Media and Politics

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2007-11-04T16:26:00.000-08:00

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Final Exam!!!

2006-12-21T17:47:00.000-08:00

According to Wikipedia , here is the definition of Media: “
Media (the plural of "medium") is a truncation of the term media of communication, referring to those organized means of dissemination of fact, opinion, entertainment, and other information, such as newspapers, magazines,banners and billboards,cinema films, radio, television, the World Wide Web, billboards, books, CDs, DVDs, videocassettes, computer games and other forms of publishing. Although writers currently differ in their preference for using media in the singular ("the media is...") or the plural ("the media are..."), the former will still incur criticism in some situations. (Please see data for a similar example.) Academic programs for the study of mass media are usually referred to as mass communication programs.”
There are six models of the mass media that I'm going to define very briefly. But remember, as Prof. Pimpare said in class, “the Media can’t tell you what to think, but what to think about.”
The first model is the Objective Fact Model, where the media serves as a tool, between the government and the citizens, informing them about facts and no judgments or comments about what happened. The main critic about that model is that it is realistically impossible to inform the public about everything, there is just too much information. The second model is the Neutral Adversary Model, where media don't take sides but understand its function to check on the government. The third model is the Public Advocate Model. Journalists have the mission to inform and responsibly the public. The Profit-Seeker Model doesn't need more that its name to be understood. In our capitalist society, the media are big corporations, always looking for more profits, and thus, are selling us the news we want to buy. The Propagandist Model is according to Leighley “the chief purpose of the media is to support and advance the interests of those in positions of power.” Our last model is the Tocquevill/Pimpare Model which claims that the media should be free and available to anybody. All the news should be in them, and it is everyone’s task to make his/her own judgement about what’s going on in the world.
My opinion is that the ideal model is realistically impossible to reach .However I don't believe that each one of the models that I just described is actually 100% accurate. We live in a such complicated world, where, as Leighley explains, everyone one of us has another frame of mind, everyone of us understands differently the same information, that it is just impossible for me to conceive a model like the Objective Fact Model. At the same time, I am sure that the Profit-Seeker Model exists in everyone of those models. My ideal model would be then a model where the media would be free from any outside lobby. As much that I understand that it is impossible to find totally objective people, it shouldn't stop us to at least try to get as close as possible to the goal of finding them, instead of hiring pro-whatever political affiliation journalists. This media should be free (there are solutions for funding with a minimum of lobbying at the same time) and should be available to whoever would want to get it. It should report objective facts but in a very random order to avoid the danger of psychological association.
The performance of the Main Media/Big Media using my model that I would call Amram’s Model, is real a disaster. As Leighley says “It would seem unfair to argue that the business of privately owned media corporations is to offer in-depth, analytically political coverage to an audience that has no interest in it.” But, the problem is not that people do not know about politics; the real question is why people do no care enough about politics. After all, the power that government detains comes from the people themselves. One of our assignments for our class was to go on a political blog and to review the Comments on any one substantive entry. In Alana’s Views , Alana brought the example of a “posting entitled "Bush won't help fight the terror of crime in US cities," Joe from D.C. argued that the crime rate is increasing since more money is going towards the war on terror than to local violence. He brought in substantial quotes to prove his point, resulting in a brief but interesting post. This post elicited 135 comments. Some responders did make thought provoking comments with a point. Most did not. A lot of the bloggers gave one-line answers that failed to add anything to the discussion. For example, dad said, "criminals vote republican failure pays." Another wrote, "this govt doesnt give a rats ass about los angeles. they shoot all their propaganda in canada, to fuck the union writers, actors and directors." Regardless of whether or not these statements are true, they fail to add anything to the political discourse”
Many surveys were made to evaluate the level of knowledge that individuals have in terms of political knowledge. Well, all show a serious lack of basic political knowledge. The problem with those surveys is that the assumption is that “the knowledge is freely and easily available.” And it is not. While some people complain that The New-York Times’s level of writing is very low, others aren’t able to read it because it is too high, and of course because it costs money. We’re really not aware of the fact that people, nowadays, still share phones. Not somewhere in the South, in a lost village, but here in New-York City, in the Bronx.
Leighley asks the following question: Why politicians seem to be so critical of the news produced by the mass media? The answer is of course that media always seek for the sensational news, and psychologically, individuals are attracted to them. Meanwhile, “politicians cannot be satisfied with this, especially since they are devoting more resources than ever to managing media relations.” But media do depend on them for the news coverage, since they make the laws and take decisions. So, it is a constant debate what should be said to the media, and how it should be exposed to the public, and that’s why I think that Amram’s Model wouldn’t have that kind of issues since it would be a neutral media, which would just quote whatever the official said, entirely, and it couldn’t be accused of bias.
To get back to the idea that power is given by the people to the government, it is also true that the elected officials generally “respond to citizen’s policy preferences.” One could also imagine different models of politicians, the Profit-Seeker would be the one who would do anything to get elected, the Public Advocate Model would be the one who would do what seems to be the best for his constituency etc… But, in the end of the day, we are the ones who are making the decisions, since we are the one who vote for them. If we decide to not go along with the politician’s Profit-Seeker, by the next elections either he will not be there anymore or he will have changed his strategy, if he is smart enough.
Regarding Government Secrecy and a Free Press, we had the visit of Steven Aftergood, who is the Director of the Government Secret Project of the Federation of American Scientists. Yoni Noble, in his famous PublicAgenda.org, we read an article about the 20 questions that should be asked on any poll that would come up in front of us. Questions like who did the poll, who paid for it, what questions were asked and in what order….do show the liability of a poll. Psychology is used a lot, and manipulation is definitely part of the game. For example, if the person asking the question the questions wears an orange t-shirt seeking to know what a rabbit eats, 97% of the answers will be carrots. Why not 100%? Well there is always a 3% of margin of error.
Political Science being a soft science never has one definition for one specific term. Propaganda is defined according to Nicholas Jackson O’Shaughnessy by “Schumpeter (1966) as “any statement emanating from a source that we do not like”, while Jones affected to see no difference between propaganda and the institution-bound transmission of information.” Nevertheless, it is true that the term propaganda has a very bad connotation; people see through it a picture of a dictatorial state. As O’Shaughnessy brings for examples, rumors is a very dangerous phenomena and get to extremes like claiming that the Holocaust never happened or that Nine-Eleven was a CIA or an Israeli plot.
But we are manipulated, on some levels, by some symbols. For example, we watched in class a clip from a candidate who was talking from a Church with the Cross in his back, then we could hear his voice but see him at the same time with his wife smiling (both of them of course) and their dog (there is always a dog!). All those symbols, and myths are deliberately put there, and even if unconsciously people don’t pay attention to them, it still sticks in the back of their mind until the day of the election when they will pick A and not B, because B had a red car, and who would vote for somebody who owns a red car? For the same reason, big companies continue to pay for the same adds to be shown on television, like the Corona one. It’s not to promote their product; most people know about it already. It is only to make an impression in order for the potential client to choose their product and not another one the day she will be at the supermarket.
The New Media’s situation is a little more complicated, since it is new and we haven’t so far so much of it in order to evaluate its impact. INTERNET!! That’s the word. This invention which connects people from all over the world, and apparently facilitates communication, seems to perfectly fit Amram’s Model. The information is right here, on anybody’s computer, at any time. Hold on. Did I just say computer? Some people are still up to sharing a phone and I am talking about getting a wireless connection, using my laptop, download music to my iPod, paying the DSL connection… Did I forget to mention that the same corporations that own the Main Stream Media (MSM) own the biggest news websites? Indeed, we counted between 6 to 7 big corporations who share 90% of the MSM, and those corporations do not only own Media, they also own oil companies, gas companies… so talking about neutrality after know those information becomes a little hard. To almost finish with the internet, who said they were free of charge? Some websites make you pay to access to their articles or opinions. Amram’s Model claims that everything should be as available as possible, and what we see with that kind of new media is the transition from the inconveniency of the MSN to the New Media phenomena.
And Moshe Said “Let There Be Gilmor…” And There Was Gilmor. Dan Gilmor has a very positive and futurist view on the New Media. He believes that there is a big revolution and it is because of the beautiful invention of the blogs. We saw in class a short movie about some students who saw blogging as being a citizen-journalist. As Gilmor explains, blogs are a collection of everybody’s knowledge. Each one of us has something to offer, knows something that others don’t and that’s where blogs come up. They’re here to offer an opportunity to everybody to share that knowledge and also to express their views on other people’s blogs. If Wikipedia
became one of the top 10 websites visited (from the 28th last year) it is because Wikipedia is a super-blog. So many surveys were made, and most of them conclude that because Wikipedia is so popular, it is also accurate as well. People check the articles that they wrote and discussions are taken as to know if some substance of the article has to be change or not.
In order for Amram’s Model to be working, we then would need a free access to internet to the entire world, which is realistically impossible. My suggestion could be summarized in one word: EDUCATION. People have to be aware of the New Media. If people do not vote, if people do not read newspapers, it is just because they do not see the importance of it, for whatever reason. So, by educating them of what they could gain from the New Media, they would find a way to access it. There are libraries all over New York City with free access to the internet. People, instead of going on the MSM’s websites, should be going on blogs and read the comments to get a better understanding of whatever news they’re interested of. It should be up to the people to make up their own mind.

Wikipedia Credibility

2006-12-04T13:44:00.001-08:00

Wikipedia and New Medias

2006-12-04T13:36:00.001-08:00

Important anti-Semitism Alert re: France

2006-11-29T13:22:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends, Recent reports out of the Jewish Community in
France are sounding very ominous. The Jewish people in France have had a long
history, and events of the past few years have created an atmosphere of fear and
danger for the 600,000 Jewish citizens who continue to reside there. In a
pattern that is reproducing itself throughout Europe and in some cases beyond
Europe, France's Muslim populations are growing exponentially, (now estimated to
number 5 to 6 million) and the younger members of the Muslim population are
acting to promote extremism and anti-Semites. "Nowhere have the flames of
anti-Semites burned more furiously than in France" declared one member of the
French Jewish Community anxiously in an e-mail he circulated amongst his peers,
trying to raise awareness and take more of a proactive stance in combating the
alarming trend. Here are a few examples of some of the most recent occurrences
that have created such uneasiness for our Jewish brethren living in France.
Here is part of the email that I keep receiving from some of my (good) friends. Following this paragraph is a list of "facts" that happened in France. I am not going argue the veracity of those incidents (even though for some of them, I know they're never occurred) but my point is that we're all facing nowadays one of the dangers of the Internet through that kind of emails. They say whatever we want to hear (here, the bias that France is country full of antisemitics looking to kill Jews) and is written is a way that would call up to the emotion of the reader: Yes, you probably already guessed it:Propaganda.

Prisoners, by Jeffrey Goldberg.

2006-11-27T13:27:00.000-08:00

As we’re trying to change the world in terms of trust in the Medias, somebody started before us… His name is Jeffrey Goldberg. Born in the U.S. he grew up Shomer Hatzair (Israeli left wing) and moved to Israel to serve in the Army. He served in an Israeli prison for Palestinians arrested during the first Intifada. Over there he made some “friends” prisoners with whom he keeps in touch until today. It's the story of his life, his questions (he could be defined as centrist ) and his doubts about the political agenda of Israel and the Palestinians today. What’s really impressive is that he always separates himself from the topic (it’s called objectivity) and in one point of the book, while he is in the middle of Gaza talking to one of his friends who tells him how he wants to kill of the Jews, his answer was “But I’m Jewish”. I really appreciated the fact that Goldberg shows us how it is still possible to not be bias to a sensitive topic as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is. (If anybody wants to borrow the book, feel free to ask)

Exposed by Glenn Beck (pay attention to what he says in the beggining... and the rest as well)

2006-11-26T17:10:00.000-08:00

"Can one make fun of Nazism?"Walter Moers "No,one MUST do so"

2006-11-22T12:47:00.000-08:00

Lapdog

2006-11-22T10:54:00.000-08:00

In his article titled “Lapdogs”, Eric Boehlert argues that some MSM are sold to Bush’s administration. He proves that the night before invading Iraq, the press conference was a joke, Bush had all the answers and planned before whom to ask. Eternal debate: Bush is a politician, he would do anything to have the support of the citizens but Bush is also the President and shouldn’t lie or fake press conferences. I’d like to know, according to Boehlert, if he can find a place where power and money aren’t associated to corruption and lies. I am sure he is a very smart man, and his point is like “discovering” that Santa Claus never existed. Yes, Bush manipulates people. What were you expecting? That he would tell you the truth and just the truth? He lives in a world of lies, where around him everybody lies. If he wants to survive, he has to play by the rules.

Free Speech?

2006-11-20T19:44:00.001-08:00

http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/showbiz/2006/11/19/b.anderson.nword.cnn&wm=10

Hitler's speech.

2006-11-12T07:54:00.000-08:00

Freedom of Speech

2006-11-12T07:38:00.000-08:00

I know! I was supposed to blog about a particular website... But last night, I went for my second time to The Museum of Tolerance in L.A. And overthere, I saw about Nazi Propaganda. I saw posters, Newspapers, speeches from Hitler.... Propaganda can be irrational and not necessarily calling for emotions, and still works. The Nazi were accusing the Jews of being at the same time Communists and Capitalists, richs and poors, smart and stupid ect. When people are depressed, looking for impossible solutions, they're ready to listen, believe to anything they would be told. Which brings us to the question of freedom of speech. If we know that during those crucials situations, freedom of speech could be employed to propagate some messages of hatred, should we limit the First Amenment? Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that one of the particularity of America was a total freedom of speech. There is no other country in the world like America when it comes to freedom of speech. Should we responsabilze the people and teach them how to use this right? Or the fact to do so would be unconstitutional because it would be considerate like conditionning and thus limiting this right?

Aristotle and the Origine of the Propaganda

2006-11-08T13:27:00.000-08:00

One of the aspects of Propaganda is Emotion that O’Shaughnessy describes beautifully through Aristotle’s example. Aristotle distinguished Pathos from Ethos and Logos. In rhetoric, pathos is the use of emotional appeals to alter the audience's judgment. Ethos could be explained as the integrity of the author and its persuasion, while Logos means that the argument is based on rationality. I think it’s interesting to see how the author shows us that propaganda is not something new, but can be found already in the Greek Antique. So often we hear elders saying “back in my time, when we could still read newspapers…” well, after a course like the one we’re taking now this couldn’t be accepted anymore

Sam Brownback in YU

2006-11-08T10:26:00.000-08:00

According to Sen. Sam Brownback, the Republicans lost the elections because of the following reasons: 1) War in Irak; 2) Corruption 3) Bringing up big questions to the public like Immigration and not solving them and 4) Most of the times, when it's the last mandat of the President, his party loses at the last Midterms.
What came out good from those elections, according to him, was that the Democrats runned using the Republicans values.
Brownback also point out how interesting it would be if a seat from the Supreme Court would opened withing the next two years, to see what kind of debate will occurs then.

I won't be surprized if that was made by the Republicans...

2006-11-07T17:54:00.000-08:00

Propaganda again

2006-11-07T17:50:00.000-08:00

Polls Again

2006-11-06T21:29:00.000-08:00

Very interesting Polls from Al-Jazeera. Which reminded me our conversations about people read the media that they like (and why do you like them so much???)

2006-11-06T13:52:00.000-08:00

In one hand I have this article from The Australian, and in another one I have this video clip from www.crankydocs.blogspot.com . In the video clip, I was told that the Midterms elections are elections were my vote doesn’t count. The percentage of reelection is really high, and the same “representatives” would get an incredible amount of money from the lobbies for their campaign. They’re corrupt and do not mind to use calumny or else to get rid of potentials adversaries. The Australian writes about the Midterm Elections in the U.S. where, according to him, the Democratic Party will win the majority in both houses, and thus because of the unsuccessful war in Iraq, launched by the Republicans. Hold on, I thought people weren’t going to vote (according to that video clip, they don’t.) And even if they do… they don’t matter, because the same people are reelected anyway.
The author continues and warns us that it “would be wrong to suppose that Democratic success will bring an immediate change in US foreign policy, especially on Iraq. President George W. Bush will still be in the White House, and having firmly backed his Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, will keep US forces in Iraq until either the chaos is brought under control or an appropriate exit strategy is devised.” Already, we can see an effort from the author to understand the American Political System.
Finally the author concludes two things: the Democratic Party could withdraw the allocation of funds to Iraq, like it was made in Vietnam (but it wasn’t such a happy end). And that objectively, Bush’s Administration did a good job regarding the economy, but it won’t matter, because they’re judge on Iraq.
What was interesting in this article was to see how The Australian could simplify the Midterm Elections in twenty lines. The Democratic Party will win because of Iraq, but it won’t really change anything. It is a way of propaganda towards the Australians readers, who don’t know that much about American Politics and will find this argument suitable to whatever believe they hold.

Approved or not?

2006-11-01T13:49:00.000-08:00

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/polls/archive/?poll_id=19
How many times have you heard “the President’s approval rating decreased by 5 points”? Have you ever asked yourselves why? Have you ever asked yourselves how the poll was conduct? What kinds of questions were asked? In what order? How many people were parts of that poll? How were they chosen?
In this

Poll

2006-10-30T13:40:00.000-08:00

To the question “who do you think is currently winning the war against terrorism- the U.S. and its allies, neither side, or the terrorists?” in 2001, 42% of the people asked, answered the U.S. and its allies, 11% the terrorists, and 44% neither side. However, in 2005, 37% answered the U.S., 20% the terrorists, and 42% neither side. In order to know if this survey is reliable or not, Dr. Sheldon Gawiser and G. Evans Witt, cofounders of the Associated Press/NBC News Poll, give us the formula to do so: 20 Questions which are going to determine if the survey is credible or not. The basic questions are about the making of the poll (who, when, why, what and how), the people who were asked and the way of how the poll was conducted. Regarding our poll, the methodology was conducted by Gallup Organization, which is a reliable source of information according to Fishkin in the following article (even though, he claims having a better one.) The findings of this survey aren’t so significant, besides that more people think that terrorists are winning. The fact of correlating those two polling (2001 –pre 9/11 and 2005- war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan) already makes us conclude that the terrorists are winning, and that U.S. is loosing. Or somebody could always argue that today people are more fearful of terrorists attack and because of that, would answer that they’re winning.

Orwell

2006-10-25T13:20:00.000-07:00

“If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy.” This is how George Orwell’s reading assignment could be summarized. In a brilliant manner, Orwell explained the danger of the utilization of the English language, how the most horrible crime could be “translated” as the elimination of an enemy of the democracy. Words could be used and abused until that they lose their credibility. My question to him is that he’s complaining against his own world. He is an author, he is a writer, he makes up those rules that we, readers, have to follow. He is “one of them”! Why should we trust him now? Yes, he raises the problem, and he is in a good position to do so, but still. It is like Goebels warning us about the propaganda: he invented it, but I don’t think anyone will trust him.

Democracy Never?

2006-10-18T13:17:00.000-07:00

I watched last night the edition of October 17, 2006 of Democracynow.org. It’s an hour long show and is categorized (or categorized itself) as an independent media, which means concretely that it doesn’t accept any subventions from the government, corporations, or any advertisers, but is “funded entirely through contributions from listeners, viewers, and foundations”.
The show started by the headline which consists of 9 different events which happened yesterday. The common point between them was that the intonation was very critical toward Bush’s administration, Blair’s government and the State of Israel. I didn’t read the “About Us” until after I finished watching the show but I had already more than an idea about what political affiliation Ami Goodman (the host) is.
To give you an idea of what made me conclude that they are real liberals, I am going to describe to you one part of the show. It is about Mohamed Munaf, a U.S. Citizen, who was arrested by the U.S. Army in Iraq for being involved in a kidnapping of three Rumanians journalists. Since then, he was sentenced to death and his American lawyer, Jonathan Hafetz, is trying to obtain his transfer to U.S. for a new trial. So far, it seems fair enough. Now, when Amy Goodman asked him what do the Romanians journalists say about him (apparently, if he was involved with their kidnapping, they should know something about it...), Hafetz’s answer is more then surprising: “Well, we haven’t spoken to them yet”. Munaf is being held for the past 16 months in Iraq, but his lawyer hasn’t spoke to the victims yet. Goodman accepted that answer as totally normal and insisted on the fact that apparently two American officers had a separate meeting with the judge in order to pressure him to sentence his client to death. His source is …. the Iraqi lawyer. Yes, he saw them, and he knows whatever they say to the judge in his office.
The other topics of the show were the sentence to 28 months to jail to Lynne Stewart, who is accused of transmitting messages from her client Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman to his followers in Egypt. I could watch Lynne Stewart during 5 min thanking all her supporters and complaining how ridiculous and stupid is the administration (I even watched her husband who didn’t really have much to say). Then, Los Angeles Times Baghdad Bureau Chief Borzou Daragahi, from Baghdad gave a report on the situation on Iraq. In conclusion there was a very interesting interview from Tariq Ali who just wrote a book called “Pirates of the Caribbean” where he defends the position of Hugo Chavez. He explains Chavez’s speech at the U.N. as historical but he thinks that “he went over the top a bit. I’m personally opposed to attacking Bush personally, in personal terms. Whether he’s an alcoholic or what is not significant.”
I finished watching the show and start thinking what ideas a show likes that leaves in the mind of the viewer. Well, not so positive in terms of Bush’s administration and it also gives the impression that we are facing an international conspiracy. Bush is controlling the justice here, in the U.S. and there in Iraq, and trying to influence Venezuela, and also the elections in South-America etc.

Clinton and Media

2006-09-27T13:30:00.000-07:00

With the elections for the Congress coming up in November in New York, one could ask if it’s really true. Is Hillary Clinton really running? Against who? For what position? While 2006 is considered like an “off-year” (no presidential elections), the medias seem to ignore or forget about those elections. Do they really? Leighley explains in his book “Mass Media and Politics” that media would talk about anything as long as people are interested. I remember from my American Politics class, Professor Pimpare saying how it was fascinating to observe that people could named you the name of the President but are incapable to remember who their U.S. House of Representative is. In the end of the day, he does much more for us than the President.

So to come back to Hillary Clinton, I found a very interesting article in the New York Times “THE NEW YORK PRIMARY: THE INCUMBENT; A Renominated Clinton Forgoes the Victory Dance” by Anne Kornblut (September 13, 2006) about the fact that Senator Clinton didn’t celebrated her victory at the primaries of the Democrat Party and instead went back to Washington. Maybe the intention of the journalist was just to criticize Hillary Clinton, but what I want to learn from that article, that if she felt comfortable to not have a party after winning the primaries, it is only because she knows that it wouldn’t be an issue. We are all aware of the fact that politicians depend a lot on their reputation, which bring us again to the question of how much the constituent know about their representatives.

For example, the New-York Sun, for September, published eight articles about Senator Clinton, while at the same time it publishes about four articles a day about the “war on terror”. Of course, one can argue that National Security interest more people, especially after 9/11, but as President Clinton said in his interview on Sunday night, if people want to know something it is because of the media. Media are responsible (partially?) for the level of interest and awareness that people have on some issues. In Newsday, which is a local newspaper, the editor chose to start publishing articles about the elections only a day before the primaries until three days later.

Leighley wrote that most voters won’t go and research about the candidates but will probably wait for the information to come to them. Considering the coverage that media offer to the “off year” elections, we shouldn’t be surprise if we’ll get, again, a low percentage of voters for the upcoming elections.

Cliton upset? Yes, and he admitted it

2006-09-25T17:48:00.000-07:00

On this video from Fox News last night, Clinton answered to the journalist that if people were concerned about the reasons why his admnistration didn't kill Ben Laden, it was because of the desinformation that they were getting from "neo-con" medias.

“Declassifying” Steven Aftergood.

2006-09-20T13:51:00.000-07:00

On Monday night, Steven Aftergood lectured us about an area that most people are unaware of: declassification of secret documents. Every year more than 20 millions documents are classified as secret and this requires a budget of 9 billions dollars to maintain an infrastructure like that. Steven Aftergood, according to the FAS (Federation of American Scientists) website is “directs the FAS Project on Government Secrecy, which works to reduce the scope of government secrecy, to accelerate the declassification of cold war documents, and to promote reform of official secrecy practices”. There are many levels of classified documents and there are about 4000 governmental employees who have the power to decide if a document should be release to the public or not. The question is of course, should we trust them? An organism like FAS has the role of counter balancing the power of the government, and I think their presence in D.C is more than necessary. Aftergood described his organism as apolitical, and without really explaining the benefits of the release of those classifieds documents, he advanced the idea that democracy is the best antidote to terrorism, here stopped by secrecy. While he acknowledged the utility of keeping some documents out of anybody’s hands, like war plans etc, he believed that the current administration has a policy of keeping things as secret without a good reason.
While I was hoping a great lecture and exciting news coming out of it, I’ve got a lot of “I don’t know” answers and a lot of speculations as explanation. Let’s be honest, Steven Aftergood has exactly the same rights than any other citizen in the country to declassify those documents.

Discovering Political Blogs

2006-09-12T19:50:00.000-07:00

I decided to go on Little Green Football’s blog labeled Righty Blog according to Prof. Pimpare. And here there is: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/entry=22542_Blair_Urges_Lifting_of_Palestinian_Sanctions&only

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Blair Urges Lifting of Palestinian Sanctions

Tony Blair has given some excellent speeches recently, full of ringing phrases about the big issues, confronting Islamic fascism, clash of civilizations stuff.

Then he does something like this. Blair urges lifting of Palestinian sanctions.

That’s right. While Hamas has not backed down one iota from their genocidal stance toward Israel, and continues to refuse to renounce terrorism, they make one token meaningless concession and Tony Blair’s ready to cave on the sanctions.

BRIGHTON, England (AFP) - Britain’s Tony Blair urged the lifting of economic sanctions on the Palestinian Authority, so long as a deal on a cabinet of national unity there meets international conditions.

He made the comments a day after returning from a three-day trip to the Middle East, during which he faced protests over his stance notably during the recent conflict between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

“Yesterday’s announcement of a government of national unity in Palestine is precisely what I hoped for,” he said, referring to an agreement under which president Mahmud Abbas is to dissolve the current Hamas-led government.

“On the basis it is faithful to the conditions spelled out by the Quartet, that is the UN, EU, US and Russia, we should lift the economic sanctions on the Palestinian authority,” added the British prime minister.

The comments went from a four words sentence (“he’s an idiot”) to few lines. But, most of them reflected one thing: nobody read whatever the blogger wrote about Tony Blair. They all saw one word “Blair” and automatically a comment came up in their minds, translated into a blog on the internet. All of them were comments coming from rightists. Of course, one could ask himself what is the point of a blog if everybody agrees on the matter, but who said it had to be logic. People like to comfort themselves in their ideas so here is another way to do so. Concerning their political knowledge, for most of them it’s pretty hard to judge, since they just wrote few words. Others are completely ignorant on the question (“Has Cherie Blair converted to Islam yet?”) and comment more to comment than to make a point for a debate which is inexistent anyway. But some of them are actually well written, and the authors actually spent time and efforts composing them. The only thing is that they’re biased to their cause which leave the reader skeptic about anything they write.

Network (1976)by Lumet

2006-09-06T12:42:00.000-07:00

Last night, I watched Network(1976), by Sidney Lumet, with Prof. Pimpare and some guys from the class (thanks to Gadi who arranged everything and the guy who brought the coke-sorry I don't know your name.) A journalist (Peter Finch) announced that he will commit sucide after learning that he's fired because of the bad popularity of his TV Show for which he worked during 25 years. He sinks quickly in a mystical madness, and is finally manipulated by UBS to become an insane preacher of the television news, transforming the TV Show into national success. At the same time, Lumet shows us the ascension of a producer (Faye Dunaway) manipulator and without scruples dedicating an immoderate worship to her career and the TV rating of her show. What impresses us especially in Network, it is the maitrise of Lumet to tell his story. The scenario - very complex - passes like a letter in the mail.The speeches of Finch for example, able alternatively to sell liberalism or to destroy the bases of the democracy. And then, this extraordinary scene where Jensen (CEO of the company) beats Beale on his own game and turns over it completely.
What to think about that movie? The idea was clear, the TV sells us whatever we would watch and has no scrupules to change any program if they don't "work". As Jensen explained to Finch, today there are no more goverments , there are big companies, big networks, and there is only one word: buisness!
Apparently this movie was very well recepted when it came out, but this idea of globalization of the medias and more generally of the rest of the world, nowadays isn't new. Medias need money in order to function and the only way for them to get it, is to have an audience. Of course, in this movie, the story went to the extreme. The real question would be more to find another system than to criticize the one we have. What are goverments supposed to do about it? In an ideal world, more competitive the medias are, better the news are. Let's not forget of the advantages of our system would be my comment on that movie.

Katrina's Birthday

2006-08-29T19:34:00.000-07:00

A year ago, a terrible hurricane devastated New Orleans. This tragedy has a name: Katrina. All those houses destroyed, lives to be restart, economy of a state inexistent summarized in a name: Katrina. Yesterday’s front pages of most national editions were talking about the anniversary of this tragic natural catastrophe (http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/hr.asp?fpVname=CA_TS ) I’d like to raise the question in general of anniversaries. What exactly is their function? To give a good conscience to people? It is true that Katrina showed up few times on the news over the past years, but this time we hear about it just because of the calendar dictates us to do so, and not because of any exclusive news on the matter. Did everything just become a name (here Katrina) or/and a date (August 29th)? Katrina raised a lot of questions such as how much the government cares about those none-east coast or west coast states, or why New Oleanders weren’t warned in advance about the hurricane coming in. Let’s try to think about those issues more than showing pictures of houses destroyed with a kid crying in front of them and tomorrow having the anniversary of the slave rebellion in 1800.

2006-08-24T21:05:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting article about the reconstruction on Lebanon from the NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/opinion/22pascual.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fContributors&oref=slogin One of the good observation that the authore makes is that this time there will be no foreign companies brought to Lebanon to help them rebuild the country. Lesson taken from Iraq, where one third of the budget goes to security. The other interesting observation is that the international community will actually train and equip the Lebanese Army which would go to South-Lebanon and that "even before this conflict, the Pentagon had studied the modernization needs of the Lebanese military." Let's remember when Afik Hariri was assasinated by Syria. At this time, Lebanes placed their trust into the hands of the UN which sent a team to investigate. Today, Lebanon get their "reward"; the international community didn't forget them. Of course, there are other interests which are involved (having troops in that region, nowadays, is a good political asset) but it definitely helped a lot.

Welcome to my blog

2006-08-23T19:54:00.000-07:00

Hello and welcome to my blog.