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Radical Openness and #LiWoLi 2012Tomorrow I head to Linz, Austria to participate in LiWoLi 2012.Thinking about "the challenges of a open practice" gets me thinking about what "radical openness" could mean. On the surface, it could just mean really, really, extremely, very open. But that's a overly colloquial understanding of the word radical, as in "totally rad," as opposed to "radical critique."Extreme or drastic is not necessarily radical. Radical requires a fundamental transformation, change so deep it goes to the root, the "radix". Radical has the a same linguistic root as "radish," the edible root vegetable of the Brassicaceae family.Thus, to be radical, a practice has to get at the root, to work towards a fundamental transformation, no matter how moderate or gradual.Radical openness would be not necessarily mean being as open as one could be, but rather working towards the fundamental obstacles to openness that exist, perhaps even in ways that are not open, or less open we might like.To be open, we need to be safe and we need to be alive.To be safely open requires us to have the freedom and privileged to speak our mind, to do as we please. When what you want to say, or do is unwelcome by powerful forces, perhaps because what you are sayingand doing is something they consider threatening to their interests, you can not be safe. So long as inequality and intolerance exists in society, any chance we have to get the freedom to pursue radical openness requires us to have privacy, requires us to be able to chosewhen and with whom to be open. Not having privacy means that we will have less openness.Radical openness requires privacy.To be alive we require food and shelter and the necessities of life, and in a capitalist society, what we do, our practice, is largely formed by our participation in the labour market, in order to obtain such necessities. As such, not only the practice, but what becomes of the results of work, is determined not by our own wishes, but by the logic of capitalism. This logic means thae do, our practice, is largely formed by our participation in the labour market, in order to obtain such necessities. As such, not only the practice, but what becomes of the results of work, is determined not by our own wishes, but by the logic of capitalism. This logic means that in most cases we can not chose either the conditions of our labour nor the terms of distribution of what we create. For the masses, openness in terms of their productive life is simply not a practice they can chose. This means that the degt in most cases we can not chose either the conditions of our labour nor the terms of distribution of what we create. For the masses, openness in terms of their productive life is simply not a practice they can chose. This means that the degree of openness that we can have is not determined by individual choice, but by collective struggle.Radical openness requires collective struggle.In this light, radical openness can only mean the collective struggle for a more open society, which is a society where open practice is not threatened by repression or economic consequence.Which means that radical openness must be closed to violations of privacy and to economic exploitation.A sharable version of this text can be found here:http://www.dmytri.info/radical-openness-and-liwoli-2012/I'll be at stammtisch {2} this evening around 9pm as usual.{1} http://liwoli.at{2} http://bit.ly/buchhandlung

chris mann <chrisman-KealBaEQdz4< at >public.gmane.org> Re: <nettime> Capitalism is FINISHED -- As a Result of the Internet!Newmedia-YDxpq3io04c< at >public.gmane.org Re: <nettime> Capitalism is FINISHED -- As a Result of the Internet!Newmedia-YDxpq3io04c< at >public.gmane.org COMMUNISM Has Arrived (in fact, a long time ago)!- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Mon, 21 May 2012 09:35:45 -0400Subject: Re: <nettime> Capitalism is FINISHED -- As a Result of the Internet!From: chris mann <chrisman-KealBaEQdz4< at >public.gmane.org>isnt the point rather that people invest in apple coz its walled gardenaesthetic is the most like television? i mean if the digital is thesuburban expression of the quantum, an ode to the death of causality(seattle used to be kneedeep in mormans who believed the (ms) pc to be thedemocratised urim and thummim of a new age), then of course theres going tobe a push for things that look like moments that nostalge (what i think thedsm refers to as 'self regard' and economists refer to as 'bubbles'. i meanwhat did you expect, music?On 20 May 2012 12:26, <Newmedia-YDxpq3io04c< at >public.gmane.org> wrote: <...>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -From: Newmedia-YDxpq3io04c< at >public.gmane.orgDate: Mon, 21 May 2012 09:49:11 -0400 (EDT)Subject: Re: <nettime> Capitalism is FINISHED -- As a Result of the Internet!Chris: Of course! Why did the *only* people who used Macintoshes in business come from the "creative department"? What "creative" means here is *commercial art* which is almost entirely in *service* to mass-media (i.e. "promotion" and "advertising.") Kids waiting in line for a new iPhone -- hoping to become "famous" among their friends or maybe even on the evening news -- are acting out *television* fantasies. The "sensibility" of TELEVISION is 100% closed and "in control." It is, after all, "propaganda" (in Ellul's sense of "totallizing") and that requires a CLOSED environment. Jonathan is correct to associate Apple with "conspicuous consumption" because that is the *behavior* of both those who slavishly buy Apple products *and* what they project onto the rest of the world through their attitudes and, in many cases, their jobs! However, OPEN is the *digital* sensibility and as more-and-more of the world makes that transition, this will be a growing problem for Apple. Mark StahlmanBrooklyn NY In a message dated 5/21/2012 9:35:45 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, chrisman-KealBaEQdz4< at >public.gmane.org writes:isnt the point rather that people invest in apple coz its walled garden aesthetic is the most like television? i mean if the digital is the suburban expression of the quantum, an ode to the death of causality (seattle used to be kneedeep in mormans who believed the (ms) pc to be the democratised urim and thummim of a new age), then of course theres going to be a push for things that look like moments that nostalge (what i think the dsm refers to as 'self regard' and economists refer to as 'bubbles'. i mean what did you expect, music? <...>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -From: Newmedia-YDxpq3io04c< at >public.gmane.orgDate: Mon, 21 May 2012 14:07:52 -0400 (EDT)Subject: COMMUNISM Has Arrived (in fact, a long time ago)![from Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp.372-3] To Prince Bernard of the Netherlands (May 14, 1969) Your Royal Highness: It was good to be there. [The Bilderberg meeting took place May 9-11, 1969 in Elsinore, Denmark] It is good to be back. As you know, I was a rather bad boy at Bilderberg . . . The great advantage in participating in Bilderberg is that it gives one a means of estimating the level to which the incompetence of the participants has enabled them to attain. Every man has a right to protect his own ignorance. However, these men are responsible for coping with a changing world which has sent them scurrying for cover in the opposite direction of the changes that we have released. I asked them to instance a single example in human history of any community that had been able to foresee the consequences of any innovation. The group was unable to comply. When I explained that in terms of services available to the ordinary person, the services that the greatest private wealth could not possibly provide for itself, that is Communism. It happened long before Karl Marx. Such service environments are invisible to accountants and actuaries and bankers who deal in entries of double entries and arithmetic which conceal technological and environmental realities completely. Today, with the multi-billion dollar service environments available to everybody, almost for free, (these include the massive educational and information world of advertising) it means that we have plunged very deep into the tribal Communism on a scale unknown in human history. I asked the group: "What are we fighting Communism for? We are the most Communist people in world history." There was not a single demur. One fringe benefit of the conference for me was the sudden realization of what is meant by "class war." It means people deprived of an identity. It is only accidentally the result of poverty. Today the entire TV generation has been deprived of its identity by the new image (cf. Hertz's law.) "The consequence of the images will be the image of the consequences." It is the affluent young people today who are the deprived proletariat of our world. It is *they* who are fighting the new class war. Marxism is quite unable to cope with any 20th-century problem. The so-called 'Communist" countries are merely trying to have a 19th century of consumer goods . . . Marshall McLuhan Mark StahlmanBrooklyn NY- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

JORGE ZORREQUIETA and the DISPOSICIÓN FINAL: when will he show any remorse?May 22, 2012 by Tjebbe van TijenFor the full illustrated and documented article will links go to:http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/jorge-zorrequieta-and-the-disposicion-final-when-will-he-show-any-remorse/This is old news about a book by the Argentinian author Ceferino Reato who managed to interview the former Argentinian dictator Jorge Rafaela Videla in prison and for the first time having Videla speak about the real numbers of people killed by his regime in his vision (7 to 8 thousand persons). The book was published in Argentina a few months ago, but it merits special attention in the Netherlands because the Dutch Royal House has a family relation with one participant in the Videla regime. This relationship has been constantly half denied and underplayed. The policy of the Dutch Royal House and Dutch governments is one of low profile on this issue, in the hope it will be forgotten.When I checked today the Dutch library system I did not yet find a single copy in any Dutch public library (available or on order), including the Royal Library of the Netherlands. I will certainly write the last institution about this omission! (*) “Disposición Final”(final disposal) is the military jargon – of the Argentinian generals and government – for the murder of those that were seen as a danger to Argentinian society.(...)

<http://occupytheory.org/read/we-didn-t-know-it-was-impossible-so-we-did-it-the-quebec-student-strike-celebrates-its-100th-day.html> "We didn't know it was impossible, so we did it!" The Quebec StudentStrike celebrates its 100th day Malav Kanuga Origins of an unlimited general strike ("grève générale illimitée") Students in Quebec are marking their 100th day of an unlimited general strike on Tuesday, May 22nd, the culmination of the most stunning mass protest movements of recent months and North America's largest student movement in years. In fact, the mobilizations in Quebec might just be Canada's[9] Arab Spring. Students have been organizing against tuition hikes for nearly one and a half years, when the Quebec government first proposed to raise tuition fees by 75% over five years (amended to 82% over seven years by the government at the end of April). Before the general strike began in February, protests, demos, trainings, letter writing campaigns and attempts to negotiate in good faith with the government were consistently met with obstinate silence from the Charest administration. For the students there has been a growing sense of urgency and a shared recognition that increased tuition means a heavier student debt burden, hundreds of more hours a year spent working instead of studying, less access for working class and lower class students, and a shift in university culture toward the market, the commodification of education, the financialization of student life, and the privatization of the university. Even if fees increase, Quebec students would be paying less than other provinces in Canada, a gap the provincial government has been aiming to close. But so far every time the administration has proposed to do so, students have gone on strike. Deep in the Quebec struggle is a culture of solidarity and security, a social fabric, a sense of community that endures and mobilizes a powerful defense of their commonwealth. Call it what you will, it is precisely this that Margaret Thatcher declared war upon on May 1st 1981 when she said that the project of neoliberalism is to change the heart and soul of a `collectivist' spirit, and its means is economics. Indeed, the Finance Minister of the Quebec Liberal government recently called its austerity policies "a cultural revolution" and they are not shy about their plan to reorganize Quebecois life through fiscal discipline. The Modèle québécois of social collectivism (in its traditional social democratic sensibility, but also, and more importantly, its directly democratic ethic that has emerged in the course of the last 14 weeks of strike) is the target of these policies, specifically through education and health. This is what explains the Charest government's attempts to break the strike and destroy the student unions. Student unionism is particularly strong in Quebec, and for a reason: they are inherently political, engaging, and participatory, using principles of direct democracy in weekly general assemblies. A dispersal of power, where students have a direct role in shaping the culture of university life through the policies and activities of the unions has been the backbone of the growing movement against tuition hikes, and the secret to why it has been able to mobilize such a broad and popular base. Yet, while a rejection of political parties and emphasis on direct democracy and militancy infuse the movement, there are in reality a range of unions--from the combative wing of the movement, such as the [10]Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante (ASSÉ) that demands free education, to more corporatist and mainstream student unions that integrate with bourgeois political parties. But this struggle represents more than students. It represents an attack on the middle class and lower income families, their sense of social cohesion, and the social entitlement and equality of access to public services amid rising cost of living. The strikes register across these domains of everyday life, in the university, in the family home, the workplace, and the hospital, where increasingly the same growing resentment of the imposition of austerity measures in Quebec emerge, as the tuition increases coincide with the first ever "health tax," alongside a 20% increase in hydro rates, the raising of the federal retirement age to 67, as well as mass layoffs. A chronology of the last weeks of the movement On November 10th, over 200,000 students went on a one-day strike, and 30,000 took to the streets. 20,000 of which marched directly to Charest's Montreal office to demonstrate against rising fees. Hundreds, including the Quebec Women's Federation, shut down the Montreal Stock Exchange in mid-February, a site dear to the 1%, and where the Charest government, who had so far been ignoring the budding movement, would certainly devote its rapt attention. By February 23rd, forty thousand post-secondary students across the province joined the unlimited general strike. Thousands of students occupied the Jacques Cartier Bridge. If the tactical approaches of the movement had been ignored by university administrations and the provincial government in its first weeks, by March 22nd, student unions such as CLASSE (The Coalition large de l'Association pour une Solidarite Syndaicale Etudiante), whose 80,000 members have been leading the strike, couldn't be missed. Since then, they have shifted focus toward targeting governmental offices, ministries, and crown corporations, placing strategic emphasis on economic disruption, an approach to direct action that has had precedence in many earlier urban protest movements in the last decade or so. On March 22nd, as over 300,000 students had been on strike, a massive march in the streets inaugurated the Maple Spring ("Printemps Érable," a play on words in French), with university after university, and college after college, going on strike. Two months later, on Tuesday, May 22nd, the Quebec students' unlimited strike will celebrate its 100th day, already one of the largest student mobilizations in recent history. During 100 days of strike, contempt, and resistance, students have mobilized against steep tuition increases, austerity and debt, and the criminalization of the right to education. On Friday, a friend Lilian Radovac, who has been active in the student mobilizations in Montreal, described a cultural shift expanding in the cracks of everyday austerity: "For years, May '68 was a dry, dusty thing other people theorized about in poor translations, but these last months, something like it has been happening in the crevices of our vie quotidienne. How strange that it is just there, between bus rides and doctor's appointments and trips to the grocery store, a thing that is so extraordinary and so bizarrely normal at the same time. The metro has been shut down by smoke bombs? Oh well, I feel like a walk anyway. Did it feel like this when OWS started? It must have." Each week, in local general assemblies of student associations, students have voted to sustain the `renewable general strike'. With over 180 different unions representing some 170,000 students, university departments and the government can no longer hope the movement will dwindle on its own, and are increasingly forced to repress the movement actively. Indeed, days after the Education Minister Line Beauchamp resigned on May 14th over failed negotiations with student leaders, the Quebec Government enacted a special emergency law. Bill 78 specifically targets the massive student assemblies and mobilizations in order to break the growing strike and destroy the power of the student union. One member of the Quebec political opposition used the term "Loi Fuck" to refer to the blunt and draconian tool that outlaws public assembly, imposes harsh fines for strike activity (even tacit support), and effectively makes organizing an arrestable offense. The bill also gives more power to the police in enforcing student protest. Indeed, during the last many weeks of escalating street demos, police have repeatedly preempted demonstrations with CS gas, sound grenades, `blast disperser' grenades, and rubber bullets. Nevertheless, it is not clear how this law will be used in the coming days and weeks, or whether it will be successful in intimidating students. An emergency law announced on the previous Wednesday "suspended" the semester for many CEGEP (academic and vocational college) and university students, with provisions for classes to be postponed until August.[11] Provisions of Bill 78 that followed include: * Fines of between $1,000 and $5,000 for anyone who prevents someone from entering an educational institution. * Steep penalties of $7,000 and $35,000 for anyone deemed a `student leader' and between $25,000 and $125,000 for unions or student associations. Fines double after the first offense. * Plans for public demonstrations involving more than 50 people (originally 8) must be submitted to the police eight hours in advance, and must detail itinerary, duration and time at which they are being held. * Offering encouragement, tacitly supporting, or promoting protest at a school, either is subject to punishment. In Montreal, specifically, a new municipal anti-mask law accompanies Bill 78, and another has been proposed at the federal level. With Charest's attempts to legislate the end of the student movement, the struggle has deepened and is now at a turning point. Yet, on its 100th day of an unlimited general strike, the movement does not show any signs of slowing down or veering from its median tactic of general assemblies, its preferred direct action orientation, and its culture of horizontal democracy. The return of the red square and our right to assembly Students in Quebec have popularized the symbol of the "red square" to signify being financially "squarely in the red" amid tuition hikes, cuts in social entitlements, and the specter of spiraling student and consumer debt. As their movement has powerfully reminded us, we are all `in the red' as long as the 1% imposes upon us austerity, debt, and repression. The politics of austerity and the increased policing of everyday life reveal themselves in these instances to be inseparably linked. We can see the direct link between tuition hikes and the criminalization of assembly in Quebec, just as we can see Bloomberg's management through "free speech zones" of political protest, the silencing of media, and the increased police aggression in suppressing the Occupy Wall Street movement. Thus, solidarity with Quebec students is also important work in defense of our right to demonstrate here and everywhere. When times of crisis provoke ramped up police power and allow desperate politicians to pass "emergency laws" that target unquiet sectors of the population, we are certain that the class balance of present society is threatened. But it is a cautious joy we should preach, along with the sober insight that without powerful international solidarity and coordination, as James Baldwin once wrote to Angela Davis, "if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night." The police backlash--through intimidation, repression, and wanton brutality--we have faced in NYC for trying to assemble is enormous. On May 2nd, students at Brooklyn College were met with police hostility as they demonstrated against policies that restrict access to education for lower-income students. Wherever the site of struggle, the very idea of opening up space for collective imagination is policed. But we are not battling on the plane of the imaginary. An attack in Quebec on the right to assemble, if unchallenged through coordinated international solidarity, will have real and chilling effects on our movements here. Solidarity in NYC Speaking about the Quebec students' strike in New York, there is often enthusiasm and support, if not bewilderment upon learning of the size and power of their movement, something that the media blackout in the U.S. has successfully eclipsed. But there is also a bit of shoulder shrugging. "Are they really on strike for $250 dollars?" one unmoved passerby queried as we were wrapping up an assembly in the park on Sunday. Indeed more popular education needs to be done here on the plight of students in the climate of this crisis. But the student struggle, here in NYC as in Quebec, is not only a struggle for the student: it is about access to education for all regardless of economic circumstance, a challenge to the very economic and political planning that has been transforming our cities into spaces for the elite over the last three decades. This past weekend, several groups from Occupy Wall Street and other organizations held an assembly to address these "emergency laws" and discuss solidarity with Quebec on Tuesday. Immediately a robust day was in the works: At 2PM on Tuesday, the time marches are slated to begin in Montreal, demonstrators in NYC will gather at the Quebec Government Offices at 1 Rockefeller Plaza. The Free University, which organized a day of free education in Madison Square Park on May Day, is hosting a pop-up occupation open to all students, educators, and community members. At 5PM, there will be a gathering on the north side of the fountain in Washington Square Park, where people will paint banners, make `book bloc' shields, and cut red squares for the evening march. At 6PM, there will be a teach in/speak out assembly about the Quebec student strike, the emergency laws, and the criminalization of dissent, followed by a number of self-organized lectures, workshops, skill-shares, and discussions. In coordination with Quebec students who have been holding nightly assemblies, there will also be an assembly and march originating from Washington Square Park at 8PM to celebrate the successes of the student movement and to march against repressive anti-protest laws worldwide. On this day, in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in Quebec, we will paint the town red. Malav Kanuga is a doctoral student in Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York, NY and editor of the publishing imprint [12]Common Notions.<...> 9. http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/judes/2012/03/maple-spring-quebec-students-protest-tuition-hikes-massive-numbers 10. http://www.asse-solidarite.qc.ca/ 11. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2012/05/18/quebec-student-protest-law-bill-78.html 12. http://www.commonnotions.org/<...>

<http://www.technologyreview.com/web/40437/">The Facebook Fallacy For all its valuation, the social network is just another ad-supported site. Without an earth-changing idea, it will collapse and take down the Web. * Tuesday, May 22, 2012 * By Michael Wolff Facebook is not only on course to go bust, but will take the rest of the ad-supported Web with it. Given its vast cash reserves and the glacial pace of business reckonings, that will sound hyperbolic. But that doesn't mean it isn't true. At the heart of the Internet business is one of the great business fallacies of our time: that the Web, with all its targeting abilities, can be a more efficient, and hence more profitable, advertising medium than traditional media. Facebook, with its 900 million users, valuation of around $100 billion, and the bulk of its business in traditional display advertising, is now at the heart of the heart of the fallacy. The daily and stubborn reality for everybody building businesses on the strength of Web advertising is that the value of digital ads decreases every quarter, a consequence of their simultaneous ineffectiveness and efficiency. The nature of people's behavior on the Web and of how they interact with advertising, as well as the character of those ads themselves and their inability to command real attention, has meant a marked decline in advertising's impact. Advertisement click here... At the same time, network technology allows advertisers to more precisely locate and assemble audiences outside of branded channels. Instead of having to go to CNN for your audience, a generic CNN-like audience can be assembled outside CNN's walls and without the CNN-brand markup. This has resulted in the now famous and cruelly accurate formulation that $10 of offline advertising becomes $1 online. I don't know anyone in the ad-Web business who isn't engaged in a relentless, demoralizing, no-exit operation to realign costs with falling per-user revenues, or who isn't manically inflating traffic to compensate for ever-lower per-user value. Facebook, however, has convinced large numbers of otherwise intelligent people that the magic of the medium will reinvent advertising in a heretofore unimaginably profitable way, or that the company will create something new that isn't advertising, which will produce even more wonderful profits. But at a forward profit-to-earnings ratio of 56 (as of the close of trading on May 21), these innovations will have to be something like alchemy to make the company worth its sticker price. For comparison, Google trades at a forward P/E ratio of 12. (To gauge how much faith investors have that Google, Facebook, and other Web companies will extract value from their users, see our recent chart.) Facebook currently derives 82 percent of its revenue from advertising. Most of that is the desultory ticky-tacky kind that litters the right side of people's Facebook profiles. Some is the kind of sponsorship that promises users further social relationships with companies: a kind of marketing that General Motors just announced it would no longer buy. Facebook's answer to its critics is: pay no attention to the carping. Sure, grunt-like advertising produces the overwhelming portion of our $4 billion in revenues; and, yes, on a per-user basis, these revenues are in pretty constant decline, but this stuff is really not what we have in mind. Just wait. It's quite a juxtaposition of realities. On the one hand, Facebook is mired in the same relentless downward pressure of falling per-user revenues as the rest of Web-based media. The company makes a pitiful and shrinking $5 per customer per year, which puts it somewhat ahead of the Huffington Post and somewhat behind the New York Times' digital business. (Here's the heartbreaking truth about the difference between new media and old: even in the New York Times' declining traditional business, a subscriber is still worth more than $1,000 a year.) Facebook's business only grows on the unsustainable basis that it can add new customers at a faster rate than the value of individual customers declines. It is peddling as fast as it can. And the present scenario gets much worse as its users increasingly interact with the social service on mobile devices, because it is vastly harder, on a small screen, to sell ads and profitably monetize users. On the other hand, Facebook is, everyone has come to agree, profoundly different from the Web. First of all, it exerts a new level of hegemonic control over users' experiences. And it has its vast scale: 900 million, soon a billion, eventually two billion (one of the problems with the logic of constant growth at this scale and speed, of course, is that eventually it runs out of humans with computers or smart phones). And then it is social. Facebook has, in some yet-to-be-defined way, redefined something. Relationships? Media? Communications? Communities? Something big, anyway. The subtext--an overt subtext--of the popular account of Facebook is that the network has a proprietary claim and special insight into social behavior. For enterprises and advertising agencies, it is therefore the bridge to new modes of human connection. Expressed so baldly, this account is hardly different from what was claimed for the most aggressively boosted companies during the dot-com boom. But there is, in fact, one company that created and harnessed a transformation in behavior and business: Google. Facebook could be, or in many people's eyes should be, something similar. Lost in such analysis is the failure to describe the application that will drive revenues. Google is an incredibly efficient system for placing ads. In a disintermediated advertising market, the company has turned itself into the last and ultimate middleman. On its own site, it controls the space where a buyer searches for a thing and where a seller hawks that thing (its keywords AdWords network). Google is also the cheapest, most efficient way to place ads anywhere on the Web (the AdSense network). It's not a media company in any traditional sense; it's a facilitator. It can forget the whole laborious, numbing process of selling advertising space: if a marketer wants to place an ad (that is, if it is already convinced it must advertise), the company calls Mr. Google. And that's Facebook's hope, too: like Google, it wants to be a facilitator, the inevitable conduit at the center of the world's commerce. Facebook has the scale, the platform, and the brand to be the new Google. It only lacks the big idea. Right now, it doesn't actually know how to embed its usefulness into world commerce (or even, really, what its usefulness is). But Google didn't have the big idea at the company's founding, either. The search engine borrowed the concept of AdWords from Yahoo's Overture network (with a lawsuit for patent infringement and settlement following). Now Google has all the money in the world to buy or license all the ideas that could makes its scale, platform, and brand pay off. What might Facebook's big idea look like? Well, it does have all this data. The company knows so much about so many people that its executives are sure that the knowledge must have value (see "You Are the Ad," by Robert D. Hof, May/June 2011). If you're inside the Facebook galaxy (a constellation that includes an ever-expanding cloud of associated ventures) there is endless chatter about a near-utopian (but often quasi-legal or demi-ethical) new medium of marketing. "If we just ... if only ... when we will ..." goes the conversation. If, for instance, frequent-flyer programs and travel destinations actually knew when you were thinking about planning a trip. Really we know what people are thinking about--sometimes before they know! If a marketer could identify the person who has the most influence on you ... If a marketer could introduce you to someone who would relay the marketer's message ... get it? No ads, just friends! My God! But so far, the sweeping, basic, transformative, and simple way to connect buyer to seller and then get out of the way eludes Facebook. So the social network is left in the same position as all other media companies. Instead of being inevitable and unavoidable, it has to sell the one-off virtue of its audience like every other humper on Madison Avenue. Here's another worrisome point: Facebook is a company of technologists, not marketers. If you wanted to bet on someone succeeding in the marketing business, you'd bet on technologists only if they could invent some new way to sell; you wouldn't bet on them to sell the way marketers have always sold. But that's what Facebook is doing, selling individual ads. From a revenue perspective, it's an ad-sales business, not a technology company. To meet expectations--the expectations that took it public at $100 billion, the ever-more-vigilant expectations needed to sustain it at that price--it has to sell at near hyperspeed. The growth of its user base and its ever-expanding page views means an almost infinite inventory to sell. But the expanding supply, together with an equivocal demand, means ever-lowering costs. The math is sickeningly inevitable. Absent an earth-shaking idea, Facebook will look forward to slowing or declining growth in a tapped-out market, and ever-falling ad rates, both on the Web and (especially) in mobile. Facebook isn't Google; it's Yahoo or AOL. Oh, yes ... In its Herculean efforts to maintain its overall growth, Facebook will continue to lower its per-user revenues, which, given its vast inventory, will force the rest of the ad-driven Web to lower its costs. The low-level panic the owners of every mass-traffic website feel about the ever-downward movement of the cost of a thousand ad impressions (or CPM) is turning to dread, as some big sites observed as much as a 25 percent decrease in the last quarter, following Facebook's own attempt to book more revenue. You see where this is going. As Facebook gluts an already glutted market, the fallacy of the Web as a profitable ad medium can no longer be overlooked. The crash will come. And Facebook--that putative transformer of worlds, which is, in reality, only an ad-driven site--will fall with everybody else. Michael Wolff writes a column on media for the Guardian; is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair; founded Newser; and was, until October of last year, the editor of AdWeek.

To give some background to this article. Woolworths is one of Australia's duopoly of supermarket retailers. They own heaps of other retailing business as well as well as lots of gambling outputs. They, along with Westfarmers have gradually been crushing rival businesses in all forms of consumer activity. They make very good profits and growth of profits. They have been pushing impulse consumption through digital media. This is what they think about digital media:http://www.smh.com.au/business/phone-addicts-keep-shopping-fixes-alive-20120521-1z16u.htmlWoolworths's digital multi-channel expert, Penny Winn, told a Trans-Tasman business lunch yesterday how smartphone users had become increasingly fixated by their devices and that shopping was a natural addition to their use.Noting how 1.6 million people had downloaded the Woolies phone app, Winn said smartphones had become a part of our make-up as if we were addicted to them.''I guess the one thing about these things is that it's almost like a heroin hit,'' she said.jonUTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099FDISCLAIMER: This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information.If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message orattachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and deletethis message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where thesender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views of the University of Technology Sydney.Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects.Think. Green. Do.Please consider the environment before printing this email.

Back Patches and Elbow PatchesZack Furness From the introduction to Punkademics: http://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=436The position being taken is not to be mistaken for attempted education or righteous accusation.-Operation Ivy, “Room Without a Window”I think the moment at which I realized I was actually turning into a college professor was not on the first day I taught a class in 1999, but when I was listening to an old Operation Ivy tape about a year later and found myself wanting to sit the band’s singer, Jesse Michaels, down to have a frank discussion. Specifically, I wanted to ask him why, in a song written to both illuminate the politics of ideology (“walls made of opinions through which we speak and never listen”) and express the need for open-mindedness and self-reflexivity, would he choose to intentionally denounce the educational function of his lyrics from the outset? Not being a complete idiot nor unfamiliar with the band, I obviously realized that the song “Room Without a Window” (quoted above) was penned by Michaels when he was in his late teens, which is around the time when years of schooling and top-down authority have unfortunately succeeded at the task of turning education – or at least the compulsory, state-sanctioned version – into something from which young people want to run; I imagine all the more so for the sizeable number of kids in the late ‘80s East Bay (California) punk scene whose parents, like Michaels’ dad, were college professors. But whether the lyric intentionally gestures in this direction or is self-consciously ironic is hardly the issue. Indeed, even if the first line just sounded cool when he wrote it, the point here is that I wasn’t singing along, tapping out the beat (as ex-drummers are annoyingly prone to do), or even just engaging in the kind of run-of-the-mill lyrical analysis that has been the bread and butter for both punk fanzine writers and music journalists for over three decades. Rather, it’s that I was busy concocting some bizarre scenario in my head that, if allowed to play out in real life, would have undoubtedly translated into the world’s most boring and pedantic conversation with one of my punk heroes.As if it didn’t feel weird enough to catch myself pursuing this rather strange line of hypothetical inquiry at the breakfast table one morning, the sensation was heightened when I also realized, perhaps for the first time, that my own internal monologue was now being structured around concepts and jargon from my graduate seminars. Since when, I thought to myself, did I start to throw around – let alone think with – phrases like “illuminate the politics of ideology”? Was I becoming the kind of person who ends up nonchalantly remarking upon the “narrative tensions” in a Jawbreaker song? Or using the word oeuvre to describe Bad Brains’ discography? Was I heading down a path where I would eventually not even be able to go for a bike ride without theorizing it? Just then, as if the universe wanted to accent the point in as cartoonish a manner as possible, I narrowly avoided stumbling over my cat while rising from the table, and I managed to spill half a mug of coffee onto the stack of student papers I had been grading. Muttering to one’s self? Check. Coffee stained papers? Check. Analyzing one’s music collection through the lenses of critical pedagogy and rhetorical theory? Check. Shabby outfit? Certainly. Disheveled hair and off kilter eyeglasses? Indeed. Exhibiting behaviors that one might objectively identify as ‘wacky’ or ‘nutty’? Check.It was official. All I needed now, I thought to myself, was the kind of jacket where the patches are sewn nicely onto the elbows instead of silk screened and stitched across the back with dental floss.Elbow Patches and Back PatchesTwelve years later I still don’t have one of those professorial tweed jackets, though I did manage to attain the job, the eccentricities, and the shock of salt-and-pepper hair that would compliment one quite nicely. And despite my initial anxieties over the prospects of compromising my then-entrenched punk ethics by turning into a stuffy academic, I actually ended up spending more time playing in bands and participating in various aspects of DIY punk culture as a graduate student and eventual professor than I did when I was younger. While far from seamless, I’ve often seen the relationship between these two ‘worlds’ as dialectical, though at first this mainly consisted of scrutinizing every new set of readings and concepts I learned in school through my own increasingly politicized worldview: a punk subjectivity that I fancied as something of a “bullshit detector.” But fairly quickly, though, my immersion in critical theory, cultural studies, feminism and political theory started to help me hold up a mirror to sub-/countercultural politics and to generally unpack some of the bullshit that is often embedded within our own bullshit detectors, as it were. Part of what facilitated this process, aside from personal experience and the guidance of some older friends, was getting exposed to the broader gamut of political punk and hardcore and to the range of writers, teachers, artists and activists who, in publications like Bad Subjects, Punk Planet, Maximumrocknroll (MRR), Clamor and Stay Free!, not only connected many of the issues and concerns I’d previously encountered within different spheres, they also complicated and problematized (in the good way) a lot of my taken for granted assumptions about punk and the proliferation of ideas in general. It was through these channels – DIY punk and DIY publishing – as opposed to the classroom, that the relationships between politics, popular culture, education, and everyday life first started to make sense to me.As crucial as the composition of these ingredients was to my own development and positionality as a teacher, writer and ‘musician’ (a term I use very loosely), I am hardly the first person to test out the recipe and I’m certainly not one of the best cooks. Indeed, my real interest in punk/academic border transgressions was not borne of my own maneuverings, but from learning about and meeting punk musicians who had dual careers as professional nerds (I use the term lovingly; it is my job description after all) and reading sophisticated work from writers who seemed as equally sure footed in zine columns and basement shows as they did in a theory heavy journal publications, political organizing committees, or in front of podiums lecturing to graduate students at prestigious research universities. In addition to being generally interested in what other people have done (or aspired to do) with the kinds of energies, knowledges and tensions generated through their involvement with, or their reflections upon, both punk music and culture, I had a personal interest in wanting to meet more of these folks and to pick their brain about their paths toward careers as nerdy rockers or punk professors (given that either one sounded ideal to me). I was also intensely curious about the ways in which people reconciled their interests and understood the dynamics between two very different ‘scenes.’ I wanted to hear what other people had to say about scholarship on punk, or their relationships to band mates and fans (if applicable). And broadly speaking, I wanted to know what kind of sense people made of their punk/academic situation; whether it was something they analyzed, disparaged, incorporated into their work, trumpeted, or simply took in stride. What kind of stories did they have? What kinds of insights about punk and teaching have they drawn from their experiences or analyses?Unlike the prospects of time traveling to an Operation Ivy show in 1990, the possibilities for actually starting some conversations around these topics was quite real, and a few years ago I started the process with the aim of garnering essays for the book you are now reading. I asked people to contribute work that was either about punk specifically, or the intersections between punk and higher education, whether in the form of biographical pieces or chapters devoted to teaching and pedagogy. To keep things simple, I took the approach that punks of yore utilized when contacting bands they liked: sending letters. My interest was less in nostalgia (they were e-mails, after all) than in making contact with people whose work I admired and otherwise beginning what would become a long experiment. That is to say, part of my reason for doing the book was because, first and foremost, I wanted to see if it was possible. While I had long been attuned the fact that there were some professors and many more graduate students who, like me (circa 2005, when I hatched the idea for this book), simultaneously played in bands while they taught classes and worked on their degrees, I often wondered about whether there are a lot of “us” out there. By “us” I mean punkademics, or the professors, graduate students, and other PhDs who, in some meaningful or substantive way, either once straddled or continue to bridge the worlds of punk and academia through their own personal experiences, their scholarship, or some combination thereof.Punk DiscoursesPunk is neither a homogenous ‘thing’ nor is it reducible to a specific time, location, sound or a select number of vinyl records and live performances. It’s various meanings, as any self-respecting punk knows all too well, are subject to wild fluctuation and widespread debate. One might say that it’s because punk shapes – and is also shaped by – specific kinds of question askers, music makers, thought provokers, organizers, shit talkers, writers, artists, and teachers. At their best, the combinations of people, places, cultural practices, social relationships, art and ideas that co-constitute punk are rife with possibilities: creating new kinds of music or reveling in the ecstatic moments at the best shows; forging bonds of group solidarity and personal identity; carving out non-commercial spaces for free expression and the staking out of positions; and pushing people toward a participatory, ‘bottom up’ view of culture. Through the often conflicting accounts and histories of punk, one can identify the ebb and flow of countless scenes, interwoven subcultures, and a broader ‘Do it Yourself’ (DIY) counterculture in which people put ethical and political ideas into practice by using music and other modes of cultural production/expression to highlight both the frustrations and banalities of everyday life, as well as the ideas and institutions that need to be battled if there is any hope of living in a less oppressive world. And crucially, people have a lot of fun doing it. Those lucky enough to have experienced some of what I’ve just sketched out know what it feels like to sense that punk really can create something new in the shell of the old, to poach a phrase from the Wobblies.At its worst, punk can be and has been a fashion show, a cultural ghetto, a minor league circuit for corporate entertainers, a merchandise peddling aggregate of aspiring capitalist hustlers, and a constellation of practices that perpetuate varying degrees of machismo, sexism, homophobia, white privilege, classism, hyper-individualism, anti-intellectualism, passive conformity, and at times, both conservative religious dogma and racist nationalism. And like the worst trends to emerge under the banner of cultural studies – the academic field in which I work – punk’s incarnates have similarly been known to promote sloppy politics while championing ‘resistance’ in all of its self-styled affairs, regardless of whether such gestures (or fanciful arrangements of clothing, tattoos or words) bear a resemblance to anything like substantive political action, meaningful community engagement, or tangible social change. In this guise, ‘resistance’, ‘rebellion’, and of course, ‘revolution’, become just another set of buzzwords chirped in slogans, animated in bad songs and contrived writing, and emblazoned on t-shirts without a hint of Billy Bragg’s sharp wit: “So join the struggle while you may, the revolution is just a t-shirt away.”The various prospects and pitfalls associated with punk (I include hardcore in this designation throughout unless noted otherwise) are constant reminders that the stories we tell about it are always being folded into converging and often competing discourses about what punk really means, what it does or doesn’t do, and why it is or isn’t culturally significant, politically relevant, and so on. As both an academic and someone who spent roughly thirteen years drifting in and out of the punk scene (admittedly more ‘out’ in recent years), I’m invested in both the kinds of stories that get told about punk as well as the manner in they are put to work, as it were. Therefore, I think it is important to note from the outset that my interest in assembling Punkademics is neither to tell the grand story of punk (an impossibly arrogant and pointless task) nor to produce the scholarly cipher through which all of punk’s secret meanings can be decrypted. Academics should not be seen as the authoritative voices capable of explaining punk to the masses, and I have no interest in presenting them as such. In fact, I have always been rather conflicted about how punk music and DIY punk culture get taken up by academics in the first place.As a teacher, I tend to see punk – like all other cultural phenomena – as a messy but nonetheless fascinating cluster of things that can be analyzed, dissected and debated. Depending on the specific course, I’ve incorporated aspects of punk in my lesson plans to talk about everything from the underground press and the political economy of the media industry, to the role that punk music – like hip hop – plays in cultivating meaningful narratives about “the city” and the importance of space and place in everyday life. And quite frequently, punk comes in handy when I need to give concrete examples to illustrate or clarify what certain social and cultural theorists mean when they throw around phrases like cultural production, articulation, hegemony, resistance, commodification, cooptation, and of course, subculture. In addition to being pedagogically useful, I also get a certain degree of satisfaction in knowing that members of the bands I discuss in class would be alternatively delighted or mortified by the idea.However, my level of comfort with the melding of punk and academia decreases quite rapidly when punk becomes an object of study unto itself. As Roger Sabin notes in his introduction to Punk Rock, So What?, one of the main problems with scholarship on punk is the overreliance on unquestioned assumptions about punk itself and, overall, the “narrowness of the frame of reference.” Along with what he describes as the “pressures to romanticize,” Sabin suggests that the impulses and trends in punk scholarship foster the development of certain kind of “orthodoxy” that structures what it is possible to say, or most likely not say, about punk’s history, its conjunctures with other ideas and artistic practices, and, I would add, its current formations, and its possible future(s). Like many of the LP records that fit squarely and safely within the parameters of a punk’s splintered subgenres, a number of the books and essays that fall under the umbrella of this ‘orthodoxy’ have their distinct merits. Nevertheless, his point about the constrictive qualities of scholarship on punk is well taken and, broadly speaking, rather understated. Because while there are plenty of exceptions (including excellent work published by this book’s contributors), a significant amount of academic writing, conference presentations and the like are authored by people who – despite being fans of punk music and passionate about the topic – seem to have limited knowledge of punk music and DIY culture, and a level of engagement with punk scenes that is more akin to casual tourism than active participation. Nevertheless, this doesn’t stop people from feeling entitled to make assumptions, lodge critiques, and draw conclusions based on what, more or less, amounts to an analysis of punk ‘texts.’ To be sure, there are a variety of things that broadcast this kind of work.My position, however, is not based on some naïve desire to preserve the sacredness of punk (Hot Topic put the final, pyramid-studded nail in that coffin years ago), nor do I think that people who are totally immersed in their activities or communities are necessarily in the best position to speak thoughtfully about their endeavors, or to critically reflect on the social or political significance of them; sometimes the exact opposite is true. Rather, my perspective is based upon what I see as a relatively uncontroversial point: whether due to shoddy research, distance from the punk scene, or harmless excitement for a topic tackled earnestly though wrong-headedly, the bottom line is that most academics simply miss the mark when it comes to punk music and culture. It would seem that I am good company on this point, even amongst fellow academics. John Charles Goshert, for example, argues that academic studies “tend toward the uninformed, if not careless, homogenizing of styles, personalities, and locales under the name ‘punk.’” David Muggleton expresses similar anxieties over the academicization of punk when, in the introduction to his own book, he describes his first encounter with Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style: “I fought my way through...and was left feeling that it had absolutely nothing to say about my life as I had once experienced it...The ‘problem’ lay not in myself and my failure to recognize what had ostensibly been the reality of my situation, but in the way the book appropriated its subject matter.”Stories matterPut simply, the stories we tell about punk matter. In the greater scheme of things, there is clearly much less at stake in the narration of punk than there is, for example, in the stories told about immigration, Indigenous land claims, prisons, or the philosophical and economic underpinnings of Neoliberalism. Nevertheless, they matter. Part of the reason why is because, like the stories told about other cultural practices and art forms, the relevant work on punk affects the ways we understand its specific histories, its present formations, and its possible future(s). Consequently, when the complexities and nuances of punk music, aesthetics and identities are ignored in lieu of sweeping claims and a reliance on problematic assumptions, this has a significant bearing on the ways in which people conceptualize, interpret and draw conclusions about the ‘politics of punk’, youth subcultures, and perhaps the social functions of art and music, as well. The concern here is thus not only the fidelity of the narratives – as in whether the accounts (of bands, scenes, events, etc.) are accurate and truthful – it is also a matter of who gets to speak for whom: whose stories are told and whose are silenced, and perhaps most importantly, who gets to shape public knowledge(s) that inform the ways in which we collectively remember people, events, institutions, ideas, cultural practices and cultural history. In addition, this body of knowledge is never only about punk in the first place: in academic research alone one finds discussions of punk situated within larger conversations about the music industry, the changing social status of ‘youth’ in the late 20th Century, the formation of identity, the nature of consumption, and the contentious dynamics of class, race, gender, sexuality and religion that are part of punks’ everyday relationships and also addressed within their own songs, musings, dialogues and debates.My point here is that the story and mythology of punk get reified over the years as much in academic writing as elsewhere. And it is not just dedicated books and peer-reviewed articles that do this kind of cultural work; it is also the hundreds of casual references that academics make to punk (for example in books on the 1970s or the Reagan Era) that simultaneously support the dominant narratives and constrain the possibilities of analyzing it without the compulsion to either validate its heroes or delineate its pure moment of inception. Because what gets missed, for instance, in the habitual focus on punk’s origins, its shining stars, its hottest locations, and its most obvious but nonetheless vital contributions – such as punks’ amplification (with all that the term implies) of independent music and art – are the everyday practices, processes, struggles, ruptures and people that make it so interesting in the first place.Up the nerds!One of my primary goals with Punkademics is to encourage a marked shift away from the punk-as-style paradigm that has become so commonplace in the wake of Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style but also from a number of the binary oppositions scholars have used to reduce ‘punk’ into a static, singular thing that can be mapped along an axis of success vs. failure, resistance vs. recuperation, authenticity vs. inauthenticity, and so on. Instead of producing another series of instrumental readings of punk that are strictly concerned with what it ultimately does or does not do, or what it definitively means or doesn’t mean at one specific moment, or within the confines of one specific scene or musical recording, I’m more inclined to think about what possibilities emerge within and through it. Scholarship on punk has sometimes pointed in this direction, though it’s typically focused on which kinds of musical and stylistic hybrids become imaginable or possible through the production of punk music and culture, or somewhat differently, which aesthetic and artistic trends are rendered most visible in punk’s history or that of its precursors. While I am interested in these linkages and the kind of work that, for example, contributors to the book Punk Rock, So What? take pains to highlight, I have always been much more curious about the kinds of subjectivities, people and communities that become imaginable or possible – or perhaps even probable – through DIY punk, i.e. the “vectors of punk that strive to escape models of production and consumption otherwise omnipresent in the entertainment industry.”A fruitful way to approach these interrelationships, as I’ve tried to demonstrate with this very book, is to consider some of the ways that punk maps onto or even organizes certain constellations of cultural practice, artistic expression, ethics, and notions of community. But crucially, I think this begins by reframing punk as an object of study and asking some rather different questions about peoples’ relationship to it. Through a combination of essays, interviews, biographical sketches, and artwork, one of the aims of this collection is to do this by way of example as opposed to merely stacking critique on top of critique. While not without its own limitations, Punkademics tries to offer more nuanced perspectives on various aspects of punk and hardcore – and in particular DIY punk music and culture – that stem from contributors’ academic backgrounds as well as their collective participation within and experience of punk scenes.But of equal importance is the attention focused in the opposite direction, which is back at the university, the classroom, and both the norms and ethics that get embedded into higher education. Given the fact that little research has been done about where punks end up or what their career paths and adventures (as well as struggles and failures) might tell us about punk or why it matters, this book offers some tangible examples that speak to these concerns, inasmuch as colleges and universities function as some of the places where people with ‘punk’ values can ostensibly thrive, or more accurately, where they can potentially put their ethics and ideas into practice; though not without great effort, considerable friction, and at times, complete train wrecks. The idea behind Punkademics is thus not only to offer some different perspectives on punk, broadly speaking, but to also tell some entirely distinct stories about academics and punks themselves, and how their priorities and passions get reconfigured by and through their experiences as theorists, artists, activists, educators and misfits working amidst the often tumultuous landscape of the modern university/edufactory.1, 2, 3, 4, Go!

For some time I have been teasing my few economically literate friends ona possible Grexit & Gre-re-entry for Grece's Euro blues, aka the'Montenegro solution': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montenegro_and_the_euroIn an op-ed in today's issue of Le Monde, that is also, in my view, Frencheconomist and EHESS boss Jacques Sapir's take, when he writes that nobodyappears to notice that the (next) Greek government _could_ (i) repudiatethe entire Greek debt juncto the Troika demands, while at the same time(ii) ordering the Greek Central Bank to issue (in print or in scrip) asmany Euros as it needs to keep the wheels of the country's economy moving.Meanwhile, Montenegro's rock star Rambo Amadeus, who already gave us theslogan "Don't Happy, Be Worry!" , is now the official Montenegro entry forthe Baku Eurovision Song Contest Festival. His take on all this:Euro-Neuro, with hilarious (English, well, sortof) texts and funky images.Enjoy!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6S-FNLv2jQDon't Happy, Be Worry:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxz0jJz0aZMThis went with a nice apocalyptic Live Short Film, Metro Last Light,reminding of Babylon A.D., the cine version of Maurice Dantec's novelBabylon Babies; If you don't get it, it's here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=trueview-instream&v=nIKhXPkUpj4Babylon A.D. trailerhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyhEHKB6cmYCheerio, p+4D!

[Still someone - maybe Christine - should explain me how a system wherebyCentral Banks (i.e., in the end 'taxpayers', pace Dmytri ;-) lend zillionsto private banks against 1% interest, and these lend that money in theirturn to governements (taxpayers again) against 6% or 7%, makes sense.]Original to:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/25/christine-lagarde-imf-eurobwo (albeit indirectly) Multutudes-infos/Yann Moulier-BoutangChristine Lagarde: can the head of the IMF save the euro?by Decca AitkenheadHer charm is legendary, but Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, is farfrom a pushover. She talks about sexism, swimming and saving the EuropeaneconomyWhen Christine Lagarde became the first female finance minister of a majorglobal economy, it's a measure of how much happier the world was back thenthat media interest focused chiefly on her talent for synchronisedswimming. She was the foxy Frenchwoman who'd won medals in the nationalteam in her teens, then worked her way up to chair an American law firm inChicago, before being invited back to Paris in 2005 as trade minister andpromoted two years later to the Treasury. Journalists had lots of funpicturing her upside down in a pool, wearing waterproof lipstick and anose clip – and Lagarde played along with the joke, crediting the sportwith teaching her a useful political skill: "To grit your teeth andsmile."No one is writing about synchronised swimming any more. On the day we metlast week, the papers were agog with economic Armageddon, as the newFrench president flew off to Berlin to face a German chancellor whoseausterity creed appeared to be on a collision course with France's newmission for growth. Athens was unravelling into chaos, unable to form agovernment and forced into fresh elections, plunging the markets intofreefall as Europe's leaders abandoned any pretence that a Greek exit fromthe euro might not be imminent. The future of the euro itself was, oneheadline declared, "a chronicle of a death foretold". When FrançoisHollande's plane was struck by lightning, the heavens themselves seemed tobe trying to tell us just how much trouble we are in.Coming face to face with Lagarde, however, you could be forgiven forthinking you must have imagined the whole crisis. We meet at the Parisoffice of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a concrete grey modernistbuilding so unassuming as to lack even a sign advertising its existence.Inside, the decor is plain and functional, the atmosphere eerily hushed.An empty lift glides up to a floor of deserted offices, where I wait bymyself for a while until a tall, strikingly self-possessed woman appearsand greets me with the elegant serenity of a Parisian hostess receiving adinner party guest. "Let us sit here," she suggests, ushering me to awindow seat beside a vase of flowers. "You can look at my orchids."The managing director of the IMF may look like one of those statuesquesilvery models who appear in Weekend's All Ages fashion pages, but she isone of the world's most powerful women, in the eye of the world's worststorm in living memory. In the years leading up to the 2008 crash, the IMFhad been starting to look, if not quite redundant, then not massivelyimportant; most of the world's economies appeared to be ticking alongquite happily without it. But the crash changed everything, so I'm curiousto know when she first thought of running for the job. Actually, she says,it wasn't her idea, but George Osborne's."We were travelling together and we were sort of thinking about thepolitical scene, and he said you know [Dominique] Strauss-Kahn is bound tobe a candidate for the French presidential elections. What's going tohappen with the IMF? Have you thought about it? That's how it started.That's when I started to play with the idea."But events moved faster than expected last May – "Yes, faster than we everthought!" – when the incumbent, Strauss-Kahn, was accused of the attemptedrape of a New York hotel maid and forced to resign. On top of the sexscandal there was a ding-dong over whether the post should go, as italways has, to another European – another French one, at that – when theglobal economy today bears no resemblance to the one for which the job wasoriginally designed in 1945. A French candidate would have to beextraordinarily impressive – and Lagarde is certainly that, lauded byeveryone from Alistair Darling to Timothy Geithner, who praised her"lightning-quick wit, genuine warmth and ability to bridge divides". But,67 years after its creation, I'm not sure everyone even really understandsexactly what the head of the IMF is meant to do, so I ask Lagarde toexplain in words an 11-year-old would understand."Well, I look under the skin of countries' economies and I help them makebetter decisions and be stronger, to prosper and create employment." Youcould think of the IMF as a global payday loan company for countries whohave got into trouble and can't meet their financial commitments – thedifference being that instead of charging sky-high interest rates, itdemands radical economic reforms. And if they say they don't like thesound of that? "If I'm confident that the sound of it is accurate, I say,well, I'm terribly sorry but this is the sound we are making."Voters in Greece and France have decided they don't like the sound of itat all and so, as the crisis accelerates, Lagarde's job is lookingincreasingly indivisible from a mission to save the euro. Some criticshave suggested that the appointment of a Europhile former French financeminister was akin to putting a drunk behind the bar; a former IMF chiefeconomist has warned she is essentially in denial about the fundamentalflaws of the euro and likely to "throw loans" at its problems, while EdBalls has argued, "The IMF's job is to support individual countries withsolvency crises, not to support a whole monetary union which cannot agreethe necessary steps to maintain itself." So I ask if she would be tryingjust as hard to save the single currency if she were, say, Mexican."Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. There is an emotional side of me that ispro-European," she acknowledges. "But I try to not be French, not beEuropean, when I do my job. And I know that resolving the Euro area crisismatters also to the Mexican, the Australian, the Brazilian."She has travelled the world asking countries to contribute to a firewallfund, but several have asked – not unreasonably – why they should have topay for Europe's mistakes, when Europe is still richer than most of theworld. Does the eurozone crisis matter more to their own interests thanthey realise? "Oh, I think they realise it," Lagarde says quickly,sounding deadly serious. "There has not been a capital I have visited inthe last 10 months where the first question has not been: what is thesituation in Europe? Are the Europeans sorting it out?"Nevertheless, while this might come as a surprise to Greeks sufferingunder extreme austerity, some say Lagarde's approach to the eurozone isless draconian than the IMF's traditional policy towards developing worldeconomies. Is it easier to impose harsh demands upon small economies, butmuch harder to tell difficult truths to the big ones – particularly fellowEuropeans? "No," she says firmly. "No, it's not harder. No. Because it'sthe mission of the fund, and it's my job to say the truth, whoever it isacross the table. And I tell you something: it's sometimes harder to tellthe government of low-income countries, where people live on $3,000,$4,000 or $5,000 per capita per year, to actually strengthen the budgetand reduce the deficit. Because I know what it means in terms of welfareprogrammes and support for the poor. It has much bigger ramifications."So when she studies the Greek balance sheet and demands measures she knowsmay mean women won't have access to a midwife when they give birth, andpatients won't get life-saving drugs, and the elderly will die alone forlack of care – does she block all of that out and just look at the sums?"No, I think more of the little kids from a school in a little village inNiger who get teaching two hours a day, sharing one chair for three ofthem, and who are very keen to get an education. I have them in my mindall the time. Because I think they need even more help than the people inAthens." She breaks off for a pointedly meaningful pause, before leaningforward."Do you know what? As far as Athens is concerned, I also think about allthose people who are trying to escape tax all the time. All these peoplein Greece who are trying to escape tax."Even more than she thinks about all those now struggling to survivewithout jobs or public services? "I think of them equally. And I thinkthey should also help themselves collectively." How? "By all paying theirtax. Yeah."It sounds as if she's essentially saying to the Greeks and others inEurope, you've had a nice time and now it's payback time."That's right." She nods calmly. "Yeah."And what about their children, who can't conceivably be held responsible?"Well, hey, parents are responsible, right? So parents have to pay theirtax."Lagarde is a beguiling mixture of steel and silk, for she can switchseamlessly from this sort of hardball talk to nimble diplomacy. Asked ifshe expects to be the last European to run the IMF, she replies, "Well, Ihope I'm not the last woman." But the last European? "I don't know." Shesmiles, adding playfully, "I might last for a long time."I begin a question about British Eurosceptics – "Lots of people where Icome from – " but she can see what's coming and interjects warmly, "Abeautiful island." When I ask if she enjoyed dealing with Gordon Brown,she offers, "Erm… I don't think he was ever finance minister when I was."That's a rather graceful way of avoiding the question, I say, smiling.Lagarde affects a blank expression of innocence, and starts to laugh.Everybody talks about Lagarde's phenomenal charm and it doesn't take longin her company to see why. She goes, "Pouff!" when I say so, batting thecompliment away with a flick of the wrist, but she is neither aneconomist, nor even really a politician – she spent just six years of hercareer as a minister in France – so I wonder if charm is actually the keyqualification for the job."Well, I think when you drill down and ask what it takes to be managingdirector of the IMF, then the ability to listen, the ability to understandthe perspective of your entire membership, the respect and tolerance forthe political diversity, the cultural diversity, I think that's veryimportant actually. I mean, it's often underestimated because many peoplewill say you need to be a very strong economist. Well, maybe so. But Iwouldn't qualify for the job. I'm not the top-notch economist; I canunderstand what people talk about, I have enough common sense for that,and I've studied a bit of economics, but I'm not a super-duper economist.But, yes, that appreciation for the interests pursued by the other side ata negotiation table, a sense of the collective interest and how that cantranscend the vested individual interests of the members, that matters."She doesn't claim these as feminine virtues, but acknowledges, "I'vecriticised enough women who are fighting so hard to look like a man thatit destroys half of their own sanity and humanity." How often does shefeel judged as a woman at the IMF? "Oh, quite often. That wouldn'tsurprise you! Come on." When she had the temerity last autumn to point outthe obvious truth that Europe's banks were under-capitalised, "that's anoccasion where I think some observations were related to me being awoman." She drops her voice to mimic the catty whispers: "'She doesn'tknow what she's talking about, silly woman, she must have been poorlyadvised.'"So what does she do about it? "I think you can choose one of two options.Either you become bitter, and you complain constantly about it, and arguethat people will criticise you or undermine you because you are a woman.Or you decide to take advantage of it. Not overplaying the feminine sideof things; not being on the seducing side, not playing the attractivewoman in high heels – I've never done that and I think my mother would behorrified if I did, and I don't want that to happen because I loved hervery much. But…" She falls silent. But what? "Men will not insult you orwill not easily say no when you tell them you need more money to securethe institution and make sure it can do its work." Does she mean it'seasier for her to ask for money as a woman? "Yes," she flashes back. "Yes.Yes. Absolutely." Because masculinity responds to a woman saying I needmore money? "Yes," she agrees, smiling. "People have said that to me. 'Howcan I say no to you?'"For all Lagarde's charm, it's hard not to feel a sense of Alice InWonderland bewilderment about the IMF's work. The Americans are recoveringwith a stimulus programme more familiar to Europe than Washington, while aFrenchwoman is trying to save the eurozone with austerity measures thatwould please the Tea Party. The whole point of the European project was toprevent the sort of conflict that once engulfed the continent, and yet theIMF's life support strategy has seen neo-Nazis elected in Athens, and nowrisks destabilising the marriage between Germany and France on which theEuropean dream depends. When democratic elections produce politiciansunwilling to play by the IMF's rules, they have been replaced by unelectedtechnocrats – Mario Monti in Italy, Lucas Papademos in Greece – giftingEurosceptics evidence for their charge that the EU is fundamentallyanti-democratic.Were voters in Greece and France basically wrong to elect anti-austeritypoliticians? "You are never wrong when you have voted because you've actedin accordance with your conscience and your beliefs, and you've exercisedyour democratic right, which is, you know, perfectly legitimate in ourdemocracies."But Germans elected Hitler in 1933, and we don't think they were right, dowe?"Well, somebody once said if people are not happy with their government,you change the people." She laughs, deftly sidestepping the question."What's really interesting," she says more seriously, "is that whereveryou see a change of government, for instance in Spain, do you see majorchanges from the economic and financial policies that were conducted bytheir predecessors? No." She suspects we will see a similar pattern now inFrance. "I'm very much a believer that it's action that matters much moreso than, you know, the flurry of political promises and statements andslogans that are used during political campaigns. So let's see."Is she saying there's no need to panic about a rift between Paris andBerlin? "I should think so," she agrees quietly, with a knowing smile. "Ithink it's largely overstated."Lagarde's unflappable calm seems to come quite naturally. She was born inParis in 1956, the eldest daughter of a university lecturer and a teacher;her father suffered from motor neurone disease and died when she was just17. After failing twice to get into the prestigious Ecole Nationaled'Administration, the elite incubator for French civil servants, shejoined the American law firm Baker & McKenzie and rose to become its firstfemale chairman. In her early 30s she had two sons with her first husband,but after that the details get a little hazy; she married again while inChicago, to a British businessman, but now lives with a Corsican she firstmet in her 20s at law school. In the French tradition, that's about asmuch as we know of her private life, apart from the fact that she isteetotal, vegetarian and a fanatical swimmer who will stay only in hotelsthat have pools. "She radiates," an acquaintance once said of her. "Ithink that's because she swims so much."She certainly radiates assurance, but of course part of being reassuringmeans not saying anything very bold. I ask how she squares austerity withgrowth, but she thinks the furious debate between the two is generatingmore heat than light."What we say is it cannot be either or; it's not either austerity orgrowth, that's just a false debate. Nobody could argue against growth. Andno one could argue against having to repay your debts. The question andthe difficulty is how do you reconcile the two, and in which order do youtake them? I would argue that you do it on a country by country case; it'snot going to be a one size fits all."In the UK's case, Lagarde thinks we are broadly on the right lines; publicspending cuts, quantitative easing and low interest rates all meet withher approval. I tell her it doesn't feel that way to a lot of people here,and ask for an exit narrative – the story of how we'll get out of thismess – that could cheer people up."There will be an exit," she says firmly. "No question about it." Yes, butwhat is it? "Well, we're going to invent it. To give you a couple ofpositive messages, firstly, protectionism is not reappearing. The secondreason for optimism is, there's a lovely sentence by Robert Musil, whichsays, 'Man is capable of anything – including the best.' And when you seehow a situation can be turned around by one individual – get Mr Berlusconiout, you bring Mr Monti in, he's dedicated, he couldn't care less abouthis political future because he's not interested. And he does the job. Andhe changes the perception, and restores confidence. That's also a sign ofhope."That may be true, but it's not an exit strategy narrative. "Ah," she saysbriskly, laughing. "You'll have to come back for that." Could she at leastsay where we are on the curve; is this as bad as things can be, or willthey get worse? "I'm not in the business of reading tea leaves. I don'thave a crystal ball. Some of the major issues are being resolved – butit's not over now. Let's face it, it's not over yet."And for Greece – is the euro over? Lagarde won't say. I ask if I'll bepacking euros if I go on holiday to Greece next year and she just smiles."A holiday in Greece, it's a good investment for the country!"She will put her name to just one firm prediction: she's going to be atthe synchronised swimming at the Olympics this summer. "Osborne promisedme that I would be invited, so, yes, I will try to do that. I'm desperateto."I try once more. When history books are written about the financialcrisis, they will say it began in 2008. What date will they give for itsend? "Hmm, after the hyphen? After 2008? Two thousand," she says firmly.How odd, I think – her English is perfect, but she must have misunderstoodthe question. I ask again, but she is laughing. There was nomisunderstanding."Well, I'm sure about the first two digits: 20. But I'm not sure about thelast two digits."

We would like to bring your attention to our more focused second meeting inBerlin which will follow up the *ArtLeaks’ 1st Working Assembly*, aroundthe issues that are at the core of the group’s mission, namely exposinginstances of abuse, corruption and exploitation in the art world - *to beheld at Flutgraben on June 3rd from 19:00 (http://www.facebook.com/events/176353445826756/). **Then on Monday, June 4th, 8pm at Westgermany* *in collaboration withInterflugs*, ArtLeaks will co-host a workshop in which we would like tofocus on specific cases submitted to our platform, and what we may learnfrom these instances of abuse and exploitation to create an internationalfront of solidarity to struggle for cultural workers’ rights. How can wethen challenge ourselves to re-imagine fairer relationships toinstitutions, organizations, networks and economies involved in theproduction and consumption of art and culture? In addressing these concernsas a group, we will develop themes that will form the bases of ArtLeaks’upcoming publication, a journal which will be entirely dedicated tocensorship, cultural workers’ rights and formulating strategies and goalsof organizing cultural workers.ArtLeaks members: Corina Apostol, Vlad Morariu, David Riff, DmitryVilensky, Raluca Voinea will facilitate the workshop in collaboration withInterflugs and friends. Special thanks to West Germany.Time: Monday, June 4th, 8pmPlace: West Germany, Skalitzer Str. 133, S-Kottbusser TorThe workshop will be held in English.looking forward top your participationdmitry

Dear all,Let me first introduce myself: my name is Miriam Rasch and I just started working at the Institute of Network Cultures. One of my first projects will involve the Unlike Us Reader. Below you'll find the call for contributions. Deadline is set August 20, 2012. Contact me if you need more information.Sincerely, Miriamhttp://networkcultures.org/wpmu/weblog/2012/06/01/call-for-contributions-unlike-us-reader/CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS:Unlike Us Reader: Understanding Social Media Monopolies and their AlternativesINTRODUCTIONFollowing the success of the previous INC readers we would like to propose to put together a reader with key texts (see under below for possible topics). Anthology (print, pdf, epub) produced by the Institute of Network Cultures in collaboration with the Unlike Us research network. Following the second Unlike Us conference in Amsterdam, the Institute of Network Cultures is devoted to produce a reader that bundles actual theories about the economic and cultural aspects of dominant social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, and the development of alternative, decentralized social media software.POSSIBLE TOPICSCritical Twitter Studies // Artistic Responses to Social Media // Genealogies of Social Networking Sites // Biopolitics // Exploitation of Immaterial Labour // Social Media Activism and the Critique of Liberation Technology // Social What? Defining the Social // Software Matters: Sociotechnical and Algorithmic Cultures // The Private in the Public // Showcasing Alternatives in Social Media // Pitfalls of Building AlternativesWE INVITEInternet, visual culture and media scholars, researchers, artists, curators, producers, lawyers, engineers, open-source and open-content advocates, activists, Unlike Us conference participants, and others to submit materials and proposals.FORMATSWe welcome interviews, dialogues, essays and articles, images (b/w), email exchanges, manifestos, with a max of 8,000 words. For scope and style, take a look at the previous INC readers and the style guide.This publication is produced by the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam and will be launched late 2012, ready in time for a possible Unlike Us #3 (no details known yet about the date and place).DEADLINE: August 20, 2012SEND CONTRITBUTIONS: miriam[at]networkcultures[dot]org (Miriam Rasch)____________MORE INFORMATIONUnlike Us: www.networkcultures.org/unlikeusINC readers: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/publications/inc-readers/Or email: miriam[at]networkcultures[dot]org (from 1st of June on you can expect a response)ABOUT THE READER SERIESThe INC reader series are derived from conference contributions and produced by the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam. They are available (for free) in print and pdf form onwww.networkcultures.org/publications/readers.Previously published in this series:INC Reader #7: Geert Lovink and Nathaniel Tkacz (eds), Critical Point of View: A Wikpedia Reader, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2011. For millions of internet users around the globe, the search for new knowledge begins with Wikipedia. The encyclopedia’s rapid rise, novel organization, and freely offered content have been marveled at and denounced by a host of commentators. Critical Point of View moves beyond unflagging praise, well-worn facts, and questions about its reliability and accuracy, to unveil the complex, messy, and controversial realities of a distributed knowledge platform.INC Reader #6: Geert Lovink and Rachel Somers Miles (eds), Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond YouTube, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2011. Video Vortex Reader II is the second collection of texts that critically explore the rapidly changing landscape of online video and its use. With the success of YouTube and the rise of other online video sharing platforms, the moving image has become expansively more popular on the Web, significantly contributing to the culture and ecology of the internet and our everyday lives. In response, the Video Vortex project continues to examine critical issues of online video content.INC Reader #5: Scott McQuire, Meredith Martin, and Sabine Niederer (eds.), Urban Screens Reader, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2009. The Urban Screens Reader is the first book to focus entirely on the topic of urban screens. A collection of texts from leading theorists, and a series of case studies that deal with artists’ projects, and screen operators’ and curators’ experiences, offering a rich resource at the intersections between digital media, cultural practices and urban space.INC Reader #4: Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer (eds.), Video Vortex Reader: Responses to YouTube, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2008.The Video Vortex Reader is the first collection of critical texts to deal with the rapidly emerging world of online video – from its explosive rise in 2005 with YouTube, to its future as a significant form of personal media.INC Reader #3: Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter (eds.), MyCreativity Reader: A Critique of Creative Industries, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2007.The MyCreativity Reader is a collection of critical research into the creative industries. The material develops out of the MyCreativity Convention on International Creative Industries Research held in Amsterdam, November 2006 (no longer available in print; pdf online).INC Reader #2: Katrien Jacobs, Marije Janssen and Matteo Pasquinelli (eds.), C’Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2007.C’lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader is an anthology that collects the best material from two years of debate from The Art and Politics of Netporn 2005 conference to the 2007 C’Lick Me festival (no longer available in print; pdf online).INC Reader #1: Geert Lovink and Soenke Zehle (eds.), Incommunicado Reader, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2005.The Incommunicado Reader brings together papers written for the June 2005 event, and includes a CD-ROM of interviews with speakers (no longer available in print; pdf online).See also: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/publications/inc-readers/ABOUT UNLIKE US EVENTSUnlike Us #1: The launch of the research network took place during a one day event took on November 24, 2011 in Liamassol, Cyprus. The conference was organized by the internet and communications department of the University of Limasol and focussed on the political economy of social media.Unlike Us #2: The second event of the Unlike Us event took place in Amsterdam from March 8-10, 2012. The major themes of the workshops and two-day conference were alternatives in social media, software studies, artistic practices and the private and the public.______CONTACTMiriam RaschPublications + ProjectsInstitute of Network Culturest: +31 (0)20 595 1865miriam[at]networkcultures[dot]org---Miriam RaschInstitute of Network CulturesHvA Interactive Media, room 05A07Rhijnspoorplein 1NL-1091 GC Amsterdamwww.networkcultures.orgPostal address: PO BOX 1025NL-1000 BA Amsterdamt: +31 20 5951866f: +31 20 5951840miriam-xAlTj2NUtBEeri3KQaAn9UB+6BGkLq7r< at >public.gmane.org

Hello everyone,something wonderful has happened:http://wp.me/pnaKK-CUwith the rise of Open Data and Smart Cities / Smart Communities in theinternational discussion on the (near) future of our cities, we have beengranted the possibility to enhance the Ubiquitous Pompei project wedeveloped a few months ago.High school students of the city of Pompei were given a series offree/libre technological platforms to design their ideal digital city.Wonderful ideas emerged in the process, aiming at a model of city in whichcitizens can adopt peer-to-peer methodologies and practices for citygovernance, coordination, and action on the fundamental issues of theirdaily lives, including the care for the environment, the creation of newopportunities for sustainable business, new forms of education andknowledge sharing.Real-time systems, ubiquitous social networks, augmented-reality andlocation-based services, information visualization, and novel technologicalsolutions dedicated to human relation were all put to good use in thedesign and implementation of the first prototypal services.The project received wide support from the city administration, and hasbeen recognized as a best practice from Italy's Digital Agenda.On June 3rd and 4th, we will join all together in Pompei to start the nextphase of the project.Students will engage the rest of the population in their role ofpeer-to-peer city designers.A series of technological tools and physical-space initiatives will enablecitizens to take active part in the design, and to promote their vision,desires and wishes for the future of their city.All contributions will be collected for the next phase of the project,starting in a date yet to be defined around September/October 2012, so thatthe next phase services will be implemented by the end of the year.Everyone who is able to join us in Pompei is strongly encouraged to do so.All the best,Salvatore + Ubiquitous Pompeisalvatore.iaconesi-H0WUfK1cM0SULHF6PoxzQNHuzzzSOjJt< at >public.gmane.orghttp://www.artisopensource.net

European Sociological AssocationResearch Network 18 - Sociology of Communications and Media ResearchConference "Communication, Crisis, and Critique in Contemporary Capitalism"University of the Basque Country, Bilbao.October 18-20, 2011New deadline for abstract submissions: July 20th, 2012Keynote Talk: Prof. Peter Golding (Northumbria University, UK) – Why a Sociologist should take Communications and Media SeriouslyWe are living in times of global capitalist crisis that require rethinking the ways we organize society, communication, the media, and our lives. In the social sciences, there is a renewed interest in critical studies, the critique and analysis of class and capitalism, and critical political economy. The overall goal of this conference is to foster scholarly presentations, networking, and exchange on the question of which transitions media and communication and media sociology are undergoing in contemporary society. The conference particularly welcomes contributions that are inspired by sociological theories, critical studies, and various strands and traditions of the critical study of media & society.Submission and ParticipationAn abstract of 200-250 words should be sent to Dr. Romina Surugiu, University of Bucharest, at the following e-mail address: bilbao.conference< at >yahoo.comPlease insert the words Bilbao in the subject. The deadline for abstract submission is July 20th, 2012.If you want to participate without paper presentation, then please register via e-mail to Romina Surugiu, stating that that you want to register and participate.Conference FeeFor members of ESA RN18: 35 EurosFor non-members of ESA RN18: 50 EurosThe fee will be collected from the participants at the registration in Bilbao.You can become a member of ESA RN18 by joining the ESA and subscribing to the network. The network subscription fee is only 10 Euros for a 2-year period:http://www.europeansociology.org/member/You can become a member of ESA and of RN18 here:http://www.europeansociology.org/member/Christian Fuchs, Peter Golding, George Pleios(ESA RN18 Chair, Honorary Chair, Vice-Chair)# 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

<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/books/we-are-anonymous-by-parmy-olson.html> The New York Times | International Herald TribuneBooks of The TimesThe Secret Lives of Dangerous Hackers`We Are Anonymous' by Parmy OlsonBy JANET MASLINPublished: May 31, 2012 Postscript Appended In December 2010 the heat-seeking Internet pranksters known as Anonymous attacked PayPal, the online bill-paying business. PayPal had been a conduit for donations to WikiLeaks, the rogue whistle-blower site, until WikiLeaks released a huge cache of State Department internal messages. PayPal cut off donations to the WikiLeaks Web site. Then PayPal's own site was shut down, as Anonymous did what it did best: exaggerate the weight of its own influence. Enlarge This ImageValgas Moore Parmy Olson WE ARE ANONYMOUS Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency By Parmy Olson 498 pages. Little, Brown & Company. $26.99. But, according to "We Are Anonymous," by Parmy Olson, the London bureau chief for Forbes magazine, it had taken a single hacker and his botnet to close PayPal. "He then signed off and went to have his breakfast," she writes. (The accuracy of this account is in dispute. PayPal says that its site was never fully down. But as Ms. Olson says, in "a note about lying to the press," this is how she weighed information as a reporter: "Did supporters of Anonymous lie to me in some interviews? Yes, though admittedly not always to start with. Over time, if I was not sure about a key point, I would seek to corroborate it with others. Such is the case with statements presented as fact in this book. My approach to Anons who were lying to me was simply to go along with their stories, acting as if I were impressed with what they were saying in the hope of teasing out more information that I could later confirm. I have signposted certain anecdotes with the word "claimed" -- e.g., a person "claimed" that story is true. Not everyone in Anonymous and LulzSec lied all the time, however, and there were certain key sources who were most trustworthy than others and whose testimony I tended to more closely, chief among them being Jake Davis." Mr. Davis, known as Topiary, appears to be a principal source in describing how the PayPal attack unfolded.) Even so, Anonymous made it seem like the work of its shadowy horde. "We lied a bit to the press to give it that sense of abundance," says the figure named Topiary, one of the best sources in "We Are Anonymous," a lively, startling book by Ms. Olson that reads as "The Social Network" for group hackers. As in that Facebook film the technological innovations created by a few people snowball wildly beyond expectation, until they have mass effect. But the human element -- the mix of glee, malevolence, randomness, megalomania and just plain mischief that helped spawn these changes -- is what Ms. Olson explores best. "Here was a network of people borne out of a culture of messing with others," she writes, "a paranoid world whose inhabitants never asked each other personal questions and habitually lied about their real lives to protect themselves." The story of Anonymous and its offshoots is worth telling because of the fast and unpredictable ways they have grown. Anonymous began attracting attention after it attacked the Church of Scientology in 2008; subsequent targets have included Sony's PlayStation network, Fox television and ultimately the C.I.A. The Homeland Security Department expressed its own worries last year. Ms. Olson provides a clear timeline through Anonymous's complicated, winding history. She concentrates particularly on how it spun off the smaller, jokier group LulzSec. "If Anonymous had been the 6 o'clock news, LulzSec was `The Daily Show,' " she writes. The breeding ground for much of this was 4chan, the "Deep Web" destination "still mostly unknown to the mainstream but beloved by millions of regular users." The realm of 4chan called /b/ is where some of this book's most destructive characters spent their early Internet years, soaking up so much pornography, violence and in-joke humor that they became bored enough to move on. Ms. Olson, whose evenhanded appraisals steer far clear of sensationalism, describes 4chan as "a teeming pit of depraved images and nasty jokes, yet at the same time a source of extraordinary, unhindered creativity." It thrived on sex and gore. But it popularized the idea of matching funny captions with cute cat photos too. "We Are Anonymous" also captures the broad spectrum of reasons that Anonymous and LulzSec attracted followers. Some, like Topiary -- who turned out to be Jake Davis, an outwardly polite 19-year-old from a sheep-farming community on the remote Shetland Island called Yell, who was arrested in 2011 -- were in it for random pranks and taunting laughs. This book does not shy away from the raw language its principals used, as when Topiary told one victim: "Die in a fire. You're done." Other participants had political motivations. The New Yorker calling himself Sabu began as a self-styled revolutionary and was instrumental in getting Anonymous to invade the Web sites of top government officials in Tunisia. A pivotal part of this book concerns the arrest of Sabu, the unveiling of his real identity as Hector Monsegur, and the F.B.I.'s subsequent use of him as an informant. Sabu's dealings with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks are also described. Ms. Olson notes how Sabu "suddenly seemed very keen to talk to the WikiLeaks founder once his F.B.I. handlers were watching." Ms. Olson regards it as inevitable that neither Anonymous nor LulzSec could reconcile the divergent goals of its participants. Bullying jokesters and politically oriented hacktivists may share sophisticated knowledge of how to manipulate the Web and social media, but each faction became an embarrassment to the other. Topiary told Ms. Olson about his own long-distance contact with Mr. Assange, whom he describes as both intrigued by the saboteurs' potential and critical of their silly side. (After sifting through 75,000 e-mails from a digital security firm, Topiary bashfully admits, one of the things that most interested him was an e-mail from the chief executive's wife saying, "I love when you wear your fuzzy socks with your jammies." ) The most startling conversation in "We Are Anonymous" was arranged by the author: an in-the-flesh meeting between Topiary and a person she calls William, since he remains unidentified. William personifies the dehumanizing effects of cybercrime, and he knows it. One of his specialties is extorting pornographic pictures and then putting them to damaging use. "We split up several boyfriends and girlfriends and appalled many people's mothers," he recalls, about the Facebook tricks the book describes in detail. "I'd be lying if I said there was any great reason," he adds. "I don't feel guilty, it makes me laugh, and it wastes a night." Together they confirm the worst suspicions about the power of sophisticated but untethered Internet manipulation. "You could inspire some 15-year-old, or someone with a 15-year-old's mind-set, to hate whoever you want them to hate," William says. Postscript: May 31, 2012 After this article was published, PayPal contacted The Times to take issue with the statements in the book that say the hackers shut down its Web site. Jennifer Hakes, a senior manager in corporate communications, said that as a result of the attacks in December 2010, "PayPal was never down."A version of this review appeared in print on June 1, 2012, on page C27 ofthe New York edition with the headline: The Secret Lives of DangerousHackers.

Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and an unseen participant of the Thames flotillaJune 3, 2012 by Tjebbe van TijenThe illustrated version with links is available at:http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2012/06/03/queens-diamond-jubilee-and-an-unseen-participant-of-the-thames-flotilla/[tableau of the swimmer activist in front of the big ship Queen Elizabeth]The unseen participant is Trenton Oldfiled who swam into the line of rowing boats during the yearly Oxford/Cambridge rowing competition on April the 7th this year and caused quiet a stir with his non-violent direct action. The Diamond Jubilee Flotilla of today would have been yet another excellent occasion for his daring protest swimming, but I failed to spot him in the live coverage by the BBC, yet in my mind’s eye I saw him courageously crossing the path of the ‘ship of state of the United Kingdom’… I am sure that Trenton Oldfiled has been put under special surveillance during this River Thames event preventing him from participating. Apart from waving and cheering, the audience at such events is supposed to be not involved in the action.[front page of Oxford Student magazine of the swimming activist intervention on April the 7th 2012 and their comment; they called him “a crazed Marxist”…]I had made – in the beginning of April thus year – a note of his personal web pages with his extensive somehow confused ‘manifesto’ “Elitism Leads To Tyranny” on the server of squarespace with the URL http://elitismleadstotyranny.squarespace.com/ , but his site had disappeared. If this is because of his own will or that of others, I can not tell. So, because I had neatly documented his ‘manifesto’ web blog (posted before his action on April the 7th 2012), I can reproduce the full text hereby for posterity. It does not mean that I do fully agree with his way of arguing, but as someone who has studied and documented ‘social movements and direct action’ for decades, I try to understand how someone choses a ‘social issue’, reasons his or her intervention, and what are the reactions. Trenton Oldfiled, worked in the tradition of the British ‘suffragette’ movement. The use of his own bare body as a weapon during an elite sport event, links to an historic action back in the year 1913 by the British suffragette Emily Wilding Davison, who threw herself during a Derby attended by the King before the king’s horse, an action that toppled the horse and the jockey and hurt herself so much that she died of the wounds. “DEEDS NOT WORDS” was the slogan of that time of the militant fighters for equal rights of women.Trenton Oldfiled does make a direct reference to the historical – catastrophic – action by Emily Wilding Davidson, he fails – though – to make a good analysis of the different meanings of that action at that time (*) and links it in too few words with the practice of what he calls “anti-imperialism activists and guerrillas” and the sabotage survival tactics of ”trans-Atlantic slaves.” Nevertheless Trenton Oldfiled was on my mind today and others may have had similar associations seeing the royal pomp of the Brits and thinking about what social realities are hidden by such spectacles and how someone swimming in the pathway of a Royal Flotilla would have been a refreshing addition. That is why I choose this day to republish his somehow clumsy manifesto to honour the River Thames Swimmer Activist of the year 2012.[screen shot with "sorry elitismleasdstotyranny blog is not available]--- start of quoted manifesto ---ELITISM LEADS TO TYRANNY THIS IS A PROTEST, AN ACT OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, A METHODOLOGY OF REFUSING AND RESISTANCE. THIS ACT HAS EMPLOYED GUERRILLA TACTICS. I AM SWIMMING INTO THE BOATS IN THE HOPE I CAN STOP THEM FROM COMPLETING THE RACE AND PROPOSING THE RETURN OF SURPRISE TACTICS. THIS IS ‘PEACEFUL’ … I HAVE NO WEAPONS (DON’T SHOOT!) MY ONLY FEAR, IS NOT SWIMMING FAST ENOUGH TO GET IN THE RIGHT POSITION TO PREVENT THE BOATS. PERFORMANCE UPON THAMES This part of the River Thames is very well known to me having previously worked in the area. I have continued to visit it as often as possible as it is one of the London reaches I became most fond of, mostly because of its unregulated Wooded Tow Path, the expansive foreshore at low tides and the wildlife habitats in the adjacent Leg of Mutton Reservoir. It is a beautiful place, one of the more serene spots in London. Best to visit when it has been dry for a few days as the path can be very muddy and puddled. Setting aside the compelling natural environment for a moment, this reach is also the site of a number of past and present elitist establishments; Fulham Palace, Chiswick House and St Paul’s Schools and a large collection of other ‘independent/public/free schools’. It is also where Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats and Deputy Prime Minster of the Government lives with his family, despite his constituents living hundreds of miles away in post-industrial Sheffield. Most notably and most importantly for today, it is a site where elitists and those with elitist sympathies have come together every year but one for the last 158 years to perform, in the most public way, their ambition for the structures and subsequent benefits from elitism and privilege to continue. (They even list in the programme which public school the rowers attended before Oxford or Cambridge) The boat race itself, with its pseudo competition, assembled around similar principles of fastest, strongest, selected …etc, is an inconsequential backdrop for these elite educational institutions to demonstrate themselves, reboot their shared culture together in the public realm. It is also inconsequential to the performance that the overwhelming majority of the population continue to remain interested in their own lives and disinterested in the boat race. The boat race, while accessible to everyone, isn’t really advertised or promoted as something for the general public to attend, you know when it’s on because it is part of the social networking calendar. This is a public event, for and by the elites with broader social relations aims. The fact that it happens in the public realm (visible) almost exactly as it has done for the last 158 years also becomes important; the untouched; the unchanged is significant. Most standing alongside the Thames today are in fact the pumped-up though obedient administrators, managers, promoters, politicians and enforcers; functional, strategic and aspirational elites. The transnational-corpo-aristocratic ruling class (invisible) haven’t turned up today and would never consider doing so, despite the best endeavours of Bollinger, Xchange and Hammersmith & Fulham’s mayor. HISTORY IS A WEAPON When hasn’t elitism lead to tyranny? When hasn’t the belief of being ‘more’ than another person led to tragedy? Who benefits from elitism? One won’t be surprised to learn the etymology of the word ‘elite’ derives from ‘the elected’ … unfortunately not elected by democratic means, but rather, elected by god. Yup…‘elected’, ‘selected’, ‘chosen’ … by god … inherited. When has this understanding of oneself or by a group of people ever been a good thing? When has this understanding not resulted in tyranny? Is tyranny surely not the inevitable outcome? And in contrast, when hasn’t the pursuit of equality, not resulted in these long passages of tyranny being overcome, even if temporarily? Everyone will remember some of their history lessons … where people have been taken advantage of by people that believe themselves somehow better, more entitled than another individual or group of people. Most recently this has included the enclosure and eviction from the commons, transatlantic slavery, imperialism and colonialism, fascism, holocausts, genocides and dictatorships and migrant labour camps. It is difficult to grasp, as many of us are still heady and have strong memories of the previous ‘boom’ decade, but we are in the middle of the early stages … or we have just about reached the precipice of another era of mass enslavement and the large scale enclosure of ‘Our Public’. What is happening in the UK, for example, is not ‘privatisation’ but a contemporary demonstration of full scale enclosure of Our Public. Couldn’t happen again … why not? Why wouldn’t something different but similar happen again? What policies, what institutions, exist to prevent something similar from happening again? What evidence is there that this isn’t happening? When did Our Public last experience an injection of its own readily available dose of agency and liberty? To enclose and to enslave requires the audacity, cunning and daring to take advantage of our natural kindness, our belief in others, our respect for authority, our desire to please, and our apprehension about ‘causing waves’, our hope for all to have a better life, somehow. It also depends on our disbelief, despite having experienced it, that other people would purposefully set out to harm us for their own advantage. More recently we have also been encouraged, though the evidence displays the opposite much of the time, that a whole raft of institutions exists that work to prevent human catastrophes like our right to protest being denied, detention without trial or charge, the monopolisation of industries, and essentials like food and water. These institutions were established to prevent slavery, genocide, indentured labour and groupings of indices of deprivation and poverty from occurring. It is likely many in the western Baby Boomers generation (large percentage of the UK population), who have benefited so much from these institutions, are finding it very difficult to consider that these institutions might now be turning against them, their children and their grandchildren? Could what is happening in the UK (and around the world); the state of exception with Olympics, the wholesale removal of countless civil rights, the project to create fear and suspicion of others, the transfer of our money into the vaults of a handful of corporations, the ongoing wars, the pomp and ceremony for unelected official anniversaries, the amazingly high unemployment, the devastation to public services such as health and education, the isolation of education due to high fees, the entangled corrupt relationship between the media, police and politicians, the racism, the increasing misogyny, the forced labour in supermarkets, the spying on our emails, skype calls, the control of food production and distribution and the reductions of tax burdens for the richest … could these all be best understood as the process of enclosure? Do we resist now setting out to avoid something akin to slavery and imperialism? Or do we hesitate and find ourselves and our children without agency once again and in a long battle to gain it again? How long might it take and how many lives might this demand? CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE There is a concerted effort to disintegrate ideas of Our Public; to atomise and divide us. Only yesterday did a British government minister suggest that citizens should ‘shop’ (dob-in) people they know to be organising or attending a protest related to the forthcoming Olympic Games. Along with the brutality the police and military are prepared to use against organised peaceful protestors, it seems it might be time to employ ‘little war’ / ‘guerrilla tactics’. My swim into the pathway of the two boats today (I hope) is a result of key guerrilla tactics; local knowledge, ambush, surprise, mobility and speed, detailed information and decisiveness. There is no choice but to be apprehended in this action. I know this area very well and have planned the swim as best as I can, taking into account all the local knowledge I have gained over the years. Guerrilla tactics could be summarised as; ‘preparation, creativity, daring and attrition’.The aim of employing these tactics is to shift from being a ‘victim’ … of having things done to one, to being the ones setting the agenda, placing elites more and more on the back foot, increasing their costs, causing confusion, fermenting internal mistrust, creating embarrassment (a Tory’s worst nightmare?), frustration and manifesting a vulnerability. This will provide the time and space for an ongoing development of post-elitism, post-capitalist thought and debate. Our current disorganisation and indirection is an advantage. In the past, guerrilla tactics have been employed by small groups of people. Today there is the opportunity to also undertake this alone, as an individual. Part of my inspiration for today’s action comes from a protest action that took place 99 years ago – when Emily Davison ran into Epson Derby race. On the 4 June 1913 Emily ran into the horse that the king had entered. She died from the injuries sustained from action. She was demanding rights for women. It was an individual act born of a political and philosophical position. This action is also part inspired by the anti-imperialism activists and guerrillas. This includes trans-Atlantic slaves who not only forced their freedom by revolting but undertook tactics of breaking tools, working slowly, acts of sabotage, feigning illness and maintaining their cultures. They found ways to continually undermine the system in small and large ways. We all need to make a living and sometimes we do this by taking jobs we disagree with or find out are likely to detrimental to our children’s future. Being in these jobs also provides us with a great opportunity to employ civil disobedience and guerrilla tactics. It is the chance to match the personal and the political. Security guards are possibly in the best position. Examples of actions might include: · Setting off Fire Alarms in buildings where we work, perhaps at strategic times, when a particular meeting is meant to happen that will agree the cutting of services, for example? (This action seems morally okay as all the emergency services happily deployed vast numbers to participate in the filming of a Bond movie the other weekend on Whitehall). · If you work in a private company or government department that is helping enclose Our Public perhaps you could work slowly, make mistakes, loose documents, sending large documents to clog up email accounts? · If you are a taxi driver can you take the passenger the slowest possible and most expensive route? · If you are a plumber can you ‘store up’ a problem in the office of a conservative think tank office you have been called to? · If you have a tow truck company can you park in front of Nick Clegg or David Cameron’s driveway, accidentaly? Could you tow their car away? · If you ride a bike and it’s difficult to find somewhere to lock your bike (as bike racks are taken away), can you lock it the one of the corporate bikes which now litter our streets everywhere? · If you clean the bathroom of someone that considers themselves elite or is an elite sympathiser, like a right wing professor, can you never put loo paper in their bathroom? · If you work in a restaurant where elitists eat, can you serve the food once it is cold or cook the wrong food? · If you are a builder repairing the house of an elitist can you also bug it and share the footage and audio online? · If you are a pest controller and you are called to the office or home of an elitist or elitist sympathiser can you fail at destroying the pest and possibly introduce new pests? · Can you take up the time of a ‘VIP’ you work for by arranging time consuming meetings, asking as many questions as possible? Can you make them late? · If you work in a call centre, can you refund people and find the best discounts? · If you are a student and attend a talk, can you challenge the professors? Can you take the stage and highlight to the audience the work they have done in contrast to academia? · Are there networking events designed for the elites and their sympathisers where you could let off a stink bomb? · If you work in audio-visuals for meetings/conferences could you put up the wrong slides, or turn the correct ones upside down and remove cables, rendering the equipment unusable? · Could you plan your own government or council made up from people you admire and trust – in similar vain to Football Manager and publish it on the internet? · Are there events like today’s boat race that you could do something similar to Emily Davison with? Is this possible in the lead up to and within the Olympics itself? This is a special call to security guards. The elite depend on you the most. Without you they are nothing. Copyright © 2012, TRENTON OLDFILED. --- end of quoted manifested ---[tableau with this caption: "A 1911-1912 typical banner of the British suffragette movement with the action paradigm “DEED NOT WORDS” and a later depiction of the action of Emily Davidson throwing herself before the King’s racing horse."]—-(*) - The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866-1928 By Elizabeth Crawford has many references on the complicated history of Emily Wilding Davison and several pages can be read on line via GoogleBooks.- Another good source is “A Suffrage Reader: Charting Directions in British Suffrage History By Joan Ryan, Laura Ugolini, also available on GoogleBooks.Be the first to like this post.Posted in news-tableau, Revolts | Tagged "deeds not words", British Queen Diamond Jubilee Flotilla, direct actions,history of social movements, manifestos, Oxford cambridge Boat Race, Queen Elizabeth II, river Thames,suffragettes, swimming activist, Trenton Oldfiled

London 2012 Olympics security operation investigating 500,000 people, but WILL HE PASS?June 6, 2012 by Tjebbe van Tije; for the full illustrated and linked version see:http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2012/06/06/london-2012-olympics-security-operation-investigating-500000-people-but-will-he-pass/-------------The Guardian June 5th: “London 2012 security operation investigating 500,000 people”[ tableau with picture of ‘whole mind scanner’ with Paul McCartney being scanned and a female constable][picture of Paul McCartney with the Beatles singing 'Revolution' in 1968][idem video]These associated lyrics (from 1968 at the end of the roaring sixties) will certainly let many alarm bells ring when Paul McCartney will pass the check point prior to his opening performance of the 2012 Olympics Games in London. Automated surveillance systems now massively used to prevent any unrest during the London Olympics also checking out this humble WordPress blog – are unintelligent and will just gather that there is a pattern of ‘adjacent words’ with a recurring frequency of the words:‘revolution’, ‘change’, ‘world’, ‘destruction’, ‘money’, ‘hate’, ‘constitution’, ‘chairman’, and ‘Mao’.M16 and Scotland Yard on-line surveyors vetting each person entering the Olympic perimeters, will rush to their screens alarmed by the perfect Big Brother System – operational and tested already for months – and in the embedded earphones of the female constable’s hat, a voice will say…. “take this man apart for questioning.”And…, of course there will be excuses afterward and an embarrassed smile, when human intelligence will have been applied. “Please Sir McCartney, come and join the opening ceremony, there never has been any harm in your songs, … excuse us for those stupid machines.”You say you want a revolutionWell, you knowWe all want to change the worldYou tell me that it’s evolutionWell, you knowWe all want to change the worldBut when you talk about destructionDon’t you know that you can count me outDon’t you know it’s gonna be all rightAll right, all rightYou say you got a real solutionWell, you knowWe’d all love to see the planYou ask me for a contributionWell, you knowWe’re doing what we canBut when you want moneyFor people with minds that hateAll I can tell is brother you have to waitDon’t you know it’s gonna be all rightAll right, all rightAhAh, ah, ah, ah, ah…You say you’ll change the constitutionWell, you knowWe all want to change your headYou tell me it’s the institutionWell, you knowYou better free you mind insteadBut if you go carrying pictures of chairman MaoYou ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhowDon’t you know it’s gonna be all rightAll right, all rightAll right, all right, all rightAll right, all right, all rightThe good old Birtish National Council for Civil Liberties (founded in 1934) now renamed ‘Liberty’, has already for a long time this subdued polite commend on their web page about the impact of surveillance on the London 2012 Olympics:There is no doubting that police and security will be faced with demanding challenges during the London Olympics. Nevertheless, infringements on basic civil liberties like the right to free speech and peaceful protest are not the solution to a secure Games. It would also be completely contrary to the spirit of the Olympics for 2012 to become an excuse for mass surveillance and loss of liberties. What a shameful legacy for London 2012 that would be.Posted in news-tableau, The downside of leisure industry | Tagged 1968, automated surveillance, Chairman Mao,civil liberties, destruction, London Olympics 2012, mass security systems, Paul McCartney, protest songs,revolution, whole mind scanners

A number (13)The dOCUMENTA, the hEGEMONDespite the fact a Critical Art Ensemble tries hard to get in touch with people's hearts and minds on the spot[1], despite the fact the TRA.FO 'fights' since years for a friendly, clean but un-cleared and pro-(street-)people gardening-claim on the bourgeois protestant churchyard where jerks, drunk and junkies meet[2], despite the fact WochenKlausur[3] had no other (better) 30.000,00 EUR-idea but steelwork ... pardon me! streetworkers for those subordinated "subaltern", despite the word "Competition is good for business" at the Friedrichsplatz but "everyone for themselves" [4], despite the fact VW loves to sponsor the Grossveranstaltung and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann would adore it, despite the fact some Jakobs of the dada13[5] were "based in Berlin" and took part in (if you like) the Capital Gentrification Programme there and AND AND AND[6] are "commoning" ("Liebe Bewohnerinnen und Bewohner Kassels / Dear Inhabitants of Kassel") before or after Detroit or Buenos Aires (?) and the local motley Living Without Armament Group fixated on Panzer[7] will be able to hand out home-baked Cookie Tanks under this umbrella in Europe's first theatre building in history, despite the fact of approx. 12 million dependent on state transfer payments in the FRG and June-September means no holiday at this point, despite all the activist's interconnectivities and the benefit for the town (who's town?), despite the hot summer drinks and the Nothern-Hesse Hotel Occupy Movement[8] and "Kabul could be Kassel"[9], despite some want to be part of it plus the matter that 13 is the number after 12 and before 14 and we are suspicious but not superstitious, will this be bad luck when it's in the end free riding little rat-shops, cheap cheating copycat stores and temporary homes[10] in the dirty parts of the postwar and prewar inner "City" without any right to the real city after such de-reconstruction, selling non-profitcultural glitchè (Klitsche)[11] stuff or fake residencies without any subsidies overworking in self-exploitation?What do we know?And who is this omnious "we" anyway? Besides this ontological questioning: As we know the Hegemon functions similar to a Block (Gramsci). The block must not necessarily be a politicial party (Gramsci's erminology was camouflage paying attention to the censor) but, embedded actor–network relations given, the great _it_ of the Hegemon is based on this projection of identity and hallucinates itself being able to incorporate any other smaller or weaker block or at least to till the field and leave traces ("Beuys Stones", »Men Walking to the Sky« in several front gardens of Kassel suburbs) and to spur the echos of former and new prosperity. This leading walking to the sky is certainly not to be indentified with the offspaces's "Off". At the end of the tube there is no Anti-Wall Street Party heaven waiting, there is the spirit of a citizen of honour waiting: August Bode (not Arnold Bode), the "ingenious designer"[12]. The first German tank in the so called World War I, the "Kolossal Wagen", was a job for Wegmann & Co.[13] In other words, any gap of social interaction in the district out there can be filled with bullets of anti-voids. Such anti-void is common in this town. Horrors of rememberances may be filled utterly with objects of significance.As the striving for leading the community indicates differences in social class structure art takes the lead[15] as mediator between the classes like Polaris[16] announces in a re-interpretation of the fameous scene of reconciliation[17] in _Metropolis_(Director: Fritz Lang). The movie was celebrated by members of the local educated class last (Bildungsbuerger) year -- the look and feel of the FRG's socio-futuristic message which pleads for a paradox ignorance in knowing, that Bildungsbuerger, the middle classes are aware of economic inequality only they see just a "gap between rich and poor", that's how assets are rephrased into social capital. A real couch in terms. In strange concidence with the notorius Agenda 2010, which is Germany's austerity programme since 2004, a nearly complete copy of _Metropolis_ has been found in Buenos Aires in 2010. TJing this fact with the ideology of reconciliation the whole project can be considered the rediscovery of class-compromise, a project endangered middle classes like most.[18] "Culture for all" (Social Democrats) turns out to be the positivist slogan of the ruling close to the "Artistic pragmatism" of Artur Žmijewski[19] by which the group in the middle between right an left helps itself out. "The interest of the state becomes the interest of its Biennials (...)."[19] When the state succeeds to bind civil society's powers and buttom-up forms it (he or she?) wins in every sector. And if the state succeeds to shape and sculpt social contradictions into disarmed paradoxes it prevails ... its rhythm can take the shape of racist protest: "I can't pay no doctor bill. (but Whitey's on the moon)".[20] So d'accord with Rosa Perutz, the struggle is about "development of self-organised structures" and not "spectacularisation" -- nevertheless critiques on a as-such-spectacularisation following the SI guarantees a global but German career in the subsidised art-"world".Imagine beeing a PHD-student or post-graduate from Greece payed by some XY-Archive or some ABC-mediale in Berlin (literally ) dealing with a theory of money ... what an academistical joke. But yet and anyhow the "partaking"-argument Haben und Brauchen champions in the capital is in fact begging but demonstrates ideas of a re-socialisation in contrary to the existing agenda of the administrations and shows an internalised state pateranlism: "(...) the art market alone does not provide a sufficient economic basis for the future life of contemporary art in Berlin. (...) the city must join in taking responsibility for that arena's [Berlin's art, whatever that is] economic requisites."[21] Shall this happen in every city for every social field? And who defines this art on what basis of criteria? Remember Hans Heinz Holz's demand for criteria in the documenta 5 catalogue. Is the relationship of aesthetical overproduction and overpopulation understood? Are self-organised structures better than the spectacle and if so why? Where does the money for such responsibility come from?One can find the call for "financial stimulus" in Frankfurt/Main, Hamburg, Goettingen, Kassel etc. To word a word: A crisis finds its victims who oppose sacrifices. "A ban on speculation" would mean to halt normal capitalism in terms of private poperty, back to an old false social compromise and the handshake of postwar-times, times of prosperity and the beginning of the German classless society. These organised want regulation and needs reflection getting »art-fare«.Body & Brains: Bakers shall never exploit bakersCities like Berlin and Prague are full of these prosper tingings. Berlin "has got 70.000 artists, am I the one who becomes the 70thsd-and-1?" As facebook became almost the modern-modern marketing medium-tool for the self in the Post-Fordism of the global(ised) cities vulnerables must "like" the mini-businesses of their "friends" on penalty of social ruin. Talks about "abuse, corruption and exploitation in the (...) world" -- the "art world"[22] -- also ethics like "artists should not exploit artists" deny a plain truth of the Body & Brains as commodity but pursues apparently a New Deal for cultural workers. To have and to need under current conditions is to be and to produce against the needs. We appreciate this cry for non-alienated work and living conditions but the criticial standpoint of Haben und Brauchen accepts the make-up of marketing. It has to, as long as even the smallest petit bourgeois grounds are not lost. And they accept the NLP of corporative "Surfing Systems"[23] for small profit and subsistence and competence in concurrence and tempered competition. Renting a space (white cube, gallery, playground) and selling time is the consequence of the gulf in the cultural sector in concrete terms. To work with this chasm supports the category of culture itself and therefore the order. Is it only state driven performances acquire another asset namely the critical art freed from hard/real/true subsistence (artisanism), free (and neo-fine) from that reason? Fuck Fucking Good Art. The ethics of subsidy not only abnegates the existing border line market on the edge of art markets and funds, it can not negate its own funding and must suppress the sourcing of its sources in a blockout. All earnings for academies, departments, associations and clubs originate firstly from funds in the end funded by surplus (unpaid) work in the profit making sectors. This is where the debating of topics of the beauty and ugliness of money (discourses) requires a socket for the "operating system" (compare footnote 23).Visible BlindnessThe POT of the ">top e.V."[24] by way of example and to make an example is a fake money pot. The persons are running and running an impossible space with and against the bigger event. Running in Kassel a few days before the "d" offers insights: according to new official poster campaign visitors must be blind and need quick response code readers to see where the art is. According to an older but secondary poster campaign[25] by the municipality local culture is unseeable too but everywhere and thus has to be branded, marked, signified in alarm colours. Strike is not allowed (German Works Constitution Act prohibits political strike anyhow, ... if artists were unionsed). The red and white stripes speak. The semiotics of the barrier claim a culture zone, the reactionary T.A.Z. In the zone all is possible -- culturally. But the zone is no longer particular anymore. We don't write about museification of the public. When culture is everywhere one doesn't need any museum or barrier, the barrier became an abstract sign, the museum became a factory or at least the non-democratic refunder of the worker's and service provider's capitals only legitimised by ruling networks. The Fridericianum[26], the negative museum, is the perfect cast for this fatalistic theory of a Without-any-Outside. It is the socket for the OS-Hardware. Spectacularisation in the name of a power from above (underneath, alongside, "in us"?)[27] masked (?) with self-organised bottom-up look-alike structures dares to attack this temple.This spectacular Hegemon[28] does no longer match Gramsci's notion of a position warfare in civil society, it's fluid. As One of the first public museums on the continent this building was representing the classicistic enlightended Europe (1768/1769), the very model of knowledge and literacy of the citoyen and the contrat social -- it now can be regarded as an eye and senses catching upgraded machine that attracts attention for a new unification, for "a social relation among people, mediated (...)"[29] a ...POT = Point of Tale[30] for the "Ecology of Culture"DIY everywhere, self-organissation everywhere, spectacles criticizing spectacularisation -- the ubiquitous culture unseen but public related, the European championship, the political football?[31] The mask though, see above and footnote 23 again, is Make-up, an integrated persona and personification with nothing behind now forced into activism entertaining you like any William. Spectacle speaks as money speaks, it says: I am no spetaculum and you are no speculator, this is everyday life. Adjust![32]In her text "Ausser Controlling" (Outside of Controlling) Carmen Moersch complains about bureaucratic life-forms. These are not absolut as such by now but function like positive interventions or Dazwischenkunft (In-Betweenness), as mediator for social circumstances designers say.[33] In 2007 at the documenta 12 Moersch exposed a post-re-colonial verbal gesture by adressing Kassel citzens with: "We are looking forward working with the population"[34] After September the culture as secured culture[35] telling this tale never came back again personally. The selfmade space, any space is an im-possible space in terms of geo targeting a prosper township with a 15,5 per cent Poverty Rate only[34 1/2]. The "Ecology of Spirit and Culture and the "image pollution", both proclaimed by Carolyn Christov-Nakargiev[36], tell distinction, order and cleanliness in controlling via aesthetics. Pecunia non olet. Still VW is as clearly a German undertaking as the Documenta is. Any Europeanism has to be analysed towards a Germanism in Capitalism. For a t-shirt: German-centric Policy = d13.Collapse and Recover!And if its still masks, is this visage of sustainability diversity post-coloniality the unidentified character-mask of this non-concept-concept[37]and face of the "I don't know"[38]? A non-totalitarian approach of pretended indifference rolling back to closed (Heiderggerian?) contexts[39]? Who were those of a Kassel factory who set a failed workpiece right into the documenta's parcour and had to face incorporation of the piece to the list of works like some Henry Moore? What's the difference of work and work here?After Germany's Renaissance from 1948 on the parole was Collapse and Recover! At this point a reading of _The Wages of Destruction_[40] may help to explain how the Reich actually won the war by collapsing the fiend and recovering yourself. Besides the traces of the so called Second World War in the city of Kassel (the inner city was bombed and destroyed by nearly 100 per cent!) the Documenta rebuilds since ages the latter, the self of the Volk (and its Wagen) while -- in Heidegger style -- breaking down all breaks with this circuit. Madonna's devil horn hand is a victory sign.[41] Or for who may read sociological German:"Das détournement ist laengst detourniert und Bestandteil der Massen-Hochkultur, deren (politisierte) Produzentinnen, Freigesetzte und Lohnarbeitslose, davon traeumen, eine Verbindung herstellen zu koennen, zwischen ihrer "Arbeit" am Sozialen -- die sie fuer eine Poesie der Gesellschaftsgestaltung halten, ohne mit ihrem kuratorischen, in-determiniert distinguierten "I don't know" je die Eigentumsverhaeltnisse anzutasten -- und dem ganzen Rest, der fuer sie die unerreichbare Wirklichkeit ist, die sie absaugen, innerhalb derer sie ausgesaugt werden, zerr-finanziert aus den Fonds der (im Sinne des Kapitals) produktiven Sektoren, welche ihnen voellig fremd sind und daher um so mehr zur Projektionsflaeche ihrer Unerfuelltheiten dienen, die auch deshalb unerfuellt sind, weil die Lumpenkreativen spueren aber nicht weg- und wettmachen koennen, was die Differenz zwischen ihrem Spiel auf Honorarbasis und der wirklichen Umsetzung und Realisierung der spielerisch-produktiven, herrenlosen nicht-anarchischen Produktivitaet ausmacht ..." (HAUPT STADT KULTUR FRONT)When reproducing the matter within critique can be distunguished from criticising the matter through its representation spectacle-spectacle says: Be critical, I will filter. Let's rock.[42]_________________________[1] http://www.critical-art.net/WinningHeartsAndMinds[2] http://kulturnetz-kassel.de/topografie/details.html?id=1493&hk=10&uk=1[3] http://www.hna.de/nachrichten/stadt-kassel/kassel/30000-euro-eine-idee-2274885.html[4] Stephan Balkenhol. HNA, 9. Mai 2012. Druckausgabe / HNA Newspaper, May 9, 2012. Printed Edition.[5] http://d13.documenta.de/#participants/participants/jakob-schillinger[6] http://andandand.org/brief_28_02_12.pdf[7] http://panzerknacken.blogsport.de[8] Rumors say hotels are booked out in Kassel during summer.[9] Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (?).[10] http://www.temporaryhome.org[11] Rat-Shop.[12] www.stadt-kassel.de/stadtinfo/jubilaeum/ehrenbuerger/weitere/17595/index.html[13] http://einestages.spiegel.de/external/ShowEntry/Sl_onHideNotices/S13902.html [14] www.h-klussmann.homepage.t-online.de/koenigsplatz05.jpg[15] www.artscouncil.org.uk/what-we-do/our-priorities-2011-15/london-2012/artists-taking-the-lead[16] http://polarisinternational.wordpress.com[17] http://polarisinternational.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/polaris-ltd-creative-class.jpg[18] A beautiful line of conspiracy could even be found in Fritz Rasp's role in the movie: He's reading the Metropolis Courier 13 while watching the boss's son. http://media.coveringmedia.com/media/images/movies/2010/05/16/metropolis_01.jpg[19] "Trust your Angst" by http://perutz.copyriot.com. Žmijewski is the anti-curator saving the arts as art who believes that simple local non-independet solidarity is a solution to the economic crisis: "If you have a kitchen constructed by you, where soup or simple pasta is cooked thanks to donated food - precisely this is an economical answer." Occupy Amsterdam Does the Revolution Need Revolutionaries, or Does It Need Artists as Well?" in: _What can Art do for Real Politics?_. Camera Austria, 2012. P. 41. The book _Art & Agenda: Political Art and Activism_ is full of such naive "future forms of political discourse". http://shop.gestalten.com/art-and-agenda.html[20] Gil Scott Heron, who one year before his death boycotted playing Tel Aviv because of Israel's apartheid. However is the boycott of Israeli products that has to be justified as an act against a state in war and the phantasies of changing politics by means of cosumer-power widespread in specific stratums in civil society.[21] http://www.habenundbrauchen.de/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/HB_web_english_neu.pdf[22] 1st ArtLeaks Working Assembly 2012. http://www.facebook.com/events/176353445826756[23] This was the title of a Kassler Kunstverein exhibition in the late 1990ies, the ironic and therefore true handshake of esthetic "operating systems" (art was willingly indentified with this term in those days) with the established and art as unquestioned authorized sector of the emerging new order of a post-coldwar Mid Europe Society. With this strategy the "Art Club World" was only stepping on the pathways of the Neue Mitte -- a mask of under-critical thinking and acting per reinventing that very institutional plot, a 'free' neo-fine arts as a pre-form of patronaged cultural anti-industries which balances the market (in comparison to cultural industries) so well and helps to preserve the cultural state or to be little more precise the State of Culture (which has other tasks than the State of War for instance ... really?).[24] pot.top-ev.de[25] "Ueberall Kultur (Culture Everywhere)" http://www.stadt-kassel.de/aktuelles/meldungen/18249/12_05_03_kasselkultur_600.jpg[26] http://www.art-magazin.de/asset/Image/_2010/Art-City-Guide/CG-Kassel/fridericianum-kassel/Kunsthalle-Fridericianum_ar.jpg[27] "'The model of the Heterotopia as location (topos) in a field or sector which is until now not fully occupied by the power of the democratic state and its commando is paradoxically the core content of the cultural agenda of the state.' (Michel Foucault ?)" From an unpublished script for a programme on aesthetical production and (political) economy.[28] http://www.tfw2005.com/transformers-news/attach/3/9/6/4/7/hegemon1_1336022992.png[29] "Mediated by images". Guy Debord. _The Society of the Spectacle_, theses 3 and 4. See: http://www.n0name.de/news/news137.txt[30] Compare top e.V.'s Tagline-Rotator on the project webpage (http://pot.top-ev.de.), it's a database based WordPress Plugin which randomly and content-hybridly selects selected (!) lines. [31] http://images.artnet.com/images_DE/Magazine/reviews/aichinger/aichinger06-13-08-6.jpg[32] http://www.fotocommunity.de/pc/pc/display/18019657[33] http://www.gesellschafftform.de[34] Carmen Moersch. "Ausser Controlling. Kuenstlerinnen in der Kunstvermittlung." in: _Kulturvermittlung - zwischen kultureller Bildung und Kulturmarketing -- Eine Profession mit Zukunft_. P. 217. Somewhere else (HNA. Newspaper, 2007?: "Wir freuen uns darauf, mit der Bevoelkerung zusammenzuarbeiten" (Carmen Moersch).[34 1/2] See "Suche nach regionalen Armutsquoten (Search for regional Poverty Rates)" with the Armutsatlas (Poverty Atlas) http://www.forschung.paritaet.org/index.php?id=armutsatlas&no_cache=1[35] A secure*d* culture can by no means be understood as _secure_ culture. It is uncertain, sieged by all what's not culture.[36] Carolyn Christov-Nakargiev in: HNA. Newspaper. "Volkswagen wird Hauptsponsor der documenta 13 (Volkswagen becomes main sponsor of the documenta 13)", 13.04.2012. In 2007 it was Saab.[37] Christov-Nakargiev, dOCUMENTA 13.[38] Artur Zmijewski, 7. Berlin Biennale.[39] The artist makes the art, art makes the artist.[40] Adam Tooze. _ The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy._ http://www.amazon.com/The-Wages-Destruction-Breaking-Economy/dp/0670038261[41] http://www.klatsch-tratsch.de/wp-content/uploads-thumbnails/615xq100/2012/01/Madonna_Sticky__Sweet_Tour_Chicgago_.jpg[42] http://www.n0name.de/38317/wuerstchenbude/09_38317-wegmann_120_db.mp3Ali Emas/Matze Schmidt, Kassel June 3, 2012

Here’s information on two upcoming seminars at the University of Essex Centre for Work, Organization, and Society. Cheers, Stevphen18/6 Seminar on Revaluing the Social in Contemporary CapitalismMonday June 18th, 2012 < at > 3PMUniversity of Essex Room 4SB.5.3Centre for Work, Organization and Society (http://www.essex.ac.uk/ebs/research/emc)Seminar presentations by: Jason Read (University of Southern Maine) / George Tsogas (Cass, City University) / Stevphen Shukaitis (University of Essex)AbstractsGeneral Relations: Transindividuality from Ontology to a Non-Economic Critique of Political EconomyJason Read (University of Southern Maine)In the Grundrisse Marx writes “Only in the eighteenth century, in ‘civil society,’ do the various forms of social connectedness confront the individual as a mere means towards his private purposes, as external necessity. But the epoch which produces this standpoint, that of the isolated individual, is also precisely that of the hitherto must developed social (from this standpoint, general) relations.” The contradiction Marx grasped between the increased interconnectedness of economic production and social isolation has only deepened into the twenty-first century: it is the era of commons, of digital connections, but also the era of neoliberal individuation, isolation, and precarious fragmentation. How then to make sense of an era of connection and isolation. I argue that the concept, or rather the problem, of transindividuation, makes possible a conflictual understanding of the genesis of both individuals and social relations. I say problem, or problematic, rather than concept, because transindividuality needs to be grasped in its broadest sense as an ontology of relations (Simondon, Spinoza); a critique of political economy (Marx, Virno, Stiegler); and a constitution of political subjectivity (Balibar, Negri). It is by thinking the interrelation of the ontology, economy, and political that we can think the constitution and transformation of the present.Cognitive capitalism, organization, and the labour theory of valueGeorge Tsogas (Cass) & Stevphen Shukaitis (Essex)We address the reasons and methods for renewing a transfusion of ideas between Marxism and organisation and management theorising. We put forward a dialectical approach to the search for O&M theories, by stepping outside disciplinary confines. The Marxian labour theory of value is put forward as the territory for such synthetical exchange to commence. For that task, we make the most of the autonomist Marxist tradition, inasmuch as it offers us a coherent explanation of the social foundations of post-Fordist, contemporary (cognitive) capitalism. We question the contemporary significance and relevance of the Marxian labour theory of value, in an era of deep capitalist crisis, and reach the assertion of the negation of value creation in cognitive capitalism: consumption precedes production and creates – rather than destroys – value. Our aim is to bring to the forefront of O&M theoretical enquiry fundamental questions on the nature of labour, exchange relations and forces of production in contemporary, cognitive capitalism.--26/6 Seminar: Rise of the FlashpublicsTuesday June 26th, 2012 < at > 4PMUniversity of Essex Room LTB4Centre for Work, Organization and Society (http://www.essex.ac.uk/ebs/research/emc)Rise of the Flashpublics: State-friended Social Media, User-Generated Discontent, and the Affective TransferThis presentation examines recent entanglements of social media and political dissent to explore mutations in network sovereignty. Using a number of recent examples (including the US State Department organized Alliance of Youth Movements, the uprisings in Iran and Egypt, KONY 2012, Occupy Wall Street, and the US police networks), it argues that we are witnessing a convergence of sovereign and network powers, one that expresses new modes of control while setting the conditions for new forms of evaluation and antagonism. Network alliances and coalitions have become key actors in constructing a public (now as “State-friended” movements) and dissuading dissent movements (“State-enemied” ones). More specifically, counter-radicalization can take place via creating what I call flashpublics (quickly mobilized networked alliances that distract and prevent other emergent networks). At the same time, these coalitions depend on social media spectators/participants, which are affective transfer points that exceed network capture.Bio: Jack Z. Bratich is associate professor and department chair of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University. He is author of Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture (2008) and coeditor, along with Jeremy Packer and Cameron McCarthy, Foucault, Cultural Studies, and Governmentality (2003). His work applies autonomist social theory to such topics as audience studies, social media, and the cultural politics of secrecy. He is a zine librarian at ABC No Rio in New York City.

Dear Nettime,As you might imagine, I¹m working out on my own analysis of the Wisconsinrecall election flame-out. I¹m taking my time with this one. What happensover the next few weeks following the June 5 election will be important insetting up the next phase of the struggle here and will say something aboutthe national implications.Quicker than I are these writers, linked below. I don¹t agree with all, andthere is some overlap in perspectives, but out of the flood of post-mortempunditry these are some of the more interesting.Doug Henwoodhttp://lbo-news.com/2012/06/06/walkers-victory-un-sugar-coated/Nichali M Ciacciohttp://nichaliciaccio.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/recall-as-detour-why-wisconsin-should-not-stop-now/Nicolas Lamperthttp://www.justseeds.org/blog/2012/06/wisconsin_workers_divided_and.htmlArun Gupta and Steve Hornhttp://truth-out.org/news/item/9661-the-silver-lining-in-walkers-victoryMatt Rothschildhttp://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=36963Barf away,Dan w.

"We are free because we are together"The third protest camp of refugees-on-the-street took place last monthin Ter Apel NL, in front of the big complex for processing asylumseekers and undocuemnetd migrants. The camp is a form of autonomousaction by a collective of victimized and criminalised men and women.It is not a new tactics in the global social movement of migrants, butfor The Netherlands it constitutes an important step ahead. For Dutchactivists it is very encouraging to be able to join directly with thepeople whose rights they have been trying to defend for years. Andwe could join them in the way of the activist: initiating a concreteand radical action to make a different way of looking at migrationpossible.any alternative left. The choice for many is between detention andleading a miserable life on the street, after exhausting all yourreserves and the generosity of your friends. Many have no way ofleaving the country. They cannot go to Germany or Belgium and if theydo so legally they will be returned (based on the Dublin Claim rule).Moving on to Canada or USA is a wish but expensive and complicated ifyou don't have some connections already. So if you have really goodreasons for not going back to your country of origin, to your mother,to your old friends and to the naturalness of social life, than youhave to do something drastic to stop going crazy and losing yourdignity.A powerful illustration came when the riot police came to arrest themostly Somali refugees in the camp, after the Iraqi's had consented toaccept shelter and give up the camp. The Somali brothers lined up infront of the TV-camera's, they looked straight into the lens, standingtall. They raised their writsts and held them up in the air, crossingtheir wrists as if hand-cuffed. With all the agony and anger theirmessage was for me: "You can come and get me, motherfuckers. You canput me in prison, but my mind is free." Their yelling "Human Rights"and "We don't go" and their passive resistance to the intimidation bypolice violence was impressive for those who were with the Somali's,Irani's and others who were all arrested in the end (total 117). Wewere 3 or 4 activists, the old doctor Co and myself. This exclusiveimage of power and pride was indeed very uplifting. These are the guysyou can practice real solidarity with. No dependency but equal exhangehere. No charity but true collaboration.That is why I look forward to the next camp!Jo M2MSounds of the Camp including the eviction on the 23rd of May can be heard at M2M Radiohttp://m2m.streamtime.orgfor Arab readers:http://www.iraqi-refugees.org