Video reveals Police involvement in G20 death

In a turn of events that is the dream of every newspaper editor, The Guardian has obtained a short video that shows a Police officer attacking a passer by minutes before he dies during London's G20 protests.



City of London’s newsagent Ian Tomlinson was walking home from work on Wednesday, April 1, when he found himself caught between riot Police and demonstrators near the Bank of England. After collapsing on the ground — and allegedly being succored by Police medics despite being “pelted with missiles believed to include bottles as they tried to save his life” as reported by Sky News — Tomlinson stumbled away and died of a heart attack soon after.

The incriminating footage is part of a dossier that The Guardian has put together and presented to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), which also includes a collection of testimonies from witnesses. According to many commentators — see here, here, and here — the episode is only the last dramatic testimony of the way Police forces in the UK have recently been dealing with demonstrations trying to challenge estranged political and financial classes*.

Early Police statements did not acknowledge any misbehaviours committed by officers on the ground during the clashes, and, as the Sky News example mentioned above, mainstream media were quick to pick up the down-with-these-noglobal-rioters line. The worst of all was The Evening Standard**, which carried a (now) unfortunate double-page spread with a rather dramatic — but completely off the track — headline.


Fortunately, an amended article is now online here, and the ES actually carried this article on today’s edition.

Also, IPCC Commissioner for London, Deborah Glass, admitted that “witnesses” have reported Police involvement in the incident. “It is important that we are able to establish whether that contact had anything to do with [Ian Tomlinson’s] death," she said.


*See also what happened at the Nato Summit held in Strasbourg, France on April 4 as reported by Current.
**London’s widest-distributed daily newspaper has recently been sold by its historical owner, Daily Mail & General Trust PLC, to Russian tycoon Alexander Lebedev, a former KGB spy. Strange as it seems it could be a much-needed boost to liberal journalism in the British capital — see here for details.

Earth Hour: some afterthoughts and criticisms

The last couple of days have seen a huge media reaction to this year’s event, and news items, blog posts, and commentaries responding to the increased public awareness could hardly be counted.

The Cape Philharmonic Orchestra perform a concert powered by bicycles, Cape Town, South Africa.

In South Africa, power utilty Eskom claims that electricity demand dropped 20 percent after 8.30PM, saving 400 tonnes of CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere. See here for more details.

Around the world, the Philippines topped the Earth Hour participation with 647 cities and towns, and in Ireland the equivalent of 700,000 lights went off for the hour. Toronto, Canada, saw a decrease of 15.1 percent in electricity demand, and for the first time the United Nations turned the lights off at their headquarters in New York.
More data will surely be available soon here and here.

But the power of Earth Hour does not reside in its mere efficacy, and the number of energy saved will never be its ultimate goal, nor it would be enough of an environmental action if it were. As many critics were eager to point, switching lights off for an hour — no matter how lights you have in your house or how many people around the world actually do it — will not knock the global carbon emissions down. In fact, many (see also here) argue that if we account for all the energy spent to advertise Earth Hour, CO2 production actually goes up…and if we use paraffin candles, we won’t be doing a favour to the planet either, according to the Physical Insights.

Some extremists have arrived to the point of instituting counter-events such as Hour of Power — in which participants are encouraged to turn all their lights on — still believing that global warming is not a man-made threat. Fortunately balanced and constructive criticism can also be found out there, and here you’ll find a particularly good one. Here is another, if shorter, example.

The message sent was indeed a strong and clear one: change starts from small gestures. Symbols can be a powerful tool, even if they cannot actually righting wrongs overnight — nothing ever does that, not even the best thought-out government policies…especially those. Earth Hour may well be a tiny spec of dust in the massive sandpit in which climate change is dragging us, but is undoubtedly showing how millions of people can still be aroused behind a cause they believe in, and strive for a common goal they judge achievable, making them participants and co-creators of a more sustainable future.

If symbolism is all there was left to Earth Hour, I would still sign up to every newsletter, petition, and call to action that bore its logo. But maybe is also time for a renewed mass-participation in local and global politics. As Kim Carstensen, the leader of WWF’s Global Climate Initiative said in her post-event statement: “Last night’s message from the masses was loud and clear: Delay no more, real action now!” The message is directed to the world’s representatives who will meet in Copenhagen in December for the UN COP15 summit on climate change. And they are our representatives after all.

NEED on TIME.com

Congratulations to my friends at NEED magazine for scoring yet another editorial and marketing success by having a set of images from one of their recent feature stories published on TIME.com.

© Andy Richter/NEED magazine

American freelance photographer Andy Richter’s reportage of the Starkey Hearing Foundation was originally featured on NEED issue 5 —soon fully available online here.

Specialists audiologists, who volunteer their time and skills to the Minnesotan-based organisation, visit and assist thousands of hearing-impaired people in countries stretching from the U.S. to Vietnam, delivering more than 50,000 hearing aids annually through more than 100 hearing missions a year.


© Andy Richter/NEED magazine

28 March 2009: Earth Hour - 3rd edition

It has been a year already…hard to believe but alarmingly true: time to prepare for the upcoming event then. …Many of you must have guessed that I’m not talking about my birthday, which I do not particularly care for, but a rather more important global happening: Earth Hour.


Earth Hour encourages public participation through small scale, individual actions: by switching off all lights and superfluous electrical appliances at home or at work for an hour, between 8:30 and 9:30PM local time on Saturday, March 28.

Created by the WWF and started in 2007 in Sidney, Australia — when 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour — the event quickly spread to most major world cities, with hundreds of landmarks, thousands of organisations, and millions — 50 of them in 2008 — of people taking part. In a city like Bangkok electricity usage decreased by 73MWh, equivalent to 41.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Christchurch, New Zealand, reported a drop of 13% in electricity demand. (Source: Wikipedia on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Hour)

The goal in 2009 is to reach a billion participants: a billion votes, according to the organisers, for Earth, and against global warming, a powerful message for the world’s representatives who will convene in Copenhagen in December to discuss climate change at the UN COP15 conference.

Related possibilities are, as usual, infinite: environmental website TreeHugger for instance suggests that if Google were to switch from a white to a black homepage for good, it would save about 750MWh a year. See here for full details, and check this Google-powered search engine called Blackle.
On a similar note, ecoIron, a blog that provides reports and commentary on all aspects of green computing and sustainable technologies in IT, calls out to all web designers to think about the environment in their work by using Energy-C, their low-wattage colour palette. So we won’t even have to decide between monotonous black websites and saving the planet.

I personally made my choice some time ago when I first launched this blog of mine, but to be honest I was more concerned about style and professional consistency than anything else…would I have swapped to white, maybe even only for a day, if that had meant saving energy and send a message at the same time? Probably. Would you? Or do you also think that this is only greenwash?

The important point here is to understand how change can be achieved through means that are rather effortless indeed. The simple gesture of switching your lights off for an hour has the power to show that several small individual actions contribute to the achievement of a much larger goal.

We can all do something: the future is in hour hands, or in this case, on our fingertips.

Virtual Padrini on Facebook

The moment I’m about to leave the sleepy grip of Italian winter an interesting controversy regarding freedom of thought, the mafia and the Internet giant springs unexpectedly up.


Just before the end of the year, articles in Italy and the UK sounded a note of alarm regarding the sudden proliferation of pages and groups praising former Mafia bosses such as Toto’ Riina and Bernardo Provenzano. Their creators were obviously eager to follow Facebook’s very own marketing device: a friend (of Cosa Nostra) is a fan.

International news organisations, blogs, and commentators quickly picked up the story, before it finally crash-landed back on Facebook — whose Italian operation has been the fastest-growing in 2008 with a whopping +961 per cent. Here it spawned a number of counter-groups that are now lobbying the network’s admin to censor these “Mafia apologists” and remove the pages they’ve created, or else they will leave Facebook en masse. Tens of thousands have subscribed to several groups and are now well on their way to top the 100,000 mark.

The biggest breakaway group — 58,000-strong at the time of publishing, up from 39,000 in only one day — has set an ultimatum for Sunday, January 18, and is asking its member to stick to it, noting that they represent a sizeable part of the 4.5 million Italian users — but not 10 per cent as the group’s creator claims.

Facebook’s bosses have so far excluded they will take any action, with spokesman Matt Hicks stating: “The controversy is not a good reason to proceed with the removal of the groups.” As noted in many wall posts, Facebook recently forbade the posting of pictures of breastfeeding women considering them too explicit, a decision that now seems even more controversial.

However, the really interesting aspects of the walls’ discussions is that they have not simply been one-way denunciations of ignorance and poor taste, but informed posts and replies about freedom of thought and expression in the age where king among mass media is the Internet.
They asked questions such as: do we want the Internet to be free and unregulated so everyone can assert their own opinion? If so, are we ready to accept some that we may find inappropriate and offensive? If not, where do we draw the line, what is permitted and what isn’t?



Others pointed out that leaving Fecebook in protest against their somehow nonchalant policies will do the cause no good, completely leaving the scene to the Mafia enthusiasts — who care not a dime if the networking site ‘allows’ their opponents to set up anti-Mafia groups.
And I feel to agree with this because I believe in total freedom of expression in any medium, mitigated, if necessary, by certain circumstances and the author’s own sensitivity. But also because I’ve done some maths: several groups praising Toto’ Riina and Bernardo Provenzano count, all together, 1,813 members — at the time of publishing —, a tiny spec of dust in the giant’s eye if compared to the overwhelming support mustered by their counterparts.

Below are a number of links referring to the on-going controversy as reported by various media outlets. Enjoy the read and feel free to join the debate.

English:
Fury as Mafia godfathers idolised on Facebook - Times Online
Pro-mafia Facebook pages cause alarm in Italy - Reuters
Facebook Mafia confronts actual Mafia on facebook - BBook.com

Italian:
Su Facebook il gruppo degli ammiratori di Toto' Riina - Walter Gianno
Padrini virtuali, Facebook e la demonizzazione di internet - Visti da Lontano
E Facebook non chiude il gruppo a favore del boss Riina - Corriere della Sera

Future | Solid Foundations | NEED magazine

NEED magazine has published its latest issue featuring a story of mine about an American aid and development organisation called CHF International that works, among many other places, in the Balkans.



See the whole reportage here. Read the story here (Synopsis only, full story available soon). All pictures by Maciej Dakowicz.

Squatteurs De Luxe — SPRAY

Million Dollar Squatters get published again, this time with a French touch on up and coming style magazine SPRAY.



All pictures by Alex Masi, for English or Italian text contact me. Both available to be syndicated for further commercial use.

So easy even a moron could use it!

The future of reading is just a click away according to the founder and CEO of Amazon, the Internet retailer riding a year-long success of the gadget that might change the way we read books, magazines and newspapers, the Kindle.

Jeff Bezos is still as enthusiastic today about Amazon's pretty creation as he was when it was first launched in the US in November 2007. See what he and a number of American authors have to say about it in the video below.



The Kindle is a wireless reading device, in many respect similar to other devices already available such as mobile phones, PDAs and laptops; their point being to bypass the ageing publishing and printing industries and tend to all our reading necessities in a digitised version.

Why is the Kindle being hailed as such a revolutionary innovation then? Well, because it is.

We've all seen and tried e-books and audio-books before, and most of us have the possibilty today to use these media on a daily basis instead of the old-fashioned paper books and newspapers. No more messying around on public transport, no more cumbersome tomes to carry with us, no more cheap ink on our fingers. Heaven, right? Not exactly. For many reasons, some technical some definitely Freudian, none of the solutions we have been sold works for us, and so we kept to our beloved dog-eared pages.

But the Kindle is different. Its developers seemed to have worked harder to tweak those features that really would make Amazon's gadget more similar to a book than any other reading device before. Paper-like screen, light weight, and ergonomic design that resembles the appearance and readability of a book; wireless capabilities, a huge memory, online back-up, and built-in dictionary makes it stand out. Read the full specs here, plus reviews and interviews, a list of titles already available, and much more.

Watch this for an independent review of the Kindle.

So is the future of reading really a click away?
A New York's City Journal article — whose author is admittedly already in love with the Kindle — asks: "Will the Kindle replace books as we have known them since the beginning of Western civilization? Will downloading replace browsing at the bookstore? Will books follow the vanishing species of CDs and DVDs?"

Good questions. The answer I believe is no, it won't. Or not entirely at least. Maybe new books in a near future will only have digital versions, perhaps many old titles will go out of print, and surely any new way of reading — be it the Kindle or soon-to-appear even better devices — that finally improves on printed paper will take hold.

But I believe we are still very far from a total replacement because of the simple pleasures that make reading a book, a magazine or a newspaper so unique: the feel of different types of paper, the smell of it, the hand-written notes on the margins, the cover artworks, browsing a bookstore, etc., etc. Call me a reactionary fool, but wasn't supposed to be the same story with records, tapes, and why not, also banknotes, and bicycles? Sure, they might not be the devices of choice anymore, but they are still around, and I dare say, prosper as niche products.

Dani's final word: don't wait for the moment in which Kindle owners will roam victorious the world's airports, train coaches and waiting rooms, as it will be easier than what you expect to still hear the rustling of pages and scribbling of pencils.

The (Free) Press? Bilingual, please.

Things never turn out to be what they seem initially, and this is pasrticularly true if friends are involved. Last night I happened to get together with an old pal who, instead of filling the time it took to prepare a delicious chicken tikka with casual chit chat, introduced me to a new exciting project he's been recently busy with.

© Marko Manico

The name's aljarida — the newspaper in Arabic — and you will hear more and more about it as it takes its first steps into the publishing world. It is a free, quality, monthly publication, completely bilingual and produced by a mixed team of dedicated individuals, that is stirring the free press market down in Milan, Italy, and has been the talk of the town since issue 1 hit the newsstands earlier this month. Read it fully here.

aljarida's target audience is primarily the growing arab and arabic-speaking community of Milan, but also every Milanese who appreciate to be living in a city that, thanks to the abbundant opportunities it offers, is a strong magnet for immigration. Which, in turn, is a golden opportunity for social and personal growth.
The founders' goal is to highlight the common ground present between the indigenous Italian culture and the one brought by our North-African and Middle-Eastern neighbours, study how they influence each other, elaborate a common language comprehensible by all, and foster wider understanding in the process.

aljarida is innovative in content and aim, but also in style and design. It is the first free sheet to be feature every article of every section in both Italian and Arabic, the two versions facing each other and indeed almost blending to create a unique visual impact, and a formidable tool for the study of both languages.

Another striking feature: the paper opens horizantally, like a calendar, so it is instantly accessible to Italian as well as Arabic-speaking readers — who read from right to left and open their publications back to front.


My last word is dedicated to the group af activists, journalists, and scholars who brought about this idea, support it and contribute to it seeing it as the natural evolvement of their social activities. They are the backbone of an association called MEDInaTERRANEA, born to promote the "exchange of information between members of different communities, and the creation of spaces for dialogue through the media, literature, music, and art."

If you want to get in touch, email them at info@aljarida.it

News to brighten up your winter

Winter is definitely upon us in all its coldness and wetness, but for once we won't have to look out too hardly to find some good news coming our way from the publishing world.

NEED magazine, the American humanitarian publication I contribute to was eventually rescued from premature death and is fully back in action: the much delayed Issue 5 is out now in the US. Unfortunately it is not normally available (yet) in European bookstores and newstands, but you can order your copy here if you wish to do so.

NEED's Editor in Chief Stephanie Kinnunen.

You can also read all the stories featured in previous issues — plus a brief introduction of the ones coming out on Issue 5 — on NEED's website.

And if you really can't wait until peeps at Borders finally decide to stock the magazine in the UK as they are already doing in the States, contact them here.

I will talk more about NEED's Issue 5 as soon as I get hold of a copy myself, and will also upload a couple of tearsheets of the story I've written for them from the Balkans about an organisation called CHF International and their micro-finance projects.


On a somewhat less exciting note, you might have noticed some little changes I 've made to this blog. It is not a great deal, but if you look at the top of the page, just below the masthead, you'll find a new quick link section, which I hope will ad some extra spice to readers' browsing — especially new visitors. As I mentioned in a previous entry, it is part of a medium-term drive to move my operations to a "real" website, a goal on which I'm still working on.


Stay Tuned