The Big Felafel

Bloggers Beware- The Government Doesn’t Like Your Negativity

If reading the news gives you stomach indigestion- then welcome to my world. Reading headlines that are blatantly anti-Israel is one thing, but I haven’t even seen articles on the other side, and that has made me nauseous. Where have all the protesters gone? Where are the investigative journalists with their breaking news stories about corrupt politicians and dirty government games? Does anyone out there have an opinion and want to voice it?

I think I found an answer to my questions in The Jerusalem Post’s columnist Caroline Glick’s latest editorial, Our World: How Olmert defies gravity. Not only does she explain the government’s leash on the media but she goes into detail about the left wing media’s grip on the press. Just to get an understanding of what we are dealing with here, read below (make sure to have a barf bag near by):

Two weeks ago, the New York Jewish Week reported that Haaretz’s editor in chief David Landau asked US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to “rape” Israel. Landau also told Rice that it was his “wet dream” to tell the Secretary of State to “rape” his country.

Landau made this shocking appeal to Rice at a dinner in September at the home of US ambassador Richard Jones. Also in attendance were Israeli intellectuals and media elites.

Jewish Week’s report was a major scoop. But it raised troubling questions. Why did it take three months for Landau’s statements to be reported? Why were they not reported by the Israeli media?

Is your barf bag full? Glick goes on to identify that the media won’t report “bad news” about Olmert and his miserably weak government because they want to get interviews with people like President Bush when they come to town.
That explains why the media isn’t reporting the news accurately, but where are the protesters? Could it be Big Brother is finally watching?

Last week I wrote the post: How I faked it: Breaking into the Media. After I wrote the post I learned that three people, who were outside the hotel just hours after I was there, were arrested for causing “public nuisance”. This of course is a lame excuse for any arrest but in this case it is a complete fabrication of the truth and obstruction of our freedom of speech rights. Glick and Arutz Sheva are the only sources that even reported the story.

That explains why the protesters are far and few, since we are no longer free to express ourselves if it means opposing the government. You can find the “public nuisancers,” the term for protesters in your local jail, being bullied by the police or, writing editorials and blogs.

That brings me to the worst of the worst. They are coming for the bloggers too. That’s right, according to Glick,

Last week, the ministerial committee on legislation approved a bill that would make Web site owners and editors legally responsible for comments published on their sites. Given the government’s arbitrary and biased definition of sedition and incitement, if the law is passed it will effectively force bloggers and Web site operators to block all comments to their Web sites. Yet another avenue of protest will be silenced.

So that’s it, they have us cornered in every direction. We can’t scream and now we can’t even write. With Olmert still in power it was always obvious that the people’s voice doesn’t matter. But I didn’t know there was an actual method to his madness: secret police and keeping the media in check.

Well I for one will never be silenced especially by a man who had the worse comb-over in comb-over history. You may enforce the Big Brother-KGB-Patriot’s Act- infringements on my right’s-Martial Law but that doesn’t mean that we the people have to follow it. You can arrest me but you will never be able to lock me up- especially my mouth, honey.