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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
 Posted - 04/24/2006 : 11:25:33
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I couldn't fit enough in the title to explain but here's the account of what freaked me out and required I scream about it somewhere:
Democracy Now was interviewing some residents of a trailer camp outside of New Orleans that was set up for Katrina displaced citizens. Two men showed up who were security guards for the camp and evicted the news reporters. Huh?
That can't even be legal. No solicitors maybe, but restrict who the residents can talk to on their own property? I know the residents don't own their trailers there but at least in this state there are lots of landlord tenet laws which protect the tenet's right to live as if it is their residence unless there's a good reason for a landlord's restrictions. And that's not even mentioning free press and free speech laws.
And the guy they were interviewing asked if it was breaking a rule and when the guards said yes the tenet said he couldn't talk anymore because he didn't want to break any rules. Unbelievable!
They did have the option of continuing the interview off site but even so I was disgusted with the idea of the restriction. Between that and arresting the protester who heckled the Chinese President (or whatever his title is), it sooo feels like we are that communist government my father warned me about.
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 04/24/2006 : 14:07:35 [Permalink]
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I agree with you, these are bad signs of a diminished right of expression. Using FEMA guards to silence our citizens is obscene. The protester who was legally on the White House grounds as a certified journalist) could perhaps have been quietly ejected for shouting at Hu, but prosecuting her for speech is completely out of line, as was President Bush's apology to the Chinese boss. We should never apologize for allowing free speech, especially to a bloody-handed dictator.
And, instead of fixing the horrible problem, it looks as though the Administration is looking to shoot the whistle-blowing messenger in the CIA overseas torture prisons scandal. This, while the Administration deliberately having leaked the identity of active CIA agent Valery Plame, shows a heavy, hypocritical hand on the part of the White House.
This stuff adds up to a growing, systematic threat to our democracy.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 04/25/2006 : 02:22:31 [Permalink]
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| Oh yes, that apology...gads that was disgusting. And the news media hasn't noticed the free speech angle or the incorrectness of the apology at all. Surely more than a few citizens noticed. |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 04/25/2006 : 02:40:36 [Permalink]
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B. bespoke herself: quote:
Oh yes, that apology...gads that was disgusting. And the news media hasn't noticed the free speech angle or the incorrectness of the apology at all. Surely more than a few citizens noticed.
Those are the worst two things about it -- both the public and the press seeing nothing wrong with this horrible loss of the right to free expression, and with the apology to a murdering tyrant.
What's changed us this much, 9-11 alone?
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 04/25/2006 : 07:08:57 [Permalink]
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I fail to see what this has to do with Communism. It doesnt require Communism to oppress the people.
Edit: Just nitpicking, dont feel obligated to respond. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
| Edited by - BigPapaSmurf on 04/25/2006 07:09:28 |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 04/25/2006 : 13:20:13 [Permalink]
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BigPapaSmurf stated: quote:
I fail to see what this has to do with Communism. It doesn't require Communism to oppress the people.
Oh, you're right of course. There are plenty of other regimes that oppress people. But China was the particular 1,313,973,713-population elephant standing in the press conference, when the woman heckled President Hu Jintao.
My main concern in this thread has been American free expression, not Chinese, and the US is not a Communist regime. I just find it obscene that an American president would apologize for an incident of free expression to the president of any power that routinely shoots its own citizens for doing the same.
Of China itself, I have this to say: Horrible as the regime was in the days of Mao, they at least had the supposed ideal of socialism to "justify" their tyrannical behavior. Like the Stalinists, they did not ever live up to that ideal. But now, the Communist Party bosses and even the Peoples Liberation Army generals in Beijing are the biggest capitalists in that country. Abandoning all pretense of being a government of the proletariat, they have kept the dictatorship intact.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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