Video: ‘News blackout’ to hit Italy

(PressTV) – Italian journalists say they will stage a “news blackout” to protest a proposed law that could hinder the media freedom in the European country.

Some 2,000 journalists filled Rome’s Piazza Navonna on Wednesday to protest the move, and pledged a news blackout on July 9 to protest the law, which is seen as a threat to the free flow of information, The Boston Globe reported.

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Amid Media Blackout: Congressional hearing reveals US intelligence agencies shielded Flight 253 bomber

A January 27 hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security established that US intelligence agencies stopped the State Department from revoking the US visa of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The Nigerian student, whom US officials suspected of being affiliated with the Yemeni terrorist group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, attempted to set off a bomb on Northwest Flight 253 into Detroit on Christmas Day. Revocation of Abdulmutallab’s visa would have prevented him from boarding the airplane.

BBC blackout on Gaza

The London Daily News has learned there is an informal news blackout at BBC Radio over the mounting public outrage following the Gaza incursion by Israeli troops.

According to sources, radio station phone in’s have been screening out any callers wanting to talk about the Israeli air strikes and ground offensives in the Middle East.

The Sucker Bait Called Hope

Making the best of the slow apocalypse

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, aka “Joe the Plumber”, like Sarah Palin herself, was chosen cynically by the Republican Party to exploit the huge political confusion afflicting the social conservatives in the back country and white working class.

We just concluded an election in which both parties talked about hope, one more so than the other. Hope, that murky, undefined belief that some unknown force, perhaps Jesus or modern science or some great political leader, or other as yet unknown force will reverse our national or personal condition … will deliver us from what every bit of evidence indicates is irreversible, if not politically, then ecologically: Decline and eventual collapse. There is quite a difference between hope and understanding the facts, then holding justified optimism. Hope is magical thinking, a sucker’s game. Politicians the world round fully understand this.