The 12th Anti - Racist Festival Thessaloniki - 12ου Αντιρατσιστικού Φεστιβάλ Θεσσαλονίκη

The 12th Anti - Racist Festival starts tonight at 9pm. It will last three days and is on the seafront (Paralia) opposite the School for the Blind (Sxoli Tyflon). The event includes concerts, film shows, theatre, discussions, workshops and lots of activities for kids.

Παρασκευή 26/6

Παραστάσεις- Δρώμενα

• Η ιστορία των κρουστών στους πολιτισμούς του κόσμου με ήχους και εικόνες από το Συγκρότημα Κρουστών “ΚΡΟΥΣΤΩΔΙΑ”
• “Σύνορα” , Διαπολιτισμικοί Διάλογοι μέσα από τη Γλώσσα του Θεάτρου από τους/τις μαθητές/τριες του Διαπολιτισμικού Γυμνασίου Πυλαίας, σε σκηνοθεσία. Κόλντο Βίο
• Χοροθεατρικό “La liberta des eskllavos” από την ομάδα Cuba Baila

Προβολές

Προβολές για τα Σύνορα & τους Πρόσφυγες από την Ομάδα Μεταναστών & Προσφύγων

Ντοκιμαντέρ για τις Συνθήκες Κράτησης στις Ελληνικές Φυλακές από την Πρωτοβουλία για τα Δικαιώματα των Κρατουμένων

ΕΞΑΡΤΗΣΕΙΣ: «Τα ναρκωτικά κάνουν… καλό στην πολιτική» του Σ. Κούλογλου - Ρεπορτάζ Χωρίς Σύνορα από το Συντονιστικό ΜΚΟ & Πρωτοβουλιών για τον Κοινωνικό Αποκλεισμό

ΥΓΕΙΑ: «Masters of Life and Death: Doctors in the Third Reich»
των Christopher Paul - Christian Feyerabend / ZDF από το Συντονιστικό ΜΚΟ & Πρωτοβουλιών για τον Κοινωνικό Αποκλεισμό

Συναυλίες

Δυτική Σκηνή
• X-Darawish
• Ensemple Minoria Grande
• Bubasvabe
• Jazz Frenquently Quarted
• Boikot

Ανατολική Σκηνή
• Kappa Band
• Μαρία Φωτίου και Λωξάνδρα
• Φωτεινή Βελετσιώτου – Β. Πρατσινάκης – Γ. Λίζος
• Σαbach
• Χρήστος Μητρέντζης

Εργαστήρια

• Ενημέρωση για NoBorder Camp (Μυτιλήνη, Αύγουστος 2009). Αντιρατσιστική Πρωτοβουλία Θεσσαλονίκης
• Για την Κατάργηση των Φυλακών Ανηλίκων, εισηγήσεις: Γ. Νούσκαλης, (λέκτορας Νομικής), Ε. Κομπατσιάρη (καμπάνια για την Κατάργηση των Φυλακών Ανηλίκων). Πρωτοβουλία για τα Δικαιώματα των Κρατουμένων
• Ενοποίηση των αγώνων ντόπιων και μεταναστών εργαζομένων – νεολαίων ενάντια στην εργασιακή επισφάλεια-ανασφάλεια. Σωματείο Μισθωτών Εκπαιδευτικών Θεσσαλονίκης, Σωματείο Αποκλειστικών Nοσηλευτριών Μακεδονίας
• Μετανάστες/τριες και πολιτική συγκυρία. ΣΥ.ΡΙΖ.Α.
• Η Μεταναστευτική πολιτική στο φόντο της Κρίσης και η απάντηση της αντικαπιταλιστικής Αριστεράς. ΑΝΤ.ΑΡ.ΣΥ.Α.
• “Who are I” - Ανάπτυξη διαπολιτισμικού διαλόγου. Βιωματικό εργαστήριο-συζήτηση. Συντονιστικό ΜΚΟ & Πρωτοβουλιών για τον Κοινωνικό Αποκλεισμό.

http://www.socialcenter.gr/

Twitter on the Barricades

Chrysa - Χρύσα, originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

I came across this article on twitter by Noam Chomsky on the International Herald Tribune website. It is perhaps one of the most lucid analysis of the microblogging service that allows users to post short messages of 140 characters or less.

When I first saw Twitter last year I have to admit that I was less than impressed. It seemed trite and boring, but when the December riots broke out in Greece it proved to be an excellent way of keeping up with events. Nowadays the mainstream media have caught onto Twitter to the extent that it even made the front page of Time magazine.

Now we can follow what is happening in Iran at the moment via Twitter (#iranelection) and at least have an alternative to the official version of events. I have to agree with Chomsky's idea that Twitter is not a medium of organisation, being too limited to the well off and/or techno-literate, but it is an excellent way of connecting local events with the wider international community.

I saw this with my own eyes in December where the use of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Skype and blogs allowed Greeks to mould the way the riots and protests were seen in the international media and in that way get beyond the local media's message which was that all the trouble was just the work of a few mindless hooligans. As with Iran now the events that shoke Greece following the death of Alexis Grigoropoulos in December were best reported by those on the streets and on the internet.

Likewise a small group of people of no more than a few hundred Twitter users, with a hardcore of less than ten, technically minded users who felt comfortable using English (another big hurdle which those who talk about globalisation seem to forget) were able to get out the news to a global audience. They did not organise or direct what happened but rather were a vital link between the demonstrators on the streets and the rest of the world.

Having seen Twitter in action from street level I do believe that it has the power to change things, however, as a tool, it is liable to manipulation by media literate groups and regimes and that is exactly what I predict will happen soon when Twitter is enlisted in some kind of Wag the Dog scenario in the near future. Imagine the Gulf of Tonkin Incident (which marked the start of America's official involvement in the Vietnam war) using Twitter.

So here is the article;

"Political revolutions are often closely linked to communication tools. The American Revolution wasn’t caused by the proliferation of pamphlets, written to whip colonists into a frenzy against the British. But it sure helped.

Social networking, a distinctly 21st-century phenomenon, has already been credited with aiding protests from the Republic of Georgia to Egypt to Iceland. And Twitter, the newest social-networking tool, has been identified with two mass protests in a matter of months — in Moldova in April and in Iran last week, when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to oppose the official results of the presidential election.

But does the label Twitter Revolution, which has been slapped on the two most recent events, oversell the technology? Skeptics note that only a small number of people used Twitter to organize protests in Iran and that other means — individual text messaging, old-fashioned word of mouth and Farsi-language Web sites — were more influential. But Twitter did prove to be a crucial tool in the cat-and-mouse game between the opposition and the government over enlisting world opinion.

As the Iranian government restricts journalists’ access to events, the protesters have used Twitter’s agile communication system to direct the public and journalists alike to video, photographs and written material related to the protests. (As has become established custom on Twitter, users have agreed to mark, or “tag,” each of their tweets with the same bit of type — #IranElection — so that users can find them more easily). So maybe there was no Twitter Revolution. But over the last week, we learned a few lessons about the strengths and weaknesses of a technology that is less than three years old and is experiencing explosive growth."

For the rest click here.

Lydia - Λυδία

Lydia - Λυδία, originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

A chip off the old block. Το μήλο κάτω απ΄την μηλιά, έπεσε.

Stay calm. This is just an exercise.

Stay calm. This is just an exercise., originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

"Remember kids, what are you supposed to do when you see the flash?"

"DUCK AND COVER!"

If you want to download the whole film click here.

The meeting that never was - Old media in terminal decline

It's not been a good week for the mainstream media here in Greece. Today one of the country's leading dailies, Eleutheros Typos (Free Press) announced that it was closing down, blaming an unsustainable business model. Like newspapers in many parts of the world the combination of falling advertising revenue and the challenges of the internet has eaten into profits. On the other hand newspapers in Greece have long been facing a drop in readership which I think has nothing to do with either the current recession or free content on the web.

While access to the internet is growing it still lags behind the rest of Europe and so to blame it for the failure of newspapers here seems a mite premature. On the other hand the relatively low level of readership is, in part the result of a long term policy by local media corporations to cut costs at any cost. The result being a low quality product which is held in contempt by many; too much "copy and paste", too little quality content.


Greek newspapers and magazines are often little more than press releases, canned interviews and product placement, in fact anything that reduces reliance on trained professionals who might dare to ask for a decent wage. As a consequence the newspapers and magazine while looking as slick as their European counterparts are remarkably free of engaging content.



Another problem is reliability, at least as far as newspapers are concerned. Case in point being the recent gaffs by the three major newspapers who printed stories this week about the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyi Erdogan's visit to Athens. The Vima newspaper even went as far as to describe the "icy atmosphere" of the meeting with Greek prime minister, Kostas Karamanlis. The Ethnos newspaper was also there to provide us with a photograph of the Greek foreign minister, Dora Bakoyianni with her Turkish counterpart. The Eleutherotypia newspaper even put the story on their website proving that the adaptation of new technologies can be used to reproduce bad habits.


Just one small snag. None of this ever happened. Erdogan decided to postpone his meeting over the weekend so he never arrived in Athens. Imagine the Times, the Guardian and the Daily Mail all writing about the tense meeting that Gordon Brown had with Nicolas Sarkozi in London yesterday, only to find out Sarkozi had not even left France. It's hard to imagine a mistake of that magnitude being permitted in not just one but three national newspapers in any place that took journalism seriously.


So all the pages of reporting and analysis printed last weekend were simply the figments of a journalist's/editor's imagination. Nearer the truth is the fact that nobody even bothered to check what happened and just rehashed an old story. Sad but its is this kind of sloppy, "grab something from the freezer" reporting which is killing newspapers. Why would anyone pay three euros for this kind of low grade landfill?

I stopped reading Greek newspapers on Sunday years ago when it became perfectly apparent that once you took away all the ads and bumpf there was very little to actually read and that most of that was stale as week old bread. The old media is indeed starting to show its age.

UK MPs' expenses - We're still closing in

UK MPs' expenses - We're still closing in, originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

Don't worry, it's just an earthquake

Just felt a minor earthquake here, nothing serious, probably no more than three point something or just far away. Nothing like living in Greece to make you blase about such dangers. Since I've been here I've been in earthquakes, forest fires, riots and more traffic accidents than I care to mention.

Concert in Navarinou Square

, originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

"I have become death the destroyer of worlds"

"I have become death the destroyer of worlds", originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

"Lightning is an atmospheric discharge of electricity usually accompanied by thunder, which typically occurs during thunderstorms, and sometimes during volcanic eruptions or dust storms. In the atmospheric electrical discharge, a leader of a bolt of lightning can travel at speeds of 60,000 m/s (220,000 km/h), and can reach temperatures approaching 30,000 °C (54,000 °F), hot enough to fuse silica sand into glass channels known as fulgurites which are normally hollow and can extend some distance into the ground. There are some 16 million lightning storms in the world every year."

Wiki

UK MPs: "We're not paid enough"

Gordon Brown loves you., originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

"MPs were accused yesterday of a massive cover-up of their expenses after the Commons authorities released hundreds of thousands of claims documents and receipts with huge sections of detail blacked out.

Amid renewed public anger over the scale of Westminster's spending habits, the documents contained enough fresh information to create new embarrassment for senior politicians.

David Cameron was forced to pay back an extra £947, the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, was reported to the parliamentary commissioner for standards and Gordon Brown was revealed to have charged the taxpayer almost £6,500 to green his second home in Scotland.

Even Tony Blair found himself under the spotlight after the documents revealed that he had claimed almost £7,000 for roof repairs two days before leaving office and standing down as an MP.

With MPs reeling from public anger at the extent of their claims, Bill Cockburn, the chairman of the body responsible for setting their pay, chose yesterday to suggest that MPs deserve a pay rise of up to £10,000 a year, arguing that they were underpaid by 10-15%.

It was also disclosed that 184 MPs – over a third of the Commons – have agreed to pay back nearly £478,000 in inappropriate claims, including Brown and ministers Douglas Alexander, Alistair Darling, Yvette Cooper, David Miliband, Ed Balls, Rosie Winterton, Andy Burnham and the former home secretary Jacqui Smith."

Guardian

To check out other expense claims check out this BBC webpage.

My 100th Flickr Explore photo

Made using BigHugeLabs Scout

I've just got my 100th picture in Flickr Explore. Every day the photography web site chooses 500 of the most interesting pictures posted. Being one out 500 doesn't sound that special till you realise that millions of images find their way onto the site every day.

Minister quits over her expenses

Average (UK) MP's expenses cost taxpayer £118,000, originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

|Treasury minister Kitty Ussher has quit the government after further questions were raised about her expenses.

Ms Ussher took the step amid reports she "flipped" the designation of her second home shortly before selling it in 2007, avoiding capital gains tax.

Ms Ussher denied she did anything wrong and said she was stepping aside to prevent the government embarrassment.

The move comes on the eve of the publication of all MPs' expenses on the Parliament website

BBC news

Lightning storm - Taken now

Lightning storm - Taken now, originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

This was taken 15 minutes ago from my balcony. Get out there!!!!!!

The revolution will not be televised - But it will be Twittered, blogged, videoed, and photographed.

This post is a kind of mash up, a mixture of different sources and types which show how the internet through its ability to allow participation is changing not just the way we consume media but the way we conduct our lives in the public sphere.

My first port of call is the video Iran: A Nation of Bloggers by students at the Vancouver Film School. The short gives a brief but insightful look at ones of the world's blogging super powers. All the more relevent given the way blogs, Twitter, Flickr and Youtube are being used by young people there to get their message out to the world at large as we speak.



The second video is by Clay Shirky at TED about how cell phones, Twitter and other such innovations can make history. How the old media paradigms are cracking under the weight of changes brought about by the internet.



However, amidst all the hype and glee about the opportunities such technologies offer let's not forget that in many parts of the world authoritarian minded regimes still seek to silence critics through the suppression of internet users and the stripping away of basic rights such as the right to anonymity. China, Iran and most lately the UK have ruled against the right to blog without declaring your identity. Nice to know Gordon Brown has chosen to align his government with such enlightened states. The axis of internet evil gains another member.

K Bhta - Live in Thessaloniki this Thursday - Μυλος

Thessaloniki Steet Parade 2009

Thessaloniki Steet Parade 2009, originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

The Thessaloniki Street Parade wound its way through the centre of the city much to the bemusement and delight of those left in the city. With thousands following a truck with bands playing it was a surreal sight to see all those people dancing and enjoying themselves.

Thankfully the riot police decided discretion was the better part of valour and kept to their buses which followed those taking part at a respectful distance.

"Θυμάστε πέρυσι το Street Parade και πως τυχαία έπεσα πάνω του; Μη πείτε ότι δεν σας ειδοποίησα. Την Κυριακή 31/5, ακριβώς ένα χρόνο από το περσινό έχουμε πάλι Street parade. Πρώτα συγκέντρωση στο αστεροσκοπείο και συναυλίες εκεί με διάφορα συγκροτήματα της πόλης. Και ύστερα στους δρόμους της πόλης. Ως την Κυριακή πάρτε ένα δείγμα από τις περσινές φωτογραφίες στο flickr.

Thess.gr

Soulfire

The Thessaloniki Street Parade

The kiss , originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

IRAN-VOTE-DEMO

IRAN-VOTE-DEMO, originally uploaded by Merat®.

Supporters of defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi clash with riot police during a protest in Tehran on June 13, 2009. Hardline incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a crushing victory in Iran's hotly-disputed presidential vote, according to official results that triggered mass opposition protests.

AFP PHOTO/OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI (Photo credit should read OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI/AFP/Getty Images)

Latest: Tehran Streets

Latest: Tehran Streets, originally uploaded by mousavi1388.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mousavi1388/sets/72157619592664479/

Latest: Tehran Streets

Latest: Tehran Streets, originally uploaded by mousavi1388.

Riots in Tehran following the announcement of election results.

For more pictures click here.