Post-Christmas Ramble

Every year since I started blogging I have done some sort of Christmas post, usually something to do with "the real meaning of Christmas". This year I'm a fortnight into January, and my most recent post is still from the 10th December!

It seems to me to have been a very dark midwinter. Extended-family-wise situations have varied between stressful and downright frightening; healthwise CFS has been exhausting; UK-politics-wise has seen a barely veiled policy of favouring the rich and taxing the poor; US-politics-wise we have "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" - tax cuts for the wealthy and persecution for the whistle-blowers (not to mention the division in that deeply divided, and extremely violent, country resulting in yet another shooting atrocity); in Cote d'Ivoire there's another African 'strong-man' who won't relinquish power, financed, in this case, by the multi-national chocolate manufacturers Nestle, Mars/M&Ms and Hershey (although not Cadbury, yet); there are major floods in Brazil and Australia; and clearing up from last year's earthquake in Haiti doesn't seem to be happening.

Maybe, for me, this year's "real meaning of Christmas" is a line from the opening section of John's Gospel: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." Please?

Guess Who's Hosting World Press Freedom Day

From BoingBoing

China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, USA - some of the nations whose governments are most heavy handed in their political censorship of the internet. All have constitutions which, as I understand it, guarantee freedom of speech, yet all strongly attack those who embarrass the state.

China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, by and large, confine the bulk of their censorship to within their own state borders. The USA is trying, with some success so far, to censor the rest of the world as well. Death threats, threats of imprisonment, allegations of terrorist activity which would be laughable if they weren't so dangerous, government to government coercion - to which Australia has simply rolled over (at least initially), and Switzerland and Sweden appear to have been, at the very least, heavily influenced - and government to private industry coercion: Visa & Mastercard (who happily work with the Ku Klux Klan and its allies), PayPal, Amazon, and so on. It is remarkable how much effective control the US government actually has over the functioning of the internet.

So who has recently announced that they are to host Unesco's World Press Freedom day, 2011? The USA, of course. The writer of their press release appears to have a fine sense of irony:

"The theme for next year's commemoration will be 21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers. The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals' right to freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information. We mark events such as World Press Freedom Day in the context of our enduring commitment to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age."

As this Guardian news blog put it: "Shameless. You really could not make it up."

To end on a lighter note, the best joke of the week so far - thanks again to the Guardian Newspaper's blog - comes from Ben Yarrow's Twitter account (with a hat tip to @janinegibson):

Freedom of Speech - priceless. For everything else, there's MasterCard.