The future of free journalism lies in a real online alternative to the MSM, not blogging
The international war crimes court at The Hague found Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga Dyilo guilty in its first ever ruling after a decade of work limited largely to Africa. Major cases elsewhere remain beyond its reach.
I wonder if there is a single powermad African who will give a flying f**k about this judgement.
The US Fed cleared the way for many large banks to raise dividends and buy back shares as it released the results of its latest round of “stress tests.”
Pretty much immediately afterwards, various more objective agencies suggested that the entire exercise was an obvious attempt to paper over the cracks of a very large dam. 617 dam busters Squadron is on its way from Europe.
Suhair Atassi’s revolution against Bashar al-Assad began weeks before the first “dignity” march in Damascus on March 15 last year. Since the early tremors of the Arab uprising in Tunisia, the 40-year-old divorced mother had resorted to every trick to mobilise the Syrian streets. She called for marches in support of Tunisians, then Egyptians, then Libyans; she appealed for demonstrations against corruption and for the release of political prisoners.
We do not know to whom Suhair Atassi owes allegiance. But we do know that – as in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya – the successors to the great dictator will be Islamist dictators of an even more fanatical nature.
China – the world’s largest exporter – recorded a record trade deficit for February. Coupled with declining car sales and slowing retail sales, the report provided reasons for investors to think again about where the economic and property futures there might be going. But the widely held opinion is that Beijing will relax its money regime to deal with this.
How can easy money both control property prices and boost exports, when China’s biggest trading partner the EU has a rapidly dwindling consumption power?
The first of each of the paragraphs above is a verbatim report from the MSM. The following one is my simple interrogation of it. The better blogs provide a much greater degree of analysis, extrapolation and speculation. Unless some of us band together in a serious attempt to offer a real alternative to this superficial bollocks, five years from now all journalism will be controlled reportage.
You read it here first.
The Slog 