And Niall Ferguson’s peers call his book “tendentious”
Niall Ferguson’s essay/book excerpt in Newsweek – and more than likely his whole book – was very much op-ed, very much not pure reporting. It was also intended to invigorate Western readers. But he has offended pretty much everyone who’s read the book and has been subjected to its apparently supremist undertones. It’s a commercially-led, provocative, publicity-optimised title; Civilisation: The West and the Rest.
“Character assasination” is how Ferguson described to Canada’s The Globe and Mail the review of Civilisation: The West and the Rest in the London Review of Books by Pankaj Mishra. The spat was since echoed in the New York Times, Guardian, Evening Standard and The New American to throw a few quick links at you.
Here’s what he said to The Globe and Mail after being called a neo-imperialist by Mishra:
That wasn’t a review. It’s extremely selective, quite deliberately misrepresents my work, and strongly implies that I’m a racist, which I resent. I’m extremely angry about that piece. It was malicious and defamatory and I don’t intend to take it sitting idly. I will respond with great force to that attempt at character assassination.
Looking forward to that response that will come with “great force”.
I still like that paragraph that I blogged below!
Niall Ferguson summarises Western society’s “viruses”
Just read an essay in Newsweek adapted from Niall Ferguson’s book Civilization: The West and the Rest, in which one of his final paragraphs really resonated with me. He is talking about the US but I think it applies to all of the West:
What we need to do is to delete the viruses that have crept into our system: the anticompetitive quasi monopolies that blight everything from banking to public education; the politically correct pseudosciences and soft subjects that deflect good students away from hard science; the lobbyists who subvert the rule of law for the sake of the special interests they represent—to say nothing of our crazily dysfunctional system of health care, our overleveraged personal finances, and our newfound unemployment ethic.
Those four or five points are the reason I’m about to start studying sociology and why I enjoy the journalism of my favourite American, British and European publications. And I live in London because it’s at the heart of the action.
The article also draws comparisons between America’s decline and the collapse of history’s great societies. Read it here.
Sean Smith ‘Frontlines’ Exhibition – Striking but evasive
The bottom floor of London’s Kings Place complex is where you’ll find the high point of Frontlines, a new exhibition by war photographer Sean Smith. A Lebanese boy sits in a vehicle holding his younger brother, awaiting their opportunity to flee from violence in their village. The boy’s face could not possibly be a more pure expression of fear, until you see his little brother’s eyes. A moment of utmost terror, skilfully captured by an exceptional photographer.
Smith, who has won much acclaim for his work for the Guardian and Observer opens the exhibition this Friday to launch a book of his last decade of work. Striking images of conflict zones thread in and out of the Kings Place Gallery and throughout two floors of the complex, displaying his observations from Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo and Lebanon. He shows us civilians whose lives have been destroyed, insurgents who will fight no more and the tedium of life as a soldier. However, for all of Smith’s courage in capturing the reality of war, his story of humanity misses vital components.
Image: Anbar Province, Iraq, 2005, © Sean Smith
While suffering is a theme that applies to both civilians and militia throughout the exhibition, allied soldiers are portrayed without emotion. Captions read, “US and Iraqi army personnel carry out early morning raid”, “US soldiers conducting house-to-house searches, “British soldier from the Mercian regiment mentoring an Afghan soldier” – words that display as much of the soldiers’ emotions as their accompanying photographs.
While browsing the collection it is difficult enough to imagine what those troops must be feeling let alone attempting to empathise with their situation. These soldiers suffer pain and loss, they suffer mortal injuries, they make mistakes, but the exhibition depicts them as clinical and detached from the destruction around them.
With the political baggage carried by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - already controversial via document leaks and the initial justifications for invasion – Smith has the opportunity to make a statement about the reality of the human cost of the operations. It is a disappointment that the collection of his work on display lacks the impact it could have had.
Exhibition information here.
Opening Times:
Aug 5-Sep 30
Kings Place Gallery / Bookshop / Balcony North Gallery:
Monday – Friday 10 am – 6 pm Saturday – Sunday 12 am – 6 pm
Admission free
Hactivists wipe $1.3 billion from Ebay in PayPal boycott
In response to the recent arrests of suspected perpetrators of the “Operation Payback” hacking attacks surrounding Wikileaks in December 2010, hacking group Anonymous today launched a campaign against PayPal’s “economic blockade” of Wikileaks. Internet users were encouraged to close their accounts, resulting in a dramatic price drop in the stock of PayPal’s owner Ebay.
Activist group Anonymous and its affiliate LulzSec today launched a campaign against PayPal in retaliation for the FBI arrests of internet users involved with the group and the “economic blockade” against Wikileaks. The result was a $1.3 billion drop in the value of Paypal’s owner Ebay as “thousands” closed their accounts.
| eBay Inc.: NASDAQ:EBAY quotes & news – Google Finance
Get detailed financial information on eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) including real-time stock quotes, historical charts & financial news, all for free!
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Preamble:
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PayPal statement regarding WikiLeaks
PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. We’ve notified the account holder of this action.
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PayPal freezes WikiLeaks account
Online payment company says funds were being used for ‘illegal activity’ in violation of its rules PayPal has frozen WikiLeaks’ account in the latest action against the whistleblower website, which has been posting leaked US embassy cables online.
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Dec 6, 2010 – PayPal becomes one of the companies targeted by hackers in ‘Operation Payback’ – a response to the blacklisting of Wikileaks. Responsible for the attacks are a collective of otherwise independent activists identified as Anonymous.
Jan 27, 2011 – The FBI are on the case, executing over 40 search warrants in their investigation of Operation Payback.
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FBI — Search Warrants Executed in the United States as Part of Ongoing Cyber Investigation
FBI agents today executed more than 40 search warrants throughout the United States as part of an ongoing investigation into recent coordinated cyber attacks against major companies and organizations. Also today, the United Kingdom’s Metropolitan Police Service executed additional search warrants and arrested five people for their alleged role in the attacks.
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Operation PayPal
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16 Arrested as F.B.I. Hits the Hacking Group Anonymous
SAN FRANCISCO – In the most visible law enforcement response to a recent spate of online attacks, the on Tuesday announced the arrests of 16 people across the country in connection with strikes carried out by a loose, secretive federation of hackers called .
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Jul 21, 2011 – Anonymous and affiliated group LulzSec respond with tweets to the FBI and a YouTube press release (accompanied by a text version in five languages) suggesting impending retaliation.
| “ | DearFBI this idea can’t be stopped. 100s of people have stepped up in the places of the 16 u arrested. The ones that will also get out. | |||
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| “ | Arresting people won’t stop us, FBI. We will only cease fire when you all wear shoes on your heads. That’s the only way this is ending. | |||
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| “ | Whats not cool is @paypall freezing funds of activists, and pushing the fed to go after Anons RT @luluzaku: @YourAnonNews that’s not cool | |||
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Jul 26, 2011 – Activist blog Cyanidelulz discusses the fate of one of the arrested hackers, who faces a $500,000 fine and 15 years in jail – making comparison between the lesser sentence normally handed down to rapists.
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Love Lulz & Cyanide
So, apperently hacking a website, and not stealing any money or anything like that get’s you 15 years in jail, but most rapist only get 11 years. [“http://bit.ly/rcJslI 15 years for the Paypal attack? While 80% of rapists are sentenced to 11 years: http://bit.ly/rjvYLi YOU SERIOUS?”
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Jul 27, 2011 – Anonymous announce Operation PayPal with a tweet followed by a media release, urging internet users to close their PayPal accounts.
| “ | Operation PAYPAL (#opPAYPAL) Cash out your accounts, and cancel them. Press release coming soon. Get the message out there. | |||
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There is immediate response on Twitter, some encountering PayPal restricting the closure of accounts.
| “ | @YourAnonNews @AnonymousIRC I just cancelled both of my PayPal accounts. It needed to be done. Thanks for the heads up. | |||
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| “ | @YourAnonNews just cancelled both my accounts ! Thanks for the warning  now go knock’em dead! |
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| “ | RT @john78258: @YourAnonNews PayPal is not letting me out! Asking for a lost CC# as a verification to close. Office closed till morning. | |||
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| “ | @YourAnonNews I just closed my paypal account . #OpPayPal #Anonymous #Voice #fuckpaypal …… | |||
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| “ | Thousands cancel their PayPal accounts in protest over treatment of WikiLeaks & its defenders. Join #OpPaypal and boycott the bastards. | |||
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| “ | We support the work of #Anonymous in drawing attention to the economic blockade of #Wikileaks by corrupt financial institutions. #OpPayPal | |||
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| “ | PayPal parent ebay hit with $933M stock crash as Anonymous-WikiLeaks boycott hits #oppaypal http://t.co/wbPTvmq | |||
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| “ | At least 35,000 PayPal accounts have been closed today, likely much more to come. | |||
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Australia contemptuous of UN with Malaysia refugee agreement
Australia is too frequently an embarrassment to itself on the international stage. The agreement made with Malaysia yesterday is an example of the inherent xenophobia, and sometimes plain racism, that expose themselves every time Australians need to make a serious human rights decision.
For a country whose modern society was founded by people who arrived by boat onto land that was not their own, Australia’s fear of “boat people” is outrageous. And it’s an effective political tool too – the ability to ignite Australia’s fear of foreigners can swiftly shift the direction of an election campaign. But fear and racism aside, making international refugee agreements that clearly conflict with commitments to the UN refugee convention is a contempt of the United Nations and the international standing Australia is so desperate to build.
The country is already in trouble with the UN for its treatment of indigenous Australians – a further display of contempt for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples it signed just years ago.
If Australia want to become a respected global power, they need to deal with their governments’ reprehensible attitude towards human rights.
Read Liz Gooch’s article ‘Australia and Malaysia Sign a Refugee Swap Deal’ for the New York Times here.
IMF should get young Arabs off the streets and into lecture rooms
Found a great little snippet about the IMF while flicking through this week’s Euro edition of Newsweek.
Now, before Tunisia and Egypt even have new governments in place, the IMF has jumped to offer them loans for vast infrastructure projects in the desert – as if the fund didn’t know that young Arabs there want ways to start businesses and have careers, not temporary construction jobs.
It was in Amar Bhide and Edmund Phelps’ article ‘More Harm Than Good – How the IMF’s business model sabotages properly functioning capitalism’.
The IMF needs to be wise when spending tax dollars in foreign countries. There are a lot of needy hands in the world at the moment and funds are limited. Egypt have a new and inexperienced government who are already discussing $15 billion of investments from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. These two nations will undoubtedly want to see commercial returns, which may see a lot of the gains from Egypt’s eventual economic resurrection leave its borders.
The IMF has the opportunity to initiate stability and growth from a root level. The young people that are still protesting on the streets want to know their futures are in good hands. Spending the proposed billions of dollars in ongoing projects focusing on filling skills and education gaps and incentivising small businesses would be a powerful morale lift in the short term and a solid foundation for Egypt and Tunisia’s 10-20 year futures.
At the very least, micromanaging any funding and ensuring effective implementation will have a profound effect.
Chapter 2 – I’ll decide
There is so much I want to do but I have a very all-or-nothing mindset in the way I do things.
I am so passionate about so many issues but because I can’t make ground in all of them I revert to absorbing more and more information but neglect to write about it. I want to have a publication that digs into all of those things but because I don’t have it and I’m not employed to do it I sit on my haunches waiting for the opportunity to come along.
At least what I do know is that I am meant to be in media and communicating to people.
The opportunities do come along, but they float past so quickly, and just out of reach. That boring corner of the rat race where there’s little purpose and little contribution to society and your personal aspirations is so magnetic. I don’t want to live this way but I it seems like a new incentive to compromise on what I want in the short term for later rewards always appears just at the right time to keep me where I don’t want to be.
I deserve more and it’s time to stop relying on others to get to where I want to go.
International Newspapers Week: Al Watan Daily, Kuwait
Kuwait is a tiny country right in the heart of the Middle East with a population of just 3.5 million. They are squished up against Iraq in the north, Saudi Arabia to the south and Iran is just over the Persian Gulf. The country is smaller than Wales yet owns the fifth largest supply of oil in the world, contributing to its place as the fifteenth richest country per capita, even ahead of Germany and the U.K. It was a part of the Ottoman Empire, the British more or less acquired it after World War I, and after independence from the British they suffered an invasion by Iraq before the U.S. more or less won back the land and setup one of their strongest alliances in the Middle East.
While the media industry in Kuwait is reported as one of the most transparent in the Middle East, recent events suggest the level of press freedom is not particularly exemplary, in particular an incident in late 2010 when the government closed down the Al Jazeera office in Kuwait City while police violently dealt with protestors at a demonstration. Also in the country, a Shiite newspaper editor is being prosecuted for referring to the recent Saudi Arabian military movements in Bahrain as “an invasion”. According to Reporters Without Borders, the editor Abdel Hossein al-Sultan says ”he was told not to publish anything that could harm relations between Gulf nations”. A Kuwaiti journalist has also just been freed from jail after winning a defamation suit against him after he made allegations about the Prime Minister. The Al Watan (The Homeland) Daily itself was fined only in February for publishing a pro-Israel advertisement in the supplement of the International Herald Tribune.
Onto the content of today’s paper . The day after the news of Osama bin Laden’s death is invariably going to take over the front pages no matter where you are in the world. Bin Laden’s Death Reverberates Globally is the headline and the page is dominated by a full report on the events, a transcript of Barack Obama’s statement as delivered on television and a statement from the US Ambassador to Kuwait Deborah K. Jones. Jones’ statement more or less deals with one issue:
The United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam. We are at war with Al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization that is committed to killing as many innocents as it can.
A short headline, Iran state TV carries report of Israeli build-up points to page five where a small Reuters article reports on Israeli military movements picked up by the website of Iranian state-owned Press TV: “Iranian state television ran a report Monday saying Israeli military aircraft were massing at a U.S. air base in Iraq for a strike on Iran.” It continues to say that Israeli leaders have not ruled out military action against Iran and that the U.S. and its allies suspect Iran’s nuclear energy programme is a cover to build nuclear weaponry. The report closes by mentioning that Iran does not recognise Israel except as a “Zionist regime”.
Back on the front page we have another report about the creation of a new Kuwaiti Cabinet from an unnamed source inside the government. An inset photograph shows protestors face to face with police in Algiers. A short article reveals 102 journalists were killed in 2010 with 40 of those in Asia and 32 in South America at the top of the list, according to the International Press Institute. Wrapping up the front page is the revelation of live streaming court sessions and the new admission of computers, tablets, smart phones and social networking into court rooms in Massachusetts, U.S.A..
Interestingly, a leading piece on page two looks at Phase Two of a programme that so far has been focused on “women’s issues”. Sheikha Al-Adwani, the Head of the Community Development Department in the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, announced “a number of feasible projects that would serve development causes, putting humans’ communication skills atop them, following the completion of Phase One that was concerned with women’s issues.” The article also mentions the following description of the programme as reported by the Kuwait News Agency: ”Training opportunities will be provided, all year round, in the fields of marital guidance and promoting public awareness in order to enhance women’s consciousness of their social rights and duties.”
Another prominent article on page two reports on movements to create a strong environmental plan by the Minister of Oil and Information. Elsewhere in the magazine, the Kuwaiti government calls for greater Gulf Cooperation Council coordination, the Iraqi Vice President visits, and Kuwaiti inventors win medals in Geneva. A Kuwaiti charity worker detained at Guantanamo pleads for freedom – the group of Kuwaitis who began aid work in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the period just after 9/11 were “brutally arrested” by U.S. Marines and claim their innocence. The newspaper seems strongly on their side.
In the business section Kuwaiti crude exports to Japan are down, and a strong dip has occurred in the wake of bin Laden’s death.
Overall the Al Watan Daily is a quality publication with a substantial selection of informative articles in politics, business and humanities. It has strong Western influences prominent iPad ad halfway through, and the English Premier League headlines on the sports pages.
International Newspapers Week: The Hindu, India
India’s The Hindu is the next to feature in this week’s international newspaper profiling. It is no surprising fact that there is a very large amount of newspapers in India, covering hundreds of languages and regions. There is also a healthy amount of quality English papers, the three largest comprising The Times of India, The Hindu and The Hindustan Times.
Image from knol.google.com
The Indian newspaper market is very different to the average Western news industry; the country’s Hindi paper Dainik Jagran is read by an average of 16 million each day, and the above titles are read by approximately 7, 3.5 and 3 million respectively. They are all sold for a cover price of no more than 3 rupees (equivalent to US$0.05) and capitalise on a vast advertising market. The English papers are heavy with advertisements from educational institutions, construction, international business opportunities, commercial real estate and electrical appliances. By all accounts the printed news industry seems very healthy in India and they are only just beginning to expand their online offerings.
The Hindu is featured here today because of its international news focus and domestic coverage that is not too distracted by the consumerist, celebrity-inspired culture that is prevalent in a lot of the English language press in the country. Although The Times of India is also a quality publication we wanted to have a look at one of its strongest rivals.
The front page headline of the May 2 edition of The Hindu concerns a report on a scheduling mishap for a major architecture examination in Chennai that was apparently caused by a leak of the exam paper. The story has probably been given so much weight due to the country’s pride in its educational institutions. Also on the front page, a helicopter transporting the Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh went missing in the Bhutan region on Saturday and a large scale search by military and police has failed to produce any clues; a village is about to get a new road, saving its children from a 2.5 hour walk to school who sometimes have to turn back when the jungle stream flows too rapidly.
Air India is in big trouble, its pilots have been on strike for five days and 90% of its flights have been cancelled. Its CEO is worried that the airline might not survive. The striking pilots are predominantly from Indian Airlines before the merged with Air India and want equal pay with their new colleagues. In West Bengal, tension is rising in the lead up to elections for the West Bengal state Assembly as fundamentalist groups contest the vote.
The online homepage features most of the international news, and the overnight killing of Osama Bin Laden takes over most of the page with vast coverage of all aspects of the event and its ramifications. There are headlines for the latest from Syrian conflict, and Turkey prepares for refugees fleeing north over the Syrian border. The editor of The Hindu, N. Ram, interviews Julian Assange on Indian President Manmohan Singh’s reaction to the cables leaked by Wikileaks concerning India. Divers find the black box recorder from the Air France flight that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean. Microsoft, BRICS summit, Bombay Stock Exchange and NASA all feature towards the bottom of the homepage.
Overall the international news mix is fairly consistent with most Western publications. It almost seems to be a mirror of the general Western international news mix. While most of the reporting is coming from the standard wires (AP and Reuters), it is a thorough chronicle of world events and does not show any obvious unusual bias, which detracts from the paper’s character . The domestic coverage is abundant and diverse but there is a lack of on the ground political reporting. It would have been nice to see some strong messages bringing light to the human rights issues that cripple a significant portion of the population.
One last article that did take our eye was ISRO develops India’s fastest supercomputer, a technology breakthrough by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) that definitely means there is a lot more space news to come from India, who are most likely excited by the winding down of NASA’s space programmes.
International Newspapers Week – El País, España
This week’s theme will look at foreign newspapers from around the globe and extract a brief feel of what’s affecting that particular nation at the moment. We will try to put the headlines of the publication in context with a more international view and see if there is any contrast with the headlines and opinions of our favourite news curators The Guardian and The New York Times.
Image from entrepapelesyteclados.blogspot.com
First off the rank is the Spanish national paper El País, based in Madrid, owned by Grupo Prisa and edited by Javier Moreno. Spain has a very good selection of quality newspapers, but we’ve chosen to look at El País because it has a strong editorial direction in its presentation of news and the way it puts current events into context. It also has an English language edition, which is supplemented in the Spanish edition of the International Herald Tribune and freely available online.
The online homepage currently features the latest photos of Colonel Qaddafi’s relatives killed in the recent NATO attack. There are no such headlines in the April 30 edition of the English version however but it could have been published before the news was made public. The homepage also highlights a good amount of international news, including events in Yemen, Syria, the refugee crisis in Italy and France, and the threat of terrorism coming out of Marrakech in light of the bombing there last week. Terrorism in Morocco is a particularly sensitive issue to Spain as the Madrid train bombings of 2004 were largely blamed on groups based in the country. The lead feature in the Opinion and Editorials section of the English edition also deals with Morocco and looks at how it fits into the MENA region unrest. This quote puts the root of the problem quite succinctly:
The king has so far avoided the question of whether he is prepared to give up any of his near-complete power over the country — power that makes him a political and economic factotum.
Domestically, the unemployment rate has just hit 21.3% in Spain, spurring the top headline of the English edition, ‘Unemployment rises to almost five million’. A massive concern. While those figures did not feature very heavily in the Britsh and American press this week, it surely will if another European state moves towards a bailout. Spain might well be the next in line. There is an interesting letter to the editor about the 40% jobless rate in the 15-24 age group and its relation to a high rate of early high school dropouts. Further on in the Business section a report suggests that the unemployment situation will probably become worse.
Apart from the domestic news and politics, the most notable news skew in El País is definitely the Moroccan terrorism problem.
Rounding up, we should draw attention to some really worthwhile features also included in the English edition. What will become of the bookstores? - The electronic era paints an uncertain future for books printed on paper and A journey back in time - National British library pays homage to Spaniard who invented the time machine are well-researched, topical and interesting pieces and also ease readers from the very serious news section. Another interesting and entertaining feature that would work with almost any audience, entitled It’s easy to steal a Picasso, but then what? Organized gangs have a tough job when it comes to cashing in on stolen masterpieces wraps up an English supplement that we are going to read a lot more often.
Get some El País here and the April 30 English edition here - to get the latest daily English edition head to the bottom right of the main El País homepage.
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