That’s not Morroco. It’s Monaco, the small country on the south coast of France. One of the richest countries in the world, per capita. It’s where the super rich go to play.
They’re very different countries, and the difference changes the story.
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I think there is a fair amount of truth in what you’re saying, but it illustrates that agency still exists, even if too many people (ourselves, maybe included in that) don’t always exercise it. But there are opportunities, as you say. The more we talk about those, the more they exist in real time. The more people will be driven to take advantage of those possibilities to do the right thing. And at the end of the day, someone is making the choice to make our choices appear less possible (if that makes sense).
This is the problem with our modern world, I think. That these huge institutions dominate our lives, and make it seem as if there are no options, when, of course there are. The more we talk about them and highlight them, the more likely we are to make these giants responsible to US, not to monied interests.
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Yup, I stand corrected, but, again, the point was that it is not wrong for major media to not report on this until they can verify some aspect of the story.
If you have “leaked emails” publish them.
Blind finger pointing and feeling like you have to circle the wagons is…
This isn’t Fox. This is the BBC. Maybe they want to do some actual reporting, which takes time for investigation, fact checking, and making sure everything reflects what is going on instead of what we think is going on.
A mob is easy to start on passion and rage. We want better than snap-jerk from agencies that are supposed to report what’s going on.
We can’t give in to that paranoid cynical oice whining that the world is fucked it’s too big for us I’m gong to be angry about it.’
I know where that path leads. Ulcers and distrust of everyone, including friends and family.
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So the idea that financial dealings among the super-elite include all sorts of scurrilous shenanigans is somehow new to reporters working for the BBC? If so, I trust their supposedly principled, scrupulous reporting even less than I already did. Anyway, the BBC isn’t far off from NPR in the U.S. in these terms; it’s long done little to challenge significantly the inequitous status quo. Which isn’t surprising, since their very existence as a “major” news source depends on it.
I’m simply asking for caution here instead of mob mentality. Maybe theyr’e being scum, maybe they’re just being careful and wanting to make sure the details are right. All i can say is from personal experiance anger clouds the mind and makes you do or say things you wouldn’t otherwise and what we need are calm heads. This is why I’m glad i’m not someone that decides big important things. You’ve seen me. I’m a loudmouthed anger prone paranoid.
Not someone you want making descisions.
Fine. But the decision at the BBC to not even mention this scandal has already been made. Asking why, and expecting that they at least mention it by now, let alone offer some initial reporting on it, is not the same as joining some slash-and-burn “mob.”
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Fair nough. Some kind of ‘We have heard these reports and are looking at them’… on the other hand what we’ve been trained to do is see something like ‘we take these reports very seriously and are looking into the matter’ to just dismiss as ‘oh it’s going to be swept under the rug.’
I don’t see how they could indicate that they’re trying to dig into the matter without looking like they’re just brushing it off.
On the other hand i do feel I may be overly optimistic on organizations. I want to believe that everything isn’t complete garbage everywhere.
Interesting factoid.
I’ve been doing a count of the search results on Google news for “unaoil”.
The day after the HuffPo posted it there were 4k results, then it went to 40k, then 90k, then 150k, then as of last night 190k.
Today it’s 170k!!!
Talk about a smoking gun for censorship, egads.
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Their current top story is about a different leak: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite’s tax havens.
Interesting to see two such large leaks in the press within a week of each other. I hope the leakers have protected themselves, and that those whom the documents expose as gross economic criminals get the judicial comeuppance that they deserve.
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Note that the Panama Papers links to the original sources, though. It’s not a “trust me, this is big” article.
It has been all over the BBC this weekend. Maybe they check ttheir sources rather than spread gossip.
just letting you know.that I posted a link to this article … and an old professor noted “BMW owns Rolls Royce!”
Hope the story gets it due look…
And Ford owns BMW.
I absolutely agree with this. Institutional culture does make a huge difference, and I greatly admire institutions that can encourage more open behaviour.
But even when encouraged, it still takes a lot of bravery, especially when a beneficiary of the bad behaviour is the department that you’re working with your friends and colleagues. (Report foreign bribery, watch you lose the business to the Chinese, have the department close, etc.) It’s really tough when truly the public interest is to have your department shut down and everyone let go, so that money can be spent more effectively elsewhere.
I’ll say that in the cases that I’ve witnessed where I though there should be better disclosure to the customer (nothing even remotely criminal, but deviations from the most moral approach), the pressure has come from the bottom far more often than from the top. (Often, because the top is being kept in the dark as well.)
In this case, I think it vastly more likely (although the narrative is much less compelling) that people reasonably high up in the BBC don’t want to go down in history as the person who allowed the Conservatives to destroy the BBC after it got sued by some of the most powerful people in the world for libel.
Far better to spend a few days getting all your ducks lined up, and let some other news organization go into the firing line first. “Playing it safe” may not be great journalism, but it’s pretty easy to justify to oneself as protecting thousands of BBC employees (and coincidentally, your job as well…).
Obviously, I approve of every effort to make institutions more responsible. Where I differ (I think) from Corey is that I dislike the demonization of those making decisions that are in many cases (obviously, criminal behaviour aside) are likely the same decisions that we here would make if placed in the same position.
After all, if, as part of the global 1%, we’re not making moral self-sacrificing decisions to benefit the rest of the world, why one earth would we assume that we’d suddenly be willing to do so if we’re part of the global 0.1%?
Again, I’m all in favour of pushing for better - after all, it is our moral obligation towards society. But I expect those who share my beliefs to be self-aware enough of their own instincts and behaviour to be less judgemental of that same behaviour in others, even as they seek to improve it.
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More likely it’s just how Google’s search algorithms work.
When they report 170k they try to exclude duplicate results, the same page with different URLs or maybe just straight copies of pages that viewers aren’t interested in.
The number probably went down once their backend processes went over the results in more detailed and cleaned up the result set.
It could also be some of the mentions were temporary topical content that changed as the story got older.
I think that’s a lot more likely than someone silently censoring 20k different pages.
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Damn you and your logic and sensible facts and stuff! My paranoid delusional rantings are far more entertaining! 
(It's back up to 190k, sigh...)
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Here you go, straight from Fairfax, the co-publisher of this stuff. They’re not HuffPo (which is shit), they’re the non-News Corp mainstream media in Australia.
this is in today’s media not a good explanation. compare it to the Panama Papers: An exclusive stroy by the ICIJ network, but within hours reported everywhere.
I’m pretty sure the Panama papers weren’t an exclusive, ICIJ ended up sharing the data with over 100 other media companies, sorry “reporting partners”.
