Satireday on Shit Happens

Satireday on Shit Happens

A Comdeian makes Sense

Russell Brand on voting

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My source: quakerattled

Fear of the Blogger

Yet another story of a government repressing bloggers with tragic consequences.

Mother of Vietnamese blogger ‘burns herself to death’

Vietnam

The mother of a prominent Vietnamese blogger has died from her injuries after setting herself on fire in front of government offices, her family says.

She was protesting against the detention of her daughter, Ta Phong Tan, who is facing charges of anti-state propaganda, another daughter told the BBC’s Vietnamese service.

Dang Thi Kim Lieng set herself alight in southern Bac Lieu province.

Her daughter faces trial in August and could be jailed for 20 years.

Dang Thi Kim Lieng went alone, without telling anyone, to the local government building in Bac Lieu, the second daughter told the BBC.

Ex-policewoman

The police have made no comment, but activists and lawyers said that Mrs Dang died while being taken by police to a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.

She was said to be extremely worried about the fate of her daughter, who she had not seen since her arrest last September.

Ta Phong Tan was arrested by the authorities with other bloggers, who are also accused of subversive activities in a state that controls the media and has little tolerance for criticism.

She is a former policewoman who built up a following with her reports on police abuses and injustices in the legal system.

Read more

Opinion:

Governments are stupid. It doesn’t matter if it is Vietnam, Ethiopia or the USA. The world of communication has changed, through blogs the people have more voice than before. Controllable media like TV and newspapers are going the way of the dinosaurs for those who want the truth.

If the government fears the blogger, then the government is doing something wrong. Not the bloggers.

The governments need to change their attitudes; not the other way round.

Blogging has brought about levels of transparency that governments have never deal with before. The people are demanding the truth. Governments can no longer hide their criminal activities.

Canadian government is ‘muzzling its scientists’

Government experts tracked a new ozone hole, but were not allowed to give interviews

The Canadian government has been accused of “muzzling” its scientists.

Speakers at a major science meeting being held in Canada said communication of vital research on health and environment issues is being suppressed.

But one Canadian government department approached by the BBC said it held the communication of science as a priority.

Prof Thomas Pedersen, a senior scientist at the University of Victoria, said he believed there was a political motive in some cases.

“The Prime Minister (Stephen Harper) is keen to keep control of the message, I think to ensure that the government won’t be embarrassed by scientific findings of its scientists that run counter to sound environmental stewardship,” he said.

“I suspect the federal government would prefer that its scientists don’t discuss research that points out just how serious the climate change challenge is.”

The Canadian government recently withdrew from the Kyoto protocol to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The allegation of “muzzling” came up at a session of the AAAS meeting to discuss the impact of a media protocol introduced by the Conservative government shortly after it was elected in 2008.

The protocol requires that all interview requests for scientists employed by the government must first be cleared by officials. A decision as to whether to allow the interview can take several days, which can prevent government scientists commenting on breaking news stories.

Sources say that requests are often refused and when interviews are granted, government media relations officials can and do ask for written questions to be submitted in advance and elect to sit in on the interview.

‘Orwellian’ approach…

Source: BBC News Read more

Opinion:

Canada isn’t alone in this. It has become the ‘norm’ around the world.

Governments have decided to keep the people in the dark and only feed them on a ‘want to know’ basis to protect their flawed governments.

 

The People are Waking Up

Much has been said about Wikileaks, etc. The people who have something to hide have been vitriolic in their condemnation of the release of secret documents. Documents that have shown just how shady are the dealings of governments and military. Of course they don’t want their dirty laundry to be aired in public.

Politics and war are not pretty, they are dirty sordid affairs and if the people are aware of how dirty and sordid, then the politicians wouldn’t have a prayer of ever being reelected.

This is what it is really all about. Those in power want to stay in power.

Whistleblowing is about making politicians, and by virtue their military cronies, transparent as they should be.

The people of the world need Wikileaks to tell them the truth, because the politicians could lie straight in bed.

In more recent days, with the fall of Tripoli, the press is having a field day with the documents recovered from government offices. Documents that are far more damaging to the American and English than Wikileaks.

The documents recovered so far show that both American and English intelligence agencies (now there’s an oxymoron) colluded with the Libyan despot in many ways that are considered illegal and despicable.

Now the British Prime Minister is calling for an inquiry into the reported dealings, reported in the BBC News today. The agencies of both countries have been caught with their pants down and are back peddling like crazy in their embarrassment.

But the result of all this is the people are now beginning to see their governments for what they are.

Maybe with their eyes open a little further they will see that the conspiracy theorists are not so full of bullshit after all; that their governments are capable of anything, and I mean ANYTHING,  in the name of self-preservation, nothing at all to do with serving the people. Serving the people is not even on the agenda.

The sheeple have been following the leader blindly for too long; and that’s exactly what the governments want. As long as the sheeple are blind to what’s going on, the governments can do what they please.

Wikileaks, Libyan Files, etc are precisely what we need.

The politicians and military need to be brought back into line and serve the people; that’s what they were elected for.