Concers Chinese Article/Russia & others

Media News - Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Times fails to overturn ‘internet publication rule’ in court case
Newspapers will continue to be sued multiple times over the same website story after the Times lost a case in the European court of human rights Tuesday. In a decision condemned by media lawyers, the court rejected arguments in favour of a 'single publication rule', prevalent in the US, where defendants can only be sued once for publishing a defamatory statement. The case was brought by the Times newspaper after an alleged Russian mafia boss sued the paper for a second time for libel over internet articles. He had previously sued the Times for the same articles printed in the newspaper. The Times argued that the 'internet publication rule' under English law breached the right to freedom of expression. The internet publication rule allows for a libel action each time someone accesses archived material on the internet. Anthony Lester QC, representing the Times, had argued for a common international rule about internet publication. 'An article might be read in 100 different countries with 100 different libel laws, giving rise to multiple liability with no clear guidance on how long is too long,' he said. However, the court declined to set a clear time period after which archived articles would stop giving rise to libel claims. (The Guardian)
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Online publishers to debut new advertising formats
A collection of nearly two dozen online publishers plan to offer advertisers at least one of three new display advertising formats beginning in July, the Online Publishers Association announced Tuesday.
The ad units are designed to be larger than banner ads, offer interactivity, and comprise a greater proportion of the advertising-to-editorial ratio that most publications operate under.
The move by online publishers comes at a time when the economy is in a recession and advertisers are pulling back on their spending.
"Agencies are looking for new ways to integrate their clients' brand experiences with more interactivity on the page, and these new units provide a way for them to accomplish this," said Pam Horan, association president, said in a statement.
The nearly two dozen online publishers represent approximately 66 percent of the U.S. Internet audience, according to the association. And they include FOXNews, NBC Universal, CBS Interactive (publisher of CNET News), ESPN, Time Inc., and The Wall Street Journal Digital Network.
The three advertising units include:
A pushdown ad that runs the width of a page but retracts to the top of the page, as well as offering a second ad on the right hand column.
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Taro Aso: the millionaire slumdog
Noriko Hama
A desperate economic constellation magnifies the embarrassing flaws of Japan's prime minister Taro Aso, says Noriko Hama.
Taro Aso, the current but perhaps not for much longer prime minister of Japan, is a man of many vices. He is rude. He is crude. He is spoilt. He is embarrassing. All these things are really quite intolerable. Yet they are not that particularly unusual in Japanese prime ministers. What is really unacceptable about this person is his arrogance.Noriko Hama is professor at Doshisha Business School. She writes regularly and commentates frequently in leading journals (Mainichi Shimbun, Japan Times, Financial Times) and broadcasting media (NHK, BBC, CNN). Her publications include (as co-author) Can the Dollar Recover? (1992) and (as contributor) The Japanese Economy in Synopsis (2005)

Also by Noriko Hama in openDemocracy:

"Koizumi after Koizumi: Japan's changing pains" (12 September 2005)

"How not to build an East Asian Community" (9 December 2005)

"Shinzo Abe: riding high on ambiguity" (18 October 2006)

"The China-Japan spring romance: thus far, how much farther?" (17 April 2007)

"Shinzo Abe: out of time" (24 August 2007)

"The recycling of the G8: ghosts at the table" (11 July 2008)

"Yasuo Fukuda's exit strategy: suicide by drowning" (5 September 2008

His predecessor-but-one, Shinzo Abe, was also a very arrogant man. But his arrogance was of the "let them eat cake" variety, whereas Taro Aso's version is much more of the "let them eat dirt" kind. There was even a certain innocence to Abe's condescension, which pales against Aso's brutal insensitivity. Aso is a playground bully who has earned his position through affluence rather than influence. Or so he apparently thinks.
There is little doubt that the prime minister actually is a very rich man. Mind you, it is all inherited. The Aso dynasty has a history of wealth-creation that goes back into the mid-19th century. Politics is also a legacy that has been handed down to Taro Aso from a previous generation. His maternal grandfather is none other than Shigeru Yoshida, the Churchillian figure of postwar Japanese politics. Yoshida had two spells as prime minister in those years, the second lasting from October 1948 to December 1954.
Thus money and power run plentifully through Taro Aso's bloodstream. Not the ability to read Japanese, however. At least, not when it is written in kanji. Kanji are Chinese characters but they are an indispensable part of the Japanese language in its written form. Teaching people to read and write them is an essential part of Japanese school education. The prime minister attended an expensive school. It is also the school that the Japanese royal family sends their children to. One would assume that such a school would be fussy about the kanji-literacy of their graduates.
And yet Aso makes the most hair-raisingly hilarious slip-ups in the art of kanji reading. Not surprisingly perhaps, since by his own admission, the prime minister does not do much reading apart from his beloved manga comic books. Kanji do not have a very great part to play in the world of manga, where communication mostly takes place in howls of one syllable.
The media had a surplus of fun reporting on Aso the manga-man's struggles with kanji. Yet the whole thing tended to rather miss the point. For achieving kanji literacy is actually no easy feat. Even the most well read of Japanese people are apt, every so often, to come up against a word that defeats their kanji-unravelling skills. The point is that such well-read people would blame themselves for the lapse and try to ensure that it did not happen a second time. Aso simply does not seem to care. He is quite content to live with his own art of creative kanji misreading. This blasé attitude to his own incompetence smacks of the spoilt brat who thinks he can get away with anything and everything because his family is rich and powerful.
Time to grow up
This notion that he can do what he likes with impunity also seems to have been at work in the prime minister's choice of cabinet members. Just as the kanji jokes were starting to wear thin, one of Aso's ministers dutifully provided the media with another irresistible bombshell. The then finance minister Shoichi Nakagawa presented himself at a post-G7 meeting press conference on 14 February 2009 in what appeared to be a terminally advanced stage of intoxication.
st1\:* { BEHAVIOR: url(#ieooui) }
Nakagawa could barely keep himself awake, let alone speak with any shred of coherence. He even drank from a glass of water meant for Masaaki Shirakawa, the Bank of Japan governor who sat next to him. The hapless governor was forced to look on bemusedly as Nakagawa wobbled his way through one slurred word after another. Nakagawa himself blamed it all on jetlag and an overdose of pills for the common cold. Perhaps. Yet his drinking problems are an open secret and the performance was a pretty convincingly drunken one.
Nakagawa announced his resignation three days later. But the fact remains that the premier saw fit to appoint him to the ministerial position in the first place. Nakawaga is Aso's closest ally and personal friend. It is inconceivable that his foibles were unknown to the prime minister. But he just went ahead and put Nakagawa in charge of one of the most important portfolios in the cabinet, at a time when the global economy was headed towards a meltdown of unprecedented proportions.Also in openDemocracy on the politics of Japan:

Takashi Inoguchi, "The Japanese decision" (7 August 2003)

Takashi Inoguchi, "An ordinary power, Japanese-style" (26 February 2004)

Takashi Inoguchi, "America and Japan: the political is personal" (17 June 2004)

John Dower & Yoshio Okawara, "America and Japan: the next century and a half" (25 October 2004)

Isabel Hilton, "China and Japan: a textbook argument" (20 April 2005)

Andrew Stevens, "The Koizumi legacy and Japan's future" (21 September 2006)

Andrew Stevens, "Japan's lost election" (31 July 2007)

Christoph Neidhart, "Tokyo's change, Moscow's echoes" (28 September 2007)

James C Farrer, "China and Japan: from symbolism to politics" (12 May 2008)
It has since become apparent that Japan is suffering a lot more serious damage from the ongoing crunch than initially assumed. That initial assumption was itself false given that the Japanese economy was almost totally dependent on exports for growth prior to the global meltdown. Take exports out of the growth equation and there was nothing left, apart from growing income disparity and increasing numbers of working poor and homeless people. Indeed it could be argued that the more cost-efficient the export sector became, the greater became the problems of displaced workers, since it was essentially by getting rid of people that the exporters were keeping themselves competitive.
Japan is revisiting the unwelcome prospect of a depression which will intensify its many and deep economic problems, amid political disarray that also affects the opposition, and as it approaches an election that must be held at latest by September 2009. As President Barack Obama very justly pointed out in his inaugural address on 20 January, the time has come to put aside childish ways. Grownups do not give important jobs to drunkards just because they are their friends. They do not indulge in the shameless abuse of their mother tongue. With adulthood comes the awareness that there are other people in the world, who might be in pain, who might need help, who might find immature behaviour offensive.
Barack Obama's remarks were a quote from St Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. Taro Aso would do well to give the passage a glance. But then the New Testament is yet to become a manga bestseller. The millionaire brat's childish ways may only be put aside - or at least disappear from public view - when political reality intervenes.
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Russia’s left – what to do?
How should Russia's Left respond to the economic crisis as Putin's popularity goes undiminished?
We really do live in very interesting times! The media is full of all kinds of reports. There are apocalyptic announcements about the inevitable collapse of everything in the near future and ostrich-like claims that the country is in excellent form and anyone who thinks differently is a defeatist unworthy of the title of citizen.
Be that as it may. However you look at it, I think it's difficult to deny that there is a crisis, whether it's a domestic one or we are only "battling with the consequences of international financial upheavals". There is something else that is much more interesting: what should the Left do in this situation?
We shouldn't hurry with an answer. Six months ago I would have said: strengthen the organisational network, raise awareness among employees, bolster our authority through participation in real street battles, strengthen cooperation with workers at factories and real trade unions, with social movements etc - then we'll see what happens.
The moment has now arrived when the "what happens" should already be happening. And what do we see? Everything has become utterly confused. Where do we direct our meagre resources and how can we understand which actions might have a significant social effect?
The Communist Party answers this question traditionally: we will put more people on the streets, write a resolution and announce that we strongly protest against the actions of the regime which does not work for the people. That's good, but what next? G.A. Zyuganov tells us that the main thing is not to rock the boat, as Russia won't be able to endure a new revolution. On the whole, the task is to reduce the pressure and ensure that voters at the next elections remember the fiery speeches of leaders and vote in the right way. This is all quite sensible. But you can't just come up with the same trick for 15 years in a row, you need to think of something new!
The main rival of the Communist Party, "Fair Russia", is taking a different path. Rather than scare anyone before time, it is slowly strengthening its internal organisational infrastructure, but without admitting why, not even to its supporters. Party activists use "small-scale tactics", helping selected people with housing problems, pensions, work conflicts etc. Areas where these efforts are needed are increasing, thanks to the crisis and the "highly effective" actions of the authorities at all levels. The party may offer those whose social rights are being infringed the support of its far from impartial activists with some (small) resources at their disposal. This is done in such a way that issues about the future of the country and the party do not even have to be raised. All the party has to do is wait until the mist clears of its own accord. I think that the slogan "further from the leaders, closer to the people" will be reflected in the election results, though it will not in any way affect the foundations of the political system in Russia.
And what about the "Left outside the system"? I think that we're lost in the murky waters of the crisis. Many activists have taken the simplest route: more protest, more radical slogans, more heroism. Alas, we are clearly unable to outdo the government in creating a revolutionary situation in Russia. Perhaps we can only limber up a little in the lead-up to future class struggles...
A year ago Left Front forces seizing Red Square was really something: by hook or by crook we'll draw attention to the problem and drive the message home. Today it's only lazy people or federal channel TV presenters on duty who don't talk about our current problems. No, we need some kind of asymmetric response.
What do we need to do? Instead of just "revealing" problems we need to convince people that we are the ones who can solve them. You know, I meet a lot of voters and I get the feeling that Putin's popularity level in the country has not fallen. On the contrary it has increased over the last six months - though the popularity of the government has fallen catastrophically. Irrespective of whether he is good or bad, people believe that the prime minister can influence the situation. The rest - including us - only chatter. This is very well understood by the Kremlin youth guard, whose main task, according to the holy instructions of Father Fyodor from Ilf and Petrov's Twelve Chairs, is to shout: "You're a fool yourself!" It's not important what this is a reply to. What matters is that people who are inexperienced in politics frown squeamishly and run away from the disputers, without finding out which of them is right. Once Khodorkovsky called Putin the main liberal in the country: today he is also the main revolutionary. This is a serious problem for us.
I'm afraid my answer to the eternal question "what is to be done?" will be diametrically opposed to the opinion of many of my comrades. I think we should adopt the principle of "do no harm". The revolutionary situation is ripening as we speak: wonderful, then we should be prepared for things to get worse. We should strengthen our contacts with large organisational groups, which could influence the course of events, above all with the alternative trade unions, which are increasingly united around the All Russian Confederation of Labour and various social movements. At the same time, we must remember that we cannot be the initiators of change - there are not enough of us for that. We must, however, become the central ideological and organisational force.
Something that seems even more important to me at the moment is getting the movement out of the margins. We have already shown that we are not shy of fighting, but now it's important to show that we can both think and organise. The authorities have painted themselves into a corner with their system for preferential advancement of personnel from St Petersburg, so this is not so difficult. At least two parties (the Communist Party and Fair Russia) are ready to present their lists for getting activists into the local bodies of power - why not make use of this? The most interesting level of politics - local - is something that no one is interested in here, though we all admire the conscientious French who regularly come out on strikes and protests. They can only do this because their members (even the most radical leftist groups) go through intensive training in local government.
Buffeted by the winds of crisis, an increasing number of Russian citizens will start looking around to see if there is anyone besides the existing regime to whom they can entrust the country. It is very important for all of us to realise that the government will go bankrupt not when the last dollar of the gold and currency reserves has gone, but when an alternative government appears that is acceptable to the majority of the active population. You can sympathise with punks protesting sincerely against the regime, but they don't inspire trust even in the "broad-minded" office plankton, so often described now as the "proletariat of the 21st century". And certainly not in workers, for whom this style of life is completely alien. It's time to grow up.
I would like to be understood correctly. At this vitally important historical moment I am not calling for an end to street protests or suggesting that we should follow the Communist Party into the soothing peace of parliamentary cretinism. I do, however, suggest that we should take advantage of the general bewilderment, but not just to make a pointless fuss. This has no effect on the real situation in Russia. It only leads to ever longer sentences when party activists are arrested and have civil, and in future even criminal charges slapped on them. Today we need to use the situation to prepare for the moment when the regime becomes completely derelict. Especially as all the logic of economic and political development shows that we do not have long to wait.
(Source;Open Democracy)
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Re-Edited: MUKTI MAJID
EDITOR/PUBLISHER/PRESIDENT