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having had time to read some of the earlier documents more closely, and toread further at http://blog.demandprogress.org/and http://www.aaronsw.com/,i feel the situation deserves comments more nuanced than the ones i madeearlier.i do not think Swartz was deliberately trying to steal. i DO think that"stealing" covers copying as well as property that can't be copied, butthat's a story for another day. (and I will note that the article linked inprior emails was not about Swartz).i do believe Swartz was doing what he did for reasons of scholarly research.i have read some of his other research and not only respect it but considerit highly valuable. the specific question he seemed to be asking--thefunding sources for science articles in JSTOR--is a vital and importantquestion.but the questions remain. Did Swartz ask JSTOR for permission? It seemslikely to me that JSTOR would have been willing (and probably still would bewilling) to work with a researcher to provide either data or access to datato ask the sort of questions he is interested in. I can' find any referenceto making a standard request to JSTOR of this sort.What it appears is that Swartz simply started downloading, knowing he wasviolating the terms of use of JSTOR and MIT. He decided. On his own. Thatthe minimal policies protecting intellectual property within the universitysystem are not worth respecting, and perhaps not even worth consultingofficially.That does irk me. Because the only principle Swartz can be said to bestanding up for, other than libertarian/Ayn Rand principles of "my power,i'll do it now, my way, or burn it down" is that an academic deserves accessto any and all information. Such principles require institutions of even aminimal sort to maintain them. I've yet to hear anyone or read anywhere of amass protest or outrage about JSTOR.If Swartz's point is that JSTOR (and by extension all academics andlibraries) have no right to the products of their intellectual labor, andthat our rights are so highfalutin that a single individual is within hisown rights to abrogate JSTOR's entirely, then we really do have a massivedifference of opinion.when "demanding progress' means that libraries and academics have no rightsover their works at all, and agents like JSTOR are being tagged with wordslike "criminal" the world has turned upside down.there are huge properties in intellectual property law. the ability ofsingle researchers to publish and distribute their works is not one of theserious ones. there is very little research data not made available widelywithin the relevant research community. most colleges and universities andmost public libraries allow access, including downloading for private use.institutions like libraries and JSTOR are necessary to provide the minimalinfrastructure necessary to do the research and teaching in the first place.most academics distribute their own research free of charge. if we are theenemy, who are your friends? and which sides is the war between?i'd be a lot more sympathetic if there was a track record of trying to dothis research officially and being turned down before hacking in to it.because without it, this sounds like "doing research through regularinstitutional methods" is the target of attack. maybe it is--but if so, whydo you expect me to sign on?

Theses on DebordRichard Gilman-Opalsky From Spectacular Capitalism: http://www.minorcompositions.info/spectacularcapitalism.htmlThe urban environment proclaimed the orders and tastes of the ruling society just as violently as the newspapers… Obstacles were everywhere. And they were all interrelated, maintaining a unified reign of poverty. Since everything was connected, it was necessary to change everything through a unitary struggle, or nothing. It was necessary to link up with the masses, but sleep was all around us. -GUY DEBORD, 1959[T]he effort of the philosopher does not and cannot stay on an isolated philosophical level, in a separate consciousness, sphere or dimension; the source of his theories is social practice, and he must direct them back towards life, be it through his teaching or by other means (poetry? literature?). -HENRI LEFEBVRE, 1958I just don’t know how to go about this. I want to find out just how I should do it. I think it’s going to have to be very subtle; you can’t ram philosophies down anybody’s throat, and the music is enough! That’s philosophy. -JOHN COLTRANE, 1966I.The chief defect of all situationist theory – that of Debord included – is that it responds to the realm of appearances, and particularly that of the urban environment, which always already embodies and reflects a particular and dominant ideology, and which is organized and managed by capital; situationist theory thus recommends contestatory interventions that can only ever aspire to be interruptions or disruptions, rendering politics an occasional attack, a kind of piracy, “hacking,” or a temporary counter-media. In short, situationist theory reifies the “permanence” of its opponent by accepting saturnalias of interference as a modus operandi. Situationist theory thus admits a desperation and opportunism that, while reflecting a practical consideration of its own position, ultimately mirrors and affirms the “permanence” of the society of the spectacle, which it wants to destroy. Debord’s theory is a necessary advance over the materialism of Marx, the idealism of Hegel, and the various combinations of the two (i.e. Gramsci, Lukács, etc.) – none of which captured the singularity of the image-object. Yet Debord’s understandable cynicism regarding revolutionary aspirations leads him to a politics of exceptional activity that leaves the rules intact.Debord’s earliest efforts reflect his trajectory from the art world, and his personal investment in staging gallery events carrying the principles of an outline for a new political philosophy into the world. Hence, Debord arrives at political philosophy out of various non-political or amorphously political commitments, and never manages to breach those commitments sufficiently for an understanding of the “permanent situation” of capitalism. To be clear, the trajectory from art is a major source of the strength of Debord’s work (i.e. contestation utilizing hoaxes, humor, and other provocations, seizing attention with creative and visual savvy), but in this case art is a double-bind; for it also leads to a practice conceived and fixed mainly in gallery or sketchbook format, such that the discrete acts of a situationist politics often feel like incendiary novelty items. Hence, like Feuerbach, Debord “does not grasp the significance of ‘revolutionary,’ of practical-critical, activity.”II.Truth is a matter of both theory and practice. Despite Baudrillard’s obfuscations on the subject, truth can be discerned, although never very easily, and never as a purely theoretical or as a purely practical matter. Truth is not a priori or a posteriori, for it is both – it is only ever discerned in the corroboration of the conceptual with human experience, or the corroboration of human experience with the conceptual. While philosophy can help us to identify what ought to be, only the world as it is can help us to identify which way to go. One without the other is never enough of the truth: one without the other is always a moral and practical risk. Theory without practice is indeed merely scholastic, but it is no more merely scholastic than the empirical facts of the world are merely “data” without the conceptual assessment of human beings and the organization of such “data” in critical discourses. In other words, the empirical facts of the world alone, without the struggle to understand them from a theoretical point of view, forces a break between the facts of the world and the world itself. If we could manage to extricate the facts of the world from their complex historical, economic, and social contingencies, then the facts of the world would be a purely non-political field of data available for the scientific assessment of objective study. But, as C. Wright Mills has said, “No man stands alone directly confronting a world of solid fact. No such world exists.”The empirical facts of the world always already reflect a politics, and if there was nothing else besides the world as it already is, that would mean the end of politics itself. In order for politics to exist there must be some analysis of what is and a contention that something other than what already is could possibly be. To be apolitical is nothing more than to accept the facts of the world as they are without any contention. Without theory and a sense of the possibility for something other than what already is, the world would be (and often is) mistaken for an immutable obstacle course, and human understanding is reduced to a means for finding one’s way through to the end of life. Therefore, contrary to a common derision of philosophy as otherworldly and useless (i.e. the common lesson of Thales who was so involved in observing the stars that he fell into a well), both the world and politics depend on it.III.The antagonisms underlying spectacular society have been complicated and obscured to the point of oblivion and society cannot be cleanly divided “into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – bourgeoisie and proletariat.” These two camps, in particular, still exist, but many different constitutive parts comprise each one, some parts ideological, some formed by group identities – many of the constitutive parts bind individual members across class lines. More and more, we discover the failure of class analysis to account for the heterogeneous complexity of class composition. But this does not mean that we should abandon class analysis. To the contrary, the actual and ongoing existence of class society requires class analysis. However, the analysis of society must be more complex and less inexorable – refuting all dichotomous thinking that would make things easier to talk about, but farther from the truth of the world. The complexity of the world we live in does undermine and ultimately destroys Marx’s efforts to identify a revolutionary subject position through class analysis. And we cannot rescue the inexorable antagonism of Marx’s “revolutionary class” by introducing a far more amorphous category like Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have done with the “multitude.”A further complication is that the new complexities of social stratification in so-called multicultural societies cannot be reasonably understood as reflecting revolutionary developments in a historical materialist dialectic. Changes in the composition of society are due to multifarious causes, none of which can simply be celebrated as a harbinger of anything radical or even liberal (i.e. migrations and group diversification often lead just as much – or more – to ethno-nationalist reaction, chauvinistic patriotism, and the reification of racial identities as they do to cosmopolitanism and social solidarity).But there is some good news. By retaining (i.e. rethinking and reviving) a moral and normative political position against capitalism and its culture, we can identify a common ground shared by people across different fields of human life. Indigenous Mayans in Mexico were quite surprised in the 1990s to discover their robust common ground and the profound resonance of their claims with environmentalists and feminists and gays and precarious and rebellious people everywhere – theirs was a commonality of being on the losing side of power, where power is defined by and for capital. However, capital does not by its own force create a revolutionary subject as “its special and essential product.” Rather, the creation of any revolutionary subject today requires the conscious and creative work of the imagination.Helpful in this regard are the works of Nancy Fraser and Enrique Dussel who find “revolutionary” prospects in subsets of populations that attempt to “transform” instead of “reform” the political-economic and cultural structures of the world. Commonality (and solidarity) among such groups is critical because none can bring about structural transformations alone, or through temporary, sporadic, and opportunist interventions. Yet, the commonality of the aims of disparate groups does not produce a “multitude” that, however internally diverse, retains a cohesive unity over time. If any such “group of groups” did retain cohesive unity over time, then we could employ an analytical rubric of the multitude versus its opponents. But this cannot be done because when we look to the world for something like Hardt and Negri’s multitude we do not find it there. And this is not because we are not looking in the right place, but rather, because it is not there to be found.In addition to Dussel and Fraser, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s comments on “expanding the chain of equivalents between the different struggles against oppression” are helpful. But, while these theorists can help us to imagine a new revolutionary subject position, we must keep in mind that none of them comprehended the critical role of the meta-textual terrains that Debord focused on. It is one thing to answer the question of “who,” yet another to answer the question of “how.” And the final analysis on these questions is not even an analysis: “who” will be answered when they show themselves, and “how” will be answered when they win.IV.Debord starts with an extreme form of alienation, which deepens Marx’s theory of estrangement and recognizes the complete failure of the predictive side (that is, the promise) of historical materialism. One could say that, in Debord, this latter recognition is dialectically related to the new depth of alienation. To state the problem bluntly: How can we resolve the failure of revolutionary projects and the lost promise of historical materialism, on the one hand, with the maintenance of revolutionary aspirations on the other (especially if alienation manages to extinguish instead of ignite revolutionary aspirations)? This is still the preeminent question today. The problem was summed up very well by Raoul Vaneigem in his Basic Banalities (Part 1):In this social context the function of alienation must be understood as a condition of survival… The satisfaction of basic needs remains the best safeguard of alienation; it is best dissimulated by being justified on the grounds of undeniable necessities. Alienation multiplies needs because it can satisfy none of them; …the glut of conveniences and elements of survival reduces life to a single choice: suicide or revolution.Here, I read suicide to have a particular signification regarding the life and the living spirit of the revolutionary. Either we will find revolutionary alternatives to revolution, or we will choose to end our lives as revolutionaries. Simply put, without a way through this impasse, the revolutionary becomes a relic for the archives of history.Keeping the revolutionary subject position alive in the world is not a task for the philosopher, but philosophy can work through the impasse if wielded by others than philosophers. And while radical philosophy has its professors, it is not a profession. The way forward is never a matter of intellectuals writing recipes for the people and the people providing study material (in the form of their lives) to intellectuals. Philosophy itself must become the ongoing activity of those who can think and communicate well, and who can do better than my kind at reaching more than specialized reading publics looking for “groundbreaking” texts. When I hear or see or learn about an articulation of some kind that reframes critical questions in a provocative and compelling manner, that destabilizes ideology, I cannot but conclude that it is philosophy broke loose.I must make a qualification at this juncture. There are and have been versions of “folk philosophy” that could never be called “radical philosophy.” There is a difference between the two, and it is a difference that makes all the difference in the world. Let us take a particularly dangerous example. The School of Practical Philosophy secularizes philosophy by offering it up (selling it, to be precise) as a practical means for the “philosophically trained” person to achieve positional advantages (economic, psychological, spiritual) in complete felicity with the existing society. Like much of the “practical psychology” that aims to teach people how to be happy, “folk philosophy” is oriented towards making “healthy” adjustments to the existing world, and not in any way towards making transformations of the world into something other than what it is. Philosophy only retains its transformative potential for as long as it is not made (and does not make us) compatible with the smooth functioning of spectacular capitalism.V.Debord, not satisfied with the “science” of Marx’s crisis theory, wants to abandon the whole enterprise. But Debord does not sufficiently understand the reluctance of human societies to desire and imagine, let alone to work for radical transformations. Generally, people are not open to structural transformations in the absence of imminent crises. John Locke understood this well in 1690, and his observations are no less true today:People are not so easily got out of their old forms, as some are apt to suggest. They are hardly to be prevailed with to amend the acknowledged faults in the frame they have been accustomed to. And if there be any original defects, or adventitious ones introduced by time, or corruption; it is not an easy thing to get them changed, even when all the world sees there is an opportunity for it.Americans in the US are especially uninterested in radical and revolutionary politics; that position is largely a result of the fact that the global crises many people worry about are still in the realm of abstraction for most Americans. Americans, for example, need to find themselves in greater imminent danger than a well-managed flurry of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad-cow disease) to prompt them to become vegetarians who oppose factory farming. Likewise, the “crises” of peak oil and global warming and fresh water reserves are not imminent for as long we can continue everyday life relatively uninterrupted, except by occasional worries about the abstract eventually becoming concrete. Most of the political work that takes place in between crises is preparatory, as people must be ready to act when the opportunity structure changes. We must utilize crisis theory in order to comprehend the political significance of the abstract becoming concrete.Crisis theory is necessary, but must be done without the predictive side of Marx or the indifference of Baudrillard. As much as radical philosophy can redirect attention, nobody will imagine and fight for possible futures unlike the present until the present proves its unsustainability in imminent and concrete ways.The imminence of unsustainability is the only catalyst that lies in wait for a revolutionary politics today. The practice of radical philosophy (and situationist politics, since crisis is the ultimate situation) is limited for as long as we live in between crises. But if and when crises are deep and widespread and especially if and when they reflect transnational system-crises, then the “permanent situation” of spectacular capitalism becomes all at once evidently impermanent and is thus more susceptible to the inroads of radical philosophy. Like Debord, my own view lies in between the optimism of Marx and the oblivion of Baudrillard. Yet, unlike Debord, I explicitly recognize the catalyzing prospects of crises. The downside of this view is that the emergence of such crises is out of our hands. Even though human culpability does often lie behind the environmental crises that are treated as purely “natural” events, such events are mostly made by generations of humans collectively and inadvertently, and such crises cannot be unmade or averted by the conscientious lifestyles of green anarchists or green consumers (which often amount to the same thing).When the financial systems collapsed in 2008-2010, the US was only prepared to bail out its private sector through gargantuan measures of corporate welfare. US civil society vacillated between seeing this as a regrettable necessity, or, suspending all logic, socialism. Meanwhile many in the civil societies of France, Greece, and Spain, and in the city of Brussels, were ready to make real socialist transformations. Those movements, however, appear to have been suffocated by isolation or diminishing appeal, just as the most revolutionary transnational aspirations of the Zapatista rebellion were almost evaporated by the end of the 1990s. Still, the most promising responses are not coming from the US. I do not propose any vanguard, and certainly not a national vanguard, but for numerous reasons of culture and economy, the new revolutionary subject will not hail from the US.One of the hardest questions I hear from students in the US is, “What can I do?” I do not buy into the old rhetoric about the “belly of the beast” or “using the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house.” Solidarity may be the only role to play for those in the US. There is only one other option, and that is if the world’s most marginalized and rebellious people form “transgressive public spheres” and invite our participation from abroad. Of course, a crisis may change this reality, but it is worth keeping in mind that the crisis of empire is often the vital contestation of everyone else who could not afford to wait until the bitter end.VI.The world needs a kind of humanism. This is a moral claim. The basic principles of humanism can be derived from multifarious sources, from Marx’s early manuscripts of 1844, from Raya Dunayevskaya, from Jean-Paul Sartre, and even from Louis Althusser’s critique of humanism. Humanism is not very clear in Debord. The humanism that animates the cosmopolitan philosophy demarcates the broadest (even if the thinnest) sphere of human solidarity. Cosmopolitanism itself is a very good idea, and is the logical extension of humanism; but its faults come out in the rejection of nationalisms, certain forms of which have served liberatory purposes, as can be seen in the colonial and postcolonial struggles of peoples in the 20th century, and clearly in the works of Frantz Fanon and Partha Chatterjee. What is needed, then, is a general humanism combined with the principle of self-determination. Our human being provides a broader basis for solidarity than shifting national, religious, or other identities which are in a slow flux. However, people use such other identities to highlight their particular struggles against exclusion, discrimination, poverty, disempowerment, etc. In some cases (i.e. under occupation or colonial rule), the assertion of national or sub-national identities is part of a liberatory struggle for self-determination. And it is necessary to clarify that self-determination is not the business of states, which have long histories of preserving themselves first and foremost, and of treating their “constituents” as instrumental to the goal of self-preservation and the propagation of their own power. We must, therefore, always distinguish between national identity and the national state.The kind of base humanism I am proposing makes it impossible to “presuppose an abstract – isolated – human individual.” The meaning of being human is a meaning that must always be negotiated within a social context. This is a basic sociological and existential observation, well expounded by phenomenology, and controversial mainly to essentialists who want to mystify the human person. But the point has a further stipulation vis-à-vis Debord: Just as the human person does not exist as an isolated individual, so too the revolutionary transformation of human society cannot take place as the culmination of isolated individual acts. On some level, perhaps this seems obvious. But, after World War II, radical movements around the globe saw the emergence of a form of lifestyle politics, often seen in atomistic varieties of anarchism and consumerist politics.The total individuation of the human person, which can only occur in one’s imagination, leads inevitably to the individuation (or privatization) of political action, which has only an imaginary value. As Jürgen Habermas pointed out in his earliest works, individuation or privatization of political action is actually depoliticization. As it turns out, no matter how deformed our social life becomes, we ultimately understand ourselves only and always within the context of other human beings. Other human beings make each of us who we are, whatever distinguishes us as individual persons is only visible in the light of other people, and other human beings make one social reality (or another) possible. Solipsism is a philosophical error that cannot actually occur in the world of human affairs. The only thing that everyday people can do that can really be seen and heard, that can, in other words, intervene in and possibly transform the conditions of everyday life, is collective action. The movement of collective action can feel like plate tectonics, and the instinct to step outside of the collectivity is understandable, but none of that sensibility makes it any more effective (or, for that matter, possible).VII.Debord was right in making the first necessity of the program collective action. But his effort on this score was hobbled by an opposing force, that of the cult of personality of his own role in the SI and of the SI itself. Debord sharply denounced the conversion of his philosophy into the ideology of “situationism.” He even cites this move from theory and philosophy to ideology as one of the root causes of the dissolution of the SI. Already in 1960, Debord wrote “There is no ‘situationism.’ I myself am only a situationist by the fact of my participation, in this moment and under certain conditions, in a community that has come together for practical reasons with a certain task in sight, which it will know how or not know how to accomplish.” But any honest account of the SI inevitably reveals Debord’s top-down micro-managerial style, his own susceptibility to the trappings of political purism and cause célèbre. I am not the slightest bit interested in this as a biographical curiosity or a lifestyle criticism, but rather, as a specific historical context that indubitably impacted Debord’s political thinking. This point is not psychoanalytic and can be simply stated as follows: Debord’s narrow and tenuous faith in a coterie of situationists was just as misplaced as any narrow and tenuous faith in any group with a particular name and set of organizational texts. The strategy of the putsch has been far better utilized by the powerful than by their antagonists, and it is time that the antagonists understood this.I am therefore not a “pro-situ” writer who wants to see some kind of new SI. As interesting as the storied history of the SI is, Debord’s writing was his real legacy. Debord himself said that of the many names he had been called, “theoretician” was the most fitting, and, he asserted, he was “one of the best.” We are certainly safeguarded then in shelving all of the biography and confronting the theoretician as such. With regard to the SI itself, we need a complete inversion of how the footnotes have gone thus far. That is, the theory and the analysis of spectacular capitalism and spectacular socialism must take center-stage, while all the rest of the SI drama, which has until now been the source of Debord’s notoriety, should become the new footnote. In order to put these works to work for the future, we must take them from the trap of the SI itself.This project is neither about the recuperation of the SI nor is it about the fossilization of the SI in time. Recuperation wants to turn a corpse into a kind of Frankenstein’s monster, and fossils are useful for the reconstructive work of paleontologists. We must continually remind ourselves that revolutionary politics is neither recuperative nor backward-looking.VIII.All good theory is essentially practical. All of the most pressing problems of spectacular capitalism will find their solutions in human practice and theory, and not necessarily in that order. This follows the basic Kantian principle that what works in theory also works in practice, a principle which remains true and yet continues to run contrary to the common saying (no less common today) on theory and practice that Kant was responding to in 1793. That common saying, which Marxist orthodoxy (and anarchist anti-intellectualism) has repeated ad nauseam, has served to separate critique from praxis, which impoverishes both.IX.The highest points reached in Debord’s political philosophy consist of his formal efforts towards the practical synthesis of creative, theatrical, and surprising collective action, utilizing humor and savvy, to cultivate (or provoke) an insurrectionary and/or revolutionary comportment and critique. Following such practical thinking, even new political parties (in addition to political science itself) should not be organized around elections and legislation as much as for the cultivation or understanding of insurrectionary and/or revolutionary tendencies.X.The standpoint of old socialisms has been to view the state, and capitalism, as instrumental historically transitional modes; the standpoint of new socialisms must be more anarchist with regard to the state and less predictive (less willing to find anything inexorable) with regard to capitalism. The standpoint of new socialisms must seek to understand the complex social-psychological position and composition of civil society and the destabilization (via radical philosophy) of the ideological impediments on that terrain.XI.Philosophy can change the world if it is wielded by others than philosophers; when the best philosophical works are the emancipatory struggles of the marginalized among us, interpretation is not their sole content.

The disembodied Leviathan of LibyaJuly 23, 2011 by Tjebbe van Tijen The illustrated and fully documented/linked version of this text can be found athttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2011/07/23/the-disembodied-leviathan-of-libya/A picture today in Aljazeera of the Green Square (*) in Tripoli struck me,it had a caption “People gather near a portrait of Gaddafi in Tripoli’s Green Square on Friday, before the explosions [Reuters]“. This news picture showed a huge street painting or print of Gaddafi and what seems to be a dwindling crowd around it. There is a fence around the picture that must be something like 40 by 160 meter in size. On the inside of the fence once sees guards posted at regular intervals. The picture shows Gaddafi in one of his hundreds of outfits, possibly the uniform of an air marshall he wore when visiting the Italian president Berlusconi in June 2009. On the right side of his uniform jacket Gaddafi wears a gallery of medals and on the left the a photograph has been pinned on his uniform. The photograph shows the martyr of Libyan resistance Omar Mukhtar, the “Lion of the Desert”, on the day before he was hanged by his Italian colonial masters in 1931. A provocative statement for his host Berlusconi, who hugs him nevertheless as he is about to make some big business deals with the Libyan leader.The people around the fence at the Green Square in Tripoli look at the picture of this moment of theatrical revenge, showing the leader completely, from his golden adorned cap to this shoes, with a saintly light blue glowing aura all around him. If one would not trust the strict editorial rules of Aljezeera and Reuter’s photo agency, it could have been a photoshopped picture.This made be think of the frontispiece of the book by Thomas Hobbes “Leviathan” published in the mid 17th century during the English Civil War, which describes the necessity of a sovereign authority to be accepted by all, to avoid ‘the state of nature’, everybody for themselves, a ‘war of all against all’ (Bellum omnium contra omnes).For the sake of peace, the people, so did Hobbes argue, had to make a social contract with an absolute ruler, best in the form of a king. The ruler in 1651 is depicted as an embodiment of ‘the people’. There is a crowd that marches from a landscape into the body of the ruler. The ruler has a sword in one and a crosier in the other hand, showing he is in command both of church and state.[tableau picture combining the Hobbes book cover of Leviathan with the Green Square Tripoli street painting of Gaddafi]The display of the picture of the ruler as if he was a landscape, one could walk in, at the Green Square in Tripoli, has a similar function: Gaddafi as embodiment of the Libyan nation. Only, the aerial photograph unveils that it is but a meagre crowd assembled around their leader. It expresses how the maximum leader has inflated himself disproportional to the feelings of embodiment by ‘his people’.The 17th century theory of state of Hobbes can still be used today, to understand the prolonged rule of dictators. There is some form of common interest, expressed in a social contract, by the ruler and his subjects. How such a two dimensional state of affairs – ruler and ruled – may become a more diverse structure where more people can participate in the affairs of state, is apparently not well understood. The attempts of outsiders – like the Western coalition forces under NATO command – to kill the ruler have failed until now. Aerial bombing, even under the title of a UN mandate to protect civilians from attacks by their own ruler, are counterproductive to deliver the idea of democracy to a nation, or at least it takes many generations to wear off the effect of long distance destruction perpetuated by outside forces in one’s own country. (**) Interventionist regime change does do little to empower the common people. Meanwhile, the ranks of the opposition forces are more and more filled with former supporters of the Gaddafi regime that try not only to evade the eminent purges after Gaddafi’s downfall, but also are preparing to continue the old rule, hidden under new revolutionary slogans.The inflated picture on the pavement of the square of revolution in Tripoli of the dictatorial ruler Gaddafi, serves more than one purpose. It glorifies him and at the same time it shows him as an ancient non-heriditary king who knows his days are counted when he hears the song in the streets: “the king must die“. (***) The ruler as scapegoat to cleanse the history of a nation. The ‘effigy of Gaddafi’ may serve an extra purpose, as a painting to be trampled on by thousands of feet in a direct release of anger , thus avoiding or diminishing the acts of revenge that accompany any change of regime.———–(*) Green Square named so after the Green Revolution coup d’état of Gaddafi in 1969 (Arabic: الساحة الخضراء‎ As Sāḥah āl Ḥaḍrā), also known as Martyrs’ Square (Arabic: Maidan Al Shohdaa‎); a downtown landmark at the bay in the city of Tripoli. Mainly constructed during Italian colonial times. Named Square of Independence during the short lived Libyan monarchy (1951-1969). On February 20th an anti-Gaddafi demonstration took place here, which was harshly suppressed. One source, a mortuary orderly from Tripoli who fled to Tunesia, later told the BBC that he saw hundreds of dead and wounded be brought into the hospital where he worked: ”Many young people went to protest in Green Square that day, and I believe almost no-one came back alive that night.”(**) Incendiary carpet bombing of Germany, Japan, Korea, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, imprecise precision bombing of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan…(***) See the famous chapter of Frazer in his book the ‘Golden Bough’: “Kings killed at the end of a fixed term.”Tjebbe van TijenImaginary Museum ProjectsDramatizing Historical Informationhttp://imaginarymuseum.orgweb-blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/# 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://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

“Languages are meant to be spoken, writing is nothing but a supplement of speech. … The analysis of thought is made through speech, and the analysis of speech through writing; speech represents through conventional signs, and writing represents speech in the same way; thus the art of writing is nothing but a mediated representation of thought, at least in the case of the vocalic languages, the only ones that we use.” Derrida, PronunciationI can only imagine what non-vocalic language JD was referring to in his time, but these days we have quite a few languages which are non- vocalic and do in some way represent thought.It is this transition from the pre-history of written language to the system and structure of collective society that JD refers to as a movement from Discourse to the Essay. The ideals our society embody come as thoughts, affected by a system of speech, but come into legal existence through writing.It is in fact the logic of writing, over the mere rationality of speech, which enables the scientific method, the social contract, the keeping of history. Just as the first French dictionary smoothed out disparate linguistic communities, it also created a common conceptual toolkit for adjudication. While De Landa shows how specifically the dictionary aided the development of France as a nation, his study is too brief (1000 years) to see it in the context of a transition from speech to written language.More than the cultural homogeneity the Dictionary created, or the authoritative position written logic took, the importance for us is to see through the logical system of organization which we live in. To see logical organization as only one rationality. It is not that we need a return to vocalization, or vocal rationality, but rather we can take from speech a view of language which is not that of the written word, yet still existing in some configuration with our thoughts and ideals.The homogeneity of written logic has become hegemony of truth in society. While witnesses in the courtroom and politicians on the pulpit may still use vocalization, written law always takes precedence. And why shouldn’t it? Writing things down helped humans remember stuff. For everything written language enabled us to create, it was still humans that were doing the writing. Written words became tools for us to express our thoughts, beyond books to institutions and discoveries. While these tools may not be prefect, they became our best judge of truth, scientific and legal.Our societal reliance on written logic, and the system of truth it creates, has blinded us to the history of language outside of the written word. We did not go from vocal primitive humans to modern writing humans, and the story doesn’t simply stop there. Even Derrida fails to explore the positioning of images, and image rationality, in the story of Discourse to Essay. Image was not codified by the Dictionary in the same way that spoken language was. Formally the two systems of expressed thought have been kept separate because they lack a common set of signs. This is why music, despite being expressive, is not considered spoken.The assumption logic has given us is that both language and rationality require discrete symbols. The irony of pictographic languages and “symbolism” not withstanding. Not only does an image- base expression of thought represent a rationality that is different than the same thought conveyed through speech, but as representations image contains a different set of tools. Images not only express things differently, they are capable of expressing different things.If signs and signifiers of meaning replace the common set of discrete symbols that image-based expression fails to share with written and spoken languages. Then rather than a transition from vocal to written, we can see each medium of expression across a historical landscape of communicated thought. What written language brought to speech was exactly the discrete set of symbols which made it so beneficial to us, and set it apart from the other mediums of expressions. We certainly could not use music for adjudication.Despite this frailty, the other mediums of expression, the sloppy ones, continued to be developed. Images spawned motion-images which despite their inexactness, increasingly play a role in politics. While written contracts continue to have a legal monopoly on truth, there are still those that choose not to read, and their direction, the direction of those humans, is more influenced by the rationality of motion-images, than that of essays and logic.And that is not all that images spawned. In the 20th century, humans have created, hybridized, refined and sub-categorized countless new ways of expressing our thoughts. Yet none of these mediums have had the kind of power that written language gave us, both in terms of its specific advantages and in terms of its ability to control and organize our social reality.However, up until the last 20 years, logic has been the anchor of written language. The hegemony of logic is not that written language is better than other mediums of expression, but that logic was the most accurate form of rationality. Written language just happened to be better at logic than speech. Thus humans obscured the written words dominance by saying that it was logic’s dominance.Then the transistor entered the story of human existence, and with it came something that we had not seen since we started writing things down. For the first time there was a new medium of thought expression which did not share the frailty of every medium other than spoken and written language. Computer languages had a discrete set of symbols and could work out logical problems faster than books. The one thing computer languages have not been very good at is expressing the thoughts of humans. For all the accounting forms computer languages have helped us to create, there are still no novels written in C++.Computers were designed to do logic, from the transistor up. Computer languages were designed to organize and manage logical operations. Each computer language had a different toolset of expression, much like each spoken language, but those toolsets have always been designed in reference to local operators, while the signs, signifiers, ideals and thoughts of humans were push to software and devices. This division made sense historically. The computer was made to be a logical tool, and at some level the language we use to communicate with it must be in terms of logical operators.Much like motion-images, using a computer to express yourself is supported by abstracting away from the most difficult and tedious aspects of logic, and thus made thought expression more accessible to more humans.But when we look at computer languages, on a landscape of expression, we see their common roots with Derrida’s vocalic languages in the signs and symbols of thought. Logic may have gotten humans a good distance from their primitive history, but ultimately logic’s claim on accurate accounting and truth depends upon what it enabled us to do when it was written down.It’s not that logic itself ever had any power to change society, but that logic enabled humans to dream in new ways, in ways that held true. It was written language, on the other hand, that provided the means of logical expression. Written language enabled our true ideas to move around the planet, be remembered with specificity through generations, and be easily compared with expressions of other true thoughts.Logic’s pervasivity is exactly why we created computers to be logical machines. But the relegation of the signs and symbols which make up our written language to what is called the “content layer,” separated computer based expression from the discrete symbol set that distinguished written and spoken language from other mediums of expression. On one side of the content divide in computer science are languages which share the power of the written word, while on the other side are kept all relations to human thought and experience.It is not that we want irrational computers or illogical computer languages, but that we need to incorporate the repositioning of logic in relation to expression. If computer languages could contain the parts and participles of myths and dreams, as the written word does, then the rationality of that language would take precedence over logic. Logic was great at pulling humans out of the middle ages because it enabled us to build things faster and more accurately, but in the next century the pace of innovation comes from whatever system enables us to build faster and better. Ultimately, what we think is right exceeds what we can prove.As computer languages become more able to express human ideals, logic not only becomes repositioned, but also destabilized. This is why academics tug at our notions of authenticity within our research. This is why we laugh about celebrating only success and not failure. While written language gave us the scientific method, the social contract, and the keeping of history, it was logic’s dominance that made those systems work.As computers learn to speak the language of humans, they are doing more than simply replacing our methods of conducting science, business, government and history. They are making accessible the toolsets of accuracy, authenticity, and truth. More than being logical machines, computers are becoming human machines, in that their operations are becoming a medium of human expression.

Michael H Goldhaber <mgoldh-bAttSoROYyI< at >public.gmane.org> Re: <nettime> some more nuanced thoughts on SWARTZJohn Hopkins <jhopkins-LRlVL1xtBs0sV2N9l4h3zg< at >public.gmane.org> Re: <nettime> Aaron Swartz charged for downloading too many JournalAngela Mitropoulos <s0metim3s-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> Re: <nettime> No JSTOR downloads or bicycle-helmet-masks for youRob Myers <rob-MHOfhu0kjIxg9hUCZPvPmw< at >public.gmane.org> Re: <nettime> some more nuanced thoughts on SWARTZmp <mp-2b86UMU8KtVAfugRpC6u6w< at >public.gmane.org> Re: <nettime> some more nuanced thoughts on SWARTZ- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -From: Michael H Goldhaber <mgoldh-bAttSoROYyI< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re: <nettime> some more nuanced thoughts on SWARTZDate: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 21:25:36 -0700Even though he's gone, I'm still in a certain amount of shock at histhought processes. What in "'publicly funded research' " doesn't heunderstand? Usually this refers to researchers being paid, directly orindirectly by state agencies of some sort. Or are we now to understandthey are all voluntees hoping to get a slice of the payments fordownloading their articles? And somehow I doubt that reading publiclysupported papers for free is what Rand had in mind, though I can't sayI've ever read her.Best,MichaelSent from my iPadOn Jul 24, 2011, at 8:20 PM, t byfield <tbyfield-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> wrote: <...>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2011 20:13:49 -0700From: John Hopkins <jhopkins-LRlVL1xtBs0sV2N9l4h3zg< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re: <nettime> Aaron Swartz charged for downloading too many Journal >> Indeed, it's not clear from the indictment if "breaking" into the >> wiring closet required more than opening a door. It seems they are >> resting the "restricted area" argument on the fact he went into MIT >> buildings without being and MIT student or staff member, something >> that I and many other people have done. > > cheers. however MIT itself seems a pretty open minded institution, > just consider the open courseware, not sure how it gets into the > picture here.Oh, J.! just a reminder:open-ness is perhaps a front to further concentrate influence and a controlling stake in the discourse and operation of technocratic educational processes. I don't know the numbers, but major chunks of their research is directly tied in to the military-industrial complex, ever since WWII, and therefore, controlled access to many places. Obviously not to the 'regular' schooling areas, but... MIT has many faces, some of them pleasant to look at and others ... not so...jh- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:15:39 +1000From: Angela Mitropoulos <s0metim3s-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re: <nettime> No JSTOR downloads or bicycle-helmet-masks for youExcellent response. Funny because it's true.best, AngelaOn 24/07/2011 5:55 PM, Rob Myers wrote: <...>

Hi all,Some on the NETTIME list may be interested in reading the plain txt version, of a recent interview I did with John Jordan and Gavin Grindon about their collaborative publication, A Users Guide to (Demanding) the Impossible on Furtherfield (www.furtherfield.org).If you are interested in reading the interview with images:http://www.furtherfield.org/features/interviews/we-demand-impossible-interview-john-jordan-and-gavin-grindon'A Users Guide to (Demanding) the Impossible'Published Published by Minor Compositions.http://www.minorcompositions.info/--------------------<plain txt version heres>...................We Demand The Impossible:An Interview with John Jordan and Gavin Grindon.By Marc Garrett - 19/07/2011"This guide is not a road map or instruction manual. It’s a match struck in the dark, a homemade multi-tool to help you carve out your own path through the ruins of the present, warmed by the stories and strategies of those who took Bertolt Brecht’s words to heart: “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.”Marc Garrett: In the introduction of your publication it says that it, "was written in a whirlwind of three days in December 2010, between the first and second days of action by UK students against the government cuts, and intended to reflect on the possibility of new creative forms of action in the current movements. It was distributed initially at the Long Weekend, an event in London to bring artists and activists together to plan and plot actions for the following days, including the teach-in disruption of the Turner Prize at Tate Britain, the collective manifesto write-in at the National Gallery and the UK’s version of the book bloc."I think readers would be interested to know how the 'teach-in disruption' and the 'collective manifesto write-ins' went?John Jordan: I was not at the first Turner teach-in so can't give first hand account. From what I've heard it was a wonderful moment where the sound of the action penetrated into the room where the Turner Prize were being held, as the back drop of the channel 4 live link up. Kind of perfect, because it was a sound artist who got the award.As for the National Gallery event - this was held during the evening after one of the big days of student action. Having spent the day being trampled on by her majesties police horses, a load of us went up to the National Gallery and mingled in front of Manet's Execution of Emperor Maximillian, opposite a corridor that held a Courbet painting. It was a perfect placement as Courbet of all the 19th artists was really the one who understood the role of art within an insurrection, putting down his paintbrushes to apply his creativity directly to the organising of the Paris Commune of 1871 just as the impressionists fled the city to the quiet of the countryside. Only to return a few years later when Impressionism was launched, as a kind or artistic white wash over the massacres of the Commune, a return to normal bourgeois representation. Courbet had used the rebel city, a "paradise without police" as he put it, as a canvas to create new forms of social relationships and new ways of public celebration, including the destruction of the monument to Empire and Hierarchy, the Vendome column.Several hundred artists and art students at a given moment sat down and occupied room 43, telling the staff that we would leave once a collective manifesto had been written. Which is what happened. Small groups of 10 or so were formed as the guards and director of the gallery paced up and down unsure of how to react, each group worked on points for the manifesto which were then read out and merged in 'The Nomadic Hive Manifesto' - http://www.criticallegalthinking.com/?p=998 - it was an extraordinary moment of collective, emergent intelligence, a reclaiming of a public cultural space from the realm of musefication and representation.MG: 'A Users Guide to (Demanding) the Impossible' features quotes by individuals and groups, who have inspired many of us in the networked, Furtherfield community. But, I am also aware that you may be part of a younger generation, presently experiencing the brunt of education cuts imposed by the current government coalition. Could you explain how these cuts are effecting you and your peers?JJ: Well I wish I was a younger generation !!! I’m 46 years old, it was written for the youth !! You should talk to some arts against cuts folk, I can put you in touch if you need to?Gavin Grindon: I'm not exactly 'the younger generation' either, but I guess I'm in a strange position between. I recently finished my PhD, so a lot of my friends are either students or just becoming teachers. There aren't many jobs about, academic or otherwise, and most of them are doing multiple part-time, short-term jobs to make ends meet, without the assumed security or career progression of a generation before, and the cuts are only going to exacerbate that situation. I guess what's new is a recession on top of these kind of precarious work conditions, which extend far beyond the University. With part-time, hourly-paid and non fixed positions, replacing real jobs.Of course it's damaging, but it's also been inspiring to see students responding to turning over lessons to discuss the cuts and seeing them on the streets. It's politicised a lot of young people, and there's an opportunity there. At one of the University's I work at, it was great to see the art students working together to make protest banners, not in their studios but in the foyer, where other people could see and join in. And when I started talking with them, we began to realise that with all the technical resources of an art school at their disposal, it was possible to be much more ambitious and imaginative than just making banners or placards, the standard objects of protest. But the history of a lot of art-activist groups who had these kind of ambitions isn't taught, never mind the more popular history of the arts of social movements itself. And it's not just about knowing and being inspired by some great utopian tales of adventure, or understanding yourself as part of a historical legacy - it leaves you strategically disadvantaged about what can be done. So starting a conversation with these students, was, as JJ says, kind of the idea behind the guide.MG: There are various other creative protest groups such as UK Uncut (http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/) and the University for Strategic Optimism (http://universityforstrategicoptimism.wordpress.com/), whom I interviewed live on Resonance FM, December last year (http://www.furtherfield.org/radio/8122010-university-strategic-optimism-and-genetic-moo). Are you connected to any of these creative activist groups, and are there any others in the UK you would like us to be more aware of?JJ: Yes - I've worked with UK Uncut, and was unfortunately arrested in Fortnum and Mason, whilst recording the BBC 4 afternoon play, but that’s another story! There are lots of interesting groups that work on the edge of art and activism, right now a space to keep an eye out for and to visit is THE HAIRCUT BEFORE THE PARTY - http://www.thehaircutbeforetheparty.net/ - set up by two radical young art activists who have opened a hair dressers that offers free hair cuts and political discussion about organising and friendship, rebellion and the material needs to engage in it. The salon is in 26 Toynbee Street, near Petticoat Lane and open till November. It's an interesting example of a medium to long term, art activist project that attempts to create new forms of relationship and affinity, and sees itself as building radical movement and not simply representing them.GG: Yeah, again the idea of the text was to build on the connections that are already there, which THBTP does too in a more informal, social way. And for sure, you shouldn't be seen at the June 30th strikes or UK Uncut's support actions without a flash new haircut. I should also get a plug in for Catalyst Radio - http://www.catalystradio.org/ a new 24/7 DIY UK-wide activist radio station, which started up the other week and is still growing, and brings together a lot of radical radio projects from around the country.MG: Do you share a mutual empathy and respect for other protesters elsewhere such as those in Spain, in Greece, and in the Middle East?JJ: Of course. Although it feels like the camp protests are lacking a conflictual approach and without the mixture of conflict and creativity, protest can easily be ignored, which is a bit what has happened with all the European camps. Although sitting here in the British library its easy to be critical ! Whatever happens, those involved in the camps will have tasted politics, new friendships, alternative ways of organising etc... As for the middle east, its all still in flux, who knows what will happen and the role of artists and musicians has been pretty key in setting the powder kegg alight there..GG: Yeah, though I think there's a tension between the symbolic solidarity of occupying city squares and the strategic differences between activist practices in different countries. I think solidarity between these struggles is massively important, though I'm personally not sure how it's best to manifest that here right now.MG: In the User's guide, it mentions the workshops in art and activism at the Tate Modern, held by the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Labofii), entitled it ‘Disobedience makes history’. And that Laboffii "was told, in an email, by the curators that no interventions could be made against the museum's sponsors (which happen to be British Petroleum) [..] decided to use the email as the material for the workshop. Projecting it onto the wall they asked the participants whether the workshop should obey or disobey the curator’s orders."What I find interesting regarding this episode is both that a big institution would take the risk of inviting in art and activist culture to their usually, protected environment whilst being sponsored by British Petroleum; and the different forms of controversies reaching the public from such situations. I am surprised that Laboffii would even consider doing such a project in the Tate Modern in the first place, but also pleased, because of the dialogue that has come out of the clash of different political contexts. So, isn't it the case that we need to explore issues of corporate corruption further within these big institutions so that those who would not usually consider such things are suddenly faced with the issues?GG: I'm sure JJ has plenty to say about this. But more generally, it depends *how* they function as a platform. An art gallery or a university can be a great discursive space to explore issues, but the bounds of that debate are also strictly limited in lots of ways. This is a problem with the idea of a bourgeois public sphere. Most often, that boundary is that you can debate whatever you like but questioning the basic systemic assumptions on which such spaces rest isn't possible, at least not in a practical way. The lab's workshop at the Tate tried to question exactly that kind of assumption about what culture is for, and who it benefits. But for many activists from social movements, who have less faith in the public sphere and its institutions to resolve issues by discussion, that neutered debate is more of a problem than a benevolent gift to the public, and they have to take a different approach. Its not necessarily opposed to those institutions as a whole, but just asks them to make good on what they claim to be.JJ: It's a long story, but the key is to be able to put one foot inside these institutions and to be not frightened to KICK. But not to KICK symbolically, to really kick, to really shake them up and to be able to let go of one's cultural capital. The Labofii will NEVER be re-invited to do anything at the TATE, bang goes all our chances of a retrospective in the fashionable art activism world !!! ;) But, what we gain is that we were free ! When the curators told us that we could not do anything, could not take action against BP and we refused to obey them, we were free, we could do what we wanted because they could not give us anything in return. The Zapatistas say, "we are already dead so we are free" - when power can give you nothing you want, you can do anything.. this is a very powerful moment. To see the faces of the curators, the head of public, the head of security etc during the meeting where they tried to censor the lab, was priceless - they had always had power over artists, because artists will normally do ANYTHING to get their work in the Tate, but we did not care, we cared about the politics, about the actions, about climate change and social injustice - we were more powerful than the institution in that moment because we were no longer dependent on them.. it was one of the most beautiful moments... and now the movement against oil sponsorship is spreading everywhere. The message is simple, give up your cultural capital throw away your dependence on these institutions and be free...MG: I come from a background of hacking, social hacking and D.I.Y culture, and instead of going to University I chose to be self-educated, creating alternative groups for self discovery and art with dedication to social change. And even though, many are fighting the education cuts right now, what are your own ideas around self-education, do students really need to go to college now that there are so many different forms of information and ways in creating one's own place in the world 'with others'?GG: A lot of experiments with autonomous self-education have sprung up recently which ask just this question, like the Really Free School (http://reallyfreeschool.org/), there are even some more institutional business-model experiments online with peer-to-peer education. But at the same time the catchment of both of these is relatively narrow at the moment, so I think there's still a place for these kind of education institutions, and there are interesting radical experiments going on all over, either by individuals or whole departments, although the cuts to institutional funding for education by the government changes the playing field again, so there's an opportunity for something like this to become less marginal, both inside and outside the university.MG: JJ, In 2005 you wrote, Notes Whilst Walking on “How to Break the Heart of Empire”, in it you write "Radicals are often vulnerable souls. Most of us become politically active because we felt something profoundly such as injustice or ecological devastation. It is this emotion that triggers a change in our behaviour and gets us politicised. It is our ability to transform our feelings about the world into actions that propels us to radical struggle. But what seems to often happen, is that the more we learn about the issues that concern us, the more images of war we see, the more we experience climate chaos, poverty and the every day violence of capitalism, the more we seem to have to harden ourselves from feeling too much, because although feeling can lead to action we also know that feeling too much can lead to depression and paralysis..." How the hell do you remain positive when you know how many horrible and disgusting things are being done to decent folks and the planet all of the time?JJ: Unfortunately there are no magic recipes that can protect us from such feelings, a lot depends on context on our particular situations etc. But here are a few tips that have helped me keep the despair of capitalism at bay:1) Resist the spell of individualism that capitalism tries to weave around us, a spell that chains us to the fantasy of autonomy and keep us in a state of sadness and paralysis. Break this spell and its toxic chains by realising that you are part of a greater whole, that working with others gives us strength, that seven minutes making real friendships (face to face) is more political than seven days glued to a computer browsing social networks in a trance, that inevitably fails to shake the loneliness of modern life.2) Build a gang, a group, a collective, a crew - remember the joy of plotting things together, the power and possibilities when work and imagination is shared. In fact, imagination finds it's insurrectionary potential when we share it, when it's freed from the privatised ego, escapes from shackles of copyright and the prison's of the art world.3) Learn the skills to work together with others, consensus decision making, group facilitation, conflict resolution etc. We need to re learn collective working methods, capitalism has destroyed all our tools of conviviality and we need to reclaim them back, recreate new forms of being together.4) Redefine Hope. Not as something that will come and save us, like a saviour, but as something that comes from not knowing what will happen next, something that takes place when we act in the immediate moment and don't know what will happen and trust that history is made from acts of disobedience that did not necessarily have any idea of what the next step was...5) Remember that victory is not always what happens, but what did not happen. Social movements tend to forget this. Look at all the nuclear power stations that WERE not built, all the wars that did not happen, the laws that were never passed, the free trade agreements that were never agreed on, the repressions that the state could not get away with, the gmo's that were never planted. One of my favourite books, what I call prozac on paper, is Rebecca Solnit's HOPE IN THE DARK (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28048.Hope_in_the_Dark) - it's a lovely little book which redefines hope in the most beautifully optimistic way, recommended reading when capitalism seems irresistible.6) When everything appears useless, try to change your conception of time... think deep time, not shallow modern now time, but think about the generations that went before you and those that will come after you. Try to imagine what the generations of the future will think about your actions, imagine those from the past that fought for the emancipation of slaves and yet never saw the results of their actions, those who died for the eight hour day, for the right to build a union, the right to vote or publish an independent magazine. Spend time imagining how those alive in 50, 100 years will view your life and work...MG: In the publication, you mention Marx and Debord. "We can all be engineers of the imagination"..."that our “general intellect”, all the collective knowledge and skills we use in making things, are taken away from us and embodied instead in the machines of our work. What would happen if we somehow re-engineered these machines if we did what Guy Debord argued and started, “producing ourselves... not the things that enslave us." Do you see the recent cuts across the board as an example of how the powers that be are actively dis-empowering the working classes?GG: Definitely. The cuts aren't just about an experience of 'austerity,' however long term, but constitute a historical attack on poor and working people. They're an attempt to technically recompose the material of the institutions, structures, ideas and habits people live through, in order to limit their ability to resist and remake them for themselves. In factory production, that involved the local restructuring of machine-labour, but later at a wider level Keynesian economic restructuring. This neoliberal restructuring of education is an extension of capitalist discipline into a new area, an attack on a social space which has historically been a base for social change. The government has made this pretty clear by, for example, David Willetts's dictate amidst these massive cuts, to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, that the Tory party's vacuous advertising slogan "the big society" become a core research area, replacing the less ideologically narrow area of 'communities and civic values'; and the Department for Business and Innovation's concomitant rewriting of the 1918 Haldane principle, that research directions are best decided by researchers through peer review.The optimistic take on this is not that it's an inevitable recuperation of resistance, which was the position Debord tended towards in the end, but that capital is always on the back foot - that its own developments are driven by and a response to social movements. That it's an open dialectic (or if you prefer, not a dialectic at all). There's a kind of neurosis to it, although rather than excluding the other to maintain its ego, the state is including everything to stave off other possibilities - you can see this in the language. The whole discourse of 'participation' and networks in business (and since the 1990s, also in art), is as Boltanski and Chiapello observed in their book the New Spirit of Capitalism, a recuperation of the language and terms of 1960s social movements - movements which first properly gave birth on a mass scale to the kinds of self-consciously autonomous and creative politics, or art-activism, which we talk about in the guide. Likewise, the big society is focused on mutuality, and there's a strange recuperation of libertarian and radical thought by the thinkers behind it like Phillip Blonde. In this case, you're left with a stunted vision of the anarchist idea of mutual aid, without any institutional aid, and structurally limited mutuality. But rather than simply critique this, I'm interested to look at how we might otherwise structurally and materially embody other kinds of social relation. Obviously this starts on a much smaller scale, and is often more directly materially embodied. University departments' attempts to support radical philosophy within existing institutions and setting up new autonomous radical art institutions are two possible, but not mutually exclusive, directions here. As, of course, at the most local, accessible level, are the art-activist practices and objects we discuss in the guide.Our new book-film is out "Les Sentiers de L'utopie"Free online (in french) : http://www.editions-zones.fr/Our blog: http://lessentiersdelutopie.wordpress.com/our twitter: < at >nowtopiaSome info for A Users Guide to (Demanding) the Impossible.3 different links to download the publication:http://www.minorcompositions.info/usersguide.htmlhttp://artsagainstcuts.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/a-users-guide-to-demanding-the-impossiblehttp://www.brokencitylab.org/notes/required-reading-a-users-guide-to-demanding-the-impossibleThe Font used was Calvert is by Margaret Calvert, designer of our road signs.Words: Gavin Grindon & John Jordan Design: FLF Illustration: Richard Houguez Original Cover: The Drawing Shed Produced by the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, London, December 2010. www.labofii.net Anti-copyright, share and disseminate freely.More about Minor Compositions - a series of interventions & provocations drawing from autonomous politics, avant-garde aesthetics, and the revolutions of everyday life.http://www.minorcompositions.info/Other Info:Crude awakening: BP and the Tate. The Tate is under fire for taking BP sponsorship money. Does corporate cash damage the arts — or is it a necessary compromise? We asked leading cultural figures their view. Interviews by Emine Saner and Homa Khaleeli. guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 30 June 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jun/30/bp-tate-protests

<http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110724/01464615221/university-calgary-refusing-to-pay-access-copyright-any-more.shtml> University Of Calgary Refusing To Pay Access Copyright Any More from the breaking-out-of-the-stranglehold dept We've written a bunch about Canadian copyright collecting society Access Copyright, which gets universities to pay up for a license to cover people photocopying educational material. The organization doesn't[1] really distribute very much of its money to content creators and yet it's been seeking a massive 1,300% increase in fees[2] -- and Access Copyright claims that even if professors just link to copyrighted content, they have to clear that through Access Copyright. Not everyone believes that's the case. The University of Calgary has said that the new fees are way too high, and it will no longer use Access Copyright at all.[3] Instead, it will seek to clear any copyrights directly, when needed, or otherwise encourage professors to link to material online that students can use. It will be interesting to see if Access Copyright challenges the university for doing so. How much do you want to bet that Access Copyright will now be snooping around, looking for a professor who fails to properly clear a photocopy somewhere. Update: Looks like York University is about to do the same thing.[4][1] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110526/08281714442/did-less-than-10-access-copyrights-income-go-to-authors-last-year.shtml[2] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101001/01322411247/access-copyright-trying-to-stifle-objections-to-1-300-increase-in-copying-fees-for-students.shtml[3] http://thegauntlet.ca/story/15583[4] http://copyright.info.yorku.ca/

Dear Nettimers, Here is some of my new work on drones. The work is verymuch in development, and your comments and suggestions are very welcome. JordanOn a recent clear evening in December, as the sun was setting over theTexas horizon, a Mexican drone entered U.S. airspace and crashed into abackyard in El Paso.In another time and place, a drone falling from the sky could haveelicited a high degree of alarm. In this particular border neighborhood,however, it is not much of an event. Flanked by an army of surveillancecameras, floodlights, thermal imaging systems, inspection apparatuses,ground sensors, and mobile surveillance units -- fortifications that,together with an enormous barricade of cement, steel, and barbed wire,define the border with Mexico -- the region is home to a cavalcade ofmysterious machines that populate the skies: reconnaissance aircraft,relentlessly prowling for illegal activity, extending ground patrols intothe air. As the doomed drone lay tangled in the desert scrub brush andsoftly blowing sand, its processing ability weakened and its connectivecapability disabled, the resident calmly picked up his phone. He did notcall emergency services. At the onset of this particular catastrophe, hedid what any vigilant citizen in this part of the world would do: hecalled U.S. Customs and Border Protection.Drones -- also known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) -- are prone tosystem failures and pilot mistakes. Bad weather can bring them down;relatively small and vulnerable, they can be felled by something as simpleas a gust of wind. The source of this particular El Paso crash wasrevealed to be a mechanical malfunction. It caused operators, who alwaysoperate at a distance, to lose control of the pilotless plane. As isoften the case with unmanned vehicles, it was not clear who thoseoperators were. A Mexican Attorney General spokeswoman denied hercountry's involvement with the drone, but later that same day, anotherMexican official said it was being operated by the Ministry of PublicSecurity and was following a target at the time of the incident. Aspokesman for the Mexican Embassy in the United States said that thedrone, while belonging to Mexico, was part of an operation in coordinationwith the U.S. government.The impact had opened up more than just a small hollow in the sand. Itdisrupted and opened the rituals of neighbors, the connectivities ofmachines, the routines of public agents, and the choruses of desertcicadas. It destabilized the coherency of the crashed drone itself,which, far from sitting intact, was now distributed into the routines andspaces of the various agencies that were engaged in parsing its failure,sustaining its role, or coordinating its return. At the onset of itsweakened capacities, phones were dialed, conversations started. Acollection of material and discursive components, it was now available forreassembly. At the international level, the accident brought into playthe governmental agencies concerned with the maintenance of relationsbetween the two countries, along with the global Israeli companyAeronoautics Defense Systems, agent of the drone's manufacture, all ofwhom sought to maintain the perception that the drone "works," whether interms of mechanical infrastructure, data, or public relations. At thenational level, it brought into play the investigative agencies of theNational Transportation Safety Board, concerned with regulation of theskies in which UAVs travel, and the Department of Homeland Security, chiefenforcing agents in the area of border protection and regulation. Thesearbiters of the safe and legal passage of people, traffic, and goodsharnessed the drone as a case study, distributing its components within aninvestigative landscape of national security discourse, drug smuggling,gang violence, public health, and private commerce. At the city level, itbrought into play the El Paso Fire Department, attender to the emergencyand modulator of its material risk, along with the local PoliceDepartment, dispatched by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agencywhose presence in the region, along with its brother agencies inimmigration and drug enforcement, is considerable. Unlike the PoliceDepartment, it operates its own drones.The return of the UAV was a humble affair. The U.S. Border Patrol, in thecapacity of several agents and a van, pulled up to an international bridgein a cloud of smoke and dust. They stepped out of the vehicle, extractedthe drone from the rear, and handed it back to Mexican officials. Perhapsa ceremony of some kind was involved, but the handing over of the dronewas, in terms of physical exertion, fairly easy, since it was in the"Mini" class -- an Orbiter Mini UAV -- with a total wingspan of aboutseven feet. The entire system, disassembled, fits into a backpack.The recovered drone, relatively intact, might have been reassembledquickly. According to the manufacturer's specifications, this takes aboutten minutes. Yet, the UAV was dismantled by an array of forces thatviolated its coherency in a deeper, more long-lasting sense. Between thedrone's destruction in a backyard and its delivery at a bridge, thecomponent agencies necessary to operate and maintain it became newlyrevealed. Dislodged from their mainframe and rendered vulnerable, thesecomponent agencies, however operational, institutional, or discursive,become newly active in their negotiations and attachments. Phone callsare made, conversations started, extensions orchestrated. At the sametime as they are distributed, however, they are consolidated -- resolvedto a territorial or ontological specificity. Escaping abstraction, theybecome embroiled in a geopolitics that may have been overlooked or erased.In the onset and aftermath of the catastrophe, the coherency andcentrality of the drone is destabilized, its deceptive unity revealed. Itcannot be reassembled in quite the same way.--UAVs made their appearance on the world stage just after September 11,2001, in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. now relies on themheavily, most notably for surveillance and bombing missions across theMiddle East and North Africa. Primarily due to their perceived success inthese military operations, their potential has come to be widelyrecognized in many sectors of the U.S. government, and pressure has beengrowing to allow them into domestic skies. The Department of Defense andthe Department of Homeland Security have besieged the Federal AviationAdministration (FAA) with requests for the flying rights of a range ofpilotless planes into civilian airspace for the purpose of domesticsecurity operations, law enforcement, and disaster relief. So far, theyhave obtained FAA permission to operate unmanned planes along limitedzones, including the Southwest border from California to Texas. In thecase of large-scale catastrophes, drones can be operated nationwide in thesearch for survivors.While many countries across Asia and Latin America -- Israel, Japan, SouthKorea, Brazil, and Mexico, to name a few -- already allow UAVs fordomestic use, and while the E.U. is planning to have them integrated intocivilian airspace by 2015, the process of developing regulations in theU.S. has been slow and fraught with complication. FAA officials areconcerned that, in domestic skies, there is a greater danger of collisionswith smaller aircraft than in the war zones in which UAVs have beentested. The fact that UAVs come in such a wide range of scales -- theGlobal Hawk is as large as a small airliner, while the hand-launched Ravenis just 38 inches long and weighs four pounds -- makes matters worse. TheFAA is are worried that drones might plow into airliners, cargo planes andcorporate jets at high altitudes, or plunge into low-flying helicoptersand hot air balloons. (Raven drones, in fact, have been known to collidewith manned helicopters in the crowded skies over Baghdad.) The rapidgrowth of unmanned planes of all sizes not only threatens safety in theskies but on the ground. With UAVs coming as small as the 13 inch Wasp,it is easy to imagine a tiny drone, malfunctioning or wavering offcourse,crashing not into a border-town backyard but through a living room window.One of the FAA's key concerns is that remote operators can losecommunications with the aircraft. In the world of drones, loss ofcommunication with the aircraft can lead to loss of control. Many UAVs,when they lose a connection to ground stations, are programmed to fly offto a safety zone and try to regain contact. But often, this does notwork. The plane goes renegade, disappears or plummets to earth. Loss ofcommunication and control can occur from a systems failure, a softwareglitch, or, as in the case of the Mexican drone crash in El Paso, amechanical malfunction. The drone can also be cut off by an atmosphericdisturbance, a hostile interception from the ground, or an enemy hack. Inone way or another, human error often plays a role, whether in the form ofa faulty program, mechanical oversight, or coordination mistake.Human error was revealed as the cause of a yet another crash into thebackyard of a border town residence -- this time, in a neighborhood muchlike El Paso but about 300 miles west, near Nogales, Arizona. Thecatastrophe, which occurred before sunrise in the early morning hours, wascaused by a ground operator's failure to follow procedure. The failureset forth a cascade of collapse. It caused the ground control console tolock up, which caused the UAV’s engine to shut down. On loss of itsengine, the Predator began turning off its electrical systems to conservepower. It then descended below the minimum altitude, turned north intoArizona, and awaited further commands.  No such commands came. Operators had completely lost contact with theplane. It floated about the desert night, abandoned, aimless, andinvisible. Air traffic control operators, faced with the danger of anunlocatable, headless robot lurking in the air somewhere, quickly closedoff large chunks of airspace. Tucson International Airport was nearlyaffected. The out-of-control and powerless Predator then dove into anarea of upscale ranch homes and crash-landed in the backyard of a largehouse.The accident was reported when residents of the neighborhood, sleepingquietly amid the sounds of insects, television hum, and soft rustlingleaves, were awakened by the explosion. The scale of this pilotlessplane, a Predator B built by the California-based company General Atomics,is as large as some commuter airliners -- nearly ten times larger thanthat of the Mini UAV in the El Paso incident -- and undoubtedly, itsresounding crash at this hour elicited no small degree of alarm. Theplane missed two houses by about 200 feet. Abruptly catapulted from theirbeds in a violent crescendo of machine grind, metallic crush and earthupheaval, these homeowners may have first called emergency services. However in this case too, a call to U.S. Customs and Border Protectionmight have been most appropriate, since this was the agency that wasoperating the plane.The downed drone, smoldering amongst the cactus, scrub brush, and sandsage in a cloud of smoke and dirt, was most likely a peculiar sight. Atwisted geometry of spilt forms and unmasked roles, of networks sought andbroken, it now offered itself to connection, continuity, and salvage. Among the spilled cables, machine parts, microprocessors, storage units,and sensors that were dislodged by its slam to earth there would have beenlittle trace of human presence. In the place of a cabin, within whichpilots, sitting amongst angular consoles, molded door panels, and wornseats, work the controls that are sculpted around them, there is only asolid, bulbous mass teeming with hardware and data flows. The violentspray of metal, electronics, rubber, and engine fumes that is released bythe impact would have contained few shards of glass, for there are nowindows that line the plane's dense hollow and no monitors within itsconfines. There are only the tiniest portals of cameras and sensors,peering downward out of its underbelly, sucking in data from the groundbelow.Drone DesireThe demand for unmanned vehicles is not limited to the military, homelandsecurity, and law enforcement. Civilians, too, want their drones! Tornado researchers want to send them into storms to gather data. Energycompanies crave their use for geological surveying and and pipelinemonitoring. Security companies want to send them up for new surveillanceapplications. Commercial upstarts yearn to service them and train theiroperators.Perhaps the most visible drone desire is that of the everyday consumer. Homegrown drones sprout up everywhere, their production and operationfacilitated by an expanding network of hobbyist groups and bloggercommunities. Ignited by their prominent roles in sci-fi literature,television, and film, drones populate social and cultural imaginaries. They appeal to generations of gamers, who relate to the control interfacesthrough which they are operated and the first-person-shooter style imagesthat are streamed from them, often accessed on the very same computerscreens upon which these games are played. Flying a drone is like playinga game, and drones often populate games. User-generated websites like DIYDrones, information resources like Dronepedia, and drone applications formobile phones that allow actual drones to be controlled and virtual onesgamed together function as social networking platforms, recreationaloutlets, and learning environments. They serve as catalysts for thedevelopment of shared, distributed forms of thinking and practice,bringing into play new knowledges and skills. Building and flying a dronemight require one to learn principles of aerodynamics, airframeengineering, robotics, photography, and piloting via radio control. Itrequires awareness of regulations on the ground and in the air, howeversocial or environmental, and the skillful management of one's identity andstature within groups. The need to display knowledge, talent, and agilityis often a driving force, whether in competition or cooperation.There is an erotic dimension to this sharing, acquisition of expertise,and display of prowess. One might build drones because, as one suburbanteenage DIY blogger puts it, they are a "chick magnet." Drone displayflourishes out of backyards, streets, abandoned lots, and open fields, andin the consequent posting of video and photographic documentation onsocial networking sites. Nestled amid the sagebrush along the Californiaside of the U.S./Mexico border is even a small DIY drone airfield. Makeshift and unkempt, devoid of pavement and infrastructure, it isunremarkable in the absence of the gathered assemblies of amateur pilots,planes, and spectators for which it is intended. One might well overlookit, yet perhaps in some way it serves as a model of sorts, a harbinger ofairports to come: a preview of what drone airfields might look like, writlarge, in their absence of traditional control platforms and opticalinfrastructures. Much like this one, the unmanned airport would containno centralized control tower presiding over the runway and no lightingtracks reflecting its contours. There is no need for a commanding viewfrom above. The distributed and windowless drone, devoid of any interior,requires no human sightline for its flight. In an operational sense, itstrajectory is not visual. Geometries of looking, whether from a cockpitor a control tower, have been replaced by networks of sensing, somevisually oriented, but most not. Interior/exterior relations, at least inany conventional, spatially-continuous sense, diminish in theirstructuring relevance.If the drone were to provide a model of subjectivity, it would not bedefined by a logics of enclosure. There is no incomplete interiority tobe recuperated. There are no external objects to drone desire, onlyinternal parts of its distributed architecture, opaque to observation. So, too, with those who would harness the drone's allure for the purposeof erotic display: there are no counterparts to an erotics within whichall desiring agents are immanent.--For the drone aficionado of all sorts, drones are curious, kick-ass, andcute, a potent combination of menace and allure, and in this combination,one might embody in them the workings of the sacred or the sublime. Hencethe erotic potential of the image of the shiny drone, glowing against aclear blue sky, as well as the smashed one, twisted amongst the desertbrush.The erotics can spill into the realm of politics, mobilizing civiliangroups in the pursuit of social and political causes, united under thesign of the drone. Of the vigilante groups who now fly drones along theU.S./Mexico border, the most visible and technologically advanced is theAmerican Border Patrol. Its UAV, a ramshackle plane called the BorderHawk, is operated from a ground control station on a private ranchsituated on the Southeastern Arizona borderlands. Endeavoring to providepublic access to transmissions that are usually shrouded in secrecy, thegroup streams all of its drone video footage live on the web.The plane's inaugural flight took place over the San Pedro River, apopular site of cross border activity. To ensure that the drone provedits effectivity in spotting actual, living people, volunteers from theAmerican Border Patrol masqueraded as illegal border crossers. Jutting toand fro, stealthily wending their way across the harsh desert borderland,conscious of the view from above, they mimicked the very people they aimedto target, adopting their renegade behavior in a caricature ofcriminality. The complex pleasures of crossing over in this manner,through appearance, disposition, and demeanor, are well known to thedeviant maneuvering to "pass," with whatever degree of conformity andsacrifice this might entail. These pleasures are often undetectable tothose who man the optics: visual mastery is privileged over groundleveldisplay, at the expense of any awareness of the correspondences of selfthat the targeter finds reflected, extended, and propagated in the scope.As glimpsed in the amateur officiality of their nomenclature, groups likethese straddle the line between governmental and non-governmental agency. Aiming to assist the Border Patrol in the apprehension of illegalimmigrants, they see themselves as providing a valuable public service,filling in the gaps among the limited number of Border Patrol agents thatare available to patrol the entire 2,000-mile stretch. At the same time,they regard themselves operating as government watchdogs. Suspicious oftheir state apparatus and disillusioned by the ideologies of theirgeneration, these groups, dominated by retired military and security men,patrol the border as if in search of something far more than illegalactivity: the recuperable myth of white male privilege. Situated farfrom the contemporary sci-fi imaginary, they seem to embody, instead, thegenre of the Western -- the pre-technological harbinger of itscyber-frontierism. Drifting about the desolate landscape, drones at theready, they guard their version of the American Dream.--Allowing unmanned aircraft into domestic space heightens a number of civilliberties concerns. It expands the government's ability to surveil itscitizens -- adding to its already substantial patrol arsenal of sensors,night vision scopes, video surveillance systems, directional listeningdevices, and data mining systems. The cameras on drones like the Predatorcan read a license plate from two miles up; the electro-optical sensorsystems of the Global Hawk can identify an object the size of a milkcarton from an altitude of 60,000 feet. And while domestic drones are notpresently armed, they can be easily outfitted with weaponry -- as theywere after the September 11, 2001 attacks, when Predators were quicklyarmed with Hellfire missiles (fired, frequently, at the wrong targets). Drone strikes often slip into the cracks between regulatory domains; theirresponsible parties, often combinations of actors working across theboundaries of national governments and domestic agencies, are difficult topinpoint. Among the hundreds of deaths -- some say thousands -- thatAmerica's drone strikes abroad have caused there is little accountability.Many of these concerns are superseded by the drone's allure. Even whenconsidering social costs and ethics, the use of drones is widely supportedby the general public. Guarding the border is understood to be paramountto U.S. national security, and the practicalities of domestic securityloom large. Politicians do not want to risk appearing "soft" on bordersecurity. They argue that UAVs could operate as "force multipliers"allowing the Border Patrol to deploy fewer agents and improve coveragealong remote and sparsely patrolled sections. The synthetic-apertureradar, infrared sensors, and electro-optical cameras on a UAV like theGlobal Hawk can provide the capability to survey over 60,000 square milesa day. According to Homeland Security, UAVs have proved theireffectivity, helping to intercept thousands of illegal immigrants andpounds of drugs.In a more general sense, it is widely understood that unmanned systems,for both military and domestic security operations -- considering, for themoment, that this distinction still stands -- are the wave of the future. The Department of Defense has invested aggressively in their developmentand use, and by Congressional mandate, this investment must continue toincrease. The perceived advantages are many. As with many roboticsystems, drones are unhampered by the physiological and psychologicallimitations of humans; they can easily take on jobs that are dirty,dangerous or dull. They can stay aloft and loiter for prolonged periodsof time, persisting on targets over ten times longer than pilotedaircraft, at far less cost. The human risk factor, at least on the U.S.side, is vastly reduced. As a general rule, drones do not result in theinjuries and deaths of their crews.But they do crash.They crash frequently -- many more times than manned aircraft.They crash not only into American border regions and backyards but intoglobal hotbeds of military activity.They have slammed into Sunni political headquarters in Mosul, Iraq. Nose-dived into the Wales airport runway. Struck power lines and cut offpower in Alberta Canada. Vanished into Pakistan's tribal region in NorthWaziristan. Plummeted into uninhabited terrain near Ghanzi, Afghanistanand the Indian/Pakistani border. Collapsed into the Gaza Strip. Plungedinto the Mojave Desert. Disappeared into Turkey’s desolate Mardinprovince. Cannonballed into the coast of Spain. Ditched into the Iraqicountryside. Rolled with scrub brush across the rough desert terrain nearIndian Springs, Nevada. The Italian Air Force has discovered one of itsdowned drones floating along the surface of the Adriatic Sea, its bodyglistening in the sunlight like the bleached skin of a whale.If a demo reel of Oscar-worthy drone crash moments were assembled --perhaps in order to pitch the drone for a starring role in the ubiquitousaction-adventure movie -- it would be composed of clips like these. Intrue commercial fashion, it would seek to harness the drone's menace andits allure, its potent combination of desire and threat. Like any goodobject of desire, it would give us what we want and what we fear. As aconduit of identification and affect, it would allow us to extendourselves, in all our sensory acuity, into a landscape devoid of everydaypolitical rationales and ethical or moral judgments: to plunge headlonginto the melee.The resulting drone crash action-adventure documentary would be geared forthe everyday viewer primed for the economies of disaster, of pleasurableviolence transmitted on private screens -- sites where drone games areplayed and drone missions consumed. Its trailer might go something likethis. Ground control operators have suddenly lost control of an armedReaper flying a combat mission over Afghanistan. A manned U.S. Air Forcefighter is dispatched to shoot down the renegade drone before it fliesbeyond the edge of Afghan airspace. (In the world of robotic warfare,human pilots are apparently still good for something: shooting downwayward drones.) The tension builds: disciplined man against chaoticunmanned.The fighter plane arrives too late. The renunciant Reaper, speedingheadlong into its own future, crashes into the side of a mountain. Abstracted in a shower of engine oil, smoke, lost data, and crushed metal,its dissipating fuselage drops. Amplified in a rush of sensation andadrenaline, its absorbing body elevates.Salvage OperationsWhen UAVs crash, they provide a bounty of potentially valuable informationand parts. Their databases are rendered vulnerable to access, theircomponents susceptible to retooling -- absorbed into affiliations that canenhance the warfare capacity of foes. In order to prevent enemies fromobtaining sensitive materials, almost every drone crash involves anintensive recovery operation.It can be difficult to secure the wreckage. When a Canadian UAV crashedaround three kilometers from the U.S. military base at Ma'Sum Ghar inwestern Kandahar province, American military forces were too late: within22 minutes, the drone had been fully stripped and hauled away by locals. If a recovery is not possible in time, a drone may be destroyed by its owngovernment: British special forces once bombed a Reaper that had crashedin Afghanistan, in order to prevent its parts falling into the hands ofthe Taliban. Smaller drones like the Raven often simply disappear intothe hands of enemies, as they have frequently in Iraq.A U.S. Predator crashes in Jahayn, a remote village in Yemen. Localresidents, who frequently complain of the noise that the widely-useddrones make as they relentlessly circulate in the skies overhead -- somesay it sounds like a lawnmower -- most likely meet this downed drone withsome degree of relief. Discovering the wreckage, they call the police. The felled drone is recovered, hauled away from the oil-stained sand. Asthe convoy heads back, however, it is intercepted by gunmen. The armedrebels, reported to belong to Al-Qaeda, hijack the plane. The YemeniMinistry of Defense dismisses these reports as baseless rumors. How solidis its claim? According to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, theYemeni government deliberately covered up the crash of a previous Americandrone, the Scan Eagle, claiming that the aircraft, which washed up on thecoast of Hadramout, was an Iranian spy plane.Unlike the smooth coordination of agencies involved in the El Pasoincident, which resulted in the crashed UAV's return to Mexico, there isno handing over of the drone by the Yemeni government. It scatters intothe routines and spaces of renegade agencies. Its parts, however materialor discursive, are absorbed into other systems of meaning and affect,however straight or wayward, countered or modulated, amplified ordiminished.The dispersion, more the rule than the exception, is always accompanied bygathering, a consolidation. As the drone's material parts, each endowedwith a distinct spatial boundary, are assembled in a coherent, stabilizedform, its discursive components are often consolidated into a linearnarrative -- outfitted with a beginning and an end. Which story tobelieve and invest in? One will most likely prevail: a descriptivephrase, like a material part, seeks consistency, endurance, and relevance,of which those that work best for the task at hand, or become most useful,achieve a higher degree.At the onset of the El Paso crash, Mexican officials were pressed tospeak. Citing national security concerns, they dodged the inquiries --replying, as most government officials do, that all information related tounmanned aircraft systems is classified as restricted. The dodging istypical. Governments will disclose the nature and quantity of their UAVoperations and arsenals only when hard pressed, and only when drones drift

Critical Success Factors for Rural ICT Projects in India:A study of n-Logue kiosk projects at Pabal and Baramati ProjectSubmitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree ofMaster of ManagementBy Vivek DhawanABSTRACTIn the past few years, the power of Internet as a communication mediumhascaptured the imagination of developmental organizations around the world. Anumber of projects have been undertaken in various parts of the worldattempting to provide sustainable digital access to rural communities.Indiaboasts a maximum number of such projects. There is an urgent need to studythese projects for critical factors for sustainability, scalability andimpact of theseprojects.This particular study entails the study of rural internet project of n-LogueCommunications Pvt Ltd at its sites in the Pune District of Maharashtra. Thestudy focuses on the business model of n-Logue, which involves a LocalServicePartner at the region-level and an entrepreneur at the village level torun aninformation kiosk. The infrastructure and nature of services provided atthekiosks, usage charges, user profiles etc have been studied. It was foundthat themajor revenue generating services are: Computer education, Kundli,Photography and Internet, in that order. Also a number of factors affect thekioskbusiness: kiosk operator profile and personality, location of the kiosk,demographic factors, services etc.As part of the project, an evaluation of usage and impact of agriculturalconsultancy through aAQUA was made. aAQUA ('a'lmost 'A'll 'QU'estions'A'nswered) is an online expert Question & Answer based community forum,developed by Media Labs Asia, KReSIT, IIT Bombay, for delivering informationtothe grass roots of the Indian Community. It is an online, multilingual,multimedia, archived discussion forum accessible using a web browser,allowingmembers to create, view and manage content in their mother tongue(Hindi,Marathi etc). aAQUA has cyber extended the reach of experts at KVK, Baramatiand has demonstrated great potential for local content creation. HoweveraAQUAsuffers from the following limitations: slow rate of content creation andabsenceof commercial benefit for the kiosk operator in the present model. Scalingup ofaAQUA would require linking up with a greater number of experts and acommercial model at the kiosk level.http://www.dil.iitb.ac.in/docs/kiosk-success-factors.pdfFN +91-832-2409490 or +91-9822122436 (after 2pm)#784 Nr Lourdes Convent, Saligao 403511 Goa Indiahttp://fn.goa-india.org http://goa1556.goa-india.org

original to:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/28/murdoch-news-corp-banks-transnationalsA mere state can't restrain a corporation like Murdoch'sWhether News Corp, banks or food giants, transnationals are not so much astate within a state as a power beyond itThe deep corruption of power revealed by the phone-hacking scandal has ledmany to question how Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation could establish "astate within a state". MPs have trumpeted their determination to make sureit never happens again. They will struggle.As if to rub the point in, BSkyB's board announced it was back to businessas usual on Thursday. Despite parliament's question mark over theintegrity of its chairman, James Murdoch, the rest of the board said theyfully supported him. A few hours later the Guardian reported a new low inthe saga – allegations that Sarah Payne's mother's phone may have beenhacked. But the corporation marches on.The fact is that the modern globalised corporation is not a state within astate so much as a power above and beyond the state. Internationaldevelopment experts stopped talking about multinationals years ago,preferring instead the tag of transnational corporations (TNCs), becausethese companies now transcend national authorities.Developing countries, dealing with corporations whose revenue oftenexceeds their own GDPs, have long been aware of their own lack of power.They are familiar with the way world trade rules have been written tobenefit corporations and limit what any one country can impose on them.They know about the transnationals' tendency to oligopoly; and theirability to penetrate the heart of government with lobbying. For anaffluent country like the UK, it has come as more of a shock.While traditional multinationals identified with a national home, TNCshave no such loyalty. Territorial borders are no longer important. Thishad been the whole thrust of World Trade Organisation treaties in the pastdecades. Transnationals can now take advantage of the free movement ofcapital and the ease of shifting production from country to country tochoose the regulatory framework that suits them best. If restrained bylegitimate legislative authorities, they can appeal to WTO rules toenforce their rights, as the tobacco company Philip Morris has threatenedrecently. It says it will sue the Australian government for billions ofdollars for violating its intellectual property rights if it goes aheadwith its plan to ban branding on cigarette packets.TNCs can and do locate their profits offshore to thwart any individualcountry's efforts to take revenue from them. The ability to raise taxes toprovide services is a core function of democratic government, yetgovernments have been reduced to supplicants, cutting their tax ratesfurther and further to woo corporates. Meanwhile, as the Rowntreevisionary Geoff Tansey has pointed out, transnationals have used patentsand intellectual property rights to create their own system of privatetaxation.If labour laws or environmental regulations become too onerous for them,they can move operations to less regulated jurisdictions. So globalisedfood and garment manufacturers can move to cheaper centres of productionwhen governments introduce minimum wages or unions win workers' rights. Iffinancial rules curb their ability to invent complex, risky new productsto sell, they can set up shop elsewhere. The transnational banks have beenpast masters at playing off one jurisdiction against another and using thethreat of relocation to resist government controls. Much of their activitystill takes place in a shadow system beyond the states that have bailedthem out.Nearly three years on from the near collapse of the whole system, thestructural reform that everyone agreed was needed has not materialised.Lobbying at the heart of governments in Europe and the US has seen offcalls for the separation of investment banking from the retail bankingthat takes ordinary people's deposits.So the banks remain too big and too interconnected to fail. Vince Cable,the business secretary, who still argued forcefully this week for thatseparation, is nevertheless reduced to hoping that the ringfencing offunctions preferred by the big corporates will work. The Germanchancellor, Angela Merkel – wanting to make sure private bankingcorporations would share the pain for the Greek loans they made as thatcountry hovers around default – was threatened with not just relocationbut with the whole banking system being brought down again. Notsurprisingly, she backed off.The most effective checks on transnationals are as likely to come fromNGOs and consumers as individual governments these days. Campaigners havefound new forms of asymmetric engagement that enable them to take oncorporations whose resources dwarf their own. Harnessing the same advancesin technology and instant globalised communication that TNCs have used tobuild up their control, activists have brought together shared interestgroups across borders to challenge them. So for example, direct actiongroups such as Greenpeace have been able to connect protesters againsttransnational soya traders in the Amazon, with activists across Europeancountries in highly effective simultaneous campaigns against the brandsthat buy from them.When the Murdochs initially refused to appear before parliament to accountfor their corporate behaviour, there was much anxious consultation ofancient rules to see if these two foreign citizens could be forced or not.In the end, it was probably the market that got them there, as the damagelimitation gurus advised that a dose of humble pie would be the mosteffective strategy for restoring shareholder confidence. After the MillyDowler phone-hacking revelation, it was neither our compromised electedrepresentatives nor our law enforcers the police, but activists on Twitterthat brought them down. Attacking not just the brands owned by theMurdochs but those owned by their advertisers until they withdrew from theNews of the World's pages, they played by the globalised market'srulebook.

Freeley accessible & downloadablebwo John Armitage, with thankshttp://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08109021003676359AbstractA knowledge economy has been defined as one in which the generation andexploitation of knowledge has come to play the predominant part in thecreation of wealth. It is not simply about pushing back the frontiers ofknowledge; it is also about the more effective use and exploitation of alltypes of knowledge in all manner of economic activities. One key questionis whether there are new opportunities and new models for scholarlypublishing that might better serve researchers and more effectivelycommunicate and disseminate research findings. Building on previous work,this paper looks at the costs and potential benefits of alternative modelsfor scientific and scholarly publishing, describing the approach andmethods used and summarising the findings of a study undertaken for theJoint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the United Kingdom. Itconcludes that different publishing models can make a material differenceto the costs faced and benefits realised from research communication, andit seems likely that more open access to findings from publicly fundedresearch would have substantial net benefits. * View full text * Download full text

Another Gilberto Gil?M-----Original Message-----From: Portside Moderator [mailto:moderator-1P9u8MX5GVLRnqqr4xx/QQ< at >public.gmane.org] Sent: Sunday, July 31, 2011 4:19 AMTo: PORTSIDE-psCCsKB7rKShSZ4PnerUBNpPI6r2+5pS< at >public.gmane.orgSubject: [SPAM] Renowned Singer Susana Baca Named Peru's Minister of CultureRenowned Singer Susana Baca Named Peru's Minister ofCultureWorld Music CentralNews Dept.July 29, 2011http://worldmusiccentral.org/2011/07/29/renowned-singer-susana-baca-named-perus-minister-of-culture/Renowned Singer Susana Baca Named Peru's Minister ofCulturePhoto: Susana Baca http://tinyurl.com/3pwss2fPeru's president elect Ollanta Humala had named Afro-Peruvian innovator Susana Baca new Minister of Culture.She replaces Juan Ossio. The Ministry of Culture wascreated only 11 months ago. With this initiative,Ollanta Humala a similar path to Brazil's formerpresident, Lula da Silva, who named famed musicianGilberto Gil Brazil's Minister of Culture.Susana Baca has been an essential figure in the revivalof Afro-Peruvian music. She reached internationalaudiences in 1995 thatnks to the successful compilationCD The Soul of Black Peru. In 2002, Susana Baca won theLatin Grammy Award for Best Folk Album, for her LamentoNegro CD. Susana Baca `s most recent album isAfrodiaspora, where she explores the musics of theAfrican Diaspora, including the African rooted music ofCuba, Argentina, Brazil, New Orleans (USA); and genreslike forro, cumbia, tango, etc.Despite her appointment, Susana Baca will continue withher U.S. tour plans to promote her new album titled Afrodiaspora.Tour dates:Sunday, August 21, 2011 at City Winery in New York CityTuesday, August 23, 2011 at El Rey Theatre in LosAngeles, CAWednesday, August 24, 2011 at Kuumbwa Jazz Center inSanta Cruz, CAThursday, August 25, 2011 at Herbst Theatre in SanFrancisco, CASaturday, August 27, 2011 at Mayne Stage in Chicago, IL___________Susana Baca Becomes Peru's First Black GovernmentMinisterAssociated PressJuly 26, 2011 Singer, known as the voice of Afro-Peruvian music tradition, given culture portfolio by president-elect Ollanta Humalahttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/26/susana-baca-peru-culture-minister/printSusana Baca won a Latin Grammy in 2002 for an album she recorded nearly 20years earlier in Cuba. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the GuardianPeru's president-elect, Ollanta Humala, has chosen thesinger Susana Baca as culture minister, making her the country's first blackgovernment minister since independence from Spain in 1821.Baca is the best-known voice of the musical and dancetradition of Afro-Peruvians, descendants of slaves. The 67-year-old won aLatin Grammy in 2002 for the album Lamento Negro, which she recorded nearlytwo decades earlier in Cuba.Humala also named his education minister as thesociologist Patricia Salas in the last cabinetappointments announced before he takes office onThursday.___________________________________________Portside aims to provide material of interest to peopleon the left that will help them to interpret the worldand to change it.Submit via email: portside-0h5K2prAsCRg9hUCZPvPmw< at >public.gmane.orgSubmit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faqSub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribeSearch Portside archives: http://portside.org/archiveContribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate!DSPAM:2676,4e34a1fd40301864710518!

Geo-politics come before human rights: the case of Syria and the legacy of the city of HamaJuly 31, 2011 by Tjebbe van TijenThe illustrated version with embedded video and links can be found at:http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/geopolitics-come-before-human-rights-the-case-of-syria-and-the-legacy-of-the-city-of-hama/[tableau of International Criminal Court logo with the balance of justice swung one way and tanks advancing on Hama and demonstrations in that town of these last days]‎”Syrian tanks storm the city of Hama” I read today and the mere name of that haunted town makes me shiver, as tens of thousands of people were massacred there in the year 1982 on orders of Assad Senior, the death toll ranges between 20 and 40 thousands. A genocide forgotten – some say – a political mass-murder would be a more apt classification. The movie below commemorates the 1982 ordeal of Hama in Syria.[embedded Youtube movie]The well documented Syrian Human Rights Committee has this report on the 1982 Hama Massacre:http://www.shrc.org/data/a​spx/d5/2535.aspxInfringements on human rights in Syria have been documented for decades by organisations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. This has not led the ‘international community’ to take any serious action against the Assad regime. The Assad dynasty is a stabilising power in the region, as was the Egypt of Mubarak. The fate of Syrian citizens is judged as being less important than the Middle East Entente.Also the International Criminal Court in The Hague – sadly enough – is more lead by the geo-politics of its constituent states, than by the rule of international law. Whereas the UN Security Council asked the ICC to research whether the Libyan government should be indicted for its threats to the civilian population. No such actions have been taken against the Syrian government of Assad Junior. The balance of power in the Middle East is more important than the balance of international justice. Or will the attack of tanks on demonstrating citizens of the town of Hama make the bascule of justice move to its proper position?Of the 139 states that have signed the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 34 have not ratified the treaty, Syria is one of them.Tjebbe van TijenImaginary Museum ProjectsDramatizing Historical Informationhttp://imaginarymuseum.orgweb-blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/# 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://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

Emblem for the International Criminal Court: Iustitiae LanguorAugust 2, 2011 by Tjebbe van TijenThe illustrated version with a link to the emblem source can be found athttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/emblem-for-the-international-criminal-court-iustitiae-languor/[tableau with 17th century emblem and picture of the International criminal Court in The Hague]Iustitiae Languor/Justice Falls Down:Indictment for Gaddafi but not (yet) for Assad makes one wonder and the symbol of Justitia as an impartial being came to mind and it made me search in one of the emblemata databases for the word ‘justice’, this one popped up and though made in the 17th century it is still fitting four centuries later, where the geo-political situation in the world often gets out of control, like an unbridled horse.The emblem book (*) has the old German text on the facing page and it reads:motto (de)Gerechtigkeit gehet zu Grundt.subscriptio (de)GLeich wie ein wildes/ freches PferdtStelt sich die Welt jetzundt auff Erdt/Das wildt Pferdt leydet kein Gebiß/Die welt die leydet kein Verdrieß/Doch haßts vnd scheucht insonderheit/Der Gesetz Recht vnd Gerechtigkeit.A quick rendering of the somewhat obscure German – with an eye to the Latin – could read in English:Like an untamed horseThe world puts itself on earthA wild horse not bridled by a bitA world not guided by remorseBut hating and dossing off especiallyLaw, righteousness and judiciary.——–(*) Proscenium vitæ humanæ siue Emblematvm Secvlarivm, Ivcvndissima, & artificiosissima varietate Vitæ Hvmanæ & seculi huius deprauati mores, ac studia peruersissima. Versibvs Latinis, Germanicis, Gallicis & Belgicis ita adumbrantium … (1627, Frankfurt)Tjebbe van TijenImaginary Museum ProjectsDramatizing Historical Informationhttp://imaginarymuseum.orgweb-blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/

Kiddieporn appears to still function as the primary omnibus baseball batto smash 'the anarchy' on the Internet (with terrorism a good second). Butas with 'white slave trafficking' it will become interesting to see whenthe concept itself that it seeks to represent will come under closerscrutiny...bwo support.antenna.nloriginal to:http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/08/the-legislation-that-could-kill-internet-privacy-for-good/242853/The Legislation That Could Kill Internet Privacy for GoodBy Conor FriedersdorfThe Atlantic, Aug 1 2011,An overzealous bill that claims to be about stopping child pornographyturns every Web user into a person to monitorEvery right-thinking person abhors child pornography. To combat it,legislators have brought through committee a poorly conceived, over-broadCongressional bill, The Protecting Children from Internet PornographersAct of 2011. It is arguably the biggest threat to civil liberties nowunder consideration in the United States. The potential victims: everyonewho uses the Internet.The good news? It hasn't gone before the full House yet.The bad news: it already made it through committee. And history shows thatin times of moral panic, overly broad legislation has a way of becominglaw. In fact, a particular moment comes to mind.In the early 20th Century, a different moral panic gripped the UnitedStates: a rural nation was rapidly moving to anonymous cities, sexualmores were changing, and Americans became convinced that an epidemic ofwhite female slavery was sweeping the land. Thus a 1910 law that made itillegal to transport any person across state lines for prostitution "orfor any other immoral purpose." Suddenly premarital sex and adultery hadbeen criminalized, as scam artists would quickly figure out. "Women wouldlure male conventioneers across a state line, say from New York toAtlantic City, New Jersey," David Langum* explains, "and then threaten toexpose them to the prosecutors for violation" unless paid off. Inveighingagainst the law, the New York Times noted that, though it was officiallycalled the White Slave Traffic Act (aka The Mann Act), a more apt namewould've been "the Encouragement of Blackmail Act."That name is what brought the anecdote back to me. A better name for thechild pornography bill would be The Encouragement of Blackmail by LawEnforcement Act. At issue is how to catch child pornographers. It's toohard now, say the bill's backers, and I can sympathize. It's theirsolution that appalls me: under language approved 19 to 10 by a Housecommittee, the firm that sells you Internet access would be required totrack all of your Internet activity and save it for 18 months, along withyour name, the address where you live, your bank account numbers, yourcredit card numbers, and IP addresses you've been assigned.Tracking the private daily behavior of everyone in order to help catch asmall number of child criminals is itself the noxious practice of policestates. Said an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation: "The dataretention mandate in this bill would treat every Internet user like acriminal and threaten the online privacy and free speech rights of everyAmerican." Even more troubling is what the government would need to do inorder to access this trove of private information: ask for it.I kid you not -- that's it.As written, The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of2011 doesn't require that someone be under investigation on childpornography charges in order for police to access their Internet history

Police in Istanbul have 'taken into custody' several people thought to beinvolved in the illegal trade in body parts in Turkey. They organisers ofthe trades are alleged to have used facebook as the means of marketing forsellers and maybe buyers. The page was still up last night on facebook.Here's a link to an English version news articlehttp://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=252327As a visual artist just starting a project on the intersections between thehistoric means and manner of trade and the contemporary for stuff likebio-products, its almost hard to believe that a story like this is not toogood to be true or is it a giant hoax, hard to tell.

Gay Pride Canal Parade 2012: who is next to come out?August 8, 2011 by Tjebbe van TijenA fully documented version with web-links and a 'tableau' illustration can be found at:http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/gay-pride-canal-parade-2012-who-is-next-to-come-out/Gay Pride 2012, who is next to come out? The Dutch army and the National Bank (DNB) are only a few official institutions that participate with a boat of their own in the yearly Canal Parade of Gay Pride Amsterdam. Themuseum and cultural sector is presented with their own boat (Amsterdam Museum | Bijbels Museum | De Nieuwe Kerk Amsterdam | EYE/Filmmuseum | FOAM | Hermitage Amsterdam | Het Concertgebouw | Het Nationale Ballet | Joods Historisch Museum | Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest | Museum Van Loon | Nationaal Historisch Museum | Nederlands Bureau voor Toerisme en Congressen | Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest | Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder | Rijksmuseum | Scheepvaartmuseum | Stedelijk Museum | Tassenmuseum Hendrikje | Tropenmuseum | Van Gogh Museum) a never ending list. Even the government has their own (contested) boat - though the prime minister Rutte choose to profile himself at a more straight mass party around the corner on the same day as the Canal Parade: ‘Dance Valley’ . A Dutch Hindu boat was a newcomer this year following the trend of Christian, Islam and Jewish gay representation, during an event that seems to aim at embracing ‘the whole’ of Dutch society. But certain key sectors of the Netherlands keep ‘missing the emancipation boat’, fail the institutionalised ‘coming out’: Dutch football business, the Dutch Royal House of Orange (and they have several nice boats ready to take part) and a boat of a section of this society that is thought to consist mainly of macho heteros, the Dutch Mafia. Here is an underworld that should be targeted, stimulated to ‘come out of their closets’. One can already enjoy the vision of a ‘parade of sails’ of hash and cocaine boats chaperoned by armoured speedboats, with the crew dressed in proper t-shirts and sunglassed criminals with their water-pistols doing ‘bang, bang, bang’.[tableau with a movie poster, a pink t-shirt and pink water-pistol]Tjebbe van TijenImaginary Museum ProjectsDramatizing Historical Informationhttp://imaginarymuseum.orgweb-blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/

Glued to the Beeb as I have been the last few days, I do have my opinionson the origins and consequences of, tag "Anarchy in the UK" happeningright now, and I triggered a discussion on that subject on the INURA list,where I found ref to this text, which I think is most worthwhile. So nosubstantial comment for now (it may come), but just going for one of thepurposes of this list: text filtering.Cheers, patrizio & Diiiinooos!...................Original to:http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/08/panic-on-streets-of-london.html(do check it out for background & more!)Penny RedPanic on the streets of London.Posted August 9, 2011I’m huddled in the front room with some shell-shocked friends, watching mycity burn. The BBC is interchanging footage of blazing cars and runningstreet battles in Hackney, of police horses lining up in Lewisham, ofroiling infernos that were once shops and houses in Croydon and inPeckham. Last night, Enfield, Walthamstow, Brixton and Wood Green werelooted; there have been hundreds of arrests and dozens of seriousinjuries, and it will be a miracle if nobody dies tonight. This is thethird consecutive night of rioting in London, and the disorder has nowspread to Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol and Birmingham. Politicians and policeofficers who only hours ago were making stony-faced statements aboutcriminality are now simply begging the young people of Britain’s innercities to go home. Britain is a tinderbox, and on Friday, somebody lit amatch. How the hell did this happen? And what are we going to do now?In the scramble to comprehend the riots, every single commentator hasopened with a ritual condemnation of the violence, as if it were in anydoubt that arson, muggings and lootings are ugly occurrences. That muchshould be obvious to anyone who is watching Croydon burn down on the BBCright now. David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, called the disorder 'mindless,mindless'. Nick Clegg denounced it as 'needless, opportunistic theft andviolence'. Speaking from his Tuscan holiday villa, Prime Minister DavidCameron – who has finally decided to return home to take charge - declaredsimply that the social unrest searing through the poorest boroughs in thecountry was "utterly unacceptable." The violence on the streets is beingdismissed as ‘pure criminality,’ as the work of a ‘violent minority’, as‘opportunism.’ This is madly insufficient. It is no way to talk aboutviral civil unrest. Angry young people with nothing to do and little tolose are turning on their own communities, and they cannot be stopped, andthey know it. Tonight, in one of the greatest cities in the world, societyis ripping itself apart.Violence is rarely mindless. The politics of a burning building, asmashed-in shop or a young man shot by police may be obscured even tothose who lit the rags or fired the gun, but the politics are there.Unquestionably there is far, far more to these riots than the death ofMark Duggan, whose shooting sparked off the unrest on Saturday, when twopolice cars were set alight after a five-hour vigil at Tottenham policestation. A peaceful protest over the death of a man at police hands, in acommunity where locals have been given every reason to mistrust the forcesof law and order, is one sort of political statement. Raiding shops fortechnology and trainers that cost ten times as much as the benefits you’reno longer entitled to is another. A co-ordinated, viral wave of civilunrest across the poorest boroughs of Britain, with young people comingfrom across the capital and the country to battle the police, is another.Months of conjecture will follow these riots. Already, the internet isteeming with racist vitriol and wild speculation. The truth is that veryfew people know why this is happening. They don’t know, because they werenot watching these communities. Nobody has been watching Tottenham sincethe television cameras drifted away after the Broadwater Farm riots of1985. Most of the people who will be writing, speaking and pontificatingabout the disorder this weekend have absolutely no idea what it is like togrow up in a community where there are no jobs, no space to live or move,and the police are on the streets stopping-and-searching you as you comehome from school. The people who do will be waking up this week in thesure and certain knowledge that after decades of being ignored andmarginalised and harassed by the police, after months of seeing anyconceivable hope of a better future confiscated, they are finally on thenews. In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if riotingreally achieved anything:"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn'triot, would you?""Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, allblacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in thepress. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crewsand newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere ‘’’There are communities all over the country that nobody paid attention tounless there had recently been a riot or a murdered child. Well, they’repaying attention now.Tonight in London, social order and the rule of law have broken downentirely. The city has been brought to a standstill; it is not safe to goout onto the streets, and where I am in Holloway, the violence is comingcloser. As I write, the looting and arson attacks have spread to at leastfifty different areas across the UK, including dozens in London, andcommunities are now turning on each other, with the Guardian reporting onrival gangs forming battle lines. It has become clear to thedisenfranchised young people of Britain, who feel that they have no stakein society and nothing to lose, that they can do what they like tonight,and the police are utterly unable to stop them. That is what riots are allabout.Riots are about power, and they are about catharsis. They are not aboutpoor parenting, or youth services being cut, or any of the other snapexplanations that media pundits have been trotting out: structuralinequalities, as a friend of mine remarked today, are not solved by a fewpool tables. People riot because it makes them feel powerful, even if onlyfor a night. People riot because they have spent their whole lives beingtold that they are good for nothing, and they realise that together theycan do anything – literally, anything at all. People to whom respect hasnever been shown riot because they feel they have little reason to showrespect themselves, and it spreads like fire on a warm summer night. Andnow people have lost their homes, and the country is tearing itself apart.Noone expected this. The so-called leaders who have taken three solid daysto return from their foreign holidays to a country in flames did notanticipate this. The people running Britain had absolutely no clue howdesperate things had become. They thought that after thirty years ofsoaring inequality, in the middle of a recession, they could take away thelast little things that gave people hope, the benefits, the jobs, thepossibility of higher education, the support structures, and nothing wouldhappen. They were wrong. And now my city is burning, and it will continueto burn until we stop the blanket condemnations and blind conjecture andtry to understand just what has brought viral civil unrest to Britain. Letme give you a hint: it ain’t Twitter.I’m stuck in the house, now, with rioting going on just down the road inChalk Farm. Ealing and Clapham and Dalston are being trashed. Journalistsare being mugged and beaten in the streets, and the riot cops are inretreat where they have appeared at all. Police stations are being setalight all over the country. This morning, as the smoke begins to clear,those of us who can sleep will wake up to a country in chaos. We will wakeup to fear, and to racism, and to condemnation on left and right, none ofwhich will stop this happening again, as the prospect of a second stockmarket clash teeters terrifyingly at the bottom of the news reports. Nowis the time when we make our choices. Now is the time when we decidewhether to descend into hate, or to put prejudice aside and work together.Now is the time when we decide what sort of country it is that we want tolive in. Follow the #riotcleanup hashtag on Twitter. And take care of oneanother.

Social Media and the UK Riots: “Twitter Mobs”, “Facebook Mobs”, “Blackberry Mobs” and the Structural Violence of NeoliberalismA blog post comment on the role of social media in the UK riots by Christian Fuchs“One formula [...] can be that of the mob: gullible, fickle, herdlike, low in taste and habit. [...] If [...] our purpsoe is manipulation – the persuasion of a large number of people to act, feel, think, known in certain ways – the convenient formula will be that of the masses”. — Raymond Williams“What is true of London, is true of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, is true of all great towns. Everywhere barbarous indifference, hard egotism on one hand, and nameless misery on the other, everywhere social warfare, every man’s house in a state of siege, everywhere reciprocal plundering under the protection of the law, and all so shameless, so openly avowed that one shrinks before the consequences of our social state as they manifest themselves here undisguised, and can only wonder that the whole crazy fabric still hangs together”. This passage could be a description of the social conditions in the United Kingdom today. It is, however, a passage from Friedrich Engels’ report about the “Working Class in England”, published in 1845.In his book “Folk Devils and Moral Panics, first published in 1972, Stanley Cohen shows how public discourse tends to blame media and popular culture for triggering, causing or stimulating violence. “There is a long history of moral panics about the alleged harmful effects of exposure to popular media and cultural forms – comics and cartoons, popular theatre, cinema, rock music, video nasties, computer games, internet porn” – and, one should add today, social media. “For conservatives, the media glamorize crime, trivialize public insecurities and undermine moral authority; for liberals the media exaggerate the risks of crime and whip up moral panics to vindicate an unjust and authoritarian crime control policy” (Cohen, Stanley. 1972/2002. Folk devils and moral panics. Oxon: Routledge. Third edition. page xvii).The shooting of Mark Duggan by the London police on August 4th 2011 in Tottenham triggered riots in London areas such as Tottenham, Wood Green, Enfield Town, Ponders End, Brixton, Walthamstow, Walthamstow Central, Chingford Mount, Hackney, Croydon, Ealing and in other UK areas such as Toxteth (Liverpool), Handsworth (Birmingham), St. Ann’s (Nottingham), West Bromwich, Wolverhampton, Salford, or Central Manchester.Parts of the mass media started blaming social media for being the cause of the violence. The Sun reported on August 8th: “Rioting thugs use Twitter to boost their numbers in thieving store raids. [...] THUGS used social network Twitter to orchestrate the Tottenham violence and incite others to join in as they sent messages urging: ’Roll up and loot’“. The Telegraph wrote on the same day: “How technology fuelled Britain’s first 21st century riot. The Tottenham riots were orchestrated by teenage gang members, who used the latest mobile phone technology to incite and film the looting and violence. Gang members used Blackberry smart-phones designed as a communications tool for high-flying executives to organise the mayhem”. The Daily Mail wrote on August 7th that there are “fears that violence was fanned by Twitter as picture of burning police car was re-tweeted more than 100 times”.Even the BBC took up the social media panic discourse on August 9th and reported about the power of social media to bring together not only five, but 200 people for forming a rioting “mob”. Media and politicians created the impression that the riots were orchestrated by “Twitter mobs” and “Blackberry mobs”.And also, as usual in moral panics, the call for policing technology could be heard. The Daily Express (August 10th, 2011) wrote: ”Thugs and looters are thought to have sent messages via the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service to other troublemakers, alerting them to riot scenes and inciting further violence. Technology writer Mike Butcher said it was unbelievable the service had not already been shut down. He said: ’Mobile phones have become weaponised. It’s like text messaging with steroids – you can send messages to hundreds of people that cannot be traced back to you.’ Tottenham MP David Lammy appealed for BlackBerry to suspend the service“. The police published pictures of rioters recorded by CCTV and asked the public to identify the people. The mass media published these pictures. The Sun called for “naming and shaming a rioter” and for “shopping a moron”. The mass media also reported about citizens, who self-organized over social media in order to gather in affected neighbourhoods for cleaning the streets.Blaming technology or popular culture for violence – the Daily Mirror blamed “the pernicious culture of hatred around rap music, which glorifies violence and loathing of authority (especially the police but including parents), exalts trashy materialism and raves about drugs“ for the riots – is an old and typical ideology that avoids engaging with the real societal causes of riots and unrest and promises easy solutions: policing, control of technology, surveillance. It neglects the structural causes of riots and how violence is built into contemporary societies. Focusing on technology (as cause of or solution for riots) is the ideological search for control, simplicity and predictability in a situation of high complexity, unpredictability and uncertainty. It is also an expression of fear. It projects society’s guilt and shame into objects. Explanations are not sought in complex social relations, but in the fetishism of things. Social media and technology-centrism, both in its optimistic form (“social media will help our communities to overcome the riots”, “social media and mobile phones should be surveilled by the police”, “Blackberrys should be forbidden”, “more CCTV surveillance is needed”, “CCTV will help us find and imprison all rioters”) and its pessimistic form (“social media triggered, caused, stimulated, boosted, orchestrated, organized or fanned violence”), is a techno-deterministic ideology that subsitutes thinking about society by the focus on technology. Societal problems are reduced to the level of technology.Let’s talk about the society, in which these riots have taken place. Is it really a surprise that riots emerged in the UK, a country with high socio-economic inequality and youth unemployment, in a situation of global economic crisis? The United Kingdom has a high level of income inequality, its Gini level was 32.4 in 2009 (0 means absolute equality, 100 absolute inequality), a level that is only topped by a few countries in Europe and that is comparable to the level of Greece (33.1) (data source: Eurostat). 17.3% of the UK population had a risk of living in poverty in 2009 (data source: Eurostat). In early 2011, the youth unemployment rate in the UK rose to 20.3%, the highest level since these statistics started being recorded in 1992.The UK is not only one of the most advanced developed countries today in economic temrs, it is at the same time a developing country in social terms with a lot of structurally deprived areas. Is it a surprise that riots erupted especially in East London, the West Midlands and Greater Manchester? The UK Department of Communities and Local Government reported in its analysis “The English Indices of Deprivation 2010”: “Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Manchester, Knowsley, the City of Kingston-upon Hull, Hackney and Tower Hamlets are the local authorities with the highest proportion of LSOAs amongst the most deprived in England. [...] The north east quarter of London, particularly Newham, Hackney and Tower Hamlets continue to exhibit very high levels of deprivation“ (pages 1, 3). Decades of UK capitalist development shaped by deindustrialization and neoliberalism have had effects on the creation, intensification and extension of precariousness and deprivation.Calls for more police, surveillance, crowd control and the blames of popular culture and social media are helpless. It is too late once riots erupt. One should not blame social media or popular culture, but the violent conditions of society for the UK riots. The mass media’s and politics’ focus on surveillance, law and order politics and the condemnation of social media will not solve the problems. A serious discussion about class, inequality and racism is needed, which also requires a change of policy regimes. The UK riots are not a “Blackberry mob”, not a “Facebook mob” and not a “Twitter mob”; they are the effects of the structure violence of neoliberalism. Capitalism, crisis and class are the main contexts of unrests, uproars and social media today.# 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://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

bwo INURA listoriginal to: http://bit.ly/ppNoV5 (The Architects' Journal/ AJ)many comments on siteRiots updated: Sennett, Rykwert, Till, de Botton, Tavernor and more on whyBritain is burning10 August, 2011 | By Christine MurrayThe AJ asks prominent architectural thinkers to comment on thearchitecture of our cities. More comments added daily.Joseph RykwertCities incite riots - and herding people in high rise reservoirs of socialaggression doesn’t help: if we didn’t have football and rugby matches torelease it, however messily, we’d have many more, though riots are almostalways triggered by specific incidents. Current hoody anomie was fosteredby the spectacle of the fat-cats bloated bonuses accompanying the ‘we’reall in it’ talk about cuts - as well as by the knowledge that the policewas among the public services to be mutilated (which also goes for parks,youth centres), so was inevitably demoralised. And the spark was amishandled police shooting. Locking up cowed hoodies in overcrowdedprisons won’t solve anything. We need to think about public housing andpublic space - quicklyRichard SennettThe riots were all too predictable: a generation of poor, young peoplewith no future becomes a tinderbox for violence. The British riots haveone resemblance to those which afflicted France in the last decade; theyoccur in the places where no-hopers live, rather than political riotsdirected at the centres of power; the result is that the principle victimsare their local neighboursJeremy TillAt least the architects are not blamed this time, as we were withBroadwater. Nor could we be, because (quoting Simmel) the city is not aspatial entity with sociological consequences, but a sociological entitythat is formed spatially. Here the riots spatialise years of ramping up ofsocial inequality. So when my Twitter feed calls for the reintroduction ofJane Jacobs, I blanch (because space is not the solution, just thesymptom) and when the Tories say it is ‘pure’ criminality, I rage (becauseof the implicit disavowal of their political responsibility). One way out?Act on the New Economic Foundation’s Great TransitionAlain de BottonPeople tend to distinguish between violence against people (very serious)and violence against property (not so bad). But in these riots, whatemerges is how offensive it is to see buildings on fire because thissymbolises a destruction of the hopes and efforts of so many who struggledto build and maintain them. It isn’t just money that goes up in flames;it’s the spirit of civilisationRobert TavernorThe London riots are a sobering reminder that cities are for people, thatpeople make cities. Cities rely on a precarious social balance that can bewrecked by the irresponsible. Leadership and good action are now essentialIrena BaumanI already talked about this before it happened. I’ve made many commentsabout the wealth divide within cities and how it is impacting on physicaland social geographies and increases fear and violence. We will see muchmore of this kind of unrest in the future. No amount of regenerationfunding will help. We need to change the core values of our society andredistribute wealth, if a long term solution is to be found.William JR CurtisLondon has been up for sale to the highest bidders in the internationalplutocracy for years and the results are there to see in the Shard and allthe other grotesque signs of exaggerated wealth that are in factimpoverishing the public realm for everybody else. Worse than that,British politicians of both Left and Right have sold their souls and theirpolicies to the City of London and therefore to the vagaries ofinternational financial capitalism which has no loyalties and no sense oflocal responsibility. All the eyewash of Cameron’s so called Big Societycannot disguise the fact that the bottom end of society has beenabondoned: Is one surprised that one kind of violence is responding toanother kind? No, not really.Wouter VanstiphoutThe reality of urban riots is that they have always turned out to be theopposite of a learning experience for a city. Riots have nearly alwaysresulted in politicians simplifying the problem even more, and lookingaway even further. After a riot your average city will become more afraid,more authoritarian, more segregated, more exclusive and less tolerant.That is the real tragedy of the post-war western urban riot, first itshocks and terrifies us, then for a moment it makes us see flashes of thekind of city we should be working towards, which then fades away into thedarkness.Yasmin ShariffRegeneration schemes have made a difference where they have offered anopportunity to the under privileged, but these projects should not beconfused with developments that displace the urban poor. Riots in newregeneration areas point to the schism where ordinary people cannot affordthe new people’s palaces - the £160m regeneration in Dalston by BarrattHomes for instance boasts residents gym, 24hr concierge, buzzing publicsquare, shops a library and a 2 bed apartments will set you back £350K . It can be little surprise that these regeneration areas are being torched.As long as these kids are trapped in the poverty of their circumstanceriots such as the ones we have seen will continue to erupt. What we areexperiencing are the consequence of policies which pander to big businessand line the pockets of bankers, developers, PFI companies and otherprivate organisations at the expense of the public purse.Marianne MuellerOur practice is involved in the design review assessment of regenerationschemes. You can’t deny the strong commercial focus of recent regenerationprojects that push out other (in the short term, less profitable)functions. Spaces for young people and public facilities in general(nurseries, libraries, green open spaces…) are definitely not a focus inthe schemes we have been reviewing over the last few years. Projects like‘Youth Space’ by MADE remain a rarity - especially with the recent cuts -where young people can get actively involved in the design of theirenvironment, develop a sense of ownership and simply have a place to be.To quote the opening of the publication of the Youth Space projectdocumentation, ‘Of all those excluded from any given urban territory,youth surely form the greatest subset. They are excluded on the groundsthat they are not yet adults, that they cannot pay, that they are troublemakers, that they will break the law, be noisy, or frighten othercustomers away.’