us in the U.S. who keep up with international news would probably have described Tunisia’s state as stable and in today’s world, sustainable. But in defiance of the statistics, trouble was brewing. Despite the fact that Tunisia’s unemployment levels were low in comparison to some of its destitute neighbors, Tunisians had been feeling the economic squeeze much like the rest of the world. Unemployment was rising, as were food prices. The government’s corruption, which had been tolerated by the public in the name of relative prosperity and freedom, suddenly came into focus.

FCC Approves Comcast Takeover of NBC Universal

The FCC has given final approval to a $30 billion dollar takeover by the nation’s largest cable television company, Comcast, of the television and movie giant NBC Universal. The merger gives Comcast control of the NBC network, the Spanish-language Telemundo, cable channels including MSNBC, dozens of local television stations and the Universal film studio. The FCC vote was four to one, with commissioner Michael Copps casting the lone dissent vote. Media democracy advocates have widely criticized the merger. Josh Silver of the group Free Press spoke to Democracy Now! on Tuesday.

Josh Silver: "The Comcast-NBC merger is going to increase prices for consumers, it’s going to make independent voices even more scare on commercial television dials and it’s going to cut out independent programming even further from the commercial dial. Yesterday’s announcement of this merger flies in the face of Obama’s stated commitment to oppose media consolidation when he was on the campaign trail and it bodes terribly for the future of the Internet. We expect to see higher costs for access, for cable programming for Internet access. And, at the end of the day, less choices for consumers and higher prices."

Attorney & Blogger Glenn Greenwald on the Arrest of Julian Assange and the U.S. "War on Whistle-blowers"

"Well, I just want to underscore how alarming everything is that you just described, both in that report and in your earlier one, which is, whatever you think of WikiLeaks, they’ve never been charged with a crime, let alone indicted or convicted. And yet, look at what has happened to them. They’ve been essentially removed from the internet, not just through a denial of service attacks that are very sophisticated, but through political pressure applied to numerous countries. Their funds have been frozen, including funds donated by people around the world for his—for Julian Assange’s defense fund and for WikiLeaks’s defense fund. They’ve had their access to all kinds of accounts cut off. Leading politicians and media figures have called for their assassination, their murder, to be labeled a terrorist organization. What’s really going on here is a war over control of the internet and whether or not the internet can actually serve what a lot of people hoped its ultimate purpose was, which was to allow citizens to band together and democratize the checks on the world’s most powerful factions. That’s what this really is about. It’s why you see Western government, totally lawlessly, waging what can only be described as a war on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange outside the bounds of any constraints, because that’s what really is at stake here. If they want to prosecute them, they should go to court and do it through legal means. But this extralegal persecution ought to be very alarming to every citizen in every one of these countries, because it essentially is pure authoritarianism and is designed to prevent the internet from being used as its ultimate promise, which is providing a check on unconstrained political power."   - Glenn Greenwald

I see said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw - wolrd press freedom day event in the US?

The United States is pleased to announce that it will host UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day event in 2011, from May 1 - May 3 in Washington, D.C. UNESCO is the only UN agency with the mandate to promote freedom of expression and its corollary, freedom of the press.
The theme for next year’s commemoration will be 21^st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers. The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals’ right to freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information. We mark events such as World Press Freedom Day in the context of our enduring commitment to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age.

Statement on Media and Mobs - Arundhati roy

New Delhi, October 31: A mob of about a hundred people arrived at my house at 11 this morning (Sunday October 31st 2010.) They broke through the gate and vandalized property. They shouted slogans against me for my views on Kashmir, and threatened to teach me a lesson.

The OB Vans of NDTV, Times Now and News 24 were already in place ostensibly to cover the event live. TV reports say that the mob consisted largely of members of the BJP’s Mahila Morcha (Women’s wing).

After they left, the police advised us to let them know if in future we saw any OB vans hanging around the neighborhood because they said that was an indication that a mob was on its way. In June this year, after a false report in the papers by Press Trust of India (PTI) two men on motorcycles tried to stone the windows of my home. They too were accompanied by TV cameramen.

“Media Subdues The Public. It’s So In India, Certainly” - Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky has a veritable cult following among those who are sceptical about views the liberal media espouses and government propaganda machinery spawns to suit their often overlapping agendas. Compelling is his criticism, breathtaking is his knowledge, persuasive is his voice, and deep runs his humanity. This 82-year-old Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, has written over 100 books and is considered the doyen of modern linguistics. To the world outside the academia, though, he’s more famous as America’s leading dissident intellectual whose instinct it is to expose the hypocrisy of the powerful. His awesome credentials inspired The New York Times to describe him as “arguably the most important intellectual alive”.

On the 15th anniversary of Outlook, Ajaz Ashraf and Anuradha Raman talked to Chomsky over the phone on aspects of the crisis plaguing the media. These included the questions you readers have often wondered about: Is the media really free? Or is it the handmaiden of the elites, the state? And how does one distinguish propaganda from news? Speaking with the candour and brilliance typical of his writing, Chomsky says the crisis in the media is not a result of its declining revenues as much as its intellectual dishonesty. He also sprang a few surprises—for instance, he finds the media in Pakistan more vibrant than it is in India. Excerpts:

Tehelka Interview w/ Arundhati Roy Regarding Sedition Charges.

As a section of the political class and the media bays for her blood, author Arundhati Roy tells SHOMA CHAUDHURY why her opinions do not amount to sedition.

Speaking her mind Arundhati Roy’s views on the Kashmir issue have invited brickbats from all possible quarters PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

The State has been contemplating charges of sedition against you for your speeches in Delhi and Kashmir. How do you understand sedition? Did you see yourself as being seditious? What was your intention in speaking from those two platforms in Delhi and Srinagar under the rubric — Azadi: The only way.

Sedition is an archaic, obsolete idea revived for us by Times Now, a channel that seems to have hysterically dedicated itself to hunting me down and putting me in the way of mob anger. Who am I anyway? Small fry for a whole TV channel. It’s not hard to get a writer lynched in this climate, and that’s what it seems to want to do. It is literally stalking me. I almost sense psychosis here. If I was the Government of India I would take a step back from the chess board of this recent morass and ask how a TV channel managed to whip up this frenzy using moth-eaten, discredited old ideas, and goad everybody into a blind alley of international embarrassment. All this has gone a long way towards internationalising the ‘Kashmir issue’, something the Indian government was trying to avoid.

One of the reasons it happened was because the BJP desperately needed to divert attention from the chargesheeting of Indresh Kumar, a key RSS leader in the Ajmer blast. This was a perfect opportunity, the media, forever in search of sensation, led by Times Now, obliged. It never occurred to me that I was being seditious. I had agreed to speak at the seminar in Delhi way before it was titled “Azadi: The only way”. The title was provocative, I guess, to people who are longing to be provoked. I don’t think it is such a big deal frankly, given what has been going on in Kashmir for more than half a century.

The Srinagar seminar was called ‘Whither Kashmir? Enslavement or Freedom?’ It was really meant for young Kashmiris to deepen the debate on what they meant by and what they wanted from azadi. Contrary to the idea that it was some fire-breathing call to arms, it was really the opposite — it was about contemplation, about deepening the debate, about asking uncomfortable questions.

Noam Chomsky: More Cancer in Fallujah than Nagasaki and Hiroshima?

It Goes against our nature; but the left has to start asserting its own values.

The progressive attempt to appeal to self-interest has been a catastrophe. Empathy, not expediency, must drive our campaigns

So here we are, forming an orderly queue at the slaughterhouse gate. The punishment of the poor for the errors of the rich, the abandonment of universalism, the dismantling of the shelter the state provides: apart from a few small protests, none of this has yet brought us out fighting.

The acceptance of policies that counteract our interests is the pervasive mystery of the 21st century. In the US blue-collar workers angrily demand that they be left without healthcare, and insist that millionaires pay less tax. In the UK we appear ready to abandon the social progress for which our ancestors risked their lives with barely a mutter of protest. What has happened to us?

The answer, I think, is provided by the most interesting report I have read this year. Common Cause, written by Tom Crompton of the environment group WWF, examines a series of fascinating recent advances in the field of psychology. It offers, I believe, a remedy to the blight that now afflicts every good cause from welfare to climate change.

The Media and the Far Right: Showcasing the Crude, the Violent and the Aberrant

Last Sunday in the October 10, 2010 New York Times, two very lengthy features appeared on the rancid Ann Coulter and the blogger Pamela Geller—a grotesque anti-Semite against Arabs who flaunts her sweeping bigotry as a badge of pride. Geller even called herself a ‘racist-Islamophobic-anti-Muslim-bigot’. One veteran reporter called the sprawling two page feature, with all of twenty color photos “an advertisement.”

Anyone with such open and flaunted hatred against Jews would either be ignored or slammed paragraph by paragraph with denunciations consigning the sick character into media oblivion.

The latest Coulter feature, one of many in the mainstream media over the years, chronicles her efforts to reinvent her shouts since she is being outflanked “on the right by the Tea Party.”

Tides Foundation CEO Urges Advertisers to Boycott Fox News

What you say matters.... Saying crazy things is going to inspire crazy people, Mr. Beck.

In media news, the founder and CEO of the Tides Foundation has written to advertisers of Fox News asking them to remove all of their ads from the network or risk having blood on their hands. In July, a fan of Fox News broadcaster Glenn Beck was arrested for plotting to assassinate employees of the Tides Foundation and the ACLU. The gunman, Byron Williams, admitted Beck’s show inspired him to plot the attack. For months Beck has railed against the Tides Foundation, accusing the San Francisco-based non-profit of being part of a secret left-wing plot to take over the government. In his letter to advertisers on Fox News, Drummond Pike of the Tides Foundation wrote, "The next 'assassin' may succeed, and if so, there will be blood on many hands. The choice is yours. Please join my call to do the right thing in this regard and put Fox News at arm’s length from your company by halting your advertising with them." Recipients of the letter included JPMorgan Chase, BP, GEICO, Chrysler and GlaxoSmithKline.