Hard News: Who owns the news?
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Up against the Wall....
Shows the power of the social media, and the collective action of real people, over the big corporates. Very heartening.
dumb cop action has resulted in the unions getting involved and Occupy Wall Street is getting bigger...
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
dumb cop action has resulted in the unions getting involved and Occupy Wall Street is getting bigger…
Roll on the Wall Street Gherao!
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Watson a name?
at the risk of ©odwinningthe the thread - I hadn't been aware of the Madrid Protocol prior to reading thisKiwi businesses will need to get their trademark acts in order before New Zealand enters an international treaty next year that could prompt an intellectual property land-grab.
A New Zealand intellectual property practice has issued the warning before the Trade Marks Amendment Bill brings New Zealand into the Madrid Protocol.
The protocol allows international organisations to register a trademark in any other protocol country in a single procedure. -
Penny Red who wrote that amazing piece about the London riots is now at the escalating Occupy Wall Street protest.
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Occupy Wall Street now owns their own news...
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A print run of 50,000! That will be a valuable archival record in the future.
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DCBCauchi, in reply to
A print run of 50,000! That will be a valuable archival record in the future.
The 'Occupied Wall Street Journal' looks to be a brilliant thing. I'd love a copy. Going by the photo and quotes, it seems to have been carefully well crafted by sensible people who know what they're doing.
There is a lot to be said for printed polemic, whether in pictures or words.
In Europe in the late 15th/early 16th centuries (particularly in what is now the Netherlands and Germany), there was a bit of a stoush between the established powers and various freedom movements of the usual religio-political apocalyptic kind.
There are amazing propaganda pamphlets from this time, from both sides, vilifying each other of course. Mostly using pictures. Each side usually portrayed the unacceptable sexual activities they wanted you to think the other side got up to. The content and form of each side's pamphlets were remarkably similar. Make of that what you will.
I read somewhere that these freedom movements were able to grow and spread so quickly and widely and powerfully (before they were finally crushed) because of their early adoption of the opportunities created by the new printing press technology.
Sympathetic printers would let the freedom fighters use the offcuts of paper from other printing jobs, which is why the pamphlet is the size and shape it is (or is the right term leaflet?). They were pictures partly because their audience was illiterate but mostly because a single picture is worth much more than 10,000 words.
I can't remember where or when I read this (though that last bit is my editorialising!). Does it ring any bells for anyone else?
It seems to me that, with a laptop and internet connection, you don't really need a sympathetic printer any more. But they still help.
I like how the Occupy Wall St people seem to be using 19th century tactics of pushing radical newspapers on people in combination with some 21st century tactics. Quick, mobile, adaptive, practical, apparently not peddling received off-the-shelf solutions (yet at least). Good on 'em.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
…in combination with some 21st century tactics.
Quick, mobile, adaptive…Just like the New York Times – who shift the blame on the run…
Harking back to the media’s cavalier attitude to science and corrections, Whatsupwiththat have a nice story on the Telegraph misplacing the North Pole…
Here’s a story about a monologue that made Steve Wozniak cry…
Plus early pamphlet/propaganda printing links for a wet night in or idle browsing (these may not touch on the printing on the salvage aspects that DCBC refers to above, but they are still hours of interesting reading):
Propaganda in the ReformationPamphlets, printing, and political culture in the early Dutch Republic
The function of the new media in seventeenth-century England
and this doesn’t even get into Hogarth and Gillray, et al or the German street sheets or Ben Franklin's printing endeavours or modern underground press….
Print will never die!
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Islander, in reply to
Amen*!
Have bookmarked your links – cheers!
*An atheist’s amen is also composed of chocolate… and yeah, I realise it means 'So be it.'
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DCBCauchi, in reply to
Print will never die!
Islander beat me to it.
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I'm not familiar with the term 'German street sheets' (sheets in German you hand out on the street?). Are they related to this kind of thing at all?
http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/Der_blutige_Ernst/4/index.htm
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chris, in reply to
Do you think in the old times, citizens in far flung territories, not simply aligned with but under the thumb of the empire cared much about the goings on in Rome?
Does our enhanced ability to vicariously share in these distant struggles motivate significant reinforcement and real momentum with regards to similar issues in our own backyard or does our possession of a digital "support" button transfer the general populations' enthusiasms offshore, as it were. Relegating these kinds of occurrences to a mere spectator sport?
Genuine questions.
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Islander, in reply to
o you think in the old times, citizens in far flung territories, not simply aligned with but under the thumb of the empire cared much about the goings on in Rome?
Very much YES - because it could mean the movement of Legions and the replacement of Roman officials - and their supporters/dependent co-rulers- in areas as far away as Scotland.
And some news travelled relatively swiftly - by sea.
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Thanks for taking the time to answer Islander, much appreciated. Perhaps it's a false equivalence, but I'm ever querulous about the amount of attention afforded the US by ANZers, it doesn't get so much airtime here, nothing much does, besides growth and development. Our gaze stolen by a dying fire's embers, waylaying our task of collecting fresh kindling from the dilating blackness.
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Islander, in reply to
O goodness chris! This could've been engraved by someone back on Hadrian's Wall-
it is poetry
"our gaze stolen by a dying fire"-I'd stop it there, but do feel enhanced - as a human being - by your words - thank you!
I am fascinated by 3 quarters of the world (the major ones) China/USA/Africa - while my heart&mind&self are polynesian & here...anyway /no reira - ka mihi mahana kia a koe n/n Keri
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chris, in reply to
"-I’d stop it there,"
Tēnā rawa atu koe hīnātore. ko koe tonu a runga.
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DCBCauchi, in reply to
Our gaze stolen by a dying fire’s embers, waylaying our task of collecting fresh kindling from the dilating blackness.
Is it being distracted by others' flames, stopping us from kindling our own, or more looking at how they built their fire, to inform our search for kindling?
Or both?
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How to build a fire:
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
effem era...
Are they related to this kind of thing at all?
totally, the street sheets thang is just my generic description of that family of broadsides and broadsheets as distinct from pamphlets and flyers...
maybe the German ones are not so much handouts as Hans' doubts...
;- ) -
Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Genuine questions
Chris, I agree with Islander's take on it, but tempered with the "think global, act local" mindset, while news can travel at varying sped it can be manipulated as well and often has to be treated as suspect.
plus to your second question: I think there is a large degree of being baffled or swamped by bullshit, we all end up knowing too much we don't need to know, too much complexity, too much detail without corroboration - and it overloads our filters and ability to act decisively. -
chris, in reply to
Is it being distracted by others’ flames, stopping us from kindling our own, or more looking at how they built their fire, to inform our search for kindling?
Interesting perspective DCB. I mentioned fire as analogous to a civilization, the global blaze of sustenance, each nation huddled about its own shoulder of the bonfire. Answering your question in that vein, I do sometimes wonder if we focus too much on the USA's waning light as opposed to focusing more on the winning methodologies of countries such as Australia, Singapore, India, China, Brazil etc who through whatever means are weathering this lull with less ado. What works as opposed to what hasn't. On that bent, my potential answer to the second part of your question is rendered moot as we are relatively well informed there: (from your link)
"CORPORATE GREED, WAR, Gov WASTE + CORRUPTION, GENECIDE, POLLUTION, PROHIBITION..."
To your actual question, correct me if I'm wrong, and I do apologize if I am - the 99% movement as the fire. I agree that looking at how they built and are building their fire is of sociological interest and can inform activists. But I remain skeptical, not so much about the intrinsic value of a protest about the distribution of wealth as about the likelihood of it garnering any kind of tactile result. Given that nowadays the relative degree to which public demonstration is sanctioned in a territory seems almost inversely proportional to its probable effectiveness, this gathering seems to serve as little more than a good hard look in the mirror.
Ostensibly it increases our awareness of an issue that 99% (+/-) of us face, and thus online in our caves we duly reflect, rather than say hamming it up over yonder on a jetski. But do NZers truly face these same torrid scenarios? Are we the same 99%? with our free health care and welfare state? From the first page of that link there are some interesting trends:
"At 21 years old, I am…
-One semester from graduating college with a degree no one seems to hire
-In massive debt because of that once “dream degree”
-About to become a mother to a baby whose illness has gotten us booted off government health insurance…at 9 months pregnant…""I am a married man w 3 children. Living w my wife 3 kids and + SISTER. I am the only ONE working. Save the little we have to MAKE eNds meet. + That's NOT Enough...
I'm a single mom of 2 trying to beat statistics..."
$73,000 in student loan debt for a degree I couldn’t finish because a guy decided he wasn’t too drunk to drive. (He was!) I got nothing from his insurance company…because he didn’t have one.
Callously, one could argue that the lack of pragmatism and responsibility in some of these peoples' stories is adequately reciprocated by their democratically elected government. This downward US swing has been in motion for decades, and we didn't elect their leaders. That a central country is in freefall is of concern and yet the world goes onanon. NZers of course face similar issues, but fortunately they are not the very same, and we only have so much attention to give. I'm not sure how much is enough, but an election looms. Mass apologies for the rant.
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chris, in reply to
we all end up knowing too much we don’t need to know, too much complexity, too much detail without corroboration – and it overloads our filters and ability to act decisively.
I'm definitely feeling that Ian.
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Islander, in reply to
From another century, words by a wastrel, exploiter, and womaniser:
"Sorrow is knowledge,
those that know the most
must mourn the deepest,
the tree of knowledge
is not the tree of life." *
Mind you, a constant stream of factoids isnt anywhere 'knowledge'.....*Byron, with an obvious nod towards Christianity.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
How to build a fire:
Los Indignados Americanos.
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ChrisW, in reply to
"Sorrow is knowledge,
those that know the most
must mourn the deepest,
the tree of knowledge
is not the tree of life."Nice quote Islander - I guess the complementarity of 'Sorrow is knowledge' to Keats' 'Beauty is truth ...' is obvious, as well as its greater truthfulness perhaps? I looked it up seeking context and find it pre-dates Keats by three years and is somewhat different from above -
But grief should be the instructor of the wise;
Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most
Must mourn the deepest o`er the fatal truth,
The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.Half-way back on topic - I gave up on TV news at 6pm yesterday when 3News started on a third phase of its lead item being some inconsequential murder acquittal in Italy, after 6 or 7 minutes already - switched to TVNZ and found the same close-ups of bra-strap, switched off in disgust.
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