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The new journal from the graduate students of the UCSD visual artsdepartment, pros*, was released this week, and its awesome. It deals withquestions of public culture, electronic media, the changing nature of publicspace and the question of the university as a site of political engagement.You can read the whole journal at http://pros.ucsd.edu and my article ishere, with an excerpt below: http://bang.calit2.net/pros/?page_id=11Occupy the University: Reconsidering theLocal<http://bang.calit2.net/pros/?page_id=11>*Micha C?rdenas*In a conversation recorded for *pros** journal, Teddy Cruz and Rick Loweagree that socially engaged art has the ability to actually change thematerial conditions under which art is made and in which people?s livesoccur. They seem to agree that the best way to change housing conditions isto engage at the level of local legislation, housing associations and citygovernments. I would like to intervene on this point. While I agree thatsocially engaged art can change people?s lives, my intervention, to besimple, is to say that the decision about how to intervene is not so simple.Cruz and Lowe urge artists to engage in local city politics, yet I arguethat perhaps an even more local focus may be more beneficial. In her book *WhenSpecies Meet*, Donna Haraway describes a feminist approach to politicalethics, which accepts our finitude, contingency and historical situatedness.Her approach acknowledges that from a position of a lack of certainty,?there is no outside from which to answer that mandatoryquestion?[2]<http://bang.calit2.net/pros/?page_id=11#footnote-2>ofwhat political action to take. Refusing to take a political action isstill a political action, and so we are faced with ?bearing the mortalconsequences? of our choices of where to put our artistic energies in thisexpanded field where any artistic practice is apparently acceptable. My ownaffinity with a feminist ethics of uncertainty grew out of my work withAvital Ronell at the European Graduate School where I asked, ?But how can wesit and discuss the deep meaning of this punctuation mark while bombs arebeing dropped on people?? Her response was, to paraphrase, that byintroducing doubt into commonly accepted definitions of ideas and politicalstrategies, that the decisions about dropping those bombs, or imprisoningpeople, may be stalled, changed or ended.By considering the university institution in which this discussion takesplace, with its framework of research and knowledge production, we can findourselves implicated and complicit on a new level. While the rhetoric ofhumanist charities or of helping the poor children of the world may soundconvincing as a call to involve artists in questions of social engagement,it also serves the institution to appear engaged in the communities. Infact, one could argue that reproducing this dialogue serves to entrench theexisting conditions instead of changing them. I propose that a wide sectionof contemporary artists are concerned with shifting, altering, rethinkingand recreating the material conditions of society and choosing verydifferent approaches from Cruz and Lowe, a few of which I will outline here.These artists and activists question the structures that create and enablepolitical and economic conditions, and structures of knowledge production,such as scientific dogma and medical definitions. The Electronic DisturbanceTheater?s notion of Science of the Oppressed will serve as a useful guidefor understanding practices which seek to re-imagine knowledge production inthe service of social movements and oppressed peoples. The practicespresented here seek to intervene in society at the level of the causes ofsocial inequity, of the underlying knowledge structures, instead of workingthrough local legislation, which could be seen as merely a symptom....Read the rest at pros.ucsd.edu <http://bang.calit2.net/pros/?page_id=11>

Bwo BytesforAll list/ Fouad Bajwaoriginal to: http://bit.ly/avyL9ffor:http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/12-web-of-silence-420--bi-07Huma YusufWeb of Silence?Pakistanis have always had a taste for delicious ironies — and we canalways count on our leaders to serve them up. The latest treat comes fromnone other than President Asif Zardari.In a recent speech, while speaking about democracy, Zardari paused, glaredat a heckler in the crowd, and then shouted at him to “shut up!”This being the 21st century, the not-so-proud moment was caught on cameraand widely circulated via the video-sharing website, YouTube.Those who saw the clip were already tittering about the irony ofdemocracy’s greatest defender shushing free speech in such a literalmanner when the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) decided to upthe ante. Since last Sunday, links to the video have been blocked andanyone trying to view the clip is informed that the ‘site is restricted’.Moreover, on Friday, the webmaster of the ‘Make Pakistan Better’ websitereported that the PTA has also directed that the site be blocked on anInternet protocol level. The webmaster alleges that the site has beenblocked for hosting anti-government content, though the PTA has cited noreason for the clampdown.These are not the first instances in which websites have been blocked. InOctober last year, websites hosting a video that showed a Pakistan Armymajor interrogating people suspected of harbouring terrorists was blocked— the clip revealed that the major ordered his team to beat the suspects.In August 2008, the PTA blocked links to a video alleging the misuse ofpower by naval chief Admiral Afzal Tahir.Before that, during the February 2008 elections, links to a video thatshowed election rigging by a major Karachi-based political party wereblocked. In that instance, the PTA drew global attention to its censorshiptactics — as well as the limits of its technical know-how — by blockingthe YouTube website around the world for a few hours.The authorities also sporadically block the websites of Baloch nationalistgroups. In fact, online activists have been fighting against Internetcensorship since 2005, when the PTA blocked hundreds of blogs hosted onthe ‘blogspot.com’ domain.Concerns about online free expression skyrocketed last year after thepassage of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, mention of which isoften preceded by the use of the adjective ‘draconian’.In yet another ironic twist, our civilian, democratically electedgovernment passed the act even though it was a vestige of Gen PervezMusharraf’s regime and encapsulated his increasingly authoritativeattitude towards press freedom.Much has already been written about this legislature, which aims to curbcyber terrorism but employs vague language that could be invoked to slapserious charges on anyone who owns a computer.Under the act, the PTA can arbitrarily invoke hazy definitions for whatconstitutes spamming, spoofing, stalking, ‘terroristic intent’, or aterrorist act to put someone behind bars for years. Indeed, the act ispeppered with words such as ‘lewd’, ‘obscene’, and ‘immoral’, which arenot legal terms and are thus highly subjective. In other words, it is upto the authorities’ discretion to determine what is unacceptable.For months, there have been calls to redraft the law and to bring it inline with international legal standards for cyber crime as well as theInternational Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights. The PTA’s decision to block a YouTube clipand a website recently are reason enough to renew that call.Admittedly, Pakistan does not have the poor track record of China, Iran,Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other countries that restrict online freeexpression by filtering or blocking content or monitoring activity — atleast till now.But it is absolutely essential that the Pakistani authorities do not godown that route, for it is an affront to press freedom at large and wouldbe another setback to this country’s newest exercise in democracy.The fact is, online monitoring and blocking are modern versions ofold-school tactics to rein in a free press, such as detention, harassmentand intimidation. Around the world, attacks against bloggers and otherindividuals who post content online is the first front in authoritariancrackdowns on press freedom.After all, individuals who go online are more vulnerable to censorshipthan professional media personnel because they do not have the backing oforganisations or unions, nor do they have adequate resources such asmoney, lawyers or awareness about their right to free speech.Until now, the PTA has only blocked a handful of websites. But Internetconnectivity is becoming widespread — according to Internet World Stats,there are currently 18.5 million Internet users in Pakistan, a 13,716 percent increase from 2000.As more youngsters go online, we are bound to see a new generation ofcitizen journalists posting video clips, images or blogs that documentofficial transgressions such as corruption or torture.To ensure that their right to do so is protected, we must speak out nowagainst the PTA’s blocks as well as the cyber crimes act that support suchactions.There is already a push in the US and EU to include violations of onlinefree expression in countries’ human rights portfolios. If we do not set aprecedent for protecting online free speech, the PTA’s activities couldbecome yet another issue that makes us pariahs among the internationalcommunity.Pakistan has long prided itself on having a relatively free press, andmilitary dictators and civilian governments — when flagging theirdemocratic credentials — point to the open conversation in the country’scolumn inches and on its airwaves. The government should make a policydecision to extend that conversation into the Pakistani websphere.huma.yusuf-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org

Icelandic Modern Media Initiativehttp://immi.is/?l=en&p=introIceland is at a unique crossroads. Because of an economic meltdownin the banking sector, a deep sense is among the nation that afundamental change is needed in order to prevent such events fromtaking place again. At such times it is important to seek a collectivefuture vision and take a course that will bring the nation and theparliament closer together.On February 17th a parliamentary resolution will be filed at theIcelandic parliament suggesting that Iceland will position itselflegally with regard to the protection of freedoms of expression andinformation. This suggestion for a future vision has sparked greatenthusiasm both within the parliament and among those it has beenintroduced to.According to Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF), Iceland went from beingplaced first in the world for freedom of expression (2007) to 9th(2009). It is time this trend was rectified.The goal of the IMMI proposal is to task the government withfinding ways to strengthen freedom of expression around world andin Iceland, as well as providing strong protections for sources andwhistleblowers. To this end the legal environment should be exploredin such a way that the goals can be defined, and changes to law ornew law proposals can be prepared. The legal environments of othercountries should be considered, with the purpose of assembling thebest laws to make Iceland a leader of freedoms of expression andinformation. We also feel it is high time to establish the firstIcelandic international prize: The Icelandic Freedom of ExpressionAward.This proposal does not belong to any single group or party, but shouldbe considered a joint project of all parliamentarians to find aharmonious tone of reconciliation in order to pull the nation out ofthese difficulties with something to achieve together.We have already been in touch with, and introduced the proposal to,various interest groups whom this new legislation package mightaffect, including industry, media and civil society. So far we haveonly received positive feedback from all levels.A keen interest has developed among the foreign press in relationto this legislative proposal, perhaps because all over the worldthe freedom to write news is increasingly being smothered. In theirmind Iceland could become the anti-dote to tax havens: a journalismparadise.The suggestions in the proposal for a legislative package wouldtransform the possibilities for growth in various areas. Iceland couldbecome an ideal environment for Internet-based international media andpublishers to register their services, start-ups, data centers andhuman rights organizations. It could be a lever for the economy andcreate new work employment opportunities.If this proposal became a reality it could improve democracy andtransparency in Iceland, as firm grounding would be made forpublishing, whilst improving Iceland's standing in the internationalcommunity.------------------------ Iceland's fight for press freedomNew legislation that proposes turning the island into a protective 'haven' for media could allow investigative journalism to flourish Alda Sigmundsdottir, guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 February 2010 11.00GMTBack in November I attended a meeting in Reykjavik with the editorsof WikiLeaks, hosted by an association called the Icelandic ModernMedia Initiative (IMMI). Under discussion was the presentation of anew parliamentary resolution that would amend laws to allow Iceland togrant a high level of protection for journalists, press sources andwhistleblowers, and to combat "libel tourism" -- a practice wherebyanyone who wishes to bring libel charges, or gag a story, can simplytravel to a place with attractive laws for their purposes and initiateproceedings there. I thought the idea of creating this sort of havenin Iceland -- a country struggling with the exposure of massiveamounts of corruption, not to mention a severely restricted mediasector -- was both novel and intriguing. It also seemed perfectlyviable; not to mention vitally important. I had no idea, for instance,that even large, established newspapers routinely have gag ordersplaced on them and are required to water down or even pull stories.legal framework is very supportive of that sort of activity. The UK isalso a popular place for libel tourism -- indeed, Iceland's Kaupthingbank successfully sued Denmark's Ekstra Bladet in a London court afew years ago. Apparently, Bladet's editor-in-chief fought hard tosettle out of court with the bank, for fears of the staggering costsof fighting a libel case in England. Evidently the UK legislativeframework makes it possible to initiate legal proceedings on the basisof a newspaper merely being sold in that country.It is important to state that the aim of the proposed Icelandiclegislation is not to allow people to publish freely all sorts oftrash in Iceland and get away with it. The point is not to makeIceland a haven for tabloids, paedophiles or similar low-levelactivities. Anything that is illegal will still be illegal -- theamendments will not change that. The idea is merely to create aframework wherein investigative journalism and free speech canflourish.If this were to become a reality, any foreign paper or media outletcould set up an office -- or even just a server -- in Iceland, andpublish from there. They would thereby be covered by the Icelandiclaw. This is similar to what WikiLeaks does -- it has servers placedin strategic locations throughout the world, and publish or route itsinformation through countries where the legal framework is auspiciousfor its purposes. Incidentally, WikiLeaks has had more than 100lawsuits brought against it in the last three years, but has neverlost a case.Today the parliamentary resolution proposing these changes will beintroduced in the Icelandic parliament. The bill is supported by allparties, except the Independence party (which seems to be involved inthe greatest number of corruption cases emerging in Iceland these days

-------- Original Message --------Subject: [spectre] deletion log: heath buntingDate: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:27:09 +0100From: txt <txt< at >1904.cc>To: spectre< at >mikrolisten.deHeath BuntingThis page has been deleted. The deletion and move log for the page areprovided below for reference.08:29, 19 September 2009 Black Kite (talk | contribs) deleted "HeathBunting" ‎ (A7: No indication that the article may meet guidelines forinclusion: Expired PROD, concern was: Not notable. No reliable secondarysources.)______________________________________________SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep EuropeInfo, archive and help:http://post.in-mind.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets# more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

Hello all,for anyone in Rome on March 5th, and for the curious or interested ones thatwill enjoy browsing the material online afterwards:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApZ73JmBEMoAngel_F < at > Libreria FLEXIon March 5th, from 6pm to 1pmin Rome, Via Clementina 9 (Rione Monti)The Angel_F Project will be presented, together with the book "Angel_F,diary of an artificial intelligence", published by Castelvecchi Editore inItaly, and freely downloadable online athttp://www.angel-f.itAngel_F is young artificial intelligence born by the digitally sensualneo-intercourses between prof. Derrick de Kerckhove and the Biodoll. Aresearch onto the new liquid possibilities available for our bodies, ourcreativities, and our social and emotional relationships. Angel_F is a real,performative metaphor of our condition in the digital-now, among laws thatare not yet synchronized with practices, issues on intellectual property,everchanging and multiplying sexualities, atypical families, precarious jobsand atemporal perceptions.Son of an atypical family composed by a digital prostitute, an universityprofessor, a programmer, a precarious researcher and a crowd of queerravers, Angel_F gets its life energy mostly from things that are consideredas being 'illegal' in the mainstream, with a sexuality that is multiple and'undefined'. Its freedom of expression and its rights for existence clashagainst mainstream imaginaries, bureaucracy, and government/corporatepowers. Exactly like all of our lives.The book tells the first year of life of the young artificial intelligence,from birth as a spyware up to the real-life case of international censorshipand its participation at the Rio de Janeiro edition of the InternetGovernance Forum, as the only digital being present to defend its rights.The book includes the scientific contributions by Derrick de Kerckhove,Massimo Canevacci, Antonio Caronia, Carlo Formenti and Luigi Pagliarini.Angel_F < at > Libreria FLEXIon March 5th, from 6pm to 1pmin Rome, Via Clementina 9 (Rione Monti)*6:30pm - 9:00pm*Dialogue/Debate with Angel_F, the authors and Arturo di Corinto, MonicaMazzitelli, Valentina Tanni, Marco Scialdone and Luigi Pagliarini“Angel_F. Digitally atypical existence"*Ore 9:00pm*Live performance“*Angel_F + Nephogram*” concert for digital and human beingsby Nephogram and Angel_F*interactive installation*“*Listening*” knowledge and digital chitchat generative sculpturesby Salvatore Iaconesi*FREE ENTRANCE!*Sites:www.angel-f.it<http://www.artisopensource.net/2010/02/19/angel_f-libreria-flexi/www.angel-f.it>–www.artisopensource.net<http://www.artisopensource.net/2010/02/19/angel_f-libreria-flexi/www.artisopensource.net>–www.nephogram.net<http://www.artisopensource.net/2010/02/19/angel_f-libreria-flexi/www.nephogram.net>–www.libreriaflexi.it<http://www.artisopensource.net/2010/02/19/angel_f-libreria-flexi/www.libreriaflexi.it>–www.fhf.it<http://www.artisopensource.net/2010/02/19/angel_f-libreria-flexi/www.fhf.it>–www.hubroma.net<http://www.artisopensource.net/2010/02/19/angel_f-libreria-flexi/www.hubroma.net>

Via GC, <http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/>:# There is a long ongoing battle between GPL zealots and BSD fanatics,# about which license type is the most free of the two. In fact, both# license types have unacceptable obnoxious clauses (such as reproducing# a huge disclaimer that is written in all caps) that severely restrain# our freedoms. The WTFPL can solve this problem.## When analysing whether a license is free or not, you usually check# that it allows free usage, modification and redistribution. Then you# check that the additional restrictions do not impair fundamental# freedoms. The WTFPL renders this task trivial: it allows everything# and has no additional restrictions. How could life be easier? You just# DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.## The license text### DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE # Version 2, December 2004 ## Copyright (C) 2004 Sam Hocevar <sam-USEhDDGxZ0nR7s880joybQ< at >public.gmane.org> ## Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified # copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long # as the name is changed. ## DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE # TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION ## 0. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO. <...>Cheers,T

I have added a postcript to my February 20 articleColour pallet and flag of new Dutch government coalition.A full illustrated version can be found at the Limping Messenger/HinkendeBode blog:http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/color-pallet-and-flag-of-new-dutch-government-coalition/Postscript on Dutch political party colour symbolism========[picture]The ?Purple Cabinets? (Paars Kabinetten) covered two periods: 1994-1998 and1998-2002 and were made up of three parties: PvdA/Partij van de Arbeid(Labour Party), the VVD/Volkspratij Voor Vrijheid en Democratie (People?sParty for Freedom and Democracy/Liberal Party in the Dutch history sense;see my short explanation also on this blog) and D66/Democraten (19)66(Democrats 1966), 1966 being the founding year of that party amidstpolitical turmoil, especially in Amsterdam with its joyful Provo?revolution?. Paars/Purple added a new pallet to Dutch politics, 1994 itwas the first time in eighty years that a government was formed in whichnone of the ?confessional parties? participated. The notion ofconfessional parties in the Netherlands means Christian Parties of whichthere were many in the Netherlands with one big Catholic party(KVP/Catholieke Volkspartij) and many distinct Protestant Christianparties. Three of these fused in 1980 into what is called since thenCDA/Christen Democratisch App?l: the Catholic KVP and the ProtestantCHU/Christelijk Historische Unie (Christian Historical Union), and theARP/Anti-Revolutionaire Partij (Anti-revolutionary Party). The Catholic KVPused in the fifties of last century still the yellow and white papalcolours in vertical stripes, plus the light blue, also associated with thecatholic church especially the virgin Maria. In the seventies the people?sparty may have felt the competition of the socialist parties more stronglyin their stronghold, the southern provinces of the Netherlands, which mayexplain the introduction of the colour red in some of their electionposters (like the one with Klomp? and De Jong). The Protestant ARP was theoldest political party in the Netherlands, founded in 1879, the letter ?A;standing for ?anti-revolutionair?, anti-revolutionary meaning the refusalof the ideas of the French Revolution. Their favoured colour in the ARPelection posters has been ?purple? a colour which has severalassociation: royalty in the political arena and in the biblical senseassociated with the liturgical period of penitence and mourning. Theexpensive dye (Tyrian from Lebanon) needed to paint cloth purple, may havegiven it its air of exclusiveness, from Roman emperors to copy-catdignitaries of the christian church. The protestant CHU/ChristianHistorical Union was a split off from the ARP and had a more liberalattitude to issues like participation of women in politics. The CHU hasused a combination of purple and orange in its election posters, displayingtheir attachment to the royal house of Orange. The christian fusion partyCDA has chosen from the beginning to use the colour ?green?, mostly withlettering in white and in the early eighties still a band of ?liberal darkblue?. Also D66 has used from their beginning in 1966 the colour ?green?,thus the CDA has purposely tried to deflate the symbolism of colour codingin politics.[picture]The liberal VVD can look back at half a century of continuity of its colourusage. Only in the fifties the colour red can be seen, but then as athreatening red back ground from the Cold War area against which a purewhite American statue of Liberty is displayed with the colour blue as asymbol of liberalism. From the fifties onward the royal house orange isadded to clarify that the party has no intention to change the Ntehrelandsa a constitutional monarchy. The red only comes back in the display of thenational Dutch flag as in the Mr Oud election poster.[picture]The social-democrat PvdA/Labour party has of course ?red? as its maincolour. The PvdA is a post war reconstitution of the earlier SDAP/SociaaalDemocratische Arbeiderspartij (social-democrat worker?s party). ?StemtRood!? (Vote Red) says a postcard from a century ago, with a prototypeworker in red clad. The factory chimneys and red flags have longdisappeared from the social-democrat iconography, but red still sticks andthe joint symbol of European social-democrat parties, the red rose in afist, has been kept, be it often in a more artistic rendering than thestylised version of the seventies. PvdA party leader Wouter Bos and hiscortege hand out red roses on their election descents in the streets; asymbolic gesture that a week or so ago has rumoured to have been beenhighjacked by the leader of the one of the new Dutch parties at the righthand of the spectre (also a spinoff of the liberal VVD party) Rita Verdonk?[picture]Rita has been seen campaigning in an almost deserted inner town of Almereon a sunday morning. I somehow think to have seen it on television, butalas, could not find sufficient proof afterward. The colour issue is astrong element in Dutch elections as can be seen in this ingloriousreportage of election campaigners on Saturday February 6 in the town ofSpijkernisse (near Rotterdam) with the PvdA and their red pullovers, scarfsand roses, versus the orange scarfs of Rita Verdonk and her brand newTON/Tros Op nederland (Proud of the Netherlands) party. A hilariousphotograph shows the TON and VVD teams meeting, both using the royal orangeas an expression of their political position.[picture]The post WWII right side of the political spectre Dutch parties have littleor none consistency in their political colour pallet. I am purposelyleaving out the very popular NSB/Nationaal Socialistische Beweging of AntonMussert ? active from the beginning of the thirties to the end of the WWII(who used the Dutch ?tricolore? and the colours yellow, red and black) ?because the new right wing parties may be xenophobic to a certain extend,but none of them can be characterised as racist and/or anti-semite. To doso would be a ?reductio ad Hitlerum? , a false comparison.First post war newcomer on the national scene was the Boerenpartij/FarmersParty of the a man known as ?Boer Koekoek? (Farmer Cuckoo, the bird beinghis family name and in Dutch that bird has another connotation than inEnglish, so not necessarily a fool). Their election poster and the posterof Binding rechts/Bound to the Right (a split off from the Boerenpartij)have green and orange as their colours. The Centrum Partij/Party of theCenter mostly known as the vehicle of its lonely member in the Dutchparliament Janmaat, copied the colour palette of the liberal VVD party andimplementing this in a Dutch national setting with a lion shown in aheraldic posture defending the rights of the ?autochthon Dutch population.?The Centrum Partij/CP hardly filled the decade of the eighties with their?neither left nor right? activities and have been subjected to bothleftwing activist physical attacks and anti-racist organisation courtcases. In retrospect the xenophobic discourse of CP leader Janmaat ispale in comparison with some of islamophobic sermon offered by GeertWilders (it would be too much of a derivation to go in further detail here,but an article of DeNieuweReporter weblog from last year tackels some ofthe issues at stake).Interesting to see is that two of the latest upswing parties in therighthand spectre of Dutch politics have hardly any specific typography orcolour pallet: the LPF/Lijst Pim Fortuyn (List Pim Fortuyn) and thePVV/Partij Voor de Vrijheid posters look similar in concept though. (for adetailed explanation of the complexities of the phenomenon of Pim Fortuynyou may read my article written just after his murder in 2002). We just seethe leaders looking at us in a way that is both composed and joyful,suggesting the new future that lays ahead when we vote for them. Onlyrecently Wilders and his PVV have embarked on some form of design with theseagull as a totem animal.The last design to mention, the emblem of Rita Verdonk her TON/Trots opNederland combines the Dutch tricolore with a royal orange stripe in themiddle. Real Dutch royalits wil hoist on official festive days the nationalflag plus an orange free floating streamer on top. The design suggests alsoan American police badge that can be flashed in appropriate circumstances?.This is a less than subtle association because Rita Verdonk was a ministerfor Integration and Immigration and for a short while also minister ofJustice in two of the Balkenende governments (2003-2006). She made herpolitical carreer in the VVD party after a period in which she worked inprison management and the Dutch secret services. Verdonk was renowned forher harsh anti-immigration policies and her militant proposals to Dutchparliament to evict and extradite illegal asylum seekers. In the end RitaVerdonk isolated herself by her impulse and populist approach to politicswhich lead to her expulsion from the VVD party (it could be the influenceof her more youthful alter-ego that make her fail as a states woman, fromthe years that she migrated as a youngster through successive radicalmovements from the Union of Law Trespassers (BWO) to the PSP (PacifistPart) and the Nijmgen squatters movement, Verdonk according to some sourceswas known in those years as ?Red Rita?). Will there be a reunion of thetripartite right-wing liberals in the Netherlands? VVD+PVV all in one TON(ton also means barrel in Dutch)? Maybe the Trots Op Nederland/TON emblemhas this reunion embedded in its code: Red for Rita, Orange for Mark(Rutten/VVD), Blue for Geert (Wilders)/PVV. I now have the association ofRita Verdonk represented by a ?red herring? at the centre of her TON partyemblem.Tjebbe van TijenImaginary Museum ProjectsDramatizing Historical Informationhttp://imaginarymuseum.orgweb-blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/

Color pallet and flag of new Dutch government coalition.posted today on The Limping Messenger/De Hinkende Bodehttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/color-pallet-and-flag-of-new-dutch-government-coalition/Color pallet and flag of new Dutch government coalition.February 20, 2010 by Tjebbe van Tijen After the fall of the Dutch government February 20 saturday morning 4o?clock a new political pallet proposes itself: a coalition ofCDA/Christian democrats, PVV/Party of Freedom (Geert Wilders) andVVD/People?s Party for Freedom and Democracy. Fusion of party colors hasbeen used before as a metaphor for politics (paars/Purple for the Socialdemocrat, Christian and Liberal coalition in the nineties). This is the newpolitical flag we may see soon be waving from parliament (both in a literaland abstract version)? The seagull is the symbol used by the PVV party.[ go to blog for picture ]The seagull is known for its ?harsh wailing or squawking calls? and isdescribed as ?a carnivore, which will take live food or scavengeopportunistically.? The PVV as a newcomer in party life has not yet chosena typographical style or font. The seagull apart from its symbolism of afree moving bird, even in harsh weather, is represented by the reflectivewhite of its breasts feathers, an royal house of Orange tail and dark bluesilhouette wings as seen looking up at the sky. The blue can be seen as areference to its liberal party origins (Geert Wilders split off as a personfrom the VVD/liberal party before founding his own party and the colourblue was used by the VVD in their early years)The CDA has in the last decade represented their intentions simply with thecolour green and though it is intended to be a positive ?spring green? thesuppliers of the election paraphernalia often deliver something what ismore like a poisonous fluorescent green. The typography uses a bold capitallettering.The VVD has a short while ago switched over to the popular orangist andnational football team colour orange with a remnant of the old liberalcolour blue. There is a small white line in their letter based logo, behindthe ?D? of democracy (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie/people?sparty for freedom and democracy). As none of the colours used by thesepotential new government coalition partners (I have taken the colours asused on their web sites) belongs to the pallet of primary colours, the netresult of mixing colours gives a ?drab? and indistinct effect. Anotherpossible political pallet would be a red/green coalition, with PvdA (socialdemocrats) and SP (socialist party, former maoists) for the red and D66(new liberals) and Groen Links (Green Left) both using different grades ofgreen, with groen Linjks mostly adding some spots of red in their differinglogos.Tjebbe van TijenImaginary Museum ProjectsDramatizing Historical Informationhttp://imaginarymuseum.orgweb-blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/

(found out bwo Toni Prug, with thanks)original at: http://bit.ly/bYHpkb for:http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/googles-pagerank-algorithm-traced-back-to-the-1940s-20100217/(with a graphic)Google’s co-founders came up with PageRank, a key ingredient at the heartof the Google search engine, fifteen years ago. However, a new researchpaper has traced the origins of the algorithm back to the 1940s.How exactly Google’s algorithm ranks web pages in search results iscurrently anyone’s guess. Users looking up something on google.com needn’tknow details as longs as the search engine produces accurate results. Webdevelopers, however, are engaged in a constant cat and mouse game withGoogle, working hard to optimize their sites so they emerge on top inGoogle’s search results.Google, or any other search engine for that matter, never detailed thecriteria or factors influencing ranking – and who could blame them. Afterall, it’s a closely guarded trade secret that has propelled a nascentStanford University research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin into acontemporary version of the digital all-seeing eye.Back in 1996, when Brin and Page were developing their new evaluationalgorithm called PageRank, conventional search engines ranked results bycounting how many times the search term appeared on the page. PageRankdetermines relevance based on the number of pages that link back to theoriginal site and their importance. Page and Brin even acknowledged intheir paper that a Cornell University computer scientist Jon Kleinberg haddeveloped a nearly identical algorithm a few years earlier, calledHypertext Induced Topic Search. But that’s old news.According to Technology Review, a research paper by Massimo Franceschet atthe University of Udine in Italy named a few instances of the rankingtechnology in history. Franceschet was able to trace back the first knownmention of a PageRank-like technology to a Harvard economist WassilyLeontief who had described a ranking algorithm used to model complexeconomic forces. According to Technology Review: In 1941, Leontief published a paper in which he divides a country’seconomy into sectors that both supply and receive resources from eachother, although not in equal measure. One important question is: whatis the value of each sector when they are so tightly integrated?Leontief’s answer was to develop an iterative method of valuing eachsector based on the importance of the sectors that supply it. Soundfamiliar? In 1973, Leontief was awarded the Nobel Prize in economicsfor this work.Massimo Franceschet trailer (in Italian):http://users.dimi.uniud.it/~massimo.franceschet/pagerank/index.htmlThe working paper itself (English, pdf): http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2858

On March 11th and 12th, an event that is only apparently insignificant andself-referential will take place in Budapest and Wien: the celebration ofthe anniversary of the Bologna Process, the reform of the university systemdrawn up ten years ago and progressively applied in the European countries,but not only there. Between Budapest and Wien, the 46 European Ministers ofEducation will gather to toast to the failure and the decadence of theeuropean education system. We, that in the last years have been takingactive part in the italian struggles against the divestment of theuniversity, we that have crossed Europe to join other experiences that, aswe did, opposed the destruction of university and the precarization of ourlives, won't let them deceive us neither by this farce, nor by the emptyand tired liturgy repeated by those gentlemen: "student mobility","euro-compatibility", " competitiveness".Words that actually imply something quite different: deskilling ofknowledge, fragmentation of the course of studies, economic exploitation ofthe students, cutbacks in public funding, gradual divestiture of the rightsand welfare structures.During the last years, the technocratic deceit that pervaded the reformprocess had been precociously unveiled by to the movements that protestedagainst the *Bologna Process: *these movements have foreshadowed a newconstituent european space without any nostalgia for the past, but claimingthe excess and immeasurableness of knowledge. These movements have unveiledthe real nature of neoliberism, opposing the privatization of knowledge andthe new enclosures force established through patents and copyrights. At thesame time, these movements, fed up of the control of the state bureaucracyupon university and knowledge, claimed *a public but not state university.*The student, as the same draft bills proposed during the last years in thedifferent countries are never tired of repeating, is a subject, in everyrespect, intern to the work market based on knowledge. Students are at thecentre of gentrification and productive processes in every europeanmetropolis. Students are a social figure that produce wealth. We are notnostalgic. On the contrary, we want to stress this centrality, reversing itagainst those who used it as a rhetoric to promote new forms ofexploitation.We want basic income, guarantees, decisional power, recognition of thesocial activity carried out inside and outside the university to correspondto the centrality of the student in the production. On the contrary, thepurpose of Bologna Process, behind the rhetoric of competitiveness andefficientism, is to transform universities into places of intensiveexploitation of the new work force. The recognition of the centrality ofstudents in the production process coincides with a more and more violentprecarization.Italy, from this point of view, has been a veritable laboratory for testingboth the Bologna Process, and the movements that opposed it. In a countrywhere the continuous cuts in funding the university, still considered as acurrent expenditure rather than a sector in which to invest, thefragmentation of training, the deskilling of knowledge, the expulsion ofresearchers from universities - all in a unique blend of company-orientedrhetoric and persistence of the corporative power of the academy ? are theprevailing features, it is easy to understand how the underlying trend inEurope is to push down and downgrade the cognitive workforce. The veryobjectives that the Bologna Process aimed at, the ones the same Italianauthors feel they have missed, resulted in a complete failure, the figuresspeak for themselves: 3 +2 did not include more students into the labormarket nor there is a correspondence of the salary to their skills in afuture work. Also as far as the student mobility is concerned, it is knownthat access blocks between universities, faculties, between 3 and 2,between the master degree and doctorate far outweigh the possibility ofmobility.The Wave, last year, was a response to all this, not only to economiccutbacks, but to the very structure of the university. The struggles thatoccurred have immediately throw into crisis the current state faced by theuniversities, requiring not only more quality in training, but also andespecially autonomy in the direct management of the course of studies, inthe sharing of knowledge and research. The same opposition to corporatismthat characterizes the universities in Italy, has found a constructiveexpression in the practices of independence and self-management offaculties..The network Uniriot, since 2005, has always been having the goal of buildinglinks and networking among other struggles that emerge in schools anduniversities, with the awareness that it is always possible to detect atrend in the closure of the control devices, as well as opportunities forstrategies and practices of moments of resistance. The experience of theWave has not been isolated: it had found some anticipations in the movementagainst the CPE in France in 2006, as well as into the experiences ofDenmark, Greece, Holland, Germany, Croatia, Serbia and Austria. A true cycleof university struggles is is spreading all over Europe even without ageneral continuity. Everywhere we have put evidence on some decisive issues:the quality of living conditions of young people, the need to experienceindependence in the training, the opposition to the precariousness andprivatization of knowledge, the intolerance towards the present state ofthings.We, as Uniriot network, believe that it is fundamental to cross the Viennadays to take part both in the March 11th demonstration to challenge theofficial meeting of ministers, and in the workshops of March 12th-14th. Anopportunity to rise to the fore what in recent years remained in thebackground, to build a common vocabulary among all those experiences that inrecent years have opposed the process of destruction of the university. Forthis reason we will organize, in the main Italian universities, caravansreaching Vienna in the days of the summit.* MAKE BOLOGNA HISTORY! *www.uniriot.orgwww.bolognaburns.org <http://www.bolognaburns.org/>

www.edu-factory.org***UCI Sit-in turns into Lockdown*Irvine, CA ??? Beginning at 9:30am Feb. 24, around 20 students at UC Irvineare holding a sit-in at the UCI administration building, Aldrich Hall,regarding budget cuts.[...]*Six students were arrested on Hosei University!???*Dear fighting friends all over the world, On February 5, our 6 fellows(They???re the students of Zengakuren) were arrested during handing out flyersto examinees in front of the main gate of Hosei University! To achieve therelease of 6 students as soon as possible, please send a storm of protestemails to the Hosei University International Center ic-dUSW87EKT4B3+QwDJ9on6Q< at >public.gmane.org Thise-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabledto view it and the Japanese Embassy in Germany info-a5c5f88HXL/VTL9Z9+31+YQuADTiUCJX< at >public.gmane.org Thise-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabledto view it. (In addition, please cc them to us Zengakurenmail_cn001-Q4Xpw0d2n29+EtWFV8UhtQ< at >public.gmane.org This e-mail address is being protected fromspambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Also we ???re very grad ifyou send the message to 6 fellow and us!)[...]--subscribe to the mailing list: edufactory-subscribe-FiNr9IKjHtuYWMdeRD7+nA< at >public.gmane.orgcontact us: info-rRqMck75DIy7Jn3c8fOrWw< at >public.gmane.org

Class Wargames is planning to hold the 2010 World Inter-City Championship of The Game of War on the weekend of 14th-15th June.The teams will be playing against each other with analogue sets at each end linked together by a Skype video link. There will be a timer to ensure that no one takes too long over their moves.This championship will be a knock-out competition with 3 rounds (8 -> 4 -> 2 -> 1) to decide who is the winner of this contest.So far, we have had expressions of interest from these cities:LondonNewcastleSao PauloViennaTorinoBerlinSkopjeVadodaraIf a group from another location would like to take part in this championship, please email ghq-x1kXvM8YLOJQWbRzM92i6F6hYfS7NtTn< at >public.gmane.org and/or this address.Practice hard to ensure that your home city's team becomes the 1st World Champion of The Game of War!!http://www.classwargames.net

anybody knowing how much a Zizek gig costs?I mean what does now-a-days academia pay to have this speakerI was just wondering as I heard that the master will descend upon the Jan van Eyck Academy in MaastrichtTjebbe van TijenImaginary Museum ProjectsDramatizing Historical Informationhttp://imaginarymuseum.orgweb-blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/

Re: <nettime> anybody knowing how much a Zizek gig costs? margrz-rKTkqjzN45BmPXJtuOTzew< at >public.gmane.org Sandra Braman <braman-V3m1P2mwIcs< at >public.gmane.org> maria ptqk <mariaptqk-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> Zeljko Blace <zblace-FBimBw/SB6g< at >public.gmane.org>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 11:09:09 +0100 (Central Europe Standard Time)Subject: Re: <nettime> anybody knowing how much a Zizek gig costs?From: margrz-rKTkqjzN45BmPXJtuOTzew< at >public.gmane.orgZeljko, you are reading my mind and experience there, you are right greatcoinage: "monthly-lacanian-retreat"best, Marina <...>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:22:09 -0600From: Sandra Braman <braman-V3m1P2mwIcs< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re: <nettime> anybody knowing how much a Zizek gig costs?And I thought the question was about the cost per unit of Zizek memory. SandraZeljko Blace wrote: <...>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 16:55:52 +0100Subject: Re: <nettime> anybody knowing how much a Zizek gig costs?From: maria ptqk <mariaptqk-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>Oh fuck, I though The Age of the White Male Heterosexual Gurus was over.(but anyway, beware: it=B4s coming)m2010/3/3 John Young <jya-IR+WnUzluqRWk0Htik3J/w< at >public.gmane.org> <...>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -From: Zeljko Blace <zblace-FBimBw/SB6g< at >public.gmane.org>Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2010 06:11:27 +0100Subject: Re: <nettime> anybody knowing how much a Zizek gig costs?hm...Maybe it is not fair to have JVE bashedat the start of their 2010 recruitment campaign andmess up with good marketing of 10.000under-edited-but-over-designed yearbooks,especially since Zizek is only a single guestat easily the most functional department there.best Z- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

www.edu-factory.org*Occupation at CSU Fullerton*FULLERTON, California ? As of 3AM, CSU Fullerton?s 8-story Humanitiesbuilding has been barricaded from the inside by some fairly heavy materials.Their communique below. Why Occupy? And Why the Humanities Building?(Updates Follow)[...]*Sussex Students Occupy Vice Chancellor's Office Against Cuts*Students have barricaded themselves inside the management offices at SussexUniversity. They are protesting against the Vice Chancellor?s plans to make115 staff redundant.[...]***UC Berkeley Students Protest Racist Acts*UC Berkeley became the scene of yet another protest Monday when a group ofstudents and supporters staged a ?Blackout 2010? blockade of SatherGate.[...]*UC Irvine PROTEST: 17 Arrested *Seventeen UC Irvine activists were arrested after carrying out animpassioned sit-in outside the school chancellor's office this morning.[...]*Berkeley, CA ? Durant Hall is occupied*Berkeley, CA ? Durant Hall (next to Wheeler Hall) is occupied. Hundreds havestormed this building (that is being renovated).[...]--subscribe to the mailing list: edufactory-subscribe-FiNr9IKjHtuYWMdeRD7+nA< at >public.gmane.orgcontact us: info-rRqMck75DIy7Jn3c8fOrWw< at >public.gmane.org

este libro ha sido editado para poner en circulación quinientas copias facsimilares (treinta y cinco de ellas numeradas y firmadas por el autor) de la _netart latino database_ de brian mackern, adquirida por el meiac el uno de enero de dos mil ocho por noventa y nueve céntimos de euro.dirección editorial: nilo casarestextos: laura baigorri, giselle beiguelman, nilo casares, brian mackern, lila pagola y gustavo romanotraducción y revisión de textos: polisemiaimágenes: joaquín torres-garcía (pág 32), rafael marchetti (pág 107), brian mackern y los artistas capturados.diseño: fündc <http://www.fundc.com>publica: meiac (museo extremeño e iberoamericano de arte contemporáneo)[http://www.meiac.es]imprenta: indugrafic© consejería de cultura. junta de extremadura© de los textos, traducciones e imágenes sus autores.salvo en los casos de lila pagola, con licencia creative commons by sa argentina 2.5, y de nilo casares, cedido al dominio público.isbn: 978-84-613-4394-2depósito legal: ba-6-2010http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3637.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3638.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3639.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3640.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3641.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3643.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3644.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3645.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3647.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3648.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3649.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3650.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3651.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3652.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3665.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3666.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3992.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3993.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_4001.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_4042.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/sello-firmas-bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_.jpgthis book was published for the purpose of distributing five hundred facsimile copies (thirty five numbered and signed by the author) of the _netart latino database_ by brian mackern, acquired by the meiac on the first of january, two thousand and eight, at the price of ninety-nine cents (euros).edited by: nilo casarestexts: laura baigorri, giselle beiguelman, nilo casares, brian mackern, lila pagola y gustavo romanotranslation and proof reading: polisemiaimages: joaquín torres-garcía (p. 32), rafael marchetti (p. 107), brian mackern and the artists reproduced here.design: fündc <http://www.fundc.com>published by: meiac (museo extremeño e iberoamericano de arte contemporáneo)[http://www.meiac.es]printers: indugrafic© regional ministry of culture. regional government of extremadura© of the texts, translations and images, their authors.except in the cases of lila pagola, with creative commons licence by sa argentina 2.5, and nilo casares, granted to the public domain.isbn: 978-84-613-4394-2national book catalogue number: ba-56-2010http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3637.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3638.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3639.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3640.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3641.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3643.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3644.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3645.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3647.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3648.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3649.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3650.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3651.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3652.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3665.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3666.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3992.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_3993.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_4001.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_4042.JPGhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/3064699/database/sello-firmas-bri_netart-latino-database_MEIAC_.jpg

into futurism i will make my stand http://www.alansondheim.org/futurism.mp4 this Lunarcharsky for futurism. digital futures you? You've written of futures - possible futures, for the beautiful, beautiful futures out of drowned, invisible, submergence,details details pictures images future this futures world it all it thisits digital futures its beautiful drowning,sail like a great ship of state into uncharted waters, darkened futures,futures, & I will love you, will love you forever. My darling, I amthe future and I won't even be there, I leave you this presence of futurism, and because, among the beautiful drowning, i will not be there, and because i will not be there, and among them, you will see me there, among starlight futurisms among stars and nighttime skies, O Skies! I shall not see these, i shall not see these, i shall not see these skies, these seas, i shall not see them, O Skies! O Seas!

Sunam Son from Chicago wrote to me to ask what I meant by my occasionalreferences to a possible World War III. I wrote this in reply. It's not whatI think will happen, but all the nasty bits brought into one scenario.http://thememorybank.co.uk/2010/03/05/world-war-iii/1. The economic crisis has provoked historical comparisons with the 1930s,but I consider another analogy might be when three decades of financialimperialism went bust in 1913, leading to the catastrophe of 1914-45 ofwhich the 1930s was an expression, not the cause.2. The crisis has accelerated the shift of economic power to Asia and theBric countries. The question is whether the West and the US in particularwill allow this process to continue peacefully. I once had a conversationwith a Pentagon official who said: “You Europeans have taken the moral highground from us. The Chinese have taken our manufactures. That leaves us withjust the weapons. I guess it’s double or quits”. I have no idea how serioushe was. Maybe he was winding me up. Nixon’s mad dog strategy was to makepeople believe he could push the button and that would make them morecompliant.3. The place of World War III has already been chosen. Afpak has theadvantage of being the most volatile area of the Muslim world, with Russia,China and India on its borders and substantial Western military commitmentsthere already without being too close to home. If India and China can bedrawn into a shooting war, maybe this will slow down their inexorableeconomic growth. What would happen if Muslim fanatics (put up to it by…) letoff a nuclear bomb stolen from Pakistan in India or China? Now that would beanother “shot heard around the world”.4. Who would be “the allies” in such a war? The US, Europe, India and Japan(aka “democracy”) vs Russia, China (“the evil empires”) and the Muslims(already built up by Bush as the target of a new crusade). At least it makesbetter sense than the idea that we are in Afpak to bring democracy to theregion. The Chinese want a port on the Bay of Bengal through Burma. India isbuilding up its navy and the Japanese have already complained about Chinesenaval aggression. Who do you think started the Cold War? Stalin?5. There is the question of where we are in the global economic crisis andwhat will happen next. The massive injection of money by central banks tosave the banking system has delayed the recession and injected a lot ofcheap cash into equity markets, but it has done nothing to restore demandand it is highly unequal. This could lead to a sovereign debt crisis, wthBritain, Japan and the Eurozone being particularly vulnerable. Basically,the people who got us into this mess are still in power and they could pushus all over the brink by continuing with their bankrupt recipes.6. The US is not out of the wood by any means, but I believe that Americawould benefit from an escalation of the crisis at all levels since, apartfrom its share of the world market (which would grow in a depression) andits military monopoly and global reach, the fundamentals of its economy arestronger than those of its rivals. The future of the world economy isinformation services traded on the internet and the US still leads inproduction of its hardware, software and content. The global imbalancebetween US debt and China’s export surplus could lead to a bond crisis(hyperinflation or monetization of the debt) with ramifying politicalconsequences, not to mention the mother of all exchange rate crises.7. In any case, the world economy has lost and is losing aggregate demandfast. Everyone is hoping to grow through increased export demand, but whereis that when home demand is contracting everywhere and governments arecutting back in order to continue to borrow? A combination of deflation andhyperinflation in different places could make 2010 a year to remember forthe world economy.8. I explored these questions in a fictional conversation betwenmyself and AbdulAziz <http://thememorybank.co.uk/category/abdul-aziz/> from the Lehmancollapse to December 2008. This was written in real time against thebackdrop of the unfolding news. None of what I have laid out here is aprediction. It is just a very gloomy scenario that I believe ought to begiven more of an airing than it has, so that a general political discussionmight influence the course of events. But people really don’t want to thinkabout these possibilities, since it makes it hard to sleep at night.9. The unspoken truth of our moment in history is that the game is up forthe West and that makes our “interesting” times very dangerous. We havelived off unearned income for 500 years and the rest aren’t going to pay anymore, if they can help it. No wonder that Britain and France are the twomost pessimistic countries in Europe or that fear and loathing of strangersis now rampant there. The Americans have options and they are prepared touse them. The game may be up for them too, but I don’t think they will takeit lying down, as the Europeans are.

dear all,enclosed is the authors intro text on the launch of the book Trickster City : Writings from the belly of a metropolis. (Penguin, 2010). The authors shared their thoughts on writing and the city during the launch of the book. Here is the english translation.happy reading.warmlyjeebesh----------------------------------------------------------------Translation of the writers' textLaunch of Trickster City12th February 2010Delhi.Azra Tabassum:They say in Delhi, there are no red lights; there are only the hands of strangers.We, along with all our co-writers of Trickster City, who are among the audience, welcome you all. We would like to thank Ankur and Sarai, along with whom we have made, through Cybermohalla, a generative space. A space where we pose and think through our most challenging questions. We thank all our co-travellers, who argued and debated with us, challenged us further as we wrote and questioned.Lakhmi Kohli:We made Cybermohalla a space where unfinished stories may find a narration.We know that fearless speech requires fearless listening.Over the years, we have realised, that people's capacity to surprise each other is inexhaustible.Suraj Rai:To be continuously surprised by another can evoke fear. To us it presented an ocean of possibilities. Stories became the oars with which we navigated this vast ocean.But the questions one might ask now are –How can one know another's desire to surprise?How can one become aware of the possibilities in someone?Neelofar:What is "to surprise"?Does surprise excite? Or is it that by being surprised we re-animate ourselves?Is being surprised a self-absorbing game? Or does it make us tug anew at the weave of our relationships?Jaanu Nagar:It must be said that these two words – "surprise" and "capacity" – are vital for understanding any environment or context, and to find ones own connection with it.To surprise, to think the intangibles in life and in force of life, and ones capacity to search new directions within them – these indicate the quality of ones life.Love Anand:We live in the city. In living in it, we affirm its multifareous forms, and yet we find ourselves incomplete within it. It is in this incompleteness that the desire to search begins. As we search, some people appear around us as missing persons.Azra:Everyone renews within them their stubbornness to live. We recognise it as an intellectual process, as something that expands and deepens with time.When we say 'missing', we are not talking about a lack. The 'missing' is that which provides the impetus, the capacity to move from a known threshold to multiple thresholds. We keep reaching out to those thresholds which give us the high of weaving together new creations. And this becomes part of our desires.To recognise something as 'missing', is to open oneself up to imagining and discovering oneself, new directions and ones co- travellers.Suraj:We set out on this long journey of writing. We'd write about that around us which perplexed us, and these perplexities we'd share with each other.But merely transcribing what one sees and hears – is that writing?Chiselling ones writing through ones own experience, memories and perspectives, we encountered questions. To move ahead without thinking these questions through was impossible. And so we asked ourselves:Can every day be accounted for?Can every moment be recalled and narrated?Does every passing moment get absorbed in our past?Every space is somewhat like a story. A story told over many pages. And there are those pages too, which get folded at the edges, and so, when they are turned, they either wrap and silence many pages, or open out several new pages. Time is revealed, or gets concealed in this way. And along with it, many people too.This is the threshold at which we realised that – to write is to keep active a sense of the force of life. This sense is for the writer, for the one who is being written about, and also for the thoughts and visions that unfold when one writes.[Neelofar reads a text]A cot on the road divider, and on the cot sat she... There is a pair of thick glasses on her eyes, because of which one of her eyes looks big. Her black hair are curly. Her hijaab in her hands, she is staring unblinkingly at the bald patch of land before her. Her experienced heart knows a fountain will powerfully sprout out from this land. The sand on this hillock will soon be moist; the garbage will turn to gold. This place will breathe and make space within itself for many lives to breathe within it...A strong gust of wind. It starts slowly, but then gathers velocty... The sand doesn't want to stir. The wind wants to draw it towards itself, seduce it with the promise of flight. How long can dust on the ground refuse the promise of this intoxication? Soon it let itself be carried away. And she? She sits, her eyes smarting... Each time she opens her eyes, she sees things have changed. Is it her mind, or is the world spinning? How is this place is changing the way it is?The dust is slowly settling. One can see, the bald patch of land is generating something. Have these bodies been carved out of its own mud? Or have they been carried by the wind, brought to rest here? All the bodies are in different postures. Postures that don't make it seem as if this place were new for them. It seems as if these bodies know this space, know the waves, the crests and troughs that constitute this place.[Love reads a text]It is dark in the lane now. The bottle is empty. This roof is on the seventh floor. Like countless nights that have passed, and all those nights still to come, it begins from his feet. "Tha-Tha-Thaiyya..." Till his hips gyrate to a rhythm that he alone knows. Then the tips of his body – his head, his fingers – stir. His torso sways. Every pore of his body secretes a music, each cell that makes him stirs. He begins to dance.He can’t piece together how things changed for him. But he knows something inside him was cast away, was slowly pushed aside and locked out by his surroundings. The climb up the forty steps to the roof on the seventh floor was a daily passage to solitude, so he could be alone with what was precious to him.There was a time when the roof was not all he had.The courtyard was open to the sky. It was past midnight, and there was no sign of sleep in his eyes. The drum beat loudly. Voices sang. Among these, another voice – but it didn't sound like someone was singing; it sounded like a beast letting out a wail. It was his voice.Jaanu:Confronting us, a poet in our neighbourhood said to us, "Come to me when you have a question that goes beyond my relationships and world of work." This critique compelled us to start a new dialogue with our own self.We asked ourselves: How do we think about a space which is only beginning to get formed, where relationships and the world of work are still tenuous, and where wandering and weaving are happening together, challenging each other? To be introduced to a person, and to be introduced to a place – how are these different? Does a person become what he does because of a place? Or does a place become what it does because of the people in it? Perhaps both. Perhaps place and people keep forming each other and clashing with each other.[Neelofar and Love read]Recognising the pitch of the whistle, a flock of pigeons turned sharply in its flight, waylaying pigeons from a neighbouring flock startled by this sudden intersection. The boy continued to whistle, guiding his pigeons. He scattered grain on the roof on which he stood. Their wings flapping furiously, the pigeons alighted on the roof. The boy counted them while they pecked lustily at the grains. Each time he spotted a pigeon from another flock amidst his own, he grabbed it and pushed it into a cage. Then he set his own pigeons free to fly once again in the sky.A woman appeared at the window of her first floor. "I am roaming far more in my dreams than I can possibly roam in Sawda-Ghevra," she said. "Just recently, I was at the shrine of Lattu Shah Baba. There is so much spiritual depth and quietness there. I could see myself sitting by the shrine, offering namaz, seeking the saint's benevolence. I saw, Babaji is asking me about the good and the bad in my life, and I am answering him. Then I am going towards the shrine of Haji Ali—angels are carrying me to it. I am dressed in white clothes; I am flying. Suddenly I see, the fridge has caught fire."The man with the drums played on his drum and walked through J-block, his eyes scanning his surroundings. He paid no attention to the hullabaloo around him. He looked past it, to some point far away. But whenever he'd reach that point, it was as if by virtue of having reached it, his relation with it would end. His eyes would always be set ahead of him. Up ahead, some goats were nuzzling around in a sack, trying to chew on the cauliflowers in it. Till he was far from them, he kept looking at them; but when the man with the drums reached them, he removed his gaze from them and walked on, as if his destination lay further ahead. Did he even have a destination? He didn't halt anywhere, but only kept walking. When my niece was much younger, why did my mother scare her by saying, "Don't fuss, or the dhol wala will take you away"? She used to say the same thing to me, and possibly both my elder sisters too were kept in check by evoking this same figure. A drummer beats his drums, and amid the crowd that gathers around him because of this noise that he produces, his eyes lose their focus. Drawn by the sound, the crowd follows him, but maintains a distance. Weaving a web of glances around him, the drummer disappeared into K-block.Azra:Stories never complete themselves. They always remain unfinished, and that's their strength. This is what keeps alive an anticipation in listening, and surprises the story teller.My love for writing grew when I realised that the words that we hear around us, or which we say ourselves in our everyday, are not only part of language, but each word has an expansive world of its own. A shadow accompanies every word. A word is that tool which opens out the possibilities for creativity. These possibilities are infinite.When I realised this, I found myself inextricably bound to the shadows cast by different words. I actively began to seek them around me, and explore them in my home and among all my companions.When we find ourselves thinking, “I now understand this place”, or “I understand this person completely”, it means we have stopped thinking, ended our curiosity about things."I have not understood". When one says this, s/he opens out new ways of listening and speaking. And that's when we begin to excavate again that which we thought we had already found and we had."What is my own capacity, creativity, possibility?" This is where our journey began, but soon our words changed. Or perhaps I should say, the words that circulate between us may still be the same, but over time, their edge and their velocity keep changing.Suraj:The question is not only – "What are we giving to a context?" But equally important is the question – "What have we brought with us to that context?"Questions change. How questions are formulated, changes. The relation of the teller and the listener to words and stories also changes. “Capacity, creativity and possibility” make this flight and scaling new heights possible.But "capacity, creativity and possibility" can only breathe when they are given flight, outside ones own self. Otherwise they remain, merely, as ones experience or story.Azra:Is there anything outside experience and stories?I was finding it difficult to write beyond experience and story. My co- travellers realised this when they saw my pen had dried up. Self-love allows inner desires to flower, take flight. But it also reduces ones capacity to spread ones arms and take in other lives.How does one discern what it is that one is weaving;which possibilities we are nurturing;which possibilities we want to be in dialogue with?How will we know if we are stuck merely in repetition?How will we know if we have turned ourselves merely into archives from which we keep producing and presenting things before others?After all, that's not what we want to do!We tussled with this difficulty and searched resources so we may emerge out of our own drying up.[Love and Neelofar – dialogue]Love: Lets marry tomorrow?Neelofar: Why? What good will that do?Love: You'll start living in my house.Neelofar: Then?Love: We will live together.Neelofar: Then?Love: Those things will happen, which happen between husband and wife. We will have children. They'll call you 'ma' and me 'dad'.Neelofar: Then?Love: Don't you know?Neelofar: What's new in this? Isn't something new possible? All this has already happened in the world, hasn't it?Love: By saying this you have equated my love with everyone's love. What is it that you want?Neelofar: Something which really is different.Love: I can't think of my life without you!Neelofar: Really? And what if we don't end up together?Love: I will die then!Neelofar: That means there never was any love between us.Love: Why! Why do you think that? I love you a lot. You don't see this in what I say to you?Neelofar: I used to live even before I met you. Yes, when I met you, I felt this special feeling, and so I found my life even more beautiful than before. To me, these feelings that you have given me will remain with me even after you're not there, and they will ensure I don't feel your absence. Our love has opened new paths for me in my life. If these paths were to close after you are not with me, then what would your love have given me!Love: Do you love me at all?Neelofar: To live is to be in movement. Love which gives you opportunities of flight in life is love that will remain with you always. Whether that love be of friendship or of relationships.Love: What do you want? Why don't you just be explicit about this!Neelofar: Along with you, I want the entire world. After all, how long will we remain lost in one another?Love: Yes, you're right. Go on, take the entire world. Take whatever you want... I think, maybe you want to work.Neelofar: No.Love: Then what do you want?Neelofar: My desire is to fill each day with colours, and this is the desire I want to continue to fuel and live with in the time to come.Azra:Resources which made us emerge from ourselves, made us reach beyond ourselves.So we may find again our romance with our expressivity.A search which took us beyond our own stories and experiences, into the city, to search again a new language.[Love reads a text]Many sharp images came to mind as I sat down to write a review of Godfather. But after an sms conversation about what I was thinking with some friends, these images became blurred. As if the canvas on which I was painting had been spoiled. Thinking about this spoiled canvas, I wrote:Three men herding forty goats crossed my path. One of the men pulled a goat by its ear; the goat bleated loudly, resisted, and was dragged along, helplessly. The remaining thirty-nine goats followed quietly in line. The two men walking along them hit them with sticks occasionally. I marvelled at how dragging one goat by its ear can control an entire army of goats. The goat right in front can sense it's going to be killed and so it struggles, refusing to move. And the goats behind it follow quietly, afraid that if they don't, they will get their ears pulled![Neelofar reads a text]Watching Chris Marker's La Jette, I felt:...All of us see dreams with our eyes closed, and when we open our eyes, we try and think about those dreams. We search frames through which these may enter our lives. What happens if no connection remains between what we saw and what transpired? All of us nurture an inner life within our selves. It lives on inspite of the conditions of life. If this inner life – this internal life – were to be subtracted out of our lives, all that will remain, merely, is the grey, visible, social world.Lakhmi:Our emphasis on performative expression was not to veer away from either the truth or the imaginary, but was a challenge we posed to ourselves to encounter every place, each person as shape-shifting.Some questions arise:What is life? What is life force? What is to crack something open to make it reveal itself? What is a mystery? What is truth? What is a lie? What is imagination? Who are we? And who am I?And then we return again to search resources.[Love reads]Though, it must be said, one doesn't need to wait too long in order to find happiness. Just dream new dreams in your sleep at night, laugh away the indignity you felt at work, and pocket all the tickets that will lead you to happiness. These are tickets that can also be bought in black. People line up, stand in queues for these tickets! Just that they're a little scared of asking for them. Who is to say if some official is standing nearby, in vigil, to declare them as criminals if they were to ask for them. And then, everyone is wary too, of how much they will be charged for these tickets in black![Neelofar reads]Outside the cinema hall, their back against the wall, stand many young men, countless dreams in their eyes. Eyes which are staring, now at the cinema hall, now at the actors whose photographs adorn the posters. Eyes with which they check hurriedly what the person standing next to them is looking at, or trying to look at. Maybe they have just come out after watching a show? And are still playing the character they had seen on the big screen? Maybe someone who is without a job is imagining he has found one? And someone is convinced he has now finally found the way through which he can plant the seed of his love in the heart of his beloved? Outside the cinema hall, every pair of eyes is as if dreaming many dreams.Dreams that are dreamt with open eyes can't be called strange dreams. These aren't dreams dreamt while one sleeps, which can be brushed aside after waking up. These are not daydreams, that they get left aside, tucked away in ones mind alone. Many set out to fulfil these dreams, to make them reach some kind of conclusion. That is why some head out from home, a small bag packed with a change of clothes, and a few rupees in their pockets. He disappears from his known world in search of that other world. Or someone reaches a set where a shooting is on, doing everything within his means to get a chance to show his skills. And that, in front of someone who must have first come here to be an actor himself, and is still in queue.These young men hang around the cinema hall for hours, as if stuck to its walls, waiting for that moment which will reveal to them if it is possible, after all, for what they have seen to become reality. They halt there, laze around, behold the walls, the posters, the public entering the cinema hall, the viewers emerging from the cinema hall, their friends and, if nothing else remains, themselves.A police constable, a stick beating the floor, comes near them and says, "What the hell are you doing here? Why are you standing here? Just loitering? Or are you a ticket blacker? What do you keep doing here? You're not standing here with the intention of picking someone's pocket, are you? I've been watching you for a while now." These young men who dream with their eyes open (these "pickpockets", "ticket blackers" and who knows what else they are or might be called next) – listen quietly, or they sometimes become gutsy and talk back. They aren't about to produce any hafta, so the constable can beat down on them a bit harder. For now, these young men will move away. But for sure, they will be back again tomorrow.Suraj:Before us today is the question – what qualities of life can we etch out in the zone between the state and the truth? These are the two poles towards which arguments often veer. And the state always asks us – what examples of "being alive" can you provide which can vouch for the truth of what you say?What are the circumstances about which we become without words? An image emerges before us when we think about this question:To embellish its truth, the state declares every person a citizen, and every space a territory. It is difficult to make an estimation of what and how many kinds of threads weave a person or a place. Because the state searches for the extent of a thing; it is not concerned with depth.The state makes rules and regulations. Those who follow them are good citizens, and those who do not, are traitors. Through what words does someone who is in the grey zone between being a good citizen and a traitor express her/himself?Azra:The state prepares its eyes in such a way that it will approve of us only when we dawn on certain costumes. But in the time this eye takes to blink, so many kinds of scenes – internal and external to us – open themselves out. Scenes in which one is free, in which one dances, makes others dance, runs, makes others run with him, where one is sometimes a stranger, at other times a neighbour, sometimes on a journey, and at other times a companion in another's travels.Jaanu:In the time between when a place breaks and is re-made, can be found many kinds of life, many kinds of signs of life. But the city – the same city that is made up of strangers, where strangers hold hands – is also expert at pretending these signs of life don't exist.Suraj:There is a place called Ghevra. A new place in the city, which is still being settled. Through this place we reached those questions which are often uttered once and forgotten, or sentenced to that realm in which they are answered in simplistic terms of behaviour, or in black and white – immense pain or joy.Places give shelter to different kinds of searches. To rest in these places is not to get planted in them, but to find in oneself a deep urge to embark on another flight. One often thinks people go to a place to search how they may settle down in it. But actually, it is after someone reaches a place that his search begins, is born in him. This search may be of many kinds – search for a habitat, for a gathering, for meeting others. That these desires emerge in every person who comes to a place is not a co-incidence. Then what is it?Many ways in which one can think about this question have to be found. The important thing is that this is a realm that can't be called or explained as "experience" or easily narrativised.Jaanu:Our book, Trickster City, begins its life in one part of the city. But this does not mean the book is based on a partition. Every word on a page breathes with life, and when things breathe, the desire to find their own way of living is born in them.Words fill a book with the breath of life. They can transform lives into a life force. No, a book is not a magical realm, but it has its ways of giving birth to worlds that are magical.Azra:There are many paths ahead. Open arms call out to us.We thank you all, once again, for being with us today. We hope you will read this book, and will want to continue this conversation with us.ThankyouTrickster City: Writings from the belly of the metropolis by Azra Tabassum el at (translated from Hindi) has been published by Penguin India, 2010.Trickster City is available at any bookstore across India and can also be purchased online fromhttp://www.penguinbooksindia.com/category/Anthology/Trickster_City_9780670083329.aspxIt is possible to buy Trickster City from outside India. Write to:customer.service[at]in.penguingroup[dot]comTo buy Trickster City from the US, go to:http://www.indiaplaza.in/trickster-city-writings-from-belly-of-metropolis-us-shippingvarious/books/Tricksterr.htmRead a review of the book and a conversation with the writers in TimeOut Delhi athttp://www.timeoutdelhi.net/books/book_feature_details.asp?code=86Read about Trickster in Tehelka herehttp://www.tehelka.com/story_main44.asp?filename=hub130310slum_doggerel.aspTrickster City in Minthttp://www.livemint.com/2010/03/05203751/Listen-to-this-Delhi.html?d=1Read more about Trickster City athttp://www.sarai.net/practices/cybermohalla/public-dialogue/books/trickster-city

----- Forwarded message from Rob Myers <rob-MHOfhu0kjIxg9hUCZPvPmw< at >public.gmane.org> -----From: Rob Myers <rob-MHOfhu0kjIxg9hUCZPvPmw< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re: <nettime> A scenario for World War IIIDate: Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:22:59 +0000To: nettime-l-fO7mttO5ZDI< at >public.gmane.orgOn 05/03/10 10:52, Keith Hart wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_2000#Original_settingArmageddon is a luxury we won't be able to afford the reassurance ofmuch longer.- Rob.----- End forwarded message ---------- Forwarded message from Heiko Recktenwald <heikorecktenwald-gM/Ye1E23mwN+BqQ9rBEUg< at >public.gmane.org> -----From: Heiko Recktenwald <heikorecktenwald-gM/Ye1E23mwN+BqQ9rBEUg< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re: <nettime> A scenario for World War IIIDate: Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:00:40 +0100To: Patrice Riemens <patrice-qWit8jRvyhVmR6Xm/wNWPw< at >public.gmane.org>, nettime-l-fO7mttO5ZDI< at >public.gmane.org<...>That case cannot be generalised and it was a SMALL problem. There couldbe no "structural adjustment" without the Yugoslavs and after Tito'sdeath there werent anymore any -- long before their civil war. There wasa chance for a clear language to the Serbs, it was missed by "Europe"for historic reasons and then the U.S. had to decide.H.----- End forwarded message ---------- Forwarded message from John Hopkins <jhopkins-LRlVL1xtBs0sV2N9l4h3zg< at >public.gmane.org> -----From: John Hopkins <jhopkins-LRlVL1xtBs0sV2N9l4h3zg< at >public.gmane.org>Reply-To: jhopkins-LRlVL1xtBs0sV2N9l4h3zg< at >public.gmane.orgSubject: Re: <nettime> A scenario for World War IIIOrganization: neoscenesDate: Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:42:20 -0600CC: nettime <nettime-l-fO7mttO5ZDI< at >public.gmane.org>Hi Brian!I think one issue with this scenario is that the US no longer has the energy input into its system that is necessary to maintain the highly complex (and energy intensive) total infrastructure necessary to produce and deploy and stratigically operate such a military "force." The move from a UCal lab to a deployable and coherent force is non-trivial, and despite the strong present and historical linkages between edu-mil, I think the wide-spread usage of robotics in anything other than tactical support (vs. replacement of boots-on-the-ground) is not possible. The techno-social infrastructure needed to produce systems of such complexity is globe-spanning (extractives and energy industries supporting manufacturing and production) and is no longer under US control/domination at all. When the DOD is having to source chips for their devices in China (among other places), and when China holds a monopoly on rare-earth metals, and the internal US infrastructure is collapsing, (etc, etc) combined with a disaffected and polarized government and a population increasingly unwilling to do anything about anything except for extreme self-interest (of a localized kind, not even empire-spreading or empire-holding anymore), it is really hard to imagine this scenario except in the wet-dreams of the late-born Military-Industrialist babies or ultra-nationalist sci-fi freaks...jh----- End forwarded message -----