Censoring the Voice of America
Matt Armstrong delivers an on-target op-ed in Foreign Policy:
Censoring the Voice of America
Earlier this year, a community radio station in Minneapolis asked Voice of America (VOA) for permission to retransmit its news coverage on the increasingly volatile situation in Somalia. The VOA audio files it requested were freely available online without copyright or any licensing requirements. The radio station’s intentions were simple enough:
Producers hoped to offer an informative, Somali-language alternative to the terrorist propaganda that is streaming into Minneapolis, where the United States’ largest Somali community resides. Over the last year or more, al-Shabab, an al Qaeda linked Somali militia, has successfully recruited two dozen or more Somali-Americans to return home and fight. The radio station was grasping for a remedy.
It all seemed straightforward enough until VOA turned down the request for the Somali-language programming. In the United States, airing a program produced by a U.S. public diplomacy radio or television station such as VOA is illegal. Oddly, though, airing similar programs produced by foreign governments — or even terrorist groups — is not. As a result, the same professional journalists, editors, and public diplomacy officers whom we trust to inform and engage the world are considered more threatening to Americans than terrorist propaganda — like the stuff pouring into Minneapolis.
Read the rest here.
Amen, brother!
August 7th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
In the last year, the US Government has become both a competitor and a regulator in the automobile industry, in life insurance, and in banking. Becoming a competitor and regulator in news would be an extension of the current socialist stance, whatever the intent.
August 7th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Hi Dan,
.
While I agree that government ownership/hegemony in major industries is very problematic, I don’t think that Smith-Mundt in any way would prevent the USG from becoming a major stockholder in ABC or the NYT. What is at issue is whether or not the information created for foreign audiences itself can be published/broadcast here regardless of by whom. Maybe Matt will stop by here and clarify re: Smith-Mundt.
August 8th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
[…] our Chinese Socialism. It is important to give jobs to Michigan. Health care to the unemployed. Fight terrorism. Keep people in their homes. It is not that these aren’t valid reasons, but that using […]
August 8th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Zen,While I agree that government ownership/hegemony in major industries is very problematic, I don’t think that Smith-Mundt in any way would prevent the USG from becoming a major stockholder in ABC or the NYTI would hope this would be prohibited by the First Amendment. Otherwise, the state could simply eminent domain all papers to end them. <i>What is at issue is whether or not the information created for foreign audiences itself can be published/broadcast here regardless of by whom. Maybe Matt will stop by here and clarify re: Smith-Mundt.</i>That would be interesting. My own take is that the debate over Smith-Mundt is rather tactical. Either side may be right. I simply do not know. Certainly its weird the US gov is prohibiting the reproduction of information in public domain. The broader issue is rather media will be subjected to the same socialism with Chinese characteristics as we have adopted for automobiles, insurance, banking, and so on. I hope not.
August 8th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
PS: Drat your confusing text editor! đŸ˜‰
August 8th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
This may be out of topic, but your posting is, in a way, about the dynamic relationship between the power we can project outward and inward. What do you make of this comment from http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2007/11/13/empowered-individuals-and-super-empowered-ones/ that seems to project the power inward? Perhaps you have covered this before, if so my apologies.
" arminius07 said 1 year ago:
A little more on “the subject of super-empowered individuals”
“Is this going to be a stand-up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?” – Private Hudson, Aliens.
I love the smell of long-chain monomers in the morning. It smells like… new plastic. I love the super, double- secret feel of empowerment, it gives me. Previously, after going off on the concept of “super-empowerment” – like a Blackwater Protective detail working State (what’s the per-diem, there anyway?) – Without contemplating it in any real great depth, I decided to delve into it a little further.
Starting with a simple Google image search – “Iraqi prostitutes in Syria” led me first to:
Tdaxp, Dan at Tdaxp is the man! (to see) apparently and in this case, our featured provider is named “Nora” from Morocco and currently practicing her trade in, Paris. Close enough to “Iraqi prostitutes in Syria” for the purpose of our “Super-empowered” 5th generation warfare experts, it would seem. (but, I digress) Anyhow, it was then a fairly routine matter of just sitting back and watching the trail for a while. Following their droppings led to most, of the rest. Tdaxp, Thomas P.M. Barnett, Purpleslog, Arherring, Zenpundit, Phatic Communion, etc. A possible example of an autopoietic machine. Zenpundit seems to be leading the chorus with “TheSuper Empowered Individual” refrain. I’m getting the sense, I think, that what is meant by “The super empowered individual” is not a someone like this, with magical symbols of empowerment, a rifle and quaint sentiments like “Leaveour land now while you can or, die in it” or some other ‘mere’ 4th generational warfare practical exercise but, rather something else, more abstract, ethereal, intellectual or theo-semiotic. Perhaps, it’s “poetry”.
In my perusal of the various ‘blogs’ related to my search terms “Iraqi prostitutesin Syria” I really liked “Dreaming5GW”. There are the posts on “superempowerment” and such but, the best post by-far, that I came across, is the commentary and excerpt from, William Gibson’s, “Pattern Recognition” as a definition of, 5GW. Now, I began to see. I was in familiar territory. “I just kept waiting for a black guy in derecontextualized Doc Martens to show up and muse about the whereabouts of Stephen King’s Wang” I can hardly wait for the analysis of “Spook Country”
A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world. — from The Honorable Schoolboy (LeCarré, 1977: p. 84).
The concept of “Super-empowerment” and it’s place in “5th generation warfare” speculation are not, I think, thoughts of people who actually crawl around in stinking, snake-infested, swamps or, garbage-strewn alleys, smelling of human feces (and worse), looking for candidates to rape, torture, or, kill. At least, I hope not. Not literally anyway. Nor probably, is it their family, friends or loved ones who are coming home in bits and pieces or, in body bags. Nor, I suspect are they the ones who suffer the most from the consequences or, effects of their ideas, concepts, policies, etc. (unless, paying higher prices to fill that SUV or, letting little ‘Junior’ play with toxic toys, or unknown chemicals in the food chain counts?)
The greatest danger they face on daily basis is probably, I believe, spilling their lattes on their keyboards as they beat out the rhythms of “Super-Empowerment” and “5GW” from the safe distance and comfort of their homes, cubicles, desks or, laptops. Perhaps, as, William S. Lind, in his article on 5th Generation Warfare, observed “honest attempts to discover a Fifth Generation suggest that their authors have not fully grasped the vast change embodied in the Fourth Generation” and perhaps, have fallen prey to the temptations of “technological hucksterism: coming up with Madison Avenue slogans to sell new weapons programs *by claiming that they fundamentally change warfare. This kind of carnival sideshow act lies at the heart of the so-called “Revolution in Military Affairs,” and it dominates all discussions of national defense in Washington. Every contractor who hopes to get his snout in the trough claims that his widget “revolutionizes” war.
As the framework of the Four Generations spreads, you can be sure that the Merchants of Death will claim that whatever they are trying to sell is an absolute necessity for Fourth (or Fifth) Generation war. It will all be poppycock.” *(or blogs, books, speaking tours, etc.)"
August 8th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Mountain Runner has made a good case over the years that Smith-Mundt is interpreted way to stringently (another sign of the lawyer-izing of societ).