SacredFacts

Will.i.am and Obama

I still think McCain may win in the end, but Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas campaign song for Obama is brilliant - as is the anti-McCain spoof of it..

I feel UK political campaigning has a bit to learn yet...

Davos 08

For the first time in 7 years I'm not at the World Economic Forum in Davos (in spite of the Daily Mail reporting otherwise). I hear it's downbeat with concern about the economic outlook. There's a surprise.

However, they have pushed forward their reachout campaign via videoblogging in particular. It doesn't capture the real business of the conference, but it at least makes it feel more accessible.

Try You Tube

or Buzzmachine where Jeff Jarvis (and Robert Scoble) are busy using their mobiles to videoblog.

or Loic Lemeur on Seesmic

or David Brain's twitter round-up at SixtySecondView

(PS: Im delighted to read that Howard Stringer, the CEO of Sony, agrees with me about mobile..."it will be the platform for everything"...)

[Photo by Jean-Bernard Sieber via Flickr]

Iran and the lessons of Iraq

Report by Duncan Stanworth from the News Xchange 2007 conference in Berlin on 25 October

There are echoes of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq in the media's coverage of Iran, with "drumbeats" being sounded over Tehran's nuclear policies, the News Xchange 2007 conference in Berlin has heard. Delegates were asked whether journalists had learned the "lessons" from Iraq, including the reporting of claims about weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq and alleged links between the Saddam Husayn regime and Al-Qa'idah. Moreover, grave concerns were raised about the current coverage of Iran in the Western media. Robert Greenwald, the US-based documentary maker whose internet video "Fox Attacks Iran" presents apparent parallels between US TV news coverage of Iran today, and Iraq in the run-up to the 2003 invasion, said the scenario was being relived. The US administration had a "laid-out plan, trying to scare us, seeking to put it [the Iran issue] in an emotional context". But conservative commentator Michael Ledeen, author of "Iranian Timebomb", said he detected no plan to attack Iran, adding that bellicose speeches were nothing new. Martha Raddatz, chief White House correspondent of US network ABC News, said the media had to look at its pre-Iraq War behaviour: "We have to raise our eyebrows about anything regarding WMD."

Lack of backbone

The media had displayed a lack of backbone over Iraq, said former BBC journalist and current Fox News presenter Anita McNaught. "The shock was to discover that we knew just what the US and British governments knew. They drew different conclusions. We lacked the courage to call their bluff." Fox had had a "hotline to the White House", she added, and would trumpet apparent successes in the search for WMD. The BBC ran with these stories, before "learning restraint". Other speakers bemoaned what they saw as a lack of context and perspective in coverage of Iran. Jon Snow, from the UK's Channel Four News, said the media had to deconstruct the "monolith" that was Iran. He asked why there had been no mention that 40 per cent of foreign insurgents in Iraq were Saudi, not Iranian. The theme was echoed by Greenwald. He said the "framework" for discussing Iran was limited to "when to bomb, how to bomb".

Politicians "setting the agenda"

Europe-based Iranian blogger Hossein Derakshan went further, saying the preamble to war had started in the media. The "propaganda" was not limited to Fox, but came too from the likes of the New York Times and Boston Globe newspapers. He questioned the frequent use of the phrase "nuclear ambition", which, he said, was employed alongside the "demonization" of Iranian President Ahmadinezhad. Al-Jazeera head Wadah Khanfar said politicians were setting the agenda. Money was needed in order to present the context. But this presented difficulties. Martha Raddatz said it was difficult to get in and out of the country, and that it was hard to get answers. Networks were already stretched by the need to cover Iraq, and resources were finite. With more chest-beating over Iran on the cards, some speakers urged the News Xchange journalists not to repeat the recent past. "Don't let our country lead us into another tragedy," Greenwald pleaded. "Covering Iran properly is one of our greatest obligations to humanity," Snow added.

Source: BBC Monitoring research 25 Oct 07

More Burma

Two pieces in the wake of the recent disturbances argue that the Junta needs to be part of any solution.

Nick Dunlop in Prospect recalls his visit earlier this year and the access he was given to the new capital Nay Pyi Daw. (Subscription needed)

And in the Chatham House magazine The World Today, Bertil Linter looks at what may happen when the general fall from power.

"The civilian opposition does not have adequate capacity to fill the power vacuum that the collapse of the present regime would produce and alone form a new government. ANy state failure in Burma would have regional repercussions as its neighbours would be affected by an even bigger flow of refugees, drugs and weapons than is the case today.

State failure could also encourage Burma's ethnic insurgents ...to go their own ways perhaps even declare independence. Thus a Yugoslavia style scenario is not unlikely but would also have disastrous consequences for the region."

The War Tapes

I've just caught up with The War Tapes - an extraordinary documentary filmed by three US Guardsmen in Iraq and produced by Deborah Scranton. It is the most authentic, and indirectly sympathetic, portrayal of life on the frontline in Iraq. See the trailer here.

Even better, watch Deborah Scranton talk through how she made the film and some of her experiences afterwards at TED. IN particular how she talks about the disconnection between the experiences of the soldiers, the public and the media.

It makes me think of the lacklustre public response to our own troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Pulling The Plug

The OpenNet initiative has published a really interesting report on the internet shutdown in Burma following the recent protests. It concludes that the people of Burma "demonstrated that the tools of information technology can have a strong impact on the global coverage of events as they are unfolding and sometimes on the events themselves. The events in Burma also provide a chilling example of the limitations of the internet, access to which was ultimately vulnerable to the unilateral choices of a repressive regime.."

Integrity

Listened to a fascinating edition of NPR's Fresh Air with an interview with Bud Krogh who went to jail in the wake of Watergate. He's written a book 30 years later - Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House. The discussion focuses on what choices he had when loyalty conflicted with personal integrity - and he admits he chose wrongly.

End of the Golden Age?

Alan Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve for almost 20 years, has been in London promoting his book this week. As one of the world's leading economists he has a sweeping overview of the world and history. I went to hear him at an on-the-record session at Chatham House.  We have been living, he said, through the dramatic acceleration of globalisation as a result of the end of the cold war in 1989. Growth in developing countries had been twice that of the developed world. It had produced more than a decade of economic stability and expansion. But this was about to change he thought. The "Golden Age" of growth was ending as countries like China caught up - costs of production and wages were rising there, suggesting the days of cheap production and cheap exports to the West would come to a close.
The biggest economic issue facing the US and UK was the "economic tsunami" of the baby boom generation retiring - placing a greater load on the state and those still working. And the recent debt crisis and Northern Rock drama? Classic symptoms of a bubble in the market for loans. We never learn it seems. For a brief moment I felt I understood economics. But it swiftly passed.

Education 2.0

John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, made a really good point at the Clinton Global Initiative:

He said the current education system of grades and exams puts people in competition with each other and is a top down command-and-control model. As the leader of one of the world's biggest IT companies he believes future education should concentrate on networking and collaboration - which will support greater innovation and cross-discipline creativity. It will also, he said, attract talent. Call it Education 2.0 then...

Factoids

Being in New York in UN Week (when the General Assembly gathers) you pick up some interesting but random "facts". Not sure what to do with them, and can't guarantee am not guaranteeing their accuracy, but they're interesting nonetheless. Like:

- The number of people suffering from Alzheimers in the world will increase five fold by 2020. The last 15 year prediction greatly underestimated the increase.

- In 2003 there were no mobile phones in Afghanistan. Now there are six different services and 3 million subscribers.

- If the US, Russia, India and China were as efficient as Japan in terms of carbon emissions global greenhouse gases would be cut by 20%.

- The markets allocate more capital in one hour than all governments combined in a year.

- At current trends the entire polar ice-cap will have disappeared in 23 years.

- China's per capita GDP places it below the 100th country in the world. (Which I guess is another way of illustrating potential growth)

- A new coal powered energy plant opens every three days. In 20 years we will have produced more CO2 than during all previous human use of coal.

PS: And a great quote from Desmond Tutu: "Religion is like a knife. If you use it to cut bread it's good. If you use it to cut your neighbours arm off it's bad."