Free Speech – Page 34 – artdiamondblog.com

Brit Papers Survived Due to “the Gratifying Defeat of the Luddite Unions by Rupert Murdoch”

“Evans says: “Ultimately, Mrs Thatcher was the reason I was fired, because I attacked her so much.” Source of caption and photo: online version of The Independent on Sunday article quoted and cited below.

(p. 12) As a condition of acquiring both The Times and The Sunday Times in early 1981, Murdoch promised that the independence of each would be protected by a board of directors, and made other solemn guarantees.

“On this basis,” Evans wrote in Good Times, Bad Times, “I accepted Rupert Murdoch’s invitation to edit The Times on February 17 1981. My ambition,” he admitted, “got the better of my judgement.” Every assurance regarding editorial independence, he added, was blithely disregarded.
On 9 March 1982, the day after he’d come back from burying his father at Bluebell Wood cemetery in Prestatyn, Harold Evans was sacked.
“Ultimately,” he says, “Mrs Thatcher was the reason I was fired. Because I was attacking her so much. When she started to dismantle the British economy, the most cogent critic of that policy which led, OK, to… a lot of things… was The Sunday Times. I wrote 70 per cent of that criticism myself. When I became editor of The Times, I continued to criticise monetarism. But I could still see some of the good things about her.”
“Just remind us?”
“I’m thinking – and you probably won’t agree with this because I sense that you’re a firm supporter of the NUJ [National Union of Journalists] – mainly of her dealings with the unions.”
“How do you feel about her now?”
“I think she is a very brave woman.”
“Hitler was brave.”
“Yes, but… she was right about terrorism. She was right about the IRA.”
“Do you think Britain would be a better place if she’d never existed?”
“No. I think Britain benefited from her having been there. Britain was becoming so arthritic with labour restrictions.”
“Good Times, Bad Times is an unforgiving portrait of Rupert Murdoch.”
. . .
(p. 13) [Evans] has called Rupert Murdoch elitist, anti-democratic, and asserted that the Australian cares nothing about the opinion of others, so long as his business expands. This is the same man who refers to “the gratifying defeat of the Luddite unions by Rupert Murdoch”.
. . .
“So how do you feel about the Murdoch empire now?”
Evans pauses. “I’m not that familiar with the British… OK. Let’s take an alternative scenario. Murdoch never arrives. I manage to take control of The Sunday Times with the management buyout. Then I get defeated by the unions. The Independent wouldn’t be here. Rival papers survived because they got the technology. Thanks to Murdoch.”

For the full interview, see:
Robert Chalmers, Interviewer. “Harold Evans: ‘All I tried to do was shed a little light’.” The Independent on Sunday (Sun., June 13, 2010): 8 & 10-13.
(Note: free-standing ellipsis, between paragraphs, added; internal ellipses in original; italics in original; bracketed name added in place of “he.”)

Action Hero Reagan Made Sure Message Could Be Heard

“William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan in 1978, following their debate over the Panama Canal Treaty.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 23) On the night that William F. Buckley met Ronald Reagan, the future president of the United States put his elbow through a plate-glass window. The year was 1961, and the two men were in Beverly Hills, where Buckley, perhaps the most famous conservative in America at the tender age of 35, was giving an address at a school auditorium. Reagan, a former Hollywood leading man dabbling in political activism — the Tim Robbins or Alec Baldwin of his day — had been asked to do the introductions.

But the microphone was dead, the technician was nowhere to be found and the control room was locked. As the crowd began to grumble, Reagan coolly opened one of the auditorium windows, stepped onto a ledge two stories above the street and inched his way around to the control room. He smashed his elbow through the glass and clambered in through the broken window. “In a minute there was light in the upstairs room,” Buckley later wrote, “and then we could hear the crackling of the newly animated microphone.”
This anecdote kicks off The Reagan I Knew (Basic Books, $25), a slight and padded reminiscence published posthumously this past autumn, nine months after Buckley’s death.

For the full review essay, see:
ROSS DOUTHAT. “Essay; When Buckley Met Reagan .” The New York Times, Book Review Section (Sun., January 18, 2009): 23.
(Note: bold in original.)
(Note: The online version of the review essay was dated January 16, 2009.)

Cellphones in North Korea Promote Free Speech

“Mun Seong-hwi, a North Korean defector, speaking to someone in North Korea to gather information at his office in Seoul.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

I have long believed, but cannot prove, that on balance technology improves human freedom more than it endangers it.
The case of cellphones in North Korea supports my belief.

(p. A1) SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea, one of the world’s most impenetrable nations, is facing a new threat: networks of its own citizens feeding information about life there to South Korea and its Western allies.

The networks are the creation of a handful of North Korean defectors and South Korean human rights activists using cellphones to pierce North Korea’s near-total news blackout. To build the networks, recruiters slip into China to woo the few North Koreans allowed to travel there, provide cellphones to smuggle across the border, then post informers’ phoned and texted reports on Web sites.
The work is risky. Recruiters spend months identifying and coaxing potential informants, all the while evading agents from the North and the Chinese police bent on stopping their work. The North Koreans face even greater danger; exposure could lead to imprisonment — or death.

For the full story, see
CHOE SANG-HUN. “North Koreans Use Cellphones to Bare Secrets.” The New York Times (Mon., March 29, 2010): A1 & A10.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated March 28, 2010.)

Mr. Africa Carries a Gun to Keep the Press Free

“Anchors read the latest news from around the world this month in the studio at Radio Mogadishu, which opened in 1951.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A6) This is a typical day at Radio Mogadishu, the one and only relatively free radio station in south central Somalia where journalists can broadcast what they like — without worrying about being beheaded. The station’s 90-foot antennas, which rise above the rubble of the neighborhood, have literally become a beacon of freedom for reporters, editors, technicians and disc jockeys all across Somalia who have been chased away from their jobs by radical Islamist insurgents.

. . .
Somalia has become one of the most dangerous places in the world to practice journalism, with more than 20 journalists assassinated in the past four years. “We miss them,” Mr. Africa said about his fallen colleagues.
He cracked an embarrassed smile when asked about his name. “It’s because I’m dark, really dark,” he said.
Mr. Africa used to work at one of the city’s other radio stations (the city has more than 10) but decided to move on after fighters with the Shabab dropped by and threatened to kill the reporters if they did not broadcast pro-Shabab news. Mr. Africa called the Shabab meddlers “secret editors” and now he carries a gun.
“I tried to get the other journalists to buy pistols,” Mr. Africa remembered. “But nobody listened to me.”
Another reporter, Musa Osman, said that his real home was only about a mile away.
“But I haven’t seen my kids for months,” he said.
He drew his finger across his throat and laughed a sharp, bitter laugh when asked what would happen if he went home.
The digs here are hardly plush. Most of the journalists sleep on thin foam mattresses in bald concrete rooms. The station itself is a crumbling, bullet-scarred reflection of this entire nation, which has been essentially governmentless for nearly two decades.
. . .
They air the speeches of insurgent leaders, they say, and stories about government soldiers robbing citizens.
“If the government does something bad,” Mr. Africa said. “We report it.”

For the full story, see:
JEFFREY GETTLEMAN. “Mogadishu Journal; A Guiding Voice Amid the Ruins of a Capital City.” The New York Times (Tues., March 30, 2010): A6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review is dated March 29, 2010.)

Brin Plays Google’s “Ethical Trump Card”

“Co-founder Sergey Brin has been active in Google’s dealings with China.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A8) As a boy growing up in the Soviet Union, Sergey Brin witnessed the consequences of censorship. Now the Google Inc. co-founder is drawing on that experience in shaping the company’s showdown with the Chinese government.

Mr. Brin has long been Google’s moral compass on China-related issues, say people familiar with the matter. He expressed the greatest concern among decision makers, they say, about the compromises Google made when it launched its Chinese-language search engine, Google.cn, in 2006. He is now the guiding force behind Google’s decision to stop filtering search results in China, say people familiar with the decision.
. . .
The move is the clearest manifestation yet of a tension that has always existed at Google.
The Internet company, on one hand, is analytical: It built its core search business on algorithms that determine the relevance of Web sites and has tried to apply quantitative analysis to traditionally subjective parts of a business, such as hiring decisions. On the other hand, Mr. Brin and co-founder Larry Page have passionately touted Google’s ability to spread democracy through access to information, and adopted the unofficial and now-famous motto, “Don’t Be Evil.”
“At its best, Google is data-driven with an ethical trump card,” said Larry Brilliant, who headed up the company’s philanthropic efforts until 2009. Always it was the founders, Messrs. Brin and Page, who could play that card, he added.

For the full story, see:

BEN WORTHEN. “Soviet-Born Brin Has Shaped Google’s Stand.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., MARCH 13, 2010): A8.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article had the date MARCH 12, 2010 and has the slightly longer title “Soviet-Born Brin Has Shaped Google’s Stand on China.”)

“A Regime that Survived through Myth and Fear”

(p. 4) It’s an old Soviet joke.

Three Russians are in the gulag. The first one says, “What are you in for?”
The second one replies, “I called Zbarsky a revolutionary.”
“That’s funny,” the first one says. “I called Zbarsky a counterrevolutionary.”
“That’s funny,” the third one says. “I’m Zbarsky.”
Vern Thiessen’s new play, “Lenin’s Embalmers,” which starts on Wednesday at the Ensemble Studio Theater in Clinton, opens with the ghost of Lenin telling this joke as a parable of the mordant doom pervading the Communist state he created.
In real life the joke wasn’t specifically about Zbarsky. You could insert any of Stalin’s thousands of lackeys turned victims. Certainly Zbarsky would do. Boris Zbarsky was a real person, one of the two biochemists who, after Lenin died in 1924, were ordered by the Kremlin to devise a way of preserving his body forever.
He and his colleague, Vladimir Vorobiev — the play’s main characters — succeeded spectacularly, won fortune and power, then fell from grace into the terror, like many others who served a regime that survived through myth and fear.
. . .
The new work, written as a stylized dark comedy, takes only a few liberties with history. It has Zbarsky and Vorobiev arrested after they’re tricked into betraying each other. In fact Mr. Vorobiev died in a hospital, under mysterious circumstances, in 1937. Mr. Zbarsky was arrested in 1952; he was freed two years later, after Stalin’s death, and died of a seizure soon after. Still, betrayals and trumped-up confessions were common in the era.

For the full review, see:
FRED KAPLAN. “He’s Had Work: Preserving the Face of a Revolution.” The New York Times, Arts&Leisure Section (Sun., February 28, 2010): 4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated February 23 (sic), 2010.)

“How Am I Going to Live without Google?”

“A woman examined bouquets and messages left by Google users on Wednesday outside the Internet search company’s headquarters in Beijing.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article cited way below (after the citation to the quoted article, which is a different article).

David Smick in The World as Curved, has suggested that restrictions on the internet in China, limit entrepreneurship, and ultimately economic growth.

(p. 5) BEIJING — At the elite Tsinghua University here, some students were joking Friday that they had better download all the Internet information they wanted now in case Google left the country.

But to many of the young, well-educated Chinese who are Google’s loyal users here, the company’s threat to leave is in fact no laughing matter. Interviews in Beijing’s downtown and university district indicated that many viewed the possible loss of Google’s maps, translation service, sketching software, access to scholarly papers and search function with real distress.
“How am I going to live without Google?” asked Wang Yuanyuan, a 29-year-old businessman, as he left a convenience store in Beijing’s business district.
. . .
Li An, a Tsinghua University senior, said she used to download episodes of “Desperate Housewives” and “Grey’s Anatomy” from sites run by BT China that are now closed. “I love American television series,” she said with frustration during a pause from studying Japanese at a university fast-food restaurant on Friday.
The loss of Google would hit her much harder, she said, because she relies on Google Scholar to download academic papers for her classes in polymer science. “For me, this is terrible,” Ms. Li said.
Some students contend that even after Google pulls out, Internet space will continue to shrink. Until now, Google has shielded Baidu by manning the front line in the censorship battle, said a 20-year-old computer science major at Tsinghua.
“Without Google, Baidu will be very easy to manipulate,” he said. “I don’t want to see this trend.”
A 21-year old civil engineering student predicted a strong reaction against the government. “If Google really leaves, people will feel the government has gone too far,” he insisted over lunch in the university cafe.
But asked whether that reaction would influence the government to soften its policies, he concentrated on his French fries. “I really don’t know,” he said.

For the full story, see:
SHARON LaFRANIERE. “Google Users in China, Mostly Young and Educated, Fear Losing Important Tool.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., January 17, 2010): 5.
(Note: the online version of the article has the title “China at Odds With Future in Internet Fight” and is dated January 16, 2010.)
(Note: ellipsis added.)

The source of the photo at the top is the online version of:
KEITH BRADSHER and DAVID BARBOZA. “Google Is Not Alone in Discontent, But Its Threat Stands Out.” The New York Times (Thurs., January 13, 2010): B1 & B4.
(Note: the online version of the article has the slightly different title “Google Is Not Alone in Discontent, But Its Threat to Leave Stands Out” and is dated January 14, 2010.)

The reference to the Smick book is:
Smick, David M. The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy. New York: Portfolio Hardcover, 2008.

Socialist Chávez Quashes Free Speech in Venezuela

Here is evidence of the continuing relevance of Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom:

(p. A5) CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A cable television channel that has been critical of President Hugo Chávez was taken off the air on Sunday after defying new government regulations requiring it to televise some of Mr. Chávez’s speeches.

Venezuelan cable and satellite television providers stopped transmitting the channel, Radio Caracas Television, after it did not broadcast a speech by Mr. Chávez on Saturday at a rally of political supporters.
. . .
. . . the cable channel, known as RCTV, said the telecommunications agency “doesn’t have any authority to give the cable service providers this order.” It said in a statement, “The government is inappropriately pressuring them to make decisions beyond their responsibilities.”
The channel switched to cable in 2007 after the government refused to renew its license to broadcast on the regular airwaves.

For the full story, see:
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. “Cable TV Station Critical of Chávez Is Shut Down.” The New York Times (Mon., January 25, 2010): A5.
(Note: the online version of the article has the date January 24, 2010.)
(Note: ellipses added.)

Reference for Hayek book:
Hayek, Friedrich A. Von. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press, 1944.

Global Warming “Consensus” Achieved by Suppressing Skeptical Research

(p. A25) When scientists make putative compendia of that literature, such as is done by the U.N. climate change panel every six years, the writers assume that the peer-reviewed literature is a true and unbiased sample of the state of climate science.

That can no longer be the case. The alliance of scientists at East Anglia, Penn State and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (in Boulder, Colo.) has done its best to bias it.
A refereed journal, Climate Research, published two particular papers that offended Michael Mann of Penn State and Tom Wigley of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. One of the papers, published in 2003 by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas (of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), was a meta-analysis of dozens of “paleoclimate” studies that extended back 1,000 years. They concluded that 20th-century temperatures could not confidently be considered to be warmer than those indicated at the beginning of the last millennium.
In fact, that period, known as the “Medieval Warm Period” (MWP), was generally considered warmer than the 20th century in climate textbooks and climate compendia, including those in the 1990s from the IPCC.
Then, in 1999, Mr. Mann published his famous “hockey stick” article in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), which, through the magic of multivariate statistics and questionable data weighting, wiped out both the Medieval Warm Period and the subsequent “Little Ice Age” (a cold period from the late 16th century to the mid-19th century), leaving only the 20th-century warming as an anomaly of note.
Messrs. Mann and Wigley also didn’t like a paper I published in Climate Research in 2002. It said human activity was warming surface temperatures, and that this was consistent with the mathematical form (but not the size) of projections from computer models. Why? The magnitude of the warming in CRU’s own data was not as great as in the models, so therefore the models merely were a bit enthusiastic about the effects of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Mr. Mann called upon his colleagues to try and put Climate Research out of business. “Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal,” he wrote in one of the emails. “We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board.”
After Messrs. Jones and Mann threatened a boycott of publications and reviews, half the editorial board of Climate Research resigned. People who didn’t toe Messrs. Wigley, Mann and Jones’s line began to experience increasing difficulty in publishing their results.

For the full commentary, see:
PATRICK J. MICHAELS. “OPINION; How to Manufacture a Climate Consensus; The East Anglia emails are just the tip of the iceberg.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., DECEMBER 18, 2009): A25.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated DECEMBER 17, 2009.)

“Today You Can Be What You Want to Be”

“In this Nov. 25, 1989, file photo a Czech demonstrator overcome by emotion after hearing about the resignation of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Prague.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A16) . . . Mirek Kodym, 56, a ponytailed former security guard who published illegal political and literary tracts before 1989 and marched on Tuesday as he had 20 years ago, said the Velvet Revolution had been a seminal moment in which a beleaguered nation had finally tasted freedom.

“Today you can be what you want to be and do what you want to do, and no one will interfere,” he said. “The nostalgia for the past is a stupid thing.”

For the full story, see:
DAN BILEFSKY. “Celebrating Revolution With Roots in a Rumor.” The New York Times (Weds., November 18, 2009): A16.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated November 17, 2009.)
(Note: ellipsis added.)

“The former Czech Republic’s president Vaclav Havel, background center, with a red scarf, placed a candle at a commemoration of the so-called Velvet Revolution, in Prague on Tuesday.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Castro Agents Beat Up Cuban Blogger

“Blogger Yoani Sánchez speaks at home in Havana on Monday, days after she says she was beaten by Cuban agents.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A14) Yoani Sánchez, Cuba’s most prominent dissident blogger, was walking along a Havana street last Friday along with two other bloggers and a friend when two men she says were Cuban agents in civilian clothes forced her inside an unmarked black car and beat her, telling her to stop criticizing the government.

The assault, believed to be the first against the growing blogger movement on the island, has cast a spotlight on the country’s record of repression, highlighting how little change there has been in political freedoms during the nearly three years since Raúl Castro took over as president from retired dictator Fidel Castro.
A decline in tourism revenues from the global recession and damage from several hurricanes last year have prompted the island’s government to clamp down even harder on dissent and freedom of speech, according to a recent report by the Inter American Press Association, a watchdog group.
The group said Cuba currently has 26 journalists in jail, and it cited 102 incidents against Cuban journalists in the past year, including beatings, arbitrary arrests and death threats.

For the full story, see:
DAVID LUHNOW. “Beating Rattles Cuban Bloggers.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., NOVEMBER 11, 2009): A14.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated NOVEMBER 12, 2009.)