./english/42.txt:53:After some minutes the trial was interrupted because of a strike of the court assistants. We shouted again the above-said parole and also "No justice – no peace".
./english/54.txt:21:in one of the aircraft hangers ten minutes walk across the old runways. The
./english/162.txt:118:25. Cf. D. Garcia and G. Lovink, "The ABC of Tactical Media," www.waag.org/tmn/abc.html. Also see the wide variety of projects that have been discussed in the "Next 5 Minutes" festivals, http://www.n5m.org. Today, indymedia.org is considered (by some) as the broadest expression of tactical media.
./english/212.txt:16:The ESFs have generated mixed results regarding their three main missions: The ideational debate, the elaboration of programmatic proposals, and decision making for common action. The ideational debates occurred mostly during the preparatory phases of the Forums and were reflected in the programs of the plenary sessions. Being based on consensus, decision making is inevitably the result of compromises reached by the different forces involved in Forum preparation. This sometimes leads to apparently unsatisfying outcomes. Thus during the three ESFs held until now, the space given to war and racism was particularly important, leaving aside other major issues such as economic, environmental and social questions, or the problem of European construction. It is far from clear that the resulting thematic hierarchy reflects the views of the majority of the social movements involved in the Forum. This can be empirically verified by comparing requests (for seminars and workshops) with the final programme of the plenary sessions. The contrast between requests and outcomes questions the functioning and the modes of discussion of the European Preparatory Assembly (EPA), which manifestly finds it difficult to sustain political debate concerning the strategic priorities of the movement. True, this assembly is ’open’ in the sense that all can participate in it. However, it has become apparent that some organisations are far more active than others are because they benefit from permanent memberships, financial means and political determination. This fact should push the EPA to promote greater representation of all the organisations involved. Moreover, the EPA’s most active core organisations have remained the same over the past three years. This highlights faithfulness and continuity. However, it also points to limits given that the movement requires expansion and the integration of new organisations into the core. The EPA being the essential locus of political construction of the ESF it is essential to enrich its democratic character, its representation and its participation. This will no doubt require setting up a system of financial solidarity. This is also true for the ‘Assembly of Social Movements’. In the course of the Forums themselves, some useful debates occur during the seminars and workshops. However, the plenary sessions are often reduced to a juxtaposition of speeches prepared in advance and to media focused rhetorical exercises designed to enhance the organisations, which fought their way to the podium. Despite the real substantive debates that occurred during the ESFs, the Forums had three failings. The first, which became apparent after the fact, is the lack of guidance for the plenary seminars and workshops. This muddles the event for participants who don’t know if the objective is to confront analyses, exchange experiences or build programmatic alternatives. The second drawback is a total absence of knowledge accumulation. While minutes of various sessions are inconsistently drawn up, no method exists as yet to identify key points raised, to broaden public debate around them, or to deepen work in a sustained fashion. Hence, we have no means to ensure continuity and to measure progress. This situation is unquestionably fuelling a feeling that the Forums are repetitive. The third failing, made apparent in London, is ideological drift. Preceding Forums had successfully avoided this but there were expressions of intolerance, exchanges of insults, and pseudo debates without democratic contradiction in London. Responsibility for this lies with some sectarian political groups and religious organisations, as highlighted during the seminars on Iraq or in debates over the French law on religious signs in schools. These drifts threaten the ESF’s existence and cannot be allowed to continue.
./english/216.txt:18:5. It has to be recognised that the European Preparatory Assembly (EPA) is the space where the political orientation of the ESF is forged. Therefore, it is absolutely essential that its functioning is democratic. Until now, democracy in the EPA context has largely been a matter of assuring openness and inclusivity, while transparency and accountability for decision-making has been neglected. Improving this state of affairs would in a first step mean creating or reorganising the basic infrastructure for the meetings (for example documents must be made available before meetings, facilitation must be properly prepared and rotated during meetings, participant lists and minutes must be made available after meetings).
./english/226.txt:16:The ESF in London showed up problems and weaknesses of the movement which have existed for a while. Lacking transparency, missing willingness to compromise, insistence on national priorities, dominance of individual groups, and ad-hoc coalitions. Installing a homepage in advance and publishing detailed minutes of the preparatory meetings have been steps towards greater transparency, but these steps have to be collectively expanded.
./english/240.txt:15:Collaboration between the RN and individual activists, groups and networks struggling on issues of migration proved complicated. RN decisions were made arbitrarily without any effort at consultation. Co-ordination and the setting of priorities was thus in the hands of a few. Minutes of meetings have never been published. As there was no open email list, groups who were not able to participate in one of the rare RN meetings had no opportunity to engage. Therefore, it was almost impossible for autonomous groups and activists to co-ordinate seminars through the RN. The lack of transparency caused constant battles, especially with organisations from outside Britain.
./english/245.txt:36:In parallel a range of activists and individuals created another website based on wiki technology (wiki is essentially an online notepad which allows people to easily add and edit text on a webpage). For a while, this website (www.esf2004.net) became the best source of information about the 2004 ESF, carrying reports, notes, minutes, discussions and notices of meetings, many of which were lacking from the official website – all constructed collaboratively. While it is true that many projects that were critical of the ESF processes found a home on this website, it did show the wider potential of these tools, and provided a space for communication and collaboration which was sadly lacking within the official organising structures. Indeed several initiatives were set up outside of the main ESF organising process, including web facilities, to demonstrate just how easy it is to create appropriate electronic tools to aid memory reporting and archiving efforts.
./english/245.txt:57:One crucial factor for the ESF should be the involvement of the "Media of the Movements" – i.e. the progressive community media which is based in our constituency. However for the 2004 ESF these were treated as inferior cousins of the mainstream corporate press. There was an assumption that they would just provide coverage anyway. So instead of any campaign to involve them, there was little public encouragement given, until the very last minutes when some telephone calls were made to journalists of all types who attended the Paris ESF to encourage them to come to London. Press passes for the ESF were to be available to 'proper' journalists with National Press Cards, but while assurances had been given to media activists in London that community media would be able to gain press passes and access to the ESF media centre, this was never officially stated via the ESF website. Indeed during the preparatory process the media centre had been treated by many as "non-political" - as a purely practical issue disconnected from any political discourse. Some people even going as far as to ask how we can deal with ‘this problem of IndyMedia people and community media wanting to use the media centre’!
./english/249.txt:21:After the Istanbul assembly no minutes was ever made. Of course this enforces the power of the “inner circle”, making it very, very hard for new organizations or people who are not “nerds” with political meetings to have a say in the process. This was corrected after the Paris working group meeting after strong demands from several people from NGOs from different countries. We even got an agenda for the Brussels meeting.
./english/293.txt:373:It depends on the company. In some they give you a bonbon, in some they some pay more if you work on a holiday, in others you get a night supplement if you work at night, so it more or less equals out. In all the companies I think the owners have it worked out this way so each one can give some things better and some things worse. As for a general wage agreement, well, in the works committee we are habitually struggling for just that, that they fulfill the agreement to the letter. Now they’ve done something good, which is that now there’s a break from looking at the screens. Before there was a break of 10 or 15 minutes, depending on the hours you normally work, but now what there is is a five minute break for every two hours of work, to relax your eyes. Its important that people know this and that if they pressure us not to pay attention, that we have the right to the break. But what happens in this job is that if in this moment there are a lot of calls the coordinator is there to tell you “wait a moment, right now there are too many calls, or else you won’t be able to go to the bathroom.” No one knows very well what is the function of the coordinator, but that one person can tell another that she can’t go to the bathroom… anyway, with the question of the breaks, if you enter in the rhythm that everybody enters when you arrive you think, okay, I’m going to do things well and I don’t really care if I go out five minutes earlier or later, and then that is established, and very easily you end up without any break at all… So do they fulfill the agreement in general, yes, but of course its not in general, its each day of work, and since the calls are entering and you want to attend them well and they sell you this idea of professionalism… (Telemarketing drift)
./english/368.txt:84:All of this thorough and rapid circulation of news and observer reports of the situation in Chiapas led quickly to analytical and critical assessments of the origins and meaning of the Zapatista uprising. Here too cyberspace provided forums for informal discussion and debate. Alongside editorial pieces from the print or sound media appeared questions and opinions from a wide variety of concerned participants. Unlike "letters to the editor", every single one of these comments and feedback appeared in electronic "print", not days later but hours or even minutes after an original story or argument. The repressive response of the government, with its torture and killing, was subjected to widespread condemnation, while being very feebly defended, mostly with lies that were quickly exposed. Unlike government or editorial "retractions" which might be buried in some obscure corner of a newspaper, the exposure of lies within an ongoing "thread" of discussion in cyberspace emerges right up front where everyone can see it. Within this context of open debate, the Zapatistas were condemned by some and praised by many, dismissed by the apologists of the state and treated with great seriousness by those who studied their communiques. Wild charges of "terrorism" (echoes of state propaganda) were dissected and demolished in plain public view.(35)
./english/375.txt:2:This debate was organised by Globalise Resistance on 25 January 2003 at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre Brazil in front of about 300 people. The two main speakers spoke for 21 minutes each, and there were then some 22 contributions from the floor – one of the highest degrees of participation at any meeting at the forum.
./english/375.txt:120:My question to Michael is would you say that that basically is a result of our information technology. In the past we could not communicate quickly at a distance, so we had to come together once a year or every three or four years and put together a platform that had to be followed, whereas today we can communicate quickly and in five minutes exchange information in these coalitions quickly. So would you say this is primarily a result of improvement in communication?
./english/376.txt:87:Next 5 Minutes 4 - International Festival of Tactical Media. Next 5 Minutes is a festival that brings together art, campaigns, experiments in media technology, and transcultural politics
./english/396.txt:606:(From Denmark): Dear FIRE: You are welcome to broadcast 1-2 of my interviews (personal testimonies) in Spanish with Mayan Indians about violence and torture during 36 years of armed conflict in Guatemala. The interviews last from 15-30 minutes. You can listen to a short version on my website: www.para-nunca-olvidar.org. Yours, Lotte Holmen, Danish Radio journalist.
./english/396.txt:660:(From Peru): Greetings from Mónica Hurtado, assistant to Gaby Ayzanoa of Milenia Radio. We are starting a program on Fridays about the elections of 2001. Tomorrow we have the candidate Lourdes Flores Nano. Our radio will make audio summaries of the best interviews and we would very much like it if you would include these in your web radio page. We send out these dispatches 50 minutes after the end of the interview. Would this be possible?
./english/402.txt:38:The FSM seems to me something of a shrine to the written and spoken word. (In so far as I worship both deities, I am throwing this stone from my own glasshouse). At its core is The Panel, in which 5-10 selected Panellists do their thing in front of an audience of anything from five to 5,000, the latter being thrown the bone of three to fine minutes at a microphone. And these were the lucky ones! At the other end of the Forum’s narrow spectrum of modes there is The Demonstration. Here euphoria is order of the day: how can it not be when surrounded by so many beautiful people, of all ages, genders and sexual options, of nationality and ethnicity, convinced that Another World is Possible? But here we must note the distinction made 30 years ago, between mobilisation and mobility, as related to the old organisation and the new media:
./english/416.txt:1:Minutes of the Repression Network meeting in Frankfurt, 03.11.06
./english/417.txt:1: Minutes from the European Preparatory Assembly in Frankfurt/Main, Germany
./english/417.txt:4:These minutes were taken only of Nov. 4 2006. They include the reports and evaluations from
./english/417.txt:5:the 4th European Social Forum in Athens, a list of reporting networks (the minutes circulated
./english/417.txt:10: Minutes of Nov. 4th
./english/417.txt:381:III. List of networks which had meetings (minutes are not taken from their oral reports
./english/611.txt:28:The fact that it was teeming with attendees and speakers, becoming a kind of progressive self-contained universe, was nothing new. That many more people were marching and celebrating outside speakers venues than were attending the speaking events themselves was new, however. It apparently owed in part to poor translation facilities. If you came from parts of India that didnt leave you fluent in English or Hindi, you were at a loss to understand many talks being given. But I suspect people not attending talks had another reason as well. As with other WSFs most of the presentations were about how bad globalization, capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and caste relations, not to mention Hindu fundamentalism, are. The people parading all day outside the talks knew all this without having to hear it. Does it really make any sense to get up on a stage and talk about the ills of poverty and of indignity in a city like this - where walking five minutes in any direction outside the gates of our event offers incontrovertible evidence of the claims -- evidence so powerful, so humbling, so sickening, and so overwhelming, that no speaker could possibly expand on its message?