[thechat] reporter fired for reporting

Bob Haroche spambait at onpointsolutions.com
Mon Mar 31 15:13:57 CST 2003


Martin Burns wrote:
> Civilisations move from external power on the body (punishment)
> to a more subtle, yet just as effective internal, psychological
> system of supression (discipline). While I'll happily call that
> 'progress', I'm really not sure that one methodology is more
> 'free' than another.

Lest we wander into a semantic wonderland of what "free" means, I'll
only say that as a practical, not philosophical, matter I feel much
safer and "freer" carrying anti-Bush protest signs here in California
than I would carrying anti-Saddam signs in Baghdad.

> I don't see that the US media and military is any more free than
> the Iraqi one right now.

I've been listening to an independent Berkely, CA based radio station
that daily carries hours of anti-war and what many conservatives here
would consider "anti-US" reporting and analysis. Last week, they had a
long segment and interview with a fellow who runs a project devoted to
helping soldiers avoid deployment. They're constantly broadcasting
logistics of when, where and how to protest the US administration. Is
there an Iraqi counterpart radio station to this? Granted, I wouldn't
expect one today even in a "free" Iraq given that they're under
invasion, but did/could such a station exist in the 1980's to protest
Iraq's invasion of Iran.

> Although the punishments are more subtle

You're correct but I submit that you're correct in such a technical or
abstract sense that I wonder if we're having the same conversation.
I'm not purporting to discuss these issues on a philosophical level,
but on a material, flesh and blood, bullets are flying level. Peter
Arnett getting fired might be on the same spectrum of evil as an Iraqi
dissenter having his tongue cut out, one punishment simply being more
"subtle" than the other, but personally I don't see it that way, nor
find it useful to see it that way.


-------------
Regards,
Bob Haroche
O n P o i n t  S o l u t i o n s
www.OnPointSolutions.com




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