Last Straw » Media

Iceland passes world’s strongest freedom of speech laws

Christiaan — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:27:23 +0000

Props to Iceland for going ahead with plans to pass the world's strongest freedom of speech laws.

Time to look for a new web host in Iceland.

Lip reading Star Trek

Christiaan — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:28:31 +0000

Hilarious. Click through for the video.

The Guardian’s new iPhone app

Christiaan — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:49:27 +0000

The Guardian has just released an iPhone app. It's only available U.S./UK/Ireland for now but they're working on other countries.

Food for thought

Christiaan — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:17:45 +0000

Channel 4’s Dispatches last night: Do You Know What’s in Your Breakfast? A reminder that, in capitalism, it’s not the job of the food industry to provide good healthy food. Their job is to make as much money by whatever means necessary, even if that means sneaking copious amounts of saturated fat, sugar and salt into…

Line fishing on an industrial scale

Christiaan — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:08:10 +0000

This is a clip from Fragile Paradise, the first in a series of documentaries by the BBC called South Pacific.

Guardian gagged from reporting parliament

Christiaan — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:49:27 +0000

Guardian gagged from reporting UK parliament: The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights. Update: Trafigura drops bid to gag Guardian over MP’s question.

‘You are being shagged by a rear parrot’

Christiaan — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:26:56 +0000

Sirocco the Kakapo, a native parrot of New Zealand, gets frisky. An extract from Stephen Fry’s and Mark Carwardine’s new BBC documentary, Last Chance to See: H.264 H.264 360p FLV 360p MP4 240p FLV Flash (via Frogblog)

The truth about Amersterdam vs. Bill O’Reilly 2

Christiaan — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 06:40:49 +0000

Bill O’Reilly being called out again out on what can only be described as his feeble fact-free attempt to paint Amersterdam as a cesspool of crime and corruption. You can watch the original Bill O’Reilly clip here, and the Roberwter’s first response here. (via Russell Brown’s Hard News)

The three parts of news stories you usually don’t get

Christiaan — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 09:59:32 +0000

Mark Thompson, writing on his weblog Newsless — Time to stop breaking the news, and start fixing it: I’ve come to the conclusion that there are four key parts to news stories, and we typically only get one of them, even though journalists possess all four, and the other three are arguably more important.

Cheney: an evil person for evil times

Christiaan — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 06:19:23 +0000

The Guardian: ‘Memoirs to reveal Dick Cheney thought Bush had gone soft on war on terror.’ Who knows what dark place we’d all be in if this man had become U.S. President.

On Rupert Murdoch’s plan to charge for news websites

Christiaan — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:02:11 +0000

Andrew Clark writing for The Guardian: “Rupert Murdoch said quality journalism is not cheap and so he intends to charge for all his websites,” including the Times, The Sun and the News of the World. Two comments. The Sun and News of the World are not quality journalism. They’re tabloids. A prediction: Murdoch’s plan to…

Remind me never to buy a Kindle

Christiaan — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 09:48:20 +0000

Amazon has remotely wiped a book that people had already purchased for the Kindle (an ebook reader). As John Gruber notes: It’s one thing to stop selling them. It’s something else entirely to remove them from the Kindles of those who already bought them. That this happened with1984, of all the books that have ever…

I can’t believe he said that

Christiaan — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:40:07 +0000

Groups of people all over the world calling themselves “news organisations,” such as The Times, continue to spread myths about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, such as that he called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” or that he denies the Nazi Holocaust. In the mean time the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister has been quoted as…

You can’t trust the BBC on the Middle East

Christiaan — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:37:15 +0000

Robert Fisk, writing for The Independent: … why is it that Haaretz’s1 top correspondents—Amira Hass and Gideon Levy—write so much more courageously about the human rights abuses of Israeli troops (and war crimes) than the BBC has ever dared to do? Whenever I’m asked by lecture audiences around the world if they should trust the…

Bill O’Reilly: a mouse by any measure

Christiaan — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 06:31:02 +0000

Robert Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times writes to Bill O’Reilly. That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection! (via Daring…

I’m beginning to like this guy

Christiaan — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:56:27 +0000

Russell Brand head-to-head with some of the more nefarious amongst us: I demand Jack Straw pays the 7bn pounds he squandered on the Iraq war that we didn’t want. No wonder his son has to toke himself to sleep.

Jade Goody showed the brutal reality of Britain

Christiaan — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:54:54 +0000

Johann Hari: Jade Goody showed the brutal reality of Britain. In her short life, Jade showed how as Britain has spiralled into one of the most unequal and immobile societies on earth, we have begun to openly jeer and sneer at the people trapped at the bottom.

The Great Feast

Christiaan — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 21:22:39 +0000

Incredible clip from the sixth and last episode of the BBC’s Nature’s Great Events.

ABC News doesn’t understand how income tax works

Christiaan — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:42:07 +0000

Either the people at ABC News are extremely ignorant or they don’t care and would like to promote ignorance about income tax.

Time to ditch Facebook?

Christiaan — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:20:01 +0000

Have you ever thought it was a bit creepy that Facebook, a profit-driven organisation, has such an intimate knowledge of you, your friendships and family links? Ever considered leaving Facebook because of such creepiness? Maybe now is a good time.

People lose their moral compass over Israel

Christiaan — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 08:57:21 +0000

It surprises me to the degree that many people lose their moral compass over Israel. We’ve come to expect it from Israelis; currently they’re promising to protect their war criminals from international prosecution over their recent massacre of Gazans. But, then there’s people like Mark Thompson, the BBC’s director general, who has been instrumental in the…

The Daily Show: Speaking truth to power or setting the boundaries of acceptable debate?

Christiaan — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:15:50 +0000

I enjoy watching Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show but sometimes the confines of his liberal naivety drives me nuts. Ian Sinclair on the problem with Jon Stewart: Stewart is surely right to state the mainstream news media in the US is “hurting America”, as he did during a heated exchange on CNN’s now-defunct Crossfire in 2004. However, as a programme that is adversarial but…

Contrasting a prank call with invading a country

Christiaan — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:23:22 +0000

A huge controversy has blown up in the UK after a couple of comedians made a lewd phone call and it was broadcast on BBC radio. The broadcast received two single complaints on the day but after The Mail on Sunday lead with the story a week later that eventually ballooned into the tens of thousands. As of tonight…

U.S. spending $100 million a year on propaganda in Iraq

Christiaan — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 23:24:36 +0000

Washington Post: U.S. to Fund Pro-American Publicity in Iraqi Media The Defense Department will pay private U.S. contractors in Iraq up to $300 million over the next three years to produce news stories, entertainment programs and public service advertisements for the Iraqi media in an effort to “engage and inspire” the local population to support…

The media and the market economy

Christiaan — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 08:24:54 +0000

Many of you will know I’m not exactly a fan of the market economy. In fact I think, one day, it may come to be known as the single worst invention humans have devised. And one area where it does the most damage is the mainstream media. I’ve had arguments with newspaper editors and other…

The Fear and the closed internet

Christiaan — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 07:55:51 +0000

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber explains why he thinks the management of some of the closed aspects of Apple’s iPhone App Store are flawed. And if that interests you, you might also be interested in this interview with Jonathan Zittrain and a review of his new book, The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It.

The mechanisms of propaganda in a “free press”

Christiaan — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:18:10 +0000

Ben Kuchera, of Ars Technica, writes about the relationship between game software developers and game reviewers, and the mechanisms each have at their disposal to manipulate the other, namely paid advertising and access to information. It’s a good practical example of some of mechanisms that corrupt a “free press” in a capitalist society and, of course, similar…

It’s a good thing, Jane

Christiaan — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:23:09 +0000

Jane Clifton muses on the emergence of blogging and it’s relationship with old fashioned journalism, complaining that “it’s hard to tell whether the information providers are accurate, biased or simply malicious.” “The Blogerati” responds in good fashion, but what I like that blogging brings to the table is exactly what Clifton fears: uncertainty about who is telling the truth. One…

A glitch in the media matrix

Christiaan — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 08:37:17 +0000

The NZ Herald has published a remarkable editorial today which offers rare insight into just how well our “free” media system serves to undermine democracy, while the background story offers great insight into how much National Party politicians deplore democracy and how deplorably dishonest they can be in the lead up to an election. As an aside: the only politicians…

Iran is not the belligerent party

Christiaan — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:08:59 +0000

The media in the West has a lot of blood on its hands already. Is it going to have more blood on its hands in Iran? Iran is not the belligerent party: When it comes to demonising Iran, the US, Israel and Britain have a unified message and a compliant media, which has learned nothing from…