Saturday, 11 June 2011
Khoda
What if you watch a film and whenever you pause it, you face a painting? This idea inspired Reza Dolatabadi to make Khoda. Over 6000 paintings were painstakingly produced during two years to create a five minutes film that would meet high personal standards. Khoda is a psychological thriller; a student project which was seen as a ‘mission impossible’ by many people but eventually proved possible!
Journalistic Verification, Amina Arraf, and Haystack
How did a Syrian blogger, who told beautiful and heartwrenching stories of life as a lesbian in Damascus, manage to trick so many people? How did an American software engineer, whose passion for the Iranian cause led him to build what he dubbed the safest of circumvention tools, do the same? The stories of Amina Arraf and Haystack contain odd parallels: Both took advantage of fervor around Middle Eastern uprisings, both had a grassroots formation of followers…and both thrived on the promotion of professional journalists, whose praise helped garner them support. Both were also absolutely sensational stories that may have caused journalists, otherwise scrutinizing, to discard their usual standards.
I’ve written extensively on the Haystack story, but to quickly re-cap: Circumvention tool comes out of nowhere, built by young, outspoken engineer. Wild claims about efficacy. Media picks up on the hype, young engineer wins awards, media builds the hype even further. Circumvention and censorship experts begin to raise doubts about the tool itself, eventually get ahold of it, tear it apart. Turns out it’s not as secure as the engineer–and by extension, the media–had hyped it to be.
In the case of Amina Arraf, her blog–Gay Girl in Damascus–gained a following amongst bloggers and Middle East enthusiasts, then was quickly catapulted into relative blogger stardom after a series of articles in prominent publications profiled her. Therefore, when on June 6, her “cousin Rania” posted to her blog that she had been kidnapped, the public was quick to believe it. It wasn’t until the next day, when Andy Carvin and others began to question the story, that the details started unraveling as the public quickly jumped in to sleuth the story.
So what made journalists cast aside their usual levels of scrutiny? Or, is it perhaps that journalists are not as careful as we trust them to be?
I would argue that the journalistic treatment of the Haystack story was far more problematic, not least because it was easier to verify: After all, the product’s engineer was based in the US. He was reachable by phone and traveled for several interviews and awards. Numerous journalists met him, and yet not one after questioned the security of the tool. In the case of Amina, the journalists (the pseudonymous “Kathryn Marsh” and Shira Lazar) who first profiled her should have seen red flags when they couldn’t get her on the phone, but they were also dealing with a situation in which digging too much could’ve put an already endangered woman in far more danger...
I’ve written extensively on the Haystack story, but to quickly re-cap: Circumvention tool comes out of nowhere, built by young, outspoken engineer. Wild claims about efficacy. Media picks up on the hype, young engineer wins awards, media builds the hype even further. Circumvention and censorship experts begin to raise doubts about the tool itself, eventually get ahold of it, tear it apart. Turns out it’s not as secure as the engineer–and by extension, the media–had hyped it to be.
In the case of Amina Arraf, her blog–Gay Girl in Damascus–gained a following amongst bloggers and Middle East enthusiasts, then was quickly catapulted into relative blogger stardom after a series of articles in prominent publications profiled her. Therefore, when on June 6, her “cousin Rania” posted to her blog that she had been kidnapped, the public was quick to believe it. It wasn’t until the next day, when Andy Carvin and others began to question the story, that the details started unraveling as the public quickly jumped in to sleuth the story.
So what made journalists cast aside their usual levels of scrutiny? Or, is it perhaps that journalists are not as careful as we trust them to be?
I would argue that the journalistic treatment of the Haystack story was far more problematic, not least because it was easier to verify: After all, the product’s engineer was based in the US. He was reachable by phone and traveled for several interviews and awards. Numerous journalists met him, and yet not one after questioned the security of the tool. In the case of Amina, the journalists (the pseudonymous “Kathryn Marsh” and Shira Lazar) who first profiled her should have seen red flags when they couldn’t get her on the phone, but they were also dealing with a situation in which digging too much could’ve put an already endangered woman in far more danger...
The Same Financial Firms Responsible For Our Economic Crisis Are Driving Us Toward a Global Food Disaster
US and EU investors -- including US universities, pension funds and investment firms -- are involved in unprecedented land grabs currently taking place in Africa, according to a series of investigative reports released on Wednesday by the Oakland Institute.
The Oakland Institute spent over a year working undercover to gather information on land deals in Ethiopia, Mali, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Tanzania and South Sudan.
The reports show how land deals have a number of effects, including the destabilization of food prices, mass displacement and environmental damage.
"The same financial firms that drove us into a global recession by inflating the real estate bubble through risky financial maneuvers are now doing the same with the world's food supply," said Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute.
"In Africa," she added, "this is resulting in the displacement of small farmers, environmental devastation, water loss and further political instability."
These deals are often presented as agricultural investment, providing much-needed economic funds, creating jobs and infrastructure in developing countries.
Yet, the report argues, many of the deals have negative impacts. These include inadequate participation of local populations, misinformation, lack of adequate compensation, especially for women or indigenous populations.
The intention of releasing the reports is not to curb agricultural investment but rather to ensure that the funding does what it promises to do and minimizes the deleterious effects.
The "Understanding Land Investment Deals in Africa" reports reveal that these largely unregulated land purchases are resulting in virtually none of the promised benefits for native populations, but instead are forcing millions of small farmers off ancestral lands and small, local food farms in order to make room for export commodities, including biofuels and cut flowers.
So there is an inversion of small, local farming to industrialized agriculture...e="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Tina Gerhardt @'Alternet'
Friday, 10 June 2011
The man who screwed an entire country
Two of them are well known. The first is the lurid saga of his “Bunga Bunga” sex parties, one of which has led to the unedifying spectacle of a prime minister being put on trial in Milan on charges of paying for sex with a minor. The Rubygate trial has besmirched not just Mr Berlusconi, but also his country.
However shameful the sexual scandal has been, its impact on Mr Berlusconi’s performance as a politician has been limited, so this newspaper has largely ignored it. We have, however, long protested about his second failing: his financial shenanigans. Over the years, he has been tried more than a dozen times for fraud, false accounting or bribery. His defenders claim that he has never been convicted, but this is untrue. Several cases have seen convictions, only for them to be set aside because the convoluted proceedings led to trials being timed out by a statute of limitations—at least twice because Mr Berlusconi himself changed the law. That was why this newspaper argued in April 2001 that he was unfit to lead Italy.
We have seen no reason to change that verdict. But it is now clear that neither the dodgy sex nor the dubious business history should be the main reason for Italians looking back on Mr Berlusconi as a disastrous, even malign, failure. Worst by far has been a third defect: his total disregard for the economic condition of his country. Perhaps because of the distraction of his legal tangles, he has failed in almost nine years as prime minister to remedy or even really to acknowledge Italy’s grave economic weaknesses. As a result, he will leave behind him a country in dire straits.
A chronic disease, not an acute one
That grim conclusion might surprise students of the euro crisis. Thanks to the tight fiscal policy of Mr Berlusconi’s finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, Italy has so far escaped the markets’ wrath. Ireland, not Italy, is the I in the PIGS (with Portugal, Greece and Spain). Italy avoided a housing bubble; its banks did not go bust. Employment held up: the unemployment rate is 8%, compared with over 20% in Spain. The budget deficit in 2011 will be 4% of GDP, against 6% in France.
Yet these reassuring numbers are deceptive. Italy’s economic illness is not the acute sort, but a chronic disease that slowly gnaws away at vitality. When Europe’s economies shrink, Italy’s shrinks more; when they grow, it grows less. As our special report in this week’s issue points out, only Zimbabwe and Haiti had lower GDP growth than Italy in the decade to 2010. In fact GDP per head in Italy actually fell. Lack of growth means that, despite Mr Tremonti, the public debt is still 120% of GDP, the rich world’s third-biggest. This is all the more worrying given the rapid ageing of Italy’s population.
Low average unemployment disguises some sharp variations. A quarter of young people—far more in parts of the depressed south—are jobless. The female-participation rate in the workforce is 46%, the lowest in western Europe. A mix of low productivity and high wages is eroding competitiveness: whereas productivity rose by a fifth in America and a tenth in Britain in the decade to 2010, in Italy it fell by 5%. Italy comes 80th in the World Bank’s “Doing Business” index, below Belarus and Mongolia, and 48th in the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness rankings, behind Indonesia and Barbados.
The Bank of Italy’s outgoing governor, Mario Draghi, spelt things out recently in a hard-hitting farewell speech (before taking the reins at the European Central Bank). He insisted that the economy desperately needs big structural reforms. He pinpointed stagnant productivity and attacked government policies that “fail to encourage, and often hamper, [Italy’s] development”, such as delays in the civil-justice system, poor universities, a lack of competition in public and private services, a two-tier labour market with protected insiders and exposed outsiders, and too few big firms.
All these things are beginning to affect Italy’s justly acclaimed quality of life. Infrastructure is getting shabbier. Public services are stretched. The environment is suffering. Real incomes are at best stagnant. Ambitious young Italians are quitting their country in droves, leaving power in the hands of an elderly and out-of-touch elite. Few Europeans despise their pampered politicians as much as Italians do...
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