Re: nettime Justice Department attempting to remove public documents from libraries
This is good, too: http://cryptome.org/doj-killbooks.htm Both GPO and the Department of Justice regret any inconvenience resulting from the initial request for withdrawal. Judy Russell Judith C. Russell ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Managing Director, Information Dissemination (Superintendent of Documents) U.S. Government Printing Office # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: nettime The Art of Sweatshops [4x]
Look for China to implode medium term: Signs of overheating are unmistakable: an explosion of credit; rampant overcapacity (nine tenths of manufacturing goods are in oversupply); and the return of inflation (2.8% in the first quarter of 2004). President Hu Jintao, and his prime minister, Wen Jiabao, have assured financial markets that 'resolute' measures are being taken to rein in excessive investment and engineer a 'soft landing' for the economy but, so far, with no discernible impact. China is in a situation of severe over-investment, noted Credit Suisse First Boston's Hong Kong office. What's more, this investment is chasing diminishing returns. According to The Economist, China currently needs $4 of investment to generate each additional dollar of annual output, compared with $2-3 in the 1980s and 1990s. Ominously, China displays many features of Asia's 'tiger economies' in the period leading up to their spectacular crash in the summer and autumn of 1997. Last year, fixed asset investment accounted for an unprecedented 47% of China's GDP, with the construction sector accounting for half this figure. By comparison, in 1992-96 fixed asset investment in South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia averaged 40% of GDP, still extremely high by international standards. In the same period, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines experienced money and credit growth rates of 25-30% a year. China's money supply grew by 20% last year, and bank credit (new loans) by 56%. snip 16 million manufacturing jobs have actually disappeared since 1995, as Chinese industry has upgraded its technology. Shanghai Baosteel Group, for example, the world's sixth largest steel producer, cut its workforce to 100,000 from 176,000 five years ago. snip While average per capita incomes have risen rapidly in the last 20 years, the gap between rich and poor is now the biggest in the world. This has been a largely urban boom, with average incomes in the cities six times those of rural ones. from: http://www.socialismtoday.org/84/china.html --- The workers got screwed, ala the Soviet Union. Of course China is not exactly the same, but they are headed for trouble as the realization that sacrifices for socialism have not delivered a better life AND NOW the country must swing back towards a market economy to keep investments of hard cash flowing. I think manufacturing jobs flow there because labor is so cheap. But it is cheap in India as well and India does not have the historical baggage China does. I think baring a nuclear exchange with Pak., India will continue to be the main recipient of outsourced tech jobs. # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: nettime Hackers Take Aim at GOP + CrimeInc LOGISTICS ENCLOSED
[ In a Mr. Burns voice, Excellent... ] But on a serious note, do you folks think this is an effective form of protest? Or just geeks wanking off? Could a short term disruption have a meaningful affect on them? If moveon.org was shutdown completely I could see it having an affect on the election, but only 3 days of dubya's 'personal' site being down? And what about potential internation participation in this? It is easy to do via the net, but I think it would not be well received if protesters from all over the world came to New York to fight with the GOP during the convention. # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: nettime Brazil puts patients before patents
The problem down in Brazil is not that the drug companies are charging too much for AIDS drugs. The problem is that Brazil is refusing to budget sufficient money to cover the costs associated with dealing with the AIDS problem the country is sadly faced with. Instead they're simply robbing drug companies. The large drug manufacturing consortium should consider a boycott on Brazil over the complete range of the rest of their drug products or simply don't send any of the newer drugs as they enter the market down there so Brazil can't steal them too. The idea that drug companies be offered a 'reward' instead of letting market price be tied to RD is a bad one. Say what you will about the evils of capitalism, but the one truth remains that individuals and companies will produce more (to the benefit of the community at large) when they can anticipate a greater benefit to themselves for doing so. Finding good drugs that cure nasty diseases is expensive no matter how you look at it. Governments are neither willing nor able to spend the necessary money. The only way that private enterprise is going to step up and do this is if it pays them extremely well. I for one would like to see the day where one of these big companies find a final cure for AIDS and cancer. It's just unfortunate that no more reasonable alternative to that end exists. Regards, John S. Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 13:04:33 -0100 From: nettime's_busy_reader [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: nettime Brazil puts patients before patents http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-love/brazil-puts-patients-befo_b_47651.html May 4, 2007 The Huffington Post James Love Brazil puts patients before patents, rejects Bush administration pressure and issues compulsory license on important AIDS drug ... # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
nettime Current State of Political Debate on the Left
Hello All, Below please find the full text of an editorial recently run in the Wall Street Journial. In it the author makes a claim that I believe to be worthy of consideration by the Nettime readership. While this piece specifically focuses on US politics, those readers from Europe and elsewhere may also find something here worth considering. Is Peter Berkowitz's statement that the the political discussion on the Left is stagnant with little debate on the major issues? If not, what evidence of a lively debate in political opinion can be brought to bear in demolishing this audacious claim? Kind regards, John http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010137 The Conservative Mind The American right is a cauldron of debate; the left isn't. BY PETER BERKOWITZ Tuesday, May 29, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT The left prides itself on, and frequently boasts of, its superior appreciation of the complexity and depth of moral and political life. But political debate in America today tells a different story. On a variety of issues that currently divide the nation, those to the left of center seem to be converging, their ranks increasingly untroubled by debate or dissent, except on daily tactics and long-term strategy. Meanwhile, those to the right of center are engaged in an intense intra-party struggle to balance competing principles and goods. One source of the divisions evident today is the tension in modern conservatism between its commitment to individual liberty, and its lively appreciation of the need to preserve the beliefs, practices, associations and institutions that form citizens capable of preserving liberty. The conservative reflex to resist change must often be overcome, because prudent change is necessary to defend liberty. Yet the tension within often compels conservatives to wrestle with the consequences of change more fully than progressives--for whom change itself is often seen as good, and change that contributes to the equalization of social conditions as a very important good. To be sure, some standard-order issues remain easy for both sides. Democrats instinctively want to repeal the Bush tax cuts, establish government supervised universal healthcare, and impose greater regulation on trade. Just as instinctively Republicans wish to extend the Bush tax cuts, find market mechanisms to broaden health care coverage and reduce limitations on trade. But on non-standard issues--involving dramatic changes in national security and foreign affairs, the power of medicine and technology to intervene at the early stages of life, and the social meaning of marriage and family, the partisans show a clear difference: the left is more and more of one mind while divisions on the right deepen. Consider Iraq. The split among conservatives has widened since Saddam was toppled in the spring of 2003. Traditional realists continue to put their trust in containment, and reject nation-building on the grounds that we lack both a moral obligation and the requisite knowledge of Arabic, Iraqi culture and politics, and Islam. Supporters of the war still argue that, in an age of mega-terror, planting the seeds of liberty and democracy in the Muslim Middle East is a reasonable response to the poverty, illiteracy, authoritarianism, violence and religious fanaticism that plagues the region. In contrast, Democrats today are nearly united in the belief that the invasion has been a fiasco and that we must withdraw promptly. Indeed, rare is the Democrat (Sen. Joe Lieberman was compelled to run as an Independent) who does not sound like a traditional realist denying both America's moral obligation to remain in Iraq and its capacity to bring order to the country. Consider also abortion rights and embryonic stem-cell research. Here too, the right is torn, with the social conservative wing opposed to both, and the small government, libertarian wing supporting both. No such major divisions are in evidence on the left. Rare is the progressive man or woman who opposes abortion rights, or who regards the destruction of embryos as the taking of human life, or even as a dangerous precedent corroding our respect for the most vulnerable among us. And look at same-sex marriage. Again, the right is rent by serious difference of opinion. A crucial segment of those who voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004 think that the Constitution should be amended to protect the traditional understanding of marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Another crucial segment of the Republican coalition rejects alteration of the Constitution to advance debatable social policy, preferring that states function as laboratories of innovation. Meanwhile, on the left, despite ambivalence among the rank and file, all that remains to be decided at the elite level is how and in what ways to endorse same-sex marriage. Few doubt that presidential candidate John Kerry's opposition to same
Re: nettime War Economics 101
Sorry, this is a bit late. Are Flagan wrote: I think the euro link, even if it is somewhat misconstrued from my non-economist point of view, brings home a useful perspective on Showdown Iraq. Not at all. The US economy was already in a steep and steady slide downward prior to the Iraq Crisis or even 9/11. At best, they merely helped along the demise of the dollar and the crashing stock market in the direction they were already headed. In fact, it works to Bush's propaganda advantage to to suggest 9/11 and/or Iraq as primarily responsible for US economic woes, when in fact it all has to do with the inability of the Republican administration to handle a bubble that had burst the year prior to stealing power. Even now, you can see the plunging markets and dollar tied to how loud Georgie boy beats the war drums: every time it looked as though there was the possible resolution of the Iraq issue, the markets went up and the dollar strengthened. Likewise, now that the war seems imminent, so too does the DOW slipping well below 8,000 points and the euro surpassing $1.10 for a USD. John # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
nettime Iceland info
a side battle of globalization... This may seem on the 'fringe' literally and figuratively, but for obvious reasons, on the scale of the damming of the Colorado River which destroyed entire riparian environments in the west of the US -- now there are plans for an enormous hydro plant in the east Highlands of Iceland which will destroy a huge piece of untouched arctic wetland. ALCOA is the major factor, along with the greed and naivete of some Icelanders. The deal is not just to construct a large dam in an unspoiled and incredibly fragile site, but to generate electricity cheaply (completely subsidized by the Icelandic government) that is then sold to ALCOA for their planned aluminum smelter right down the road on a pristine fjord (who's micro-climate often concentrates and stills the air, causing miserable pollution). There is already exisitng another aluminum smelter near Reykjavik that puts out an atmospheric slick of piss-yellow air that does tend to blow away because the factory is located on an exposed peninsula. (quoting an english language news source in Reykjavik) Power-Plant Protestor Arrested A large crowd of people gathered outside the House of Parliament yesterday to protest against the K·rahnjukar power plant (east Iceland). A man who threw a snowball at the House of Parliament was arrested by police, which angered the other protestors. A shower of snowballs then rained down on the House of Parliament, but police decided not to interfere further. Protestors remained outside Parliament most of the day, shouting words of protest and demanding a national vote on the matter.(unquote) followed by this, which underscores the game: (quote) German company RAG Trading GmbH are currently discussing with the Icelandic Investment Board the possibility of raising an electrode factory in Iceland. The Board have been asked to help in making an environmental survey on the effects of a 340-tonne factory in Hvalfjrdur fjord (whale fjord), southwest Iceland. The factory would be a 20 billion krÛnur investment for the German company and would create around 140 jobs. To produce one tonne of aluminium, half a tonne of electrodes are needed, and therefore producing electrodes in Iceland could be very economical for the Alcoa factory in their plans to build an aluminium plant in the East Fjords. (unquote) People are being stripped of power at such a rate these days -- we must regain the power of intimate and changeable co-relation with each other to offset relations stylized by crippled social heirarchies bent on dominating the world! so it goes... jh # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: nettime Notes on the Politics of Software Culture
This is great openning for discussion for both N5M and AE participants who deal with this topic as thay share some commonalities but tend to take further more political (N5M) or economical ...snip websites...avoiding to dig deeper into the messy and fuzzy work of geeks and nerds who lack sence of selfpromotion. Few projects like CCC¥s Blinkenlights manage to get the idea of creative use of IT across, but still somehow miss on being a subject of new media theorists/critics. How can this situation be changed or inverted? Can computer/media art community stop being self-referential and emerge itself in the already established IT community/media platforms, rather than being ecstatic (with years of delay) with phenomenas like open source, p2p, wirelles? Hej Zeljko There are always, thank god, significant activities that don't make the (Mac)spotLight -- don't forget that by actual choice, or by the simple human idiosyncracy of individuals who don't run along with the highly socialized trends of the culture spectacle (of which all the organs you mentioned are really collected -- some more conscious than others) -- there are many people who will never surface in the PR realm. Like one of the concepts around the TAZ, avoid that surficial social visibility (because the western culture is fundamentally obsessed with surfaces and objects (materialism) -- being in its view, under observation, literally, will CHANGE THE OUTCOME OF THAT WHICH IS OBSERVED!) Basic quantum. Why not create movements (experiments) on the premise that they run without that intervention, so, out of that Sight. With only the lively participants engaged with each other. Always, the most humane-ly productive critical engagement occurs at the granular level of human-to-human, regardless of the surrounding social flow (festival or at home in a bar or at academic conference or bunkered down in the squat). Many of the 'trends' that are happening 'now' like wi-fi, etc are re-deployments of the rising Surveillance Society anyway. Capturing the surfaces that it is so attracted to -- meanwhile, lives go on, deeper than that surface view can ever deconvolve. Maybe it's better to not invert an old, tired equation, but to simply make a new descriptive system, a new way. Cheers John -- -~ tech-no-mad : hypnostatic domain: http://neoscenes.net mobile: +1 303 859 0689 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: nettime Re: [0100101110110101.ORG] FOR SALE
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This news is very funny... but fake! In addition, it is blatant plagiarism of a leaflet I co-authored in 1989 as a member the Art Strike Action Committee East Coast USA, as a comparison of the two texts shows: [01 text posted to Nettime]: 01 0100101110110101.org as it had previously operated from this URL 01 will cease to exist as soon as the domain will have been sold, and 01 will stop its public interventions over artistic politics. The 01 E-Mail addresses of 0100101110110101.org will be open to any use of 01 their future owners. People contacting us personally will receive a 01 copy of this text. [ASAC text from 1989:] AS The Art Strike Action Committee which operated from this P.O. Box AS has ceased to exist with the beginning of the strike and will AS suspend its actions of public agitation and debate over political AS and cultural questions. The P.O. Box will remain open and revert AS to use by its former owners who will mail one copy of this text and AS one Art Strike flyer to anyone who writes concerning the Art Strike. ...and finally: 01 With its interventions, 0100101110110101.org aimed to make 01 institutions less solid and tenable, and demoralize people 01 who would otherwise fail to have their beliefs called into 01 question. On all these counts, 0100101110110101.org considers its 01 past work a success. On the other hand, there has been a momentum, 01 internal and external, to assimilate 0100101110110101.org into the 01 production logic of the art system. By ultimately selling out, 01 0100101110110101.org will both affirm and end this status quo. AS The primary functions of the Art Strike, as formulated by the AS various groups involved, were to increase the presence of critical AS political attitudes in certain sections of the political and art AS communities, make the cynical positions of certain careerist hacks AS less tenable, and to demoralize any naive artists who might AS otherwise go their entire lives without having the content of their AS religious/ruling class attitudes called into question. On all these AS counts, the pre-strike response has shown hilarious success. On the AS other hand, there has been an unfortunate momentum, internal and AS external, to mystify the strike by comparisons with other cultural AS events (of course, in a certain sense the strike is a cultural AS event, albeit one which reverses the values put forth by nearly all AS other culture). The most typical formation is to see the Strike's AS primary organizers as Artists for whom the public strike is a AS conceptual art piece. John Berndt # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
nettime Choking Fidel and Us
The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control has issued for public comment new restrictions on travel to Cuba with increased penalties for violations. The proclaimed intent is to harm Cuba's economy by reducing income from tourism and educational travel. http://cryptome.org/fac061604.htm It would be helpful if non-US nations increased promotional efforts for tourism and educational travel to Cuba. All persons might wish to comment on the proposed nastier interference in Cuban sovereignty. This action has come in response to Bush's Cuba study commission, instituted to recommend US actions to undermine the Cuban government. The committee issued its report in early May: http://www.state.gov/p/wha/rt/cuba/commission/2004/c12237.htm Lebbius Woods, an architect and Cooper Union professor, who defied Cuba travel restrictions is being hounded by Treasury for payment of a $75,000 fine, with salary and other income at threat from the obsessed free marketers. Lebbius is showing recent work in his new book, The Storm and The Fall, on June 26 at the Center for Architecture, 536 La Guardia Place, NYC, 6:30-8:30PM, with party at 9:00 PM the same day, at his studio 80 Nassau Street, in downtown Manhattan. For the party, RSVP to 212-227-5079. # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: nettime Choking Cuban writers
What is troubling is that the US is singling out Cuba for economic warfare while doing its damnest to promote economic bear-hugging other socialist and ropgue states, presumably on the premise that economic well-being will persuade the citzenry to vote with their pocketbooks by buying and consumiong US products and services -- mirroring the Western mindset. All hail the surveilling Internet and its ideology-free pop-ups and spam. With Cuba there appears to be a sclerosis of imagination, mirroring, perhaps, that of the aging Cuban leaders. Do the two sides need one another to remain immutable as did the Cold Warriors? Not many Americas give a shit about what happens to Cuba, out of sight out of mind. For that reason a small group of anti-Castroites can get their jollies hammering a moribund state at the expense of those who live under it. Not many anti-Castroites in the US seem to give a shit about most Cubans, but they adore their rancid ideology. What unrestricted intellectural discourse, if not fat-headed tourism, could accomplish is the exchange of new ideas to replace the dreary remnants of the Cold War -- still being milked by lead-assed ideologues for economic benefit and to avoid having to get a new mindset. All praise for the 75 Cuban intellectuals and journalists who bucked their system -- it would be nice to have a similar percentage of our mind-workers do the same in the US: risk jail and execution for defying their source of steady income. Not just pretending to do so by tickling the imaginary sensitivities of bullheads, but performing genuinely criminal acts. To be sure the US justice system and prison industry are eager for this development, Patriot Act-primed. The odds of civil disobedience becoming criminal in the US is not at hand, the 60s cauterized sensitivies, and thus there is not much to be said of intellectual courage in America, harmless aestheticization of ideology is paramount -- pays damn swell, what with galleries and theaters and think-not centers abounding. Admiring Fidel awaits Broadway splashdown -- distancing mindwork set to music and dance, then a blockbuster at the Met to purge whatever slight empathy for the world's poor remain in salons of democratic and socialist and democratic socialist and liberative wordgames bountiful. # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: nettime Will Rational Exuberance Prevail?
No doubt the thing to do is to relax, don't overly fret about the US election outcome, why bother to organize, do legwork, serve on dreary election committees, seek out and listen to those who you've never spoken to as an equal to learn from them what's eating their gizzards, to hear what they think of laid-back thinkers and indolent fingerpointers and supremacist whiners and ever so condescending shits, sure, best to herdishly blame those who do these get together and work hard to elect their own kind. It's smart to stay clear of the mess, that way there's no culpability, no risk, no need to give up prejudice about the consumerist luts, easy to lay low and work the previleged angles of those who really love the sweatless perks. That's the aristocratic way, argue the finer points of powedered wigs, the curve of calf, the vulgarity of the ingrate peasantry. # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: nettime Re: Signals, Statistics Social Experiments
Having gone through that entire process though, I think Ayreen and I experienced/learned something quite specific, which was that as long as this sort of jamming happens to an outside force, things are, at least within the art context, all ok, but turned inside out, blurred, and when the art context itself is implicated within a certain matrix, the reaction against such a thing can be quite fierce and un-accepting snip... The thing is, there is no outside - we're stuck with the institutions and their digestive capacities, all around me I see the activist-artists going in and out of the institutions, like I do, like you do. What's more, I think it's necessary, because if there is no contentious presence of discord within the various kinds of mediating institutions (not only art) then the power blocs will become even more violent and ugly, as they already have. The question is, how to play the controversies out in public, how to resolve them? Where resolve means that new compromises are hammered out after struggle. With no guarantees. I think back to the art against Reagan years, and stuff like Piss Christ and other awful Serrano pieces which I never saw the use in; and I wonder whether I missed the point, or whether it really was an awful failure. In which case I am even more nervous about what people like us are doing right now. Speaking of the Reagan years, something popped up in my mind while both immersed in the hypocrisy of that period and retrospecting on its relative innocence compared to our present time. It would seem that art which comments or engages the currents of the present regime of collective reality, there is the extreme and subtle risk that the work is, by definition, REACTIONARY. The mechanism of reaction inexeorably links the artist to the original social situation in a dangerous symbiosis. For example, very often artists in the 80's would exhibit a knee-jerk reaction -- Reagan would make some tremendous and offensive gaff, the artists would, as a cluster, in the same manner that cameras cluster-click at a press conference the moment there is any kind of physical gesture, make some art about the event. By definition, reactionary. This symbiosis might explain the paradigm of the constant appropriation of oppositional strategy. Versus the impossibility of an existing social milieu to absorb revolution without deep change. Apropos of I can't remember what, Geert Lovink said: Free expression? That's Theo van Gogh: a brilliant artist who called Muslims goat-fuckers in every third sentence of his films. Is that what we want? But now it's too late for Dutch people or anyone else to ask whether we want it or not, because van Gogh is dead and there's a situation of extreme tension and violence, with no chance left for any resolution through the mediation of aesthetics, not any time soon at least. This is where the distance between reaction and revolution might point to some possible solutions. The revolutionary path is not rooted in reaction, but in generating a personally relevant pathway (that perhaps remedies or eases a critical situation) and simply move onto that pathway as a praxis (life-practice) which stands as a lived example of a possible alternate pathway for others. (walk the walk vs talk the talk) Brilliance in art (as a both individually and collectively subjective value) may or may not have anything to do with this reaction/revolution dialectic. But it is clear that confrontational conduct often has clear outcomes, and artists using confrontation risk the gross effect of escalation or the equally problematic effect of, through confrontation, propping up that which they would seek to destroy or discredit. The Cold War is an interesting example of that reactionary/polarity-generating effect and the widely understood structurally symbiotic relation between the two Cold War states. The US seems to need an Evil Other to locate its own identity as the Godly Self. The War on Drugs which immediately followed the Cold War had so much of the same rhetoric as the Cold War and the subsequent War on Terror. The same effect might well be developing internally in the US now -- to unforseen consequence. In the previous Reagan example, one thing that seemed to happen was that everytime somebody did art about Reagan that Reagan as a concept and political entity, became more powerful. And that each players location became clear, defined, and definite. (Moving life into a simulation or static reduction of being) versus (life being indeterminate, unclear, dynamic). Dwelling in reaction is a fundamentally impoverished pathway that lowers the overall value of creative living. (of course, one can also use as example the operational policies of the Palestinian/Israeli confrontation where both sides explore violently creative solutions which are deeply rooted in reaction-on-reaction, while those who seek to make pathways between the
Re: nettime Southeast Asia Tsunami and the Effective ...
What is disturbing about lack of information from the South Asia tsunami is whether allegedly missing persons being memoralized by nations of origin with candlelights and moments of grieving, are dead, injured, or merely unaware they are preceived to be missing and thus do not contact those who fear they are dead, or more likely, do not wish to be found and placed in yet another official databank. I know of three such persons who were quite surprised and violated in their privacy by obnoxious inquiries from those determined to leave no tern unstoned to satisfy purient dread and lascivious certainty that they must learn the horrific facts first hand. No matter that their inquiries set into motion nasty searches of private lives and deliberately concealed tracks and hiddent whereabouts -- this was paradise the lost had been seeking, away from the meddlers and watchers and checkers-up-oners. The three I know about had went to the South Asia for pleasures not all together acceptable, or easily acceptable, back in the homelands. This did not set well with the pryers into other people's lives who leapt at the chance to override the privilege of escapism. Are the authorities in South Asia doing the missing a favor to claim them such, turning a blind eye to customarily invited piccadilloes until the sated escapees decide to transform themselves back into upright citizens with nothing to hide? The three I know won't say who they know is missing on purpose, as customary when off the grid of violative information. Merely ask that don't do it again, come spying and squealing on us. Those outed can say, tsunami was it this time, how strange that megasexual locution of sublime ecstacy is misapplied by faux grievers of floodlike sorrow, panhandling maximum. To be sure, the millennialists and armageddonists will have a field day declaring god panoptics the hedonists, wrathing the sublimity a ratchet heavenword. # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: nettime Just do it! - Intellectual theft as a curatorial
There is nothing beyond happenstance convention which assures a creator credit, recognition, monetary payment, praise, security from appropriation. Much, perhaps all, of the argument in the exhortive post is that used by commercial approriators, thieves and bandits, their henchpersons and sharks, who invoke lop-sided convention to lay claim to creative work, cloaked, as ever, in the mantle of defending near-helpless creators, few of whom enjoy the fruits of convention, and always much less than the upper levels of the copyright heirarchy forever raving about the way things should be: like they want them to be. Blessed are those who defy this priestly argument for protection of innocents unable to protect themselves without divine intervention from rot-crotched belly-achers hoping to divert attention from their back-channel predations. To be sure, artists and ever more surely, curators, rip off creators. So what. Rip them off in return. Diatribes against ripoff are capable of being entertaining, in a dumb and dumber mode. No artist deserves anything except what they can beg, borrow and steal. Intellectuals deserve nothing except one another. Defenders of artists and intellectuals are up to no good. # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: nettime More new orleans
Hallo nettimers -- I thought to remind you of Jacob Holdt, the Danish citizen who traveled in the US, making informal snapshots of the people -- mostly impoverished Southerners -- that he met back in the 70's. While I believe much of the photojournalism from Katrina is simply more of the same media exploitation-and-crucifiction for the benefit of the consumer, you will see in it traces of the same intense poverty that Holdt confronted in his movements. He worked with an instamatic camera and still tours with a powerful and personal slide show under the title American Pictures -- http://www.american-pictures.com/ I happened to see Holdt's live presentation about 22 years ago in a small community center in Santa Monica, California. The intensity of his work, and how it reveals the soft underbelly of the Beast confirmed my own experiences when I was working as a roughneck on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, based out of the Mississippi delta town of Houma. So it goes... John # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: nettime Notes on Netporn
The operator of the war porn site Dery cites has been arrested: http://www.freep.com/news/latestnews/pm6544_20051008.htm The ex-cop's web site, NowThatsFuckedUp.com, continues to offer cutting edge repugnant carnage ribaldry of the kind popularized by lit and flic of crime-war-faith fantasies worldwide for all times. Criticism porn, king tut-tut. # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
nettime Fwd: [iDC] interesting article on new media scene in LA
Forwarded from the iDC list -- I thought it might bring back memories of the discussions around the California Ideology at the beginning of the nettime list... Cheers John + ++ Hi iDC list, The LA Weekly article reproduced below links new media with Hollywood, business models and education. It ties in to some extent with what Anna, Ryan and Jon have been discussing. Here's the link to the article itself: http://www.laweekly.com/ink/printme.php?eid=69403 I find the current unproblematized adoption and valorization of the business-model model very disturbing--and it's present not only in new media circles but also in the theorizing of relational aesthetics as in MFA programs. This business-model discourse has a history too--see Allan Kaprow's Should the Artist be a Man of the World as well as his Education of the Un-Artist--and I worry that with the piecemeal dismissal of history the nuances--historical, ethical, aesthetic--of its implications may get lost. Certainly that's what's happened in Bourriaud. But then again maybe critical vanguardism is hopelessly retardataire. -Judith - - Digital Universe With L.A. at its center by HOLLY WILLIS I'm going to put the phone down now â just hang on. Media artist Michael Naimark was at LAX one morning a few weeks ago, on his way to the Banff Centre's Refresh Conference on histories of new-media art. Another artist, Simon Penny from UCI, was up ahead, also on his way to the conference, and UCLA's Erkki Huhtamo, a new-media theorist, wasn't far behind. Not wanting to lose our connection, Naimark put the phone into one of those gray plastic containers and pushed it toward the X-ray machine. On my end of the call, the sounds of the airport grew muffled, and then everything got quiet. I held my breath as the phone moved along the conveyor belt. In spite of sitting in my sunny office, I looked around, poised for â what? A bright light maybe? But there was nothing, just a soft whooshing noise and the faint hum of distant voices. I hovered through another minute of stillness, suspended somewhere between downtown and the airport, waiting for Naimark to re-appear. At once mundane and mind-blowing, my cell-phone journey through the airport X-ray machine echoes a host of similarly strange moments of technologized disembodiment and networked connection (and disconnection) that make up daily life today. How to visualize the places we go online, for example, or to imagine the invisible crisscrossing lines of static that link cell phone to cell phone? And Naimark, along with Penny, Huhtamo and about 100 other Southern California artists, theorists and curators, are at the forefront of a media-art movement destined to help it all make sense. Indeed, Southern California has become the unrivaled international hub of new-media art, design and theory. One of the original design-team members for the MIT Media Lab in 1980 and creator of several amazing interactive installations, including the celebrated 360-degree piece Be Now Here (1995â2000), featuring panoramic views of four cities, Naimark moved here a year ago to take a faculty position in the Interactive Media Division of the USC School of Cinema-Television. Huhtamo arrived from Finland six years ago and now teaches in the Department of Design | Media Arts at UCLA, and Penny, originally from Australia, heads UC Irvine's Art Computation and Engineering graduate program. Other relatively new Southern California residents include media artists Perry Hoberman, Jordan Crandall, Marie Sester and Michael Lew. And we can tout a list of top scholars, too: UCLA's N. Katherine Hayles, who has written about how we became posthuman; USC's Marsha Kinder, who heads the Labyrinth Project, dedicated to experimenting with interactive narrative; UC San Diego's Lev Manovich, who wrote The Language of New Media; Art Center's Peter Lunenfeld, founder of Mediawork, a consortium of new-media thinkers and artists, and creator of terms like digital dialectic and technoVolksgeist in several books on new media; and Brenda Laurel, who wrote the fundamental text Computers as Theatre. The various programs in media art at local universities have expanded exponentially over the last five years, and they continue to grow, each taking on different areas of focus. CalArts' ViralNet and USC's Vectors, online journals that address media art and alternative scholarship, were launched last year. UCI's Beall Center for Art + Technology, a gallery space devoted to new-media art, was founded in 2000, and L.A. Freewaves, a biennial festival of video and new media, is currently building an extensive online archive and new-media resource to help create a focal point for the international exchange of media art and ideas. Art Center's Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery continues to showcase media art â over the summer
Re: nettime call to nettime moderators to change email address/systems [u]
Hello Felix -- Nettime gets about 1000 spam messages per day. About 95% of this is filtered out automatically by SpamAssassin, installed on bbs.thing.net and configured by nettime, the rest slips through and is deleted manually. Having worked with SpamAssassin for some years, I can't believe that it tagged the following text, so perhaps this discussion should focus on a greater care taken by the human filters. It IS a big responsibility, not just a gate-keeping role. Of course it in understandable that things slip through and the whole nettime community should be aware of this possibility and raise the issue publicly if their posting does not make it to the list. That's their responsibility. There is also the greater issue which I am finding lately -- speaking personally, I have 4 email addresses -- 2 academic and 2 commercially hosted. One academic one gets upward of 500 spams a day (and the university (of Art Design Helsinki) refuses to have any spam-management implemented!!), the other has been bouncing xchange list material sometimes and perhaps other things lately. One of the commercial ones, hosting my neoscenes.net seems to pop up on spam blacklists sometimes, or the domain can't be found, and other times bounces incoming mail from random individuals. The other dot.com lost all my spam filter info last month, and seems to also go down randomly. I have always thought I could manage this particular kind of remote presence, as it is a critical extension of my work, but it doesn't seem possible. Is it related to some kind of global infrastructure weaknesses showing up on a large scale, or just a personal lack of energy to organize things perfectly? I guess that's not an unusual situation for well-publicized email accounts. Occasionally, we teak the filters, when too much spam is coming through, or when we realize that legitimate email is being filtered out. Of course, this is difficult to see as spam is deleted right away, so we usually react only to complaints, like Geert's. This same thing happened to me this week on nettime, where I had forwarded an article from the iDC list. I repost it again following: ++ Forwarded from the iDC list -- I thought it might bring back memories of the discussions around the California Ideology at the beginning of the nettime list... Cheers John Hi iDC list, The LA Weekly article reproduced below links new media with Hollywood, business models and education. It ties in to some extent with what Anna, Ryan and Jon have been discussing. ... [remainder of the message removed @ nettime to avoid douplication. Original posting: http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0510/msg00048.html] # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: nettime Use of Computers in Preschools
A fair amount of this critique of computer use is applicable to business, government, education, religion and so on. The seniors, call them leaders, see computers only as tools to maximize worker productivity and for open and covert surveillance. They do not use them to set policy except to gather data for justifying and enforcing will of the wisp phantasies of maintaining control. Teachers are not exception to the hypnotic appeal of empowerment by subterfuge, whether by catatonizing television, authoritarian lecture notes and books (required listening, reading, testing, submitting, ass-licking mentoring, grotesque letters of reference offering an obesequious candidate, or fucker, or executor of diabolist schemes). What transfixes computer users, especially those imagining empowerment through the Internet, is what readies them for easy manipulation by way of easily acquired, indeed subsidized, tools which appear to expand individual prowess while enslaving -- the military pilot of weapons platforms is no different than the blackest hat hacker, nor are those different from the ideologists of machine dependency who gleefully encourage the malleable to believe in their boxes and push-buttons liberating efficacy. Give them medals and life-time achievement awards for preaching not what they do but what they want others to do innumerably. A wireless globe,that's a gob of merchandising missionarianess fit for a new world subscription. Track every user and yank the threat-string of being excommunicated, silenced, unsubbed, game over, pornless, a la Saint Augustine, at the first lost signal of trying to evade EM-pandemia. # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: nettime The Sudden Stardom of the Third-World City
There is hardly a better prescription for dreaming of suicide, by cities, persons or ideoligies, than comfortable success and lack of a need to struggle to survive. The invention of the Third World brand came from the mental laziness non-western intellectuals and political ideolgues grown soft from the luxury of being treated as exotics by the west -- so long as they only intellectualized and ineptly agitated politically and posed no serious threat. Dollops of overt and covert funding assured the dogs of ample feedings and preenings, not lost on domestic curs seeking the same from their caretakers and pervasive spies and turncoats. When all goes well, whether western or eastern, or lately African and South American, daydreams of ending it all oneself rather than being tortured and murdered, as if there is a correspondence between nightmares imposed on others and aesthetic murder of one's ego, or intellectual guilt of distancing from direct guilt of doing harm by way of impotently attacking the doers of crimes against humans. Third World is hoary nomenclature of world bankism or worse, UNism, promise without substance, so it is no wonder it has become a star powerfully attacting celebrity do nothings -- hardly limited to aging rock stars, say, where Hugo Chavez's luxurious accommodations are concerned, it's a tourist magnet, oh my, Che, what a come down to t-shirts and trickets in a VE mall. Third World was peopled by political rock star academics and indies looking for replacement funding for the petered out Cold War brand, now seeking alternatives to the threadbare Viet Nam schtick, the civil and human rights carcasses, the ethnic, feminist, negritude, marxian flayed corpses. Meanwhile, western cities have continued to rot with untended pathologies, sustained by the greatest number of spies and police and largest military and military-addicted economies ever in history. Vile and villainous neighborhoods so overplayed by the media that nobody wants to squander a career looking at the failure of generations of promises at home for a better and safer homeland, and thus embarassing the erstwhile leaders of the poor who promised to lead their people better than alien insensitive outsiders, and where there is as much evidence for intellectual dishonesty as can be found outside the countries which must spawn critics and apologists or be judged uncivilized by perfectly mirrored other critics and apologists. It will be come increasingly fashionable to argue that the poor can do a better job of helping themselves than unreliable outsiders. That is a predictable cycle which follows failed intentions of good hearts when funding disappears -- except for last gasp efforts to justify abandoning the needy. And fat-gutted outsiders will become so bereft of purpose that suicide becomes highly appealing -- in the abstract, burp. Call it Camusian, rebel without cause. # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: nettime hear ye, hear ye... truce for NNA discussion
Yes, the NNA report was somewhat informative but smeared, obscured, lipsmacked by the trivial sidebar complaint. What fear, of what or whom? Truce for what, a minor snit sniffle, piffle? And what is this illiteracy about stars and the little nobodies aching to lick their shriveleds as if condemned to it by trepidation. That stinks of abject student trolling the profs, whimpering where there is no need except by the protection of embracing secondary status. Turn not thy tender belly up for mercy, bite whatever barks at you, real or imaginary, or threatens or bluffs, yeah, it must be about bluffing, pretending to be terrified or worse, bored, at no longer masterful or fed up with being slavish. Fuck that and that and me. Elpeda where art thou to stiletto this whining and regretting the old days chickenshittish, lollygagging procrastinating, side-eyeing the medal giving head patters for effect. Backroom chat is servantish carping about disrespect when the house needs burning, weeping throats inviting slitting, your own mostso. No truce, no mercy, no overdone respect for anybody. # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: nettime report_on_NNA
Thanks Tobias for the report -- I was a bit dismayed to receive the email announcing the stream too late to tune in, as I had wanted to. Although many of the issues definitely hit home, I guess I have found that nettime front-channel is what it is. I rely on it for noisy and occasionally brilliant topical and opinion bursts along with subjective viewpoints about this messy space of networks, media, and criticality. It rarely addresses praxis which I find problematic, and rarely applies principles to its own space of action, so, in that respect I see it as another channel of academic discourse -- more about Word and less about Action (note how many early nettimers have sought shelter in academia since 1996 from the more radical fields of cultural/media activism). I use it primarily as a stimulus for backchannel 1-to-1 interactions that are personally more satisfying and more energizing. Anyway, as an 'oldtimer', I realized that I have a pretty much complete Eudora archive of nettime back to January 1997 (prior to that the archive vanished into ELM heaven). It is interesting to sort on Sender and see what/who shows up. I thought to write a script of sorts to make a table for easier analysis, but haven't the brain power for that -- I would challenge somebody out there (preferably not a moderator!) to either be allowed access to a digital copy of the full online nettime archive to massage the data to provide this info -- or if possible, give me some input on how I can do that myself relatively easily. (It could also perhaps be instructive to compare my received-mail archive to the 'official one!) Cheers John # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: nettime report_on_NNA
Let's say for the sake of argument that nettime is actually run by Satan himself. Do his motives matter? For most subscribers' purposes I think the answer is probably no. The very worst I could do is a pale shadow by comparison with him, so it seems like my motives would be that much less noteworthy. As for the rest, it's best to let straw men rest. This is of course, an issue -- facilitating a space for creative encounters among others is a control issue no matter where you set the slider-tab on the range from NO CONTROL (one devil) to TOTAL CONTROL (another devil). It is subjective, delicate, and always open to conflict-of-interest criticism. Ideally, such facilitation should provide a discursive space that is not too large to be difusive, and not too small to disallow experimentation. A moderator has to decide this range based on the full range of posts, and select a range where he/she believes to be reasonable (to whom?). Impossible mission. In terms of possible solutions to help nettime make the next evolutionary step, while retaining the format of list (vs blog, etc) what about, for example, that moderators not be allowed to post except back channel to individual subscribers -- this would eliminate instantly the very real conflict between moderation and opinion which has generated more noise than necessary (and more noise than signal on several occasions). Moderators should have a public email address (public to subscribers) for back channel communications, and that communications content should be placed on an archive server. Easy technical solutions. I can't imagine that you can say Geert has had nothing to do with nettime for 8 years. That's total bullshit. And not that I always have the time to read his prodigious posts nor do I frequently even agree with his ideas -- anyone who reads, lurks, posts, subscribes is as much a participant as any other. If you understand networks, I don't understand how you can make such a statement. You are not acting as a moderator when you say something like that. You shouldn't be a moderator if you think things like that. As someone who has admined my share of lists over the years, it seems that nettime has had the worst time with the relation between moderation or lack thereof. In spite of this there has been a decent flow of interesting ideas. For that I am thankful. And I respect the work of adminning and moderation (and the dedication of Felix and Ted and the others who do this kind of facilitation), but maybe it's time to look for new moderators, or have a rotating moderation structure. Ted, you sound as though you are burning out, and that's no position to be in when attempting this kind of facilitation... Facilitation is not about carrying crosses. Cheers JOhn # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: nettime report_on_NNA
Not directly but in any community/collective I know if someone 'stands up in a meeting' and makes a suggestion involving work then such an intervention carries with it the implication (and perhaps responsibility) that they are also willing to share in that work. Otherwise the intervention could be mistaken for being somewhat aristocratic. Weeel, c'mon, he's chiming in with what seems to be a good idea, but good to do some arm-twisting before he gets too deep into academia ;-)) I am of the same opinion, and probably cannot join in on the task as I have other facilitation tasks already. BUT, see below -- it's hard to say yes OR no without a clear description of the job! The examples you gave of larger networks of moderation implies that having been part of the early phase need not preclude being part of the new rotation in fact a blend of experience and new blood might enrich any new model under consideration. excellent suggestion David, and with steady rotation and an experience-base to further stabilize things maybe nettime continues, or maybe not. a decade is a long time in this biz. change can also mean death. In this Light, I would challenge Felix and Ted (and any others feeling qualified) to write a brief task description of the (different) roles/positions necessary to run nettime as it is today. Put it out here. I certainly have some interest, but would need to know the scalability and absolute size of what tasks are necessary, and how they are (technically and socially) accomplished... Cheers John # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
nettime Over 100 detained in Russia! One disappeared!
repression russian style - Weitergeleitete Nachricht - Datum: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:41:40 +0400 Von: Trade Union Solidarity Action Committee of Saint Petersburg and Leningrad region Betreff: [fse-esf] harassment and repressions in Russia Dear Friends and Comrades! We have to resort to you with an appeal for help and international solidarity! Russia is on the verge of the G 8 summit which is to be hosted in Saint Petersburg. At the same time our country is experiencing another series of political violence and reprisals. Contrary to the official G-8 summit an alternative event has been planned to be held in Saint Petersburg by the Russian Social Forum. The activists belonging to different political and grass root organizations and groups scattered all over Russia are coming to Saint Petersburg to participate in the alternative summit. Among them are the activists of the all Russian Society of Hostels and Dormitories Dwellers Rights, activists of the anti monetization laws movement, trade union activists of the Siberian Confederation of Labor and from other regions, different human right groups activists and many other individuals. These persons are being harassed and persecuted by the local police and security services agents on their way to Saint Petersburg. Some people are being stopped and arrested at the air ports and rail way stations without any legal pretext. Some activists have been detained illegally. One person from Siberia has disappeared. Up to this date at least 100 people have been detained under various pretexts having no legal force. People are forcefully deprived of their documents, transportation tickets, stalked by unknown individuals and then once again arrested by police on the pretext of protecting their personal safety (!). On different occasions people have brutally been mishandled by police and secret service agents. Here in Saint Petersburg Vladimir Soloveichik, one of the leaders of the Civil Initiatives Movement of Saint Petersburg and Leningrad region has been detained in his own apartment and now has been taken under police custody. In Saint Petersburg some more arrests have been made: two girls were arrested last Monday on Sennaya square for handing out materials on the Russian Social Forum, two activists from Germany have been detained under a pretext of violating their legal status of staying in a foreign country. Now they are being kept in police station N 36 of Saint Petersburg together with another Russian citizen. A peaceful demonstration planned during the G-8 meeting in the period of July, 15-17, has been banned by the authorities. It seems that the authorities are trying to provoke illegal actions and then blame them on committing terrorists and illegal actions. All this is going on at a time when the civil rights of many other individuals in other Russian regions are being violated and neglected. We are unsure if those arrests and reprisals have been initiated by the authorities in Moscow or by the local authorities. But all this seems to be a very well coordinated and concerted action. We are appealing to all people in the Western countries and asking them to voice their solidarity with the Russian political and social activists at this critical moment on the eve of the G- 8 summit. We suggest that you request the Russian embassies and consulates in the West European countries that they provide you for necessary information. We suggest that you picket their offices. Please spread the word! A traditional Russian police state Russia is making a comeback! What we see now is an authoritative state brutally repressing legal and civil rights of the Russian citizens. Is Russia worth being a G- 8 member? We also urge you to come to Saint Petersburg and witness everything with your own eyes. In solidarity Trade Union Solidarity Action Committee of Saint Petersburg and Leningrad region How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos. http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail/uk/taglines/yahoo_com/photos/*http://uk.photos.yahoo.com/Get Yahoo! Photos -- OUR BOOK IS OUT and now translated into Italian and Greek too - with Korean, French, German and Spanish editions on the way ! WE ARE EVERYWHERE: THE IRRESISTIBLE RISE OF GLOBAL ANTICAPITALISM edited by : Notes from Nowhere published by VERSO and available in most bookshops and online This is the first book to truly capture and embody the exuberant creativity and radical intellect of the protest movements Naomi Klein an authentic document of revolution The Times www.weareeverywhere.org # 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: [EMAIL
Re: nettime actors wanted
Could a terrorism theme park be not far away? /jc + From a UCSD press release August 22, 2006 Operation College Freedom Hi Jordan -- While I also find this next step in the militaristic show of force on campus repugnant, those of you docked and living in SoCal (NoCal as well) might well take a bit of personal heed to the very real event statistically just over the immediate horizon (it stays an immediate possibility until it happens!) -- that of massive geo-tectonic activity. As a geophysicist, I couldn't rationalize staying in the LA basin area, working an a building on Wilshire Blvd with giant auto springs holding it up in the basement and every other week, the strange precursor rumblings that was first thought to be a herd of morbidly obese amurikans thundering down the hallway outside my office. If you thought that Katrina was a big deal, or 911, or the Iraq War for that matter, you will be overwhelmed by the potential of large-scale tectonics. Doubtful that even numerous DHS practices will help much of anything except for the military itself, but you might consider making a locative project out of the idea of hiking east out of the heavily populated costal areas assuming that all elevated roads will be collapsed, and that you will have to carry all your water, food, and weapons to stay in possession of both, with you -- at least as far as the Arizona border. It won't be a theme park, it'll be REAL LIFE! Cheers John # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: nettime IDF reading Deleuze and Guattari (and Debord)
There is a need to build a new old language of critique, not simply rely upon the recycled reactions of a strain of the left from '68. Bravo Daniel for stating that up front and clearly!! To use Debord might be an oversimplification of his work, just as it is to use D+G. But we must ask, what is in these works that makes them so open to this use? I think a more general class of question might be: How is it that a relatively obscure set of texts become so Popular and are now used to explain everything? And: Who is next to be completely discredited; Who is next to be raised from the historical mausoleum of textual re-presentation and re-duction to be exclusively followed? Or who(se writings) will next be warped and twisted to fit the contingencies of those in power. Just wait and see! Not to degrade the ideas arising from that period or any other period -- but they are only one way of looking at the world -- I wonder what the landscape of nettime (or of academia) would look like if historical quotations could not be invoked -- that instead first-hand observation was the primary pathway to a world-view. Personally, I got tired of using other people's models for the world, and prefer constructing my own internally (and externally) consistent view. Of course, perusing an elegant and inspiring model from someone else is a nice thing, but should discourse be so often couched in terms and images that dead white guys thought up? I recall using DeBord back in the mid 80's (as a critique of post-modernist-obsessed academic thinking and as a suggested pathway for an engaged critical praxis), but being completely rebuffed by claims that his writings were irrelevant. So much for PC amurikan academia... Unfortunately, these theories of the French radical mafia have now become synonymous with critical theory in general, as the IDF has Just as the writings/writers who gave rise to the PoMo view of the world were discussed ad infinitum, ad nauseum between 1980 - 2000, now it's DG from 1990 - 20xx along with the Situationists from 1995 - 20xx. It's great to adopt more accurate models than the one that one is presently following, or models that more accurately circumscribe the momentary contingencies of presence in a particular socio-political milieu, or to actively adjust existing models to fit the moment, but reliance on any one model as the flux of history passes seems problematic. It's too easy. AND, when the next critical step is taken, the step from reading to acting, to a lived praxis, what happens when the book can't be found, when there's no time to read, when life is in-your-face, or the chapter hasn't been written to aid in coping with TODAY? What then? When one is faced with constructing ones own model, THEN one has to be critical of ANY social input at the same time as rebuilding (and being confident in) atrophied internal sensibilities and comprehensions of the world 'out there.' It's a nice unstable, dynamic, and active position to be in, rather than nodding in agreement with those old texts. It brings one to the front of living, where decisions must be made based on what is happening in the moment, not on what one was told to do in school... okay, cheers, John PS - and one might well ask the question of older bits of wisdom -- how is it that they stick around -- hegemonic academia, rigid theoretical application? or functionality? (Sun Tzu has probably saved more readers' arses than DG so far...) ;-)) PPS -- and when, historically, was war anything else but the ego play of the leader of the offensive war machine? # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
RE: nettime Disordered thinking through the origin oflanguage
Words, coherent language, came from god, and if that anti-scientific premise is offensive, recall that the earliest philosophers, Thales et al in western canonicism, others earlier in Asia and Africa, argued that coherent language came from a humiliating sense of wonder, wonder at astonishing events which could not be explained by simple survival needs. Posting god as a devious humanizing of the sense of wonder for propounding manipulative religion, should not preclude non-deist apprehension of coherent language deriving from origins not easily explained with the narrow conceits of everyday-everyman science, the simplistic, again deviously anthropocentricizing pseudo-science, call that the humanities unable to bear absolute uncertainty and doubt about the human as the center of existence, much less the humiliation of nature indifferent to humanoids. Language is a cry for significance, whether sung or spoken, that the poets got right and the philosophers must forever question what's the point, Thales' ur-query why, the least animal concern. Fear, terror, anxiety about death, grief, loss, and ecstacy about love, beauty, courage, surely, as noted earlier, well up in the chest, and become bleats, hollers, and wails of recognition and affirmation or denial. Animals emit some of those oral superfluities, as well as dance and play. It is the superfluity of language, its overflow beyond what is needed to survive that points to an origin in imagination. Sartre and others have argued that imagination is what uniquely identifies the human but that it is also what condemns the human to eternal prison of its own making: the desire to be god. Would god have invented such a being, you bet if god is posited by a human seeking escape from mortality, ano imaginary concocted for aesthetic diversion. Thinking is another inexplicable human devousness. # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: nettime Gender and You
Feminism is not the same as women, maybe not about most of them either. It addresses a fairly small set of some women's interests, and some of those women extrapolate their interests to women in general. And a small number of men use this as a means to presume to know what women are and, to be sure, want, that is, they want to be a certain kind of men pretending to be women of a certain kind, most often brainy show-offs. Similarly malism, or masculism, is not the same as men, and definitely is not about most men, but addresses the interests of a few men who extrapolate their interests to men in general. A small number of women use this as a means to presume to know what men are and, to be sure, want, that is they want to be kind of women pretending to be men of a certain kind, most often brainy show-offs. An even smaller number of women and men toy with becoming faux men and women, pretending like mad, utilizing narrow interests and perceptions abstracted from real women and real men in general which cannot be known in their generality but only by selective abstract positings based on limited direct acquaintance -- customarily only familiarity with a few hundred actual experiences and maybe ten to a hundred times that amount by way of study of the gender topic (once lumped as the humanities, oh the humanities). Queerism attempts to surpass all too easy feminism and masculism -- which incorrectly identify feminism with women and masculism with men. The vagina and the phallus are conjoined in the anus ashitting during penetration, abirthing congealed philosophy, or art, aboriginal, pre-verbal, farting precursing argument and song. Yes, there is a cartesian incertainty, gratitude at being alive, upon delivering a pile or puddle of feces, contributing to the earth's refertilization, sui generizing triumphantly, autoerotic coitus if comical to see in toilet mounted video. # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
nettime CLIMATE CHANGE OPERA OPENS IN LONDON'S SQUARE MILE
Sorry for cross posting This is the opera some of you might have heard that i was working on .. thought you might be interested in it. A strange shift from 7 years ago which was the last time i worked in the square mile and was helping to organise an insurrection there (the J18 carnival against capitalism) ! but operas and insurrections have some things in common i think ??? Please dont listen to it withouth doing the walk ( so if your not in London wait till you visit ) - it would be like watching TV with the picture switched off !!! yours JJXX NEW OPERA CREATES 'SOUNDTRACK FOR THE ERA OF CLIMATE CHANGE' Today sees the launch of And While London Burns - a compelling collision of thriller, opera and guided walk that dramatically explores London's Square Mile and its role in climate change. An 'opera for one', it takes the audience equipped with an mp3-player on a walking audio adventure through the skyscrapers, streets and alleyways of the City. This unusual work catapults the climate crisis from the cold realms of science and economics into the emotional world of culture. And While London Burns leads the headphone-wearing participants on a mystery tour, experiencing the City through the eyes of a tormented financial worker, who encounters Roman ruins, real life City characters, bank trading rooms, buried rivers, and relics from the Great Fire. The audio tour explores the role of companies including BP, Royal Bank of Scotland and Swiss Re in fueling climate change. Starring recent Olivier Award nominee Douglas Hodge[1], and produced by award -winning arts company PLATFORM,[2] the track is downloadable for free from http://www.andwhilelondonburns.com and can be experienced at any time of the week. Pre-viewing theatre critic Robert Butler writes [3]: The journey becomes a magical mystery tour, a London walk, a political essay, a short story and a requiem James Marriott [4], co-writer, says: The theme of this opera is not fiction, and this is emphasised by it being staged in real space, among real characters. This is a soundtrack for the era of climate change. John Jordan [5], fellow librettist, continued: We know the numbers, graphs, models and terrifying predictions of the climate catastrophe that faces us, but until we are truly moved to feel the scale of the crisis, then there is little hope that our society will go beyond the cataclysmic scenario of business as usual. Composer Isa Suarez's [6] stirring score evokes London's fiery past, oil drenched present and a dark unknowable future and is performed by some of the UK's best contemporary musicians including BBC Jazz award winning clarinettist Alan Barnes and acclaimed cellist Robin Michael. She describes And While London Burns as a requiem for the warming world. Press Contacts: James Marriott: 0207 403 3738 Greg Muttitt (till Sunday 3rd Dec): 07970 589 611 Dan Gretton (after Monday 4th Dec): 07749 422 953 A press photograph is available for use in print media Notes to editors 1. One of the UK's most versatile actors, Douglas Hodge has recently starred in Titus Andronicus for The Globe and the West End run of Guys and Dolls. He has just finished playing Ewan Mc Gregor's lover in the hit British film Scenes of a Sexual Nature. 2. PLATFORM works across disciplines for social and ecological justice. It combines the transformatory power of art with the tangible goals of campaigning, the rigour of in-depth research with the vision to promote alternative futures. http://www.platformlondon.org 3. Robert Butler, author and theatre critic, was drama critic of the Independent on Sunday from 1995-2000. His most recent book is 'The Art of Darkness - Staging the Philip Pullman Trilogy' (Oberon 2004). The review appears on http://www.ashdendirectory.org.uk/featuresView.asp?pageIdentifier=20061130_63053531view= 4. James Marriott, Co-Director of PLATFORM, has been researching London's oil gas sector since 1995. He is the author of 'The Next Gulf - London, Washington the Oil Conflict in Nigeria' (Constable 2005) and is an AHRC Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths College, University of London. 5. Artist activist John Jordan was co-founder of the infamous anti-globalisation collective Reclaim the Streets. He is co-editor of 'We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anticapitalism'(Verso 2003). He worked on the film The Take about the economic crisis in Argentina with Naomi Klein and set up the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army in 2003. 6. Trained classically as a musician, Isa Suarez is a composer, sound artist and songwriter working since 1988 on film and TV, contemporary art, songs and multimedia productions. She has released albums internationally and exhibited at Tate Britain London and Whitechapel Art Gallery. She was recently awarded an artist residency in Southwark, London and is currently preparing a multimedia piece
Re: nettime WiReD: 'infectious blogs'
Would we expect the most-read bloggers to be the most original thinkers? Although some of the top bloggers are leading thinkers in their fields (Juan Cole comes to mind http://www.juancole.com ), in an era of information overload a blog whose viewpoint you identify with and trust serves more as an information filter, helping to bring you choice bits of of the kind of info you would look for on your own if you had more time. I enjoy reading Eschaton http://atrios.blogspot.com and CalPundit http://www.calpundit.com but neither Atrios nor Kevin Drum are experts in politics or any of the other subjects they write about, rather they are highly skilled at filtering through large amounts of data and presenting their readers with a selection of links to material that may interest them, more editors than writers. Not all blogs are like this, but these are two of the most widely read on the left leaning side of things... John --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I thought this was great coming from WiReD: The most-read webloggers aren't necessarily the ones with the most original ideas, say researchers at Hewlett-Packard Labs There is a lot of speculation that really important people are highly connected, but really, we wonder if the highly connected people just listen to the important people, said Lada Adamic, one of the four researchers working on the project. = John von Seggern producer remixer DJ Digital Cutup Lounge West Los Angeles http://www.digitalcutuplounge.com videogame film and TV scoring with Terra Incognito http://www.terra-incognito.us # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
nettime no subject
The Bush administration has produced look-alike news propaganda clips and then persuaded television stations across the country to air them uncritically and, often, uncut. As many as 20 government departments have produced fake news which stations broadcast as though they had produced the segments themselves http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=619654 # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
