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.
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 been written, is simply incredible.
(Point of comparison: when apps get yanked from the App Store, they don’t get deleted from the iPhones of people who already bought them.)
I don’t care what reason Amazon has for this. If the book shouldn’t have been sold they should have stopped it in the first place.
This is a very different world to that of the free and open internet; this is the world of “internet appliances,” where the companies that sell these products have remote control over them. I feel cagey enough about owning an iPhone, which is also an internet appliance, but there’s no way I’m going near the Kindle after this episode.
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 saying “What Iran is trying to do right now is not far away at all from what Hitler did to the Jewish people just 65 years ago.”
Sorry, what the fuck?
So on one hand you have an oil-rich nation — Iran — that has never attacked another, let alone with nuclear weapons, and has just had its oil-rich neighbour invaded and occupied.
On the other you have a nation that has invaded and occupied Iran’s neighbour and is the only nation in the world to have attacked another with thermonuclear weapons, along with another nuclear-armed quasi-nation — Israel — which can’t stop getting into wars with its neighbours, brutally represses those in its midst who don’t belong to the right race or religion, and openly discusses attacking Iran, along with its partners in the crime the U.S. and a group of European nations, all of whom helped create the racist state in the first place.
If you believe Iran is the belligerent party in all of this and is about to pull an Adolf Hitler on us, then you are a stupid fuck.
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 BBC, I tell them to trust Amira and Gideon more than they should ever believe in the wretched broadcasting station.
I can certainly advise viewers to turn to Sky TV’s infinitely tougher coverage of the Middle East and … I can recommend the courage with which Al-Jazeera English covers Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian-Israeli war.
My experience is that you can’t trust the BBC on the Middle East either. While I was in Iraq on the human shield action, the BBC — somewhat to my surprise — turned out to be one of the most factually incorrect and least objective news source reporting on the action. In fact I remember at one point reading more objective stories on the Fox News website, a propaganda channel for the Republican Party of the U.S.
I doubt anything will change there until the place is cleansed of people like the morally corrupt Mark Thompson, the BBC’s director general.
Notes: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 Fireball)
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.
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.
Incredible clip from the sixth and last episode of the BBC’s Nature’s Great Events.
Either the people at ABC News are extremely ignorant or they don’t care and would like to promote ignorance about income tax.
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.