Thought Picnic: They've run out of video tape

Casing the joint - night and day

I sometimes think I am quite observant but I have realised that it does not mean that I notice a lot. The other day, as I walked up to the chemist for another batch of pills, I expected the video shop to be open though I have not plied any trade there in a good few years.

In fact, the night I decided to buy my place, one of the things I did was to visit at night and get a feel of the atmosphere around my prospective dwelling place.

There is no point have a look at a prospect during to cool of the day when everyone is out at work and then realising that at night is a hellish place to be long after you have signed the papers and had a few sleepless nights.

The video shop that opens from 14:00 to 22:00 was at the time the last shop to close in this area, so I walked in and had a chat to the manager about how he felt about working in this area and what kind of people lived here.

It was there, now no more there

His views were encouraging and I felt confident I had made the right choice. Soon, I was a registered member of the video club though I probably only ever hired a few videos except when I had young guests that I ventured there – it was just a place that existed my coming here and had every possibility of outlasting us.

My first DVD player was bought from there and it was easy to get recordable CDs or DVDs if needed in an emergency from the shop.

However, on that day, I saw a sign in Dutch thanking us for 10 years of being there, it was not like they had moved elsewhere, rather it seemed the business had closed.

Besides the travel agent was probably the first to vacate their business premises just over two years ago and that spot has not found new occupiers yet. I suppose things have been tough but many businesses have been resilient – it has just been, the sign of the times.

Nigeria: #OccupyNigeria New York townhall disruption

On Sahara Reporters

Now, I am not the greatest fan of Sahara Reporters but I realise that in a country like Nigeria the need for a guerilla news agency beyond the reach of government or powerful influences is critical and important.

I have always contended that they need to be more professional with a better editorial policy, an independent funding arrangement and some control of the quality of commentary that accompanies their stories.

As I learnt to my chagrin and annoyance, some two years ago having praised Sahara Reporters on my blog, their editorial team ripped off my article wholesale and posted it verbatim without acknowledgement or attribution and gave the impression I was a guest blogger when I was not at all.

The interesting knowledge gained from that experience was when I eventually got to see the 33 or so comments posted with relation to my write-up only one appeared to comprehend fully what I was talking about, the rest of the comments were redolent of ignorance and a strange pall of illiteracy that put keyboards at the fingertips of cretins.

Some lessons

Recently, the front-man of Sahara Reporters attended a town-hall meeting in New York where the Minister of State of Foreign Affairs was the guest of honour. He successfully disrupted the meeting which was recorded and posted on YouTube and he made some very crucial points that representatives of Nigeria going abroad will pay heed to appreciate and note.

We are well informed of activities in Nigeria and the global cachet of Nigerians is able to project and protest anywhere in the world.

The idea that Nigerian dignitaries can utilise African time when going to events abroad where we do keep to time and are punctual will no more be condoned. In this case the Minister was shamefully 90 minutes late.

We are not in thrall of people in power, if you are in public service, the element of service to your countrymen has to be paramount, the idea that you will be revered as some potentate with an air of mystique is so last century.

Patriarchy is dead, if you are expectant of respect by reason of the office you hold, you will have to earn it by merit, with competence and the honest engagement that accords respect to the people you desire respect from.

Causing serious embarrassment

The Occupy Nigeria movement has a global outreach and it is evident that despite the fact that the President in his concessional speech revisiting the fuel subsidy issues by promising to cut unnecessary travel, this minister was almost aimlessly gallivanting around the United States with the penchant for arriving late at all events she was invited to.

Though there were Nigerians in Diaspora ready to fawn in supine sycophancy in the presence of Nigerian politicians the goal of Mr Sowore was to call out this minister and in the process address the burning issues going on in Nigeria whilst embarrassing the minister seriously for her classless and reprehensible behaviour, not to talk of the inability of the government to really cut back on the profligacy that had become part of the gripes of the Occupy Nigeria movement.

Mr Sowore made his point by disrupting the meeting and he probably could have been a bit less volatile and abusive in his delivery so as to make even more reasonable points. The meeting eventually commenced after that representation of Occupy Nigerian were escorted out of the venue by the New York Police Department but not before an 11 minute recording had been made which will have the minister having to do some explaining and clarification with regards to what that video clip purports to suggest.

Reviewing the video clip

Without doubt every news organ has an agenda and it behoves them to pursue it with fervour, but it also important that the organ maintains a principle of credibility and integrity for purposes of posterity.

I cannot say if Mr Sowore’s edition of that video had sinister intentions to embarrassing all Nigerian representatives to the point that their positions become untenable. That might be scalps for Sahara Reporters but it does their cause no good at all.

At issue with that video is the idea that the minister and representatives of the Nigerian Embassy in New York sat through the recitation of the Nigerian National Anthem and a cursory viewing of that video appears to suggest that they disrespected the National Anthem and the ensuing consequences will be grave. Many of the comments I have read had both excoriated and condemned those officials but I not convinced that they did sit through that fervent expression of patriotism.

Within the first 1:07 minutes of that recording, there is enough evidence to indicate that the editing of this film clip has either deliberately or inadvertently besmirched the loyalty of these officials.

I have taken timings in playing back that video at normal speed and detailed my observations to support my view.

00:00 The lead in to this video clip introduces the subject of this recording.

00:04 The national anthem was already being sung as the narrator began to set the stage for the event.

00:14 The man at the podium was talking to the audience from what one can see of his demeanour; he could not have been doing this whilst the national anthem was being sung, indicating the audio recording of the anthem was dubbed over the video.

00:30 The lady that approaches the podium after the man also appears to be talking to the audience.

00:35 The lady glances toward the high table as if to acknowledge the people sat there.

00:38 The lady in the black jacket walked over to confer with the lady speaking at the podium.

00:42 The camera pans to the back of the lady in red who appears to be holding a microphone and maybe asking questions – at no other time are we shown the audience singing the National Anthem after the glimpse at the beginning of the clip.

00:59 The clapping at the end of the audio playback of the national anthem appears to be in acknowledgement of the man getting up on the right as he makes for the podium. The minister and the other man are clapping too, it cannot have been for the end of the national anthem.

01:05 As the man approaches the podium we hear the voice of Mr Sowore who seems to have commandeered the microphone and you can see the attention of those sat at the high table directed towards him.

My submission

I will suggest that no matter how late meetings start for Nigerian gatherings there will most probably be a call to prayer and the singing of the national anthem.

In both cases, I will expect that the master of ceremonies will expressly as all in attendance to rise for prayer and then rise for the singing of the national anthem.

It is unlikely that the singing of the national anthem will be a spontaneous activity and hence if the people are asked to rise to sing the national anthem it is almost impossible to contemplate the situation where those at the high-table with expressly ignore that request and sit through the national anthem.

By circumstance, tradition or even rarity, one has to submit that the video was an edited version of the event which inadvertently portrays a side of the story that does not represent the whole truth and by so suggesting the official disrespected the national anthem – there is no indication from that clip that those officials did not rise for the national anthem and until one expressly shows that they did not respect the anthem it will be unjust to suggest impunity.

I will be ready to review any other recordings of this event either to corroborate or dispute my views but this video by commission or omission on the matter of respecting the national anthem is unfair, unjust and heaps opprobrium on the officials to foster an ulterior and dastardly motive which is at best unconscionable if not dishonest.

A dose of television slumber

Come slumber with long vision

Televisions determine where I sleep in my home and that has been the case for years and for a very long time.

A few months ago, my Philips combination television and video cassette recorder in my little bedroom just died, I believe it is the fuse that needs changing, even though I did study electrical/electronic engineering, the last time I looked in the back of a television or cathode ray tube type monitor was probably more than 20 years ago.

I follow the basic instruction that there are no user serviceable parts to play with and consider the matter of replacement whilst sending the old box to the recycling dump for scavenging in the unfortunate places where the material might well be considered valuable.

Sleeping rough at home

The loss of the television meant I moved to my living room where I had a self-inflating mattress for a bed for quite a few months – I sleep with my lights on and to the sound of the television – and though I did without all this in hospital and without television for more than a month after returning home, I am back to that habit and sense of comfort.

For months, I slept “rough” in my living room till I decided to sort out the poor signal to the cable television/Internet socket in the bedroom because the digital television decoder which I acquired almost a year ago could not maintain a connection.

Once I got the plug-in booster I also purchased a basic 24” LCD television with a built-in DVD player and connected up the whole deal only to find out that the digital television decoder had not been registered and enabled by my provider and that will take 72 hours to activate.

All for nothing almost

So, I defaulted to cable and soon found out that my new television could not read channel names off the discovered channels, so I had to rely on visual watermarks to rearrange the channels and I have not yet found out if I could manually label the channels with textual names.

After the 72 hours, I tried the digital television decoder again and it was still saying I was not subscribed to the channels despite the fact that I already had another decoder with digital video recording working in my living room.

As usual, I tried what I had been told before, disconnected the decoder because the smart guys who built it gave it no power switch, on reconnection, the thing had died, probably the fuse – so now, I have to return that decoder in exchange for a new one.

During that week, I resolved to begin to enjoy my home ago and that became my opportunity to move back into my small bedroom and onto my bed again.

Problems with the other television

Meanwhile, my other Sony television which is a cathode ray tube system that I brought over from the UK and then discovered that the PAL system was a group of incompatible systems between countries that I needed a Dutch video cassette recorder to refine the signal for my television, I soon found out that the decoder or even a DVD playback system could refine the signal (Whatever happened to those multi-system televisions of the 1980s that all NTSC, PAL and SECAM systems as default.)

I have had the television for over 10 years, in fact, I still have working gadgets of 16 years, my microwave oven and stereo set, but this morning, I switched on the television and there was a white line at the top of the screen – vertical scan collapse – I thought but why did channel numbers display properly.

All cables to the show

After moving some cables and connections around, I found the television was OK and the problem had to be with the decoder, but the decoder was indicating it could see the channels too.

Switching off the decoder and then switching it back on again meant that my living room has returned to life with a television and there was no need to send two decoders back.

Tomorrow morning I pick up my telephony equipment to connect to cable, I decided not to reconnect my original landline after the telephone company I had been a customer of for 9 and a half years cut my communication off completely – such unsympathetic and heartless businesses do not deserve my custom at all.

The grip television has on us and what really do we watch that is so compelling? You tell me.

Boats, Threats & Videotape

A voice out of somewhere

“I am coming to you”, Could this be a father saying to his daughter who is distressed at school as a voice of assurance or is it a voice carried in the un-calm winds of the Persian Gulf in the Strait of Hormuz, threatening the existence of a coalition vessel convoy?

No one can say, just as the United States military command in the Gulf cannot now confirm that the video of seemingly or allegedly Iranian speedboats in aggressive posturing to their fleet is the source of that cool but eerily sinister voice.

We have seen boats, threats and videotape – you can make what you want out of both.

Far away war a day

The United States, very far away from home causing enough trouble in the Middle East was in international waters close to the territorial extent of Iran – this was no doubt a recipe for close encounters with their enemy.

The US then released a video of seemingly reckless speedboat riders playing chicken with a belligerent world power – they were at the point of being blown to smithereens when a voice was recorded with this chilling threat.

Iran then released their own video and the storyline takes a completely different course – a calm and collected officer asking about the coalition vessel, definitely not the voice we heard of the US video threat.

The curse of propaganda

If anything, it shows why we need multiple perspectives of any story, because each side had a propaganda element to portray and we are at risk of being persuading of what might be entirely false.

Had Iran not released a video view of their perspective of the incident the US reported, we would have satisfied ourselves with the usual staple of Iran being a lawless, ill-disciplined, faction-ridden theocracy that needs to be blown up to instigate regime change.

The Iranian version of events, though edited for consumption just as the US version was, gives us another pause for thought that Iran might not as horrible as we get told they are – it also shows that we would try to get away with anything, if other parties are not smart enough to take a record of their engagements with the West.

The UFO threat

I find this whole thing utterly reprehensible, I would hate to think that people are manufacturing videos to reflect a situation that does not represent the truth – between the US notion of provocative and Iran notion of routine, there must be something that is closer to the truth.

As the US backtracks about the coincidence of the voice with the appearance of these speedboats which one could almost say are probably Unidentified Floating Objects (UFO) – mirages of the sea – recorded from the fatigued lenses of a battle-weary cameraman and edited by excitable agents for more blood and gore of war.

As this story unravels, I do not think the entire truth would be revealed – however, for the sake of truth, fairness and justice, it is incumbent of all these aspiring Hollywood film-makers to release the entirety of their recordings of the event.

The news wires and channels should also keep out the analysts – at least, give us viewers the opportunity to decide for ourselves who is closer to the truth of the event.

A new premise for war

Beyond this is the opportunity for the US to contend that they have been provoked into attacking Iran having lost the impetus from the recent report that states that Iran has suspended any nuclear weapons development programme for years.

With an admiral suggesting that Iran risks a Gulf conflict, one fears that some activity very similar to the Iraq Dossier on the presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction on which the war in Iraq was based but found to be groundless is being orchestrated to justify an unjustifiable attack on Iran – someone is fanning the embers of discord and one wonders who.

More so, having failed to execute the war in Iraq with finesse, or handle the issues in Afghanistan with a conclusion in sight; it is contemptible that a new set of planners are probably trying to see if another war in Iran can be a lessons-learnt success to redeem the supremacy and credibility of the United States.

Perish the thought, but let it pass your mind for a second!

Both pieces of footage

Turkey still unsuitable for Europe

Consulting Turkey

There is no doubt that Turkey does have an uphill task in becoming acceptable and amenable to Europe. I could very well sympathise with the many who believe that the way Turkey straddles Europe and Asia makes it better a neutral ally than an assimilated partner in the great Europe project.

Turkey still struggles with its identity in terms of its history, its nationhood, the influence of the army and its protection of pressure-cooker secularist ideology.

In many cases, what binds the people is so artificial in the context of real-politik and nowhere is that best exemplified than in the Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code which pared down simply makes a crime of insulting Turkishness.

This article, controversial as it is, surreptitiously stands to revolt against any objective scrutiny of Turkish history; this mainly points to the case of the alleged genocide of Armenians by the failing Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1917, it also refuses to the recognise the need to protect the human rights of ethnic minorities like the Kurds.

Insulting Turkishness

The laudable goals of this article are listed thus:

1. A person who publicly denigrates Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and three years.

2. A person who publicly denigrates the Government of the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the State, the military or security organizations shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and two years.

3. In cases where denigration of Turkishness is committed by a Turkish citizen in another country the punishment shall be increased by one third.

4. Expressions of thought intended to criticize shall not constitute a crime.

You will note that the critical word of import in this article is “denigration”, which in common parlance means to blacken; somehow, one must not attack the reputation of all entities Turkish even if they have been caught in situations that make their reputation questionable or one must not deny the importance or validity of a stance even if it is an unfair revision of history to suit nationalistic purposes.

Resulting Turkey mess

The last part of this article could as well be a muzzled dog in that it cannot allow for objective analysis of a view which criticizes but is view by some as denigration.

On the basis of this poorly constructed piece of legislation, many have been charged with insulting Turkishness prominent amongst whom are the Nobel Laureate for Literature 2006 – Orhan Pamuk – charges were eventually dropped.

Hrant Dink, a writer and journalist, was convicted under this article in 2005 for writing about the Armenian Genocide and on the 19^th of January was gunned down in front of his newspaper office by a teenager who took exception to his writings or so it seems.

The outpouring of rage and grief at the procession to the funeral of Mr. Dink did give the impression that the Turks would rather dispense of a piece of legislation that makes their brand of democracy questionable if not a fallacy of a pseudo-totalitarian state propped up by the army and licensed to punish any view that does not subserviently defer to that of the government and its organs.

The Economist suggested that this article be repealed as a sign of a new democratic dawn in Turkey and a lasting legacy to Mr. Dink.

Exulting extremist Turkey

It would now appear that we have been thinking ahead of ourselves, a leaked video – something that now seems the laudable purveyor of truths people in authority would rather we did not know – showing the suspect killer of Mr. Dink (Ogun Samast) posing with the national flag and some police personnel in a “Boy, you have done us proud” situation is now public property.

This would feed into the conspiracy that the suspect was probably part of a greater plot of perpetrators out to kill Mr. Dink, though being 17 years old, is a convenient fall-guy for an offence that might Turkishly be swept under the carpet for the want of another turn of phrase.

Obviously, an inquiry has been instituted to nab the police involved in what might have let the cat out of bag – the indoctrination of people into fundamental Turkey-tude that they cannot separate the wrongness of a heinous crime of murder from the absurdity of insulting Turkishness.

Insulting our intelligence

Beyond that, they are also after whoever leaked the video, now, that really gets to me, the video is a truthful recording of events that really took place, a truth that must not be conceal from a public that might feel justice is being served only to find out that murderous crimes are being glorified.

Once again, like all those before, the man who revealed the hanging of Saddam Hussein, the people who revealed the pictures of Abu Ghraib and yesterday, the lady who revealed the pictures of orphaned babies being gagged from crying out in a hospital in Russia, these are the upholders of our civility, the real democrats, the people who make us feel our bosoms for a conscience – they need to be commended and protected from the tyranny of powers that would not prevent injustice and when that injustice is revealed, they are hounded for seeking justice that should have been there in the first place.

It is self-evident that a Turkey in this form that allowed this ideology of Turkishness to prevail to the point that people can get killed does not belong in Europe. Imagine an offence like “Insulting Englishness” or “Insulting America-ness”, it is absurd.

Though, France does not help by creating a new offence of denying the Armenian Genocide, both Turkey and France are perpetrating wrongs that require a genuine historical consensus on what really happened and accepting that as the truth regardless of citizenship.