[Nettime-bold] Re: Tactical Media Workshop NY . . . Rockefeller activists!!?

["Gustavo Barbosa" <gustavo.listas@iname.com>]

The Rockefeller Foundation!!!!!!??

Have a look at the attachment...

NOTE:

"I've had too much experience with the "miracles" that come out of the
Rockefeller Foundation. Let me give you just a few reasons why the golden
rice will not be a miracle but a disaster. The Rockefeller Foundation
financed the "Green Revolution" in the 1960s, which shifted agriculture
worldwide from sustainable, organic bases to totally non-sustainable
chemical farming. It did not produce more food; it displaced more peasants.
It bonded Third World countries into permanent debt. India had a
threefold-leap in borrowing from the World Bank, just for loans related to
chemical agriculture in the 1960s. The later cycles of debt and structural
adjustment are all hooked to that recipe of addiction to agrichemicals
through World Bank and Rockefeller financing. Each year the Green Revolution
would introduce one rice variety that would last for one or two years, until
it collapsed because of a disease outbreak. And then they would introduce a
new monoculture. Collapsing monocultures are not diversity! But they are a
wonderful treadmill that the big corporations would like us to get on. First
they sold us chemicals. Then they wanted to sell us seeds that would require
the chemicals. That is why they introduced genetic engineering. And that is
why they created herbicide-resistant varieties like "Roundup-Ready" soy. The
golden rice is part of that same package. My response to the Rockefeller
Foundation is: "Why don't you talk about the organic sources of vitamin A
that are in the hands of women in the Third World – the 200 varieties of
greens that we grow in our fields, the hundreds of wild herbs we collect for
vitamin A sources? Just go to the African bush; just because they don't have
vitamin A tablets doesn't mean they don't have vitamin A. Just look at
nature's biodiversity and count the sources of vitamin A. And if you can't
do it, we'll hold grassroots peasant women's literacy classes for you!" If
they push the golden rice the way they pushed the Green Revolution where I
live, then every field in the world will be full of golden rice! And all the
subsidies from the Rockefeller Foundation, and USAID, and the World Bank
will wipe out our millet, will wipe out our greens, and destroy vitamin A
sources while pretending to create them."

Extract from "The New Global Brahmanism and the Meaning of the WTO Protests:
An Interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva"
http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/ingles/biblioteca/textos/2000110706_Van
dana_Shiva.rtf

More relevant info can be found at:
http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/portugues/biblioteca/

or

http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/

Cheers,
Gustavo

----- Original Message -----
From: Drazen Pantic <drazen@opennet.org>
To: <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>
Sent: 23 April 2001 04:57
Subject: <nettime> Tactical Media Workshop NY


Tactical Media Workshop
The Impact of New Media on Political Engagement and Cultural Activism

Organized by Center for Media, Culture and History at NYU

Saturday, April 21, 2001 @ NYU's Center for Alternative Technology



Background

The workshop was organized as a session of activists and thinkers who
are engaged in refiguring the social spaces emerging at the intersection of
technological innovation and cultural/political activism. The broad
goal of the meeting was to see what we can systematically learn from
these experiences, moving beyond the anecdotal to build a
practically-informed model of networked politics, and to consider ways
in which we might build upon this knowledge.

Series of meetings and discussions preceded the organization of this
workshop. The initial idea of organizing relatively small workshop in
New York devoted to tactical media emerged in numerous conversations
and emails between Barbara Abrash, Joan Shikegawa, Geert Lovink,
Marleen Strikker, Ted Byfield, Andrew Blau, myself as well as numerous
other people who contributed towards shaping this meeting and its
agenda.

The archive

http://forums.nyu.edu/cgi-bin/nyu.pl?enter=tacticalmedia

contains initial announcement, list of participants who were able to
attend the meeting, as well as their short introductory statements.


The Structure of the Events

The moderator of the event was Andrew Blau, who has brilliantly
maintained lively and open discussion, while on the other hand carried
on with the meeting agenda and subjected participants to prepared
questions with great delicacy and tact.


The first session was devoted to the following 3 questions:

1. What have been the issues at stake for you, in working with new and
old media forms?
2. What limits and possibilities have emerged in your own media
practices, and how do they relate to the goals you established at the
outset?
3. What new spaces for thinking, creativity, and action have opened up
for tactical media, in this new media environment?

The second session focused on  exploring individual cases and needs in
expanding the work to the next level.

Highlights (at least for me) were brilliant expositions from Daoud Kuttab
and Myoung-joon Kim from Seoul. Daoud explained basic ideas behind the
Arabic Media Internet Network (AMIN) and their ambitions to go
aggressively into the Internet streaming as well as the current action
of assembling public access Internet center for journalists. It is
clear that AMIN could very well use the experience of Open Source
community in building public access centers and collective sharing of
bandwidth resources in their Internet radio project.
Ravi Sundaram immediately took on that, and offered help from Sarai
people, who have great and fresh experience in assembling a public
access space using Open Source tools and tactics. So, all chances are
that we will soon see another great action of activists solidarity
over similar social and political goals complemented by the Open
Source tools.

Myoung-joon Kim gave us brilliant exposition of the Korean Progressive
Network. The striking example of their activity is recent everyday
video coverage of Daewoo workers struggle using broadband with the
help of JinboNet

http://cast.jinbo.net/video/special_daewoo.html.

Korean situation is even more specific, given the fact that Korea has
more then 5 million broadband subscribers, hence many people use
Internet (especially streaming services) as the primary source of
information.


The final session was devoted to exploring specific collaborative
projects and  ideas for future shared work, gatherings. The following
ideas received full support of all participants:

* David Garcia has suggested the continuation and regularity of
meetings like this over a three year research project. The research
will be spanned over regular meetings; at least twice per year: one
devoted to conceptual and the theoretical issues and one based on more
practical and activistic "problem solving" approach. Each meeting
might follow by a publication

* Virtual Source Book

Will focus on describing and research of practices as well as open
platform for ideas for further projects. It was suggested that we the
methodology for describing tactical media practices is very much
needed. A suggestion of adapted Request for Comments format was
welcomed, and the first step towards adopting RFCs and working with
that format might be compiling the proceedings from the workshop.


Finally, meeting ended by thanking Barbara Abrash and Center for
Media, Culture and History at NYU for organizing the workshop,
Natalie Jeremijenko and Center for Alternative Technology for hosting
the event and Joan Shikegawa and The Rockefeller Foundation for
sponsoring the event.

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GlobalBrahmanism-VandanaShiva.rtf