|
Written by Rafi Chaudhury
|
|
Sunday, 16 November 2008 |
|
The term ‘national bankruptcy’ is not being thrown around lightly in Iceland these days. In the last two months, the country’s three largest banks were nationalized, its stock market briefly suspended trading, and its currency, the Krona, stopped trading in foreign exchange markets. Iceland had been enjoying the fruits of a deregulation-led banking boom for much of this decade, and together with Norway, had topped the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI), a measure of living standards, as recently as last year. Economists had however warned that the banks’ easy lending terms had fomented a credit bubble, and that a market correction was on its way. Fueled by the global credit crunch however, the correction has hit the small country with a degree of severity that few could have predicted.  Be first to comment this article |  Add as favourites (0) |  Quote this article on your site | Views: 83
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Written by Sarah Abravanelli
|
|
Sunday, 10 August 2008 |
|
Now, as a Franco-American, I could not let Democratic candidate Barack Obama's visit to France and meeting with Sarkozy just pass without writing a column about it. After all, they went further than any other politician in terms of pop culture and “rock star status.” Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (0) | Quote this article on your site | Views: 527 |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Written by Kevin Taber
|
|
Wednesday, 21 May 2008 |
|
Media Portrayal and Its Effects on Public Opinion of Muslim Immigrants in Western Europe Despite their best efforts to suggest otherwise, the media tend to shy away from complete objectivity, particularly when dealing with the very subjective issues that surround the definition and coverage of “us” and “them”(1). As the late Middle Eastern scholar, author, and professor, Dr. Edward W. Said, so eloquently put it:
...despite the variety and the differences, and however much we proclaim the contrary, what the media produce is neither spontaneous nor completely “free”: “news” does not just happen, pictures and ideas do not merely spring from reality into our eyes and minds, truth is not directly available, we do not have unrestrained variety at our disposal (2).
Even in the West – where we are privileged to have access to both “new” and “old” media – our concept of an independent press and free speech is still limited to the types of information that are “marketable,” so to speak, to the general public. However, even in repressive, authoritarian regimes, the mainstream is sometimes circumvented when the demand for information outstrips the supply, or when those who seek to interfere with that supply are themselves circumvented (3).
Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (0) | Quote this article on your site | Views: 705 |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
|
IAJ International Update 
