This lecture by Clay Shirky at Etech, a recent O'Reilly conference in San Diego, is really excellent and concerns how you manage web software that allows some degree of free posting by the public. He has some really really good ideas, many of which are very relevant to how Indymedia Centers manage themselves. Especially important is this concluding remark he makes:

Social software is the experimental wing of political philsophy, a discipline that doesn't realize it has an experimental wing. We are literally encoding the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of expression in our tools. We need to have conversations about the explicit goals of what it is that we're supporting and what we are trying to do, because that conversation matters. Because we have short-term goals and the cliff-face of annoyance comes in quickly when we let users talk to each other. But we also need to get it right in the long term because society needs us to get it right. I think having the language to talk about this is the right place to start.

(via Jos&eacute)

This is hee-lar-ee-ous. Chip off the old block, I say. Got a prosperous career ahead of him, I'm sure....

(via José)

I just heard from Free Speech TV that they're airing

29 hours of special programming in the days surrounding the Three Year Anniversary of the U.S. Invasion of Iraq. This programming is scheduled to coincide with numerous and diverse protest events taking place across the U.S. and around the world.

including 2 pieces of mine that I licensed to them last year. So, instead of going out to a protest, stay home and watch my videos! heh. just kiddin. but anyway here they are:

Cops of the World
Broadcast Date/Times: Saturday March 18 @ 6:51 am ET; 5:51 pm ET; 10:51 pm ET
Steve Hise
5:07
TVPG
A video for a modernized version of a Phil Ochs song, linking U.S. domestic police brutality to foreign policy brutalities.

Nexus-6
Broadcast Date/Times: Saturday March 18 @ 6:56 am ET; 5:56 pm ET; 10:56 pm ET
Steve Hise
2:46
TVPG
A re-working of a President Bush speech reveals a potentially more accurate sentiment of his administration.

And there's a bunch of other great documentary pieces they're showing, including Robert Greenwald's "Uncovered: The War on Iraq."

Free Speech TV reaches 25 million U.S. homes through its full time channel (DISH Network, channel 9415), and part time on 170 public, educational and government access (PEG) channels. For a complete list of PEG stations carrying FSTV: http://www.freespeech.org/html/affiliates_list.html

Reporting on a delegation of Latin American activist women who came to Washington D.C. on International Women's Day, this excellent article about the increasing trend of femicide across the area contains a lot of good information and points. There's the definite concensus emerging that the Juarez situation has raised awareness of a regional problem for which it is only the tip of the iceberg. And there are very serious related consequences:

In the view of Adriana Beltran, the power of organized criminal groups and the persistence of femicide serve to undermine the democratic transition Guatemala was supposed to experience after the peace accords. In former military dictatorships like Guatemala where civilian government institutions are still fragile, the security threats posed by organized criminal bands and their impunity are paradoxically reviving the former national security state apparatus as the military is being drawn into law enforcement. Beltran believes that this is a temptation that should be resisted at all costs. "We strongly believe that the lines between police and military should be kept separate, especially in countries that had armed conflicts," she says.

• steev's blog

I've always liked the blog about video blogs called We Are The Media. I often found it refreshing to tap into a non-radical, even non-political take on the simple idea of citizen participation in media production, without the usual party line so prevalent within Indymedia circles. It gave me hope that this alternative media revolution could be bigger. But today the dark side of that non-stance has reared its head with an entry bleating the wonderous coolness of Rocketboom's new commerce-soaked format. I could understand mentioning the fact that Rocketboom, the most popular vlog on the net, has sold itself for a week literally to the highest bidder and will spend a week making special advertisements that go at the end of its regular vodcast. But all the hyperbolic celebration of this as a beautiful and innovative new opportunity for advertisers is making me want to puke the more I think about it. Here's a choice quote:

When people download Rocketboom every morning, they have the episode on their computer and the Rocketboom team have taken this advantage and scored a touchdown. They made a commercial where the idea is simple, but the story is full of intruiging [sic] and subtle details. If you want to get it, you just watch it once, but if you want to really get it, you have to watch it over and over for all the easter eggs and cool details that lie just below the surface.

No thanx. I'll pass. I'm not even going to link to Rocketboom here. I don't watch RB anymore anyway. I used to look at it pretty much every day for a few weeks last fall, but i lost interest pretty fast. Hackneyed newsdesk format that relies on having a pretty blonde anchorwoman. blech. Goodbye forever, Rocketboom, blasting off into the stratosphere of corporate capital...

Over the last 12 years the world has seen the general public gradually catch on to what the Internet is good for. It's been a long slow process.

First it was an "Information Superhighway," which most people didn't understand. Nice try, Al.

Then it gradually turned into a giant shopping mall, and then, sort of after the fact, a library. And a few other uses are seeping into the zeitgeist. It's a place to pick up dates; a place to promote your band or sell your band's indie recordings; a place to share photos of that trip to Disneyland with grandma; a place to auction off the old stuff in the attic; Even a place for a sort of public diary and/or soapbox.

The last, frustrating frontier: a place and a tool for distributed collaboration; a lot of people still just don't seem to get that. I first started thinking about it in 1994, as soon as I found out about the web. Well, actually before there was a web, but I won't go into that (early participation in what would become SITO...) And this stuff isn't rocket science. I'm talking about simple shit, like, say you're an artistic collective or a nonprofit of some kind. Wouldn't the web be a good way to make available files that different members might need regularly? Like hi-res versions of the group's logo, or letterhead, or common templates for documents? Oh, yeah! good idea! Never thought of that!

sigh... suspira...

I just arrived in Flagstaff with 2 other imcistas from Tucson. We're here for an indymedia teach-in/workshop thing, trying to get activists and community members here in Flag more involved with indymedia. It should be interesting and fun.

It's snowing here. Big fluffy flurries of snow. On the way here at about 3000 feet I got to see the transition zone where snow was accumulating on saguaro cacti. That's a weird sight. Cool to have that range of climate in 4 hours of driving. But it is 5000 feet of altitude difference so, not that crazy, though this much snow this late in the winter is unusual, I'm told.

Wow. Ha Ha Ha America is a clever, funny, scary little film about China and the U.S. Everyone in gringolandia should watch this. Everyone. Go. click and watch it. now.

Saw a great film tonite called "Sembrando Esperanza" (Sowing Hope) about the Magonistas of Oaxaca, CIPO-RFM. They're a sort of a network of indigenous communities in Oaxaca that are simliar in their goals to the Zapatistas, only they are pacifists; but it's interesting, this may only mean that so far they have never taken up arms, because, just as with the EZLN, armed struggle is the last resort after other things have been tried for a long time.
Also, CIPO uses tactics such as letting loose hordes of rats and bugs in the offices of government officials, or putting nametags with the names of politicians on pigs and letting them run through a building... things that in the U.S. would probably get one arrested and charged with "eco-terrorism."

Anyway, it's inspiring to see other radical resistance movements in Mexico besides the Zapatistas, and its great to see solidarity campaigns starting here for them.

Also, right before going to that film I met some AZ indymedia folks at the cafe and we met with 2 guys from Ambazonia, who are involved with the indymedia center there. They're working on a film about what's been going on there in Ambazonia, a small country that's been sort of a buffer zone between Nigeria and Cameroon, and hence between colonial powers France and Britain, for a long time. They're still struggling for independance from Cameroon, and demonstrating students are getting shot in the streets. shot dead. Next time your little white middleclass peace march gets peppersprayed, remember that.

Yesterday I sent out a mass mail to everybody I know that's ever shown interest, so you may already know this- but anyway, I'm trying to raise funds so I can manufacture a whole bunch of copies of the DVD of On The Edge (my film about the femicide in Juarez). You can donate and get a copy, or even order one for your school or organization. The more money I can raise the more copies I'll be able to have made, meaning the more people will see the film.

And in related news, there are only 3 sections of the film left to translate into spanish. Thank you to everyone who's been helping with that. Just a little more and we'll be ready!