Flipping through the Metro newspaper on Friday and the most rediculous of page space allocations became immediately obvious.
On page 3 we have an almost full page spread about the storyline in the comic Batman R.I.P. - yes a fucking COMIC. A work of fiction.
Only the weather section stops it from taking up all of page three. Yet a glance at page 2 will make perfectly clear why our mainstream news is totally screwed up…
Encircled is the story of a Tory MP being busted by counter-terrorist police for allegedly handling leaked documents from the Home Office. (Times Online article, another Times Online article - I would use Daily Mail articles, since the Metro is their publication but they’re typical (hate) Mail items..)
Those documents contained no national secrets, nothing that could be determined to be a national security risk.. instead they were items that the UK government simply didn’t want publishing because they showed ineptitude of the UK politicians as well as just how bad they’re getting with regards our civil liberties.
A tiny item snuck away in the corner of a page designed to force the majority to pay attention to the bright yellow advert and not the abuse of terrorism laws and the attempts of the UK government to stifle any info it regards as damaging to its image.
You’re not a company attempting to use PR as damage limitation, you’re a government entrusted by us to ensure the country as a whole doesn’t descend into chaos and lawlessness.
ALL info regarding our government should be fully disclosed to we, the citizens, who placed you into your positions and pay for this machavalian nightmare.
It also doesn’t help when our population has been lulled into rejecting any talk of politics and instead spends it’s time obsessing over “celebs” and crap that just doesn’t matter.
I know that I shall be devoting as much time as possible to re-educating people around me and getting them to look at our government in a critical fashion once again. It’s no surprise that satire, once a great British staple, has been steadly declining across our media - replaced by shite such as the ceaseless tide of “reality” shows.
Wake the fuck up Britain, please.. we need to send a collective message to Downing Street that we know you are broken and require fixing.
I appologise, I’m 5 days late for this since it happened on the 22nd. Please check out the OneWebDay site for the 2009 event.
For this years OWD I thought I’d cover the 14 or so years that I have been a citizen of the net.
Has it really been 14 years?
More than anything else, the net has really impacted my life and changed the way I do things, the circle of people I interact with and alters my world view more in 1 week than years without it.
Yet, I have to remind you that our great internet is under threat. The freedoms and borderless existance the internet represents has countless countries and corporations scared and concerned.
Through the abuse of technologies such as DPI, web proxies and QoS we are encountering ISPs that will restrict the use and/or bandwidth of specific apps and filters certain dangerous information under the guise of anti-piracy, anti-terrorism and chilld protection campaigns. Yet this is the digital equivelant of burning books (blocking access) and misinformation (altering the data in the stream before it reaches you).
Then we have the assumed - grossly mistakenly - beneign use of DPI in order to extort money out of your privacymonetise their customers in behavioural tracking and analysing in order to serve you ads by scum such as Phorm in the UK and NebuAd in the USA. I recommend everyone reads The Register’s fantastic coverage of this governmental corruption laden scheme. Your jaw will struggle to get up off the floor once you see what is being done under the guise of “improving your net experience”.
Because, in their twisted little minds, the net is such a better place when the adverts are relevant to our interests - ignoring the fact that 99% of people consider ads on the net to either be noise or simply a stopgap measure to fund a cool site until a real revenue stream can be found.
If you happen to visit a site that finds its way onto the government No-No(tm) list then you can expect a knock on your door and your equipment stolen.
Your crime? Reading and learning.
By all means, keep tabs on things but knowledge should never be restricted just because some people might use it to do bad things. This is a very slippery slope that we really shouldn’t tread.
Information should be set free, hopefully the taste of freedom we have gained so far will be strong enough for us to fight for it.
For if we don’t protect it, the greatest development of the modern world will become a sterile, government and corporate sanctioned waste of time.
*none* of this is any business of the general public and the slogans of “if you suspect it, report it” is giving me orwellian creeps, when the fuck are the british public gonna take a stand against this crap?
now I remember where I saw this type of advertising…
I’m truly lost for words about how pathetic all of this really is.
It certainly looks like the terrorists won if we’re being told to be panicy about someone taking photos or, heaven forbid, owning more than one mobile!
250,000 requests for comms data in a 9 month period?? fucking hell..
On a side note, who here heard about the bill that bush is trying to get pushed thru that has, buried deep within it, exemption of any guilt for the current administration and thus no chance of being tried for any war crimes committed in their “war on terror” stretching back from sept 11th 2001 all the way to today!
The rate we’re going, we’ll be casting an envious eye on the freedoms enjoyed by the peoples of north korea and the chinese republic!
