User talk:Steven Harkins
Contents
To Do
Done
- Eric Joyce
- Peter Eigen
- Networks Central Ltd
- Ross Martin
- Transparency International (Inc associated Pages)
- Laurence Cockcroft
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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)
PS on TI
PS Steve
can you lead into this quote with who is speaking pls? ie, who is "I"? we need to spell out these things.
- "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."
thank you! --Claire Robinson 18:33, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
More on TI
Hi Steve
am continuing to put suggestions thru you re TI rather than just editing myself because David asked me to work with you on it and as you are a journalism student it might be more useful to you, but let me know if you run out of time or inclination to do more and I will have a go myself.
Having said that, I did tweak Venezuela section. I think your decision to cut the long quote out and summarise it is good. I have tried to make clear why Venezuela and Chavez might be targeted in this way. Venezuela is one of the few countries with an oil industry that's still in state hands (it might be the only one - if you know, please correct) -- and where oil revenues are put into state programs - and at the other end of spectrum, TI is part-funded by private oil companies.
There is a lot more to be said on TI. One thing that should be followed up is Beth Aub's statements about TI and Jamaica. First, I would quote Aub's allegation (making clear it is her allegation) that TI said facilitation payments are "not quite" the same as a bribe.(!!) And have a quick look on the web to see if/how TI has addressed this issue of facilitation payments, quoting any defence they may have.
The important thing about TI and Jamaica is that TI said that Jamaica, the country, is corrupt. http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20070927/lead/lead1.html . BUT if one looks into what what way they are supposed to be corrupt, according to Beth Aub, quoted in this article, it's probably to do with "the Trafigura debacle". Now Trafigura is a private oil corporation, I think Dutch-based. Trafigura gave a "facilitation payment" to the People's National Party of Jamaica. So you could say, reasonably, that it's a Dutch corporation that's corrupt, or even, if one wanted to use the same logic as TI, the Netherlands!! But of course according to TI's corruption map, the Netherlands, in common with all the Western free market democracies, are squeaky clean. Whereas countries like Jamaica (and Africa!) are red-zone corrupt... But no, it's Jamaica that is deemed corrupt. This is a clear example of TI letting private corporations' corruption pass unremarked and the state/public sector being accused of being corrupt.
Please feel free to use any of the above as needed.
The Greg Palast article you quote in yr intro is very good and I think you should mine it for every piece of info that he gives about TI and add it to the article.
BW --Claire Robinson 12:34, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
PS
HI Steve
of course the uber-theme with TI is that they ostensibly expose bribery and corruption but are themselves funded by alleged big bribers: http://www.gregpalast.com/venezuela-corrupt-rntransparency-international-has-some-questions-to-answer-itself/
this is said in a roundabout way in our article but needs to be spelled out in the intro paras and wherever else that's appropriate.
--Claire Robinson 13:07, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Aub
HI Steve
I shall give TI a rest for a few hours in case I trip over you. But just to alert you to a change I made to the Beth Aub passage -- I changed it to say "TI tolerated" facilitation payments rather than it actually made them, thus:
- Beth Aub was the general secretary for the Jamaica chapter of Transparency International. She resigned her membership of the ‘global anti-corruption body’ in 2004, alleging that TI tolerated corrupt practices such as "facilitation payments", a term she described as another name for bribery and corruption.
I scoured the source article that quotes Aub and can find no evidence (in spite of some confusing wording by the writer) that TI actually made such payments -- but they have been attacked (eg by Palast) for being supported by companies that make such payments. I would like ideally to clear this up with Aub herself but can find no mention of her contact details on the web.
Best wishes
--Claire Robinson 15:26, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
