Writing

Writing a novel is hard work and particularly time-consuming. I' don't seem to find time to follow up on my blogs in Dutch let alone in English. Things are moving though, and yesterday I experienced an outburst of apparantly seamless inspiration that gave me the outline for most of the story that I'm writing.

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land

[Comment to the Brigitte Gabriel speech on YouTube]

If this isn't propaganda then I don't know what. I've never seen something more obviousely biased than this. Even is the small story about the hospitalride is true, the generalisation that this woman is making is pure racism. Futhermore she's downright lying about the Israeli assaults in Libanon. Have a look at the following film and you'll get a better idea of the conflict:

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land (Bathsheba Ratzkoff and Sut Jhally - 1 uur 19 min 14 sec. - 22 apr 2006) provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites--oil, and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others--work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported. Through the voices of scholars, media critics, peace activists, religious figures, and Middle East experts, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land carefully analyzes and explains how--through the use of language, framing and context--the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media, and Israeli colonization of the occupied terrorities appears to be a defensive move rather than an offensive one. The documentary also explores the ways that U.S. journalists, for reasons ranging from intimidation to a lack of thorough investigation, have become complicit in carrying out Israel's PR campaign. At its core, the documentary raises questions about the ethics and role of journalism, and the relationship between media and politics.

Terminology in tourism

Dear Ranjan,

I see what you mean. Vigilance is incredibly important:
- because they have become so shrewd in using our terminology, in other words: 'meaning' is in fact 'pregnant with meaning' and in the ends becomes 'acceptation'
- because they use professional marketing methods to sell their message to the public who is unaware of the corporate intrests behind it all
- because the tourism industry is generally associated with fun times and therefore harmless activities.
- Furthermore, people don't want to be bothered with problems, they want to leave their problems behind on holidays.
- finally, we haven't got grassroots support in the west yet, as some other worldproblems do have.

Still, collecting expertise is the first thing. And good practices. As their are more and more succesfull examples in the global south (and north) where people take tourism in their own hands, we must be hopefull. With the spreading of the social forum phenomena, we must seize the opportunity to start more alliances between local people with first hand experiences and 'knowledge centers' such as ECOT. We must seek contact with the big ngo's in the west who have experience in more capacity building and get more campaigns going in Europe and North America. We must expand the TEN network into a global alliance of activists, local communities, expertise centers and professional advocacy networks that are on speaking terms with the decision makers at the WTO or elsewhere. Finally, we must combine pressure on international and national level to reach change of policies.

My warmest regards,
Koen

New Internationalist magazine on-line :.

.: New Internationalist magazine on-line :.

Carfree cities are carefree cities

Living cities are changeable. An interessting publication that just came out making this point is J.H. Crawford's "Carfree cities."

Some monthes ago at the European Social Forum in London I bought an book called "cities are good for us" from Harley Sherlock. This was interessting because of his historical overview. Sherlock explains how cities grew and evolved, especially in England.

Crawford's book "carfree cities" devellops a model for new cities where cars become ...superfluous. New is that he couples a nicely developed Internet site to the book: http://www.carfree.com/.

Besides its theoretical models for new car-free cities put he a number of original low-car cities in the picture such as venice and the historical Moroccan emperor cities. By means of a fototour you can walk through these old cities. Splendid photography. In spite of the possible counterarguments of occupants and tradesmen it is not considered with difficulty which potential tourist opens you by opening up at least the inner cities for pedestrians. Questions put to the small shop-owners in the many shoppings streets of our inner cities, which were seized firstly with a light panic their street car-free were then made, because "the customers would stay away if they could no longer drive till their front door." Therefore, to large satisfaction of the tradesmen did not stay away the customers not in the least, more still, they made an outing of it. How much more pleasant it quietly beyond the vitrines walk, the street to be able cross without looking round. Everything that you hear its votes and foot steps, no noisy engines or exhaust gases in your face.
(sorry for bad translation, not time, thanks to Babelfish)

A nice quote from the World Social Forum in Brazil...

The african speaker from Mali related a story when she was still a child on a practice in Dhakar, Senegal. As a child, she has observed that they can buy birds from bird merchants whenever she feels sad and then released it to be free, believeing that with the freedom of the bird, her sadness would be released as well. As an adult, she have refelected on this practice and would still like to free the birds, not by buying is freedom from the bird merchants that are bird catchers as well, but by breaking the cage. She then challenge President Lula to show her support to the campaign by symbolically tieing up the white band in his wrist.
http://www.11.be/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=1452

American Republican chaingang

Looking at the election results at the cnn website (http://us.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/) the map is rapidly turning red from Bush's winning states. While the northern eastcoast and westcoast are mostly blue where Kerry leads, the deep heart of the U.S. votes republican.
They voted for the same people that dismantled the social system,
In the end they are prepared to plunge the whole world into war, as long as it's profitable to them.
The neo-cons in Washington don't care about ordinary people, they don't care for the environment, they don't care about the rest of the world, to them the future is something like a horror movie full of war and poverty and death. They have done nothing but make the rich richer, boosted the arms industry (of which they are among the main beneficiaries), convince everyone outside the country that the US is a greedy monstruous and evil empire.

How is it possible that the ordinary American identifies himself with republican values?

Another observation: more men voted Bush than women. Not suprising since, everybody knows, women are smarter. Also, women have lost their sons and husbands and brothers in Iraq. They tend to have a social conscience and think about the future.