Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Source of political news Posted here Wednesday, January 14, 2004 at 3:58:43 PM     From the CSM The two main political parties begin the formal process of choosing their 2004 presidential candidates at the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary later this month. And when it comes to campaign coverage, the Internet is playing a larger role than ever, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. While TV remained the top source for the more than 1,500 adults surveyed, 13 percent said they regularly went online for election news. That's up from 9 percent in 2000. Network news and newspapers both declined, by 10 percent and 9 percent, respectively. Where respondents said they turned for candidate and campaign news, by percentage: Local TV newscasts 42% Cable news channels (Fox, CNN) 38% TV network newscasts 35% Daily newspapers 31% TV newsmagazines 25% Talk radio 17% National Public Radio 14% Sunday TV talk shows (tie) Internet 13% TV comedy shows ("The Daily Show," "Saturday Night Live") 8% - Reuters, Associated Press Comment: striking that the most connservative moves along the  tech of cable. Was this effect ever prdicted by anybody? ********

World Bank.. Posted here Wednesday, January 14, 2004 at 2:21:18 PM     Documentation from fiction.. From the God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy "Some days he walked along the banks of the river that smelled of shit and pesticides bought with World Bank loans. Most of the fish had died. The ones that survived suffered from fin-rot and had broken out in boils." The Bank would loan money so that it would go, through local bureucracies, to the richest farmers who would buy fertilizer and buy out the poorer. It could be shown that income went up on average by a factor of three, but of course the average is skewed by the new income of the richest,  and the fact that food prices had gone up by more than a factor of three (mostly because local crops were replaced by export crops for dollars) did not get into the reports. ********