StarSuckers

Starsuckers is a feature documentary about the celebrity obsessed media, that uncovers the real reasons behind our addiction to fame and blows the lid on the corporations and individuals who profit from it. Made completely independently over 2 years in secret, the film journeys through the dark underbelly of the modern media. Using a combination of never before seen footage, undercover reporting, stunts and animation, the film reveals the toxic effect the media is having on us all and especially our children. Chris Atkins presents Starsuckers as a series of five lessons on fame in the modern world: how children are persuaded that fame is something they want, how television and the media reinforces the importance of celebrity and the efforts to attain it, how the mind and body reinforces our need to follow the activities of well-known people and strive to join their number, how the press became addicted to celebrity coverage, and how the art of promoting fame has led to celebrities and their handlers controlling the press instead of the press having say. Along the way, Atkins demonstrates how celebrity news with no basis in fact gets into print, why newspapers will run press releases almost verbatim, how parents will eagerly sign away the image rights to their kids, how certain mass scale charity events end up helping the performers far more than the causes they designed to support, and how publicists keep accurate but unflattering stories out of the news.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

UK Man ARRESTED For Posting Comments on Web site

Sent: Mon 2/09/09 2:23 PM
To: ar-news (ar-news@googlegroups.com)

A man has been arrested in connection with comments posted to theactivist news site Indymedia. The postings on January 21 included the personal details of aprominent High Court judge who had earlier that day handed down prisonsentences in a landmark animal testing extremism trial. A spokeswoman for Kent Police said the arrest was made this morning inSheffield. No further details about the man, who has not been charged,were released. His arrest follows Kent Police's seizure of anIndymedia server in Manchester on January 22. The two user comments that prompted the investigation were posted onIndymedia in response to a story about the jail sentences given tomembers of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). Mr Justice NeilButterfield handed down sentences of between four and 11 years forblackmail to three women and four men after they were convicted ofharassing
people and companies connected to Huntingdon Life Sciences(HLS).

-- full story:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/09/indymedia_shac_arrest/