 Blog back |
| DIY activism vs. Professional
journalism |
Contributed by Anarcho Babe on
from the dept. Indymedia is so much better than
professional journalism, in my opinion. No self-obsessed by-lines,
at least here in Britain, accountability towards the reader and the
other indy volunteers, no hierarchies, and instant possibilities of
the reader to contribute opinion, clarification and corrections
make Indymedia a much more happy community news resource than any
other mainstream media outlet.
Not that the amount of conspiracy theories would not be bothering -
the slight flaw in the Indymedia philosophy of "discuss it all out and the truth will
eventually win the argument" is that hardly anybody has the
time to read and investigate facts and opinions and to really
discuss them out. Contributing to this is the abuse readers and
contributers throw sometimes at each other, "trolling" can piss of folks who don't
yet understand the "open
publishing principle" and just stroll along
accidentally .
But in the mainstream media you have a lot of twisting the facts,
spinning and exaggeration for entertainment puposes.
One of the most recent examples is the
Guardian's interview with Noam Chomsky by Emma Brockes.
Medialens put out a critique
and collection of statements by Noam Chomsky to reveal how twisted
his quotes became.
Chomsky was voted the world's greatest intellecatual and
interviewed on this occasion. |
("Also filed under"):
[ Comments?] |
| Review of Kim Fletcher's: The
Journalist's Handbook |
Contributed by Anarcho Babe on
from the dept. The book has two parts, roughly separated
in practicalities and issues. Though the whole book is about
practicalities, the second part deals with the Press
Complaints Commission and its guidelines, moral issues, the
difficulties of knowing the audience's interests, the rise of the
internet with new possibilities and its limits.
The first part is focussed on individual skills as to how to
improve writing and reporting, expanding to the topics on how to
get into journalism as a profession.
It is the second part which is really usefull for beginners with a
richness of examples and case studies.
The book is recommendable for students and wanna-be journalists,
the second part may also be of some relevance to initiate
discussions amongst more experienced reporters and journalist
colleagues.
What i liked about the book is that it is quite readable
– in contrast to the other books i currently
read, it is an effortless fly-through, as the content is relevant,
with lots of examples, the language is simple, most chapters are
short or have vox-pox like inserts, and the style is positive,
which is astonishing. Astonishing, because when Kim Fletcher
appeared at the Guardian Media Conference, he came over rather
disillusioned and negative, even a bit sarcastic.
His face was rather brown pigmented, I wondered if it was due to
sun exposure or liver failure.
Older journalists in the profession are in general still perceived
as drinking a lot as a side effect of their job.
Of course liver disease can also come of other causes, such as
malaria and other tropical illness or longterm drug use (any drug
being heavy on the liver including e.g. anti-epileptic drugs), but
usually it is associated with accumulation of bilirubin which has a
yellowish undertone.
Unfortunately i wasn't able to examine the underlying causes more
detailled as i did not come close enough. It just left
me wondering.
Well, maybe they all came back from some exciting international
reporting assignment or holiday in the sun.
In Richard Keeble's book: "ethics for
journalists" he
writes on page 99:
"In 1999, the Fleet Street consensus again backed the US/UK attacks
this time on Yugoslavia (with the Guardian proving one of the most
jingoistic) and called for a ground assault. Only the Independent
on Sunday opposed the war, and its editor (Kim Fletcher) was sacked
just days after the bombings ended." |
|
| Review of Jon Snow's autobiography:
"Shooting History" |
Contributed by Anarcho Babe on
from the dept. There are only few journalists today who
are trusted by the public, and even fewer whose reports are trusted
by anarchists. Jon Snow is one of the few. That might be because of
his radical left student past. However, also Andrew Marr describes
himself in his biography as something similar to having been a
"marxist" once upon a
time. So, do former leftists have a quality of trustworthiness and
integrity other journalists fail to deliver? Does ideology and
attitude of the journalist affect his status in the general
population? Is the description "have been a lefty once upon a time"
as much of a quality assurance as having smoked dope at university
a generation time before reporting on a mainstream media
outlet?
|
|
| The Guardian Media Conference: What
is it like working in the Media? |
Contributed by Anarcho Babe on
from the dept. Here is a review of The Guardian
Media Conference: What is it like to work in the Media? from
the Glasgow event on 18th of October 2005. I wasn't very impressed
and should have spent my time and money staying in Edinburgh
reading books, persuing projects, job-hunting and writing.
The long review is in the content box, including suggestions for
making it better. Slight problem in how to get this review to the
people who matter, and to get them reacting and changing for the
better. Now, i wonder if anybody would appreciate that or
not. Actually nobody would most likely appreciate it, subject to
apathy and inertia from the organisers site and probably scared
rabbit like behaviour from the audience. |
|
| Yippieh! Blog back
online! |
Contributed by Anarcho Babe on
from the dept. Ahh. The blog is back. Some evil hackers
broke into the server and were trying to get other people's money
with scams. Luckily enough it was early detected and the whole
thing shut down. Then it was necessary not only to rebuild the
whole thing, but also to check the technical solutions and
additionally to move to another server.
There has been a lot happening the last weeks and I am really,
really happy as I am back to studying.
I am also really happy that I am out of ACE. So much time available
better spent on other projects.
G8 court cases are going on at the moment, and activists in Glasgow
are writing and publishing regular reports on Indymedia
Scotland.
Apparantly both the clown and the fairy got off okay.
|
|
| The gratification of
volunteering |
Contributed by Anarcho Babe on
from the dept. I am still chewing on the ACE issue, but I
have now thought about it, and am considering leaving a political
project is like splitting up a love relationship, but in
'Zeitraffer' (fast
motion).
Reading the letter I got from ACE after I left, it was astonishing
that it rather pointed out mistakes I made and seemed to slag me
off, and chatting to somebody left me wondering why, when you leave
a political collective, people rather send letters out critising
volunteers than "Thank you for
all your help in the past years" notes.
If i would write a "good-bye" letter to myself, than I
would have pointed out all the good stuff I have done and which I
am proud of, along with a "you
are always welcome back" note, rather than critisism.
But apparantly, with political projects you never get that. You
never get a "Thank you for all your
help, time and resources expecting nothing in return"
note.
Talking to other political people, they experienced the same.
That's why I also think leaving a political project is like
splitting up in a former love relationship - it is pretty
irrational and emotional and not based on logic.
Political projects seem often to experience leaving them as
hurtfull, too, maybe even as a criticism of their ideology and
politics.
Blaming individuals leaving, seems for political projects often the
sole solution to carry on without changing anything and without
reflection nor evaluation, trying to give sense and fulfillment and
pride and reason for the people staying behind continuing with the
work.
So I wondered when and if putting money, time, energy and resources
into a voluntary project (political or unpolitical) would be worth
it for the individual, or for me in particular, worth enough to put
several years of lifetime into it.
So this is what I came up with:
It is worth volunteering if you get something out of it like:
- learning new skills
- meet new friends and have good social relationships
- gain more self-confidence out of successfull projects
- get attention
- get praise and positive feedback
- solidarity: give and receive
- new links to new projects
- outreach/PR
- mutual aid: give and receive
- learn conflict resolution/mediation
- responsibilities
- trust
- references
- communication increases
- expenses paid e.g. travel or food
- use of resources also for private use and personal projects
- invitations
- helping other people
|
|
| The Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh
(ACE) |
Contributed by Anarcho Babe on
from the dept. After the G8, I resigned from the Autonmous Centre of
Edinburgh (ACE). I felt pretty much associated with it since I
first arrived in Edinburgh six years ago.
But now I feel pretty exhausted and burnt out.
It seems to me that the centre demands endless supplies of efforts,
enthusiasm, motivation and resources, without ever giving back
anything or too few to its users.
One of my philosophies was that, if I myself put lots of energy,
work and resources in something, than others will join eventually
to realise the project and then to share the benefits of it with
everybody getting their equal share.
With ACE, I felt like often, if not always, that it was a lone
battle which wasn't rewarded at all, apart from using ACE as a mail
address for communicating with political prisoners and other
political projects, it did not seem to give me much, though many of
the groups based there, did.
I tried to extent the political
video archive, but whenever putting in originals, they were
lost or stolen. When putting in copies, people did not borrow them,
but wanted to give them away, and did so. I did never get any
financial support for any tapes to put in, so I gave it up after
putting in about 10. I do assume that copying all the videos,
printing and photocpying out the desciptions and a catalogue would
have probably been about 100 pounds or so, but of course it could
have been stacked.
I tried to sort out mail and magazines sent to Counterinfo , which has its mail address at
ACE, but there wasn't actual enough office supplies to sort it, the
ones there were, were often faulty and old und sometimes even
rusty, and everything had to be noted down, but hardly anybody ever
did it, it was more demand than action. And the steady flow of
foreign language magazines were interesting, but hardly anybody
ever made use of it, particularly not for Counterinfo, as this
newssheet alwys came out rarely, did not have enough editorial
space, and often the news were too old. Counterinfo eventually
seemed to become less important with the rise of the world wide web
and news websites such as Indymedia , especially Scotland
Indymedia.
One also disillusional thing was the organisation of the Foot and
Mouth event. Although it was a good street party, the
conference, the Mouth bit was disappointing, except for the
playbus. It took almost a year organising it, and then the outcome
of the conference was limited, so I think political people in
Edinburgh are not that interested in political theoretical
discussions. Not to mention the difficulties with having a
women's space in the
conference.
ACE feels draining - often too dark and too cold, the heating is
broken and the water system leaks. Indymedia was based at ACE, but
often, when calling for a meeting, Indymedia volunteers and
interested people would become less and less, over time, till
meetings consisted of myself only.
I hope that now, that Indymedia Scotland is based at the Forest, the
meetings will be better and a new second life will be blown into
the project. It is nice to know that the Forest is open almost
every day, so people coming early do not have to wait in the cold
and the rain, there is a nice cafe with warm food and hot drinks,
toilets and entertainment in the building, and even wireless
access. The cafe is also good for combined projects such as film
screenings, discussions, and little projects such as speaking tours
and similar, and it attracts a wide range of people, from
non-political to environmentalists, and also the cafe is based
beside the university and has an art gallery, a free shop, piano,
music, library, vegan and vegetarian food. (Although I have to
admit that the food has stayed pretty much the same for the last
past five years there). There is not that much which can be done
without a cooker I guess, and for not having a cooker, the Cafe has
really made the best out of the possibilities.
But the main reason was the G8. I just did not feel there was much
- nor any support from the ACE collective for the G8 mobilisation.
Not many members of ACE tunred up to the anti-G8 protests or even
helped supporting these in any way. ACE offered its back room, but
there was never any support for using it effectively. I was getting
very angry, when the computers donated to ACE about a year and a
half ago, the Imacs, are missing now their CD-Rom drive and other
parts and are more or less unusable. When ACE got them donated I
was pushing for buying hard disks for all of them, having an
install workshop and then setting all of them up. Now individual
Imacs have been taken by individuals or other projects and out of
the centre, and only one of the formerly six ones is set up in the
centre. That really makes me angry. Again, ACE wanted to save
money.
The same with the high-speed internet connection. The money was
given from Dissent to install it and set up a computer network, but
it was never used - nobody really cared about it.
ACE also got a donation to move. I tried to find nice buildings,
and one which I would have found ideal, as it had heating, 2
kitchens, was freshly renovated and ina former trade union
building. As this opportunity wasn't taken up, which was the last
opportunity really before the G8 to have any new premises to
support the protests with crash space, cooking facilities and
similar. I got so angry - especially with the academic
armchair anarchist fraction in ACE, that i decided to resign.
Now i got a letter basically telling me that I got unsubscribed
from the email list, should pass on the keys asap and trying to
defend any criticism of ACE as the fault of the inidvidual.
|
|
| G8 reflection booklet |
Contributed by Anarcho Babe on
from the dept. On Indymedia
Uk and the ResistG8 list,
there was a call for submissions for a "Reflections on G8"
booklet.
I have submitted one of my write-ups, but it seemed to never get
printed - and maybe never will, because the style might be too
simple and modest. (Inner beauty, apparantly that's what "modesty"
is called in Chinese! According to BBC Learning Zone).
So, I put it up here on my blog, because that is why I have it,
isn't it.
Ode to the cleaners! A local perspective after
the G8.
It is now the 20th of
July, and the big hype is over. Most of the activists were
quick to leave, a few stayed to clear, tidy up and reorganise the
spaces and to take on responsibility in fulfilling promises made by
other people.
The few activists left to tidy up other people's mess were not the
bigmouthing, theoretical and ideological proofed academics or
wanna- be intellectuals, who are so quick in telling everyone what
to do and how – yet, exactly these had disappeared early.
No, most of the reliable, hard working people present, were the
silent, unobtrusive types, and most of them were female, who kept
themselves usually in the background a lot, who talk less and work
more, and have earned my total appreciation, respect and admiration
for what and how much they worked, how reliable they are, whilst
also doing one of the least acknowleged, but one of the most
important work: tidying up the mess left behind.
Maybe it is the fear of repression, the lack of excitement or the
exhaustion as reasons for most of the activists to leave within 3
days after the last protest.
So now it is a case of tieing up loose ends to find people
disppearing into nowhere, not answering emails nor telephone calls.
The lost and found items are still piling up high in various
places, many activists are disappearing far away to other places on
the planet into holidays, the prisoner support group is hardly
working yet, two people remain on remand in prison, court cases
start in august, september till november, and already a call has
gone out to note down the glorious successes of “The
Movement” at this years G8 protests.
Too early if you ask me.
So, there will be enough people talking about the successes of this
mobilisation, so I will neglect this, and just say it was brilliant
so many people coming up to Scotland.
Beforehand there was much of a discussion, that counter
mobilisations confronting summits locally would be obsolete –
I do still believe differently, and it certainly made sense to us.
For the G8 protests, it has made all the difference in the world,
here in Scotland, to have international and country-wide support
from activists.
It was good activists from all over actually coming here, not only
to protest, but also to create and publicise feasible, practical
alternative non-hierarchical views and projects.
Especially those helpers, who came up to half a year early, they
really made a huge difference, but also the activists coming even
one month earlier, or a few weeks or days, they gave much
incredible support by the practical work they did. Without them,
the convergence centres would not have been possible and without
them, there would not have been the brilliant start of the protests
with the Cre8 community garden possible, which was the best
reaction possible to the mainstream media villifications, and
without them, we would have been stuck with publicising, with
resources, and with places.
It has so far been an incredible good experience locally for us. In
fact, so far, there seems to be nothing better than having a G8
summit in your local town, as you can still sleep in your own comfy
bed every night and everybody from the activist scene is so
incredibly friendly and takes care not to piss the local activists
off – which is a very big advantage compared to mobilisations
into other towns, where often, people and activists not yet known
might find it difficult to be included and trusted.
After the protests, it is also hard to tidy up, in the respect, as
you need to dismantle the dreams and visions connected with the
places, the places standing for an alternative, better future we
long for, the places symbolising mainly positive experiences for
us, images for a possible world not foccused on making as much
money as possible, but actually based on caring for each other,
based on solidarity, mutual aid, respect, responsibility and
freedom.
We are also able to continue with a new little Indymedia Centre now
in the basement of the Forest building (tel: 0131 225 6885) in
Edinburgh.
I dearly love this place already, not for what it actually is, but
because of its already young history, for where it came from and
how it got started. This is keeping up the spirits.
An experienced, wide and far travelled activist stated with relief
after the clean up when leaving:
“For the first time after a big counter
summit mobilisation, I actually feel we have left something good
behind for the locals.”
-AB, Edinburgh-
|
|
| Katrina relief effort is the
ultimate consequence of capitalism |
Contributed by Anarcho Babe on
from the dept. Seeing the victims of the hurricane
Katrina begging for help from rooftops with no water nor food gets
me so angry.
The world's richest nation and yet no help, just army for days.
What the fuck is going on?
Have we already approached the century of barbarism?
Good to hear that at least Food Not
Bombs and Infoshop and the anarchists have got their act
together.
Good to see New Orleans Indymedia still
up with uptodate newswire and breaking news, and supported by
Houston
Indymedia, too.
But hey! did we not have this before?
Senseless stupid office burocrats shuffling off responsibility
whilst making decisions - or no decisions - resulting in thousands
to die?
I hate capitalism.
Seeing hundreds of busses underwater whilst no transport for the
poor out of New Orleans.
Seeing the army protecting shops whilst people die in the streets
because of hunger and thirst.
I hate capitalism. And I disgust the US system. No health care, no
transport, not even free food, no accomodation, not even in
catastrophic times. Just money that counts.
Profit over people in its most extreme forms.
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Anarchogeek
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-
Went sailing, paddled the boat, didn't sink!
Yesterday i made a failed attempt at sailing solo. The engine
died and i was just not quite savvy enough to get the sails up and
sail out of the marina. Today i talked warren in to joining me. We
were trying to get the engine started when a nice berkeley boater
came over to see what our problem was. She asked if we had paddles
and if we did, why not use them. So we did. We paddled the boat out
of the marina. It's a real pain that my slip is the farthest one
from the marina entrance.
Just as we were getting near the entrance we got a tow from
another sail boat on it's way out which had a working motor. At
first there wasn't much wind, but it picked up as we slowly moved
out and it felt like we were doing a good clip. Probably about 3 or
4 miles an hour, but it FELT fast. We made it about half way to
angel island before i decided that i wasn't to sure it'd be as easy
to return as it was to go out.... I turned us around and we made
our way back. We sailed right up to the slip. I had a few failed
attempts at tacking in the marina, but the wind shifted so we could
go straight in without it. All in all it was pretty successful
afternoon. It's really nice to do something so very different from
sitting in front of a computer and programming.
Warren took photos and put them up as a flickrset, Sailing the
AnarchoBoat.
-
Radio Insurgente Adds Podcast Feeds!
Radio
Insurgente, the radio voice of everybody's favorite
revolutionary social movement, the zapatistas, now has a podcast
(on odeo, as
rss.)
It's mostly in spanish, with a smattering of the 5 indigenous
languages which are also spoken by the zapatista communities. The
amazing thing is how humble and unassuming the voices in radio
insurgente are. They talk about resistance, international
solidarity, community democracy, the mexican political landscape,
the rights of women, building a new water system, all with an
almost meek voice. If you can understand it, or want to learn
spanish i highly recommend it. It's a good radio program to learn
from because the speakers don't rush through their words like most
latino commercial radio, but speak slowly, deliberately, focusing
on their words because spanish is a second language of most of the
speakers.
-
Scaring Users Away - Second Life & Billing
So noah has been playing
with second life, it seems like
a crazy dream like world. So i said, why not, i'll go try it. Noah
said it's free to signup. But here's the deal, their signup page
and list of options, free trials, asking for credit cards to start
charging after 7 days, asking me for my mobile phone (another group
of poeple who have perfected unethical billing praticies) has
prevented me from signing up.
So i haven't tried their service. I'm sure i'm not the only one.
A service's billing needs to be simple enough to understand for
somebody who HASN'T used it before. I should be able to try it with
a simple form, what's my email and name. No more. If i reach the
end of the trial period and want to keep using, then i'll like the
product and be prompted to pay.
It's part of why services like MetroPCS are so popular, people
are less likely to be screwed with
a big unexpected bill.
-
%51! Damn, Evo & MAS Wins Elections in Bolivia
I'm shocked, and pleased. The left coalition behind Evo
Morales and Alvaro Garcia Lineras has won the election in the first
round with a majority! This means they actually will be able to
take power. I thought this was a very unlikely outcome... In the
latest polls Evo as getting about %35. I guess it just goes to show
that if you are looking at a canidate with more support in el
campo, you can't just poll people with phones or who live in the
cities.
This marks a major shift for the left in bolivia. It's not an
end of the struggle, but a major shift in direction.
-
Good WTO Protest Coverage
There's a great feature over on www.indymedia.org with links to
tons of converage of the
WTO meeting / protest in Hong Kong. It's definately worth
checking out. If you're in to podcasting, there is Radio Hong Kong in english
and radio mundo
real, forum de
radios in spanish, and gomedia
radio and streaming tv in korean.-
Photo Audio Story Telling....
I've for a long time been frustrated with the concept of the
full length video. It's so hard to produce good video, yet it can
be incredibly powerful as a medium.
So one solution is the slide show style photo montage with a
voice over. Augustin and the Testimonios collective in
Uruguay did an
incredible piece about the Classificadores, the people who make a
living by collecting and sorting trash to find things to sell. It's
easy to produce and powerful. The combination of photos and audio
is powerful.
It's something which would be an important tool to provide for
indymedia, radical story telling which is easy to produce, but
incorporates rich media. Today i came across a wonderful example of
this style in Inner City Youth -
London great. They've also got one about the us
mexico border which incorporates more music and faster
transitions. I think it's custom produced flash, but the output
could be flash, quicktime, keynote, a DVD, etc.....
-
WTO Protests in Hong Kong
Lots of great activists are working hard to destrupt the WTO in
Hong Kong. I'm too busy working for the
man. Lots of other activists are there organizing militant
protests against rampant neoliberalism. There is no indymedia site setup in Hong Kong, but
there is a site coordinating the protests and coverage in english,
Target WTO.-
My Musical Signature....
I came across this personalized audio mashup / signature
tool (via
unmediated), it's a web app which reads what i listen to itunes
and mixes the songs. Anyway, i took mine and put it up on odeo. So
you can listen to it here.
-
Riot Tones: Klingeltöne politisieren
Apparently i said the following in an interview about riot tones:
"Klingeltöne politisieren den
gemeinschaftlich-kulturellen Raum. Statt jemandem einen Flyer zu
geben, sendet man eine kleine politische Idee in die akustische
Umgebung der einzelnen Menschen. Damit kreiert man eine Umwelt in
der Menschen über Politik nachdenken. Ob nun im Club
oder im Supermarkt, wenn man einen politischen Klingelton
hört, löst das einen Gedanken aus, und man
merkt zum Beispiel: nicht nur ich bin gegen den Krieg im Irak, es
gibt andere die genauso denken."
For anybody who speaks german, there's an article / radio program
about mobile activism including mobile active, Txt Power and my own stalled project
Riot Tones.-
We made it! Stockton to Berkeley in two days
Well, last week i bought the sail boat in ebay, this weekend
i got up early, picked up Noah and Jack and drove over to the
Stockton. We spent the morning getting the boat ready and taking
multiple trips to West Marine for supplies.
At about 1 we set out across the San
Joaquin Delta for the San Francisco Bay. The delta is a weird
place, it feels like another world, islands, swamps, levees, lots
of fisherman and duck hunters...
At dusk we were approaching Antioch for the night. I looked over
and saw this large sign, shaped differently than ones we'd seen
before, it said "5". I remarked to noah who was steering, hey, i
wonder what that 5 means. A minute later Noah yelled out, hey, the
boat isn't going the direction we're steering. We'd run aground!
Jack and I got up, started rocking the boat while noah tried to
reverse our way out of the mud and signal a passing motor boat for
help.
They had MUCH bigger engines and pulled us out easily, but not
without asking at least 4 times why we hadn't be looking closely at
our charts.
Antioch is a weird little town... we couldn't get a key for the
marina gate so we had to climb over the fence to get in and out. We
walked down to what the locals call the 'Stop and Rob' connivence
store.
In the morning the marina was fogged in, we walked a few miles
around antioch looking for a cafe, eventually we found a greasy
spoon diner. We filled up the gas tanks and headed out again
dodging giant container ships.
Eventually we got in to the bay and saw the sunset behind
the golden gate bridge. Anyway, both noah and i took photos
which we posted to flickr.
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