The first Independent Media Centre (IMC) came to life in Seattle in November 1999. It was set up to cover a specific event: the protests against the World Trade Organisation. The Seattle IMC produced a printed publication called The Blind Spot, which was distributed on the streets during the demos, as well as creating a website that became an enormous success.
Since then “independent media” and “open publishing” have become buzz-words among activists everywhere. Indymedia is…
Cultural resistance is, it seems, in the air at the moment. There's been British novelist Nicholas Blincoe, calling for a cultural boycott of Israel by disrupting Israeli folk-singer Noa's performance at a London music festival; the theatre producer who decapitated a marble statue of Baroness Margaret Thatcher as a protest against global capitalism; and George Michael, challenging US foreign policy in the pop charts, an attitude also adopted by a host of high-level-artistic figures in the US…
Some people still reduce Zapatismo to Marcos. Pure racism. An educated white man was surely manipulating those poor, illiterate Mayas. They cannot say what he is saying and even less conceive such a movement... Unabated racism.
But what about the crowds? A year ago, subcomandante Marcos and 25 Zapatista commanders travelled to Mexico City. For the first time, millions were able to see and hear them. Time and again the crowds did not allow the other Zapatistas to speak. Marcos! Marcos…
I started off as a street musician in Dublin in 1986, filling in the hours while my three daughters were at school. The streets get into the bloodstream after a while - the freedom, the fresh air, the uncertainty of it all, the peace.
What started off as a hobby became a part-time earner. Arriving in Dublin with the three girls, I met other musicians, we played together on the streets and had fun. Having studied the Irish language (old and medieval) and being under pressure from…
Close to and almost surrounding the Turkish parliament in Ankara are the various headquarters of the military establishment army, navy, airforce, and gendarmerie. Diagonally opposite looms the office of the General Chief of Staff.
It is well known that the armed services have played a very central role in modern Turkey, since the foundation of the Republic in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, himself a military leader. Three democratically elected governments have been ousted…
Oscar Wilde famously observed that he couldn't look at a map without it present among the nations, while Sir Thomas More invented the word with his 1516 treatise on the ideal society, compounding Greek words to mean not a place, literally nowhere.
The small matter of geographical non-existence didn't stop More however. In fact it was a prerequisite in his picturing of the perfect island community. And ever since that first named outing, utopia has spread across the world and beyond,…
This manages to be both an utterly charming book, and to convey a serious message. Skip the introduction its fine, but you can get the explanations of Zapatismo from a hundred other places. Maybe go back to it when you've read the stories. Which are marvellous.
Marcos is well-known for his writing, especially the eloquent communiqués which emerge periodically from the Lacandon jungle. These stories are a different breed whimsical, funny, literary. Don Durito de la Lacandon…
Usually referred to as Alternative Nobel Prizes , the Right Livelihood Awards started in 1980 and are presented annually in the Swedish Parliament.
Founder Jakob Von Uxekull felt that the Nobel Prizes today ignore much work and knowledge vital for the future of humankind. These awards were introduced to honour and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent questions facing us today .
This year's awards will be presented on 7 December, with…
This is a kind of concept album about pirate-radio and death-row. The premise being that it’s the night before a revolutionary, activist nun (yes, nun), who advocates the medical use of marijuana, is about to be executed.
Hmmm... Michael Franti is a lovely, great guy, and this album has a lot to recommend it (it's on in the office a lot). Issues are sensitively covered, the songs are fantastic, beautifully arranged, hitting the political-soulful-funk spot perfectly. But the snippets…
On the night of 13 October 1965, the Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer was working at home; his family had already moved, for their own safety, to his mother-in-law's house.
Around 10.30 pm, a crowd gathered outside and began to throw stones at the house. Police officers and soldiers arrived, telling Pram that they had come to “take him to safety”. Instead, he was taken to the Army Reserve Strategic Command Post.
He was held in a variety of prisons until 1969, when he…
This is Consolidated's seventh full-length studio album, and while perhaps their most musically diverse,certain political themes remain a constant feature of all their work.
It's a musical journey which touches on blues, rock, industrial and hiphop. The End of Meaning has several outstanding tracks: I rather liked the shambling hip-hop of You Go Dude; the anti-porn rant of Speech and Harm ; and the industrial intensity of Fall of the Culture Industry…
Love them or loathe them, the James Bond films and novels comprise one of the most significant British cultural phenomena of the last fifty years.
For Black, among the central themes are the impact of the Second World War upon western culture, the declining importance of Britain on the world stage and changing relations between the west and Russia. He also gives a great deal of consideration to changing attitudes towards gender, race and ethnicity throughout the period.
In a…
A dreamlike account of dysfunctional life in the modern French Foreign Legion. Stuck in Marseilles after being cast out from his beloved military “family”, Staff Sergeant Galoup recalls his time in Djibouti as a sun-baked idyll.
From Galoup's remembered perspective the East African landscape seems to be populated with happy, compliant locals and the eroticised bodies of legionnaires. But as Galoup himself says, “viewpoints count”, and this nostalgia-laden view of the post-colonial…
Richard Pakleppa was a conscientious objector to serving in the South African occupation army, and went to Europe, where he worked as a camera assistant. He then moved to Cape Town, along with other young Namibian radicals, and became involved in “civic youth, working class student struggles, organising mass campaigns, the powerful use of culture, propaganda, theatre, music, stayaways, boycotts”. In 1986 he returned to Namibia and worked for some years as an activist and union organiser for…
This fundraiser CD for Survival -the campaign group supporting tribal people - makes very easy listening. Billed as “A fusion of chilled tribal beats, ambient dub and trance music”, it certainly is!
While it has several tracks from famous artists, such as Leftfield, and Banco de Gaia, it also showcases less well-known performers, and all cite tribal influences in their music.
Basically it starts off very chilled, builds up to a more busy and dancey middle section - with tracks…
