Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
"In a report analyzing the economics of protecting a threatened fish in the Pacific Northwest, the Bush administration this month deleted all references to possible monetary benefits" from conservation. The U.S.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu is scheduled to be released soon from prison after serving an 18-year sentence for blowing the whistle on Israel's weapons of mass destruction. However, Israel is also forbidding him from communicating with foreigners or moving about without permission and has been told that any infraction of these rules will land him back in prison without trial.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"Impartial information is increasingly hard to come by in Iraq," reports Fiona O'Brien. "As fighting has intensified on the ground, U.S. authorities have stepped up a separate battle for public opinion, tightly controlling the flow of information to journalists whose ability to move freely in Iraq has been limited by increasing danger." Although U.S. military officials refuse to discuss Iraqi civilian casualties, other reports suggest that hundreds have died in the past week in Fallujah alone.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression chooses April 13, the anniversary of Jefferson's birth, to issue its annual "Jefferson Muzzles" award to call attention to "those who in the past year forgot or disregarded Mr. Jefferson's admonition that freedom of speech 'cannot be limited without being lost.'" This year's awards included:
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Ivan Rogers, the principal private secretary to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, "tried to muzzle the Government's top scientific adviser after he warned that global warming was a more serious threat than international terrorism," report Steve Connor and Andrew Grice. In a leaked memo, Rogers ordered Sir David King - a scientist at Cambridge University - to decline any interview requests from British and American newspapers and BBC Radio.
Submitted by John Stauber on
The Bush administration loves to wrap itself in the mantle of "sound science," but as we've reported in our book Trust Us, We're Experts, "sound science" is a buzz-word for science with a pro-industry bias. Now, "More than 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel
laureates, issued a statement yesterday asserting that the
Bush administration had systematically distorted scientific
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"US corporations are picking up the pace in shifting well-paid technology jobs to India, China and other low-cost centres, but they are keeping quiet for fear of a backlash," reports David Zielenziger. "Morgan Stanley estimates the number of US jobs outsourced to India will double to about 150,000 in the next three years.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"For the past three years, the Bush administration has quietly but efficiently dropped a shroud of secrecy across many critical operations of the federal government - cloaking its own affairs from scrutiny and removing from the public domain important information on health, safety, and environmental matters," report Christopher H. Schmitt and Edward T. Pound.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"It's not quite Soviet-style airbrushing, but the Bush administration has been using cyberspace to make some of its own cosmetic touch-ups to history," writes Dana Milbank. "White House officials were steamed when Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said earlier this year that U.S.
Submitted by John Stauber on
Norman Solomon writes that "few Americans have heard of Katharine Gun, a former British intelligence employee facing charges that she violated the Official Secrets Act. So far, the American press has ignored her. But the case raises profound questions about democracy and the public's right to know on both sides of the Atlantic. Ms. Gun's legal peril began in Britain on March 2, when the Observer newspaper exposed a highly secret memorandum by a top U.S. National Security Agency official. ...
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