Posts tagged News

Newspapers are having a hard time, I don’t think anyone could doubt that. When it comes to news people have long turned towards the internet or turned away completely. We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded with information, it can be easy to switch off.

This has left many newspapers with a massive problem. How are they supposed to sell something that is free online? The answer is the quality of the content. That is easy for broadsheets, but for tabloids, how is this achieved. Through any means possible seems to be the answer arrived at by many recently. The victims of this have been very real and very human.

No sooner than the journalists of Britain had been awash with the inquiry into the phone hacking scandal then had the British royal family been the subjects of numerous attempts to not just breach their privacy but also the sanctity of their most private lives.

Whether this is a group of girls entrapping someone or someone stalking a young woman and taking pictures of her relaxing from a mile away, I think it is easy to denounce it. However, that does not make it any less important to. There is no ambiguity in the line between journalism and attacking the very fibres of a person’s life, their most fundamental rights ignored by a group of people whose ship is sinking and needs the buoyancy of floundering celebrities and those who were born into positions of jealousy, stalking and isolation.

When we look at stories like this it is easy to only see part of it, to fail to connect the dots, not just as readers, but also as writers. You might just see the pictures and forget the stalking, or the phone hacking. We are awash with information, and it is easy to shut off to all, or even just some of it.

We at DFTBANews want to stop this, so soon we are hoping to create a way of telling news that allows you to know everything (yes, you can use it to chat someone up, though I advise sticking away from the story mentioned above, my cheek still hurts,) with minimal effort. To do this though we need help, this will be a new project for us, and we want new people. I am excited by the projects that are forming in the back studios (I swear, they are totally real in my head) of DFTBANews, and I really believe that they represent solutions to problems that news has always faced. And we promise that no matter what, we will never defile someone’s privacy, not even for a multi-million dollar name.

If you are interested, email us at dftbanews(at)gmail.com

Thanks,

~Sean

When should our actions be limited?  When should a country be able to command it’s citizens to never partake in something, or commit an action? These are the simply black-white questions that many people may see them as. There is a very important reason that we vote. Governments have massive amount of power not just to set laws, but set the tones of laws. Take, as an example, the self defence laws. The law states that you must only use force exactly necessary to escape, nothing more. Of course, this law does state that you can fight back in self-defence; however this is in some way countered by a very real chance that you could be help legally liable. Is this right? The government decides.

Almost all of the most justifiable laws are built around what is commonly referred to as the Harm Principle. Basically, if something is harmful to others than it should be illegal, if not, it shouldn’t. So look at things like gay marriage, does it harm people? No, therefore it should be legal. On the other hand, racism hurt people, badly, so it should be illegal. Where this principle does not cover is the issue of the so-called nanny state. Some see the nanny state as good, others as bad.

The principle of the nanny state is simple, although the phrase used to describe it is designed to be negative, so let’s call it the advisor state. Here the state decides that it is in the best interest of the people to do certain actions. It does this because it believes that it has superior information. Drug laws and such fall into this category.  However, it is important to note that these laws are the controversial ones, as note that it is the case that the government must assert, (it is impossible to prove) that it knows better.

The main reason it is important to understand these very quick principles is to begin to understand why each of the laws in any country have been passed. Obviously there is another principle of “I am a dictator, do it” but when looking at the western world you must look at a very real desire for total freedom, which must be respected.

So here lies the problem of internet regulation. There are negative things online, and so the harm principle may come into effect, however at the same time this maasive desire for freedom must be respected. The internet, as Tim Berners-Lee dreamt, is a land of freedom. The problem is as put in TFIOS “in freedom many people find sin.” The internet is a land of freedom, so sin exists. But is what is morally wrong legally wrong. There lie the questions of future generation, and every political divide across every generation.

What do you think, so what is morally wrong or objectively idiotic be illegal? We love your answers and comments.

~Sean

The Olympics are sadly over. Now begins the questions; How well were the games hosted? How did they compare to previous games? Did your country win as many medals as it hoped, why/why not? How can they win more in the future?

Why do we ask these questions, surely they are redundant in sport. Sport is not about how many fireworks were used, how many people watched, or even the quality of the stadiums. Surely sport is simply about people competing against one another. A 100m race is equally sport regardless of whether it is run on a football pitch or a stadium with an audience of millions. Do we poor hundreds of millions into Olympic sports just to see the look of pride on our athletes’ faces? No, that would be stupid.

Humans are competitive, destructively so. You may have wondered why I wrote on war last week, well I wanted to draw a contrast between this article and that. In that one I question whether it was good to fight and die if it means your enemies fail at their genocidal aims. But there are other ways to win a fight, ones that can be good. America never fought the USSR during the Cold War, but they did compete and USA eventually won. They competed on the surface of the moon, on economies, and on the field’s of sporting prowess.

This concept that a nation that does well in the Olympics is in some way superior did not start in the cold war. Indeed, many know of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where the Nazi’s attempted to show pure Aryan dominance, only to be conclusively beaten by Jesse Owens, who remains a legend to this day. The reason we do this is simple, humanity loves to win, and whether it is in sport or war it is the same to people.

However why would anyone ever host the Olympics, costing billions and not making a large amount, even on the grand scale of the macro economy they are fiscally irresponsible. Unless, that is, you are basically running a long-term marketing campaign for your country. The Beijing Olympics displayed China as a modern superpower, a veneer it had lacked before. Suddenly everyone was talking about how China would usurp the US. London 2012 aimed to display the UK as a modern country that is secure and comfortable in its post-imperial present, something many doubted before the games.

So as we look onto Rio 2016 this is what we must remember, nearly a billion people watch the opening ceremony. A billion people will be watching Brazil as a developing country, can the Rio games change that? Can they show Brazil to be a country that deserves to become one of the elite that the West consider themselves? That is the importance of the Games, the proof that one country is great. It is very significant that in the clash between the strict and lifelong training of the Chinese and the more DIY sports that we believe in in the West, USA came out on top of the medal table, something that will leave the Chinese with many questions.

The Olympics can represent so many clashes, from those of war to those of ideology. And all of the events, all of the ceremonies, are watched by between 1 to 4 billion people, all watching to see exactly what the host country is like.

~Sean

Recently DFTBA News’ Tumblr page broke 500 subs. I know that this sounds rather unimpressive to a lot of you but to the team here at DFTBA News it does mean something. And not only does this mean something but so do all the things that have resulted from having more followers. It wasn’t long ago when only the very best articles that we wrote got any likes at all, now all of them do. These changes have not come quickly, they have come dropping slow.

But I, like so many at DFtBA News are grateful, we are grateful to you, our readers that you do take this time to read our pieces. We have tried many things to improve your experience with us and we hope that whether you read our pieces through tumblr or our website (www.dftbanews.wordpress.com) you like the individual way that you consume our media.

At DFTBA News we have always hoped to ask nothing more of our readers than that they enjoyed our work, and no matter how big we grow ever we will maintain that particular focus. And for all of the support you have given us, thanks.

That said the future, as always, will be different. We hope to do new things with everything, and yes,  we will admit that it is possible that as a result the rapid expansion of our article numbers may slow down. But these spaces will be traded for videos, and other fantastic things. We at DFTBA News are extremely pleased to still have you, our reader at our side. You must remember that we do all of this for you, so what do you want to see?

~Sean

Sort of European, but not. Sort of wealthy, but not. sort of Islamic, but not. It’s that last one that seems to make the least sense in that 95% Muslim country, but when you view this country you understand. Turkey is a land of little contrast but with great difference from others.

Walking down the Western style, yet defiantly Eastern main streets of its small towns does to little confirm or deny anything about this strange but beautiful country. After just ten days I still cannot manage to begin to understand the place.

Realising this I took sanctuary where.many armature historians do, in amount the ruins and buildings of those long dead. So I headed upstream towards the ruin of Caunos. Here I began to realise why it was that those first three sort ofs were not.

Caunos (formerly Kbid, and Kaunos) was a small town carved into a tall cliffy hill, at the summit, and around it at the same time. It sums up the whole of Turkey with its history. It was founded by the Anatolians (Turkish peninsula, Asia minor) claiming to be from Crete, conquered by the Persians, and claimed by the Greeks in rebellion. Following this it fell into the hands of the Romans, and was part of the Eastern side of the Romans (itself a country of different names, of Byzantium or Eastern Roman Empire, denoting its own difference.)

From here it declined from pirate and Muslim Arab attacks and plagued with attacks from Turkish tribes it become more of a hilltop castle. However it wasn’t man that finally toppled it, but malaria, when a serious outbreak wiping out many and forcing the rest to leave.

These constant changes are mirrored by the whole of Turkey. Constantly swapped between not just countries (it was indeed conquered by, wait for it, the Mongols,) but also entire culture systems. West and East fought for this land, and it sat in the middle, changing.

Turkey reminds us that it is possible to be caught in between, to be half one and half another. So even though it is 95% Muslim, it is sort of Islamic, but not. It is a secular country, as religious as any Western state is. It is a tale of two cultures and Turkey reminds me of the best of both, and gives me hope for a future of secular nations, each with their religion existing, but never forced.

Culture is what nations are built on, so perhaps it is inevitable that Turkey remains a largely unified, albeit large, country. And perhaps it is relatively monochromatic European culture that leads to the effect of the EU as a US of Europe. Even Hans isn’t too different from Paddy.

Sitting as I did, eating dinner on my final day there, in front of a ruined house half full of the sea, I couldn’t help but to imagine how our own largely unchanged culture will be rewritten in the coming centuries, decades even. Turkey is a land of East and West, will the opening up of China make us the same?

As the sun set I could only watch it sunk below the destroyed roof of the half-sunken ruin, unsure as I was a lot in Turkey, whether that house would have been considered Western or Eastern.

That land of sort of, but not.

~Sean