4 comments

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  eee_eff

  5 months ago

  Hundt explained that he believed that the Bush administration and the media had acted in concert and “coordinated” coverage to deceive the American people about the need for war in Iraq.
  
  That statement is so plainly true, that I can't believe someone would think to challenge it. Well, everyday, I can be amazed.
  
  Net neutrality, he explained, was necessary to keep information channels open. This view of government as guarantor of free speech, given he has just depicted the government as a villain determined to distort speech, is a little odd.
  
  Well given that the First Amendment is found in the Constitution, which was, last time I checked, a government document, it could hardly be otherwise. Obviously, Hundt was referring to the actions of a particular administration, lead by a particular individual (Bush) who doesn't value the First Amendment (or the rest of the Constitution either) There is nothing inherently contradictory in the criticism of a particular individual while advocating a particular institutional structure. If fact, those who do believe that the government should protect the First Amendment will be the first to criticize a particular administration that fails to uphold that responsibility. To do otherwise would be inconsistent.
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  eee_eff

  5 months ago

  During question period, however, some of Hundt’s spontaneous utterances raised the eyebrows of even jaded observers such as myself. For example, he noted Senator Obama’s excitement about current plans to build cities in China that measure and plan for efficient energy use… A nifty idea, but in the United States there are already any number of cities, pretty well built up. We are to rebuild them? Maybe this needs to be thought through a little more.
  
  Hmmm..Solveig, perhaps you've heard of Global Warming, and the War in Iraq? Two consequences of not having paid attention to sustainability. Kudos to China IF they do actually build their infrastructure to maximize sustainability of their cities,, but I won't hold my breath. After alot of talk about sustainability, China has been backsliding considerably.
  
  India is doing much better on that front.
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  SolveigS

  5 months ago

  re: "plainly true" ... I will cheerfully agree, when presented with credible evidence. Spouse noted to me that some former CNN reporters had come forward with reports that they had been asked to "try another angle" on early stories--but this has a number of possible explanations. Conspiracies are awfully hard to conceal when significant numbers of people are involved.
  
  re: "sustainability" Building modern infrastructure on top of relatively minimal development is one thing. But anything done in the U.S. (various proposals have been made already) will have to be overlaid on complex existing systems. Whatever the merits of what they are doing in China (and I thought that you considered any positive mention of China to be a symptom of sympathy with oppression, BTW) it will have limited application here.
  
  re: "constitution." You seem to argue as follows: The consitution is the government. One may not point out a regime's susceptibility to abuse, by noting actual examples of such abuse. This all makes very little sense.
  
  Note: On top of a good education, I've been knocking around in the policy area for over 12 years. This includes public speaking in front of expert audiences eager to catch any errors I make--an experience that sensitizes the mental filters mightily. You may wish to avoid comments premised on the idea that I am uttering absurdities that any buffoon could refute. If I were in the habit of doing so, more people would have let me know they think so than a couple of cranks. A patronizing tone is not scoring you points; you just look like a fool.
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  eee_eff

  5 months ago

  re: “plainly true”..when presented with credible evidence evidence:
  
  I am not saying there existed an out and out conspiracy; that's rather typical of the straw horses I see here. Just that the attitude of the press as defender principles, like NYT was when they published the Pentagon papers is sorely lacking. Just read the NYT's own apology for not questioning the War more:
  
  

  "But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.
  
  The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime change" in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.) Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations — in particular, this one.
  
  Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all."

  
  
  Res ipsa loquitur.
  
  Besides that, there is the 'training' that all the Fox news people had to go to, and it was basically 'how to treat the republicans better'
  
  re: “sustainability” I am an architect who's worked on quite a few projects that have achieved LEED certification, and I'm LEED accredited in addition to being AIA, so I am quite experienced in sustainability issues and I would agree that there is much work to be done on that front, and I fully appreciate the complexity of these systems that are involved. But we have to start now, and cities such as Portland have shown how, with appropriate measures such as an urban growth boundry, development can occur in a much more sustainable fashion.
  
  You are quite right that I am no big fan of the present Chinese regime, because I think the Chinese people deserve better than the terrible repressive government they are presently cursed with. I am very suspicious of their progress on sustainability front, and they have done quite a bit of backsliding from their previously announced goals.
  
  India has been doing much better, although progress there has been too slow also.
  
  I suspect that the ability of the Chinese government to suppress free speech enables them to largely ignore the problems of pollution. A fress Press leads to hard questions which generally leads to some form of action. See Amartya Sen's observation (in Development as Freedom) that there has never been a famine in a country that has had both a functioning multiparty democracy and a functioning free press.
  
  re: “constitution.” You are again misconstruing what I have said. If someone believes that it is the government's responsibility to protect free speech, shouldn't they criticize a government official who fails to institute that protection?
  
  Re: note I apologize if the tone of my remarks suggested that I believe any buffoon could refute your arguments. Only a highly educated, articulate, witty, and very intelligent person would be capable of refuting any of your arguments.
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