International Comm & Culture 2009

Sorry, I don't use the word media. I don't use the word news. I don't think that those words mean anything anymore

But the problem is not that the traditional way of writing articles isn't valuable anymore. The problem is that this is now in the minority. It used to be a monopoly, it used to be the only way to distribute news

Newspapers are not important. It may be that their physical, printed form no longer works.

new kinds of social media are challenging those traditional levers of state media control and allowing Iranians to find novel ways around the restrictions.

But it appears they are finding ways around Big Brother.

The success of these and other Japanese works in Korea is raising concerns that Japanese pop culture could once again dominate Korea.

Experts say the Korean entertainment industry's dependence on Japanese pop culture will increase because the Japanese novel and manga markets are popular around the world. According to the Korean Publishing Research Institute, as of 2006 the size of the Korean novel market was no more than W203 billion, while that of Japanese market stood at W724.3 billion. The gap for the manga markets was even greater, with the Japanese market (W4 trillion) some 40 times bigger than the Korean market (W124.2 billion).

Bae Won-keun, a researcher at the KPRI, says it is a shame that Korean entertainment companies scramble to snap up Japanese stories for quick returns rather than working to strengthen their creative power. "The entertainment industry should make more effort to cultivate young writers with fresh ideas," he adds.

Germany Is World's Third Largest Defense Exporter

Once one of the world's most aggressive powers, Germany today likes to project a pacifist image

a report released yesterday by the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC), a German think tank, reveals a different side of Germany's relationship to war.

Japan has the sixth-largest population in the world; the music industry generates billions and billions of dollars worldwide every year.

Japanese popular music is all commercialism and void of any artistic merit

The late 90's also saw some more western-style artists, such as Dragon Ash and Utada Hikaru explode onto the scene.

If they fail in their appeal, Eleanor Katherine may have to leave the only family she has ever known and await adoption by another couple whose religious convictions satisfy the State of New Jersey.

Superior Court Judge William Camarata raised the religious issue.

Judge Camarata denied the Burkes' right to the child because of their lack of belief in a Supreme Being

The term multiculturalism generally refers to the acceptance of various cultural divisions for the sake of diversity that applies to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the scale of an organization such as a school, business, neighborhood, city or nation.

Australia The response to multiculturalism in Australia has been extremely varied, with a recent wave of criticism against it in the past decade. An anti-immigration party, the One Nation Party, was formed by Pauline Hanson in the late 1990s. The party enjoyed significant electoral success for a while, most notably in its home state of Queensland, but is now electorally marginalized. One Nation called for the abolition of multiculturalism on the grounds that it represented "a threat to the very basis of the Australian culture, identity and shared values", arguing that there was "no reason why migrant cultures should be maintained at the expense of our shared, national culture."[83] A Federal Government proposal in 2006 to introduce a compulsory citizenship test, which would assess English skills and knowledge of Australian values, sparked renewed debate over the future of multiculturalism in Australia. Andrew Robb, then Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, told a conference in November 2006 that some Australians worried the term "multicultural" had been transformed by interest groups into a philosophy that put "allegiances to original culture ahead of national loyalty, a philosophy which fosters separate development, a federation of ethnic cultures, not one community". He added: "A community of separate cultures fosters a rights mentality, rather than a responsibilities mentality. It is divisive. It works against quick and effective integration."[84] The Australian citizenship test commenced in October 2007 for all new citizens between the ages of 18 and 60.[85] In January 2007 the Howard Government removed the word "multicultural" from the name of t

The response to multiculturalism in Australia has been extremely varied, with a recent wave of criticism against it in the past decade. An anti-immigration party, the One Nation Party , was formed by Pauline Hanson in the late 1990s. The party enjoyed significant electoral success for a while, most notably in its home state of Queensland , but is now electorally marginalized. One Nation called for the abolition of multiculturalism on the grounds that it represented "a threat to the very basis of the Australian culture, identity and shared values", arguing that there was "no reason why migrant cultures should be maintained at the expense of our shared, national culture." [83] A Federal Government proposal in 2006 to introduce a compulsory citizenship test, which would assess English skills and knowledge of Australian values, sparked renewed debate over the future of multiculturalism in Australia. Andrew Robb , then Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, told a conference in November 2006 that some Australians worried the term "multicultural" had been transformed by interest groups into a philosophy that put "allegiances to original culture ahead of national loyalty, a philosophy which fosters separate development, a federation of ethnic cultures, not one community". He added: "A community of separate cultures fosters a rights mentality, rather than a responsibilities mentality. It is divisive. It works against quick and effective integration." [84] The Australian citizenship test commenced in October 2007 for all new citizens between the ages of 18 and 60. [85] In January 2007 the Howard Government removed the word "multicultural" from the name of t he Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, changing its name to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

most everybody around the world stopped what they were doing — on television, on the Internet and on the street — to look and listen.

as the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, showed in 1997, communal sorrow is moving, public frenzy is alarming, but the two together make for irresistible television.

Brian Williams of NBC, who sat on a special platform outside the Staples Center, told his colleague Lester Holt that the public had a way of deciding for itself what matters, “despite, at some times, the news media’s better wishes.” He added ruefully, “And this is an event because it is.”

Has enough time passed for a more impartial assessment of the man

Our traditional response to a person's death can be summed up by the Latin "de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est" - roughly translated "don't speak ill of the dead". But in the information age, where the news keeps on rolling and the notion of deference has long since been replaced by a fascination with fame, how does the old maxim hold up?

Leith believes politicians like Vaz make a "category error" when they posture in this way. "They appropriate cultural events. You wouldn't really expect Michael Jackson to ratify the Countryside Act 2000 so why should parliament say what a jolly good dancer he was?"