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Folks: I presume that some on this list read the material from STRATFOR, an Austin TX based "private" intelligence network (mostly derived from foreign journalist inputs, according to the Wikileaks internal emails released last year) run by George Friedman. George sees everything through the lens of "geo-politics" -- which is to say that *geography* (literally natural resources, coastlines, mountains, rivers etc.) takes priority over everything else in his analysis. His latest essay caught my eye for its heroic efforts to ignore what is really going on in the recent spate of "succession" efforts -- including Catalonia and Palestine (but apparently not Texas <g>). _http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/gaza-catalonia-and-romantic-nationalism?utm_source=freelist-f&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20121127&utm_term=gweekly&utm_content=readmore&elq=c8990ae3b2734f54b5d8000cdf4fed40_ (http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/gaza-catalonia-and-romantic-nationalism?utm_source=freelist-f&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20121127&utm_term=gweekly&utm_content=readmore&elq=c8990ae3b2734f54b5d8000cdf4fed40) What George calls "romantic nationalism" is what might be called DIGITAL politics, if you give priority to technology and the various ways that we adapt to new technological environments (as I discussed in my UN speech two weeks ago). The Westphalian nation-state was, as we would analyze things, *not* the result simply of geography but rather a major effect of the PRINTING PRESS and its ability to tie-together the various "nations" through their printed language starting in the 16th century. While there have long been attempts to rearrange (or to engineer) these borders, what is happening today takes on a new context because we are now in a very different *digital* technological environment. As a result of focusing on the "wrong" theme (and, no doubt, their own limited resources), STRATFOR has completely missed China -- which they view as geographically in terrible shape (exposed coast, surrounded by enemies, burdened by need to feed peasant population) and instead champion Japan as the most important Asian power. Moreover, as the above Friedman essay illustrates, by ignoring the impact of technology, they are consistently mistaken about major current events. The NATION STATE has *long* been dust-binned (as has been the printing press as the dominant medium, since the mid-1800's). It was replaced by a sequence of "empires" (driven by a sequence of new technologies) and, over the past 50 years, by an attempt to build a GLOBAL elite -- centered in the ambitions of the group that "won" WW II, which can be short-handed as the "Rockefellers" (this time in an environment dominated by Arthur C. Clarke's geostationary satellite television broadcasts, which incidentally should have been a clue for George Friedman that borders don't matter any more!) The mechanism used by this group certainly involved the US (and other governments) but it was largely promoted by an explosion of NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS -- starting with the UN, World Bank and IMF but now with thousands of NGOs.A recently published book "Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations of American Power" details how the "Big 3" were a crucial part of this strategy to build a global network of like-minded elites -- _http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-American-Century-Carnegie-Rockefeller/dp/0231146280/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1354026765&sr=8-2&keywords=foundation+of+american+century_ (http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-American-Century-Carnegie-Rockefeller/dp/0231146280/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1354026765&sr=8-2&keywords=foundation+of+american+century) As the author was scolded (in the Q&A) last year when he presented the book at the Hudson Institute, the "networks" that have always been the focus of these foundations are really not properly called "American," so Prof. Parmar's "neo-Gramscian" approach (i.e. he gives priority to a peculiar "Marxist" class-style of "hegemony" analysis) missed the *global* forest while cataloging all the "national" trees -- _http://www.hudson.org/files/publications/5-31%20Parmar%20transcript.pdf_ (http://www.hudson.org/files/publications/5-31%20Parmar%20transcript.pdf) In the current US situation, however we might have felt about Obama vs. Romney, there is little doubt that the Dems waged a very sophisticated *cable-television* styled "niche-marketing" campaign, while the Repubs were still fighting with an earlier *radio/network-tv* style campaign. As we know, the newer technology won that contest. And as we have already seen, the "relief" that the relentlessly advertised/hyped election was over (along with the overall low turnout)

Hi nettimers,Marc Garrett from Furtherfield has interviewed me about Sauti yawakulima (The voice of the farmers): a collaborative knowledge baseabout the effects of climate change done by rural farmers in Bagamoyo,Tanzania. The focus on the interview is related to socially engagedmedia art, and how can such forms of art become an agent of hope inthese urgent times. Here is a very short quote, hoping that you willwant to read more:"In my opinion, the artists who still embrace the idea that art shouldonly serve its own ends will become those who play the lyre while ourworld burns."Read it here:http://www.furtherfield.org/features/interviews/community-memory-through-appropriated-media-interview-eugenio-tisselliBest wishes,Eugenio.

*Social media activism in the Arab World and China **Amsterdam, Monday 21 January 2013*During the Arab Spring revolts, a spontaneous yet coordinated activist useof social media developed. Activists established strategic communicationspaces through Facebook groups, such as ‘We are all Khaled Said’ and the‘6th of April Youth Movement’, as well as through Twitter hashtags, like#sidibouzid and #egypt. At the same time, on the other side of the world,Sina Weibo –the Chinese equivalent of Twitter– is quickly developing in oneof the world’s largest social media platforms. Although the Chinesegovernment heavily censors this platform, it is widely being used foractivist purposes. This massive social media use in authoritarian statestriggers various questions. How is online activism shaped by statecensorship? Why do activists so enthusiastically embrace social platforms?What strategies have they developed to communicate through these platforms?And, most importantly, what role does social media activism play inrevolution and political change?*To reserve your place in the two seminar sessions, please send an email toPenn Ip: t.t.ip-V/Xpf/srekw< at >public.gmane.org* (Registration for the public debate in the eveningis not necessary).*First seminar session: case studies on social media activism *(10.00-12.30 uur, Vondelzaal, University Library, Singel 425, Amsterdam)• Daniela Stockman - The Chinese Internet Audience: Who Seeks PoliticalInformation Online? (http://daniestockmann.net/)• Florian Schneider - The Diaoyu/Senkaku Island Dispute Online - AnalyzingNationalism in Chinese Digital Networks (http://hum.leiden.edu/lias/staff/schneiderfa.html)• Jeroen de Kloet, Thomas Poell & Zeng Guohua – Will the Real Weibo PleaseStand Up? Chinese Online Contention and Actor-Network Theory (http://jeroendekloet.nl/)• Miriyam Aouragh - Revolutionary Maneuvering: The Internet as a Blessingand Curse for Arab revolutionaries (http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=151)• Sarah Van Leuven – A ‘Facebook Revolution’ in foreign coverage? Aquantitative content analysis of journalists’ sourcing practices during theArab Springhttp://www.cjs.ugent.be/index.php?id=50#VanLeuven)• Thomas Poell – Social media activism (http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/t.poell/)Respondents: Sami Ben Gharbia, Guobin Yang, and Paolo Gerbaudo*Second seminar session: reflecting on social media activism*(13.30-16.00 uur, Vondelzaal, University Library, Singel 425, Amsterdam)• Geert Lovink – Unlike Us: From Critique to Alternatives for Social MediaMonopolies (http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/geert/biography/)• Seda Guerses – An activist and a consumer meet at an online socialnetwork http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~sguerses/)• Tamara Witschge - The limits to online dissent (http://www.rug.nl/staff/t.a.c.witschge/cv)• Michael Dieter – Tactical Media, Real-Time Streams and EverydayTemporalities (http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/m.j.dieter/)• Eric Kluitenberg – A feeling in the air - Preliminary notes on politicalformation in hybrid space (after the end of tactical media) (http://www.debalie.nl/artikel.jsp?personid=920)Respondents: Sami Ben Gharbia, Guobin Yang, and Paolo Gerbaudo*Tweet, Share, Like & Censor: A public debate on social media activism inthe Arab World and China*(20.00-22.00 uur, Doelenzaal, University Library, Singel 425, Amsterdam)• Sami Ben Gharbia (advocacy director of Global Voices): one of thefounders of the collective Tunisian blog Nawaat, which translated anddistributed the infamous TuniLeaks, and inventor of the Cross-posting forAdvocacy Strategy (http://globalvoicesonline.org/author/sami-ben-gharbia/)• Guobin Yang (Annenberg School for Communication): a leading expert onChinese online contention, civil society, and the Chinese environmentalmovement (http://sociology.sas.upenn.edu/content/guobin-yang-0)• Paolo Gerbaudo (King’s College London): researcher working oncontemporary global activism, recently published the book Tweets and theStreets (http://www.tweetsandthestreets.org/)The debate will be led by José van Dijck, professor of Comparative MediaStudies at the University of Amsterdam.

http://vrritti.com/2012/11/23/australian-minister-provides-detailed-explanation-of-tax-evasion-by-google-apple-and-others/http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/news/15431664/france-says-google-would-lose-court-case-over-taxes/http://en.apa.az/news_google_italy_suspected_of_tax_evasion__183392.htmlhttp://www.3news.co.nz/Starbucks-Google-Amazon-accused-of-UK-tax-evasion/tabid/369/articleID/276457/Default.aspxhttp://www.linformaticien.com/actualites/id/27219/menace-d-une-taxe-en-allemagne-google-defend-la-liberte-de-surfer.aspxhttp://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/11/23/0156212/australian-govt-pledges-action-on-google-tax-evasionhttp://gurstein.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/the-ituwcit-thinking-about-internet-regulatory-policy-from-an-ldc-perspective/If governments, companies and (g< at >d preserve us) certain elements of civilsociety want to pursue (project) a libertarian political agenda globallythat of course, is their g< at >d given right. But let's be clear, drop thehypocrasy and call a bit a bit and stop confusing a bunch of wellintentioned people that this is some sort of holy crusade to "save theInternet". I would be the first one to argue for a transparent, net neutral, openaccess, free speech Internet but I'm also for an inclusive Internet in adecent socially equitable environment with proper schools, and healthcare,and an adequate physical and social infrastructure for all, not just for therich (or those in rich countries) and that means that companies, likeeveryone else have to pay their fair share.Greed is greed and the best way to keep from paying taxes as thelibertarians know extremely well, is to make sure that there are nolaws/regulations in place to require anyone to pay taxes.(From my contribution to an on-going discussion on the civil society listconcerned with global Internet governance...Mike

For those of you with artistic leanings and a distaste for the rankcorruption of New Zealand's film subsidy policies, we are invitingsubmissions of drawings, multimedia installations, or other art to the'Kill the Hobbit to Save Regular Earth' Initiative.Rules below. Valuable prizes awarded. Spread the word and kill the Hobbit.http://piracy.americanassembly.org/the-kill-the-hobbit-to-save-regular-earth-initiative/------I am happy to announce the ???Kill the Hobbit to Save Regular Earth??? Initiative??? KH2SREI for short (pronounced Kisstory, after the ancient Elven admonition to beware Hobbits bringing gifts). I invite you to flesh out the Kisstory allegory in whatever direction makes most sense to you. If you send me pictures, I will publish them here (as long as they are not obscene or gratuitously nasty). I will even try to talk the good people at Bloomberg View into running them. And if we get enough submissions we will have a public vote to award copies of the ???semi-epic??? Media Piracy in Emerging Economies (http://piracy.americanassembly.org/the-report/) to the two most worthy entries (plus whatever other awards we can accumulate in the meantime.) With luck, we???ll assemble a panel of distinguished judges to make these additional awards.Some suggested guidelines:Extra points for including other figures from the story, such as New Zealand PM John Key (gollum?) or Peter Jackson (Saruman?)Extra points for representing the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.Extra points for contrasting a free and open Internet to some future, corrupted TPPA Internet.Extra points for adding more Harry Potter references or other WB properties into the mix.Extra points for combining this somehow with the Hawkeye Initiative (http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/).Special awards for multimedia (Downfall (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5qHckZlAT8) anyone?)Special award for the best pro-Hobbit, pro TPPA, pro Warner Bros art, if we get any.Submissions will be accepted (and occasionally published) through Dec 31. We???ll also set up some sort of public voting mechanism.You can submit images or links to work to KilltheHobbit-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org (mailto:KilltheHobbit-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org)All images will be assumed to be available under a CC attribution non-commercial use license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/), so that we can keep public culture public.------Rim hennaid, Nettime readers.

Below is an excerpt and afterword by Bifo of "Dictionary ofOperations" by Autonomedia...Launched next Thursday at the ACF NY with a debateon "Cultural Intelligence Operations" with AyreenAnastas, Stephen Duncombe, Fran Ilich and Jim Fleming.http://world-information.net/cultural-intelligence-operations/Cheers, Konrad***Narrative PoliticsIndividuals choose descriptions of possibilities rather than optionsthemselves. Humans read and write their own narrative. Addicted tostories, some develop deeper relations with fictional charactersthan their friends, with the understanding that one can withdraw anemotional involvement with imaginary figures.Sequences of behavioral modes compressed to narrative images encode“good” or “bad” feelings towards a situation. Affective threadsproduce contextual frames and coordinates for a matrix of values andpsycho-cybernetic control. When cognitive processes lack the speedfor informed options, affect is a shortcut to behavioral decisionsand automatized rules of engagement in social relations. Affectbecomes dominant in complex situations of conflicting alternativesand ambiguous uncertainty. In the absence of information, culturaladjustment takes over judgment.Contrast-priming that anchors experience effects a displacement awayfrom subjective experience by direct comparison of stimuli. Marketingstrategies, using contrasts, position unattainably-expensive luxuriesto actually move and sell inexpensive items next to them. Looking foran answer for a given set of possible responses assimilation-anchoringdraws subjective experience towards an expected range. Interrogatorsmay accuse a prisoner of a horrible act, far worse than anythingsuspected, only to extract a confession to a minor offence. Yetanchoring can be used in fair and transparent games to induce a courseof losing.Natural-born storytellers, humans understand the world by placingthemselves within a larger hyper-narrative that signifies the real.Ex- alted human faculties to see patterns and create narrativesproduce excess. Superstitious self-centered views of events are a sideresult of these high-powered abilities. Construing causality in seriesof events and tendencies to contain all kind of behaviors in narrativemodels leads to failures of judgment. Bound to spin and weave theirtales with narrative strings of selfhood, people become entangledin their own web. Using various glands to produce a diversity offibers, some spiders spin up to eight different silks. Extruded fromits spinnerets, a spider web’s strength is comparable to high-gradesteel.A traditional device to incorporate the unknown into a story isthe sequential arrow of time. Narration not only tells the untold,but the untellable and incommunicable. Always ready to communicatethe incomprehensible, it speaks the phantasmal and impossible tounderstand. Mythopoetic narratives provide modes of understandingbeyond dialectics, where “The one who tells the stories rules theworld.” Or, as Winston Churchill put it, “History will be kind tome because I intend to write it.” Imperialists have only scorn forthe judicious study of the world, because empires create their ownreality.Strategic communications in the info-sphere seems a secure investment,and the art of truth-projection is a creative-industry product forthose who pay. Their stories make sense of worlds, but when theycollapse their legends fall apart, into fragments of forgottensentiments.AFTERWORDFranco “Bifo” BerardiDictionary of Operations is a book by Konrad Becker. What is KonradBecker talking about?About everything. Everything is here: Language and Money, Conjurationand Conspiration. According to recombinant methodology, the operationsthe title is hinting to are the countless operations that a readercan do, by recombining the conceptual units that can be found inthis book. The Author is walking at the border that separates (andactually connects) the world of superstitious Reality and the world oftheoretical superstition.The book has been composed — better, assembled — in the periodin which the black hole of financial capitalism is swallowing theworld. Perfect timing. This is the right moment to reflect on the(dangerous) confusion between linguistic production and the economy.This confusion was started by the Symbolist poets, who replacedrepresentation with evocation and realist description with themystic epiphany of transmental words, and was perfected by theVirtual technology which generates the world that surrounds us as abyproduct of Simulation. Financial capitalism — the last step in thesuicidal pathway of the Invisible Hand that is strangling us — is thetheological translation of Indust-Reality.Magic algorithms have taken the place of the old machines made ofiron and steel, and although “syncretistic cults of capitalism donot yield meaning,” (as Becker says), they do yield value. Physicalthings disappear, bewitched and swallowed by the financial spell:buildings, cities, human beings, institutions, trains, schools.Immaterial money (unspeakable figures, uncountable amounts of creditand debt) is taking their place.In an article published in1996, with the title “Global Debt andParallel Universe,” Jean Baudrillard wrote that debt is foreverorbitalized, out of Planet Earth, out of our lives and out of ourtime: “In fact, the debt will never be paid. No debt will ever bepaid. The final counts will never take place. If time is counted[si le temps nous est compte], the missing money is beyond counting[au-delà de toute compatabilité]. The United States is alreadyvirtually unable to pay, but this will have no consequence whatsoever.There will be no judgment day for this virtual bankruptcy. It issimple enough to enter an exponential or virtual mode to becomefree of any responsibility, since there is no reference anymore, noreferential world to serve as a measuring norm,” he said.He was wrong, although genially prophetic (prophets are often wrong,but they see the point, while other people are often right, thoughthey talk about pointless things). Baudrillard was wrong, becauseThe Debt is back on Earth, as you know, and we are looking at it ina state of astonishment. Incredulous of what we see, we to try tounderstand the metaphysical debt, but we can’t. This is why (asKonrad Becker puts it), “Displacing religion in secular societies,both are incorporated into financial market forces where they remainintertwined.”And also (anthropologically speaking, of non-anthropological things),“Humans form religion which informs humans vice versa.” And also(biologically speaking, on non-biological prospects), “DNA in theevolvement of living cells did not follow slow continuous mutation.Living cells are not autistic actors of sociobiological dogmabut sensitive entities in a copy and paste conspiracy.” So whoknows? It may be that, in the infinite, future recombination of DNApossibilities, we can find a way out. Entrapped, entangled, but doingoperations, and always hopeful, stupidly hopeful, because, as Beckersays: “The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of thehuman mind to correlate all its contents.” As we cannot correlate, wedo operations, and look around for something that so far we have beenmissing.What?Dictionary of Operations, Autonomedia 2012 ISBN: 978-1-57027-261-5# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

*The Journal of Peer Production CFP: Value and Currency in Peer ProductionEdited by: Nathaniel Tkacz, Nicol?s Mendoza and Francesca Musiani.The marriage of cryptography and the dynamics of open-source have nowproduced a working distributed currency system. Bitcoin, as the mostnotable example, can be understood as a new technics of exchange inspiredby the animal spirits of crypto-libertarianism. Whether or not there is aplace for currency -- and therefore exchange and (economic) value -- in theutopian visions of commons-oriented thought is contested. Meanwhile, hybridforms like Bitcoin are developing unhindered by their constitutionalparadoxes. Capitalism, after all, equally thrives atop what David Graeberhas called a 'baseline' or 'everyday' communism. Current developments ofdigital currencies are pervaded by a number of issues: Who or what issuesthe money? What is the source of the collective agreement to concede value?What forms of control are coded into currency systems and who is guidingprocesses of (re)design? Who plays the role of guarantor when a currency isdecentralized? And what role does trust play in all these issues? Hascrypto-mathematics transformed trust into a technical quality of a system?The flipside of this issue is value: The intensification and extension ofcomputational procedures, which is manifested most clearly in the rise ofbig data, has lead to a proliferation of bottom-up procedures to formalise'values', rendering them easily calculable and lending order to thedecentralised world of peers. Wikipedia contributors, for example, havelong awarded each other 'barnstars' for valued service in a range of areas,and the site has long explored ways of rating article quality. In place ofmanagerial commands and bureaucratic hierarchies we have Karma points,ranking systems, reputation metrics and the long-tail logic of networks.Order in this sense is iterative, recursive and topological.This issue of The Journal of Peer Production invites contributions on thethemes of value and currency as they relate to peer production.Topics might include but are not limited to: - Decentralised and crypto-currencies; - Non-coercive taxation systems and/or experiments/experiences; - Analog/pre-digital (or historical) networks for distributed value exchange; - Currency and design; - Currencies and the commons; - Life after fiat (the becoming-uncertain of taxes); - What does/should peer production value?; - Re-thinking the constitution of value; - Theories of non-monetary value and worth; - The relationship between valuing practices and project hierarchies; - Forms of belief in peer production; - Automated systems of ranking and distributing value; - Theories of exchange, gift and voluntarism; - Trust and anonymity in the building of value; - Intermediation and 'guarantees' in P2P exchanges.Submission proposals of under 500 words due by January 28, 2013. Fullsubmission details and extended CFP available athttp://peerproduction.net/value-and-currency-in-peer-production/.*Nathaniel TkaczAssistant ProfessorCentre for Interdisciplinary MethodologiesThe University of WarwickTwitter: http://twitter.com/__nate__

Dear all,Hope you are aware of the debate on Open Access taking place at the WSISKnowledge Communities discussion forum.The debate has the broad topic of -- 'is Open Access only for richcountries?'The discussion can be accessed here:http://www.wsis-community.org/pg/forum/topic/586392/is-open-access-only-for-rich-countries-participate-now-in-an-online-dialogue-on-open-access-and-the-developing-world/For a summary of the debate so far, the three posts by Eve Gray are veryhelpful:http://www.wsis-community.org/mod/groups/topicposts.php?topic=586392&amp;group_guid=58145#10376http://www.wsis-community.org/mod/groups/topicposts.php?topic=586392&amp;group_guid=58145#10486http://www.wsis-community.org/mod/groups/topicposts.php?topic=586392&amp;group_guid=58145#10584Please let me invite you all (perhaps again) to participate in thediscussion.Apologies for cross-posting.Regards,sumandroajantriks.net

dear nettimers,it's been a while, but I thought you might probably enjoy this read.it is a short review of an event I attended at documenta13. it'sabout the online archive in progress of the work of Finnish media artpioneer Errki Kurenniemi published in the German weekly newspaper DerFreitag, partner of The Guardian:"Where an Artist of the 20th Century Can Happily Meet the Future"http://www.freitag.de/autoren/lets-talk-about-art/active-archivesAdmittedly, I went back to Kassel on the 14th of September 2012 togive documenta – and myself – a second chance. After my first2-day visit in August I was more than disappointed by – by manythings, but first and foremost by the arrogant bearing of a curatorwho confronted her audience with an exhibition that in any casescould only be seen in part; whose plethora of art works resisted anycriticism due to the lack of a concept or any curatorial guidelinesthey could be aligned with, thus celebrating the cult of subjectivityand arbitrariness which came across as rather anachronistic.Still, I went back with a spark of hope to attend the workshop“Erkki Kurenniemi Online Archive” held in the Ständehaus andhosted by the Belgian association for art and media Constant. Knowingthe work of this specific collective and also the context from whichthe documenta commission (with an arts organisation Kurator) to createa Kurenniemi online archive originated – namely that the documentaagent Joasia Krysa was working in the area of algorithmic culture –I was curious. Also, I was in upbeat mode that this event would getcloser to the issues I am struggling with myself and the problemsI’m turning over in my own art practice… and which I had sadlymissed in large parts of the documenta exhibition.Joasia Krysa has also been partly responsible as a curator for theOrangerie, the baroque building down by the park, where it was decidedto intersperse the “astro-physical cabinet,” the technology museumnormally housed in this building, with a number of art works, some ofthem dealing with algorithms, computing and experimental media use –and abuse. Amongst them was one large space dedicated to the work ofErkki Kurenniemi, the Finnish artist, who is in his 70s now, regardedas a pioneer of media culture and electronic music.Documents turned into data turned into eternal artifical life – oneday, in the future.Besides Kurenniemi’s obsession with technology and his love ofexperimentation, he was obsessed with himself, pursuing the idea of anarchive of the self. For decades, the artist has documented his life,in its most banal details as well as its most intense moments, inthousands upon thousands of photographs, endless video clips and 8mmfilm reels, hundreds of hours of audio recordings, notes in computerfiles and notebooks – with the aim of providing “the necessarymaterials for someone in the future to be able to reconstruct humanlife once computers are powerful and intelligent enough to performthe task, reflecting what Kurenniemi considers to be inevitable by2048, and thus enacting the fantasy of artificial consciousness.”www.kurator.org/projects/archive-kurenniemi/After the artist suffered from a stroke in 2006, the material washanded over to the Central Art Archive of the Finnish NationalGallery where it is in the process of being developed from a pileof documents into an archive proper. In parallel, Joasia Krysa, whocurrently works as Artistic Director of Århus Kunstbygning Centrefor Contemporary Art in Denmark, is involved in the planning a largeretrospective of Kurenniemi’s oeuvre with Kiasma in Helsinki. Aspart of their involvement with Kurenniemi, Kurator (of which Krysa ispart) developed the idea to commission an online archive – a mostobvious idea, given the source material – but in this case to treatthe material in the spirit of its own construction. In the frameworkof documenta 13, they were able to commission the Brussels-basedfeminist collective Constant to approach the material and developideas towards an online archive.For Constant the Kurenniemi archive is one project within theirumbrella project Active Archives, an ongoing research project (since2006) dedicated to the development of experimental online archives.According to their manifesto, Active Archives aims at“creating a free software platform to connect practices oflibrary, media library, publications on paper (as magazines, books,catalogues), productions of audio-visual objects, events, workshops,discursive productions, etc. Practices which can take place on line orin various geographical places, and which can be at various stages ofvisibility for reasons of rights of access or for reasons of researchand privacy conditions. ... regular workshops will be organised tostimulate dialog between future users, developers and cultural workersand researchers”One of the central aspects for the artist researchers is thedevelopment of a free-software-based infrastructure, on the basis ofexchange and dialogue. They understand the web not simply as a meansof distribution, but a space for (collaborative) writing, prototyping,and developing ideas. Taking this as a starting point, they go on tofundamentally reflect on the nature of what an archive in a networkedenvironment could be, conceiving it as an “utopian space whereknowledge is ‘free’ (unrestricted and available) and can be‘re-discovered’ anew by making the archive an active practice.”This also includes the possibility of making the material availablefor new contexts and even transformations, including all the trickylegal and ethical aspects involved.Furthermore, the task is to find an approach that specifically meetsthe nature of the material to be archived. In the case of Kurenniemi,the archivists’ questions were, how to make sense of all thedocumentation gathered by Kurenniemi, and to ask what knowledgescould result from the active archive process. During the workshop inKassel, Michael Murtaugh and Nicolas Malevé demonstrated some of thealgorithmic experiments they had run with a subset of the Kurenniemidocuments and engaged the participants by sharing their reflections,concepts and quite artistic prototypes.The workshop can roughly be divided in three parts: the demonstrationof Constant’s work by showing probes and experiments, the makingavailable of original archival material to the audience to convey abetter understanding of its quality and sheer amount of data, and adiscussion between involved parties and the audience. Just to give anexample of their experimental approach: the incredibly large amount ofimages shot and stored by Kurenniemi made the active archivists wonderhow relevant a single image was, and instead of accessing every singleimage, asked if it would reveal something more telling to approach themass of images by the use of various tools or filters. Such filterscould for example be computer algorithms that “see” differentlythan a human would do and that would be able to “aggregate andseparate, connect and disconnect, assemble and disassemble“ thephotographs in new and surprising ways. The result of such reflectionsis, for instance, the calculation of “an average image” createdthrough the aggregation of all images contained in a given folder ofthe Kurenniemi’s archive.Another example based on similar assumptions is the application of analgorithm that filters and extracts all faces from a given selectionof photographs.The logbook kept by Michael Murtaugh and Nicolas Malevé containstraces of their interrogations, the output of scripts, algorithms andpersonal reflections and provides access to various other examples oftheir experiments.Certainly this project has not (yet) solved many of the problemsrelated to such a gigantic endeavour, and it is not to bemisunderstood as “The Kurenniemi Online Archive,” but ratheras “work towards an online archive.” Nevertheless, due to itssophisticated and highly artistic, dialogical and networked approach,the project triggered a most inspiring discussion.Despite the main motivation I gathered, which was to rethink my ideaof what an archive could be and should be altogether, what I foundmost striking about the ‘Online Archive: Erkki Kurenniemi (In2048)’ was the appearance of a notion of art that I had largelymissed in the rest of documenta – once reported to be ‘the’international cutting edge art show. ‘Online Archive: ErkkiKurenniemi (In 2048)’ by Constant can indeed be considered tobe an art project, and as such it represents a notion of art thatunderstands the upheaval caused by digital, networked technology, artthat confronts the question of what it means to think, see, and filteraffect through computational processes, that is to say, art that istruly contemporary in the 21st century. And that Constant itself doesnot operate under the ‘art’ label only shows another aspect ofthis shift to the new millennium that they are embodying: the smartbut modest ‘artist’ who is concerned with the world and its urgentproblems rather than with himself. In that sense, even if we willwitness the rebirth of Kurenniemi’s digital self in some unknownfuture, we will be able to clearly identify him as an artist from thepast (and modernist legacy).I’m glad I went back to this event which eventually balanced mynegative feelings towards documenta a bit. However, I am pretty surethat my reading of the event is not the one of the chief curatorCarolyn Christov-Bakargiev, who probably still thinks that ‘OnlineArchive: Erkki Kurenniemi (In 2048)’ is about the artist Kurenniemi,while in fact Kurenniemi just gave occasion to present a notion of artthat really breaks new ground. It is only at large scale events likedocumenta where such unexpected and unplanned ‘slips’ can happenin the ramifications of curatorial decisions. And that’s a goodreason for still going there.Seminar & workshop with Constant, and further contributions fromJoasia Krysa, Geoff Cox, Tarek Atoui, Perttu Rastas and MagdaTyżlik-Carver.Online Archive: Erkki Kurenniemi (In 2048) is commissioned byKurator.org and dOCUMENTA (13) in partnership with Central ArtArchive of the Finnish National Gallery and Contemporary Art MuseumKIASMA, and supported by Arts Council England. The first phase of theongoing work will be exhibited at Aarhus Kunstbygning as part of theexhibition “Systemics #1” (11 January 2013), and as part of thisConstant will be running further workshops.???????????????????????????????????????????????????MEDIA ? ART ? RESEARCHDr. Cornelia SollfrankDuncan of Jordanstone College of Art & DesignUniversity of Dundee, Scotland????????????????????????????????????????????????????# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

The antidemocratic makeover of the cultural scene in HungaryShare and publicize!Recent legislative steps in Hungary point towards the authoritariantransformation of the institutional structures and funding system ofcultural life, by giving an ultra conservative artist group closeto the rightwing government, the Hungarian Academy of Arts, anunassailable position of power. As a result of these decisions, thegovernment has endangered the long term autonomy, professionalism anddemocratic procedures of Hungarian contemporary art. The governmentestablished the Hungarian Academy of Arts (MMA) as the preeminentauthority in the field of arts through the new constitution orFundamental Law, which came into force on 1 January, 2012. TheAcademy, which was originally founded as a private association in1992, is made up of artists strongly loyal towards the government. In order to be accepted as a member, the Academy requires a commitmentto the nation, a certain "national feeling." In 2011 the HungarianAcademy of Arts was transformed into a public body, in a processlacking the minimum of transparency, and was provided straightoff with a considerable amount of funding and its own a grandioseheadquarters. In November the government further extended the culturalpolitical role of the Hungarian Academy of Arts, endowing theorganization with unprecedented power, including exclusive right ofdecision making over the contemporary cultural infrastructure - and agigantic budget at the expense of the whole of the Hungarian culturalscene. According to the announcement of the Ministry, the Academywill have the right to be involved in the committees deciding aboutimportant state awards, and next year the entire system of publiccultural funding and subsidies will be reviewed in a process involvingthe president of the Hungarian Academy of Arts. This funding system,which up till now has been operated through advisory boards made upof representatives of the respective artistic fields - including theNational Cultural Fund, the organization with the most comprehensiveactivity in the field of distributing state support on a professionalbasis - is in danger of being centralized and subordinated to aparticular interest group, an ideologically based community.The Hungarian Academy of Arts, according to their stated intentions,would take over several state tasks and responsibilities in thefield of culture, thus for example they would participate in theselection of directors of cultural institutions and museums, and evenencroach on how professional organizations work. From 1 January 2013the M?csarnok (Kunsthalle) Budapest, which is the most significantvenue and symbolic space for contemporary art in Hungary, willbecome the property of the Hungarian Academy of Arts. The HungarianAcademy of Arts will also have the right to define the principles andprofessional concepts of the art policy of the institution. Followingthis announcement, the present director of M?csarnok has resigned.The legal background of the Hungarian Academy of Arts may guaranteeits legitimacy in legal terms, it does not however make up for itslack of professional legitimacy. The upgrading and extending of therole of the Hungarian Academy of Arts in cultural policy, includingraising its budget without any public and professional consultation,have taken place in an antidemocratic way, excluding professionalorganizations and forums. Together with the general, dramaticfinancial restrictions in all fields of culture, these processes willresult in the mutilation of the possibility of maintaining a diverseartistic environment in Hungary. With these measures, the Hungariangovernment, through the Ministry of Human Resources, have given overthe right to make the most important cultural decisions to a societyof artists that avows and commits itself to conservative values andnational culture, that also opposes the rejection of state and thechurch control, and rejects a contemporary culture that stands forthe autonomy of art and believes in the critical social role of art.It has become evident that the political executive power intends tocontrol contemporary culture in a direct way with the help of legalregulations and put an end to its still existing plurality.Board of the Hungarian section of the International Association of ArtCritics (AICA) nemma-GaUfNO9RBHfsrOwW+9ziJQ< at >public.gmane.org or aicahu-Y8qEzhMunLyT9ig0jae3mg< at >public.gmane.org+http://linneawest.com/conservative-controls-on-the-hungarian-art-scene/+http://linneawest.com/democracy-sche-mocracy-i-dont-give-a-damn-for-this-modern-democracy/+http://beyondeast.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/the-lunatics-have-taken-over-the-asylum/

F(r)ee ?Lets us look on four levels:1) philosofical level -- what is to be free ?2) consumer level - Living under Intel Monopoly on Microprocessors,Apple Monopoly in terms of video and cinema, HP Monopoly in terms ofprinters, Linux monopoly and growing because of they are cheaper forgovermental institutions and commerce, etc and etc.3) administration level - ICANN dictatorship and their respectiveagents on each country, IPV6 and their domain etc and etc controlsunder the hands of a few.4) on the industrial technological level - who are controllingsatellites transmissions on a technological level, telecoms lobbies,internet providers, etc and etc . How can someone talk about freedom in that situation ?Open (?)1) it is open for who ? for the ones that are programmers only ?2) the majority of the ones that says that they are "open" dont eventhink and practice open data.Digital Culture (s) 1) How can someome talk about that, if ,what happens is adigitalization of various cultures ?2) Talking about Digital Culture in a singular way is totalitarian, isa medium not a culture.

Convergence, anyone?Original to:http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/796b412a-4513-11e2-838f-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2F6RDsrKLCounter-terrorism tools used to spot fraudBy Richard Waters in London (Dec 13, 2012)JPMorgan Chase has turned to technology used for countering terrorism tospot fraud risk among its own employees and to tackle problems such asdeciding how much to charge when selling property behind troubledmortgages.The technology involves crunching vast amounts of data to identifyhard-to-detect patterns in markets or individual behaviour that couldreveal risks or openings to make money. Other banks are also turning to“big data”, the name given to using large bodies of information, toidentify potential rogue traders who might land them with massive losses,according to experts in the field.“They’re trying to mine not just trading data, but also emails [and] phonecalls,” said David Wallace, an executive at SAS, a US data analysiscompany. “They’re trying to find the needle in the haystack.”Guy Chiarello, JPMorgan’s chief information officer, said the bank wasmining massive bodies of data in “a couple of dozen projects” thatpromised to have a significant effect on its business, although he refusedto give further details.According to three people familiar with its activities, JPMorgan has usedPalantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley company whose technology was honedwhile working for the US intelligence services, for part of its effort. Itfirst used the technology to spot fraudsters trying to hack into clientaccounts or ATMs, but has recently started to turn it on its own250,000-strong staff.In another aspect of its big data work, the bank is drawing on largeamounts of highly diverse information about local economies where it hastroubled real estate loans, two of these people said. The information isbeing used to set prices for property sold before a loan goes intodefault, in an attempt to reduce the social disruption caused by thetroubled loans.Other technology companies are also finding new purposes fornumber-crunching techniques used in intelligence to bring newdata-intensive approaches to risk management, credit assessment andmarketing activities. Quantifind, a tech start-up that has worked with theCIA to identify aliases used by terrorists, was called in by JPMorgan toexplain how its technology could be applied to its credit card business,said Ari Tuchman, chief executive.Some of the same technologies revolutionising risk-management in banks,meanwhile, are being used to break down barriers in the financial servicesbusiness and let start-ups compete head-on with large institutions.Larry Summers, former US Treasury secretary, predicted that this wouldlead to a wave of new technology-based companies in the consumer lendingand investment fields.“We’ve had a generation where financial innovation was found in largeinstitutions for the benefit of large pools of capital,” he told the FT.“I think the next generation of innovation will be more for consumers.”Mr Summers on Thursday joined the board of Lending Club, a Silicon Valleystart-up that lets individuals invest directly in pools of consumer loansit generates over the internet. The company has been able to take a largeslice out of the funding and operating costs of a traditional bank andoffer better terms to borrowers and lenders, said RenaudLaPlanche, LendingClub’s chief executive.# 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

Carbon-based life self-combusts, mediated by a (very brief) interlude of reasonThe wholly enlightened earth, after having radiated calamities triumphantly for 300 years, is now counting down the last seconds before ignition. To substantiate this claim, consider the two numbers presented by Bill McKibben in Rolling Stones. It is estimated that roughly 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide can be released into the atmosphere before the planet is pushed above the treshold of two degrees. The known reserves of gas, coal and oil are five times that number – 2,795 gigatons. Those reserves are still in the ground, but they have already been calculated with in the share prices of companies, in credits given to companies by banks, and in national budgets. This insight evokes despair, of course, but mixed in with despair is a feeling of fascination. Fascination over that our lifespans are located right at the end of the cycle of life, in toto. The one positive thing to be said about this predicament is that we find ourselves in a philosophically privileged spot, something that has been denied all previous generations. We can now say with confidence: ”there was a telos, after all”. This telos can be summarised in one sentence: carbon-based life self-combusts, mediated by a (very brief) interlude of reason. That interlude is very short in comparison to the 3.7 billion years that went before. Still, it took millennia for reason to refine the slingshot into a megaton bomb. It must be granted to the same scientific rationality that it has alerted us to the danger ahead. It is through scientific abstractions, and only though those, that we can glimpse the task that mankind has set for itself, but which it seems incapable of resolving. The crux is that those abstractions fail to produce the sense of urgency, determination and self-sacrifice that a measured political act would require. Myth, by which I here mean religious superstition tout court, possesses those qualities, but rarely places the political act where it is due. No airplanes are flown into oil-refineries, no-one sets himself on fire outside the headquarters of BP and Exxon. Note to be taken, I am not saying that this would be a wise course of action. Most probably, the reaction provoked by such acts would catalyse the transition to the post-democratic society, already well under-way as the ecological foundations for bourgeois civility are crumbling. Nonetheless, that no political subject has arisen matching the approaching calamity is something that calls out for an explanation. There are the familiar ones: the vested interests, the geopolitical lock-down, the cultural-industry, etc, to which must be added the subjective side of the equation. We go on, day by day, hoping that our own being-towards-death will have run its natural course before we reach the telos of planet-towards-ignition. In other words, what we know as a political impasse is the atomist individual reflected outwards. With the passage from traditional society to modernity, the story has been told many times, the autonomous individual cut herself free from her bonds with past and future generations. Initially, this generational decoupling was formal and subjective, soon it will be made objective by the workings of chemistry and thermo-physics. The atomist, autonomous spirit, whether in its dominant, liberal-capitalist incarnation or disguised as a purported contender, have failed and continues to fail to provide the concepts and morals that are needed. A recognition hereof is already a step beyond, though belatedly so. Facing the prospect of planetary annihilation, we have finally found the exit from the self-enclosed labyrinth of discourse, of simulacra, of pragmatism and micro-politics. Any credible philosophical inquiry today must tend towards metaphysics. A dark horse for 300 years, metaphysics is destined to make a comeback as modernity draws to a close. The discoursians of yesteryear were the first ones to throw themselves on the exit, migrating en masse from the pragmatic end of the spectrum to the metaphysical under the heading of ”new materialism”. The mythical past of the arche-fossil allegedly provides them with a lever for dethroning the human being – again, thus repeating the gesture that their predecessors did with semiotics. Maybe someone can find consolation in this idea. If there ever only was an endless flux of mater, then nothing has been lost when the current constellation of carbon and oxygen-atoms, which just happens to precondition the existence of conscious beings, changes into something new and different. To whoever comes up with a palliative response to the climate crisis – engineer, economist or philosopher – there will be a funding opportunity. In contrast, old-school materialists do not locate their vantagepoint for reflection in an archaic past but in the future. This future too, incidentally, is intrinsically linked to the arche-fossil, and it furnishes thought with a temporality without any human beings. The whole body of work of the materialist historical tradition must be rethought in the light of this diametrical reversal of the meaning of the future, from a telos to strive towards into that which must be averted at all costs. It is a grim replacement, but we must do with what we have been dealt. At the very least, this narrative restores direction and purpose to our life and praxis.

“It’s amusing that our model of ourselves is that of an impenetrablemachine we somehow need to decode and predict—then and only then can wemake the right decisions in order to be happy. We set up miniatureexperiments and carefully monitor our responses and how others react to usto see if we should repeat or continue the experience. Frantically movingfrom one friend, lover, job, university, project, political cause, to thenext, each briefly improving the situation and giving us the status andself-importance we need to get out of bed in the morning. Worrying aboutthe global issues, reading the news religiously every day so we’re informedindividuals and can ramble on for hours about the pains of people in theworld we’ll never meet. Ignoring people we could share happiness withor—worse—learning methods of manipulation so we can influence those closest(proximal) to us, the satisfaction of a person molded feeding back into ourpersonal status machine. Eye contact, use first name, soft tone, develop arapport but not for too long lest honesty and humility creeps in. Helpingand diplomacy rather than sharing and empathy.”

1) philosofical level -- what is to be free ?http://freedomdefined.org/ all the bestJaroslaw Jaroslaw, do you really think this is freedom? It depends on yourconcept about the internet, if you think that is a public space whatis the need for that license or that definition ? What i am saying isthat more and more the internet is not a public space and less andless "free", in fact some might say that was and will never be free,because as Assange says the internet is the biggest spying machineever made.

Crowd Funding the Right to KnowPosted: 12/16/2012 11:38 pmDaniel Ellsberg and John Perry BarlowHuffPo, http://tinyurl.com/cftyrye"A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, an ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know." -- Judge Murray Gurfein, Pentagon Papers case, June 17, 1971In December 2010, WikiLeaks started publishing a selection of leaked U.S. State Department cables through the New York Times, the Guardian, and other traditional media, opening a deep crack in the thickening wall of secrecy that has been forming worldwide around the internal processes of democracy since 9/11. They helped catalyze the "Arab Spring." They struck a blow for the right of citizens everywhere to know what is being done in our names. And they thoroughly freaked out the U.S. Government, sending it into a security spasm of Cold War proportions.It reminded us strongly of another era, when one of us, Daniel Ellsberg, was called "the most dangerous man in America" by the White House and prosecuted for revealing to the American people what was really going on in Vietnam. Efforts to stop the publication of the Pentagon Papers ended when the Supreme Court declared that the government cannot censor the media from publishing truthful information in the public interest, even if it's classified.Thus, had the government tried to stop WikiLeaks in court, they would have failed. But they didn't have to. Instead, two individuals, Sen. Joe Lieberman and Rep. Peter King simply took it upon themselves to defund the truth. They successfully pressured Visa, Mastercard, Bank of America, and PayPal to stop processing donations to WikiLeaks, costing it 95 percent of its funding overnight.When the private financial embargo was imposed on WikiLeaks, it was an act of censorship on them and on everyone who wanted to support their work. But against this extrajudicial sanction, there was no avenue of appeal. Even though Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced that there were no legal grounds to blacklist WikiLeaks, that didn't matter. Amazon, Visa, Mastercard, Bank of America, and PayPal are private corporations. They can do as they please. The closest thing they have to a Bill of Rights is a terms of service agreement no one reads.While the Internet has broadly enabled those who would increase institutional transparency and accountability, responsible revelation requires more than the ability to dump documents online. Editorial processes are required to separate signal from noise and to expose the guilty without endangering the innocent. It takes actual journalism and actual journalism takes money.We believe that not only does WikiLeaks need to survive, it must be joined by an array of others like it, edited transparency media that have so far failed to emerge, self-censoring victims of the chilling effects of the WikiLeaks blockade. Moreover, the watchdogs that do exist struggle for backers as brave as they are. The old media fear the fears of their advertisers. The new ones often depend on a few large foundations or donors, who, being from the elite themselves, may hesitate to part its curtains.The answer, we believe, is to crowd-fund transparency, making it easy and relatively anonymous for the public to support the best watchdogs in one place, setting up a kind of United Way for the Truth.To that end, a group of us that also includes Glenn Greenwald, Xeni Jardin, John Cusack, and Laura Poitras are launching The Freedom of the Press Foundation. Our goal is to collect deductible donations for a changing suite of scrappy public-interest organizations -- both new and existing -- focused on exposing mismanagement, cruelty, corruption, repression, and criminality in our increasingly opaque institutions.Our first bundle of beneficiaries -- in addition to the still-beleaguered WikiLeaks -- will include MuckRock News, which streamlines Freedom of Information Act requests so that ordinary people can file them easily, The National Security Archive, which has been prying open the black boxes of classified information for years, and The UpTake, a combative Midwestern collective of citizen journalists focused on bringing transparency to state and local governments.We hope our financial support and technical assistance will inspire a host of other edited and secure conduits for anonymously-provided documents that the citizens whose lives and liberties they impact have a natural right to see.These channels are needed more than ever. In 2011, the U.S. Government classified over 92 million documents, four times more than were classified under George Bush in 2008. Moreover, President Obama's Justice Department has prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all the previous administrations combined.When a government becomes invisible, it becomes unaccountable. To expose its lies, errors, and illegal acts is not treason, it is a moral responsibility. Leaks become the lifeblood of the Republic.Whatever one's opinion of WikiLeaks, every American should be offended that two elected officials, merely by putting pressure on corporations, could financially strangle necessary expression without ever going to court. What happened to WikiLeaks is completely unacceptable in a democracy that values free speech and due process.We intend to assure that it can't happen again.

the difference between the new fiction and the oldis simple: we're increasingly forced to recognizethat we're buffeted in the universe, that we'reatom to mountain, that we're increasingly irrelevantoutside our own self-interest. so the narrativesare narratives of buffeting, of forces beyond ourunderstanding and control. we received entangledmessages of limited content from the cosmos; westrangle ourselves in attempts to cohere, inhabitinstead of live within as abstraction - Heidegger,where are you when we need you? we are the miseryof absolute annihilation within the matter of time;we operate on smaller and smaller domains as ifspace were a matter of local technologies and ourcorporate love of them. the truth is that the truthis incontrovertible, inconceivable, immense, beyondour limitations, as multiverses become place-holdersin formulas and emptied signifiers. we believe inuniversal knowledge, sentient networking, data-banksof the world's intelligence, ignoring the realphysical devastation the planet shakes upon us. wehold to the myths of an Internet of totalizing andinfinite connectivity, ignoring the buffeting infavor of buffering, hold-fasts and clouds which arestill more phenomena of the mythos of placing andplacement. the buffeting will necessarily,entropically, win out in the end, in a version ofEliot's whimper, and it's this that's forming thenew germ of our cultures, hardly visible, but withincreasing presence as the surface of the planetcontinues with its own branding of devastation.write of buffeting, not buffering, and tell thetruth, while simultaneously the truth, undererasure and corrosion, is annihilated, while bothvoice and comprehension are permanently stilled.

21/22/23 december 2012 – FACEBOOK Doomsday Campaign – The End of Facebook – Join Us!It’s not the END of the world, it’s END the of the world as we know it..and in this world…Facebook has become way too time and energy draining for many of us, causing distraction, disconnection and distress in its anti-privacy / exploitation scheme.The TIME has come to put FACEBOOK to an END! #FacebookdoomsdayIf we want to change the world for the better..we need to ACT ourselves. A major transformation is upon us..and WE can only make this happen. Join FACEBOOK DOOMSDAY now! Let’s give ‘em a sign on 21/22/23 december!Step 1: Download and back up any photos or other information you want to save before deleting your account.Step 2: Permanently delete your Facebook profileStep 3: Click the Dislike Facebook button here (the number of dislikes will be of significance after 23 december)Step 4 (optional): Share your reasons for quiting Facebook (see right side bar)Step 5 (optional) Consider decentralized/distributed social media alternativesEnjoy your Facebook-less life!http://quitfacebook.info/?p=467

Statement by Julian Assange after Six Months in Ecuadorian Embassy (Thursday December 20th, 19:00 GMT)Six months ago - 185 days ago - I entered this building.It has become my home, my office and my refuge.Thanks to the principled stance of the Ecuadorian government and thesupport of its people I am safe in this Embassy and safe to speak fromthis Embassy.And every single day outside, people like you have watched over thisembassy - rain hail and shine.Every single day. I came here in summer. It's winter now.I have been sustained by this solidarity and I'm grateful for theefforts of people all around the world supporting the work ofWikileaks, supporting freedom of speech and freedom of the press,essential elements in any democracy.While my freedom is limited, I am still able to communicate thisChristmas, unlike the 232 journalists who are in jail tonight.unlike Godfried Svartholm in Sweden tonightunlike Jeremy Hammond in New York tonightunlike Nabeel Rajab in Bahrain tonightunlike Bradley Manning who turned 25 this week, a young man who hasmaintained his dignity after spending more than 10% of this life injail, some of that time in a cage, naked and without his glasses.and unlike the so many others whose plights are linked to my own.I salute these brave men and women. And I salute those journalists and publications that have covered what has and continues to happen to these people, and to journalists and publications that continue publishing the truth in the face of persecution, prosecution and threat - who take journalism and publishing seriously.Because it is from the revelation of the truth that all else follows.Our buildings can only be as tall as their bricks are strong.And our civilization is only as strong as its ideas are true.When our buildings are erected by the corrupt. When their cement iscut with dirt. When pristine steel is replaced by scrap-our buildingsare not safe to live in.And when our media is corrupt. When our academics are timid. When ourhistory is filled with half truths and lies. Our civilization willnever be just. It will never reach the sky.Our societies are intellectual shanty towns. Our beliefs about theworld and each other have been created by same system that has lied usinto repeated wars that have killed millions.You can't build a sky scraper out of plasticine. And you can't build ajust civilization out of ignorance and lies.We have to educate each other. We have to celebrate those who revealthe truth and denounce those who poison our ability to comprehend theworld we live in.The quality of our discourse is the limit of our civilization.This generation has come to its feet and is revolutionizing the way wesee the world.For the first time in history the people affected by history are itscreators.As for other journalists and publications - your work speaks foritself, and so do your war crimes.I salute those who recognize that freedom of the press and the publicsright to know- recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rightsand in the 1st Amendment in the US - is in danger and needs protectionlike never before.Wikileaks is under a continuing criminal investigation and this facthas been recognized by Ecuador and the governments of Latin America asone that materially endangers my life and work.Asylum is not granted on a whim but on facts.The US investigation is referred to in testimony under oath in UScourts, is admitted by Department of Justice and by the DistrictAttorney of Virginia as a fact. It's subpoenas are being litigated inthe courts. The Pentagon reissued its threats against me in Septemberand claimed the very existence of Wikileaks is an ongoing crime.My work will not be cowed. But while this immoral investigationcontinues, and while the Australian government will not defend thejournalism and publishing of Wikileaks, I must remain here.However, the door is open - and the door has always been open - foranyone who wishes to speak to me. Like you I have not been chargedwith a crime. If ever see spin that suggests otherwise, note thiscorruption of journalism. Then goto justice4assange.com for the fullfacts. Tell the world the truth.Despite the limitations, despite the extra judicial bankingblockade, which circles WikiLeaks like the Cuban embargo, despitean unprecedented criminal investigation and campaign to damage anddestroy Wikileaks, 2012 has been a huge year.We have released nearly a million documents. made significant releases- relating to events unfolding in Syria.We have exposed the mass surveillance state and hundreds of thousandsof documents from private intelligence companies.We have released information about the treatment of detainees atGuantanamo bay and elsewhere.We've won against the blockade in the courts and the EuropeanParliament.And after a two year fight contributions to WikiLeaks have gone frombeing tax deductible no where to being tax deductible across theentirety of the European Union and the United States.And last week information revealed by Wikileaks was vital indetermining what really happened to El Masri, an innocent Europeankidnapped and tortured by the CIA.Next year will be equally busy. Wikileaks already has well over amillion documents to release. Documents that affect every country inthe world. Every country in this world.And in Australia an unelected Senator will be replaced by one that iselected.In 2013 we continue to stand up to bullies. The Ecuadorian governmentand the governments of Latin America have shown how cooperatingthrough shared values can embolden governments to stand up to bulliesand support self determination. Their governments threaten no one:attack no one: send drones at no one. But together they stand strongand independent.The tired calls by Washington power brokers for economic sanctionsagainst Ecuador, simply for defending my rights, are misguided andwrong. President Correa rightly said, "Ecuador's principles are notfor sale.". We must unite to defend the courageous people of Ecuadoragainst interference in its economy and interference in its electionsnext year.The power of people speaking up and resisting together terrifiescorrupt undemocratic power. So much so that ordinary people in theWest are now the enemy of governments, an enemy to be watched,controlled and impoverished.True democracy is not the White house. It is not Canberra. Truedemocracy is the resistance of people armed with the truth, againstlies, from Tahrir to London. Every day, ordinary people teach us thatdemocracy is free speech and dissent.For once we, the people, stop speaking out, and stop dissenting, oncewe are distracted or pacified, once we turn away from each other, weare no longer free. For true democracy is the sum of our resistance.If you don't speak up, if you give up what is uniquely yours as ahuman being, you surrender your consciousness; your independence,even your sense of what is right and wrong. In other words, perhapswithout knowing it, you become passive and controlled, unable todefend yourself and those you love.People often ask, "What can I do?" the answer is not so difficult.Learn how the world works. Challenge the statements, actions andintentions of those who seek to control us behind the facades ofdemocracy and monarchy.Unite in common purpose and common principle to design, build,document, finance and defend.Learn, challenge, act.Now.

My latest piece for the Register:"There’s a kind of cognitive dissonance in most people who’ve moved from the academic study of computer science to a job as a real-world software developer. The conflict lies in the fact that, whereas nearly every sample program in every textbook is a perfect and well-thought-out specimen, virtually no software out in the wild is, and this is rarely acknowledged."To be precise: a tremendous amount of source code written for real applications is not merely less perfect than the simple examples seen in school--it’s outright terrible by any number of measures."http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/21/financial_software_disasters/--Dave Mandldmandl-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.orgdavem-Lr0sFQ5rN1I< at >public.gmane.orgWeb: http://dmandl.tumblr.com/Twitter: < at >dmandlInstagram: dmandl