North West RESPECT Convention - video clip

Media links don't seem to work - even the added links.

Why are they uploaded to San Fransisco IndyMedia?

And why encode them as Real Media? Unless you don't want anybody to make use of your clips and you are protecting them, the codec is crap!

Respectfully request that you upload your clips as QT .mov or .mpg.

Does this story act as an advert for a political party? The blurb is definitely.

I know that a similar story (different party) was taken off the Liverpool site because it was a "political" advert.

All of the video codecs you mention are proprietary--realmedia is no worse or better than the rest from that point of view. Since when has Apple been a bastion of media liberation? I use realmedia because, in my experience, it gives the least worst sound quality and lowest file size at 56k. There is an alternative free player called Real Alternative which avoids the privacy problems of RealOne Player. Download it from:

 http://home.hccnet.nl/h.edskes/mirror.htm

I use the Indybay site because usually it is very reliable, but not, apparently, in this case. Political advertising? I see that the thought-police are alive and well. It is the 20th anniversary of 1984 this year. RESPECT is a registered political coalition that held a local convention. The fact that a section of the Asian community attended and spoke is NEWS not advertising. You wouldn't really want to censor the speech of an Asian community would you? Or is this a honky-only news site?

To download a dial-up encoded QuickTime version of this clip, go to:

 http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2004/03/238734.shtml

To download a broadband version of this clip go to:

 http://nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/88570/index.php

The broadband clip (35 MB) is the top one labeled "unknown media".

The middle one is a dial-up encoded QuickTime clip labeled "watch video".

The lowest clip labeled "unknown media" is a realmedia video file encoded for dial-up modems.

To download any of the files, right click on them and select "save target as". Then play them on your desktop.

I'm not trying to re-open the Mac/PC debate but in my experience there is no support for Real Media amongst Mac users. I suppose as a media producer myself I like to have files I can control and when I publish clips I hope that somebody might want to use it some other way, maybe edit it into a compilation - whatever they want. There is an agreement that all media published on here is free to be re-used (I might not phrase this exactly).

However, try as I might, there is no way to open/import .rm or .ram files (or .wmv files come to that) into any application. That in my humble opinion makes it proprietory. Quicktime on the other hand is the format used by most if not all off-line editing software. Using Final Cut or Premiere you can import most common formats but not Real Media or Windows Media.

Thanks for posting the QT file.

You said that "The fact that a section of the Asian community attended and spoke is NEWS not advertising".

I think what was news was that you attended the conference!

I have been to several 'Respect' Unity Coalition (it was born plain old Unity Coalition) meetings. Never has the Asian community not been very well represented either in the audience or the platform. Indeed, at the last meeting at the mosque in Preston the vast majority of the audience was from the Asian community as were the speakers including Maulana Saeed Ahmed making very much the same points as he did on Sunday.

I doubt if anybody who is involved in any way with IndyMedia is in any way racist so to suggest that 'pingu' might be by saying 'You wouldn't really want to censor the speech of an Asian community would you? Or is this a honky-only news site?' is a racist slur of the kind typically used by members of the SWP when they can't engage in an argument.

If there is a policy that political parties (a coalition is merely a plurality of parties!) should not be promoted on here (I don't know that there is) then it has to be applied accross the board without despicable accusations of racism like yours.

And finally, why are we now on NYC Indymedia space? Isn't IndyMedia UK worthy?

To see both dial-up and broadband encoded clips (Realmedia and QT!) of Sue BOnd speaking go to:

 http://nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/88585/index.php

I use the US IMC sites because they are reliable for uploading video files and the UK site is unfortunately not--I am NOT complaining about that because I know that UK Indymedia is run by dedicated volunteers and I imagine that it is a question of lack of resources.

I make no apology for suggesting that a proposal to effectively censor a video clip of an Asian person speaking at the RESPECT COnvention was racist. It was racist. Racism does exist in the British left--usually unconsciously. The left, like everyone else, is bombarded by it every day in the media so it not really surprising.

And finally Nikdonia, I don't try to tell you in what format you should upload your video clips or where to post them. You really should try to be a little less pompous.

Thanks to Nikhedonia for some points well made.

Chris, with respect, your missing the point. First of all it's a little bit colour blind of you to assume I am white and speaking out against Maulana Saeed Ahmed. Secondly, I'm an anti-racism campaigner and don't appreciate your accusation. It doesn't do any Indymedia any favours when legitimate concerns are met with such hostility.

For your clarification, it's the title and the blurb. The title advertises a political party, the blurb does as well. Indymedia guidelines are:

"Occasionally we are forced to hide postings offending the open posting guidelines. Because of the 'real time' nature of the newswire, it is not possible to monitor its contents 24 hours a day. All posts, hidden and showing can be seen in the View all posts page.

Newswire Open Posting Guidelines:

Repeated : content that is reposted or text that was originally a comment posted as a report.

Non-news : posts which are clearly purely comment, opinion or rants unrelated to a recent event or action etc.

Discrimination : posts using language, imagery, or other forms of communication promoting racism, fascism, xenophobia, sexism or any other form of discrimination.

Inaccurate : posts that are inaccurate or misleading.

Advertising : posts with personal or product promotions.

Hierarchy : The newswire is designed to generate a news resource, not a notice-board for political parties or any other hierarchically structured organization.

Disruptive : Contributions by individuals who habitually publish above mentioned discouraged content."

Your post comes under the hierarchy guidelines. If the emphasis you had put was on the speaker, and that fact that it was at a Respect conference was mentioned, then that would have been ok. However, the posting was the other way round. The emphasis is on Respect not the speaker, and you do have a pro-Respect blurb.

The previous article you posted was commented on by me as well, but I didn't think it broke the guidelines. I think this one does.

At the risk of falling foul of the the Non-news clause in the Open Postings Guidelines I will make my final comments on these matters.

Firstly, Chris, I didn't try to tell you in what format you upload your clips. Read what I said, it was a request. I then tried to explain why it would be beneficial to upload them in a format which could be imported into either Final Cut or Premiere. Given your propensity to export your clips as Real Media files I think it is safe to assume that you are using Premiere. Mpg is a format which it could be said is part of the common culture and if you want your clips to be more widely seen without having to resort to a very clumsy technology like Real Media, it might be a preferable format. Whenever I send or post links to .rm files (I never create them) I get a storm of complaints. I think that you have provocatively uploaded an extremely poor quality QT movie clip in order to 'illustrate' your point, given that you allocated only a tenth of the file size of the Real Media file to it. 'Look everybody, the Quicktime movie looks shit.' Duh! And pompous? See below.

The fact that members of the Asian community attended this meeting is NOT news. It was only news to you because you weren't at all the other previous Respect Unity Coalition meetings. If you had been to them you would have realised that the turnout of the Asian community in Manchester on Sunday was relatively poor. But you conveniently skip this point when made earlier.

The fact that you take a criticism of your article on the grounds that it contravenes the IndyMedia guidelines as being racist further convinces me that you have an SWP mentality, i.e. making 'right on' accusations of racism at anything that moves. You are the thought police! You make it impossible to present a criticism of anything if it includes ethnic content by immediately crying, 'You're racist!'. 'You're sexist!'. 'You're homophobic!' It contributes absolutely nothing to make trumped up accusations like that. Of course, this suits the SWP agenda because in reality they aren't a party of unity, they are the disruptive element which have deterred other left leaning and environmental organisations from joining Respect and will probably be its downfall, although by then they will have beaten a hasty retreat. It is their participation which prevents at least eight long time committed anti-racist activists from my small backwater alone from getting involved in Respect as well as the whole of our Stop The War group and I regret to say it, eventually possibly me. Though that shouldn't trouble you or the SWP.

And before you levy an accusation of racism at me, I have been involved with anti-racist campaigns for many years. I became a supporter of the Anti-Nazi League in 1980. I have marched, leafleted, photographed and been arrested for my ant-racist stance as well as devoting much of my life to environmental activism and other important issues.

If you aren't already a member of the SWP, Chris, I suggest you ask them for an application form because by the sound of it, you are just what they are looking for.

Another reason why I use realmedia is because it compresses broadband files down to much smaller sizes than for example QuickTime using the vp3 codec. Unfortunately, I am stuck for the time being with NTL broadband which has 600k download, but only 128k upload. It takes ages to upload big broadband files and my time is limited. Nikhedonia, if you or anyone else wants to use my video footage, the best thing to do is to e-mail me for a CD-rom, DVD or MiniDV copy.

I have nothing against QT and the idea that I would deliberately upload a poor quality file to discredit it is just plain silly. The actual reason is that I have not used QT for 56k files very much because I use the  http://tv.oneworld.net site which only uses realmedia. I have been using Oneworld (with broadband links to Indymedia) to build up a video record of the Manchester anti-war movement over the past two and half years. Have a look at it and you will see what I mean:

 http://tv.oneworld.net/tapestry?person=1514

So, the truth of the matter is that I have not thus far got the settings for encoding QT files for 56k dial-up modems down to the fine art that I have with realmedia. In fact the QT file I uploaded was one of the first ever QT files I have encoded for dial-up modems. That is the reason why it not as good. If anyone wants to suggest better settings/codecs etc. for QT filess, I would be very happy to receive them. E-mail me.

Nikhedonia, you may have seen and heard Maulana Saeed Ahmed before, but people outside Preston have not—that is why it was necessary to put it on Indymedia. Thus, your argument doesn't make sense. It is important to let people outside Preston know that at least a part of the Asian community is supporting RESPECT and that it is not composed of just the SWP and the other "usual suspects".

RESPECT really does have support in the Asian community and the unions--as the video clip of Sue Bond--national vice president of PCS--indicates. The national general secretary of PCS, Mark Serwotka, is also a member of RESPECT. This is a public sector union in the front line of the battle against privatisation and which is currently striking against the government over pay. The RMT supports RESPECT’s Scottish ally the Scottish Socialist Party in Scotland

On the question of racism within the left: do you really think that the left is immune from the all the racism that the working class is relentlessly bombarded with, on a daily basis, by the mainstream media? Do you think that because someone joins a left organisation, or regularly reads Indymedia, that they suddenly become immune from all the ills of society? From national chauvinism, classism, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia etc., just like that? If you do, you are seriously mistaken. One of the reasons why there is resistance to RESPECT is precisely the Islamophobia that infects a part of the left.

I know all about the shortcomings of the SWP. However, after reading some of the posts on this site, people might be forgiven for thinking that the SWP is worse than the Blairites, Tories, and even the BNP--a slight loss of perspective I think.

The SWP is a part of the left landscape and has been for decades. As well as noting deficiencies, I also believe in giving credit where it is due. They did play a big part in the success of the anti-war movement and they are trying to build a credible alternative to Labour and the BNP. That is to their credit. And in the meantime, while I am struggling alongside them to build a serious political alternative to Labour/BNP, I will give the SWP a little bit of ear ache about their political shortcomings.

The best way to way influence someone and to bring them round to your way of thinking is to work with them and discuss political disagreements with them as you struggle together against the warmongers.

Finally, Pingu you should also either put up or shut up—-as the lawyers say. In what way is RESPECT undemocratic? And I beg to differ with your view that RESPECT is non-news—you are talking nonsense. Your partisan sectarian slip is showing.

A clip suitable for dial-up modems.

Pingu attempts to argue for the censoring of this news item on entirely partisan political ground dressed up as supposedly flouting editorial guidleines. He says:

A muslim cleric, Maulana Saeed Ahmed, an Imam in Preston, UK, speaks on the platform of RESPECT--a new party dedicated to challenging the Blairiite and BNP warmongers in the UK.

He says:

"Your post comes under the hierarchy guidelines. If the emphasis you had put was on the speaker, and that fact that it was at a Respect conference was mentioned, then that would have been ok. However, the posting was the other way round. The emphasis is on Respect not the speaker, and you do have a pro-Respect blurb."

This is simply not true. My original post says:

"A muslim cleric, Maulana Saeed Ahmed, an Imam in Preston, UK, speaks on the platform of RESPECT--a new party dedicated to challenging the Blairiite and BNP warmongers in the UK."

The emphasis is clearly on the fact that a muslim cleric is speaking. That is the first thing that is mentioned. It was necesary to mention that he was speaking at the RESPECT meeting because without this context the post would have been meaningless.

I also uploaded a clip of a leading trades unionist to report the fact that RESPECT has support in the unions.

Pingu misses another point which is that RESPECT is a new political coalition that came out of the anti-war movement and which attempts to develop it into a political alternative to Blairism. The fact that a North West launch of this coaliiton took place in Manchester Town Hall last Sunday is NEWS in and of itself.

2 million people marched in February 15th 2003, but it did not stop Blair from implementing the war. It is obvious from this that it is necessary to fight Blair on both the electoral terrian as well as on the streets and in the workplaces (strikes). The fact that part of the anti-war movement met to discuss what to do in the Euro-elections and GLA elections was and is NEWS. I was simply reporting wehat happened. The fact that I, as the reporter and videographer, am sympathetic to RESPECT is irrelevant.

For a dial-up modem encoded video clip of George Galloway speaking at the North West Respect Convention in Manchester Town Hall 29.2.04 go to:

 http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/03/1672626.php

By the way, please ignore the second paragraph in my earlier post entitled "A further point". It shouldn't be there--it was an error when I was cutting and pasting the post.

To download a broadband clip of George Galloway speaking at the convention on the 29th, go to:

 http://wmass.indymedia.org/newswire/display/2532/index.php

To download a broadband video clip of Manchester Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) spokesperson, Dr Aziz, speaking at the 29th Feb 2004 NW RESPECT Convention, go to:

 http://wmass.indymedia.org/newswire/index.php

Apologies, the above Dr Aziz clip URL was for the Western Massachusetts newswire index.

The exact address for the video clip (labelled "unknown media") is:

 http://wmass.indymedia.org/newswire/display/2552/index.php

Right click on it and select "save target as" to downlaod this big broadband realmedia file.

Hello

Just came across this site as I am trying to find video footage relating to the Respect coalition. I'm a student in Scarborough (North Yorkshire) and also a member of Respect there.

I've beeen asked to make a music track and video for the European elections, using video footage related to Respect, but finding useable footage has been pretty difficult.

Is there any way to get hold of clips like these at better quality. Perhaps just 640x480, still compressed within QT?

Any help or reply will be much appreciated.

Bryn