CNN, Iraq and Twitter

The following video from CNN illustrates the routine banality of much of the American mainstream media as it seems to increasingly serve a light entertainment PR role on behalf of large corportations and celebrity culture rather than having a genuinely independent and investigative voice.

The clip consists of an interview between CNN's Kiran Chetry and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who is in Iraq today to learn from local people about whether and how the social media platform might serve the cause of nation building in Iraq. Dorsey's patience with the infantile level of interviewing is to his credit.

The thudding noise in the background is either the reverberations from the suicide attack today north of Baghdad which claimed the lives of five civilians, or it might be me banging my head on my desk in despair.

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Is AudioBoo the Thinking Man's Twitter?

I love Twitter, but I also understand the frustration sometimes expressed about it being used to merely rehash news or links.

AudioBoo allows users to upload short items using the spoken word only and as Dropbox explains below, it solves the problem of endless tweets that contain less than original content.

Fair enough, but my own solution to that particular issue is to only follow people on Twitter who post updates that are worth reading.

I'm not quite teched up enough for AudioBoo, anyway.

One similarity between the two: Stephen Fry uses both!

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Brave New World of Digital Rabbits?

OK, I know you're not going to rush out and buy one tomorrow, but as a hint of what H.G. Wells might call The Shape of Things to Come, please take note of the Nabaztag - that's tech language for a white digital rabbit, apparently.

Shall I even be so bold as to describe it as an early example of Web 3.0?

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Obama's Torture Disclosure: a Christian Response

I don't think there's a word I disagree with in Jimmy McCarty's article, responding as a Christian minister to the news that President Obama has ordered a disclosure of the previous administration's legal advice to the CIA on the use of torture.

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Obama Champions High Speed Rail Networks

I can't remember a US president ever making such a serious pitch for high speed rail as Barack Obama has done today.

It's a tremendous development - with major implications for the country's transport, energy and environmental policies - if he can get the measures passed and the funding agreed.

It's probably too fanciful an idea, but it would be great to imagine that such networks could further stimulate the development of genuine trans-European high speed lines as serious alternatives to short haul flying.

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Sheep Art

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Socialism in America?

The current economic downturn is causing a measure of debate within industrialised countries on the fundamental nature of the economic system we all live in.

Against this backdrop, a recent poll by Ramussen Reports claims that 33% of Americans under the age of 30 are in favour of socialism as an economic system. The poll, interestingly, did not define socialism (or capitalism.)

At the same time, in a move reminiscent of the McCarthy era, Congressman Spencer Bachusa claims to posess a secret list of 17 House members who are socialists. The fact that a politicain could imagine that such a claim would cause shock indicates how entrenched anti-socialist views are in some sections of the American body politic. It may also indicate confusion over definitions of terms: is the Congressman attacking the European model of social democracy or is he confusing this with reviolutionary Marxism?

Meanwhile, in another take on the issue of socialism in America, there is an interesting review here by Seth Sandronsky on Michael Yates book "Why Unions Matter."

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Is Telecommuting Taking Root in America?

Salt Lake City in Utah is emerging as a one of the top locations in America for telecommuting according to its local paper.

The practice has been technically possible for years but has met entrenched resistance in many companies, fearful of reduced productivity by staff left to their own devices at the end of a web cam.

A combination of the need to cut costs and improvements in technology may be behind the growth of the phenomenon stateside.

If it really takes hold in a big way, we can be sure it will do so over here in a year or two.

Any thoughts from your own experience?

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Comforting Words from Pakistan

When challenged about his country's need to do more to eradicate terrorism, particularly directed against the UK, Pakistan's High Commissioner to the UK, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, is quoted on the BBC website today as saying that his country was already active in this area and was arresting people in anti-terror raids "every day".

In other words, there are thousands of would-be terrorists in the country, enough for at least 365 of them to be arrested each year.

Why am I not very reassured by this fact?

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Fox Orders Reality Redundancy Show

The creation of a reality TV show in which employees of a company fight each other to stay on the payroll while one of their colleagues is made redundant has been ordered for broadcast by Fox TV in the United States.

The show - reality not fiction - strikes me as a modern form of Roman gladiatorial contests in which the powerless fight each other for the dubious privilege of surviving and the possibility of one day gaining their freedom - all for the sake of entertaining the masses and consolidating the power of the rulers. In the modern "game" the carrot is a brief moment of media fame and a possible media contract to tell all.

This crude exploitation of working people by a media organisation whose CEO has a net worth of $4 Billion should be avoided like the plague.

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Springtime for Gordon

The Prime Minister's flowers at Number 10 are looking very fine.

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North Korean Rocket Launch - a Non-Event?

Not sure what to make of Postman Patel's claim that the reported launch of a rocket from North Korea did not really happen - at least on nothing like the scale reported in the western media.

He makes a reasonable case for there being no story of any substance.

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Rowen Williams on the Trinity

“If God is neither a quasi-Hegelian organizing principle, nor an abstract postulate, nor yet an agent among other agents, what is to be said of him? Christian practice begins to answer that question by repeating the story of Jesus: what is to be said of God is that Jesus of Nazareth was born, ministered in such and such a way, died in such and such a way, and was raised from death. This is an odd statement, in that it treats the narrative of a human being as predicated of a substance or subject which is God…. God is what is constitutive of the particular identity of Jesus; that is what can be said of him, and it is what the homoousion of Nicaea endeavoured to say…. The ‘essential’ or ‘immanent’ Trinity can finally be characterized only as that which makes this life (and death and resurrection) possible and intelligible.”

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Portugal: a Model for National Drug Policy?

Facts can be inconvenient things.

Take the recent report on the effects of drug decriminalisation in Portugal by Glenn Greenwald of the Cato Institute, for instance.

The reality is, as explained in the report, that the policy line taken by Portugal in 2001 - to totally decriminalise all drugs - has neither resulted in Lisbon becoming a centre for drug tourism nor in rises in drug use.

The report, in fact, shows that in many significant ways, drug use has decreased, especially in the socially significant 13-18 year-old age groups.

Before getting too excited (or angry) about this, it is worth clarifying what actually took place in Portuguese law in 2001:

• The possession and personal use of drugs remained illegal but was decriminalised. This means that the action was treated as an administrative issue and had no criminal implications or penalties attached to it
  
• The emphasis of social policy shifted from a punitive approach to one of public health , with much greater emphasis placed on users seeking access to treatment programmes, without the fear of arrest or the stigma of receiving a criminal record
  
• this approach is different from that of "de-penalisation" in which the act of using or possessing drugs remains criminal but is rarely punished in practice (an approach taken in part by several EU states especially around cannabis use)
• drug trafficking (defined in Portugeuse law as "possession of more than the average dose for ten days of use") remains a criminal offence in Portugal, punishable by custodial sentences.

The report emphasises that the change in the law in 2001 was aimed strongly at reducing drug use nationally. The evidence after eight years is that the policy is having an effect. The report makes compelling reading and suggests a possible way forward in the issue of public policy on drug misuse.

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