Patricia Sauthoff

CapitolHillSeattle.com: Hyperlocal news for the city’s core of cool

This article was originally published by CJR.

Densely populated and filled with restaurants, nightspots, and shops, Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood is one of the city’s hubs of cool. Even those who don’t live in the area keep tabs on the neighborhood’s comings and goings to see what hot spot will arrive next.

Not a bad home for a news website. EnterCapitolHillSeattle.com, a hyperlocal community news outlet founded in 2006 that tracks development, crime, and culture. Started by Justin Carder in his spare time while working in web analytics for Microsoft, Capitol Hill Seattle slowly grew into a business as Carder reached out to residents and gathered information and sources within the neighborhood. Shortly after founding the site, Carder left Microsoft to work on his community news venture full-time.

While Carder admits that digital neighborhood news is a tough business, he points to key features that allow the medium to thrive. “You have to have environments that have strong businesses, highways, and strong educational institutions,” he says. Strong businesses are not only potential advertisers but also make for interesting news items. Educational institutions are also newsworthy, and their presence means a neighborhood is more likely demographically to get its news online. Highways and other transportation factors mean the neighborhood is accessible and frequented by people who don’t live in the area. Capitol Hill has approximately 75,000 residents, says Carder, but the site usually sees upwards of 100,000 unique visitors monthly—proof that the site is gaining attention both within the neighborhood and beyond. (More detailed traffic information can be found on the site’sQuantcast page.)

It’s easy to see why locals would turn to Capitol Hill Seattle for coverage. Where a daily or weekly paper might only devote a few column inches for a story in a given neighborhood, Capitol Hill Seattle includes maps, blueprints, artist’s renderings, photographs, and full documents in its coverage. Carder says as much time is spent deciding how to approach a story as is spent reporting it. As the site’s only full-time employee, he acts as reporter, editor, and art director for most of the stories on the site. (The rest are written by volunteer community contributors.)

He says the work requires more desk time than he’d like, and he balances working alone by spending time in two separate office shares. He commutes via bicycle.

“It can be hard to motivate to ride to the office,” he says, “but when I get there I’m always glad I went.”

So far, the site could not exist without Carder’s own sweat, but he believes there is money to be made in the neighborhood news business and is trying to find ways to better collaborate with other Seattle-area news sites.

“We like to say that we don’t compete now,” Carder says of the news startup community, “but that’s not exactly true. Local chains do want to advertise on local sites and we compete for that attention.”

In 2010, Carder set up the Seattle Independent Advertising Network, which brings together a dozen neighborhood sites and five citywide news and information sites that work together to attract advertisers with their combined traffic and reach. Carder says the model is unique in that members of the network are allowed to participate in the collective effort while continuing to sell advertising on their own.

Most participating sites in the network keep a slot dedicated to running network ads but keep control of the remainder of their slots. The goal is to create a steady flow of premium ads for sites so that they can worry less about the comparatively small rates offered by remnant ads and Google AdSense. Carder says that most of the advertisers on the network approach him directly. He devotes little time to cold calls.

“The best advertisers want to reach these kinds of sites and find us there,” he says. One of the biggest difficulties facing independent news sites is the effort a single person often has to put in day after day to build and maintain the enterprise.

“I’m up at 5 am every day,” Carder says. “If I stop working hard tomorrow it will decay quickly. None of us have figured out a way to keep it going permanently. There are too many barriers as far as building anything more permanent.”

He sees his work with the ad network as one way to strengthen independent news sites both financially and through collaboration that helps ease the collective workload, bringing permanence more within reach.

“I have no idea how long it will last and I hope everybody enjoys it while it’s here,” Carder says in a video posted on the site’s about page. “I hope it lasts forever. I’d love to find a way to make that happen.”

Portland drops at the South Pole

This article was originally published by the Willamette Week.

In late October, Mikey Kampmann left Southeast Portland’s Clinton Street neighborhood for a summer vacation of sorts. Kampmann, a 25-year-old comic and occasional Portlandia cast member, is spending four months working as a cook at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. An American scientific research center that focuses on meteorology, astronomy and astrophysics, it employs approximately 200 people in the summer and 50 in the winter. WWinterviewed Kampmann by email and phone (it’s a 21-hour time difference) about Antarctic cuisine, retro fashion and the relatively enviable weather. “It’s not as cloudy,” he says, “and the sun is bigger than I’ve ever seen. It just does circles in the sky. It’s trippy.” Kampmann also blogs about his adventure at mikeygoingdown.tumblr.com.

WW: Have you seen any penguins?
Mikey Kampmann: No. 1 most annoying question we get. I haven’t seen any penguins. Apparently a skua [seabird] flew past the station one day and they announced it over the PA, but I missed it. Other than that, the only life we’ve seen is a slug that came here on a head of cabbage. We tried keeping it as a pet until it died.

I assume you have some everyday luxuries, like a bar. What IPAs are on tap?
The South Pole doesn’t have a proper bar. We can buy booze at the store and drink wherever. I like to drink Speight’s Old Dark, a New Zealand beer we get here. That or whiskey. Or both.

What about the coffee?
Before I left, I decided to exclusively drink Legare’s coffee—my favorite coffee in Portland. Jonathan [Legare] insisted I take 10 pounds of his coffee with me so I could trade with Russians while I was here. In return for 1 pound of beans, I received a bottle of vodka and a pistol. It’s been really important to me having that coffee here. I look forward to my bowl of coffee everyday, and it reminds me that one day soon I’ll be back in Portland.

Where does the food you eat come from? We presume it’s all local.  
The South Pole has about a two-year supply of frozen food in an underground food arch. About once a week during the summer we get freshies (fruit, veggies and eggs) from New Zealand, depending on weather. Back in Portland, I work for Groundwork Organics, an organic farm, and I thought I appreciated fresh fruit and veggies at the farmers market, but now when I see freshies I’m even more thankful. It’s remarkable that you can eat a fresh avocado at the South Pole, or even just an apple. Part of the space-stationlike vibe [here] is the greenhouse, which does grow a nice amount of greens, including kale! Also, alien meat is pretty good.

How do you entertain yourselves? 
There are some fun nights here: some big dance parties, Scrabble and cribbage are huge, watching movies, and of course looking for aliens. My favorite thing is to walk away from the station and sit in the sun in the flat, white nothing. I recently found a spot I call “The Beach” because the ice looks like the ocean, and where I like to sit sorta looks like the beach. I brought my boombox, too, so I’ll play music and just sit and enjoy that nothingness. I’ve enjoyed making some absurd videos. Also, checking out the science happening here has been fascinating, even if I can’t understand any of it. 

What’s the dating scene like? 
There are free condoms in every bathroom. That said, I think a lot of people just take the condoms ’cause they’re feeling overconfident. People are definitely hooking up.

South Pole fashion. Portlandy? 
Everybody is mostly wearing the same thing, a “Big Red” parka, Carhartt overalls, bunny boots, gloves and goggles. Definitely lots of gross beards. Not nearly enough cutoff denim as Portland, which is too bad, and thankfully not as much flannel. For parties, people wear some outrageous clothes, most of which have been left here over the years. The ’80s are definitely still going on here at the South Pole.

How did you end up there, anyway? 
I’m following in the footsteps of my friend who worked in Antarctica. I thought about doing this for three years and finally realized that if I didn’t do it now then I never would. So I applied, and a week later I had the job.

Is the South Pole everything you thought it would be? 
It doesn’t seem to belong to any place or any time. Until you land here, you can’t feel how strange it is. It’s fucking strange. I’ve completely fallen in love with the landscape and find it fun to walk out into minus-25 degrees  and think it actually feels pretty warm. It’s definitely been harder than I thought it would be, and it’s made me a tougher person. Life in Portland is so fucking easy. 

Cecile Richards: Planned Parenthood’s president on Congress, the HPV vaccine and why men use her group’s clinics

This article was originally published by the Willamette Week.

When WW compares Oregon and Texas, Cecile Richards gets a little defensive. “Why does everybody always pick on Texas? I’m from Texas,” she declares with a slight drawl.

 Richards isn’t just from Texas, she’s the daughter of late Texas Gov. Ann Richards, giving her just the political pedigree she needs in her position as national president of Planned Parenthood.

 Her perpetually newsmaking organization runs more than 800 clinics, providing family planning and sexual health services to more than 3 million people a year.

 Richards, 53, worked for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as deputy chief of staff, and she founded and ran America Votes, a coalition of voter registration groups. 

 Richards, who became president in 2006, is currently touring Planned Parenthood centers in the Pacific Northwest. We talked to her about the recent fight in Congress over birth control, her hefty salary, and why Planned Parenthood does more for men’s health than most people know.

WW: Every Planned Parenthood location in Oregon offers men’s health services. What services are offered, not just here but nationwide?

Cecile Richards: Ten percent of our patients now are young men, and that’s increasing every year. They’re the fastest-growing population now coming to us, and I’d say a lot of folks come to us now for STD testing and treatment because we’re a confidential, affordable provider. They do vasectomies in Bend, and a fair number of them. 

Is it because more couples seek services together?

It’s that. Young men are not only our patients but our educators. That translates into activism. Now so many of the next generation of activists for Planned Parenthood and reproductive health care in general are young men.

How is Planned Parenthood changing so that it’s inclusive for men and women?

With this Congress that’s so far to the right—it was really going after ending basic access to birth control and access to cancer screenings and STD testing and treatment—thousands of young men got involved to stand for Planned Parenthood. Men have just as vested an interest in birth control as women.

Do you believe laws requiring women to receive sonograms prior to abortions affect their decisions to have an abortion?

We always counsel women on all their options if they have an unintended pregnancy. What we have found historically is that women make incredibly responsible decisions. The thing that is really disturbing about most of these laws is that they basically assume women are incapable of making their own personal, responsible decisions about their health care.

But these laws push women to get more information before making a decision.

Legislators, most of whom will never be pregnant, [are] writing their own ideas about what doctors should be telling their patients. It assumes doctors aren’t responsible, that they have to be led by the legislature to tell women what to think. Most legislation being passed contains erroneous information. It’s not even medically accurate. It assumes that women won’t have the wherewithal to actually talk to their doctor about keeping a pregnancy or whatever alternatives there are.

Bill Clinton spoke about keeping abortion legal and rare. Are we closer to his vision?

That’s actually the most disturbing thing about what’s happened this year. What the House of Representatives tried to do was essentially say that [women] could no longer go to Planned Parenthood for basic birth control, cancer screenings, STD testing and treatment. They were going after the kinds of services that women depend on to not have an unintended pregnancy. 

Planned Parenthood is at the center of the abortion fight but has been pretty quiet when debate about the HPV vaccine came up recently. Why is that?

We provide the HPV vaccine, and we have ever since it was approved by the FDA. We’re very enthusiastic supporters of this vaccine. It’s  unbelievable how it’s been politicized. As a mother of two daughters, for me it’s fantastic that there’s a vaccination they could get to try to prevent HPV and cervical cancer. 

 The whole point got lost in that debate. My concern was that some of the statements that Congresswoman [Michele] Bachmann made were just completely unmedically founded. I’m worried that it has given people a total misimpression about the importance of this vaccination for young people.

In the efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, a lot was made of your salary—close to $400,000 per year. Planned Parenthood declined to comment on it. Why?

It’s public record. It always has been. I work hard for my salary, and I think that’s a red herring. Planned Parenthood is the most cost-effective provider of family planning services in this country. The far right has done everything they can to undermine us and to create non-issues, which I think that is. 

The Taj to the Tuk-Tuk. Language in the Indian Wikiworld

This article was originally published by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Lets just cut to the chase. Yes, the Taj Mahal is every bit as amazing as it’s supposed to be. It’s huge, it changes colors with the rays of the sun and its intricate carvings truly are breathtaking. It is worth putting up with the hassle of Agra’s touts and what may be the worst weather on the entire planet. Really, even in winter it’s pushing 90•, though at least without the sticky humidity that makes the air feel like a sponge the rest of the year. All the misery, though, doesn’t make a bit of difference when you’re in front of the gardens, surrounded by Indians dressed in their finest, everyone gasping as the Taj comes into view.

Clearly, this building is a source of pride for both humanity and the people who live in the nation in which it was built. As I wandered the grounds I was exposed to one of the most unexpected bits of local custom I would find throughout my trip. Foreigners at the Taj Mahal, who pay about 37 times more than Indians to see the site (not an exaggeration), are part of the local attraction. I was approached by dozens of people, some of whom simply handed me their children without warning, so they could take pictures. This would continue to happen at all the major historical sites, but nowhere was it more prevalent than at the Taj. I’d come halfway around the world to see their history, and that, apparently, needed to be documented.

This pride made me curious. What gems of information would I find in the Hindi Wikipedia’s entry on the Taj Mahal that weren’t present in the English Wikipedia entry? It was exciting to think that with this tool at my disposal I would learn something special, something to get me on the inside. When I excitedly looked up the entry I found … a translation of the English page. Bummer.

Surely the monsoon, a season so tied to the Indian collective consciousness it’s not just a season, it’s the inspiration for festivals and literature, has a page that explains all this, adding poetry and national identity to a scientifically leaning article. Negative. The page appears to be an early translation of the English page.

But perhaps I’m looking in the wrong place. Just because I, as a visitor, find these places and things to be fascinating and what I think define India, doesn’t mean that the local population feels the same. It makes sense that even though the monsoon affects India for months that a well written and lengthy article in English, that predates the Hindi Wikipedia page, would be translated rather than written from scratch. Many of the pages are, and several of the Indian Wikipedians I spoke with thought this was just fine. Marathi Wikipedian Mandar Kulkarni, whom I met with in Pune, envisions a Wikiworld in which articles are written in any language and translated to the others. Logistically, not so realistic, but in the true spirit of an open Internet in which one can write about his local community in his local language and share that information with anyone on earth in their local language.

I asked Kulkarni whether this translating of pages leaves out the Indian perspective on English and other non Indic languages pages, but he assured me that because so many Indians edit English Wikipedia, the Western viewpoint isn’t the only one being represented, a sentiment echoed by English Wikipedia editors Pradeep Mohandas and Pranav Curumsey.

For Indic language editors, writing in their local language is a way to keep that language alive and add to the long literary tradition while English language editors are more focused on the globalized world of knowledge. For many, whose local language is another Indic language, Hindi becomes a language of “us” or India, with the local language that of “me.” It’s the language that ties the country together, but not the one that necessarily does the same for neighbors. Further, the definition of “Hindi” is rather complex. Colloquial Hindi, used conversationally, has subtle variations dependent on the location from which the user hails. This can include loanwords from other Indic languages that would be used in one region but not another, or pronunciation. For me the Central India, New Delhi Hindi sounds the most familiar while the pronunciation used in Mumbai and other parts of Maharashtra make my ears work a little harder. Wikipedia doesn’t suffer too much from these differences, first, because it’s written so the pronunciation differences don’t come info play and second, because it’s written in Modern Standard Hindi, a Sanskritized Hindi that differs from that one would use when, say, picking up a tuk-tuk on the street.

It sounds confusing, but it’s really not any different from the regional dialects and different forms of English that exist throughout the English-speaking world. The difference though, is that many students aren’t literate in Hindi at the levels they are in their local language and English. They’re fluent, but Hindi education doesn’t continue throughout school with the rigor English education does. For this reason, many editors have worked on Hindi Wikipedia as a means of practicing a language they can speak effortlessly.

But that doesn’t mean the tuk-tuk driver, or his son or daughter is left out completely. Modern Standard Hindi doesn’t always mean lengthy literary prose. Sometimes a page is just a little stub, where translation of an English page is an option but where something more local and unique can be understood by those without a high level of education and, if they choose, can be added to.

Dispatch from a far flung corner of India

This article was originally published by the Wikimedia Foundation.

A towel, as any Douglas Adams fan will tell you, is a necessity for galactic travel. One would likely be helpful in India as well, but more useful is a copy of The New York Review of Books. Surprisingly, this publication, which was passed onto me as a hand-me-down of a hand-me-down has proven the most vital instrument in a backpack full of useful things. Forget the snacks, scarf, Hindi grammar book, and hand sanitizer, NYRB is the most versatile, acting as a fan, shooing away bugs, and many articles are interesting enough to pass large amounts of time with little effort while others are so exceptionally dull they promote sleep in even the noisiest of circumstances. Clearly, I have found the perfect travel companion.

My backpack might make me look like every other twenty- or thirty-something traveler trying to find the answer (man) but what I’m looking for is a little different than the tour-led culture or the off-the-grid spirituality.

While the Hindi-language Wikipedians I’ve tried to meet with have been timid – understandably, as there are only 2 active administrators and fewer than 250 active editors (compare that to English Wikipedia’s 1,500 administrators and 144,000 active users) – it’s been quite easy to explain the fellowship project to those I’ve met. My fellow travelers, the ex-pats I’ve met and many of the locals all seem intrigued by the project.

Several of the middle-class non-Wikipedian locals I spoke to didn’t know there was a Hindi-language version of the Wikipedia but thought it made sense and one journalist even said he’s considered looking at the community of Indian Wikipedians himself. Of course, when a debate came up about the ages of Bollywood stars this didn’t stop anyone from searching in English on their mobiles.

That, of course, is one of the biggest challenges to the Hindi-Wikipedian community, how do they compete for readership with the English-language version when cellular and computer technology is sold to consumers with Roman alphabet keyboards and pre-installed English-language web browsers? There is, of course, also the question where Hindi Wikipedia fits into the urban/rural landscape of India.

Surprisingly, it was in Khajuraho, a small town of fewer than 20,000 residents in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh that people seemed less willing to speak to me in Hindi. The taxi drivers and train passengers of Delhi and Rajasthan were surprised when I used the language, but in rural Madhya Pradesh the local pride is in their ability to use English. Not only has this been unexpected but it makes me wonder about the intended audience for a Hindi Wikipedia.

Clearly, for the rural residents of Khajuraho, English is the language they use to demonstrate their education while the urban editors of Hindi Wikipedia are trying to retain a linguistic heritage. It was only an elderly security guard at Khajuraho’s temples who finally engaged with me in his language after he used all the English he appeared to know. One might assume, as I did, that it would be the urban elites who wish to speak in English while the rural residents would focus on Hindi but in fact the opposite was true. Everywhere I went middle and upper class urbanites switched easily from one language to the other, perhaps aware of the colonial implications of English in a way their rural counterparts aren’t.

Even more surprising in Khajuraho than the refusal to use Hindi by the young people when speaking to a Westerner is the access to the Internet. For three days in Delhi I scrambled to get a SIM card that would offer me access to the Internet (turns out you need a passport photo here to get connected, or know the right people). Wifi was almost nowhere, even several high-end hotels told me one could plug into the ethernet but there was no wifi available. Jaipur, a city of more than 2.5 million has intermittent and very slow internet and my cellular internet is useless. In tiny Khajuraho however several restaurants announce free wifi and jewelry shops double as Internet access points, not that I’ve yet actually seen anyone taking advantage of these technological options, and I image they are also exceedingly slow.

As an outsider I can only make educated guesses about both the language and internet usage questions that I have. Rather than speculate, I turned to Ajay Awasthi, a local documentary filmmaker and cofounder of an educational and environmental charity called Global Voices. Awasthi confirmed my suspicions that in the rural community English is the language that designates education, which is why everyone here insists on speaking to me in my native tongue. Because Khajuraho is a center of tourism in an area largely dependent on agriculture, students here also learn a little French and a little Spanish alongside English and Hindi to allow them access to the tourist rupees. While initially it may seem positive that local kids are given an alternative to agriculture, Awasthi warns that many young people leave school as soon as they’re able to earn a living and are not truly becoming educated. Of course, here lies the moral dilemma for the tourist as well. When a young person asks for money for his education it feels terrible to look the child in the eye and say no, but one does just this in hopes that the same child will stay in school longer. Providing access to information in the local, native language is exactly why Wikipedians are working in Hindi (as well as a handful of other Indic language Wikipedias). Their work demonstrates and reminds us that these languages have a long history that is deeply tied to the communities who use them.

As for internet, Awasthi says the majority of the computers in town are internet only machines set up for tourist use. When locals do use computers, he says, they do so in English and mostly as communication devices. These young people aren’t searching the web for information, they’re simply logging on to connect with friends. That the technology they have is in English is telling. In fact, even the small coins, worth one and two rupees, don’t carry Devanagari numbers, and instead are emblazoned with the familiar 1 and 2 numeral, accompanied by the image of a hand holding up the corresponding fingers for those without basic numeral literacy.

For those working on Hindi Wikipedia this means the rural population, which could benefit from the efforts of these Wikipedians, are unlikely to ever come across the project. Of course, this doesn’t mean the project is doomed or the work done isn’t important. As internet usage and media expands into rural areas young people are more and more likely to experience urban lifestyles and in time many of these same people may begin to seek out more information about those other walks of life.

Thus far, every step of my trip has benefited from the generosity and knowledge of others. Before long I’ll have read the entire New York Review of Books and its usefulness will diminish but I have no doubt that something unexpected will sneak in to take its place as just the thing I need at just the moment I need it.

The Far End of the Maghreb

This article was originally published by Current Intelligence.

A boarded up movie theatre in Marrakech’s Gueliz neighborhood tellingly demonstrates the city’s struggle with both poverty and modernity. It sits abandoned, barbed wire preventing access to windows and doors, a block from a bustling street filled with European-style bars and restaurants, many beckoning visitors with 1950s-era neon signs. Scattered among the aging, once high-end hotels are the signs of what’s likely to become of them. Multi-story empty buildings, closed off on the ground floor, their window openings, devoid of glass, allow the weather to seep in. The Gueliz, once the French enclave of the city, is no longer new, as its other moniker, Ville Nouvelle, implies. Instead, it has become a dying hub of Marrakech’s struggling middle-class. Few of the buildings suggest that they have been repurposed, their lifespans seemingly limited to the businesses that once thrived within their walls.

Were it not for the mix of low-end fashion, galleries offering affordable contemporary art, and beat up late-model cars, the Gueliz would seem frozen in time. It moves along, but at a pace that has been left behind by the Europeans who built it.

As pundits fill television screens, offering predictions about which Middle Eastern states will fall next to waves of protest, Morocco does, from the inside, seem relatively safe. From the Gueliz to the traditional Medina, newspaper stands dominate major intersections and offer Arabic, French, German and English papers and magazines. According to the CIA’sWorld Factbook, 53.2 percent of the total population can read at least some of those papers. Of these, 65.7 percent are men and 39.6 percent are women. There is a range of information about the rest of the world on offer to them, and for those lucky enough to have internet-capable devices. There’s an outdoor garden, a literal cyber-park, that offers access to the online world. For the rest, the satellite dishes that spring up from nearly every rooftop in the city channel information from around the world.

An air of oppression certainly exists, but it isn’t crushing. Marrakech may also be unique, in that so much of its economy is dependent upon outsiders. Evidence of a tourist-based economy are everywhere, from the luxury hotels that line the road from the Medina to the Guilez, to the tour groups wandering through narrow, high-walled streets peppered with impoverished idle youth, to street signs that point only to sightseeing destinations and roads leading to other cities.

Nearly all of those sightseeing spots are stunning if dilapidated examples of Islamic architecture. Outside them, local boys offer hash for sale in a handful of Western languages while school-age children bat sad eyes in efforts to exchange packets of tissues for a few dirham. The history that hides behind the high walls is inaccessible to the very people to whom it belongs - part of an unspoken, subtle antagonism between  Moroccans and outsiders. Too much struggle on offer and the tourists won’t come, making that struggle even worse. 

Unemployment in Morocco already sits at approximately 9.8 percent, only slightly higher than the United States’ estimated 9.6 percent or Egypt’s 9.7 percent. Government is largely invisible, with private security guards most prominent at the city’s train station and a mixture of private and public uniformed police forces in the Medina’s main square. The protests that took place across the country last Sunday are unsurprising but not fraught with the urgency found in similar ones across the continent. Rather than calling for an overthrow of the ruling powers, Moroccans demanded the king introduce constitutional reforms that would limit his power. Easier said than done: he’s part of a ruling line that claims to be descended from the Prophet Muhammad and took power in 1631 — a power declared in the constitution to be sacred. The reforms that protesters called for limit the king’s power to dissolve the government or to have the final say in government appointments, giving that power back to voters.

The protests in Morocco are less likely to be broadcast around the world than others taking place in North Africa. This isn’t because they’re less important. They’re just less dramatic. Rather than a people trying to topple a longstanding government, Moroccans are trying to compromise with the system that already exists. Reform might not play out well on television but it certainly is just as extraordinary.

Reshape the constitution to make life better for the people of Morocco and perhaps that beautiful old cinema can have another life too.

All Jazzed for Al-Jazeera

This article was originally published by Current Intelligence.

When little girls and boys dream of becoming journalists they imagine something similar (though perhaps with a bit less time detained) to what Al Jazeera’s reporters have been through in the last two weeks. Journalism, in its most idealized state, includes not only reporting on the exciting events of the world, but participating in them. It also, no matter how much objectivity one shoots for, means standing up for what’s right. 

It’s that standing up that’s caused an Al Jazeera English blackout in the United States since its inception in November of 2006. It’s no secret that America’s right wing has protested Al Jazeera since its inception as anti-American — a shaky label that, if included to mean anti-U.S. government, the right’s darling FOX News certainly could share. 

Now, however, as people find themselves captivated with the ongoing protests in Egypt, it’s that strong editorial stance that seems to be drawing people to the internet for a look at the channel. Al Jazeera has successfully demonstrated itself to be the definitive source for information on the story. Americans are sharing links to AJE on Facebook and Twitter, The New York Times reports that the online campaign to bring the channel to the U.S. is working, and talks with Comcast will be held later this month.

All this is great, because Al Jazeera might be what the American television news landscape needs right now to focus its attention back on the actual events of the day, and less on its own rhetoric and misreporting.

There’s one little problem though. While Americans found themselves supporting Egyptians during the heat of protests, the story has already begun to fade from the headlines. Julian Assange has found his face splashed on the front pages of the Guardianand The New York Times, while the Egypt spotlight has dimmed. So too will American enthusiasm for Al Jazeera. 

I’m not saying they’ll stop watching and start uninformedly talking smack again. Al Jazeera has proven itself  a network that will relentlessly chase a story it thinks worth telling, even as its journalists are detained, its offices raided and its feed officially banned. Americans will do what they always do (which means going back to whatever it was they were doing before). A few might put AJE into their news rotation but with the heavy focus on the Arab world, most will turn away, in that other American tendency: isolationism.

As life returns to normal for some Egyptians who can’t keep their shops closed any longer, so too will Western news habits. Just a week ago most couldn’t help but ask which country would be next. Most, unfortunately, won’t tune in to find out.

Protests in Pretty Places

This article was originally published by Current Intelligence.

According to a 2010 report (pdf) by the U.S.-based watchdog organization Freedom House, nearly 1/4 of the planet’s 194 countries are “Not Free”, freedom in this sense based on the political rights and civil liberties of the country’s population. Not surprisingly, the stretch of North Africa (running from Algeria to Egypt), where protests in recent weeks have seen governments toppled and online communication sites such as Twitter and Facebook blacked out, rank high on the lacking-political-rights-and-civil-liberties scale.

To the West, “Partly Free” Morocco has managed to stay out of the headlines for the most part — despite its freedom rating falling in the last year and a case of self-immolation by a young man in Casablanca last Friday. 

East of the North African protest strip, of course, the freedom ratings aren’t much better. From Jordan to Afghanistan, with pockets of partial freedom here and there and the exception of a very free Israel (Occupied Territories notwithstanding), what in many places is democracy in name only is being challenged by people who want undemocratic leadership out. 

Tunisians began protesting in mid-December and it took weeks of sustained and on-going protests for President Ben Ali to leave. Egypt, thus far, has one full day under its belt and reports from Algeria imply protest there are unsustained. By cutting off social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, governments hope to quell efforts to organize potential protests but reports (largely on these same sites) indicate that protesters are still managing to relay information to others about assembly points (after all, it worked during the French Revolution… ). Reuters is reporting Egypt has banned demonstrations and will detain protesters, a move that will likely lead to more protests rather than less.

But while the West focuses on protests in pretty places it knows better for their tourist potential than for their internal politics (I’ve already seen London taxis with Egypt and Tunisia travel advertisements on them today) some less dramatic protests also plague the region. 

What should stand out most about the demonstrations is how they mirror what’s been happening in the West. Tunisians didn’t oust their president after 24 years simply because two and a half decades is long enough. Rising food costs and high unemployment became intolerable to a people who saw their leaders as corrupt and out of touch. Certainly the London student protesters of late last year, fighting rising tuition costs and feeling deceived by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg (who promised to end fees altogether) can relate. Just today the BBC reported 20 percent of university graduates are unable to find work. Spain, of course, has such a high unemployment rate, and has for so long, that one more bout of unemployment is viewed as an inevitability. Around the globe there are fears of higher costs for food, oil and other natural resources, at risk of rising due to inflation. McDonald’s, that Platonic form of cheap food, is raising its prices — though the more cynical among us will chalk that up as just another move to boost profits.

Lets not forget too that in Pakistan, Karachi University ended its fall term in a fit of violence and protests, starting classes in January two weeks later than scheduled. Here the issue is largely one of gaining political control over the university in the country’s ongoing political disputes. Rather than protest government control and partisan bickering, Americans simply scoff at the seating arrangement for the State of the Union Address, criticising every word while not actually taking action on governmental inaction. In fact, even the press in the U.S. has become so used to rising costs, unemployment and political infighting that it barely reported that the U.S.’ old nemesis Osama bin Laden — you know, the archetypal evil villain, the one who inspired military operations in Afghanistan — released another tape. Not that most Americans seem too bothered. Even the one-time sole representative of all that is bad on earth has become a footnote. 

Maybe, for the west, the problem seems too big. Obama’s speech last night talked of the need to freeze spending on everything except defence and major social programs, while his government made more than US$16.5 billion in arms deals with the Near East/South Asia region last year alone. Maybe the low numbers for “Not Free” political rights and civil liberties have something to do with all those weapons in the hands of oppressive governments. Good thing the one selling them all is rated the most “Free” a country can be.

The Panda With the Dragon Tattoo

This article was originally published by Current Intelligence.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, an organisation so fond of the Giant Panda that it employed the West’s only one as its logo in the 1960s, there are only approximately 2,500 of them left in the wild, anywhere. China’s rapidly growing economy hasn’t exactly helped the bears thrive but conservation efforts have grown in the last few decades to ensure that the loveable critters don’t vanish completely.

In the past, China has offered pandas to zoos around the world as part of what’s been dubbed “Panda Diplomacy.” Though the practice officially ended in 1984, a press release noting Monday’s announcement that Edinburgh has been granted two pandas demonstrates that pandas and diplomacy go together like bears and bamboo. “The project represents the culmination of five years of political and diplomatic negotiation at the highest level,” it states, “and it is anticipated the giant pandas will arrive in their new home as soon as a date is agreed.”

China’s other long-term diplomatic project, also culminating this week, doesn’t involve fur and probably won’t excite nearly as many school children. It has greater implications. I’m talking, of course, about the handover of long disputed territory from Tajikistan to China. The deal was cut more than a decade ago for the handover of the 1,000 square mile track of remote mountain land (and sorry panda fans, it’s not really habitable for that particular endangered species), but the Tajik government didn’t actually ratify the handover until Wednesday. 

According to the BBC, “it is not clear where exactly the land to be ceded is or how many people live there.” But apparently it was all resolved peacefully, save for Tajik opposition leader Mukhiddin Kabiri calling the move unconstitutional. 

While the move may be largely symbolic, it is, like the trading of pandas, important to the world’s second largest economy, second largest by land area, and which is getting a little bigger in Central Asia. The stretch of territory in question is in the Pamir mountains, and borders both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The English-language Chinese People’s Daily newspaper reported this week that China and Pakistan are ramping up economic efforts to tie the two countries together. Meanwhile, relations with India are strained due to an incident in September 2010 in which it accused Chinese forces of entering Kashmir and threatening construction workers. In Tajikistan, China initially sought 11,000 square kilometers, and it currently claims rights on 90,000 square kilometers in northern India. Relations between China and India have been less than friendly since a 1962 war over territory, and China’s growth in Central Asia is sure keep India’s attention focused.

SUNFLOWER SEEDS — The Changes of Ai Weiwei

This article was originally published by The End of Being.

It was inevitable, but that doesn’t make it any less unfortunate.

When Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds opened at Britain’s Tate Modern in October, art-lovers were treated to a unique gallery experience. Not only was the massive hall filled with millions of tiny, hand-made, porcelain sunflower seeds — unique in its own right — but you could walk across them, feeling and hearing the crunching below your feet. Ten days later, the museum realized the dust from the trampled seeds was going to lead to a fine dust that Tate Modern curator Juliet Bingham said on the museum’s website, “could be damaging to health following repeated inhalation over a long period of time.”

It was an unfortunate announcement, but one that didn’t come as a huge surprise.

Even more unfortunate, it wasn’t the last change the piece was to go through. In fact, now the original mission to “look more closely at the ‘Made in China’ phenomenon and the geo-politics of cultural and economic exchange today,” has been tread upon in a way that makes the evolution of the piece even more interesting than the work itself.

I didn’t get the chance to see Sunflower Seeds when it first opened because the disadvantage of living in a place like London is I always have the chance to get there eventually. So long as I show up before the show closes, in this case May 12, I’ll get to see it. But this meant I missed the first incarnation of the artwork. Instead, the first time I saw it, in early November, a rope was set up along the part of the work closest the entrance and I could look out across the vast field of seeds. The only interaction available was to reach my hands to the ground and feel the seeds closest me.

I didn’t take any and put them in my pocket. But, because others did, which meant that when I made it back in mid-December things had changed again. This time the seeds had been pushed to the side, leaving a long aisle down the long-side of the piece where before the work had gone all the way to the back wall of the gallery. This was great because, like the original orientation, you could walk and see just how many uniform seeds made up the piece. Sadly though, the rope was at a more museumish distance from the work — about a foot beyond arms length — so it could be seen but not touched.

Suddenly the close look Weiwei created became a distanced gawking. A position most people who frequent the Tate Modern are used to. The uniformity of the seeds is highlighted and the minor differences fade from view. No longer is the exchange tangible. Instead we are left at a distance where we can see but cannot interact.

I wanted to run my fingers through each and every single one of those seeds. I wanted to rest my body on top of them as if to make a snow angel. And yes, I wanted to pocket one. But now I can’t do any of those things.

Sunflower Seeds is still beautiful, but instead of being a dialogue with its audience it has become just another installation.