Librangelical

Propaganda is a form of communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus possibly lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda. [Wikipedia]

You might be forgiven for thinking that there is no place for propaganda in our modern democratic society, this, however, couldn’t be further from the truth. 

A particularly prevalent source of social / political propaganda is BBC News, particularly stories relating to key government policy…

In 2008 BBC News reported on the Governments proposal to revisit the question of building new nuclear power stations.  The reports consisted of several brief voice clips of  ‘respectable’ looking ‘experts’ and interested parties all speaking in favour of new nuclear power stations, followed by one heavily pierced dreadlock sporting ’activist’ who spoke against. 

The problem with this report was not the issue of weather we should build more nuclear power stations, but the BBC’s deliberate and blatant bias in it’s obviously pro-government reporting. 

Sometimes the propaganda is not so obvious; yesterday there were multiple reports on the break-down of power sharing in Northern Ireland and along side these stories was a report stating that young paramilitary sympathisers are using Facebook and other social media to promote their causes, including pictures of themselves posing with knives and guns…

It would appear in this case the other ‘related’ story has been deliberately released alongside this news to influence and colour public opinion in relation to the ‘militants’, promoting fear and anger, and garnering sympathy for the government if / when it has to suspend the devolved assembly at Stormont. 

It’s important when taking in information from the news and other media to take a step back and examine what is being presented objectively; bias reporting can usually be identified quite easily if the bias goes against our own personal bias (and we all have one) and somewhat harder when it agrees with our position. 

Peripheral stories, related and apparently un-related, are also often important – there is no such thing as a coincidence in news reporting – the Facebook Militants story is not a ‘new’ issue which just happens to coincide with the Stormont crisis, and who can forget the “good day to bury bad news” scandal… 

fLaMePr0oF  <><

Although Microsoft Forefront ‘client only’ is offered without any time limit or license restrictions, MS seem to have deliberately made the installation process ‘difficult’ in order to push their preferred domestic platform, Microsoft Security Essentials, however, I would highly recommend using Forefront as your anti-virus / anti-malware solution…

 I like Forefront a lot, it is built on the excellent Windows Defender (formerly GIANT AntiSpyware) technology and in recent Virus Bulletin tests it came out top of the pile, even beating Eset’s NOD suite in reliably detecting all signatures in the wild and avoiding false positives.

It provides an ‘all-in-one’ anti-virus anti-malware solution which replaces Windows Defender and integrates fully with Microsoft Update:

1. Download the Microsoft Forefront Client Security Evaluation from Microsoft… HERE

 2. Burn / mount the image

 3. Open an elevated command prompt (run cmd as administrator)

 4. Navigate to \CLIENT (\CLIENT\X64 if you have 64 bit Windows)

 5. Execute “clientsetup /nomom”

That’s it!

You can literally install and forget about it, secure in the knowlege that you’re about as protected as you can be against malicious threats.

What kind of country drags vulnerable children from their beds at daybreak, puts them behind bars and fills them with terror? Paul Vallely meets a family who have endured this horror – in Britain. And they’re not alone…

Detaining children in Britain: No place for the innocent

www.independent.co.uk

The thundering knock came early in the morning. It was 6.30am. Without waiting for an answer the security chain across the door was smashed from its fittings. Feet thundered up the staircase…

The Joint parliamentary committee on  human rights are currently looking for submissions on human rights issues relating particularly to proposed legislation.  This is a superb opportunity for interested citizens to get their views across – but we need to act now as the deadline for submissions is Jan 18th!

From the press release:

“The Joint Committee on Human Rights scrutinizes every Government Bill for its compatibility with human rights, including common law fundamental rights, the Convention rights protected by the Human Rights Act 1998 and the human rights contained in other international obligations of the UK. The Committee’s scrutiny of Bills for compatibility with the requirements of human rights law includes consideration of whether the Bill presents an opportunity to enhance human rights in the UK. The Committee is actively seeking to encourage more input from civil society into its legislative scrutiny work.

Further to the Committee’s press notice of 28 July 2009, on the Government’s draft legislative programme for 2009-10, the Committee has now identified the following nine priority areas for scrutiny in 2010, based on the significance of the human rights issues involved and the likelihood of legislation being passed before the end of the parliamentary session. The Committee would welcome short submissions of up to 1500 words from interested parties by Monday 18 January.”
(my highlight)

The areas for submission cover:

• lllegal File Sharing
• DNA & Fingerprints
• Domestic Violence
• Stop & Search
• Enforceable Entitlements for parents and pupils
• Mandatory Sex and Relationships education
• Reporting of family court proceedings
• Entitlement to personal care at home
• Asylum support and destitution

The press release includes more details on the rights implications of each of these topics.  It also says where to send your submission.  There is a mail address but you are also asked to send a signed hard copy (which hopefully can be accepted after the submission date).

Time is short, so if you have views on the above then you need to set aside some time during the next few days to put down your views.

(This post is by Edward English and originally appeared on Stand Up Diggers All)