Update of the Videos page

We have finally put some order in the videos section of the blog. After editing and discarding some of the material posted since 2011 you will find an eclectic selection of short videos and longer features related to those issues we care about. Comme c’est le cas avec le blog vous y trouverez de matériel en Anglais, Français, Catalan et Castillan.

"Speak Rich in Tabernaque" Texte de Marie-Christine Lemieux-Couture, récité par Katia Gagnon au parc Émilie-Gamelin, le 25 avril 2012. Uploader  EdgarBlaar

 Hem intentat  que hi hagues una certa coherencia entre els videos i el material que hem anat pujant, de manera a il.lustrar situacions sovint complexes i allunyades dels mitjans massius de comunicacio. Seguimos editando (subiendo textos y fuentes) el material que tenemos en Onada Expansiva Redux. No podremos subir nuevo material hasta el mes de Junio. Tras el cierre del primer canal de Onada Expansiva en youtube por temas de copyright nos tomamos en serio los avisos.

Somalilàndia, sobirania sense reconeixement formal

Recuperem una nota publicada al diari digital Nationalia iniciativa del Centre Internacional Escarré per a les minories ètniques i les nacions (CIEMEN) sobre Somalilàndia territori independent que tot i no gaudir de cap tipus de reconeixement formal per part de l'anomenada "comunitat internacional" (d'Estats i Organitzacions Intergovernamentals) ha aconseguit establir institucions pròpies, consolidar un marc d’estabilitat en un sub-context geografic  especialment convuls, tot negociant l'explotació de recursos naturals sota la seva sobirania.
Manca de reconeixement formal que es repeteix en la multiplicitat de nacions sense Estat repartides a escala global on la negació de drets lingüístics, històrics, culturals i polítics deriven en situacions de persecució i conflicte. Simultàniament el continent africà és exemple i escenari d’Estats suposadament sobirans on la manca de legitimitat es tradueix en inestabilitat i l’ingerència de grans potències.

La inestabilitat de Somàlia durant les ultimes dues dècades ha conduit a la creació de facto de noves entitats nacionals, sense reconeixement internacional pero control efectiu sobre considerables extensions de territori, recursos i accés a sortides marítimes Font. BBC

Exploracions petrolieres i relacions internacionals: Somalilàndia és sobirana sense reconeixement formal

Nationalia 31/10/2012

La república autoproclamada manté lligams privilegiats de mutu interès amb la principal potència regional, Etiòpia · El govern somalilandès ha arribat a acords amb tres companyies per explorar el sòl a la recerca de petroli i ha anunciat l'inici imminent de l'extracció de mineral de ferro i carbó · Cap estat del món reconeix la independència de Somalilàndia, que actua com a país sobirà des de 1990

Tenir ministres que són rebuts amb honors de dignataris estatals, donar permisos a les companyies petrolieres per explorar terrenys, signar acords de defensa... Atribucions com aquestes, que habitualment són exclusives dels estats reconeguts, són assumides a la Banya d'Àfrica per Somalilàndia, una república no reconeguda oficialment per cap altre estat del món. D'entrada, la resta de països consideren que forma part de Somàlia, un país que no ha tingut control efectiu d'aquest territori des de 1990 i que pateix una guerra civil des de fa dues dècades.

Olympian Arrogance

A timely op-ed in the New York Times on what the Olympic games are about, beyond medals and athletic prowess: corporate profit, security build-up and gentrification.We have added pictures,some hyper-links and background info.

    Not an Olympic discipline just yet: Sreet Art in East London Source Blouin Artinfo on Tumblr

Olympian Arrogance
By JULES BOYKOFF and ALAN TOMLINSON
Published: July 4, 2012

WHILE Europe roils in economic turmoil, London is preparing for a lavish jamboree of international good will: in a few weeks, the city will host the 2012 Summer Olympics.
But behind the spectacle of athletic prowess and global harmony, brass-knuckle politics and brute economics reign. At this nexus sits the International Olympic Committee, which promotes the games and decides where they will be held. Though the I.O.C. has been periodically tarnished by scandal — usually involving the bribing and illegitimate wooing of delegates — those embarrassments divert us from a deeper problem: the organization is elitist, domineering and crassly commercial at its core.

Information shall be freed. Aaron Swartz and the Guerrilla Open access manifesto

 Access to knowledge is an essential part of  an informed citizenry, critical for a full-fledged democracy; obstacles and constraints of different nature to this access is one of the many factors feeding the digital divide, which in the age of the information keeps inequality painfully updated. 

Several recent developments have shown that those with the power and means to profit the most from the private use of information and knowledge are not  willing to relinquish this privilege.

Heavy Downloader, Aaron Swarts, co-founder of Demand Progress indicted by US authorities on July 19th accused of downloading thousands of academic papers and making them available to a wider audience Picture from Wikipedia

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Furthermore they are taking very specific steps to ensure that no one dares to suggest they should.
On  one hand and following some successful hits by the Anonymous Hacker collective in solidarity with Wikileaks,  , the US Justice Department announced  on July 20th the arrest of 16 individuals (with 5 people held in European territories) and search raids in 35 locations in connection to the referred actions of solidarity. On the other hand, NYT and other corporate media outlets informed of the arrest on June 19th  of Aaron Swartz, a Harvard researcher known for his contribution to the development of the RSS tool and his stance in favor of open access. Mr Swartz presumably accessed a protected server at MIT  to download a huge number of academic papers and files from JSTOR  which he later purportedly uploaded in a file-sharing site (with another upload of massive academic information having been reported  recently in apparent solidarity with Mr. Swartz).  Finally, is worthy noting (and it will be developed in this very pages) that US, EU and other major western countries have been negotiating (behind closed doors) a new international treaty to counter "piracy", the so called Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement (ACTA) agreement is yet a new attempt by industrialized States (and their corporate backers) to uplift Intellectual Property standards in a way that it will be more difficult to access and share knowledge.
Here you can find the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto that Mr. Swartz authored some time ago:

Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You’ll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.

There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have been lost. 

That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It’s outrageous and unacceptable.

“I agree,” many say, “but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it’s perfectly legal — there’s nothing we can do to stop them.” But there is something we can, something that’s already being done: we can fight back. 

Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends. 

Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends.

But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t immoral — it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.

Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make copies. 

There is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture. 

We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.

With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we’ll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?

 Aaron Swartz July 2008, Eremo, Italy

Here you can show your support for Mr Swartz in this trying moments.

More on the issue

• A close look at the Stop Online Piracy Act bill  Jonathan Zittrain Al Jazeera English January 12 
•  Academic publishers have become the enemies of science Mike Taylor The Guardian January 12 

Military PR at work.Good piece on Petraeus by FAIR

General Petraeus, the academic warrior, is landed yet another soft ball by the mainstream media

 Puffing Petraeus

07/18/2011 by Jim Naureckas Newsweek (7/17/11) begins a piece on David Petraeus becoming CIA director with an account of how he got the "short-term job done" after he was named commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan:

Now, after 13 months, the 58-year-old Petraeus is coming home to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Since that day in the Oval Office, hopeful signs have begun appearing that he may have performed the seemingly impossible task of stabilizing the Afghan battlefield.

The article, by reporter John Barry, doesn't provide much detail on what these "hopeful signs" are, but Afghan civilian deaths are up 15 percent in the first half of 2011 vs. the first half of 2010.  (Maybe that's why an Afghan media executive cited in the piece contends that "not everyone in Afghanistan fully appreciates what Petraeus has achieved in his year there.")
As for U.S. troops and their non-Afghan allies, 705 of them were killed in the 13 months Petraeus was in charge of Afghanistan--as opposed to 725 in the 13 months before that. Other than that, I'm sure he had a great war.

Original link http://www.fair.org/blog/2011/07/18/puffing-petraeus

More Information

• David Petraeus: A US war hero?  Inside Story Americas Al Jazeera English November 13th 2012
  

 

The story behind the " detainee 001" story. John Walker Lindh´s dad piece in The Guardian

  America's 'detainee 001' – the persecution of John Walker Lindh

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Frank Lindh, father of 'American Taliban' John Walker Lindh, explains why his son is an innocent victim of America's 'war on terror'

• Frank Lindh

John Walker Lindh following his capture by US troops in December 2001. Photograph: Getty Images

John Phillip Walker Lindh, my son, was raised a Roman Catholic, but converted to Islam when he was 16 years old. He has an older brother and a younger sister. John is scholarly and devout, devoted to his family, and blessed with a powerful intellect, a curious mind, and a wry sense of humour.

Labelled by the American government as "Detainee 001" in the "war on terror", John occupies a prison cell in Terre Haute, Indiana. He has been a prisoner of the American government since 1 December 2001, less than three months after the terror attacks of 9/11.

John is entirely innocent of any involvement in the terror attacks, or any allegiance to terrorism. That is not disputed by the American government. Indeed, all accusations of terrorism against John were dropped by the government in a plea bargain, which in turn was approved by the US district court in which the case was brought.

Link to the complete article 

More on the issue

• Four Days in Guantanamo Video footage reveals a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between captor and captive at Guantanamo Bay prison. Witness Al Jazeera January 12