The United States has continued to fall in the annual ranking of global press freedom under President Barack Obama. The U.S. fell three places to 49th from its already low 46th place last year by Reporters Without Borders 2015 World Press Freedom Index.
The index shows that the United States is now ranked behind Malta, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Despite the continued support of many liberals, President Obama has racked up one of the most hostile Administrations in history to press freedom. Indeed, President Obama has been called by leading reporters one of the most anti-media Administration in a generation.
In case you are looking for press freedom, you can look at the top 15 countries, where you will find some of our closest allies:
#1 Finland
#2 Norway
#3 Denmark
#4 Netherlands
#5 Sweden
#6 New Zealand
#7 Austria
#8 Canada
#9 Jamaica
#10 Estonia
#11 Ireland
#12 Germany
#13 Czech Republic
#14 Slovakia
#15 Belgium
As previously written, we tend to talk a good game about our freedoms as if they are inviolate and guaranteed. The fact is that we have have a serious rollback on civil liberties in the last decade — a trend that threatens not just our freedoms but our very identity. In the meantime, Mongolia has good reason to hope that it will pass up the U.S. just a couple spots ahead on the rankings for next year.
what was the test? Journalists dying…like brietbart or the kid from rollin stone. Or tim russert who who who. Or the latest pressssss causuality who talked to snowden then ‘died’. What is the test for press freedom? And who reports it and to whom?
J – Obama Happened
As to the Free Press in America. Ferguson used to have its own newspaper. It was called The Town Talk. Having a town newspaper held the community together. The Town Talk got bought out by Suburban Journals which was later owned by Pulitzer and run by the Post Dispatch. They quit covering Ferguson over time and finally went out of business. Capitalism. The Post Dispatch used to have all sorts of people on staff who were reporters. They are gone. There are a few. The Post will rehash all the AP and whatnot. The Post cannot even cover the Ferguson problem well. The Pulitzer family sold out years ago. Some consortium owns it. Same thing happened when the Graham family pulled out of the Washington Post. That is two newspapers who employ the word Post in their name who have gone South. Blame Obama. He gets blamed for everything else. No credit given for the Dow Index going up to 18,000 under his watch though. My half blind guy bought some stock in Enron too. Bad move.
Whether its dog food, the Dow Index, or bad workers at the cathouse on C Street in DC, its all about Obama. Post his photo every time something bad happens. Good journalism. Blogs have helped the public see things. But, they can be used to abuse. Why has journalism slid downhill? Ask a living member of the Pulitzer family. Or the Graham family. Not Lindsey Graham.
Paul
The issue was not the timing. The point I presented was that the issue was not cut and dry and involved a spark that ignited a desire that had been there for reasons other than taxation without representation or the spark. These reasons were primarily the freedoms connected with economy and trade. There were those in London that had favored greater independence for the colonies well before it came to a head. They were also supporters of greater freedoms for the average citizen and reducing the absolute power of the monarchy. There were those in the colonies, the United Empire Loyalists that were persecuted and left for the North.
Regarding what they teach in Canada, you as an American stand on thin ice criticizing the education systems of other countries. The average Canadian knows more about early North American history than the average American. American history taught in America focuses on specific moments that reinforce the pride that Americans feel regarding their country. This pride is well founded. However, it does not include the whole story, too boring, no one would watch it on TV. Read a biography of Alexander Hamilton. His story parallels that of the US rather closely. What is nice about this back and forth is that you can’t bring Obama into it. Or perhaps you can.
Happypappies
When I lived in France, I visited friends in the Dordogne region. This area was part of Aquitaine which was English for a long, long, time, Eleanor and Henry and all that. There, is a story, that may be true, centered around two villages that routinely used to raid each other. This became somewhat of an occurrence that entered into their own histories, with the other village being wrong, all the time. The raids consisted of men sneaking out of their village past lookouts and making their way to the other village, sneaking into the homes, conking a few on the heads, killing a few men if they resisted and making off with as much loot as they could carry.
One night both villages decided to raid each other each unbeknownst to the other’s plans. The men from each village snuck out and made their way across to the other village and rampaged for a while, conking a few and killing a few. They each experienced a greater ease of this ritual with almost to no casualties.
When they returned to their respective villages with their spoils, they found the results of this nonsense and after a few days, licking their wounds, and letting it sink in, they called a truce and stopped fighting, raiding, looting. Those that had been on one side for generations and those who had been on the other side for generations, lived together in harmony as the English had long ago left the region after ‘King’ Talbot had been defeated at the battle of Castillon, ending the Hundred Years War. Sometimes people keep on fighting each other well after the reasons have disappeared and it takes an example of how stupid it is to make a difference.
Isaac. – yep it’s all toooo stupid. Wake up world. 😉
Paul
Of course the Declaration of Independence written by the victors, the colonists become citizens of their own countries would state that the blame was on the other, the losing side. Jeez Paul. Alright, you’re joking, I get it. Ya got me.
issac – the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776. Prior to this they had been trying to make nice with the British government (less the problems around Boston). The Declaration was the ‘shot across the bow’ to let them know the fight was on with all the colonies. Clearly they do not teach North American history in Canada. 😉
Do the Koch Brothers pronounce their name as Coke? Or Cock? Are they named after cocaine? Do they use it? Same question with cock.
Free Press: are not the two words when joined together an impossible thing to achieve? It is difficult to even have a free blog these days. Print journalism is going the way of the telegraph. Either way, print or internet, you have to avoid advertisements right and left.
If we are 49th in Free Press, then where do we stand on Free Beer?
Britain needs an American Revolution. In Birmingham they are getting an Islamic Revolution. When Queeny goes it will be Charlie. itShay goes downhill. They are all Krauts. You all knew that I hope. That issue gets less Free Press than the thing about President Obama being born in Africa and being a Muslim. Hawaii is Out of Africa. It is also out of the United States. A state, out there in the middle of nowhere. Can you imagine that? And Romney, being a Gypsy. Can you imagine where the DOW would be if he had won?
Reblogged this on James F Tracy.
So, it’s great to have an oligarchy instead of a democracy.
It’s great to have the candidates chosen by a few and beholding to a few if they get elected to run the lives of all.
What I have to say about the Tar Sands is that it is a travesty in a long line of travesties. However, I drive an internal combustion engine car, and therefore am part of it all. Canada has a long history of selling its natural resources, not always with the focus on the environment. If you look at the messes around the world created by major mining companies you will find that along with the American conglomerates, Australian conglomerates, and British conglomerates, Canada is right in there with the worst of them. We could go on, I didn’t bring that up; I was merely responding to Paul’s acerbic and ill thought out comment suggesting that Britain was the sole cause for the American Revolution.
Separate the topics.
Issac,
I suggest you not fall in the topics. It’s not worth it. You cannot change the worlds problems inside of your head. They have been brewing since humanity developed an intellect and started gathering grain and saw that first shiny piece of metal and wanted to hammer it out into something pretty and then learned how to bake clay and glaze it and be artistic.
You must make lemonade with the lemons. It is like Obama himself said. Look at the things done in the name of Christianity. Well, lets take that hate one step further and look at the things done in the name of Religion. Such as Vlad Tepes who started out as a Muslim and a jealous one at that.
In 1436, Vlad II Dracul ascended the throne of Wallachia. In 1442, he was ousted by political rivals, and courted the Ottomans for support in regaining the throne. As a sign of loyalty, Vlad II sent his sons Vlad III and Radu to the Ottoman court as hostages. Radu submitted to the Ottomans, eventually converting to Islam. Vlad III, on the other hand, was regularly whipped and beaten for verbally abusing his captors every opportunity he got. Eventually, Vlad III was released and educated by the Ottomans, picking up Logic, Turkish, Persian, and horsemanship.
So, Vlad was now once again Voivode of Wallachia. His beloved country has been plunged into darkness by war — crime is rampant, agriculture production is at an all-time low, and trade has dwindled to nothing. The Boyars, the noble class of Romania (of which, recall, Wallachia was a part), were feuding amongst themselves and raping the country into the grave. Vlad was determined to renew his country’s former glory. First order of business: strengthen his political power-base by torturing and executing Boyars and elevating men of common birth to their position, ensuring the loyalty of these newly-elevated men.
Next order of business, once Wallachia was settled back on the path to prosperity, was to deal with the Ottoman Empire. In 1459, Pope Pius II called for a Crusade against the Ottomans, a call that was met with apathy by European leaders with the exception of Vlad. Vlad could not afford apathy; the Ottomans were at his gates, practically, looking to take control of the Danube River to prevent the Holy Roman Empire from using it to launch naval attacks against the Ottoman Empire. As expeditionary forces of Turks entered Wallachia, Vlad ambushed them, one by one, impaling every last Turk and Bulgarian soldier he could lay hands on, living or dead. Vlad even pushed into Ottoman-controlled Bulgaria, trying to send a strong enough point to Sultan Mehmed II regarding the folly of entering Wallachia.
Soon, 60,000 Ottoman soldiers with 30,000 supporting irregular troops entered Wallachia. They were greeted by a forest of stakes, upon which were impaled perhaps as many as 20,000 Turks who had entered Wallachia during prior raids. Vlad, meanwhile, was in the Wallachian hills with 20,000 to 40,000 peasant militiamen. If he failed — if Wallachia and the Danube fell to the Ottomans — there would be precious little to prevent the Ottomans from expanding and conquering as far as Rome. So he did what he had to do — in addition to the psychological weapon element of the forest of impaled Turks, he launched a series of guerrilla raids against the Sultan’s armies.
Vlad instituted Scorched Earth policies, poisoning water supplies and digging trenches and creating marshes to slow and fatigue the Ottoman army. He rounded up sufferers of leprosy, syphilis, tuberculosis and the bubonic plague and sent them to mingle with the Sultan’s soldiers. On June 16th/17th, 1462, Vlad launched a daring night attack — known as The Night Attack, and considered one of the finest military actions in Romanian history — in an attempt to assassinate the Sultan himself. As is, some 23,000 Turks and Bulgarians were slain, but Mehmed II was not dissuaded, instead marching as far as the Wallachian capital of Targoviste — where he found another 20,000 staked Ottomans. Demoralized, Mehmed and his army returned to Turkey. This pretty much marked the end of Ottoman attempts to annex Wallachia.
Vlad had won, though he would continue to fight the Ottomans until his death at their hands in 1476, at the age of 45. His corpse was decapitated, and his head put atop a stake in Constantinople.
***
What can be said about Vlad the Impaler? Even in his own lifetime, there was a marked dichotomy in how he was viewed. In Eastern Europe, he was venerated as a hero and a liberator, almost like a Romanian George Washington. In Western Europe, Vlad was seen as a blood-maddened sadistic tyrant who burned whole cities to the ground and staked everyone he could get his hands on. Reports of how many people Vlad put on stakes ranges from 40,000 to 100,000, with some stories reporting an additional 80,000 burned alive.
The problem is, reports of Vlad’s cruelty were spread throughout the west by his “ally,” King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary in the form of an illustrated pamphlet. Corvinus’ reasons for spreading such rumors were simple, and as old as politics itself: Corvinus had raised quite a bit of money throughout Europe to fund wars against the Ottomans, and then that money just…disappeared. And to divert attention from his own jingling pockets, Corvinus raised a shaking finger and said “Look! Look! Vlad’s ramming sharpened wooden spikes up peoples’ asses!” Only, y’know…he probably said it in Latin. A number of similar propaganda manuscripts against Vlad circulated through Russia and what is now Germany, as early as 1462, in large part written by people Vlad had opposed, who took the opportunity to present the Impaler as sadistic and/or violently insane.+
This is just one person……
http://www.bloodsprayer.com/the-popes-debt-to-dracula-vlad-the-impaler-revised-and-edited/
issac – we have all heard of the Declaration of Independence but few of us have actually read it. It lays out the case for England being at fault for the American Revolution. You can add that many in Parliament thought Britain was at fault for the American Revolution.
Happypappies – this is like a spectator sport. Let’s keep saying “Koch Brothers” and watching the Liberals have apoplexy.
Why don’t people just be honest, and say, yes, this is bad, instead of blaming Bush, the Koch Brothers, Sarah Palin, Anne Coulter, and the phase of the moon.
It’s just bad.
I’m sure there have been misdoings of presidents going back to Washington. It is irrelevant. This is wrong.
What would a judge and jury say if a murderer says, Well, yes, he did kill 26 people, but there was a serial killer in the 1800s who killed 25. And wars kill more than that, as does disease.
Karen
Right now on another Blog which I will not name, they are having a hissy fit because Obama has brought up the 3 Muslims killed and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he has called Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry.
Before Obama made his statement, Erdogan said, “President Obama, Mr. Kerry, (Vice President) Biden, at this point have not made any declaration of respect. This is telling. … And if you stay silent when faced with an incident like this and don’t make a statement, the world will stay silent towards you.”
*******
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/13/us/chapel-hill-shooting/
So, the beat is going on. And I had not even thought of any of this but CNN has it covered…… as usual.
Obama looks at the family dog as a potential appetizer. No more. No less.
Isaac is our Howard Beale.
Paul
Add Soros to the list, along with all the other oligarchs, Democrat and Republican, and I will stay on my horse. The greatest strength a country has is that of its citizens to criticize. The greatest weakness is its citizens objecting. The US is alone at this extreme of poodle ownership. It is a fault that America has refined to a real smell and is the greatest threat to democracy, in any country. The reason I focus on the Koch brothers is that theirs is the most blatant and offensive form of this travesty of democracy.
Secondly I compared Canada to the United States fairly accurately. Each was a product of its own unique circumstance. The US a demand of autonomy, and Canada a request. The one that preceded the other created in part the circumstance for the other. The fruit analogy doesn’t really apply. We are discussing methods not size. If size were the issue then a grapefruit to a kiwi fruit might be more appropriate. Great Britain woke up after the revolution and the development of the colonies into the Dominion was worked out from both sides over decades. Britain remained a guarantor of Canadian independence with military alliances into the 20th Century. When Britain declared war in 1914, Canada was automatically included. Canada sent troops to fight in the Boer War. Only with WW2 did Canada declare war on Germany and Japan without any previously signed agreements. On July 1st 1867 Canada became independent, however, autonomous rule started decades earlier and alignments continued until WW1.
The bending over backwards was mutual. Canadians did not want to be absorbed into the US and Great Britain did nothing to slow down or stop the series of accords that lead to 1867. Regarding the possibility of the US being the first experiment in developing a commonwealth from an empire, that may be so. However, there were other issues besides taxation without representation. Merchants from the 13 colonies were increasingly encroaching on Great Britain’s trade with the Caribbean, not to mention the trade of other nations that either directly or indirectly affected Great Britain. Merchants from the 13 colonies were becoming less and less likely to participate in economic embargoes that GB might impose on the French, Spanish, or any other of the then world powers it might be at odds with. The desire for independence started well before Britain tried to get the 13 colonies to contribute to the decades of costs fighting off the French and their Indian allies. John Hancock and his uncle profited through providing the British with ships and supplies at a profitable level of cost to the British, before, during, and after the expulsion of the Acadians. When the time came to make a decision his was as much an economic one as one founded on ideology. The Americans before the revolution were experiencing a desire to run their own lives their own way, with economics being the standard bearer. The issue of taxation without representation was the most universally applicable item. What is the most often debated item in today’s politics? Why is it unAmerican to tax Warren Buffet more than his secretary. Revolutions start with the ideas of the upper and upper middle classes. There were more of those in favor of starting up a brand new country than sticking with mother Britain. Those must have been heady days. One question to ponder is what if the colonies had decided to pony up their share of the past several decades defense costs? Then would have things have worked out differently? Perhaps it was how the 13 colonies handled Britain as well as how Britain handled the 13 colonies.
issac – just where did those French and their Indian allies come from?
Issac
Regarding Soros
Can’t you please take off those rose colored spectacles and look at these men the way they really are 😉
And, While you are doing that, blame it on the constitutional framework of the country and the inhumanity of man and all since we are no longer a “Christian” nation that was never “founded” on “Christian” principles.