User talk:Steven Harkins
Contents
To Do
- Transparency International (Inc associated Pages)
- Peter Eigen
- Laurence Cockroft
Newspapers/Magazines/News Outlets to be created
Daily Sport | Sunday Sport | The Spectator | Fortune | Time | Newsweek | Financial Times | The Scotsman | The Herald | CNN | Daily Express | The Daily Mirror | The People | Daily Record | Sunday Post | Sunday Mail | Daily Mail and General Trust | ITN | The Barclay Brothers | Channel 4 | Channel 5
News Owners
Daily Mail and General Trust | Guardian Media Group | Hachette Filipacchi | Newsquest plc | Scottish Media Group
Media Links
World Economic Forum | Trilateral Commission | Bilderberg Group (the Economist provided the secretariat in 2008) |LOTIS Committee
TI
Hi Steve
not yr page I think but David tells me you are working on this one and wonder if you cd take care of the following on TI:
In the quote introduced by:
- TI's origins are in the World Bank:
can u briefly say who is talking and set in context?
the next quote: who Jeremy Pope? briefly say.
the quote:
- "Finally, what really made TI was when USAID came with about $3 million. At that stage, I decided I didn't want to manage this thing anymore."
who is talking? set in context.
Re:
- Jeremy Pope has started up his own organisations Tiri
briefly say what Tiri is.
do pls put the lists of board members and advisory council in their own sections and if appropriate, you can place towards end of page.
Sentence beginning:
- Wesley A. Cragg and William Woof's The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act...
is astonishingly long and complex. can u unpick it and make it into as many "the cat sat on the mat"-style sentences as needed? one thing that will help you here is to keep linear time in your prose, ie avoid constructions like "after Mr X did this, he told xyz to Mr Y, who had previously done abc to xxx..." and so on and so forth. The problem with this sentence as far as I can tell starts with the word "When". what we need is, x happened, then y happened, and that led to z.
The quote beginning:
- Fritz Heimann notes in correspondence...
is long, complex and rather hard to follow. Are we sure that all the material in this para is indeed the quote or does the sentence beginning "It should be noted that the US courts..." belong to someone else? And who is Mr Romualdez, or should it be Romauldez? what is his relevance to the story? and who is Westinghouse?
I would try to summarise the ICC material and the point of the above quote for the reader -- as well as giving the quote. I find it difficult to understand what the point is. And the phrase that leads into the quote, "Of Heimann they say:"--"I assume "they" means the ICC? I would specify.
Re section: Spotlighting Venezuela
can u introduce the quote, say who is speaking etc. and set it in context? what are we expected to draw from this extremely long quote?
Some refs needed, but I am sure you know that!
This is a tough page. Let me know if you get stuck. I don't envy you...
--Claire Robinson 16:33, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
ref found and other TI stuff
HI Steve
found a source for this quote
- TI's origins are in the World Bank:
- "But then [James D] Wolfensohn...
It's from
http://www.sun2surf.com/article.cfm?id=11764
Now we've tracked it down, can you add a ref and provide a bit of context for the lead-in re who is talking etc?
Also add a qualifier such as "according to xyz, writing in abc, TI's origins..."
You can also copy and paste the following from Eigen's page to back up the WB connection (I think this is interesting and relevant):
- A lawyer by training, Eigen previously worked as a World Bank manager of programs in Africa and Latin America. He also worked with the Ford Foundation to provide legal and technical assistance to the governments of Botswana and Namibia.
The following section is very problematical as the lead-in is cryptic and the quote so long that the reader will not know what to glean from it. can you try to unpick what it all means and what the thrust of it is? basically the reader needs to know from your lead-in what the point of the quote is. If approp, split the quote into many parts and guide reader thru it.
- On 28 April 2008, TI published a report on the transparency of oil revenue accounts of many countries.[10] The curious aspect of the report is the way Venezuela's accounting was reported:
Let me know when you have worked thru my suggestions on TI (perhaps you will find that some are not relevant and that's fine) and I will go and do a check the article. also let me know when you've finished with Eigen. Goes without saying, if you run into difficulties drop me a note.
best wishes --Claire Robinson 09:50, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
PS on TI
PS Steve
What I think this TI article needs more than anything is the main reason they are in Spin to be made plain, spelled out in words of few syllables for the tired and stressed. This will be linked with the fact that the org has connections to institutions like the World Bank. What is TI propagandising for? This needs to be said early in the intro in a couple of sentences and then the detail should back that up. The following article is given in the Resources:
I don't know if a few salient points could be summarised from this rather academic article or if there is a better source elsewhere. It's clear that TI gives misleading 'data' and it's clear that re Venezuela, in the US tradition, they are smearing Chavez. Does anyone summarise the purpose of all this? can we quote from them? is there a tendency to focus on corruption in the public sector and to ignore corruption in the private sector? we need to spell all this out early on.
Does this make sense? This is a tough assignment.
thanks
--Claire Robinson 10:07, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
TI--more
HI Steve
I know you have the following Guardian article in a quote on Venezuela in TI article but these few sentences are so absolutely key to why this TI org is in Spin that I feel we should quote them in the 2nd para of the intro. Otherwise the reader has to read a lot of material before he gets to the nub of the matter. Say who is saying this and set it briefly in context, as with all quotes.
- The international corporate media considers TI to be a reliable source, despite the fact that almost all their funding comes from western governments and big business. The British government is one of the major donors, contributing £1 million in 2007. Other donors include the US government, Shell and Exxon Mobil.
I have tried to follow this principle of letting the reader know the worst about a person/org, very early on and in simple terms, with the article on GM banana promoter Emile Frison http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/Emile_Frison -- see third para of the intro about the funding. I did this because otherwise the reader has to read all about Frison, then all about Bioversity International, then all about the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which near the bottom has the point that they are funded by Syngenta and DuPont, GM firms. Only the most obsessive reader is going to get that far and be able to make the connections themselves. The point about this fellow is that he is a GM banana promoter; and that GM firms indirectly fund his activities at two removes via couple of front orgs. I am hoping to edge all our writers towards this principle. It makes the point of SpinP clear to readers.
thank you...
--Claire Robinson 18:29, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
