Re: nettime More new orleans
Hallo nettimers -- I thought to remind you of Jacob Holdt, the Danish citizen who traveled in the US, making informal snapshots of the people -- mostly impoverished Southerners -- that he met back in the 70's. While I believe much of the photojournalism from Katrina is simply more of the same media exploitation-and-crucifiction for the benefit of the consumer, you will see in it traces of the same intense poverty that Holdt confronted in his movements. He worked with an instamatic camera and still tours with a powerful and personal slide show under the title American Pictures -- http://www.american-pictures.com/ I happened to see Holdt's live presentation about 22 years ago in a small community center in Santa Monica, California. The intensity of his work, and how it reveals the soft underbelly of the Beast confirmed my own experiences when I was working as a roughneck on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, based out of the Mississippi delta town of Houma. So it goes... John # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
nettime (CRIS): WSIS and Human Rights in Tunisia (Modified by Geert Lovink) [u]
(Interesting report from the communication rights campaign coordinator Se?n ? Siochr? who recently visited Tunisia, the host country for the second world summit on the information society (wsis) that will take place in Tunis, mid November. Next week a third and last preparatory meeting takes place in Geneva. This text was fwd. from the Incommunicado list. /geert) From: Se?n ? Siochr?, CRIS Campaign Human Rights in Tunisia: The Grip Tightens in the Lead up to The WSIS. I am of the generation that on hearing that someone has been on a ?mission?, immediately thinks either of ?Mission Impossible? or of the many Irish missionaries that plied the world with Christian ideology, mostly well-intentioned, in the name of helping poor people. I am just back from a human rights mission to Tunisia. This is my report. I cannot say which of the above it more closely approximates, if any, but my firm intention is to add another voice to those who argue that civil society must take strong action at the upcoming WSIS PrepCom 3 and Tunis Summit on the human rights situation in Tunisia. -- I travelled to Tunis last week on behalf of the CRIS Campaign as part of an international group of human rights related NGOs. We were to participate in a planning meeting about the WSIS and the human rights situation in Tunisia hosted by the Ligue Tunisienne des Droits de l?Homme (LTDH) ? Tunisian League for Human Rights ? and I personally was eager to assess the situation for myself. The schedule included a session on the 8th of September with LTDH members to discuss the situation and options, meetings with government officials to listen to their positions, followed by attendance as observers at the Sixth Congress of the League. Human rights advocates under siege? The deterioration of the situation in Tunisia was evident even before we set off. On the Monday before travelling a court order was issued prohibiting the LTDH from holding its Congress, and indeed from even discussing and planning the event at a later date. On arrival on Wednesday evening, we went straight to the League?s office to find the street at both ends cluttered with plain clothes police, presumably intended to deter visitors and intimidate those inside. The atmosphere in the office was siege-like, non stop convening of meetings and huddled discussions. But messages of support from the German ambassador, the Canadian Attach? and EU diplomats were encouraging; and the news that the President of the European Parliament had issued a strong statement in their favour, drawing attention also to the WSIS, was greeted with some appreciation. [1] There is strong evidence that the human rights situation in Tunisia is deteriorating in many respects, including in relation to the internet. The first assembly of the Tunisian Journalists Association, scheduled for the Wednesday the 7th of September, was also cancelled by the authorities. And the imprisonment in April of lawyer Mohamed Abbou to three and a half years for a website article comparing torture in Tunisian prisons to Abu Graib [2] is still fresh in everyone?s minds? as is the sad death of the young Zouhair Yahyaoui, editor of TuneZine, who had been imprisoned and tortured for publishing his critical Web journal [3]. All this in the country that will soon host the Information Society Summit. E-mails of suspect individuals are systematically monitored ? a joke here is that faxes usually arrive the next day! The LTDH is itself infiltrated by many government agents, who barely conceal their efforts to hamper its activities and undermine its credibility (the suspended Congress being a case in point). Many in Tunis and outside had hoped the security-obsessed President Ben Ali might concede to pressures to improve the human rights situation in the run up to the WSIS in November. On the contrary: Systematic and orchestrated efforts appear to be ongoing to prevent the LTDH and independent non-governmental organisations from casting a spotlight on the ugly reality of human rights in Tunisia when the heads of state, ministers, intergovernmental organisations and NGOs converge on the Summit in November. Apart from words of comfort from some governments, offered mostly by local diplomats who can appreciate the facts with their own eyes, there is scant evidence that the rest of the international community is at all concerned where it matters most ? in the context of the WSIS itself. International relations being what they are, it seems none amongst them is as yet willing to spoil the party, even those who privately believe that the party itself ? the WSIS - will achieve little. Thursday: Meetings commence In a tense but defiant atmosphere, the meeting between the international NGO observers and the LTDH went ahead on the 8th in their offices ? they had been unable to find hotel
nettime Pastry Action Roundup
The Daily Mail Pie ruins Clarkson's top gear September 12th, 2005 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=362135in_page_id=1773 Sunday Times columnist Jeremy Clarkson's big day ended in tears this morning after a protester hit him in the face with a custard pie at a degree ceremony. The outspoken motoring writer of the year was at Oxford Brookes University to collect an honorary degree in recognition of his passion for engineering, highlighted by his championing Isambard Brunel in the Great Britons BBC television series. But the decision has proved to be controversial, and protesters, including members of Oxford's Green Party, assembled outside the presentation dressed in Clarkson's trademark tight jeans and wigs. Despite stringent security cordons and a massive police presence that outnumbered the handful of protesters waving banners that read On Yer Bike Clarkson at the gates, a woman managed to gain access to a media call after the degree ceremony. She dashed out in front of the television cameras and, as Mr Clarkson posed in his cap and gown, removed what appeared to be a custard pie from a wrapped-up newspaper and hit him full in the face. The startled presenter maintained his cool, quipped good shot and posed for a few more pictures before beating his retreat. Mr Clarkson has been criticised for engaging in stunts such as driving a 4x4 through an environmentally-sensitive peat bog in Scotland and inciting people to break the law by hiding mobile phone use while driving. Speaking shortly before the assault, he defended his record on environmental issues, saying: I do have a disregard for the environment. I think the world can look after itself and we should enjoy it as best we can. But while protesters outside denied any involvement in the prank, they said Mr Clarkson was a dangerous buffoon who did not deserve any recognition. Local councillor Elise Benjamin said: We keep hearing about the damage caused by yob culture and yet he is a yob culture advocate. Protester Denise Lock said Mr Clarkson makes a living out of offending people. While other universities are rewarding the likes of Nelson Mandela, Brookes is rolling out the carpet for a dangerous buffoon. Nearly 3,000 people have signed an online petition against Clarkson receiving the honorary degree. Editor's Note: great photos at http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/09/323233.html http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/09/323121.html http://www.arbib.org/clarkpie/ ~~ Warsaw, Poland: Anarchist Action Against Homophobia and Repression June 12, 2005 Activists from the Anarchist Federation Praga (Warsaw) pied the Vice President, Andrzej Urbanski, in response to the city's homophobic actions and statements and banning of the gay pride parade for the second year in a row. The President of the city, Lech Kaczynski, is a raging homophobe who openly says that we will not promote homosexualism and such sick social deviance by allowing a gay march to take place in Warsaw. Officially, he tries to find many pretexts not to allow these marches which had, before his reign, taken place in this city without incident. Last year he banned the gay parade and was pied with a nice vegan berry creation upon which he started yelling about faggots and threatening our friends. He pretended to even by hurt by the pieing, wore a neck brace for a few days and took off of work. This year, Kaczynski started up again. At one point, he started to get in a little trouble, which he doesn't really need being he's the forerunner presidential candidate. So he sent in his vice-president to take over and make up some more pretexts for not allowing the parade. In amazing streams of creativity, he even came up with the pretexts that parades cannot be held unless the organizers pay the city money to reroute all the buses. When a lesbian activist from Lambda pointed out that other protests didn't pay this fee, the vice-president called her a liar. In a few interviews and TV, Urbanski spun homophobia and bullshit and pissed people off. The organizers of the gay parade decided not to obey the ban and about 2500 people showed up, despite heavy counterprotests. There was some violence organized by the youth branch of League of Polish Families who even paid for hooligans to come to Warsaw from Krakow. Lots of eggs flew, there were some small scuffles and, unfortunately, two women were hospitalized when fascists threw bricks into the crowd. In all, about 20 applications for counter-demonstrations were made and the city legalized a few. The Law and Justice (Guilianiist) Party (Kaczynski's) wanted to make one too but officially stated that they were too afraid of anarchists and leftists to go out in public. At the end of the march, a very strange thing happened; the head of the security services and the vice president appeared and stood in the middle of a small group of anarchists. Most
nettime Fwd: [MediaAct] statement from Houston Indymedia:Houston Radio Update
Begin forwarded message: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Hannah Sassaman) Date: September 9, 2005 3:00:26 PM PDT To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: [MediaAct] statement from Houston Indymedia:Houston Radio Update they've handed out thousands of radios already and plan to do more over the weekend.a local station, KPFT, has already dedicated a number of hours a week to programming made by, for, and about the needs, affairs, and stories of displaced people and families.with 8600 people confirmed today by harris county officials still in the astrodome shelter complex, we're exploring a few other options for the LPFM with the FCC and in other locations too, so we'll let you know if there is suddenly a reason to celebrate. non-astrodome reasons to celebrate:other groups are getting permits to build stations in the hurricane affected regions, including bay st. louis and new orleans itself.and wireless networks are flourishing, allowing families to make VOIP phonecalls and research housing and job options online. more when we know more! best, hannah s. prometheusradioproject For Immediate Release:Contact: Jim Ellinger (512) 796-4332 Friday, September 9, 2005 Tish Stringer (713) 478-4559 Renee Feltz (713) 906-0407 RADIO ACTIVISTS TO HAND OUT FREE RADIOS TO LA EVACUEES Rebuffed by Harris County officials to provide radio services to the thousands of Louisiana residents staying in the Reliant Center and the Astrodome, low power and community radio activists will hand out thousands of free radios and batteries today at 2:00pm at or near the Reliant City complex. On September 4, the Mass Media Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission granted emergency authorization to install and operate three low-power FM (LPFM) station inside the buildings. The stations were to be used to provide vital information to the evacuees.FEMA and other government agencies have publicly stated that they were have difficulty in getting timely, accurate information to the evacuees, and were spending considerable time dispelling rumors. Despite the FCC authority and considerable support from elected officials ranging from Texas Governor Rick Perry to Houston City Council member Ada Edwards and Houston Mayor Bill White, officials with Harris County, which owns and operates the Astrodome, twice refused to grant access to the radio group. Harris County's spokeswoman claimed to reporters that the radio group was asking for banks of telephones, 5000 square feet of space, unlimited access to and from the building... This is not true. Only a small secure space and utilities were requested. When the group applied a second time, they offered to park a mobile unit outside the Astrodome and run a single wire into the building. That too was denied. We did everything we could to give these poor folks something they vitally needed...information. Harris County officials appear to be in lock step with the FEMA PR Machine, more concerned with image than getting out information to survivors. The radios will be distributed today at 2pm at or near the Astrodome. Film crews are urged to wear comfortable footwear and be able to move quickly.There will be plenty of dramatic action. For more information call 713-526-4000, log on to www.kpft.org or tune in to 90.1 FM in Houston or 89.5 FM in Galveston. ___ Activist mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.mediatank.org/mailman/listinfo/activist --- Mike Weisman please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
nettime Needed: online media which can bring attention to problems before disaster
After a slow start, The US press has rallied in a better than usual way to challenge the poor handling of the crisis in New Orleans by the US government. This points up the problem with the media in the US. Though several newspapers had published articles about the crisis that was brewing in New Orleans because of the cutbacks in funding and the administrative changes in FEMA, no press was powerful enough to have this problem taken seriously. This raises the problem of the need for a progressive press in the US that will be able to bring needed attention to serious problems before they turn into disasters as has happened in New Orleans. I have written an article about how a similar problem was recognized in south Korea, and how the online newspaper OhmyNews was created to begin to make a dent in this problem. The urls for the article are: Advancing News guerrillas OhmyNews and 21st Century Journalism Ronda Hauben 08.09.2005 http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/20/20853/1.html or OhmyNews and 21st Century Journalism Ronda Hauben chronicles the birth of the newspaper and its new form of online journalism http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=8no=246787rel_no=1 I welcome comments and discussion on the article either on this mailing list or on either of the discussion sites where the article appears. with best wishes Ronda # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
nettime Katrina: The Spectre of a Soviet-Style Crisis in the U.S.
I remember waking up a teenager in the late 1980's and realizing that when the Berlin Wall fell, it was all over for the Soviet Union. I wonder if Katrina spells a similar fate for the U.S. Paul http://www.lefigaro.com/debats/20050912.FIG0354.html?083700 Emmanuel Todd: The Specter of a Soviet-Style Crisis By Marie-Laure Germon and Alexis Lacroix Le Figaro Monday 12 September 2005 According to this demographer, Hurricane Katrina has revealed the decline of the American system. Le Figaro. - What is the first moral and political lesson we can learn from the catastrophe Katrina provoked? The necessity for a global change in our relationship with nature? Emmanuel Todd . - Let us be wary of over-interpretation. Let's not lose sight of the fact that we're talking about a hurricane of extraordinary scope that would have produced monstrous damage anywhere. An element that surprised a great many people - the eruption of the black population, a supermajority in this disaster - did not really surprise me personally, since I have done a great deal of work on the mechanisms of racial segregation in the United States. I have known for a long time that the map of infant mortality in the United States is always an exact copy of the map of the density of black populations. On the other hand, I was surprised that spectators to this catastrophe should appear to have suddenly discovered that Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell are not particularly representative icons of the conditions of black America. What really resonates with my representation of the United States - as developed in Apr=E8s l'empire - is the fact that the United States was disabled and ineffectual. The myth of the efficiency and super-dynamism of the American economy is in danger. We were able to observe the inadequacy of the technical resources, of the engineers, of the military forces on the scene to confront the crisis. That lifted the veil on an American economy globally perceived as very dynamic, benefiting from a low unemployment rate, credited with a strong GDP growth rate. As opposed to the United States, Europe is supposed to be rather pathetic, clobbered with endemic unemployment and stricken with anemic growth. But what people have not wanted to see is that the dynamism of the United States is essentially a dynamism of consumption. Is American household consumption artificially stimulated? The American economy is at the heart of a globalized economic system, and the United States acts as a remarkable financial pump, importing capital to the tune of 700 to 800 billion dollars a year. These funds, after redistribution, finance the consumption of imported goods - a truly dynamic sector. What has characterized the United States for years is the tendency to swell the monstrous trade deficit, which is now close to 700 billion dollars. The great weakness of this economic system is that it does not rest on a foundation of real domestic industrial capacity. American industry has been bled dry and it's the industrial decline that above all explains the negligence of a nation confronted with a crisis situation: to manage a natural catastrophe, you don't need sophisticated financial techniques, call options that fall due on such and such a date, tax consultants, or lawyers specialized in funds extortion at a global level, but you do need materiel, engineers, and technicians, as well as a feeling of collective solidarity. A natural catastrophe on national territory confronts a country with its deepest identity, with its capacities for technical and social response. Now, if the American population can very well agree to consume together - the rate of household savings being virtually nil - in terms of material production, of long-term prevention and planning, it has proven itself to be disastrous. The storm has shown the limits of a virtual economy that identifies the world as a vast video game. Is it fair to link the American system's profit-margin orientation - that neo-liberalism denounced by European commentators - and the catastrophe that struck New Orleans? Management of the catastrophe would have been much better in the United States of old. After the Second World War, the United States assured the production of half the goods produced on the planet. Today, the United States shows itself to be at loose ends, bogged down in a devastated Iraq that it doesn't manage to reconstruct. The Americans took a long time to armor their vehicles, to protect their own troops. They had to import light ammunition. What a difference from the United States of the Second World War that simultaneously crushed the Japanese Army with its fleet of aircraft carriers, organized the Normandy landing, re-equipped the Russian army in light materiel, contributed magisterially to Europe's liberations, and kept the European and German populations liberated from Hitler alive. The Americans knew how to dominate
