Global & Immoral

International Radio Broadcasting in a Globalizing World: A New Paradigm. A New Information and Communication Order

2009-04-28T17:21:00.001+08:00

http://www.amazon.com/International-Radio-Broadcasting-Globalizing-World/dp/3639146069/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1240904773&sr=1-2

Rio de Janeiro 2016, Brazil 2014 and Beijing 2008: Not Games.

2008-06-05T13:41:00.004+08:00

Chicago, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro and Madrid have been selected yesterday as the candidate cities to host the 2016 Olympics.
The chosen quartet of cities – who had all been expected to survive the first stage in the selection process - will now have to compile a detailed dossier and submit it by February 12, 2009 giving the reasons why they should be chosen to be the next host after London in 2012.
After that, a panel of IOC experts will visit each of the cities, tour the proposed sites and meet with bid and government leaders. The panel will release an evaluation report to the IOC members a month before the vote on October 2009.
Rio, which hosted the 2007 Pan American Games, would be the first South American city to get the Olympics. This possibility, as remote as it might seem, immediately makes me wonder about how our beloved Rio and Brazil would look like in 2016.

Questions are: Is it imperative to Brazilians, as much as it is to Chinese people, to host such a huge event, thus triggering a massive effort on hiding severe wounds (mostly social wounds)? Do we need to hold the Olympics to acknowledge the “need” to become a regional power? Are this people talking about the same country where I was born and raised?

Last night I was watching my beloved Fluminense’s amazing victory over Argentina’s Boca Juniors at Libertadores Cup semi-final and I was deadly proud of how our country and our people are devoted to football and, in broader sense, sports. No doubt that we are ready to organize the best FIFA World Cup ever, in 2014.
Summarizing: one step at once, rite? There is a lot to be done before FIFA World Cup 2014 and I am not talking about Sports.

Doubt remains: What future for The Taiwan We Know?

2008-02-20T04:04:00.012+08:00

Taipei, 2008.

The Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) administration is considering further relaxing cross-strait economic policy before Chen steps down in May, a plan which is supported by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), who confirmed declarations to the Taipei Times, on February 18.

When asked for comment, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) applauded the president's plans to relax cross-strait policies and urged Chen to begin by arranging charter flights starting on March 1 for Taiwanese based in China to return to vote in next month's presidential election.

It's been almost a decade Taiwanese businessmen are taking advantage of China’s cheaper production costs.
In late 1999, ACER invested USD 50 million in a manufacturing plant in Zhongshan, Guandong Province, to produce computers and DVD players.
Summarizing, 30% of Taiwan’s total IT production was already made in China in 2000.
About the “Silicon coalition”, the term used on defining the rush for building producing centers in the mainland, Taiwan’s vice-president Annette Lu insists in a tough posture of dissatisfaction:

“This fantasy about the mainland has triggered uncertainty about the future of Taiwan, causing the relocation of capital and production bases… Blindly following the mainland fever without knowing the risk behind, is not something a wise man does… Ridiculous for Taiwanese to pour money into China, when Beijing has 300 missiles aimed at the island.”

President Chen Shui-bian, on his inaugural speech on May 2000 envisioned the “sustainable green silicon island” as a plan to develop a knowledge-based economy in Taiwan. His project proposes an implementation in Six Ways to consolidate Taiwan as a Science Island:

1 – Set up mechanisms to encourage innovation and foster new ventures.
2- Expand the use of information technology and the Internet in production as well as daily life.
3– Lay the groundwork for an environment supportive of Internet usage.
4 – Consider due modification of the education system in a drive to meet the development of personnel needs by training and importing a sufficient pool of knowledge workers.
5 – Establish service-oriented government.
6 – Formulate precautionary measures against social problems that arise from the transformation of economy.

How effective were president Chen's proposes so far? It's known that R.O.C's last triumph is the expertise in the IT sector and, in this regard, P.R.C is clearly "catching-up".

Concerning Taiwan's representation in an international sphere: contingencies. On January 15, this year, Malawi was the fourth country to break relations with Taiwan since 2006 after Senegal, Chad and Costa Rica. There has been speculation that the Marshall Islands and Guatemala could soon follow suit.

Should Taiwan pursue independence at any cost? Could a compromise between the two sides ever be reached? What does the future holds for Taiwan?

In the picture: The author is a witness of a "transforming" Taiwan. View of Taiwan Democracy Hall (Former Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, 2007)

Tropa de Elite: Otra grande produccion cinematográfica destaca el problema de la violencia urbana en Brasil.

2008-02-20T03:41:00.003+08:00

Ganador del Oso de Oro por la mejor película de 2008 del Festival Internacional de Cine de Berlin, en el ultimo Lunes 18, “The Elite Squad”, titulo en inglés, destaca la realidad de las fuerzas especiales de la policia en la ciudad de Rio de Janeiro.

Interesante sobre esta produccion es que, antes mismo del lanzamiento, una audiencia estimada en 3.5 millones de personas ya habian visto la pelicula.
La copia [ no autorizada ] de la película se puede ver o descargar de muchos sitios en la internet. La especulación es que más que 1 millón de copias se han vendido en las calles brasileñas.

Tropa de Elite ', del director Jose Padilha, destaca agentes brutos de una policia sangrienta, que se quedan heroes de una sociedad asustada y paranoica. Segun el director, el intento de la película es expresar que algo esta incorrecto con el sistema, donde oficiales com bajos sueldos "deben elegir entre la corrupcion, la negligencia o la guerra.

Algunos veículos de la prensa, como la revista Variety, todabia están acusando la película de fascismo. Elogiado como "ciudad del dios 2", pero presentando una narrativa basada en la perspectiva de un policía, la película está provocando discusiones calentados a través del país sobre las causas de la violencia en las grandes ciudades.

Si el cine es verdaderamente un espejo de una sociedad, se parece imprescindible que los brasileños busquen una nueva orden urbana. Imagines En Tropa de Elite lo qué representaría ciertamente un choque, en los ojos de una audiencia internacional, significa, con exactitud, la extensión del miedo en las ciudades de la decima economía del mundo.

Soon at Radio Canada International's Spanish Service. Reportero de un día:

http://www.rcinet.ca/rci/es/emissions.shtml

The language as a neutral medium and seek for a cultural ecology

2007-11-12T07:57:00.000+08:00

Brilliant scholar Hamid Mowlana observes that most research in the field of International Communication regards language itself as a neutral tool of communication. It is possible, in this case, to compare a communication-modernization paradigm to the Marxist paradigm of class struggle and dependency. In the former, language carries predevelopment messages and information.[1] In the later, power, domination, exploitation, and influence are first and foremost economical and political phenomena.[2] Language and culture are usually a result rather than a primary cause. Language appears as an eternal medium.

Indeed, a paradigm of electronic-oriented industrial societies is linked to the motors of cultural domination, result of ownership of broadcasting facilities, the impact of international broadcasters or the flow of foreign wire services. But these are categories of economic or politic analysis, such as percentage of foreign content, capital and technology rather than categories of language or linguistic analysis. The concern about a possible “programmed earth” or visual alienation should also be understood and discussed in a scientific basis.

In thoughts of Friedrich Nietzsche, the power of language becomes transparent, as it follows:

“… it is not that we are bound be our language, but that we are in effect defined by our chains. Without the fetter of our language so to speak, there would be nothing and no one at all. Not prison or freedom, but limitation of the chaos or not being there.”[3]

Michel Foucault views discourses as domains within which power and authority are conferred on some and denied to others, as political analysts and theorists our approach to language must shift. Rather than regarding language and speech practices as denotation tools for discovering aspects of experience, we can regard them as representations in themselves of political relations.[4] It is particular of every society, that the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized and redistributed, according to a certain number of procedures.

In a more broad sense, language could be considered as a reflection of the mind and culture. It is both a significant system in the creation and distribution of power and a pivotal medium in Global Communication.

The process of information and technological innovations, as it relates to communications between human beings and their environment and among the peoples and nations, is demanding new explanations. One way to conceptualize the world in an integrated perspective is to look at the word communication as a cultural ecology composed of international dimensions.

Culture, conceived as a symbolic interaction underlying world politics may help explain such phenomena as the growing multiplicity of nation-states, the rise of ethnicity, the diversity of national developmental goals and needs, the diffusion of technology by national and transnational actors and simultaneously entry of many nations into the industrial-technological age and the communication and information age. The current global landscape is where the cultural forces should come into play globally.

As International Relations expand into a multitude of diverse interests and structures, ranging from military to political, from economic to cultural spheres, the question of communication ecology and the environment in which a new structure is taking place occupies a prominent role.

[1] Hamid Mowlana. Global Communication in Transition: The End of Diversity? (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1996). p. 109
[2] Ibid.
[3] T.B. Strong Language and nihilism, 1984, p.82. in Hamid Mowlana. Global Communication in Transition: The End of Diversity? (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1996). p. 110
[4] M.J. Shapiro Language and Political Understanding, 1981, p.140. In Global Communication in Transition: The End of Diversity? (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1996). pp. 110-111

Elite Squad: Another great movie highlights Brazil's misery of widespread urban violence

2007-11-08T04:21:00.000+08:00

“Elite Squad”, a much-hyped film about Rio's special forces police (BOPE) was officially released on Oct. 12. The peculiar thing about this release is that an estimated crowd of 3.5 million people have already seen it before its debut. The [unauthorized] copy of the film can be viewed or downloaded from many different places on the web, and the speculation is that more than a million copies of the DVD have been sold on Brazilian streets across the past few weeks.

‘Tropa de Elite', by Brazilian director Jose Padilha, has turned into the most seen and debated unreleased film to date. From one side we see BOPE's tough agents turning into the heroes of a frightened and paranoiac society, and on the other there is a police effort to block the film's screening. In fact, Padilha tried to express that something is wrong with the system, where underpaid officers “must choose between becoming corrupt, neglectful or going to war.”

But still some are accusing the film of fascism. Praised as a “City of God 2″, but presenting a narrative based on a policeman's perspective, the film is provoking heated debates across the country about the causes of violence in big cities. There are interesting discussions also on the morality of the widespread use of an unauthorized copy leaked to the web of an unreleased film. Surely, this case has made Brazilians go deeper into the actual meanings of piracy in the digital era, and it can turn out to be a defining moment for the audiovisual industry. Bloggers are all around it.

If cinema is truly a society's mirror, it seems imperative for Brazilians to seek a new urban order. What would certainly represent a shock, in the eyes of an international audience, disclosed, accurately, a widely spread sense of fear in the cities of the world's 10th economy.

The Golden Shield of China: Just Global business

2007-11-08T03:36:00.000+08:00

The global nature of the internet, the while geographic distribution of its users and the diverse character of its contents lead many policy-makers to believe that the activity in the cyberspace is beyond the regulation and the control of any single state.

Former US president, Bill Clinton, once compared controlling the internet with “trying to nail a Jello to the wall”.

Jiang Zemin, on the other hand, drew attention to the dangers of spreading “unhealthy” information and appealed to the international community to develop common mechanisms for “safe information management”.

Editorials in the People’s Daily speak of hostile forces at home and abroad trying to infiltrate the country via internet.

Even liberal democratic countries tend to accept the need for control when it comes to issues like the dissemination of child pornography, racism, the instigation of violence, rightist extremism and hate speech.

Many regulations of the internet in China are intended to benefit internet users, such as measures protecting consumers by governing online trading in pharmaceuticals and online educational services, or upholding intellectual property rights and individual privacy.

More directly questions related to control and censorship, however, are various provisions that were included in a raft of regulations that was introduced in the year of 2000 to govern telecommunications and the publication of news and electronic information on the internet.

The main forbidden topics or contents are the ones related to the Falungong movement, Tibetan independence, Human rights violations and the Republic of China in Taiwan.
Blocking of websites is an obvious case of proactive censorship, and it is applied mainly to websites operated by foreign news service like CNN, the BBC or international Human Rights organizations. Blocks are sometimes temporarily lifted on special occasions.

Internet cafes have been raided several times by security forces. Between April and June 2001, 56,800 were inspected on a national scale. A minimum distance of 200 meters is required, from government offices, army units and party organizations, as well as from primary and middle schools [1]

Special police units are charged with the central tasks of fighting cyber crime, ensuring IT security by “keeping order” in cyberspace. In Hong Kong an advertisement was published in order to recruit members for a Special Hacker Force. According to a local magazine, the Chinese Military was looking for a few good men - to be trained in the art of hacking over the Internet… called for the development of a hacking capability made up of civilian experts and specially trained military personnel that could engage in online and Internet warfare.[2]

Aiming to safeguard the security in computer networks and to fight against cyber crime, the Chinese government has launched the Golden Shield project. It consists in connecting together the databases and surveillance systems of national and local police stations. The curious aspect of this project is that the technological apparatuses/softwares are provided by Western firms, such as Cisco Systems.

Another method reported to have been used stifle debate is to reduce data transfer speed before sensitive dates approach, for example 4th June, date of Tiananmen massacre.

In August 2001, it was reported that the International Broadcasting Bureau, the parent company of the Voice of America has entered a project to undermine the China’s efforts to censor the Internet. The “Triangle Boy”, a method for maintaining anonymity in cyberspace. Soon, after September 11th this venture ran into problems, since the atmosphere in the US became more sympathetic to strengthen online surveillance.

I could notice that the majority of annalists who have followed and studied the development of the internet in China in more depth do not support the picture of a State rendered powerless over an incontrollable Internet, but tend to conclude that the authorities are able to exert their control over online users as much by simple intimidation as by sophisticated electronic surveillance or by blocking direct access to politically suspect foreign websites.

I understand that this does not mean that Internet is politically irrelevant, just that it is not causing significant social change, so far. What can be said of the Internet can be said of the other media in China as well.

[1] Staff, Newsbytes, Hong Kong, August 4, 1999. In JONES, Andy. , KOVACICH, Gerald L., LUZWICK, Perry G. Global Information Warfare. CRC Press LCC, Boca Raton, FL. 2002. p.232.

[2] HUGHES, Christofer R., WACKER, Gudrun. China and the Internet: Politics of the digital leap forward. Routledge Curzon, London 2003. p 230.

Related link: PBS Frontline "The Tank Man" Chapter 6 - The Struggle to Control Information: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/view/

Electronic Revolution for warfare: We are linked and hostile

2007-11-07T00:37:00.000+08:00

Today, for the multiple media overlapping in the convenient computer unit, these are times of Information Warfare. Summarizing, those who had the best information the fastest were able to act, the soonest were victors in battle.

The definition for Information Warfare (IW) is intentionally broad, embracing organizational levels, people and capabilities. It allows room for governments, cartels, corporate, hacktivists, terrorists, other groups and individuals to have a part.

Although the Internet touches many critical infrastructures and these in turn affect Information Environments (IE) with which we interface, most of the Information Warfare areas were around before the Internet.

In times of net espionage, hackers and software bugs, Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”, written some 2500 years ago, remains as a timeless classic - the basis for almost every military doctrine. Certainly, nowadays technology provides more resources to manipulate information in a shorter period of time. Again, the current scenario in the dynamics of Balance of Power is that of nations, enterprises and individuals relying on the electronic revolution resources in order to apply warfare strategies.

The presence of an extensive Information Warfare atmosphere is fundamental to both business and government. Protecting and enhancing capabilities in the Information Environment is vital to achieving objectives and to attain and maintain competitive advantage. This reality is not restricted to using computers to attack computers.

Information Warfare is not confined to a cyber realm. “Virtual” means also electronic radio frequency (RF), and photonic manipulation and conducting physical and virtual operations in a synchronized and coherent fashion. The United States Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated terms provides an accurate evaluation of IW and its related processes:

Information Warfare (IW) - information operations conducted during time of crisis or conflict to achieve or promote specific objectives over a specific adversary or adversaries.

Information Environment (IE) - the aggregate of individuals, organizations or systems that collect process or disseminate information; also included the information itself.

Information-Based Processes - process that collect, analyze and disseminate information using any medium or form. These processes may be stand-alone processes or sub-processes that together, compromise a larger system or systems of processes.

The Electronic Revolution forced nation-states, organizations and world society to reinvent their Information Warfare arrangements. A comprehensive model for a current Information Environment can better illustrate the components of information-related operations in a macro level.

Information moves across information infrastructures in support of information-based processes. Information infrastructure is the media within which we display, store, process and transmit information, such as computers, fiber-optic cables, lasers, telephones, satellites and certainly people.

Now, a modern nation-state and its society are in an information-based and information dependent period. Nations are more than ever relying on a set of information systems and networks to function.

More than physical structures, they need elements to transmit, store, process and display data, images and voice. To date, at least 53 countries, including the United States, Canada, most European countries, a number of African and South American countries and a large proportion of the countries in the Pacific Rim, have identified that they have a National Information Infrastructure (NII).

It seems we are linked, though increasingly hostile.

Welcome to Global & Immoral, an open forum for a World of Contrasts!

2007-11-06T22:58:00.000+08:00

Greetings!

The undersigned is a Master in International Affairs graduate of Ming Chuan University’s Graduate School of International Affairs (MCU-GSIA), Taiwan, Republic of China.

Taking off from my undergraduate course, which was Public Communication/Journalism. I have recently presented my thesis dissertation entitled International Radio broadcasting in a Globalizing World. The study focused on evaluating the new paradigms for the International Governmental Radio Broadcasting Agencies, considering a wide range of media & broadcasting resources in a globalizing world, thus examining their new role - International media shall provide room for debate and discussion of Global issues, in an international scenario of interdependence and Technological convergence.

Partially, Marshall McLuhan’s “global village”, in which everyone in the world system has the opportunity to listen and to be heard through an international communications network, is bringing the peoples and nations of the world closer together. On the other hand, we cannot ignore the Last Mile[2]. The majority of the residents of this global village are deprived of even the most basic tools of modern communication, information and knowledge.

According to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Report 2006 access to information and communication technologies continues to outpace global economic growth .[3] However, by the end of 2004, 14 per cent of the world’s population was using the Internet, with a large digital divide separating developed and developing regions: Over half the population in developed regions had access to the Internet, compared to 7 per cent in developing regions and less than 1 per cent in the 50 least developed countries.

The new communication technologies can encourage wider participation and greater equality in politics and society. Yet doubts remain as to whether these communication infrastructures are capable of withstanding the attacks of international communication interests in a sustained manner, not just sporadically, as was perhaps the case at the Earth Summit held in June 1992, in Rio de Janeiro.

As a professional of media, with the ambition of performing further relevant works as a news reporter, I intend to keep on studying and perhaps develop alternatives to face the existing problems in the global information and communication order. As a liberal professional, I strongly believe that independent journalism can overcame the cultural gap of a prevailing ethnocentrism, focus on violence and shallow oversimplified reporting; what cannot be solved by advances in communications technology.

For the future generations, technological specialization and familiarity to the new devices, in a democratic environment, focused on educational basis, would certainly build up a decisive leap, for cultural, scientific and economical development.

Welcome to Global & Immoral, an open forum for a World of Contrasts!

葛駱世

[1] McPHAIL, Thomas L. Global Communication: Theories, Stakeholders and Trends. 2nd ed. Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA. 2006. p.283

[2] Countryside. Little villages where is clear the lack of communication facilities provided by international technologies corporations, widely spread in the metropolitan areas. The Last Mile is not enough profitable attractive. Lecture offered by Dr. John Hwang, The Graduate School of International Affairs - Ming Chuan University, Taiwan, 2006.

[3] THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS REPORT 2006 in: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mdg/Resources/Static/Products/Progress2006/MDGReport2006.pdf