Beating Big News: Juvenilebirds

He's out there somewhere:

http://www.youtube.com/user/JUVENILEBIRDS

I don't feel the need to rebroadcast his work, but some notes, obvious or clever, do come to mind.

1. As with the mad massacre earlier this year at Virginia Tech, a guy with a cell phone can do a lot for global media if he happens to be in the right place at the wrong time;
2. "Juvenilebirds" reports as being 17 years old, but the shooter could be seven years old or 70--the technology only favors those who wish to record what they see;
3. However the shooter's getting this work on the Internet, it may be traceable to a physical location (or two or three), and that could give YouTube another headache in its Censor or Cooperate Departments, which don't exist, but effectively the service gets political pressure to "shape" its signal to conform to interests and restrictions regime by regime.
4. As you watch what Juvenilebirds shoots--it doesn't look edited or cut, so lets not get wound up by video technique--look at the use or possession of other cameras in the crowd.

It has been about 20 years since the last violent repression of the democratic reform movement in Burma, and that's a generation that has experienced the hardship of living with the regime but not that of competing at arms with it. 

One might suggest that a lone officer and few rowdy but bright and spirited "kids" who believe in the global communicating society might oppose the regime with more than a chance at altering its course, but I'd be careful: media may be global -- violence remains local.

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1. Juvenilebirds recording and reporting from Myanmar, circa late September 2007.

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Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim

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