Joseph E. Stiglitz on capitalist fools: About Us: vanityfair.com: "Capitalist Fools Behind the debate over remaking U.S. financial policy will be a debate over who’s to blame. It’s crucial to get the history right, writes a Nobel-laureate economist, identifying five key mistakes—under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II—and one national delusion."
Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, presides over one of the world’s richest minerals treasures, the Great Dyke region, which cuts a geological swath across the entire land from northeast to southwest. The real background to the pious concerns of the Bush Administration for human rights in Zimbabwe in the past several years is not Mugabe’s possible election fraud or his expropriation of white settler farms. It is the fact that Mr. Mugabe has been quietly doing business, a lot of it, with the one country which has virtually unlimited need of strategic raw materials Zimbabwe can provide—China. Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is, along with Sudan, on the central stage of the new war over control of strategic minerals of Africa between Washington and Beijing, with Moscow playing a supporting role in the drama. The stakes are huge.Mugabe’s Biggest Sin
Getting Around Online FirewallsFor its part, Reporters Without Borders is already advising reporters unfamiliar with China how to get around the government's censors. The first item on its to-do list: Install programs such as Tor, Psiphon, or Proxify that circumvent firewalls and protect communication. "The international version of Skype (EBAY) is recommended, rather than the one available in China, which is not secure," suggests the group. "It is also advisable to encrypt e-mails with PGP."NGOs: China Is Breaking Olympics Promises
An article in July 21th Forbes Asia tells this story of "Dark Journalism" or "Black Journalism" in China. The major incomes of Chinese journalists come from extortion or payoff to cover or uncover the reported target.This might also happens/happened in other countries. Restaurant owners payoff journalists in all sorts of different ways for getting a good review. However it seems to go beyond the extreme of protocol. But who's protocol is it?
Dark Journalism - Forbes.com
Censorship isn't the only thing wrong with Chinese reporting. The other one is a current of corruption
"There are many mines that have their own media consultant," says journalist Wang Keqin, who has investigated illegal mines in Shanxi. "Once the mine has an accident, all the reporters come, and the mine's media consultant would give red envelopes based on what kind of media you are. CCTV might get 50,000 to 100,000 [yuan, or $7,250 to $14,500], Xinhua might get 50,000. For provincial level media, it could be 30,000, and for small newspapers it could be a couple thousand to 20,000. This money is called the 'make-you-shut-up fee,' and it's also called the 'media public relations fee.'" Xinhua, for its part, denies having had any case of corruption in recent years and says it would fire a journalist found to have taken hush money.
