The Information Society Archives

HEALTH: Internet Weaves a Lethal Web

Vast amounts of drugs and billions of doses of medicine are being sold illegally over the Internet every year, a report by the International Narcotics Control Board reveals.

COMMUNICATIONS: A Small Step Towards the Information Society

By Gustavo Capdevila

The only visible progress made at the recent preparatory meeting for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was the adoption of a financing mechanism created a year ago by city governments of Europe and Africa.

RIGHTS-RUSSIA: Media Feeding New Xenophobia

By Kester Kenn Klomegah

'Gypsy mafia stripped Muscovites of apartments' says a headline in a leading Russian newspaper. 'Ukrainian woman came to Moscow to sell child' says another.

TECHNOLOGY-BRAZIL: Cybercrime Capital of the World?

By Mario Osava

Criminals to some, innovators to others, computer "hackers" are a fact of life in the globalised world of information technology - and a surprisingly large number of them are based in Brazil.

IRAQ-MEDIA: All Flights Lead to Rome

By IPS Correspondents

It was the last despatch sent by Italian reporter Renato Caprile before he left Baghdad last week.

MEDIA-US: If It Bleeds, It (Still) Leads

By IPS Correspondents

"If a local candidate wants to be on television, and cannot afford to advertise, his only hope may be to have a freak accident," quipped U.S. Senator John McCain as he introduced legislation to compel local television stations to improve their coverage of local political campaigns.

RIGHTS: Stick in Hand, Tunisia Talks Freedom

By IPS Correspondents

The media freedom group Reporters Without Borders has declared it "ridiculous" that the second phase of the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) should be held in Tunisia later this year.

POLITICS: Embedded in the Spin Cycle…

By IPS Correspondents

An incisive new documentary is taking aim at the U.S. media's one-sided coverage of the war in Iraq, arguing that its collective complicity deceived the populace and made the war possible.

IRAQ: Media Held Guilty of Deception

By Dahr Jamail

A peoples tribunal has held much of Western media guilty of inciting violence and deceiving people in its reporting of Iraq.

BALKANS: Political Will to Join EU Exists, But Public Scepticism on the Rise

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic

The enlargement of the European Union (EU) from 15 to 25 members last May saw only the countries of the Western Balkans left out of the family.

RIGHTS-US: Big Brother Thriving in High School Classrooms

By IPS Correspondents

While authoritarian states in much of the world routinely jail journalists and others for expressing critical opinions, a high percentage of U.S. high school students believe the government should censor the press and that constitutional protection of free speech goes "too far".

POLITICS: Idealists Without Illusions

By IPS Correspondents

When researchers from the Centre for Public Integrity decided to delve into the arcane world of U.S. government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, they were met with the bureaucratic equivalent of stony silence.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Are Better Communications Possible?

By IPS Correspondents

Next year, when the World Social Forum (WSF) is "decentralised" and held in a number of different and still undetermined venues around the globe, the need to remedy the event's ongoing deficiencies in communications, both internal and external, will be even more pressing.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Fighting for the Right to Information

By Mario de Queiroz

The control wielded by big media and the need for strategies to challenge that power were among the central themes addressed at the First Information and Communication World Forum (ICWF).

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Open Systems for Open Politics

By IPS Correspondents

The World Social Forum opens Wednesday with open information systems in place to go with an open political ethos.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Venezuela Aims to Channel Voice of the South

By Humberto Márquez

Following in the footsteps of Arabic broadcaster Al Jazeera, Venezuela is spearheading a project to launch a new television network that will bring the voice of Latin America and the Caribbean to the rest of world, while challenging U.S. control of the hemisphere's media.

MEDIA-U.S.: Terrorism Shaped 2004 News Agenda

By Jim Lobe

While President George W Bush's November re-election topped the Associated Press' (AP) annual listing of the top 10 news stories for 2004, the other leading choices suggested that the news media might have helped him in his quest.

POLITICS-BALKANS: The Battleground Moves to Cyberspace

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic

A new war has broken out between Serbs and Croats, this time without casualties and bloodshed because the battleground is cyberspace.

TRADE: Software Patent Delay Welcomed

By IPS Correspondents

Campaigners have hailed the EU decision to postpone the adoption of controversial new rules for patenting computer-based inventions as a victory for "European democracy".

CHALLENGES 2004-2005: ‘Islamophobia’ Spreading Far and Wide

By Thalif Deen

A renowned Islamic scholar of Egyptian origin is barred from taking up a post in one of the most prestigious institutions in the United States - the University of Notre Dame - after the U.S. State Department invokes an anti-terrorism law to keep him out of the country.

THAILAND: Thaksin Outlaws VCD Challenging State Over Muslim Deaths

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

While the world marked human rights day, the Thai government chose the occasion to step on the citizen's right to information by declaring illegal a video compact disc (VCD) containing footage of Thai troops suppressing Muslim demonstrators.