Panta Rhei: In Memoriam Andrei Gheorghe (1962-2018)

„Totul trece.) În cazul de faţă a trecut şi ultima interdicţie şi după 30 de zile va spun iarăşi, Salutare! M’am întors şi sint acelaşi, cu aceleaşi ocupaţii.) Voi continua sa trollez demnitari, medici, profesori, popi, îngeri, catedrale, antisemiţi, homofobi, legionari, negaţionişti şi alte asemenea făpturi imbecile. Cu drag, ag“, a scris Andrei în ultima sa postare de pe Facebook.

 

Gabriel Liiceanu și noi

A creat Planeta Humanitas. A veștejit ticăloșia, mișelia, lichelismul. Refuză să se pensioneze moral. Rămâne un spirit aronian, adică un spectator angajat. Este un camusian, adică posedă un inepuizabil rezervor al revoltei etice. Refuză tăcerea. A fost și continuă să fie insultat, ponegrit, calomniat. Una din cele mai intristătoare forme de obscurantism este intelofobia. Intr-un remarcabil articol apărut pe platforma “Contributors”. Mircea Morariu atrage atentia asupra acestei noi imunde campanii impotriva celui mai activ exponent al spiritului lovinescian (Eugen și Monica) din cultura românească a zilelor noastre. Articolul se incheie cu aceste cuvinte ale lui Vladimir Jankélévitch: “În cele din urmă nu există nimic care nu poate fi uitat, dar rămâne întotdeauna ceva ce nu este scuzabil”. (Washington, DC, 4 ianuarie 2018)

Le Combat

Marine Le Pen is the name of all the things I despise, dislike, and disparage. I will not post a picture with her. She’s evil. And, if the name of the newspaper Camus wrote for means something, I think that Combat is the call of the day. Therefore I post this. Maybe Marine Le Pen and her supporters have not found it out yet: Nazi Germany did capitulate!

Will Ukrainians Ever Trust the Press? An article by Adam Tismaneanu

Journalism has changed since the Euromaidan, but most Ukrainians still don’t trust the media. Oligarchs continue to own a majority of the major outlets. Since 2014, reformers have established a public broadcasting service and are in the process of privatizing several hundred state-owned newspapers. Those steps may not be enough. The media suffers from a lack of transparency—something that government regulators, nongovernmental organizations, and citizens can help address.

That was one of the main conclusions reached at a National Endowment for Democracy (NED) panel on Friday, April 28. Organized by the NED’s Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA), panelists included Tetyana Lebedyeva, chair of the supervisory board of the National Public Broadcasting Company; Katerina Myasnykova, executive director of the Independent Association of Broadcasters; Roman Shutov, program director at the watchdog Detector Media; and Joanna Rohozinska, senior program officer for Europe at the NED. Mark Nelson, CIMA senior director, moderated the discussion.

While Ukraine’s media environment has “significantly improved” since 2014, according to Freedom House’s just-released 2017 Freedom of the Press report, the country is still categorized as only “partly free.” Some experts, like Myroslava Gongadze, who leads the Voice of America’s Ukraine service, have called it “free, but not independent.” What needs to be done to make Ukraine’s media independent?

More information about ownership was the government’s answer. While broadcasters must give detailed information about the identities of their owners to a state regulator as of October 2015, enforcing this legislation and even unearthing this information is tricky. Panelists agreed that transparency of ownership is fundamental to fostering trust in the media. Until the government proves that it is committed to enforcing the legislation on media ownership, oligarchs will continue to control it, they said.

Shutov said the problem is that there is no way for the government regulator to investigate ownership information. “They don’t have the capacity to check the information for all the broadcasters; it’s impossible,” he said. “Some oligarchs are hidden in Moscow now and they don’t have any interest in disclosure.”

Myasnykova said that the regulators face serious financial challenges as well. “If an oligarch claims someone owns a company and even if we know it’s not true, you have to go offshore and pay money to check, but the [regulator] doesn’t have this money,” Myasnykova said. “The most crucial problem for me: according to our legislation, media companies have no requirement to provide information to the [regulator].”

Most people still struggle to identify which sources are the best and most reliable.

“Media literacy is much more in focus than it used to be a few years ago,” said Myasnykova. “I think it’s the right thing to do.” Schools have started media literacy courses and the press work with teachers, she said.

Media transparency can also be boosted by increasing citizens’ access to genuinely independent media through public broadcasting.

A 2014 law created a national public broadcasting service in Ukraine. “This is a key reform: we are able to get rid of state media, something we inherited from the Soviet Union with all its negative characteristics,” Lebedyeva said.

While passage of this law was a giant step forward, Lebedyeva emphasized that there needs to be a wait-and-see approach until the ownership legislation is enforced.

Ukraine’s media climate will only thrive with the assistance of outside parties, Myasnykova counseled. “One very important issue. . . is for us and international media developers and donors to be more active.”

Adam Tismaneanu, an intern at the National Endowment for Democracy’s Center for International Media Assistance, is a fourth-year journalism, media, and screen studies major at Northeastern University. 

 

Will Ukrainians Ever Trust the Press?

 

Why does Michnik matter?

It is not my intention to offer here a biography of my close friend Adam Michnik. I just want to offer some responses, hopefully informed, to the following question: Why does Adam Michnik matter? He matters because in times of infamy, he raised his voice and suffered for this. He matters because he has a moral compass and some of us regard it as persuasively indispensable. He matters because he does not yield to nativism, tribalism, clericalism, militarism, Orbanism, Putinism, LePenism, Trumpism, populism, and other political pathologies. I dedicate this thext to the memory of Leonidas Donskis.

Adam Michnik in Vilnius, Lithuania

 

 

Not to sink into the mass of the depraved: Adam Michnik at 70

Minima moralia: In “Shadows of the Forgotten Ancestors,” one of his most influential essays–and also one of my favorites–, Adam Michnik wrote about Piisudski, but in fact about himself: “…his is not simply a national but also a very human perspective. It is not patriotic and political concerns but my own concerns, my own good that inspire me to fight. This will rescue me from sinking into the anonymous, shapeless mass of the depraved, captive, and obedient.” (“Letters from Prison,” University of California Press, 1985, p. 210)

Image: Adam Michnik, Warsaw, December 1981

A fost ucisa acum zece ani

“Bitches always hate decent people.” – Boris Nemtsov. In memory of Anna Politkovskaya, murdered ten years ago, precisely on Vladimir Putin’s birthday…

 

Greața

Când citesc despre sumele plătite de Sorin Ovidiu Vântu unora și altora, mă cuprinde o greață infinită. Cu ani in urmă, un amic, fost coleg de liceu, parcă la Roman, cu SOV, imi spunea că in anticamera mafiotului puteau fi văzute personaje faimoase stând la coadă pentru primirea plicului. Mi-a oferit niște nume, m-am crucit. Pentru de-alde răposatul Patriciu, Vântu și alti caizi, orice om are un preț. In ce mă privește si in ceea ce-i privește pe prietenii mei de valori și de idei, s-au inșelat amarnic. Adevărul, cinstea și onoarea sunt neprețuite. Ele sunt precum diamantul despre care un mare psiholog german, Ludwig Binswanger, scria: “Der Diamant soll nicht geteilt werden, weil er wertvoll ist”. Traduc liber: Diamantul nu trebuie sfărâmat, valoarea ii stă in integritate.

Linia despartitoare

Cu aceasta scrisoare sordida catre copilul unui jurnalist detestat de borfasi, publicata in ziarul lui Felix si difuzata maniacal de televiziunile lui Felix, s-a trecut un prag. Nici macar Vadim Tudor nu a atins asemenea cote ale abisului imoralitatii. Cine nu vede acest lucru ignora distinctiile decisive, esentiale, vitale dintre bine si rau. Mai exact spus, se situeaza de partea raului. Pentru Dan Voiculescu si omul sau de casa, Dan Constantin, directorul publicatiei unde a aparut mizeria Oanei Stancu, nu exista metoda prea imunda pentru a nu fi folosita intru atingerea josnicelor scopuri. Priviti-l! Este cel pe care Marin Preda il numea tipul infect.

Paroxismul obscenitatii

Campionatul nemerniciei a fost castigat de Antena 3. Scrisoarea catre fiica lui Dan Tapalaga surclaseaza, intru infamie, “interviul” din anii 70, de fapt o agresiune verbala a culturnicului Dinu Sararu impotriva mamei lui Virgil Ierunca, publicata cu dezgustatoare, jegoasa fanfara, in “Flacara” lui Adrian Paunescu. Atunci, la ordinul Securitatii, a fost agresata simbolic o femeie in varsta, acum, la o televiziune condusa de dupa gratii de un mogul securist, un copil. Atunci se urmarea intimidarea lui Virgil Ierunca. Acum, a lui Dan Tapalaga si a platformei Hotnews. Cei care molesteaza psihologic batrani si copii pot sa comita si crime fizice. Este vorba in aceste cazuri de o maladiva propensiune sadica.

Astept cu maxim interes reactia CNA. Oare ni se vor servi, a mia oara, aceleasi stupide panglici propagandistice menite sa protejeze infamia? Membrii CNA au rang de secretar de stat, salarii si beneficii asisjderea. Deci sunt platiti din bugetul public. In acest caz, este vorba de ceea ce Andrei Plesu a diagnosticat drept obscenitate publica. Membrii CNA au fost numiti acolo la propunerile venite din partea partidelor politice. Astept, prin urmare, delimitarea acestor partide de membrii CNA care nu vor reactiona rapid si fara echivoc pentru sanctionarea exemplara a aceste imense, scabroase, impardonabile ticalosii.