Tuesday, September 10, 2002

Esat BT launches flat-rate Net service. Ireland joins rest of Europe [The Register] this isn't quite true - still lagging and the flat rate access doesn't really roll out until next year. The interesting thing in the article is that it's copyrighted to Electric News - an Irish-based tech news wire set up by Sheila McDonald whom I first met when she was editor of Dot.ie magazine. She's a live-wire american (pardon the pun) and always worth a read (shameless plug). 10:54:28 AM

IISS releases report on Iraq's WMD arsenal. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) has released today a report on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) capabilities. The IISS has also posted a shortened version of the report on their web site. I am not trying (nor am I willing) to dispute the report. However, I do object to how several media agencies (USAToday, The Guardian and CNN to name but a few) have portrayed it. [kuro5hin.org] This article assesses media coverage of the IISS report and is critical of the scary headlines generated, suggesting that they are designed to give weight to the Bush-Blair offensive. The author concludes that you can't trust what you read in the newspapers. Which is probably why I stopped reading them a long time ago (or was it just laziness) and, aside from occasional indulgence in the financial times for the crossword, the only newspapers I see are the free ads ones that come unsolicited in the mail box. Which brings me to a topic on yesterday's blog that I promised to come back to. For the past week the web has been awash with scary headlines about 45 per cent of americans that oppose freedom of information on the internet. Yesterday I located the source of these headlines, a report from PewInternet on the state of the medium post sept 11. Last night I read it and found it reassuringly dull and ordinary. No scary headlines, no big scoop, just honest to god research and impartial observation. What emerged from reading it was some insight, finally, into what's making the yanks tick post sept 11 - a matter of significant confusion for many of us non-americans. The bottom line is that people are afraid of terrorism, and they are prepared to support restriction on their freedoms if it will buy them some safety in their beds at night. Which brings me back to the matter of media-misinformation. I watched an excellent documentary on the Arte channel (a bright star in the otherwise murky morass of french TV land) the other night which explored legislative responses to sept 11. Noam Chomsky said he took a train trip around the US for 8 weeks following the event to find out people's reactions - he felt he couldn't get that information from the media. Others interviewed (probably known liberals in the US but unknown to me) discussed the level of erosion of civil liberties that have been the real outcome of sept 11, criticising the cynicism displayed by Ashcroft in manipulating peoples' fears to his own ends. 10:43:47 AM

British Energy saved - for three weeks. UK latest: Shareholders scramble to escape fallout from nuclear power company's troubles. [Guardian Unlimited] - it's one thing if a communications giant goes into receivership - and who really cares about trouble at Vivendi - but British Energy with its 6 nuclear reactors in the UK and Enron as creditors, scary. 9:43:42 AM