<nettime> warm bodies, cold media digest [weisman, da rimini, dominguez]

["nettime's_ticker" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>]

Mike Weisman <popeye@speakeasy.org>
     Re: <nettime> barlow@anti-war demo
francesca da rimini <gashgirl@systemx.autonomous.org>
     anti-war chronicles
"ricardo dominguez" <rdom@thing.net>
     Re: <nettime> barlow@anti-war demo [S]

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Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 08:04:32 -0800
Subject: Re: <nettime> barlow@anti-war demo
From: Mike Weisman <popeye@speakeasy.org>

On 10/27/02 6:51 PM, geert lovink wrote:


> The puzzling question to me is, why are the media going along with George
> II on this. What the hell is in it for them?

> But it's not important to the media. Why?

John Perry Barlow remembers a bit of high school history.  Hearst did use
his newspaper to help start the Spanish-American War.  But not to sell
papers. 

Newspapers today (and even then) don't make money from selling papers.  They
make money from selling ads. And many make money today from the value of
their properties, including real estate, radio and TV stations, book
publishing, and investments.

As the US economy enters the decline of its eventual demise, all aspects of
the economy are going through dislocation.  Real estate in the few remaining
stable areas of the country is too expensive to buy, and agents are loath to
put inventory on the market at declining prices.  Newspaper ad sections are
almost non-existent.  During the dot.com boom there was an entire section of
jobs ads; now there are almost none.

Display ads are also in decline.  No more full page color ads for Pets.com
or MyLackey.com. No more tombstones for floating new issues; there are no
new issues. 

Polls show that the vast majority of the country supports the war. The
conventional wisdom is that the war will help the economy, although that has
never been the case in the 20th century.  The markets will decline
precipitously if the US actually goes to war, an action that becomes less
probable each day as the Bush administration backs off its war talk with the
realization that it isn't going to influence the election and may even have
hurt their chances to retake the Congress.  But newspapers hope the war will
increase the value of their investments, generate more consumer ads and
classifieds, and lead to new vigor in the real estate market, where they
really make their money. They also hope the Bush administration will
continue to relax restrictions on media ownership, so that newspapers can
expand their media footprint and make money from 'synergies.'  Remember
'synergies' from the dot.com boom?   Keep in mind too, that most US
reporters today are conservatives, not liberals, according to research.

The war will also destroy what's left of the real estate market, and owners
in must sell situations will take a loss.  Purchase of major appliances and
cars, which currently sell with the help of zero-interest loans, will end.
And forget new investment in the stock market.  Buy gold. Newspapers are
betting like contrarians, hoping that I am wrong about all this, and that
the war will restore the vigor that papers enjoyed during the Clinton years,
when consumers were more confident about the future.

John is right about one thing: no one has any faith or trust in the nation's
leadership, left or right, young or old.  The level of distain and
discouragement is higher than ever before.  With good reason, because the
political leadership of this country has absolutely no plan for the future,
no post war plan, no war goals, no economic program except to burn more coal
and turn back the clock to 1950, and no educational program.  Blame John
Perry Barlow and his friends like Bill Gates and George Gilder, who took the
'Me' generation to its absurd extreme, pontificating on the need to keep
regulation out of the technology sector and creating an entire philosophy
around selfishness, stupidity, and ignorance as virtues.  Boo hoo.

The future will be more like Red Dawn than Secaucus Seven.  Welcome to the
new shrinking, ostracisized, poor, declining, and impotent US.  Its not the
triumphant country in John's songs.   But it could have been.

Mike Weisman
Seattle

-- 
Please respond to:
Mike Weisman
popeye@speakeasy.org

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Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 22:55:51 +1100 (EST)
From: francesca da rimini <gashgirl@systemx.autonomous.org>
Subject: anti-war chronicles

re JPP's statement:
But from where I was marching, it looked like a big deal, and not simply
because everything I'm involved with looks like a big deal to me. This was
huge. Let me tell you a little about it, since apparently no one else is
going to.


since someone had just sent me a video of the big no war protest in
central park in NYC a cpoupla weeks ago
i was interested in knowing how the oct 26 peace/anti-war protests were
going in
dc and sanfrancisco and various other cities around the world so i was
checking out various indymedia sites on saturday (US PM) and found a lotta
reports and pictures, streaming files etc 

who expects to get "real news", witnessing etc from mainstream feeds
these days....?

the streets and the nets seem the more likely places to put your body and
reports

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From: "ricardo dominguez" <rdom@thing.net>
Subject: Re: <nettime> barlow@anti-war demo [S]
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 06:45:27 -0500

[Just a small amout of micro-media reports about these massive
manifestations to be found - total blackout about all the demos at the
 dominant media level. Only spectacles of violence and death get covered in
the U.S. - rdom].


Protesters March Against War in Iraq
Sat Oct 26, 5:27 PM ET
By LAWRENCE L. KNUTSON, Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021026/ap_on_re_us/anti_
war_protest_17

WASHINGTON (AP) - Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters circled the White
House on Saturday after Jesse Jackson and other speakers denounced the Bush
administration's Iraq policies and demanded a revolt at the ballot box to
promote peace.


The protest coincided with anti-war demonstrations from Augusta, Maine, to
San Francisco and abroad from Rome and Berlin to Tokyo to San Juan, Puerto
Rico, and Mexico City. In Washington and many of the other demonstrations,
protesters added complaints about U.S. policy toward the Palestinians.


"We must not be diverted. In two years we've lost 2 million jobs,
unemployment is up, stock market down, poverty up," Jackson told a spirited
crowd in Washington. "It's time for a change. It's time to vote on Nov. 5
for hope. We need a regime change in this country."


Congress has authorized the use of military force to achieve the
administration policy of "regime change" in Iraq.


"If we launch a pre-emptive strike on Iraq we lose all moral authority,"
Jackson told the chanting, cheering throng spread out on green lawns near
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.


A sign showed Bush's face at the end of two bright red bombs with the
caption: "Drop Bush, not bombs."


The protest brought out the elderly, young parents with babies in strollers,
even a man dressed as Uncle Sam wearing dreadlocks and another Uncle Sam, on
stilts, with an elongated Pinocchio nose.


Protest organizers claimed up to 200,000 people had answered the call to
challenge President Bush (news - web sites)'s determination to force out
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). Because the U.S. Park
Police no longer issues crowd estimates, the size of the crowd could not be
verified. As the march began, participants stretched for at least five city
blocks.


On a nearby street corner, a handful of Iraqi-Americans staged a
counterdemonstration. Aziz al-Taee, spokesman for the Iraqi-American
Council, said, "I think America is doing just fine. ... We think every day
Saddam stays in power, he kills more Iraqis."


New Englanders ventured out in snow, sleet and rain to join demonstrations
in Maine and Vermont. Across the nation a couple thousand showed up at the
Colorado capitol in downtown Denver, and demonstrators marched at San
Francisco.


The thousands who gathered in cities across Europe, Asia and beyond also
displayed vocal opposition to the U.S. policy toward Iraq and demanded
reversal of Bush's Iraq policies.

In San Francisco, demonstrators stretched about a mile as they marched from
the financial district to City Hall, carrying placards that read, "Money for
jobs, not for war" and "No blood for oil."

Young punk rockers with mohawks, aging hippies and middle-aged couples with
children all took part, chanting, "One, two, three, four, we don't want your
racist war."

In Berlin, an estimated 8,000 people, brandishing placards that declared
"War on the imperialist war," converged on the downtown Alexanderplatz and
marched past the German Foreign Ministry. Another 1,500 showed up in
Frankfurt, 500 in Hamburg.

Another 1,500 rain-soaked demonstrators gathered under umbrellas outside the
U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark. More than 1,000 marched in Stockholm,
Sweden.

In Washington, civil rights activist Al Sharpton addressed Bush, even though
the president was at an economic summit in Mexico.

"It would have been good for you to be here, George, so you could see what
America really looks like," Sharpton said. "We are the real America.

"We are the patriots that believe that America should heal the world and not
bring the world to nuclear war over the interests of those business tycoons
who put you in the White House."

___

Associated Press writers Elizabeth Wolfe in Washington and Angela
Watercutter in San Francisco contributed to this report.

<<<MORE>>>>

100,000 Flood Washington for What May Be the Biggest American Antiwar March
Since Viet Nam
The Usual Suspects-and Beyond
by Esther Kaplan
October 27th, 2002 2:30 PM


WASHINGTON, D.C.-It's true, the longshoremen's drill team, with its sharp
black uniforms and tightly rehearsed moves, did attract attention, as did
the tuneful warbling of Rochester's Raging Grannies. And the paparazzi
couldn't help but trail Rockers Against the War, a gaggle of glam rock
retro-protesters from New York City who pranced with stylish profanity in
platform shoes, boas, and glitter. But Saturday's D.C. march against war on
Iraq, likely the largest antiwar protest here since the Viet Nam era, was
not really an assembly of unions and community groups, of mosques, churches,
and campuses-it was not a march of contingents at all. Rather, it was a
sprawling mass of 100,000 individuals, families, and batches of friends who,
to paraphrase Spike Lee, just got on the bus.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0244/kaplan.php

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