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  • 13:50 - 24.04.2009 News >> Latest

     Publisher's Note: One good story after another in today's Times of London   From The Times of London
    April 24, 2009 Tehran is terrified: America is being friendlyIran's hardline leadership has been knocked sideways by Barack Obama's conciliatory tone. But how will it affect the election? Richard Beeston  
    In Tehran drivers dutifully wear their seatbelts but think nothing of racing through a red light. Women must cover their faces and bodies under strict Islamic laws, but young women stretch the rules to reveal designer clothes, dyed hair, heavy make-up and prominently displayed bandages from recent cosmetic surgery. The state-controlled media fill the papers and air waves with a solid diet of prayers, documentaries about the Iran-Iraq war and speeches from the country's leaders. In the privacy of their homes, most Tehranis watch illicit satellite television channels beaming Persian music videos from California and uncensored news bulletins or just read foreign websites. The very same Iranian who would chant “Death to Britain” at the end of Friday prayers would also regard English football as his second religion. Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney are household names and the visa queue at the British Embassy stretches around the block. Iranians are hospitable to a fault. But the same generous host can just as easily lapse into paranoid conspiracy theories about how British spies run the country and the Jews rule the world. Welcome to Iran, now marking 30 tumultuous years since the Islamic revolution and facing an identity crisis as it ponders middle age. True, the country is young and energetic and has a strong sense of its culture and heritage. It is also endowed with huge energy resources. But power still resides in the grey-haired clerics whose policies have provoked international sanctions and pariah…

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  • 04:36 - 02.06.2009 News >> Latest

        

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  • 04:52 - 29.07.2009 News >> Latest

      Fox News commentator calls Obama racist A Fox News Channel commentator, Glenn Beck, said he believed President Barack Obama was a racist.  
     
    Beck made the statement during a guest appearance on the "Fox & Friends" morning show. He said Mr Obama had exposed himself as a person with "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture".His remarks came during a discussion over Mr Obama's reaction to the arrest of the Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates junior Mr Gates is black and was arrested for disorderly conduct by a white policeman over a misunderstanding about a break-in at his home.A spokesman for Mr Obama said the White House had no comment.Beck's statement was challenged on the air by Fox's host, Brian Kilmeade, who noted that most of the people who work for the nation's first black president are white."I'm not saying he doesn't like white people," Beck said. "He has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist."Beck wondered, during the discussion, what other president would immediately jump on the police for their actions in the case. Mr Obama said in a news conference that he believed the police acted stupidly in the case, but later backtracked from the statement and invited Mr Gates and the police officer, Sgt James Crowley, to the White House for a conciliatory meeting later this week.Bill Shine, Fox News senior vice president of programming, told the TVNewser web site that Beck had "expressed an opinion which represented his own views, not those of the Fox News Channel. And as with all commentators in the cable news arena, he is given the freedom to express his opinions."   

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  • 12:42 - 13.12.2008 News >> Latest

    China’s six-to-one advantage over the US
    By Spengler

    America outspends China on defense by a margin of more than six to one, the Pentagon estimates. [1] In another strategic dimension, though, China already holds a six-to-one advantage over the United States. Thirty-six million Chinese children study piano today, compared to only 6 million in the United States.[2] The numbers understate the difference, for musical study in China is more demanding.

    It must be a conspiracy. Chinese parents are selling plasma-screen TVs to America, and saving their wages to buy their kids pianos - making American kids stupider and Chinese kids smarter. Watch out, Americans - a generation from now, your kid is going to fetch coffee for a Chinese boss. That is a bit of an exaggeration, of course - some of the bosses will be Indian. Americans really, really don’t have a clue what is coming down the pike. The present shift in intellectual capital in favor of the East has no precedent in world history.

    "Chinese parents urge their children to excel at instrumental music with the same ferocity that American parents [urge] theirs to perform well in soccer or Little League,” wrote Jennifer Lin in the Philadelphia Inquirer June 8 in an article entitled China's 'piano fever'.

    The world’s largest country is well along the way to forming an intellectual elite on a scale that the world has never seen, and against which nothing in today’s world - surely not the inbred products of the Ivy League puppy mills - can compete. Few of its piano students will earn a living at the keyboard,…

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  • 12:22 - 19.12.2009 News >> Latest

     The two big mistakesMichael TomaskyComments (90) I do think there are two tactical errors the White House made with regard to healthcare. There may be more. But these are the two that matter. And these are beyond doing it this year, which I've said many times I was against.
     
    First -- I've said this too, come to think of it -- not enough emphasis was placed on the moral case for changing the status quo. Obama placed emphasis on cost savings. One understands why, I guess, given the state of the economy right now (although this circles back to my main argument that they should have waited until the economy was better). But the problem with the p.r. campaign was that they didn't show how this would change many peoples' lives for the better. Now, lots of us are asserting that, but we're doing so in a vacuum because the White House didn't really do it.
     
    For the last four months, Obama could have had weekly or bi-weekly events of some sort with humble working- to middle-class Americans who got thrown off their plans over cancer or diabetes or whatever. Or merely who saw their premiums increase by 18% in a single year. He talked a lot about these things in abstract terms. But that isn't remotely the same as putting actual human faces on the narrative. TV eats that kind of thing up. If he'd had eight or 10 such sessions over the last 16 weeks, the polls would be better right now -- not massively, maybe, but better enough that it would matter.
     
    Second, the administration -- Obama himself sometimes, but especially Rahm Emanuel -- have tonally mishandled the relationship with the left-activist-blogospheric wing. Every time one of those stories appeared on…

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Obama's Tech Wizard tells his secrets. Print E-mail
From Times of London Online
February 19, 2009

Obama's tech wizard says Labour need his magic

Thomas Gensemer, who masterminded President Obama's internet campaign, says Labour are lagging behind the Tories in technology


David Cameron and the Tories are winning the “web war” against Gordon Brown and Labour, according to the man who masterminded Barack Obama’s successful online strategy during his presidential election run.

Thomas Gensemer said the Tories had succesfully used the internet to spread their message, citing the launch of WebCameron, which features videos of the Tory leader’s domestic life.

The managing partner of Blue State Digital, which built Mr Obama’s internet operation, said that Labour’s bureaucratic machine meant it was unable to respond quickly to events and that its existing internet operations lacked sophistication.

“In its day WebCameron was cute,” Mr Gensemer told The Times. “It came across as authentic. That’s a good use of the online media to personalise your candidate.

“They [the Conservatives] have done a better job of talking to more than just bloggers and taking advantage of quick moments. They kicked Gordon when he’s down, then they move quickly and get out something creative.”

He said he recently saw a billboard poster for the omnipresent Conservative baby - which features the tagline “Dad’s eyes, mum’s nose, Gordon Brown’s debt” - then quickly saw the image was on the Conservative website as well. “That’s some integrated campaigning going on," he said.

Mr Gensemer, who has previously worked on Labour campaigns, said he had little hope that the Prime Minister could turn Labour’s fortunes around, adding that he could “help with the necessary rebuild of the network of the Labour Party”.

He also criticised both Labour and the Tories for being prone to using web “gimmicks” rather than engaging with people, adding that Labour had not yet mastered how best to use the medium.

“Three days ago I got [an e-mail] from Harriet Harman. Yesterday I got something from Jacqui Smith. Neither of them asked me to do anything. Neither of them even contained a link,” he said.

Mr Gensemer previously advised Ken Livingstone’s re-election effort for the London Mayoralty that ultimately failed, but which finished with a higher proportion of the vote than Labour had in national opinion polls. He also worked on Jon Cruddas’s upstart campaign for the deputy leadership of the party, where the backbencher beat several Cabinet members to win third place in the vote.

Both Labour and the Conservatives watched as the Obama Campaign led by Blue State Digital, co-founded by Mr Gensemer, built an army of supporters over the internet, who helped to push their candidate to an historic victory.

Even Karl Rove, the Republican political adviser who masterminded George W. Bush’s two election wins is an admirer, saying that the company does “good things for the wrong people”.

Through constant and direct communication over e-mail and social networking sites such as Facebook, over three million Obama supporters gave a staggering $500 million in online donations. This was often done by simply pressing a button on the official website.

About three million of Mr Obama’s supporters made calls to family, friends and perfect strangers to evangelise on behalf of his campaign, and on election day they also helped to get voters out to the polling booth. People spent 14 million hours watching Obama campaign-related videos on YouTube, or 50 million views overall.

Mr Gensemer said that simply dabbling in using new technology was not the route to success and that rather than merely blogging and creating Facebook groups, parties had to find a way of getting ordinary people interested in what they have to say, and eventually working for them.

“Stop trying so hard,” Mr Gensemer said of British politicians’ keenness to sign up to likes of the the microblogging service Twitter, something less likely to come easily to lifetime politicians more used to writing formal letters to constituents than using the latest text-speak in a mobile phone message.

“I’m not trying to be confrontational to our friends in the Labour Party, but the political capital you spend trying to get 10 MPs to Twitter... is probably not capital worth spending.

“It would probably be better to go into the constituency with a video and encourage them to do things that are more natural to them.”

 

 

 
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