nettime mailinglist

Dear friends and colleagues,I was at Art Tower Mito when the quake happened. I stayed overnight there before coming back to Tokyo via hitchhike and trains. Now I'm safely back in Kyoto.I wrote an essay entitled "From Nuclear to Solar" for the REALTOKYO web magazine. Please have a read through it at:<http://www.realtokyo.co.jp/docs/><http://www.realtokyo.co.jp/docs/en/column/outoftokyo/bn/ozaki_225_en/>Japanese version is at:<http://www.realtokyo.co.jp/docs/ja/column/outoftokyo/bn/ozaki_225/>This is my personal thought, but if you also feel this way, please forward this email or URLs to anyone who may be interested. Many thanks in advance.Best wishes,Tetsuya----------------OZAKI Tetsuya (Mr.)Publisher/editor-in-chief, REALTOKYO/RealkyotoGuest professor, Kyoto University of Art and Designozaki-QMw93Zo0nKFktA2wFaHycQ< at >public.gmane.orghttp://www.realtokyo.co.jp/http://www.realkyoto.jp/

And a visual representationhttp://davemiller.org/drawings/nuclear/crimes_heroes_humanity.pngAlong with an extension of the notion of Crimes Against Humanity thereshould also be the development of a global process for identifying andawarding glories to those who are Heroes for Humanity (and not the treaclystuff that comes out of various semi-popular, mostly US media outlets...And I nominate... <http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newser.com%2Fstory%2F115157%2Finside-the-hell-that-is-fukushima.html&src=sp> (Newser) – As if risking their lives to work feverishly to avoid nuclearmeltdown wasn't grim enough, there's no respite for the weary workers atJapan's hobbled Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. A Japanese nuclear official whojust returned from five days at Fukushima paints a picture of life on theinside, reports the *LATimes*,<http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-japan-workers-20110329,0,319767.story>withcatnaps caught in hallways, two sparse meals a day (breakfast istypically crackers and vegetable juice), no running water or way of bathing,and no contact with family. "I don't think the workers have the energy theyneed to work under these extremely tough conditions," says the official.Add to that the stress of looming disaster and TEPCO's seeming incompetenceat gauging the radiation levels to which it's exposing the 450 or soemployees fighting to stabilize Fukushima. "These things are an indicationthat they don't have good control on radiation protection," says an expert.But beyond the danger, basic needs are going by the wayside. "Some haveexpressed concern about not being able to change their underwear," says thenuclear official.It need hardly be noted I think, that those folks are risking (and verylikely sacrificing) their lives for all of us as well... given what seem tobe the evolving risks from the nuclear meltdown that the Execs areresponsible (and should be held accountable) for...M

The Arpanet Dialogues Vol. II ARPANET Test June 1976 with Samir Amin, Steve Biko, Francis Fukuyama &Minoru Yamasakihttp://www.arpanetdialogues.net/Available to read online and a PDF in English & ArabicIn the period between 1975 and 1979, the Agency convened a rareseries of conversations between an eccentric cast of charactersrepresenting a wide range of perspectives within the contemporarysocial, political, and cultural milieu. "The ARPANET Dialogues" is aserial document which archives these conversations. Even more unusualperhaps was the specific circumstances of the conversation: takingadvantage of recent developments in telecommunications technology,the conversation was conducted via an instant messaging applicationnetworked by computers plugged into ARPANET, the United StatesDepartment of Defense's experimental computer network.All participants in the conversation were given special access toterminals connected to ARPANET, many of them located in US militaryinstallations or DOD-sponsored research institutions around the world.Excerpts from each session will be published as they become available."The ARPANET Dialogues" is an ongoing project by Bassam El Baroni,Jeremy Beaudry and Nav Haq.Vol. I of the dialogues was presented as part of OVERSCORE, AlexandriaContemporary Arts Forum's (ACAF) curatorial contribution to Manifesta8, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art which took place in theregion of Murcia, Spain in 2010.Vol. II is presented as ACAF's contribution to MARKER at ArtDubai 2011. The second edition features guest collaborator KhweziGule, a curator, artist, and writer based in Johannesburg, SouthAfrica.http://www.arpanetdialogues.net/

Steam Powered CensusIt should be no surprise to any of us that the 2011 England and Walescensus is being conducted by Lockheed Martin, the same company that webuy trident nuclear missiles, cluster bombs and F-16 fighter jets from,or that Scottish Census is being provided by CACI International adefence contractor who was contracted to provide the US Armywith"interrogation services" at Abu Ghraib. After all、the late 19th century’s mechanised census tabulation systemof Hollerith (IBM's founder) and Dr. John Shaw Billings saved time andreduced errors for the USA Government also led to the Nazis‘efficient‘use of the IBM machines and assisted in the Dutch census toreduce the Dutch Jewish population from 140,000 in 1941 to 35,000 in1945 alongside many others. To carry out a census you need to have discovered the concept ofpopulation, which in Europe seems to have happened some　time in theenlightenment at the end of the 18th century. Population was accompaniedby other nascent technologies of power including electricity,reciprocating engines, pneumatics, bar charts and accurate maps. In 1798、seven years after the French revolution、Thomas Malthuspublished his essay on the 'principle of population' suggesting thatpopulation growth would soon outstrip supplies of food and Britain wouldsuffer famine, disease and other disasters. Aristocratic gentlemen withland owning interests could be seen swarming nervously to spend 50guineas to attend the newly founded Royal Institution lectures in anattempt to find ways to bend Natural Philosophy into a cheap way to maketheir land productive, discipline society and avoid social unrest andthe loss of their heads. One of these methods was census of thepopulation.The 21st Century 　decendents of these specimens are increasingly tryingto convince us of the usefulness of our personal data for the publicgood. (With the proviso that it is efficiently collected, qualitycontrolled and managed securely.) This process, we are informed, willallow us to reap the various forms of value/benefit produced byimproving myriad forms of efficiency. If we think about government as aseries of tactics, strategies, techniques, programmes and aspirations ofthose authorities who wish to control, influence or improve what wethink of and do as a population, databases、like that of the earliercensus、inform various modes of thinking, decision making and acting. Wehope that the information we give up will be used in a timely manner andhopefully help them make the best use of public finances and to evidencedecisions in a rational and reasonable manner. We also have theexpectation that this process will be as open and transparent to thepublic as possible while protecting our individual privacy.This attitude still embodies many of the arguments put forth by JohnRickman in 1798/99 as a clerk to the House of Commons in favour of theCensus Act in 1800, also known as the Population Act, were he outlinedarguments in favour of a census in which he called for the gathering ofthe intimate knowledge of a country. The first census in 1801 ordered and disciplined population, revealingits components, creating a knowledge that could act as a kind of remotecontrol on the elements it defined. How many people can I impress onBritish Navy ships from the Thames Estuary, Essex without destroyingfood production for London?How little corn do I need to produce to feedthe population of Manchester or Liverpool to avoid social unrest?Thetrajectory of the 1801 census was to create a machine in which themechanisms of its power would function fully,creating a state ofreadiness. The mechanisms of ordering require containers to be constructed, boxesthat discipline the item you place in it by saying what they cannothold. In this way constructing a container called ‘street’excludesliving in the sea or in a forest or on the moon or、in the case ofgypsies、by the side of the road. The empty container implies theexistence of the object that it is supposed to posses and in theboardrooms of nascent empire juggling the containers into new machinesto fight wars, famines and plagues, they became more important than theobjects they were meant to contain. They articulated government’srelation to population. As this is largely a Foucauldian landscape I'm drawing with some scrapmetal, wires, steam engines and electricity thrown in, discipline, orsurveillence,is always accompanied by punishment.Refusal of the form isfollowed by the threat of fine or imprisonment. Recursive discipline:forthe individual to define what they are in relation to governance；andfor government to discipline itself to create the containers throughwhich it will discipline the population. The completed apparatus ensuresthe norm of most of us tapping at our keyboards or scratching ink intopaper in this year’s census -revealing our intimate knowledge,our readyacceptance of control societies.In its increasing attempt to convince us about parting with or notcomplaining too much about the use of our intimate data, government andother enterprises have set up a number of open data initiatives of whichthe census will become one more,after our names and adresses areremoved. A recent high-profile example of this openness would be the publishingof MP's allowances. The website mps allowances.parliament.uk allowsanyone with an internet connection to view all the MP's expenses insomething resembling a software panopticon, an equal gaze over all theMP’s allowances in which anomalous spending of the bad may beforegrounded against the normal spending of the good. An equal gaze is normally associated with technologies of power such asthe census、in which population can be policed for health, crime,security or be quickly made ready for war. Government,witnessing theeffectiveness of the gaze as a technology of power, turned it on itselfas an inoculation against the infection carried in by its parasite MPs.Governance in this way appeared to martyr itself in a public atonementfor its infection. In acknowledging and reflecting on its ownsubjugation before this machine、government enables this technology toamplify its power to create ever larger machines. “Look、we did it toourselves, we are all in this together.”The equal gaze afforded by theMP's expenses databases is a set of truths, a register of moralvictories on which to build the next round in the arms race oftechnologies of power. The use of this form of equal gaze of many eyes has steadily beenheading up the political armoury for the last decade or so as computingpower, and databases in particular, have inflated new forms of authorityby creating new views of information that have been processed into newforms of knowledge. By the time of the 1801 census, Natural philosophy had become such atangible force in the construction of daily life that its mechanismscould be spawned off into new processes. John Rickman proposed that thecensus would “generally encourage the social sciences to flourish”applying the apparatus of reasoned enlightenment to the study of thenewly discovered population.The jewel of Natural Philosophy, steam engines、regulated themselves andwere seen as possessing the capacity for a universal regulation. Themachine operated at a constant unvarying speed, which in turncommunicated itself to the labour of the workforce who also had to mineits coal, move it around, feed its furnaces and think,eat and shit atunvarying speed. Just as the steam engine had the potential to producedisciplined,ordered workers、then　with the census, social sciencescould reduce the organic stench of society into an ordered repository ofpotential profit, a force for good and empire. Natural Philosophy,the soon-to-be science,had been disciplining natureinto truth machines, systems of ordered procedures for the production,regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of authoritativestatements. These machines,like their iron and coal brothers andsisters,grew by a process of breaking down objects, analysing, places,times, movements, actions, operations that cut up space and time intomanageable chunks.The current UK Government,through the office of National Statistics、sees releasing public data as a way to help people understand howgovernment works and how policies are made.　This is a move towards anequal gaze for everyone in which we all police each other, as in thecase of MP's expenditure. HM Treasury has estimated that open data isworth £6 billion to the economy with data.gov.uk bringing all itscentral data together in one searchable website. It believes that makingthis data easily available will make it easier for people to 　informdecisions and put forward suggestions for government policies based ondetailed information. (www.data.gov.uk)Within the ambition of these forms of open data initiatives,especiallythose of government, problems arise when we begin to consider theprerequisites for participation which fall technically within the areaof transparency. The Open Data Foundation (ODF) suggests the followingguide for open data (www.opendatafoundation.org) For ODF, transparency means being to: * Discover the existence of data * Access the data for research and analysis * Find detailed information describing the data and its production processes * Access the data sources and collection instruments from which and with which the data was collected, compiled, and aggregated * Effectively communicate with the agencies involved in the production, storage, distribution of the data * Share knowledge with other users Government data produced under this notion of transparency can be viewedas operating the ventricles of an enlightened power, interconnecting thedomains of government and population. The relative openness of the datacan be seen as an attempt to unfold ‘rationalist’ attempts to evidencedecisions. This transparency debate creates a protocol betweengovernment and non-government Database Management System administratorsand ethical statistical analysts who summon the latent energiescontained in the new knowledge to power their differing politicalfactions. This is a data exchange between those who can already perceivedata from its modes of representation or to put it another wayunderstand the construction of the data and wish to exploit it as a formof self-reflexive critique of government.The government’s radical pension reforms of last year were based on thecurrent life expectancy figures of 77.4years for men and 81.6years forwomen. This statistic sent thousands of analysts scurrying off duringlunch hour. Flurries of emails later revealed that people in Kensingtonand Chelsea's life expectancy for females is 85.8 years, almost nine anda half years more than Glasgow's 76.4:therefore the question was,who wasliving longer and who would pay.Due to historical and social formations too numerous to mention here,the gap between the wider public's perception of data and the socialexperience it attempts to model, creates a form of indifference towardthe expectations of this kind of narrative. A partial remedy for thisindifference might be found in making data more vital through taking amore critical view of transparency. This would require seeing it, not somuch in technical terms – the protocols of the enlightened yet unequalparticipants of the governed and government - but more in terms of thedata itself having some kind of agency.Such a perspective can be imagined through a critical reading in whichwe are able to see what decisions the data has informed and evidencedand how that data has been collected, for what purpose and by whom.Taking this thread a little further it would also be illuminating to seein which positions the data places the subject of its records, and wheretoo it places the user of the data. Within the technologies of power, the database a descendent of thecensus can be seen as an energy source, a motor of change or anamplifier for the progression of truths within the discourses thatfabricate them. 'Truth', in this instance, should be understood as thesystem of ordered procedures for the production, regulation,distribution, circulation and operation of authoritative statements. Wecan think of the mortality rates above as emanating from just such atruth-creating machine that would be thought of as penetrating illusionsand seeing through to underlying realities. We do not have to agree withthe truth of these machines as we are not trying to say they are true toeveryone, only true to the discourses that produce them. The history of the census is embedded now into every machine vibratingin every fluff-ridden pocket and on every dusty desktop. At the core ofthe 21st century census lies the relational machine, (the conceptualmachine that make a database possible) operating processes where dataatoms are placed in structures of entities and relations and queriesprocess those atoms into information. New knowledge is formed whengovernment compares the information. This power then emerges as newknowledge which has the potential to change the conduct of others. HarwoodCentre for Cultural StudiesGoldsmiths CollegeUniversity of London# 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

Microsoft has announced that it is going to formally file an anti-trustcomplaint against Google in the EU, arguing that " Google is engaging inanticompetitive behavior in search, online advertising, and smartphonesoftware".I thought this would be an interesting read for many on the list.http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20049062-75.html?tag=nl.e498Also, do look at Brad Smith's blog on MS explaining the rationale in greatdetailhttp://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2011/03/30/adding-our-voice-to-concerns-about-search-in-europe.aspxCheersNishant

I got this e-mail from Free Software Foundation at: http://www.fsf.org/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today we're launching the first in a series of features on how to use common websites without using JavaScript. You may not be aware of the dangers of JavaScript -- a problem we've deemed The JavaScript Trap -- proprietary software running on your computer, inside your web browser. * <http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/gmail-jstrap> When you visit a website such as Gmail, your browser will download and run several thousand lines of JavaScript code. This JavaScript code is no different to other programming languages -- applications written in those languages running on our computers should be free software, so we can run, modify and share them if we wish. While some people have already made free software that alters and manipulates Google's JavaScript, they are doing so at the mercy of Google, who may change it at any time. So, while it's clear that JavaScript is a very powerful and useful technology in the right hands, we're calling on Google and others to step up and let people make useful, interesting contributions available to others, by releasing the JavaScript code as free software for Gmail users to modify. Check out our guide to using Gmail without JavaScript and send us your suggestions for future websites to feature: * <http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:NoJavaScript> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Someone might find it interesting. Please, share.Best, gORAN LibrePlanethttp://libreplanet.org/wiki/Main_Page"The LibrePlanet project is a global network of free software activists organized into teams working together to help further the ideals of software freedom by advocating and contributing to free software. The main activity of LibrePlanet is hosting regional teams that operate locally in accordance with the project mission statement. One example is the Massachusetts Team which you are welcome to join if you are in the area, or check your regional page to see if there another one near you. Local teams are just getting started on LibrePlanet so you may want to start your own. "

It should have been obvious to us all that the practice of leaking and thepower of the web would come together in a terrible, childish and unstoppabletantrum of the kind described in this article.Anywhere sensitive data is collected; where mentally-unstable, unhappy orvindictive people might work; is vulnerable to self-righteous "leaking" thatmay or may not align with any rational moral calculus. If we've experienced,over and over, the phenomena of the disgruntled shooter, mass murderingrampages against so-called "enemies" in the workplace, home or school... howmuch lower is the rage threshold for a revenge leak?If we support the anti-establishment leakers of incriminating info about thebigwigs and mucky-mucks, how do we confront leakers whose social alignment isdifferent from our own? How does that affect our cheerleading lyrics?Or is this another CIA plot in disguise!?Adult industry enraged as 'Porn Wikileaks' gives stars' real nameshttp://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/sex-industry/adult-industry-enraged-as-porn-wikileaks-gives-stars-real-names-2258874.htmlFriday, 1 April 2011By Guy Adams in Los AngelesErotic stars such as Jenna Jameson, her male counterpart Seymore Butts andCharlie Sheen's latest inamorata, 24-year-old blonde former centrefold BreeOlson, are all so mainstream that their lives are detailed in Wikipedia.But the 1,500 or so performers in the seedier end of the pornographic filmtrade, predominantly based in California, often sought to conceal their"acting" careers from friends and family and especially later employers.Now the ability of those pornographic film performers to hide their identitybehind sometimes bizarre stage monikers has been shot to pieces after a websitepublished a leaked database containing the real names, dates of birth, andofficial nicknames of more than 15,000 of the adult industry's hard-workingperformers, past and present.Most of the information revealed by the Porn Wikileaks site is likely to havecome from computer files that originally belonged to the Adult Industry MedicalHealthcare Foundation [AIM], an STD-testing facility based in the San FernandoValley, north of Los Angeles, which caters to the 1,500 working erotic filmactors based in the region at any one time.Under guidelines that are supposed to minimise the spread of HIV and othervenereal diseases ? in an industry that does not always insist on condom useexcept in titles aimed at the gay market ? all pornographic actors are supposedto be tested at the clinic once a month. Producers and directors are then ableto access the database it holds, before casting their movies.The information published by Porn Wikileaks was first uploaded several weeksago but only began being widely disseminated yesterday, after its existence washighlighted by Mike South, a blogger who covers adult entertainment issues."Your information is now in the hands of people who shouldn't have it," hewarned his readers in the trade.Although the leaked database does not include private medical information ortest results, it includes names, addresses and copies of identificationdocuments of everyone who has registered at AIM. In some cases, it alsoincludes Google Maps photos of their homes. The site will therefore effectively"out" anyone who has worked as an erotic actor since the clinic opened in 1998.That prospect is uncomfortable for porn stars who have neglected to informfriends of family members of their profession. And it's even more chilling forformer adult actors who may have quit the trade several years ago in order topursue mainstream employment. In two cases in recent months, US schools havesacked members of their teaching staff after it emerged they had starred inerotic films when younger.No one knows what motivated the creator of Porn Wikileaks, which is amateurishand yesterday struggled to cope with a sudden surge in traffic. The site isregistered in the Netherlands, apparently by a disgruntled member of the "pornpress", and describes the purpose of its existence as being a "mediaorganisation" devoted to making the industry more transparent.The leak of the database meanwhile comes at a bad time for the AIM clinic,which was founded by Sharon Mitchell, a former adult actress, in 1998. It wasbriefly closed by regulators last year following an HIV outbreak amongperformers tested there.--* WHERE'S MY ARTICLE, WORLD?http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Flick_Harrison* FLICK's WEBSITE & BLOG: http://www.flickharrison.com

*:sorry for any cross posting:*www.unicommon.org<http://www.unicommon.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=132&Itemid=324>We are students, precarious, unemployed, a young generation that is too muchskilled for a job... We are the 'generation without future' of a Europe incrisis that we don't like and we want to change. We are students of Rome andLondon who have taken the streets to reclaim a better future.In these months we have learned a lot from what is happened in Tunisia andEgypt, events that we have followed with attention, curiosity andapprehension. The struggles of Maghreb and Mashreq have inspired us becausewe have identified ourselves in the slogan of a young generation and itshigh expectations, that are too high for the future that corrupted regimesand government in crisis want to offer us. In these months we have learnedthat the struggle of Tunisi and Egypt are our struggles!For this reason we want to go to Tunisi, to meet the protagonist of therevolt and build up together a new and different Europe, that is able to gointo the other side of the Mediterranean Sea: a new space full of projectsand common struggles.Inventing a new geography breaking the borders, setting up new directions,discovering new traces: the students of the UniCommon network will be inTunisia starting from the 7 April 2011 together with the project United forFreedom, a caravan that will go to Lybia border in order to help who areescaping from bombs and mercenaries, to shout "no war": humanitarian war ornot.bringing medicines and first-aid materials, because flight is a right,because flight the war is everytime an act of courage!Days in Tunisi from the 7th to 12th of April will be very intense. Newrelationships, learning a lot from those have made the revolt, showing asolidarity beyond the rethoric. Inventing a new compass of struggle, a newlanguage and grammar for the movement: this is the challenge of this march.For this reason we have decided to move and we would like to invite allstudents and precarious of Europe to joint us!Unicommoninfo: 2011caravan-ZvJ7cn4oP1WEi8DpZVb4nw< at >public.gmane.org*******[French version] Nous sommes les étudiants, les précaires, les chômeurs, lesjeunes qui ont le malheur d’être « trop qualifiés » pour trouver unemploi. Nous sommes la « génération sans futur » d’une Europe en crise, quene nous n’aimons pas et que nous voulons changer. Nous sommes les étudiantsde Rome et Londres qui ont descendu dans la rue pour prendre en main leurfutur. Dans ces mois, nous avons beaucoup appris des évènements qui se sontdéroulés en Tunisie et en Egypte, évènements que nous avons suivi avecattention, curiosité et appréhension. Inspirés des luttes dans le Maghrebet dans le Mashreq nous nous sommes reconnus dans les mots d’ordre d’unegénération dont les attentes sont trop ambitieuses pour le futur que desrégimes pourris et des gouvernements en crise nous réservent. Dans ces mois,nous avons appris que les luttes tunisiennes et égyptiennes sont les nôtres! 
Justement pour ces raisons nous avons décidé de nous mettre en voyagepour aller à Tunis et rencontrer les protagonistes de la révolte etconstruire tous ensemble une Europe différente, capable de franchir laMéditerranée pour générer un espace nouveau riche de projets et de luttescommunes.Rompre les frontières pour inventer tous ensemble des géographies et desdirections nouvelles, découvrir des nouvelles traces : les étudiants duréseau Unicommon seront à Tunis à partir du 7 Avril 2011 en soutenant leprojet Unis pour la Liberté, une caravane qui ira jusqu’à la frontièrelibyque pour donner de l’aide à ceux qui se sauvent des bombes et desmercenaires, pour dire « non» à toute forme de guerre, plus ou mois «humanitaire ». Après Tunis, on ira vers le champ de réfugiés de CitaBenghardane, en portant avec nous des médicaments et tout ce qui peut servirau premier accueil, car la fuite est un droit, car repousser la guerre esttoujours un acte de courage |Ce seront des jours intenses ceux que nous vivrons en Tunisie entre 7 et 12d’Avril, pour tisser des nouvelles relations, apprendre par ceux qui ontanimé les révoltes, montrer une solidarité qui dépasse la rhétoriqued’habitude. Tout ça signifie inventer une nouvelle carte des luttes, desnouveaux langages et grammatiques de mouvement : voilà le défi de cettecaravane. Justement pour cette raison nous avons décidé de partir et nousappelons tous les étudiants et les précaires d’Europe à faire pareil et àpartir avec nous.Unicommoninfo: 2011caravan-ZvJ7cn4oP1WEi8DpZVb4nw< at >public.gmane.org*******[Spanish version] Nosotros somos estudiantes, precarios, desempleados,jovenes que tienen la malasuerte de ser “demasiado calificados” para buscarun empleo. Somos la “generación sin futuro” de una Europa en crisis, que nonos gusta y que queremos cambiar. Somos los estudiantes de Roma y deLondres, que se fueron a la calle para volver a tomarse en sus manos supropio futuro. En estos meses hemos aprendido mucho de los acontecimientosde Tunisia y de Egipto, acontecimientos que hemos seguido con atención ,curiosidad y aprención. Las luchas en el Magreb y en el Mashrek nos hancotidianamente inspirado porque nos hemos reconocido en °°° de unageneración que tienen unas esperas demasiado ambiciosas para aquel futuroque los regimenes corruptos y los gobiernos en crisis nos ofrecen. En estosmeses aprendimos que las luchas tunisinas y egiptianas son tambien lasnuestras!Por esto queremos meternos en viaje y ir a Tunis para encontrar losprotagonistas de las revueltas y construir juntos una Europa diferente, quesepa cruzar el Mediterraneo: un nuevo espacio lleno de proyectos y luchascomunes.Romper las fronteras para inventar nuevas geografías, direcciones, ydescubrir trazas nuevas: los estudiantes de la red Unicommon serán a Tunisdesde el 7 de abril de 2011, apoyando al proyecto Unidos para la Libertad,una carovana que se ira hasta la frontera líbica para llevar una ayuda a losque se fuyen de las bombas y de los mercenarios, para decir “no” acualquiera forma de guerra, que sea humanitaria o menos. Desde Tunis, dehecho, iremos hacia elCampo de refugiados de Cita Benghardane, llevando con nosotros medicamientosy todo lo que puede servis a una primera acogida, porqué la (fuga**) es underecho, porqué escaparse de la guerra es siempre un acto de coraje!Serán días intensos los que viviremos en Tunisia entre el 7 y el 12 deabril, para tejir nuevas relaciones, aprender de los que han dado vida a lasrevueltas, demonstrando una solidaridad que vaya más allá de la retóricahabitual. Todo eso significa inventar un nuevo mapa de las luchas, un idiomanuevo y una nueva gramática del movimiento: aquí está el desafío de estacarovana. Para esto hemos decidido salir y invitamos a todos lasestudiantes, las precarias de Europa a hacer lo mismo y ponerse en viaje connosotras.*Unicommoninfo: 2011caravan-ZvJ7cn4oP1WEi8DpZVb4nw< at >public.gmane.org*

*Japan ? Fissures in the Planetary Apparatus*http://jfissures.wordpress.comWhile we are observing the new impetus of global uprising against capitalism and the state, the catastrophic situation is arising in Japan. Triggered by the earthquake and tsunami of maximal scale, Northeastern part of Honshu has been devastated by the increasing number of losses and refugees, and the worsening nuclear disaster. The activity of the planet has shown not only its unequivocal nonhuman force but also the degree in which our societies and their apparatuses forged by capitalism are relying on, merging with, implicated in and expanding over the planet in an extremely ominous manner. What the so-called natural disaster is showing on this occasion is nothing but the implication of the apparatus in the environment and its fatal effects.In this situation, we intend to translate, quote and analyze as much information as possible from Japanese into English, and translate your encouragements, comments, suggestions, analysis, proposals and anything written in English into Japanese for the vantage point of the people struggling there and everywhere.At the moment in Japan, the government is trying to make the situation look as normal as possible, by veiling crucial information on the degree of radiation and the calamitous condition of the reactors. This menacing situation notwithstanding, it does not show any intension to terminate its pro-nuclear power policy. In accordance with the benefit of TEPCO (The Tokyo Electric Power Co), it is instigating temporal blackout in large areas outside central Tokyo, as if sending the message to the people: ?no nuclear power, no electricity.? It also makes tremendous efforts to isolate and contain the stricken areas and the increasing number of refugees, by mobilizing massive number of the Self Defense Forces, mainly for driving the business as usual of the capitalist operations. Meanwhile the media is seeking to reproduce the image of a society without dissent by orchestrating the campaign to ?Save Japan in Unity.? Some proxy intellectuals are inflaming patriotism even by awakening the nationalist sentiment from the fascist regime of the past.Nonetheless, as the contamination worsens and expands, resident foreigners have begun to leave Japan, and some Japanese who are able to have begun their exodus to the west. The agony, anger and angst of the people, especially those who have to sustain their livelihood in Tokyo and northward therefrom, are unimaginable. It is a reminder of the stories from the Cyber Punk era in terms of dystopia finally realized.Meanwhile activists of anti-authoritarian vein are striving to begin various campaigns: a call for de-nuke general strike, a new anti-nuclear movement, protests against the government and TEPCO, establishment of refugees? communes in metropolis such as Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka, and sending the ?People Rescue Troops? to the stricken north. A mass mobilization is yet to be seen. Facing the imminent possibility of catastrophe, the people are also expecting a long long term struggle, for survival and break-out of the pro-nuclear governance. Taking into consideration the situation in Japan, we find it necessary to establish a global network to create a current of both resources and persons in and out of Japan, accursed and confined archipelago. To begin with, we are preparing a place for exchanging critical voices from there and elsewhere, to find a way out of the dystopian cul-de-sac, and create a path to undo and reorient the course of the world whose worst effects are manifest there at the moment.

This is really heartbreaking. Mute might merit passing mention in ritualistic histories of nettime,but I doubt the list would still exist if it weren't for the Mutants'collective efforts. To call those efforts 'sustained' risks soundinglike some awful award; but in a field where many have flitted aroundfrom one project to another, sixteen years of publishing some of thebest writing in the field is absolutely sustained -- and sustaining. T<http://www.metamute.org/en/mute_100_per_cent_cut_by_ace> [256] Mute's 100% cut by ACE - a personal consideration of Mute's defunding, by co-founder Pauline van Mourik Broekman [257] Editorial content | [258] Articles [259] Share ___ reads | [260] view pdf | [261] Printer-friendly version Submitted by [262] mute on Friday, 1 April, 2011 - 15:34 By Pauline van Mourik Broekman Please send us your comments and feedback on Mute's 100% cut by ACE this week. We are hoping to set this in the context of the broader cuts across the arts and society, which represent a sustained assault on the conditions for free expression, critical thinking, and independent production - be that directly or indirectly. You can do that on [263] http://metamute.org , Facebook [264] http://linkme2.net/p5 , [265] http://twitter.com/mutemagazine [266] < at >mutemagazine , on our list, Mute-social [267] http://lists.metamute.org/mailman/listinfo/mute-social , or email, [268] mute-nCTaps5r1Y9TeqIcxkLZrQ< at >public.gmane.org Thanks! ** We are very sad to announce that, on Wednesday, Mute Publishing found itself in the category of 'losers' as these emerged from ACE's National Portfolio Organisation decisions. The magazine had presented to ACE a programme that combined a web and print magazine, books and events, community self-publishing, education, and digital strategy support and advocacy work, but faltered in the second stage of the assessment process, where its financially precarious position and 'weak' governance structure - as well as the perception other organisations were better placed to deliver to ACE's strategic goals - proved fatal, resulting in a 100% cut to core funding. We regard the process of being placed in competition with other arts organisations as poisonous and distracting: while we will privately question the sizeable uplifts granted to large, established organisations (which, in the greater scheme of things, need further funding about as urgently as Paris Hilton needs another handbag), in the end we recognise it as a familiar part of the divide-and-rule principle that has long marked the operations of support agencies like ACE, where a chronic reliance on the parent body for the basic apparatus of organisational reproduction nurtures fear among the 'dependents' - slowly but surely stripping them of all sense they can do anything for themselves, let alone together... The spectacle of slavish gratitude for the spoils of public funds, in which even organisations cut or killed felt compelled to reiterate the basic tenets of ACE's funding paradigm (excellence, innovation, global leadership and creativity), were truly depressing in this regard - not one voice standing out for offering a different vision or lexicon of practice. For us, the relevant story is elsewhere, as it has always been, and is effectively being obscured by a smoke-screen of rhetoric: it is said that 'adventurous and risk-taking programming is being rewarded', and a 'resilient' arts portfolio composed. Although we concertedly participated in the process, adapting our organisation's operational model to that demanded by ACE's 'Achieving Great Art for Everyone' agenda (within which we happily chose to deliver to the Excellence and Innovation Aims), the relevant story lies in the devastation being wrought upon the social in general. Here, in the name of prudent economic management, Government's disinvestment in art and education (two fields with which Mute interfaces most intimately) appears as a symptom of a larger programme of creative destruction, launched in the name of an aggressively kickstarted, entrepreneurial Britain that we all know is doomed to fail, but not without wrecking the lives of millions. To be a 'winner' in the arts variant of this competition (and that means those who, as The Guardian dubbed it, 'won big'; not the hundreds kept on on a shoestring), several kinds of compliance are required. Firstly, a near religious belief in the power of art to 'deliver' personal transformation. Second, a normative and by now entirely standardised model of art-organisational development, where success is measured via the ability to diversify funding sources (via trading activities, rights management, sponsorship, philanthropy and a variety of non-public sources), have 'reach and impact' (loose catch-alls combining audiences, media reception, influence), and offer 'engagement' - all of which, it is reiterated, can only be achieved by bodies in possession of larger executive boards, which have represented on them 'experts' from the realms of Finance, Legal, Development and Artistic Vision, and who watch Income and Expenditure lines like hawks, assuring they mitigate risk, execute their mission and stay on a number of targets, as these encompass financial, audience and strategic partnership projections. As Mute - and many others, such as the Scottish based Variant magazine (another 'loser' of late) - has attempted to discuss in a series of articles stretching back decades, the backdoor this structure has offered to an entirely corporatised version of art, wherein genuine diversity and antagonism is replaced by superficially different versions of doing the same thing (and many platforms for critical discussion gradually desist from analysing culture as a whole to discussing the ins, outs, rights and wrongs of particular art forms), is one of the great untold stories of mainstream contemporary culture. As a critical platform seeking to understand culture in the round - i.e. in the many and various ways it exemplifies, illuminates and engages with larger processes (be they, to put it cheesily, part of the 'macro' dimension of global economics, or the 'micro' level of subjectivity) - we have attempted to shore up our core editorial work with a range of others that could help subsidise this. OpenMute, our consultancy and tools agency, through which we also facilitate the publishing activity of many other independent producers, has been the most visible result. But the free-content economy of the web, which felt like a natural home for our discussions, eventually became Mute's nemesis, as sales and subscriptions decreased at the same speed our web readership grew, and a growing international community of readers slowly and unwittingly dealt our 'business model' a death-blow. We must now figure out what to do about this, as all of us who've worked on the magazine for so long have no intention of stopping our work because of a funding decision. Many different working models can and are already being imagined. Others in the many small to medium sized digitally-led organisations which have been cut will be trying to figure out their futures similarly, as will, it seems, many comparable small organisations whose governing remits aren't deemed essential in the current round. We are particularly perplexed by the blow dealt to diversity-led organisations, who engage with questions we imagine will increase rather than decrease in urgency in 'Austerity Britain'. We will attempt to continue the discussion in a number of places. One, on our website, Metamute.org, which publishes weekly and where we will open space for responses to ACE's funding decisions, on Mute Publishing as well as other organisations, as well as the Googlegroup, acedigitaluncut and media arts discussion list CRUMB*, where many are hoping to marshall a more specific discussion about the apparent disinvestment in the still badly understood area of digital practice. ACE's decisions reflect a presumption digital has been 'dealt with' by conceiving of it as integrated in routine organisational development processes, rather than demanding to be explored as a highly self-reflexive area of work with a long and rich history linking into video, performance, independent publishing, installation art, software development, literature and more. Given the consolidation, surveillance and privatisation happening in the digital realm as we speak, now seems exactly the wrong time to be making such a move. The fact that ACE (and partner organisations like the BBC) are seeking to align themselves with digital innovation and broadcasting at exactly the same time just demonstrates further ignorance and shortsightedness. Yours sincerely, Pauline van Mourik Broekman Director and co-founder of Mute, with Simon Worthington, and writing on behalf of brilliant staff, Editorial and Advisory Boards, namely Josephine Berry Slater, Caroline Heron, Howard Slater, Darron Broad, Laura Oldenbourg; Omar El-Khairy, Matthew Hyland, Anthony Iles, Demetra Kotouza, Hari Kunzru, Mira Mattar, Benedict Seymour, Stefan Szczelkun; Sally Jane Norman, Andrew Seto, Sukhdev Sandhu and Andy Wilson. *Those wishing to subscribe to acedigitaluncut should go to: [269] https://groups.google.com/group/acedigitaluncut?hl=enReferences 255. http://www.metamute.org/en/subject/cyberspace/wap 256. http://www.metamute.org/en/mute_100_per_cent_cut_by_ace 257. http://www.metamute.org/en/content_type/editorial_content 258. http://www.metamute.org/en/content/articles 259. http://www.addtoany.com/share_save 260. http://www.metamute.org/en/html2pdf/view/20 261. http://www.metamute.org/en/print/20 262. http://www.metamute.org/en/user/mute 263. http://metamute.org/ 264. http://linkme2.net/p5 265. http://twitter.com/mutemagazine 266. http://twitter.com/mutemagazine 267. http://lists.metamute.org/mailman/listinfo/mute-social 268. mailto:mute-nCTaps5r1Y9g9hUCZPvPmw< at >public.gmane.org 269. https://groups.google.com/group/acedigitaluncut?hl=en

Hi all,I can't resist a good quote from Oh Brave New World:'Art, Science- You seem to have paid a fairly high price for yourhappiness', said the Savage, when they were alone. 'Anything else?''Well, religion, of course,' replied the Controller. 'There used to besomething called God -... Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)We believe that influence is the ability to drive people to action --"action" might be defined as a reply, a retweet, a comment, or a click. -http://klout.com/Announcer enters the stage: breaking news from the house of Power: I am aRock, I am an IslandBystander: Can you define power?Street cleaner: The claim of states to rightfully assign arbitrary numbersto people, animals and plants and lampposts wedded to the claim ofcorporations to arbitrarily assign copyright and intellectual propertyover simple blocks of data that were simple noise, freely booming loud toall. Power is to hold the decision to decide what is data and what isnoise.All power is temporary.Announcer enters the stage: Well, this is the breaking news:"Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut DownAfter Budgets CutBy Marshall Kirkpatrick / March 31, 2011 2:45 PM / 30 CommentsTwo years ago the incoming Obama administration launched a number ofambitious websites (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/datagov_finally_launches_looks_nice_but_short_on_d.php) , most notablyData.gov (http://data.gov) , that were dedicated to offering public and government data to the outside world. The stated intention was to fostertransparency and offer a platform for the development of new software andservices. It appears those experiments may be over for now. Today theSunlight Foundation (http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2011/03/31/budget- technopocalypse-deepens-transparency-sites-will-go-dark-in-a-few-months/)and Federal News Radio(http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=35&sid=2327798) reported that the public projects Data.gov, USASpending.gov, Apps.gov/now, IT Dashboard and paymentaccuracy.gov as well as a number of internal government sitesincluding Performance.gov, FedSpace and many of the efforts related theFEDRamp cloud computing cybersecurity effort would be taken offline incoming weeks due to budget cuts by Congress. Perhaps things likeelectronic government, software platforms and public accountability werejust fads, anyway.Update:. We're hearing from several places that there's a potentiallyviable effort to save these sites and organizations. Here(http://bit.ly/i16ldO) is one perspective on that and you can also see theSunlight Foundation's Save the Data (http://sunlightfoundation.com/savethedata/) petition. Data.gov & 7 OtherSites to Shut Down After Budgets Cuthttp://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/datagov_7_other_sites_... "Chorus: So what are we looking at here?"What we are looking at here is the decline of imperial powers which hadonce stretched around the globe. In these circumstances, the inquisitorialbureaucracy which we have observed, bedevilled by minutiae which by anyobjective standards are meaningless, seems incomprehensible. Yet theemphasis on the steady accumulation of pieces of paper betrays a mentalityunable to deal with the reality before it: the reality was of an empireand society in precipitous decline: unable to face it, the inquisitorialmentality took refuge in useless documents designed the honour andnobility of the nation.In such circumstances opinions which diverged from the chosen picture ofreality were unwelcome. The truth perhaps hurts most - and provokes mostanger in - those whose are increasingly distant from it. Thus in Spain inparticular the broad current of European though groping towards theEnlightenment in the latter 17th century was unpalatable and had to beprevented from polluting the nation. The movement of scientific enquiry,raised on the shoulders of Bacon, Desc artes, Locke and Spinoza, was adirect challenge to the inquisitorial world view. The Inquisition couldsense from afar that there was an ideology which could deal it a mortalblow in a way that the conversos and the moriscis never had.The Inquisition was right to be suspicious, for some of the moreimportnant roots of this ideology did indeed penetrate back to the verypeople whom the inquisitors had pursued remorselessly for so long, theconversos. The development of the scientific world view was in fact deeplyconnected with the waves of persecution which the Inquisition had firstunleashed in Spain at the end of the 15th century, 200 years before thisera of decline." (Green, Toby. Inquisition, Reign of Fear. Pan Books,2008, p. 257)Bystander: Oh my, I think you are a few hundred years off! ha haStreet sweeper: After all, it is quite logical that these programs wouldstop. At one point you run up against a wall when you ask for opening updatabases. At that moment you will hear that this particular kind of datacannot be 'open' or 'disclosed'. After two years of opening up what can beopened up according to 'officials' you seem to hit a glass wall. That wallis 'state interest'. Then we ask: Hey but aren't we the state? Ah notquite, it seems.Just keep asking and the beast will eventually have to show itself.Singer: (Van Morrison: paraphrasing:You can take all that data from the USAput it in a big brown bag for mesail it right round these seven oceansdrop it straight into the deep blue seashe's as sweet as Tupelo Honeyjust like honey baby from the beeyou can't stop us on the road of freedomand while you at it closing all your fences, leave the lights on inBradley Manning's cell and give him a good nights sleepthen go look for the beesthey are leavingsalut! Rob

Hi, I am not sure if many of you are following this story (the report below comes from CNET). I haven't seen many references to it yet. It is interesting in the light of the sheer endless debates about Twitter/ Facebook revolution yes/no/maybe/no opinion in the Middle East and North Africa. /GeertMarch 29, 2011 11:25 AM PDTFacebook takes down Palestinian intifada pageRead more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20048363-93.html#ixzz1IaR029RrA Facebook page called the Third Palestinian Intifada has been removed from the site following a request from the Israeli government.Yuli Edelstein, Israel's minister of public diplomacy and diaspora affairs, sent a letter directly to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on March 23. In the letter, which has been posted on the Web site The Jerusalem Gift Shop, Edelstein asked the company to take down the page calling for a third intifada, translated by some as violent uprising, to begin against Israel on May 15.Pointing to remarks and movie clips on the page calling for the killing of Israelis and Jews and the liberation of Palestine through violence, Edelstein expressed concern over the "wild incitement" that could be caused by the page, which had collected more than 230,000 friends at the time he wrote the letter.On Friday, the Anti-Defamation League also asked Facebook to remove the page, labeling it "an appalling abuse of technology to promote terrorist violence" with "inflammatory anti-Israel language calling for supporters to build on the previous two intifadas." From its initial response, Facebook appeared reluctant to take action."We strongly believe that Facebook users have the ability to express their opinions, and we don't typically take down content, groups, or Pages that speak out against countries, religions, political entities, or ideas," Facebook spokeswoman Debbie Frost said in a statement e- mailed to Bloomberg.But as of today Facebook had removed the Third Palestinian Intifada page. Explaining its decision, a Facebook spokesman e-mailed CNET the following statement:The Page, The Third Palestinian Intifada, began as a call for peaceful protest, even though it used a term that has been associated with violence in the past. In addition, the administrators initially removed comments that promoted violence. However, after the publicity of the Page, more comments deteriorated to direct calls for violence. Eventually, the administrators also participated in these calls. After administrators of the page received repeated warnings about posts that violated our policies, we removed the Page.Facebook added that it continues to "believe that people on Facebook should be able to express their opinions, and we don't typically take down content that speaks out against countries, religions, political entities, or ideas. However, we monitor Pages that are reported to us and when they degrade to direct calls for violence or expressions of hate--as occurred in this case--we have and will continue to take them down."Saying that it welcomed the decision to take down the page, the Anti- Defamation League asked Facebook to "vigilantly monitor their pages for other groups that call for violence or terrorism against Jews and Israel."Since the removal of the page, new ones have been created to replace it. Though the number of friends is small so far compared with the original, the new pages appear to mimic the first one with further calls in both English and Arabic for a new intifada.Literally translated as "shaking off," the word intifada is more commonly translated as "revolution" or "uprising." Palestinians have staged two intifadas, according to CNN, one that began in 1987 and another that started in 2000. During the second intifada, thousands of Israelis and Palestinians died, CNN said.Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20048363-93.html#ixzz1IaQhWE6g

*:sorry for any cross posting:*www.unicommon.org<http://www.unicommon.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=132&Itemid=324>The caravan "United for freedom" started from Tunis three days ago andUnicommon is participating as part of the Unicommon March. The firstapproach to the capitol city is marked by the huge attention from thepopulation and media to the war in Libya and the state of migrants inLampedusa, Italy. Indeed, in Italy migrants from Maghreb and Mashriq aretreated in a terrible way, living at inhuman conditions and being deportedin Centres of identification that work as jail in italian territory.Hundreds of them escaped from the Manduria Centre: freedom and pursuit of abetter future cannot be contained! As in Italy migrants escape fromdetention centers, in Tunisia self-managed groups are organizingsolidarity, helping collecting medicines and first aid materials. 150thousands people have been helped by them: the caravan "United fro freedom"and Unicommon will give them all the materials we will collect, on goingwith these networksto the libyan border.The meeting with the Union UGTT has been rich of exchange and emergingproblematics, well explaining the complexity of a country that is facing ahuge transformation after the revolts. Someone underlined as this revolt isrooted in the struggles during 60s and 70s, despite Ben Ali repression, andthe central role that women played in the revolts. There is the absolutenecessity of monitoring the constituent process of the revolution,continuing to take to the streets to affirm the right to freedom and income,against poverty and unemployment. [readmore]<http://www.unicommon.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2700:news-from-the-caravan-qunited-for-freedomq-&catid=132:book-bloc&Itemid=324>READ<http://www.unicommon.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2667:fuk-the-rich-love-and-anger-in-uk-&catid=132:book-bloc&Itemid=324> ::thetext about Unicommon in London:: report/videos/photos from blockades anddemoREAD<http://www.unicommon.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2692:unicommon-the-revolt-of-living-knowledge-invent-the-future-reverse-the-present&catid=140:materials&Itemid=337>::inventthe furture, reverse the present:: flier from UnicommonREAD<http://www.unicommon.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2697:march-21-26th-week-of-action-in-the-netherlands&catid=132:book-bloc&Itemid=324>::book block in Netherlands :: report and videos by Ehsancritique.com

Re: <nettime> hysteria cook-off <...> Rama Hoetzlein <rch-YszBOzCFqnGCCSEA9G1mgw< at >public.gmane.org> "yonatan reinberg" <yoner-97jfqw80gc6171pxa8y+qA< at >public.gmane.org> { brad brace } <bbrace-qx95VtOkOx/QT0dZR+AlfA< at >public.gmane.org> Michael Wojcik <mwojcik-kFrNdAxtuftBDgjK7y7TUQ< at >public.gmane.org>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2011 17:58:55 +0200From: Rama Hoetzlein <rch-YszBOzCFqnGCCSEA9G1mgw< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: =?windows-1252?Q?Re=3A_=3Cnettime=3E_hysteria_cook-off_=28?=Despite anti-globalism in the security theatre following 9/11, open source write-in software by GM foods accelerates global warming and Japan's precariat reactor troubles.23 words. : )-RamaOn 4/4/2011 6:49 AM, Morlock Elloi wrote:<...>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -From: "yonatan reinberg" <yoner-97jfqw80gc6171pxa8y+qA< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re: <nettime> hysteria cook-off (Re: Japan =?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=93?=Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2011 13:10:33 -0300you can connect them all:if the press response to 9/11 had been more open-source, like the social-media, anti-globalism-provoked outcry to the Japan reactor problems, theunited states wouldn't have forged ahead with its sad security theatre,forcing the tsa to disrobe your grandmother. nowadays, with a class ofjournalists derived from the precariat driving the 24 hour cycle of tweets,retweets and "likes", we can't convincingly set up same paranoid apparatus.sadly, the same can't be said of GM foods, which governments areincreasingly protecting as the [write-in] intellectual property of globalcapital.yoniOn Sun, 3 Apr 2011 21:49:26 -0700 (PDT), "Morlock Elloi"<morlockelloi-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> said: <...>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2011 12:44:44 -0700 (PDT)From: { brad brace } <bbrace-qx95VtOkOx/QT0dZR+AlfA< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re: <nettime> =?utf-8?q?hysteria_cook-off_=28Re=3A__Japan_=E2=80=93_F?=you might add GE's (Japanese nuclear-plants) failure to paytaxes on several billions in profit.../:bOn Sun, 3 Apr 2011, Morlock Elloi wrote: <...>============= <...>/:b- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2011 11:49:32 -0400From: Michael Wojcik <mwojcik-kFrNdAxtuftBDgjK7y7TUQ< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: =?windows-1252?Q?Re=3A_=3Cnettime=3E_hysteria_cook-off_=28?=On 2011-04-04 00:49, Morlock Elloi wrote: <...>The Fukushima global catastrophe illuminates how the 9/11 attacks werestaged security theater intended to distract us from the need toopen-source the genomes of GM foods before they proliferate in awarming climate and drive out evolved species which offer greaterresistance to radiation.OK, someone needs to work "precariat" and "write-in" into that.As for "convincingly" - historically, what has been more convincingthan utter nonsense? The Big Lie is our trump of tropes.

PRESS RELEASEThe Unbound BookA Conference on Reading and Publishing in the Digital AgeAmsterdam and Den Haag, The Netherlands19 - 21 May 2011*For full program and tickets go to: www.e-boekenstad.nl/unbound/ *The conventional notion of the book, based on centuries of print, hasgrown outdated. The book is coming unbound, freed from the bindings ofthe printed volume and from the limitations of conventional text. Howwill today’s multimedia content and online modes of authorship offerentirely new vistas of book-like functions? How should we preservevital features of conventional print? How will the chain from authorto reader develop?Left without obvious contours, the entire concept of ‘bookness’ needsreinvention. Cultural forces must step in to design and develop futuremodels for learning, publishing, and design. The Unbound BookConference, the largest in scope in The Netherlands to date, bringstogether researchers, publishers, librarians and designers from aroundthe world to take part in defining this rapidly changing landscape.Featuring: Arianne Baggerman (University of Amsterdam), James Bridle(booktwo.org, London), Florian Cramer (Piet Zwart Institute,Rotterdam), Gary Hall (Coventry University, UK), Suzanne Holtzer (DeBezige Bij publishers, NL), Liz McGettigan (Library EdinburghCouncil), Miha Kovac (University of Ljubljana), Tomas Krag(Booksprint, Copenhagen), Veljko Kukulj (Geanium, Croatia), Alan Liu(UC Santa Barbara), Anne Mangen (Stravanger University, Norway),Bernhard Rieder (University of Amsterdam), Ray Siemens (University ofVictoria, CA), Femke Snelting (Open Source Publishing, Brussels),Nicholas Spice (London Review of Books), Bob Stein (Institute for theFuture of the Book, NY), Simon Worthington (Mute Magazine, London),Frank van Amerongen (ThiemeMeulenhoff publishers, NL), and more.Also featuring the book launches of the Institute of Network Culture'snew publication Critical Point of View: a Wikipedia Reader (20 May,Koninklijke Bibliotheek) and the Graphic Design Museum's newpublication I Read Where I Am (21 May, Openbare BibliotheekAmsterdam).Dates and Locations:19 May Sessions: Hogeschool van Amsterdam, Rhijnspoorplein 1,Amsterdam: http://www.hva.nl/locaties/20 May Conference Day 1: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, PrinsWillem-Alexanderhof 5, Den Haag: www.kb.nl21 May Conference Day 2: Openbare Bibliotheek, Oosterdokskade 143,Amsterdam: www.oba.nlEditorial team: Morgan Currie (Institute of Network Cultures), JoostKircz (Hogeschool van Amsterdam), Geert Lovink (Institute of NetworkCultures), Bas Savenije (Dutch National Library), Adriaan van der Weel(University of Leiden)The Unbound Book is an Initiative of CREATE-IT Applied research centreat the Hogeschool van Amsterdam, the Book and Digital Media Studies atthe University of Leiden, and the Institute of Network Cultures.Buy tickets now at: www.e-boekenstad.nl/unbound/For more information contact morgan-xAlTj2NUtBEeri3KQaAn9UB+6BGkLq7r< at >public.gmane.org

re all,FYI: http://www.dyndy.net/2011/04/bitcoin-presented-to-the-old-world/Bitcoin presented to the Old-world Posted on Wednesday, April 6, 2011 Filed under Conference, Currency Tagged with cash, crypto, P2P, public Related articles: * [23]Action in London, Revolutionary Credit Cards * [24]Process Ecology: the lesson from Nature for assessing the Monetary System Just back from the 10th edition of the [25]EPCA conference held in Amsterdam, where I was a shoulder for my friend Genjix: bitcoin developers were invited to talk about [26]Bitcoin to a specialized audience of mostly >50 years old banker types in suits, with very few exceptions. Genjix presenting bitcoin in EPCA2011 The incipit of the conference booklet recites: “Over 200 transaction services professionals from all over the world will attend, discuss and experience this leading platform. For the last 10 years we have been on top of trends and developments in payments. We focus in particular on strategic innovation and break-through developments in on-line transactions“. And in fact it looked pretty well populated for that kind of context: besides the white-male-with-suits first scary impression, especially for those who value variety, from the written documentation available (I haven’t attended talks) one can tell these people run quite some businesses – at least they did until now <g>- and quite successfully. The brochures of the conference talk about transaction systems, RFID/NFC payment devices and all flavors of bank related products along the names of “Mobile Money”, “Secure SD”, “ePassport” and “Automated Fare Collection”. Our guy Genjix is a colorful and open minded type, witty and messy, a good mix that entertained the people present despite it being the last presentation of the day; he did a good (unpaid) job presenting some quite impressive information on the growth and usage of Bitcoin, making people present progressively interested (or pissed, but then hard to notice behind the suits) at this crypto-cash system that seems to be there to stay or, one could argue, to multiply in different flavors in the near future. “Being shown an anonymous digital currency with its own laundering service. Used for selling drugs. Bit-coin, you have cheered me up.” Michael Price The presentation didn’t hide even the most controversial aspects of bitcoin, pointing out to some very extreme usage: something that seemed to relieve the audience, considering that banker types are pretty beaten up by corporate ethics evangelists nowadays. In such cases Bitcoin tends to show that anonymity is used in the “worst” way, which is still half of the story. We are still far from developing a positive narrative on anonymity and continuing on this track will likely move policy makers into massive identification campaigns, as it has been now since the 9/11 sad facts. Still on the good side for bitcoin is its working implementation of a distributed system relying on an “open source algorithmic contract”: something definitely inspiring that knocks off the hegemony of old-world currencies – and one can hardly imagine how they’ll ever recover from this manifest process ultimately due to the unstoppable, immanent influence of the digital dimension. Bitcoin is a messenger and the message it carries doesn’t originates even from a person, or a group of people, not even an organization or a company: it’s a Geist (or Zeitgeist, should we say) that impersonates the ultimate dissolution of centralized governance: everything that was solid melts into thin air, should we mourn once again, while all those who were on the deregulation train in 1984 have now to face their kids reminding them how their World is made of lies – and dreams, apparently, still alive. Following a materialist point of view (and crypto-agnostic, we’ll argue) bitcoin can surely be interpreted as a [27]Rube-Goldberg machine for buying electricity – and this was even our very first reaction at DYNDY when we got to know it the first time. Surely these are times when materialism is needed, as opposed to more abstract financial blabbering, but then consider that the processing power in bitcoin serves to strengthen the network authentication: all that electricity is energy invested by participants to enforce the integrity of the network. Now consider how old monetary systems keep their integrity: a huge government building with armed guards along the perimeter, to not even mention the huge investment of resources and infrastructure to distribute this money (street level access) and authenticate it at transaction time. Remember prof. Greco? we’ve been talking about this… Bitcoin is a “disruptive technology”, but disruptive for whom? as a human creation, it inherits human problems that are also present in older systems; still P2P currencies as bitcoin let us save energy rather than consume more, also substituting the violence of armed guards with agile and cryptographic communications. Ultimately, the positive message that bitcoin also carries is that of more possibilities in engineering currencies, that of a future in which complementary currencies can make economic systems more resilient to the the disruption of capitalist behaviors, while closely relating people to their community values and maybe even revolutionize the way we contribute to the common good – paying taxes for what we really care, rather than not paying them, let me add. Quoting Wei Dai in [28]one of bitcoin’s founding texts: “It’s a community where the threat of violence is impotent because violence is impossible, and violence is impossible because its participants cannot be linked to their true names or physical locations. Until now it’s not clear, even theoretically, how such a community could operate. A community is defined by the cooperation of its participants, and efficient cooperation requires a medium of exchange (money) and a way to enforce contracts.” Now I’m wondering how people present at the EPCA 2011 conference feel, threatened or pleased by this epiphany? in either case it might be interesting to watch reactions. The transaction products I read of are stacking on technological complexity and seamless design that is ultimately undermining the very possibility for people to trust them. On top of that now there are on-line grass-root communities actively building new systems in a decentralized fashion. Will the monopoly of violence enter this game to defend the old-system, despite the squeaking sounds of its carcass, the diffused lack of trust for old hierarchies and the lack for collective agency within its cheated rules? We will see where this ends up: after all today it felt like one of those historical days marked by such a talk made by a little provocative guy wearing a t-shirt and nail polish speaking in front of a old and well dressed audience – but then no-one was really scared. IRC excerpt from #bitcoin-dev during the conference:<jaromil> sirius-m: i'd expect some more fashion happening<topi`> jaro: they just don't know how :)<sirius-m> thanks for being there, it's a new important audience for bitcoin<sirius-m> people who otherwise might not hear about the project<jaromil> true but knowing the types i think they are thinking how to fork it in their own advantage<jaromil> prolly wasted effort<topi`> at least they start talking about it:)<topi`> good luck finding ways to exploit the system<krytzz> hopefully they cant fork the network<krytzz> only could start a seperate one :(<sirius-m> nah, it's good that you're spreading the word :)<topi`> if there *will* be some threat coming from corporate sector, then we'llfinally find out how resilient the whole architecture is :) Like this article? Donate BTC :^D 1GJehYZs5BZfL4RTCBFUpTVrjX6XRhDWdq * Comments open on the DYNDY article website http://www.dyndy.net/2011/04/bitcoin-presented-to-the-old-world/ * Copyleft © 2010-2011 GNU FDL dyne.org foundationReferences Visible links 23. http://www.dyndy.net/2011/03/action-in-london-revolutionary-credit-cards/ 24. http://www.dyndy.net/2011/03/the-analogy-with-process-ecology-for-assessing-the-monetary-system/ 25. http://www.epcaconference.com/ 26. http://bitcoin.org/ 27. http://trustcurrency.blogspot.com/2011/03/bitcoin-rube-goldberg-machine-for.html 28. http://weidai.com/bmoney.txt Hidden links: 88. http://www.dyndy.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/genjix_bitcoin_epca11.jpg 89. http://www.dyndy.net/wp-content/pdf/newspaper.pdf

Press Release, April 7th, 2011. Belgrade.Face to Facebookhttp://www.face-to-facebook.netA project by Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico.Legal update:After sending us a "cease and desist letter" (which led to making the website Lovely-Faces.com unavailable), asking us to give them back the 1M publicly available data and terminating our Facebook personal accounts, Facebook lawyers are continuing to follow up with us. First they are insisting on asking us to remove all the content from the Face-to-Facebook.net domain, which is the website documenting the project. This request sounds quite surreal for us: this website merely contains a collection of texts, materials and links related to Face-to- Facebook project. Even more, we have received a threat from Facebook legal department about the claim that the face-to-facebook.net domain name is violating Facebook trademark.So, why should such a big online corporation push a couple of artists to remove the documentation of their project? Our lawyers are investigating the legal basis of their request.Global Mass Media Hack Performance:http://www.face-to-facebook.net/press-coverage.phpMeanwhile, the news went through to more than 1000 media reports, reaching a wide audience spread all over the globe. Very different stages were involved like: tv, radio, newspapers, magazines, blogs, portals and plenty of personal blogs, not counting the thousands of tweets. The pattern of propagation would need time to be properly analyzed, but it definitively is "viral", especially in some countries like Brazil, Pakistan, Greece, Turkey, Ukraine.There are plenty of captivating scenes in this mass media performance, like for example the one where 93 per cent of the 7538 participants to the online poll opened by the Australian newspaper The Age answered "Yes" to the question "Should Lovely-faces.com require consent to use your photo?" Maybe that influenced also the blog "Ethics Alarms" to declare Lovely-Faces.com as "Unethical Website of the Month." And the controversial aspect of the project has been clearly picked up even by some popular U.S. TV news (see links below) sometimes resulting as quite bizarre.Some selected TV News videos:* MyFox LA, Los Angeles Fox News Tvhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJYRM9VAtsE* WSBTV, Atlanta WSB-TV channel 2http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye3Qyz-ojvI* Newsy, Online video news analysishttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlDs3PdGKSA* Apple daily HK, Taiwan, China, Hong-Kong-based newspaperhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STSNZqoqk24* Tagesschau, German public TV ARD channel 1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzCh1XPWlMYSome selected online Interviews:* CNN, US - Art 'hacktivists' take on Facebook:http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/02/11/artists.facebook.project* 2010LAB (Video), Germany - Facebook and Transmediale - your face is ours:http://www.2010lab.tv/en/video/facebook-and-transmediale-your-face-ours* Artinfo.com, US - The Artist Who's Out to Liberate Facebook:http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/36912/the-artist-whos-out-to-liberate-facebook-a-qa-with-profile-thief-paolo-cirio* Artline, Switzerland - Sculptors of data - Die Daten-Bildhauerhttp://www.artline.org/?p=detail&id=10736&back=home&L=0* Jetzt, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany - Feldzug gegen Facebook:http://jetzt.sueddeutsche.de/texte/anzeigen/519492/Feldzug-gegen-Facebook* Politika, Serbia, newspaperhttp://www.politika.rs/rubrike/spektar/zivot-i-stil/Uzeli-smo-desetine-hiljada-profila-iz-Srbije.sr.html* Ha'aretz, Israel, newspaperhttp://www.haaretz.co.il/captain/spages/1217717.htmlExhibitions and presentations of Face to Facebook during April:* Share Conferences, presentation , Belgrade - Serbia* ENTER Festival, exhibition & presentation, Prague - Czech Republic* Chilling Effects, exhibition & presentation at TETEM, Enschede - The Netherlands* REALITYFLOWHACKED, exhibition, Paolo Cirio's solo show at Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana - Slovenja* EMAF 2011, presentation, Osnabrück - GermanyPaolo and Alessandro.

When I saw the film the first time I almost got to vomit. Because allthese pans to Slavoj Žižek were like a pre-post-traumaticpedestrian-area-expert-cut-up. Well, in _Marx Reloaded_ (in German _Sinddie Tage des Kapitalismus gezaehlt?_*) Negri and the others once againtalk only in this good arte-manner what the chief economist of theDeutsche Bank at the other pole doesn't say. Who deems this cuttingdialectical montage produces obviously just a hipness of characters. Sothis is the way how you get film subsidy, this is your aesthetic regime.Sloterdijk, the German anti-prole, fiend of workers, bleakly is on thelist of speakers. One then concludes that the days of capitalism arenumbered, yes, that one does not want it anymore like this butdifferent. But this is not the matter of the film, it is the matter withthe film. Even state culture television/TV Culture d'État is allowed tosay anything, to let think anything. So this is the embracement ofrevolutionary thoughts by revolutionaristic picture-talk, this is theway of bite-sized silencing by means of silver-tongued heads. (ms)arte_Marx Reloaded_http://videos.arte.tv/en/videos/marx_reloaded-3817744.htmlDocumentary of Jason Barker and Alexandra WeltzWe., 20.04.2011 05:00 am (in Europe)_________________________* _Are the days of capitalism numbered?_

In the last two years we have participated and assisted with extraordinarymovements that have fought for a quality education, for labor rights and newwelfare against the austerity politics of the European Union. The wilddemonstrations, pickets lines and strikes, the university occupations andthe turmoil of the Mediterranean signal a generational revolt and thenecessity of a new social pact that involves all those subjects that standup for their rights and refuse to be blackmailed. The huge strikes lastautumn in France showed us the possibility of creating an intergenerationalalliance, as blockades of production and circulation of goods constitutedifferent aspects of a common struggle. In Rome, as in London, the BookBlock was a collective political practice able to speak out about thedismantling of public universities and processes of deskilling. At the sametime, the revolts of Maghreb- Mashrek demonstrate how the construction of afuture is tightly bound to both the radical claim for democracy and with thenecessity of freedom from the parasitic and corrupt power that commands overour lives, universities, schools and workplaces. The recent revolts andmovements have crossed national and European borders as well as the limitsimposed on education and mobility by Bologna Process to clash with thefailure of a strategy we have always opposed.The struggles of these months have indicated that the possibility of radicalchange can only become concrete through the alliance among the differentactors of labor and education, through common and transnational practicesguided by those whom put their own bodies and knowledge. We hope to give acommon meaning to this new space redefined by the conflicts in which thecrises opens new possibilities to create an "other" future. It is for thisreason that we want to initiate an open debate about the common projects wewant to build together, starting in Rome on 12 and 13th May 2011.Program?????????*Thursday 12th May 2011*6 p.m.Aperitive - *Global video session #1*Contribution from the education revolt - Book Bloc video and photoInside the happening there will be a specific space for videos and photosthat may contribute to the discussion in two crucial ways: first of all, bytelling us about new practices expressed by movements that are able to gobeyond specific local conditions: the manif sauvage born during the Frenchanti-CPE movement spread to the student movement in Italy. Pickets,unauthorized demos, blockades of circulation, in this way students acrossEurope took to the streets of the metropolises. The occupations were themost common means of activating struggles, not only in universities but alsoat historical monuments in city centers and the suburbs with mobilizationseventually spreading throughout the urban fabric. The Book Block was, morethan any other, the political practice that allowed the bodies subjected toprecariousness and the deskilling of knowledge.Secondly, we would like to give a wide-ranging discussion throughcontributions from all those who build and play an active role in themovement at a global level.Global Video # 1 is a session to talk about conflicts and sketch therichness of the imagery they have created in recent years.?????????Friday, May 13, 2011University La Sapienza10:00 am*Critic of knowledge and self-education: making the other university*The university occupations and practices of conflict signals that thedefense of public universities necessarily depends on its transformation.The free school born in the English movement and the self-education coursesand the self-managed learning initiatives in Italy pose the need to urgentlyrethink the production of knowledge beyond disciplinary boundaries andacross national borders, without however limiting ourselves to changing justa small segment of the educational process but, rather, with the convictionto completely change its places, themes and times.This first workshop aims to investigate those practices where research islinked to learning, and the various working figures of the university -researchers, students and precarious - able to break with imposedhierarchies and move towards a true democratization of the university.Rethinking research and education on a transnational level, inventing highquality knowledge practices in the crisis of the Bologna Process meansdefending public universities in order to completely transform them in aradical way.? ? ?14.00lunch break? ? ?15.00*The Wind of the SouthLabor, income and democracy against the crisis: the socialeuro-Mediterranean issue*A growing intellectual unemployment and the poverty that affects more andmore skilled young people seem to be common and transversal features of theeconomic growth inside global financial capitalism. Young skilled workersare locked in a vicious cycle of unemployment and increasing poverty, but atthe same time they are the co-protagonists of economic and financial growthwithin global capitalism.In this frame, there is the need to completely rethink the forms of welfareand the protection of legal rights: their extension is unavoidably linkedwith the always open question of transversal alliances among the differentsocial sectors. From the Maghreb - Mashreq revolts to the Europeanmovements, there is an urgent need to open a real debate on democracy andthe forms of generalization of the strike, starting from a central elementsuch as welfare.On what basis is the reclaim of rights the recomposing weave among differentgenerations and actors at the transnational level?? ? ?20.00Dinner - *Global video session # 2*Contributions and interviews from the revolts of Maghreb - MashreqThe revolts of the Maghreb-Mashreq constitute a reference point for readingthe political transformations of our time. A changing scenario in whichno-one has tools ready to grasp the complexity of such radical ruptures.Youth and students are the subject to blackmail, by now impoverished, butwith a degree in hand, and ever so close to all those in Europe who see theMediterranean, and especially the Maghreb, as something far away. Yet theirhigh level of education, their mobility, the lack of rights in a place thatwas corrupted and blocked by lobbying groups is not so far from us, indeed.In this session Global Video # 2 we aim to collect the contributions ofyoung North Africans in order to better grasp such radical changes thatinform us about new democratic processes, young people forced to migrate,and new social alliances.*Link & UniCommon *? ? ?info: www.unicommon.org; www.coordinamentouniversitario.it