Human-driven information curation is the antidote to this algorithmic disconnect between access and accessibility:
The primary purpose of an editor [is] to extend the horizon of what people are interested in and what people know. Giving people what they think they want is easy, but it’s also not very satisfying: the same stuff, over and over again. Great editors are like great matchmakers: they introduce people to whole new ways of thinking, and they fall in love.
According to JohnPilger.com – “On 7 June 2011, the Lannan Foundation in the United States banned the film and cancelled a US visit by John Pilger without explanation.”
The Wall Street crew that wants to cut your Social Security and Medicare benefits are sensing that victory is in sight. They have managed to knock jobs completely off the agenda and have made deficit reduction the near exclusive focus of economic policy in Washington. They are now setting the stage to have the Congressional “super committee” produce a deal that will mean large cuts in both programs.
The backdrop for these cuts is that the country is in crisis and that we have no choice. A central part of this story is that the stock market crashed last week in response to the Standard & Poor's (S&P) downgrade of US government debt. The Wall Street crew and their allies in the media and Congress will tell the country that if we don't have the cuts in Social Security and Medicare demanded by S&P then we run the risk of further downgrades. This raises the prospect of further market panics and the complete wreckage of the economy.
This story has as much credibility as John Edwards' tales of marital bliss during his presidential campaign.
Phi Beta Iota: A couple of things are clear, the first being that Barack Obama is not in charge of anything, the second being that New York–Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, the Koch Brothers–is. From the Tea Party funded and manipulated by the Koch brothers, to the idiotic lack of intellent analysis from the newspapers and broadcast stage, what we have here is theater. The truth is nowhere to be found between New York and Washington.
Jon Stewart skewers the media, and especially the right-wing media, for obviously and deliberately refusing to name Ron Paul or mention his various victories.
Even when the media does remember Ron Paul, it's only to reassure themselves that there's no need to remember Ron Paul.
Phi Beta Iota: The corruption of the media, including CNN and Bloomberg, is despicable. They dishonor the public from whom they derive their public commissions to do business.
The government's relentless pursuit of people suspected of mishandling or leaking classified information underscores the need to combat the misuse of classification authority, wrote J. William Leonard, the former director of the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times today.
“The Obama administration, which has criminally prosecuted more leakers of purportedly classified information than all previous administrations combined, needs to stop and assess the way the government classifies information in the first place.”
“Classifying information that should not be kept secret can be just as harmful to the national interest as unauthorized disclosures of appropriately classified information,” he wrote. See “When Secrecy Gets Out of Hand” by J. William Leonard, Los Angeles Times, August 10.
Mr. Leonard recentlyfiled a complaint with the new ISOO director, John Fitzpatrick, based on his assessment that a document that served as a basis for criminal prosecution in the case of Thomas Drake should never have been classified at all.
This story is completely false. NightWatch's compilation of data reveals that “March saw the highest level of fighting up to March 2011 and May was higher still. July looks down, but much more focused and lethal against senior officials.”
Just more of the aversion of truth that permeates Washington…..it also goes against all the previous reporting of having the Taliban on the ropes…..
For the first time in five years insurgent-initiated attacks in Afghanistan have not increased with the start of a new fighting season, suggesting that a surge of U.S. forces has blunted Taliban momentum, according to the coalition forces.
There is nothing more sacred to the maintenance of democracy than a free press. Access to comprehensive, accurate and quality information is essential to the manifestation of Socratic citizenship – the society characterized by a civically engaged, well-informed and socially invested populace. Thus, to the degree that access to quality information is willfully or unintentionally obstructed, democracy itself is degraded.
It is ironic that in the era of 24-hour cable news networks and “reality” programming, the news-to-fluff ratio and overall veracity of information has declined precipitously. Take the fact Americans now spend on average about 50 hours a week using various forms of media, while at the same time cultural literacy levels hover just above the gutter.
Phi Beta Iota: Although the author focuses on Fox News, all of the propaganda techniques are common to the mainstream media that refused fully paid advertisements against the elective war on Iraq (NYT, LAT, WP) as well as Huffington Post and other minor-league leftist outlets. “Idiot America” is the title of a serious book. This condition will persist as long as the government–and the country as a whole–lack the integrity to restore truth to all dialog and deliberation.
