EclectEcon

Rocky Mountain Economic Summit, 002

The Economic Summit I will be attending will be held in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, July 11-13. It is their 5th annual such get-together. Details are here at their website.

It appears I will be there with the expectation that I write about and report about what transpires. Well, of course! As much as I love to consume economics, I also love to talk about it and write about it. This will be a perfect fit!

My attendance at the summit is supported by several sponsors, including the Department of Economics at The University of Regina.

Related articles

Rocky Mountain Economic Summit, 001

Austerity and Growth

Never Again! this frightening nonsense needs to be countered constantly

A blatantly anti-semitic rally took place in Hungary [h/t Tom Palmer].

Several hundred supporters took part, despite attempts by the government to prevent it going ahead.

Jobbik said the rally was a protest against what it said was a Jewish attempt to buy up Hungary.

The party, which says it aims to protect Hungarian values and interests, is the third largest in parliament.

It regularly issues anti-Semitic statements.

It is maddening and frightening that this party is the third largest in Hungarian Parliament. Also be sure to check out the links along side that story.

No Paywalls at Major Media for the Election

I hope to avoid most of this nonsense, but if you're interested, here are the links, courtesy of MA:

Paywalls Dropped for Election at Wall St. Journal, NY Times, National Journal, UK Times
Tuesday, November 6, 2012 | 

Several news sites have temporarily dropped their subscription paywalls for election day and night.

The New York Times will be free from 6 p.m. EST tonight until 6 p.m. EST Wednesday.

The Wall Street Journal will be free from 5 p.m. EST today until 5 p.m. EST Wednesday.

The National Journal is free today and tomorrow, the cut off time has not been determined.

The UK Times is free today, for an unknown time period.

 

Storm Porn

Next time there's an imminent disaster, I'll watch the network that uses all the already in place webcams to show what's happening rather than allowing/encouraging reporters to agrandize and endanger themselves with the events. 

I admit it. I have a ghoulish curiosity about storms. So do lots of people. Storm chasers are a good example. So are all the people who watch the all-news channels during storms and boost those ratings. But I tire of reporters leaning into the wind and rain, wading in the water, and shouting the obvious extreme cliches.

I'm with this guy.

Then the Hurricane Sandy devastation in New Jersey and New York. Footage of flooded subways, as if massive waves of water finding an outlet in large holes in the ground was a surprise. In Toronto’s east end, a tree fell. Power went out. CP24 savoured it all, at last some real, honest-to-God disaster effects.

For all the raw footage and dramatic scenes of flooding, fires, rescue workers waist-deep in water and darkened buildings lashed by wind, television struggles to convey the authenticity of disaster-inducing storms. The fallback position is disaster-movie cliché and panicked voices in a studio commanding viewers to look (just look!) at this footage of flooding! The term “weather porn” doesn’t do it justice.

Antisemitism in Malaysia:Fulford Takes on Simpson and Burman

Robert Fulford, writing in the National Post, itemizes the antisemitism extant in Malaysia and in the process criticizes columnists Jeffrey Simpson of the Globe and Burman of the Star. 

It’s only when we grasp the unremitting and mindless hostility of countries such as Malaysia that we begin to understand the pain and difficulty of Israel’s place in the world. This is the context in which we should think about the Harper government’s pro-Israel policy. Israel faces automatic enmity from all the Arab nations, most other Muslim-dominated states and the many organizations in democratic countries that dedicate themselves to showering abuse on Israel (and no one else) in the name of human rights....

Yet many Canadians apparently believe that there is something unfair in this situation, not in the invective heaped on Israel but in Canada’s habit of friendship with the only democracy in the Middle East. It’s argued that this policy has done harm to Canada. Jeffrey Simpson of The Globe and Mail says that because of our attitude to Israel, “Canada’s reputation in the Arab world is mud.” Tony Burman, of the Toronto Star, former head of Al Jazeera English, and now a journalism teacher at Ryerson University, says that our government’s “passionate pro-Israeli stance” has damaged Canada’s reputation throughout the Middle East “after decades of being one of the world’s respected ‘honest brokers’ on Mideast issues.”

Of course there are many reasons for Canada's pro-Israel stances: democracy, constant threats of annhilation, and expulsion of Jews from so many arab and other Muslim countries to name three important ones.

Sunday Night Baseball?? Five Sportsnet Channels and NO choice??

Sheesh. We received about 999 cable tv channels here in London, ON. We subscribe to LOTS of channels, and we especially like to receive every possible sports channel. 

Not one of them is carrying the Sunday night baseball game between Atlanta and Washington. 

Meanwhile several sports channels are carrying NASCAR. And Rogers Sportsnet, with five different channels because, in their words,

It's all about choices. The ability to give sports fans the freedom to choose what they want to watch, when they want to watch it. Welcome to the world of Sportsnet ONE,

is carrying the Memorial Cup (junior hockey) on ALL FIVE of their channels! I realize that most people here in London will be pleased because the London Knights are playing in that championship game. But I would like the option to switch to the baseball game now and then. Certainly Sportsnet Pacific could be offering the baseball game. What's the point of Rogers' having five different Sportsnet channels if they are NOT going to offer viewers the promised choice??

Addendum: I see their Sportsnet One channel is indeed offering some choice. It's scheduled to show cricket.

Eliminate the Penny: Appearances on CBC Radio Wednesday morning

It looks as if the Senate Finance Committee of Canada will accept my recommendation (among others) and urge the gubmnt to eliminate the penny. As news of the Senate's recommendation has hit the newswires, I have, of course, been swamped with calls from the media given that I was once referred to as "the godfather of the ban-the-penny movement."

As a result, tomorrow (Wednesday) morning I will be interviewed by at least ten different CBC radio stations between 5am and 8am Central Standard Time. Unfortunately, I don't know which ones will be interviewing me at which times.

WikiLeaks and the Economics of Property and Information

Let's get one thing clear: WikiLeaks is not entirely about freedom of expression. It is also about publishing stolen information. It does, however, raise an interesting question about who should have what legal entitlements to do what with intercepted or stolen diplomatic communications. This point is made quite forcefully by Janet Daley in The Telegraph.

In its self-contradictory maintenance of its own untraceable operations, it [WikiLeaks] effectively declares itself to be the only agency in the world that is entitled to secrecy. Its insistence that it is somehow a voice of open and transparent “freedom of expression” is simply absurd: there is no issue here of any individual or group openly expressing an opinion that would otherwise have been suppressed. The only opinion that is implicitly conveyed by WikiLeaks’ exposures is the boringly prosaic anti-Americanism of the average Guardian comment writer.

All that WikiLeaks has done, as its name suggests, is to publish stolen documents that were purloined by a malcontent within the US defence network. As it happens, the leaked material has been almost entirely unsurprising, apart from one rather spectacular own goal in WikiLeaks terms: it turns out that a number of Gulf states have been urging the US to strike at Iran before it succeeds in producing nuclear weapons, and that the US has been resisting this pressure. This tends to undermine both the image of America as trigger-happy warmonger and the idea that the entire Muslim world is united in hatred and distrust of the Great Satan.

 There are, of course, at least two parties involved in the WikiLeaks: those who "stole" the documents and provided them to WikiLeaks; and WikiLeaks itself. WikiLeaks is probably more like a publisher than anything else and will quite possibly be protected under freedom of the press. At the same time, I'm not sure that freedom of the press protects disclosure of "official secrets"; my recollection from The Pentagon Papers escapade of 1971 is that it does in at least some instances (for example, see this); but even if it doesn't, if the only relief is injunctive, it's too late now -- the cat's already out of the bag.

Update: George Friedman of Stratfor has pretty similar views.

Wiser: Ocular or Auricular Trauma?

Wiser Canadian whiskey is currently running an ad that is pretty funny about some wall-climbing guys. I like the ad.... until....

The smug, arrogant jerk in the chair starts clapping his hands slowly, implicitly saying, "if you blow off some guy who is being a bit of a geek/nerd/jerk, you'll be welcomed into the club of real men." I detest the theme and I have detested all Wiser ads because of the theme.

As usual, I'm disappointed that an ad agency thinks this approach works; I'm even more disappointed that it probably does work.

"When I became a man, I put away childish things."

My sister and I have had some recent e-mail exchanges about this cover from the Saturday Evening Post (Dec 12, 1953). We both recall that it was posted somewhere in our church Sunday school above verse 11 from I Corinthians 13 (which we were all supposed to memorize, as I recall).

When I was a child, I spoke as a child,
I understood as a child, I thought as a child:
but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Digression #1. Speaking personally, and given that one of my favourite sayings is "You're never to old to have a happy childhood", I really doubt that I have put away very many metaphoric childish things. 

Digression #2. I see the cover price of the Saturday Evening Post in 1953 was 15 cents, about three times the price of a standard candy bar or bottle of pop. The Post died long ago, but are there many or any weeklies with its quality and reputation that have a cover price of only $3 today (triple the very roughly standard $1 price for pop or candy bars)? And even if there are, does anyone care? (I have changed  my subscription to The Economist to receive just electronic, not dead-tree issues).

Where's Muhammad?

This cartoon was pulled from a number of newspapers. [h/t Jabber]

It is a poke at the uproar caused by the Danish cartoonists who published cartoons depicting Muhammad. 

"Free" Weekly Newspapers -- on the wane? the process of "creative destruction"

My first experience with a "free" weekly newspaper was in Ames, Iowa, where I attended graduate school in the late 1960s. The Ames Advertiser was delivered weekly to people's homes at no charge; further, there was no charge for placing classified ads in the Advertiser. The business model was that display ads paid the freight. 

When the Advertiser arrived, people perused it, looking for bargains. And if there was something we particularly hoped to find, we looked through it very carefully, reading every ad in case the item we wanted was the 7th item listed in someone's classified ad. In the process, of course, we saw every single display ad in the tabloid-style paper. Merchants, both local and national, knew they would have a big audience for their ads in the Advertiser.

 We sold books, an old sewing machine, and lots of other things through the Advertiser because we didn't have to pay for the classified ads. We bought a bed, dressers, and several other things through ads in the Advertiser. It was a popular weekly.

When we lived in London, Ontario, there was a similar weekly newspaper called "The Pennysaver", which was delivered at no charge to our door once a week, along with numerous additional flyers. The differences between the Advertiser and the Pennysaver were notable:

• Both carried display ads, but the Advertiser had a higher proportion of display ads and a smaller proportion of accompanying flyers. Often, when the Pennysaver arrived, I would just pull out the Canadian Tire ad and not bother looking at the rest.
• The Pennysaver always charged for classified ads. The charge was considerably less for classifieds in the London Free Press (daily newspaper), but the ads weren't as well-organized in the Pennysaver, either.

Since we moved to Huron County nearly fifteen years ago, we have been receiving a weekly bundle of flyers and news items delivered to our home at no charge. But this package has very few high-priced classified ads. 

With the growth of the internet, the use of no-charge weeklies for classified ads has diminished considerably. People sell things on eBay, on the local Kijiji sites, on Craigslist, etc. via the internet. Weekly bundles with classified ads are less popular now. On-line classified sites offer dynamic updating so that buyers don't have to wait for the next edition. They also have no-charge classified ads. And, using reasonable database programming, they allow buyers to search more specifically for what they are looking for by location, product category, and often even brand or model.

As a result, with the reduced browsing traffic through weeklies like the Pennysaver, display ads are worth less than they used to be. Advertisers are still willing to pay for home delivery of flyers but display ads in weeklies based on classifieds are not seen as much as they used to be; and so advertisers are not willing to pay as much to support those weeklies. 

The result is that some of the weeklies are changing, offering more local news stories. But others are closing down. 

The London edition of The Pennysaver will cease publication by Oct. 22....

Seven layoff notices, effective Oct. 21, were given to Pennysaver sales staff, who will be given every opportunity for employment elsewhere in the company as it becomes available.

It may be more than the internet that is driving this change; e.g. perhaps increasing numbers of people are concerned about the environmental effects of producing, printing, delivering, and recycling so much unread paper and hence are posting "No Flyers" signs on their doors. But I doubt if this effect is very large. If the "free" weeklies had content that we still wanted, they would be read or browsed more widely and would be more profitable.

 The process of creative destruction, through innovation and technological change via the internet, is leading to the demise of many of the "free" weeklies; at the same time it creates more value for electronic ads.

YouTube and Freedom of from Expression

Mark Steyn, outspoken as usual, has some interesting comments about the policies from YouTube and other places concerning items that are pro-Israel (compared with some that are definitely anti-Israel). His concluding remarks reveal the biases:

Their [YouTube's] technological iconoclasm is, alas, all too often accompanied by soft-left squishiness on broader philosophical points such as freedom of expression. I long ago lost count of the number of places, from Toronto Airport to Marriott hotels, that have SteynOnline blocked as a "hate" site. Oddly enough, jihadist networks calling for death and destruction of western civilization, including the crappy Marriott round the back of the airport, never seem to fall into the "hate" category.

Thanks, AGAIN, EastLink!

Half a day with no cable, internet, or telephone service last week. No service again today. Thank goodness I can use my iPhone to tether to collect at least a portion of my e-mail, surf the web, and post to my blog. If I'm mad, think about the losses being suffered by businesses in the area who depend on them for everything.

Inexcusably poor service.

EastLink Cable Update

I just received a telephone call from Ashley at EastLink. She says they have worked out an arrangement whereby we will now be able to watch Toronto Blue Jays games on the MLB extra-innings package (channel 456 in our area) for the duration of the Memorial Cup hockey play-offs. I hope so; we'll find out tonight. 

I gather this plan required some fairly quick negotiations on their part. Surely in the long-run  it would have been (or would be) preferable for them just to carry the Alternate Sportsnet channel. Also, channel 456 is not in high definition (I don't know whether the Alternative Sportsnet channel is available in hi-def).

She was also quite apologetic about the inability to provide feedback to them via their website and said she had sent a note to their IT folks asking them to work on it.

Earlier today, I received e-mail from Sportsnet confirming that indeed they do NOT charge service providers to carry the Alternative Sportsnet channel.

Finally (full disclosure), to compensate me for my angst and hassles, EastLink is providing us with a month of no-charge for the sports package.

Dear EastLink Cable Company

You folks are total jerks. Here is what happened:

• In its infinite wisdom, Rogers Sportsnet decided to carry the Memorial Cup (Junior A) hockey games instead of Toronto Blue Jays baseball on ALL of its channels. They announced on the air and on their website that we could watch the baseball games on their "alternate network", which I gather is not unlike TSN2 or CBC-Bold --- a second set of programming from the network.
• We were unable to find the Alternate Sportsnet channel among the hundreds of channels carried by EastLink Cable (which recently acquired Bluewater Cable, our original cable service provider.
• So during the weekend, I called Eastlink to find out where I could watch the ballgames that were being played.
• During my first call, I spoke with Andy, based in Prince Edward Island (note: I live in Ontario). He remarked that one of his co-workers was dealing with a call about exactly the same issue. They had no idea why we did not have access to the Alternate Sportsnet channel. 
• I complained that since I, in effect, sign over my entire monthly paycheque (or so it seems --- I pay quite a lot for a home customer) to you folks, I thought it reasonable that I be able to watch the game somewhere, somehow on my cable system. I even pay extra for the MLB package, and said, "Well surely I should be able to find a telecast of the Jays game somewhere in that package. 
• Andy agreed and said he was certain I could view the Jays game on at least one of the MLB  package channels. To that end, he consulted with someone else and then gave me two different channel numbers to try that afternoon (I was calling in the morning).
• Well, sure as shootin', when game time rolled around, we tried every channel we could in the entire lineup from EastLink, and we could not find the game. 
• So I called your customer service number again. 
• This time I was connected with Tim in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He clearly had no idea what was going on, but he checked with someone at EastLink who said that EastLink was unable to obtain the license for the Alternative Sportsnet channel. 
• I said, "I don't believe EastLink is unable to obtain the license. Alternate Sportsnet is carried on Shaw Cable; it is also carried by Bell Satellite and by something called Cable-Cable. I don't believe EastLink couldn't get the license if you wanted it." He stuck by his story, and I stuck by my criticism, feeling considerably cheesed off.
• To make matters worse, it seems that because the BlueJays are carried on the Alternate Sportsnet channel, they are blacked out on the MLB package. So we were stuck: no Blue Jays games while the Memorial Cup is being played.
• Because I was curious, I sent e-mail to Sportsnet to ask why EastLink was unable to obtain a license for the Alternate Sportsnet channel:

Is there some reason I cannot watch the Toronto Blue Jays on East Link? I gather they do not provide the Alternate Sportsnet channel, but can you tell me why? They say it is because they are unable to obtain the license, but I don't understand that explanation.

What is worse, we cannot even see the Blue Jays on MLB extra innings. Why are we being left out?

• Today I received the following response from Sportsnet:

Thanks for your recent email. We provided the feed for the Sportsnet Alternative channel to all providers including Eastlink. No license was necessary, they just had to get the broadcast feed from us. We are not sure why they were not able to do so.

Sincerely
Jim LaChapelle
Audience Relations


• It isn't completely clear that Sportsnet provides the feed for Sportsnet Alternative at no charge to all providers. Their response certainly reads that way, though. And even if they were charging for the feed and you folks didn't want to pay for it, you should have told me that instead of saying you were unable to obtain the license.
• I then tried to write to you in e-mail to inquire further about the situation. I logged onto your site.
• But before I could click on "Contact Us", a box popped up that requires a user to click on the name of their former cable provider, in my case, Bluewater Cable.
• And no matter what browser I use, I am told that the link doesn't work. I cannot even write to you directly to express my concerns. Hence, I am left with posting this on a blog for others to read.

So, 

• not only did someone tell me I could watch the game on certain channels when I couldn't, 
• not only did someone tell me that you were unable to obtain the license when apparently you can,
• but then your "contact us" link is inoperable.

Is it time for the CRTC to look into your behaviour? Or is it just time for people in our area to reconsider their satellite vs cable decision?

There is a simple, two-part solution to this situation:

1. Stop lying to (or at the very least misleading) your customers.
2. Start providing the Alternative Sportsnet channel for your customers.

Regards,

John Palmer

BBC Biases in the Middle East

Something we don't learn much about in the western media is this (in the second paragraph quoted):

So, let’s just accept that Israel’s handling of the Ramat Shlomo settlements announcement during US vice-president Joe Biden’s recent visit was cack handed and self-defeating. Prime Minister Netanyahu has admitted as much by apologising. It was a diplomatic faux pas, and it provoked a torrent of protest from the State Department to the Palestinian Authority. It also received saturation coverage in every major outlet in the western media. ...

Now consider the response [from the rest of the world] to the Palestinian Authority’s decision last week to celebrate the worst terrorist atrocity ever perpetrated inside Israel (the 1978 bus massacres which left 38 dead including 13 children) by naming a central square in Ramallah after its perpetrator, Dalal Mughrabi. That was a statement of values and intent, glorifying mass terrorism and signalling to Israel and the world that the Palestinians can never be trusted to abide by civilised norms. It tells you everything you really need to know about Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and why peace with them has proved elusive for more than six decades. What follows is a list of the western news outlets that have covered what, I repeat, is an immensely significant and illustrative story:

1. The New York Times. 2. Nobody… That’s right, every other major media outlet in the western world has effectively censored it. ...

Why does the BBC not mention it? Why does the CBC not mention it (at least to my knowledge)? Robin Shepherd offers an explanation here. [h/t MA]. I'm not satisfied with his explanation (because he doesn't really offer one other than to emphasize the constant threats to Israel's existence) even though I do accept his conclusion:

By leaving the general population in a state of near total unawareness about the realities that Israel confronts in its dealings with the Palestinians, even neutral and unbiased observers are bound to come away with the impression that Israel is the guilty party in this conflict.

This is real censorship. And it works.

The Full Popular Science Archive Is Available On-Line

I used to read Popsci now and then as a teen. I don't know that I'd have much interest in this now, but some of you might.

Avatar, a Dissenting View

I do not go to movies in theatres very often. But when both my older son, David Ricardo Palmer, and former student, David Henderson recommended Avatar, I agreed to go see it. As David Henderson pointed out, the movie has a strong moral theme of defense of property rights. The more primitive society had something the high-tech folks wanted; the high-tech folks were unable to negotiate a purchase, and so they tried to take it by force.

But I didn't see the movie as an anti-war movie (as Henderson claimed), since the defenders clearly resorted to the use of force to protect their property rights. I did see the movie as anti-imperialism, almost trite and over-the-top on this score. And to be frank, I really don't go for sci-fi type adventure movies.

My son, like most reviewers, did not seem particularly impressed by the plot but was very impressed by the computer graphics and the 3-D. I'll grant that the computer graphics were very well done. But the 3-D effects, per se, didn't seem any more impressive than the ones I remember from more than 55 years ago in the movie, Fort Ti, which also used orthogonal polarization (instead of red-blue lenses) to enable the 3-D effect.

As I reflected on the experience, I realized that there was a tremendous amount of work and creativity that went into the 3-D animation. Nevertheless, I wouldn't rate the movie all that high. Maybe an 8 for special effects, but a 4 for plot; overall 6 out of 10. Despite the awesome computer graphics, the movie just didn't do it for me. It was another underdog, Karate Kid, David-and-Goliath type ho-hum predictable plot.

The Book of Eli (and my tangential relationship to it)

The other day I saw an ad on television for the movie The Book of Eli, an apocalyptic/adventure/fantasy movie starring Denzel Washington. I don't pay much attention to movies, and so I tend to ignore movie ads. But something about this sounded familiar.

And then I remembered: about 7 years ago, when I was doing some professional acting, I auditioned for a role in this film. It was so long ago, I can't remember what the role was --- a prophet of some sort as I recall. But I remember waiting in a room with about 50 guys, most of them with big-time professional training and experience, nearly all of them dressed in their perceptions of how Hasidic Jews might dress.

The audition was in Toronto back in the days when many major production companies were shooting films and commercials in Canada to take advantage of the low US price of the Canadian dollar (well below purchasing-power parity in the film industry) and to exploit some of us poor Canadians*. I see from IMdb that in the end, the locations were all in Alcatraz and in the southwestern US -- none in Canada.

I don't see that role in the film, now. I wonder what happened to that role and I really wonder what caused the lengthy delay in getting that film made and into the theatres.

*No, I didn't get the role. Their loss. And believe me, I wouldn't have felt exploited if I had been given the role.

Blood Libel?

Israelis have been accused by a Swedish journalist of killing Palestinians to harvest organs from them. Despite the lack of evidence (indeed, despite assertions from both Israelis and Palestinians to the contrary), the story now seems to have been recirculated in the Ukraine (see this).

Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet's August 2009 story (translated into English in full here) accusing the IDF of harvesting Palestinian organs caused an uproar. Donald Bostrom, the author of the offensive piece, duly demonstrated his utter lack of any basic journalistic standards when he said: "But whether it's true or not - I have no idea, I have no clue." On top of this, the story was further undermined as one of the Palestinian families interviewed said they never told any reporter that their son was missing organs.

With the credibility of the story in tatters one might have expected the outrageous accusations to have a limited shelf life or to disappear altogether. However, the Swedish blood libel is a textbook case study of how what starts as an article published in a language read by few from a country of limited international influence can turn into a poison that spreads much wider.

As Ha'aretz reports:

Stories appearing on several Ukrainian Web sites claim Israel has brought around some 25,000 Ukrainian children into the country over the past two years in order to harvest their organs.

This is truly reprehensible and must stop.

"I'm about to go out of business because I'm in a declining industry, so you have to give me some money."

That is what local over-the-air television station owners are telling the cable companies in Canada. Sounds silly doesn't it. Well, unfortunately that is exactly what is happening in hearings before the CRTC. Alan has been blogging up a storm about this at Silly Little Country.

Imagine what the viewership of local television would be if cable companies did NOT carry the local over-the-air stations. And as Alan and I agreed yesterday, we might even be willing to pay the cable companies NOT to carry some of the drek that passes as local over-the-air television.

How Smart Is This? Advance Warning that Security Cameras Will Not be Operating

We recently received a campus-wide e-mail, telling us, in part:

On [date deleted], wireless in the building will experience two brief outages as well as a number of the cameras on the Camera surveillance system.

Ignore the issue of how the announcement is worded [how does wireless experience a number of cameras? But one assumes the notice means that security cameras will be inoperable.].

Given that so much theft that occurs is carried out by people who have inside information,  is it really wise to announce this in advance?

Or is this announcement a ploy to entice thieves to attempt to steal something so they can be caught? If this is the case, one suspects there has been a rash of campus thefts leading up to such a strategy.

And if it is a ploy, does my writing about the possibility have any impact on its likely success?

Or do I just watch too many crime shows on television?

the Guardian Actually Published Something I Liked?Is the apocalypse upon us?

From Daily Alert:

Ahmadinejad's Attack on Israel at UN Hastens Walkout - Ewen MacAskill

Iranian President Ahmadinejad faced a series of walkouts at the UN General Assembly Wednesday after launching a renewed attack on Israel. Within minutes of his criticism of Israel, delegations from various countries began to rise from their seats and noisily left the chamber. Many other countries had left before he even began, partly in protest over his brutal crackdown on the Iranian opposition after June's election and partly over comments last week again questioning whether the Holocaust had taken place. (Guardian-UK)

Delegations from Argentina, Australia, Britain, Costa Rica, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, New Zealand and the U.S. left the room as Ahmadinejad began to rail against Israel, a ! European source said. Israel was not present when the Iranian leader began his address and Canada had said it would heed the boycott call.

An Unbalanced Look at Refugees:the anti-Israel bias of The Economist

I'm a little behind in my reading of The Economist and only recently came across this piece about refugees. This statement really upset me:

The official figures also ignore 4.2m Palestinians whose families were displaced by war in 1948 after Israel was founded ...

It upset me for two reasons:

1. Most (I know, not all) Palestinians left Israel at the urging of the surrounding countries (Syria, Jordan, Egypt) who told them they could return after the Israelis were driven into the sea.
2. The article makes NO mention, absolutely NONE, of the fact that hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced out of arab countries. The difference was that Israel accepted the displaced Jews as citizens. The arab countries did not accept the displaced Palestinians. For more on this, see Benny Morris or Sir Martin Gilbert.

.

Why Are Tennis Commentators SO Full of Themselves?

I was shocked. I was stunned. My friend and co-blogger at Curling, Alan Adamson, wrote on his Facebook page,

Alan Adamson thinks CBS/ESPN has a great team covering tennis - the McEnroe boys, Darren Cahill, and the very fetching Pam Shriver, Mary Jo Fernandez, and Mary Carillo. How did such a team get assembled?

I completely disagree. Earlier this week, when watching the U.S. Open, I found the only way I could bear it was to mute the commentary; and in the end, I actually just turned it off rather than listen to John McEnroe ramble on. And the women commentators need to learn that the show is about tennis, not about them. Cutesy interactions and inane questions just don't cut it for me.

What is it about McEnroe that I can't stand? First let me state up front that, yes, he was a great tennis player, and, yes, he is quite knowledgeable. What I think irritates me is his arrogant yet whiny condescension that both says and implies that if only the players had done what he thought they should, they'd have won the point/game/set/match/whatever.

Update: Alan responds on his own blog.

Cochrane Responds to Krugman

I confess that I find many of the mathematical exercises in economics to be wholly uninteresting and irrelevant and to that extent I enjoyed Krugman's article (here). But he really does have his head....

as John Cochrane points out, at great length. Here is the intro to Cochrane's piece.

Many friends and colleagues have asked me what I think of Paul Krugman’s New York Times Magazine article, “How did Economists get it so wrong?”

Most of all, it’s sad. Imagine this weren’t economics for a moment. Imagine this were a respected scientist turned popular writer, who says, most basically, that everything everyone has done in his field since the mid 1960s is a complete waste of time. Everything that fills its academic journals, is taught in its PhD programs, presented at its conferences, summarized in its graduate textbooks, and rewarded with the accolades a profession can bestow, including multiple Nobel prizes, is totally wrong.  Instead, he calls for a return to the eternal verities of a rather convoluted book written in the 1930s, as taught to our author in his undergraduate introductory courses.  If a scientist, he might be a global-warming skeptic, an AIDS-HIV disbeliever, a stalwart that maybe continents don’t move after all, or that smoking isn’t that bad for you really.

It gets worse. Krugman hints at dark conspiracies, claiming “dissenters are marginalized.” Most of the article is just a calumnious personal attack on an ever-growing enemies list, which now includes “new Keyenesians” such as Olivier Blanchard and Greg Mankiw.  Rather than source professional writing, he plays gotcha with out-of-context second-hand quotes from media interviews. He makes stuff up, boldly putting words in people’s mouths that run contrary to their written opinions.  Even this isn’t enough: he adds cartoons to try to make his “enemies” look silly, and puts them in false and embarrassing situations.  He accuses us literally of adopting ideas for pay, selling out for “sabbaticals at the Hoover institution” and fat “Wall street paychecks.” It sounds a bit paranoid.

It’s annoying to the victims, but we’re big boys and girls. It’s a disservice to New York Times readers. They depend on Krugman to read real academic literature and digest it, and they get this schlock instead. And it’s ineffective. Any astute reader knows that personal attacks and innuendo mean the author has run out of ideas.

And that’s the biggest and saddest news of this piece: Paul Krugman has no interesting ideas whatsoever about what caused our current financial and economic problems, what policies might have prevented it, or what might help us in the future, and he has no contact with people who do. “Irrationality” and “spend like a drunken sailor” are pretty superficial compared to all the fascinating things economists are writing about it these days.   

What do I think?  How sad.

...

Swedish Blood Libel:quintessential anti-semitism

The irresponsibility of the so-called journalist in this story is reprehensible. From Honest Reporting,

Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet's story (translated into English in full here) accusing the IDF of harvesting Palestinian organs caused an uproar. ...

Donald Bostrom, the author of the offensive piece, duly demonstrated his utter lack of any basic journalistic standards when he said: "But whether it's true or not - I have no idea, I have no clue." On top of this, the story was further undermined as one of the Palestinian families interviewed said they never told any reporter that their son was missing organs.

Rather than acknowledging a case of shoddy, not to mention offensive journalism, Aftonbladet and even the Swedish government turned the issue into one of freedom of speech, as the situation escalated into a full blown spat between the Israeli and Swedish governments.

More Ignorance from 'merican Mediots*

Shortly after I moved to Canada, someone in the US asked me, "How big of a city IS Canada?"

But that person wasn't a mediot* like the person on CNN who does all those cutesy stories and who should have known better than this.

*Mediot: contraction of media and idiot.

Trono: Centre of the UniverseCoor's Light Billboard

There is a tendency for people who do not live in Toronto, Ontario, to believe that people in Toronto think they are at the centre of the universe. Understandably, based on this belief, they often mock Torontonians. The latest, which is really humourous, is this billboard for Coor's Light:

Of course the folks in Trono [also sometimes spelled Trahnah] don't see it as quite so funny. See this.

Making fun of Toronto is a unity issue that ties together everyone who doesn't live there, a strategy that has been used for years.

What has changed, said [Paul Cubbon], who teaches marketing at UBC's Sauder School of Business, is the speed at which localized ads can move outside their target area via cellphone cameras, YouTube videos and Twitter postings.

[h/t Jack and Scoop]