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Rome, Oct. 15th, 2011http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=J_FU8qAMtVgThis short video displays the activity on social networks (Twitter,Facebook, Foursquare) during the riots of October 15th which tookplace in Rome during the local instance of the 15th October initiativecreated in the planetary process started by the Occupy Wall Streetmovement.The peaks and contours you see represent the intensity of thecommunication and conversations that was taking place from the startof the protest (at 3pm local time) up until its approximate end (at8pm local time). The animation shows the geo-referenced intensity ofmessages for each 30 minute time slot from the beginning to the end ofthe protest.A '"other" event took place in the infosphere. Watching it, we canperceive a deep mutation: the intersection between public digitalspace phisical territory, the observability of our online activitiesand lives, but also the possibility to create new forms and tools forprotest, collaboration, solidarity inspired and coherent with ourmutated condition.more info on:http://www.artisopensource.net/2011/10/16/versus-rome-october-15th-the-riots-on-social-networks/

Friedrich A. Kittler died yesterday, 18 October 2011, in Berlin.http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,792511,00.htmlhttp://www.faz.net/aktuell/zum-tod-von-friedrich-kittler-jede-liebe-war-eine-auf-den-ersten-blick-11497216.htmlhttp://www.welt.de/kultur/literarischewelt/article13667566/Der-letzte-Grosse-aus-dem-19-Jahrhundert.htmlFriedrich Kittler beim Abschied aus der Sophienstrasse, Juli 2011:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csDCdqU-DGY

Dear nettimers,it is with great sadness that I have to announce here the death of German media theorist Friedrich Kittler. He died yesterday, in Berlin.There is already to be found on the Net about this tragic loss. I know some of you studied with him, worked together in Berlin, experienced him as a supervisor or like me, as a co-presenter at many conferences and events where we used to me.What do you think? What are your memories?I ran into his work for the first time around 1986 and his work (together with that of Klaus Theweleit, who also lived in Freiburg like FK at the time) had a major influence on me, giving me the confindence to become a media theorist (extra-academic in my case). I have studied his media theories works extensively and in particular enjoyed his perculiar (harsh, complex, dark) style of writing. One weekend I decided to htichhike from Amsterdam to Kassel to attend one of their conferences and this is where I felt very much at home, and this is also where my long-lasting affection for German media theory started.Back in June, over at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, where we both used to teach, Friedrich Kittler was barely able to teach and we all feared that he would not able to live much longer.Maybe someone who smokes can light up a sigarette for me, and smoke one on my behalf, to commemorate Friedrich's passage to elsewhere.Geert

This summer White Flag Projects in Saint Louis held an interesting exhibition called Another Kind of Vapor. Taking inspiration from Dieter Roth's work the show presented artists who use non-traditional and decaying materials, such as Paul McCarthy, Ed Ruscha and Dieter Roth himself.Roth's piece in the show was a glass jar containing flies collected by the artist from his legendary work Staple Cheese (A Race), 1970. This work has disappeared long ago, thrown away in the desert by the gallery owner, nothing else remains beside this 40-year-old jar full of dead flies.Unfortunately Dieter Roth never made this work, it's a fake. We invented it one evening in a bar with our friend Corazon Del Sol, and put it together the next day. We bought all the stuff on the internet: an old glass jar, a vintage cork and lots of flies (yes, you can buy flies online), and sent the work to the unaware curators.The piece has been shown for over a month, and nobody questioned its authenticity or worthiness. The image of the jar with flies started circulating on the Internet and it's also mentioned in Roth's biography in Wikipedia.Maybe one day the jar would have been included in other Dieter Roth shows, and, who knows, even sold for a lot of money.Sometimes we tend to prefer facts we wish to be true, rather than facts we know to be true. Maybe the little jar fulfilled our desire that the Dieter Roth legendary work wasn't completely lost. Believing is seeing.More infohttp://www.0100101110101101.org/home/rotand the exhibitionhttp://white-flag-projects.org/wfp10/exhibition_details.cfm?eID=53

-----Original Message-----From: TriumphOfContent-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw< at >public.gmane.org[mailto:TriumphOfContent-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw< at >public.gmane.org] On Behalf Of Anjana BasuSent: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 6:05 PMSubject: [TriumphOfContent] The Strange Case of the Faux Nobel LiteraturePrize Website The Strange Case of the Faux Nobel Literature Prize Website 3:00 pm Thursday Oct 6, 2011 by Judy Berman<http://flavorwire.com/author/judy> <http://assets.flavorwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/not-nobelized.jpg> This morning, most of the Western world woke up to the news that the SwedishAcademy had awarded their countryman Tomas Tranströmer (again, not BobDylan) the Nobel Prize for Literature. Minutes earlier, however, Serbiannewspaper readers were informed that their very own Dobrica Cosic had wonthe prize. As Jacket Copy reports<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/10/the-hoax-nobel-literature-prize-website.html> , the culprit turns out to be a fake website(www.nobelprizeliterature.org <http://www.nobelprizeliterature.org/> ) thatwas just purchased yesterday and mimicked the design of the real Nobel Prizehomepage <http://www.nobelprize.org/> . The pranksters behind the site alsoemailed the announcement of his victory to news outlets. Now thatnobelprizeliterature.org has been outed as a hoax, the group that created it— which bills itself as a “non-profit, self-organized group of webactivists” — has posted a different message, in both Croatian and (somewhatbroken) English. Read what they have to say for themselves after the jump.We are a non-profit, self-organized group of web activists.The purpose of our activity is to bring to the attention of the Serbianpublic dangerous influence of the writer Dobrica Cosic, who has been, againthis year, proclaimed by some as a serious contender for the Nobel Prize inLiterature.Dobrica Cosic, author and public political figure, active for decades,always close to the highest political power and those who exercise it, fromthe Communist Party of former SFRY, inspirators of their manifest of Serbiannationalism, infamous Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of sciences, formerpresident of the Milosevic’s wartime SR Yugoslavia, to present alliance withreactionary and most dangerous Serbian pseudo-democratic circles in the newera.We have registered the domain of this obviously hoax site on the 5th October2011, as a symbolic reminder of that day eleven years ago, when Serbiamissed a historic opportunity to create a different and better world. Todayagain, Serbia turns to war, terror and deadly kitsch of the nineties,violence towards diversity, nationalist conservatism and dishonestorthodoxy. We believe the political activity of Dobrica Cosic is stilldeeply intertwined with this hazardous value system, which does not cease tothreaten us all.Terrible consequences of decades of Mr. Cosic’s political, literary andpublic activity are felt to this day, both by his own country and throughoutthe region.Dobrica Cosic is not a recipient of the Nobel Prize, although the generalpublic in Serbia, and he himself, believed he is for 15 full minutes.We find some solace in that fact.__._,_.___Reply<mailto:onjona-PkbjNfxxIARBDgjK7y7TUQ< at >public.gmane.org?subject=Re%3A%20The%20Strange%20Case%20of%20the%20Faux%20Nobel%20Literature%20Prize%20Website> to sender | Reply<mailto:TriumphOfContent-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw< at >public.gmane.org?subject=Re%3A%20The%20Strange%20Case%20of%20the%20Faux%20Nobel%20Literature%20Prize%20Website> to group | Reply<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TriumphOfContent/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJyZXRlcTRyBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzE3OTM4NjM5BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTA2Mzk4NQRtc2dJZAMyNDM0OQRzZWMDZnRyBHNsawNycGx5BHN0aW1lAzEzMTkwNzI3Mjk-?act=reply&messageNum=24349>via web post | Start<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TriumphOfContent/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJmM2xlYnJpBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzE3OTM4NjM5BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTA2Mzk4NQRzZWMDZnRyBHNsawNudHBjBHN0aW1lAzEzMTkwNzI3Mjk-> a New Topic Messages<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TriumphOfContent/message/24349;_ylc=X3oDMTM3N3FnajdkBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzE3OTM4NjM5BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTA2Mzk4NQRtc2dJZAMyNDM0OQRzZWMDZnRyBHNsawN2dHBjBHN0aW1lAzEzMTkwNzI3MjkEdHBjSWQDMjQzNDk-> inthis topic (1) Recent Activity: Visit<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TriumphOfContent;_ylc=X3oDMTJmbGVicmM0BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzE3OTM4NjM5BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTA2Mzk4NQRzZWMDdnRsBHNsawN2Z2hwBHN0aW1lAzEzMTkwNzI3Mjk-> Your Group MARKETPLACEStay<http://global.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=15o8dfjad/M=493064.14543979.14562481.13298430/D=groups/S=1705063985:MKP1/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1319079929/L=9a66c2f2-fab7-11e0-9a37-ab2482a9e8be/B=zWG1EdBDRrQ-/J=1319072729775772/K=V6nJ5xGEj0txAkCRdlWDWg/A=6060255/R=0/SIG=1194m4keh/*http://us.toolbar.yahoo.com/?.cpdl=grpj> on topof your group activity without leaving the page you're on - Get the Yahoo!Toolbar now. <http://groups.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTJlMmE3ZWFiBF9TAzk3NDc2NTkwBGdycElkAzE3OTM4NjM5BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTA2Mzk4NQRzZWMDZnRyBHNsawNnZnAEc3RpbWUDMTMxOTA3MjcyOQ--> Yahoo! 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Can an algorithm be wrong? Twitter Trends, the specter of censorship, and our faith in the algorithms around us Oct 19, 2011 http://culturedigitally.org/2011/10/can-an-algorithm-be-wrong/The interesting question is not whether Twitter is censoring its Trends list. The interesting question is, what do we think the Trends list is, what it represents and how it works, that we can presume to hold it accountable when we think it is “wrong?” What are these algorithms, and what do we want them to be?It’s not the first time it has been asked. Gilad Lotan at SocialFlow (and erstwhile Microsoft UX designer), spurred by questions raised by participants and supporters of the Occupy Wall Street protests, asks the question: is Twitter censoring its Trends list to exclude #occupywallstreet and #occupyboston? While the protest movement gains traction and media coverage, and participants, observers and critics turn to Twitter to discuss it, why are these widely-known hashtags not Trending? Why are they not Trending in the very cities where protests have occurred, including New York?The presumption, though Gilad carefully debunks it, is that Twitter is, for some reason, either removing #occupywallstreet from Trends, or has designed an algorithm to prefer banal topics like Kim Kardashian’s wedding over important contentious, political debates. Similar charges emerged around the absence of #wikileaks from Twitter’s Trends when the trove of diplomatic cables were released in December of last year, as well as around the #demo2010 student protests in the UK, the controversial execution of #TroyDavis in the state of Georgia, the Gaza #flotilla, even the death of #SteveJobs. Why, when these important points of discussion seem to spike, do they not Trend?Despite an unshakeable undercurrent of paranoid skepticism, in the analyses and especially in the comment threads that trail off from them, most of those who have looked at the issue are reassured that Twitter is not in fact censoring these topics. Their absence on the Trends listings is a product of the particular dynamics of the algorithm that determines Trends, and the misunderstanding most users have about what exactly the Trends algorithm is designed to identify. I do not disagree with this assessment, and have no particular interest in reopening these questions. Along with Gilad’s thorough analysis, Angus Johnston has a series of posts (1, 2, 3, and 4) debunking the charge of censorship around #wikileaks. Trends has been designed (and re-designed) by Twitter not to simply measure popularity, i.e. the sheer quantity of posts using a certain word or hashtag. Instead, Twitter designed the Trends algorithm to capture topics that are enjoying a surge in popularity, rising distinctly above the normal level of chatter. To do this, their algorithm is designed to take into account not just the number of tweets, but factors such as: is the term accelerating in its use? Has it trended before? Is it being used across several networks of people, as opposed to a single, densely-interconnected cluster of users? Are the tweets different, or are they largely re-tweets of the same post? As Twitter representatives have said, they don’t want simply the most tweeted word (in which case the Trend list might read like a grammar assignment about pronouns and indefinite articles) or the topics that are always popular and seem destined to remain so (apparently this means Justin Bieber).The charge of censorship is, on the face of it, counterintuitive. Twitter has, over the last few years, enjoyed and agreed with claims that has played a catalytic role in recent political and civil unrest, particularly in the Arab world, wearing its political importance as a red badge of courage (see Shepherd and Busch). To censor these hot button political topics from Trends would work against their current self-proclaimed purposes and, more importantly, its marketing tactics. And, as Johnston noted, the tweets themselves are available, many highly charged - so why, and for what ends, remove #wikileaks or #occupywallstreet from the Trends list, yet let the actual discussion of these topics run free?On the other hand, the vigor and persistence of the charge of censorship is not surprising at all. Advocates of these political efforts want desperately for their topic to gain visibility. Those involved in the discussion likely have an exaggerated sense of how important and widely-discussed it is. And, especially with #wikileaks and #occupywallstreet, the possibility that Twitter may be censoring their efforts would fit their supporters’ ideological worldview: Twitter might be working against Wikileaks just as Amazon, Paypal, and Mastercard were; or in the case of #occupywallstreet, while the Twitter network supports the voice of the people, Twitter the corporation of course must have allegiances firmly intertwined with the fatcats of Wall Street.But the debate about tools like Twitter Trends is, I believe, a debate we will be having more and more often. As more and more of our online public discourse takes place on a select set of private content platforms and communication networks, and these providers turn to complex algorithms to manage, curate, and organize these massive collections, there is an important tension emerging between what we expect these algorithms to be, and what they in fact are. Not only must we recognize that these algorithms are not neutral, and that they encode political choices, and that they frame information in a particular way. We must also understand what it means that we are coming to rely on these algorithms, that we want them to be neutral, we want them to be reliable, we want them to be the effective ways in which we come to know what is most important.Twitter Trends is only the most visible of these tools. The search engine itself, whether Google or the search bar on your favorite content site (often the same engine, under the hood), is an algorithm that promises to provide a logical set of results in response to a query, but is in fact the result of an algorithm designed to take a range of criteria into account so as to serve up results that satisfy, not just the user, but the aims of the provider, their vision of relevance or newsworthiness or public import, and the particular demands of their business model. As James Grimmelmann observed, “Search engines pride themselves on being automated, except when they aren’t.” When Amazon, or YouTube, or Facebook, offer to algorithmically and in real time report on what is “most popular” or “liked” or “most viewed” or “best selling” or “most commented” or “highest rated,” it is curating a list whose legitimacy is based on the presumption that it has not been curated. And we want them to feel that way, even to the point that we are unwilling to ask about the choices and implications of the algorithms we use every day.Peel back the algorithms, and this becomes quite apparent. Yes, a casual visit to Twitter’s home page may present Trends as an unproblematic list of terms, that might appear a simple calculation. But a cursory look at Twitter’s explanation of how Trends works – in its policies and help pages, in its company blog, in tweets, in response to press queries, even in the comment threads of the censorship discussions - Twitter lays bare the variety of weighted factors Trends takes into account, and cops to the occasional and unfortunate consequences of these algorithms. Wikileaks may not have trended when people expected it to because it had before; because the discussion of #wikileaks grew too slowly and consistently over time to have spiked enough to draw the algorithm’s attention; because the bulk of messages were retweets; or because the users tweeting about Wikileaks were already densely interconnected. When Twitter changed their algorithm significantly in May 2010 (though, undoubtedly, it has been tweaked in less noticeable ways before and after), they announced the change in their blog, explained why it was made – and even apologized directly to Justin Bieber, whose position in the Trends list would be diminished by the change. In response to charges of censorship, they have explained why they believe Trends should privilege terms that spike, terms that exceed single clusters of interconnected users, new content over retweets, new terms over already trending ones. Critics gather anecdotal evidence and conduct thorough statistical analysis, using available online tools that track the raw popularity of words in a vastly more exhaustive and catholic way than Twitter does, or at least is willing to make available to its users. The algorithms that define what is “trending” or what is “hot” or what is “most popular” are not simple measures, they are carefully designed to capture something the site providers want to capture, and to weed out the inevitable “mistakes” a simple calculation would make.At the same time, Twitter most certainly does curate its Trends lists. It engages in traditional censorship: for example, a Twitter engineer acknowledges here that Trends excludes profanity, something that’s obvious from the relatively circuitous path that prurient attempts to push dirty words onto the Trends list must take. Twitter will remove tweets that constitute specific threats of violence, copyright or trademark violations, impersonation of others, revelations of others’ private information, or spam. (Twitter has even been criticized (1, 2) for not removing some terms from Trends, as in this user’s complaint that #reasonstobeatyourgirlfriend was permitted to appear.) Twitter also engages in softer forms of governance, by designing the algorithm so as to privilege some kinds of content and exclude others, and some users and not others. Twitter offers rules, guidelines, and suggestions for proper tweeting, in the hopes of gently moving users towards the kinds of topics that suit their site and away from the kinds of content that, were it to trend, might reflect badly on the site. For some of their rules for proper profile content, tweet content, and hashtag use, the punishment imposed on violators is that their tweets will not factor into search or Trends - thereby culling the Trends lists by culling what content is even in consideration for it. Twitter includes terms in its Trends from promotional partners, terms that were not spiking in popularity otherwise. This list, automatically calculated on the fly, is yet also the result of careful curation to decide what it should represent, what counts as “trend-ness.”Ironically, terms like #wikileaks and #occupywallstreet are exactly the kinds of terms that, from a reasonable perspective, Twitter should want to show up as Trends. If we take the reasonable position that Twitter is benefiting from its role in the democratic uprisings of recent years, and that it is pitching itself as a vital tool for important political discussion, and that it wants to highlight terms that will support that vision and draw users to topics that strike them as relevant, #occupywallstreet seems to fit the bill. So despite carefully designing their algorithm away from the perennials of Bieber and the weeds of common language, it still cannot always successfully pluck out the vital public discussion it might want. In this, Twitter is in agreement with its critics; perhaps #wikileaks should have trended after the diplomatic cables were released. These algorithms are not perfect; they are still cudgels, where one might want scalpels. The Trends list can often look, in fact, like a study in insignificance. Not only are the interests of a few often precisely irrelevant to the rest of us, but much of what we talk about on Twitter every day is in fact quite everyday, despite their most heroic claims of political import. But, many Twitter users take it to be not just a measure of visibility but a means of visibility – whether or not the appearance of a term or #hashtag increases audience, which is not in fact clear. Trends offers to propel a topic towards greater attention, and offers proof of the attention already being paid. Or seems to.Of course, Twitter has in its hands the biggest resource by which to improve their tool, a massive and interested user base. One could imagine “crowdsourcing” this problem, asking users to rate the quality of the Trends lists, and assessing these responses over time and a huge number of data points. But they face a dilemma: revealing the workings of their algorithm, even enough to respond to charges of censorship and manipulation, much less to share the task of improving it, risks helping those who would game the system. Everyone from spammers to political activist to 4chan tricksters to narcissists might want to “optimize” their tweets and hashtags so as to show up in the Trends. So the mechanism underneath this tool, that is meant to present a (quasi) democratic assessment of what the public finds important right now, cannot reveals its own “secret sauce.”Which in some ways leaves us, and Twitter, in an unresolvable quandary. The algorithmic gloss of our aggregate social data practices can always be read/misread as censorship, if the results do not match what someone expects. If #occupywallstreet is not trending, does that mean (a) it is being purposefully censored? (b) it is very popular but consistently so, not a spike? (c) it is actually less popular than one might think? Broad scrapes of huge data, like Twitter Trends, are in some ways meant to show us what we know to be true, and to show us what we are unable to perceive as true because of our limited scope. And we can never really tell which it is showing us, or failing to show us. We remain trapped in an algorithmic regress, and not even Twitter can help, as it can’t risk revealing the criteria it used.But what is most important here is not the consequences of algorithms, it is our emerging and powerful faith in them. Trends measures “trends,” a phenomena Twitter gets to define and build into its algorithm. But we are invited to treat Trends as a reasonable measure of popularity and importance, a “trend” in our understanding of the term. And we want it to be so. We want Trends to be an impartial arbiter of what’s relevant… and we want our pet topic, the one it seems certain that “everyone” is (or should be) talking about, to be duly noted by this objective measure specifically designed to do so. We want Twitter to be “right” about what is important… and sometimes we kinda want them to be wrong, deliberately wrong – because that will also fit our worldview: that when the facts are misrepresented, it’s because someone did so deliberately, not because facts are in many ways the product of how they’re manufactured.We don’t have a sufficient vocabulary for assessing the algorithmic intervention a tool like Trends. We’re not good at comprehending the complexity required to make a tool like Trends – that seems to effortlessly identify what’s going on, that isn’t swamped by the mundane or the irrelevant. We don’t have a language for the unexpected associations algorithms make, beyond the intention (or even comprehension) of their designers. We don’t have a clear sense of how to talk about the politics of this algorithm. If Trends, as designed, does leave #occupywallstreet off the list, even when its use is surging and even when some people think it should be there: is that the algorithm correctly assessing what is happening? Is it looking for the wrong things? Has it been turned from its proper ends by interested parties? Too often, maybe in nearly every instance in which we use these platforms, we fail to ask these questions. We equate the “hot” list with our understanding of what is popular, the “trends” list with what matters. Most importantly, we may be unwilling or unable to recognize our growing dependence on these algorithmic tools, as our means of navigating the huge corpuses of data that we must, because we want so badly for these tools to perform a simple, neutral calculus, without blurry edges, without human intervention, without having to be tweaked to get it “right,” without being shaped by the interests of their providers. -Contributed by Tarleton Gillespie, Cornell University Department of Communication-# 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

Fuchs, Christian, Kees Boersma, Anders Albrechtslund and Marisol Sandoval (Eds.). 2011. Internet and Surveillance: The Challenges of Web 2.0 and Social Media. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-89160-8. EU COST Publication. 332 pages.http://fuchs.uti.at/books/internet-and-surveillance-the-challenges-of-web-2-0-and-social-media/With contributions by: Anders Albrechtslund, Thomas Allmer, Mark Andrejevic, David Arditi, Roberto Armengol, Kees Boersma, Miyase Christensen, Christian Fuchs, David W. Hill, André Jansson, Deborah G. Johnson, David Lyon, Thomas Mathiesen, Marisol Sandoval, Iván Székely, Monika Taddicken, Daniel Trottier, Kent Wayland, Rolf H. WeberThe publication has been supported by EU COST – European Cooperation in Science and Technology and the EU COST Action IS0807 “Living in Surveillance Societies“.This book is the first ever published volume that is dedicated to Internet surveillance in the age of what has come to be termed “social media” or “web 2.0″ (blogs, wikis, file sharing, social networking sites, microblogs, user-generated content sites, etc). The Internet has been transformed in the past years from a system primarily oriented on information provision into a medium for communication and community-building. The notion of “Web 2.0”, social software, and social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have emerged in this context. With such platforms comes the massive provision and storage of personal data that are systematically evaluated, marketed, and used for targeting users with advertising. In a world of global economic competition, economic crisis, and fear of terrorism after 9/11, both corporations and state institutions have a growing interest in accessing this personal data. Here, contributors explore this changing landscape by addressing topics such as commercial data collection by advertising, consumer sites and interactive media; self-disclosure in the social web; surveillance of file-sharers; privacy in the age of the internet; civil watch-surveillance on social networking sites; and networked interactive surveillance in transnational space. This book is a result of a research action launched by the intergovernmental network COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).--Prof. Christian FuchsChair in Media and Communication StudiesDepartment of Informatics and MediaUppsala UniversityKyrkogårdsgatan 10Box 513751 20 UppsalaSwedenchristian.fuchs< at >im.uu.seTel +46 (0) 18 471 1019http://fuchs.uti.athttp://www.im.uu.seNetPolitics Blog: http://fuchs.uti.at/blogEditor of tripleC: http://www.triple-c.seBook "Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies" (Routledge 2011)Book "Internet and Society" (Paperback, Routledge 2010)# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

Bwo Sarai Reader list/ A.Manihttp://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27157Occupy The World! To the Barricades Comrades?by William BowlesFour years ago in a Ministry of Defence Review, the Whitehall Mandarins, more astutely than any so-called Lefty, determined the following: “The Middle Class Proletariat — The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples’ attachment to particular states. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite. Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.”— ‘UK Ministry of Defence report, The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme 2007-2036’ (Third Edition) p.96, March 2007Yeah, I know, I'm always using this quote (I first used it four years ago) but it illustrates the great intellectual divide between the political class and the citizens they rule, including our Left, now made so apparent by what the pundits are now calling the 'Occupy The World' (OTW) movement. It seems that only our very own ruling class foresaw OTW.Dig a little deeper into OTW and we find that with a few exceptions, there are no challenges to capitalism, mostly it's a 'clean up your act' kinda thing. Throw a few billionaires in jail, add some regulation and things will eventually turn out just fine. Dream on...But we've been here before. This is what attempts at 'reforming' capitalism in the past have looked like. We lived under such a system from 1945 until the late 1970s, before the Empire reasserted itself, proving once again, that concepts like 'democracy' under capitalism, are at best, mere conveniences and so vague a concept that it can be made to resemble almost anything.And once the so-called Good Life that capitalism allegedly had offered us started to wear thin and capitalism once more plunged us into war and poverty, so too the 'Good Life' had to be dumped. Belt-tightening time again.But unlike 1968, or even the 'Anti-Globalization Movement' that some are comparing OTW to, socialism is barely mentioned, let alone the central motif. Yes, there are increasing anti-capitalist references but in 1968, politics was at the very heart of the situation. It wasn't about money but about posing a real alternative to capitalism. The concept of belonging to a class still existed in the public's consciousness, even if it lacked the collective will to do anything about it.Am I being altogether too cruel to OTW? It is after all, early days in the development of OTW. It might all fizzle out or if it doesn't, the political class might have to use the logical response to the MoD's quote above: suppress it. Something for which, no doubt in another (secret) report, the Whitehall Mandarins have laid out the strategy and tactics to be employed in suppressing a burgeoning (socialist?) revolution.After all, when "[f]aced by th[o]se twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest”, says it all.You have to take this stuff seriously! It's not a game and the state is very adept at employing whatever tactics it chooses to suppress serious dissent including the use of agents provocateurs (a long-standing 'tradition') to infiltrate and provoke pointless confrontations with the state, in order not only to justify suppression but more importantly, as part of a propaganda war waged through the media, where we have no counter-voice.Repression of course carries its own risks and far from being a solution could only further excerbate the problem. Timing is all. This is not a game. The political class is fighting for its life and that of its masters, the corporations. That's why they write those reports. Just as with the insurrections earlier this year in the UK, the state had a clear response to it and the role of the media was central to its effectiveness in spreading the state's message.Let it 'burn baby, burn' and turn the world's cameras onto the conflagration, followed by a good dose of Victorian 'rough justice' (pity they've abolished hard labour and deportation to Australia). Make an example of them should anyone else have ideas about following in their footsteps.The key here is the observation made by the Whitehall Mandarins about "class interests". Now if well-paid and no doubt loyal members of the political class' intelligentsia have gotten it figured out (and so far, their prediction is right on the money), how come the 'Left' hasn't?Currently class is something almost entirely absent from the OTW movement. Without it eventually taking centre stage, OTW is bound to be stillborn. But there are some positive signs that some kind of 'consensus' mechanism is emerging from the chaos akin to some kind of 'self-organizing' principle. After all, we have what the MoD report called "access to knowledge, resources and skills" necessary to produce workable alternatives not only to capitalism but to fashion a new kind of inclusive democracy, one that hasn't existed before. The aim is to create a venue for democratic deliberation and open debate in a place normally associated with secretive privilege. People working in the City of London have played a starring role in creating the global economic crisis. Since our representative institutions have thus far failed to address this crisis in a way that is both sensible and just, it is only fitting that we should use the City as a place in which [to] work on solutions ourselves. -- 'Talk Amongst Yourselves' By Dan HindIt's not a 'peasants revolt' kinda thing, though of course inevitably those hit the worst by the crisis will revolt first. But the crisis of capital has now hit those who make up the very bedrock of capitalist society's justification for existing, its so-called middle classes. These are the major consumers in our economy, not only is their consumption a major chunk of our GDP (as well its debt), they are also the managers and technicians of capitalism and the state machine. Piss them off and things could get out of hand just as the MoD has predicted.Some on the Left in the UK are still calling for revitalizing the Labour Party as a potential force for socialism but if so, then it means that it would have to come from its decimated grassroots membership, a tall if not impossible order to carry out. At the first signs of revolt in the Labour Party's constituency membership, the Party Machine will intervene and purge its ranks just as it has done so many times in the past.For a Left largely pinning its hopes on a working class that no longer exists, it will have to broaden and deepen its knowledge of how capitalism has evolved and transformed the nature of the working class and learn to seek connections to a much more diverse and complex alliance of forces if we are to defeat the Empire.What an irony that the Left—led largely by middle class intellectuals—fails to see what has happened, trapped as it is in its own patronizing and nostalgic vision of the working class aka George 'middle class' Orwell's 'Road to Wigan Pier'. And this is the problem: it's always middle class intellectuals on the Left who have set the agenda, not for their own 'class' mind but for an idea that emerged in the middle of the 19th century; that the organized industrial working class would undertake the Revolution, led of course by middle class intellectuals.OTW is nevertheless a transcendent moment, one to cherish and sustain and no doubt just the first shot across the bows of Global Capital but for it to have a chance of success it will have challenge corporate capitalism's right to exist.To do this we will first have to dispel the 'bad apple' theory as the cause of the current crisis. That it's just a question of regulating capitalism, smoothing out the rough edges, eliminating the extremes and above all, restoring 'competition', so-called real capitalism.But this could only be done by breaking up the giant corporations and abolishing the financial sector in its entirety as it currently exists. Is it likely that advocates of 'real' capitalism aka Max Keisser could undertake such a mission? The way I understand it, a 'real' capitalist economy would consist only of small competing private businesses, cooperatives, public utilities and the self-employed, and one assumes massive state intervention in order to make it all happen.Sounds a bit like my favourite kind of socialism, William Morris's version and not an overly ambitious objective given the political will to carry it out.But who will break up Shell or Goldman Sachs? Who will smash the military-industrial-media complex? Only a state owned and managed by the working class can undertake such a momentous task. OTY OTW...# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

bwo INURA list/ P.M.Folks,I know many are already involved in activities such as the ones discussed here, but more is better, and the opportunities are great...Non-occupying supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement are critical forces in influencing the impact of the movement. Occupiers are themselves a tiny fraction, but their support reaches widely, those many that are discontent, insecure, and/or exploited, dissatisfied with things as they are. Their support reaches into the majority of the population, even into Republican circles, even sharing some roots with some tea partiers. Occupy Wall Street will not bring about a revolution, but it can be a force to bring about a shift from a defensive to an offensive posture, to push from radical reform rather than only amelioration at the edges.Supportive non-occupiers can play a major role in moving in this direction. They can develop the details occupiers are accused if ignoring, organize around individual the individual concrete issues contributing to the deep discontent with the direction in which society is moving. Linking the broadly-targeting aroused occupiers to the multiple existing groups and organization already struggling for change might provide strength and energy all around.In more detail on my blog, pmarcuse.wordpress.comPeter Marcuse

Gaddafi, tyrannicide: who are the puppets that are dancing in the streetsOctober 21, 2011 by Tjebbe van TijenThe illustrated version with links can be found at:http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/gaddafi-tyrannicide-who-are-the-puppets-that-are-dancing-in-the-streets/A dictator is never alone. A dictator is a system whereby one man or woman is the figurehead with whole strata of society deriving their social position and wealth from their participation in a system of rule both headed and symbolised by a specific ruler. Removing just the figurehead and his or her direct entourage does not cleanse a nation of its dictatorial past. With a figurehead removed in a spectacular way, entrenched deeper layers of a system of dictatorship tend to remain largely intact. Summary execution – which may have happened today to Gaddafi by unruly troops of the new power – bypasses any attempt at reestablishing a just society.Trying a dictator in court may help to lay bare the social strata that have been keeping a dictatorship in place. The dictator and his entourage may defend themselves and point to others who were part of their rule and may now pose as liberators. The defence of a dictator in court may also expose all forms of international support for a regime by countries, parties and other leaders who may only recently have turned against a dictator whereas before they were supporting a totalitarian system in economic, military and diplomatic ways.The killing of Gaddafi without any form of justice serves many interests: many members of the new Libyan government involved in Gaddafi’s regime; Libyan businessmen that derive their wealth from dealing with the Gaddafi rule; political leaders both retired and active who have received Libyan support or did make economic deals; academics, intellectuals, artists, architects and so on that did get Gaddafi’s financial support or who performed for him. The killing has been tried by NATO many times in the last months, throwing tons of bombs on Gaddafi’s premises and saying that they were not targeting the leader as such. Now we will have to wait to see if sufficient details of the circumstances of the violent death of Gaddafi will come out to establish at least some form of truth of what has happened today.Those who dance in the streets to rejoice the violent death of a dictator may well be the recruiting force for the next totalitarian regime in the making.Tjebbe van TijenImaginary Museum ProjectsDramatizing Historical Informationhttp://imaginarymuseum.orgweb-blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/

The art of bombarding retreating troops: Kuwait 1991 ~ Libya 2011October 22, 2011 by Tjebbe van TijenAn illustrated version with links can be found at The Limping Messenger:http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/the-art-of-bombarding-retreating-troops-kuwait-1991-libya-2011/Some side images of the killing of Gaddafi near Sirte, of the alleged bombing by NATO of a retreating/escaping convoy of Gaddafi (*), reminded me of the Highway Of Death in Kuwait in 1991, the bombarding of retreating Iraqi troops… a massacre not only of soldiers and their equipment but also of civilians related to the Iraqis that tried to make their way out of Kuwait City. Kicking your adversary in the ass… there is a ‘virtual black book of military history’ to which a page seems to have been added by NATO. Do you let your enemy escape or will you destroy him? What are the long lasting effects of such non glorious military acts of revenge, ‘the bombing of retreating troops’? The pictures I choose are not the most gruesome that exist. The Kuwait highway bombing photographs include charcoaled faces of people burnt alive by the aerial strike, images that have burnt themselves in my memory as a reminder that the art of surrender should be exercised instead.[two photographs: Kuwait highway April 1991 and Libya Sirte November 21 2011, with a header "The art of bombarding retreating troops"]Let me give one example of historical back firing: the massacre of the retreating Croatian troops of the fascist regime of Ante Pavelic in May 1945, near the town of Bleiburg at the Slovenian/Austrian border by partisan troops (40/50.000 killed). This megative event has remained a rallying point for Croatian nationalist ever since and played its role in the much later enfolding new Balkan War at the end of the 20th century..

-----Original Message-----From: Gurstein's Community Informatics [mailto:donotreply-C9VZrtpQYE6akBO8gow8eQ< at >public.gmane.org] Sent: Saturday, October 22, 2011 2:20 PMTo: mgurst-Jd+xZ2xb0Fz3fQ9qLvQP4Q< at >public.gmane.orgSubject: [SPAM] [New post] Up from Facebook: #Occupy-(Re)Building andEmpowering CommunitiesNew post on Gurstein's Community Informatics <http://1.gravatar.com/blavatar/b5101a0bf56d6ccf9d413bc5a3f1a041?s=32&ts=1319318394> <http://gurstein.wordpress.com/author/gurstein/> Up<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/up-from-facebook-occupy%e2%80%94rebuilding-and-empowering-communities/> from Facebook: #Occupy-(Re)Buildingand Empowering Communitiesby Michael <http://gurstein.wordpress.com/author/gurstein/> Gurstein #OWS (occupy Wall Street and the "Occupy" movement) have been widelydiscussed but not as yet in the context of a broader understanding of anevolving Digital/Information Society.Castells and Wellman and his colleagues have argued that the Digital orInformation Society (or in their term the "networked society") results insocial relationships characterized by what they call "networked<http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol8/issue3/wellman.html> individualism" .It is the move from densely-knit and tightly-bounded groups tosparsely-knit and loosely-bounded networks. Each person is a switchboard, between ties and networks. People remainconnected, but as individuals, rather than being rooted in the home bases ofwork unit and household. Each person operates a separate personal communitynetwork, and switches rapidly among multiple sub-networks. For them, the organic and multi-dimensional relationships of communities arebeing transformed into narrow digitally-enabled, highly individualized,networked relationships; perhaps most widely recognizable as Facebook"friend"-ings accompanied by Facebook "like"-ings as a possible substitutefor shared community values and norms. Regrettably their analysis nowherepoints out how these changes reduce the capacity for individuals to protectthemselves from the on-going encroachments of an impersonal neo-liberalmarketplace and particularly how it undermines the possibility of solidaritywhich in the past has proven to be the most effective basis for effectiveresistance.According to Wellman and his colleagues there is a parallel transformationin the political sphere withcivic involvement . increasingly . taking the form of e-citizenship,networked rather than group-based, hidden indoors rather than visiblyoutdoors.andThis move to networked societies has profound implications for how peoplemobilize and how people and governments relate to each other . But suche-citizenship also facilitates, and to some extent reinforces, mass society,with the individual in direct relationship with the state without theintermediary of local and even central groups. . the turn away fromsolidary, local, hierarchical groups and towards fragmented, partial,heavily-communicating social networks. Certainly politics in the Information Society seems to have taken the shapeprescribed for it by the marketplace-fragmented, concerned with short-termindividualized interest maximization, personality-obsessed media saturationand so on. These changes in turn have been propelled by the forces oftechnology and the breakdown of established employment structures, educationpatterns, industry-based physical communities, even family and friendshipties under the avalanche of neo-liberal induced corporate and governmentalrestructuring, outsourcing, downsizing and so on.Elsewhere<http://www.itforchange.net/sites/default/files/ITfC/PolEco-Gurstein.pdf> Ihave critiqued this position as one that is profoundly pessimistic anddepoliticizing and that it ignored the possibilities for community-basedICT-enabled resistance arising within the Information Society. I pointed outthat while applications such as Facebook manifested these types of alienatedand alienating individualized relationships (where individuals interactedwith each other as fragmented and depersonalized "profiles" linked throughthese social media); I also suggested that such social frameworks could andwould be countered through community informatics - digitally enabledcommunities networked both internally (as communi ty networks) andexternally (as networked communities).It is not I think an accident that the Occupy Movement overall ischaracterized by processes of community formation enabled by Information andCommunications Technologies both locally - site by site - and as a movementwide, mega-community rhyzomatically linking the individual siteselectronically and through shared values. Tis emergent resistance is aresult of the fusion of the local and global - interacting and being enabledboth by face-to-face connections and electronic media - Facebook and Twittercertainly, but perhaps most significantly through technologies of presencein distance such as skype, online chat and streaming video.What can be seen in individual sites are communities being formed - thearticulation of common core values; the emergence of behavioral normsgoverning conduct within the community and between the community and itsexternal environment; and the creation of systems for knowledge gathering,opinion sharing, decision-making and boundary setting; among others.These emergent communities are internally networked - linking individualsvia mobile phone, iPads, netbooks etc. to each other and into broaderpersonal networks which aren't permanent parts of the sites but which weavein and out following the vagaries of personal schedules and inclinations.As well, the individual sites are directly and more or less continuouslydigitally networked into other sites and sympathizers both locally andglobally allowing for both physical absence and virtual presence.For the Occupy-ers there is a very strong emphasis on both place andcontinuity. Rather than (asfor previous such movements) focusing on individual events such asdemonstrations is on the continuing occupation of a focal point of territory- a site. Individuals can thus find and integrate themselves into theevolving Occupy community allowing for very many individuals to come and go,achieving through slectronic means some degree of identification with themovement while still living their daily lives.This focusing on the physical presence of a site is a significant stepbeyond the virtuality and externally imposed structuring of the set ofdigital connections of social media(ted) networks e.g. Facebook and allowsfor a face to face connection to support and deepen involvement with theoverall movement. Thus the virtual connections (the "networkedindividualism" of a Facebook or an email connection) is superseded or eventransformed into a more organic and deeper connection of shared values andnorms through physical interaction at the site. This transformed connectioncan then be more easily maintained and where necessary mobilized through themuch shallower and more fragile but continuous and distance-spanningtechnical capacities of electronic networks and social media.A couple of other elements might be noted. Rather than focusing on specificevents or demonstrations which are transient and ephemeral, the occupationof a specific site requires the creation of a variety of structures ofinternal management and governance all of which are the on-going elements ofa community - food provision, waste management, security, education,governance and decision making, external relations/diplomacy, even inVancouver - a lending library. All these are as necessary for a continuousoccupation as they are for any other community. Notably one of the constantthemes of the discussions and the placards is this process of communitycreation/recreation - often as in opposition to the imposed alienation ofthe contractual relations of work or formal education which participantsexperience as characte rizing life in the modern era - a deft fusion ofmeans and ends.Another effect is the internal emphasis on continuity and even permanency.Thus the communities have the time, even the leisure to work through theirinternal processes in a relatively unhurried manner without the pressure offast approaching crucial events. This allows the sites to take their time tobe more democratic, inclusive and tolerant - allowing for broader groupcollaborative norms to hold sway while reducing the pressure for rapid (andthus almost inevitably) top-down decision making. This overall has theeffect of preventing the emergence of a leadership cadre whose function isto move events along at a pace determined not by internal processes butrather by external exigencies.Facebook or Twitter in this context become tools for organizing and makingconnections rather than being fundamental infrastructures of linkage andnetworks/networking as many have suggested (incorrectly I believe) underlaythe events in Tunisia and Egypt. But importantly the social media createinitial linkages towards community relationships. Once face to faceconnections have been established the social media remain useful formaintaining connections/networks beyond physical presence allowing vastnumbers to remain "attached" even though the presence is mostly virtual butwho nevertheless are available to participate as might be necessary orpossible as events unfold.These developments are perhaps the next step "up from Facebook"-integratingand using the social media tools that Facebook and the like provide but aselements in the re-construction of normative communities within urbanenvironments and most importantly perhaps as a foundation for broader socialaction and transformation. The characteristic of place-based communities asresilient and persistent locales for education and nurturing become dynamicopportunities for the recreation of personalities not as fragmented profilesbut as whole beings linked both organically and technologically with theirfellows as well as into the larger world and most importantly being able towork outwards from the strength that such communities provide in a processof remaking and refiguring the world in their image.Precisely what this emergent future might look like is not clear. But thatthis process has unquestionably begun, that it is globally dispersed butrhyzomatically linked, and that there is the rise of community as a stepbeyond networked individualism and as the basis for resistance andultimately transformation in the corporate structures and exploitativeprocesses of a neo-liberal dominated society now appears possible. Andoverall there is the need to recognize that the Information Society is notcondemned to be a place of alienation, fragmentation, distancing andpowerlessness but rather a more democratic and economically and sociallyegalitarian society can be constructed on a foundation of digitally enabledand empowered communities.Michael <http://gurstein.wordpress.com/author/gurstein/> Gurstein | October22, 2011 at 14:19 | Tags: Community<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/?tag=community-development> Development,Community<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/?tag=community-informatics-practice>Informatics Practice, Community<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/?tag=community-research> Research, Digital<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/?tag=digital-transition> Transition, urban<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/?tag=urban> | Categories: Community<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/?cat=31327999> Based ICT Practice, Community<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/?cat=771367> Informatics, Community<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/?cat=33791888> Informatics Practice | URL:http://wp.me/pJQl5-8b Comment<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/up-from-facebook-occupy%e2%80%94rebuilding-and-empowering-communities/#respond> See<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/up-from-facebook-occupy%e2%80%94rebuilding-and-empowering-communities/#comments> all commentsUnsubscribe or change your email settings at Manage<http://subscribe.wordpress.com/?key=0411ceb4c3067f687647025a213718cc&email=mgurst%40vcn.bc.ca> Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/up-from-facebook-occupy%e2%80%94rebuilding-and-empowering-communities/ Thanks for flying <http://wordpress.com> with WordPress.com <http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=gurstein.wordpress.com&blog=10925955&post=507&subd=gurstein&ref=&email=1&email_o=wpcom> !DSPAM:2676,4ea33380217016407871730!

A couple intertwined snippets which are evolving today:"Let them eat cake? Framing (of) the Flow: re-distribution and the Occupation of Wall Street"http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/45243and"Energy for the Warfighter"http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/45305jh

The provocative article by William Bowles posted by Patrice Riemensprompts me to finally sketch an analysis of the momentous events thatare finally creating a fearsome social opposition to the financial,political, and technocratic elites that caused the Great Recession,precipitating millions into misery and uncertainty.The Great Recession has mostly hit Europe and America. It is in Spainand now in the States that indignado/occupy movements have sprang mostforcefully against so-called financial dictatorship, i.e. more than 30years of monetarist policy in Europe and of neoliberal deregulation offinancial markets everywhere, a way to echo the 2011 uprisings inTunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain that have toppled (or notyet) all-too real dictatorships. Other hubs of discontent have beenGreece (basically rioting and striking non-stop since 2008) and Chile(the huge and hardy student movement against the privatization ofcollege education shares many traits of the young-precarious-ledSpanish indignad< at >s movement).However it is Occupy Wall Street, started in September 17, that hassparked the global imagination, prompting similar protests all acrossthe Anglosphere (#OccupyVancouver, #OccupyMelbourne, #OccupyLSX etc)and reinfusing life in the European indignado movement, most notablyin Brussels and Rome, two polar cases of what happened on October 15,or #15o in twitspeak, being Twitter the medium of choice for politicalmobilization against the crisis. The revolution might have not beentelevised, but it is being tweeted. Anonymous and its hive mind havemanaged to set off a swarm of political agitation unseen sinceSeattle-Genoa and most likely to be the historical equivalent in theGreat REcession of popular front politics and sit-down strikes duringthe Great Depression.I was in Brussels, while the bulk of MilanoX (a free weekly which wasdecisive in making the present left-of-center mayor of Milano, a manwith a radical past, win the primaries; he went on to humiliateBerlusconi and the League in municipal elections last May) was inRome. We had set up a twitterbox for comparative viewing of theso-called #europeanrevolution and #globalchange being triggered onOctober 15 (http://www.milanox.eu/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/TwitterBox1.html).Rome was an Athenian large-scale riot. Anger for the precariouspresent and future reserved to the youth by most gerontocratic societyin the world, and especially at the Berlusconi government, whose asshad just been saved once more the day before, erupted during butespecially at the end of the demonstration in the worst riots sincethe 1970s. Hundreds of thousands of spaghetti neoindignad< at >s, mostlystudents, interns, temps, young precarious employees, joined by themetalworkers' union, NoTAV, SanPrecario, and the remnants of thenoglobal movement, were sidelined by media discourse, whichpredictably focused on the 2-3000 baddies (many of them girls!) whothrew rocks at carabinieri and police for hours and hours, threw afire extinguisher and burned a carabinieri van (a kind of symbolicvengeance for Carlo Giuliani's death a decade before) in piazza SanGiovanni, normally used by the political and union left for staidpolitical speeches. The choice made by the respectable radical left toconstrain the demo in an itinerary that did not pass by the symbols ofpolitical and financial power was probably not a wise one, given thepent up anger (students had rioted a year ago when the political andeconomic rot had barely started). Likewise, the outburst of blindviolence prevented the blooming of indignado movement inSpaghettiland, with its now customary proliferation of tents and campsin symbolic squares for weeks and months on end, until power isdefeated or at least ridiculed.By contrast, the spontaneous manif in Bruxelles was sunny, creative,joyful, peaceful and unexpected in its success (the night before we ofPrecarious United formerly EuroMayDay were hotly debating with fellowactivists why this was a movement we had to contribute to, butuncertainty hovered about how local people would respond to it). Ledby a Spanish and French core of activists (German and English werealso widely spoken) it was amazingly diverse in its politicalexpression against financial domination in Europe. It ended nearSchuman Square, next to the buildings of European Commission andEuropean Council (where EU summits are held, now frantically thisSunday and Wednesday), and set up camp in the nearby park. Brusselshad been prepared by a month-long march of indignados form Barcelonato Brussels through Marseille, Paris, Lille, which arrived in the EUcapital on October 8, tried to occupy a park and was given anabandoned university building from where it started stirring things upin the European/Belgian capital. The experience of the 15 May movementin Madrid (acampada Sol) and then Barcelona (plaza Catalunya) was thatof a wide mobilization against the austerity peddled by all politicalparties. The majority of Spanish and Catalan civil society sided withthe protesters in the Spring of Discontent. In Barcelona, theparliament was assaulted on June 15. Zapatero, after losing the localelections, called early elections and said he'd step down after that.The protesters correctly concluded that the cuts (recortes) were beingdecided elsewhere. That the whole of Spain and the rest of Europe hadto strike at El Pacto del Euro, i.e. the Maastricht Treaty forcingausterity, deflation and unemployment down the throats of the peoplein all countries of the eurozone. The austerity strategy was beingformulated in Brussels and Frankfurt, following the diktats of theMerkel-Sarkozy diarchy, in order to appease financial markets andrating agencies, which after Greece, were targeting Spain and Italyand could undermine that beautiful monetarist creation called theeuro, the first currency in history based on a single monetary policy,but 17 different fiscal policies, now all restrictive. US economistslike Krugman had long said it: a monetary union without a fiscal unionis a recipe for disaster, should a major crisis hit.European policymakers are still living in the dreamworld of the GreatModeration (1989-2008), where inflation and balanced budgets are themost pressing concerns. Only unavowedly and half-heartedly is the ECBpracticing quantitative easing, which the Fed is doing again to rescuethe US economy from the double-dip and, arguably, help Obama'sre-election. Fact is, we live in the world of Great Depressioneconomics, we have fallen into a liquidity trap and only aggressivekeynesian fiscal policy can get us out of mass unemployment andescalating inequality. What the indignado movement in Europe and theoccupy movement in America are saying in macroeconomic terms is thesame: stop cuts, invest in society. In Europe, there'll be nopolitical will to do so until Sarkozy and Merkel (and Berlusconi..)are unseated. In America, Obama is finally distancing himself fromWall Street, but is constrained on the right to do another stimulus,which would presumably be more oriented toward the unemployed andinvestment in social capital.To conclude, a brief analysis which clashes with Bowles' and that ofother traditional red leftists. Luckily, this is not theanti-globalization movement, insofar as it is unaffected by 20thcentury revolutionary marxist dreams and nightmares. It is resolutelypostcommunist and nonviolent, unlike the Seattle-Genoa movement. Itshares with the 1999-2007 movement two aspects: it is intrisincallyanarchist, i.e. horizontal, networked, direct-democracy oriented,mistrustful of organized politics, and it despises neoliberalism. Butwhile in the late 90s neoliberalism seemed to be a viable economicdiscourse to the eyes of the majority, it is now totally discredited,while neoliberals are still in power. Thus the Occupy Wall Street isstrongly anti-elitist: "We Are the 99%", in a way the previousmovement (more preoccupied with systemic critique) wasn't, and has amuch wider social appeal. In terms of social composition, theoccupy/indignado movement is mostly young and middle-class. They arethe downwardly mobile children of the middle class. I'd argue that allpostwar movements (nuclear disarmament, civil rights, may '68,feminism, gay+lesbian liberation etc) have been middle-class and thatthe educated middle classes have been bastions for the defense andconquest of real democracy from Johannesburg to Cairo, from Lisbon toHong Kong. The occupy/indignado thing is about democracy, somethingdespised by some as "bourgeois illusion", but very real in the heartsand minds of those presently rocking the secluded world of politicsand finance. The movement of the Teens is about radical democracy,this is the "revolution" it aspires to. It uses revolutionary ends forreformist means. I find this perfectly reasonable, in the context ofGreat Recession politics, which, like during the Great Depression,favors big social coalitions on the left to defeat economic élitesand, in Europe, the ever-present danger of slides to the populist,racist, facist right. If you read the decidedly lefty Occupy WallStreet Journal, you will find not only hope for radical change aboutthe economy, but also doubts about whether the indignant movement willbe able to revitalize climate activism, which has been on the wanesince the failure of the Copenhagen Summit in 2009, while theconsequences of global warming have worsened. But, surely,environmentalism is a middle-class concern;)

27 to 29 of October 2011 - Barcelona*Oxcars and FreeCultureForum 2011Networks for a R-evolution**Three days to think about what the Internet has done for us, and what we can now do for it ;-).*http://whois--x.net/english/oxcars-and-freecultureforum-20112011 is the year when the consciousness of a global network hasemerged. The massive and strategic use of social and digital networkshas allowed the movement of citizen empowerment to step up a notch,and has facilitated a viral uprising of civil society in many partsof the world. The struggles to defend the Internet have shown to be afertile breeding ground for such uprisings.The #15M movement within the *#spanishrevolution* is organized online.By the same token, one of its biggest strengths is the feedbackprocess that happens between the network and the streets, between theinternet and the men and women gathering in streets and squares.*We have to continue promoting, facilitating and improving theefficient use of the Internet to achieve mobilization and directparticipation.*During the previous edition of the FCForum it was already discussedthat the intense struggles by civil society within the Spanishstate to defend the Internet against the Sinde Law (a law to stopdownloading) were the starting point for a larger action.*For 3 years now, the OXCARS and the FCForum*, held in Barcelona, haveprovided international meeting spaces in which to build and coordinatecommon tools for issues regarding free culture and the Internet. TheFCForum gathers the main organizations and active voices that areworking on such issues, while it is also an open space for all thosewho wish to understand, deepen and participate in the responses beforethe pressing challenges that face our connected societies.This year, the FCForum will focus, inevitably, on the experience ofthe 15M movement as a case study that can be exported to the globalarena.*The intention of the FCForum 2011 is for all participants to analyzeand build the best tools that the struggle needs at this point, bothfor its organization and for the impact it aims to have here in Spain,as case of study to be applied more globally.* * Some of the questionsthat we will discuss this year are:*Which tools and methods of online organization and communication haveallowed the emergence of the #15M movement? How can these practices beimproved? How have social networks facilitated a change in the respectshown between people from different groups? What dangers threatenthe neutral, open Internet which we know and want to preserve, atthe local and global levels? How has the Internet facilitated thecreation of new ways of producing and spreading culture? How can someof those methods become a way to avoid artists being used as an excuseto privatize the Web? What should we do with SGAE (the main managementorganization in Spain) now that its directives have been taken tocourt ;-)?*This gathering of 2 days will be preceded, as always, by the OXCARS,the biggest free culture event of all time. A great celebration offree culture that will serve as a warm-up event.*We believe it will be a very useful space for the empowerment of themovement.We welcome and await you all.This year we will be helped along in our discussions, amongst manyothers, by John Perry Barlow, who in 1996 lit the spark with his'declaration of independence in ciberspace', Alex de la Iglesia, whostepped down from his post as Director of the Film Academy in protestagainst the Sinde law, as well as many of the hackers and people whohave created tools to assist the actions of the 15M movement, such asthe network N-1.cc.*Three days to think about what the Internet has done for us, and whatwe can now do for it ;-).*LocationThursday 27th October, 20.30 Oxcars Sala Apolo - BarcelonaFriday 28th and Saturday 29th from 11h to 21h at the Rambla in front of Santa Monica and at Santa Monica, Drassanes metro stop*Site:http://www.2011.fcforum.net/Program:http://www.2011.fcforum.net/topics/**English translation will be provide.*Please, help to disseminate the info.http://oxcars11.whois--x.net/en/http://whois--x.net/english/the-oxcarshttp://whois--x.net/englishhttp://2011.fcforum.nethttp://fcforum.nethttp://www.facebook.com/LaEXnetTwitter at < at >fcforum_net (ingl?s)Identi.ca at < at >fcforum (ingl?s)Twitter at < at >X_net_ (castellano)*X.net**http://whois--x.net*

bwo INURA list/ Roger KeilOriginal to the Los Angeles Review of Books:http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/11725867619/no-more-bubble-gumNo More Bubble-gumMike DavisWho could have envisioned Occupy Wall Street and its suddenwildflower-like profusion in cities large and small?John Carpenter could have, and did. Almost a quarter of a century ago(1988), the master of date-night terror (Halloween, The Thing), wroteand directed They Live, depicting the Age of Reagan as a catastrophicalien invasion. In one of the film’s brilliant early scenes, a hugethird-world shantytown is reflected across the Hollywood Freeway inthe sinister mirror-glass of Bunker Hill’s corporate skyscrapers.They Live remains Carpenter’s subversive tour de force. Few who’veseen it could forget his portrayal of billionaire bankers and evilmediacrats and their zombie-distant rule over a pulverized Americanworking class living in tents on a rubble-strewn hillside and beggingfor jobs. From this negative equality of homelessness and despair, andthanks to the magic dark glasses found by the enigmatic Nada (playedby “Rowdy” Roddy Piper), the proletariat finally achieves interracialunity, sees through the subliminal deceptions of capitalism, and getsangry.Very angry.Yes, I know, I’m reading ahead. The Occupy the World movement is stilllooking for its magic glasses (program, demands, strategy, and so on)and its anger remains on Gandhian low heat. But, as Carpenter foresaw,force enough Americans out of their homes and/or careers (or at leasttorment tens of millions with the possibility) and something new andhuge will begin to slouch towards Goldman Sachs. And unlike the “TeaParty,” so far it has no puppet strings.In 1965, when I was just eighteen and on the national staff ofStudents for a Democratic Society, I planned a sit-in at the ChaseManhattan Bank, for its key role in financing South Africa afterthe massacre of peaceful demonstrators, for being “a partner inApartheid.” It was the first protest on Wall Street in a generationand 41 people were hauled away by the NYPD.One of the most important facts about the current uprising issimply that it has occupied the street and created an existentialidentification with the homeless. (Though, frankly, my generation,trained in the civil rights movement, would have thought first ofsitting inside the buildings and waiting for the police to drag andclub us out the door; today, the cops prefer pepper spray and “paincompliance techniques.”) I think taking over the skyscrapers is awonderful idea, but for a later stage in the struggle. The genius ofOccupy Wall Street, for now, is that it has temporarily liberated someof the most expensive real estate in the world and turned a privatizedsquare into a magnetic public space and catalyst for protest.Our sit-in 46 years ago was a guerrilla raid; this is Wall Streetunder siege by the Lilliputians. It’s also the triumph of thesupposedly archaic principle of face-to-face, dialogic organizing.Social media is important, sure, but not omnipotent. Activistself-organization — the crystallization of political will from freediscussion — still thrives best in actual urban fora. Put another way,most of our internet conversations are preaching to the choir; eventhe mega-sites like MoveOn.org are tuned to the channel of the alreadyconverted, or at least their probable demographic.The occupations likewise are lightning rods, first and above all, forthe scorned, alienated ranks of progressive Democrats, but they alsoappear to be breaking down generational barriers, providing the commonground, for instance, for imperiled, middle-aged school teachers tocompare notes with young, pauperized college grads.More radically, the encampments have become symbolic sites for healingthe divisions within the New Deal coalition in place since the Nixonyears. As Jon Wiener observed on his consistently smart blog atwww.TheNation.com: “hard hats and hippies — together at last.”Indeed. Who could not be moved when AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka,who had brought his coalminers to Wall Street in 1989 during theirbitter but ultimately successful strike against Pittston Coal Company,called upon his broad-shouldered women and men to “stand guard” overZucotta Park in the face of an imminent attack by the NYPD?It’s true that old radicals like me are quick to declare each newbaby the messiah, but this Occupy Wall Street child has the rainbowsign. I believe that we’re seeing the rebirth of the quality that somarkedly defined the migrants and strikers of the Great Depression, ofmy parents’ generation: a broad, spontaneous compassion and solidaritybased on a dangerously egalitarian ethic. It says, Stop and give ahitch-hiking family a ride. Never cross a picket line, even whenyou can’t pay the rent. Share your last cigarette with a stranger.Steal milk when your kids have none and then give half to the littlekids next door — what my own mother did repeatedly in 1936. Listencarefully to the profoundly quiet people who have lost everything buttheir dignity. Cultivate the generosity of the “we.”What I mean to say, I suppose, is that I’m most impressed by folks whohave rallied to defend the occupations despite significant differencesin age, in social class and race. But equally, I adore the gutsy kidswho are ready to face the coming winter on freezing streets, just liketheir homeless sisters and brothers.Back to strategy, though: what’s the next link in the chain (inLenin’s sense) that needs to be grasped? How imperative is it forthe wildflowers to hold a convention, adopt programmatic demands,and thereby put themselves up for bid on the auction block of the2012 elections? Obama and the Democrats will desperately need theirenergy and authenticity. But the occupationistas are unlikely to putthemselves or their extraordinary self-organizing process up for sale.Personally I lean toward the anarchist position and its obviousimperatives.First, expose the pain of the 99 percent; put Wall Street on trial.Bring Harrisburg, Loredo, Riverside, Camden, Flint, Gallup, and HollySprings to downtown New York. Confront the predators with theirvictims — a national tribunal on economic mass murder.Second, continue to democratize and productively occupy public space(i.e. reclaim the Commons). The veteran Bronx activist-historianMark Naison has proposed a bold plan for converting the derelictand abandoned spaces of New York into survival resources (gardens,campsites, playgrounds) for the unsheltered and unemployed. The Occupyprotestors across the country now know what it’s like to be homelessand banned from sleeping in parks or under a tent. All the more reasonto break the locks and scale the fences that separate unused spacefrom urgent human needs.Third, keep our eyes on the real prize. The great issue is notraising taxes on the rich or achieving a better regulation of banks.It’s economic democracy: the right of ordinary people to makemacro-decisions about social investment, interest rates, capitalflows, job creation, and global warming. If the debate isn’t abouteconomic power, it’s irrelevant.Fourth, the movement must survive the winter in order to fightthe power in the next spring. It’s cold on the street in January.Bloomberg and every other mayor and local ruler is counting on a hardwinter to deplete the protests. It is thus all-important to reinforcethe occupations over the long Christmas break. Put on your overcoats.Finally, we must calm down — the itinerary of the current protest istotally unpredictable. But if one erects a lightning rod, we shouldn’tbe surprised if lightning eventually strikes.Bankers, recently interviewed in the New York Times, claim to findthe Occupy protests little more than a nuisance arising from anunsophisticated understanding of the financial sector. They should bemore careful. Indeed, they should probably quake before the image ofthe tumbrel.Since 1987, African Americans have lost more than half of their networth; Latinos, an incredible two-thirds. Five-and-a-half millionmanufacturing jobs have been lost in the United Sates since 2000, morethan 42,000 factories closed, and an entire generation of collegegraduates now face the highest rate of downward mobility in Americanhistory.Wreck the American dream and the common people will put on yousome serious hurt. Or as Nada explains to his unwary assailants inCarpenter’s great film: “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kickass…. and I’m all out of bubblegum.”...........Mike Davis is a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Review ofBooks and the author of Planet of Slums, City of Quartz, In Praiseof Barbarians, and more than a dozen other books. He teaches at UCRiverside. His biography of Harrison Gray Otis is appearing seriallyin these pages.

bwo Eveline Lubbersoriginal to:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/24/bankers-wikileaks-free-speechThe bankers' blockade of WikiLeaks must endJames Ball, The Guardian Oct 24, 2011.Whether you support WikiLeaks or not, the blockade by Visa, Mastercard,Paypal and others is a sinister attack on free speechIn December 2010 three of the world's biggest payment providers, Visa,Mastercard and Paypal, cut off funding to WikiLeaks. Ten months later,Julian Assange has announced the whistleblowing site will suspendoperations until the blockade is lifted – and warned WikiLeaks does nothave the money to continue into 2012 at current levels of funding.On the surface, it appears as if the bankers' blockade – encouraged byseveral US senators, including Joe Lieberman – may have come close toaccomplishing its goal. WikiLeaks is, for now, silenced – though notbefore publishing the full cache of 251,000 diplomatic cables, and thefiles of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.The real picture is murkier. As Reuters journalist Mark Hosenball noted atthe WikiLeaks press conference, it's not clear exactly which operationsWikiLeaks has to suspend: WikiLeaks has not released a single file sincethe publication of the Guantánamo Bay material – obtained independently bythe Guardian and New York Times – in April. The site's primary submissionssystem has been offline since Daniel Domscheit-Berg and others walked awayfrom WikiLeaks in the summer of 2010. Assange says a replacement will beonline by the end of November.Assange also claims WikiLeaks has over 100,000 documents waiting to bereleased – but this claim might not bear scrutiny. WikiLeaks haspreviously been publicly criticised for claiming to hold five milliondocuments when in reality it did not, by John Young of Cryptome.org, inwhose name the WikiLeaks website was originally registered.In reality, WikiLeaks' cupboard presently stands almost bare: Assange haslaid the responsibility for the non-appearance of a much-heralded cache ofdocuments relating to Bank of America on sabotage by ex-employees.However, sources close to the site believe the real issue is more mundane:journalists at more than one financial outlet have been given access toreview the material, and found nothing of interest.WikiLeaks' financial claims are similarly questionable. Assange declaredthe site will need $3.5m to continue operations at their current level.Questions as to who needs $3.5m to publish nothing new in six monthsaside, this figure is highly dubious.In 2010, when the Collateral Murder video was published (and a crew flownto Iraq), the Afghan and Iraq war logs were released, and the massivecache of diplomatic cables was unveiled to the world, WikiLeaks spent just€400,000. Given Assange also requested – but was refused – access toWikiLeaks funds towards his bail surety, WikiLeaks' track record onfinancial claims is also not unblemished.So given WikiLeaks' status as an unreliable purveyor of financialinformation, and given its operations might have crashed to a halt with orwithout financial restrictions, is the banking blockade a mere non-issue?In short, it is not. The banking blockade against WikiLeaks is one of themost sinister developments in recent years, and perhaps the most extremeexample in a western democracy of extrajudicial actions aimed at stiflingfree speech – made all the worse by the public support of numerous peoplesitting in the US House of Representatives.Payment companies representing more than 97% of the global market haveshut off the funding taps between WikiLeaks and those who would donate toit. Unlike many of the country's leading corporations, WikiLeaks hasneither been charged with, nor convicted of, any crime at either state,federal, or international level.When the Department of Justice mounted a lawsuit against Microsoft in1998, the idea that payment companies might cut it off due to statedisapproval would rightly have been seen as ludicrous and illiberal. Yetwhen payment companies do exactly this to WikiLeaks, who have neverappeared in court opposite the US state, many tacitly accept the action.Visa, Mastercard and Paypal are none-too-choosy about who they providepayment services for. Want to use your credit card to donate to the KuKlux Klan? Go right ahead. Prefer to support the English Defence League?Paypal will happily sort you out. Prefer to give cash to Americans forTruth about Homosexuality, who oppose the "radical homosexual agenda"?Feel free to use your Visa, Mastercard or Paypal.Visa and Mastercard are already inescapable. As the world becomesever-more digital, and cash continues its journey to obsolescence, theywill become still more pervasive. If they are allowed to cut off paymentto lawful organisations with whom they disagree, the US's first amendment,the European convention on human rights' article 10, and all other legalfree speech protections become irrelevant.Those who value free expression, whether they like WikiLeaks or loathe it,should hope it wins its current battle.

In explaining the Initiative to form an International Debtors' Party I have discussed the issues of why "Debtors" and why a "Party", now I would like to introduce some ideas as to how the Debtors' Party will be different from other parties, by proposing the idea of a "Transnational Counter-party."A Transnational Counterparty is a transformative political organisation, that works towards the goals of a world with no classes and therefore no state.It is Transnational, because, within itself, it recognizes no borders, and it is a Counter-party, because it's goal is not to transform society from top down by seizing the power of the State, but to fight for the social conditions required by existing and emerging community- initiated, bottom-up, forms of transformation. To engage in the political theatre and struggle against the plutocratic interests from the old society that would crush any new social developments that would challenge there privilege.To be a transformative structure requires divergent outwardly and inwardly characteristics.Being part of a transformation, such a structure is a creature of the current society, it's outwardly appearance and interfaces must be structured according the laws and practices of the existing society in order for it to function. Within itself it is an incubator for a new society and thereby the relations contained within itself must reflect those it want to achieve. It must be the revolution it seeks. It's external characteristics must be the characteristics it seeks in the society it strives to achieve.Venture Communism is such a transformative model, externally a joint- stock corporation, internally fostering commons-based production, Copyleft and Copy-far-left are also such transformative models, externally claiming property rights, while internally creating an information commons.Antithetical extrinsic and intrinsic characteristics are essential features of any transformative structure. Above all, the extrinsic structure must ensure that the regressive relations of the outside must not penetrate and corrupt those of the inside, the extrinsic characteristics must create a bastion that allows its intrinsic properties to develop and thrive.A Transnational Counterparty is such a transformative model, externally a network of regionally-bound Political Parties that contest elections for representation within hierarchical, authoritarian Governments, but internally operating as a radically participatory, non-hierarchical collective that operates without borders.The network of Political Parties it founds and co-ordinates must be legally recognized as eligible to participate in government, and thus, these local Parties are objects of specific Government jurisdiction. A Transnational Counterparty, however, must operate such local entities as extrinsic interfaces to local governments which are closely bound to it's own, fluid and participatory international internal democracy, and likewise it's elected candidates must not become holders of individual power, must must excercise power on behalf of the democratically established census of the global membership, contractually bound to do so, and to forfeit their position if they fail to do so. The ultimate power in the Transnational Counterparty must be held by the membership itself, and never either it's internal executive officials, nor it's candidates and representatives in local governments. All agents of the Transnational Counterparty must be held accountable to the global membership.The Transnational Counterparty can not ever be a ruling party, though it may have electoral success in places, the plutocratic parties will always hold more power. This is not a rule or principle of that the party needs to observe, this is a simple biproduct of the fact that it represents the new society, the emerging autonomous, collective communities striving to create a new ways of living. The plutocratic parties represent the powerful economic forces of the current society, and thus will always have more power so-long as the current society is not yet transformed.Once the social power of the communities represented by the Transnational Counterparty overcome the power of the plutocrats, this means that such a newtork of autonomous, independent and inter- dependant communities will be larger in it's social and economic base than that of the old society. Society will have already been transforme. classes will no longer exist, and without them nations will vanish. There will no longer be any ruling class or ruling party, the State will have withered away and the Transnational Counterparty will have dissolved into the fabric of the new society.By the time a Transnational Counterparty has the power to seize the State, their will no longer be any State to sieze.A nation is a body of people kept together for the purposes of rivalry and war with other similar bodies, and when competition shall have given place to combination, the function of the nation will be gone."

bwo INURA list/ Michael Edwards, Mark Barretthttp://occupyupdate.hubpages.com/hub/OccupyLondonA POLITICAL TOURIST WRITES:OccupyLondon's extension squat is now well established right in frontof the Bloomberg HQ in Finsbury Square. The School of Oriental &African Studies student union have moved their big Mongolian yurt, asplendid affair robed in very thick white felt, from London Universityto the shadow of Deutsche Bank.A number of the Finsbury campers seem to have been lured from their TVsets by Friday's sudden volte-face by the Cathedral authorities. StPaul's announced out of the blue that they wanted the pro-democracydemonstrators to depart. Yet just a few days earlier it was suggestedthat maybe the police should leave. Why? The pressure from above towhich the Dean & Chapter had succumbed was not, of course, God butMammon.The latter, however in the form of City of London Corporation & theTory Party at prayer, with more than a phone call or two, no doubt,from the Home Secretary (i.e. for European readers, the Minister ofthe Interior) seems in its tactics to have brought forth that which itsought to suppress. Sudden evaporation of any visible principles ofChristian charity, in favour of the nation's money lenders, was thevery thing that caused a second anti-banker bridgehead to bounce upalmost overnight.Finsbury Gardens, which in the Christmas bonus season play host tohordes of fat cats & vomiting commodity traders, are ideally placed tocatch the autumn sun most of the day; and the attention of constantpassing traffic, which is forced to stop at a set of convenientlyplaced City Road traffic lights. Bus drivers hooting support as theydrive by. Well-wishers of all sorts dropping off donations of food,tents etc.Each time it happens a big cheer goes up. Team of volunteers yesterday(Sunday) apparently went 60 miles to collect a set of donatedportaloos. Yesterday morning requests for interviews at FinsburySquare alone were coming in at two or three an hour, from the likes ofLBC radio phone-ins, Press TV (Iran), BBC Online etc. A very clued-upyoung Palestinian, who's doing a course at Exeter, had completed fouror five no-nonsense question & answer sessions by lunch time.Young women seem to play a major role - unusually for most suchpolitical situations at Finsbury. Very focused & efficient, theyfacilitate the two general assemblies each day, for example, moreso than the men. And run around recruiting campers to deal with themeeja. One of the most skilled technical advisers, however, flittingbetween St Paul's & Finsbury, yesterday at least, is a self-employedwindow-cleaner. One Met Superintendent, stood watching from a distanceas yesterday's morning meeting got under way. He was a tad audiblycontemptuous, I noticed, of two legal observers some yards away acrossthe lawn.Which are they? I asked, not having hitherto spotted that there wereany.The ones in the yellow tabards, he replied. Autonomous collective?Now there's a contradiction. Like socialist worker I pointed out thatthe meeting of hand-flutterers wasn't in fact called an autonomouscollective but a general assembly. Seeking to establish some commonground, I reminded his colleague, a Scot, that the Church of Scotlandhas a General Assembly. Which prompted his superior - somewhat to myastonishment - to start quoting Winstanley at me. "And the earth shallbe a common treasury for all . . ."General assembly was a term used by the New Model Army . . . He wasfamiliar, it turned out, with both the Penguin edition of Winstanleyand, in the circumstances, its suitably titled companion volume byChristopher Hill: The World Turned Upside Down.. . . Very interesting man, Winstanley. Stroll on. And mind how yougo.

Who will be responsible for the ‘de-gaddafization’ of Libya?October 22, 2011 by Tjebbe van Tijen, the illustrated version of this text with a few links has appeared in the Limping Messenger:http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/who-will-be-responsible-for-the-de-gaddafization-of-libya/How anybody can protect civilians by throwing bombs from the air? When we find the sight of the mutilated body of Gaddafi on show in a freezer of a butcher store appalling, what about the multiplication of the principle – now in Libya – on the backstage of global news? Which accounts are settled in the shadow? Who gets hold of whom for what, in a situation without rule of law? What has been the example given by the Alliance forces dropping explosives from the air, not bringing members of the contested regime to justice, but to punish them on the spot by attempted annihilation?When it is true that a fleeing or escaping convoy of Gaddafi has been attacked by NATO airplanes with their deadly load just outside of Sirte, why to muddle about the subsequent lynching that seems to have taken place? NATO tried to lynch from the air, long distance and ’high tech’, opposition forces finished the job by hand on the ground.Who will hold out her or his phone camera to document the revenge between civilians triggered by such examples, raging now in Libya?It is sufficient to have read the recent report of Amnesty International “LIBYA: THE BATTLE FOR LIBYA: KILLINGS, DISAPPEARANCES AND TORTURE” published on September 13. 2011, to know that the perpetration of violence was/is not only a monopoly of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, but has entered the veins and bloodstream of this society.[photograph showing many people with phone camera's stooped over the dead bopdy of Gaddafi in a freezer with the orginal caption:"Muammar Gaddafi's 'trophy' body on show in Misrata meat store Libyans queue to see dictator's body as wounds appear to confirm he was killed in cold blood" (The Guardian October 22, 2011)]These are the days of the ‘little axes’, in so many hands, falling down on so many heads… How dare heads of state – like Sarkozy – speak through broadcasts to the Libyan people, “Its time now for reconciliation” , whereas those that need to be reconciled have been left behind with a collapsed state and hardly any governmental or citizen’s networks to undertake such a huge task of building a civil society and reconcile?The nazi regime lasted a mere twelve years and ‘de-nazification’ several decades. We Europeans have not been able to stop the wild enforced regime change by an outsider high technology military force. NATO has been send in, paid by our tax money. What has been sold to us by Aljazeera and the like as a ‘people’s revolution’ may in the end well have been mutated into a ‘coup d’état’ where the top have been toppled, but the echelons just below it remain in control.Who will be responsible for the ‘de-gaddafization’ of Libya?-----------Tjebbe van TijenImaginary Museum ProjectsDramatizing Historical Informationhttp://imaginarymuseum.orgweb-blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/