nettime collaboration - 7 notes on new ways of learning and working together
directions around the flows of knowledge. Cooperation necessarily takes place in client-server architectures. It follows a metaphorical narrative structure, where the coherent assignment of each part and its relation to the others gets reproduced over and over again. The current educational system mirrors this structure and is therefore essentially incapable of responding to contemporary challenges, let alone future ones. Even worse, the more the system attempts to re-modernize itself, the more it sinks in the swamp of commodification, homogenization and hierarchization. Obviously the problem lies with the educational system's understanding of what contemporary imperatives are and its insistance that these must have an 'applicable' function. If a model of collaboration were to be applied to educational cultures , then it would have to accept an inabilty to predetermine outcomes even while sharing a set of aspirations or directives or being anchored in a set of recognised probelamtics. 7. Collaboration entails rhizomatic structures where knowledge grows exuberantly and proliferates in unforeseeable ways. In contrast to cooperation, which always implies an organic model and a transcendent function, collaboration is a strictly immanent and wild praxis. Every collaborative activity begins and ends within the framework of the collaboration. It has no external goal and cannot be decreed; it is strict intransitivity, it takes place, so to speak, for its own sake. Collaborations are voracious. Once they are set into motion they can rapidly beset and affect entire modes of production. Free or open source software development is probably the most prominent example for the transformative power of collaboration to un-define the relationships between authors and producers on one side and users and consumers on the other side. It imposes a paradigm that treats every user as a potential collaborator who could effectively join the development of the code regardless of their actual interests and capacities. Participation becomes virtual: It is enough that one could contribute a patch or file an issue, one does not necessarily have to do it in order to enjoy the dynamics, the efficacy and the essential openess of a collaboration. In the last instance, the democratic or egalitarian ambition has migrated into the realm of virtuality: Open source developer groups usually do not follow the patterns and rules of representative democracy, the radical notion of equality reveals in the general condition that everyone has instant and unrestricted access to the entire set of resources that form a development. The result is as simple as it is convincing: Those who disagree may fork and start their own development branch without loosing access to the means of production. On the internet, distributed non-hierarchical information architectures are characterized as peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. They emerged in the 1990s and triggered a revolution of the conventional distribution model. These networks were first designed to exchange immaterial resources such as computing time or bandwidth, mainly in scientific academic contexts. Their aim was to overcome technological limits, incapacities and shortages by combining the existing free resources. Since the late 1990s the same network architecture has been used to exchange relevant content: music and movies were distributed amongst ordinary personal computers that worked as both downstream and upstream nodes in mushrooming networks. The enormous success of these projects, from Napster to BitTorrent - currently estimated to account for nearly half of the total of internet traffic - enabled people who do not know each other and probably prefer to not know each other to actually share their hard drives. In fact, their anonymous relationships are based on the irony of sharing, even in a strictly mathematical sense: due to lossless and cost free digital copying the object of desire is indeed multiplied rather than divided. In the last instance collaborations are driven by the desire to create difference and refuse the absolutistic power of organization. Collaboration entails overcoming scarcity and inequality and struggling for the freedom to produce. It carries an immense social potential, as it is a form of realisation and experience of the unlimited creativity of a multiplicity of all productive practices. FLORIAN SCHNEIDER [thanks to Arianna Bove, Eric Empson and Irit Rogoff for proof-reading, comments and advise]=20= # 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 summit -- non aligned initiatives in education culture
and concept labs: A series of meetings and sessions on burning questions of education - Open space: Forum for initiating proposals, highlighting practices and making theory urgent - Collaborative drafting of a declaration DATES: May 24 to 28, 2007 VENUES: Hebbel Am Ufer (HAU), Stresemannstr. 29, 10963 Berlin unitednationsplaza, Platz der Vereinten Nationen 14a, 10249 Berlin bootlab, Tucholskystrasse 6, 10117 Berlin REGISTRATION: http://summit.kein.org info[at]summit.kein.org FACILITATING COMITTEE: Kodwo Eshun, Susanne Lang, Irit Rogoff, Florian Schneider, Nicolas Siepen, Nora Sternfeld SUMMMIT is organized by Multitude e.V., in collaboration with Goldsmiths College, London University and Witte de With, Rotterdam. SUMMIT is supported by the Federal Culture Foundation, Germany. # 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 dictionary of war: video
dear nettimers! last weekend the first edition of the DICTIONARY OF WAR took place in Staedelschule in Frankfurt/Main. 25 concepts on the issue of war have been created and presented by artists, architects, theorists, filmmakers and activists. http://dictionaryofwar.org since last monday night the video recording of the entire event is online. you can download every concept presented in frankfurt from the DICTIONARY website: http://dictionaryofwar.org/en-dict/v2v The RSS feed is available here: feed://dictionaryofwar.org/en-dict/v2v/feed for the distribution we are proudly using the V2V network, a video syndication network based entirely on open source technology and peer-to-peer distribution. we started this project in 2003 and continously developed it further on. today it is featuring modules for the drupal content management system http://drupal.org that allow the syndication of the video files across different sites and blogs: http://v2v.cc all contributions to the DICTIONARY OF WAR are released under a share-alike creative commons license. if you are interested in the video material in higher resolution please contact us at: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] the next edition of the DICTIONARY OF WAR will take place on July 22 and 23 in Munich, Muffathalle. among the contributors invited to munich are: konrad becker, jordan crandall, tim etchells (forced entertainment), tom keenan, geert lovink, marko peljhan, eyal sivan, zelimir zilnik... the munich edition will be followed by sessions in graz on october 13 and 14, and a berlin edition most likely on february 9 to 11, 2007 more soon! florian # 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 dictionary of war
Dear nettimers, may I take the liberty to invite you with a rather lengthy and detailled posting to join a project we are currently setting up in the tradition of a series of events that started with the makeworld festival in 2001 http://www.makeworlds.org/1/index.html went on with NEURO--networking europe in 2004 http://neuro.kein.org and also included last years Fadaiat*/Borderlineacademy. During the latter event in the old castle of the city of Tarifa in the very south of Spain, at the Straits of Gibraltar, while meeting with about two hundred artists, activists, theorists in a dedicated open space environment it happened that we were realizing that although we might sort of share some basic beliefs, convictions or attitudes there is a certain lack of understanding since specific keywords or buzzwords were conceived in tremendously different ways and notions. Not that I would consider this a bug or a problem one should fix and get rid of, but sitting together and thinking about what is to be done next we thought that there might appear an enormous potential for the creation of further and possibly very productive understandings and/or misunderstandings: Spontaneously we organized an almost six hour long session in which various different people entered the stage and presented in alphabetical order one term or terminology that seemed crucial to them. It partly failed entirely and partly worked terrificly well. But in the following weeks and months we tried to develop this rather off-handed performance idea further on and decided to look for funding. In two weeks from now, on June 2 and 3, 2006, the first edition of DICTIONARY OF WAR will take place as a collaborative platform for creating concepts on the issue of war. At four public, two-day events over the next few months in Frankfurt, Munich, Graz and Berlin altogether 100 concepts will be invented, arranged and presented by scientists, artists, theorists and activists. The aim of DICTIONARY OF WAR is to make the creation or revaluation of concepts transparent into more or less open processes in which we can and need to intervene; at the same time, the aim is to develop models that redefine the creation of concepts on the basis not of interdisciplinary but rather undisciplined, not co-operative but rather collaborative processes. Such platform is explicitely not meant as a sort of specialized wikipedia with a focus on war. We are looking for concurrent versions, divergencies, critical debate and discussions rather than identifying a common understanding and imposing so called definitions. There are no limits except a certain time frame for the actual performances; every contributor or concept person is free to choose whatever medium, format or genre in order to present the concept. The DICTIONARY OF WAR is an experimental project and entirely under construction. It will be generated at least on three levels: First of all it will be produced concept by concept in alphabetical order during four performance sessions at different places: an art school, a concert hall, a theatre and a museum. Every contribution is going to be properly video recorded and then made available near on real time on the website where it can get further elaborated, enriched with additional material and discussed. After the first four sessions a book will be published that collects 100 concepts. Participation on this project is not limited to those who can actually make it to one of the four events we are planning so far. You are invited to register at the platform and use this customized multi-user weblog system (based on the excellent code of drupal4.7) in order to participate, contribute a concept, compile your own versions, pick up the RSS-feeds, remix them etc. http://dictionaryofwar.org In times of war this mailinglist has repeatedly turned out as a very particular and valuable communication channel: I remember the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, but also of course the subsequent debates after 9-11 or before and during the latest Iraq war. The new war, post-modern war, global war -- almost every major military operation over the last years has evoked a new debate about the new character of war and this discussion has not been restricted to a few specialists but heavily affected political activists as well as cultural producers. Lastest after 2001 state of war has turned into a normality. Five years of global war have turned the world upside down, in a way that the extent of the ongoing changes cannot be fully conceived yet. DICTIONARY OF WAR is about polemics in various respects: It seeks confrontation with a reality that is characterised by the concealment of power relations the more that one talks about war and peace. But it is also about finding out to what extent war may function as an analyzer of power relations that constitutes current changes. Changes that have been producing ever new wordings and all sorts of labels that indicate that
nettime fadaiat//borderline academy
military, paramilitary and civil regimes of control are overlapping with situations of economical exploitation, where tremendous legal and illegal flows of traffic have to be managed and every square centimeter is surveilled around-the-clock, the special meaning of networked communication technologies becomes obvious. But what if they don't only play a major role in constraining freedom of movement, but also in regaining it? We have waited for five days on the Maroccon coast, without having something to drink nor to eat. At 2 o' clock in the morning we entered the boat. The crossing to spain took us 13 hours. The steermen were specialists. May be that's why we spend so much time on the water. We had to ship around warships - at night around Maroccon ones, during the day around Spanish ones. But as soon as we arrived we've already been expected by the Guardia Civil. Right in the middle of the conference the news arrive, that only some kilometers outside of Tarifa three refugee boats have landed in the military area. One of the refugees is Moussa, whom the authorities will later name John and impute a liberian nationality on him, even though he doesn't speak a single word of English, but so he can be deported back immediatly. Surprisingly, Moussa is being released after two days in the deportation camp, because he has contact to one of the representatives of the local refugee support network, that was negotiating about the release of Moussa with the authorities for the two days. Moussa had unified the refugees that came from countries, where only few people were present, who had been more or less by themselves and in a very difficult situation, since they have no community, says Nico Scuglia. Still in Marocco, in the clandestine camps, in which the refugees are waiting up to months for a chance to cross, communication structures play a decisive role. Usually only larger communities are able to organise all necessary infrastructure like mobil phones, addresses and contacts to the different networks necessary. =46rom this background, Scuglia is especially glad about the response that the conference has created on the other side of the straits, where mobile phones or even internet is far from being a matter of course. Next year the activists from Al-Jwarezmi from Marocco want to continue the event in Larache the other way around. Also Osfa from Sevilla sees the greates challenge in trying not to waste a political project like Transacciones/Fadaiat in platitudinous activism or fast media effects, but to take on the complexity of a postmodern borderregime. In the straits not only the military and the economical streams of the empire are crossing each other, they are also confronted with the selforganised movements of a multitude, that is networking beyond any border. Nevertheless- at the end of the conference a sponteneous old-school demonstration evolves: Just when the prisoner transport van of the Guardia Civil is trying to bring the refugees, that they captured during the day, off of the harbour mole, the conference participants rush out of the fortress and block the evacuation of the refugees for half an hour. But the balance of power is characteristic: six activists are barricading the harbour gate with a long banner, whereas another dozen of activists is surrounding them on the street with videocameras in theis hands. At this moment Moussa is already in the deportation prison Algeciras, 20 kilometers away: Together with 16 other people in one dirty room, in which simple benches substitute beds and blankets. After the ordeal of the crossing he could also not find any sleep in his first night in Europe; only on the second day in prison they received a small piece of cake to eat and a cup of coffee. He doesn't understand the world anymore and is at the same time pointing out the most blatant contradiction: If they would want to obstruct the way for us, they should then at least do so, so we know right from the beginning, that the borders are closed. In the end, this is the hypocritical dimension of the postmodern border regime, that is pretending to manage migration but is only turning it into illegal migration, making it more difficult, more expensive and more dangerous, but never prevent people from migrating. No matter if at the Sacred Heart of Jesus Statue or anywhere else around Europe. (florian schneider) --- * Fada'iyyat or FADAIAT (arabic): literally through spaces -- FADAIAT means also space-ships or rather space-clearing engines. According to Fatema Mernissi FADAIAT is the name in Arabic for satellite TV.= # 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 neonazis go spam
from: susanne lang [EMAIL PROTECTED] published at: http://idash.org/ NEONAZIS GO SPAM Since the weekend May 14th/15th, many internet users had to notice their inboxes were flooded with some rather unusual spam, carrying neofascist propaganda. Most of these spam mails are containing one or several links to web sites of the NPD, Germany's major radical right wing party, even though some mails also link to articles by the mainstream press, such as Der Spiegel, FAZ or Heise Online. The headers of the spam mails are forged, so one should not assume the sender of the spam mail to be related to the email adresses that appears - bounces show that many explicitely anti-racist or anti-fascist domain names have been forged in order to send out neonazi spam. Right now there are 72 different variations of the neonazi spam - in German and in English, as reported at GrabaGeek http://www.grabageek.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=487 many being related to the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Another suspected reason for the spamming may be the elections Northrhine-Westfalia that are happening on Sunday. The worm's author is most likely a neofascist sympathizer and doesn't consider himself as a spammer, but is motivated by ideology instead, as pointed out in this article at Reuters http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNewsstoryID=8519179 As Heise http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/59588 reports, the e-mails are sent via computers infected with a bias containing a backdoor. Apparently, this seems to be the 15th version of a virus called Sober - now being active in version Sober.Q and Sober.P. This virus has emerged in 2003 and became known lately in hiding in spam messages, promising soccer World Cup tickets and delivering the virus instead. In general the virus is not damaging your computer, but seriously consuming bandwith and continously updating itself. After having infected a computer, the virus is contacting webservers and loading new programms, sending out emails with different messages, such as neofascist Propaganda, or even trying to take down certain websites, through Denial-of-Service-Attacks (DoS). A serious damage then happens if the virus is widespread and heavy spamming at the same time. This was the case on Monday in South African networks, where 84% of the available e-mail bandwith was used up by spam, as finance24.com http://www.finance24.com/articles/companies/display_article.asp? Nav=nslvl2=compArticleID=2-13-1443_1706222 reported. To get rid of the virus is actually very easy - you only need to detect it and delete it. It is strongly suggested to update your antivirus software as soon as possible, but before Sunday, as the virus is expected to load new programms on Monday 23rd of May. According to Heise.de http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/59729 it is not known yet what will change in the behavior of the virus. It is possible that the message of the text will change, but it is also possible that the infected computer will be used as a bot in order to attack certain webservers. If you need help finding antivirus support, check the http://www.heise.de/security/dienste/antivirus/Anti-Virus sites of Heise.de. # 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 Reverse Engineering Freedom and make world paper#3
[this message got stuck in my outbox while travelling from one outgoing mailserver to another... sorry for the delay /fls] On Wednesday, September 24, 2003, at 12:49 PM, David Garcia wrote: It is a sad truth that although imperfect, the most effective guarantor of the personal safety upon which the freedom Geert and Florian celebrate, including (perhaps especially) the innovations of the opensource movement, are not universal principals but the power sovereign states, able and willing to offer minimal conditions of safety to its resident netizens, activists and hackers whether in Brisbane, Berlin or Delhi. may i disagree? it's a bit late, and very illegitimate but i guess i still should. this argument somehow reminds me to the conservative teacher who told me when i went to my first demonstrations in the early 80ies: you are going to fight against a system that at least allows you to fight against it. he did not really understand that it was precisely that hypocrisy of the western propaganda during the cold war that was outraging me and lots of others young guys. why one should have to decide between bad and worse? geert and me are certainly not so tired that we would prefer to lay back and refer to universal principals. i also feel limited gratitude to the power of souvereign states, which tend to offer conditions of paranoia rather than safety. when we are talking about freedom of movement and freedom of communication we are referring to the everyday struggles of millions of people crossing borders as well as pirating brands, producing generics, writing open source code or using p2p-software. there is a multitude of reasons to exercise these very different practices; but first of all it refers to an impregnable autonomy of resisting and refusing both the new border and the intellectual property regimes which are set up by souvereign nation states and global corporations. apparently they rely existentially on depriving more and more people of freedoms, which are even not the privilege of some netizens anymore. what has been formerly known as a human right, became subject of all sorts of management strategies. in this situation conscience-stricken moralizing makes us only weaker than we are, because it plays into the hands of those whose power originates from granting limited, temporary or no access to sources and resources. i feel no need to feel guilty or excuse for the bizarre coincidence that i may be in possession of a passport that currently allows me to travel across most of the borders of this world. but i feel a need to enjoy such advantages with everybody on this globe. i feel a need to struggle for freedom of movement, not because i feel misery with these poor victims, who have to escape from where they have been born and should stay for the sake of authenticity, nativity and noble savageness. the reason is that i have lots of respect and admiration for anyone who makes the difficult decision to leave one's point of origin. i guess the excessive abuse of the verb share in this context (i.e. file-sharing) carries enormous ideological impact. as if one would loose something like safety, if mobility is no longer exclusive to those who pretend to be already fed up with it or are already too wise and sophisticated to be affected by it; as if one would have only half of the fun if others enjoy the same as oneself. actually the opposite is true: i am glad, when i log onto my computer in the morning and when i see how many people downloaded something they were looking for. i am glad when i was able to support somebody to get at least a chance to spend even some time in areas of the world that are supposed to be reserved for the exclusive usage of only a few. Geert and Florian's words are as always provide an inspiring dose of boosterism but nevertheless (in this paragraph at least) they are a chimera because the condition of the privileged and mobile, net-savy intelligencia they generously wish to universalize is totally dependent on the existence of the network of states and their institutions whose boarders they would dissolve. To act as though globalization and the networks (from either above or below) have rendered nation states either illusory or merely an oppressive anachronism, is to fail to see the plight of the tens of thousands of stateless people, whose membership of the human family alone affords them little pity, protection or hope, let alone freedom (reverse engineered or otherwise). This outdated narrative which claims to be going beyond the naivetes of the dot.gone era, merely succeed (here and there) in recuperating its lack of (all but the most recent) historical awareness. Despite a critical ambience we are re-visiting the euphoria of another holiday from history. Geert and Florian dissolve in the universalising solvent of their rhetoric the fact that many important liberation movements (including that taking place in Palestine) are more than
nettime streaming f15
f15 LIVE STREAM SAT FEB 15, 2003 12:00 -24:00 CET http://de.indymedia.org http://www.expertbase.net/f15 While the US-goverment and it's allies are preparing for the next war on Iraq, multitudes are raising up against the destructive power, hypocrisy and corruption of the exisiting world order. Next saturday, February 15, about 20 million people are supposed to march on the streets in hundreds of cities all over the world. In order to connect the worldwide protests media-activists around the globe are currently preparing for the up- and download of all sorts of texts, reports, interviews, audio- and video-material, streams and satellite feed: looping up to a hybrid media marathon and shaping a global network of local and remote collaboration. After the success of the live video streaming session from the protests against the nato- conference last weekend in munich, dozens of independent media activists from Germany have joined to set up a 12 hours f15 live stream from Berlin. The program will be divided into two parts: 1. LIVE FROM THE ANTI-WAR RALLYE IN BERLIN Full coverage of the demonstration in Berlin at Brandenburger Tor: - All together more than 20 teams of media activists and videographers are going to provide audio and video reports directly from the demonstration in Berlin - The video-material will be roughly edited and uploaded for viewing on demand http://kanalB.de http://subtv.org - Starting around 2 am CET the protest march will be live- casted by several camera units, the footage will be encoded and uploaded through a wireless connection from a tent next to the stage 2. f15 - LATE NIGHT PROTEST SHOW - Starting around 6 pm CET a video studio will be set up in bootlab in Berlin, Ziegelstrasse 23, - Livecasting of incoming reports from Amsterdam, London, Paris, Stockholm, Vienna, Rome etc. - Live reports of correspondants via mobile phone from Buenos Aires and New York and many other places - DJ-sets, videomixes and screening of globally found footage - Live talks with spontaneous guests and special contributions from the temporary f15- studio in bootlab, Berlin - IRC chat at: irc.indymedia.org #f15-stream Attention: The f15 live stream is another test-run after beta-versions from the esf in florence and the anti-nato protests in munich. it is proud to be at experimental stage and doesn't even tend to be clean of all kinds of interruptions, breaks, failures, mistakes, crashes, congestions... if you are not afraid of restarting your player -- stay tuned! 3. CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS Please get in touch with us if you are planning to film, edit and upload your clips from your local protest. we'd be happy to get to know about it and include it into the live stream. Join the chat on saturday, send a message to mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] or subscribe to the f15-info mailinglist: http://www.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/f15-info You can easily link to the f15 LIVE STREAM by pasting this piece of html-code onto your website: a href=http://www.expertbase.net/stream/live.ram; img src=http://www.expertbase.net/f15/f15-s.gif;/a # 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 The_Network_of_the_World's_Social_Movements
[From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] a list that was established after the hub-project, an independent open space during the esf in florence /fls] The World Social Forum's New Project: The Network of the World's Social Movements By Ezequiel Adamovsky; The Cid Campeador Neighborhood Assembly, Buenos Aires. A new project has been proposed at the World Social Forum this year. The idea is to build a Network of the World's Social Movements. The CUT and other Brazilian organizations have already volunteered their services to flesh out its secretariat. The plan is, as the document that is being circulated states, to achieve a more permanent articulation between the social movements at the global level. Of course, nobody wants to oppose such an idea, and I believe that an articulation of this type is fundamental to the growth of the movement of movements. However, I completely disagree with the route that the project is beginning to take. Moreover, I believe that the failure of the coordination of the Argentinean Assemblies presents us with clues as to why this plan is a bad idea. The WSF does not have to create a network of the movements because this network already exists: we have been constructing this network over the last six or seven years. Certainly, this network is still not strong enough, but we have to build upon what already exists before we can create ONE institutionalized network under the WSF's control. If the WSF attempts to domesticate the existing networks, attempts to provide them with a determined center and a single voice, I don't think it will work. Worse yet, the gravest danger is that the attempt will be a serious set back to the efforts to strengthen the networks that already exist. We know that networks are only able to speak through the multiple voices of their nodes. What happens, for example, if a movement disagrees with something asserted by the network that the WSF controls? Can that movement find a space to speak outside the network, a network that pretends to speak for everyone? The WSF project, in the way it is being considered, would check and inhibit contact between the movements rather than enhance the circulation within the network. Furthermore, my doubts in regard to this project also have to do with the fact that practically none of the social movements has been given the opportunity to discuss it. Rather, it seems as if the decision to go ahead with the project has been taken in advance, by the same organizations that have been controlling the WSF in particular; namely, ATTAC (especially its French contingent), some of the NGO's, the PT and the Brazilian CUT. This is where my doubts increase. Why would the representatives of hierarchical organizations create a structure of coordinated networks, that is to say, a horizontal and decentralized one? The project, such as has been proposed, resembles an attempt to create a new International--hierarchical, centralized, aspiring to represent the totality of the social movements just like the Internationals of the past--rather than a network. Personally, I don't care if the Leninists and Trotskyites still want to establish an International, even after all the failures of the past. It would bother me, however, that they would try to disguise the politics of the past by resorting to the words, the creations and the style of the new movement. People should feel free to create a new International, if that is what they want, but it would be very irritating to see them try to do so by using the World Social Forum, and by appropriating the notion of the network to create something that just amounts to a centralized formal institution, that is to say, the opposite of a network. If it is really a matter of strengthening the coordination of the networks, then the best way of doing so is by encouraging voluntary and flexible coalitions that allow each and every singular node the freedom to decide the particulars of its actions. Coalitions, by definition, do not represent single individuals or the network in its totality, they only represent those that participate in them. A coalition only lasts as long as it has a job to do, or as long as its members want it to last. Nobody in a coalition desires to assume control or take power because coalitions are temporary and indeterminate. Anyone can call for the formation of a coalition: if the job to be done merits attention, then chances are that many nodes in the network will take part in it. The coalition is not the center of the network, only a temporary crystallization within it; a moment when the unstructured connections of the network cohere in stronger agreements. Once the task has been accomplished the coalition dissolves into the network. And of course, singular nodes may participate in multiple coalitions, and the network will allow for as many coalitions as the singular nodes decide to create. I think that it is this
nettime waiting for the war
Jeremy Scahill is an independent journalist, who reports for the nationally syndicated Radio and TV show Democracy Now! He is currently based in Baghdad, Iraq, where he and filmmaker Jacquie Soohen are coordinating Iraqjournal.org, the only website providing regular independent reporting from the ground in Baghdad. http://www.iraqjournal.org FOX NEWS: 'The Network America Trusts' (to pay 'Saddam') Filed February 1, 2003 by Jeremy Scahill BAGHDAD--The sat phones are lined up. The tents are in place. Dozens of languages fill the smoke filled atrium. Every kind of technical equipment imaginable is scattered about. The scene almost resembles an eerie version of the quick set up for a heavy metal concert. Welcome to the Press Center on the ground floor of the Iraqi Ministry of Information. Over the last several weeks, low-paid Iraqi construction workers have rubbed elbows with journalists from CNN, BBC, The New York Times and a slew of other media outlets. The workers are halfway through a sizable construction project to expand the Press Center to accommodate the influx of the proverbial herds waiting for the war. Inside the building, tiny 6' x 6' cubicles are now the hottest real estate on the Baghdad market. Officially, the space will cost you $500 a month. But space is limited and cash is flowing from the pockets of the major networks to Iraqi officials and the government to ensure access once the bombs start flying. But it is not just the cubicles. Under the government guidelines, journalists cough up a handsome sum of money to the government and individual officials. Here are the bare minimums for journalists operating in Baghdad: --$100/ day fee per journalist, cameraperson, technical staff etc. --$150/ day fee for permission to use a satellite telephone (which the journalists have to provide themselves) --$50-100/ day for a mandatory government escort --$50-100/ day for a car and driver (some networks have a fleet of vehicles) --$75/ day for a room at the Al Rashid Hotel That's already $500 and that doesn't include the thousands of dollars daily for each direct live satellite feed for TV networks. Nor does it include the bribes and tips shelled out left and right. Nor does it include the money handed over at border crossings and the airport. The networks don't like to talk about how much they actually spend, but one veteran of the media scene here estimated the cost for a major TV network at about $100,000 a month. Others say that is a low estimate. Almost all of this cash (except a few tips here and there) goes directly to the Iraqi government. Once you add up the bill for the TV networks alone, we're talking perhaps millions of dollars in revenue a month for the government. There is a joke here that the major media outlets are now competing with oil smuggling as the number one money-maker for the Iraqi government. It is particularly ironic that while Rupert Murdoch's troops from FOX News Network rally for the war, dismissing antiwar activists as dupes of the Iraqi regime, the network America trusts is paying Saddam (as they refer to Iraq) hand over fist tens of thousands of dollars every month. But stroll down the halls of the press center and you'll see that Rupert's troops have multiple battalions. He also owns Sky News (the British version of FOX), as well as the Times of London. A bit of research would probably find that Murdoch owns other publications operating here as well. FOX News reporters (and others as well) like to say for the benefit of the viewers that their broadcasts are being monitored by the Iraqi government. Fair enough. But perhaps the Murdoch Empire should begin each of its reports or dispatches from Baghdad by disclosing how much money they paid Saddam today. # 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]
