Mark Lloyd Satellite Radio Days: XM-Sirius Merger Sparks a Welcome Debate As the House Judiciary Committee plans to investigate the XM-Sirius merger, Congress needs to embrace a thoughtful and pragmatic alternative to the FCC’s business-as-usual approach to media ownership.
http://action.freepress.net/ct/DdwOYqM1jBrV/

“We Have a President Who is a Utopian”
Video - Seymour Hersh: Mario Savio Memorial Lecture

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17199.htm

BEHIND A NEWS STORY

AP: 800 CONTRACTORS DEAD IN IRAQ
http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?jrl=488191&story=248688&rfr=nwsl&clk=84571

Mark Crispin Miller comments:

> Here’s another item that the press should be playing up—especially in light of Jeremy Scahill’s shocking new book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. For what that book makes clear, although this AP story doesn’t mention it, is that Blackwater is a Christianist endeavor, whose founder, Erik Prince, is a dedicated and inordinately wealthy player on the theocratic right.

Prince’s crackpot sense of mission, and his lavish paramilitary resources, ought to worry any genuine patriot. No less troubling is Blackwater’s total openness to grizzled veterans of extremely dirty wars throughout the world. (E.g., countless troops trained under Gen. Pinochet are now participating in Bush/Cheney’s “war on terror,” their high salaries paid by your tax dollars.)

And so this AP item is far more important than you’d think from reading its account of the high toll among “civilians working under contract to the Pentagon.” These dead were not merely cooks and truck-drivers and fellas who “did laundry” for Our Troops, but, often, well-paid mercenaries fighting on the payroll of a private corporation with a clear dominionist agenda, and close ties to the Bush regime.

IWANTMEDIA.COM: Murdoch Faces Probe of Media Assets

Rupert Murdoch is facing a government review of his U.K. media assets, after ministers decided to intervene in his acquisition of a stake in ITV, the country’s largest commercial broadcaster. The move risks antagonizing the Murdoch media empire, which includes influential newspapers

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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/725eac96-c607-11db-b460-000b5df10621.html

THE POLICE AND DEMONSTRATION NUMBERS

As readers know I have written about the problems peace movements in America have it getting the media to report accurately and fairly on the size of their mobilizations. It now appears that the same problems are manifest in the UK:

Whatever the issue, campaigners and protestors, are now used to the farce of the estimates given out by the police for the numbers on demonstrations when contrasted with the experience of those participating. The most notorious example was the initial figure of 70,000 given out on 15 February 2003 for a demonstration which was the largest in British history, with up to two million protestors on the streets.

Last Saturday was another milestone in the endlessly repeated saga, when the police gave their initial estimate as 2 to 3,000. Following complaints, this was quickly raised by the police to 10,000, a figure that was then adopted by most of the media.

How do we know the figure of 10,000 was nonsense? The combined total of placards distributed at the start of the rally by Stop the War, CND, BMI and just two other organisations affiliated to Stop the War was over 10,000. Many more placards were distributed by other groups. Look at any picture of the march and it is clear that only a minority carried placards. The ratio is around 5-10 people not carrying placards to one person carrying a placard. The maths is quite simple for the whole demonstration.

Stop the War has made a formal complaint to the Metropolitan Police and sent a copy of the complaint to all media sources in the country. We know that many of our supporters have sent complaints to newspapers and television news programmes. What the motivation is for the ever predictable under-estimating of numbers attending demonstrations is anyone’s guess!

Israel Defence Forces break into local radio and TV broadcasts in Nablus

The Israeli defences have begun breaking into local radio and TV programmes as an alternative to dropping leaflets informing residents of their activities. According to a report from the Jerusalem Post, an operation took place Monday in Nablus. Israel Defence Forces (IDF) troops sealed off the centre of Nablus’s old city with cement blocks and trash containers and moved from apartment to apartment in search of seven Palestinian fugitives.

In a new tactic, troops broke into transmissions of local TV and radio stations yesterday and broadcast the names of the men, all residents of the old city. Soldiers warned civilians against hiding the fugitives.

Abir Kilani, director of the local TV station Gama, told the Jerusalem Post that her broadcasts were interrupted several times by the army. Kilani noted that this method is much more effective and cheaper than the military’s previous tactic of dropping leaflets with messages to residents.

http://blogs.rnw.nl/medianetwork/?p=7389 - The Jerusalem Post via MediaNetwork Weblog

EGYPT REMOVES CONTROVERSIAL TV STATION

EGYPT: An Iraqi satellite television channel that has angered the US and Iraqi governments for broadcasting anti-US and anti-Shiite news reports has been taken off the air by the Egyptian government, the press reported Sunday.

‘The Iraqi Al Zawraa satellite channel on NileSat 101 was cut off after it repeatedly interfered with the transmission of several other channels,’ the state-owned Al Gumhuriya newspaper reported. It said that several channels had been experiencing transmission problems that were traced to Al Zawraa.

http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070226-061618-7067r -