Hate drives change

That's me in the corner, notebook in hand, scribbling away on tubes and buses, in queues and sometimes just stopped in the street, searching for pen and paper when a new thought hits. I'm writing lists and more lists as this year has topped them all for drama and excitement. Best year ever and that includes all the awful and heartbreaking things that have made the tears flow.

A few weeks back I attended the Account Planning Group meeting that had some of the award winners presenting their papers. The memory that stands out is a short piece of film shown to illustrate the Honda commercial's message - "hate something, change something".

News footage, very brief, a rope around the statue of Sodhim Horsein, then the statue is pulled forward and topples over. The great thing about raw film footage is it isn't beautifully set up, everything about the film clip was awkward and ungainly. Great choice because it was real.

Stuart Smith is right. Hate drives change.

I've had my awareness raised this year about the scandal that is modern news reporting and lo and behold, by the end of this year we're starting to see the behemoths turn around and start reporting in a new, uncharted way.

For instance, this article in the Sunday Times today:

"DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD Islam online

Unregulated blogging terrifies repressive regimes. In particular, the Iranian blogger Saena claims that "blogs are the one weapon that even the Islamic republic cannot beat". Iran has jailed and whipped bloggers - Omid Sheikhan, who blogs as Shurideh, was sentenced in October to 124 lashes of the whip - yet online dissidence shows no sign of abating. "

(Note: this week John Griffiths reminded me there is some recent research that shows when regimes try to repress bloggers, there is a significant bump, as many more bloggers sign up and start writing.)

"On the other hand, as the hate-peddler Dr Mohammed Al Massari said in the excellent BBC documentary The New Al-Qaeda, the internet is vital for terrorists. Without it, "the process of dissemination and mobilisation will take, instead of one year, 50 years." Extremist sites deploy propaganda, teach internet fraud and glorify suicide."

Read the whole thing here.

The world wide web is a powerful weapon. The bad guys know it. So do we.

Ten Things I Hate:

1.Suicide Bombers - a lower form of life than slimy worms
2.Every human that helps a suicide bomber - oh wait, here's a lower form!
3.Newspaper "news" stories that are biassed - because they always leave out the information I think is the most interesting and important
4.Heroin/cocaine chic
5.TV news - film footage should not trump real news
6.Provincial attitudes - all the casual prejudices go in here like anti Semitism parading as sympathy for the underdog
7.Speaking of Israel, when are people going to pay lip service to the way the Syrians, Jordanians, Egyptians and Lebanese have treated the Palestinians, hello? even smart people don't seem to be aware of consistent, long term abuse by all those nations as well, just saying.
8.Road works and no one doing any work
9.All tackiness including littering and playing crap music loud with the car window down
10.Not getting even.