Martin Bright In The New Statesman On Mr Justice Aikens' Gagging Order

So I take it we can add the New Statesman to the list...

It would appear that ridiculous judgments where the government is a party are the norm, not an exception. I have numerous judgments where the government was involved that are so unbelievable, even a child could see they were the result of fixed hearings.  The legal system is no different to that of Uzbekistan or North Korea when a government does not want to lose, which is why the North Korean legal system is based on the German Civil Code, which is controlled by a law dating from the period when Adolf Hitler was in charge. 

This is the way that the legal system has gone, ordinary folk are no longer considered worthy of being treated fairly before the law.   

Since this doesn't apply outside the UK, what's wrong with mailing firedoglake or equivalent and asking them if they'd be willing to post it for us?

Actually, since I have no idea what the injunction covers, presumably I can mention it in passing with impunity?

Ahem.

George W Bush and/or Tony Blair made a suggestion concering/planned/joked about a course of action/one-off event/shift in policy which would lead to violence/death/mayhem/destruction/smears/off-the-record briefings against Iraqi civilians/journalists/sundry brown people/Muslims/liberals/people who live over a lot of oil.

That should cover most eventualities.

When the government is involved as a party in a court hearing anything goes. This involves denying the other party the right to speak and various other non-democratic foul play. I have numerous judgments which prove this is the case, which even a child could see that the verdict is ridiculous.

Am I wrong in thinking that by declaring you will breach the injunction, that you are already guilty of at one criminal offence - Intent. In relation to what you say about publishing, contempt, and if indeed, the memo does cover matter of national security, treason.

Why not match the rhetoric? Write to the men, and ask them to tell you what they know seeing as they are already in jail, pass the info to the bloggers, publish and be damned?

Am I wrong in thinking that by declaring you will breach the injunction, that you are already guilty of at one criminal offence - Intent. In relation to what you say about publishing, contempt, and if indeed, the memo does cover matter of national security, treason.

Why don't you match the rhetoric and write to the men. Ask them to tell you what they know seeing as they are already in jail, pass the info to the bloggers, publish and be damned?

It seems like you are only willing to break the imposed law if you can get away with it.

The conditions of this order should be unacceptable to any journalist who cares about the freedom of the press in this country.

Yeah, but there are NO "journalist(s) who care about the freedom of the press" working in the mainstream media these days. One can see that daily by watching the news and reading the papers.

There is always just one single version of events, no matter what they are, that is usually supplied directly by the government departments or the political parties spin doctors.

There has been an unprecedented use of news 'blackouts'  in the last few years - where are the journalists complaining? They know damn well they should be telling us more than they do but we don't hear them complaining or demonstrating do we? The reason is the same for most people, they probably have a mortgage to pay. That is how everyone becomes enslaved - through debt.

I could site countless 'news' stories that later turned out to be completely bogus. You never here these people correct themselves or admit their mistakes. They are all part of the illusion to make us feel we live in a 'democracy' and that we are 'free', when in fact the complete opposite is true.

With reference to the piece from Catatonic, you are 100% correct, the main stream media today is in no way there to defend Democracy. As Catatonic states they are there to do exactly the opposite.

 I have been trying to get media exposure for a story which proves that we do not live in a Democracy, and there is no media organisation that will touch it. The reason is, that it will in its simplicity prove that ordinary persons have less rights than criminals before the courts.

Doubleplusungood. Do you have any references to this inequity at all? Or are you saving it for the publishers ?

Just interested is all, stuff like that should be public domain, and if the big boys won't publish because they all have their heads up the politicians @rses then putting it in the public domain would gain it enough exposure for the mainstream media to appear neutered, which of course is exactly what they are.

Indeed Catatonic, We have a bunch of people standing in front of cameras eight hours a day, whom wholly rely on Govenment press statements. They stand there and mouth verbatim from those pieces of paper, or draw up a few bullet points. When the times comes in the report for a critical analysis they have non. Instead we have to listen to them talk about the probable feelings and emotions of those involved.

The resignation speech of T Blair was a prime example of this.

Another, more explicit example of the consequences of reporters who fail to do their job and instead repeat what 'their sources' tell them, is the 'On the scene, ace BBC reporter' Jane Stanley Building Seven Collapse VIdeo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7SwOT29gbc

There she was telling the world that the Salomon Building (Building 7) had indeed collapsed and then stood aside for the camera to pan the scene only to reveal, TADA! It was still there. Now you'd at least expect a reporter, who went to reporting school would be able to be a little more accurate and deny such sources. I mean its not too much to ask what with her being-on-the-scene-and-all-that is it?

Hi Krippers2 yes all the evidence is available in writing. The media refuse to touch it because it proves the state of justice for ordinary persons. The facts are not possible to deny because they are so simple to understand.

Talking of the BBCs clairvoyant reporter, Jane Stanley, and here foreknowledge of only the third steel-framed building in history to collapse from 'fire' (I think you can guess what the other two were), check out the response from the BBC news editors.

More interesting (and more truthful I fear) are the posts that totally destroy the credibility of the editors argument. They have never responded to all those questions asked by the people that pay their wages.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/02/part_of_the_conspiracy.html

POLITE NOTICE:

Can we keep the thread to the al-Jazzera memo, or gagging orders, rather than 911 please.  It's not like the net hasn't got enough places dedicated to discussing 911 theories.

Gagging orders equals news censorship. The media censors news all the time. Sometimes we need to stand back a bit to get the full picture. It's no good pointing at a few faces and saying "gosh, look at those terrible people" when the problems are far more endemic and broader.

The point about the BBC WTC7 collapse report is that it is a prime example of the BBC failing to report actual facts, because it was not a fact until 30 minutes later. There has never been an explanation for this. The BBC reported  the building collapsed due to  fire when the NIST report (part of the official 9/11 commission) concluded that the cause remained 'unknown'.

I have no desire to discuss 9/11 here. I just want to point out that the mainstream media can not, and indeed, should not be trusted to tell the truth. And I provided one example of why.

While there are certainly problems with the media and censorship, it's worth remembering that much of what we do know comes from the media. Journalists do try to get information to us, often at considerable risk to themselves as we've seen in Iraq and Palestine. The gagging order in this case came from a judge and it is being fought by The Guardian, The Times and the BBC who want to be able to report much more than they are allowed to. The Official Secrets Act is a government invention not a media one. If it hadn't been for the Daily Mirror, none of us would have been aware of the al Jazeera memo.

While there are certainly problems with the media and censorship...

I would argue that the problem is with people being ignorant of fundamental issues, a state which the media are only to happy to perpetuate.

A basic knowledge of history, an inquiring mind and an ability to think 'outside the box' will allow anyone to draw there own conclusions and not rely on some spoon-fed propagandists' clap-trap.

People tend to read todays news and accept it as being mostly truthful and never follow up on the work of the true investigative journalists, who usually publish their works in book-form these days because the mainstream is not interested in 'old news'.

There are some very worthwhile reads out there that totally contradict (with evidence) a lot of what people are told as fact by the news media, and of course none of it gets reported.

This is a societal problem. People are just too 'busy' (working to pay of the mortgage no doubt) to notice anything other than a screaming headline.

"Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost."
- Thomas Jefferson

"No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority"
- Joseph Addison

If those guys could see it hundreds of years ago, why can't we today? Are we not more educated and worldly wise? Obviously not.

Chomsky's 'propaganda model' of the media seems to capture the essence of the system: "A propaganda model focuses on the inequality of wealth and power and its multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices. It traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public."
And, of course, there's the kind of education that journalists and editors receive. Chomky's 'dominant private interests' exercise as much control in that sphere as they do the corporate media.
Added  to this is the fact that modern media businesses are corporations whose primary task is to sell audiences to advertisers. So it's not hard to predict whose interests are being served. The BBC is playing to essentially the same rules, though it's ethos is much more an outgrowth of elite public schools and  their  commitment to traditional priviliege and power.