'free speech' roundup
compiled by Giles Grierson

The current military campaign in Afghanistan has been named "Operation Enduring Freedom." One of the most-trumpeted aspects of U.S. "freedom" is freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

No anarchy in school
A Nov. 1 Associated Press story reported that a 15-year old high school student in West Virginia couldn't form an anarchy club or wear t-shirts opposing the current bombing campaign.

Katie Sierra was given a three-day suspension from Sissonville High School for promoting the club. She was also forbidden to wear t-shirts with messages like "When I saw the dead & dying Afghani children on TV, I felt a newly recovered sense of national security. God Bless America."

Sierra argued that her right to free speech was being denied. However, a Circuit Court judge ruled that the "sacred" right of free speech could be limited to prevent disruption of the educational process.

Pentagon controls satellite pictures
An Oct. 19 article in the New York Times and an Oct. 20 article in the English-language Pakistani paper Dawn both reported that the Pentagon has bought all rights to satellite pictures of Afghanistan. The National Imagery and Mapping Agency, an arm of the U.S. Department of Defence, made the purchase on Oct. 7. The move gives the U.S. government a total monopoly over high-resolution satellite images of Afghanistan.

The images are sourced from the Ikonos satellite, owned by Space Imaging Inc. This is the only commercial satellite able to gather high-resolution images of targets as small as one square metre.

The Bush administration could have blocked media and other access to the satellite on grounds of national security by invoking a never used "shutter control" provision. However, this move could have been challenged in court.

Was Bush really elected?
An Oct. 22 article in the Sydney Morning Herald reported: "Media Suppress the News that Bush Lost Election to Gore." A media consortium including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times and CNN paid more than $2,000,000 (U.S.) to the National Opinion Research Centre at the University of Chicago to carry out a study that the consortium now appears to be hiding.

The study involved an inspection of more than 170,000 ballots rejected as "unreadable" in the state of Florida during last year's presidential election. The consortium decided to postpone the story for "lack of resources and lack of interest," according to the article.

The newspapers themselves reported that the final phase of the analysis has been postponed. However, investigative journalist David Podvin revealed that results of the study were ready at the end of August, and the consortium had decided to cover up the results. The results are widely believed to suggest that Republican George Bush actually lost the election to Democratic opponent Al Gore.

More self-censorship by "free" media
The New York Times reported on Oct. 11 that the five major U.S. television networks agreed to edit any future tapes of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden or his followers. The networks agreed to remove any language considered inflammatory by the U.S. government.

The consenting networks are ABC, CBS, NBC and its subsidiary MSNBC, CNN and FOX. This unprecedented agreement to limit news coverage was characterised as a "patriotic" move by one network executive.

Meanwhile, CNN chairman Walter Isaacson has ordered staff to balance images of civilian death and devastation in Afghanistan with reminders that the Taliban harbours murderous terrorists. A report in the Oct. 31 Washington Post quoted Isaacson as saying that it "seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties of hardship in Afghanistan."

U.S. government tightens grip on information
Two separate moves are making information on the U.S. government harder to get.

On Oct. 16, the Associated Press reported that U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has directed all agency leaders to "carefully consider" threats to national security and the effectiveness of law enforcement when releasing records to journalists and others.

Ashcroft also promised full backing of the justice department to agencies that "legitimately" turn down Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. He also instructed agency leaders to consult justice department lawyers about "significant" information requests.

Normally, the FOIA allows disclosure of any unclassified government records.

Then, on Nov. 1, President George W. Bush issued an order allowing past presidents, beginning with Ronald Reagan, to keep some of the White House papers private indefinitely. The records were already protected for 12 years.

More than 68,000 pages of Reagan's records, including the vice-presidential records of George H. W. Bush, were due to have become publicly accessible this past Jan. 12 ["Bush extends restrictions on release of presidential records," Associated Press, Nov 1].

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