J’accuse on .eu (tvm)

An interview on TVM program .eu about blogging, the internet, the Th!nkaboutit campaign and the European Parliament elections. Interviewer is Keith Demicoli. Vid ripped from di-ve.com by the King of Bloggers who does not want to be named. The program was screened on TVM on 3rd February at 18.15 with a repeat on 4th February at 22.00.

J’accuse’s European Campaign

All over the world they’re voting

It’s kicked off and we do not even have a proper slogan yet. I’m sorely tempted to do a nationalist and steal mine off some foreign campaign that has already been tried and tested. Or I could come up with something so kitsch that it has to stick out. Of course there is always the option of adapting Zefrank’s old adage all over again. Whatever we choose the campaign is here and now and J’accuse readers will be spoilt for choice and luckier than they have ever been before. Why luckier? Because thanks to j’accuse you can follow the campaign on three fronts – all of which are as independent minded and uncensored as an underground pirate radio of the early nineties.

J’accuse itself

First of all there is the self-reverential site par excellence. J’accuse - la verité si je mens - brings you 4 years of blogging experience and tongue-in cheek entertainment. It is time to spread the word and tell friends and friends of friends the good news. It is the Pauline year after all and that does not mean that some obscure babe named Pauline gets special attention but rather that the Catholic Apostolic Church is celebrating the doings of Saul of Tarsus a.k.a Paul. His was the mission to spread the word with the Gentiles. Yours it should be to spread the word among the uninitiated to get a reader (it’s free) and add J’accuse and the many others populating the Maltese blogosphere with their deep thoughts and arrogant conclusions. So yes. Number one is good old J’accuse – vetting the EP candidates so you don’t have to.

The Malta Chronicle

Second in line is the site that feeds off anything electoral. This year the Chronicle is taking shape to be a lovely vehicle in which the Maltese side of the EP campaign is examined. There’s all sorts of writers and frankly we are hoping for there to be more. Once again word of mouth is essential. The more readers and diverse opinions will appear on TMC the more interesting the read. This is not a profitable organisation so set aside your suspiucion of some underhand monies passing through. The Fausto’s, Mark’s and Vlad’s of this world are writing with passion and passion is what TMC is about ultimately. There you go. Number two is The Malta Chronicle – the pygmy elephant votes.

Th!nkaboutit

Lastly and thirdly (but not leastly) there is the European dimension of the independent thinkers campaign. The Th!nkaboutit blogging competition launches today and you will find opinions by a great diversity of bloggers ranging from the eurosceptic to the eurotepid (at least that’s my first impression). Thanks to the involvement of people with more savvy on the national rather than the eurocrat process this promises to be a more interesting read for those who cannot stomach the horsetrading in Council, Parliament and Commission. There’s an added bonus of course… since the Eurovision is miles away you get your chance to vote for your favourite posts (vote from one to five). Of course I am not telling you to get there in droves and vote for the J’accuse contributions unless you really feel they deserve it. To be quite honest the idea of participating is such an exchange is a prize in itself… corny as it may sound. I may not be De Coubertin but hey… I am enough of a discussion freak to think that way. So yes… do head to Th!nkabout it blog where over 70 authors will test your patience with their perspective on the European Campaign. Use your vote wisely and enjoy the trip… because it is a trip!

www.jacquesrenezammit.com/jaccuse

… is being test driven as you read. Never was so much time wasted in the creation of a feeble header. Comments on that site will be greatly appreciated. I hoped to officially launch it on the 10th of March in keeping with the J’accuse anniversary tradition (this x.iii is J’accuse’s 4th anniversary). Speaking of anniversaries, Sandro Vella just pointed out that J’accuse on Indy turns one on the 2nd March. Time flies and we’re still having fun.

This has been a j’accuse round up… updating your google reader/other reader so you don’t have to!

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J’accuse : Party Times

Bruxelles la Moche

Brussels and I have a love/hate relationship in the sense that I love to hate it and whenever I get a chance to visit Europe’s bureaucratic capital this love-to-hate-you relationship is rekindled. I’ve tried long and hard to give the city a chance but it has just about as much charm as a village lady all dolled up for festa night. More often than not I get to town by train…it’s as though a guided tour of the human body were to start from the backside. You travel through the entrails and uglier sides of the city quietly hoping that it will, at some point, get better. Little do you know that that’s it… a sort of railroad WISYWIG tour before you hit the streets. You should have known it after all – this is the town whose main highlights are a pissing boy, a giant monument of an atom and of course a square that gets covered in flowers every now and then.

Yet tourists hit Brussels in droves. The cram every nook and cranny of the garish streets shopping for hideous souvenirs, stuffing themselves with chocolates and downing the beer. It’s not Ibiza because there’s no sun and there’s no sea. There’s grey building after grey building, badly signed roads (don’t think of driving in this mess) and unhelpful citizens with a chip on their shoulder about the other half of their country depending one whether you meet a Flemish or a Walloon.

I should have warned you that I am biased because there is a sort of rivalry among the Maltese expats living in Luxembourg and those of Brussels. We cannot take the stink and they cannot take the boredom. Anyways, last weekend was one of those rare weekends when I boarded the train to Brussels on what I may call blogging business…

81 Bloggers – Ego-Party

The business in question, as I mentioned the other week, was the launching of a pan-European blogging competition organised by the European Journalism Centre. The EJC came up with this brilliant idea of getting bloggers from all the member states and inspiring them to blog about the European Parliament elections for the coming five months until the day Europe goes to the polls. The result was a fizzing buzz of exciting young and old blogging freaks full of enthusiasm meeting in one place.

If there’s one thing you should know about bloggers is that they invariably possess an ego the size of your average elephant… and I ain’t talking pygmy. Yes, I am fully aware that the description in the last sentence includes the undersigned but hey… if you had not noticed J’accuse’s ego-tripping personality by now then you’ve really been reading our articles in the wrong spirit. It’s not just the ego that made this motley crue of Eurobloggers stick out like a Czech sculpture in a European institution but rather their absolute addiction to all things technological. The Geeker-counter needles went berserk as we waddled around conference room after conference room in search of a socket to plug into and a Wi-Fi password to type in.

When we do finally settle down and the podium speakers strut their stuff about how to be both EU Savvy and Blog Sexy at the same time you tend to notice that the attention span of your average blogger is one click short of that of a barbary macaque on ecstacy. It’s incredible. Just sit behind any blogger who has just switched on his or her baby and you will notice that the apparatus currently warming her laps is not intended for note taking. Before you can say Tim Berners-Lee the blogger has done the equivalent of “Around the Net in 80 nanoseconds” and has facebooked, twittered, linkedinned, aggregated, searched, miniblogged and googled on a million different pages. It’s not a presence on the internet that we are talking about … it’s more like the demi-gods of the 20th century – they’re everywhere … and trust me… it’s hard to keep up.

European Party Politics

Thankfully the competition business has nothing to do with nimbleness, dexterity and propensity to jump from web page to web page like some New Age Tarzan because I would be worried that I would fare badly and disappoint my compatriots in a Eurovision pie in the face kind of way. Nope. What we will be “competing” about is the business of getting news about the EP to our blogs and believe you me there’s loads of that going around. Brussels may be an ugly host but in a way it allows you to appreciate the hubbub of the goings on in the institutions even more clearly. You have no time to waste at the West End or round Montmartre in Brussels… so you get to dig deeper into matters European.

One of the problems of European Union politics is that it is very self-referential. What ultimately classifies as pure EU politics material is a bunch of matters that are of interest solely within the stinky confines of the Quartier Européen in Bruxelles la Moche. The moment such matters manage to evade the smog smothered borders of the city that should have a shower at night it begins to morph into 27 types of political stories… one for each state which is affected by it.

It’s the same story you will hear no matter what time you decide to jump on the EU train and learn more about what it has to offer. I’ve been following and specialising in EU matters for over twelve years now and the same old story seems to be stuck in a loop. You tend to reach a bizarre conclusion – that in the end it is not that the people are confused about what the European Union is about but rather that the wrong end of the EU is being shown to the people.

The people, that slippery demos that is oft conned into believing that the EU is a seven eyed monster that wants to gobble their souls, are given an EU picture by their national governments (eager to blame the latest ills on the gravy train guys in BXL), another by the media (more often than not to jump on the “let’s bash the EU inefficiency” bandwagon) and a final one by the disparate institutions of the EU themselves each of which has hitherto demonstrated an utter inability to explain the most minor of details in a user friendly manner.

TH!NKABOUTIT (End of the beginning)

 

Keith Demicoli of .eu

Live from Bruxelles, just before the Thinkaboutit! conference ends Keith Demicoli of PBS’ .eu interviews J’accuse on blogging and EP election campaign. I’m off to Lux… more about all this later.

TH!NKABOUTIT (shorts)

A new European Blogging Portal. An FT journalist gets inspired by the experience. A vlogger demonstrates the power of Flip cameras by filming a BBC correspondent in action. That and more as Thinkaboutit is launched. Details later. Now is the time for a powernap.