Archive for the ‘ Politics ’ Category

Multistory

This blog doesn’t get much use unfortunately. I’ve been busy juggling a few different projects and plans are coming together for these webspaces itison.tv (the channel) & itison.net (the network). Basically, it is all about collaborative curated media. I will explain more in detail when I put some shape back onto these sites and make them easy to navigate again.

In the meantime, aside from the web projects themselves I’ve been looking at the issue of the upcoming census in Ireland and it’s association with CACI  who are accused of torture in the notorious Abu Gharaib prison in Iraq. They also are involved in the Scottish census while Lockheed Martin have a starring role in the census for the rest of the UK.I launched multistory.itison.net a few days ago to compile and curate some of the information out there regarding this. Here in Ireland there has not been adequate media coverage of this and the general public are not by enlarge aware of this issue.

The details are in the first stories on the site now. Tune in. Check it out.

multistory.itison.net

RTÉ: The Unsaid

On Sunday last (21/10/10) the Irish government announced the IMF / ECB bailout plans. This was already the word on the street for the previous week and the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen had, on more than one occasion, vehemently denied any plans for an IMF bailout. Yet again, more lies. The IMF brigade were apparently just here on a friendly visit over the previous days and were shacked up in the swanky Merrion Hotel, conveniently located a spitting distance from the back door of government buildings. But the charade couldn’t be kept up for too long.

I was watching the news develop online via Twitter when it was announced a press conference would take place after 8pm with some news from the government. It’s unusual of course for our politicians to work on a Sunday, so this it would seem was the admission of what the IMF were really here for (as if we didn’t know).

I switched on the television and flicked around to see what was being said. BBC and Sky News were covering the story for an hour previous and people wondered on Twitter if RTÉ was going to announce that they would be covering it.

RTÉ broadcast the government’s press conference at 8.30pm after Fair City. The News Flash cut the live broadcast at 8.50pm before it was over when the journalist Vincent Browne dealt some tough questions to An Taoiseach and went back to the studio for some “analysis”. I had to switch to the BBC to catch the remainder of the conference.

License fee; €160
Remit; public service broadcasting

I, like many, complained. What I got from RTÉ was a stock response.. My email correspondence with them is attached below in full (pdf format)

complaint to RTÉ – November 2010

…. I’m still waiting for a reply but won’t be holding my breath.

On Monday night I made a little remix garnered from some of the material I harvested over the previous 48 hours.
Et voila…

Mercy buckets RTÉ

ps: as you won’t find an archive of this conference on the RTÉ website, I’ve linked it below from some puclic service minded Youtuber

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHcw5xYSaAE

The Crises of Capitalism

David Harvey’s words are animated on the topic of capitalism and our economic world in which we live today. Of course I don’t mean they are dressed up in any way… just objectivity helped by visuals.

go to the source..

see all of David Harvey’s talk