February 2010 Archives

By Maung Zarni
The long list of dignitaries with whom Burma's junta chief has played 'engagement' attests to his masterfully strategic use of iconic figures for public relations purposes. Stiglitz may be next.

How exciting that Joseph Stilglitz, the high priest of post-Washington Consensus globalization, traveled to Rangoon to give Senior General Than Shwe's deputies a crash course in poverty reduction and rural development!

But this misplaced and premature excitement, if that is what it is, shows how desperate for change we as Burmese elites and our international supporters have become, and how pathetically inadequate our understanding of the nature of the beast we are dealing with is.

Stilglitz's journey to Naypyidaw is seen as newsworthy by star-struck Burmese and Burma media who think that the regime, which has not and will not budge a political inch despite repeated calls for engagement by Aung San Suu Kyi, our home-grown Nobel, may finally bend to the economic advice from another Nobel.

Stiglitz lays it on the line for the generals

From an official US government guide...this is the sort of advice that gives bureaucrats a bad name...

Greenwald has an intriguing update on the previously posted piece on the New York Times mystery writer...

The Hillman Foundation's Charles Kaiser asked NYT Op-Ed Page Editor David Shipley about this strange matter and received this reply:

We found Ms. Dadkhah from work she did in Small Wars Journal, work that was part of her Ph.D. dissertation at Georgetown. Ms. Dadkhah only recently took a job at Booz Allen. We tend not to mention the names of companies -- as it can run the risk of seeming self-promotional. I thought it was sufficient to have the author say, as she did high up in the piece, that "While I am employed by a defense consulting company, my research and opinions on air support are my own." It's worth underscoring that Ms. Dadkhah's research regarding close air support came entirely from her doctoral research, and that these are issues she has written about over the the last couple years for Small Wars.

Greenwald has more

...what can be done?

Does international aid hurt or help?

  William Easterly and David Beckman argue that the foreign aid system is broken and that some basic changes -could make a big difference.

 

 

Luis Felipe Rojas

by Marc R. Masferrer - from Uncommon Sense

If you're a Cuban independent journalist, you know you have the dictatorship's attention when the secret police summons you to headquarters to deliver an ominous message: If you keep reporting and writing your stories, you risk being sentenced to a long prison term. Considering there are some two dozen journalists in the Castro gulag, that is not an empty threat.

Greenwald is on the case again in Salon, pointing out that te New York Times has published a monstrous  Op-Ed complaining that the U.S. is being too careful to avoid civilian deaths in Afghanistan (which would probably come as a surprise to these people andthese people if they hadn't been Liberated by the U.S. . . . from life).  The Op-Ed is by someone identified as "Lara M. Dadkhah," and it's so ugly that it merits little refutation, as it really negates itself:

by Clothilde Le Coz, 

Iranian authorities are once agan cracking down on the Internet.

Internet connection speeds were degraded in several cities in advance of the Islamic Revolution's 31st anniversary on February 2. This same tactic was previously used by the regime in advance of events likely to be used by the opposition to stage demonstrations. Several websites were also targeted by hackers, including the Radio Zamaneh, which was attacked by the "cyber-army," a group linked to the Revolutionary Guard.

By Christopher Hitchens
It's an old story, but it bears retelling. One day at the dawn of the 1960s, a lawyer named Peter Benenson was reading the newspaper on the London subway. He came across a small item reporting that two students from Portugal--then still a fascist dictatorship running a filthy empire in Africa--had been sentenced to seven years imprisonment for raising a toast to liberty in a public place in Lisbon. After a short cogitation, he decided to take action, and his open letter concerning "prisoners of conscience" was published on the front page of the London Observer. You may never have heard or read about this micro-event or its macro consequences, but I am willing to wager that you have heard of Amnesty International, which was the great tree that sprouted from this acorn.

By Jean-Francois Julliard

Who knows exactly what happened in Iran during the demonstrations Thursday marking the anniversary of the Islamic revolution? Thousands of images and stories have leaked out of the country since the disputed presidential election last June. But it is extremely difficult to verify information. Those foreign reporters who get visas are forbidden to cover opposition demonstrations. As for the local reporters who have not been jailed or fled the country, their main concerns are how to be efficient, now that a dozen newspapers have been closed since June. As of this month, Iran is imprisoning more journalists than any other country.

The team writing the World Bank 2011 World Development Report are taking a remarkably open and 'webby - watch us work' approach to their task - posting as they go along and inviting comments. 

This latest post by NIGEL ROBERTS is remarkable, if only because Israel continues to keep foreign correspondents out of Gaza. This state censorship means that there are few independent eyewitness accounts of what life is like in the Strip. This is a thoughtful post well worth reproducing in full:

Gaza City, January 9, 2010

"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."

Winter in Gaza

I first visited this place in 1994. Even then, the name was synonymous with misery. What I remember, though, was a crowded, contentious place possessed with energy and, in the minds of many, the hope of an end to 46 years of exile.

	Photos © Natalia Cieslik Rex Bryan, Yezid Sayigh (from left), and I on the right during our trip to Gaza.

I haven't been here for four years, and am here on WDR business with Yezid Sayigh (our West Bank and Gaza case study author), Rex Brynen and Natalia Cieslik of the WDR core team. Today, Gaza feels dead. It's cold. A few green Hamas flags droop from the electricity lines. Much of the damage from the battles of December 2008 has been cleared away, but bullet-strikes run up and down many of the apartment blocks. There is little color anywhere; little of the efflorescent graffiti that once covered walls, few advertizing bill-boards, hardly any of the posters of 'martyrs' once claimed by contending political parties. As we drive the length of the Strip, the streets are almost empty.

By Bob Dietz/Asia Program Coordinator CPJ.org

It was good to hear Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa point out in his Independence Day speech on Thursday that the country "cannot be developed with harassment, gross punishments or by the gun." But the sentence that followed that--"Discipline is not revenge"--gives cause for concern. Rajapaksa's speech marked the 62nd anniversary of the country's independence from Britain. It was delivered in Kandy, the heartland of the president's electoral base.

By Takis Michas
In Greece, as elsewhere, if the management of a company reports misleading figures about the company's financial situation in order to boost the price of the shares or to support the sale of securities, it risks facing criminal charges. Around the world, including in Greece, this is securities fraud.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Q&A: Greece's financial crisis explained (cnn.com)
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• Takis Michas: Greece Is Bankrupt (Morally, At Least) (online.wsj.com)

A World Bank blogger argues, somewhat controversially,  against wholesale enthusiasm for greater transparency and information. Its not just the risks of propaganda through mass media that shes worries about about, but the reality that competitive media are as likely to be  "lapdogs" rather as "watchdogs"

Comment

By Chris Hedges

Reporters who witness the worst of human suffering and return to newsrooms angry see their compassion washed out or severely muted by the layers of editors who stand between the reporter and the reader. The creed of objectivity and balance, formulated at the beginning of the 19th century by newspaper owners to generate greater profits from advertisers, disarms and cripples the press.

BY Antonio Lambino
There are places in the world that appear to be democratizing. Their governments claim to be working toward institutionalizing a free press. But authoritarian control can still be imposed behind the curtain of make-believe. Let me share a real-world example from a country that shall remain unnamed.