Remember 10 September 2001

Eric Lee of LabourStart has an article titled 'End of the Internet dream?' which references a massive study of abuses of online freedom of expression by nearly every country in the world. This was conducted and published by a group called Reporters Without Borders.

Follow-up: More photos you're not supposed to see

The Memory Hole - Military Coffins: The Photos You're Not Supposed to See is the big buzz in blogland. The Memory Hole is dedicated to combatting government secrecy and filed a FOIA motion to get the photos of military coffins at Dover AFB. I found this link at Notes from Atlanta.

Everyone else is showing it

Here's the picture everyone's blogging about. And the latest story about it is that the young woman who took the picture has been fired by Maytag Aircraft, a company based in Kuwait and performing cargo services on contract to the US military. American Samizdat's Dr. Menlo has the story, including the weasel-y explanation of why it is against government policy to allow the media to show pictures like this.

Challenge Censorship - Read Banned Books

I found this tidbit on Creative Dissonance. Once again I missed Banned Book Week. And I think I even sort of banned, well challenged, a book myself that week, although I felt really bad about it. Let me explain. In order to "get out more", and also to save money on books, I joined a "Reading Chains" programme at the Nottingham Public Library (sort of like a book club but without meetings). I was given a book to read that hadn't officially been added to the "chain" and when I returned it, I recommended that it not be added to the chain because it has a very explicit and, to me, disturbing, scene in it involving mother-son incest. I made it clear that the book was not in my opinion obscene, nor was it a "bad" book (in fact it was well written) but I was thinking that a thing like this, if someone more touchy than me read it (that's most people to be fair) could bring unwelcome controversy to the library. As I say, I felt very conflicted about the whole thing. The book is called "The Deadly Space Between", so it would ease my conscience a lot if someone would read it.

Disappearing the sick and injured in Iraq

This is from a blog called Creative Dissonance.

Pentagon cover-up on pneumonia-like deaths

This story by United Press International concerns one suspicious death in Kuwait of a soldier serving in Iraq, and refers to about a half-dozen more cases. The common link is that they were all previously healthy and that their illnesses followed on from receiving an anthrax vaccination. It's the usual deal with relatives and in some cases doctors suspecting a link and spokespersons from the Pentagon trying to dance and sing their way out of it.