If you can’t help but watch…

Although I know it’s best just to wait until tomorrow morning when all the polls have closed and the votes have been counted (we hope…), it’s hard not to keep your eyes glued to the car wreck that is election night news coverage. But if you want to break away from the mainstream, at least Paper Tiger TV is here to help with coverage that focuses on big issues besides just who’s ahead.

This New York City based public access television group is producing live election coverage tonight, 10:30 – 11:30 PM EST. If you’re in Manhattan, watch Manhattan Neighborhood Network Channel 67. Or you can tune in online at mnn.org and at indypendent.org.

More details after the jump…
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Sirius/XM Merger an Opportunity for Openness & Access? LPFM for Satellite?

Matthew Lasar continues his excellent reporting for Ars Technica with an article on a recent letter from House Energy and Commerce Chair John Dingell (D-MI) and Internet subcommittee Chair Edward J. Markey (D-MA) to the FCC urging an open platform for satellite radio if the Commission approves the Sirius/XM deal. What they’re calling for is the ability for any manufacturer to make Sirius/XM compatible satellite radios, without the ability for the merged company to prevent things like iPod docks or HD Radio capability.

Lasar also notes the gathering steam in support for setting aside some of the merged company’s channel capacity for noncommercial programming, similar to what has been required for direct-broadcast satellite TV. Apparently even Clear Channel wants 5% of capacity set aside for “public interest” programming, whatever Cheap Channel means by that.

I oppose the merger on the principled basis of the fact that such a merger was specifically prohibited as a provision of the original authorization of the service. Nevertheless, I recognize that principle rarely rules the day in DC. Therefore I very much support setting aside channel capacity for non-commercial broadcasters as a necessary condition if the FCC chooses to approve the merger.

Obtaining a non-commercial channel on Dish Network was vitally important for Free Speech TV and has allowed that organization to distribute its radically critical grassroots programming in a way that it simply could not before, feeding public access TV stations around the country.

Although internet distribution is still more practical for radio programming than for TV programming, having several nation-wide progressive and grassroots radio channels nonetheless would be a great opportunity, and could be of great service to community radio stations.

A channel I’d love to see is one built on an Indymedia type of model, mixed with Current TV. It would be fed by programming from independent producers and community stations, like the programs you find at the A-Info Radio Project and Radio Indymedia. But, like Current, it should be edited and curated. That is, I’d like to see things selected and knit together into a coherent program flow. Maybe a whole show would be carried, or just a particularly good segment. And then combine these shows and segments with regular hosts and other original content related to particular themes and topics.

In a way, this idea is a lot like what a lot of people over the years have hoped would come of NPR or Pacifica, that they would function truly more like networks connecting up stations than as program syndicators. But I do understand how the overhead of the kind of operations they need to run make playing that networking role more difficult.

That’s the beauty of having new channels on satellite radio — the overhead is comparatively low because you don’t have to worry about physical broadcast stations, licenses or signing up affiliates. Like an internet station, but with a different kind of reach, the low overhead allows more opportunity for experimentation.

Of course the kind of channel I’m envisioning is not necessarily well suited to distributing programming in the same way that Free Speech distributes Democracy Now to stations. That’s why we need to have multiple channels set aside, so there is room for multiple models. Compared even to satellite TV channels, satellite radio channel capacity is cheap. I don’t see any reason why the FCC can’t or shouldn’t make this a condition of approving the merger. It could be like creating LPFM for the nation.

Radio Indymedia Is Back Online!

Thanks to hardworking geek IMCistas Radio Indymedia is back online, providing a great resource for uploading and sharing radically independent, non-commercial audio and radio content. This is great because the extensive and valuable archives are again available, but also because it’s open to new content, too.

For the six months or so that Radio Indymedia has been offline the only other truly independent, non-commercial audio sharing site has been the pioneering A-Infos Radio Project, which I think has been feeling the strain of being the only game on the (English-speaking) ‘net.

It’s important not to have all our indy eggs in one basket. So I’ll also make a promise to myself to start uploading the radioshow to Radio Indymedia and A-Infos, too.

An Appeal from Kenya

The situation in Kenya is truly heartbreaking, especially since that nation has shown so much progress in moving past ethnic tensions and divisions. This message from an Indymedia journalist in has been circulating through Indymedia networks and deserves wider dissemination:

Dear Indymedia Colleagues,

Five days ago, on the 27th of December, I stood in a queue for six hours – from 5.30 AM to 11.30 AM, waiting for my turn to cast a vote in my country Kenya ‘s presidential, parliamentary and civic elections. When the votes were counted later that night, Raila Odinga, the opposition leader, began taking a near-unassailable lead. At one point, he led with almost one million votes. But somehow, Mwai Kibaki the incumbent president squeezed through a disputed victory. I can live with that. What I can’t live with, is that in the last three days, more than 200 Kenyans have lost their lives because of this disputed election results.

When the tension escalated, I had to move to my brother’s house because I stay in a neighborhood dominated by the Kikuyu, the biggest tribe in Kenya and also one that President Mwai Kibaki comes from. Tragically, Kikuyus around the country are bearing the brunt of an angry people and they are also beginning to retaliate. Just a kilometer from where I am now staying, a crowd of Kikuyus gathered at the police station asking for trucks that they can use to ferry their fellow kikuyus from different parts of the country. In the meantime, they are beginning to demand that all non-Kikuyus in this region should start vacating.

I recently talked with a close Kikuyu friend from Eldoret town and she was so scared. She is from the Kikuyu community while most of her neighbors are from the Kalenjin community. Due to no fault of hers, the president happens to be from her community. Due to his own fault, the president has greatly angered the Kalenjin community together with thirty eight other communities. Even the supposedly official results show that he only led in two provinces out of eight. Consequently, members of all other communities generally feel that the president has robbed them. Unfortunately, they are taking it out on innocent members of the three communities that voted overwhelmingly for the president – Kikuyu, Embu and Meru. It is becoming a ping-pong game of violence as members of these three communities are also starting to hit out.

I blame the people who commissioned and condoned the rigging of these elections. While I realize that most losers usually blame rigging for their losses, these particular rigging claims are not mere speculation. Samuel Kivuitu, the chairman of the Electoral Commission of Kenya has already admitted that he announced the presidential results under pressure from the President’s Party of National Unity. He also conceded that there were widespread irregularities which resulted in extended delays in announcing results from some forty eight constituencies. Both local and international observers have explicitly reported that while the actual voting process was beyond fault, the tallying of the votes was riddled with faults. Raila Odinga has refused to accept these results. Millions of Kenyans have refused to accept these results. Business has been paralyzed across the country and it is not business as usual. Lives have been lost and life cannot go on like this.

Kenya is now in a state of panic. Just yesterday, when the rest of the world was celebrating the New Year, thirty women and children were burnt alive in a church that they had sought refuge. They have died because someone found it fit to rig an electoral process and someone else found it fit to either facilitate or condone that rigging. They have died because there has been no concerted high level effort to quell a fire that is now consuming highways, byways and villages of this great nation. They have died because a subjective mass intolerance has been borne from massive political deception.

I hold all the aforementioned persons responsible for these deaths and any other deaths that may result from this tragic situation. The blood of these fellow Kenyans is primarily on the hands of the politicians whose legs have trampled on the fundamental voting rights of Kenyans. This innocent blood is also on the guilty hands of those whose acts of violence inflicted irreversible death blows. No injustice, however heinous, warrants murder of the innocents. As we learnt from the Rwanda genocide, this blood will also be on the hands of all those who will turn a blind eye on this simmering conflict. Which is why we cannot, and must not turn a blind eye on this violence and other violent situations around the world.

But what can you and I do to stop this violent, raging fire that is razing down innocent Kenyan lives?

1. Share this information far and wide: Send this piece to your local newsrooms and radio stations. When more and more people are informed, more possibilities avail themselves.

2. Volunteer as a web designer for the Kenya Independent Media (Indymedia) website: The Kenya Indymedia website can and should act as a platform for accurate and widespread expression. We need to publish dozens of first account stories that may not make it to the mainstream media. We also need to publish photos, audio and video. We therefore need volunteer web designers and programmers to work on it consistently for a period of 2 – 3 months as the Kenya Indymedia team builds its web designing and programming capability. As Kenya Indymedia, we now need to communicate to the world what is really happening and a vibrant website will be one way of doing this. We are liaising with national movement known as Million Youth Action to call and text people from across the country, moreso the worst hit areas of western Kenya and Rift Valley, so that we can in turn share their stories. This way, statistics will cease to be cold figures and they will take on a personal, human angle.

3. Host the Kenya Independent media website: In order to enable a download of videos, images and audio of this conflict, the website needs to have sufficient space. We would like to use this site to keep track of all the Kenyans who are needlessly losing their lives, getting injured, robbed and displaced in this post-electoral violence. We would also like to use it to keep track of who is instigating, undertaking and condoning this violence. Even more important, we would like to know the victims of this violence so that we can reach out to them one way or another, in our own small way.

4. Mobile phone communication: The only way that most endangered people can communicate and be communicated to, is through mobile phones. We would like to distribute mobile phone air time to as many people as possible so that we can enable them to communicate about what happened, is happening or may be about to happen. As already mentioned we will file all this communication on the website and pass it on to relevant authorities. One dollar will provide four minutes air time. These four minutes may make a difference between life and death.

5. Help relocate someone from a danger zone: This violence has taken on ethnic dimensions, which means that people from certain communities are now no longer safe in certain places in which they are the minorities. Property belonging to such individuals is being looted and destroyed. Even worse, their lives are in grave danger. Many of them are however not able to flee since many public means of transport have suspended their services due to rampant insecurity on the roads. We intend to relocate such people through any means possible. This includes tipping food delivery trucks, cargo trains, newspaper vans and any other vehicles that are moving from one point to another for whatever reason.

6. Help feed a relocated person: we have identified and are continuing to identify families in Nairobi and other parts of the country that can temporarily host relocated persons. As this is a grassroots movement with an emphasis on grassroots solutions, we intend to temporarily host displaced persons in host families. These families will greatly appreciate whatever food supplements we can give them.

7. Diplomatic missions: Contact your respective embassies in Kenya and seek to know what they are doing about the deteriorating situation in Kenya . Give them our contacts and forward this paper to them. Embassies can do more than issue blanket statements for people to ‘keep the peace’ as if don’t already know that!

8. Tend to a child: More than 75,000 Kenyans are now internally displaced. Most of them are women and children. What a tragedy when young children are caught up in such a mess. There is no perfect formula for reaching out to such innocent ones. We intend take to them toys, clothes, chocolate, drinks, books and more gifts that can cheer them up. We will particularly target children who have been displaced or those whose parents have died in this conflict.

9. Pray: For those of you, who like, believe in God, do whisper a prayer that peace will eventually prevail in Kenya .

10. Share your ideas: it will greatly help if you share any concrete ideas that you may be having. Most politicians are just telling Kenyans to keep the peace and not really taking any concrete action to address this situation. People power and solutions can make a BIG difference.

You can do any of the above by donating any of the mentioned things or what you would consider to be their monetary equivalent. Just go with your gut feeling and thanks for your thoughts.

- A member of Kenya IMC

Sad News from Oaxaca

I’ve been mostly offline (from the web, at least) for days now, so I apologize for not posting this earlier. Many readers well-plugged-in to the Indymedia scene will likely know already, but I must note the murder of NYC Indymedia journalist Brad Will by Mexican military forces in Oaxaca last Friday. This happened as mexican federal police continued a violent crackdown on the peoples’ popular movement (APPO) that has brought the center of Oaxaca City to a standstill.

What can I say except that it makes me very sad and angry, both for the death of this innocent man, and for what is happening to the people of Oaxaca at the hands of the corrupt state and federal governments. I’m afraid I otherwise can’t say anything that does justice to the situation, except express my deepest condolences to Brad’s family, friends and compañeros.

NYC Indymedia is doing an excellent job keeping up on the news from Oaxaca, as is Arizona Indymedia, which is posting English translations of updates from Indymedia Oaxaca.

Narconews has been providing continuous coverage of Oaxaca since the teachers’ strike began in May. Free Speech Radio News has also been providing very regular reports from its reporters in Oaxaca.

These independent sources are very important at this moment because the mainstream US news has paid little attention to Oaxaca, aside from when the situation flares up. But it’s not about isolated bursts of activity and violence, but rather a growing movement of peoples’ solidarity that is now being met with ever increasing state repression. The governments of Oaxaca and Mexico do not want the eyes of the world on them now.

In their press release on the death of Brad Will, the NYC Indymedia collective made explicit the role of information in this struggle, as first expressed by Subcommandante Marcos:

The NYC IMC also supports the call of Zapatista Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos “to compañeros and compañeras in other countries to unite and to demand justice for this dead compañero.” Marcos issued this call “especially to all of the alternative media, and free media here in Mexico and in all the world.”

Indymedia was born from the Zapatista vision of a global network of alternative communication against neoliberalism and for humanity. To believe in Indymedia is to believe that journalism is either in the service of justice or it is a cause of injustice. We speak and listen, resist and struggle. In that spirit, Brad Will was both a journalist and a human rights activist.

Finally, I’ll mention that I covered the developing situation in Oaxaca back in September on the radioshow in an interview with Nancy Davies and George Salzman, two retired Americans living there. George and Nancy were much more sanguine six weeks ago, before the federal soldiers came, as the APPO was gaining strength.

I’m out of town through Monday, so this Friday’s radioshow is already produced. But I think I’ll try to get in touch with Nancy and George again for the following show.

Political Economy by Any Other Name Is Apparently a Fresh, New Idea

Perhaps this is nothing new, but I’m starting to really notice a severe lack of awareness of critical traditions within the A-list blogosphere/digerati culture.

Back in March, Andrew took note of a proposal to create a new “interdisciplinary discipline’ of Critical Information Studies, which he concluded, “sounds very like the areas covered by Political Economy of media.” The original proposal was floated by cultural historian Prof. Siva Vaidhyanathan, and picked up by BoingBoing.

Today I’m reading BoingBoing myself and find a post about the political disenchantment of Mitch Kapor, the original designer of Lotus 1-2-3. And what is his insight?

I’ve become completely convinced that we need to begin a process of fundamental political change in the U.S., not in the form of a new party per se as a new multi-faceted movement of ideas, organizations, and cultures, based around a vision of democracy which is fundamentally open, participatory, and decentralized.

Wow? Really? Open, participatory democracy? Them’s some pretty radical ideas there.

Please forgive my sarcasm, but I guess what annoys me most is not that Kapor’s unoriginal. It’s that now when these critiques come out of the mouth of the digerati it’s like they’re heretofore unseen insights about the political condition. And the a-list bloggers that spread the word seem equally ignorant of the critical tradition of the last 150 years as explored and explicated by scholars, activists and radicals.

Kapor follows up with his analysis that “Politics is Architecture:”

When it comes to building a new movement, the converse proposition, “politics is architecture” holds true as well. The architecture (structure and design) of political processes, not their content, is determinative of what can be accomplished.

Can someone please hand this man some Weber, Marx or Chomsky books (or Cliff’s Notes of them)?

I guess I should be at least somewhat happy that a central argument of Political Economic analysis comes so obviously and without apparent precedent to someone who sort of comes from the business side of the internet universe. But the failure to historicize these ideas, or even attempt it, does a disservice to all. Both because it fails to make linkages with vibrant movements that are taking concrete action this very moment, and because it threatens to create another instance of reinventing the wheel.

Even if we just look within the young world of the blogosphere there are thousands (if not millions) of bloggers like me who have been punching away at the modern political economic machine from a critical perspective, be it reformist, socialist or anarchist. We’ve been criticizing the very structure of western capitalist governments, the collusion of elected representatives and industry, and the myth of the free market, obeyance to which devolves into corporate oligarchy.

This isn’t a matter of sour grapes — I’m quite well aware that my own critiques are built upon a strong foundation of thought and scholarship that I have read and studied for the last sixteen years or so. I may have the occasional insight that I think is an original moment of praxis or synthesis. But under no circumstance do I presume that I’m knitting newly developed ideas about the modern capitalist state.

And if Kapor’s recent revelations are your first introduction to these ideas, then I’m glad you’ve also stumbled onto my words here. My advice is that you take a moment or more to read and understand other similar perspectives, and especially look into the field of Political Economy which has been addressing these fundamental problems for a very long time.

On Friday’s Radioshow: Immokalee Workers Using Independent Media to Fight for their Rights

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is on the McDonald’s Truth Tour 2006: The Real Rights Tour! Today they stopped in Champaign-Urbana for the afternoon, making an appearance on the U-C IMC‘s low-power station WRFU and joining a community potluck dinner at the IMC. A couple of folks on the tour were also nice enough to carve out some time to sit down with an interview with me for this Friday’s radioshow.

Independent media has been instrumental in aiding the CIW, which represents tomato pickers in Florida, fight for better wages and more respect from large corporate tomato consumers like Taco Bell. They put a low-power FM station on the air in December, 2003, giving the workers a powerful tool for communication and education.

On the tour the workers are meeting with local church, social justice, human rights and student groups in the cities where they stop. They are also holding protests at local McDonald’s in order to pressure the company to raise the rates they are paid for their labor.

As a vegetarian I don’t typically eat at McDonald’s to begin with, though I avoided Taco Bell –a more veggie friendly fast-food chain–throughout the CIW’s boycott. They haven’t yet called a boycott on McDonald’s, in the hope that their tour and pressure will be enough to motivate the fast-food giant.

The CIW are holding a big rally in Chicago this Saturday, April 1, during which they will lead a march and demonstration in front of the so-called Rock N Roll McDonald’s.

Is There Another, Grassroots Way to Network Neutrality?

I am always a bit uneasy with policy campaigns, especially those in which the only option for positive political action seems to be, basically, “call your Congressperson!” So, as concerned as I am about the real threat that AT&T and Verizon are about to tier off and filter our internet, I am also uncomfortable thinking that the only way to prevent this is through lobbying and legislation.

So, the question is: what is another way to achieve network neutrality?

By way of comparison, the micropower unlicensed radio movement provided both an immediate means of communication and an impetus for policy changes in DC, which helped begat LPFM. While I did write my Congresscritters on LPFM, I’ve also lent support to the microbroadcasters who pushed the boundaries (and still do). Now we have LPFM and micropower stations continue to fill the gaps.

Another example is Indymedia, which fights consolidated corporate control of media by providing a functional alternative. And while Indymedia is not yet a household name on the order of Fox News, it is a growing movement and phenomena that succeeds on almost no funding, and neither government nor corporate support.

Both of these grassroots movements have effected change without simply relying on lobbying and legislative politics.

So how can we ensure a free, untiered and unfiltered internet in some similar proactive, grassroots way?

The problem with the internet is that Verizon and AT&T own so much infrastructure. Here in Champaign-Urbana, IL, you basically get your internet from either SBC/AT&T or the local cable company, which actually used to be owned by AT&T when the service was built (and I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t hook up to AT&T lines at the head end). If you buy DSL from the local “competing” telephone company, odds are you are actually just gettting it from SBC via the competitor.

Thus it is a question of infrastructure. One answer is certainly to build out alternatives like community wireless networks, but you’re still left with finding a high-bandwidth connection to the public internet, which has a good chance of being provided by one of the big telcos.

If it’s not the “last-mile” lines into homes, then it’s the larger network pipes provided to ISPs and businesses.

Can we build an alternative internet infrastructure that successfully routes around pipes controlled by the likes of AT&T and Verizon?

In other larger cities, this may be less of a question — I really haven’t researched it yet, and maybe a reader has some insight. But certainly in smaller cities and rural areas you’re lucky to have more than one broadband provider, and are probably lucky if there’s any competition at all in the broadband fiber lines that provide backbone service to your area.

Now, Google has apparently bought up lots of unused “dark fiber” which could be used to build a network infrastructre that routes around the likes of AT&T. But given Google’s recent willingness to censor search results in order to please China, I’m not so sure I ready to trust them that much more than AT&T. The choice there is really the lesser of two evils.

Could there be an Indymedia of internet infrastructure? Could the noncommercial, nonprofit sector obtain dark fiber and recover some onramps to the internet?

Can we ensure network neutrality by creating a truly neutral network of our own?

HD Stealth Cam for Indy Videographers?

Camcorderinfo notes the announcement of a Hi-Definition pocket camcorder from Sanyo that records to SD flash memory cards instead of tape. The HD1 is not quite full HD like you can get with HDV camcorders — it records 720 progressive at 30 frames a second, which is mathematically superior to the 720×480 interlaced 30 fps you get with DV. The cam records to MPEG-4 rather than MPEG-2, which I see as an advantage, since it’s easier to edit MPEG-4 and it’s a more efficient codec, giving better results at lower bitrates.

Now, there a number of “camcorders” at the low end of the market ($100 and up) that record sub-DV quality video to flash memory, typically marketed by low-end brands like Aiptek. I haven’t played with any of them myself, but the specs alone tell me that they’re fine as toys, but not too reliable for anything more.

Sanyo is not known as a high-quality camcorder manufacturer, but I have to admit that “HD” quality MPEG-4 video from a camcorder that will fit in your pocket and has no moving tape transport parts does intrigue me. If the quality of the video and audio is on par with what you’d expect from a DV camcorder at its $800 retail price, then this could be a very useful little cam, specially for Indymedia purposes.

With no moving parts and no tapes to keep track of, this kind of cam could be very useful for protests and other actions, where a small, light, easily hidden and hard-to-break camera can be an asset for keeping tabs on the cops.

The question I have is, will this produce better video than the video function on pocket digital cameras? The video mode on digicams has started to get quite credible in the last year or so, and the smallest are very small indeed. But if the HD1 will produce something much closer to the quality of DV (or even better), then it would be a much better choice for capturing footage that will eventually go into news programs or documentaries.

A quick Google search turned up an impressionistic user review of an earlier Sanyo SD camcorder over at unmediated.

According to Kenyatta and Eli the Sanyo Xacti line is already pretty popular with videobloggers. That makes a lot of sense to me, since these little cams free you from being tied to a PC or laptop with a webcam, and spit out better quality video that can very quickly be imported and edited (more quickly than with DV tape, I reckon). But the needs of videographers producing for broadcast–public access TV, DVDs, VHS or internet–are a little different, requiring higher quality all around, especially if the piece will be more than length of a typical videoblog post of a few minutes.

I’ll admit that I am intrigued by the HD1, and will have play with one if it turns up at a local electronics store.

Innovation and Tactics in the Indie Media World

Rabble has some incisive thoughts comparing Indymedia and Guerilla News Network:

In general it was interesting to look at the differences between GNN and Indyemdia. Both organizations are about radical media production, and both started with about the same number of people 5 years ago. GNN had 4 people, indymedia 8 attending meetings but a core of about 4 people. The visions were drastically different. Today GNN is 5 people who are doing very high production value work which focuses on entering american pop culture and injecting political messages.

Which leads him to ask the question: “They [Ourmedia] are building second generation open publishing tools, not indymedia. GNN is also building them, but why not indymedia[?]”

I have a couple of answers. The first is that it’s easier to move 5 people than 500, and that it’s a trade off, of sorts. The small group can be more innovative and take more risks, but is more likely to dissolve through attrition or failure. Indymedia retains a sort of structural integrity that means it’s harder to attack and destroy outright, even if it takes longer to introduce new methods.

Another answer has to do with money. The Indymedia network contains a plethora of conflicted ideas, opinions and feelings about money. Some of the differences are regional, some of them are between groups and individuals. The network as a consensus doesn’t know if, how and when to bring in money and to spend it.

But, in any event, most of the technologies and innovations that efforts such as GNN and Ourmedia roll out require some kind of funding to sustain.

Even if the code that underlies publishing tools can be written by a base of volunteers, hosting all the media is not inexpensive.

I suspect that when Indymedia was 8 people, it was easier to reach a consensus on where to turn for money and how. Now, stretched over nearly every continent on Earth, it’s not so easy to find that consensus network-wide.

Ourmedia, at least, is not concerned with creating media, or facilitating its creation — just storage and distribution. Innovation is easier when it has a clear and certain trajectory.

Indymedia, by comparison, is very fundamentally concerned with creation. And not just providing tools, but training and means. That’s harder, I’ll argue, especially as Indymedia tries to bring the means outside of the western middle-class.

In the bigger picture, what’s important is that these varying efforts and orgnanizations remain collaborative and open, and not competitive. Indy media makers can benefit from the bandwidth offered by Ourmedia without having to forsake working with Indymedia. Similarly, GNN and IMCs can work together and do — at the U-C IMC we lent use of our equipment to a GNN reporter doing interviews in Urbana last year.

Cooperation and a diversity of tactics will make independent media a strong force. That isn’t to say Indymedia shouldn’t innovate or try and find broad consensus on issues like funding. Rather, perhaps some innovations by other groups means Indymedia doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel and can focus on things that a world-wide network is better suited for — whatever those things may be.