Stratified in SF

Last week I was lucky enough to land an interview with Jon Hammond [audio | video], a local blues musician and media fanatic and I really wanted to record our interview with high quality equipment so I called in a favor from Pyramind studios, in the office I was consulting for last year. Michael Roache (great guy) said ok, and so I was on my way to the studio Friday to record. But on my way, I had an interesting experience.

This is a building I passed, walking on 5th Street, from the Caltrain station. I have walked this way many times since I used to work in the area. It's the kind of street that's pretty surreal at dusk or dawn.

To me this street is the epitome of economic differences in San Francisco. There is dramatic construction happening here right now, dozens of projects, condos and business business cuildings shooting up into our skyline, overshadowing existing problems. I guess we couldn't give a *&^% about our homeless or the city's paperclip and rubber band public transportation system. No, we just want to build more things. I guess I saw this red building against the cold, morning sky and it struck me. I took out my iPhone and took this picture.

A voice behind me said "Are you taking a picture of the cars?" I replied "No, the building." A tall, good-looking, black man stook staring at my often too-friendly face. I smiled. We stood at the intersection and the light turned and we walked across it together, talking.

"You work up in this facility?" I looked around for what he meant. "No," I said. I saw overpasses and a barren block. As we walked, I saw a homeless man sleeping along the sidewalk, bundled in what appeared to enough clothes to fight off the chill of SF. It can get cold here, but I've seen worse.

I was born in San Francisco and I grew up in Marin County. We didn't have two Ferrari's and a hot tub with *close* friends in it or anything like that, so don't ask me to borrow $20 or score you some coke. When I was younger, we struggled for money and there were even times we didn't have a home ourselves. Luckily those times didn't last long, but I've seen some down and I've seen some out. So, it's not so hard for me to relate to.

"I'm Leroy." said the man, and he shook my hand, "What's your name?"

"Lisa."

He seemed like a together guy, up early and on his way somewhere.

"What do you do, Lisa?"

I excitedly told Leroy about the blues musician I was on my way to interview. I explained that I did marketing for an Internet radio company. I had been working hard for months on a project and had neglected meetings like this, someone out of my realm, something to do with music. The interview was going to be a nice treat for me. I asked Leroy if he liked the blues. He gave me a funny look as if to say "What? Oh, I like the blues because I'm black?"

I squinted at him and asked "What do you do, Leroy."

"Nothing." said Leroy, like the punchline at the end of a bad joke. "I don't do anything."

Realizing Leroy was out of a job, awkwardness set into our moment. We came to the block where Saint Vincent de Paul is, the 'facility' where Leroy was headed, a community center for homeless and unemployed. I already felt a bit like an asshole for having an iPhone, for giving a shit about the color of that building, and for asking Leroy if he liked blues. That's when he scoffed at me, "I bet you never been in this building, obviously."

"Not obviously," I started to say.

"Have you been in it?" he asked, knowingly.

"Well, no." I tried to act offended, but the wind left those sails. I could see where he was coming from.

Leroy must have sensed my empathy and he asked me for my phone number. I told him I couldn't give that to him. I shyly thanked him I don't even know why, and I turned and continued walking. I pretended I hadn't really wanted to know Leroy better, but it wasn't true. I did. Ad I wanted him to know me. I wanted to tell him stories that would make him see I knew that side of life better than it appeared at first glance.

Not long ago on this same street I saw a man riding a bicycle get hit by a van. It was a very loud noise and a disturbing one at that, once I saw what had happened. The driver in the van half-heartedly asked the guy, who was stunned and moving the the curb, if he was alright. The bike rider said yes, and waved him off, and the driver got back into his vehicle and left. You got the feeling the driver wanted out of the neighborhood more than he cared for the well-being of the guy he'd nearly killed. I felt confused when I saw that.

Confused that we are all part of such a large species in which things like this happen. There are sacrifices to progress. There is an underbelly of people that gets swept under and crushed, people just like you and me.

After my interview with Jon, I came home and all day I listened to the CDs he gave to me. And I thought about Leroy, and what the blues mean.

You think terrorists are bad? Watch out for my 11-year old.

Sometimes the passing of a law has obscure and unpropitious results.

With a week left of summer, my 11-year old and her bff trolled around our house yesterday searching for something entertaining to do. The girls, being creative marketeers, spent an hour painting cardboard boxes the likes of a glass of lemon-lime lemonade and quarters. No false advertising under my roof.

They planted themselves on our street corner and started selling. A woman drove by shortly after, waving her fist and angrily yelling something in Chinese the girls didn't understand. Another woman came out of her house near their stand. Speaking loudly on her cell phone and glaring at the girls, she said that she was going to call the police.

When I came outside to bring the little well-behaved, hard-working ladies a snack I was approached by two neighbors who firmly told me it was against the law to sell beverages on the street. I looked at them, dumbfounded. What kind of person is against a citrus-y beverage on a hot day. Had I been working at the computer so long that society's values had changed? What was next?

Finger painting is graffiti?

Playing patty cake is considered ultimate fighting?

Pretending Barbie and Ken were kissing makes you a pimp?

Well, we're good citizens, so we broke down our criminal activity and sat down inside to marvel at the anger of our neighbors and the misappropriation of legislature.

I found this article afterward.

"...before serving the first customer, the child will need to obtain a $60 license to sell beverages. That's what seven-year-old Mikaela Ziegler found out after the city's Office of Licenses, Inspections and Environmental Protection shut down her refreshment stand."

I guess there really is a law on this. We live in a stratified neighborhood of single family homes and a high percentage of Mexican immigrants. A couple of blocks away the day workers line up on the street awaiting a ride to a day of underpaid, illegal hard labor. Many of the immigrants have relatives who work on farms and sometimes they acquire some of their inventory -- oranges, strawberries, flowers -- and attempt to sell them on the street.

The police have regular campaigns to monitor day worker activity, ticketing on behavior like, if a day worker enters a vehicle that stopped on the street rather than a parking place, they say that was illegal. I know this because I found a lost report which had been filled out by an officer who had been marking down, by street corner, how many workers were standing there on any given day and how many tickets they had given out. So the legislation to end illegal activity has now overflowed to a sad point I think.

The problem is not the selling of stuff on the street. The problem is the government's policy and perhaps resource pool to contain and support illegal immigrants.

Momus moment

I am not the type that has a hard time sleeping. I work with several A-type personalities who go at it day and night and together we are building evolutionary ways for people to communicate. I love my job. But I get tired and shut down and rest, very often when I need to. Tonight, a few weeks past our release still working hard and yearning for our launch and a vacation, I sent myself to bed.

But I had a hard time falling asleep. So I traced my day backward to recall if I had had coffee in the afternoon or eaten chocolate that might have kept me up. No, that wasn't it. I picked up a heavy book and began to read. My mind drifted. I closed the book and tried again to sleep but thoughts rolled around inside my head and would not be quiet. Sometimes I write when I can't figure out what is bothering me. As I sat down to the computer, opened my browser and looked at the date, my mysterious inability to sleep finally made some sense.

Two years ago on this day my mother died unexpectedly. It was a very sad day, the saddest, and a lingering one that seems to have stretched to now. Normally I write on this blog about the things that happen elsewhere in the world. But today I am writing about something inside of me and all of us, about the inescapable accumulation of knowledge.

We can't stop bad things from happening. Time, it keeps moving past of course. Things grow and things die. Layer upon layer of memory build and compress. I used to revel that things made more sense as time went by, but to understand is not necessarily to be more happy or feel more solace. There is just more truth. More of it, tipping us collectively into a better way. The future -- though we fight it -- is evolved and better prepares us to survive. We endure it because we must and we claim that knowing is what we want, but maybe you are like me and wish somedays that you knew less. Today I wish I'd seen and heard less. Knowledge is a burden we must carry, whose disappointments and difficulty we must absorb.

John Keats, one of my favorite authors, wrote a piece about good and bad things called A Song of Opposites. The poem points out that beautiful things are ever so much more beautiful when they are present with bad things. What a masochist he must have been, must we all be, and how true the inverse is as well.

Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow,
Lethe's weed and Hermes' feather;
Come to-day, and come to-morrow,
I do love you both together!
I love to mark sad faces in fair weather;
And hear a merry laugh amid the thunder;
Fair and foul I love together.
Meadows sweet where flames are under,
And a giggle at a wonder;
Visage sage at pantomine;
Funeral, and steeple-chime;
Infant playing with a skull;
Morning fair, and shipwreck'd hull;
Nightshade with the woodbine kissing;
Serpents in red roses hissing;
Cleopatra regal-dress'd
With the aspic at her breast;
Dancing music, music sad,
Both together, sane and mad;
Muses bright and muses pale;
Sombre Saturn, Momus hale; -
Laugh and sigh, and laugh again;
Oh the sweetness of the pain!
Muses bright, and muses pale,
Bare your faces of the veil;
Let me see; and let me write
Of the day, and of the night -
Both together: - let me slake
All my thirst for sweet heart-ache!
Let my bower be of yew,
Interwreath'd with myrtles new;
Pines and lime-trees full in bloom,
And my couch a low grass-tomb.

I remember a case study about death in a cultural anthropology course I took. The study highlighted the difference in the grieving of the death of a baby. It compared the still birth ratio in the U.S. with Nigeria and showed how death was so common in Nigeria that the women were therefore less emotional about their loss. If you are surrounded with good and a bad thing happens, it is nothing less than shocking. If you are surrounded with bad and a bad thing happens, you are simply less affected.

Some close to me know I had a challenging childhood, and my relationship with my mother had more than its share of problems. It is not the moments of difficulty now that tear me up. It is the contrast of beauty -- the slivers of time she was laughing or loving, like minerals between the rocks -- which cause the deepest sorrow. She was a beautiful woman, with a big sense of humor and the ability to steal a whole room of attention with just her smile. She tried very hard to be happy, and in the end, failed. To be known is to be loved and so I loved her very much.

Lisacast features a world of new media guests

Lisacast has been all over the place and has more great shows coming. This week I interviewed Dr. Noam Lemelschtrict-Latar about social DNA and his deep experience in new media and it's effect on social interaction and information overload.

He earned his masters degree in engineering systems at Stanford University and a Ph.D. in communications at M.I.T.’s Interdepartmental Doctoral Program in Mechanical Engineering and Political Science. Dr. Lemelschtrict-Latar offers insightful thoughts and encouragement directly from Israel.

You can listen to past shows here.

You can listen to the stream via browser or call into the shows while they are live and just listen or ask a question. The US number is (646) 478-4956. Upcoming shows feature the following guests:

August 12th, 2007: Jack Androvich, Sr. Director of Marketing Intelligence and Operations for Worldwide Marketing at Autodesk

August 8th, 2007: Ian Browde, Nokia on the device company’s future and user-generated media

August 19th, 2007: Ning CEO, Gina Bianchini on user controlled networks and what to do with an extra C-series funding of $44 m

August 26th, 2007: Bill Turpin, ex-Netscaper and current CEO of Metaverse.net, multi-player gaming and developer networks

Know someone in new media who might be a good guest on Lisacast? Please email me with your suggestions.

The Return of Reliance

Must the village be a verboten concept? Are we so independent that we cannot collectively agree that independence in the grand scheme is a temporary reality, and not an optimal one. It is the splinter of a moment at the end of a race where one man stands at the top of a mountain and says "Just me." We have not forgotten that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole, have we?

"I am an island", my long-time male friend proclaims as he finishes the build on a beautiful log cabin house on the water in Tahoe this month, customized to every detail of a singular life dependent on no one. Another female aquaintance of mine, a single mother, maintains that she doesn't seek to establish a traditional family scene and in the same breath mentions also that she is exhausted and feels unsupported. And many of us have felt for years that our voice doesn't matter, our votes don't matter, recyclying doesn't matter, my way or the highway and so on.

But I think now there has begun a renewal of community, real community, not just virtual. Whether you believe it or not, virtuality has enabled the return of reliance on one another. Last weekend, because I do less podcasting less these days, I rented out my Marantz sound recorder to a woman who was capturing the sounds of birds. Today I need to find a British army coat for my daughter's 5th grade play. I bet if items like that were listed in some loan database by zipcode, like making my recorder available, I could find one blocks away instead of having to go downtown. I think we're very close to that reality. For resources, for information and support, for all kinds of things.

Last weekend I held a talk show on BlogTalkRadio and my guest mentioned the disappearance of a woman on vacation in Cancun, Mexico. Last night, a woman called me from NY with information about the incident and sent me several articles which lead to the idea that a suspect in the woman's disappearance may be on the west coast now. I wondered if there were any bloggers who had put together an alert system yet about missing persons. In the U.S. anyway, a certain amount of time must pass before a person is considered missing yet homocide police will say that every hour matters in the capture of criminals in cases like these. Again, community stemming from the virtual world can touch our every day lives. These things are coming. If you have any information about the disappearance of this woman, an Israeli tourist, please contact me.

A live voice for press

I keep a Google alert running for the keywrods "citizen journalism" and found out about this story through a blog post from yourfreepress.blogspot.com written by Rafael Martinez Alequin. Mr. Alequin for over 20 years has been covering New York mayors as well as state politics. He is the founder and publisher of a bi-weekly publication covering community, city, state and national issues at http://www.nycfreepress.com. But now that his publication moved online and technically he is also a blogger, he is not considered to have the right credentials as a member of the press and recently he was not allowed in City Hall in New York and is fighting for press credentials once again.

Rafael Martinez Alequin, now 74, was born and raised in Puerto Rico. He studied at Universidad Ibero-American in Mexico City and graduated from Hobart College in Geneva, NY. He was a freelance writer for the New York Yankees Magazine, started a print publication that moved online, ncyfreepress.com, and is known for asking hardball questions.

The timing of my discovery of Mr. Alequin's situation ties in with my joining BlogTalkRadio and expanding my own media contributions to include a live talk show. So I asked this seasoned and passionate journalist to allow me to interview him and he said yes. You can read more at Lisacast.com, listen live to the show, scheduled to air each Sunday at 10 am PST or download it from the archive.

BlogTalkRadio allows hosts the ability to take live calls while the show is aired live and automatically generates a feed for your show so that listeners can subscribe and be alerted when shows are going to be on. There are a ton of categories and countries represented in the programming guide and the site is undergoing some nice changes which will include better search features, listener profiles and promotion tools for hosts. Some very exciting things are coming from the company.

Hamster Pie

I watched an Irina Slutsky video recently about locals in Stockholm, Sweden and their use of the Internet. A gentleman said he participated in a commmunity site called 'Hamster Pie'. I followed my short attention span first to a new browser tab and optimistically typed in 'hamsterpie.com' at which I found a most literal result, i.e. 'pie for hamsters'.

Google search results for hamster pie. And you know what's coming right?

Well hamster owner forums, small animal into food fetish communities, the Swedish mister's social network and yes, a recipe for Le Hamster Pie from the French. I just love the picture at the top of the page. And I give to you, a poem from the food fetish collection, it goes:

"A pan of hot oil
A frog is dropped gently in.
Vigorous sizzling."

The number of cultural differences a couple of words can have is dizzying. I fall into the hamster advocate group, having had 2 as pets when I was in grammar school, however, I've also eaten a frog.

The last 9 people

I just took a peek at the last 9 visitors to our site and wanted to share that I couldn't have hoped it would appeal to a more global audience. That it will grow ever more so opens up so much learning about the world's culture.

1. Cairo, Al Qahirah

2. Lausanne, Vaud

3. Hatfield, Norfolk

4. Muenster, Nordrhein-Westfalen

5. Pleasanton, California

6. London, Lambeth

7. San Francisco, California

8. San Francisco, California

9. Waianae, Hawaii

The most intersting thing I learned recently

Do you have a story to share with me from your side of the world? What's the most interesting thing you've learned recently?

The most interesting thing I saw this week was a latest demo of dotSUB.com, a translation service site with a really intersting player which allows you to scroll through captions in various languages. They are about to incorporate the service with sites like witness.org. Check witness.org out. Very smart, socially-conscious and responsible crew. Something the UN should support no debate.

"Messy and wonderful"

That is how Dan Gillmor charactizes the state of Citizen Media tonight at the Mid-Peninsula Community Media Center. The long-time blogger and ex-columnist for the San Jose Mercury News now runs the Center for Citizen Media.

Dan touched on the history of the newspaper industry as an example of the changing landscape of journalism and said that for the past 40 years it has been dependent on monopolization. "It was previously bad business to annoy half of your audience."

But the traditional journalism business models are quickly eroding. The product is no longer printed on presses that cost $50-75 million. The competition that previously existed in journalism is much less significant today than the present race for ad dollars. We are struggling to encourage local coverage, which is playing a very important role in the value of community knowledge. Investigative and in-depth reporting sites and those adding value to content like newassignment.net, Witness.org, and dotSUB.com are also key to keeping some structure in place and continuing quality journalism. This discussion on citizen media attracted its own "random acts of journalism," a term Mr. Gillmor uses.

I have been part of Ourmedia.org since last May, which today celebrates its 2nd birthday. Happy Birthday! Two years ago J.D. Lasica and Marc Canter approached Brewster Kale, founder of the Internet Archive, to open the Archive's media repository to user-generated content. This turned out to be a popular idea and Ourmedia.org now enables a widely-available library of deep-tagged media, hosted for free. The content is copyright-indicated so people can use them in their own works if you say so. Ourmedia.org's library includes articles about how to use materials.

What's okay to use and what isn't? What do the different licenses mean? How do you strip out or add audio to a podcast or video? Ourmedia.org answers these questions. Ourmedia.org also sports a peer-to-peer file sharing application from Outhink Media you can use to create all kinds of things called SpinXpress. With SpinXpress you can set up private groups and share large files from one computer to another (without uploading it somewhere else first or emailing large files). These image, sound and video files are almost always huge so it solves a big problem. Plus you can publish to multiple locations, including . The Internet Archive is a really nice clean place to showcase your media too. Here a few pieces I published there. Ourmedia.org is also about to relaunch it's site with a Drupal upgrade, which will improve the user interface and extensibility of the service.

What else to expect in the future from these new media experts?

Dan and J.D. are about to launch a project at the Center for Citizen Media centered around "principles of journalism" which includes topics such as story accuracy, fairness and transparency. Check out the media center for ongoing projects and courses you can take to learn more about video production and editing and more.
When tonight's audience was asked why they came to Dan Gillmor's discussion, a member with a philosophy background said, "I want to change the world."

Let's continue with a common goal of better journalism, encouraging the diligence of formal reporting and working too with the spontaneous, creative nature of citizen-generalted media. Some pictures courtesy of Jeff Schwartz are posted on Flickr.

Related items:

http://www.communitymediacenter.net
http://www.archive.org
http://www.ourmedia.org
http://www.citmedia.org
http://www.metacafe.com
http://www.wikipedia.org (my home page is currently set to this page on the Wikipedia.org site and learn something every day)
http://www.newsvine.com
http://www.blip.tv
http://parr.org

$70 M rewards loyalty?

by Michal Berman

Recently much was made of hockey goalie Rick DiPietro's 15-year $67.5 million contract, some commentators went as far as to call the move insane – owner Charles Wang said he believed in rewarding loyalty as a principal of doing business. What a refreshing message or reminder of the value that can be placed on loyalty, the faith (in humanity) required to set out on such a deal, and of how unfortunately rare this commodity (in the sense of an "article of trade") is in business.

Hockey commentators are still shaking their heads at this move and are questioning the merits of offering this type of a deal to an athlete considering the risks of injury and the affects on motivation to maintain a high level of performance. However, NHL and NBA analyst Maria Rotundo indicates in her research that these types of moves may be exactly what is needed to improve overall team performance and reduce counterproductive or retaliatory behaviour on the rink/court. I'm not arguing for or against this kind of contract in sports what I'm more interested in is the message that owner Charles Wang is sending by rewarding loyalty in what is deemed as such a controversial move. Just who wouldn't want to feel some of that organizational "love" at your company?.

Loyalty, according to many industry pundits, is an important business goal. It's sought after to build great teams, to enable revenue growth via customer retention and for those some would argue, more enlightened companies, it's a powerful productivity tool.

The current business climate seems to be far from realizing the concept let alone the ideal of "investing in loyalty in reward for superior value". It's the exception to be able to establish a relationship whether as an employee/employer or consumer or service/goods provider that lasts the long haul e.g., 15 years or more.

Although we don't know the personal aspects of this deal, it will take all the stakeholders (the owner, the individual and the team) to create success from this start. While maybe a bit trite or sophomoric to those whose business is hockey or other sports (or for organizational theorists and psychologists), a great example of the human and environmental complexity required to support this move is the film Jerry Maguire. Ultimately the success of all involved came down to loyalty, loyalty between player and agent, agent and business partner, and player and fans. Loyalty is a quality hard to offer, challenging to maintain and impossible to mimic. I'm hopeful from the various quotes I've read by Wang and DiPietro that all involved will have the faith in each other to sustain this public commitment, (and we all know, deals, whether in writing or not, are broken every day).

A refreshing example, well who knows really? Guess we'll have to wait the 15 years to surely find out in this case.

If you want to read more about loyalty in a business context, check out University of Toronto, Business school, Rotman's latest magazine on the subject.

Michal Berman is a multi-national technology consultant from Toronto, Canada.

Media in Italy

Click to view this 4-minute video

Roberto Spiezio, citizen journalst from Italy, is interviewed about his entry into the world of jourmalism.

After my interview with Mr. Spiezio in South Korea, we corresponded by email and he was kind enough to offer more information about politics and media in his home country of Italy.

LP: Thank you in advance for your perspectives on life in Italy, Roberto. First, let me ask, how does Italy view immigration?

RS: This is a really sensitive issue and one of the usual battlefields for the political parties. The left wing has a policy of aperture about immigration, because of ideological matters and because immigrants are a good source of political consensus.

At the moment the government (left wing) has given many immigrants a resident status, as long as they have a regular job. In the past few years the right wing government had cracked down on immigration, by making the entrance and the staying in Italy a lot more difficult. As example, a Korean friend of mine came to visit me 2 years ago, and the army stopped her and told her if she didn't notify her presence -even as a tourist- within 7 days with the authorities, she could have been immediately expelled and banned from the country for 5 years - and she was just a tourist!

In Italy immigrants don't have the right to vote, even if they are permanent residents, whereas relatives of native Italians abroad, even if they are not Italian citizens, do have it.

This is one of the points the present government is going to address, along with the problem of the legal status of the 2nd and next generations of immigrants, citizens by birth or not.

Finally, the enterprise world in Italy is demanding more immigrants, because the economy needs it, and this affects the choices of the government in a decisive fashion often times.

LP: What is mobile phone use like in Italy?

RS: In Italy mobile phones are really widespread. Many Italians have more than one, and even elementary school kids tend to have it. Born as a status symbol, now it's more a common consumer device, like the TV or the radio. The most widespread technology is GSM, an European standard not compatible with Eastern Asian one (CDMA 2000) but UMTS (a standard introduced for multimedia streaming) is gaining consensus, since it allows people to make video calls and watch TV, while browsing the Internet at broadband speed, but the service doesn't cover the whole territory yet, we are far from reaching a 100% covering actually.

Recently Italy has been witnessing a springing up of services connected to the use of the mobile phones, especially silly subscriptions services (love compatibility and stuff) and it has been also introduced the TV service. Sky Italia is on the frontline in this new development.

The market seems to have reached its saturation since there are a number of mobile providers that have not changed for years now.

LP: What can you tell me about RAI?

RS: RAI TV is not exactly a private enterprise. As a state television, it has a character of public service, like PBS in America and it's divided into a number of companies that have a specific area of the industry to take care of, from advertising to new media.

Rai receives public funding, especially through subscription fees paid by the viewers. An anomaly is that this fee is conceived as a government tax on the possession of the TV set, so everyone is supposed to pay it, even if doesn't watch the channels. The management is appointed by a parliamentary commission, so there is a heavy political control as to how the company is run.

There are plans and petitions to exclude this pervasive political control over the service, and a real privatization is, as far as I know, not favorably welcomed by many, since the original character of public service would be "betrayed."

The overall quality of this network is good, apart from a questionable tendency to multiply quiz shows and "reality shows" like big brother and others, in that there are several competent journalists, and the offer is quite wide, even if some of the most interesting channels can be viewed only via satellite or in the new digital terrestrial platform. But in my opinion, just because of the political control over the management, a complete independence can't be assured. This is particularly evident in the news branch of the network.

LP: And how about SKY Italia?

RS: This is quite an interesting problem. Sky Italia is the only satellite provider in Italy, after the debacle of Telepiu and Stream. Its offer is wide and overall good quality in my opinion, even if too expensive for the average viewer. Nowadays SKY is under the spotlight because of the big soccer scandal ongoing, and the problem of the game transmission rights (collectively contracted or team by team). In Italy many don't see SKY as a positive reality, since it has a monopoly in its particular branch of the media.

LP: What about globalization or “delocalizzazione”?

RS: This is a relatively recent and controversial issue in Italy. It's recent because we "woke up" to comparing with other countries, and started facing the problem when other countries already were actuating their own solutions. It's controversial because the economy in Italy is not as good as before, the cost of living and for energy has risen dramatically over the past few years, and de-localization unavoidably brings job decreases and desperation in many people made redundant.

In my area there are the major eyewear companies in the world, producing glasses for the most important brands, including Ray-Ban and Prada. Some of them have started a delocalization project, and the main destination is China.

The pros of such a kind of phenomenon can be seen only for the enterprises in my opinion, in that they can reduce costs while gaining higher profit. I still have doubts about the quality of the products made in China, though. Cons regarding job descreases, and all the social problems related to that, including destroying entire communities that were totally built around a single factory in many cases.

LP: How do the quasi poveri connect and use the Internet, as well as get their news? Do they trust the large media companies? If not, then who?

RS: The Digital Divide in Italy is still a grave and serious problem. While we are supposed to be an "advanced country" there are still many towns and villages without broadband connection. Some organizations are trying to propose a project to adopt a policy for bringing the broadband virtually everywhere. The real matter is not the access to the internet by quasi poveri, but the access to the internet and its diffusion as well as the creation of an "internet culture" as a whole.

Some enterprises have introduced Wi-Fi in rural areas or villages not covered by the wired broadband connection.

The de facto monopolistic situation of Italian telephony, whereby one company owns all the infrastructure and forces the other providers to abide by the rules and the prices imposed by it, has created a really difficult situation: the prices for a flat internet connection are comparatively higher than in other European countries, and the quality is nearly always unsatisfactory.

The access to news is mostly traditional: TV, newspapers and then radio. People are divided about trusting mainstream media. As I perceive it, while the majority still relies on them, especially the well-established media, such as Corriere Della Sera and Republica, the most important newspapers in Italy, there are many people more and more dissatisfied with them, in search of something better. Proof is in the springing up of "counter information" and alternative information websites. Their quality is not always good, because there seems not to be any form of editorial control, and anyway they are regarded as niche realities that have nothing to do with the "serious" and "official" media.

My perception is that as long as a publication can pose itself as a credible and authoritative alternative to the mainstream media, it can break in and become a point of reference.

Related items:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482633/
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2006/5/Stille.asp
http://www.vivazapatero.co.uk/

Saying Goodbye to the Dead in Batibo

Batibo is a sub-administrative unit in the North West province of Cameroon. It is mostly a rural environment situated at the boundary between the Savannah and the equatorial rain forest. The majority of the people that currently reside in this area are the Moghamo-speaking people. History tells us that many other people residing elsewhere in the North West province migrated from this area, hence there are many cultural similarities between the Moghamo people and the rest of the province's people.

The Moghamo people tend to be very sociable and they profit from their strong social bond to overcome many challenges by organizing themselves in groups to tackle problems that would otherwise be insurmountable to a single individual. This togetherness plays a very big role when the community loses somebody.

The wailing of women usually announces the passing away of somebody. Typically when this happens, everybody in the immediate vicinity suspends whatever he/she is doing and moves to the compound of the bereaved. Within minutes, a crowd soon forms in the compound and volunteers start doing everything from comforting the bereaved to arranging the compound to receive more sympathizers. Women usually move in with their mats and mattresses to be sleeping in the compound for a week or two to console a wife, a sister or the mother of the diseased. Female sympathizers bring along food while males bring jugs of raffia palm wine known as 'fitchuk'. These items are added to what is prepared in the compound to entertain visitors beginning from the day the death is announced, through burial to the final death celebration. The program can last from a few days to two weeks depending on the status of the person and size of the family. In the past it could take up to a month or more.

Since majority of the people of Batibo are Christians, funeral rites usually commence from the church with songs, sermons and testimonials. After church service the crowd accompanies the coffin for burial (that takes place usually behind the house of the diseased). In the past, some family heads were usually buried in graves dug inside the living room. The firing of ten guns by men usually follows after burial. Loud-sounding guns are appreciated.

Reception is organized for everybody that attended the burial and the Batibo people have become very sophisticated at hosting large crowds and ensuring that everybody is properly fed. Priority is usually given to people that come from afar. They are usually served with something akin to a buffet. Singing and dancing follows the reception. Different people spontaneously tune songs to the crowd while those that are competent at the drums, and other instruments handle them. The songs’ melody and rhythm and the vibration from the drums send a beautiful artistic message that is difficult to describe. To know it, you need to feel it.

A second phase of the ceremony called 'death celebration' usually follows the burial ceremony. It could be organized immediately after burial or put off for another period (even years down the road) because it involves substantial organization and commitment of funds. Close family members of the diseased such as the children, the in-laws, the brothers and sisters all participate in the planning and execution of this phase. Each individual that is supposed to organize a celebration is allocated a day from a string of successive days chosen for the occasion. There are minimum financial requirements to be fulfilled by those involved. For example, you could be required to produce two big pigs, some palm oil, a bag or two of salt and other things. You may next be required to hire a traditional dance group and masquerades for the entertainment of mourners. The items you have supplied will be used to feed people but you may have to make additional provision in case there is a large turnout on your own day of the celebration. In all these arrangements, you will get material support from other people—a support that is usually proportional to your past participation in assisting others overcome similar problems.

The organization of the 'death celebration' is an obligation. If you were to die when you had a pending celebration to carry out, that responsibility will be transferred to your successor. A 'death celebration' is judged to be successful if the turn out of invitees is impressive and everybody present eats and drinks well.

People generally agree that the most positive aspect of the Batibo people’s way of handling the dead has to do with psychological healing of the bereaved. The permanent presence of many people for weeks around the bereaved tends to fill the vacuum created by the departure of the loved one. "I felt the real impact of my husband's departure only after all the mourners had dispersed", said a woman who recently lost her husband in an accident.

Njei Moses Timah is a pharmacist in his country of Cameroon and a citizen journalist writing for OhMyNews and other publications. I appreciate the time he took to write this article for Road|Productions and look forward to future collaboration with him. You can read more from Njei at http://www.njeitimah-outlook.com.

Suppression, I Accept Not

by Bhuwan Thapaliya

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I came
into this world
not like the river
but like the drop of water
and will evaporate soon

Though,
I am only
a drop of water
in the majestic ocean
of nature

I yearn
to create
a vigorous ripple
of freedom,
in the eternity of the water

For, I am the man,
of eternal freedom
and suppression
I accept not
I will accept not

The living God
within me, urges
me to be free, and
march on the road
of freedom sans any dread

My heart
like Einstein
thinks in another dimension
unknown and unknowable
even to my mind

And like Goethe
looks at things
in a different manner
different than those thinkers
bestowed with pristine minds

Freedom
the gift of God
is the inherent right
of every individual
in this compressed world

I will fight
till the end
to free the masses
from the grip of suppression
and ignite the lamp of freedom

I will free the masses
or die in the attempt
but I will never
live to see
the naked dance of repression

I am not afraid
of those suppressors
nor I am afraid of the death
that they are planning for me
they can kill me but not freedom forever

My blood boils,
Whenever, I see the strong ones
pulverizing the lean,
and my heart cries,
whenever I see the starving pauper
in the abattoir of the prosperous butcher

For me
a red rose is a red rose
it is not white
just because they call it white
to disguise the ignorant folks

They can
conquer the Everest
but not my spirit
they can stagnate the river
but not my impetus

They can
take my
sight away
but not
my vision of freedom

They can
cut my
tongue into pieces
but not
my voice of freedom

They can
stab me, with the
dagger of despotism
but not impede
the blood of freedom

I know
the road to freedom
is blocked with obstacles
but obstacles causes no despair
if they are encountered with hope

We must act now
and merely
not just look on,
when our freedom
is threatened from within

Because,
it is better
to perish without freedom
than to have a yearn for freedom
but not the valor to harvest it

Don’t be a coward.

Be prepared to receive
bullets on your chest
because, in the struggle
of freedom, tolerance
of suppression is offense

Stand up, stand up

Gather your courage
Come out in the field
let’s march hand in hand together
Right beneath the nose of the suppressors
for the emancipation of our freedom

Let us not forget that.

The ocean is composed of drops
of water, and all drops possess
equal potentials, but only, when
they mix with other drops
they form a powerful bond

So…

Listen, my oppressed brothers
listen, my trodden sisters
listen, listen
to the natural desire
of your ceaseless soul

do not fear
trust your soul
and march ahead
with a resolute heart
for the better tomorrow

And scatter
the seeds of freedom,
where does it go?
it does not matter
scatter it more with hope

Welcome the freedom
welcome it today
and enjoy it evermore
but do not use your freedom
to suppress the peoples soul
to suppress the peoples soul

Read more about the conditions in Nepal and the inspiration for this poem.

Transitions in Nepal

The past several years have been a time of turmoil and sweeping change in the mountainous kingdom of Nepal. Never in Nepal’s history have the Nepalese people suffered than in these last few years from all fronts – autocratic King, Maoist rebels, corrupt leaders, lackluster political parties, ever soaring unemployment and inflation. Things have changed in Nepal recently but the barrage shows no sing of letting up and the future of Nepal is asuncertain as it was then.

Something is still lacking in Nepal, and that missing factor is the political consensus amongst the Seven Political Parties and the Maoists. Sadly, this has given the non-democratic forces an arena to regain their recently lost glories, slowly but steadily. But in the midst of this all, let us pray for the lasting peace and stability in Nepal as ordinary Nepalese are finding it difficult to live in the nation trodden by the brutalities of the suppression and violence.

Now, let me come back to the point and share with you all, the circumstances that motivated me to write the poem, “Suppression, I accept not.”

Wherever I went, I was sensing suppression, whatever I read, I was sensing suppression, whoever I met, I was feeling suppression. King Gyanendra was busy bamboozling the people, and the anti-democratic forces were making
a mockery of the democracy by indulging in non-democratic political activities. Violence, killing, torture, and suppression were going on in all the 75 districts of Nepal, mostly from two forces – the soldiers of King Gyanendra and the militias of the Maoists. Trapped in between were the common people and the democratic political parties of Nepal. And I was very restless given the fact that we were losing our basic human rights and freedoms.

It has often occurred to me that a poet after witnessing suppression in all socio-economic frontiers of Nepal has no right to be silent. I knew then that I wouldn’t be able to change the condition of Nepal via my poetry but yet I realized that it was much better than doing nothing. I know the wonderful efficacy of poetry, and the voice it gives to the voiceless, and the hope it gives to the hopeless.

Experience had taught me that poetry is a part of the spiritual disciple of a votary of truth; so on Friday, January 2nd, 2004, I woke up from my slumber and spilled my heart out in a piece of paper as for me democracy is the best form of government, and no matter how hard they preach against democracy, they wont be able to drift me from the democratic path.

I sat on my verandah, and stated spilling my heart out in my fight against the suppression. Here is the poem which I wrote two years ago, during the zenith of suppression in Nepal under the direct royal regime but unfortunately this poem of mine is as relevant in contemporary Nepal as it was then because the Maoists are not abiding by code of conduct and are continuing forceful extortions.

Notwithstanding the commitment of the party leadership not to collect forceful donations and break the ceasefire code of conduct signed by the government and the Maoists, Maoist rebels are collecting donations forcefully from various business houses and people, though the Maoist leadership have been refuting this claim.

But the reality is very different. The Maoist cadres have been threatening business houses and people to give donations and also warning of dire consequences if they failed to comply with their orders. The Maoists have also been continuing the acts of abduction and torturing people, but the party leadership has remained tight lipped in such issues.

Considering this status quo, Nepal it seems is out of the frying pan (Royal regime) into the fire (The Maoists). And my fight is yet on in Nepal to establish true democracy and freedom in Nepal because Suppression, I accept not and will accept not, no matter what happens to me in my pursuit to the lasting peace and stability in Nepal because I have already dedicated this life of mine to their freedom – on whose freedom my existence and the existence of this great nation, “Nepal”, depends.

guest author Bhuwan Thapaliya of Kathmandu, Nepal