Freedom of the Press Foundation

I think many of you will be interested in the creation of this new foundation

pressfreedomfoundation.org

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Dear A Revolutionary

I took a quick look see.

The problem with freedom is “well, that’s just some people talking.” It usually ends up, freedom for us, but not for them.

Reminds me of eBay’s number one core value: “We believe people are basically good.” Followed by here’s a list of a couple of hundred rules or so and the resultant punishments for disobeying them.

Gerald

A revolutionary,
A crusty printer once told me…
“Freedom of the press belongs in the hands of women and men who know how to operate them”

We should add to the list of “Muck-raking” organizations to which we can donate:

We should add “Your favorite Private Press” which in this part of north Iowa is, of course, Cedar Creek Press. OK, now I’m anticipating lots of donations in order to keep my press freedom!

Ha!
I’m way ahead of all of you.
I’m saving the bulk of my type and ink for the Clandestine Resistance.

(I should be posting this anonymously or under another user name)

:o)-)

Many of europes tabletops and treadles exist because of their role in free speech and are forgotten by all but a few .
Resistance literature and free news passed around the countries of europe with the use of small presses ,many were hiddn away and did work to help beat oppression.

Well, it’s a good thing nobody will ever have to be concerned with things like that ever happening again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[edit] I’ve been studying the Journalism of the French Resistance…
http://tinyurl.com/d9slpu5
Fascinating stuff…
…and I’m not trying to be purposefully provocative but rather somewhat acting out a certain caricature that has perhaps indulged in too much Orwellian thought.

Something to think about though and to be thankful for the freedom of the press and the relative freedom…in most places…of the internet.
(but I do have a rather copious supply of Century Schoolbook, and in addition….am actively seeking someone with a crane to lower a Linotype into a rather deep hole).

I’m playing….I’ll stop now…

Dave

Dont feel that is maybe far fetched as a thought .
A flick of a switch and a huge EMF pulse wont stop my treadles from producing copy !
I hope not to have to do such things but as referred to above any press that was not hidden or smashed went to become metal for the war effort in europe , i am pretty sure america has a greater percentage of its presses of old than do any european country . Since 1850 there have been huge scrap drives for war materials for at least four wars , very little survives these events here , walk along any street in the uk and evidence of metal reclaiming is everywhere , victorian railings are the easiest to see the place where they were before they went to be re used .
If you have a european hand fed pre 1900 press it has very likely done its bit for freedom of the press and if from central europe it likely is an old propagandist veteran and should be respected as well as its former users .

actually…. I see a lot of good points made here…. and would like to recommend a few books on the topic:

1 is Prop Art…. about the secretly printed posters used in the 1960’s and 1970’s during the Soviet Occupation of Hungary. It’s quite a fascinating book.

2 - is the autobiography on Emma Goldman. She was a revolutionary who was a principal player in the Russian Revolution; the American Socialist movement; and the American Organized Labor movement .

Early in her carreer she was a fierly orator who advocated revolution…. believing that all men were essentailly good and that governemnts held them down. THEN after living through the Russian Revolution and the massacres that followed, she changed her viewpoint drastically…… it too is a very interesting book.

Now…. about self-reliant, non-censorable printing…. I agree wholeheartedly that it is vital to a free society. THAT is why I am always advocating an undersanding of how to print using home-made equipment, alternative materials, and so forth.

I’m at a point in my experience / skill level that if all of the normal printing supplies (or even my entire shop ) were unavailable… through governemnt actions, market conditions, social unrest or what-ever…. I could still print my books, posters, and broadsides. Of course it would be slower, and less precise…. but they’d still get printed.

Unfortunately, similar concepts cannot be said about our current electronic world. With a very few exective decisions, the flow of meaningful news can either be cut off completely….. or corrupted through misinformation to the point where the news is totally bogus. Look at what happened during the last election.

Now… do I think that the government is going to shut off our internet and prevent us from buying ink? No… not really….. BUT it is a possibility. it’s good to know that if it ever does come to that, i could still print my stuff.

Remember: the NAZI oppression of free speach was recent enough to still be remembered…. the communist oppression of free speach / free press lasted until 1989…. and in many radical nations the publishing of an unauthorized newspaper is punishable by death even today, and that number has increased dramatically in the last year…. even in countries that are our “Allies”.

Now I’m sure many of you are thinking “that could never happen here.” Maybe you are right…. maybe not. I’m in New York right now, working with Hurricane Sandy victims. I guess I’ve heard it a thousand times in the last month: ” I never imagined that we could get hit with a hurricane here!”

My point is this: We live in a free country, but that freedom is NOT guaranteed by any means. Even in this country we are seeing more and more “political correctness” being used to muzzle free expression, and the Constitution being ignored.

Understanding that the loss of freedom is a possibility is the first step in preventing it. Being dependent….on the government for support… or on big businesses for supplies… or on a single methodolgy for data distribution (like TCP/IP) seems to me to be a sure-fire way of becoming unable to function in the event of a major glitch in our system.

Even if the internet was closed down because of either political or catastrophe, desktop computers are still quite capable of printing, as well as publishing, without reliance on the internet. Both Jobs and Gates actually thought the internet would never be all that significant in the development of desktop computing. The ability to print or publish does not depend upon the internet, nor letterpress.

Gerald

I should probably mention that back in 1976–80 I was an information retrieval specialist at the University of Wisconsin. I searched the internet, which at that time consisted of scientific, engineering, education databases. We had internal email communication and access to the new mini-computers. No one envisioned the web and its potential nor that ours lives would ultimately become tethered to it.

Gerald