nettime Emergence of Citizen Journalism in the US and Bill Moyers
An article from OhmyNews International that I thought folks on Nettime would find of interest. Bill Moyers and the Emergence of U.S. Citizen Journalism Power of government creates need for investigative news by Ronda Hauben Bill Moyers is a highly respected professional journalist, an American journalist who stands out as one who is willing to speak truth to power, even at the risk of losing his job. Moyers has been a journalist since he was 15 years old, and yet he considers himself a citizen journalist. After an absence of more than two years, Moyers returned to PBS (public broadcasting system) on Friday, April 27 with the return of his show the Bill Moyers Journal. (1) This initial Friday night program provides a helpful framework to use in looking at the nature of citizen journalism and considering what are the essential factors needed for citizen journalism to develop in the U.S. Often citizen journalism has been referred to as a journalism of amateurs as opposed to professionals, as two prominent Columbia Journalism School professionals Samuel Freedman (2) and Nicholas Leeman (3) have argued, or as a journalism of those who lack training as journalists in contrast to those who are trained journalists, as a recent article in LinuxInsider proposes. (4) The origin and development of citizen journalism presents the basis for a very different model, however. The basis is for a collaboration of journalists as a Fourth Estate, and of citizens who are concerned with overseeing what government does so as to monitor the use and abuse of power. The concept of citizen journalism was first popularized by the Korean online newspaper OhmyNews. When OhmyNews was started in February 2000, it was with the goal of transforming the conservative domination of the media landscape in South Korea. Oh Yeon-ho, the founder and CEO of OhmyNews, had worked as a journalist for the progressive publication Mal for the previous decade. His experience taught him that even when he wrote a significant story, it received little attention. When one of the conservative newspapers in South Korea covered a comparable story, however, other conservative news media provided coverage, so the story received serious attention. In starting OhmyNews, Oh was determined to bring about a change in the media environment in South Korea so that 'the quality of news determined whether it won or lost,' not the power and prestige of the media organization that printed the article. (5) The creation of OhmyNews originally took the form of a media organization with a small staff of reporters and editors who focused on covering a carefully chosen but limited set of stories. With the concept every citizen is a reporter, however, readers were invited to submit articles, many of which were included as part of the OhmyNews publication. The writers whose articles appeared in OhmyNews were paid a small fee. Since then OhmyNews has grown substantially. The question is raised whether there is any similar development growing up in the U.S. In order to answer the question, it is important to determine the necessary characteristics for a media to be called citizen journalism. On the first regular episode of the Bill Moyers Journal, Moyers invited Jon Stewart and Josh Marshall as his guests. Stewart insists he isn't a journalist though Moyers differs. Stewart's program The Daily Show which appears on cable television, is considered by many of his devoted fans to be closer to what is news than the majority of programs which call themselves news or news media. Stewart, however, describes his show as close to an editorial cartoon. On his initial Friday evening show, Moyers played some clips from a recent Daily Show. One clip was an extract from the testimony presented to the U.S. congress by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The clip showed Gonzales claiming I can't recall in many different instances in response to nearly all the questions he was asked by the congress. Stewart comments that at first he didn't understand what the significance was of Gonzales' response. Eventually, however, he began to think he had figured out what it represented. Describing the motives of those in the Bush administration, he says: (6) They would rather us believe them to be wildly incompetent and inarticulate than to let us know anything about how they operate. And so, they do constitutionally-mandated things most of the time, but they don't -- they fulfill the letter of their obligation to checks and balances, but not the intent. Stewart is commenting on why Gonzales' testimony on April 19, 2007 to the U.S. congress did not explain anything about how the decision had been made in the situation that was the subject of the hearing. Eight U.S. attorneys appointed by the justice department which Gonzales heads were fired. These attorneys were from different regions of the U.S. and so at first the pattern of justice department activity was not obvious to congress which
nettime Report on Saturday's anti war demonstration in Washington-1/27/07
Anti-War Demonstration in Washington on January 27, 2007 Anti-War Sentiment in the U.S. Grows http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=3no=342554rel_no=1 It was 6:15 am on Saturday morning, January 27. We had gotten up at 4 am to get to the bus to go to Washington for the march against the Iraq War. I was surprised that several people I had spoke to didn't even realize there was a march happening. The anti war group United for Peace and Justice had called the march for January 27, just after the new Congressional session had gotten underway. Several people I spoke with who were going felt that if there was any way to have an impact on what was happening, it was important to do so. The person I sat near in the bus had lived under Hitler and felt that what was happening in the U.S. reminded her more and more of what Hitler had done. She particularly mentioned the ways the government would conceal the truth or lie to the public. The bus ride was several hours, but not as long as the ride for those who came from several other parts of the country. We didn't arrive at the place where the buses were set to park until after 11:00 am. The rally was starting at 11 am and we still had to take the subway into D.C. We got off the buses and headed to the subway station. There was a crowd of people from various parts of the country who were at the station, with their signs. It was good to see so many people, ranging in ages, from students to veterans of the anti war movement of the 1960s. One of the most unusual signs had a chicken on the back and a caricature of Bush on the front. Once on the subway train we waited a while as the train grew more and more crowded. Finally we were jammed in the car. I spoke with someone who had come from Long Island and he said he was convinced the war was being made for Iraq's oil and that it was crucial to oppose Exxon to oppose the war. He was urging people to boycott Exxon and to demonstrate against its executives. He wondered what was behind the Neocons determination to get the U.S. to invade Iraq. The subway train finally arrived at the D.C. station and we got out. We headed over to the Mall facing the Capitol. Jesse Jackson was still speaking, as one of the last of the speakers. Jackson was talking about leaders and how there was a need for new leaders. More important, he started to speak about the need for the United States to have a vision, a new vision. The vision he spoke about was one where right makes might not the opposite. There was a need for new roads and for education and for housing in the U.S. not for troops in Iraq. We went around to the area where the march was going to begin. There was a sea of signs. There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people, read one sign. Another sign spoke about the lies that had been spread by the government to justify the attack on Iraq. The march started off. Soon the people where I was standing began to join in. There were chants, Hey hey, ho ho, George Bush has got to go, or What does democracy look like? This is what democracy looks like. Talking to some of the people marching nearby, one pointed out that for each person here there were at least 50 who hadn't come who were opposed to the war. War is so last century read one sign being carried. War=terrorism with a bigger budget, read another. Someone nearby started to sing, This land is your land and others joined in. The weather was warm for the end of January and the sun shinning. Hey King George the Decider, Could you Please Spread Some of that Democracy Over Here read another sign. Purge the right to Surge, read another. Congress, stand up to Bush, another sign said. War is tragic, peace is magic, said another. It was fine to see so many home made signs. It was that people found their own personal way to say they were opposed to what their government is doing. When leadership is disgraceful, the people must lead, another sign proclaimed, Miriam was here, January 27, 2007. There were banners from different areas of the country, banners from veterans groups showing their opposition to the war. Banners from churches, several unions sent groups of people. Students from colleges and universities marched. Some protestors dressed up as Rumsfeld and Cheney and Bush and donned prison garb. A baby was carrying a sign that said Put Bush in his place, in the Hague. A large paper machier dragon spelled out the letters for Impeachment. One demonstrator told me that he didn't know anything about the 1960s as he was too young then. This was his first march and he was glad he had come. He had been thinking about how Bush had gotten elected in 2000 and that the Supreme Court had put him in office. He felt there was a constitutional crisis in the U.S. and that it would come to a head. Several of the people I spoke with were part of small anti war groups which had different activities. One group had
nettime rondagram [x2: UN, citizen journalism]
[digested @ nettime] Ronda Hauben [EMAIL PROTECTED] Changing of the Guard at the UN Citizen Journalism ferment in Berlin - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 15:40:18 -0500 (EST) From: Ronda Hauben [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Changing of the Guard at the UN An important change is happening at the UN: Ban Ki-moon Inaugurated http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_clas... While only a few brief references to specific events during Annan's tenure in office were mentioned during the speeches at the inauguration of the UN's new Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the ceremony led me to recall two important developments which were not included. One was the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) held in Geneva in December 2003 and in Tunis in November 2005. The WSIS event was unusual for the United Nations as it reflected the pressure of the people of the world to benefit from the technical and communication advance that the Internet makes possible. Heads of state from a number of nations were present. and the summit was asked for a commitment that people around the world not merely be treated as victims or as customers, but rather be empowered to speak for themselves and have their voices enter the global conversation. The second event which stands out was the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The U.S. and Great Britain had come to the U.N. asking for a resolution supporting their planned invasion. The U.N. did not support their attack on the sovereign nation of Iraq, but neither did it condemn the invasion. The power of the U.S. government in the Security Council was a force that limited the U.N.'s ability to condemn the aggression against Iraq. While none of the speeches about Kofi Annan's term in office spoke to these events, the General Assembly ceremony presents the occasion to think back over the past 10 years of developments at the U.N. and to project ahead to what the future may bring. -- rondaatpanix.com Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 15:44:33 -0500 (EST) From: Ronda Hauben [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Citizen Journalism ferment in Berlin I just returned from a trip to Berlin and it was interesting to see all the interest in Citizen Journalism there. I am working on a longer article about the trip, but there is a short beginning article in OhmyNews. Ronda Citizen Journalism Brought to Germany 'Reader's Edition': New web site modeled on OhmyNews http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=19no=334391rel_no=1 One early participant, Rolf Ehlers, describes the varied and interesting content contributed to Reader's Edition by its readers. He writes, Reader's Edition is opening a new world of citizen participation in all political and societal questions Reader's Edition is doing what I dreamed of with my web site a few years ago but which I could not then realize technically. Reader's Edition is more than a competitor to the known print media. It will bring new forms of news and views which you didn't even know existed. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - # 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 The hoopla over the US election and democracy
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=3no=327544rel_no=1 The Facade of U.S. Democracy and Election 2006 Only more democracy can save democracy As the elections of 2006 in the U.S. were heading toward the finish line, the mainstream press was aglow speculating about whether the Democrats or Republicans would win control of the House of Representatives or the Senate. The Wall Street weekly Barron's predicted a Republican victory in the House and Senate based on the fact that Republican candidates often had almost double the war chests for their campaigns than the funds raised by the Democratic candidates. We ... based our predictions, Barron's wrote, on which candidate had the largest campaign war chest... (Survivor!: The GOP Victory, by Jim McTague, Monday, Oct. 23, 2006.) Other newspapers predicted a Democratic landslide. Republicans prepare for the worst as disaster looms in midterm elections, wrote Andrew Buncombe in the Independent, a British newspaper. (Nov. 2, 2006) Predicting a Democratic Party victory in the House elections and possibly in the Senate, Buncombe quoted political analyst Charlie Cook's assessment that in the battle for the House, the only question remaining was the size of the Democratic victory. Other newspapers reported early problems with voting machines, especially newly installed electronic voting machines. Jason Leopold in an article in Truthout, an online news Web site summarized a report documenting machine failures, database delays and foul-ups, inconsistent procedures, new rules and new equipment which could lead to snafus or even possibly chaos on election day. The more significant issues, however, were hidden away, often requiring that one be able to read between the lines in the mainstream media articles, Why Do So Few People Vote in the U.S.?, whose author Calvin Woodward asks why only about 40 percent of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote, do. Otherwise it is necessary to find the rare alternative publication, like Counterpunch which could resist speculating on who would make it first to the finish line in Tuesday.s vote count, and instead consider the broader political issues. (See for example The GOP Should Lose, the Democrats Don.t Deserve to Win.) The bigger question, the question that rarely surfaces in any of the media, is the question raised in a program on E-government as a Tool for Participation and Inclusion at the United Nations on Nov. 3. The opening speaker in the program, Dr. Ann Macintosh explained the need to consider participatory models of democracy that make it possible to do more than just vote every few years. Though other speakers on the panel limited their presentations to the description of e-government forms for delivering government services to citizens, the Finnish representative in the audience asked whether citizens had any means of participating in the decisions regarding what government was providing to them. This question, whether citizens have any means of participating in the decisions of government officials, is critical when it comes to determining whether or not there are any democratic processes available for citizens. The two party structure in the U.S. is such that one must choose between two candidates who often have very similar positions on the issues and are more like each other than would be someone who has been put forward by the majority of the electorate. How can elections be considered a fundamental exercise in democracy as one TV announcer proclaimed, when the people voting have little or no way to influence the choice of who is on the ballot. The primaries, similarly, only allow for voters to choose among candidates chosen by for them by the parties. The current representative system in the U.S. is one in which the leadership of two political parties which are detached from the majority of the people in the country, make the decisions instead of providing a means for the public to be part of the decision making processes. This is not only true during the election process, but even more so once the election is over. Once the politicians are in office, their allegiance is more likely to be to the lobbyists who wine and dine them and who provide some of the war chests for their future campaigns What then would be a democratic governing model? There would need to be a means for the public to participate at each step of the governing procedures. The Internet makes it possible to have such participation. A democratic government would have to find a way to disenfranchise the lobbyists and replace their spheres of influence with a means for citizens to determine what kind of laws are needed, and to have a means to debate and discuss the pros and cons of proposed laws and then a means to participate in helping to put those laws into practice. Utilizing the Internet it would be possible to have discussion groups for citizens
nettime Who Killed the Electric Car? Important New Movie
There's an important new movie out about the fact that there were 800 electric cars dotting the roads in California in the 1990s and now they have all been crushed by their producer. And the technology that could have helped to take the auto industry into the 21st century was rejected by the auto companies. The film is Who Killed the Electric Car. Here's the url of a review I did for OhmyNews Ronda Powerful Interests Stifle Innovation Government, business conspire to kill electric car technology http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class =4no=303131rel_no=1 General Motors Corporation and its offspring parts operation Delphi are currently laying off more than 50,000 unionized workers in the U.S. The companies claim that their North American operations are not profitable, and GM claims that it has to do the layoffs since it is losing market share for its cars. Given the problems that GM claims it is having in its North American operations, the newly released film Who Killed the Electric Car? offers a helpful framework from which to view the automaker's current actions. The film tells a little-known but significant story about corporate America and the U.S. government's failure to support innovation. Few in the U.S. or elsewhere know that GM had produced and leased 800 electric cars, which dotted the roads of California in the second half of the 1990s. This was a new and functioning technology, the charged-at-home battery operated automobiles. The EV1 proved not only a viable technology but also a joy to the drivers. Yet, by 2006, all the cars, with the exception of a few hidden away in some museums, had been sent by GM to a crushing station in the Arizona desert. By this time, though, a set of activists who had leased the cars and had come to love them, were monitoring what GM was doing. The fact that GM chose to destroy the cars rather than welcome the support of and enthusiastic reception by their users, highlights the disdain with which GM treated a new technology that could have revolutionized its industry and the corporation. The film was released June 30, 2006, for viewers in New York and California, and will be shown throughout the U.S in the coming months. It raises some serious and important questions about the nature of corporate-government collusion in the U.S. when it comes to the ability of a society to transition to a new technology. This was similar to a problem that plagued the former Soviet Union. The story of what happened when a functioning electric car was introduced in the U.S. helps to show the forces at play that are hostile to a society's ability to embrace a new and needed technology. The story starts in California in 1990. Plagued by high levels of smog that were very damaging to the health of its residents, the California Air Resource Board (CARB) adopted a regulation called the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate. This government entity set a series of goals for automakers selling cars in the state. It required them to produce a percentage of cars with zero emissions. The regulation would require that automakers sell 2 percent ZEV's in 1998, 5 percent in 2001 and 10 percent in 2003. In January of 1990, GM introduced a car powered by a battery at the Los Angeles Auto Show. The car was later called the EV1 (Electric Vehicle). By December 1996, GM made cars available on lease for US$400-$500 a month. Later the lease rate was reduced to $250-$300 a month. By 2000, GM was leasing 800 of the EV1s it had produced. Those leasing them found them enjoyable to drive and that they needed much less maintenance than older model cars. The batteries could be charged in one's garage overnight. There was no need to purchase gasoline or to do maintenance like oil changes. Though GM did not yet mass-produce the cars nor provide favorable publicity to let people know that they were an option for drivers, there were a number of people who learned of the cars and were willing to go through the hurdles put up by GM to be able to lease a car. The reluctance of GM to advertise the cars and offer them to drivers, however, is part of a larger story. The California regulations were an incentive for GM and other automakers to invest in and develop new technology. The state of California subsidized each EV1 leased in California. The automakers, however, did not welcome such incentives. Instead, they formed a trade organization, the American Automotive Manufacturing Association (AAMA) and set out to try to stymie the regulations. In March 1995, the AAMA circulated a confidential proposal to develop a grassroots education campaign to repeal the CARB ZEV program. Andrew Card was then the president of the AAMA and would subsequently become chief of staff in the George W. Bush White House, when the U.S. Department of Justice would join the GM and DaimlerChrysler lawsuit to end the CARB ZEV requirements. In January 2002, GM, DaimlerChrysler and several auto dealerships
RE: cybernetics and the Internet, Was: nettime NNA...
On Thu, 8 Jun 2006, kenneth c. werbin wrote: I was not intending to suggest that the attendees of the Macy conferences were military mathematicians (although some like Wiener clearly were), rather that the Macy conferences saw social scientists, like Mead, consider questions of cybernetics and feedback in their fields, as well as in greater society. This is clearly attested to in the title of the inaugral Macy conference, Feedback Mechanisms and Circular Causal Systems in Biological and Social Systems, held on March 8-9, 1946*. The Macy conferences were but one means of spreading the gospel of cybernetics to academics at large. Indeed, I in no way intended to reduce the cybernetic community of the 40's and 50's to some militray plot for the purpose of control, rather I wanted to illuminate the applicability and resonance of this mathematical philosophy to open social order. But the Macy Conferences were actually about feedback systems, not about mathematical philosophy to open social order as far as the reading I have done. I have read a number of the discussions in the Macy Conference volumes. The point there was to encourage cross disciplinary discussion and to break through the communication boundaries of the various disciplines. The effort to look at feedback or self organizing systems across different disciplines meant that the research was different depending on the different disciplines Does this fit with your reading? No what you suggest doesn't fit in with my reading. Which books on the Macy conferences would you recommend? First I recommend you read some of the conferences themselves. There is a relatively new edition containing all five of them Cybernetics | Kybernetik The Macy-Conferences 1946.1953 Volume 1 Transactions/Protokolle Edited by Claus Pias Published by Diaphanes: Zurich, Berlin The 5 Macy Conference volumes are included in this edition and are in English though the publisher is German. Other suggestions: Invention by Wiener Invention: The Care and Feeding of Ideas (Hardcover) by Norbert Wiener, Steve Joshua Heims Book Review of Netizens by Boldur Barbat http://www.ici.ro/ici/revista/sic1998_4/art06.html cybernetics.ref (14%) Article on the Information Processing Techniques Office I am working on: The Information Processing Techniques Office and the Birth of the Internet A Study in Governance http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/misc/lick101.doc It is important to keep in mind that Norbert Wiener at a point in his life didn't do military related work. cheers Ronda * Summaries of all the Macy conference sessions can be found at the American Society for Cybernetics http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/foundations/history/MacySummary.htm best, ~kcw # 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
RE: cybernetics and the Internet, Was: nettime NNA...
On Wed, 7 Jun 2006, werboon wrote: we fear the -isms they may produce. This is life in open social order, in cybernetic ecumenical society. I agree that there is a legacy to the development of the Internet in the cybernetic developments like the Macy Foundation conferences, but the Macy discussions weren't military or a mathematical philosophy. Margaret Mead was part of the Macy group. She was an anthropologist, not a military mathematician. I wondered if you have read any of the Macy meeting books? Also, Licklider was only at one of the Macy meetings. He was a scientist studying the brain and the perception of sound. To reduce the cybernetic community in the 1940s and 1950s to some military plot for the purpose of control is not an accurate depiction of the material I have read. Where does your analysis of this come from? Thanks. 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 The EU and democratic role for citizen?
In light of: 1. Merkel and Chirac set timetable for EU constitution - 07.06.2006 - 09:39 The leaders of France and Germany have agreed a new timetable for trying to revive the EU constitution setting 2008 as the year when decisions on the document should be taken. http://euobserver.com/9/21782/?rk=1 This is perhaps an important consideration: 2. Citizen Model for the Study of the Internet New technology demands new paradigm, methodology About the problem of the border between citizens and their representatives discussed during the first Finnish Presidency of the EU in December 1999 and continuing as a problem in EU and on 1996 proposal that the Internet and the netizen provide a means to explore the problem: http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=296646rel_no=1 (If anyone is interested in this issue, I have come across some interesting research on it, and welcome being in contact with others interested in the problem.) ronda rondaATais.org # 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 May Day and its heritage
U.S. Protesters Mark May Day International holiday has roots in struggle for shorter hours and improved working conditions Ronda Hauben May Day -- an American Holiday May Day as the holiday celebrating the fight for shorter hours for workers began in the U.S. as part of the struggle for the eight-hour working day. In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor of the U.S. and Canada proposed that an eight-hour workday come into effect on May 1, 1886. When that day came without the proposal being implemented, over 400,000 U.S. workers went on strike. Two days later on May 3, the strikers at the McCormick Reaper Works in Chicago were attacked by police. The next day, on May 4 a rally was held in Haymarket Square in Chicago in protest. Suddenly a bomb exploded. Workers were rounded up and several anarchists were framed for the bomb. (1) Then in 1889, the Second International established May Day as the day to fight for shorter hours of work. In 1890, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) sent delegates to the Paris meeting of the International Labor Congress. The AFL delegates had proposed that May 1 be proclaimed an international labor holiday. The proposal was accepted. The Fight in Great Britain for the 10-Hour Day Actually the tradition of May 1 as the day honoring shorter hours of labor goes back even further.(2) It was in May 1848 that the working class in Great Britain won the 10-hour working day, after almost 50 years of struggle. On May 1, 1848, the first 10-hour bill became law in England. The factories had become places of great exploitation. Factory owners commonly hired children at low wages and put adult workers, especially men, out on the streets. The means to mechanize labor had created a hell for workers, rather than bringing a better life for the people of Great Britain. Faced with this factory hell, workers began to organize to improve their conditions. Robert Owen, a factory owner in New Lanark, Scotland, also recognized the problem with long hours and dangerous working conditions and supported the workers' efforts. By the early 1830s there was pressure on the British to conduct an inquiry into the conditions of work in the factories. Three years later, in 1833, a report was published documenting the abuses that the brave factory inspectors had discovered during their inquiry. A bill to limit the hours of labor to 10 hours a day was introduced into the British Parliament. Some factory owners set out to vigorously campaign against the bill, claiming that if it were passed, it would force them to shut their factories. The struggle of workers and factory owners like Robert Owen, who supported restrictions on the hours of labor and the ages of laborers in the factories, gained momentum. Their efforts were opposed by a segment of the factory owners who insisted that there should be no restriction on their activities. The 10 hours law finally passed on May 1, 1848, but opposition to it continued. It wasn't until May 1850 that the principle of government intervention into the conditions of workers in factories was established with the passage of a 10-1/2 hour law. This law, at last, included some enforcement provisions. May Day 2006 in the U.S. To honor May Day 2006, a number of demonstrations were planned in the U.S. by different groups. On the weekend before May 1, which in 2006 falls on a Monday, there were demonstrations against the War in Iraq in various cities and towns in the U.S. A major demonstration was held in New York City. There were reports that 350,000 people were part of the protest. Among the signs carried by the demonstrators were: Bush Lies, People Die Drop Bush, Not Bombs Halliburton thanks you for your taxes (carried by Billionaires for Bush) Justice for Gulf Coast Victims Make Levees, Not War Let Liars Lead No More Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam Shut Down Guantanamo The World Can't Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime War kills, Try Peace One Nation Under Surveillance Where is your Truth to Power CBS, NBC (and long list of media outlets) We the People say No to the Bush Agenda. On Monday, May 1, demonstrations have been called in many cities around the U.S. to protest the efforts by the U.S. Congress to pass a bill that would criminalize aid to undocumented workers. In place of such a bill, there is the demand that undocumented workers have the right to become U.S. citizens and that there be full protection for them to have labor rights so that employers will no longer be able to exploit their undocumented status. This year in the U.S., May 1 is being celebrated. The tradition of May Day
nettime Two recent articles on the Libby indictment
[Subject line edited @ nettime] Table of Contents: 'All the President's Men Revisited' Libby Indictment and the Press? Ronda Hauben [EMAIL PROTECTED] 'All the President's Men Revisited'? Ronda Hauben [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 11:02:50 -0400 (EDT) From: Ronda Hauben [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: 'All the President's Men Revisited' Libby Indictment and the Press? The Prosecutor's response to Libby's request for more discovery which was posted last week is worth reading. I've done an article about it. 'All the President's Men' Revisited? The Libby indictment for perjury and obstruction http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=3no=284897rel_no=1 It would be good to see more press investigative reporting on this story. Here's an excerpt from the article. Ronda On Saturday evening, April 8, in the New York area, the PBS TV featured a movie about the Watergate cover-up that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon in the early 1970s. The film All the President's Men showed the investigation by two Washington Post reporters into a burglary in the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C.(1) The investigation went on for a sustained period of time and ultimately uncovered that the burglars were part of a secret organization established from the White House to deal with those the Nixon White House perceived as political enemies. The film was particularly relevant in view of the continuing investigation by Special Council, Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into the source of the leak of classified information about the undercover status of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Plame's undercover identity at the time was leaked to reporters to try to discredit her husband Joseph Wilson's effort to demonstrate the inaccuracy of the pretext that the Bush administration was using to justify the invasion of Iraq. The Watergate cover-up was exposed with the help of investigative reporters. Nixon resigned his office rather than face impeachment. The current investigation into a political cover-up by the Bush White House, however, is lacking a similar investigation by the press. -- Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 20:18:27 -0400 (EDT) From: Ronda Hauben [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: 'All the President's Men Revisited'? Here's an article I just wrote for OhmyNews about Patrick Fitzgerald's recent document about Libby and his request to the court. I felt it was worth treating seriously and reading carefully. Ronda - -- 'All the President's Men' Revisited? The Libby indictment for perjury and obstruction Ronda Hauben, OhmyNews, April 10, 2007 http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400no=284897rel_no=1 On Saturday evening, April 8, in the New York area, the PBS TV featured a movie about the Watergate cover-up that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon in the early 1970s. The film All the President's Men showed the investigation by two Washington Post reporters into a burglary in the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C.(1) The investigation went on for a sustained period of time and ultimately uncovered that the burglars were part of a secret organization established from the White House to deal with those the Nixon White House perceived as political enemies. The film was particularly relevant in view of the continuing investigation by Special Council, Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into the source of the leak of classified information about the undercover status of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Plame's undercover identity at the time was leaked to reporters to try to discredit her husband Joseph Wilson's effort to demonstrate the inaccuracy of the pretext that the Bush administration was using to justify the invasion of Iraq. The Watergate cover-up was exposed with the help of investigative reporters. Nixon resigned his office rather than face impeachment. The current investigation into a political cover-up by the Bush White House, however, is lacking a similar investigation by the press. Instead reporters like Robert Novack, helped the administration to expose Plame's undercover identity. Other reporters like Judith Miller of the New York Times, delayed the Prosecutor's investigation by refusing to reveal. Lewis Scooter Libby's conversations with her for almost three months in the name of protecting her sources. Once Miller did testify, it became clear that she as a reporter was being involved in corrupt activity by White House officials. Fitzgerald has charged Libby with perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements to federal investigators, which are criminal felonies under the law in the U.S. While Libby's trial
nettime Response to article on citizen journalism by Samuel Freedman
Citizen Journalists and the New 'News' A response to Samuel Freedman's column on CBS TV's 'Public Eye' http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=8no=283357rel_no=1 Each week we invite someone from outside... to weigh in with their thoughts about CBS News and the media at large, explains the introduction on the CBS TV Web site feature Public Eye. The March 29 article featured on Public Eye was on the subject of citizen journalism. It was written by Samuel Freedman, a professor at the Columbia University School of Journalism and a New York Times columnist. (1) In his article, Freedman presents not only a superficial view of citizen journalism, but also a rosy colored view of the mainstream professional press in the U.S. The thrust of Freedman's argument is that citizen journalism is part of a larger attempt to degrade, even to disenfranchise journalism as practiced by trained professionals. Citizen journalism, according to Freedman, is in essence the presentation of raw material generated by amateurs, unlike the journalism of the trained, skilled journalist (who) should know how to weigh, analyze, describe and explain. Considering that Freedman is a professional journalist and also a professor who is responsible for the training of professional journalists, one might expect that he would do some investigation about the origins and thrust of the phenomena of citizen journalism before writing an article which not only mischaracterizes the phenomena, but also the practice of most of the professional journalists in the U.S. # 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 About French demonstrations against the new labor law?
I heard for the first time last night that there have been big demonstrations in France against the passage of the new labor law which will make it possible for people under 26 years of age to be fired without reason. This would seem to give encouragement to employers to terminate older workers as well as it will encourage harsh treatment toward younger workers. The government ending the occupation of the Sorbonne seems to be a provocation of sorts to the growing movementing against the new labor law. It would be good to know more about what is happening if others on nettime have been following these events. cheers 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 publication of Jyllands-Posten cartoons is not freedom of thepress
Whatever the reason for the republication and defense of the cartoons, in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, newspapers which republish them in the name of freedom of speech or freedom of the press are seriously misrepresenting what freedom of speech or freedom of the press mean. The publication and republication of the cartoons are an example of sensational journalistic practices, an effort to use the press to provoke people, which is traditionally something that the press has been used for. Freedom of the press is not the freedom to stir up hatred against a people because of their religion or nationality or sex, etc. It is not satire to misrepresent religious symbols of a people as a terrorist with a bomb. These cartoons were commissioned and printed by what traditionally had been a right wing Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten. There is obviously some fight going on in Denmark that the commissioning of these cartoons was connected to. According to a wikipedia entry on this, the newspaper has played a right wing role in Danish politics. The entry states: The paper is historically known for taking a clear right-wing line. Thus, the popular Danish nick-name Morgenfascisten Jyllandsposten (the Morning-fascist Jyllandsposten). (1) During the 1920s and 1930s the newspaper supported the rise of fascism, of Hitler and Mussolini, according to the Wikipedia entry. Also the newspaper welcomed the fascism into Denmark in the 1930s. While freedom of speech and the press is to be protected, it is important to understand the difference between such important rights and the effort to provoke people against each other. In the US the right to freedom of speech and the press is contained in the Bill of Rights. This is because there is a need to protect journalists to be able to critique corrupt government practices. If newspapers are supporting the provocation of the people of one religion against the people of another religion, this may very well have its roots in government activity. It would be an appropriate role for a newspaper to try to unmask which government officials are supporting such activities. It would be a proper journalistic role to support a debate about views, that explores the issues behind the differences in the views. But all this is different from a newspaper commissioning cartoons that are intended to be offensive about the religion of a set of people. If other newspapers want to help to sort out the issues in this problem, they can do so. But to reprint the offending graphics in the name of protecting the so called right to freedom of the press or freedom of speech does not help to identify the issues involved. Instead it only seeks to provoke a further inflaming of an already harmful situation. Newspapers in various countries have been used to try to inflame people against other people, or to invite people to attack others. To encourage ridicule of the religious beliefs of Muslim people is to act in a way so as to encourage attacks against them. The problem then is only deepened. While debate over various ideas is important, it is important to determine how to encourage such debate rather than to try to inflame those on opposing sides. In the 1940's there was a rank and file newspaper among the auto workers in Flint, Michigan. Someone submitted an article to the newspaper praising the Klu Klux Klan. The editor-in-chief, George Carroll, was a catholic trade unionist. He published the article but also published his refutation of the article. He didn't solicit the article. He didn't solicit inflamatory material either pro or contra the Klu Klux Klan. Instead he tried to encourage an environment in the newspaper where constructive debate and discussion would occur. This is the challenge for journalism. It is ever more important that there be serious discussion and clarification of what freedom of speech and the press mean in a time when the terms are being so abused. Distinguishing the practices of yellow journalism from the practices of responsible journalism is a serious challenge for society. Publishing news that is sensationalism and intended to enflame people against each other is a form of yellow journalism not an appropriate practice of those who support freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Notes (1) See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten (2) See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism -- 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 What Will Be the Model for a More Participatory News?
Here's an article I did about some of the efforts to create a more participatory form of news. http://english.ohmynews.com/ArticleView/article_view.asp?menu=A11100no=271588rel_no=1back_url= With the increasing failure of especially the US mainstream media to provide the news needed to deal with the corruption our society is plagued with, it would be good to see serious discussion of what is needed and efforts to work together to create what is needed. The following article I wrote that is in OhmyNews is a contribution to beginning this process. Ronda What Will Be the Model for a More Participatory News? By Ronda Hauben ronda(at)panix.com Recognizing that there is deep dissatisfaction with the mainstream news media, especially in the US, a number of news reading companies have opened web sites. Some are dot.com startups. A few are reported to have substantial venture capitalist funding. (1) The goal of these startups is to provide a new way for users to read the news. One such startup is Newsvine, Inc. (2) Newsvine is currently in a beta version which is being tested by invited users. One has to sign up at its web site in order to get an invitation to join or get an invitation from someone who already has access. It will open to the general public once the testing phase is finished. Newsvine offers a number of features. The site carries Associated Press (AP) articles. It also includes ESPN.com articles for sports news that it carries on its Top News page and Sports page. Users can comment on the articles. Other functions are available. One of these is a write a post function which enables users to write an article (called a column) to be posted on Newsvine. It is possible to link an article from some other web site, and write a short introduction (called seeding). There is also a chat function. A user who spends time and effort writing an article, however, finds that the article has to compete for space and placement on Newsvine with the many articles from AP. Hence many of the the user generated articles or seeds are likely to be relegated to a difficult-to-find area on the web site. There are a few exceptions which make it possible for the article to be placed in one of the few prominent spots available for user generated articles. One way is to be selected as a Featured Writer by one of the Newsvine staff. A second, is if the article has received a lot of comments from other readers, or cliques on an icon put on the article for that purpose, the article may be posted more prominently on the Newsvine site. In describing his goal for Newsvine, CEO Mike Davidson explains that he wants to provide an inviting environment for users to read news and to be able to form a community. In response to a question about what problem Newsvine is trying to solve, Davidson responded that, the current crop of major news sites simply lacks the feature set and social interaction capabilities that users have been requesting for the last few years. He believes that the startup news company which succeeds in drawing users to form a community will be the winner in the competition among the growing number of startup companies. Newsvine currently has a five person staff. It has drawn a venture capital investment from Second Avenue Partners, which like Newsvine, is physically located in Seattle, Washington. The venture capital firm includes directors who have worked at Microsoft, ESPN, and one who was an early investor in Amazon.com. (3) One of the areas on Newsvine which draws the most comments is the area where users discuss Newsvine itself. Some of the posts point out problems that have been identified, or questions that have been raised by a user's experience on Newsvine. Many of the posts express appreciation by users to the staff for creating a functional site. Also, some of the posts ask what the aim is of Newsvine. Newsvine is but one effort to apply the concept of citizen journalist, or citizen reporter which has been pioneered by the Korean online newspaper OhmyNews. An important difference between Newsvine and OhmyNews is that Newsvine relies on AP or ESPN for 80% of its content. OhmyNews created six years ago in February 2000, was begun as a criticism of the mainstream conservative media which dominated politics in South Korea. It is an online newspaper which draws its content from contributions by citizen reporters or from the paid staff it employs. OhmyNews began and continues as a part of the movement for greater democracy in South Korea. A progressive online media which welcomes participation and articles from netizens is critical for such a movement. OhmyNews pays its citizen reporters a small set fee for their articles, depending on where they are placed on the OhmyNews web site. The decision of where articles are placed is made by the editors. OhmyNews is a commercial entity. It has ads on its web site
nettime NYC Transit Strike Article in Telepolis
It would be good to see support for the transit workers who are on strike. If there is any way to let others know about the strike that would be appreciated. Ronda - New York City Transit Workers Strike Against Cutback Contract Offer Lower Pension Benefits For New Hires Causes Strike by Ronda Hauben http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/21/21627/1.html At 3:05 am on Tuesday, December 20, 2005, Roger Toussaint, the President of the New York Transit Workers Union (TWU) announced that the transit workers who operate the New York City buses and subways, were on strike. This is the first transit strike in New York City in the past 25 years. The last strike lasted 11 days and was in 1980. Toussaint said that the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), which is in charge of the transit system, has a $1 billion surplus.(1) Yet the contract offer the MTA made provides little of a wage increase and is a contractual cutback in health and pension benefits, as new hires would be required to pay more for their benefits. An important issue that has caused the strike is that the MTA contract offer would pay new hires lower pension benefits. This is a strategy to divide the union and weaken it by creating a two tier system, with one set of workers having better benefits than another set. Also such a system provides a material incentive for management to harass older workers and to try to get rid of them, so as to replace them with lower paid employees. A serious grievance of transit workers is that they are already subjected to unjust disciplinary actions by management. This is a fight over whether hard work will be rewarded with a decent retirement -- over the erosion or eventual elimination of health benefit coverage for working people, said Toussaint. The President of the Transport Workers Union of American, the parent union of the TWU, is reported to have said he wasn't in support of the strike and that the union should return to the bargaining table instead of striking. Without a strike, though, workers felt there was not much of a reason for the MTA to change the hardball tactics they were using against the workers. Toussaint explained: The MTA knew that reducing health and pension standards at the authority would be unacceptable to our union. They knew there was no good economic reason for their hard line on this issue - not with a billion dollar surplus. They went ahead anyway. (2) Toussaint also noted that the Mayor and the Governor have encouraged the hardline tactics of the MTA rather than supporting a serious effort to settle the contract dispute. The Union initially asked for an 8% wage increase each year, but reduced that to 6%. But they were committed to maintaining the same pension benefits for new hires as for older workers. A small wage increase of 3%, 4% and 3-1/2% in the 3 years of the contract was offered but as the new hires would have to pay more for their pensions, this would effectively give them an even lower wage than other union workers. A rally was held on Monday in support of the transit workers. Some of the issues raised by transit workers as problems they have been faced with include the closing of toll booths and the reassignment of workers to cleaning and other chores, the large number of disciplinary actions against workers, and the proposal to eliminate the conductor on trains who is there to monitor what is happening with the train and the passengers. (3) The sentiment among union members in the city is that they are fed up with management insisting on 'givebacks' and continually cutting workers' wages and benefits. Other unions said they would do what they could to support the transit workers. There is a law called the Taylor Law which prohibits public employees in New York from striking. The MTA has gotten a preliminary injunction from the New York State Supreme Court that will allow it to impose large fines on the union, and fine each worker two days pay for each day they strike. Also Mayor Bloomberg has filed a lawsuit asking that the workers be fined $25,000 each day they strike. The transit workers feel that if they don't stand up for better working conditions when there is a surplus in the budget, that they will only be agreeing to ever worsening working conditions. The transit workers are in a stronger position than other workers in the city in terms of their ability to fight for better conditions. If they win the strike, that is a support for other workers in their fight for higher wages and better working conditions. If the transit workers agree to accept cutbacks in their benefits and even poorer working conditions, that encourages other employers to lower wages and benefits. Toussaint said that the transit workers did not want to strike. They had let the deadline for the strike on Thursday pass, and continued to try to negotiate. The response of the MTA, however, was to continue to demand
nettime Report from Tunis - pt I )
Following is the url of a beginning report I wrote about the Tunis Summit. WSIS Proves a Summit of Unsolved Solutions http://english.ohmynews.com/ArticleView/article_view.asp?menu=A11100no=260786r el_no=1back_url= One example of a directory system in languages other than English and alphabets other than the Latin alphabet has been created by the South Korean company Netpia as an alternative domain name system. The Native Language Internet Address Service (NLIAS) is already functioning in South Korea to give users a way to access the web in Korean without knowing the URL. Also for background on the ICANN conflict, see The Amateur Computerist Vol. 13, No. 2 http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn13-2.pdf -- Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook # 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
Re: nettime FW: [IP] Craigslist Planning To Shake Up Journalism
OhmyNews, especially the English version, doesn't work this way. The editor puts stories where he feels they belong. They do record page views and have a list of the top 10 stories with regard to page views from the previous week. On Fri, 25 Nov 2005, Tapas Ray wrote: Others have already tried this, quite successfully. Kuro5in and Slashdot have been doing this sort of thing for some time. Kuro5in has a more reader-centred, one may perhaps say democratic approach, and has a more general-interest coverage than Slashdot's news for geeks focus. OhmyNews, which takes stories from citizen reporters, is a force to reckon with in South Korea and is said to have helped decide the outcome of a presidential election. Tapas It would seem more important to encourage comments and discussion on the articles, rather than votes for what page something goes on. It doesn't seem that Craig is asking the online community what is needed for an online newspaper, but somehow has his model. It would be better to see some discussion of what is needed. The value of what has happened in South Korea, where there is lots of online discussion, is that people would discuss (not vote). Discussion is dynamic. It is interesting that Craig's list has benefitted from ads but not provided any accompanying newspaper. The effort to create a good online newspaper is something really needed in the US and also the people should be paid something, not just have to volunteer their work. OhmyNews is an actual newspaper, has a staff which it employs and pays a salary, and also welcomes submissions from citizen reporters. It pays citizen reporters a very minimal amount depending on the nature of the story - in US either $20, $10 or $2. The url for my article describing OhmyNews is: Ronda http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400no=246787rel_no=1 Newmark said his news project will involve Web technology to let readers decide which news stories are the most important. At least one Web site is already working this field. Digg.com invites readers to submit stories to be posted on its Web site. Once a story receives enough (votes) from (the site's visitors) it will be promoted to the front page, the site explains. # 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 About Robert Kahn's talk at WSIS in Tunis)
Following is a response I sent to the governance mailing list about the recent WSIS conference in Tunis. I thought those on the nettime mailing list would find it of interest: On 11/26/05, Laina Raveendran Greene [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Just curious what people think about Robert Kahn's presentation at WSIS I was disappointed in his presentation as I had heard a presentation he made in 1998 at a ACM policy meeting (several sig groups participated in sponsoring it). I probably still have a tape of his speech somewhere from that meeting. At the time the wind was blowing full steam to privatize, while in his speech at the ACM policy meeting he explained the need to determine what should be the government role in the administration of the Internet. He gave the example of how there is a government role in the administration of banking and how the government role had been figured out in the case of banks, but not in the case of the Internet. Later I spoke to him and he said that the international community wanted a role in the administration of the Internet and it was a serious question to determine what that should be. In his talk at WSIS (Tunis) on the contrary, he said something about control being with the private sector. While the Internet began as a government controlled research effort, it has now become a critical part of the global information infrastructure. The locus of control has shifted from government to the private sector through many deliberate efforts over the past two decades. I am convinced this is an appropriate outcome. http://www.itu.int/wsis/tunis/statements/docs/ps-cnri/1.html I thought on the program his talk was one of the talks by civil society sponsored by the ITU. I was a disappointed that he didn't raise the need he had raised in 1998 to figure out what the proper government role should be. Kahn has made important contributions as a researcher to the creation and development of the Internet, and raising the research question of what the appropriate role is, especially when this is such a contentious issue, is a helpful perspective which he offered in 1998. Also, it isn't there is one goverrnment with quite a bit of control over the Internet, the US government. It isn't as Kahn stated that the 'locus of control' has shifted to the private sector. Nor is it clear it should. The private sector doesn't include the users, or the netizens. Essentially there is a whole sector disenfranchised if the so called 'private sector' is in control, as he stated. When I was at a meeting at the Berkman Center at Harvard when ICANN was just formed or being formed, there was discussion about the Internet and how critical are is the infrastructure (which includes the IP numbers, protocols and dns) I mentioned that these were very very valuable. During the break Elaine Kamarck, who had been on the staff for Al Gore, told me to keep talking at the meeting take the person off the board. She said she didn't know about the Internet but she did know government. That the economic life of millions of people was dependent on the Internet. In such a situation you can't have a corporate board of directors in charge as if there is abuse, all one can do is to That in government there are checks to prevent various kinds of abuse which don't exist in a corporate board structure. (Granted these checks don't work in government at times. But the basis for abuse in a corporate setting is even greater. Witness Enron and WorldCom perhaps as small examples.) She said that there had been a long of creating government institutions to have such responsibility, while that isn't true for a corporate board of directors. Kahn's talk skirted this critical issue which is in contention. He has developed the handle system for the publishing industry originally. Whether that origin which was to protect the publishing industry purposes affects how the handle system functions I don't know. I wondered how those of us who function in a noncommerrcial setting would be affected by the use of the handle system. Also it seemed that the design for the handle system was to put control in the commercial sector. I know there are other efforts like that of the folks in Korea who have created netpia to develop systems to provide for non latin alphabets that might provide alternatives to the DNS/ Also during his final press conference at the Summit, the Secretary-General of the ITU, Utsami spoke of China having some system for their dns and that there would be more regional systems in the future. Here the discussion of alternative systems was being raised as a way to regionalise control of the Internet's infrastructure, rather than having control reside in the hands of one country. Ronda governance mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://ssl.cpsr.org/mailman/listinfo/governance -- -- Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook
nettime about indictment of Libby and need for Congressional Investigation)
An article I wrote that I thought would be of interest to nettimers - r 'Scooter' Libby, White House Drama Unfolds [Analysis] Will the leak probe extend into a Congressional investigation? http://www.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=A11100no=256802rel_no=1 The unfolding saga of the latest scandal to hit the White House in the U.S. continues. With the formal indictment of I. Lewis Libby, known as Scooter Libby, on Oct. 28 by the Special Council Patrick Fitzgerald, the investigation into the probe of the CIA leak is taking on a new dimension. The essence of the prosecutor's case in indicting Libby is that the obstruction of the investigation and the lies told to those doing the investigation hampered the chance to get a clear picture of the crimes committed and the guilty parties. That is why obstruction of justice and lying to the investigators are serious offenses. (1) There are other aspects of the indictment, which is publicly postedhttp://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/documents/libby_indictment_28102005.pdf(PDF) on the Internet, which provide a window into the activities at the White House during the period when the faulty intelligence used to justify the war against Iraq was being publicly questioned. *Related Articles* Heat Is On for CIA Leak Probe Prosecutor http://articleview/article_view.asp?menu=A11100no=253530rel_no=1back_url= The Internet and White House Leak Inquiryhttp://articleview/article_view.asp?menu=A11100no=255517rel_no=1back_url= The indictment charges that on May 29, 2003, Libby asked an under Secretary of State for Information about the then unnamed Ambassador (Joseph Wilson) and his trip to Niger. What is interesting about this detail is that it wasn't that Libby was trying to determine whether the intelligence information about Iraq trying to buy yellowcake from Niger was true or false. Instead he was seeking information about the person who was challenging the intelligence. The indictment then describes how documents were faxed to Libby which made it possible for him to identify the person who took the trip to Niger as Joseph Wilson. By June 11 or 12, the indictment explains, Libby spoke with an unnamed CIA officer about the circumstances leading to Wilson's trip to Niger, and from that conversation Libby was able to learn that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and could have had some connection with Wilson's being sent to Niger. Again, the portrait of Libby's activities being described here is a portrait that presents him as interested in gathering information about Wilson, rather than his gathering information about the reliability of the intelligence used to justify the war. The picture presented in the indictment is one which shows there was a considerable amount of activity among the White House staff who were trying to determine who Wilson was and to gather information about him. Wilson is essentially being treated as a target, rather than the information he is providing being treated in a serious way. There is currently speculation in the media about the identity of the unnamed members of the White House and State Department staff that are referred to in the indictment. (2) While this speculation is helpful in unraveling the actual activities and relationships that led to the crime, it is secondary to coming to understand the nature of the White House activity that the indictment exposes. Intelligence information for Libby, as demonstrated in the indictment, is not to be held to standards of accuracy. Instead, it becomes a political weapon by which to campaign for a desired policy and to use to attack others who may disagree. Another observation from the details enumerated in the indictment is that a large number of people on the White House and State Department staff were brought into the activity of setting Wilson up as a target to be attacked. White House activity, then, is not to ascertain that the accuracy of intelligence being used for matters as serious as taking the U.S. and other countries into a war in Iraq. Instead the time and efforts of numerous members on the White House and State Department staff were expended on creating a web to encircle someone who asked for the serious consideration of the accuracy of intelligence. The indictment documents how members of the U.S. press were also brought into this web of deceit. Hence, not only are a number of members of the U.S. government involved in these illegitimate activities, but also several journalists are similarly pulled into the fold. The apparent intention is that they will help to change the focus of the critique that Wilson is providing of intelligence used by the White House, into setting Wilson, himself, and soon his wife, up as the focus of public attention. A serious question not treated in the indictment is what President Bush knew about these activities by a number of people on the White House staff. While the indictment states that Vice President
Re: nettime Who will own and control the Internet's infrastructure?
On Sun, 9 Oct 2005, Alexander Galloway wrote: I want to agree with Alexander that we want news articles that alert people to actual technical problems and that is what I set out to do with the article about what is happening at the international level with regard to who will control the Internet's names (domain names), numbers and protocols. The struggle over who will control the Internet's infrastructure escalated last week at a meeting in Geneva. Following is an article describing what is happening. It would be good to see discussion about this as it is a significant development. [...] http://www.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp? menu=3DA11100no=3D25= 1118rel_no=3D1 How can one country control the Internet? Alexander and I also agree that there is a serious problem with ICANN. Alexander, however, seems to believe that what ICANN does is limited to domain names. While the visible problems of ICANN's administration have to do with domain names, ICANN was also formed to have control over IP numbers and protocols. As far as I know, these continue to function under ICANN's administration and under the possibility of ICANN exerting its control over these bodies. It probably would be good to know more about what happens with these aspects of ICANN's responsibility. However, as far as I know, these entities still exist under ICANN, and as far as ICANN is problemmatic, there is the basis for these entities to also have a problem as long as they are under ICANN. (...) The internet is a complex, global, distributed network. The structures of command and control embedded in it are infinitely more sophisticated and far-reaching than one non-profit organization in California. I am not clear what you mean by command and control embedded. The Internet was created as a research project begun in 1973 and involved researchers from different countries in its earliest development. Perhaps it would help if you look at a paper I am working on about the international origins of the Internet http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/birth_tcp.txt As an aside that perhaps may interest you, in this paper I also document that before there was any single domain name system, there were different domain name systems used by US researchers and British researchers. Peter Kirstein of the British research team that worked to create the tcp/ip protocol development along with US and Norwegian researchers writes that during the early development of the tcp/ip protocol there was: a way to have 'a new form of interconnection' which allowed all the British network developments to occur independently of the U.S. ones, but traffic still to flow easily between the networks. He explains that, This was not an interconnection at the network level, but at the application protocol level (Telnet, FTP initially). This form of interconnection was new at the time, (and-ed) allowed the different networks to develop quite independently. In fact it was to exercise this new concept, that all the traffic between the U.K. and ARPANET was justified in the '70s and early '80s. Later in the '80s, this concept even allowed the U.S. to develop Mockapetris' Domain Name System, while the U.K. developed the 'Network Registration Service'. While these developments were quite different, Kirstein notes that, the relay function allowed them to look to users as a single network Clearly application level relays are not adequate in performance or robustness, however, they played an important role prior to the world agreeing that IP was the way to go. (See the article by V.G. Cerf and P.T. Kirstein, Issues in Packet Network Interconnection, Proc IEEE 66, 11, pp 1386-1408, November 1978. This is a special issue devoted to packet internetworking issues.) I post the above in part to agree that the IP numbers are a critical part of the Internet's infrastructure, as are the protocols and who these are administered is critical. That what is involved with regard to ICANN also relates to these, not only to domain names. In the spirit of ongoing discussion... Yes - it is important there be discussion. And it is important that the actual issues be brought to light, not that one only thinks that the ICANN structure has only to do with domain names, thought that is what is visible. 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 Who will own and control the Internet's infrastructure?
The struggle over who will control the Internet's infrastructure escalated last week at a meeting in Geneva. Following is an article describing what is happening. It would be good to see discussion about this as it is a significant development. Ronda Who Will Control Internet Infrastructure? At a recent U.N. preparatory meeting for the World Summit on Information Society, the dispute widens http://www.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=3DA11100no=3D25= 1118rel_no=3D1 As the third preparatory meeting (Prepcom III) for the U.N.'s upcoming summit about the Internet and its infrastructure came to an end, a dispute erupted over whether the management of the Internet's names, numbers and protocols should be controlled by one nation or by a multinational structure. Brazil, China, India and several other countries insist on a change from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the entity created by the U.S. government. The U.S. government insists on continued control of ICANN, which operates under the charity laws of California. Many governments believe that this is not an appropriate entity to protect those who depend on the Internet for their economic, political and social needs around the world. The stage is set for a difficult round of negotiations to determine if an agreement can be reached to resolve this dispute in time for the 2nd World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) to be held by the U.N. in Tunis, Nov. 16 to Nov. 18. A representative to the U.N.'s planning meeting for the Tunis Summit, Motlhatlhedi Motlhatlhedi, who is Botswana's deputy permanent secretary in the Ministry of Communications, Science and Technology, described how several developing countries support a multinational body to be in charge of the administration of the Internet's infrastructure, rather than only the U.S. government. The general feeling was for a change, as no single country should have control over the Internet, he said.[1] Clarifying the nature of the dispute, the Brazilian Ambassador Antonio Porto explained how the Internet has become a critical part of the political and social life of his country: Nowadays our voting system in Brazil is based on ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies), our tax collection system is based on ICTs, our public health system is based on ICTs. For us, the Internet is much more than entertainment, it is vital for our constituencies, for our parliament in Brazil, for our society in Brazil. Given the nature of this critical resource for Brazil and other countries, Porto asks, How can one country control the Internet?[2] The U.S. representative to the talks, Ambassador David Gross, who is with the U.S. State Department, maintained that the current management organization - ICANN -- should not be changed. He stated that the U.N. ought not to be running the Internet. Gross' position is that there can be some flexibility in what ICANN is doing, particularly with regard to the country code domain names like KR for Korea, or US for the United States, but that the current situation is desirable. Pakistan's ambassador and chairman of the U.N. committee, Masood Khan, trying to develop an agreement on these issues, welcomed the U.S. stand. The U.S. has taken a very clear position and has enunciated it and reiterated it both inside and outside the conference, he explained. And that has helped the process because now everybody understands what the U.S. position is.[3] Into this fray stepped the European Union. On Sept. 28, the EU introduced a proposal for a change in who oversees and who is in charge of the Internet's infrastructure. The EU position called for the creation of an international body, but outside of the U.N., to oversee ICANN. The EU also proposed the creation of a multinational entity to oversee and discuss issues related to Internet policy. Under the proposal a cooperative entity would be formed from representatives of governments, the private sector (i.e. corporations), and civil society organizations (i.e. NGOs). Their proposal calls for the initiation of two new processes, at the international level. The 3rd WSIS preparatory meeting for the Tunis Summit made a breakthrough in clarifying the nature of the problem of having one government exercise unilateral control over the administration of the infrastructure of the international Internet. As the UK/EU representative, David Hendon explained, ICANN is under a contract from one government, and the government advises it what to do. It's kind of strange for governments to be advising a public sector body and for that body to be doing things for the whole world under the instruction of one government. [4] While some progress has been made in understanding the nature of the problem, there is as yet no solution. The history of the development of the Internet contains valuable lessons toward understanding how to create an appropriate entity to
nettime Yahoo's role in 10 year prison sentence for Chinese Journalist
The role of Yahoo in convicting a Chinese journalist to a 10 year prison sentence is being debated in the press as it had been debated online in recent weeks. I thought this would be of interest to those on nettime: Some articles relating to it include Chinese journalist Shi Tao sentenced to 10 year in prison for email that Yahoo helped to track http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=248907rel_no=1 Yahoo's mess of pottage http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/20/news/edbowring.php A Cooler Look at Yahoo in China The U.S. portal is getting pilloried for its role in the imprisonment of a Chinese journalist. The affair, however, isn't so simple http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/sep2005/nf20050921_9883_db065.htm 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 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 TELEPOLIS: Questions about the new media from recent OhmyNews forum
Here are some thoughts about the recent OhmyNews forum that was held in Seoul Korea exploring the potential of a netizen news media and participatory netizen journalism: The article is in Telepolis. The url is http://www.telepolis.de/r4/artikel/20/20437/1.html What will be the future? A Netizen Media or Another Form of Corporate Dominated Mainstream Media by Ronda Hauben There is a small staff of reporters writing articles for the Korean edition of the newspaper, in addition to the submissions by citizen reporters. The newly founded international edition, however, which is published in English, is wholly dependent on submissions from citizen reporters. Citizen reporters from around the world were brought to Seoul for 3 days to meet each other and to meet their Korean counterparts. Since the international edition is relatively new, a number of those who came to Seoul had written only a few articles for the paper. While others had been writing for some time and had contributed a number of articles. The issue raised during the forum, not formally, but among the citizen journalists there, and afterwards in their comments and articles after the forum, is the issue of whether the new Internet media will end up being a new form of corporate dominated mainstream media or will it be able to be the media of netizens seeking a better world. This issue was discussed and debated during the times inbetween sessions at the forum and on the field trips that OhmyNews organized for the participants. It was discussed and debated at late night sessions with beer and Korean specialities. But it wasn't debated or even discussed in any formal way during the forum itself. --The global village is facing various difficult challenges. Wars between hostile nations continue. The disparity between rich and poor nations is growing. The world's ecology is being altered in many places around the world because of climatic changes caused by environmental pollution. The earth itself is being threatened. The greater the difficulties and the harder it is to resolve them, the more the world needs the wisdom and solidarity of conscientious citizens. This gathering will be an opportunity to agonize over what role the citizen reporter can play in international solidarity for a better world.-- The model Mr Oh proposes to solve the problems is to welcome the articles of citizen reporters, to encourage every citizen to be a reporter, so as to have the pages of the online newspaper open to many voices and experiences. During the forum there were talks by some of the international citizen reporters and some of the Korean citizen reporters about their experiences as citizen reporters. Also there were talks about the business model for OhmyNews and of Wikipedia. Both OhmyNews and Wikipedia rely on volunteers for much of their content. One, OhmyNews, is a commercial model, the other, Wikipedia, a nonprofit. While the Wikipedia news model calls for neutrality by reporters, the OhmyNews news model calls for citizen reporters to write about their experiences. There was no time, during the formal part of the program, however, for those attending the forum to debate and discuss their visions for a netizen news media. Will such a new form of news media make an effort to provide an objective view of the news? Or will it welcome contributions from a wide variety of viewpoints and thus have the news presented from a range of experiences and viewpoints? Are there other ideas of what is needed to create a netizen media? Is it possible to produce the news in a way that is different from what the mainstream corporate controlled media presents as the way to produce the news? Is it to present news that stimulates discussion and participation rather than complacency? Is it to present news that covers the experiences and problems of the common people? Is it to present news that oversees what government officials do, to keep their actions in the spotlight? The mainstream media, as in the US, more often will act like the mouthpiece of government officials, presenting their words and deeds to the public, rather than critiquing them to encourage a critical citizenry. --In reality we came to Seoul to speak about the future of international participatory journalism. We came here to understand the problems and difficulties with this ambitious project. Instead, when we were not being pushed to give our tribute to the sponsors, we only spoke of how great OhmyNews is and how successful citizen reporting and participatory journalism has been in recent years. I felt that very important questions had not been answered. Will OhmyNews eventually become like the other mainstream media or will it remain faithful to its original agenda? Will the pressure of the big corporations (Samsung, SK Corporation, LG) not overpower the great ideal? Are citizen reporters just another means to cut costs and sell
nettime The Internet and Politics:Report on Personal Democracy Forum 2005
Here's an article I wrote about the personal democracy forum held in NYC on Monday 5/16/05. The article is in OhmyNews. I thought folks on nettime would find it of interest. I welcome comments and discussion on the issues raised at the forum and in my report. Ronda THE INTERNET AND POLITICS US STYLE: Personal Democracy Forum in NYC May 16, 2005 by Ronda Hauben [EMAIL PROTECTED] Published in OhmyNews 5/19/06 http://english.ohmynews.com/ArticleView/article_view.asp?menu=A11100no=227041rel_no=2back_url= THE INTERNET AND POLITICS The question of how the Internet will impact politics is an important question being raised in countries around the world. On May 16, 2005 the Personal Democracy Forum held a conference at the City University of New York (CUNY). The one day conference was a combination of talks on how the Internet is being used in politics in the Republican and Democratic parties and how blogs in particular are being used in political settings such as labor unions. Also there was a panel about the use of blogs in other countries including Canada and Iran. Another issue that was the subject of a panel was the fight to have local government provide wireless access to all citizens in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. What follows are a few of what I found to be the highlights of the conference and then some comments on the day's events. A FEW HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CONFERENCE First the highlights: 1) The opening session set the tone for the conference. It included a talk by Andrew Rasiej who referred to the Howard Dean campaign for the U.S. presidential nomination. Dean had allowed the Net to lift him up, Rasiej proposed, but the political establishment in America...still doesn't understand the transformative power of the Net. Rasiej also said, understandably, that he was critical of the focus on elections and what the technology could do for, or against, individual politicians. This criticism may account for why an important question at the intersection of US politics, the Internet and the media, was not on the formal program of the conference. (1) 2) The program included an on stage interview with Andrew Stern, the president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The SEIU is a labor union for service workers in the public and private sectors. SEIU is one of the labor unions in the US exploring how to use the Internet. Stern has a blog Unite to Win where he and other labor union officials post articles. A number of people comment, not only on what has been posted by Stern, but also on numerous other issues.(2) For example, there is a debate ongoing within the US labor movement over whether labor union resources should be used to organize the unorganized (Stern's position) or put toward electoral politics (the position of John Sweeny, the President of the AFL-CIO). This is a narrow set of choices, however, and doesn't necessarily include what members of labor unions would see as the priority. The SEIU blog provides a place where members can post their concerns, even if there is no response from those who are in the leadership of either SEIU or the AFL-CIO. Most important, members can post their concerns anonymously, even though some who post on the blog may complain about anonymous postings. Following is an excerpt from a post on the need for democratic processes and rights within labor unions and some brief discussion on the issue of anonymous posting. From the SEIU blog: A question I have with respect to what SEIU is proposing with regard to its difference with the AFL-CIO is how the SEIU proposal affects and regards current union workers. I know of a situation in 1199/SEIU where union members don't have union meetings. The only meetings are the delegate meetings. The workers at the site are told if they file a grievance they will be fired. And there are clear examples that workers who file grievances are put into formal discipline. Does the SEIU's plan include any commitment on the part of the union to more democracy for members? (3) In response to this post an 1199/SEIU organizer complained about the fact that the union member was posting anonymously. ()By the way, open discussion and dialogue is a joke when you don't put your name to your claim. So don't respond anonymously. Nick Allen, SEIU organizer Another 1199/SEIU member responded that it was often necessary for a union member to be able to post anonymously: Those of us who aren't relentless brown-nosers and are willing to speak against corrupt and undemocratic bureaucrats face considerably more danger in stating our opinions than you do, Nick. Another 1199'er When Stern was asked about the fact that people post their responses and complaints on the blog. He responded that it was democracy to have people post and to keep the posts
Re: nettime unix history
Have you taken a look at the unix articles that I did a while ago. One article is Chapter 9 in our book which is online at http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.x09 On the Early History and Impact of Unix Tools to Build the Tools for a New Millenium There is also a chapter about Usenet in the book which gives background on Unix as well http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.x10 ON THE EARLY DAYS OF USENET: THE ROOTS OF THE COOPERATIVE ONLINE CULTURE There's another very nice article about the early development of Unix. It is http://skylla.wz-berlin.de/pdf/2000/ii00-101.pdf Helmers, Sabine. 2000. Internet as a cultural space. Internet the final frontier: An Ethnographer's Account. There's another article about the history of BSD Unix by Kirk McKusick. You can probably find a url online for it. If not write me an email and I will try to locate it. Also there is a special issue of the Amateur Computerist in honor of the 25th anniversary of the birth of Unix. It includes an earlier history I did of the birth and early development of Unix and also an interview with John Lions who was one of the early Unix pioneers. He tells some of how unix got to the universities as he and his colleagues at the University of New South Wales helped to send out the book he wrote about the Unix Kernal. The issue is online in either text or pdf. The txt version is http://umcc.ais.org/~jrh/acn/Back_Issues/Back_Issues%5b1993-1997%5d/ACN6-1.txt The pdf version is also there at http://umcc.ais.org/~jrh/acn/Back_Issues/Back_Issues%5b1993-1997%5d/ACN6-1.pdf Good luck with your paper and let us know the url when you have it done. Cheers Ronda On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hey has anyone out there got any good sources on unix history ... I have been ... # 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 Missed Lessons from the Dean Campaign
Joe Trippi gave a talk at Columbia U. Here's an article from OhmyNews that I wrote about the talk. Ronda Missed Lessons From the Dean Campaign Joe Trippi may see the Net's political force, but he has yet to see the potential of a netizen press by Ronda Hauben A talk given by Joe Trippi on March 2, 2005 at Columbia University provides some insight into why the campaign by Howard Dean for the Democratic Party presidential nomination failed. (1) Trippi described how he became interested in the potential impact the Internet could have on politics. In the mid 1990's he had participated in an online site where computer games were discussed. When one of the most influential members of the online gaming community died at age 31, Trippi was amazed to see the impact of this loss on his online community. Among other responses, some people took up to raise money to set up a scholarship fund for the children of their deceased friend. Trippi's experience online stimulated him to understand that people could learn to know and care about each other in an online community in a more significant manner than usually occurs with one's neighbors or other acquaintances. As Howard Dean's campaign manager, he set out to utilize the online connection to build an offline community of people working for Dean. The campaign would utilize the email contacts they had to inform people in a city that Dean would be making an appearance. Trippi would be astounded when he found that the people they informed would meet together, plan how to prepare for the Dean appearance, and work together to leaflet and inform people of the planned event. He described how early in the campaign Dean was planning to make an appearance in Austin, Texas. The Dean campaign emailed the 400 contacts they had in Austin. The Austin contacts held meetings and worked together to leaflet and spread the word about the Dean visit. When Dean gave his talk, Trippi was surprised that over 3200 people attended. Over and over again, the Dean campaign was surprised by the large number of interested people attending Dean campaign events made possible by the campaign relying on local email contacts to meet in person and organize effectively for the event. Trippi focused on the ability of the Internet to make it possible for people in a community to meet in person and to open their houses to others in their community. He proposed that the significant achievement of the Dean campaign was that the Internet helped to facilitate offline collaboration and cooperation among Dean supporters. In his talk, Trippi also referred to the novelty of using the Internet to raise a large amount of campaign funding from multiple small donations made online. He didn't refer to the online discussion among the Dean campaign workers and the effect of this process to invigorate the campaign. Nor did Trippi consider the problem of the mainstream US media and its negative effect at crucial periods in the Dean campaign like the Iowa primary. Unlike the online political campaign in South Korea to elect a President who was relatively unknown, the Dean campaign did not set out to create a press that would challenge the corporate media. In South Korea, Oh Yeon Ho created OhmyNews. This online newspaper helped the Korean netizen movement to topple the conservative President and replace him with a more progressive though unknown politician, Roh Moo-hyun, in the 2002 election. (2) When asked whether he felt there was a need for a similar force in the US to challenge the US mainstream media, Trippi said no. His assessment of the weakness in the Dean campaign was the inexperienced nature of those who campaigned for Dean, and Dean's own lack of experience running for office. Trippi did not consider the failure of the campaign to support the creation of a progressive online press like OhmyNews which would welcome broad ranging netizen journalist contributions. (3) Though Trippi agreed that the mainstream media in the US was a problem for the Dean campaign, he didn't see the need to analyze how a newspaper like OhmyNews in Korea could be critical in helping to counter the negative impact of the mainstream media on the Dean campaign. Trippi believed that the Dean campaign was but the tip of an iceberg in demonstrating the impact that the Internet will have on US politics. He compared the experience of the 2004 Presidential campaign with the early impact of radio and then TV on politics. He proposed, however, that the impact of the Internet on future campaigns would be even more profound. Trippi suggested that new technical developments would provide some of the tools needed by Internet based political campaigns. He referred to new entrepreneurial ventures and support for new technologies like podcasting, as the form that a new media would take in the US, rather than a form that welcomed broad ranging discussion and articles from netizen
nettime Working on article about the need for a progressive press in US
Some thoughts and questions about the US and online News Media and the recent election in the US I am working on an article about the ferment in media in the US and whether it can help to challenge the conservative media that has been the support for the manipulation of public opinion in the US, as for example, with mainstream US media promoting the notion of WMD as the basis to invade Iraq. I wondered if anyone on this list has suggestions of where there might be some help in understanding the concern of media people, of journalists, of progressive people, etc. that there be a media that is less easy to manipulate in the US. Recently there was a conference at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard in early December 2004. Jay Rosen posted on his blog, that the director of the Berkman Center, John Palfrey, told him: We want to ask hard questions that get past the hype and to what's real in this story -- if anything, Palfrey wrote. We are interested, to the greatest exten t we can, in uncovering, together, the truth about whether the internet. Is the Internet really is changing politics, not just in the US but around the world, for the better. Also that the question being raised for the conference was Has citizenship really changed in the online era? Was anyone on this mailing list at the conference? The reports I saw of what happened at the conference seemed very narrow and counter to the stated purpose It didn't seem, for example, that the essential question of how there could only be a real challenge to the Bush administration if there had been a challenge to the conservative press by a more progressive, and broad ranging press in the US was even raised at the conference. There are example like OhmyNews in South Korea, or Telepolis in Germany, which show that a broader and more netizen oriented press is possible. Articles written for these focus on encouraging discussion rather than providing information that no one cares about. Also if there were such a press in the US, then it would be the basis to provide a pressure on the more conservative news media to allow their journalists to report in a way that it serves a public interest and purpose. Also it seemed that the Republican online director was welcomed. Did those holding the conference consider that what the Republican Party did in the election was part of changing politics...for the better.? That's a hard pill to swollow if that was the rationale for inviting him. Also there was an interview with Dan Gilmor in Ohmynews (the English edition) shortly after the conference. Gilmor talks about how he doesn't want to challenge capitalism and how the conservative people in S Korea should form their own form of an OhmyNews. This is hard to understand as Ohmynews in S. Korea was formed to challenge the domination of politics by the conservative media. In the US as well, the conservative media has much funding and ability to promote capitalism. What is needed is a way to critique capitalism, and to develop a progressive challenge to the conservative media in the US. Unbridled capitalism running rampant and without having the eyes of any media challenging it doesn't represent any regard for capitalism nor for the public purpose that journalism is commonly claimed as the goal. Thus it is hard to understand how Gilmor can equate grassroots journalism with a support for broader access to a media for those with procapitalism and conservative viewpoints. Now there is a new conference planned at the Harvard Berkman School. Blogging, Journalism Credibility by invitation only. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu:8080/webcred/index.php?p=5 One of the papers they propose that people read for the conference is about a blog that criticized the North Korean government. While the North Korean government may not be the ideal government form, journalists who joined the condemnation of the Iraq government in the run up to the Iraq war, helped to prepare the groundwork for the illegal US invasion of Iraq. Since the US govt and the neocons are currently targeting North Korea as they did Iraq, it would seem that US journalists need to learn how they were used to wage an invasion in violation of international law against Iraq, by their support of the US governments phony claims of WMD in Iraq. Proposing a blog that targets the North Korean government as an example of credible journalism is another hard pill to swollow. It is hard to understand what the purpose of these conferences at the Berkman Center are for, except to help to discourage a more progressive media effort on the part of people who realize the problem that exists in the US at the moment. It would be good to know of current efforts to consider how to challenge the conservative media's power in the US. Are there any online papers that are welcoming of input and articles, and discussion toward a progressive viewpoint? About 10 years ago, Michael Hauben wrote an article that then became
nettime BBC promotes the Bush Plan to Privatize Social Security
Here is an open letter I sent to the BBC about the program story they had on their World Business Report on Thursday, January 6, 2005 about the need to privatize the US Social Security System. I thought others would be interested in how the media, including the BBC World Business Report seem to be promoting the Bush plan to privatize the US social security without any investigation of the actual problem if there is any, nor welcoming diverse viewpoints to be heard. Ronda --- An Open Letter to the BBC Listening to the BBC World Business Report on Thursday, January 6, 2005, I was surprised to hear a report about the US social security. The BBC explained that the U.S. Social Security System was bankrupt and then a CATO institute spokesperson was interviewed and he describe how the system has to be privatized. About a year ago I went to a panel discussion where Joseph Stiglitz explained how privatizing the social security system in Argentina had led to the bankruptcy of Argentina. So it was curious that the BBC (the world business report) had become involved in promoting the privatization of the US social security system without any discussion, any investigation of the actual situation, or welcoming of diverse viewpoints. Instead this BBC World Business Report reminded me of how the US press promoted the fiction about Iraq's supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction in order to create a fraudulent pretext for the US government to invade Iraq. Reports like the one on BBC on January 6 make it clear how the news, whether the printed press, the broadcast media, or other forms of media are being used as weapons in a propaganda war rather than being interested in even a pretext of providing for needed public discussion and debate on a serious issue. The investment community in the US will benefit royally if the Bush agenda is pushed through with regard to social security. The social security system will lose the contributions it needs to be maintained and instead the private stock market interests will get a windfall. And what will be the impact of all this on the US economy? And what will be the impact on the people who have contributed all their lives to the system, if it can be raided by the investment interests and their supporters in the US Congress and White House? There has been much discussion over the years about the nature of social security and its importance to American society. For example one book refuting the claims that social security has financial problems, also helps to point out that the system is not some private retirement system, but instead a system of social insurance. It is a commitment by society from one generation to another; we all pay in, and we all draw out, because we never know how we will fare in our old age. The program also provides disability and survivors' insurance. The idea that we are all in this together, on which Social Security is based, has always been unpalatable for those who believe in every man for himself and the law of the jungle. http://www.cepr.net/columns/weisbrot/mark_column_10_18_04.htm Also, see for example, the explanation of how the supposed bankruptcy of social security is but fiction which is contradicted by the official government figures: Nor is there any reason to fix Social Security any time soon. According to the numbers used by everyone, including the President's Commission, Social Security can pay all promised benefits for the next 38 years without any changes at all. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office just upped that estimate to 48 years. By either measure, Social Security is in better financial shape that it has been for most of its 69-year history. Any shortfall that might occur forty or fifty years from now will be easily manageable, and less than we have dealt with in the past, when we had much less income. http://www.cepr.net/columns/weisbrot/mark_weisbrot_12_03_04.htm Why is the BBC World Business Report acting as a mouthpiece for the Bush White House? Why isn't there the recognition that this is an important issue that should *not* be treated as hype, and that the BBC should not and act as an advertising agency for CATO institute opinions? Once the US social security system is raided, this is apt to be a splendid model for those who want to do the same to the public pension systems of other countries like the UK. The BBC needs to treat this important issue in US domestic politics as something that important to the public interest and worthy of more than a mindless mouthpiece for the Bush White House attack on the social security system. Ronda ronda(at)panix.com Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook # 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 Review of Documentary Film Control Room
Following is a review of the new documentary film Control Room which has just premiered in NYC last weekend. The film not only reviews the early days of the US invasion of Iraq, but it does so from the perspective of three people, two of whom have opposing viewpoints of the invasion. I thought those on nettime would find the film something fruitful to discuss in respect to what it demonstrates about the power of an art form to foster communication. - Control Room Demonstrates the Power of Film The gap between those with different cultural perspectives Ronda Hauben 30.05.2004 The documentary Control Room [1] opened in NYC on Friday night May 21, 2004. The opening weekend shows were sold out, and the reviews in the NY press encouraged people to see the film and to take it seriously. On the surface, Control Room appears to be a film about the Arab language media organization Al Jazeera and their coverage of the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The actual focus of the film is, however, considerably more profound. Jehane Noujaim, who directed the film, has her roots in both the Egyptian and the American cultural environments. She became interested in how the news contributes to different cultural perspectives of the world. In her film, not only does the film maker focus on the gap between those with different cultural perspectives, but she also explores the power of the the news and of film to foster communication which can overcome these cultural barriers. In an interview, Noujaim describes her personal experience which led her to the idea for her film. She explains: The idea for the film came from a few different sources. Growing up and going back and forth between Egypt and the United States provided the initial entry point. Seeing the complete difference in perspectives on the same world events between the two cultures made me start thinking about news, the creation of the news, who's responsible, and then on to questions of how these two peoples are supposed to communicate if the world as provided by their news are different. After writing letters to Al Jazeera to try to get access to film them didn't succeed, she headed to Qatar to Al Jazeera's headquarters. Her executive producer Abdallah Schleifer, formerly a journalist who was an NBC bureau chief for 10 years, was able to set up an initial meeting with Al Jazeera. That, however, was not sufficient to gain the access needed to do the film she had in mind. Sitting in the cafeteria at Al Jazerra's headquarters with the film's producer, Hani Salama, Noujaim took a week drinking lots of coffee and talking with people who would later be featured in the film. Among the Al Jazeera staff she met were Samir Khader, a senior producer at Al Jazeera and Hassan Ibrahim, a reporter, who formerly worked for the BBC. They came to understand what she wanted to do. Hassan then spoke with Al Jazeera's management and was able to get their agreement to give Noujaim the access she needed for the film. You have to have the trust of someone inside, she explains, to be able to make a film like the one we wanted to make. Abdallah Schleifer also brought her to meet Lt. Josh Rushing, the press officer at Centcom, the Media Center of the United States Central Command in Qatar. Lt. Rushing was responsible for explaining the rationale and progress of the US invasion of Iraq to the Arab press. Rushing said that he would get the film crew into Centcom every day when their application through normal channels failed. Among the memorable moments in the film, is the recognition by Hassam that George Bush has managed to galvanize people for Saddam in a way that is amazing. Despite Hassam's condemnation of the US invasion of Iraq, he maintains a conviction the US Constitution will make it possible to restore democracy in the US. Similarly, Samir expresses his belief in democratic processes and values. His goal is to create a news media which will encourage people in the Arab countries to discuss and debate the news. The goal of Al Jazeera, he explains is to educate the Arab masses in something called democracyto shake up their rigid societies, to awaken them, to tell them: Wake up, wake up, there is a world around you, something is happening in the world, you are still sleeping, wake up. Recent revelations of the torture of Iraqi prisoners by the American occupation forces, make especially ironic the footage from 2003 of George Bush explaining to the world that he expects American P.O.W's to be treated humanely, just like we're treating the prisoners that we have captured humanely. Similarly, when Rumsfeld lambasts Al Jazeera for presenting images of Iraqi injuries and deaths on tv, or for showing Iraqi women and children speaking out against the American invasion of their country, one can only wonder about what he had in mind
nettime WMD and the Bush Whitehouse - Democracy is In Trouble
The following article is online at Telepolis in English and German. I welcome comments. Ronda The U.S. Government Case for War in Iraq Based on Forgery and Lies http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/co/15062/1.html Ronda Hauben 24.06.2003 The Threat to Any Democratic Processes of Government In the past few weeks, there have been many questions raised in the U.S. and world press about whether George Bush knowingly presented fraudulent evidence about the existence of a nuclear capability in Iraq. It was on the basis of such Weapons of Mass Destruction,(WMD) that Iraq was said to present a danger to the US. This was the U.S. government's public justification for its war against Iraq. Currently there are inquiries by the British, US and Australian governments about the use of such a fraudulent case to justify war. One of the most significant falsifications in the WMD public debate, is Bush's reference to an alleged attempt by Iraq to buy 500 tons of uranium oxide from the African country, Niger. In his State of the Union address on January 28, 2003, Bush declared that, The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Similar claims had been made by the CIA in their September 24, 2002 briefing to the Congress. The case for Iraq's nuclear capability was based on documents known to be forged as of March 2002. Yet the claims continued to be used by Bush, by the CIA, and by other administration officials as a key component of their case for the war against Iraq. According to several different reports, in 2001, the CIA learned of the claims about Iraq trying to buy uranium oxide from Niger. Vice President Dick Cheney's office raised questions about this situation in February 2002. The CIA sent a former U.S. ambassador, one who was respected in Africa, to Niger, to speak with government officials there. The ambassador learned that the dates and signatures on the documents being used to support the claim were fraudulent. He reported his findings back to the CIA. A Washington Post article=A0[1] indicates that the CIA sent the White House a report of the fraudulent nature of the documents in March 2002.(1) Six months later, however, in September 2002, the head of the CIA claimed was still referring to a nuclear weapons program in Iraq. The reports are that he referring to the Niger information, without presenting the result of the ambassador's investigation. A number of Congressmen say they voted to authorize a war against Iraq based on the administration claim that Iraq had a nuclear capability. The Democratic Party minority has now asked for a transcript of the CIA official testimony at the September 24, 2002 Congressional hearing. They want to determine whether the CIA testimony at the hearing presented the forged nature of the Niger documents. Other CIA or State Department activities in 2002 and 2003 continued, making 0the same case to justify a war against Iraq. For example, in response to the Iraq weapons declaration filed with the UN on December 7, 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared before the UN Security Council on December 19, 2002. He presented the Security Council with a one page State Department fact sheet in response to the Iraqi declaration. That fact sheet stated that, The Declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger. Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement? After Bush's State of the Union speech, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) requested that the U.S. government provide evidence about the Iraqi efforts to purchase uranium oxide in Africa. On March 7, 2003, a day after the documents were finally given to the Agency, the head of the agency, Director General Mohamed ElBaradei publicly presented that the documents were forgeries. On March 17, 2003, Representative Henry Waxman, a Democratic Congressman from California, and minority Chair of the Government Reform Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, wrote a letter=A0[2] to Bush's office asking for an explanation of how the case for a nuclear capacity in Iraq could be built on the basis of forged documents. He received a response from Paul Kelly, of the State Department legislative office. Kelly writes: Beginning in late 2001, the United States obtained information through several channels, including U.S. intelligence sources and overt sources, reporting that Iraq had attempted to procure uranium from Africa. In addition, two Western European allies informed us of similar reporting from their own intelligence services. As you know, the UK made this information public in its September 2002 dossier on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. The other Western European ally relayed this information to us privately and said, while it did not believe any uranium had been shipped to Iraq, it believed Iraq had sought to purchase uranium from Niger. We sought several times to determine the basis for the latter assessment
