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Third Arab Bloggers Meeting: Highlights and Challenges in the Digital AgeHouda Mzioudet | 05 October 2011 | 0 Commentshttp://www.tunisia-live.net/2011/10/05/third-arab-bloggers-meeting-day-one-highlights-and-challenges-in-the-digital-age/Arab Bloggers chose la Cite des Sciences, Ariana, north of Tunis, to host their third annual Arab Bloggers Meeting in the presence of Tunisian and foreign media. The opening ceremony was open to the public. Malek Khadraoui and Sami Ben Gharbia, the organizers of the meeting, greeted the audience, and Ben Gharbia opened the meeting with an overview. Tunisia, he explained, was chosen as the meeting’s location because it was the first country of the Arab Spring.Georgia Poppelwell, managing director of Global Voices, highlighted the role of citizen media in giving a voice to young Arabs in the Arab uprisings and praised Arab bloggers for their courageous activism. Rebecca McKinnon, co-founder of Global Voices opened a discussion entitled Fitting of Our Digital Rights: Threats and Opportunities. She presented Riadh Guerfeli, alias Astrubal, the founder of Nawaat.org website, and his promotional video by Apple Computers on how technology brings down dictators. In the Tunisian context, McKinnon stressed the relationship between citizens and the government mediated by the internet. She also gave a historical overview of the use of internet to democratize societies during democratic transitions in countries like South Korea and Russia. She emphasized engaging in activism with no fear of online policing. Governments’ inability to control the controversial effects of online platforms such as Facebook and Wikileaks are features of the challenges of democracy in the Internet age.A discussion circle on the use of Twitter in the Arab revolutions and how activists used this new media to convey young Arab revolutionaries’ message to counter blackouts on Western media in Tunisia and Egypt. By translating tweets in several languages, the revolution was Twitterized. With Mauritanian blogger and activist Nasser Wedady as a moderator of the discussion , panelists included Sultan Al Qassemi from the UAE, Egyptian Manal Hassan, Saudi Ahmed Al Omran, Moroccan Hisham Al Miraat, and Libyan Ghazi Gheblawi and Razan Al Ghazzawi. The group emphasized that they authenticated their tweets to ensure their news was accurate. These tweets became a valuable source of information in their home countries, eventually used by mainstream media. Bloggers agreed that net activism united Arab people, discredited regimes and destroyed language barriers between Arabs.Moez Chakchouk, CEO of Tunisia’s Internet Agency (ATI), said blogging was essential for the Internet to survive. ATI was connected to the infamous “Ammar 404,” the symbol of censorship during Ben Ali regime. Chakchouk complained that ATI still controls Internet practices and the censorship of certain websites. He revealed technological equipment that was used and tested by ATI for censorship when certain western companies sold censorship software to dictatorial regimes in Arab countries afterwards. Chakchouk declined to name the companies.The Turkish speaker Zeynep Tufekci of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill gave a talk entitled “Beyond Tahrir: Networked Activism in post-Revolutionary Transitions,” asking why regimes remain for decades in “pluralistic ignorance.” Dr. Kufekci argued that the challenges of a post-revolution situation can be daunting, as history has shown. New media technologies played an important role in this period to counter dictatorship and state censorship. Arguing that rich nations lack the participatory impulse, the global challenge of the 21st century is to take inspiration from the Arab revolutions and create a bottom-up process.Egyptian and Lebanese bloggers discussing Wikileaks and its impact on Arab revolutionsAfter lunch, a documentary movie entitled “Zero Silence, a Documentary About the Free Wor(l)d” screened for the second time (premiered in Sweden), featuring players of the Arab revolutions from Tunis to Beirut who used new media to vent their anger at authoritarian regimes. The film received a positive review from the audience, and actors Wael Said and Rebecca Saada discussed the movie with the audience afterwards.Spanish-Syrian blogger Laila Nachawati presented a snapshot of the impact of the Arab Spring on Europe with a slide show on the Spanish 15M movement. Drawing on inspiration from the Arab revolution, Spanish youth gathered in the main squares of many Spanish cities, using new media to mob mobilize people against government corruption.An important highlight of the meeting was the relationship between Tunisian bloggers and politics. Several bloggers who have now become candidates for the Constituent Assembly on independent lists were in attendance, including Amira Yahyaoui, Riadh Guerfali, Mehdi Lamloum, and Tarek Kahlaoui, as well as Slim Amamou, a member of an organization which gives campaign training to independent candidates. Together they discussed their experience as bloggers turning to politics and the challenges they faced. They argue that an electorate which has become skeptical of parties may look at independent candidates as political alternatives to party politics.Wrapping up the first day of the meeting, organizer Sami Ben Gharbia and moderator Jillian York of Global Voices re-traced the Wikileaks saga: the release of the first cables in November 2010, their publication on Nawaat.org under the title “Tunileaks,” and their later publication by Lebanese Al-Akhbar newspaper. Altogether, the revelations of the leaks had a great impact on speeding up Ben Ali and Mubarak’s eventual fall, even though many were skeptical that it was possible. Gharbia said that he himself was skeptical, but when people take huge risks, courage becomes contagious. Ben Gharbia gave the example of former Tunisian Minister of Interior Farhat Rajdi and whistle-blower police officer Samir Feriani. Both men leaked secrets of the ministry.# 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

Free Society Conference and Nordic Summithttp://fscons.org/FSCONS is the Nordic countries' largest gathering for free culture, free software and a free society. The conference is organised yearly with 250-300 participants primarily from northern Europe. The main organiser is the Society for Free Culture and Software.The date for the next summit is 11-11-11 in Gothenburg (Friday November 11 through Sunday November 13).FSCONS exists to provide a meeting place where subjects covering society, culture and technology can be discussed and brought to life in peer discussions, without being confined to each particular subject area. It should provide both the physical and virtual space where people, organisations and governments, with interest in the three subject areas can meet in a participatory and constructive dialogue. The unique combination of topics creates a platform where cross-pollination between the areas can occur, and where new co-operations and thoughts can emerge which allows the participants to find new inspiration even from areas outside of their own.Keynotes 2011: Christina Haralanova and Richard Stallmanhttp://blog.fscons.org/?p=649Christina Haralanova is a feminist, a Free Software hacktivist and an IT trainer. Since fall 2010, Christina does a PhD in Communication Studies in Concordia University, under the supervision of Leslie Regan-Shade. As a free software hacktivist, Christina has participated actively in the creation of the Free Software Association Bulgaria (FSA-BG), and is a member of FACIL pour lappropriation collective de linformatique libre (since 2006) and Koumbit (since 2006) in Montreal, Canada. Christina was the Project Leader of the Legal Case Management Software (LCM) (2004-2005), an LPI proctor (2003 2005), a SPIP-bg translator.Richard StallmanRichard Matthew Stallman is a software developer and software freedom activist. In 1983 he announced the project to develop the GNU operating system, a Unix-like operating system meant to be entirely free software, and has been the projects leader ever since. With that announcement Stallman also launched the Free Software Movement. In October 1985 he started the Free Software Foundation. Other speakershttp://blog.fscons.org/FSCONS Schedule:http://my.fscons.org/schedule/Registration:http://fscons.org/registrationAbout FFKPFöreningen fri kultur & programvara (FFKP) is a non-profit organisation based in Gothenburg. Since 2005 we've worked in support of a modern democratic society through multi-stakeholder open discussions around current issues in culture, technology and society. The society works as a hub for operations in Sweden and the Nordic countries. We work across borders, both geographically and organizationally, in order to support the discussion between different organisations and people. The society is supported in its projects by, among others, the Nordic Culture Fund, Nordic Culture Point, Google, Nokia, University of Gothenburg and the Swedish Post and Telecommunications Board. https://ffkp.se/node/151Our vision is a modern, open democratic society where policies and decisions are made on the basis of the knowledge and opinions from multiple stakeholders. We believe that our future society must be built with the consideration of multiple stakeholders, and that suppressing, ignoring, or otherwise preventing or discouraging opinions of some stakeholders is not consistent with a democratic society. FSCONS Manifesto:http://fscons.org/manifesto

bwo INURA list/ PMFriends,I've written a piece on the Occupy Wall Street movement which may be ofinterest.:"Occupy Wall Street: For What, For Whom, Where, Why?"It makes 4 points:1.Occupy Wall Street doesn't make specific demands. Understandably.There is a difference between immediate demands and claims of rights,and the Occupy movement is about targeting claims of rights.2.This is not only for strategic reasons -- it's not their role -- butalso on principle; its supporters don't want to get into the game, theywant to change its unfair rules.3.They do not seek consensus but understand the inevitably of conflict.They wish to stand with the 99% and recognize that this means losses forthe 1%,but not losses that would seriously impinge on their needs.4.The space they have chosen to organize their protest is not classicpublic space, but space in the heart of the territory in which theactivities and forces they target operate. It is both a physically and asymbolically well-chosen space for their purpose.I've added5.A short reflection on what I saw and felt at the march to ZuccottiPark on March 5, and6.A somewhat flip comparison between the Occupy Wall Street movement andseveral others, from the tea party to the reform Democrats to the fringecultural conservatives, hinting that they are all reacting to much thesame basic insecurity/discontent.The whole text is four pages, and I've put it on my blog (althoughunsure, given the rapid advance of communications technology, whetherthat's the best way to do it?) . In any event, it's athttp://pmarcuse.wordpress.com.Peter Marcuse

Interview with Katherine DiPierro, re: my Eyebeam residencyhttp://eyebeam.org/blogs/katherinedipierro/eye-to-eyebeam-a-conversation-with-alan-sondheim(her other interviews are excellent as well)

(Please help to spread the word)ENGLISH, CATALAN, SPANISH VERSIONENGLISHForum Building Digital Commons and Collaborative Communities29th - 30th  October 2011, Barcelona, Catalonia & Online http://www.digital-commons.netBuilding Digital Commons and Collaborative Communities is a new initiative aiming to bring together individuals, collective and organizations from different Free and Open Collaborative Communities, Digital Commons Initiatives and Researchers in the area to identify ways to support and learn from each other and collaborate in order to promote together digital commons.Why?The new technologies offered a big opportunity to create, innovate and collaborate to share and build information and knowledge resources. However, we are living challenging times, with   an ongoing growth of the enclosure of the commons.i) We want to promote  the “makers” and “ doers” approach: To increase the visibility of the initiatives that are based on building digital commons.ii) Systematize experiences & learn from each other (at the legal, infrastructural, sustainable, participation and governance levels).ii) Map the digital public spaces and promote common actions iv) Create public procommons references: To underline the distinction between the governance of digital commons and other forms of corporate-providers not based on free and open infrastructure.v) Build bridges between action and research on commons as a form of governance, production and horizon for social transformation.What?We will address collaboratively and critically a series of working lines:1. Participation and engagement in communities2. Sustainability formulas and dialogue between social digital economy and cooperativism 3. Mapping a variety of digital commons initiatives and to define a common strategyA "How to manual on digital commons: participation engagement, sustainability formulas and over all digital commons networking" and a "Digital commons alliance/network" will be the resulting outcomes of the event. When and Where?29th  and 30th  of October 2011 physically at the CCCB ( 5th Montalegre str. – Aula 1) (Barcelona) and online at: http://www.digital-commons.netSee program: http://www.digital-commons.net/program/Building Digital Commons built upon and is celebrated in continuation with the Free Culture Forum (http://www.fcforum.net) in order to facilitate the connexion of collaborative communities building digital commons with other groups advocating for the rights of free culture and knowledge (as Free Culture Forum’s participants: artists, musicians, activists and lobbies for digital rights, among others).How to participate and keep informed?To attend physically register at: www.digital-commons.net/form/registration Keep updated and participate online:Identica & Twitter: < at >dimmons_forumFacebook: ForumGlobal DimmonsIRC: #DimmonsVisit www.digital-commons.net for the streaming Engage with the event documentation and collaborative writing at: wiki.digital-commons.net Looking forward to hearing back from you!Building Digital Commons is an initiative promoted by Institute of Government and Public Policies - Autonomous University of Barcelona (http://igop.uab.cat) and Amical Viquipedia (http://www.viquimedia.cat), and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation (http://wikimediafoundation.org). CATALÀFòrum Procomú Digital i Comunitats Col·laborativesMarca't la data al calendari! - 29, 30 d'octubre a Barcelona (Catalunya) i en xarxa: http://www.digital-commons.netFòrum Procomú Digital i Comunitats Col·laboratives és una nova iniciativa destinada a reunir persones, col·lectius i organitzacions de diferents Comunitats Col·laborativas Lliures i Obertes, Iniciatives de Béns Comuns Digitals i investigadors i investigadores en l'àrea amb la finalitat d'identificar formes d'aprendre mutuament i col·laborar per a promoure conjuntament els béns comuns digitals.Per què?Les noves tecnologies van oferir-nos una gran oportunitat per crear, innovar i col·laborar en l'intercanvi i creació de recursos d'informació i coneixements. No obstant això, vivim en un temps ple de desafiaments, amb cada vegada un major encerclament dels commons.Volem destacar l'enfocament del fer i crear: Per augmentar la visibilitat de les comunitats que construeixen béns comuns digitals.Sistematitzar les experiències i aprendre mútuament (a nivell legal, d'infraestructura, sostenible, de participació i d'auto-govern).Traçar un plànol del procomú digital i promoure accions comunes.Crear referències a favor del domini públic: Per remarcar la diferència entre la infraestructura online lliure i oberta i sota governança comuna i altres formes de provisió d'infraestructura online corporativa.Construir ponts entre l'acció i la investigació en el procomú com una forma de govern, producció i l'horitzó de la soci-transformació.Què?Tractarem de forma col·laborativa i crítica una sèrie de línies de treball:Participació en comunitatsSostenibilitat: Dialogue entre la economia social digital i noves formes de cooperativisme Promoure i Mapar les iniciatives procomunes digitals i recolzar una estratègia comunaCom a resultat de la trobada es construirà conjuntament i difondrà un "Manual sobre/per procomuns digitals: participació, sostenibilitat & networking" i es promourà una "Aliança/xarxa de Bens Comuns Digitals". Quan i on?29 i 30 d'octubre de 2011 presencialment a Barcelona (CCCB - Montalegre, 5 – Aula 1) i en xarxa a www.digital-commons.netVeure el programa: http://www.digital-commons.net/program/Construint procomú digital es celebra a continuació del Fòrum de Cultura Lliure (http://www.fcforum.net) per afavorir el contacte entre les comunitats col.laboratives en torn a bens comuns digitals amb altres grups que promouen els drets digitals (com ara artistes, musics, activistes, o lobbistes particpants al Fcforum).Com participar i mantenir-se informat?Per participar presencialment registre't en: www.digital-commons.net/form/registrationMantén-te informat i participa online a:Identica i Twitter: < at >dimmonsforumFacebook: ForumGlobal DimmonsIRC: #DimmonsVisita www.digital-commons.net per veure l'streaming Participa en la documentació i redacció col.laborativa del temes: wiki.digital-commons.net Per a més informació, posa't en contacte amb info-gyMb1R/nBgP7y3wIJjeDKu4UqaaL+JwI< at >public.gmane.org Estarem encantats/des de rebre els seus comentaris!Digital Commons Forum és una iniciativa promoguda per l'Institut de Govern i Polítiques Públiques – Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (http://igop.uab.cat) i Amical Viquipèdia (http://www.viquimedia.cat), i recolzat per la Fundació Wikimedia (http://wikimediafoundation.org). CASTELLANOForo Construyendo el Procomún Digital y Comunidades ColaborativasReserve la fecha - 29, 30 Octubre, Barcelona, Cataluña y en red en http://www.digital-commons.netForo Construyendo el Procomún Digital y Comunidades Colaborativas és una nueva iniciativa destinada a reunir individuos, colectivos y organizaciones vinculadas a diferentes Comunidades Colaborativas Libres y Abiertas, Iniciativas de Bienes Comunes Digitales e Investigadores e Investigadoras en el área con el fin de identificar formas de apoyarnos y aprender las unas de las otras y colaborar para promover juntas los bienes comunes digitales.¿Por qué?Las nuevas tecnologías brindaran una gran oportunidad para crear, innovar y colaborar en el intercambio y creación de recursos de información y conocimientos. Sin embargo, vivimos en tiempos de desafíos, con cada vez un mayor cercamiento de los commons digitales.i) Queremos destacar el enfoque del hacer y el crear: Para aumentar la visibilidad de las iniciativas que se basan en crear bienes comunes digitales. ii) Sistematizar las experiencias y aprender mutuamente (a nivel legal, infraestructural, sostenible, de participación y gobierno). ii) Trazar un plano de los commons digitales y promover acciones en común. iii) Crear referentes a favor del dominio público: para remarcar la diferencia entre la gobernanza de los bienes comunes digitales basados en infraestructura libre y abierta y otros proveedores de infraestructura corporativos o con intereses privados. iv) Construir puentes entre la acción y la investigación en los commons como una forma de gobierno, producción y el horizonte de transformación social.¿Qué?Trataremos de forma colaborativa y critica una serie de líneas de trabajo:i) Participación en comunidades creativas ii) Sostenibilidad: Dialogo entre la economía social digital y nuevas formas de cooperativismo iii) Mapar las diversas iniciativas de bienes comunes digitales, promover proyectos conjuntos y definir una estrategia común.Como resultado del encuentro construirá conjuntamente y difundirá un "Manual sobre/por el procomún digital: participación, sostenibilidad & networking" y se promoverá una "Alianza/red de Bienes Comunes Digitales". ¿Cuando y donde?El 29 y 30 de Octubre de 2011 presencialmente en Barcelona (CCCB - Montalegre, 5 – Aula 1) o en red en en www.digital-commons.netConsultar el programa: http://www.digital-commons.net/program/Construyendo procomú digital se celebra en continuación del Foro de Cultura Libre (http://www.fcforum.limpio) para favorecer el contacto entre las comunidades colaborativas en torno a comunes digitales con otros grupos que promueven los derechos digitales (como por ejemplo artistas, music< at >s, activistas, o lobbistas particpantes en el Fcforum). ¿Cómo participar y mantenerse informad< at >?Para participar presencialmente registrarse en: www.digital-commons.net/form/registrationPara mantenerse informad< at > i participar en red: Identica y Twitter: < at >dimmons_forum Facebook: ForumGlobal DimmonsIRC: #DimmonsVisita www.digital-commons.net para acceder al streaming Participa en la documentación y redacción colaborativa sobre los temas en wiki.digital-commons.net. Para más información, contacta con info-gyMb1R/nBgP7y3wIJjeDKu4UqaaL+JwI< at >public.gmane.org ¡Estaremos encantad< at >s de recibir tus comentarios o sugerencias!Building Digital Commons és una iniciativa promovida por el Instituto de Gobierno y Políticas Públicas – Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (http://igop.uab.cat) y Amical Viquipedia (http://www.viquimedia.cat), y apoyada por la Fundación Wikimedia (http://wikimediafoundation.org). «·´`·.(*·.¸(`·.¸ ¸.·´)¸.·*).·´`·»«·´¨*·¸¸« Mayo Fuster Morell ».¸.·*¨`·»«·´`·.(¸.·´(¸.·* *·.¸)`·.¸).·´`·»Research Digital Commons Governance: http://www.onlinecreation.infoFellow Berkman center for Internet and Society. Harvard University.Postdoctoral Researcher. Institute of Govern and Public Policies. Autonomous University of Barcelona.Visiting scholar. Internet Interdisciplinary Institute. Open University of Catalonia (UOC).Member Research Committee. Wikimedia FoundationPh.D European University InstituteVisiting researcher (2008). School of information. University of California, Berkeley.E-mail: mayo.fuster-tSBZotL4Eu8< at >public.gmane.orgE-mail: mayofm-NSUg5Meegb4GniliKUt/3FV15Tx05bL6< at >public.gmane.orgTwitter/Identica: LilarojaSkype: mayonetiPhone United States: 001 - 8576548231Phone Spanish State: 0034-648877748Berkman Center23 Everett Street, 2nd FloorCambridge, MA 02138+1 (617) 495-7547 (Phone) +1 (617) 495-7641 (Fax)Personal Postal Address USA:The Acetarium http://www.acetarium.com/265 Elm Street - 4Somerville, MA, USA02144The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination, distribution, forwarding, or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited without the express permission of the sender. If you received this communication in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer.

[This message deserves a proper formatting.]This letter of solidarity, signed over by 50 intellectuals and activists in China, was posted to Utopia yesterday. Thanks to everyone for the translation and editing work!http://chinastudygroup.net/2011/10/message-from-chinese-activists-and-academics-in-support-of-occupy-wall-street/From the middle of September, a great "Wall Street Revolution" has broken out in the United States. This street revolution, going by the name of "Occupy Wall Street," has already expanded to over 70 cities and countries in North America, Europe, and other areas. In their statement on "The Wall Street Revolution," the American people have sworn that this demand for "a democratic country, not a corporate kingdom" mass democratic revolution must spread to every part of the world, and they will not rest until this goal is met. From the anti-capitalist demonstrations that began after the 2008 financial crisis, and which this year have spread across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and South America, this magnificent global mass democratic movement has finally spread to the center of capitalism's financial empire -- Wall Street.The eruption of the "Wall Street Revolution" is an historical indicator that the popular democratic revolution that will soon sweep the world is set to begin. It is an especially significant and important event for this movement. Before this most recent action, street protests had virtually been exclusively used as a tool by US elite groups to subvert other countries. Now, however, the "Wall Street Revolution" -- with its goals of shared prosperity and popular democracy -- has launched protests in the country that is the self-proclaimed defender of democracy. This will inevitably strike a hard blow against the US elite group, itself responsible for the plunder and oppression of people all over the world, and the group that pushed the world into crisis and instability. The protests ring the death knell of the rule of capital. Popular democracy will replace elite democracy in the 21st Century, and the curtain has lifted on the movement from elite politics to popular politics. Using the language of the "Wall Street Revolution," this is a struggle of the popular 99% against the corrupt 1%, a struggle of the popular 99% against the elite 1%,and is the final struggle of the popular forces against elite capitalist rule.The world belongs to all of the people of the world. Countries belong to the entire people of those countries. Even more so, wealth is produced by the entire people, and therefore should be shared by the entire people, it cannot be monopolized by the 1% -- or even less than 1% -- that is made up of an extremely small number of elites. The demand for common prosperity in economics, and popular democracy in politics has become an unstoppable historical trend! The rapid expansion of a fictitious economy and the massive flow of social wealth has created an amply reliable material foundation for the realization of the common wealth of all people. The development of internet technology and political civilization has created the conditions for human society to make the transition from capitalist democracy to popular democracy. Human society is fully capable of transforming, on the foundation of the past democracy of slaveholders, the democracy of feudal lords, and the democracy of the capitalist class, to make the fundamental shift from the democracy of the elites to real popular democracy. Common prosperity and popular democracy will become the main content of the historical transformation of the 21st Century. No matter how brutally the American riot police will attempt to suppress the participants in the Wall Street revolution, no matter how much the global elites -- especially those in the U.S. and China -- try to suppress news of the Wall Street revolution, they cannot stop the vigorous growth and ultimate victory of the democratic revolution of the people of the world. The violent repression and virtual blockade of news about the "Wall Street Revolution" by elite groups led by the US proves that the fate of oppressed people around the world is the same, regardless of whether they are from developed or developing countries, whether they are from so-called democracies or authoritarian countries. The international elite was the first class to link-up internationally via globalization. Their plunder of public wealth and repression of popular democratic movements is cruel and far-reaching, and utterly lacking in freedom and democracy. So-called freedom and democracy in modern society is nothing more than democracy for capitalism, an elite democracy. Freedom is another word for the elite to plunder, oppress and violently suppress others. Popular forces have been completely excluded from the freedoms and democracy of modern society, and the extent of democratic rights is to choose between presidential candidates that have already been vetted by capital. You can vote once every four years, but you have no way of affecting the people above you who directly determine your fate: your boss or superior. And there is no way of constraining the capitalistoligarchs who can take away the wealth of the majority of the population with the slight of hand of fictitious capital. Freedom and democracy have become a virtual game, nothing more than a tool to subvert other countries. Now the popular and democratic world revolution

This letter of solidarity, signed over by 50 intellectuals and activists in==20China, was posted to Utopia yesterday. Thanks to everyone for the=20translation and editing work!http://chinastudygroup.net/2011/10/message-from-chinese-activists-and-academics-in-support-of-occupy-wall-street/=46rom the middle of September, a great =E2=80=9CWall Street Revolution=E2==80=9D has broken=20out in the United States. This street revolution, going by the name of=20=E2=80=9COccupy Wall Street,=E2=80=9D has already expanded to over 70 citie=s and countries=20in North America, Europe, and other areas. In their statement on =E2=80=9CT=he Wall=20Street Revolution,=E2=80=9D the American people have sworn that this demand= for =E2=80=9Ca=20democratic country, not a corporate kingdom=E2=80=9D mass democratic revolu=tion=20must spread to every part of the world, and they will not rest until this=20goal is met. From the anti-capitalist demonstrations that began after the=202008 financial crisis, and which this year have spread across Europe, the=20Middle East, North Africa and South America, this magnificent global mass=20democratic movement has finally spread to the center of capitalism=E2=80=99=s=20financial empire=E2=80=93Wall Street.The eruption of the =E2=80=9CWall Street Revolution=E2=80=9D is an historic=al indicator=20that the popular democratic revolution that will soon sweep the world is=20set to begin. It is an especially significant and important event for this==20movement. Before this most recent action, street protests had virtually=20been exclusively used as a tool by US elite groups to subvert other=20countries. Now, however, the =E2=80=9CWall Street Revolution=E2=80=9D =E2==80=93 with its goals of=20shared prosperity and popular democracy =E2=80=93 has launched protests in =the=20country that is the self-proclaimed defender of democracy. This will=20inevitably strike a hard blow against the US elite group, itself=20responsible for the plunder and oppression of people all over the world,=20and the group that pushed the world into crisis and instability. The=20protests ring the death knell of the rule of capital. Popular democracy=20will replace elite democracy in the 21st Century, and the curtain has=20lifted on the movement from elite politics to popular politics. Using the=20language of the =E2=80=9CWall Street Revolution,=E2=80=9D this is a struggl=e of the popular=2099% against the corrupt 1%, a struggle of the popular 99% against the elite==201%,and is the final struggle of the popular forces against elite capitalist==20rule.The world belongs to all of the people of the world. Countries belong to=20the entire people of those countries. Even more so, wealth is produced by=20the entire people, and therefore should be shared by the entire people, it==20cannot be monopolized by the 1% =E2=80=93 or even less than 1% =E2=80=93 th=at is made up of=20an extremely small number of elites. The demand for common prosperity in=20economics, and popular democracy in politics has become an unstoppable=20historical trend! The rapid expansion of a fictitious economy and the=20massive flow of social wealth has created an amply reliable material=20foundation for the realization of the common wealth of all people. The=20development of internet technology and political civilization has created=20the conditions for human society to make the transition from capitalist=20democracy to popular democracy. Human society is fully capable of=20transforming, on the foundation of the past democracy of slaveholders, the==20democracy of feudal lords, and the democracy of the capitalist class, to=20make the fundamental shift from the democracy of the elites to real popular==20democracy. Common prosperity and popular democracy will become the main=20content of the historical transformation of the 21st Century. No matter how==20brutally the American riot police will attempt to suppress the participants==20in the Wall Street revolution, no matter how much the global elites =E2=80==93=20especially those in the U.S. and China =E2=80=93try to suppress news of the= Wall=20Street revolution, they cannot stop the vigorous growth and ultimate=20victory of the democratic revolution of the people of the world.=20The violent repression and virtual blockade of news about the =E2=80=9CWall= Street=20Revolution=E2=80=9D by elite groups led by the US proves that the fate of o=ppressed=20people around the world is the same, regardless of whether they are from=20developed or developing countries, whether they are from so-called=20democracies or authoritarian countries. The international elite was the=20first class to link-up internationally via globalization. Their plunder of==20public wealth and repression of popular democratic movements is cruel and=20far-reaching, and utterly lacking in freedom and democracy. So-called=20freedom and democracy in modern society is nothing more than democracy for==20capitalism, an elite democracy. Freedom is another word for the elite to=20plunder, oppress and violently suppress others. Popular forces have been=20completely excluded from the freedoms and democracy of modern society, and==20the extent of democratic rights is to choose between presidential=20candidates that have already been vetted by capital. You can vote once=20every four years, but you have no way of affecting the people above you who==20directly determine your fate: your boss or superior. And there is no way of==20constraining the capitalistoligarchs who can take away the wealth of the=20majority of the population with the slight of hand of fictitious capital.=20=46reedom and democracy have become a virtual game, nothing more than a too=l=20to subvert other countries. Now the popular and democratic world revolution==20=E2=80=93 symbolized by the =E2=80=9CWall Street Revolution=E2=80=9D- deman=ds an end to this=20political game, and that freedom and democracy be returned to the people.=20Democracy is not just a check on the president, but a check on government=20officials; democracy is not just a check on power, but a check on capital.==20If the rights and privileges of feudal and absolute rulers are understood=20to be a sin and abomination, then giving those rights to capital is also a==20travesty.Securities and computer networks should have been two crucial elements of=20our shift from an industrial society to an information society, from a=20material economy to a virtual economy, from capitalism to a human-centered==20economic system, and from elite politics to popular politics. But the elite==20class has turned securities into a tool of appropriation akin to the=20=E2=80=98indulgences=E2=80=99 issued by middle-age church functionaries in =Europe. In the=20new securitized economy, all the public=E2=80=99s wealth can easily melt in=to thin=20air =E2=80=93 including their houses, wages, labor power and even their hop=e for=20the future. All these things have become the targets of appropriation by a==20tiny elite minority. Both the white-collar middle classes in developed=20countries =E2=80=93 owners of fictitious property, and the blue-collar work=ers in=20developing countries who cannot afford housing or health care, belong in=20point of fact to the same class: modern proletariat. When the people=20protest the unprecedented plunder and vast income gap perpetrated by=20fictitious capital, they are met with violent repression =E2=80=93 both in =so-called democracy countries that claim to be defenders of human rights such==20as the US, and in authoritarian countries that are said to lack freedom and==20democracy. Faced with street protests erupting from the Balkans to North=20Africa, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have repeated over=20and over, =E2=80=9CThe rights of peaceful protest and the occupation of pub=lic=20space should be respected at all times.=E2=80=9D Yet when US citizens attem=pt to=20exercise this right they immediately are faced with violent repression by=20armed police, and a blockade by the news media. If this is reaction of the==20US =E2=80=93 the self-proclaimed leader in human rights =E2=80=93 then we c=an imagine what=20the reaction will be in other capitalist countries. Rule by the capitalist==20elite is just as described by the =E2=80=9CWall Street Revolution=E2=80=9D ==E2=80=93 everywhere.=20There is nowhere left were we can live and die as people.=20The eruption of the =E2=80=9CWall Street Revolution=E2=80=9D in the heart o=f the world=E2=80=99s=20financial empire shows that 99% of the world=E2=80=99s people remain exploi=ted and=20oppressed =E2=80=93 regardless of whether they are from developed or develo=ping=20countries. People throughout the world see their wealth being plundered,=20and their rights being taken away. Economic polarization is now a common=20threat to all of us. The conflict between popular and elite rule is also=20found in all countries. Now, however, the popular democratic revolution=20meets repression not just from its own ruling class, but also from the=20world elite that has formed through globalization. The =E2=80=9CWall Street==20Revolution=E2=80=9D has met with repression from US police, but also suffer=s from a=20media blackout organized by the Chinese elite.The same fate, the same pain, the same problems, the same conflict. Faced=20with a common enemy in an elite global class that has already linked-up,=20the people of the world have only one option: to unite and in a unified and==20shared struggle overturn the rule of the capitalist elite, to ensure that=20everyone enjoys the basic human rights of work, housing, health care,=20education, and a secure old-age. But we must go further if we are to=20realize shared prosperity and popular democracy in a new socialist world=20historical framework, If we are to fully escape and neutralize the crises=20and disasters that capitalism has brought the human race, and realize=20harmonious social development.The great =E2=80=9CWall Street Revolution=E2=80=9D and the great popular ==E2=80=9CChilean Winter=E2=80=9D=20that preceded it signal that the day when we realize shared prosperity and==20popular democracy is approaching. It signals that worldwide popular and=20democratic socialist movement =E2=80=93 dormant since the 1970s =E2=80=93 i=s waking up=20again. But this time, it will be the final battle to put capitalism in its==20grave. The victory of popular democracy and death of elite rule are=20inevitable! The embers of revolt are scattered amongst us all, waiting to=20burn with the slightest breeze. The great era of popular democracy, set to==20change history, has arrived again!Resolutely support the American people in the =E2=80=9CWall Street Revoluti=on=E2=80=9D!Resolutely support all street protests pushing for shared prosperity and=20popular demoracy!Long live the =E2=80=9CWall Street Revolution=E2=80=9D!Long live the global movement for popular democracy!Long live popular international solidarity!

[Generally speaking, US fascism is closer than you think. That is, it's already here, celebrating its tenth anniversary with pepper spray, swinging nightsticks, entrapment, arbitrary arrest and strict obedience to the paymasters. Not BP or Exxon in this case, but Wall Street itself, the 1% in suits, ties and blazers. The mystery on the street was, who are these dudes in the white shirts and why do they cut loose so savagely on the protesters? The answer may well be that they are paid even more directly than by the recent $4.6 million "gift" of JP Morgan Chase to the New York Police Foundation. If Pam Martens is right, the answer is that they're paid $37 an hour -- and like Smedley Butler in the good old days, they're gangsters for capitalism.]www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/10/financial-giants-put-new-york-city-cops-on-their-payrollWho Do the White Shirt Police Report to at Occupy Wall Street Protests?Financial Giants Put New York City Cops On Their Payrollby PAM MARTENSVideos are springing up across the internet showing uniformed members of the New York Police Department in white shirts (as opposed to the typical NYPD blue uniforms) pepper spraying and brutalizing peaceful, nonthreatening protestors attempting to take part in the Occupy Wall Street marches. Corporate media are reporting that these white shirts are police supervisors as opposed to rank and file. Recently discovered documents suggest something else may be at work.If you’re a Wall Street behemoth, there are endless opportunities to privatize profits and socialize losses beyond collecting trillions of dollars in bailouts from taxpayers. One of the ingenious methods that has remained below the public’s radar was started by the Rudy Giuliani administration in New York City in 1998. It’s called the Paid Detail Unit and it allows the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with crimes, to order up a flank of New York’s finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a pastrami on rye.The corporations pay an average of $37 an hour (no medical, no pension benefit, no overtime pay) for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to arrest. The officer is indemnified by the taxpayer, not the corporation.New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per hour paid to the police. The City’s 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations were paying wages of $11.8 million to police participating in the Paid Detail Unit. The program has more than doubled in revenue to the city since 2002.The taxpayer has paid for the training of the rent-a-cop, his uniform and gun, and will pick up the legal tab for lawsuits stemming from the police personnel following illegal instructions from its corporate master. Lawsuits have already sprung up from the program.When the program was first rolled out, one insightful member of the NYPD posted the following on a forum: “… regarding the officer working for, and being paid by, some of the richest people and organizations in the City, if not the world, enforcing the mandates of the private employer, and in effect, allowing the officer to become the Praetorian Guard of the elite of the City. And now corruption is no longer a problem. Who are they kidding?”Just this year, the Department of Justice revealed serious problems with the Paid Detail unit of the New Orleans Police Department. Now corruption probes are snowballing at NOPD, revealing cash payments to police in the Paid Detail and members of the department setting up limited liability corporations to run upwards of $250,000 in Paid Detail work billed to the city.When the infamously mismanaged Wall Street firm, Lehman Brothers, collapsed on September 15, 2008, its bankruptcy filings in 2009 showed it owed money to 21 members of the NYPD’s Paid Detail Unit. (A phone call and email request to the NYPD for information on which Wall Street firms participate in the program were not responded to. The police unions appear to have only scant information about the program.)Other Wall Street firms that are known to have used the Paid Detail include Goldman Sachs, the World Financial Center complex which houses financial firms, and the New York Stock Exchange.The New York Stock Exchange is the building in front of which the Occupy Wall Street protesters have unsuccessfully tried to protest, being herded behind metal barricades, clubbed with night sticks, kicked in the face and carted off to jail rather than permit the last plantation in America to be defiled with citizen chants and posters. (A sample of those politically inconvenient posters and chants: “The corrupt are afraid of us; the honest support us; the heroic join us”; “Tell me what democracy looks like, this is what democracy looks like”; “I’ll believe a corporation is a person when Texas executes one.” The last sign refers to the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, giving corporations First Amendment personhood, which allows them to spend unlimited amounts of money in elections.)On September 8, 2004, Robert Britz, then President and Co-Chief Operating Officer of the New York Stock Exchange, testified as follows to the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services: “…we have implemented new hiring standards requiring former law enforcement or military backgrounds for the security staff…We have established a 24-hour NYPD Paid Detail monitoring the perimeter of the data centers…We have implemented traffic control and vehicle screening at the checkpoints. We have installed fixed protective planters and movable vehicle barriers.”Military backgrounds; paid NYPD 24-7; checkpoints; vehicle barriers? It might be insightful to recall that the New York Stock Exchange originally traded stocks with a handshake under a Buttonwood tree in the open air on Wall Street.In his testimony, the NYSE executive Britz states that “we” did this or that while describing functions that clearly belong to the City of New York. The New York Stock Exchange at that time had not yet gone public and was owned by those who had purchased seats on the exchange – primarily, the largest firms on Wall Street. Did the NYSE simply give itself police powers to barricade streets and set up checkpoints with rented cops? How about clubbing protesters on the sidewalk?Just six months before NYSE executive Britz’ testimony to a congressional committee, his organization was being sued in the Supreme Court of New York County for illegally taking over public streets with no authority to do so. This action had crippled the business of a parking garage, Wall Street Garage Parking Corp., the plaintiff in the case. Judge Walter Tolub said in his opinion that “…a private entity, the New York Stock Exchange, has assumed responsibility for the patrol and maintenance of truck blockades located at seven intersections surrounding the NYSE…no formal authority appears to have been given to the NYSE to maintain these blockades and/or conduct security searches at these checkpoints…the closure of these intersections by the NYSE is tantamount to a public nuisance…The NYSE has yet to provide this court with any evidence of an agreement giving them the authority to maintain the security perimeter and/or conduct the searches that their private security force conducts daily. As such, the NYSE’s actions are unlawful and may be enjoined as they violate plaintiff’s civil rights as a private citizen.”The case was appealed, the ruling overturned, and sent back to the same Judge who had no choice but to dismiss the case on the appellate ruling that the plaintiff had suffered no greater harm than the community at large. Does everyone in lower Manhattan own a parking garage that is losing its customer base because the roads are blocked to the garage?Some believe that Wall Street is given special privileges and protection because New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg owes his $18.1 billion in wealth (yes, he’s that 1 percent the 99 percent are protesting) to Wall Street. The Mayor was previously a trader for Salomon Brothers, the investment bank made famous for attempting to rig the U.S. Treasury market in two-year notes.The Mayor’s business empire which bears his name, includes the awesome Bloomberg terminal, a computer that houses enormous pricing data for stocks and bonds, research, news, charting functions and much more. There are currently an estimated 290,000 of these terminals on Wall Street trading floors around the globe, generating approximately $1500 in rental fees per terminal per month. That’s a cool $435 million a month or $5.2 billion a year, the cash cow of the Bloomberg businesses.The Bloomberg businesses are run independently from the Mayor but he certainly knows that his terminal is a core component of his wealth. Nonetheless, the Mayor is not Wall Street’s patsy. Bloomberg Publishing is frequently in the forefront of exposing fraud on Wall Street such as the 2001 tome “The Pied Pipers of Wall Street” by Benjamin Mark Cole, which exposed the practice of releasing fraudulent stock research to the public. Bloomberg News was responsible for court action that forced the Federal Reserve to release the details of what it did with trillions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts to Wall Street firms, hedge funds and foreign banks.Police Commissioner Ray Kelly may also have a soft spot for Wall Street. He was formerly Senior Managing Director of Global Corporate Security at Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc., the Wall Street firm that collapsed into the arms of JPMorgan in March of 2008.There has also been a bizarre revolving door between the Wall Street millionaires and the NYPD at times. One of the most puzzling career moves was made by Stephen L. Hammerman. He left a hefty compensation package as Vice Chairman of Merrill Lynch & Co. in 2002 to work as Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters for the NYPD from 2002 to 2004. That move had everyone on Wall Street scratching their head at the time. Merrill collapsed into the arms of Bank of America on September 15, 2008, the same date that Lehman went under.Wall Street is not the only sector renting cops in Manhattan. Department stores, parks, commercial banks and landmarks like Rockefeller Center, Jacob Javits Center and St. Patrick’s Cathedral have also participated in the Paid Detail Unit, according to insiders. But Wall Street is the only sector that runs a private justice system where its crimes are herded off to secret arbitration tribunals, has sucked on the public teat to the tune of trillions of dollars, escaped prosecution for the financial collapse, and can put an armed municipal force on the sidewalk to intimidate public protestors seeking a realignment of their democracy.We may be learning a lot more in the future about the tactics Wall Street and the NYPD have deployed against the Occupy Wall Street protestors. The highly regarded Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has filed a class action lawsuit over the approximately 700 arrests made on the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1. The formal complaint and related information is available at the organization’s web site, www.JusticeOnLine.org.The organization was founded by Carl Messineo and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard. The Washington Post has called them “the constitutional sheriffs for a new protest generation.”The suit names Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Kelly, the City of New York, 30 unnamed members of the NYPD, and, provocatively, 10 unnamed law enforcement officers not employed by the NYPD.The lawsuit lays out dwhat has been curtailing the constitutional rights of protestors for a very long time in New York City. “As seen in the movements for social change in the Middle East and Europe, all movements for social justice, jobs, and democracy need room to breathe and grow and it is imperative that there be a halt to law enforcement actions used to shut down mass assembly and free expression of the people seeking to redress grievances… “After escorting and leading a group of demonstrators and others well out onto the Brooklyn Bridge roadway, the NYPD suddenly and without warning curtailed further forward movement, blocked the ability of persons to leave the Bridge from the rear, and arrested hundreds of protestors in the absence of probable cause. This was a form of entrapment, both illegal and physical. “That the trap and detain mass arrest was a command-level-driven intentional and calculated police operation is evidenced by the fact that the law enforcement officials who led the demonstration across the bridge were command officials, known as ‘white shirts.’ ”In April 2001, I was arrested and incarcerated by the NYPD while peacefully handing out flyers on a public sidewalk outside of the Citigroup shareholders meeting – flyers that warned of growing corruption inside the company. (The unlawful merger of Travelers Group and Citibank created Citigroup and resulted in the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, the depression era investor protection legislation that barred depositor banks from merging with high-risk Wall Street firms. Many of us from social justice groups in New York City had protested against the repeal but were out maneuvered by Wall Street’s political pawns in Washington.)Out of a group of about two dozen protestors from the National Organization for Women in New York City, Rain Forest Action Network, and Inner City Press, I was the only person arrested. There was no civil disobedience occurring. Rain Forest Action Network was handing out fortune cookies with prescient warnings about Citigroup and urging pedestrians to cut up their Citibank credit cards. The rest of us were peacefully handing out flyers.Chained to a metal bar inside the police precinct, I was grilled on any crimes I might know about. I responded that the only crimes I knew about were listed on the flyer and apparently, in New York City, one gets arrested for disclosing crimes by Wall Street firms.A mysterious, mature, white shirted inspector who ordered my arrest on the sidewalk, and refused to give his first name, disappeared from the police report when it was filed, blaming the arrest instead on a young police officer. Citigroup is only alive today because the Federal government inserted a feeding tube into Citigroup and infused over $2 trillion in loans, direct investment and guarantees as the company veered toward collapse.The NYPD at the time of my arrest was run by Bernard Kerik – the man President George W. Bush later sent to Iraq to be the interim Interior Minister and train Iraqi police. The President subsequently nominated Kerik to head the Department of Homeland Security for the entire nation. The nation was spared of that eventuality only because of an illegal nanny popping up. Today, Kerik is serving a four year sentence in Federal prison for a variety of criminal acts.The New York Civil Liberties Union filed a Federal lawsuit on my behalf (Martens v. Giuliani) and we learned that the NYPD had arbitrarily established a policy to arrest and hold for 72 hours any person protesting in a group of 20 or more. The case was settled for a modest monetary award and the repeal by the NYPD of this unconstitutional and despicable practice.Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years. She spent the last decade of her career advocating against Wall Street’s private justice system, which keeps its crimes shielded from public courtrooms. She has been writing on public interest issues for CounterPunch since retiring in 2006. She has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She can be reached at pamk741-YDxpq3io04c< at >public.gmane.org

bwo INURA/ P.M.Friends,Following up my earlier blog piece on the Occupy Wall Street movement,here's a further piece dealing with its place in the political spectrumand the speculation about its future. It makes the following argument:Will the Occupy Wall Street movement continue to grow? I think that'sthe wrong question. It cannot "grow" in the sense of enlarging the areait occupies, staying longer and longer and refusing to leave. There issimply no space available where it is now in New York, the weather inwinter will make it simply a test of endurance, it is more than can beasked. But there are alternative forms by which it can show itsstrength: marches, timed occupations, rallies, continued effectivesolidarity and networking. And refinement of claims, clarification ofinterpretations, pin-pointing of objectives and targets of non-violentaction and exposure.The argument goes as follows:Four alternative futures confront the movement:·Dissolve·Be co-opted·Focus on specific immediate reforms·Go for non-reformist reforms·Push for revolution.The strengths and weaknesses of each are analyzed, and they are notmutually exclusive. But the "non-reformist reforms" seems the mostproductive.In any event, its future will hinge on the extent to which it maintainsits three defining characteristics:The common thread in the analysis of the underlying nature of theproblems with which it is concerned, symbolized by the 1%/99% formulation;The bringing together of multiple diverse interests and viewpoints in amutually supportive and trusting human social context; andThe commitment to action, to exploring , physically as well asintellectually, the available avenues for implementing their desires,overcoming the obstacles they face, moving towards a better world.Immediately, tactically, imagination may suggest a variety of newapproaches to immediate action. Since continued limited occupation of arestricted site poses major problems as the sole center of the movement,imagination and spontaneity can be looked to provide alternatives toreflect the growth and wide popular support of the movement.Possibilities are mentioned.The whole text is 3 pages, plus the above summary, and it's on my blogathttp://pmarcuse.wordpress.com.Peter

Hello All,After asking permission to publish our book review in May 2011 andbeing slightly rebuked, we wondered if it even made any difference toshare our hope for a contemporary approach to insurrection. We hadtaken our own surrender to heart and decided to wait. Recent eventshave shown our skepticism to be unfounded and we are sharing this nowonly to support those in the Occupy*, especially Occupy Wall Street,who have thus far refrained from naming demands---from, as Foucaultput it, "demand[ing] of politics that it restore the ‘rights’ of theindividual, as philosophy has defined them." No demands, no checklist,no politics as usual. "The group must not be the organic bond unitinghierarchized individuals, but a constant generator ofde-individualization." Occupy EVERYTHING. No demands. Occupy, occupy,occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy,occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy,occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy,occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy,occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy,occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy, occupy...In solidarity,Adam Trowbridge and Jessica Westbrook“Originally published by Theory in Action, Vol. 4, No.2, April 2011 (©2011) DOI:10.3798/tia.1937-0237.11017 www.transformativestudies.org”(The text below is pre-editor copy, apologies for errors)Thanks to Eva Swidler, Book Review Editor, for requesting our reviewand John Asimakopoulos, Editor in Chief, for publishing it.Critical Strategies in Art and Media.Edited by Konrad Becker and Jim Fleming. New York: Autonomedia, 2009. 182 pp.Paperback $12.95. ISBN 978-1570272141.Eleven years into the new century, it may be time to discuss terms ofsurrender. Not a surrender to any civilization but the surrender ofcivilization to those in control who would use any politicalparticipation as a crutch for their failure. The question is not ifbut when giving up on civilization will be seen as the only rationalpolitical stance. Currently, the critical strategy of removing oneselffrom a failed situation and ceasing participation in a bankruptenterprise is rarely given serious thought1. Giving up is constantlyunder attack from politicians and those who benefit from the currentsituation. Activists remain in the service of an imagined future thatonly extends the crisis, unable to wean themselves from strategiesalready four decades old. This is the case in the discussiondocumented in Critical Strategies in Art and Media, a new book fromAutonomedia that documents a conference of the same name. From thepredictable return to 1968 as a vague yet singular moment to theinsistence on optimism —recuperating even hopelessness and pessimismfor continued production and activity— the most common strategiesdiscussed are pragmatic approaches to working with those who fund artprojects. Little discussion occurs concerning critical art practicebeyond hopeful slogans that parallel Nike’s “Just do It”. While thereis much to consider, discussions range from the role of technology inthe 2009 Iranian elections protests to art student interest in digitalmedia, little is covered with any critical depth. The book serves as aconcentrated set of symptoms that arise and divert discussion when artand activism are the focus: mainly variations on mythologizingactivism still mired the Sixties (especially 1968) and insistence onoptimism and positive activity.Konrad Becker, Director and co-founder of the World-InformationInstitute, sent an email to the <nettime> mailing list, announcingthe Critical Strategies in Art and Media event. His introductionincluded the following:"Since I am sick and tired of the blandness and dumbed downgullibility of what one gets to hear on issues of cultural practice(even on esteemed and generally very well informed lists) I am lookingforward to a vital and much needed debate...What strategies elude theCreative Industries? seemingly infinite appetite for things radical?Are there any strategies that can elude being reduced to styles in theservice of sales, or are critical practices doomed to play cat andmouse with the forces of consumerism?" 2The panel consisted of an A-list selection of those working in a zoneorbited by artists and activists: Ted Byfield, co-moderator of theNettime mailing list; Jim Fleming, Editor and Publisher atAutonomedia, a publisher of radical books; Steve Kurtz, co-founder andmember of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), a collective of tactical mediapractitioners; Claire Pentecost, author, artist-activist andContinental Drift through the Midwest Radical Culture Corridorcollaborator, Pete Lamborn Wilson, author of Temporary AutonomousZone; as well as others who pop into the discussion or make videorecorded statements.Konrad Becker opens the discussion with a 1956 quote from filmmakerand Situationist International co-founder Guy Debord, "All awarepeople of our time agree that art can no longer be justified as asuperior activity, or even as an activity of compensation to which onecould honorably devote oneself." Becker adds that “not only is artdead but also activism has not moved for a while and starts to smellfunny.” Why begin a “vital and much needed debate” with a Debordquote from an essay that precedes the founding of the SituationistInternational? With dérive, a Situationist approach to moving throughurban space following one’s desire, recuperated as an exercise toraise awareness for college art students and détournement, in whichnew works of art are not created but instead hijacked from existingworks and reused as propaganda, less of a radical strategy and more ofa description of YouTube and Internet memes, it seems an oddly dustyplace to begin. While it may not have been Becker’s intention, thisdated quote directly connects the conference to the events of 1968,specifically to May ’68 in France, where a general strike is oftencredited partially or substantially to the Situationist International.It is unlikely that the panelists, many with long histories ofactivist art, would be willing to shrug and agree that art andactivism are dead. Thus Becker’s introduction predictably becomes anegative against which the panelists define themselves and the worldin positive terms and sets the stage for a discussion that rarelymoves beyond the Sixties conceptions of activism3.As an example of the amorphous, mythological conception of historythat permeates the conference, Steve Kurtz uses his temporal distancefrom the Debord of 1956 to define not only Debord but to explainDebord’s “program”. In short, his explanation is that Debord wrotewhen art was limited, unlike today, when Critical Art Ensemble isambivalent about using the label “art” for their work. This semanticswitch is imagined as a potential escape from SituationistInternational condemnation. From Kurtz’s perspective, Debord might noweven approve of some art activity. It is easy to recuperate the 1956stance against art by citing historical conditions, but Debord did notstop writing then. Two years after Kurtz’s first activity under thename “Critical Art Ensemble,” a year after the core CAE group formed,and after many actions by artists (and others) pushing the boundariesof art and activism, Debord wrote, in Comments on the Society of theSpectacle (1988):"Since art is dead, it has become extremely easy to disguise police asartists. When the latest imitations of an inverted neo-Dadaism areauthorized to pontificate gloriously in the media, and thus also toslightly modify the decor of official palaces, like court jesters tothe kings of junk, one sees that by the same movement a cultural coveris guaranteed for all the agents or auxiliaries of the State'snetworks of influence." 4Kurtz’s musing that “I am not sure Debord would object so much,” whendiscussing the cultural activity of Critical Art Ensemble and othercontemporary activist artists, is undone by the later quote. It seemsquite possible that Debord would object strongly to the multipleinstances in which Kurtz defends projects that CAE (and others) makeby taking money from corporations and gentrifying organizations.In the book’s discussion on critical art and media, broad enough tocover the relationship of 1968 to “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll” andthe CIA’s LSD-based mind control, the panel neglected to discusscontemporary activism. While there is mention of text mobs, art andscience crossovers and video game “intervention,” there is nodiscussion of the radically updated civil disobedience strategies ofACT UP, or their media acumen in bringing attention to and action onthe AIDS crisis. There is no discussion of the French journal Tiqquin,or the related book The Coming Insurrection by The InvisibleCommittee. There is no mention of Tiananmen Square or GirogioAgamben’s radical last chapter of The Coming Community. Agambensuggests that the Tiananmen demonstrations existed as a communitywithout condition of belonging, a new concept of being, closelyrelated to and likely the inspiration for The Invisible Committee’spromotion of insurrection against “the very idea of man.” As recentlyborne out in Egypt and Libya, Agamben says that wherever thesecommunities “peacefully demonstrate their being in common there willbe a Tiananmen, and, sooner or later, the tanks will appear.”5 This isin stark contrast to a CAE lecture described by Steve Kurtz called“And then the police came...” The lecture covers the times that CAEwas arrested or disciplined for working in public space. Thedifference between the arrival of the police to disrupt minorinterventions and the arrival of tanks to put down (or join) aninsurrection perhaps best underscores the lack of vitality in theCritical Strategies in Art and Media discussion. It is not a matter ofone or the other so much as it is that one is thoroughly discussed andthe other is absent.“What is to be done?” This question is repeatedly asked in CriticalStrategies in Art and Media. Clair Pentecost says that “feelinghopeless just makes me mad” and Steve Kurtz says of Konrad Becker “Ihave always admired his absolutely unrelenting pessimism...at the sametime the guy never quits” The kernel of this need for activity and theforced march to optimism is found in a statement by Jim Fleming:“Somehow there has to be a bridge that allows some exodus out of thatold stuff into whatever the new stuff is going to turn out to be —which feels in some fundamental way fairly unpredictable...and that isprobably a plus.” While discussing the possibility of escape from thecurrent political and social situation, his quote would be equally athome in one of Seth Godin’s bestselling books on marketing. Capitalistsociety constantly seeks new stuff: territory, people, images, andideas to “monetize”. When civilization is not in a crisis but hasbecome the crisis, the idea of forming a bridge to the future, onceagain providing a new life-support system for a near-deadcivilization, is the root of the problem. As discussion continuallyreturns to what can be done, there is never any question whetheranything should be done6.The authors of The Coming Insurrection proposed a contemporaryquestion, a “vital and much needed” question without presumption ofoptimism or activity: “How do we find each other?”7 Their suggestionis that people must find each other through the morass of a decayedcivilization in order to actively commit to its collapse, already inprogress. The book does not begin with a call to action but bydeclaring, without hesitation, “Everyone agrees that things can onlyget worse.” This declaration is alive, without optimism —at least forsociety or political activity within society. This is current criticalsituation in artWith the coming collapse in mind, Claire Pentecost and Brian Holmes’project (with friends) Continental Drift through the Midwest RadicalCulture Corridor, and the book documenting it, A Call to Farms, ridesthe line between support for and withdrawal from the currentcivilization. The group toured the American Midwest, seeking outexamples of radical culture and independently-run farms. It is not theroad trip nature of the enterprise, which is perilously close to aSixties fantasy, but instead the focus on farms and alternateeconomies that will remain as civilization’s collapse hastens, thatmakes this a vital project. Without direct reference to The ComingInsurrection, their trip through the midwest is a response to a callto find each other. Sarah Kanouse describes it, in her introduction toA Call to Farms, as “more a process than an organization, more a verbthan a noun.” This project, of all those described in CriticalStrategies in Art and Media, seems most direct and the closest to acritical strategy combining art and media.As a gesture and as an event, Critical Strategies in Art and Media hada serious goal and began as a challenge to “the blandness and dumbeddown gullibility of what one gets to hear on issues of culturalpractice”. While there is no doubt that the participants werecommitted to their projects and positive change, a “vital and muchneeded debate” did not occur, derailed as it was by the Sixties8 and aendless return of calls to action and positive thinking. It is worthinvestigating the work of all of the participants, especially ClairePentecost, Ted Byfield and McKenzie Wark9. The aforementioned books:Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, The Coming Insurrection,Coming Community, and Continental Drift through the Midwest RadicalCulture Corridor are required reading for those interested in theintersection of art and activism. With those books read, it may alsobe worthwhile to read Critical Strategies in Art and Media, if only toconsider the multiple opportunities missed and plan a return to thetopic in a future discussion, perhaps in the tone originally put forthby Becker.Endnotes:1. A notable exception is Stephen Wright’s “Spy Art: Infiltrating theReal” in Afterimage, Sept-Dec, 2006, Volume 34, Issue 1-2, pages 52 -4. Wright discusses art that may not seek an audience and notes “Eachyear, thousands of artists simply quit the artworld, choosing topursue art in a different mode, in the mode of competence rather thanin the mode of performance, to adopt a Chomskian distinction.”2. Becker, Konrad, “Critical Strategies” 25 August 2009. Nettime listserv.http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0908/msg00026.html3. At one point in the discussion, Judith Malina, a founder of TheLiving Theater, says that “I think ’68 isn’t over, it is going on allthe time.” To not only be stuck in the shadow of 1968 but for it tonever have ended is a nightmare prospect worthy of Philip K. Dick.4. Debordy, Guy. Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. Trans.Malcolm Imrie. New York: Verso, 1988.5. Agamben, Giorgio. The Coming Community. Trans. Michael Hardt.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.6. Pete Lamborn Wilson correctly identifies the question “What is tobe done?” as “The good old Leninist question” and then, quiteseriously, responds that he is a hippie and suggests that people “dropout.”7. The Invisible Committee. The Coming Insurrection. Trans. unknown.Los Angeles: semiotext(e), 2009.8. Ted Byfield makes several valiant attempts to question the focuson a mythologized past and points out that “Entire master narrativesare both being deployed against younger people on a narrative level,and denied to them on an analytical level.” Unfortunately he isundermined and misunderstood, perhaps intentionally. His mostoutstanding criticism, “I’m uncomfortable with 1968 serving as acudgel to beat people over the head in order to declare theirhistorical circumstances inadequate.” goes unanswered.9. Wark has written extensively on digital and internet culture andmight have added much more to the discussion but was absent during thebrief moment anything related to contemporary, digital work wasdiscussed.

A call to the Army of Love and to the Army of SoftwareBy Franco Berardi and Geert LovinkOctober 2011. The fight opposing financial dictatorship is erupting.The so-called ‘financial markets’ and their cynical services are destroying the very foundations of social civilization. The legacy of the postwar compromise between the working class and progressive bourgeoisie has all but disappeared. Neoliberal policies are cutting back education and the public health system and is cancelling the right to a salary and a pension. The outcome will be impoverishment of large parts of the population, a growing precarity of labor conditions (freelance, short-term contracts, periods of unemployment) and daily humiliation of workers. The yet to be seen effect of the financial crisis will be violence, as people conjure up scapegoats in order to vent their rage. Ethnic cleansing, civil war, obliteration of democracy. This is a system we call financial Nazism: FINAZISM.Right now people are fighting back in many places, and in many ways. Occupy Wall Street inspired a mass mobilization in New York that is extending across the USA every day. In Greece workers and students are squatting Syntagma square and protesting against the blackmail by the European Central Bank, which is devastating the country. Cairo, Madrid, Tel Aviv, the list of the ‘movements of the squares’ is proliferating. On October 15 cities across the globe will amass with people protesting against the systemic robbery.Will our demonstrations and occupations stop the Finazist machine? They will not. Resistance will not resist, and our fight will not stop the legal crimes. Let’s be frank, we will not persuade our enemies to end their predatory attacks (‘let’s make even more profit from the next downfall’) for the simple reason that our enemies are not human beings. They are machines. Yes, human beings – corporate managers, stock owners, traders – are cashing the money that we are losing, and prey upon resources that workers produce. Politicians sign laws that deliver the lives of millions of people to the Almighty God of the Market.Bankers and investors are not the real decision makers, they are participants in an economy of gestural confusion. The real process of predatory power has become automated. The transfer of resources and wealth from those who produce to those who do nothing except oversee the abstract patterns of financial transactions is embedded in the machine, in the software that governs the machine. Forget about governments and party politics. Those puppets who pretend to be leaders are talking nonsense. The paternalistic options they offer around ‘austerity measures’ underscore a rampant cynicism internal to party politics: they all know they lost the power to model finance capitalism years ago. Needless to say, the political class are anxious to perform the act of control and sacrifice social resources of the future in the form of budget cuts in order to ‘satisfy the markets’. Stop listening to them, stop voting for them, stop hoping and cursing them. They are just pimps, and politics is dead.What should we do? Living with the Finazist violence, bending to the arrogance of algorithms, accepting growing exploitation and declining salaries? Nope. Let’s fight against Finazism because it is never too late. At the moment Finazism is winning for two reasons. First, because we have lost the pleasure of being together. Thirty years of precariousness and competition have destroyed social solidarity. Media virtualization has destroyed the empathy among bodies, the pleasure of touching each other, and the pleasure of living in urban spaces. We have lost the pleasure of love, because too much time is devoted to work and virtual exchange. The large army of lovers have to wake up. Second, because our intelligence has been submitted to algorithmic power in exchange for a handful of shitty money and a virtual life. For a salary that is miserable when compared to the profits of the corporate bosses, a small army of ‘softwarists’ are accepting the task of destroying human dignity and justice. The small army of software programmers have to wake up.There is only a way to awake the lover that is hidden in our paralyzed, frightened and frail virtualized bodies. There is only a way to awake the human being that is hidden in the miserable daily life of the softwarist: take to the streets and fight. Burning banks is useless, as real power is not in the physical buildings, but in the abstract connection between numbers, algorithms and information. But occupying banks is good as a starting point for the long-lasting process of dismantling and rewriting the techno-linguistic automatons enslaving all of us. This is the only politics that counts. Some say that the Occupy Wall Street movement lacks clear demands and an agenda. This remark is ridiculous. As in the case of all social movements the political backgrounds and motives are diverse, even diffuse and quite frequently contradictory. The occupation movement would not be better off with more realistic demands.What is thrilling right now is the multiplicity of new connections and commitment. But what is even more exciting is finding ways that can set in motion the collective ‘exodus’ from the capitalist agony. Let’s not talk about the ‘sustainability’ of the movement. That’s boring. Everything is transient. These fast-burning events do not help us to overcome the daily depression. Occupying the squares and other public spaces is a way to respond to the short duration of the demonstrations and marches. We are here to stay.We are not demanding a reform of the global financial system or the ECB. The return to national currencies of the past, as requested by the rightwing populists, will not make ordinary citizens less vulnerable to currency speculation. A return to state sovereignty is not the solution either, and many people already sense this. The demand for more ‘intervention’, control and oversight of markets is a hopeless gesture. The real issue is that humans are no longer in charge. We need to dismantle the machines themselves. This can be done in a very peaceful manner. Hack into their system, publish their crimes through Wikileaks-type initiatives and then delete their real- time trading killing networks for good.Financial markets are all about the politics of speed and deterritorialization. But we know their architectures and vulnerabilities. The financial world has lost its legitimacy. There is no global consensus anymore that the ‘market’ is always right. And this is our chance to act. The movement has to respond at this level. Decommissioning and re-programming financial software is not the dream of a Luddite sabotaging the machine. ‘Market regulation’ will not do the job, only autonomy and the self-organization of software workers can dismantle the predatory algorithms and create self-empowering software for society.The general intellect and the erotic social body have to meet on the streets and squares, and united they will break the Finazist chains.

Dear Nettimers,attempting to fill the gap between media theory and 'operaismo',Marxism and the Turing machine, and to clarify some vicious andperverse debates about the notoriously misnomer 'immaterial labour' Iwrote this essay, that start with a steam-punk insight by Simondon. Itried to escape contemporary binaries and go a bit back in time...I include the abstract and I recommend the PDF for reasons ofreadability.... Greets, M- - -Machinic Capitalism and Network Surplus Value: Towards a PoliticalEconomy of the Turing MachinePDF: http://bit.ly/nljAVoAbstract: Gilbert Simondon once noticed that industrial machines werealready an information relay, as they were bifurcating for the firsttime the source of energy (nature) from the source of information (theworker). In 1963, in order to describe the new condition of industriallabour, Romano Alquati introduced the notion of valorising informationas a link between the Marxist concept of value and the cyberneticdefinition of information. In 1972, Deleuze and Guattari initiatedtheir machinic ontology as soon as cybernetics started to exit thefactory and expand to the whole society. In this text I focus again on the Turing machine as the mostempirical model available to study the guts of cognitive capitalism.Consistent with the Marxian definition of machinery as a device forthe _augmentation of surplus value_, the algorithm of the Turingmachine is proposed as engine of the new forms of valorisation,measure of network surplus value and new _crystal_ of social conflict.Information machines are not just _linguistic machines_ but indeeda relay between information and metadata: in this way they opento a further technological bifurcation and also to new forms ofbiopolitical control: a society of metadata is outlined as the currentevolution of that _society of control_ pictured by Deleuze in 1990.- - -Matteo Pasquinellihttp://matteopasquinelli.org

Dennis Ritchie, Trailblazer in Digital Era, Dies at 70By STEVE LOHRhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/technology/dennis-ritchie-programming-trailblazer-dies-at-70.htmlDennis M. Ritchie, who helped shape the modern digital era by creating software tools that power things as diverse as search engines like Google and smartphones, was found dead on Wednesday at his home in Berkeley Heights, N.J. He was 70.Mr. Ritchie, who lived alone, was in frail health in recent years after treatment for prostate cancer and heart disease, said his brother Bill.In the late 1960s and early ’70s, working at Bell Labs, Mr. Ritchie made a pair of lasting contributions to computer science. He was the principal designer of the C programming language and co-developer of the Unix operating system, working closely with Ken Thompson, his longtime Bell Labs collaborator.The C programming language, a shorthand of words, numbers and punctuation, is still widely used today, and successors like C++ and Java build on the ideas, rules and grammar that Mr. Ritchie designed. The Unix operating system has similarly had a rich and enduring impact. Its free, open-source variant, Linux, powers many of the world’s data centers, like those at Google and Amazon, and its technology serves as the foundation of operating systems, like Apple’s iOS, in consumer computing devices.“The tools that Dennis built — and their direct descendants — run pretty much everything today,” said Brian Kernighan, a computer scientist at Princeton University who worked with Mr. Ritchie at Bell Labs.Those tools were more than inventive bundles of computer code. The C language and Unix reflected a point of view, a different philosophy of computing than what had come before. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, minicomputers were moving into companies and universities — smaller and at a fraction of the price of hulking mainframes.Minicomputers represented a step in the democratization of computing, and Unix and C were designed to open up computing to more people and collaborative working styles. Mr. Ritchie, Mr. Thompson and their Bell Labs colleagues were making not merely software but, as Mr. Ritchie once put it, “a system around which fellowship can form.”C was designed for systems programmers who wanted to get the fastest performance from operating systems, compilers and other programs. “C is not a big language — it’s clean, simple, elegant,” Mr. Kernighan said. “It lets you get close to the machine, without getting tied up in the machine.”Such higher-level languages had earlier been intended mainly to let people without a lot of programming skill write programs that could run on mainframes. Fortran was for scientists and engineers, while Cobol was for business managers.C, like Unix, was designed mainly to let the growing ranks of professional programmers work more productively. And it steadily gained popularity. With Mr. Kernighan, Mr. Ritchie wrote a classic text, “The C Programming Language,” also known as “K. & R.” after the authors’ initials, whose two editions, in 1978 and 1988, have sold millions of copies and been translated into 25 languages.Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie was born on Sept. 9, 1941, in Bronxville, N.Y. His father, Alistair, was an engineer at Bell Labs, and his mother, Jean McGee Ritchie, was a homemaker. When he was a child, the family moved to Summit, N.J., where Mr. Ritchie grew up and attended high school. He then went to Harvard, where he majored in applied mathematics.While a graduate student at Harvard, Mr. Ritchie worked at the computer center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and became more interested in computing than math. He was recruited by the Sandia National Laboratories, which conducted weapons research and testing. “But it was nearly 1968,” Mr. Ritchie recalled in an interview in 2001, “and somehow making A-bombs for the government didn’t seem in tune with the times.”Mr. Ritchie joined Bell Labs in 1967, and soon began his fruitful collaboration with Mr. Thompson on both Unix and the C programming language. The pair represented the two different strands of the nascent discipline of computer science. Mr. Ritchie came to computing from math, while Mr. Thompson came from electrical engineering.“We were very complementary,” said Mr. Thompson, who is now an engineer at Google. “Sometimes personalities clash, and sometimes they meld. It was just good with Dennis.”Besides his brother Bill, of Alexandria, Va., Mr. Ritchie is survived by another brother, John, of Newton, Mass., and a sister, Lynn Ritchie of Hexham, England.Mr. Ritchie traveled widely and read voraciously, but friends and family members say his main passion was his work. He remained at Bell Labs, working on various research projects, until he retired in 2007.Colleagues who worked with Mr. Ritchie were struck by his code — meticulous, clean and concise. His writing, according to Mr. Kernighan, was similar. “There was a remarkable precision to his writing,” Mr. Kernighan said, “no extra words, elegant and spare, much like his code.”# 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

#occupybankitalia #15oct #globalchange In Madrid and New York, Santiago and Athens, Tel Aviv and Reykjavik we, the “(multi)generations with no future” are rising up – refusing to pay for their crisis and rejecting the rhetorical refrain of a “general liability” towards debt. We have a different kind of society in mind, one based on a radical redistribution of wealth and on the sharing of common resources. The 99% of the planet is unwilling to accept the greed of the few.In the countdown towards the international protest of October 15 against austerity policies, dictated in Italy by the European Central Bank and Berlusconi’s government, we called for a public protest against the Bank of Italy and the ECB – as the symbols of a global governance imposing decisions that have no democratic legitimacy. That’s why the 12th october in Rome and other cities of Italy we decided that was time for direct action! We launched a call on the social networks to occupy Banca d'Italia, in the occasion of the international conference that was held there at the presence of the Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and the future president of the EBC Mario Draghi. In the afternoon thousands of people were there. We found there an incredible deployment of police and armoured vehicles but we decided anyway to stay and occupy the street.Since this day we are still there, we resist to the attempt of the police to move out the occupation: our only symbol is a rebel dragon, we have no names and identities but the common will to change the world.From days we are blocking the street and the city, the square in front of Banca d'Italia became a space of democracy and freedom, from which we refuse the dictatorship of the financial institution.We reject the deficit blackmail and urge for a redistribution of wealth, for the protection of workers rights, for free and autonomous universities and for a new universal welfare against precariousness In synergy with the acampadas and the free occupations in Spain, in US and many other countries, we propose to build a common space where to extendedly gather and protest. Let us all get together and demand social justice and change through one, basic claim: we won’t pay their debt off, it’s time to claim our social credit!The 15th October we will take the streets with many others in Rome to be part of the worldwide mobilization for global change.It is time to rise up. We are the 99%, we have a world to reinvent.Rebel Dragons towards the 15th October

Now you're all back from your local 'occupy' demo (I was at theAmsterdam one, which was fun. My favorite placard, featuring thefamous Muppet Show character, read: "99% of all cookies are eaten by1% of the monsters!"), you might want some comic relief, graciouslyprovided by Karl Rove, Buba's infamous front & henchman.What appears to infuriate Mr Rove most is the parallel often drawnbetween the Tea Party and Occupy as genuine grass-root (or populistif you don't like it) movements, albeit at the opposite end of thepolitical spectrum. To demonstrate that nothing could be further fromthe truth Rove does not hesitate to gloriously shatter what the Frenchsatirical rag Le Canard Enchaine maliciously calls 'le mur du con'.One thing is nevertheless certain: the 99% are kooky!But enjoy yr week-end all the same!patrizio & Diiiinooos!-----Op-ed in The Wall Street Journal w/e edition 14-16 October 2011from Karl rove's blog: http://www.rove.com/articles/345Democrats Court the Wall Street ProtestersThe strategy risks alienating independents and blue-collar voters.At his recent news conference, President Barack Obama praisedOccupy Wall Street, saying, "It expresses the frustrations that theAmerican people feel." Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised theprotesters, saying, "God bless them for their spontaneity." VicePresident Joe Biden claimed the protesters had "a lot in common withthe tea party." And the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee iscirculating a petition seeking 100,000 signers to declare, "I standwith the Occupy Wall Street protests."The political calculation behind all this is obvious: Democrats hopeOccupy Wall Street will boost their party's chances in next year'selection as the tea party did for the GOP in 2010. But Democraticleaders are wrong in believing that Occupy Wall Street is the liberalalternative to the tea party.The tea party is a middle-class movement of people who want limitedgovernment, less spending, less debt, low taxes, and the repeal ofObamaCare. Occupy Wall Street isn't a movement. It's a series ofevents populated by a weird cast of disaffected characters, rangingfrom anarchists and anti-Semites to socialists and LaRouchies. Whatthey have in common is an amorphous anger aimed at banks, investors,rich people and bourgeois values.The tea party reveres the Constitution and wants to change laws torestore the country to prosperity. Occupy Wall Street started byoccupying a New York City park and then blocked the Brooklyn Bridge,sparking the arrest of hundreds.The tea party files for permits for its rallies and picks up its trashafterwards. Occupy Wall Street tolerates protesters who defecate onpolice cars, allows the open sale of drugs at protests, and featureswomen walking around rallies topless.The tea party has settled down to democracy's patient, responsiblework, either by exerting influence on the Republican Party nominationprocess or educating Americans on the issues in order to holdpoliticians in both parties to account.By comparison, Occupy Wall Street seems alienated by the Americanpolitical system. It has no concrete agenda and no plan to become apolitical institution. Yet it needs both things to have an impact onpolitics or policy. Without them, Americans will be interested inOccupy Wall Street's weird and off-putting side show for only so long.The fact that it lacks a clear program means that Occupy Wall Streetis susceptible to being captured by even more extreme elements. It'sno accident its rallies and marches around the country include signsextolling wacky causes and marginal, but highly organized, left-winggroups. Nothing draws ideologues who know what they want as fast as amalleable crowd that doesn't.What Democrats eager to latch on to the Occupy Wall Street protestsdon't seem to fully grasp is that these events are in part anexpression of deep dissatisfaction with Mr. Obama and other D.C.Democrats. Some young Occupy Wall Street participants are angrybecause their economic future seems so bleak. They want someone tohold responsible for the absence of jobs. Others see Mr. Obama asinsufficiently liberal. And some are simply nutty: A third of theprotesters polled by New York magazine say the United States is as badas al Qaeda.While Mr. Obama and other top Democrats may be momentarily excited bythe notion of a long-term relationship, Occupy Wall Street may notwant to even go out for a date. The refusal of protestors in Atlantato allow Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis to address theirrally is just one sign this may not be a terribly Democratic-friendlycrowd.Rushing to identify with Occupy Wall Street could well threaten Mr.Obama's re-election by putting off the very swing voters whom thepresident needs. It could further diminish the president's supportfrom center-left business leaders, already sick of Mr. Obama's classwarfare and faux populism. Appearing to condone the crude personalbehavior of Occupy Wall Street protestors can also further erode Mr.Obama's standing with culturally conservative blue-collar voters.Before they go much further with this courtship, the president andother Democrats need to remember it's always dangerous to associatewith people who are just plain kooky............'Le mur du con': wordplay on 'le mur du son' - the sound barrier, and'con' - stupid, lame, dumb.

http://www.artisopensource.net/2011/10/16/versus-rome-october-15th-the-riots-on-social-networks/Rome, Oct. 15th, 2011This short video displays the activity on social networks (Twitter,Facebook, Foursquare) during the riots of October 15th which took place inRome during the local instance of the 15th October initiative created in theplanetary process started by the Occupy Wall Street movement.The peaks and contours you see represent the intensity of the communicationand conversations that was taking place from the start of the protest (at3pm local time) up until its approximate end (at 8pm local time).The animation shows the geo-referenced intensity of messages for each 30minute time slot from the beginning to the end of the protest.It is time to invent new, innovative, creative forms of protest, fosteringnew forms of solidarity, collaboration, participation between people, andalso to create tools, strategies and methodologies to bypass and overcomethe tricks which power structures and the people and organizations which wewant to fight against have learned to perform so well to dismantle and makedisappear all the good parts of the critique coming from the peacefulprotesters.What we suggest is to create new forms of protest. Which do not lookanything like these current ones.These and other topics will be discussed at the Share Festival and at theFabLab Italia during the first week of November 2011, where we will presentthe “VersuS” project.VersuS is a spin-off of the ConnectiCity project, and is intended to createtools that enable us to imagine, design and create new tools for the city.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/14/a-coup-in-the-european-unionFailure for 90 Percent of the People (The Rest Will Be Fine)A Coup in the European Union?by SUSAN GEORGEEuropean Union workers’ pretentions to better pay and working conditions, shorter working lives, munificent retirement benefits, long holidays and time off for this and that have got to be brought under control! Enough is enough!Let us be thankful that the European Commission has the answers. Soon the neoliberal model will become irreversible and all these pretentious upstarts will have to shut up once and for all. High time too. In a brilliant move, the Commission has pushed through a bundle of measures called the “six-pack”—a cheerful name suggesting parties where the beer flows freely. This bundle is rather more austere and will give the Commission hitherto unheard-of leverage in the affairs of its member States.By a close vote on 28 September 2011, the European Parliament passed the Commission’s plan—a far-reaching takeover of individual countries’ capacity to set their own budgets and to manage their own sovereign debts. From now on, the Parliament and the Council (with the Commission naturally overseeing the process) will be able to force governments to comply with the Maastricht Treaty recommendations—otherwise known as the “Stability and Growth Pact”–to which member States had recently paid precious little attention. After 2005 this Pact seemed almost a quaint relic. But now, thanks to the six-pack, no deficits greater than 3% and no national debts above 60% of GDP will be countenanced. What these people need is stern discipline, make no mistake.Starting in 2012, Euro-parliamentarians and the Council will dissect national budgets before national parliaments have any say at all or even a chance to look at them. If countries do not reduce their debts fast enough or refuse the budgetary “suggestions” from Brussels, enforcement measures will kick in. In case of further recalcitrance on the part of member States, punishment can mean either depositing or forfeiting .01, .02 or even .05% of the country’s GDP to the EU, depending on how severe the country’s non-compliance is judged. In the case of, say, France, with a GDP of about €1.900 billion ($2.600 billion) the Commission could demand a deposit or a fine of some €20 to €40 billion or even €100 billion if the Commission were to escalate the sanctions to .05% of GDP.True to the Commission’s usual quietly efficient methods, these permanent six-pack measures went through the whole approval procedure with barely a ripple, little debate and virtually zero citizen involvement. Most Europeans have not the slightest inkling that any change has taken place, much less a savage attack on their governments’ capacity to govern. Thanks to this legislation, we can count on the lasting power of neoliberal doctrine throughout Europe, particularly in the euro zone, as elected officials are dispossessed by appointed, non-accountable ones of their right to draw up their own budgets. They lost the right to a say on monetary policy long ago. .The six-pack, thanks also to the right-wing euro-parliamentary majority is now firmly entrenched and will be difficult if not impossible to reverse. Anywhere else, one might have heard accusations of a mass coup d’état against member State governments and their peoples. But so far, all’s quiet on the EU front.Simultaneously, the Commission is pushing the member States to follow another part of the neoliberal scenario through a variety of other directives ensuring longer work weeks and working lives and the gradual alignment of wages and social benefits according to lowest common denominators. This process may be a bit slower but will also be enhanced by the six-pack.The European Court of Justice is doing its part on the second objective in particular with at least four separate judgments obliging workers to accept sub-standard wages even when working in countries with strong worker-protection laws like Sweden or Finland.One has to admire the Commission’s capacity for discretion and getting things done without unnecessarily upsetting member States’ citizens or their national parliaments. The apparent technical complexity of the measures and the process of putting them in place help to keep things quiet, although these measures are actually quite straightforward (and, one might add, have German fingerprints all over them).Meanwhile, the largely neo-liberal European media see no reason to make an issue of what’s happening behind the scenes in Brussels and assist in keeping the lid on protest until too late for citizens to intervene. All this spells greater victories ahead to come for neoliberalism and the failure of European economies. No, sorry, only failure for 90 percent of the people. The rest will be fine. Not to worry. As Martin Wolf recently paraphrased Tacitus in the Financial Times to describe the European situation, “They create a desert and call it stability”.Susan George is a TranNational Institute fellow, President of the Board of TNI and honorary president of ATTAC-France [Association for Taxation of Financial Transaction to Aid Citizens]

dear Mark Stahlman and otherssorry about jumping in like this, I follow the various conversation on this list and at times feel a great irritation at the flippant manner in which words are bantered about.how bizarre to hear people railing against machines and other devices that somehow materialised during the 20th century when the very discourses they are engaged in is facilitated by 'machines' technologies' 'inventions' and a vast array of 20th century paraphernalia - not only is this some kind of simplistic Luddite rubbish but also the kind of apolitical posturing that is hermetic and not at all constructive.allan siegel

In a private conversation on that great modern Stoa, Facebook, myfriend Tiziana Terranova, endorsed the Objectives of the Debtors'Party[1], saying "there's nothing about these objectives I could notshare," but went to ask a rather pointed question:"It is the notion of starting a political party that leaves mebaffled, coming as you know from an autonomist political backgroundthat has been arguing for constituent power, that is the invention ofnew institutions altogether. Why try to reinvent an old formula like apolitical party?"Why a Political Party?The answer is all around us. mass movements are rising and spreading,squares world wide are being occupied, demonstrations are attractingthousands who want their voice heard and their dissent felt. Theseoccupiers, these demonstrators, have not taken to the street as apractical means of forming new institutions, they have taken to thestreet to make demands.They address their slogans, their posters and their signs, not to eachother to call for new social forms, but to the "1%," to the State,to the Police, in other words to authority, to power, to the rulingelite. Their demands are political damands; "Read My Lips: Tax TheRich", "End Welfare for the Rich!", "Create Jobs Not War!" among manyothers, demanding a right to housing, education, and health withoutinescapable debt, demanding a society governed according the interestsof the masses, not the few.Many of us in the currently exploding movement are also activelyinvolved in building constituent power, in building new ways ofproducing and sharing, in forming and envisioning new institutionswithin the shell of the old, but we can do so only within thebounds of our class condition, and when we are strapped by debtand precarity, struggling with money and time to meet our basicresponsibilities to family and community, we lack the means to formand grow our new institutions, and we lack the means to defend them.These demands are urgent demands and can not be immediately met byautonomist means alone. So long as we live within a society ruledby Government, these demands must be met by Government, we requirea political struggle, not in attempt to take power and impose newsocial relations through the power of the state, but to contest theinterest of the ruling elite on the battlefield of the politicalprocess. We must undertake a political struggle to to create the spacefor alternative institutions to emerge, otherwise they are too easilysnuffed out where they do rise.We must undertake a political struggle because the masses are callingout for it, and we must heed that call and respond, not simply rejectit and presume to educate them with theory and instruct then toleave the streets and the squares, to go back to Kansas and form amillion Kibbutzim because it better suites our vision of the future.To achieve our future visions, we must address the conditions of thepresent.All we need to do is read the signs, hear the slogans, listen to thedemands of our movements.The Existence of Demands Proves the Existence of the Demand forPolitical Representation.And who is to provide such representation? Are we to expect theparties of the plutocrats to provide such representation? The existingparties have long lost their class character and are essentiallypublicity outfits selling voters to lobbies in the marketplace ofpolitical legitimization.The time has come for new party, a party to stand up to therepresentatives of the interests of the ruling elite, the financialaristocracy, whose power has been unchallenged for decades.We musrt have a new party that is formed by, and that represents,the masses that have been dispossessed and are being pushed towardsdestitution. A party to face down the profit-seeking interests ofcreditors, who having hoarded hoarded the majority of societies wealthamong the few, have the masses into debtors.The time has come for the Debtors' Party.This is not a call for politics as usual to be appealed to to solveour problems, this is a call to Occupy Government.[1] http://dmytri.info/draft-objectives-for-the-debtors-party

ADBUSTERS TACTICAL BRIEFING #15Alright you redeemers, rebels and radicals out there,We're living through a magical moment … #OCCUPYWALLSTREET has catalyzed into an international insurgency for democracy … the mood at our assemblies is electric … people who go there are drawn into a Gandhian spirit of camaraderie and hope for a new kind of future. Across the globe the 99% are marching! You have inspired more than you know. People are digging into Act One of the long Spring.Its now time to amp up the edgy theatrics … deviant pranks, subversive performances and playful détournements of all kinds. Open your insurrectionary imagination. Anything, from a bottom-up transformation of the global economy to changing the way we eat, the way we get around, the way we live, love and communicate … be the spark that sustains a global revolution of everyday life!As the movement matures, lets consider a response to our critics. Lets occupy the core of our global system. Lets dethrone the greed that defines this new century. Lets work to define our one great demand.OCTOBER 29 – #ROBINHOOD GLOBAL MARCHThis is a proposal for the general assemblies of the Occupy movement.Eight years ago, on February 15, 2003, upwards of 15 million people in sixty countries marched together to stop President Bush from invading Iraq … a huge chunk of humanity lived for one day without dead time and glimpsed the power of a united people's movement. Now we have an opportunity to repeat that performance on an even larger scale.On October 29, on the eve of the G20 Leaders Summit in France, let's the people of the world rise up and demand that our G20 leaders immediately impose a 1% #ROBINHOOD tax on all financial transactions and currency trades. Let's send them a clear message: We want you to slow down some of that $1.3-trillion easy money that's sloshing around the global casino each day – enough cash to fund every social program and environmental initiative in the world.Take this idea to your local general assembly and join your comrades in the streets on October 29.for the wild,Culture Jammers HQ