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Hello. I have uploaded several new texts to a temporary FTP site accessible for a few days via web browser at the following URL: ==> ftp.blackflag.synology.me username:public password: public The original Erotic Truth & Exchange text is online, along with two sets of follow-on notes and themes for an unwritten essay. Also, the first part of a three part (1st volume) personal history, entitled The Bloodletting, relating to the essays written above. warning: this content may be disturbing, read at your own risk. Two notebooks of a handwritten history still await transcription. Brian Carroll

Back in the late 90s I wrote a piece praising the then almost defunct (andby now dead and burried?) telegraph system (*). Looks like the letter postis headed the same way, as the digital empire is conquering the wholecommunication realm. The whole communication realm? No, in Florida a smallvillage is resisting! ...Cheers, p+4D!(*) http://www.ljudmila.org/nettime/zkp4/07.htmOriginal to:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304636404577297673148816412.html?mod=googlenews_wsj(March 28, 2012)In Florida, These Retirees Deliver a First-Class ProtestTown of Former Letter Carriers Strives to Aid Post Office; Shunning Email,DogsBy JENNIFER LEVITZNALCREST, Fla.—Lots of folks are fretting over how to save the U.S. PostalService, but retirees here in central Florida's citrus country are reallypushing the envelope.A retirement community in Florida caters to retired mail carriers with theU.S. Postal Service. WSJ's Jennifer Levitz finds many prefer mail toemail, and no dogs are allowed.There is heavy pressure in Nalcrest, a rambling retirement community thatis its own little town, to use the U.S. mail, rather than email orcompeting shipping companies, to pay bills and mail parcels to thegrandkids. "We say…it's got to come through the U.S. mail or we don't wantit here," said Matty Rose, 67 years old, manager of Nalcrest.One can't blame the town. Seventy miles east of Tampa, it's the nation'sonly haven solely for retired postal service mail carriers.The attachment to mail runs deep. Residents joke that Nalcrest, whichstands for the National Association of Letter Carriers Retirement,Education, Security and Training, is actually short for NationalAssociation of Letter Carriers at Rest. It has its own mailing address andpost office. A mailman statue graces the village square. There is a stampclub, and a minigolf course, where the obstacle on the first hole isn't awindmill but a blue mail collection box.Carriers who spent years pounding the pavement relax under palm trees in akind of mail carrier bliss: no ice to tumble on, no snow to slosh through,and best of all, no furry foes."This is a no-dog community," said Mr. Rose, a retired mailman fromHollywood, Fla. "That's because if you're a letter carrier, you've hadexperience with dogs. In my career, I was bit twice and chased about 100times."Now the 700 residents are fighting a new menace: the crisis enveloping the236-year-old postal service, which is bleeding cash as technology erodesvolumes of first-class mail—and raising questions about whethertraditional mail is going the way of the buggy whip."It stinks," said Robert Riley, 89, a former mailman from Wrentham, Mass.,resting in a golf cart parked in Nalcrest's sun-drenched village square.Congress is debating multiple proposals to revamp the agency, includingdropping Saturday delivery and closing thousands of post offices that areunprofitable. A perceived assault on their beloved profession has Nalcrestin a tizzy."Why? Why? Then they got to make some 80- or 90-year-old woman go two orthree miles to the next post office," said Frank Wright, 70, who carriedmail in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. "The post office was originally meant to be aservice to the people, not a profit-making operation."Posted on the community bulletin board, by bingo announcements, are alertsabout the postal service's recent proposal to pull out of federal healthplans and run its own less-costly one—an idea that has retirees anxiousabout their benefits. March's "Nalcrest Monthly Bulletin" touted softball,horseshoes, a coming party—"our past winner of musical chairs just had ahip replaced so everyone has a chance this year"—and invited everyone tothe auditorium to discuss the postal service and "get on board" to saveit.They sent a 600-signature petition to Washington, by first-class mail,against dropping Saturday delivery, and raised $350 to send to theirnational union's lobbying arm. "That's the money we buy off theCongressmen with," cracked John Alversa, 72, a retired mailman fromFlushing, N.Y.Bill LaFrana, 69, and retired from carrying mail in Lexington, Ky., haswritten to Congress and his local paper back home against the postalservice's proposal to slow delivery of some mail to save money. "That justwasn't acceptable when I had to work," he said.His girlfriend, Ellen Hollon, 72, said all the talk about the postalservice is no fun."Every time a news blip comes up, it occupies even a barbecue…the wivesand girlfriends will finally say, 'hey,'" she said, making a timeoutgesture with her hands. "We don't want to hear this mailman stuff."The retirees acknowledge the postal service must make changes to stayafloat. They—and the postmaster general, and some members of Congress—sayone solution would be to ease an unusual requirement imposed by Congressin 2006 that the agency aggressively fund retiree benefits decades ahead.Supporters of the pre-funding, including U.S. Rep. Dennis Ross, (R.,Fla.), say it will insure the agency can provide benefits forretirees—like the ones in Nalcrest—far down the road and that the tabdoesn't fall to taxpayers.Nalcrest residents picketed outside Mr. Ross's local office last fall.They had hoped for a bigger crowd, "but a lot of the snowbirds weren'there yet," said Janet Russo, 63, a retired postal clerk whose late husbandcarried mail in Medford, Mass.Mr. Ross said changes he is proposing won't likely affect Nalcrestretirees, but that he isn't surprised they are mad at him. "Change nevercomes easy," he said.The community, where the modest mint-green cottages start at $395 permonth, broke ground in 1962, the brainchild of William Doherty, a formerOhio mail carrier and union leader, who envisioned a low-cost retirementhaven entirely owned and funded by letter carriers through uniondues—which long ago paid off the mortgage. The postal service contributesno money toward the town.Nalcrest has its own ZIP Code. "We had a little pull with the postoffice," says Mr. Rose, the manager.The village has a barber shop, cafe and market. Each morning, residentshead to the busy and profitable post office to retrieve mail from theirboxes—no door-to-door delivery here—yelling to the clerk, in mailmanlingo, "is first-class up?"Shipping by United Parcel Service Inc., or FedEx Corp. is frowned upon."Never used them," said Greg Stratton, a tanned and bearded retiredmailman from Sauk Prairie, Wis., as he bought stamps.Email? "Nope," he said. Write letters? "Yep."He chuckled and nodded toward the door. "My dinosaur is right outside."Write to Jennifer Levitz at jennifer.levitz-Oo4YIDBCiv0< at >public.gmane.org

2002-2012 Paul Voise, Minor Current Affair, Insecurity & Politics: tenyears after the electoral acclaim in France (editorial)After a long silence of the publication over the the internet, here iswww.criticalsecret.com #16. So, what’s new since podcasts and 3Gphones ? At this point, the passe-partout of the digital world, insynchronicity with the urban society, is the open sesame of internettablet devices : html5. The reason why this issue is digitallyrelevant to the html5 version of an hour long movie is so that it canbe watched on any computer or tablet screen, without consideration forthe browser used to watch it.*The subject of this current issue of criticalsecret is shedding apeculiar diachronic light on the renewal of the french presidentialelectoral campaign.- It finds itself at the crossroads of the European supranationalorientation in a financial crisis that obliterates currencies. Thus,after the signing of the stability pact that forces national economiesupon deserting economic growth, involving the ruin of societies toensure the hegemony of financial markets.- April 2012 comes after the Lisbon treaty, a text that abused theconsulted people over the European constitution and that, among otherthings, militarizes the police and binds Justice to the raison d’état.To fully understand the current french presidential electoralcampaign, and the subversion of the civic consciousness by the opinionand particularly by the press since the last decade, one needs to goback to the infamous 2002 presidential campaign and the Paul Voisecase.This episode inaugurated the end of the republican representation ofthe chief of state as elected through ballots.French citizens critical of the government, not having at theirdisposal blank votes which are deducted from the ballots obtained,(nor do they have proportional representation during legislativeelections) for the most part abstained from voting altogether, withthe remaining part casting a vote of defiance towards the socialistgovernment and the outgoing president by voting for Jean-Marie Le Pen,particularly ironic, even comical and omnipresent in the medias at thetime. He crystallized the vote of people frightened by the Paul Voisebeating and house fire, widely publicized by the TV and radio duringthe first turn of the electoral campaign.The movie that deconstructs the 2002 elections point-by-point exists.It is entitled ‘Paul Voise, […]’ and is directed by Simon Guibert,Documentary Journalist and radio author, and Arthur Guibert, director,cinematographer and editor with Alexandre Heraud, investigativejournalist, playing his own character.Throughout a 57 minute prospective story, this piece presents theconclusions of a two-year investigation and summarizes a deviance inthe electoral communication around the notion of security thatcharacterized the radical turn that brought democracy into anoligarchic autocracy in France.The movie, shot between 2002 and 2004 was edited in 2005, and thenpublished in four parts on dailymotion.com in 2006. Criticalsecretpublished it in extenso for the first time exclusively on the web andtablets.It is now 2012. The country is mourning because of an event of blindmurderous violence that interrupted the current electoral campaign,giving back its media omnipresence to the outgoing president and itsgovernment. A president who has himself been elected in 2007 inexceptional circumstances of mediatization of its autocratic characterand way of life, glorifying the reign of money.Without any connection except in the timing, an isolated gunman, massserial killer, caused seven deaths over three different days: inToulouse, the murder of a soldier of West Indian origin, in Montaubanthree soldiers of North African origin, all belonging to the sameparatrooper unit, the 17th, back from Afghanistan. Then several dayslater, again in Toulouse, at the entrance to a Jewish religiousschool, three school children and a rabbi. The young man, anunemployed mechanic, "allegedly" guilty, will never be investigated,tried or convicted, because he was shot down by the RAID, a specialtask force of the French national police. Then the revelations made bythe highest official of the DCRI, French intelligence agency, implythat the man could have been a rogue agent, with whom he had haddirect communication and a meeting - this would imply more than asecurity watch, according to the former head of the DST, the Frenchsecurity service agency. If Islamists recruit in prison, is itpossible that so can the DCRI? No one has seen the survey of hisarsenal, or his camera, after the attack, and everyone is wonderinghow his films all edited into one film and put to music could reachthe offices of Al Jazeera in Paris after his death, when his mother,his brother and his sister-in-law had been arrested. Besides, no onewill show this film. Once again it is a case of declarations madewithout any proof, in the eyes of the public, which is consequentlymore and more disinformed by the Press, with said Press not makingmention either of what it could have verified in terms of proof atsource. The Prosecutor only made an appearance after the events tookplace. The Press on the scene before and during the attack was held ata distance and exclusively and directly informed by the declarationsand comments of the Minister of the Interior, that it relayed withoutraising any questions. Then it was informed by the heads of police whowere justifying the 300 shots the boy would have received, accordingto the forensic specialist (without access to any sources). But theamateur videos of inhabitants clearly reflect heavy gunfire severaltimes with the final round lasting nearly ten minutes (this does notindicate where the target was, whether inside or outside). The newsreleases made by Agence France Presse reporting the declarations madeby the ministers and the President are not the same in French as inEnglish in the foreign press, where the idea of a Jihad network isdriven home and the brother is incarcerated, whereas elsewhere theattacker is described as a lone wolf. The visa that the Jihadistmurderer had for Israël, which we all know know has a particularlyefficient security service, and his passage with the Palestinians,when legal representatives have so much difficulty getting in andPalestinians getting out, will remain a mystery. So that we will notknow what is at the bottom of this affair, except a a racist andxenophobic wave that will be lastingly used with a backdrop of murdersand terror, before the outcome of the Presidential election. We willhave to wait for the investigation conducted by journalists later on,or in the case of an affair implicating the State, it will be yearslater.How will the French people react on April 22, 2012? Nobody can say,whether, like the Spanish, after the otherwise deadly attacks inMadrid in 2005 (200 dead, 1600 wounded), the French voters exercisetheir historic role by voting to maintain freedom and the law, and aneconomy vital for the country, or whether they fall into a kind ofdictatureship, that many signs are indicating could be the case.The themed installation here proposed is comprised of the movie andits annexes, texts and documents, with the addition of abehind-the-scenes photographic gallery by award-winning photographerMat Jacob. This issue takes the form of an audiovisual publication byThomas Schmidt, himself an artist and photographer.In 2005 the movie about a long-since past event didn’t retainattention. There may have been a need to repress the trauma ofunderstanding such a climate of resignation, and that a culture ofrevolt like ours had definitely lost both its constitution andfundamental rights.Suddenly, the upcoming 2012 presidential election has brought backinterest in the Paul Voise movie, screened in 2011 in numerousdocumentary film festivals. The last time it was screened beforeshowing here was during the ATTAC film festival, under the theme of“The manufacturing of fear”. And here we are.Aliette G. Certhoux, Mars 2012http://www.criticalsecret.com/n16/ out on April 2 2012http://www.criticalsecret.com* But androïd:(

AMNESTY for political murder in Surinam but NO AMNESTIAApril 5, 2012 by Tjebbe van TijenThe full illustrated and linked version can be found at:http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/amnesty-for-political-murder-in-surinam-but-no-amnestia/[Negative of state portrait of Desi Bouterse with beneath the following caption: "amnesty |ˈamnistē|noun ( pl. -ties)an official pardon for people who have been convicted of political offenses : an amnesty for political prisoners | the new law granted amnesty to those who illegally left the country.• an undertaking by the authorities to take no action against specified offenses or offenders during a fixed period : a month-long weapons amnesty.verb ( -ties, -tied) ( trans. grant an official pardon to : the guerrillas would be amnestied and allowed to return to civilian life.ORIGIN late 16th cent.: via Latin from Greek amnēstia ‘forgetfulness.’")]The negative image of Surinam as a country where ‘rule of law’ is not properly practiced has last night once more been established. With a vote of 28 for and 12 against a new law that grants amnesty to those involved in the political murder of fifteen Surinam citizens in December 1982 (Decembermoorden), has been approved, after three days of fierce debate. The persecution of this crime committed in 1982 has been delayed for three decades now. Those murdered were fifteen citizens playing a public role in Surinam society, from lawyers and trade union leaders to journalists and political opponents. There supposed attempt at a contra-coup against the newly established military regime by a group of rebelling sergeants of the Surinam army in February 1980, has never been established.Only in the last years a slow juridical process by a Military Tribunal of trying the accused had been started and this was going to come to a conclusion finally in this mont, April 2012. The special amnesty law for those involved in the December Murders of 1982 has been proposed very recently only. One of the accused is the actual president of Surinam Desi Bouterse, who has always denied having had direct involvement in the summary execution of the fifteen, though he has admitted (in 2007) that he – as a state leader of that time – carries political responsibility for the murders. On March 23, 2012, another of the suspects in the process who was part of the rebel sergeant group in the early eighties of last century, Ruben Rozendaal, made a new declaration to the court stating that Desi Bouterse had also personally taken part in the execution, killing two of the victims. In such circumstances, after all those years and fights of the relatives of the victims for justice to be done, this amnesty law was proposed and passed the parliament, signalling the negative state of the rule of law in Surinam.The president of the Republic of Surinam Desi Bouterse has thus evaded to be tried by a Military Tribunal, a tribunal that is supposed to lay down its work directly after the Amnesty Law for the december Murders 1982 comes into force. Amnesty commonly means ‘pardon for people who have been convicted of political offences’. The word ‘amnesty‘ comes form the Greek word ἀμνηστία (amnestia) meaning ‘oblivion’. One thing is certain: a state of forgetfulness about the December Murders 1982 will not occur, on the contrary, with justice not done the December Murders will remain a negative element in Surinam society as long as those involved – in whatever way – are still alive. The argument for having this new amnesty law were a needed reconciliation in Surinam society, the opposite has been wrought.[Photograph of commemorative plaquette for the 15 victims of the december 1982 Murders in Paramaribo in Amsterdam, at the side of the Mozes en Aaron Church, Waterlooplein: "In remembrance of the victims of the December Murders Paramaribo, 8 and 9 December 1982 (names of the victims) Tortured and shot dead by the military regime - They stood for Surinam and for democracy - Only justice will bring us peace"][Photograph of monument for the victims of the december1982 murders at the spot where they have been shot in Fort Zeelandia, Paramaribo, revealed in the year 2009 by the previous President of the Surinam Republic. Ronal Venetiaan: "On this spot fifteen prominent sons of Surinam were shot without any form of process by the military regime - they stood for freedom, justice and democracy (names of the victims) Their determination left us with the light of hope for justice and truth - This memorial has been unveiled on 8 December 2009 by the President of the Republic of Surinam Drs. R.R. Venetiaan."]Tjebbe van TijenImaginary Museum ProjectsDramatizing Historical Informationhttp://imaginarymuseum.orgweb-blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

PCMsYears ago I designed a PCM, this was around 1970 maybe. PCM stands forParameter Control Module; the idea was to create a unit which couldconnect and control other similar units. PCMs were digital but they didn'tneed to be. There were any number of inputs and outputs. The idea was thatanything could be connected to anything else. In other words, there werestandardized simple protocols in terms of voltage and bandwidth; every-thing functioned like blood in the veins of some untoward ganglion. Inorder to enter the PCM array, translation was necessary from an outsideworld into the protocols; this was the job of an input interface whichcould be tailored for particular situations. The interface was dividedinto two sections: the outer section was tailored to the world, and theinner, to the emission of protocols. So the input interface was generousin its acceptance. At the other end of the array, there was a similaroutput interface, divided into two sections; the inner section wastailored to the protocols, sending the signal current to the outersection, which was tailored to the world, and generous. For example, anaudio input interface might take microphone signals and standardize them,sending them to the array; an audio output interface might take the arrayprotocols and send them simultaneously to audio amplifiers and a lightingboard. What made the array of greater interest, of course, is that inputand output signals could also be applied directly to any particular PCM,bypassing the standard interfaces. The array as a whole, as a ganglion,would be in effect a ganglion open to the world at any place or space,both for input and output. One might think of the PCMs as formal neurons.Internally, the components of the PCMs might be smoothly voltage-control-led, with the possibility of directly inputting different equations; onemight begin with standard smooth trigonometric functions and replace themwith discontinuities of all sorts, including chaotic behavior. I believeto this day that designing the PCMs would have been a relatively trivialmatter. Although the project remained stillborn, the concept behind itremains of interest to me. I've begun to think of the arrays, inputs andoutputs, as an affair in which anything might modify or influence any-thing, including, reflexively, itself. The arrays in fact might be virtualand one thinks only of empty, undefined, space or air, a distant model ofthe real and external world, where such things happen. Thus anything hereand now has the potential for affecting anything else, and anything mightseem to turn around and talk directly with you, listening, at the sametime, to your innermost thoughts, whatever you choose to reveal: here arethe input and output interfaces. What goes on in such virtual arrays isonly the ideality of the world itself, the ability to take-for-grantedthat there are always relatively stable domains for communication ordwelling, for work or discourse, and so forth. Any dynamic action, anyaction which changes in time, might be considered to be modeled thus; anystatic action might be one which leaves the virtual array quiescent. Thesize and power of the virtual PCMs are also of interest; as they decrease,one might argue that the granularity of the world is increasingly differ-entiated, just as their increase transforms the granularity into rougherconstructs handled by integration. In the middle lies everyday life, whereprocessing of this sort is kept to a minimum. I can imagine in thisfashion thinking of the world as a vast complex of fundamental operationson the ordering of everyday life, just as Aristotelian logic and its lawsof distribution appear to deal well with the uncanny lack of transience ofeveryday objects. The edges of such modeling, however, are always limit-points which a different kind of roughness appears, for example quantumphenomena or color vision or even corrosion. To some extent, these roughprocesses, including unknown one, can be imagined within the virtual arraywhich would have additional signals, alarm signals, that anomalies wereworking their way into or out of the array; there could be, in fact,virtual interfaces utterly open to the real, whose sole purpose would bethe conversion of such anomalies. One process would be that of the name,beginning with the proper name, and working towards untoward generaliza-tions; another would be that of radical smoothing, and a third might bethe cessation of array activity altogether. I think of this as burrowingor death, depending on the degree of destruction or rearrangementencountered. Likewise, there would be inverse processes, those of birth oremerging, in which partial identity transformations would remain andperhaps even be backwards-traceable, backwards-compatible in terms of theprotocols. The whole, virtual and real, is a form of metaphor ready to beimplemented. I can only conclude that the same is already in the world,and perhaps always already in the world, it is there and here, it isoperational or quiescent as you like. And such would be the world and itsdynamics; it is only a question of looking over your shoulder, back intothe space you have just left behind, forward into the space your are aboutto enter. If you have the time, of course, without catastrophe ordisruption.- Alan in Omaha

PRIVACY Forum mailing list <privacy-cj3H8QvLr9TQT0dZR+AlfA< at >public.gmane.org> Paul Brigner: ISOC's amazing flexible man Seth Johnson: Brigner flunks on NN [Net Neutrality]- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2012 23:44:20 -0700To: privacy-list-cj3H8QvLr9TQT0dZR+AlfA< at >public.gmane.orgFrom: PRIVACY Forum mailing list <privacy-cj3H8QvLr9TQT0dZR+AlfA< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: [ PRIVACY Forum ] Paul Brigner: ISOC's amazing flexible manPaul Brigner: ISOC's amazing flexible manhttp://j.mp/Ho8dWB (This message on Google+) - - -You may recall some days ago I expressed surprise at ISOC's hiringof Paul Brigner for a key role. CNET discussed aspects of thiscontroversial appointment at the time:http://j.mp/H6IWPT (CNET)Mr. Brigner when at Verizon was publicly opposed to Net Neutrality.When at the MPAA -- where he was before the ISOC hiring -- hespecifically spoke and blogged in favor of PIPA legislation --apparently expressing his own views, not just those of his employer.And all of these views in question would appear to be in directconflict with ISOC positions.Now comes word that Brigner has become a foe of the SOPA/PIPA approach thathe was vigorously endorsing such a short time ago. Fascinating.And how very convenient:http://j.mp/Ho7nsS (CNET)Of course people can have a genuine change of heart, sometimesdramatically. On the other hand, the great satirist Tom Lehrer wrotea song about a famous technologist whose views were those of ...expediency.I don't know Mr. Brigner personally. I'm not in a position to seeinto his head, or his heart. =But I still find it remarkable, with all the qualified people availablewho have been stalwartly supporting ISOC positions for many years, thatISOC made this particular choice -- and I have to wonder why.--Lauren--Lauren Weinstein (lauren-cj3H8QvLr9TQT0dZR+AlfA< at >public.gmane.org): http://www.vortex.com/lauren =Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org =Founder: - Data Wisdom Explorers League: http://www.dwel.org - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org = - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.=org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com =Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public PolicyLauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.comGoogle+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren / Twitter: http://vortex.com/t-lauren =Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com_______________________________________________privacy mailing listhttp://lists.vortex.com/mailman/listinfo/privacy- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2012 09:29:56 -0700To: privacy-list-cj3H8QvLr9TQT0dZR+AlfA< at >public.gmane.orgFrom: PRIVACY Forum mailing list <privacy-cj3H8QvLr9TQT0dZR+AlfA< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: [ PRIVACY Forum ] Seth Johnson: Brigner flunks on NN [Net Neutrality]----- Forwarded message from Seth Johnson <seth.p.johnson-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> -----Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2012 06:49:40 -0500From: Seth Johnson <seth.p.johnson-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: [ NNSquad ] Brigner flunks on NNTo: Lauren Weinstein <lauren-cj3H8QvLr9TQT0dZR+AlfA< at >public.gmane.org>Cc: nnsquad-li8p1GzYfM5AfugRpC6u6w< at >public.gmane.orgBrigner flunks on NN:http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=3D3159(A good group of ISOC NY folks met up with Brigner in the Club Acelaroom in Penn Station. He mentions the Google-Verizon pact in a waythat one might easily think suggests he was involved in it. He takesa "deregulation helps Verizon's engineers" line on NN, Joly MacFiealludes to an ISOC statement regarding NN, Joe Plotkin sets the NNdiscussion off in the right place, with good follow up by othersincluding David Solomonoff. I would have asked him whether he wasinvolved in GOOG-VZN, as there was indeed an advance in the policydiscussion wrought by that deal and NN advocates missed a chance touse that to get the FCC on a productive track. However, Brignerdoesn't get it. He thinks the reclassification of Internet as aninformation service was good, and that that "is working" -- which itis, for Verizon. He says "if it stops working," there will be apolicy discussion on that and ISOC will be in the middle of that. Andhe says legislators aren't going to "let the Internet be abused byISPs" -- all very, very telling statements. He then addresses aquestion about what layer he's talking about when he characterizes theissue in terms of regulation by moving immediately to decryingregulation of apps -- without addressing the character of the IPlayer, let alone competition among ISPs [and end users] based on theiraccess to lower layers. He then jumps to the lower layer "legacyregulations" which he calls a "major threat" to services and apps andprotocols running on the network -- which they are, for acommunications incumbent that decides it also wants to be an app [orInternet] provider. And he extols the fact ISOC has a group fordealing with regulating apps. Brigner completely outlines thecolonization of ISOC, even if he personally doesn't think he's takingan incumbent line.)----- End forwarded message -------Lauren--Lauren Weinstein (lauren-cj3H8QvLr9TQT0dZR+AlfA< at >public.gmane.org): http://www.vortex.com/lauren =Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org =Founder: - Data Wisdom Explorers League: http://www.dwel.org - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org = - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.=org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com =Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public PolicyLauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.comGoogle+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren / Twitter: http://vortex.com/t-lauren =Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com_______________________________________________privacy mailing listhttp://lists.vortex.com/mailman/listinfo/privacy- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hello. I have uploaded several new texts to a temporary FTP site accessible for a few days via web browser at the following URL: ==> ftp.blackflag.synology.me username:public password: public --- The Bloodletting - part 2 ---* The second in a three part series (1st volume) personal history,spanning the years of highschool and entering into university--- Erotic Therapy Intro + Urls ---* A consideration of the merits of pornography as a therapeutictool for those dealing with sexual dysfunction & sexual abuse as a way to understand if not rewire basic sexual dynamicsnote: the idea of erotic therapy is much larger than pornoyet the filename was used here to contextualize it in thelarger framework of erotic truth and issues of exchange.erotic therapy unlike pornos would involve relationships between people, interactions beyond projection, yet thatis not dealt with here in an attempt to broach the subject. warning: this content may be disturbing, read at your own risk. One notebook of a handwritten history still awaits transcription. Brian Carroll

from http://bit.ly/HGwHszThe discourse on migration in Athens is anchored to three propositionsthat are often shared by both the pro-migration and anti-migrationpositions.1. The Centre: The first proposition is that migration is constitutedas a problem primarily in the Centre of Athens. Contrary to theconceptualization of migration as a movement, whose form and impactare dispersed, migration becomes condensed in a specific boundedlocation, a near static phenomenon that can be easily identified andmapped in Cartesian geographical terms. Anti-migration argumentsconcentrate on a “kick the migrants out of the centre of Athens”position, while pro-migration on a “we need to design social policiesfor the improvement of the social conditions and the infrastructuresin the centre of Athens” stance. In both cases, dealing with migrationis associated with the claim that something “needs to be done” withthe Centre of Athens.If we were to map the discourse of migration in Athens we would simplyhave to fill a bright colour (a red perhaps to represent occupation orracist conflict) a large chunk of the centre of the city, leaving therest of the urban space untouched.2. The city as a cell: The second proposition (which is linked to thefirst) is that migration threatens the city’s historical, cultural andgeographical core, its very essence. The city becomes, along theselines, conceptualized as a cell. In racist rhetoric, the centre of thecell is seen as being invaded by alien and hostile forces. Thebio-medical metaphors do not stop there, as migrants are routinelyassociated with the spread of contagious diseases. At the same time,migrants become the (conscious or unconscious) agents of a violentinvasion that threatens the historical continuity of the city – (i.e.the centre is usually referred to as “historical”). Migrantscolonizing the centre of the Athenian cell disrupt its history bysquatting in neo-classical houses, by praying to Allah next toChristian Churches, or simply by inhabiting public squares decoratedwith nationalist statues. Simultaneously, migrants threaten the futureof Athens because they prevent its gentrification – which issymbolically linked to a process of Europeanization. As acharacteristic example we could mention, here, the constant moaning ofthe Athenian free press over the failed plans of ambitious developers,bar and loft owners who have lived for many years abroad in London,New York, Paris and Kabul and are prevented from modernizing thecentre of the city cell by a combination of factors includinginadequate government policies for policing and for facilitating thegentrification of the centre, the absence of public and privateinvestment funds and the spontaneous and uncontrollable spatialinvasions by undocumented migrants (and drug users).Ironically, this approach is also reproduced by many anti-racistgroups’ startegies which are organized as if control was localised andcentralised and can be combated with localised counter-measures(actions in solidarity with the migrants in particular public squares)reproduce this fixation on centralisation and localisation.*Digitalization as a means of centralised control*Digitalisation becomes in this context a strategy for centralizing thecontrol of the problem of migration. If migration is localizable andstatic and the city is a cell, then its surveillance and policing bythe contemporary mechanisms of control is possible. The city centrehas become populated by private or state security cameras forsurveillance, all newly constructed or renovated buildings come withsmart cards for the safety of homeowners and electronic systems forprotecting their multiple gates and walls, aiming to shell off themobilities of the unauthorised migrant users of the space.Digitalization embodies the desire for building an armour that willseal and protect the Athenian cell from migration.Again, anti-control practices become often trapped in this discourseof the cell. Practices that include the destruction of digitaldevices, such as the demolition or painting over of CCTV securitycameras.In the rest of the paper, we will try to move from the cell to thenetwork, arguing that the digitalization of migration is not a result,a response, or an attack to the “sealing” of the Athenian cell but ispart of an altogether different form of configuration of the space ofthe city. In order to address the current debates, we argue that theanswer to the racist conflict that has emerged in Athens can originatefrom an alternative mapping of the city and its migrant mobilities – amapping that takes into account the fact thata) Migration is by definition an unbounded social movement,b) Athens is no longer a cell (if it ever was) but an interconnectednetwork, andc) Migrants mobilities privilege the operation of ad hoc networks———————————————Let’s try to unpack these three propositions and attempt to see howthey could potentially draw alternative mappings of migration inAthens.a) Migration as an unbounded social movement.Instead of analysing migration as a phenomenon that is localised,condensed, or accentuated in the centre of Athens, we couldalternatively see it within a larger terrain of flows and mobilities.The physical presence of a large number of migrants in Athens does notimply stasis or a somehow bounded space characterised by specialsocial conditions. Migration in the city is not centred but involvesdifferent types of technologies of mobility dispersed within andoutside the Athenian boundaries.These technologies of mobility are of two types:- Migrants in Athens, for one thing, are at the focus of network-basedtechnologies of surveillance and control. This surveillance is notlimited to the administration and policing of a bounded urban space(the city centre), but it is essentially distributed.It has to do, for example, with the digitalisation of European bordercontrol and, as De Genova argues, with the permanent risk of “digitaldeportability” that these migrants face. The biometric or digitalprofiles of migrants living in Athens are circulating amongst a numberof European wide electronic databases. A casual arrest of anundocumented migrant in Athens by the local police results to a new ora revised online entry in the database of the Schengen InformationSystem (SIS), or a new or revised fingeprinting profile in the Eurodacdatabase – a pan European Automated Fingerprint Identification System.It has to do also with how the Greek state is planning to manage andcontrol the mobilities of documented “legal” migrants. Illustrative,here, are the plans of the current government to introduce a “migrantidentity card’ in the coming months. This card will supposedlyregulate all interactions of all registered migrants with all stateagencies and services, and will include both RFID and biometric data.Following the work of Ayse Ceyhan and Vassilis Tsianos, we can thustrace a direct connectivity of the bodies of the migrants inhabitingAthens to the digital flows of information circulated amongst Europeanand local government agencies.- A second technology of mobility relates to what Dana Diminescu hastermed “connected migrants”. Migrants in the centre of Athens are notsimply forced to a kind of immobility as they might be unable to moveto other European countries because of the Dublin II treatyrestrictions. Nor are they simply uprooted, from their home countries.The everyday practices of migrants in Athens include the dailyproduction of cultures of bonds with their places of origin or placeswhere they have friends or relatives via the use of ICTs. VOIPtechnologies, mobile phones, are used to construct the connectedpresences of these migrants within different locales. The everydaylives of migrants Athens belong co-instantaneously to severalgeographical zones and social milieus. The socialities produced bythese connected ‘presences’ highlights even more the precarious,temporary dimension of migrants’ mobility but also the density oftheir relational networks. Look at how many migrant run internet cafeshave opened in Athens, at the informal mosques that give free wifiaccess to the neighboring areas, at how migrants use their mobiledevices, at the growing pirate markets for digital gadgets run bymigrants and this picture will start to take shape.Along these lines, the centre of Athens is nothing more than a part ofnetworks of (also migrant) mobilities.b) Athens is no longer a cell (if it ever was) but an interconnectednetwork of mobilities.This proposition does not need a lot of explanation. Theorising citiesas flows or urban spaces as networks is nothing new. The architectureof the cell is no longer relevant to the every day lives of cities.Although the centre of Athens is invested with symbolic power by thediscourse of migration, migrant mobilities defy this logic of thecentre or of centralisation. Take the example of the Athenian squares,which are exemplary symbolic places of concentration. In Plateia AgiouPanteleimona, Plateia Attikis, Plateia Victorias, in different periodsduring the past years, these squares have been claimed and inhabitedephemerally by groups of migrants (mainly asylum seekers fromAfghanistan and Pakistan) who were trapped in Greece. For whatpurpose? Were they occupied as the movements of concerned citizensargue? An occupation of the square would serve no purpose since thedesire of these migrants is to find ways to move on, to cross theGreek border. The squares are used as temporary dwellings that enablethem to organize their mobility networks in order to move on.The image of migrants sitting in the square all day is deceptive: Whatappears as stasis and urban concentration is in fact a movement thatplaces the square within a network of mobilities through variousphysical arrangements and digital inter-connections.Similarly, we can take the example of the debate around theconstruction of an Islamic Mosque in Athens. Should it be built in thecentre of the city or in a far remote place outside the centre?Conservative commentators seem to consider its distancing from thecentre absolutely necessary, while more liberal commentators note thatit should be placed at the centre for symbolic reasons. But does itmatter? When there is an already active and digitalized network of atleast 100 informal mosques dispersed all over Athens, operating ingarages, shops or apartments? This network of mosques has alreadytransformed the city in a decisive way placing it within transnationalIslamic networks.c) Tentatively, we want to propose that migration relates to theoperation of these networks of mobilities based on the notion of adhoc networking. Ad hoc, in this context, should not be merely equatedwith “non-generalisable” or “haphazard”, but instead withself-configured. Ad hoc networking is what forms a constant threat fordestabilising the regular network. Control and surveillance, forinstance, count and aim to expand and reproduce the regular operationof the network: they need to make sure that first of all, authorisedusers should have unhindered access to the network, that data flowsdon’t fail, that unauthorised users or data (viruses or hackers) don’tdisrupt the network. Ad hoc networking exploits the weaknesses of theregular network in order to create discontinuities, breaks, crackswithin it.The connectivities of the migrants to the regular networks thatorganise the urban space of Athens can be conceived in this manner.Documented migrants, for example, might seem to have all the necessarypapers, a job contract, social security stamps, a permanent residence,but the ways through which they have managed to obtain these and toreproduce them each time they are asked to do so by a governmentagency are not regular. They might have intermittently used informalor illicit networks to provide them with counterfeit job contracts orcounterfeit proof of residence, or they might have irregularly boughtoff their social security stamps. Or, they might have legally appliedfor asylum to the Greek authorities, but, before their application isprocessed, they are still searching for ways to move to anotherEuropean country and re-apply for asylum there.Or, take the example of transit migrants who seem to now live inoverpopulated apartments in the centre of Athens or in ephemerallysquatted buildings or public spaces, the practices that are usuallytaken as a sign of underdevelopment and misery. But these spaces aremore akin to transnational locales, self-configured by the migrantsthemselves, organised to gather and exchange information amongst themand to communicate with friends and contacts in other Europeancountries who will enable their planned border crossings. Do thesemigrants need a “reception centre” in an area far remote from thecentre of Athens as many NGOs argue? Perhaps not – at least not a areception centre like the ones operating in Northern Europe, wheresurveillance mechanisms are set up to prevent the formation of ad hocnetworks. What they need is ad hoc dwellings (in squares, sharedapartments and hostels) where they can reassemble, exchangeinformation, connect within them beyond borders and move on.Maybe, they will manage to cross the borders, maybe they will be foundout and get deported back to Greece, but possibly not. Theirfingerprints might not feature in the digital database. Have theymanaged to trick the fingerprinting identification system? Have theauthorities in Greece or in the other European country failed to usecorrectly the search functions of the database or have they consideredit too much of a hassle to use it at all?This ad hoc networking of the migrants emanates simultaneously fromthe need to trick or elude the surveillance mechanisms that aim tocontrol their mobilities and also from their innovative everydaypractices.We are not arguing that all these practices are purely what themigrants desire, but that they should not be conceived in negativeterms. We have to start from how ad hoc migrant networking practicesopen up new trajectories for going beyond the limits of the discourseon migration in Athens.

The conference occurs April 19th-21st and includes keynotes fromAdrian Johns, Jussi Parikka, Lisa Gitelman, Richard R. Johns and AlanLiu.The Network Archaeology conference at Miami University, co-convenedby cris cheek and Nicole Starosielski, will bring together scholarsand practitioners to explore the resonances between digital networksand

Two Worlds of Open Government Data: Getting the Lowdown on Public Toilets inChennai and Other Matters For links etc.http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/two-worlds-of-open-government-data-getting-the-lowdown-on-public-toilets-in-chennai-and-other-matters/TinyURL http://wp.me/pJQl5-98Posted on April 10, 2012On the face of it (so to speak) locating public toilets would appear to be anatural for Open Government Data (OGD). Most cities have suchtoilets-maintained at public expense for the use of residents with an urgentneed. Data on such facilities should be relatively accessible from municipalgovernment offices and making that information available to the generalpublic as a service via a mobile app is an obviously useful application andseemingly win-win-win. A win for municipal government-they get to appearpublic-spirited and supportive of citizens/tourists; a win for app maker andthe platform providing the app-what better application for a globallyaccessible smart phone than a map of facilities for folks on the run; and anatural for private sector sponsorship particularly as in the case of aleading provider of info and apps on public toilets,http://www.SitOrSquat.com who are sponsored by Proctor and Gamble (the"leading toilet tissue" brand); and of course a win for the userwhoever/wherever they may be.Good news for OGD all round and the folks at SitOrSquat.com (SOS) have quitenaturally seen the marketing potential and have their marketing informationand campaign laid out foursquare on the website. Apublic-private-partnership at its best and a potential sponsor's dream!Sitorsquat.Com DemographicsAffluent . $49,000 averageHigh Income>$100,000: 33%Demographics . Female: 60% . Male: 40%Age Range: 20 - 60College/Post grad: 67%.and so they have plans for going global by providing to their top drawer"demographics" a database of, and access to one million public toiletsglobally. And good luck to them!In a Developed Country (global North?) context this information, once havingbeen made available through municipal goodwill, efficiency and OGD spirit;and combined and compiled with sponsor-supported entrepreneurial zeal, wouldimmediately be added to the global database and become another "app"available to smart phone users if/when they ever have the need, on a visitto San Francisco, Vancouver, Chennai or Timbucto.However, as a bit of a caution, it might be well to take a look at theexperience of Nithya Raman and her colleagues in Chennai, India; who,perhaps responding to the urgent exhortations made by the SOS folks toglobalize the opportunities for responding effectively to nature's calls,undertook to get access to the equivalent OGD on public toilets available inChennai.A paper in the current special issue of the Journal of Community Informaticson Community Informatics and Open Government Data http://ci-journal.netgives a quite dramatic account of their efforts to obtain informationconcerning the number and location of public toilets in Chennai City, asubject of considerable interest to a rather different 'demographic" fromthat of the SOS group-.(those living in) "slum areas, . street vendors., those (at) bus stops andbus depots, (workers in the) clusters of informal sector industry, (thosein) waiting areas for daily laborers and so on"."We first decided to get an accurate count of public toilets in the city.One afternoon, I called the Chennai Corporation and asked for the departmentthat took care of public toilets. After many long holds, phones being hungup, and failed attempts to transfer my call to the correct department,someone finally connected me to the Buildings Department that managed allCorporation owned structures. The man on the other end of the phone chuckledwhen he heard that I was interested in public toilets, and then told me thatalthough the Buildings department was responsible for the construction andmaintenance of public toilet structures in the city, they maintained nocentral register of toilets at the Chennai Corporation's main office. To getinformation about the number and locations of toilets, he told me that Iwould have to approach each of the Zonal offices individually."At the time, there were ten Zonal offices in Chennai, and I asked Meryl tovisit each office to get the total number and locations of all the publictoilets. The process we followed was the same for each Zone, but the officesresponded with varying levels of cooperation. For one Zone, Meryl left ouroffice armed with a letter of introduction specifying the information sherequired and a vague address taken from the Corporation website, andsearched for the zonal office with an increasingly irritable auto-rickshawdriver. When she finally arrived at the office, neither the AssistantCommissioner nor the Executive Engineer was available, so the personalassistant to the Assistant Commissioner sent her to the Letters department.There, she was asked to make a photocopy of her request letter. The originalwas kept with them, and the copy was given to her, both stamped with thedate of her visit, and she was asked to come back after two days. Two dayslater, the Executive Engineer was there, and like many of the other officerswe interacted with on this issue, he seemed both confused and amused by herinterest in toilets. He chided her for coming in the afternoon, because thework would have been completed more quickly in the morning, but immediatelyput two engineers to the task of preparing a list for her. After anotherhour of waiting, she had a hand-written list of toilets and toilet addressesin her hand, and she returned to the office triumphantly to type it up."Other zones were not so easy..In this way, zone by zone, with multiplevisits, many letters of introduction, and much careful coaxing, Meryl slowlyput together a list of toilets and their addresses in the city. Only onezone provided her with a map of local infrastructure, the rest gave herlists of toilets and addresses."In this instance Ms. Raman and her colleagues, armed as they were with thevery strong Indian Right to Information (RTI) legislation were able toinsist on gaining access to the information. It should be noted however,that the "data" being provided through OGD means was, it appears, largelyspurious and reflected what the local officials wanted their higher-ups andothers such as the media to believe (and accept without further question)."From our local interviews, it appeared that zonal level bureaucrats hadgood reasons for keeping the number of toilets unclear. Contracts for toiletmaintenance were a source of income for many ward councilors, andlower-level bureaucrats were paid off to ensure that the contracts went tothe right people. Although we do not have proof that this is what happened,people we interviewed in the field told us that non-existent toilets werebeing used for creating fictional maintenance contracts so that councilorscould benefit from them."In the Indian context, the compilation of this type of information is by nomeans straightforward and in this instance became a quest requiring numerousqueries, recalibrations of data requests and ultimately site visits toauthenticate information being provided. The reason of course, being thatpublic toilets are provided and maintained through public funds. In manyinstances those toilets do not exist and may not have ever existed or atleast not existed in recent times and yet contracts are being regularlyawarded (evidently to local politicians) for the maintenance of thesetoilets. In this way was revealed a small and localized form of corruptionbut one that is of considerable significance not only from a financialaccountability perspective but also for the poor for whom these toilets havebeen paid but not provided and for whom no other equivalent public facilitymay be available.In this context as well, I should also mention the nuanced and sophisticatedanalysis of this (type of) phenomenon by Bhuvanaswari Raman and Zainab Bawawho, while recognizing these types of lower level issues put them in abroader context of "structural conditions" and "underlying dynamics"specific in some sense to the Indian environment, but also more generallyapplicable in LDC contexts . Their analysis is that while these phenomenaare occurring at the local level, their real cause and ultimate resolutiononly happens as a result of much higher level reform, structural change andpolitical resolve.Along these latter lines, on my way to Brasilia for a research meetingassociated with Open Government Partnership annual event I had theopportunity to present a short course on Community Informatics to a group ofInformation Science graduate students at UNESP in Marilia, Sao PauloProvince, Brazil. Most particularly though, I had a chance to interact withthem and with one of their Professors, Ricardo Santana who, with hisstudents is doing some very interesting work in the area of OGD.In the interactions with Ricardo and the students I began to realize thathis approach to OGD and what I understood as being the "conventional"approach to OGD were in fact, quite different or at least they were startingfrom quite different assumptions. Ricardo and his students were focusingtheir work on government transparency and transparency of a particularkind-i.e. financial and programmatic (operational) transparency. They wereconcerned to examine budgets, to observe transactions, to get data onlogistics. The type of observational, behavioural, factoidal data that isthe current stock in trade of much Developed Country OGD-the votingbehaviour of elected members, the routes and timings of government serviceworkers (garbage pick-up, bus timings) , the location of public toilets ofinterest to upscale "demographics" and so on were of significantly lessinterest.What I began to understand was that most of OGD colleagues fromDeveloped/OECD countries, are starting from a default position that theirgovernments' probity, honesty, and at least a degree of financialtransparency, could be for the most part assumed. On the other hand, Ricardoand his students (as with Nithya Raman and Bhuvanaswari Raman and ZainabBawa and their colleagues) - were of necessity starting from a defaultposition where government administrators could not be assumed to be actingin the public interest. Not that they were necessarily all involved inmal-administration or more seriously in self-dealing, or misdirection offunds; but rather that given historical evidence means were not nowcurrently in place to ensure transparency of operations and decision-makingand that these needed to be implemented and including providingopportunities for crowd-sourced processes of accountability.Thus, they were starting from a situation where OGD was not a neutral outputto be reconfigured, managed, analysed and displayed. Rather OGD was anartifact in itself to be analysed, accredited, authenticated and ultimatelysomething to be created as an output of a significant process requiringlegal support (as for example through RTI legislation), technical andforensic skill, persistence and ultimately courage. This latter since incertain instances very significant and powerful interests might be at workand obtaining illicit benefits and willing to go to very considerablelengths to maintain these interests (including as in the Indian RTI instancemurdering individual RTI activists!)What this meant for these researchers was that rather than focusing on"apps" and OGD uses that might provide additional "convenience" for theend-user, they were using official formal government commitments to OGD asthe fulcrum through which they could get the information/data tools toexpose mal-administration and even in certain instances, corruption,self-dealing, insider theft and so on.The OGD "game" that they are playing is for them and for their country avery powerful one since it is going to the very root of how government ispracticed and held accountable and (hopefully) precipitating long termchange in public service management, policy and structure. This means amongother things that the connection between OGD and Right to Information (RTI)in the Developing Country context is a necessary and symbiotic one. RTIgives researchers the legal right to access certain information thatotherwise would not be available, while OGD provides the methods, formatsand methodologies by which (some of) this information can be made mostuseful and usable as a means for introducing and enforcing governmentfinancial and operational transparency.As well, it means that programs such as that of the World Bank's providingOGD consultants and app developers from Developed Countries to LessDeveloped Countries as a form of Technical Assistance may be inappropriatesince the areas of their experience will be of much less interest than forexample, might be the skills of a public administration management expert, aforensic auditor or a specialist in procurement fraud.OGD however, may in the LDC context be among the most practical andsignificant developments ever initiated through ICT initiatives since itgoes to the very heart of governance structures and accountability andmoreover not simply at the more public national levels but equally at thelocal, regional and specialist levels such as Education financing. As anexample, one of Santana's students in Brazil is looking at the gap betweenthe ostensible procurement of food for school lunches (a very significantsocial measure instituted under Lula's government) and the shortfall inactual quality and quantity of lunches served to students. Having access tothe procurement data, the budget information, and information concerning thelunches actually served (including their contents) will give Ricardo and hisstudent some very substantive and potentially quite explosive insight intopossible mal-administration in procurement. As well, it is part of theirresearch program to develop tools for making this type of informationavailable for "crowd-sourcing" review and comment and thus ultimatelyproviding parents with the ammunition they would need to actively interveneinto the situation if and as problems are identified.In the Developed Country context one can (and does) for the most part beginwith the assumption that there are significant checks and balances in placeto ensure probity in these processes-audits, oversight committees of electedofficials, publicly accessible budgets, an information tool enabled publicand so on. In many LDC contexts many or even most of these accountabilitymechanisms may be lacking and it is into this breach that OGD and itsproponents may now be allowed to step and among other outputs to develop themethodology for crowd-sourced (enforced) accountability, transparency andinformation access. Thus one of the mechanisms that Ricardo Santana and hisstudents are building into their OGD designs is the means for"crowd-sourcing" of observation and review of budgetary and procurementprocesses and through these public actions providing reinforcement,"bureaucratic space" and support for those public officials who are strivingto act in the public interest but who in Developing and Emerging countriesmay need to have their efforts towards administrative reform andmodernization amplified and reinforced.The challenge (and opportunity) thus is to see OGD not as is often the casein DC contexts, as simply a means to provide business with additionalresources for consumer services or as a support to commercial enterprise oras a basis for additional citizen as consumer convenience, but rather as oneof the fundamental building blocks for the promotion and maintenance ofstructures of good, effective, transparent and accountable governance.Moreover, these differences in starting points for OGD in DC's and in LDC'sshould inform the design of OGD programmes and not incidentally softwaresupports.There is it appears, two possible worlds of "Open Government Data"-one theworld of smart phones, and Ipads, of apps and upscale "demographics" ofinterest to sponsors like Proctor and Gamble; and the contrasting world ofslum dwellers without access to sanitation, of populations subject tosystematic mal-and even corrupt administration -worlds where app providersand the folks who make the OGD available to them go public withmulti-million dollar IPO's and ones where those with the courage to pursuepublic information may be putting their lives at risk.Data as with information is power and this power may be of even greatersignificance when its benefits accrue to the powerless rather than to thealready empowered.

dear nettimers,I just posted this text a few minutes ago on the Tactical Media Files blog - this is a shorter text as an extension from the recent network notebook on the legacies of tactical media, intended for the Re-Public on-line journal. Unfortunately the journal is suspended due to austerity pressures, and so we are now circulating it via other channels. A further posting will follow in a few days.You can find the blog version with some images here:http://blog.tacticalmediafiles.net/?p=266bests,eric------------Editorial notice:This text was originally written for the Re-Public on-line journal, which focuses on innovative developments in contemporary political theory and practice, and is published from Greece ( www.re-public.gr/en ). As the journal has ground to a (hopefully just temporary) halt under severe austerity pressures we decided to post the current first draft of the text on the Tactical Media Files blog. This posting is one of two, the second of which will follow shortly. Both texts build on my recent Network Notebook on the 'Legacies of Tactical Media' ( http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/publications/network-notebooks/no-5-legacies-of-tactical-media/ ).The second text is a collection of preliminary notes that expand on recent discussions following Marco Deseriis and Jodi Dean's essay "A Movement Without Demands". It is conceivable that both texts will merge into a more substantive essay in the future, but I haven't made up my mind about that as yet. Hope this will be of interest,Eric------------Charting Hybridised RealitiesTactical Cartographies for a densified presentIn the midst of an enquiry into the legacies of Tactical Media - the fusion of art, politics, and media which had been recognised in the middle 1990s as a particularly productive mix for cultural, social and political activism [1], the year 2011 unfolded. The enquiry had started as an extension of the work on the Tactical Media Files, an on-line documentation resource for tactical media practices worldwide [2], which grew out of the physical archives of the infamous Next 5 Minutes festival series on tactical media (1993 - 2003) housed at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. After making much of tactical media's history accessible again on-line, our question, as editors of the resource, had been what the current significance of the term and the thinking and practices around it might be?Prior to 2011 this was something emphatically under question. The Next 5 Minutes festival series had been ended with the 2003 edition, following a year that had started on September 11, 2002, convening local activists gatherings named as Tactical Media Labs across six continents. [3] Two questions were at the heart of the fourth and last edition of the Next 5 Minutes: How has the field of media activism diversified since it was first named 'tactical media' in the middle 1990s? And what could be significance and efficacy of tactical media's symbolic interventions in the midst of the semiotic corruption of the media landscape after the 9/11 terrorist attacks?This 'crash of symbols' for obvious reasons took centre stage during this fourth and last edition of the festival. Naomi Klein had famously claimed in her speedy response to the horrific events of 9/11 that the activist lever of symbolic intervention had been contaminated and rendered useless in the face of the overpowering symbolic power of the terrorist attacks and their real-time mediation on a global scale. [4] The attacks left behind an "utterly transformed semiotic landscape" (Klein) in which the accustomed tactics of culture jammers had been 'blown away' by the symbolic power of the terrorist atrocities. Instead 'we' (Klein appealing to an imaginary community of social activists) should move from symbols to substance. What Klein overlooked in this response in 'shock and awe', howeve r, was that while the semiotic landscape had indeed been dramatically transformed (and corrupted) in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, it still remained a semiotic landscape - symbols were still the only lever and entry point into the wider real-time mediated public domain.Therefore, as unlikely as it may have seemed at the time, the question about the diversification of the terrain and the practices of media activism(s) was ultimately of far greater importance. What the 9/11 crash of symbols and the semiotic corruption debate contributed here was 'merely' an added layer of complexity. In a society permeated by media flows, social activism necessarily had to become media activism, and thus had to operate in a significantly more complex and contested environment. The diversification of the media and information landscape, however, also implied that a radical diversification of activist strategies was needed to address these increasingly hybridised conditions. To name but a few of the emerging concerns: Witnessing of human rights abuses around the world, and creating public visibility and debate around them remained a pivotal concern for many tactical media practitioners, as it had been right from the early days of camcorder activism. But now new concerns over privacy in networked media environments, coupled with security and secrecy regimes of information control entered the scene. Critical media arts spread in different directions, claiming new terrains as diverse as life sciences and bio-engineering, as well as 'contestational robotics', interventions into the space of computer games, and even on-line role playing environments. Meanwhile the free software movement made its strides into developing more autonomous toolsets and infrastructures f or a variety of social and cultural needs - adding a more strategic dimension to what had hitherto been mostly an interventionist practice. In a parallel movement on-line discussion groups, mailing lists, and activity on various social media platforms started to coalesce slowly into what media theorist Geert Lovink has described as 'organised networks'. [5] Or finally the rapid development of wireless transmission technologies, smart phones and other wireless network clients, which introduced a paradoxical superimposition of mediated and embodied spatial logics, best be captured in the multilayered concept of Hybrid Space. [6]Our question was therefore entirely justified, to ask how the term 'tactical media' could possibly bring together such a diversified, heterogeneous, and hybridised set of practices in a meaningful way? It had become clear that more sophisticated cartographies would be necessary to begin charting this intensely hybridised landscape.A digital conversion of public spaceIf the events in 2011 have made one thing clear it is that the ominous claim of Critical Art Ensemble that "the streets are dead capital" [7] has been declared null and void by an astounding resurgence of street protest, whatever their longer term political significance and fallout might be. These protests staged in the streets and squares, ranging from anti-austerity protests in Southern Europe to the various uprisings in Arab countries in North Africa and the Middle East, to the Occupy protests in the US and Northern Europe, have by no means been staged in physical spaces out of a rejection of the semiotic corruption of the media space. Much rather the streets and squares have acted as a platform for the digital and networked multiplication of protest across a plethora of distribution ch annels, cutting right across the spectrum of alternative and mainstream, broadcast and networked media outlets. What remained true to the origin of the term 'tactical media' was to build on Michel de Certeau's insight that the 'tactics of the weak' operate on the terrain of strategic power through highly agile displacements and temporary interventions [8], creating a continuous nomadic movement, giving voice to the voiceless by means of 'any media necessary' (Critical Art Ensemble). However, the radical dispersal of wireless and mobile media technologies meant that mediated and embodied public spaces increasingly started to coincide, creating a new hybridised logic for social contestation. As witnessed in the remarkable series of public square occupations in 2011, through the digital conversion of public space the streets have become networks and the squares the medium for collective expression in a transnationally interconnected but still highly discontinuous media network.Horizontal networks / lateral connectionsOne of the remarkable characteristics of the various protests is not simply the adoption of similar tactics (most notably occupations of public city squares), but the conscious interlinking of events as they unfold. Italian activists of the Unicommons movement physically linked up with revolting students in Tunisia, Egyptian bloggers and occupiers of Tahrir Square linked up with the 'take the square' activists in Spain, who in turn expressed solidarity and even co-initiated transnational actions with #occupy activists in the United States and elsewhere. It is the first time that the new organisational logic of transnational horizontal networks that has been theorised for instance in the seminal work "Territory, Authority, Rights" by sociologist Saskia Sassen, has become so evidently visibl e in activists practices across a set of radically dispersed geographic assemblages.Horizontal networks by-pass traditional vertically integrated hierarchies of the local / national / international to create specific spatio-temporal transnational linkages around common interests, but also around affective ties. By and large these ties and linkages are still extra-institutional, largely informal, and because of their radically dispersed make up and their 'affective' constitution highly unstable. Political institutions have not even begun assembling an adequate response to these new emergent political constellations (other than traditional repressive instruments of strategic power, i.e. evictions, arrests, prohibitions). Given the structural inequalities that fuel the different strands of protest the longer term effectiveness of these measures remains highly uncertain. The institutional linkages at the moment seem mostly limited to anti-institutional contestation on the part of protestors and repressive gestures of strategic authority. The truly challenging pr oposition these new transnational linkages suggest, however, is their movement to bypass the nested hierarchies of vertically integrated power structures in a horizontal configuration of social organisation. They link up a bewildering array of local groups, sites, networks, geographies, and cultural contexts and sensitivities, taking seriously for the first time the networked space as a new 'frontier zone' (Sassen) where the new constellations of lateral transnational politics are going to be constructed.Charting the layered densities of hybrid spaceHybrid Space is discontinuous. It's density is always variable, from place to place, from moment to moment. Presence of carrier signals can be interrupted or restored at any moment. Coverage is never guaranteed. The economics of the wireless network space is a matter of continuous contestation, and transmitters are always accompanied by their own forms of electromagnetic pollution (electrosmog). Charting and navigating this discontinuous and unstable space, certainly for social and political activists, is therefore always a challenge. Some prominent elements in this cartography are emerging more clearly, however: - connectivity: presence or absence of the signal carrier wave is becoming an increasingly important factor in staging and mediating protest. Exclusive reliance on state and corporate controlled infrastructures thus becomes increasingly perilous.- censorship: censorship these days comes in many guises. Besides the continued forms of overt repression (arrests, confiscations, closures) of media outlets, new forms are the excessive application of intellectual property rights regimes to weed out unwarranted voices from the media landscape, but also highly effective forms of dis-information and information overflow, something that has called the political efficacy of a project like WikiLeaks emphatically into question.- circumvention: Great Information Fire Walls and information blockages are obvious forms of censorship, widely used during the Arab protests and common practice in China, now also spreading throughout the EU (under the guise of anti-piracy laws). These necessitate an ever more sophisticated understanding and deployment of internet censorship circumvention techniques, an understanding that should become common practice for contemporary activists. [9]- attention economies: attention is a sought after commodity in the informational society. It is also fleeting. (Media-) Activists need to become masters at seizing and displacing public attention. Agility and mobility are indispensable here.- public imagination management: Strategic operators try to manage public opinion. Activists cannot rely on this strategy. They do not have the means to keep and maintain public opinion in favour of their temporary goals. Instead activists should focus on 'public imagination management' - the continuous remembrance that another world is possible. Beyond semiotic corruption: A perverse subjectivityThe immersion in extended networks of affect that now permeate both embodied and mediated spaces introduces a new and inescapable corruption of subjectivity. Critical theory already taught us that we cannot trust subjectivity. However, the excessive self-mediation of protestors on the public square has shown that a deep desire for subjective articulation drives the manifestation in public. The dynamic is underscored further by upload statistics of video platforms such as youtube that continue to outpace the possibility for the global population to actually see and witness these materials. Rather than dismissing subjectivity it should be embraced. This requires a new attitude 'beyond good and evil', beyond critique and submission. A new perverse subjectivity is able to straddle the seemingly impossible divide between willing submission to various forms of corporate, state and social coercion, and vital social and political critique and contestation. It's maxim here: Relish your own commodification, embrace your perverse subjectivity, in order to escape the perversion of subjectivity.Eric KluitenbergAmsterdam, April 15, 2012.References:1 - See: David Garcia & Geert Lovink, The ABC of Tactical Media, May 1997, a.o. here: www.tacticalmediafiles.net/article.jsp?objectnumber=379962 - www.tacticalmediafiles.net 3 - Documentation of the Tactical Media Labs events can be found at: www.n5m4.org4 - Naomi Klein - Signs of the Times, in The Nation, October 5, 2001. Archived at: www.tacticalmediafiles.net/article.jsp?objectnumber=46632 5 - Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter, Dawn of the Organised Networks, in; Fibreculture Journal, Issue 5, 2005. http://five.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-029-dawn-of-the-organised-networks/6 - See my article The Network of Waves, and the theme issue Hybrid Space of Open - Journal for Art and the Public Domain, Amsterdam, 2006; www.tacticalmediafiles.net/article.jsp?objectnumber=48405 (the complete issue is linked as pdf file to the article). 7 - Critical Art Ensemble, Digital Resistance, Autonomedia, New York, 2001.8 - Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press, 1984.9 - A useful manual can be found here: www.flossmanuals.net/bypassing-censorship/

Dear nettimers,A few weeks ago, I posted a note to this list, "turning a q into a faq: cheap computers and conflict minerals". Briefly, the note was about asking the manufacturers of the ultra-cheap Raspberry Pi computer about their corporate stance on conflict minerals.http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6662 I just wanted to update you on what has happened since then. A few people responded to the call of turning the (Q)uestion about conflict minerals into a FAQ. And, sadly, we got incredibly pathetic replies, with which the manufacturers either tried to argue that the Raspberry Pi "only" used very little quantities of conflict minerals, or even dismissed the issue because "it's almost impossible to avoid conflict minerals, [and that's why we ignore them]"Read this thread for yourself:http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs#comment-17253 On subsequent questions, the Raspberry Pi staff started to get quite aggressive:http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs#comment-18666 I tried to reply to this last comment, but my reply was never published. Here's what I tried to tell them:"Yes, we deserve an answer. For the simple reason that we are potential buyers of the Raspberry Pi, and you are the manufacturers. If you don't believe we deserve a reply, why did you open a FAQ page? And no, we are not 'bugging' you. We are simply asking legitimate questions. In the case of bigger manufacturers of electronic devices (such as Apple), there are, correspondingly, bigger organizations asking these same questions. See, for example, Enough project's company rankings: http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/content/conflict-minerals-company-rankings"A small company shouldn't be free from scrutiny from its (potential) consumers. No matter how big or small, we should demand clear corporate responsibilities from the companies that manufacture our devices. Simply stating that a device is being built on the principles of "... want(ing) to break the paradigm where without spending hundreds of pounds on a PC, families can’t use the internet. We want owning a truly personal computer to be normal for children.", such as the Raspberry Pi (http://www.raspberrypi.org/about), doesn't justify a careless attitude towards conflict minerals. The "we can't do anything about it" narrative simply feeds the average consumer's feeling of radical impotence, in a time when we are becoming increasingly empowered to *actually* change things and make a difference. And when this story comes from a manufacturer, well... it's simply saddening.We used to evaluate our electronic devices on criteria such as price, computational power or interface design. Some of the more politically-inclined users prefer devices that support open source operating systems rather proprietary ones. But, given the state of the world, we should also consider ecological and social impacts of a company's practices as important criteria.The makers of Raspberry Pi are aggressively ignoring the issue of conflict minerals and, by the tone of their replies, they are not even willing to make a corporate responsibility statement. Bear that in mind before you consider buying their products.Thank you for reading.Eugenio.

interesting read...-aWorld War 3.0by Michael Joseph GrossWhen the Internet was created, decades ago, one thing was inevitable:the war today over how (or whether) to control it, and who should havethat power. Battle lines have been drawn between repressive regimesand Western democracies, corporations and customers, hackers and lawenforcement. Looking toward a year-end negotiation in Dubai, where 193nations will gather to revise a U.N. treaty concerning the Internet,Michael Joseph Gross lays out the stakes in a conflict that couldsplit the virtual world as we know it.I. Time BombIn 1979 the Dubai World Trade Centre dominated the skyline of DubaiCity, on the horn of the Arabian Peninsula. Today, the World TradeCentre looks quaint, like an old egg carton stuck into the groundamid a phantasma­goric forest of skyscrapers. But come December theWorld Trade Centre will once more be the most important place inDubai City—and, for a couple of weeks, one of the more importantplaces in the world. Diplomats from 193 countries will converge thereto renegotiate a United Nations treaty called the InternationalTelecommunications Regulations. The sprawling document, which governstelephone, television, and radio networks, may be extended to coverthe Internet, raising questions about who should control it, and how.Arrayed on one side will be representatives from the United Statesand other major Western powers, advocating what many call “Internetfreedom,” a plastic concept that has been defined by Secretary ofState Hillary Clinton as the right to use the Internet to “expressone’s views,” to “peacefully assemble,” and to “seek orshare” information. The U.S. and most of its allies basically wantto keep Internet governance the way it is: run by a small group oftechnical nonprofit and volunteer organizations, most of them based inthe United States.On the other side will be representatives from countries wheregovernments want to place restrictions on how people use the Internet.These include Russia, China, Brazil, India, Iran, and a host ofothers. All of them have implemented or experimented with moreintrusive monitoring of online activities than the U.S. is publiclyknown to practice. A number of countries have openly called for thecreation of a “new global body” to oversee online policy. At thevery least, they’d like to give the United Nations a great deal morecontrol over the Internet.cont. athttp://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/05/internet-regulation-war-sopa-pipa-defcon-hacking# 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

The Macroeconomic Identity of CommunismTravels have kept me from posting a new article here in quite a while,however despite the long break, I'd none the less like continuethe train of though from the last article, "It's The Macroeconomy,Stupid." /1/In that article, I start by explaining that a macroeconomic identity,as an accounting identity, an equality that must be true, no matterwhat the values of its variables are. I use these economic identitiesto develop the argument that the goals of the economic elite are notto maximize the level of productive output of the whole economy,but rather to maximize their share of total wealth, at any level ofeconomic output.This point of view explains the seemingly inexplicable austerityprograms being inflicted world wide. Cutting public spending inresponse to a private debt crisis looks like economic insanity.Understanding that the goal of the economic elite is increasing theirshare of wealth not the total economic output helps unveil the logicat work.Class struggle is not a struggle over how much output the entireeconomy produces, but over the relative portion of wealth that isretained by the contesting classes. The classes that are able toretain the greater portion are able to impose their interests over theothers. The class conflict is won by the classes that retains the mostwealth.The proposed macroeconomic identity X = C + Ip – Iw is an expressionof the concentration of income, Income concentration is equal toConsumption (C) plus Capitalist Investment (Ip) minus The socialcapacity of workers to invest (Iw).This expresses what is really being contested. The owners of the mainsof production essentially want Iw to be as close to zero as possible,because that portion of worker's income does not flow back to capitaland thus does not reproduce it.So, if the Capitalists want Iw to be driven down 0, what should theworkers' want? What would these variables look like under communism,a society where the working classes retained the entire productof their labour? Well, to start with, a society that did not topay tribute to owners and rulers would not necessarily engage inmarket transactions at all, producing and sharing would likly takegeneralized and gift forms. However, lets stick with the theoreticaland imagine we can express what the value flows might look like, ifthey where measurable.Starting again with the identity P + W = C + I, profit plus wages= consumption plus investment, Kalecki broke down C as Cw and Cpto distinguish the consumption of Capitalists from the Consumptionof workers. This, however, assumes that no other relevant mode ofproduction exists.Somewhere, Marx argues that a capitalist commodity can not properly beconsidered produced until it is consumed. That is, since capital makescommodities. not to fulfill needs or wants per se, but to increasecapital, the production cycle is not complete until the product hasbeen consumed and thus created profit. This is sometimes referredto as Valorization. The C in the above identity represents capitalvalorizing consumption.However, what about the production that results from what we defineas Iw, the social capacity of workers to invest? In order to changethe structure of wealth, workers' must prevent this income flow fromvalorizing capital and becoming profit, it must instead return toworkers.Thus, for our purposes, P + W = C + I can not be expanded simply as P+ W = Cw + Cp + Iw + Ip, because it is not interesting to us whetherconsumption is by capitalist or by workers, but whether the proceedsof such consumption become profit or flow back to workers. So, let'sreplace workers's consumption (Cw) and capitalists consumption (Cp)with a different breakdown; commons-based consumption (Cc) andmarket-based consumption (Cm).Now we have P + W = Cc + Cm + Iw + Ip. We can now separate this outfurther to reflect the economic power of capital vs the economic powerof labour, using P = Cm + Ip and W = Cm + Iw. And thereby derive arate of exploitation: E = Cm + Ip / Cm + Iw.Just like Iw represents the social capacity of workers to invest, andthereby the dissolution of capital, it's counterpart Cp representsthat portion of surplus value that is retained by capital but notinvested in production. So just as Capitalists need to drive Iw toward0 in order to maintain their class power, Communists need to push Cptowards zero in order to abolish class.To imagine a macroeconomic identity for communism, when no readymeans of measuring totality of I or C would exists as people wouldnot produce and share for exchange value, thus the ultimately measurewould be what did not exist: The need to measure exchange values inorder to calculate profit.Thus, the macroeconomic identity of communism is simple: Cm = 0.We have achieved communism when everyone can get everything they needwithout vaporizing any private capital. Which brings us back to how wecan get there, and counter-politics, venture communism and insurgentfinance, I will continue this theme over the upcoming weeks.In the meantime, I look forward to being at Stammtisch /2/ tonightaround 9pm, please come by if you can./1/ http://www.dmytri.info/its-the-macroeconomy-stupid//2/ http://bit.ly/buchhandlungYou can find a sharable version of this article online here:http://www.dmytri.info/the-macroeconomic-identity-of-communism/

’Net pioneer isn’t giving up on .nyc or on 481 othersApril 12, 2012 | Filed under: News | Posted by: admin (fwd. from Josephine Bosma)http://www.thevillager.com/?p=3489BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | The Internet is getting crowded. It’s something that East Village tech entrepreneur Paul Garrin has been saying for years.“The Internet is like the phone system — they needed more area codes,” Garrin explained.Now, ICANN, the nebulous organization that oversees the ’Net, is poised to approve possibly hundreds of new so-called generic top-level domain names, making them available for the global marketplace by this time next year. This would explode the Internet, adding an avalanche of address suffixes beyond the current scant offerings of .com, .org or .net.A three-month application period for new “T.L.D.s” will close this Thurs., April 12.“This is the land rush,” said Garrin, founder of name.space.“You’re going to start seeing useful domain names,” said Al Vazquez, name.space’s chief technology officer.It’s expected that many brand owners will go for their own T.L.D.s, such as .nike and .coke.Only a few new T.L.D.’s have been added since the Internet first took off. In 2000, seven were added, including .info and .biz, as well as .museum and .aero — but the latter two suffixes are only for use by museums or airports. In 2004, .jobs and .mobi (for mobile phones) were approved.However, name.space, the East Village-based start-up Garrin founded in 1996, already operates nearly 500 top-level domain names — but it does so outside of the “main root,” which is controlled by ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). Yet, all it takes to use Garrin’s system is a mere control-panel switch on one’s computer, as simple as changing a screen-saver image.In 2000, seeking to gain access to the main root, name.space paid ICANN a $50,000 application fee for approval of 118 of its T.L.D.s. — ones that would be expected to be top performers, according to Garrin. These included the likes of .art , .cafe , .cam , .free, .gay, .hotel, .jobs, .news, .politics, .sex, .shop, .sucks and .weather, among others.Referring to ICANN’s opening up .jobs for use in 2004, Garrin said it been “stolen” from name.space.“We want it back,” he declared.Also in this group of 118 T.L.D.s that name.space applied for in 2000 was the potentially lucrative .nyc, which Garrin still lays claim to as the Bloomberg administration is even now negotiating with a Virginia-based company to acquire and operate this address. Garrin calls this rival company “Virginia carpetbaggers,” and, by contrast, stresses that name.space is dedicated to a social mission that would use a portion of its profits to make a real difference in New York City.The New York Times reported last month that New York City is seeking a five-year contract with the Virginia company to run and market .nyc, under which the city would be guaranteed at least $3.6 million.Other top-level domain extensions that name.space still lays claim to — but that weren’t included in its application list of 118 prime names — include .blog, .chat, .food, .green, .law and .text.Critically important, Garrin said, all these address suffixes, including .nyc — 482, in total, coined by name.space — have been in continuous operation by his company since 1996. He even kept his T.L.D.s up and running when in 2003 he almost died from a burst appendix — using a laptop computer in his hospital bed.Last month, name.space’s counsel wrote ICANN, restating the company’s claim to its 482 T.L.D.s.Garrin tends not to disclose the numbers of users name.space has. But, Domain Incite, a Web publication, in an article last month, dubbed it “a lightly used alternate D.N.S. root system.”But the profits that stand to be made with T.L.D.s are huge. For example, VeriSign, which runs the registration for .com and .net, is valued at $5.5 billion.To this day, ICANN has yet to resolve Garrin’s 2000 application, and this is intentional, he accused, because they don’t want to acknowledge it.Meanwhile, under the new process now starting, ICANN is charging a steep fee of $185,000 for each application for a new T.L.D. If name.space were to reapply under these new rules, it would have to pay a whopping $21.8 million.“They’re trying to price us out of our own business,” Garrin said.Plus, name.space won’t reapply because that would mean relinquishing its claims under its previous application, he pointed out — adding that’s exactly what ICANN would want them to do.“We’re asking people to opt into our D.N.S.,” Garrin said of his domain name system. “They don’t have to wait for ICANN — they can start today.”To buy a domain name, such as soho.politics, westvillage.food or eastvillage.sex, from name.space would typically cost $30.Reverend Billy, for one, has already registered an address with name.space — starbucks.sucks.Garrin strongly opposes speculative “squatters” who swoop in and buy T.L.D.s, then hold them hostage until they can make a killing. However, he said, his company might auction off more valuable names.Although name.space is continuing to operate in its alternate root, Garrin said, “Our goal is to get into the main root. We don’t want to split the root.”Garrin said they don’t want to have to sue ICANN for trademark infringement.If accepted into the main root, name.space’s business would, no doubt, go through the roof.“If we launch with 100 domain names, the return in five years would be $1.1 billion,” Garrin said.Under name.space’s mission, part of that money would be channeled back into New York neighborhoods through “community reinvestment, affordable broadband, digital literacy and adoption, and bridging the digital divide.”The Internet pioneer has written to local politicians, asking for their help in his fight to retain his top-level domain names — which, he notes, he created two years before ICANN itself was even created.Mayor Bloomberg wants New York City to become “Silicon Valley East.” As Garrin pointed out in his letter to Congressmember Carolyn Maloney on April 5, name.space is already well positioned to be a leader in that technological revolution.As Garrin wrote to Maloney, “A favorable outcome is meaningful, especially in this time of economic crisis as name.space will create jobs and opportunities, and bring cash and data economy to New York City that would otherwise go to Australia, the U.K., Virginia, California or elsewhere.”A graduate of The Cooper Union, Garrin was recently included in the prestigious East Village school’s Hall of Fame. Yet he ultimately turned his back on the art world because he found it too ego-ridden and wanted to give something back to society.He’s also known for having made one of the two main videotapes of the 1988 Tompkins Square Park riot.With the growth of the Web, he found a place to both fight the power and fulfill his calling for a higher purpose.“There’s no public good coming out of ICANN,” Garrin said. “It’s a small clique of people that are colluding to corner the market.” name.space itself, he said, is “a kind of declaration of freedom in cyberspace and it’s a way around big media control. We can break it. We can claim our space in the realm of media. This is one more way people can control the future direction of the Internet.”As part of the “opt-in” campaign for its domain name system, name.space is currently opening up registrations on its new Web site, at http://namespace.us .--The Villager encourages readers to share articles.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Find below a modded version of part of the discussion raging on analternate list regarding the "New Aesthetic". Enjoy [or don't].------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In an effort to keep this manageable [lump me into one of your keeerazzzyglitch/net.art/web-point-infinity/relational & new aesthetically-defined "artistic" categories ifyou will] here's some [non-random + IMO relevant but not necessarilycohesive] points:1. I've only skimmed the Bruce Sterling essays [both of them] and don'thave an in-depth overview of the term "New Aesthetic" [henceforth now to beknown as "Phrase That Will Not Be Named" in an effort to reduce theridiculous amount of verification we are bubble-developing around it]. Sothere.2. My flickering attention-focus [hullo, continuous partial attn syndrome]has honed in on this particular attempt at avant-garde labelling because ofhow it perpetuates the tradition of "name the new art phase in order toperform/get x" [whether x = ego aggrandisement/monetary wealth/extend anindividuals prosperity>cred value]. To employ a relevant phrase: it justsmells wrong. And by smelling wrong I'm in no way referring to Bridle orhis content [I have been rss_internalising his tumblr for some time now =it rawks: though I had no idea of his name until this whole labellingblerghness blew up] or any other glitch-luvin' practitioners or creativetypes. After all, I'm one of them.3. My seeming lack of attention to research regarding the "Phrase That WillNot Be Named", or lack of "deep (articulated) thought" regarding the issueisn't indicative of a negative outlook on "the glitch". Nor is it due tolack of engagement with the actual material/pulsing creative output that's[possibly, hopefully] superseding many flattened contemporary "art scenes"[read: institutions as opposed to practices]. My lack of focused attentionis due to the fact that *i'm_actually_living_the_aesthetic_in_question* +have been for years [New? bah!]. The life of a "Phrase That Will Not BeNamed" advocate *requires* continuous partial attention: it *requires* aprofound adherence to deriving substantiated [yet seemingly ephemeral]meaning from "the now" [ie connective novelty formation, expressive +anonymous appropriation devoid of ego/exclusive monetisation, thecontinuous fact of networked/communication immediacy/recursion, aburgeoning maker/hacktivist practice-aesthetic, the growing irrelevancy ofstandardised content/institutionalised values + associated comprehensionloadings]. Dragging an antiquated, faux-trendoid label and slapping it overset of practices that have been in operation for as long as directeddigital communication/tech platforms have coalesced = bad whiff, not tomention downright offensive. It's the problem of seeking to stuffuncategorised, non-art-defined forms into format [+ vice versa], ofassigning crusty paradigms/terms to output [like Bridle + his tumblr]that's being subsumed into a discourse designed topinpoint/catalogue/perpetuate. Drawing a [restrictive labelling] box arounda set of expression[s] that exist as working practices seems like inverseencouragement: this disappointing need tocontextualise>label>scene-create>institutionalise>monetise = sad[pandamaking. Google "sad panda" if you don't get the reference].4. Content curation isn't art. The urge to perform it may be similar towhat drives artists to produce: in many cases, content curation is aceaseless search for connection through firehosed content streams/"novelty"verification that may just ellipse the need for art/cultureclassifications. Is it possible to conceptualise a world where the need toframe practice/process/product through cultural or artistic filters islargely obsolete? [reddit.com + 4chan.org + 9gag.com + tumblr.com = givingit a decent go.]5. Appropriating + remixing graphic markers/standards from marginalised or"other-fied" disciplines/decades does not a new genre/paradigm make,especially when begging to be [or deliberately engineered to be] monetisedby a system and/or individuals determined to emergent-capture [yes, thisincludes institutionally sanctioned galleries + alternative galleries +oldschool curators + newskool aggregators + conference-merry-go-rounders +theorists + panels + karma-seeking discourse boffins]. Codify, hipsterise +aggrandise at your leisure, but be prepared for watered-down, digestible,bastardised versions of worthwhile social + expressive currencies.6. And so it goes.7. This too will pass.[Mostly-too-large-2-chew]Chunks,Mez/< at >netwurker

Dear all,in Italy some social centre, students' network, unions, occupied theatreand cinemas, associations* launched "Blockupy Frankfurt" on 10th ofFebruary, at Occupied Valle Theatre in Rome*, with comrades from Germany,Spain and several est-european countries.Since that date we carried on meetings with comrades from Germany anddebates about Europe to enlarge italian participation to Frankfurt.Here you find the launch of a seminar about Europe organized by the StudyCentre Common Alternative.. if you are around take the chance to join us atSala Vittorio Arrigoni in San Lorenzo!best and see u soonclaudia*****21-22 April,at the ex Cinema Palazzo/sala Vittorio Arrigoni(P. dei Sanniti, San Lorenzo - Rome)*Centro studi per l'Alternativa comune*(with *Ass. Lavoro e Libert?)**Europe in line for catastrophe*With the arrival of Monti on the scene, approval of the Fiscal Compact andthe second tranche of aid for Greece the storm sweeping Europe since thespring of 2010 and the most indebted countries, the so-called PIIGS(Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) appeared to have abated.Nothing could be farther from the truth. The danger focused on insolvencyfor Greece, still deferring the certainty of default, shifted to Portugaland Spain and persistent warnings are continuing to keep Italy on guard aswell. The reason is simple: austerity policy enforced by the Bundesbank andthe ECB which can do nothing other than lead to strong recession crises.Was it possible to avert a second great crash, following the one of 1929,from exploding beginning in August 2007 by applying procycle deflationaryfiscal policies? Evidently not, and the data prove this in unequivocalterms. The Fiscal Compact, in the absence of expansionary monetary policiesand the construction of a new EU welfare community, has done nothing otherthan expand the sovereign debt crisis to such countries as France andGermany, which appeared rock solid. That the euro is still at risk isunderscored by such authoritative figures as George Soros who, for years,has been betting on the demise of the euro along with other American hedgefund managers. Is this a self-fulfilling prophesy? Probably. But the pointis that Europe is not doing anything to distance the disaster. In additionto short-sighted economic policy comes the crisis of democracy. There areno democratic European institutions, only the inter-governmental Europetotally dominated by the currency Europe, the Bundesbank and the ECB. Inspite of the 2000 Charter of Nice, there is no Europe of fundamental rightsand welfare and while the Europe of citizens was set forth in some way inthe Treaty of Lisbon, Citizens? Initiatives allowing citizens from acrossthe EU Member States to submit proposals directly to the EuropeanCommission still carry no weight in the management of the economic crisis.And while austerity has been the guideline chosen for the budgets of theEuropean states, lack of job security has taken over more-or-lesseverywhere. Since the painful Red-Green Hartz reforms in Germany and thelabor market reforms laid out by Rajoy and Monti, the right to work hasbeen shattered in the name of the business interests which are woven intoand distinguish the social policies of all the European governments. Fewerrights, greater job insecurity and, above all, lower wages. The attack onreal earnings, along with deferred welfare spending, is a process which isbringing an entire generation to its knees, determining sudden destitution.The European social model, a model based on rights and welfare, inclusionand citizenship, is being thrown radically into doubt by neo-liberalrecipes, recipes which use the gasoline deployed at the end of the 1920s toput out flames already high. Building a European movement capable ofopposing all this heads the agenda of the day for those who are unwillingto succumb to the axe of neo-liberal policy. Redefining the blueprints ofcritical thinking in a way to face this challenge, on the terrain ofanalyses as well, is the purpose of the seminar set up by the *Centro studiper l'Alternativa comune* (Study Center for a Common Alternative) incooperation with the *Associazione Lavoro e Libert**?* (Labor and LibertyAssociation). All this with an view to mobilization for May 17 to 19 inFrankfurt where a wide range of movements of forces, German labor andpolitical representatives, are promoting a highly visible protest againstthe austerity policies enacted by the ECB.21.04 h 10Introduction:Francesco Raparelli21.04 h 10:15*1. **The Euro Under Attack*Introduction:Luca CasariniLectures:Christian MarazziKlaus BuschRiccardo Bellofiore21.04 h 14:30*2. **Work Without Rights and Basic Income *Introduction:Gianni RinaldiniLectures:Francesco GaribaldoAntonio LettieriPapi Bronzini22.04 h 10*3. **Democracy, Fundamental Rights and the European Social Model*Introduction:Roberto MusacchioLectures:Richard HymanAnna SimoneFederica Giardini22.04 h 12:30*To conclude: from Frankfurt to "ICE" on Basic Income*Intervention: Shendi Veli (*Anomalia Sapienza/UniCommon*);Lorenzo Marsili (*European Alternatives*)*Info: **www.alternativacomune.eu* <http://www.alternativacomune.eu/>*Streaming: **www.globalproject.info* <http://www.globalproject.info/>

<https://help.riseup.net/en/seizure-2012-april>Server Seizure, April 2012 April 18th, 2012, Riseup had a server seized by the US Federal Authorities. This is our press release. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FBI seizes server providing anonymous remailer and many other services from colocation facility.Contacts:[17] * Riseup Networks, Devin Theriot-Orr, 206-708-8740, sunbird< at >riseup.net * May First/People Link, Jamie McClelland, 917-509-5734, jm< at >mayfirst.org * ECN: Isole Nella Rete, inr-sGOZH3hwPm2sTnJN9+BGXg< at >public.gmane.orgAttack on Anonymous Speech[18] On Wednesday, April 18, at approximately 16:00 Eastern Time, U.S. Federal authorities removed a server from a colocation facility shared by Riseup Networks and May First/People Link in New York City. The seized server was operated by the European Counter Network ("ECN"), the oldest independent internet service provider in Europe, who, among many other things, provided an anonymous remailer service, Mixmaster, that was the target of an FBI investigation into the bomb threats against the University of Pittsburgh. "The company running the facility has confirmed that the server was removed in conjunction with a search warrant issued by the FBI," said May First/People Link director Jamie McClelland. "The server seizure is not only an attack against us, but an attack against all users of the Internet who depend on anonymous communication." Disrupted in this seizure were academics, artists, historians, feminist groups, gay rights groups, community centers, documentation and software archives and free speech groups. The server included the mailing list "cyber rights" (the oldest discussion list in Italy to discuss this topic), a Mexican migrant solidarity group, and other groups working to support indigenous groups and workers in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. In total, over 300 email accounts, between 50-80 email lists, and several other websites have been taken off the Internet by this action. None are alleged to be involved in the anonymous bomb threats. "The FBI is using a sledgehammer approach, shutting down service to hundreds of users due to the actions of one anonymous person," said Devin Theriot-Orr, a spokesperson for Riseup. "This is particularly misguided because there is unlikely to be any information on the server regarding the source of the threatening emails." "We sympathize with the University of Pittsburgh community who have had to deal with this frightening disruption for weeks. We oppose such threatening actions. However, taking this server won't stop these bomb threats. The only effect it has is to also disrupt e-mail and websites for thousands of unrelated people," continues Mr. Theriot-Orr. "Furthermore, the network of anonymous remailers that exists is not harmed by taking this machine. So we cannot help but wonder why such drastic action was taken when authorities knew that the server contained no useful information that would help in their investigation." The FBI purportedly seized the server because it was hosting an anonymous remailer called Mixmaster. Anonymous remailers are used to send email anonymously, or pseudonymously. Like other anonymizing services such as the Tor network, these remailers are widely used to protect the identity of human rights activists who place themselves and their families in grave danger by reporting information about abuses. Remailers are also important for corporate whistle blowers, democracy activists working under repressive regimes, and others to communicate vital information that would otherwise go un-reported. The Mixmaster software is specifically designed to make it impossible for anyone to trace the emails. The system does not record logs of connections, details of who sent messages, or how they were routed. This is because the Mixmaster network is specifically designed to resist censorship, and support privacy and anonymity. Unfortunately, some people misuse the network. However, compared to the rate of legitimate use, the abuse rate is very low. There is therefore no legitimate purpose for the FBI to seize this server because they will not be able to obtain any information about the sender. This is plainly extra-judicial punishment and an attack on free speech and anonymity on the internet and serves as a chilling effect on others providers of anonymous remailers or other anonymous services. In absence of any other leads, the FBI needs to show that they are making progress in this case, and this has meant seizing a server so they can proudly demonstrate they are taking some action. But what this incident shows is they are grasping at straws and are willing to destroy innocent bystanders for the sake of protecting their careers.About the organizations involved[19] MayFirst/People Link ([20]mayfirst.org) is a politically-progressive member-run and controlled organization that redefines the concept of "Internet Service Provider" in a collective and collaborative way. May First/People Link's members are organizers and activists who elect a Leadership Committee to direct the organization. Like a coop, members pay dues, buy equipment and then share that equipment for websites, email, email lists, and other Internet purposes. Riseup Networks ([21]riseup.net) provides online communication tools for people and groups working on liberatory social change. Riseup creates democratic alternatives and practices self-determination by controlling our own secure means of communications. ECN (European Counter Network - [22]ecn.org) is the oldest independent service provider in Europe providing free email accounts, mailing lists, and websites to organizations, activists, and movements that are involved in human rights, freedom of speech and information in Italy and Europe. ECN is anti-fascist and works towards a just and equal society. Years ago, before sites like Youtube and Vimeo existed, ECN created a platform called NGV where people could upload and share independent video of human rights violations. Nowadays ECN works primarily with anti-fascist and anti-Nazi movements in all of Europe, providing space and resources to political and social centers.Questions / further reading[23] Q: Doesn't Mixmaster/anonymous remailers enable criminals to do bad things? A: Criminals can already do bad things. Since they're willing to break laws, they already have lots of options available that provide better privacy than mixmaster provides. They can steal cell phones, use them, and throw them in a ditch; they can crack into computers in Korea or Brazil and use them to launch abusive activities; they can use spyware, viruses, and other techniques to take control of literally millions of Windows machines around the world. Mixmaster aims to provide protection for ordinary people who want to follow the law. Only criminals have privacy right now, and we need to fix that. Some advocates of anonymity explain that it's just a tradeoff -- accepting the bad uses for the good ones -- but there's more to it than that. Criminals and other bad people have the motivation to learn how to get good anonymity, and many have the motivation to pay well to achieve it. Being able to steal and reuse the identities of innocent victims (identify theft) makes it even easier. Normal people, on the other hand, don't have the time or money to spend figuring out how to get privacy online. This is the worst of all possible worlds. So yes, criminals could in theory use mixmaster, but they already have better options, and it seems unlikely that taking mixmaster away from the world will stop them from doing bad things. At the same time, mixmaster and other privacy measures can fight identity theft, physical crimes like stalking, and so on. Please see the [24]tor FAQ on abuse for more information. Q: How does Mixmaster / Anonymous remailers work? A: Anonymous remailers work by connecting to other anonymous remailers in a chain, and every one in that chain removes the mail header information making it impossible to find the real sender. [25]The Tor project maintains a list of typical users of this and other anonymity systems, and the [26]Mixmaster home page [English..] This site is run by riseup.net, your friendly autonomous tech collective since 1999.References 17. https://help.riseup.net/en/seizure-2012-april#contacts 18. https://help.riseup.net/en/seizure-2012-april#attack-on-anonymous-speech 19. https://help.riseup.net/en/seizure-2012-april#about-the-organizations-involved 20. https://mayfirst.org/ 21. https://riseup.net/ 22. https://ecn.org/ 23. https://help.riseup.net/en/seizure-2012-april#questions-further-reading 24. https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq-abuse.html 25. https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en 26. http://mixmaster.sourceforge.net/

April 19, 2012FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEON-THE-BRINK BANK STILL NOT YOURS (YET)Dow Jones posts fake release for two hours; bank gets fake website blacklisted, briefly Contact: bofa-6pgEvrInS3Adnm+yROfE0A< at >public.gmane.orgBank of America executives, investors, and opponents alike reacted with surprise to yesterday's news—posted for two hours on Dow Jones Newswire and elsewhere—that the mammoth financial institution, realizing it was heading for a taxpayer bailout, was asking Americans to start thinking about what they'll do with the bank once they own it, and to start advertising that vision too.The news, of course, was a hoax.The fake YourBofA.com website was quickly, but temporarily, blacklisted by Google as a potential "phishing scam," despite the site containing no forms, spyware, or other characteristics of a site engaging in phishing. Firefox and Google Chrome users who tried to load YourBofA.com were warned that the site may be "dangerous," while some individuals with Gmail accounts reported that emails containing the URL were bounced back or not delivered. An investigation by Raw Story concluded that "It's likely that Bank of America reported the site to Google as a phishing scam." Shortly after the article's publication—and with the help of thousands of volunteers complaining to Google—the website was taken off the blacklist.Today's reports of slumping profits make the fake site all the more timely. "This site is a forum for people to imagine what they could do with this bank," said Jane O'Heely of the Yes Lab, one of the site's creators. "The ideas we've gotten already show we all know as much as bankers about how a bank ought to be run—and actually, a good deal more.""A bank doesn't have to be something that charges you fees, invests your money in things you abhor, destroys poor communities with predatory lending, and then threatens to take down the global economy if you don't agree to bail it out," said Logan Price, who helped create BreakUpBofA.com. "Thinking of alternatives to this nightmare is not rocket science."The hoax was perpetrated by means of a fake press release; it was followed two hours later with a fake angry retort, so that no journalist would be fooled for very long. "We wanted to get people thinking about how they'd run banking differently, not to really fool anyone," noted O'Heely. "The whole fake release thing was just a way to publicize it and get people posting ideas and ads.""Any response by Bank of America would just help spread the word, and they seem to know that," added O'Heely. When Bank of America got Google to blacklist the website as "phishing" (which it was not), the Yes Lab mobilized 4000 volunteers to complain, which quickly worked to de-list the site and give this press release a small extra hook.The website's centerpiece is an open call to American taxpayers to begin considering what they will do after a bailout, when they'll have a chance to become the company’s majority owners. The "bank" also asks the public to advertise their visions with a tool for generating web banners—images that could give Bank of America a very real "google problem" not unlike Chevron's. The site also includes a letter from CEO Brian Moynihan that admits to the bank's many failings—short- sighted investment decisions and the massive accumulation of le gal liabilities, causing plummeting share prices and inexorably pushing the company towards a public bailout.The YourBofA.com website was a collaboration between the Yes Lab, Rainforest Action Network, and New Bottom Line. A number of folks within Occupy Wall Street's Alternative Banking working group also helped with the site. Like other Yes Lab websites, this one is hosted by May First / People Link.The website comes at a time of rampant distrust of big banks. Even top Federal Government regulators have recently called for the end of "too big to fail." As Harvey Rosenblum, the head of the Dallas Fed’s research department, recently wrote: "Many of the biggest banks have sputtered, their balance sheets still clogged with toxic assets accumulated in the boom years... creating a residue of distrust for the government, the banking system, the Fed and capitalism itself.""Most Americans, and even some regulators, see what's wrong with the state of our banking system," said Price. "We have a real opportunity to safely and proactively push this company towards managed bankruptcy and create smaller, more responsive financial institutions that help American communities rather than harm them."

-------- Original-Nachricht --------Betreff: [Imc-africa] Endorsement of civil society statementDatum: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:59:20 -0400Von: Mallory Knodel <mallory-H9ulVa8nQ7tg9hUCZPvPmw< at >public.gmane.org>Included in this message is a statement from civil society organizations denouncing actions by the US government and a press release issued by the affected organizations. Please forward to your networks and send your endorsements to mallory-lfLxPaknImo< at >public.gmane.org before Monday night April 23rd.***Progressive internet rights organisations strongly denounce attack on anonymous online speech by US government*The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and the following endorsing organisations strongly denounce recent actions by US Federal Authorities that threaten a democratic internet, silencing hundreds of users around the world for the misuse of anonymous internet services by one person.This week, three politically-progressive internet service providers and hundreds of their users were attacked by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation for supporting the use of the internet by anonymous users. "On Wednesday, April 18, at approximately 16:00 Eastern Time, U.S. Federal authorities removed a server from a colocation facility shared by Riseup Networks and May First/People Link in New York City, a statement by the service provider reads. The seized server was operated by the European Counter Network ("ECN"), the oldest independent internet service provider in Europe, who, among many other things, provided an anonymous remailer service, Mixmaster, that was the target of an FBI investigation into the bomb threats against the University of Pittsburgh."At this time in history when the internet is under increased surveillance and control by repressive governments around the world, the seizure of email servers in New York by FBI agents sends out a clear signal that democratic governments are ready to arbitrarily circumvent the rule of law.Jamie McClelland, director of May First/People Link said, "We cannot stop malicious anonymous e-mail without also destroying the ability to use anonymous e-mail for beneficial purposes. According to the news, the bomb threats continue to arrive at University of Pittsburgh after this outrageous seizure. There is no positive outcome to this action by the FBI."The FBI has effectively shut down service to hundreds of users and their harsh actions can only be interpreted as threatening to anonymous use of the internet. "Like other anonymizing services such as the TOR network, these remailers are widely used to protect the identity of human rights activists who place themselves and their families in grave danger by reporting information about abuses, the ISP statement continues. Remailers are also important for corporate whistle blowers, democracy activists working under repressive regimes, and others to communicate vital information that would otherwise go un-reported.""Such heavy-handed interventions by governments are a violation of US communication law and internet rights, as defined by the Internet Rights Charter, and we call on government leaders to stop these attacks on civil society and internet users' rights," stressed APC executive director, Anriette Esterhuysen.We stand with May First/People Link, Riseup, and the European Counter Network against these attacks on users of the internet who depend on anonymous communication.If you wish to endorse this statement please send your name and organisation (if applicable) to mallory-lfLxPaknImo< at >public.gmane.org with "Endorsement" in the subject line.Signed,**===***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE**Contacts:*Riseup Networks <https://riseup.net/>, Devin Theriot-Orr, 206-708-8740,sunbird-sGOZH3hwPm2sTnJN9+BGXg< at >public.gmane.org <mailto:sunbird-sGOZH3hwPm2sTnJN9+BGXg< at >public.gmane.org>May First/People Link <https://mayfirst.org/>, Jamie McClelland, 917-509-5734,jm-H9ulVa8nQ7tg9hUCZPvPmw< at >public.gmane.org <mailto:jm-H9ulVa8nQ7tg9hUCZPvPmw< at >public.gmane.org>ECN: Isole Nella Rete,inr-sGOZH3hwPm2sTnJN9+BGXg< at >public.gmane.org <mailto:inr-sGOZH3hwPm2sTnJN9+BGXg< at >public.gmane.org>On Wednesday, April 18, at approximately 16:00 ET, U.S. Federal authorities removed a server from a colocation facility shared by Riseup Networks and May First/People Link in New York City.The seized server was operated by the European Counter Network ("ECN"), the oldest independent internet service provider in Europe, who, among many other things, provided an anonymous remailer service, Mixmaster, that was the target of an FBI investigation into the bomb threats against the University of Pittsburgh."The company running the facility has confirmed that the server was removed in conjunction with a search warrant issued by the FBI," said May First/People Link director Jamie McClelland. "The server seizure is not only an attack against us, but an attack against all users of the Internet who depend on anonymous communication."Disrupted in this seizure were academics, artists, historians, feminist groups, gay rights groups, community centers, documentation and software archives and free speech groups. The server included the mailing list "cyber rights" (the oldest discussion list in Italy to discuss this topic), a Mexican migrant solidarity group, and other groups working to support indigenous groups and workers in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. In total, over 300 email accounts, between 50-80 email lists, and several other websites have been taken off the Internet by this action. None are alleged to be involved in the anonymous bomb threats."The FBI is using a sledgehammer approach, shutting down service to hundreds of users due to the actions of one anonymous person," said Devin Theriot-Orr, a spokesperson for Riseup. "This is particularly misguided because there is unlikely to be any information on the server regarding the source of the threatening emails.""We sympathize with the University of Pittsburgh community who have had to deal with this frightening disruption for weeks. We oppose such threatening actions. However, taking this server won't stop these bomb threats. The only effect it has is to also disrupt e-mail and websites for thousands of unrelated people," continues Mr. Theriot-Orr. "Furthermore, the network of anonymous remailers that exists is not harmed by taking this machine. So we cannot help but wonder why such drastic action was taken when authorities knew that the server contained no useful information that would help in their investigation."The FBI purportedly seized the server because it was hosting an anonymous remailer calledMixmaster <http://mixmaster.sourceforge.net/>. Anonymous remailers are used to send email anonymously, or pseudonymously. Like other anonymizing services such as the Tor network, these remailers are widely used to protect the identity of human rights activists who place themselves and their families in grave danger by reporting information about abuses. Remailers are also important for corporate whistle blowers, democracy activists working under repressive regimes, and others to communicate vital information that would otherwise go un-reported.TheMixmaster <http://mixmaster.sourceforge.net/>software is specifically designed to make it impossible for anyone to trace the emails. The system does not record logs of connections, details of who sent messages, or how they were routed. This is because theMixmaster <http://mixmaster.sourceforge.net/>network is specifically designed to resist censorship, and support privacy and anonymity. Unfortunately, some people misuse the network. However, compared to the rate of legitimate use, the abuse rate is very low. There is therefore no legitimate purpose for the FBI to seize this server because they will not be able to obtain any information about the sender. This is plainly extrajudicial punishment and an attack on free speech and anonymity on the internet and serves as a chilling effect on others providers of anonymous remailers or other anonymous services.===*ADDITIONAL INFORMATION*PR in Espa?ol <https://mayfirst.org/es/el-fbi-decomiso-un-servidor>Statement from May First/People Link: https://mayfirst.org/fbi-attacks-anonymous-speechMayFirst/People Link (mayfirst.org) is a politically-progressive member-run and controlled organization that redefines the concept of "Internet Service Provider" in a collective and collaborative way. May First/People Link's members are organizers and activists who elect a Leadership Committee to direct the organization. Like a coop, members pay dues, buy equipment and then share that equipment for websites, email, email lists, and other Internet purposes.Riseup Networks (riseup.net) provides online communication tools for people and groups working on liberatory social change. Riseup creates democratic alternatives and practices self-determination by controlling our own secure means of communications.ECN (European Counter Network -- ecn.org) is the oldest independent service provider in Europe providing free email accounts, mailing lists, and websites to organizations, activists, and movements that are involved in human rights, freedom of speech and information in Italy and Europe. ECN is anti-fascist and works towards a just and equal society. Years ago, before sites like Youtube and Vimeo existed, ECN created a platform called NGV where people could upload and share independent video of human rights violations. Nowadays ECN works primarily with anti-fascist and anti-Nazi movements in all of Europe, providing space and resources to political and social centers.