[lbo-talk] Re: RSF on Press Freedom

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 10/9/06, Michael Givel <mgivel at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 21:56:55 -0400
> From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Re: RSF on Press Freedom
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>
> On 10/8/06, Michael Givel <mgivel at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > On the other hand, it is hard to fudge statistics of assassinations of
> > journalists like just occurred in Russia.
> >
> > By the way, as I read the table on Worldwide Press Freedom by RSF
> > indicating
> > that the "United States In Iraq" was listed as: 137 out of 167  while Iraq
> > was listed as: 157 out of 167, see:
> > http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=554 Neither of these seem
> > like
> > a glowing testimony by RSF to freedom of press, regardless of funding
> > sources.
>
> It's not so much fudging of statistics as the fact that the ranking
> makes no sense based on the numbers of deaths and detentions that RSF
> lists, whether the numbers are regarded as absolute or relative to
> population sizes.
> --
> Yoshie
> ********************
> This is the methodology used by RSF according to their web site:
> http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=554
>
> Reporters Without Borders compiled this Index of 167 countries by asking its
> partner organizations (14 freedom of expression groups from around the
> world) and its network of 130 correspondents, as well as journalists,
> researchers, legal experts and human rights activists, to answer 50
> questions designed to assess a country's level of press freedom. Some
> countries are not mentioned for lack of information about them.
>
> The three issues in determining possible subjectivity or not regarding this
> survey is what were the 50 questions asked, how were they analyzed, and what
> was the agenda, if any, of those who answered the questions. This I think
> probably accounts for differences  as you note.
>
> Regardless, the final result as I noted earlier is hardly a ringing
> endorsement for press freedom under Iraq's purported "democracy."

Given the numbers, the USA in Iraq being anywhere other than at or
near the bottom is a great whitewash.  The rest of the ranking doesn't
make sense either.

More fundamentally. . . .

Lenin writes that, "[a]s Chalmers Johnson records (in The Sorrows of
Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic), the US now
trains military elites for 70% of the world's nations, either in
domestic institutions like the Western Hemisphere Institute for
Security Cooperation (formerly the School of the Americas), or through
surreptitious 'meetings' in which 'advisors' sidestep legislation by
providing equipment on the quiet" (at
<http://leninology.blogspot.com/2006/10/iron-curtain-and-cloth-wall.html>).

 Given that state power is ultimately defended by power of repression,
we can say that Washington is partly and indirectly responsible for
the lack of political freedom, of which press freedom is a part, in
70% of the world.
-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>