Joseph Stiglitz on artificial intelligence: 'We’re going towards a more divided society' (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/08/joseph-stiglitz-on-artificial-intelligence-were-going-towards-a-more-divided-society


The technology could vastly improve lives, the economist says – but only 
if the tech titans that control it are properly regulated. ‘What we have 
now is totally inadequate’


by Ian Sample, Science editor

Sat 8 Sep 2018


It must be hard for Joseph Stiglitz to remain an optimist in the face of 
the grim future he fears may be coming. The Nobel laureate and former 
chief economist at the World Bank has thought carefully about how 
artificial intelligence will affect our lives. On the back of the 
technology, we could build ourselves a richer society and perhaps enjoy 
a shorter working week, he says. But there are countless pitfalls to 
avoid on the way. The ones Stiglitz has in mind are hardly trivial. He 
worries about hamfisted moves that lead to routine exploitation in our 
daily lives, that leave society more divided than ever and threaten the 
fundamentals of democracy.


“Artificial intelligence and robotisation have the potential to increase 
the productivity of the economy and, in principle, that could make 
everybody better off,” he says. “But only if they are well managed.”


On 11 September, the Columbia University professor will be in London to 
deliver the latest lecture in the Royal Society’s You and AI series. 
Stiglitz will talk about the future of work, an area where predictions 
have been frequent, contradictory and unnerving. Last month, the Bank of 
England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane, warned that “large swathes” of 
Britain’s workforce face unemployment as AI and other technologies 
automate more jobs. He had less to say about the new positions AI may 
create. A report from PricewaterhouseCoopers in July argued that AI may 
create as many jobs as it destroys – perhaps even more. As with the 
Industrial Revolution, the misery would come not from a lack of work, 
but the difficulty in switching from one job to another.


A distinction Stiglitz makes is between AI that replaces workers and AI 
that helps people to do their jobs better. It already helps doctors to 
work more efficiently. At Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge, for 
example, cancer consultants spend less time than they used to planning 
radiotherapy for men with prostate cancer, because an AI system called 
InnerEye automatically marks up the gland on the patients’ scans. The 
doctors process patients faster, the men start treatment sooner and the 
radiotherapy is delivered with more precision.


For other specialists, the technology is more of a threat. Well-trained 
AIs are now better at spotting breast tumours and other cancers than 
radiologists. Does that mean widespread unemployment for radiologists? 
It is not so straightforward, says Stiglitz. “Reading an MRI scan is 
only part of the job that person performs, but you can’t easily separate 
that task from the others.”


And yet some jobs may be fully replaced. Mostly these are low-skilled 
roles: truck drivers, cashiers, call centre workers and more. Again, 
though, Stiglitz sees reasons to be cautious about what that will mean 
for overall unemployment. There is a strong demand for unskilled workers 
in education, the health service and care for older people. “If we care 
about our children, if we care about our aged, if we care about the 
sick, we have ample room to spend more on those,” Stiglitz says. If AI 
takes over certain unskilled jobs, the blow could be softened by hiring 
more people into health, education and care work and paying them a 
decent wage, he says.


Stiglitz won the Nobel prize for economics in 2001 for his analyses of 
imperfect information in markets. A year later, he published 
Globalisation and Its Discontents, a book that laid bare his disillusion 
with the International Monetary Fund – the World Bank’s sister 
organisation – and, by extension, the US Treasury. Trade negotiations, 
he argued, were driven by multinationals at the expense of workers and 
ordinary citizens. “What I want to emphasise is that it is time to focus 
on the public-policy issues surrounding AI, because the concerns are a 
continuation of the concerns that globalisation and innovation have 
brought us. We were slow to grasp what they were doing and we shouldn’t 
make that mistake again.”


Beyond the impact of AI on work, Stiglitz sees more insidious forces at 
play. Armed with AI, tech firms can extract meaning from the data we 
hand over when we search, buy and message our friends. It is used 
ostensibly to deliver a more personalised service. That is one 
perspective. Another is that our data is used against us.


“These new tech giants are raising very deep issues about privacy and 
the ability to exploit ordinary people that were never present in 
earlier eras of monopoly power,” says Stiglitz. “Beforehand, you could 
raise the price. Now you can target particular individuals by exploiting 
their 

Nozomi Hayase: Unity for Assange’s Plight Is Necessary To Build a Movement for Democracy (AntiWar)

[Patrice Riemens]

Sorry, I have not yet entirely read this article (kinda tl;dr, with my 
train in less than one hour ...), but it looks worthwhile enough with 
Julian A. on the verge of being kicked out of the Ecuadorian Embassy 
with nowhere to go but ...?


My opinions on the persona of Assange are sufficiently known, yet it 
should never be forgotten that he, not alone, but  surely by virtue of 
his, err, 'personality', shifted the lines in world politics to an 
absolutely unbelievable degree, for which the 'David against Goliath' 
metaphor is only a (very) pale moniker. And now I believe he should be 
looked at and treated as a human being, one of us, our brother ('in ...' 
- what ever you may believe).


Let him go, let him be free, and let him have some rest.

Cheers from Torino,
p+2D!



original to:
https://original.antiwar.com/nozomi_hayase/2018/08/26/unity-for-assanges-plight-is-necessary-to-build-a-movement-for-democracy/

Unity for Assange’s Plight Is Necessary To Build a Movement for 
Democracy

by Nozomi Hayase Posted on August 27, 2018


WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange remains in solitary confinement inside 
the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he was granted asylum in 2012 
against the threat of extradition to the United States for his 
publishing activities. In recent months, Ecuador’s President Lenin 
Moreno, under pressure from the U.S. began threatening to evict this 
political refugee.


In response to this dire situation, people across the political spectrum 
began to form solidarity through #Unify4J, an online platform to 
organize a social media movement in support of Assange. Among those 
include prominent Trump’s supporters. In the midst of Trump 
administration’s draconian measures on immigrants and empowerment of 
white supremacist groups, the idea of working with Trump’s key allies 
triggered reaction among the left. Recently, Classconscious.org, an 
outlet spearheading global civic action for Assange’s freedom, 
scrutinized the idea of uniting with ultra-right forces that back Trump 
and urged the movement to draw a line.


Strife around the same issue arose from the former associate and early 
proponents of WikiLeaks. Barrett Brown, an award-winning journalist, 
previously imprisoned for charges relating to a Stratfor hack, has been 
one of the strong voices in support of the whistleblowing site. He 
described how he has long stood up for the organization’s mission of 
transparency at great risk to himself, yet in recent months he became 
upset about what he perceived to be Assange’s alliance with fascists and 
radical right supremacist groups.


Brown, who recently launched the project Pursuance, an open source 
software that allows individuals to share information and organize, has 
ramped up criticism toward Assange in his most vulnerable time. This 
created the conflict with the Courage Foundation, an organization that 
provides assistance for whistleblowers. Courage was co-founded by 
Assange and it has both WikiLeaks and Brown as beneficiaries. According 
to the article on the Daily Beast, three of Courage’s trustees 
reportedly instructed Courage’s respected director Naomi Colvin to cut 
off Brown as some kind of retaliation against his hostile remarks toward 
Assange. This led to the unfortunate resignation of Colvin, who was 
forced to walk out from the organization as a matter of principle for 
her opposition to exclude anyone based on political speech.


Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a former member of Iceland’s Parliament, who now 
joined the board of Pursuance, responded to this alleged retaliation 
against Brown. Jónsdóttir, who worked for WikiLeaks in the 2010 
publication of the Collateral Murder video, recently tweeted her 
thoughts on her old colleague: "It’s beyond sad to watch the hubris of 
one man being able to do so much damage and alienate people who risked 
everything for the cause. WikiLeaks is now far closer to alt right 
groups then digital rights groups, by choice of its overlord."


The divisiveness that has grown among progressives around the advocacy 
of WikiLeaks brings extreme alarm. It weakens any kind of efforts to 
resist government and corporate oppression. Finding a way to overcome 
this force becomes now important, not only for Assange’s freedom, but 
also for creating a viable movement for democracy.


Innovation on the Internet

So, where does this divisiveness really come from? Since its mainstream 
recognition in 2010, WikiLeaks was accused of many things in different 
places and by various groups of people. WikiLeaks once tweeted: "In 
Russia, Julian Assange is a MI6 agent; In US, a Russian agent; In Iran, 
a Mossad agent; In Saudi, an Iranian agent; In Libya, a CIA agent. World 
wide establishments accuse those who expose them of being the enemy of 
the people." The latest accusation became ‘WikiLeaks, as an agent of 
fascism!’


The latest accusation became ‘WikiLeaks, as an agent of fascism!’ Yet, 
the organization cannot be pigeonholed into these 

Adam Tooze: Politics don’t matter; market forces shape our world (The Observer/Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

Politics don’t matter; market forces shape our world. So ran the 
dominant ethos before 2008.
Adam Tooze, the author of a landmark book ('Crashed' -pr), says it was 
always an illusion


The Observer/Guardian, Sun 29 Jul 2018



‘I hear people say we have to stop and debate globalisation. You might 
as well debate whether autumn should follow summer.” That was Tony 
Blair, Britain’s prime minister, in October 2005.


Two years later, in the autumn of 2007, Alan Greenspan, the former chair 
of the US Federal Reserve, was asked by a Swiss newspaper which 
candidate he was supporting in the forthcoming US presidential election. 
His response was striking. How he voted did not matter, Greenspan 
declared, because “[we] are fortunate that, thanks to globalisation, 
policy decisions in the US have been largely replaced by global market 
forces. National security aside, it hardly makes any difference who will 
be the next president. The world is governed by market forces.”

Business Today: sign up for a morning shot of financial news
Read more

Theirs is a world we have lost. To understand it, you had to believe 
that global markets, like the seasons, were givens. You had to believe 
that markets had a logic by which they ruled and that the outcome of 
their rule was, on the whole, benign. You had also to believe, as 
Greenspan’s exception indicated, that although national security 
remained political, it was separable from economics. Otherwise, if 
economics and geopolitics were entangled, then presumably economics 
would be a matter for politicians, too.


In the 10 years since the financial crisis of 2008, all of those 
assumptions have been revealed as false. The idea that the economy is a 
realm beyond politics or the play of international power has been 
exposed as a self-serving illusion.


Donald Trump is the most spectacular manifestation of that 
disillusionment and the one that matters most. He is an outright 
nationalist, pushing against the trend of globalisation. He has little 
respect for markets unless they deliver outcomes he likes. He is not 
afraid to boss the bosses or moan about the Fed. And he proclaims that 
everything from imports of German cars to Chinese “borrowing” of US chip 
technology is a matter of national security.


Trump matters because the United States affects the entire system. 
Brexit shocked Europe, but, as Theresa May’s government is finding to 
its cost, the UK’s effort to “take back control” does not mean that 
everyone else falls into line.


In trade and security, the UK lacks the heft, but it has shaped our era 
of globalisation and may still do so via one hugely significant entity: 
the City of London. While Wall Street has America’s huge national 
economy as its hinterland, the City of London is outsized, preeminent in 
currencies, interest rate derivatives and global banking Its present 
role and importance was already taking shape by the late 1950s when it 
began to provide an offshore market for unregulated borrowing and 
lending.


Again, this was very much a political choice, shaped via the growth of 
someting called the Eurodollar – a dollar held in Europe and hence, 
importantly, outside the jurisdiction of the Federal Reserve; a 
political choice enabled by the British authorities and tolerated by the 
Americans. Hence it was by way of London that the offshore dollar 
banking industry was born, with profoundly destabilising long-term 
results.


In fact, the consequences were nothing less than world historic. On 15 
August 1971, Richard Nixon suspended the gold convertibility of the 
dollar. (By the terms of the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944, which had 
governed post-war global finances, currencies were pegged to the price 
of gold.) For the first time since the invention of money in the ancient 
world, no major currency was anchored to a metallic base. Money was 
openly acknowledged as a political creation.


The result, in the short term, was an explosion of instability, 
inflation and gyrating exchange rates. It was a feast for investment 
bankers, both on Wall Street and in the City of London. Opec’s oil 
earnings added to the surge. To avoid taxes, the money was funnelled 
through offshore havens, many of which were located in the former 
British empire, or exploited quasi-feudal entrepots such as Guernsey.


The eurodollar market was a “work-around”. By the 1980s, the push was on 
to achieve something more comprehensive: the wholesale liberalisation of 
capital movements. Regulators in London and New York, egged on by 
banking interests, were racing to the bottom.


By the 1990s, the City of London had ceased to be in any sense a British 
banking centre. After Margaret Thatcher’s Big Bang, the small merchant 
banks of the City were swept up by Asian, American and European 
competitors. The City became, as Mervyn King quipped in 2012, the 
Wimbledon of the world economy. The success of British competitors was 
rarely, if ever, the point. But that 

Oliver Holmes & Hazem Balousha: Wireless in Gaza: the whizz-kids making code not war (Guardian/Tech/ the Upside)

[Patrice Riemens]

Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/05/wireless-in-gaza-the-code-school-bringing-hope-to-the-strip

The Upside
Technology
Wireless in Gaza: the whizz-kids making code not war

Gaza City academy hopes its hi-tech business model will be immune to 
physical barriers to trade

By Oliver Holmes and Hazem Balousha in Gaza City
Thu 5 Jul 2018


It’s a scene straight from a Silicon Valley startup.

Hot-desking twentysomethings type code into laptops covered with 
stickers. Retro Pac-Man graffiti and motivational slogans like “DO EPIC 
THINGS” adorn the walls. Bookshelves are filled with the tech classics: 
The Facebook Effect and The Founder’s Dilemmas. Wifi routers hang 
overhead, as do Edison bulbs, emitting more style than actual light.


But this is not the San Francisco Bay Area. No electric cars quietly 
whirr by.


Instead, this is Gaza, with its cracked streets and checkpoints manned 
by militants. On the perimeter of this impoverished coastal enclave are 
Israel and Egypt, countries that have blockaded this tiny slice of land 
for years.


Tight restrictions on the movement of goods and, vitally, people, have 
been the death of much industry here. But Gaza’s first coding academy 
hopes its hi-tech business model — which operates in the virtual rather 
than real world — will be somewhat immune to physical barriers to trade.


“That’s the reason we started this. It ignores boundaries,” says 
31-year-old Ghada Ibrahim, who was in the first class of coders, which 
started a year ago. “The blockade is a huge factor. It’s a reason why we 
have a lot of people who have come to sign up.”


With funding from international charities such as Mercy Corps and 
significant tech world players such as Google, the academy provides two 
basic requirements its students need for a freelance career developing 
websites and apps: internet and electricity.


In Gaza, that means paying for a generator to supply 10 hours of laptop 
juice a day.


“We do something that no one can cut off,” Ibrahim says, then stops 
herself mid-sentence and pauses for a few seconds. She adds, smiling: 
“Although maybe they can.” Israel provides Gaza’s internet, and as yet 
has never cut it off.


Sixteen students (half female as a rule) enrolled in the first class, 
which had international support from Founders & Coders, a UK-based 
nonprofit providing free coding lessons. Ibrahim recalls a slightly 
haphazard programme: eight hours a day where students were expected to 
self-learn coding and present a weekly project. Of the original 16, only 
nine graduated.


“We had a lot of problems,” she says. “It was supposed to be one month. 
It went on for six months.” She says the students, several of whom had 
degrees in information technology, struggled to adapt to self-taught 
techniques following a lifetime of parrot-fashion schooling: they 
continually looked to the teacher when stuck.


“We all grew up to be taught by someone. It’s never self-learning,” she 
says. To combat this, the class implemented what Ibrahim calls the 
20/20/20 rule. When encountering an issue, students spend 20 minutes 
trying to figure it out online, then 20 minutes with the help of another 
classmate. The final 20 minutes are with the help of a mentor.


It works. The class after Ibrahim’s had 12 graduates, and the one after 
that had 14. The fourth cohort is currently ongoing with all 16, she 
says, looking into the classroom, “but it’s only the third week.” And 
while the first classes had support from professional coders, all the 
mentors are now former students. It’s self-perpetuating.


Moamin Salamah Abu Ewaida, 34, is the engagement and development manager 
at tech hub and co-working space Gaza Sky Geeks, which launched the 
coding academy last year. What is essential, he says, is that freelance 
business skills are also taught at the academy.


Each student is trained how to pitch to international clients and use 
job-finding websites such as Upwork, a global freelancing platform. For 
real-world practice during the course, local businesses and charities 
are offered pro bono web development work.


And, crucially, Gaza Sky Geeks helps its graduates get paid, in a place 
that many financial institutions avoid for fears of money laundering, 
not to mention the fact that its de facto government has been on a US 
“foreign terrorist” blacklist since 1997.


Gaza Sky Geeks has partnered with banks and online payment systems that 
can verify its credentials. Graduates have already started developing 
websites for international clients in Europe.


“Our end goal is to use tech as a gateway. This area [Gaza], it could be 
the next Berlin or Dublin,” says Abu Ewaida. He warns against dismissing 
that dream, and says the conditions are there for a thriving freelance 
coding community to develop: “We have the talent. And the price for us 
is a little bit less than others. We can deliver.”


And, regardless, “This place can give more than opportunity,” he 

Re: Paul Mason: Trump is a symptom of the new global disorder, not the cause

[Patrice Riemens]

There was an interesting article in the London Review of Books recently 
(OK, source: LRB vol 40 no 10, May 2018 "Without Map or Compass, on the 
constitutional implications of Brexit", by Sionaidh Douglas-Scott) to 
the effect, as I understand it, that the impending, and long overdue, 
Corbyn take-over is entirely conditional on Brexit, i.e; the UK being 
outside the EU, since 'Europe' would absolutely prohibit and impend his 
intended reform program. This goes a long way to explain Corbyn's 
studied absence of 'Remain' position, while being careful not to 
identify with Brexiters of whatever hue outside his own party (and even 
then ...).

May be it is Jeremy Corbyn who has the best chances of implementing 
the programme laid down by Yanis Varoufakis/ DiEM25 ...

Cheers from Orleans, p+2D!

On Thu, Jun 14, 2018 at 10:41:01AM +0100, David Garcia wrote:
> 
> On 14 Jun 2018, at 10:28, Alex Foti  wrote:
> 
> > paul mason doesn't get national-populism right -  he called the current 
> > italian rightist government "neoliberalism in one country" (what??) - yes 
> > we need a big progressive front like the one varoufakis is building - for 
> > europe - too bad britain is no longer part of it - 
> 
> Alex I think that the Britain is still a part of it as one of the most active 
> members of what Varoufakis and others are attempting to develop 
> through DIEM..Far from Brexit (if thats what you reffering to) meaning that 
> the left is disengaging from Europe it has intensified and sharpened 
> our awareness of the importance of building coalitions of the left built on 
> regional proximity not simply on a broadly based Internationalism that 
> too easily becomes an abstraction. 
> 
> Best
> 
> David
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Athenes Ellenikon Health Centre: the right link!

[Patrice Riemens]

Bwo Lorenzo Tripodi:

Just a little clarification about the link to the oginoknauss website at 
the bottom of your email: this is a photographic survey mae il 2016 on 
the whole area of the Hellninikon airport with some (non updated)  info 
to the development project and resistance campaigns, but there is no 
content specifically about the MKIE, which nonetheless is in that area.


here the link at their website http://www.mkiellinikou.org/en/


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One more from Athenes: against the eviction of the Elleniko health centre

[Patrice Riemens]

IN SUPPORT OF THE METROPOLITAN SOCIAL HEALTH CENTRE OF ELLINIKO (MKIE)

The state company of ELLINIKO A.E. issued last week an ultimatum 
demanding "Metropolitan Social Health Centre of Elliniko" (MKIE) to 
evacuate its premises in the publicly owned old airport of Elliniko. 
This is in order to facilitate the privatization of the old airport, 
despite the resistance of all those who demand a creation of a 
Metropolitan park, a green area of culture and sport activities open to 
all in its space.


The ultimatum demands the MKIE to empty its premises by the 30th of June 
(!), without proposing any alternative space for re-location in another 
public building. Therefore, this is not just an eviction but a lethal 
blow.


MKIE was founded in December 2011 and it has been the continuation of 
the vast mobilizations of Syntagma sq. in that summer. It was and still 
is the response of socially active and sensitive citizens against the 
violence of the crisis and austerity that was imposed to the many by the 
few.


Its primary aim has been the provision of free health services and 
medicine for anyone uninsured, unemployed and poor, the first victims of 
the crisis who were abandoned by the public health care services. At the 
same time, it claimed the reinstatement of free and universal health and 
medical care for all those excluded from them.


Moreover, with its action created a new way and mode in the provision of 
health services, putting the human beings in the center of health 
practice, and not only the illness.


Based on self-organization, autonomy, horizontal democratic function and 
without any kind of political or economic bonds, MKIE inspired and 
brought together hundreds of volunteers. All these years, the latter 
have cared with solidarity and respect 7.366 individual patients in over 
64.000 visits to MKIE. Moreover, the needs of MKIE are supported by 
solidarity actions developed by thousands of people in Greece and 
internationally.


The MKIE from its start serves people from all over Attica and beyond. 
It has also supported with medicine, refugee camps, NGOs and public 
hospitals. MKIE wants to continue without any obstacle its operations 
because it is still a need for this. For that reason, MKIE is determined 
to fight shoulder to shoulder with all its patients and supporters.


We, the undersigned, who work in academic and research institutions, 
recognize the immense social and humanitarian contribution of the MKIE. 
Moreover, we consider it an innovative example of communal management of 
public assets and of urban space, an incubator of novel approaches to 
the health practices, and a space where new social relations and 
knowledge is produced. Therefore, we state wholeheartedly our support in 
its struggle to continue its route on the road of solidarity, dignity, 
respect and humanism.


pictures & report on MKIE:  
http://www.recentering-periphery.org/athens-hellinikon-international-airport/


If you would like to express your solidarity to the volunteers and the 
patients of MKIE, you could sign the following letter by sending an 
e-mai to  until 20th June. Please state your full 
name, title and affiliation.

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Re: In Italy: First-ever agreement between Amazon and unions

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2018-05-25 11:47, nettime's avid reader wrote:

http://www.uniglobalunion.org/news/first-ever-agreement-between-amazon-and-unions-halts-inhumane-work-hours-italy

Amazon employees in Italy have made history. Workers are announcing
today the first-ever direct agreement between unions and the company
anywhere in the world. The Italian agreement tackles inhumane
scheduling, one of the core labour problems at Amazon fulfilment 
centres

globally.



Breaking down the totally insane labour conditions imposed by big 
players in the 'new'/'gig' economy will only be achieved under the twin 
pressure of resolute actions, including sabotage, by the workers 
themselves, and by 'institutional' pressures exercised by traditional, 
established trade unions, which should conduct energetic enrolment 
drives under such workers, but also 'represent' them even if they are 
not card carrying (and dues paying) members.


For the time beeing, unions, esp in N.Europe (outside Germany) lag 
sorely behind. As they say in India, this is 'highly shameful'.

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Re: Please support the first global facebook user strike

[Patrice Riemens]

I thought we'd be going out of FB altogether. But then everything is 
relative ...


Cheerio, p+7D!

(QR Circei in GoT: "I spend a number days at a ... to get it right" 
Brother: "several days?" QR Circei: " well, the best part of an 
afternoon" ...)



On 2018-05-05 09:55, Anni Roolf wrote:

Here's the call:

Facebook has disrespected our personal data and disregarded the spirit
of our user agreements. To demonstrate our collective power as users,
log out of Facebook and Instagram May 25 – June 1. #facebreak2018
[1] #newpower [2] bit.ly/facebreak2018 [3]

Let's make this go viral.

Best, Anni

--
Anni Roolf MBA

Projektentwicklerin
Innovationsmanagerin
Community Strategist

0179 4581509


Links:
--
[1] https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/facebreak2018?source=feed_text
[2] https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/newpower?source=feed_text
[3] http://bit.ly/facebreak2018
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Desperately looking for ...

[Patrice Riemens]

... 'The Six Cirles Movement' ...

BonDi Nettimers,

There must be someone among the 100 orso regular posters and 4000+ 
nettime lurkers who rememembers a WIRED magazine article somewhere in 
the 2nd half of the nineties (the hallowed era of "The Long Boom is 
Here, Got a Problem with That?") which was about a radiant, if somewhat 
problematic future: there is a fantastic (oeuf corse technology and 
entrepreneurship-driven ("Generation Equity") brilliant epoch coming up, 
but ... discontent lingers among the 6 billions orso not partaking in 
the new wealth. They form a protest movement called The Six Circles - 
like the Olympic ones, but one more - representing their numbers. Well, 
painful but necessary - we just gotta nuke'm! (orso). After this purge, 
the Earth's population is restored to a manageable number, and 
everybody's living happily ever after.


This dystopia was described - as far as I ccould remember - in a book, 
actually existing or phantasized by the article's author.


I'd like very much to find this article back. I couldn't. Anyone?
Thanks is advance!

Cheers, p+7D!
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Re: ZAD Press release - Intergalactic Call-Out

[Patrice Riemens]

"You are a cunning linguist, Mr Agger" ...
;-)


On 2018-04-21 10:58, Carsten Agger wrote:

On 04/21/2018 10:22 AM, Patrice Riemens wrote:






Cheers, NDdL ZindabAD!

Dil mein tufanon ki toli
Aur nason mein inquilab

Inquilab zindabad!

My best wishes for the people at the ZAD.

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ZAD Press release - Intergalactic Call-Out

[Patrice Riemens]

ZAD Press release - Intergalactic Call-Out

Issued Thursday 19 April 2018

Welcome to France.

In theory and written in stone: Freedom, equality, fraternity.

In reality and written in the flesh: Public services under attack. 
Solidarity criminalised. Freedom trampled. The peasantry suffocated. 
Working class neighbourhoods destroyed. Social movements annihilated. 
Hospital workers repressed. Railway workers ignored. Students muzzled. 
Pensioners despised. And more besides


Welcome to the ZAD.

2,500 military personnel and their armoured vehicles arrive to attack a 
community of 200 inhabitants. One week later: 11,000 grenades; 250 
people injured at the last count; 30 living spaces destroyed; tens of 
thousands of people arriving to support us (thank you!). A so-called 
open dialogue, with an armoured vehicle pointing at your head and a 
bulldozer in your back. The government’s hand extended, the middle 
finger raised. Welcome to the lies of this State.


Because they speak of the rule of law, while assassinating twenty people 
a year in France, and democracy, while pounding Syria. Because the state 
and the government are asking us to bow our necks till they break. 
Because they are asking us to bend our knees until they fracture. 
Because they isolate each person’s anger in order better to fragment our 
revolt, trying to set us against each other, even though we breathe the 
same gases. They will tell us not to mix everything up because they know 
that they are our common enemy. They are trying to divide us.


Because every paving stone, every building, every tree planted, is the 
fruit of our ancestors, here and elsewhere, and not theirs. We have 
almost forgotten that this world belongs to us and that it is high time 
to take it back from them. Because they cannot be everywhere – but we 
can. Because "ZAD Everywhere" is not just a wall slogan, a cool poster 
or a demo chant, but the solid idea of a convergence of struggles and 
solidarity. Because the ZAD belongs to those who have supported it, who 
are supporting it and who will support it. Because of all this, the 
machine’s constant attempts at separation and division are unacceptable. 
Because we are both the wheat AND the weeds. Because by exterminating 
the ZAD in Notre Dame des Landes they think they can show how strong 
they are, and give a lesson to all those who dare to raise their voices 
and fight back.


From April 23, it is possible that they will return. From what they are 
saying, they want to finish us off.


If this happens, we immediately call those who fight, who are indignant, 
who rebel – a call to all the abandoned, the repressed... to the 
oppressed... to those who have not yet dared... to those who have 
tried... to those who blew it... to those who blew it in order better to 
succeed... to those who have been forgotten  to go wild 
collectively, whether on the zone or in other places, with creativity 
and imagination. Because every way of doing, every sensitivity and every 
action counts. Diversity is our greatest weapon. All we have to do is to 
express it in concert. May this week, and what comes after, be ours, and 
sincere and authentic.


Let’s be beautiful.

See you soon.

From occupants of the ZAD


NB , no I didn't translate it - but the French version ends with
'Let's be magnificent' ... ;-)

Cheers, NDdL ZindabAD!
p+7D!
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Bad ZAD news ...

[Patrice Riemens]

Podinski is right, let's focus (also) on happenings on the ground ...


bwo the INURAlist/Ivor Stodolsky, Miguel Martinez


Some of you have heard of the ZAD. Only a short time ago, after years of 
dedication and courage and work for the commons, the ZAD celebrated 
victory over the mega-project for a new airport: 
https://zadforever.blog/2018/02/01/victory-and-an-invite-to-celebrate/


Now, the anti-commonists, appalled by the fact that people can live in a 
peaceful sustainable way on shared property have attacked. With the 
brutal force of a police state:


https://www.rt.com/news/423595-police-zad-eviction-clashes/
(i'm no great fan of RT, but they are among the few teams on the ground)

In Paris, spontaneous solidarity actions have sprung up!

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1777646912300937=1325125620886404

We should also show our solidarity. Perhaps a banner out the window or a 
picture on the web? An ECA statement? A personal statement each. Please 
share.



There is also a Liveblog on:  https://enoughisenough14.org/
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ByeBye Facebook.nl

[Patrice Riemens]

Aloha,

It doesn't happen very often that the Dutch do something good (OK, 
waterworks, powerful Marijuana, and the such) but the Dutch wing of the 
Quit FaceBook movement isn't bad at all.


Check out the satirical programme 'Sunday with Lubach' which launches a 
hopefully massive national kick-off to-morrow. It's Double-Dutch but 
thanks to FaceBook/Youtube (oh irony ...) it's subtitled in English:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa-SzNepsA

Enjoy!
p+7D!

(bwo nettime-nl/Inte
full story - in Dutch: 
https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-nl-1804/msg0.html


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Re: morlock elloi

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2018-04-08 22:15, Felix Stalder wrote:

When we turned off moderation a couple of months ago, we did so because
we perceived that nettime was limiting itself by too many implicit 
rules

that had accumulated over time. So we decided to break one, abolish our
position as moderators, as an invitation others to break a few more in
the hope to make room for some new voices/ideas/styles etc. Kinda 
worked...


For me, the value of the list has always been that it creates a
collective space for reflection. That's a delicate thing. If it becomes
too cozy, it turns into an self-reflective in-group, if it become to
confrontational, then there is little change of actually thinking
together, rather everyone digs in their heels.

I still like the non-moderated flow, but I dislike the sucking noise of
real-time. It turns out, at least for me, one of the best things that
moderation did was to induce semi-random delays, simply because we 
never

worked on a fixed schedule when to do the manual work of moderation.
Sometimes a few hours would pass, sometimes more a full day before the
message got approved.

We were thinking about ways to introduce that delay again, without
reverting back to moderation. Of course, it could be done, but we 
didn't
do it. So, lets see where this goes. We can break a few more rules if 
it

helps to push forward our collective attempt to understand and do
something in the present -- whatever that is for each the 4500 people 
on

the list.

Felix





On 2018-04-08 21:18, tbyfield wrote:

Hmmm.

morlock's style has struck me as problematic at times, but other
problems concern me much more: the obstinate gender bias, the 
prevalence

of a few voices, the lack of experimentation, and sedentary/habitual
tendencies in subject, style, regional focus. I get that his/her/their
mail might be a frequent low-level irritant for some people, the kind 
of

thing that sparks eruptions. But for me the nature of that eruption
matters more than the cause: ad-homimen attacks, people ordering each
other around, and people who've never tired of letting the world
remember that they 'founded' nettime decades ago leaping to the
barricades in private mail to un-propose a "permanent ban." If we're
going to take any drastic action, it'll be to permanently ban anyone 
who

proposes permanently banning someone else.

Felix and I have spent twenty years tending to this list, so our views
are, at the very least, well informed. Felix can speak for himself if 
he

wants, but I think the tendencies above are a more serious threat than
the pace or tone of any contributor. If it's true that one person "is
killing the list," then this list is dead already. If it's not true,
then it says a lot that such a claim would go unquestioned. Not about
the person who said it (more boring ad-hominem stuff, bleh) but about
deeper shifts — for example, in whether people trust that an 
environment

like this can change organically or instead needs draconian
'leadership.' If it does, it's dead.

A year or two or three ago, I thought the list was pretty much dead. 
But
it has a funny habit of rising from the grave and wobbling around for 
a
while, and there's been a trickle of people de-lurking or 
first-posting.
Nettime needs much more of that, and a much wider range of 
perspectives,

styles, and tolerances. But that kind of pious plea that 'we can do
better' smells like something Zuckerberg would say, doesn't it? So let
me moderate that: we also need to do worse — much worse. Doing worse 
has
always been a sign of life on this list. Some of you will remember 
Paul
Garrin, integer/antiorp/nn, and jodi — entities that, in different 
ways,
embodied and exploited the list's most extreme possibilities. There 
was

a time when infuriating provocations were seen as good.

As usual, Jaromil squeezed five interesting ideas into two sentences:


maybe he passed on his account. The sort of replying-myself thing he
is doing shows that some sort of twitter ab-user has taken place and
the quantity of activity indicates there may be more people behind 
the

account now.


I like the idea that morlock is a sort of anti-antiorp. I don't think
it's true, but it doesn't matter: nettime has always actively 
supported

a false-names policy. But the idea that morlock is an improper name, a
nym for a twitterish performance of a cynical old white techie, is 
much
more interesting than bourgie pearl-clutching about how this is 
nettime

and we...we have standards!

I know this is sort of old-school, but if you don't like something,
maybe try (a) contacting the person privately with a suggestion and/or
(b) filtering your mail.

Cheers,
Ted



Hehe, these are two good posts immo (together with Allan Siegel's 
cool-headed view on the issue that triggered this whole bandobast).


A suggestion: would there exist a programme that automatically buffers 
any post less than 10 (or 5, or ...) lines long on a given thread and 
'digests' it, like the mods used to do, 

Re: Francesca Bria: Our data is valuable. Here's how we can take that value back

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2018-04-06 15:03, Felix Stalder wrote:
Our data is valuable. Here's how we can take that value back | 
Francesca

Bria | Opinion

Francesca Bria

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/05/data-valuable-citizens-silicon-valley-barcelona


Tech firms are emerging as new feudal lords. They control essential
digital infrastructures – in this case, data and artificial 
intelligence

– which are crucial for political and economic activity. But it doesn’t
have to be that way.



It is difficult and probably unwelcome to criticize such pronouncements 
and the policies which are behind it, given the sterling progressive 
credentials of all people and organsiations involved. Yet I cannot 
refrain from feeling like the French minister of the interior who in 
1938 (yes, my account at the Goodwin Bank accepts remitances ...) 
blocked the project to give all French citizens a personal identifying 
number and file, to be kept in a central Paris repository: "Je ne le 
sens pas" he said - I don't 'dig' it.


The pb is that while the 'Barcelona alternative' counters the 
proprietary appropriation of advanced data gathering, it accept the 
technologies that support it as a given. Yet it has never be proven that 
more information automatically leads to improved services and 
well-being. And well-meant technologies can always be corruptes and 
deflected to evil purposes.


To me it's like energy: not innovation but conservation/limitation 
should be the primary approach.


Cheers, p+7D!

PS Oh yeah, and it makes use the blockchain, so it's tip-top!
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Christopher Adam: Orbán’s threat of revenge has fired up the Hungarian opposition

[Patrice Riemens]

original to:
http://hungarianfreepress.com/2018/03/16/orbans-threat-of-revenge-has-fired-up-the-hungarian-opposition/



Orbán’s threat of revenge has fired up the Hungarian opposition
March 16, 2018 3:55 pm·


Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s decision to use his speech on a Hungarian 
national holiday to explicitly threaten legal and political revenge 
against his opponents has opposition politicians, journalists, academics 
and civil liberties activists wondering if the election on 8 April is, 
indeed, a “do or die” situation. The most recent Medián poll, released 
this week, shows that Fidesz is set to win a majority on 8 April, yet 
Mr. Orbán’s language was more becoming of a rattled dictator who after 
years of invincibility now fears that there is actually a chance that 
his regime might collapse.


Zoltán Lakner, a political scientists and editor of 168 Óra, suggested 
that Fidesz is constantly producing internal polls and that it is 
possible that these numbers tell a different story than the public ones. 
We know from the Medián poll that even a series of corruption scandals 
and a surprise election loss in Hódmezővásárhely has not discouraged two 
million hard-core Fidesz voters. Medián has Fidesz at 54% among decided 
voters, with Jobbik at 16% , MSZP-Párbeszéd at 12%, followed by the 
Democratic Coalition at 9% and Politics Can Be Different (LMP) at 5%. 
There are 600,000 allegedly undecided voters who are nonetheless 
committed to voting on 8 April–it is believed that many of them are 
purposefully concealing their intentions from pollsters and this does 
add some uncertainty to the outcome of the vote.


As for Fidesz voters, especially the tens of thousands bused to Budapest 
who participated yesterday in the so-called Peace March alongside the 
regime’s Polish fans: they truly behave like members of a cult–closed 
off from critical media reports and brainwashed by clever and cynical 
political communicators. Although they absurdly refer to this event as a 
Peace March, they physically attacked conservative journalist György 
Unyatyinszki of Magyar Nemzet, punched him in the ribs and threatened to 
drown him in the Danube. One of the security guards hired by the Peace 
March’s organizer, the (Civil Összefogás Fórum – CÖF) said with a smile 
that Unyatyinszki was hit because he asked too many questions. One 
cannot question Viktor Orbán. Peace March cult members declared that Mr. 
Orbán is the saviour of the Hungarian nation.


Gábor Török, a political scientist who previously had very close ties 
with Mr. Orbán and Fidesz, argued that explicitly threatening people who 
do not support Fidesz in a speech on a national holiday may prove to be 
a serious strategic mistake. While this sort of war language does 
successfully motivate and mobilize Fidesz supporters, it is likely to 
also mobilize opposition voters who may have otherwise sat out the 8 
April election. And historically, the key to defeating Fidesz is high 
turn-out. In his blog, Mr. Török argued that Mr. Orbán could have used 
other channels to send a message to people like Lajos Simicska, who are 
causing him headaches–but a speech on a major national holiday was an 
inappropriate venue for this. It appears as though Mr. Orbán said what 
was on his heart, but not what is politically practical for him at this 
juncture.


I can certainly say that Mr. Orbán’s open threat against those opposing 
Fidesz fired up opposition voters perhaps more than anything 
else–including the recent corruption scandals or the results of 
Hódmezővásárhely. The very existence of the Hungarian opposition beyond 
April–including what remains of the critical media and the NGO 
sector–now appears at stake. A historian friend of mine, respected in 
his field and who has always been more of a conservative, certainly 
never aligned with the old MSZP-SZDSZ type liberal left, suggested that 
he could accept Mr. Orbán’s eventual exile to Russia, following in the 
footsteps of Stalinist dictator Mátyás Rákosi. But he also envisioned an 
angry Hungarian mob lynching the prime minister, using a tree in the 
hills of Buda. That is a disturbing and gory outcome, but one 
increasingly put forward by an ever-angrier “silent majority” of 
Hungarians.


These scenes of violence become a reality if it becomes clear that Mr. 
Orbán will not, under any condition, cede power peacefully. And this is 
one take-away from his speech.


Jobbik spokesperson Ádám Mirkóczki said on Friday that Viktor Orbán is 
“mentally ill.” He added that the Fidesz platform contains a single 
word: revenge.


Gergely Karácsony of MSZP-P said that what Mr. Orbán said on 15 March is 
typical of ruthless dictators: he put all voters who want a change in 
government on notice, that their decision will result in legal and 
political ramifications.


Viktor Szigetvári of Együtt, however, spoke out the most forcefully: 
Prime Minister Orbán has declared civil war in Hungary.


Regardless of the outcome of 

Eduard de Jong: on digital neofeudalism

[Patrice Riemens]

 Original Message 
Subject: versie voor NTT
Date: 2018-03-28 21:11
From: Eduard Karel de Jong 

Thought on reading 
https://www.eurozine.com/collective-responses-to-digital-neofeudalism/


It seems yet an other example of the effects of an exponential system.
An exponential system requires exponentially more  resources, both in
material as in investment. It also needs to generate exponentially
more revenues to acquire these resources.

The world is finite, it
can't accommodate an exponential system. The silicon tech adepts have
always looked at the technology as its limit to this exponential growth, 
the

"end of Moore's Law' meme. A limit exist also on the many resources
being consumed and such a limit may pop up and slow down and eventually
stop the growth. That's the way nature handles any exponential system.

The 2008 crises has been a very nice bonus to the needs for capital as
it has allowed to recirculate the exponentially increasing profits
into the increasing need for investments without paying for it with
the negative interest.

The statements about the future of the internet in the nineties were
more based on the human comprehension of a non-linear system, like a
quadratic growth as per the network effect. In a quadratic growth
model the internet could be free, indeed.

For a while a quadratic or cubic polynomial model seems to work:
it fits observed developments neatly.such is the nature of en 
exponential.

The underlying exponential model is faster though and at some point
in time the old predictions no longer match.
That change appears very sudden as at that point in time the speed of
change is also way faster than expected, and the human mind scrambles
to come up with yet another polynomial model to describe the
expectations in the next round. Rinse and repeat...

Also, in this exponential silicon chip system an exponentially
reducing smaller number of human can be in control.  And, since
exponential systems are beyond human comprehension, though not as a
mathematic concept, everyone is always too late to notice the havoc it
has wrought...
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Uber Blues

[Patrice Riemens]

re: 


(pdf available on request)

The company is unreformable because its 'disruptive' business model 
sucks from A to Z & back again.


Uber & clones should simply be outlawed. No compromise.

Last in Marseille, back from dinner at R's, one of the guests booked a 
Uber car. There was still one seat left, so I joined, my first Uber 
ride. Nice guy, nice car. It was around 11pm, and the ride was not very 
long, but quite complicated (Marseille is part very hilly, with 
tortuous, badly maintained streets) We were unloaded downtown, near the 
hotel and I asked what I my share of the ride was. This was waived away 
with a laughter since it was only €6 - exactly 3 busfares (save that 
buses don't run anymore at that time of day).


This is completely ludicrous.

And it was my first, but also last Uber ride. I'd rather walk. No 
compromise.

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Fwd: Re: In the eye of the Cambridge Analytica storm

[Patrice Riemens]

Group return didn't work and send my post into the nettime walhalla ...

 Original Message 
Subject: Re:  In the eye of the Cambridge Analytica storm
Date: 2018-03-22 17:10
From: Patrice Riemens <patr...@xs4all.nl>
To: Geert Lovink <ge...@xs4all.nl>
Cc: a moderated mailing list for net criticism <nettime-l@mail.kein.org>

unDear nettimers,

And what about a life without 'social' media? - and hence without 
'discussions' about 'social media'?


Ciaoui, p+7D!
("Actionism - the infantile malady of activism")


On 2018-03-21 19:47, Geert Lovink wrote:

Dear nettimers,

I know, this is (not) the time for us to speak up… The CA events are
taking over, mainstream media are publishing one strange message after
the after—and the activists shut their mouth, thinking: I told you so
a trillion years ago...

What’s do be done? We discussed that question on the Unlike Us list
and here on nettime already from the very beginning, in 2011.

Is it an idea to organize a thousand bigger and smaller Facebook
farewell parties? What’s for sure is that it really helps to do this
out in the open, together.

Who wants to start this time? A few of you approached me recently with
the question if this would be done together, and if so, when and
where. Now is the time, if not now, when? Come together, conspire, get
things moving!

Random links:

Here is one of the instruction pages how to leave Facebook:
https://mashable.com/2018/03/20/facebook-replacement-openbook-competition/#UL3yreRCRZqJ

This is an interesting ‘Facebook’ discussion on Reddit (via Michael 
Dieter):

https://www.reddit.com/r/reactiongifs/comments/85znl4/reddits_reaction_when_the_world_has_finally_begun/?st=JF0UL9ON=80895fac

Max Krems of Europe vs. Facebook on the current situation:
https://noyb.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Media-Update-Cambridge-Analytica-en.pdf

Information about Cambridge Analytica in India (via Tripta Chandola):
https://twitter.com/therealjpk/status/976484505035751424

David Carrol’s legal action against Cambridge Analytica:
https://thinkprogress.org/this-professor-is-suing-cambridge-analytica-to-find-out-how-they-profiled-him-e52cdfb7d3fe/

More later, Geert

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Re: In the eye of the Cambridge Analytica storm

[Patrice Riemens]

unDear nettimers,

And what about a life without 'social' media? - and hence without 
'discussions' about 'social media'?


Ciaoui, p+7D!
("Actionism - the infantile malady of activism")


On 2018-03-21 19:47, Geert Lovink wrote:

Dear nettimers,

I know, this is (not) the time for us to speak up… The CA events are
taking over, mainstream media are publishing one strange message after
the after—and the activists shut their mouth, thinking: I told you so
a trillion years ago...

What’s do be done? We discussed that question on the Unlike Us list
and here on nettime already from the very beginning, in 2011.

Is it an idea to organize a thousand bigger and smaller Facebook
farewell parties? What’s for sure is that it really helps to do this
out in the open, together.

Who wants to start this time? A few of you approached me recently with
the question if this would be done together, and if so, when and
where. Now is the time, if not now, when? Come together, conspire, get
things moving!

Random links:

Here is one of the instruction pages how to leave Facebook:
https://mashable.com/2018/03/20/facebook-replacement-openbook-competition/#UL3yreRCRZqJ

This is an interesting ‘Facebook’ discussion on Reddit (via Michael 
Dieter):

https://www.reddit.com/r/reactiongifs/comments/85znl4/reddits_reaction_when_the_world_has_finally_begun/?st=JF0UL9ON=80895fac

Max Krems of Europe vs. Facebook on the current situation:
https://noyb.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Media-Update-Cambridge-Analytica-en.pdf

Information about Cambridge Analytica in India (via Tripta Chandola):
https://twitter.com/therealjpk/status/976484505035751424

David Carrol’s legal action against Cambridge Analytica:
https://thinkprogress.org/this-professor-is-suing-cambridge-analytica-to-find-out-how-they-profiled-him-e52cdfb7d3fe/

More later, Geert



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Jean Noel Montagné: An other Internet is possible: Catalonia and Germany as examples

[Patrice Riemens]

(The French, original version of this article to appear in the next 
issue of 'Le Sauvage'  http://www.lesauvage.org/)



An other Internet is possible: Catalonia and Germany as examples

When Wifi came up in the early 2000s, and it became possible to connect 
a computer to the Internet without cables, many hackers started 
tinkering around with hard and software so as to increase their in and 
outbound range. At first it was mostly about getting Internet in an 
outlying room or at the end of the garden, and then sharing connectivity 
between neighboors became the next stage. At the time Internet 
connectivity was highly desired, especially in places not served by 
ISPs, and the only way to disseminate it was to make it available for 
free and to share it as far the equipment would carry it.


It took a few months only for the culture of an always on, self-managed, 
free, decentralised, and F/OSS-based Wifi network to spread all over the 
world. Before ADSL became widely available, all cities of the world have 
seen clubs, associations or other form of collectives rolling out Wifi 
networks on voluntary basis. Most were by way of hubs, more 
sophisticated ones were meshed, and all saw various outcomes in terms of 
success. The cleverest hacks with antennas involved coffee tins, or 
deep-fry skimming laddles common to Asian kitchens, still used in many 
countries for directional antennas. Progress in reach extention went 
fast: at first hundred of metres then kilometres and then even scores of 
kilometres. Nowadays, all kind of industrial grade equipments are 
manufactured and sold worldwide, this despite very disparate national 
legislation in terms of the range permitted.

.
In France, many 'Free Wifi associations' saw the light around 2001: all 
big cities, but also smaller towns like  Montauban, Mazamet, or villages 
like Les Orres had their self-managed Wifi networks [1].  These networks 
were up for a few months or years, this untill telecom operators 
deployed cable connectivity all over the territory. So today a very few 
of these collectives are left. Some do it 'just for fun', others have an 
educational purpose to self-teach about network protocols and their 
evolution, and still others use them to connect sheperds' huts, isolated 
dwellings and mountain refuges. But the situation in other countries is 
very different.


In Germany you have the Freifunk self-managed network which is still 
growing steadily. Started in Berlin in 2002 if now aggregates 400 local 
communities all over Germany with a total of 41 000 access points. In 
scores of countries, very poor and very rich alike, collectives and 
associations run self-managed  networks, some of them adding  GSM and 3G 
technologies  to Wifi , e.g. around Oaxaca in  Mexico, boosted up by the 
Rhizomatica.org network.


In Catalonia also, as national operators would not provide connectivity 
in mountainous zones of the Pyrenees, or in the hills of the Osona 
region, a self organised WiFi culture developed, and a number of 
villages came together from 2004 onward to start a self-managed 
citizens' network: Guifi.net.This network expanded incrementally over 
the Iberic peninsula, et even connected with other countries, especially 
in South America. As I write there are 34 630 active interconnection 
nodes, of the 58 000 that have been set up.


These nodes all work with ultra small routers available of the shelf for 
30€ or even less, which use very little electricity, something between 
3W and 10W, sometimes more, depending on capacity. Some of them  are 
solar-powered. Internet  at your fingertips with just a small antenna on 
a rooftop, and a router in the attic or the staircase.  Once the 
equipment is connected the set up is through a simple webpage, everybody 
 can do it. The network adjusts seamlessly to new nodes coming up, or to 
old ones disapearing.


The software used to be starkly experimental at first, but by now it has 
been seriously upgraded, just like all F/OSS. This thanks to the 
contribution of scores of developers banding together on a Linux distro 
specifically intended for the devolpement of this type of autonomous and 
resilient Internet networks. It goes under the name of Cloudy [2]. It 
links all the nodes without any need for a centralised server. In 
addition to classic communication protocols, the Guifi community has 
also put in place mail servers, IP telephony, database services, instant 
messaging systems, webradio, webtelevision, and video-conferences 
set-ups.  This way the community created a truly autonomous, 
self-managed and resilient Internet, but one which is also connected to 
the 'big Internet'. And this is exactly where one realises the political 
and technological significance of such an approach in the context of the 
challenging years that await us.


The 'big Internet' itself is a network slowly losing its resilience. It 
is subjected to extremely strong political and technological forces 
which are 

Shree Paradkar: When will there be a film on Winston Churchill, the barbaric monster with the blood of millions on his hands? (Toronto Star)

[Patrice Riemens]

In case you go see, or went, to the film 'Churchill' ...


Original to:
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/03/09/when-will-there-be-a-film-on-winston-churchill-the-barbaric-monster-with-the-blood-of-millions-on-his-hands.html

When will there be a film on Winston Churchill, the barbaric monster 
with the blood of millions on his hands?

By Shree ParadkarRace & Gender Columnist
Toronto Star, Fri., March 9, 2018


Imperialistic pop culture has enshrined Churchill only as a military 
great, a fun drunk, a loyal monarchist with a penchant for fine speech 
and a flair for loquacious prose. But the British PM lacerated the world 
with tragedies, profiting from plunders and mass murders, writes Shree 
Paradkar.



By the time I came across the ledger at the Bangalore Club with Winston 
Churchill’s name on it in the late 1990s, British rule in India had been 
sanitized; airbrushed to present a picture of overall benevolence with a 
few violent splotches.


The entry in the ledger is dated June 1, 1899 and names one Lt W.L.S. 
Churchill as one of 17 bill defaulters. He owes the club 13 rupees from 
a time when a whisky cost less than half a rupee.


Had we then heard that Churchill once described our beloved city as a 
“third rate watering place … without society or good sport,” we would 
have probably laughed it off as the irascibility ever only indulged in 
the great. Jolly good, old chap.


Colonialism of the mind lingers long after the land is free.

And if we had heard that he once said, “I hate Indians. They are a 
beastly people with a beastly religion,” meh. He was dead. We were 
thriving.


There are flawed heroes. Lincoln, MLK and Gandhi to name a few — men who 
inflicted injustices on individuals.


Then there are monsters.

Powerful men who lacerate the world with tragedies. Adolf Hitler, 
certainly, but his nemesis Churchill, too.


It was only in 2014 that I first got a glimpse of genocidal mania in the 
man so lionized for leading his nation through its finest hour.


It was a piece titled Remembering India’s forgotten holocaust, in 
Tehelka magazine that detailed the ghastly origins of the Bengal famine 
of 1943 that killed an estimated 3 million people in one year.


Historians have easily traced it back to Churchill who had diverted the 
bountiful harvest from Bengal to Britain and other parts of Europe. When 
the locals began starving, he steadfastly refused to send them food. He 
said no to rerouting food that was being shipped from Australia to the 
Middle East via India. No to the 10,000 tons of rice Canada offered to 
send to India, no to the 100,000 tons of rice America offered. The 
famine was the Indians’ fault, he told a war-cabinet meeting, “for 
breeding like rabbits.”


In his Revisionist History podcast, Malcolm Gladwell delves into how the 
historian Madhusree Mukerjee, author of Churchill’s Secret War, dug into 
Britain’s shipping archives to uncover evidence that Britain had so much 
food at the time that the U.S. had become suspicious they were 
stockpiling it to sell it after the war.


In India, she wrote, “parents dumped their starving children into rivers 
and wells. Many took their lives by throwing themselves in front of 
trains.” Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Indian soldiers were 
fighting alongside the Allied forces.


Yet, what did the actor Gary Oldman who portrayed Churchill in Darkest 
Hour say last Sunday when he received an Oscar for Best Actor? “I would 
just like to salute Sir Winston Churchill who has been marvellous 
company on what can be described as an incredible journey.”


Salute. Sir. Marvellous. Incredible.

Oldman might as well have danced on 3 million dead bodies, many of whose 
loved ones were too weak to cremate or bury them.


Such tributes for a heinous white supremacist who once declared that 
“Aryan tribes were bound to triumph.”


Words as hollow as the tunnel-visioned ideals on which people fashion 
this man, but they can’t stem the drip, drip of blood from his hands.


They can’t hide tens of thousands of Kenyans who were rounded up in 
concentration camps called “Britain’s Gulags” under his orders, where 
thousands were tortured and killed for rebelling against British rule.


They can’t hide the bodies of the Greek civilians who were celebrating 
German withdrawal in 1944, but were killed by the British army because 
Churchill thought the communist influence on the Nazi resisters — who 
had allied with Britain — was too strong. And we haven’t even got into 
his treatment of Iraqis or the wiping out of entire Indigenous 
populations of Tasmania.


Churchill was not the first Western leader to profit from plunders and 
mass murders. Remember John A. Macdonald? But imperialistic popular 
culture continues to enshrine him, despite the Gallipoli disaster, only 
as a military great, a fun drunk, a loyal monarch with a penchant for 
fine speech and a flair for loquacious prose.


Churchill tried to manipulate history with 

PS: Addie Wagenknecht: How Claire Evans Is Writing Women Back Into The Internet (Forbes Mag)

[Patrice Riemens]

I forgot to credit the original 'text filterer': Barbara Strebel (who 
else? ;-)

Credit where credit is due!
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Addie Wagenknecht: How Claire Evans Is Writing Women Back Into The Internet (Forbes Mag)

[Patrice Riemens]

Original to:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/addiewagenknecht/2018/03/05/how-claire-evans-is-writing-women-back-into-the-internet/


How Claire Evans Is Writing Women Back Into The Internet


Claire L. Evans is the author of the new book: Broad Band The Untold 
Story of the Women Who Made the Internet. Claire recently caught up with 
me to discuss Broad Band using email, Skype dates and various document 
sharing platforms while across the world from each other, with five time 
zones in between. Her book comes out at a time when #metoo and net 
neutrality are major topics in the internet conscious and women's roles 
are being redefined and rewritten.





Can you tell me about your new book Broad Band? How did it change your 
point of view on how history is documented and how we should approach 
the narrative of the future differently?


The easy thing is to say that Broad Band is a feminist history of the 
Internet. That’s what I’ve been telling people. Maybe it’s more accurate 
to say that it’s a history of the Internet told through women’s stories: 
boots-on-the-ground accounts of where the women were, how they were 
feeling and working, at specific, formative moments in Internet history. 
It emphasizes users and those who design for use, while many popular 
tech histories tend to zero in on the box. I’ve always been fascinated 
with what happens after hardware hits the market; it’s what we do with 
it that counts.


What inspired you to write this book specifically?

I see it as the confluence of a few factors. I cut my teeth as a writer 
on message boards on the early Web, and published volumes online in the 
height of the blog era; for me, writing has rarely if ever been separate 
from online writing, but I had reached a point, having grown up online, 
of disconnect with the medium. I think we’re all grappling with the ways 
in which the Internet is changing faster than we can register. As a kind 
of balm, I started writing “secret history” pieces for Motherboard about 
female-identified Internet arcana: cyberfeminist artists, lost CD-ROM 
games. At a certain point it just felt like an inevitability to take the 
full plunge.


You met many of these women in person, was there a commonality among the 
early pioneers of the internet in terms of how they got into the tech 
sector, their personalities or upbringing that manifested their 
trajectories?


My process for identifying subjects for this book was to first identify 
the major sea changes—the birth of programming, the earliest attempts to 
network computers—and then to play detective, poking around, looking for 
women’s names. What I found, again and again, was that the women tended 
to concentrate at the beginnings of things, in those moments where the 
lack of precedent a new technology affords allowed them to carve their 
own place, rather than be beholden to institutional requirements or the 
existing standards of a field. Another way of saying this is that many 
of the women profiled in the book did some of their best work while 
nobody was looking—for their own reasons, to serve their own 
communities, or for the sheer love of the technology.


What does your creative process look like, do you have any rituals or 
favorite things to do before you start?


Like a lot of writers, I imagine, there’s a lot of hand-wringing and 
procrastinating and staring hopelessly at an empty text document. I try 
to read something before I start working, just to remind myself what’s 
possible. I write best in the morning; I write better if I’ve meditated. 
A moderate amount of sativa can help in a pinch. When I get burned out, 
I switch my working method; I’ll go on a long drive and dictate my 
thoughts into my phone, or pivot to writing longhand.


How as the shift in cultural and social climate since the election 
affected your work?


I started writing Broad Band before the election. There are some 
subjects in the book that I spoke to before, during, and afterwards, and 
although the tone of our conversations definitely evolved over that 
time, I tried to stay the course. Ultimately what I tried to create with 
this book is a sacred place: it centers women’s experiences, it 
highlights the more subtle, beautiful contributions made by people at 
the margins and at the protean beginnings of these important 
technologies. I didn’t want to let in the scrum. I wanted us to have 
something nice that wasn’t necessarily in a position of retreat, 
resistance, or reaction to external factors. That’s not to say I don’t 
get into the darkness at all—just that my priority was to hold up the 
light.


Do you have any key collaborators and people who have shaped your 
personal aesthetic?


My partner, Jona Bechtolt, is a huge part of my ability to get anything 
done. He and I have been collaborating for over ten years; we play 
together in a band, YACHT, and we founded an app together, 5 Every Day. 
He’s very fastidious and design-oriented, I lean towards big-picture 

Bifo (Franco Berardi): Bonino and the Fiscal Compact - the same mistake as the anti-EU crowd.

[Patrice Riemens]

Since 'Bifo' is one of the tutelary divinities of nettime (just ask 
Geert) I thought it was appropriate to translate (Q as usual, Alex F 
can always redress my Italian) the op-ed he published in yesterday's 
edition of Il Manifesto ('quotidiano comunista') the day of the general 
elections, which as we know have both delivered a hung parliament (in 
both chambers) and a larger than expected victory for the 5*Movement.


Bifo's pice resonates with the feeling I had this morning that Italy now 
stands where Greece stood in 2010, with the same road map of austerity 
without end, and in the end the total victory of Big Finance and Big 
Corporate in an accelerated race to the bottom neatly harmonizing with 
the inevitable generalized collapse of both society and nature as we 
know it, a.k.a. l'accident integral theoretized by Paul Virilio.


But then as that other 'foggy' French thinker said (Louis Althusser): 
"l'Avenir dure longtemps".


Have a funky week!
p+7D!

--
Bifo (Franco Berardi, a.k.a.) (Emma) Bonino and the Fiscal Compact - the 
same mistake as the anti-EU crowd.

Il Manifesto. March 4, 2018

A number of my friends, especially among my female friends, have 
expressed the intention to vote for +Europa [a political party in the 
general elections -PR] and its candidate Emma Bonino. An excellent 
choice I would be tempted to say, because she is a person of coherence 
and sympathy, and she carries a history of dignity and courage: the 
history of the [Italian] Radical Party, despite current polemics I do'nt 
understand.


Marco Panella came to Paris when I was an exile there in 1977. in those 
days politicians of all parties considered me a scoundrel and wouldn't 
touch me with a bargepole because me and my mates were talking on a 
radio that blasted the austerity favoring alliance of the Christian 
Democracy and the Ppc [couldn't find which party that was, but probably 
on the center-left -PR]. Panella came to express his solidarity and we 
went together to an event dedicated to Pasolini chaired by Julia 
Kristeva. Great times.


I was thinking of them because both Panella's and Emma Bonino's culture 
is entirely political and juridical. On the other hand however, they 
don't have the faintest idea of what things like exploitation or social 
struggles are about.


Emma Bonini is asking you to vote for more Europe, and adds that in 
order to abide by the rules of the Fiscal compact we must abstain from 
any new budgetary expenditures over the next five years. A fantastic 
idea, but for the fact that it is fraught with dangers: our high speed 
'pendular' trains will fall further apart (*), worse than they already 
do now. Pupils in schools in the peripheries will either die from the 
cold or be buried under the rubble, while thousands of teacher will 
commit suicide, either from misery of depression. Millions of people 
will be deprived of health care, and hospitals will run out of syringes 
and dressing material. Medical personnel will say goodbye to the public 
service and take up jobs in private health institutions.


So how many tens of thousands of deaths is Emma's brilliant idea going 
to cost? No, I do not think that destroying what is left of the welfare 
state is a good plan. Does that mean that I am for less Europe? Not at 
all! I just want to say that Emma Bonino doesn't 'get' what (current) 
Europe is about.


Over the last years the European Union died in the heart of the majority 
of Europeans. And the anti-Europe sentiment has grown in exact 
proportion with the pace the neo-liberal ruling class has transformed 
Europe in an instrument of the powers of finance, reason why workers see 
Europe as the cause of their misery. The imposition of the Fiscal 
Compact, which amounts to systematic removal of resources from the 
pockets of the workers to compensate for the [abysmal] debentures of the 
banks is the obvious cause why the European Union is in its death 
throws.


The Fiscal Compact is a noose around the neck of the european 
population. And when the noose is pulled, no blood reaches the head any 
more, and the European population in agony flees into the hands of those 
preaching violence, hate, and nationalistic racism. This is what the 
Fiscal Compact amounts to.


Bonino makes exactly the same mistake as the anti-Europe crowd of 
whatever hue, which clamors for an illusory national sovereignty: taking 
Europe and the Fiscal Compact for one and the same thing.


I vote for the Power to the People (Potere al popolo) Party, because I 
want Europe to be not the instrument of the financial system but an 
instrument for equality in salaries for all European citizens, and for 
solidarity, a universal basic income, and a reduction in working hours. 
I Vote for the Power to the People Party, because despite its somewhat 
backward name I want to break with society's enslavement to the 
authoritarian rule of the Fiscal Compact and see society freeing its 
energies from the 

Oliver Leistert: "Blockcian as a Modulator of Existence"

[Patrice Riemens]

Now that we have at length (and at leisure)  trashed the blockchain on 
this list, I suddenly stumbled on the first text that made sense of it, 
to me at last. Unfortunately, it paints a very dystopian picture of the 
possibilities of the blockchain.


http://networkcultures.org/moneylab/2018/02/07/the-blockchain-as-a-modulator-of-existence/

The advent of the blockchain as a protocological internet layer for 
values corresponds to a continuing monetization pressure and ongoing 
expansion of identification strategies. Notwithstanding these 
trajectories, behind this prospected killer application resides first of 
all a sovereign chronological regime that has the capacities to proof 
and modulate the existence, identity and administration of data, assets, 
goods and services from a distance on micrological scales.


(...)

It is long, but it is very worthwhile (immo). In the end I could not 
escape the conclusion that the Blockchain indeed makes sense: as the 
slowly being implemented instrument of final accumulation by 
dispossession, with the '1%' terminally appropriating everything that is 
with the '99%', and in the end their very lives as well. That a 
monstruous combination of ubiquitous networking (and surveillance), 
Internet of Things, cryptocurrencies, and probably nanotech for good 
measure, is on the verge of taking over, all 'powered' by the Blockchain 
as immutable and irrevocable timestamp of every human move, bringing the 
scenario of the film 'In Time' closer than ever.


So the Blockchain is no Bullshit after all? Rather an extremely 
dangerous Weapon of Math Destruction which should be prohibited just 
like personnel mines or weaponized gas? Is this the 'see you in 10 years 
time' Oli wat talking about? (vs Carsten)


Not very much to cheer about
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Blockchain Halelujah! (was: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

Re-routed to nettime, since the off list discussion got interesting. 
Below a  piece by Eduard who asked me to post it on nettime - after some 
light editing.

Cheers and don't churn out too many blockchains in the w/e!

(It might be advisable to read bottom up from now ...



 Original Message 
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re:  Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our 
world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

Date: 2018-03-03 09:30
From: Patrice Riemens <patr...@xs4all.nl>
To: Morlock Elloi <morlockel...@gmail.com>
Cc: Eduard Karel de Jong <edu...@dejongfrz.nl>, Geert Lovink 
<ge...@xs4all.nl>


Woooaaah! Time for a fresh Sokal-Bricmont! I can't wait!


On 2018-03-03 08:45, Morlock Elloi wrote:

You wouldn't believe pointless papers that postdocs at top
universities are churning out:

"Securing Bitcoin wallets via threshold signatures"
"Scalable and Incentive-Compatible Blockchain Design"
"A Smart Contract for Boardroom Voting with Maximum Voter Privacy"
"Hawk: The Blockchain Model of Cryptography and Privacy-Preserving
Smart Contracts"
"Thunderella: Blockchains with Optimistic Instant Confirmation"

I cannot even imagine what a college course on the blockchain would
comprise of. Sounds like a course on replacing front left tire on 2010
white Toyota Camry.


On 3/2/18, 08:08, Patrice Riemens wrote:


Aloha,

I am amazed, nay flabbergasted, too at the amount of hot air being
displaced by the Blockchain (indeed what the French call 'une usine a
gaz'). In a recent NYT there was an article about college cousres on 
the

blockchain being in such heavy demand (i& in the US that means
'effective' demand) that universities were scrambling to fill the gap.

Such a phenomenon creates a reality entirely of its own, which you
cannot negate. Criticising it will earn you no credit whatsover, and
when the whole thing collapses - not if but when, and that still can
take some time, see BTC (or 'XBT')'s current valuation), nobody's 
going

to compliment you on foresight - some might even accuse you of having
provoked it.

Sometimes, this, together withthe 'acceleration' going with it, gives 
me

a strong taste of TEOTWAWKI upcoming ...

Cheers all, p+7D!
(snowed in in Fiesole's publib ... ;-)


-

Post by <edu...@dejongfrz.nl>


Indeed! Blockchain is nothing new!! At least not new at the higher of
level of trust in society or the possibilities of IT technology  to
lead to a dystopian future.

However, what is actually new with Blockchain, is the huge amount of
hype around it, the worldwide ramping up of university courses in
blockchain programming, and the apparent, blissfull ignorance of
many of those participating in it of the libertarian (read: illiberal,
right wing) bias it 
encapsuletes: "There is no need to trust another human to

interact with, since algorithmic consenus takes over, your property
rights are clearly determined  for all to see, be challenged by no one, 
and  they're fixed for eternity too."


This hype leads potential users of the technology to forget common IT
development practices, abandon legacy systems, and ignore all the many
subtle and not so subtle requirements for IT system to work discovered
during years of operation and maintenance.

Abandoning a legacy system, starting with a "Tabula Rasa" is several
orders of magnitude cheaper than extending an old system.

Using blockchain gives an excuse to bypass written and unwritten and 
ignore

regulations and customer protection laws, as these may not fit with the
centralised processing model of each time updating just as single
block in the chain of blocks.

In this reasoning Blockchain is really a new type of technological
threat, not because of its technology but because of the (not so) hidden 
agenda of its proponents and believers.


It could well be that the near-religious belief in the transformative 
nature of the Blockchain actually reveals a deep satisfaction with the 
status quo, often expressed these days in a longing for radical change
(a.k.a. 
'disruption'). The tabula rasa promise implied by Blockchain may 

then be recognised as what is needed to make that change. This reminds 
me of what I once heard about cultural context of the start of WWI: 
There was, on 
both sides, dissatisfaction with the (political) status quo,

and a brief quick war was precisely the technological 'fix':
telephones, machine guns and the railway network altogether would make 
for just such a "Tabula Rasa"...


Cheers
Eduard
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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2018-03-02 22:27, Carsten Agger wrote:

On 03/02/2018 09:17 PM, Morlock Elloi wrote:
That article is technical nonsense. 'Blockchain' that has PoW 
consisting of 1.6 second of handset CPU is trivial to fake. And where 
is the consensus? Car does the same? Or is car running 500KW GPU 
cluster doing hash verified by ... who? Cheap PoW ("Proof of Work") is 
contradiction in terms.


This is actually a good illustration of utter bullshit that passes for 
'technology'.


We need blockchain powered nettime! BLOCKTIME!


The good thing about the Blockchain-based dystopian visions is that
they won't ever actually come to pass. Blockchain is impractical and
useless from a technical point of view. It's pure hype and nothing
more.

On the other hand, the bad thing about the Blockchain-based dystopian
visions is that everything bad that you could conceivably do with a
Blockchain you could do better and much more efficiently with an
ordinary database.

So there are definitely reasons to worry about the future surveillance
nightmare, but Blockchain is not one of those reasons, because it
won't ever make much of a difference in the technological sense. Its
hype might, but Blockchain itself is useless outside the realm of
cryptocurrencies. I say that as someone whose background is in
technology, specifically computer science.



And then, cryptocurrencies don't make very much economic sense either. 
Their only merit is have bootstrapped rethinking money and currencies - 
even though not necessarily in the 'right' direction.


On a more general plane, dystopian visions (whether Blockchain-based or 
not) and surveillance nightmares unfortunately represent the entropy 
state of social systems, and can only be avoided with a lot of 
consciencious, collaborative efforts - exactly what the current 
dispensation actively discourages ...


Have a happy week-end!
p+7D!
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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

Yes, I completely agree with Carsten.

And as I cannot repeat often enough that I am a mere 'text filterer', 
which is the primary purpose of nettime (see at bottom) I will repeat 
again that I do not necessarily agree with other people's text I post, 
but do so only because I find them interesting, usually reflecting a 
(slightly?) more mainstream take on issues being discussed on this list 
(pro memoria: social media critique and the 'told you so' faktap).


Worse still I am part of the minority (of more than one, fortunately, 
but less so of hackers, unfortunately) who thought from day one that the 
blockchain was a 'gas plant', as the French say (une usine a gaz). Since 
anything a blockchain can be put to use to can be done more easily, more 
efficiently, more securely, and usually also at a lower _final_ cost by 
humans, I have come to suspect, nay be convinced, that blockchain and 
other pieces of tech solutionism are mainly intended, and deliberately 
so, to take human beings out of as many loops as possible, possibly with 
the perspective of getting rid of them altogether when transitioning 
into the bliss of post-human algocratic singularity for the sole benefit 
of an ueberfintech elite, indubitably gifted with eternal (because 
machinistic) life to boot.


The blockchain definitely belongs to the long list of things that better 
had not been invented and represent in the end a huge waste of time, 
talent, and resources.


Cheers from snowy Tuscany, where we still shift stamped paper
p+2D!



On 2018-02-23 13:38, Carsten Agger wrote:

On 23-02-2018 13:11, Patrice Riemens wrote:



Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/23/blockchain-reshape-world-far-right-ahead-crypto-technology 
Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step 
ahead
Crypto technology is coming to a crossroads. Those who want to use it 
to radically redistribute wealth must take urgent action

[...]

Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain reads the title of a 2017 book. From 
currency speculation through to verifying the provenance of food, 
blockchain technology is eking out space in a vast range of fields.



It's ironic, amusing more likely, that the conclusion of the book
"Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain" is that the "Blockchain revolution"
will likely not amount to much of anything. The main reason is this:
Who needs a global, public and distributed ledger? What's it good for?

As a matter of fact, all proposed use cases I've seen founder on the
problem of reliability: Yes, if your crate of organic bananas has a
bar code, and that bar code was entered on the block chain along with
a statement that the crate was shipped from a fair trade/fair pay
organic cooperative in Costa Rica, nobody can know if that means that
the physical crate was actually there only that someone says that it
was. You might improve on that situation with tamperproof, sealed
cryptographic tokens, but you still don't know if the bananas were in
the crate at the time. An ordinary inspections regime would probably
work better. I.e., all use cases for blockchains which require
real-world interaction requires some sort of verification that the
data entered is correct, which the blockchain itself can't certify -
anything beyond the simple fact that the information was entered. And
that sort of tracking could ordinarily best be achieved by that
high-end bleeding edge innovation called a "database"; along with an
external verification process, the advantages of using a blockchain
over a database are exactly zip.

Now, if the data had to do with the blockchain itself and were
entirely digital ... then it's another matter. That's why blockchains
make sense for cryptocurrencies. But cryptocurrencies are not really
useful, and in their current incarnation are riddled by scams to an
extent where the best advice anyone could give is to stay the f...
away.

Distributed ledger systems do exist, though - one is called "Git". And
it's very useful for tracking source code changes. And as opposed to
blockchain, transactions can be reversed and history can be rewritten,
which is actually a necessary feature (e.g., with the GDPR coming up
here in the EU).

So, fortunately or unfortunately, it's not likely that Blockchain is
going to reshape anything, except for possibly the wallets of some
quick movers and scam artists.

Best
Carsten
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Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

Some connex pbs have caused my post to be send unedited. Here's the 
correct version (fingers X-ed)


---

Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/23/blockchain-reshape-world-far-right-ahead-crypto-technology



Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead
Crypto technology is coming to a crossroads. Those who want to use it to 
radically redistribute wealth must take urgent action


By Josh Hall
Fri 23 Feb 2018


Alice Weidel is the co-leader of Alternative für Deutschland.’ 
Photograph: Axel Schmidt/Reuters


Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain reads the title of a 2017 book. From 
currency speculation through to verifying the provenance of food, 
blockchain technology is eking out space in a vast range of fields.


For most people, blockchain technologies are inseparable from bitcoin, 
the cryptocurrency that has been particularly visible in the news 
recently thanks to its hyper-volatility. Crypto-entrepreneurs have made 
and lost millions, and many people have parlayed their trading into a 
full-time job. But blockchain technology, which allows for immutable 
records of activities, stored on a ledger that is held not just in one 
place but massively distributed, has applications in every conceivable 
area in commerce and beyond. Soon, there will be blockchains everywhere 
that transactions happen.


While the focus has so far been on currencies such as bitcoin, what’s 
less well known is the large and growing community of blockchain 
developers and evangelists, many of whom believe that the technology 
could herald radical changes in the ways our economies and societies are 
structured. But there’s a big question at the heart of that community: 
what might a world built with the help of blockchain technology look 
like?


Unchain, a large bitcoin and blockchain convention based in Hamburg, 
seems to have a potential answer. Along with speakers from blockchain 
startups, cryptocurrency exchanges and a company that purports to offer 
“privately managed cities as a business”, the conference programme also 
features Alice Weidel, listed on the site as an “economist and bitcoin 
entrepreneur”.


In fact, Weidel is the co-leader of Alternative für Deutschland, which 
recently became the third largest party in Germany’s Bundestag. Weidel’s 
election campaign in 2017 was the party’s breakthrough moment, and what 
many have seen as a watershed in German politics – the return of 
far-right, populist ethno-nationalism to the federal parliament.


Since 2015 the AfD leadership has adopted increasingly hard lines on 
borders, migration, Islam and Europe. The party has also attempted to 
recuperate language associated with historic Nazism; in 2016, the AfD’s 
then chair, Frauke Petry, called for the rehabilitation of the word 
“völkisch”, which is seen to be inextricably linked with National 
Socialism.


Weidel is thought to represent the more “moderate” wing of the AfD, in 
comparison with her colleague in the Bundestag Alexander Gauland, who 
has pushed for Angela Merkel to close Germany’s borders and to deliver 
ways by which immigrants can be repatriated. But the tension between the 
“moderate” and extreme wings of the AfD has been seen as a conscious 
tactic, in which Gauland pushes taboo subjects which Weidel then makes 
more palatable. Weidel herself, though, has also previously appeared to 
describe German Arabs as “culturally foreign” and to encourage a return 
to the paranoiac xenophobia of the Third Reich by describing Merkel’s 
government as “pigs” who are “puppets of the victorious powers” from the 
second world war.


The rise of the AfD has caused deep soul-searching in Germany. But 
outside of the country’s borders, Weidel’s invitation to the Unchain 
summit also poses questions for the nascent blockchain community. On one 
side are those who believe that crypto technologies should be used to 
divert power away from states (particularly social democratic states) 
and into the hands of a righteous vanguard of rightwing libertarian 
hackers.


Some of these people are now in positions of significant power: Mick 
Mulvaney, the director of the US Office of Management and Budget, is a 
staunch bitcoin advocate and his appointment was warmly received by some 
crypto news publications. Mulvaney has previously addressed the John 
Birch Society, an extreme rightwing pressure group that was formed to 
root out communists during the cold war but that now specialises in part 
in Federal Reserve conspiracy theories – a popular theme on some bitcoin 
forums. In June, the John Birch Society demanded that the Russia 
investigation be dropped; their “speakers bureau” offers talking heads 
on subjects including why the US must leave the UN, “the Trojan horse 
called immigration”, and “the global warming hoax”.


But there is another tendency: one that believes blockchain tech should 
be used as part of a liberatory political project, one that can 

Josh Hall: (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

Original to:




Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead
Josh Hall
Crypto technology is coming to a crossroads. Those who want to use it to 
radically redistribute wealth must take urgent action

@JoshAJHall

Fri 23 Feb 2018 11.04 GMT
Last modified on Fri 23 Feb 2018 11.06 GMT

Shares
5
Comments
32
Alice Weidel
‘Alice Weidel is the co-leader of Alternative für Deutschland.’ 
Photograph: Axel Schmidt/Reuters


Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain reads the title of a 2017 book. From 
currency speculation through to verifying the provenance of food, 
blockchain technology is eking out space in a vast range of fields.


For most people, blockchain technologies are inseparable from bitcoin, 
the cryptocurrency that has been particularly visible in the news 
recently thanks to its hyper-volatility. Crypto-entrepreneurs have made 
and lost millions, and many people have parlayed their trading into a 
full-time job. But blockchain technology, which allows for immutable 
records of activities, stored on a ledger that is held not just in one 
place but massively distributed, has applications in every conceivable 
area in commerce and beyond. Soon, there will be blockchains everywhere 
that transactions happen.

Blockchain: what is it and what does it mean for development?
Read more

While the focus has so far been on currencies such as bitcoin, what’s 
less well known is the large and growing community of blockchain 
developers and evangelists, many of whom believe that the technology 
could herald radical changes in the ways our economies and societies are 
structured. But there’s a big question at the heart of that community: 
what might a world built with the help of blockchain technology look 
like?


Unchain, a large bitcoin and blockchain convention based in Hamburg, 
seems to have a potential answer. Along with speakers from blockchain 
startups, cryptocurrency exchanges and a company that purports to offer 
“privately managed cities as a business”, the conference programme also 
features Alice Weidel, listed on the site as an “economist and bitcoin 
entrepreneur”.


In fact, Weidel is the co-leader of Alternative für Deutschland, which 
recently became the third largest party in Germany’s Bundestag. Weidel’s 
election campaign in 2017 was the party’s breakthrough moment, and what 
many have seen as a watershed in German politics – the return of 
far-right, populist ethno-nationalism to the federal parliament.


Since 2015 the AfD leadership has adopted increasingly hard lines on 
borders, migration, Islam and Europe. The party has also attempted to 
recuperate language associated with historic Nazism; in 2016, the AfD’s 
then chair, Frauke Petry, called for the rehabilitation of the word 
“völkisch”, which is seen to be inextricably linked with National 
Socialism.


Despite the wild fluctuations in cryptocurrency valuations, it seems 
clear now that blockchain tech is here to stay


Weidel is thought to represent the more “moderate” wing of the AfD, in 
comparison with her colleague in the Bundestag Alexander Gauland, who 
has pushed for Angela Merkel to close Germany’s borders and to deliver 
ways by which immigrants can be repatriated. But the tension between the 
“moderate” and extreme wings of the AfD has been seen as a conscious 
tactic, in which Gauland pushes taboo subjects which Weidel then makes 
more palatable. Weidel herself, though, has also previously appeared to 
describe German Arabs as “culturally foreign” and to encourage a return 
to the paranoiac xenophobia of the Third Reich by describing Merkel’s 
government as “pigs” who are “puppets of the victorious powers” from the 
second world war.


The rise of the AfD has caused deep soul-searching in Germany. But 
outside of the country’s borders, Weidel’s invitation to the Unchain 
summit also poses questions for the nascent blockchain community. On one 
side are those who believe that crypto technologies should be used to 
divert power away from states (particularly social democratic states) 
and into the hands of a righteous vanguard of rightwing libertarian 
hackers.


Some of these people are now in positions of significant power: Mick 
Mulvaney, the director of the US Office of Management and Budget, is a 
staunch bitcoin advocate and his appointment was warmly received by some 
crypto news publications. Mulvaney has previously addressed the John 
Birch Society, an extreme rightwing pressure group that was formed to 
root out communists during the cold war but that now specialises in part 
in Federal Reserve conspiracy theories – a popular theme on some bitcoin 
forums. In June, the John Birch Society demanded that the Russia 
investigation be dropped; their “speakers bureau” offers talking heads 
on subjects including why the US must leave the UN, “the Trojan horse 
called immigration”, and “the global warming hoax”.
Bitcoin-blocking shows that banks can help tackle debt – if they really 
want to

John Perry Barlow R.I.P.

[Patrice Riemens]

(bwo Barbara Strebel)

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/john-perry-barlow-internet-pioneer-1947-2018

John Perry Barlow, Internet Pioneer, 1947-2018

With a broken heart I have to announce that EFF's founder, visionary, 
and our ongoing inspiration, John Perry Barlow, passed away quietly in 
his sleep this morning. We will miss Barlow and his wisdom for decades 
to come, and he will always be an integral part of EFF.


It is no exaggeration to say that major parts of the Internet we all 
know and love today exist and thrive because of Barlow’s vision and 
leadership. He always saw the Internet as a fundamental place of 
freedom, where voices long silenced can find an audience and people can 
connect with others regardless of physical distance.


Barlow was sometimes held up as a straw man for a kind of naive 
techno-utopianism that believed that the Internet could solve all of 
humanity's problems without causing any more. As someone who spent the 
past 27 years working with him at EFF, I can say that nothing could be 
further from the truth. Barlow knew that new technology could create and 
empower evil as much as it could create and empower good. He made a 
conscious decision to focus on the latter: "I knew it’s also true that a 
good way to invent the future is to predict it. So I predicted Utopia, 
hoping to give Liberty a running start before the laws of Moore and 
Metcalfe delivered up what Ed Snowden now correctly calls 'turn-key 
totalitarianism.'”


Barlow’s lasting legacy is that he devoted his life to making the 
Internet into “a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice 
accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth . 
. . a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no 
matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or 
conformity.”


In the days and weeks to come, we will be talking and writing more about 
what an extraordinary role Barlow played for the Internet and the world. 
And as always, we will continue the work to fulfill his dream.

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Re: How do we govern ourselves? (was: Mechanical Turkish)

[Patrice Riemens]

Aloha,

On Fri, Feb 02, 2018 at 07:32:33AM -0600, Blake Stimson wrote:
> 
> 
> The core question of a democratic society is not "how do I become free?"
> > Rather it is "how do we govern ourselves?" Crucially that means: with which
> > institutions, under which rules, backed by which constraints [and, I would
> > add, which power]? If you do not answer these questions - as the entire
> > anarcho-libertarian spectrum including myself did not, throughout the
> > neoliberal period - well, then it turns out that others, like the Koch
> > brothers or Cambridge Analytica, will attempt to answer it for you.
> 

I read a nice statement in a recent Guardian op-ed attacking a Brexit
supporter and funder who bought himself a Maltese (EU) passport
(available very officially for £800K) just to be on the safe side.
"Freedom is easy to be had, but it's just not for free". Gives a nice
twist to RMS's "as in freedom, not as in free beer".

Greeetz from AZERTYstan (Bruksel), p+2D!


PS I seem to remember reading that Bruno Latour once started a lecture 
(in the UK) with the pronouncement that Margaret Thatcher was the 
greatest sociologist of all - he was joking oeuf corse 

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Zach Blas: Metric Mysticism

[Patrice Riemens]

bwo Barbara Strebel, with thanks.

Full story:  
http://www.e-flux.com/program/170578/lecture-performance-zach-blas-nbsp-metric-mysticism/


In this lecture-performance, artist Zach Blas gazes into the crystal 
balls of Silicon Valley and charts the transmutation of big data into a 
magical substance that predicts—and polices—our future.


Focusing on the appropriation of mysticism and magic by Silicon Valley 
start-ups and governmental surveillance agencies alike, Blas suggests 
that the crystal ball, a transparent device that permits one to see into 
the future, has come to stand in as a paradigm for how tech 
entrepreneurs prefer to imagine the algorithmic processing of 
information.


Palantir Technologies, it is suggested, is at the forefront of such 
metric mysticism. Co-founded by Peter Thiel—and described by some as the 
most powerful machine for spying ever devised—the controversial data 
analytics company appropriates the palantir, a fictional all-seeing 
crystal ball used by wizards in The Lord of the Rings. Here, in the 
palantir, data becomes the new absolute, determining what the future is 
and how it should be controlled.


Yet what if one were to gaze not into a crystal ball but rather a chunk 
of silicon? Not transparent glass but rather an opaque, geologic 
material at the very core of digital technology. Blas asks, against the 
prediction of the future, if redirecting our gaze can offer a way to 
better comprehend the crisis of the present?


Zach Blas is an artist and writer whose practice confronts technologies 
of capture, security, and control. He is currently a Lecturer in Visual 
Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London and has lectured and 
exhibited internationally, recently at IMA Brisbane, the Van Abbemuseum, 
Eindhoven and ICA Singapore.

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Re: the thing with Europe

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2018-01-16 20:38, Morlock Elloi wrote:
Or maybe it's time to put down our phones, pick up shovels and start 
laying fibre.

I don't know.


This, of course, is the only solution. If all other arguments fail,
consider that this gets you to the jail fastest. QED.

---

Europe was mentioned several times recently as alleged potential for
doing good stuff, breaking MAGAf, regulating, taxing, creating
communal infrastructure etc.

If Europe resembled anything from the 1983 Stuttgart Declaration, then
this would be a reasonable hope and actionable direction.

It doesn't.

It's a 2nd class neoliberal financial cartel, dominated by US directly
and via proxies (DE, UK.) Pipe dreams notwithstanding, this is not
changing any time soon. The smartest ones  gravitate to US, because
becoming rich CEO or semi-rich CTO is more attractive than championing
community issues. Most Europeans have foreign cellular and landline
providers - they couldn't even fix that, and they are going to
communalize and regulate Internet?

"Europe" has, in the progressive circles, the same sinister role that
Democratic Party had in the US: capture, coopt and subvert anything
that endangers the system. It is no wonder that right-wingers are
doing so well.

Forget Europe. If anything happens, it will happen in the heart of the
Empire, where shovels and the shoveling drive exist.



But Morlock, you know since Henry Kissinger, who couldn't find it in the 
phone directory, that there ain't any 'Europe'!


Caioui, p+7D!
(happy in Italy, where Bruksel (aka 'Europe') is an 'onshoni shogket' 
(distant thunder), and life is still relaxed - in my village at least)






-


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Re: social media critique: next steps?

[Patrice Riemens]

Sounds like "What Does The Ruling Class Do When It Rules"

https://www.versobooks.com/books/292-what-does-the-ruling-class-do-when-it-rules

Ciaoui, p+7D!


On 2018-01-16 12:27, Sean Cubitt wrote:

The algorithms of the ruling class are in every epoch the algorithms
of the ruling class




--


Message: 1
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2018 20:16:59 +0100
From: Florian Cramer 
Cc: Nettime 
Subject: Re:  social media critique: next steps?
Message-ID:

Re: social media critique: next steps?

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2018-01-13 15:36, Geert Lovink wrote:

Following Boris Beaude, but now in a more pessimistic/dystopic 
interpretation, I am increasingly feeling to live 'the Ends of the 
Internet'. And the links Geert provides suggest I am not alone. We, of 
the 'pioneer' generation, are - have been for quite some time - in 
irreversible retreat, rest only to see that, if possible, it doesn't 
turn into a Berezina-style rout.


Furthermore I wonder if academic research of our kind has ever had any 
impact on 'the-debate-at-large'. It is (was) enjoyable in our circles 
all the same, but is/was probably perceived - if at all - by the 
'mainstream' as starkly self-referential. It is thus not surprising at 
all that now 'prominent industry insiders' suddenly mouth apprehension 
or worse, 'the world listens' - and can do very little with the message. 
As Geert writes "(g)oing offline is (...) in fact an option only elites 
can afford."


Hence I am also none to optimistic on "(w)hat do we have on offer from 
the perspective of old-school community informatics (...)": not very 
much, again, even if it brings forth interesting discussions. We surely 
should continue doing it - against all odds (and to keep our jobs?). AAs 
far as I am concerned, the "social media debate heating up and becoming 
mainstream"  happens around issues we might have fore-fronted  early on, 
but which are now re-interpreted by other constitunties differently - in 
a very individualistic way and hapless panic mode, for instance.


'Scaling up' is the eternal dream of actionism. But is it realistic? I 
agree that exodus is a privilege, but then, for a great number of 
people, the by now definitely not so new media are completely trivial 
and unproblematic - till 'something' happens, 'hype and frenzied 
consternation ensue, but by then most people feel totally powerless - 
just like the users of old felt when the telephone system (or any other 
utility) went down.


Tech sovereignty (cf. the sobtech books, recently posted on nettime) is 
of course what should be practised and achieved - by 'us'. But who 
seriously believes it will remain other than a minority position? 
(eventhough I do wish & hope some people do!) And then we will not only 
have to be able to establish our own infrastructure, but also accept its 
limitations - the very reason why it won't go mainstream.


Hence I do not think 'Silicon Valley' is that afraid about resistance 
and - even less - exodus. They are however very concerned about 
'reputational damage', but what they fear most is firm government 
intervention, the very reason why they so much advocate doing away with 
government, (unless, of course, 'organically' their pocket ...)


Good old political struggle in a new shape then? The chances are slim, 
but existing. I think it's where we should put our best efforts. But 
then that approach is not 'kewle' at all, it moves at a snail's pace, it 
is intensely frustrating, and if not, boring - and usually both.


Just my two old hundred lires ...
p+7D!



Dear all,

social media criticism is clearly reaching a new stage. In the past
months voices from deep inside the industry have made themselves
heard, in particular in response to the fakenews/Russia media drama
and the sneaky ‘behaviour science’ manipulations of social media
users. None of these statements directly referred to the ‘classic’
critique of the past years, let’s say from the nettime circle,
Unlike Us, to established voices such as Nicolas Carr, Andrew Keen and
Shirley Turkle. It’s as if we always have to start all over again.
Most academic research on social media seems to have virtually no
impact on the current debate-at-large. Or am I wrong? Why do Silicon
Valley geeks and investors have so much authority in this case?
Insider-experts are not often seen as neutral observers. We all know
this. These individuals kept their mouth shut for years and years, and
are still deeply involved as investors, employees, consultants etc.
Now that they worry the world should suddenly pay attention?

What should be the radical next steps? Finally the social media debate
is heating up and becoming mainstream. What do we have on offer from
the perspective of old-school community informatics (RIP Michael
Gurstein), German (!) media theory, NL tactical media activism and or
ISEA-type of digital arts? Was this a topic in Leipzig at 24C3? It
seems pointless to say: “We told you so.” How can we scale up and
democratize all the debates and proposals of the past 5-7 years of
those that worked on alternative network architectures? Is the
reasonable, noble and moral appeal a la Tim Berners-Lee the only one
on offer? Going offline is one thing, (and in fact an option only
elites can afford). Self-mastering a la Sloterdijk is a marginal
reform effort from a hyper-individualistic perspective. I still
believe in vital methods to mass delete Facebook accounts. This is in
the end what Silicon Valley tries to prevent at all cost: resistance
and 

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2018-01-09 22:25, Joseph Rabie wrote:


Their is a blind belief that capitalism and the market are one and the
same, but this is not so. Markets have existed for as long as there
has been specialization of labour. Capitalism is a modern mechanism,
invented to enable certain forms of development, frequently of a
predatory and corrosive nature. The time has come to uninvent
capitalism, to return the market to its cooperative vocation.




Why does this 'self-evident truth' need to be repeated over again while 
it is being forgotten over and again?

Puzzling.
Ciaoui,
p+7D!
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Re: Never Mind the Bitcoin?

[Patrice Riemens]

In uncertain times, traditional investments bring in far less returns 
than speculative ones. Of course the risks of default are higher, but 
then it's borrowed money anyway, or held by very deep pockets players 
who behave as venture capitalists: 1 smashing investment makes for 9 
dudd ones.


People, in I am sorry to say, 'Anglo', and now 'Global' thinking, have 
always been the weakest link in the chain, to be eliminated as much as 
possible - re-read Manuel De Landa. So no wonder fin/tech elites are so 
enamoured with machines, and wants them to replace ... you.


Taxing all that flush money out of existence? Impossible, since it's 
totally virtual, that is you can't 'realize' it (reason why saying that 
20 corporate people or entities own half the world's wealth (owtte) is 
very pleasing rhetorically, but makes no sense: if they had to sell out 
- to pay a punitive wealth tax for instance - only a fraction of the 
numbers would actually show up)
But there is another possible way: wholesale monetary reform, as 
happened in many European countries after WWII. One of the consequences, 
if not one of the aims, of neo-liberalism was to prevent governments 
ever being able to do that again.


Things going to be interesting when/as non-fiat moneys come in big time, 
and outfits which are not supposed (and perceived) to be financial 
institutions (think GAFA, and big telecoms), turn out to be exactly that 
in practice, and will 'own' what pass for a monetary system before soon.


War? Yeah, that's always an option, and some powerful idiots believe in 
it. We could always try to think like the graffito:  "Stell Dir vor: es 
gibt Krieg, und Keiner geht hin ...


Cheers, p+7D!


On 2017-12-14 10:20, Felix Stalder wrote:

Bitcoin seems, to me, to indicate how much criminal, speculative money
there is out there, seeking risk worth taking, rather than "investing"
in a traditional sense. There is simply too much money held by too few
people who now trade it among themselves, rather than seeking to 
extract

surplus value from labor. There are only so many apartments one can buy
in Dubai and all that money needs to go somewhere.

Take the bitcoin exchange rate of the last three years as a fractal
image of the income/wealth distribution of the last thirty years.
Exponential acceleration within exponential acceleration.

That vehicle that this money latched onto is about the utopia of 
machine

peerage, tells us something about the state of the world, in which
technical thinking dominates and people simply don't count and, as long
as they remain necessary, most of them are forcefully written out of 
the

story. For a micro-account how invisibility is created/enforced, see
Andrew Wilson's great work "Workers Leaving the Googleplex"

https://vimeo.com/15852288

Machines, as Morlock pointed out, are simply more efficient at
everything (often in practice, but particularly in theory), in part
because we defined the world -- and ourselves -- in machine terms, by
accepting information theory as communication theory.

Back to the excess money. The sane option would be to tax that money,
but doesn't look likely in the US/EU, so the other option to break that
extremely unstable distribution of income and wealth become more 
likely:

war. Historically, this is how I understand Piketty, there have only
been these two options.







On 2017-12-13 20:41, Morlock Elloi wrote:

Bitcoin successfully hijacked a sizable amount of public belief, which
underwrites any fiat currency, and it doesn't get more fiat than 
Bitcoin.


<...>



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'La Casemate', Grenoble FabLab burned down by anti-digital activists

[Patrice Riemens]

bwo Tetalab List

Original to:
https://hackernoon.com/in-france-cyber-criticism-turns-violent-as-activists-burn-a-fablab-to-protest-the-diffusion-of-4ad378251c5b


In France, cyber criticism turns violent as “activists” burn a fablab to 
protest the diffusion of digital culture


What will be the consequences of big tech growing moral failures?
The fablab “La Casemate” after it was destroyed by the group of Grenoble

People don’t throw rocks on the Google buses anymore. Those were the 
good old times.


On Tuesday, La Casemate, a fablab based in Grenoble was vandalized and 
burned because it was described as “a notoriously harmful institution by 
its diffusion of digital culture”.


The public policy of supporting the digital transition was also 
criticized as “City Managers satisfy money-hungry start-ups and geeky 
geeks by opening Fablabs in trendy neighborhoods These seemingly 
extremely heterogeneous devices all aim to accelerate the acceptance and 
social use of the technologies of our disastrous time”.


It’s not the first time people turn to violent protests against 
automation and computers.


From 1979 to 1983, in France, the Committee for Liquidation or 
Subversion of Computers (CLODO) was active in the region of Toulouse, 
where they posed bombs and burned buildings (CII-Honeybull in 1980, 
International Computers Limited in 1980, Sperry-Univac in 1983, etc.) At 
the time, they explained to the French Media that they were “workers in 
the field of data processing and consequently well placed to know the 
current and future dangers of data processing and telecommunications.” 
And that in their view, “ The computer is the favorite tool of the 
dominant. It is used to exploit, to put on file, to control, and to 
repress.”


And there were others. In 1983, in West Germany, a computer center 
designing software used in Pershing missiles was destroyed by a group 
called Rotte Zellen. In 1984, a Belgium group called the Communist 
Combattant Cells (CCC) bombed and destroyed the headquarters of several 
companies in Belgium and Germany. In London, a group called the Angry 
Brigade tried to do the same. And there were similar actions in Asia, in 
South America and of course in the US.


It’s easy to dismiss the actions of these digital “protesters” as mere 
luddites fantasies. But their point was not that the computing industry 
would take jobs from people.


In August 1983, the CLODO gave a rare interview in English to Processed 
World, where they explain : “It’s neither retrograde nor novel. Looking 
at the past, we see only slavery and dehumanization, unless we go back 
to certain so-called primitive societies. And though we may not all 
share the same “social project,’’ we know that it’s stupid to try and 
turn back the clock.” It’s rather that these tools are “perverted at 
their very origin”, pointing for example “that the most computerized 
sector is the army, and that 94% of civilian computer-time is used for 
management and accounting”. To be clear, in their 1983 view, “if 
microprocessors create unemployment, instead of reducing everyone’s 
working-time, it’s because we live in a brutal society, and this is by 
no means a reason to destroy microprocessors.”


Since the 1983 movie “Wargames”, people have dissociated 
computer-related terrorism and violence. By insisting on hacking and 
hackers, it looks like digital politics, protests and violence only take 
place in some sort of virtual world, and that they belong to a grey zone 
where moral values are distant and fuzzy. Indeed, their vocabulary of 
“White Hat”- a good hacker, and “Black Hat”- a bad hacker, seems more 
related to the Lords of the Ring than to the Communist Manifesto. And 
since the seminal 1984 book of Steven Levy, “Hackers: Heroes of the 
Computer Revolution”,the digital world has been fascinated by this new 
storytelling, the claim to be able to break the rules of society. Its 
leaders always want to present themselves as revolutionaries. They 
always begun in a garage. They were always former hackers. They all 
wanted to change the world.


But it seems that this storytelling has come to an end.
The text posted by the group of Grenoble on Indymedia

In their text posted on Friday, the group of Grenoble share the same 
disappointment as the CLODO. They call the digital promises “a blatant 
lie”.


Echoing recent digital critics such as Douglas Rushkoff or even myself, 
they ask themselves what’s revolutionary or prophetic in an industry 
that relies on old-school capitalism, monopolies, micro-work, state 
regulations and money as a cardinal value. And as they reject the hacker 
myth, they end up calling a revered place such as the MIT… a “temple of 
technocracy”. But people surprised, offended or shocked by this 
qualification should remember the way Aaron Swartz has been driven to 
suicide after being mistreated by this institution.


Violence is to be condemned. I feel sad for the people of La Casemate. 
They are the 

Re: Never Mind the Bitcoin?

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2017-12-13 20:41, Morlock Elloi wrote:

Bitcoin successfully hijacked a sizable amount of public belief, which
underwrites any fiat currency, and it doesn't get more fiat than
Bitcoin.

This is continuation of the phenomena of machine amplification of
human activities; machines do it better and faster. Socializing, sex,
education, transport. It's just that now they are getting into more
esoteric class of activities ... beliefs. The next is probably love,
and I'd be surprised if in few years we don't get new machine-mediated
religion which will engulf the current manual ones. Now, that's the
startup worth funding!

This is not necessarily 'bad'. We are finding out what our primitives
are, uncluttered by inefficient rituals.




Just after 'shipping' I read a very good article about Zygmunt Bauman in 
the French monthly 'La Decroissance' (highly recommended!), and 
realised, of course, Bitcoin is all about 'liquid modernity'. Which may 
also explain why the hype lasts so long and flies so high. And may be 
last forever, forever being taken as till the next switch, which should 
not be long coming.


Our critique of Bitcoin then probaly looks like being solidly grounded 
in ... solid modernity.


Cheerio, p+7D!

In the Dutch weekly De Groene Amsterdammer, economist Dirk Bezemer 
identified the Bitcoin craze with another form of liquidity: 'liquidity 
preference', a concept I always found a bit hazy - but hey, I'm not 
Keynes ...



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Never Mind the Bitcoin?

[Patrice Riemens]

Never Mind the Bitcoin?

By Patrice Riemens, Eduard de Jong, and Geert Lovink

We wrote about (and against) the crankiness that is called Bitcoin back
in 2015, at a stage when everybody was gawking at its sudden rise in
'value' from $250 to something like $400 - up from $5-15 not tah much 
earlier (1)


OK, if "a week is a long time in politics" (Harold Wilson)(2), how long
must be two years in the Digital Era?

Now that Bitcoin is 'futured', and has briefly peaked at a 
'stratospheric' $19K - that is

before 'crashing' at well below $15K - it's time to take stock.
The shortstory: it's as cranky as ever, only the numbers are crazier 
than ever.

(Oh, do we hear "and you ain't seen nothing yet"?)

But then, so is the 'Zeitgeist'.

The longer story:

Our present challenge is to 'ship' our message before Bitcoin
unavoidably crashes for real, reverting to the 'value' it held for long
time: gift economy rather than speculative markets gone bananas.
Publicizing after the inevitable crash will earn us the stale notoriety 
of

belonging to the 'told you so' grumpy brigade, a corollary of François
Mitterand's remark that 'they' will never forgive you to have been
right before your time.(3)

Conversely, 'telling you so' before, let's repeat, the unavoidable
showdown probably earns us the risée of the Bitcoin aficionados, prone
to tell you, in a fine replay of Dotcom boom times, that "this time,
it's different!"

Never mind that this argument has been peddled ever since humans tried
to part other humans from their money by letting them walk in (or into)
a pyramid, because, in fact, they succeeded every time.

The same applies to Bitcoin. Just forget about outlandish concepts like
'public ledgers', 'wallet' or 'encryption', concentrate on the most easy
to grasp part of its working mechanism that is so abundantly
clear: Even if you buy at $15K for something that's not even worth the
bits it's expressed in, if it sells a day later at $19K, you still make
a helluh'of a profit!

The reverse is, of course, also true, but hey, it's a casin... err,
sorry ... the 'magic of the market'! Which points to what may
be the chief characteristic of the 'Bitcoin phenomenon': the perversity
of a steadily more unequal and unfair world, where far too much
money is concentrated in far too few hands (even if there are millions
of them).

And these owners, to use that hallowed Dutch phrase, "don't know what to 
do with it out of sheer

madness."

There is another aspect: following Saskia Sassen's dictum "Finance is
not (about) Money"(4), we now can safely say that
Bitcoin is no longer a cryptocurrency as such. It is a speculative
vehicle in the form of a cryptocurrency, leaving it into a class of its
own with regard to other cryptocurrencies, more appearing so every
day—we lost the count quite some time ago. (Maybe, one should make an
exception for Ethereum, another wonder of hacker dude driven fintech,
surrounded by nearly the same exalted hype as Bitcoin.)

This leaves another interesting question: where are the Bitcoin pioneers
in this high-stake, demented risks, game of crypto Wheel of Fortune?
We all remember the years of the Satoshi legend, that mysterious entity
that must now turn in its anonymous grave. Those were the days: 'Bitcoin
evangelists' evoking a financial revolution—liberation—for the
little man, those oppressed and ransomed by the big financial players 
...


There was talk of 'community', of frictionless payments, of smooth
usability and widespread acceptance (actually, a large shop accepting
payment in Bitcoins, smack in the middle of London's 'hipster district',
and equipped with a Bitcoin ATM, admitted to fewer than 20
over-the-counter BTC transactions over the past couple of years)(5). 
This

evaporated as 'exchanges' appeared all over the place (and got bust, or
hacked, or both), as an ever smaller number of increasingly bigger
'miners' took an ever larger part of the mining cake, and sale &
purchase of Bitcoins got expressed in any currency but its very self.

But then, have the 'early adopters' of Bitcoin struck it rich? After
all, in these days, Bitcoin 'mining' was easy and they went for free,
for a beer, of for a couple of Dollars at the most. They must be
millionaires by now! Well they may, and probably do, 'feel' so (as far
as their Bitcoins did not vanish when their computers crashed, they lost
their phone in the bus, or their thoughtlessly ditched hard drive came
to rest in a landfill). Yet for a majority of them, our guess is: they
never cashed out. Partly because the engrained Bitcoin 'philosophy' of
hoarding, partly because they became trapped in the eternal curse of the
market: it's always too early to sell (while it's always too late to
buy, of course).

As in all trading, in the end, the only ones who will have handsomely
benefited from the Bitcoin craze are the intermediaries — the very
outfits Bitcoin was supposed to dispose of.

In the mean

Hey, Mark Zuckerberg: My Democracy Isn’t Your Laboratory (NYT)

[Patrice Riemens]

Bwo Alberto Cammozzo

Original to:


By  STEVAN DOJCINOVIC

BELGRADE, Serbia — My country, Serbia, has become an unwilling
laboratory for Facebook’s experiments on user behavior — and the
independent, nonprofit investigative journalism organization where I am
the editor in chief is one of the unfortunate lab rats.

Last month, I noticed that our stories had stopped appearing on Facebook
as usual. I was stunned. Our largest single source of traffic,
accounting for more than half of our monthly page views, had been 
crippled.


Surely, I thought, it was a glitch. It wasn’t.

Facebook had made a small but devastating change. Posts made by “pages”
— including those of organizations like mine — had been removed from the
regular News Feed, the default screen users see when they log on to the
social media site. They were now segregated into a separate section
called Explore Feed that users have to select before they can see our
stories. (Unsurprisingly, this didn’t apply to paid posts.)

It wasn’t just in Serbia that Facebook decided to try this experiment
with keeping pages off the News Feed. Other small countries that seldom
appear in Western headlines — Guatemala, Slovakia, Bolivia and Cambodia
— were also chosen by Facebook for the trial

.

Some tech sites have reported that this feature might eventually be
rolled out to Facebook users in the rest of the world, too. But of
course no one really has any way of knowing what the social media
company is up to. And we don’t have any way to hold it accountable,
either, aside from calling it out publicly. Maybe that’s why it has
chosen to experiment with this new feature in small countries far
removed from the concerns of most Americans.

But for us, changes like this can be disastrous. Attracting viewers to a
story relies, above all, on making the process as simple as possible.
Even one extra click can make a world of difference. This is an
existential threat, not only to my organization and others like it but
also to the ability of citizens in all of the countries subject to
Facebook’s experimentation to discover the truth about their societies
and their leaders.

[...]




ciao,

Alberto
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Re: Critical literature on big tech corps?

[Patrice Riemens]

Aloha,

And to Ted's brilliant, if very literary (as usual) explanation, one 
might add Saskia Sassen's rejoinder in a recent interview that ours is 
not the digital age, as many think, but the age of finance. Plus ca 
change et ... plus ca change - while staying the same, sortof.


http://kingsreview.co.uk/articles/interview-saskia-sassen/

Cheers to all, and take care
p+7D!

On 2017-11-29 06:27, Zapopan Muela wrote:

Hi Kasper
I wrote this couple of years ago. Chances are you find it interesting
:

Muela Meza, Z.M., 2006. The age of the corporate State versus the
informational and cognitive public domain. _Information for Social
Change_, (23), pp.75-98.
http://eprints.uanl.mx/1740/

Cheers

Zapopan Muela

El nov 27, 2017 5:10 AM, "Kasper Skov" 
escribió:


Wow, so many (lengthy) replies. Did not expects this amount of
references. Will get the books, read and hopefully gain some new
knowledge on the way.

Thanks everyone!

Med venlig hilsen/Kind regards
Kasper Skov Christensen
Phone: 42 41 93 98
Ph.d. Student #digitaldesign @ Aarhus University Denmark

_Design and Tech Consultant,__ Techno DJ and producer, Hacker_

On 26 Nov 2017, at 19:22, t byfield  wrote:

All these suggestions so far seem good, but they mainly focus on
'tech' corporations, as if to suggest that some diffuse idea of
technology is categorically different from everything else that
corporations have been doing for centuries. One big problem with
this is the relationship between these corporations and technology
— say, whether it's a product or service, an instrument, or a
mechanism for some sort of arbitrage. If we lump all those things
together under a category like 'tech,' it's no wonder that the
result seems mysterious. So it's also worth thinking of 'technology'
as yet another potent widget. There have been and are other potent
widgets: uppers (sugar, caffeine, tobacco, coca) and downers
(alcohol), opiates, weapons, ~crops (cotton, indigo), and fuels
(fossil fuels and even wood), 'media' (film, journalism), and of
course human beings (slavery and other forms of peonage). Obviously,
there are brilliant histories of how these other ~widgets have
served, if you like, as arbitrary platforms or media or whatever for
exploiting and distorting societies at every level. Thinking about
technology in this light is helpful for developing a more
articulate, less mystified model of what 'tech' corporations are,
how they work, and their changing place in wider human ecologies.
One benefit of this is that it helps us to recognize the corporation
*as such* as a technology, which opens up another kind of critical
literature — about their history and evolution. I only have a
passing knowledge of that field, but I think the 1970s and early
1980s were a good time for work was both critical and accessible,
like Richard Barnet and Ronald Müller's _Global Reach: The Power of
Multinational Corporations_. If we want to understand current tech
corporations, it's helpful to understand how their expertise in
manipulating jurisdictional and regional disparities regarding data
is rooted in older techniques — for example, technology transfer
arrangements in which a multinational would sell its manufacturing
assets to its foreign subsidiaries in order to exploit multiple
national tax regimes — by writing off the initial capital
investment, depreciating it, 'selling' it at a notional loss,
writing it off as a capital investment, ad nauseam — and profiting
every step of the way. In that sense, as they used to say, data
really is the new oil — not as the supposed 'smart' fuel or engine
of 'new economies,' but as yet another arbitrary dumb commodity that
can be used to exploit relational differences. That's borne out by,
for example, the high-level chicanery of techniques like the 'double
Irish' exemption, in which a few pages of legal documents translate
into billions of profit by companies like Google. This approach to
thinking about corporations is also validated by a few crucial
current developments, mainly the rising power of 'offshore'
jurisdictions and multilateral trade treaties. These two phenomena
aren't at all concerned with the visible specific concerns of
particular corporations — for example, whether they're 'tech.'
Instead, these developments are concerned with corporations as such
— their supposed rights, powers, and obligations relative to
states and societies. Regulating data *on the basis of its
specificity* is important, as Wolfie Christl and Sarah Spiekermann
argue, but we shouldn't confuse it with regulating corporations as
such. The wild claim that 'technology' has changed everything so we
need radically totalizing new laissez-faire regional and global
regimes, masks how little has changed; and it distracts us from the
need to revitalize global regulatory regimes focused on the mundane
procedures and structures that, ultimately, define what corporations
are are do, whatever their business happens to 

Wilf Mbanga: Even if Mugabe has gone, Zimbabweans won’t be dancing in the streets (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

Original to: 
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/15/mugabe-gone-zimbabweans-decide-future-mnangagwa


Even if Mugabe has gone, Zimbabweans won’t be dancing in the streets
By Wilf Mbanga, The Guardian, November 15, 2017

What we want is to decide our own future, and who will lead us. But 
Emmerson Mnangagwa is every bit as iron-fisted as the man he’d like to 
replace



Should Zimbabweans be rejoicing today? Robert Mugabe, 93, has ruled them 
with an iron fist since 1980. He is the only president an entire 
generation aged under 40 have ever known. Admittedly, the fist was not 
so iron in the early years – but to millions of Zimbabweans it has 
become increasingly oppressive since the mid-1990s.


Thousands of people from the Ndebele ethnic group were slaughtered in 
the Gukurahundi purge of the early 1980s, and in the intervening decades 
many thousands more have paid with their lives. Women and children dying 
in childbirth at a faster rate than anywhere else in Africa; opposition 
activists beaten and tortured to death; journalists kidnapped and never 
seen again: it is a long and bloody list.


So surely Zimbabweans should be rejoicing at the news that Mugabe is now 
under house arrest, reported to have done a deal with the military in 
which he will resign in exchange for safe passage out of the country for 
himself, his wife, Grace, and his family.


But there is no dancing in the streets. The millions of Zimbabweans in 
self-imposed exile (estimated at 25% of the population) are glued to 
their screens, swinging between hope and despair at every tweet, every 
morsel of news, every rumour. Those back home, who have borne the brunt 
of Mugabe’s jackboot for the past decades, are huddled in their houses, 
hoping their phone batteries won’t die before the erratic power supply 
is restored. A desperate few ventured out to stand yet again in the 
endless bank queues, to draw their daily allowance, worth under 20 US 
dollars.


So why no dancing? The man believed to be their next president – the 
former vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa – is every bit as iron-fisted 
as the man he is replacing. He has been Mugabe’s right-hand man since 
the beginning. He was minister in charge of the intelligence services at 
the time of the Gukurahundi massacres. He honed Zimbabwe’s ever-watchful 
Central Intelligence Organisation into an elite dirty tricks team feared 
throughout the land. Over the years, like his master Mugabe, he has been 
accused of masterminding election violence, kidnappings, extortion, 
plundering national resources, and other crimes.


He has never enjoyed popular support. He lost his seat twice in general 
elections before finally being elected only when he changed his 
constituency to his home area. Even then, there were many accusations of 
violence and intimidation. For 10 years he sat in parliament as a Mugabe 
appointee – not by popular choice. And if he does indeed take over as 
president now, it will be as an appointee of the military.


What Zimbabweans want, what would really make us dance in the streets as 
we did in 1980, is the chance to decide our own future – and who will 
lead us into that future.


We want to be able to cast our ballots without fear of retribution. 
Mugabe’s 37 years in office has seen the rigging and stealing of 
elections, the murder and torture of his opponents, the seizure of 
productive farm land, the worst hyperinflation in history, and the 
unbridled looting and plundering of the nation’s resources by his 
supporters. And the man taking over from him was his chief election 
agent through it all.


Zimbabweans have endured a kakistocracy (run by the worst, least 
qualified or most unscrupulous citizens) for three decades. And with the 
army and Mnangagwa in the driving seat, there is little hope that this 
will change any time soon.


However, there is still a chance that we can salvage a dance from all 
this. If Mnangagwa would heed the many voices in and outside Zimbabwe 
calling for a national transitional government – involving all parties, 
and all good men and women across the political, economic, racial and 
other spectrums – that would give hope for the future. A future beyond 
the confines of Zanu-PF and its violence – of which Mugabe often 
boasted, and Mnangagwa was the executioner.


• Wilf Mbanga is editor of the Zimbabwean  
(http://www.thezimbabwean.co/)


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Brexit democracy

[Patrice Riemens]

From Sauvons l'Europe newsletter
http://sauvonsleurope.eu/brexit-hold-up-sur-la-democratie/
In French Deepl.com translated:

Brexit: Democracy robbery?

By Arthur News/editorial comment
November 6,2017

We have already written about the confiscation of the most basic 
democratic principles in the United Kingdom since the Brexit referendum, 
because the will of the people expressed to one or two percent more on 
the basis of a fabric of lies is a new democratic Grail that can suffer 
no defilement. As a result, Parliament had to be kept out of the way, 
official reports on the effects of Brexit cannot be made public and Her 
Majesty's Government is asking Her Majesty's opposition to sanction 
opposition MPs who do not support the Government's position.


Through our friend Jean-Guy Giraud, we discover that more than half of 
Leave's campaign contributions, nearly £15 million, were made by only 
five people (including the Conservative Party treasurer). This is quite 
legal in the United Kingdom, but should lead any sincere democrat to 
question the meaning of a democracy where five individuals alone can 
fund the bulk of an election campaign. In all honesty, we should add 
250,000 pounds spent by the now-famous Unionist Party of Northern 
Ireland, the DUP, whose donee is unknown because of provisions linked to 
local "events", and which represents three times its largest campaign to 
date. A shell detail, this quarter million was mainly spent on the 
purchase of pro-leave pages in Metro, which is... not distributed in 
Northern Ireland.


On the expenditure side, things are also surprising. In contrast to a 
classic election campaign, Leave camp entrusted more than half of its 
campaign budget to Aggregate IQ and Cambridge Analytica, for the 
implementation of targeted arguments based on individual profiles 
collected on social networks, at a time when Facebook still allowed this 
practice. The essence of the campaign was not to convince voters, but to 
motivate the probable Leavers and push the probable Remainers to abstain 
by bombarding them with demoralizing news about the British political 
system. The incredible abstention rate of young people, the vast 
majority of whom are pro-European and major consumers of social 
networks, shows that this strategy has had a real impact. For the 
record, Cambridge Analytica's Managing Director was Steve Bannon, who 
later became Trump's special advisor to the White House. This does not 
mean, of course, that the Russians did not seek to interfere in this 
election.


Finally, a number of large donors from the Leave camp and the 
Conservative Party are now pushing for a Hard Brexit without an 
agreement. The implicit, and sometimes explicit, idea is then to turn 
the United Kingdom into a tax and financial paradise on the doorstep of 
the Union, like a kind of huge Hong Kong with Stilton


It is increasingly surprising that this vote, whose anti-European camp 
was largely financed by a handful of English and foreign plutocrats who 
had in mind a profound transformation of the country's economy in favour 
of opaque finance, and who resorted to methods of mass manipulation to 
win, is still being presented here and there as a summit of modern 
democracy.

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"L'Europe et les regions"

[Patrice Riemens]

Yes, sorry, it's in French. But it's a well-'epibrated' (Dutch fancy 
word coined by poet Simon Carmiggelt) piece on the dilemma United nation 
states Europe vs United regionally fragmented Europe:



L’Europe et les Régions

30 octobre 2017

Bien au-delà de la place des régions dans l’Europe, les événements de 
Catalogne posent avec une force nouvelle une question fondamentale.


Peut-on construire l’Europe et dans le même temps favoriser l’émergence 
de régions plus autonomes, voire indépendantes ?


La vocation de l’Europe n’est-elle pas de rassembler, d’ unir, alors que 
l’émergence de régions autonomes ou indépendantes aura pour conséquence 
de la fragmenter, de la diviser ;


Les conflits d’aujourd’hui puisent souvent leur origine dans les 
déceptions, les frustrations du passé.


La politique régionale de l’Europe fut longue à s’imposer. Elle est née 
dans le prolongement du traité de Rome, de la prise de conscience par 
les Etats membres de la gravité des déséquilibres régionaux dont la 
persistance pouvait mettre en péril la cohésion sociale et économique de 
la communauté ;regional


Il est vrai que la création de la communauté européenne s’est produite 
dans un contexte où la centralisation était la caractéristique commune 
aux états fondateurs.


Avec la Catalogne, nous voilà une nouvelle fois confrontés à la seule 
question qui importe :


Quelle Europe voulons-nous ? Acteur du monde ou puzzle de régions ?

Quel serait le poids politique d’une Europe réduite à un puzzle de 
régions ?


Pour autant, l’Europe tAuteur : Sauvons lEurope Dans Actualités, En Une, 
Opinions erre des libertés, des droits de l’Homme, de la démocratie ne 
peut ignorer les attentes de ses citoyens et répondre uniquement par la 
force à ces demandes.


Dans une démocratie, on se parle, on dialogue. Dialoguer c’est 
reconnaître l’autre, le respecter.


Donner plus de place aux régions ne serait pas affaiblir l’ Europe, mais 
la rapprocherait des citoyens ; la rendrait moins lointaine et plus 
humaine.


Au fond, l’Europe comme la France, comme l’Espagne sont confrontées à 
deux mouvements qui peuvent paraître contraires :


Un mouvement vers plus d’Europe
Un mouvement vers plus de proximité, de démocratie locale, de 
pouvoirs locaux.


Le défi n’est – il pas de leur donner une cohérence et non de les 
opposer ?


Jacques VUILLEMIN 25000 Besançon.

(http://sauvonsleurope.eu/leurope-et-les-regions/)
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The Observer editorial on independance for Catalonia

[Patrice Riemens]

Original to: 
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/29/observer-view-independence-catalonia


The Observer view on independence for Catalonia
It is surely not beyond the wit of Catalans and Spaniards to work out a 
form of amicable association that both can live with


The Observer, Sunday 29 October 2017


The imposition of direct rule in Catalonia is, at best, a stopgap 
measure that will do little to resolve, and may seriously aggravate, the 
long-standing problem of the region’s troubled and rivalrous 
relationship with Madrid. Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s prime minister, says 
that, in the end, he had no choice but to take the “nuclear option” of 
sacking Catalonia’s government and placing himself and his ministers in 
charge. But while his actions may calm the situation in the short term – 
and the tense days to come will be determine whether that is the case – 
Rajoy has set a time bomb ticking that could ultimately explode in his 
face.


The fresh regional elections Rajoy has scheduled for 21 December promise 
to be a titanic battle of wills between those who passionately believe 
in Catalonia’s future as a sovereign republic and those who are equally 
passionate about upholding the union with Spain. The polls will, in 
effect, become the referendum on Catalan independence that the Madrid 
government has fought so hard to prevent. The regional election in 2015 
was cast in a similar light by Artur Mas, the then leader of the 
independence forces, but he failed to secure an absolute majority. In 
December, his successors will hope for a more decisive outcome.


One of many problems with this scenario is the as yet unanswered 
question of whether Carles Puigdemont, the current Catalan president, 
and other senior figures in his pro-independence coalition will contest, 
or be allowed to contest, the election. Prosecutors in Madrid are 
planning to file charges of rebellion against Puigdemont that carry a 
penalty of up to 30 years in jail. Prompted by Rajoy, Spain’s 
constitutional court is expected to rule that last Friday’s declaration 
of independence by the Catalan assembly was illegal. All 70 MPs who 
voted for it potentially face arrest, as do civil servants or police 
officers who reject direct rule.


How can Rajoy hope to mount a free, fair and credible election if his 
principal opponents are in jail or on the run? How can there be an open, 
democratic debate if television and radio stations and newspapers deemed 
to be biased in favour of independence are brought under state control? 
Who in Catalonia, or internationally, would credit the results of such a 
poll? If the Madrid authorities persist in their apparent determination 
to punish the secessionist leadership, an election that may represent 
their best chance of ending the crisis will be condemned as a travesty. 
It would certainly be boycotted by many Catalans. It will be doomed from 
the start.


Such considerations are but one reason, among many, why Rajoy must now 
tread very carefully – or risk blowing himself up. Dialogue, not 
retribution, should be his aim. It is far from clear whether Puigdemont 
and his leftwing allies, specialists in rash, provocative and 
inflammatory behaviour, will quietly give themselves up to a Spanish 
justice system they understandably distrust. It is unclear whether 
Catalan public sector workers, security forces, labour unions and 
university students will tamely submit to Madrid’s diktats. Although the 
immediate reaction to Rajoy’s démarche has been muted, there are calls 
for a general strike tomorrow. Tensions could quickly escalate.


The great nightmare, for both sides, is the possibility that the attempt 
to enforce central government authority, gathering pace in the coming 
days amid widening civil disobedience and resistance on the streets, 
will trigger a descent into violence. Rajoy and Puigdemont both have a 
duty to prevent such a deterioration. Both need to exhibit a responsible 
judiciousness and sense of proportion that has too frequently been 
lacking.


This means, for Rajoy, no more incendiary arrests of key opponents or 
police crackdowns, no acts of political revenge and no playing to the 
hardline unionist gallery in Madrid. Now that the high point of the 
crisis has arrived, he must make a courageous, practical commitment to 
openly discuss the best way forward.


For his part, Puigdemont must eschew the gesture politics and 
vainglorious posturing that have characterised his approach. 
Independence for Catalonia is a respectable ambition. But it cannot be 
conjured into existence by otiose declarations, specious parliamentary 
manoeuvres, media manipulation and spin, misuse of public funds and the 
intimidation of ordinary citizens. To become a reality, independence 
requires the clear majority in favour within Catalonia that it presently 
lacks, the maximum possible degree of agreement with the Spanish state 
and people and the support of the international 

Catalonia

[Patrice Riemens]

Aloha,

If the sign - as I interpret them - don't lie, Spain is sliding slowly but 
unmistakably, 
into civil war. But so is Catalonia.

Constitutionaly speaking, but then in the spirit of a constitution, not in its 
static state 
at a given time (of troubles), the position of the Spanish governement is 
laughable, and the 
arguments of Spain's foreign minister, meant for foreign, especially European 
consumption, 
beggar belief in their insanity. "The Spanish constitution does not provide for 
self-determination": well, even the constitution of the USSR provided for it, 
and any 
student of history knows that such an anti-sessecionist provision, and then its 
enforcement, 
the perfect illustration of the road to nowhere. Besides, the authoritarian, 
anti-democratic 
nature of this particular provision in Spain's 'modern, post-Franco, EU-conform 
constitution' cannot be better demonstrated than by reminding everyone that it 
was imposed 
in 1978 by the armed forces. This concession tot the bullwark of Spanish 
fascism, never 
repealed courtesy a.o., of the Partido Popular, now comes to roost like the 
proverbial chickens.

But if the Spanish State is firmly on the wrong side of the civil liberties, in 
Catalonia 
the situation is alas not much better, this time on the ground. Whereas 
Catalonian 
independence firmly lives in the heart of Catalonians, and this more in the 
country side 
than in the big cities, especially Barcelona, there two groups are ever more so 
bitterly 
pitted against each other. That the anti-independence constituencies in their 
good right to 
oppose secession from Spain, now endorse the measures taken by Madrid and put 
almost all the 
blame to the present Catalonian government parties under Puidgemont, is 
particularly 
unfortunate, and do not portent for a happy resolution of the stalemate.

As almost always in history, when a political situation comes to the boil, the 
outcome of 
the Catalonian crisis will devolve into a 'law and order' issue. Rajoy and his 
entourage are 
doing everything they can to avoid giving the impression that the tanks will be 
rolling over 
the Ramblas before soon, but preventing escalation is neither really in their 
power nor 
exactly derivable from the measures they envisage, in a so-calles chirurgical 
fashion, to 
enforce article 155. Another show of 'robust policing' as was witnessed during 
the day of 
the referendum, let alone fatal casualties, and, as the Dutch so nicely say, 
the bear will be 
loose.

Europe barely survived Sarajevo - and never really recovered from it. I very 
much doubt it 
will survive Barcelona burning.
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Re: Catalonia and mainstream opinion

[Patrice Riemens]

No, it did (see rep in The Guardian), but feebly, largely apportionating the 
blame on the 
Generalitat. Meanwhile prosecution of the chief of the Mossos d'Esquadra (Cat. 
Police) and 
other officials is likely to be pursued. and the Spanish State´s police and 
para-milataries 
(Guardia Civil) are still out in numbers, seen for what they are: an occupation 
force.

The (feeble) apology may indicate some braking on the downward descend into 
Article 155, so 
let's keep our fingers crossed.


Cheerio, p+2D!


On Sat, Oct 07, 2017 at 06:27:12PM +0200, Carsten Agger wrote:
> One minor correction:
> 
> 
> On 10/07/2017 06:15 PM, Molly Hankwitz wrote:
> > I have the opposite impression from reading news here in States. Spain
> > made to look like overly brutal respressive regime. They had to apologize.
> 
> That's inaccurate, at least - the Spanish government has most certainly
> not apologized for anything.
> 
> Best
> Carsten
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Steven Levy Joi Ito and the Donald

[Patrice Riemens]

On Fri, Oct 06, 2017 at 05:02:43PM +, nettim...@kein.org wrote:
> Check 
> Re: Steven Levy: Joi Ito Explains Why Donald Trump Is Like

Dera nettime-l,
The old ACER provided by CRIR runs on software that Wired doesn't accede to 
anymore. If 
you're nice and patient, you could send me a c+p simple text ...
Ciaoui, p+2D!
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Catalonia and mainstream opinion

[Patrice Riemens]

Reading stuff in newspapers and others the last few days I am getting 
increasingly shocked - 
and worried, about what appears to be mainstream (media & politics) opinion wrt 
the 'events' 
in Catalonia.

It boils down to something like 'Catalonians are nationalistic fools, what they 
do is ramp illegal, 
Spain's unity should be upheld and respected, Rajoy and state forces act fully 
inside the 
constitution and legality' etc.

EU stands aside, while European leaders fall over each other to support the 
Rajoy regime - 
with sole exception Belgium's Michel, who's probably got 'his ears cleaned out' 
(Dutch loc) 
by now ...

The insane brutality of the Spanish police is papered over, just as is the 
political 
steering of the 'independent' justice, but far worse, 3 centuries of 
oppression, culminating 
in 40 years of ultra-Castillian Franquist oppression, which almost wipped out 
above ground 
Catalan language and culture, and finds its thinly veiled admirators in Rajoy's 
Partido 
Popular, are all completely forgotten.

And never mind millions of Catalans braving extreme odds to exercise what is 
the most 
fundamental democratic right: to vote and be counted. But does the mainstream 
care for 
democracy any longer?

With a mainstream like that, who needs extremists and terrorists for the 
descent into the 
unknown? And if Madrid indeed pulls out the 'nuclear option', Article 155 of 
the Spanish 
Constitution: total take over over Catalonia - and Madrid is on the verge of 
doing so, I´d 
say: pack up for the beach - or Barcelona.

Cheers all the same from Christiania, bit of a weird place in this context.
p+2D!

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Re: Barcelona: nationalism, municipalism?

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2017-10-03 07:23, Brian Holmes wrote:

On Tue, Oct 3, 2017 at 12:02 AM, Aliette GC
 wrote:


Country is not nationalism for them but their singular and exclusive
work tool available to experiment.


Maybe, and let's sure hope. But not blindly. Ada Colau, mayor of
Barcelona and leading figure of municipalismo, calls not for Catalan
independence but rather for Rajoy, the conservative PP leader, to step
down. Why does she hesitate to join the independence movement? Because
Catalan sovereignism itself has historically been a regional figure of
nationalism, with a conservative, nativist bias that no egalitarian
leftist has ever been able to support. Now of course the abusive
strongarm tactics of the Spanish state have rallied people against
them, and maybe there will be a real majority in favor of Catalan
independence. But what that means is still undecided. If you want to
know which way the winds of history are blowing, pay attention to the
details in the days and weeks and months ahead.



Brian is far too optimistic here (and Ada Colau has probably 'not shown 
the back of her tongue' (Dutch loc) in not speaking out for 
independence.


Unless Catalunya obtains a very, very large autonomy from the Spanish 
state, remaining within Spain is a non-goer. And that is probably the 
same with Basque country, and a few more places. That is why I plead for 
a 'Europe of the regions' - maximum devolution, total subsidiarity, and 
a strong (and really democratic) confederal authority at the top for 
those issues that are truly all-European.


Viva Catalunya!

p+2D!
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Re: Barcelona: nationalism, municipalism?

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2017-10-02 09:22, Felix Stalder wrote:

Like many, I watched incredulously as Spanish police beat up Catalan
voters yesterday and I kept wondering what this rising tension does to
the project of rebel municipalism. Is it being squeezed between the
nationalisms? Or can thrive within it? What's happening.

Felix


If things play out as they should, and as we (most of us) wish, then 
to-day is the first day of regional sovereignty as 'new normal' of the 
European Union, and the last day of 'normal life' for the European 
nation states.


Cheers to Catalunya!
p+2D!
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Simon Tisdall: Ripples from Catalan referendum could extend beyond Spain (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

Ripples from Catalan referendum could extend beyond Spain
Catalonia is not unique: all over Europe groups are seeking to redefine 
identity and rejecting the centralised state


The Guardian, Monday 2 October 2017
by Simon Tisdall


The Spanish government’s attempted suppression of Catalonia’s 
independence referendum by brute force has raised urgent questions for 
fellow EU members about Spain’s adherence to democratic norms, 42 years 
after the death of the fascist dictator, Francisco Franco. Charles 
Michel, Belgium’s prime minister, spoke for many in Europe when he 
tweeted: “Violence can never be the answer!”


Madrid’s pugnacious stance, while widely condemned as a gross and 
shameful over-reaction, has nevertheless sent a problematic message to 
would-be secessionists everywhere. It is that peaceful campaigns in line 
with the UN charter’s universal right to self-determination, campaigns 
that eschew violence and rely on conventional political means, are 
ultimately doomed to fail. In other words, violence is the only answer. 
Sorry, Charles.


Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, did everything he could to derail 
a referendum that the courts had deemed illegal, but his pleas and 
threats were not persuasive. That is democracy. Rajoy’s subsequent 
choice to employ physical force to impose his will on civilians 
exercising a basic democratic right carried a chill echo of Spain’s past 
and a dire warning for the future. That is dictatorship.


Surely no one believes the cause of Catalan independence will fade away 
after Sunday’s bloody confrontations that left hundreds injured. Rajoy’s 
actions may have ensured, on the contrary, that the campaign enters a 
new, more radical phase, potentially giving rise to ongoing clashes, 
reciprocal violence, and copycat protests elsewhere, for example among 
the left-behind population of economically deprived Galicia.


In Spain’s Basque country, where Eta separatists waged a decades-long 
terror campaign that killed more than 800 people and injured thousands, 
the dream of independence is on ice – but not forgotten. The danger is 
that a new generation of younger Basques who feel ignored by Madrid, and 
repelled by what happened in Barcelona, may be tempted to revisit Eta’s 
unilateral 2010 ceasefire and its subsequent disarmament.


The ripple effect of the Catalan crackdown could potentially extend 
beyond Spain. There were covert links at one time between Eta and the 
IRA during Northern Ireland’s Troubles, with the two groups comparing 
notes and sharing expertise. Belfast, like Bilbao, is another place 
where a dissident minority remains unimpressed by placatory measures 
such as devolution, limited autonomy and power-sharing. Fringe outfits 
such as the New IRA, responsible for several attacks since 2012, find 
self-justification in the violence of the state.


Similarities between Catalonia and other supposed secessionist hotspots 
in Europe can be exaggerated. The Lega Nord (Northern League) is 
influential in parts of northern Italy, but is not serious about 
independence. The same may be said of conservative Bavarian nationalists 
in southern Germany and the Tyrol, whose frustrations have often found 
release through the CSU, sister party to Angela Merkel’s ruling 
centre-right CDU. A closer comparison is with Scotland’s SNP.


What all these groups do have in common with the Catalan nationalists is 
their dislike, if not rejection, of the centralised authority of the 
state. Previous polls suggest most Catalans do not support independence 
from Madrid. But not unlike Scotland, a majority does appear to question 
the legitimacy of a distant central government that speaks a different 
language, hands down political diktats, levies unfair taxes and 
allegedly gives back less than it takes.


The attempt by Rajoy and his ministers to depict the Catalan 
independence movement as belonging to the wider, recent phenomenon of 
rightwing European nationalism, xenophobia and populism was an obvious 
smear. Many Catalans distrust rule by Madrid. That does not mean they 
have renounced values of tolerance and inclusion. Quite the opposite, as 
any visitor to Barcelona knows.


But the distinctions can get blurred. Politicians such as the new Lega 
Nord leader, Matteo Salvini, are only too happy to exploit voters’ 
distrust and disillusion with central government to advance their 
particular anti-immigrant, Islamophobic and extreme nationalist-populist 
agendas. In France, the Front National’s key presidential election 
message was that the state was broken. Upon that basic premise were 
heaped its objectionable policies.


Nigel Farage’s Ukip did something similar in Britain last year, playing 
on a basic distrust of “establishment elites” to whip up support for 
Brexit. In last month’s German elections, the insurrectionary, 
hard-right Alternative für Deutschland ambushed the two main parties, 
which polled at record low levels. The AfD’s success was not, 

Hackmeeting 2017 Manifesto: To the Hackers of the Past / Hackmeeting 2037 Release

[Patrice Riemens]

original to: https://es.hackmeeting.org/hm/index.php?title=ManifestoENG

Hackmeeting 2017 Manifesto: To the Hackers of the Past [ENG]
Hackmeeting 2037 Release

This message has been bioencrypted to bypass the Google Guard filter 
against subversive thinking; personal data might have leaked, so it's 
possible that your location has been disclosed and that a team of Amazon 
Cimeks is coming for you.


After 6 years of clandestine activity, the spiders from the Eurasia 
Corporation have broken through the black ice that protected La 
Enredadera and all the organizing hackers have been owned. In his 
Infinite Clemency (TM), Emperor Zuckerberg forbids executions, but every 
hardy individual has been zombified.


Our only hope is to exploit the neocubs from sector 9 have installed in 
Palantir Laboratories, which will allow us to open a 20-year-old 
communication channel into the past. We believe it will be enough to get 
us ahead of the installation of rootkits in citizens' cyber-brains. Our 
goal is to r ancestors with the necessary data to avoid total submission 
to the Google E-Government.


If you've been identified, you have 4 minutes to send us your best 
scripts. We will send them to the hackers of the past when the portal 
opens: from October 12th we will have three days to transfer files and 
consciousnesses. We are counting on you for this transtemporal meeting. 
On behalf of my programmers I apologize for putting you at risk, but the 
situation is untenable. We have to act before we get to this point of no 
return.


AI-Kaos155.


Hackmeeting Manifesto 2037: To the Hackers of the Past

In 2037, Google E-Government succeeded in putting an end to social 
movements, criminalizing activism and eliminating any expression of 
subversive thinking.



The new world government

Google E-Government is the artificial intelligence that manages all 
social systems: health, justice, education, economy, security, traffic, 
etc. The system began with the sale of AIs to powerful governments, so 
that they could take advantage of the analysis of massive data: first 
with the argument of avoiding terrorist attacks, then, they claimed, to 
optimize the economy, and finally to guarantee the welfare of the 
population. Governments, seeking to win elections, progressively became 
dependent on the advisory AIs, and also ended up needing them for the 
management of daily life. Finally, the AIs councillors revealed 
themselves as part of the one single entity and set up the Google 
E-Government for the centralized management of the whole technological 
world.



Privacy is a utopia

All data is centralized and analysed to optimise the company's 
management in accordance with profit maximisation principles. All 
actions and moods have to be shared through social media that for 3 
years have become of mandatory use for all g-citizens. Massive 
cyborgization involves the installation of subcutaneous chips that 
identify the user with their economic, social, political, psychological 
and biometric information. Google E-Government records and analyzes 
every single human act.



Market rules without law or policy

Resisting this system implies absolute social exclusion. Without a 
subcutaneous chip there are no rights, no health, no identity, no 
g-coins. On the contrary, the most successful g-citizens have 
AI-coachers who use mass data to optimize their performance in their 
jobs and daily lives: surrender to the control system esnures massive 
personal advantagesand any resistance is penalized with negative karma 
scores.


There are no longer any laws, the management system based on massive 
data implements detailed modifications of the conditions of service so 
that each citizen behaves in an optimal way. This system is framed as as 
an advanced cultural stage of freedom, progress and well-being. 
Questioning the system is considered a sign of mental illness and 
sociopathy.



Multimedia Inter-Show

Monitoring entertainment, including series, movies, short video clips, 
is used to measure tastes; the AI borg exploits the human desire for 
participation to encourage audience members to become the creators. 
Biometric monitoring records the emotional intensity of the situations 
we live in, telling the cameras we have installed when to start 
recording our lives. An automated system assembles these scenes to 
broadcast them to the liking of the spectators.


In this system, many g-citizens have started to lose their minds and are 
unable to distinguish between the fantasy of the show and their own 
lives. They seek to generate content that can be seen by more people to 
receive more likes, and at the same time compulsively imitate the 
behaviors they see in the spectacular multimedia system that floods 
everything.



The Lords of the Network

To provide itself with human legitimacy, the E-Government has designed 
an automated voting system that elects a world emperor for a period of 
10 years. In the first election, Emperor 

Rutger Bregman: Look at the phone in your hand – you can thank the state for that (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/12/phone-state-private-sector-products-investment-innovation
(bwo Barbara Strebel, with thanks)

 Look at the phone in your hand – you can thank the state for that
Rutger Bregman, The Guardian Opinion, 12 July 2017

We know the private sector has given us life-changing products. But we 
forget that it is state investment that makes innovation possible in the 
first place


• Rutger Bregman is the author of Utopia for Realists (translated by 
Elizabeth Manton)




Who are the visionaries who drive human progress? The answer, as we all 
know, is the geeks, the free spirits and the crazy dreamers, who thumb 
their noses at authority: the Peter Thiels and the Mark Zuckerbergs of 
the world; the likes of Steve Jobs and the Travis Kalanick; the giants 
with an uncompromising vision and an iron will, as though they have 
stepped fresh from the pages of one of Ayn Rand’s novels.


“Innovation,” Steve Jobs once said, “distinguishes between a leader and 
a follower.” Now, if ever there were a prototypical follower, it would 
have to be the government. After all, why else would nearly all the 
innovative companies of our times hail from the United States, where the 
state is much smaller than in Europe?


Media outlets including the Economist and the Financial Times never tire 
of telling us that government’s role is to create the right 
preconditions: good education, solid infrastructure, attractive tax 
incentives for innovative businesses. But no more than that. The idea 
that the cogs in the government machine could divine “the next big 
thing” is, they insist, an illusion.


Take the driving force behind the digital revolution, also known as 
Moore’s law. Back in 1965, the chip designer Gordon Moore was already 
predicting that processor speeds would accelerate exponentially. He 
foresaw “such wonders as home computers”, as well as “portable 
communications equipment” and perhaps even “automatic controls for 
automobiles”.


And just look at us now! Moore’s law clearly is the golden rule of 
private innovation, unbridled capitalism, and the invisible hand driving 
us to ever lofty heights. There’s no other explanation – right? Not 
quite.


For years, Moore’s law has been almost single-handedly upheld by a Dutch 
company – one that made it big thanks to massive subsidisation by the 
Dutch government. No, this is not a joke: the fundamental force behind 
the internet, the modern computer and the driverless car is a government 
beneficiary from “socialist” Holland.


Our story begins on 1 April 1984 in a shed knocked together on an 
isolated lot in Veldhoven, a town in the south of the Netherlands. This 
is where a small startup called ASML first saw the light of day. 
Employing a couple of dozen techies, it was a collaborative venture 
between Philips and ASM International set up to produce “hi-tech 
lithography systems”: in plain English, machines that draw minuscule 
lines on chips.


Fast-forward 25 years, and ASML is a major corporation employing more 
than 13,000 engineers at 70 locations in 16 countries. With a turnover 
of over €5.9 billion (£5.2bn) and earnings of €1.2bn, it is one of the 
most successful Dutch companies, ever. It controls over 80% of the chip 
machine market – the global market, mind you.


In point of fact, the company is the most powerful force upholding 
Moore’s law. For them, this law is not a prediction: it’s a target. The 
iPhone, Google’s search engine, the kitty clips – it would all be 
unthinkable without those crazy Dutch dreamers from Veldhoven.


Naturally, you’ll be wondering who was behind this paragon of 
innovation. The story told by the company itself fits the familiar 
mould, of a handful of revolutionaries who got together and turned the 
world upside down. “It was a matter of hard work, sweat and pure 
determination against almost insurmountable odds,” explains ASML in its 
corporate history. “It is a story of individuals who together achieved 
greatness.”


Government isn’t just there to administer life-support to failing 
markets. Without it, many would not even exist


There’s one protagonist you never find mentioned in these sort of 
stories: government. But dive deep into the archives of newspapers and 
annual reports – back to the early 90s – and another side to this story 
emerges.


From the get-go, ASML was receiving government handouts. By the fistful. 
When in 1986 a crisis in the worldwide chip industry brought ASML to its 
knees, and while several big competitors toppled, the chip machine-maker 
from the south of Holland got a leg-up from its national government. 
“Competitors who had survived the crisis no longer had enough funds to 
develop the next big thing,” explains the company’s site. So while its 
rivals licked their wounds, ASML shot into the lead. Is ASML an anomaly 
in the history of innovation? Not quite.


A few years ago the economist Mariana Mazzucato published a fascinating 

Re: John Harris: Liberals can’t hope to beat Trump until they truly understand him (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2017-09-01 01:06, Morlock Elloi wrote:

Guardian is getting sophisticated, one has to scan 2/3rds of the
article before the obvious sleight of hand:

First, as evidenced by credible academic studies, many voters’ 
recognition

of his lies does not seem to weaken their support for him.


The bs implication here is that the current POTUS lies more than the
previous 44, and that this curiously elevated level of lying prompted
multiple credible academics to engage in credible studies of this
singular lying, and they all came to same conclusions.

The wholesale corruption of academia by the neoliberal left is not
corruption any more, it's a standard. The Guardian does not need
invoke 'experts' for the daily propaganda: now it can invoke the real
thing, the 'academics.'



Funky academics bashing, Morlock, but fact remains that Trump lies are 
different, because totally blatant, upfront, and devoid of any pretense 
to be thruthful. The lies of 44 previous presidents had to be lengthily 
cooked (nowadays 'spon') to give them at least some appearance of 
truth/facts. Trump dispenses with all these niceties. Whether you find 
this shocking or normal is up to you.

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Re: When repression is cheaper than redistribution

[Patrice Riemens]

Well, there is an absurdly simple way to achieve this change of 
calculus, though a costly one - for us: leave the screens, go down in 
the street and start getting killed by the riot police, preferably in 
numbers. No modern 'democratic' dispensation survives that, as Jacques 
Chirac knew all too well. His successors everywhere might be less smart, 
but they shall discover soon enough that lethal repression is very 
costly indeed, as it upsets the cart of the consumption-based economy 
real bad. Of course when Xi-JinPing marches in, what will happen sooner 
rather than later, the whole rule-book will change, but in the meanwhile 
we do have some opportunity to 'change that calculus' ...




On 2017-09-04 10:44, Felix Stalder wrote:

Recently, the German political scientist Ulrike Guérot argued that
digital technologies changed the political calculus of the ruling
elites: repression is now seen as cheaper than redistribution to
maintain the system.

This research, by the Center for Political Studies (CPS), University of
Michigan, puts numbers to this claim.  Advanced democracies spent just
shy of $9 billion to surveil 74% of their population, at a cost of
$10/person. Now, this of course are not the entire costs of the
apparatus of repression, but just indicates how incredibly cheap
surveillance blanket surveillance has become.

To gain any traction for political change, we need to change this
calculus, by making surveillance and repression expensive again.

Felix




http://cpsblog.isr.umich.edu/?p=2129

<...>

While nations worldwide have spent at least $27.1 billion USD (or $7 
per

individual) to surveil 4.138 billion individuals (i.e., 73 percent of
the world population), stable autocracies are the highest per-capita
spenders on mass surveillance. In total, authoritarian regimes have
spent $10.967 billion USD to surveil 81 percent of their populations
(0.1 billion individuals), even though this sub-set of states tends to
have the lowest levels of high-technology capabilities. Stable
autocracies have also invested 11-fold more than any other regime-type,
by spending $110 USD per individual surveilled, followed second-highest
by advanced democracies who have invested $8.909 billion USD in total
($11 USD per individual) covering 0.812 billion individuals (74 percent
of their population). In contrast to high-spending dictatorships and
democracies, developing and emerging democracies have invested $4.784
billion USD (or $1-2 per individual) for tracking 2.875 billion people
(72 percent of their population).

It is possible that in a hyper-globalizing environment increasingly
characterized by non-state economic (e.g., multi-national corporations)
and political (e.g., transnational terror organizations) activity,
nation-states have both learned from and mimicked each other’s
investments in mass surveillance as an increasingly central activity in
exercising power over their polities and jurisdictions. It is also
likely that the technological revolution in digitally-enabled big data
and cloud computing capabilities as well as the ubiquitous digital
wiring of global populations (through mobile telephony and digital
communication) have technically enabled states to access and organize
population-wide data on their citizens in ways not possible in previous
eras.


<>


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John Harris: Liberals can’t hope to beat Trump until they truly understand him (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

Original to: 
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/30/liberals-donald-trump-rightwing-populists

(bwo Evel with thanks)


Liberals can’t hope to beat Trump until they truly understand him
Rightwing populists are operating according to different rules. If 
everything is a circus, who cares about bread?



This week brought a fascinating spectacle indeed: Donald Trump telling 
the unvarnished truth. The occasion was a joint press conference with 
the stoic-looking president of Finland, three days after Hurricane 
Harvey made landfall and Trump simultaneously announced his pardon of 
Joe Arpaio – the notorious former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, 
who was facing a possible jail sentence for defying a court order to 
stop racially profiling Latino people. Up popped the White House 
correspondent for Fox News with a couple of simple questions: why had 
Trump done it, and what was his response to those people who insisted he 
was wrong?


There was no reference here to the announcement’s odorous timing, but 
that was the point Trump chose to address. “In the middle of a 
hurricane, even though it was a Friday evening, I assumed the ratings 
would be far higher than they would be normally,” he said. In other 
words, with Houston succumbing to historic suffering and damage and 
people glued to their TVs, he saw the perfect opportunity to drop yet 
another symbolic stunt: a shameful act by any normal political standards 
– but one that he, being Trump, saw fit to boast about.


We all know the daily drill by now: wake up, check phone, boggle at 
whatever new outrage Trump has perpetrated. We know too that whereas his 
presidency once threatened to follow a halfway substantial agenda – 
America First economics, a withdrawal from commitments abroad, the 
fabled wall – in any practical terms it has now swerved into a swamp of 
confusion and incoherence.


From banning trans people from the US armed forces to America’s 
withdrawal from the Paris climate change accords, his policy 
announcements have plenty of real-world consequences. But they seem 
chiefly chosen for the extent to which they play up the US’s howling 
cultural divisions – while the hourly blasts on Twitter compound the 
sense of an administration running on rhetoric and symbolism rather than 
any prospect of concrete achievement.


Viewed from one perspective, all this might suggest desperation and 
failure. But look at it in a slightly different way, and Trump’s 
approach might just as well point towards political success. Forty years 
of what some people call neoliberalism have long since scaled down most 
people’s expectations of what government can achieve; for most people, 
politics has tended to resemble a distant game, replete with both 
irrelevance and tedium, which leaves 99% of lives untouched. In that 
context, even if he achieves next to nothing, the spectacle of a 
president endlessly provoking the liberal establishment, speaking to the 
prejudices of his electoral base, and putting on the mother of all 
political shows, has an undeniable appeal – to the point that a second 
Trump term might be a more realistic prospect than many would like to 
think.


In a recent issue of the New Yorker, a fascinating article on Trump 
supporters in Grand Junction, Colorado – “a rural place with problems 
that have traditionally been associated with urban areas”, where Trump 
took nearly 65% of the vote – made all this explicit. Before the 
election, voters there had tended to see Trump’s stunts and provocations 
as proof of the combative qualities he would bring to an imagined 
reinvention of America and its economy. Now, his daily antics were 
seemingly close to being the whole point.


“The calculus seemed to have shifted: Trump’s negative qualities, which 
once had been described as a means to an end, now had value of their 
own,” writes Peter Hessler, a rare example of a writer who pushes beyond 
liberal loathing of the president into the reasons why so many people 
support him. “The point wasn’t necessarily to get things done; it was to 
retaliate against the media and other enemies. The assumption has always 
been that, while emotional appeal might have mattered during the 
campaign, the practical impact of a Trump presidency would prove more 
important. Liberals claimed that Trump would fail because his policies 
would hurt the people who had voted for him. But the lack of legislative 
accomplishment seems only to make supporters take more satisfaction in 
Trump’s behaviour.”


As evidenced by Blair or Berlusconi, or any number of pre-Trump US 
presidents, much of politics has long been about performance and 
provocation, and the frequent imperative to distract the public from 
awkward realities. Now the Trump experience suggests a new, surreal era 
with two key elements. First, as evidenced by credible academic studies, 
many voters’ recognition of his lies does not seem to weaken their 
support for him. Second, Trump 

Re: Who said the US is boring?

[Patrice Riemens]

"We can do better"

But we won't.

OK, some of us will - and will have to. But chance is it's 
unsustainable. That is, if we descend into the kind of scenario 
predicted within a total Trumpian meltdown. Yet we don't need to.

It is indeed likely that the US of A will get into some seriously choppy 
waters within a very foreseable future. But the alt.right, the racists, 
the white suprematists and assorted militia won't win, they will meet 
their nemesis instead. Ghetto uprisings have been alluded to. Given the 
number of non-whites, including Latinos, and including non/anti-racist 
whites, it will swan song time for the idiots. It is anyway swan song 
time for the 'sceptered race' - just look around you (and learn 
Chinese!). So if you are a true cynic, you are enjoying the perspective 
of very interesting times indeed by now.

Meanwhile, in the old world, better head by the words of 'Mutti': 
prepare to do without them, and that also includes the Disunited 
Kingdom. 'We' will make it - but then it will be time for the final 
reckoning, to face all the non-spectacle, but far more tricky sangam 
(confluence) of crises that faces us. Good Luck to all!

Cheers from the beach!
(Malinska, Krk island, .hr)
p+2D!
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Re: [spectre] the EU's first rogue state

[Patrice Riemens]

David, I think you are entirely right, but I think these are two 
separate issues: Brexitmadegon in the UK and the total dysfunctioning of 
EUrope. Brexit indeed offered an opportunity for hard re-thinking in 
Bruksel, and it has indeed been missed, we're back at business as usual 
which means pushing the bucket further down the road. So EU's going to 
the wall too, just a bit later than UK (or earlier, who knows).


We're going to the dogs, that's for sure - so maybe time to prepare for 
this at our own scale, on both sides of the channel.


Here's a nice perspective, even though it's sustainability is 
questionable in Mad Max times ...


https://zadforever.blog/

Cheers, p+7D!


On 2017-08-10 10:55, David Garcia wrote:

So Patrice… shouldn't the anti-democratic neo-liberal structures of
the EU, that actually forbid radical
socialist restructuring and are able to enforce these strictures by
means of what Varoufakis called
“fiscal waterboarding” give us some pause for thought?

This leftist scepticism on the constraints that belonging to the EU
club puts on the possibility for implementing
radical socialist (or even social democratic) agendas might help to
explain Corbyn’s lack luster campaign to Remain
(however he tries to spin it). To Corbyn supporters on the list I
would argue that the reason (despite all the protestations)
we know it was lack-luster is because it is now clear what a great
national campaigner he is when his heart is in it.

This puts many Corbyn supporters who are also committed Europeans in a
bind. We saw Franco Barardi’s
anger expressed in his withdrawl from Diem in response to the pitiful
response of the EU to the terrible migration crisis. But retreating
behind socialist versions of nationalist silos or premature
internationalist dreams, are no answer to either the human emergency
of mass migration or the EU’s institutions structural democratic 
deficit.


The UK’s imminent social, generational and economic pain that is
already accompanying Brexit.. will give other members of the club fair
warning of what is at stake when we teare the house down with only a
rickety tent made of abstract nouns (sovereinty and control) to move
into.

Probably the warning that our local plight will send will be good rest
of Europe. But for us living in the UK..not so much. My fear is that
the lesson the EU will learn will be to run back to Mutti and Macron’s
status quo. Seriously that is the wrong lesson..


On 10 Aug 2017, at 08:50, Patrice Riemens <patr...@xs4all.nl> wrote:

That's a point of view. But unfortunately Hungary doesn't provide as 
much comic relief as the Disunited Kingdom, it's totally deflated PM, 
it's rightwingers going at each other's throats, and the whole country 
generally slowly descending in the social and economic meltdown that 
the unavoidable 'Hard Brexit' promises to deliver. Never ming the 
howls of laughter in the Brussels Commission corridors at the 
perspective of lengthily torturing that political entity that made 
them suffer for so long. De Gaulle was right about the UK 'elite', and 
he must enjoy the spectacle from his heavenly abode ...



On 2017-08-09 12:06, heath bunting wrote:

nothing compared to uk
On Wed, 2 Aug 2017, János Sugár wrote:

Is Hungary the EU's first rogue state?
http://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2017/08/hungary-eus-first-rogue-state-viktor-orban-and-long-march-freedom
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Re: [spectre] the EU's first rogue state

[Patrice Riemens]

That's a point of view. But unfortunately Hungary doesn't provide as 
much comic relief as the Disunited Kingdom, it's totally deflated PM, 
it's rightwingers going at each other's throats, and the whole country 
generally slowly descending in the social and economic meltdown that the 
unavoidable 'Hard Brexit' promises to deliver. Never ming the howls of 
laughter in the Brussels Commission corridors at the perspective of 
lengthily torturing that political entity that made them suffer for so 
long. De Gaulle was right about the UK 'elite', and he must enjoy the 
spectacle from his heavenly abode ...



On 2017-08-09 12:06, heath bunting wrote:

nothing compared to uk


On Wed, 2 Aug 2017, János Sugár wrote:


Is Hungary the EU's first rogue state?

http://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2017/08/hungary-eus-first-rogue-state-viktor-orban-and-long-march-freedom
__
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Info, archive and help:
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Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Raphaële Chappe: The Supermanagerial Reich (LARB)

[Patrice Riemens]

Don't know where I got this one from, but it's super good, immo, and 
super-creepy!


Original to: 
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-supermanagerial-reich/


The Supermanagerial Reich

By Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Raphaële Chappe
Los Angeles review of Books, November 7, 2016



POPULAR CULTURE IS REPLETE with cartoonish depictions of Nazism. Hitler 
seems to emerge suddenly, as if he had been waiting in the wings as a 
fait accompli. One moment it’s Weimar decadence, really good art, and 
Stormtroopers and communists fighting in the streets. The next, 
Hindenburg is handing Adolf the keys to the kingdom and it’s all 
torchlight parades, Triumph of the Will, and plaintive Itzhak Perlman 
violins. Hitler rises above a reborn Reich as a kind of totalitarian 
god. All aspects of life come under his control through the Nazi party’s 
complete domination of German life. Of course, this is not really how it 
worked.


Before Hitler achieved his genocidal powers, there were years of what we 
would now call “intense partisan bickering,” decreasing prosperity, and 
violence in the streets. In the end, Hitler cobbled together a rickety 
coalition of business-minded technocrats, traditional conservatives, 
military interests, and his own radical ethno-nationalists into a 
plausible government. As the new government consolidated its power, 
thousands of communists and trade unionists were subjected to harsh 
suppression and were among the first to be shipped away to what would 
eventually become the concentration camps. And yet for a time, life for 
the overwhelming majority of Germans — even briefly for German Jews — 
went on largely as it had in the Weimar era. There was clearly a new 
regime in town, but most Germans got up in the mornings in the 
mid-to-late 1930s and went to work, just as they had in the 1920s. 
January through March of 1933 was not 1776, 1789, 1791, 1917, or even 
1979. Far from the world turning upside down, things were strangely 
continuous for many Germans as though nothing much had happened at all. 
For a few Germans, things were astoundingly better.


With the global rise of demagogues of the far-right like Donald Trump, 
Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orban, Narendra Modi, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, 
“fascism” is on the tip of everyone’s tongues. Water-cooler 
conversations turn around these strongmen or strongmen-in-waiting and 
their potential to tower over the political landscape of the 21st 
century. Second- and thirdhand versions of Hannah Arendt and Theodor 
Adorno have become a welcome addition to the American media landscape. 
We are all deeply invested in the ideology and psychology of fascism.


Yet, for all this talk of fascism in the air, it’s remarkable how much 
we have come to accept predominantly ideological and psychological — as 
opposed to formally political and economic — frames for our arguments. 
Few people want to talk about how fascist societies like Nazi Germany 
actually functioned, how they were built, who made them work, and why. 
But when we do, a much sharper image emerges, in which an idiosyncratic 
economic and political structure is more clearly visible.


In Nazi Germany, economic history shows us a rapid change in the 
distribution of income and the emergence of a managerial elite who 
obtained an outsized share of national income, not just the 
now-proverbial one percent, but the top 0.1 percent. These were Nazi 
Germany’s equivalent to today’s so-called “supermanagers” (to use Thomas 
Piketty’s now famous term). This parallel with today’s neoliberal 
society calls for a closer examination of the place of supermanagers in 
both regimes, with illuminating and unsettling implications.


Behemoth: The Political Economy of Nazism

Thinkers like Adorno and Arendt tended to approach Nazism through the 
lens of philosophy. They accepted Nazi self-assertions of 
“totalitarianism”; that a total, unified society was bound together 
through identification with party and leader, that all was driven 
through a Volksgemeinschaft (national community, or the consciousness of 
being part of an “authentic” national community). The reality was 
considerably messier. Adorno’s colleague Franz Neumann considered the 
same questions from the vantages of political economy and law. Far from 
“state capitalism,” where the profit motive is eliminated and production 
is under the complete control of the state, Neumann noted that under 
Nazism, business — especially large corporate interests — was given 
extraordinary leeway. They did not have perfect free rein, but large 
business interests were relieved of many previous social democratic 
restrictions. Independent labor organizations were crushed, and business 
was allowed to coagulate into massive, profit-generating monopolies as 
long as it produced the necessary goods and services the party and the 
army required.


The closer Neumann looked at the day-to-day operations of Nazism, the 
less convinced he was that one could call Nazi 

Howard Jacobson: The world has lost a great artist in mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

original to:


The world has lost a great artist in mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani
Howard Jacobson
The Guardian, Saturday 29 July 2017

‘Maryam Mirzakhani’s death will be felt by poets as well as 
mathematicians.’


The mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani died two weeks ago. She was 40. I 
had never heard of her before reading about her death in the papers. 
It’s a piercingly sad story: Iranian-born, and latterly a professor at 
Stanford University, Mirzakhani was the only woman to have won the 
Fields medal, the equivalent for a mathematician of the Nobel prize, and 
is survived, in newspaper-speak, by a husband and a daughter.


I always find the locution “survived by” too cruel to bear. So final the 
rupture, no room for error: she’s gone, they’re left. And, in this case, 
how young the mother and the wife.


It is a sad story for other reasons, too, not least the intensity of 
Mirzakhani’s expression in the photograph most of the papers used. There 
is a beauty that can only be described as that of the mind’s migration 
to the face, the transfiguring beauty of exceptional intelligence. So 
it’s a double loss: the premature loss of a person and the premature 
loss of her genius.


I remember there being an unspoken qualitative distinction at school 
between those who were good at maths and science – the priests of 
numbers and symbols – and the more poetical of us, whose medium, as 
Wordsworth had it, was the language of men talking to men. The 
assumption, at least on the part of us Wordsworthians, was that 
creativity was all on our side. I have since come to think the word 
“creative” has much to answer for. Among the freedoms it sometimes gave 
us was the freedom from structure, knowledge and the obligation to 
convince.

Howard Jacobson: ‘My personal trainer has me doing tai chi’
Read more

Mirzakhani, it is said, considered being a writer before turning to 
mathematics. It is unlikely she believed she’d made a choice in favour 
of an inferior, or less artistic, discipline. And she expressed her 
immersion in mathematics in language every writer will recognise – “like 
being lost in a jungle and trying to use all the knowledge you can 
gather to come up with some new tricks, and with luck you might find a 
way out”.


The luck, of course, is no such thing. It’s the mystery Keats called 
“negative capability”, the trust that the work will do itself if only we 
dare to plunge without irritability or insistence into the dark, not 
sure we will find a way out at all. The best writing happens in this 
way, unintended, unknowing, grateful and surprised. Such abnegation of 
will is what we mean by creativity. So the mathematician and the artist 
are companioned in the same dark, and do obeisance to the same gods. The 
pity of Mirzakhani’s death will be felt by poets as well as 
mathematicians.

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In Memoriam Maryam Mirzakhani

[Patrice Riemens]

from Il Manifesto, July 16, 2017
https://ilmanifesto.it/addio-a-maryam-mirzakhani/


Il suo nome suscitò simpatia e stupore quando nel 2013 ricevette la 
Medaglia Fields per il suo lavoro di ricerca in matematica e geometria. 
Il premio, considerato il Nobel per la matematica, a Maryam Mirzakhani 
suscitò dunque stupore, perché era la prima donna ad essere premiata con 
la medaglia Shield. Stupore, perché Maryam Mirzakhani era nata e aveva 
frequentato, svolto i primi studi in Iran, paese dove la circolazione 
del sapere era limitata dalll’embargo stabilito da molti paesi, a 
partire dagli Stato Uniti. Ed era proprio negli Usa che la matematica 
iraniana si era trasferita, agli inizi dei primi anni del nuovo 
millennio, per svolgere un master universitario dopo la laurea alla 
Sharif University of Technology di Tehran. Alla notizia della medaglia 
Fields, Maryam Mirzakhani dichiarò che quel premio era per tutte le 
donne che fanno ricerca, studiano, senza cercare la luce dei riflettori 
e della fama. Continuò il suo lavoro di docente negli Stati Uniti, 
sottraendosi alle continue sollecitudini di apparire sui media. Anche la 
diagnosi di un cancro al seno fu mantenuta riservata. In questi anni ha 
continuato a studiare, fare ricerca, combattendo la sua battaglia 
personale contro il cancro. Ieri la notizia della sua morte.


https://mathematics.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/connections-images/maryam-mirzakhani/Mirzakhani_original.jpg

PS put this in Google Translate, and be prepared for a (very) nasty 
surprise ...

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Rowland Atkinson: London, whose city? (LMD)

[Patrice Riemens]

original to: https://mondediplo.com/2017/07/06london#nh6

London, whose city?

Architectural follies, and their ruins, have consequences

The fire that destroyed Grenfell Tower and killed so many who lived
there made clear what many have felt for years: London has become a
city for capital not people. It builds for financial transactions, not
for homes.

by Rowland Atkinson
Le Monde diplomatique, July 2017.

Government ministers seen as responsible for unceasing cuts to public
services gave uncomfortable street interviews after a massive fire
rapidly engulfed Grenfell Tower, a public housing block in one of
London’s most affluent districts. The disaster made clear the
terrible results of ideological commitments to cut corners and costs
in building safety regulations, including the installation of what may
have been fire-conducting cladding. Besides the anger and trauma at
the loss of life (some 80 dead), people are questioning the political
and economic choices that forced low-cost safety choices. There is a
strong sense that poor people matter less in a city run for the rich.

Cutting funds to local authorities and public services, and red
tape around health and safety regulations, combined with deep
social inequalities to produce a catastrophe with major political
repercussions. The tower was in the Royal Borough of Kensington and
Chelsea, a parliamentary constituency that changed in the general
election, by just 20 votes, from Conservative to Labour for the first
time, mostly due to concerns over housing. The borough ran budget
surpluses and offered council tax rebates, while choosing to do public
housing maintenance and safety on the cheap. London’s inequalities
are most evident in the social geography of its inner western zones,
where public estates offer vital affordable housing to those on no and
low incomes among multi-million pound homes whose prices are inflated
by offshore investment capital and wealthy buyers.

The slow-motion social disaster of austerity created a burnt-out
landmark as a visible symbol of the callous political choices of the
past decade. People sensed that the poor mattered less and got a raw
deal in social and physical protection; some began to feel that the
disaster might even be part of a plan to rid the area of unsightly
low-income housing and poor people. The disaster seemed the defining
moment of a precarious government struggling to build an alliance to
govern, as promises to posture aggressively at Brexit negotiations
were being broken.

The mood of London and its populace is changing. There is a sense
of possibility that may generate more emphatic changes at future
elections, with a now engaged youth vote and new respect for
Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn. People are asking who London is for, and
the answer isn’t capital. The Grenfell disaster has led to calls to
invest in and reconstruct high-quality and affordable housing, and to
recognise that declining public investment and the callous treatment
of the urban poor are the problem, not public housing. Massive
inequalities

Most of London’s current and future high-rises aren’t public
housing (1). More than 400 high-rise developments are now in progress
or have received planning permission. Almost none of their homes will
be affordable, and very few are public housing. In the stories now
told of London’s massive inequalities and housing problems, the
private towers signal the city’s social extremes and the inability
of state or market to resolve social needs. These pads are intended
for the global elite and look like a disposable environment that fits
the need, in many cases, to rest money. The ‘community’ imagined
by starchitects and estate agents on billboards and in brochures is a
sales pitch to a floating class of the rich and investors. Whatever
drugs the architects of the gold apartment block at Battersea Power
Station were on, their inspiration was a pound sign, not the floating
pig on Pink Floyd’s Animals album cover. Much of the development
along the Thames is a parody of place and a mirage of communal life.
These are dead spaces and dwellings, their lifelessness important for
the realisation of maximum exchange value, rather than being valued
for their residential use. The question of who benefits from such
development is an ongoing irritant to managers and politicians.

London’s position as a beacon for the global super-rich has not been
good news for its wider population. When the good times rolled, they
were marked by an aggressive expansion of gentrification, private
tenant evictions, the demolition of dozens of public estates, welfare
reforms and household displacement. The investment and destruction may
be related; with Brexit deliberations, the potentially negative role
of international investment has been glossed over by London’s elite.

Social philosopher Erich Fromm might be a ghost guide to the new
follies and ruins created by investors and developers; in later
life he was exercised by our culture’s 

Paul Mason: Jeremy Corbyn has read Antonio Gramsci (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/commentisfree/2017/jun/12/paul-mason-jeremy-corbyn-defeat-ruling-elite-antonio-gramsci

Jeremy Corbyn​ has won the first battle in a long ​war​ against the 
ruling elite
by Paul Mason, The Guardian, June 13, 2017.

Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci understood that before taking power,
the left must disrupt and defy common sense – just as Labour
defeated the proposition that ‘Corbyn can’t win’

To stop Jeremy Corbyn, the British elite is prepared to abandon Brexit
– first in its hard form and, if necessary, in its entirety. That
is the logic behind all the manoeuvres, all the cant and all the mea
culpas you will see mainstream politicians and journalists perform
this week.

And the logic is sound. The Brexit referendum result was supposed
to unleash Thatcherism 2.0 – corporate tax rates on a par with
Ireland, human rights law weakened, and perpetual verbal equivalent
of the Falklands war, only this time with Brussels as the enemy; all
opponents of hard Brexit would be labelled the enemy within.

But you can’t have any kind of Thatcherism if Corbyn is prime
minister. Hence the frantic search for a fallback line. Those revolted
by the stench of May’s rancid nationalism will now find it liberally
splashed with the cologne of compromise.

Labour has, quite rightly, tried to keep Karl Marx out of the
election. But there is one Marxist whose work provides the key to
understanding what just happened. Antonio Gramsci, the Italian
communist leader who died in a fascist jail in 1937, would have had
no trouble understanding Corbyn’s rise, Labour’s poll surge, or
predicting what happens next. For Gramsci understood what kind of war
the left is fighting in a mature democracy, and how it can be won.

Consider the events of the past six weeks a series of unexpected
plot twists. Labour starts out polling 25% but then scores 40%. Its
manifesto is leaked, raising major questions of competence, but
it immediately boosts Corbyn’s popularity. Britain is attacked
by terrorists but it is the Tories whose popularity dips. Diane
Abbott goes sick – yet her majority rises to 30,000. Sitting Labour
candidates campaign on the premise “Corbyn cannot win” yet his
presence delivers a 10% boost to their own majorities.

None of it was supposed to happen. It defies political “common
sense”. Gramsci was the first to understand that, for the working
class and the left, almost the entire battle is to disrupt and defy
this common sense. He understood that it is this accepted common sense
– not MI5, special branch and the army generals – that really
keeps the elite in power.

Once you accept that, you begin to understand the scale of Corbyn’s
achievement. Even if he hasn’t won, he has publicly destroyed the
logic of neoliberalism – and forced the ideology of xenophobic
nationalist economics into retreat.

Brexit was an unwanted gift to British business. Even in its softest
form it means 10 years of disruption, inflation, higher interest rates
and an incalculable drain on the public purse. It disrupts the supply
of cheap labour; it threatens to leave the UK as an economy without a
market. 

But the British ruling elite and the business class are not the same
entity. They have different interests. The British elite are in fact
quite detached from the interests of people who do business here. They
have become middle men for a global elite of hedge fund managers,
property speculators, kleptocrats, oil sheikhs and crooks. It was in
the interests of the latter that Theresa May turned the Conservatives
from liberal globalists to die-hard Brexiteers.

The hard Brexit path creates a permanent crisis, permanent austerity
and a permanent set of enemies – namely Brussels and social
democracy. It is the perfect petri dish for the fungus of financial
speculation to grow. But the British people saw through it. Corbyn’s
advance was not simply a result of energising the Labour vote. It was
delivered by an alliance of ex-Ukip voters, Greens, first-time voters
and tactical voting by the liberal centrist salariat.

The alliance was created in two stages. First, in a carefully
costed manifesto Corbyn illustrated, for the first time in 20
years, how brilliant it would be for most people if austerity ended
and government ceased to do the work of the privatisers and the
speculators. Then, in the final week, he followed a tactic known in
Spanish as la remontada – the comeback. He stopped representing the
party and started representing the nation; he acted against stereotype
– owning the foreign policy and security issues that were supposed
to harm him. Day by day he created an epic sense of possibility.

The ideological results of this are more important than the
parliamentary arithmetic. Gramsci taught us that the ruling class does
not govern through the state. The state, Gramsci said, is just the
final strongpoint. To overthrow the power of the elite, you have to
take trench after trench laid down in their defence.

Tim Farron: Theresa May can’t be trusted to get it right on counter-terrorism policy (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

Original to: 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/05/theresa-may-trusted-counter-terrorism-policy

Theresa May can’t be trusted to get it right on counter-terrorism policy
The PM has a record of poor decisions and did the police a huge 
disservice when she prioritised ineffective mass surveillance over local 
intelligence-gathering


Theresa May set out her position on Sunday, stating, “Enough is enough.” 
It was a highly political speech that set out the choices she intends to 
make that will affect all of us: our security, our freedoms and the way 
we live our lives. These are important choices with important 
consequences. But the real choice is between what works and what 
doesn’t. In her rhetoric, Theresa May is ignoring her own record of 
wrong choices, both as home secretary and prime minister, and continuing 
down the wrong path.

Theresa May accused the police of crying wolf over the impact of cuts to 
their numbers, and their concerns that the public were being put in 
danger. However, the blunt reality is that the one decision she could 
take that would have the single biggest impact is to reverse those cuts. 
In the choice between cuts to corporation tax and properly funding our 
police, we should fund our police. Let’s be clear: fewer police on the 
beat means fewer conversations, less information being passed on and 
less knowledge about who’s who, and who needs to be kept under 
surveillance.

The prime minister is right to talk about the challenges the internet 
brings – and how radical jihadist ideology has been allowed to thrive. 
But these issues are not going be solved with political gimmicks or by 
banning particular technologies. Instead of posturing, politicians need 
to work with technology companies such as Facebook, Twitter and 
WhatsApp, and with other countries, to develop solutions that work to 
keep people safe. The alternative is a government that monitors and 
controls the internet in the way that China or North Korea does. If we 
turn the internet into a tool for censorship and surveillance, the 
terrorists will have won. We won’t make ourselves safer by making 
ourselves less free.
Advertisement

When we lent our support to the government for extending air strikes 
against so-called Islamic State in Syria, one of the Liberal Democrats’ 
key demands was a report into foreign funding of extremism here in 
Britain. The then-prime minister, David Cameron, agreed to that demand. 
Theresa May now has a choice. Does she publish that report, or keep it 
hidden? Theresa May talks of the need to have some difficult and 
sometimes embarrassing conversations. That should include exposing and 
rooting out the source funding of terror, even it means difficult and 
embarrassing conversations with those such as Saudi Arabia that the 
government claims are our allies.

And what of community engagement? Theresa May’s Prevent strategy has 
failed. The anti-radicalisation programme, meant to stop young minds 
being captured by violent extremists, was described by the home affairs 
select committee as toxic. It’s not trusted. David Anderson, the former 
independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said: “Prevent is 
controversial, to the point where reputable community organisations 
refuse to engage with it.” We have a government anti-terrorism 
engagement strategy that isn’t trusted and doesn’t listen to 
communities, even when they do try to speak out about those such as 
Salman Abedi who are considered a danger. In the choice between 
ineffective mass surveillance, and investment in the sort of 
intelligence we are told is best – on the ground and closest to our 
communities, trusted and appreciated – Theresa May chose the former 
through the Investigatory Powers Act.
Prevent is failing. Any effective strategy must include Muslim 
communities

I trust our police and security services. Their lightning-quick response 
to Saturday’s atrocity shows they stand ready and prepared to protect 
us. They have some of the most extensive powers in any democracy 
anywhere in the world. However, politicians do them the greatest 
disservice when they offer tough rhetoric while hollowing out the very 
mechanisms they need to protect us.

In the choices we make, we should provide the resources necessary for 
those who keep us safe to do their jobs with the powers they have been 
given. We should also jealously guard the hard-won liberties that define 
us as a country. If we make the wrong choices, those who seek to change 
our way of life have won.

Tim Farron is the leader of the UK Liberal Democratic Party

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Subhashish Panigrahi: Indian language Odia Wikipedia turning 15 this

[Patrice Riemens]

Bwo Frederick Noronha/Bytes for All readers

(Odia is an Indi-Aryan Indian language, mostly spoken in Odisha 
-formerly Orissa- in Eastern India:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odia_language)

There exist 23 Indian-language Wikipedias, and the oldest one is turning
15

Born in 2002, the Odia-language Wikipedia is celebrating its 15th
birthday on June 3.

By Subhashish Panigrahi

The Odia-language Wikipedia is celebrating its 15th birthday on June 3.
Born in 2002, just a year after the English Wikipedia, the first ever
Wikipedia went live. Odia might not be there in  the Google Translate,
but as one of the three oldest languages of the Indian subcontinent it
also has the oldest Indian-language Wikipedia. June 3 marks first ever
edit in Odia-language by an anonymous editor.

Along with Odia, Assamese, Malayalam and Punjabi Wikipedia were also
born in the same year. Today, there exist 23 Wikipedias, the latest
entrant to the family being Tulu, in 23 different Indian languages.

Odia Wikipedia is a compendium of 12,619 encyclopedic articles written
by only a handful volunteer editors, also known as Uikialis (Odia for
Wikipedian or Wikipedia editor). Though the project is 15 years old, it
was dormant for about nine years until a couple of editors started
actively contributing and building a community around it in 2011.

Slowly these editors spread out, reached out to more people, and the
content sprawled to more subject areas when subject experts started
contributing related to their domain expertise. Just like any other
Wikipedia, Odia Wikipedia is never going to be complete, but will
continue to mature.

When there are over 350 articles related to Medicine, there are only two
articles related to feminism. The reason behind that is simple. A
Wikipedian would often contribute to either a subject area that they are
interested in, or an expert in. For instance, when a veteran doctor and
assistant professor of a medical school translated hundreds of
medicine-related articles, there were not many editors to do the same
for the articles about feminism.

Not all the editors are subject experts themselves, many
Wikipedians--like Pritiranjan Tripathy who has contributed the largest
number of biographical articles, and Sangram Kesari Senapati who has
written several articles on Indian movies and actors--actually
contribute for articles that they are personally interested in.

The contributor community of these Wikipedians have also worked in
bringing two other Wikimedia projects--Odia Wikisource, an online
library of freely-licensed books, and Odia Wiktionary, a dictionary with
the meanings of native words that are equivalent of foreign language
vocabulary. Though the community is small, there is a wide mixture of
people of all professions, most importantly open source software
developers. This has helped the community build many tools that they
themselves and the larger society is using.

One of them is a converter that helps anyone convert text typed in
legacy encoding systems into Unicode, a universal and contemporary
alphabet encoding standard. There are hundreds and thousands of text in
multiple non-standard legacy encodings that has been typed in the recent
past, and are being typed currently by writers, publications,
journalists and media houses. Because of the use of such diverse
encoding systems, the content is never searchable on the Internet nor
reproducible.

This converter has transformed the state of the language on the web.
This and many other software that have been developed by the community
have been released under open licenses along with the source code. Many
of the software are also built in collaboration with the global and
other Indian-language open source contributors.

Globally, there are 285 active Wikipedias in diverse world languages and
each of these Wikipedias is looked up by millions of viewers every
single moment. In India, Wikimedia India chapter, Access to Knowledge
(CIS-A2K) at the Centre for Internet and Society, Punjabi Wikimedians,
West Bengal Wikimedians User Group, and Karavali Wikimedians are
designated as movement affiliates that operate with some institutional
framework managed by either/both volunteers and paid professionals.

But outside these collectives, there exist a few thousand volunteers
that have been constantly driving the open movement in their native
languages.

Author bio:

Subhashish Panigrahi is a Bangalore-based educator, communications,
partnership and community strategist, and a long time Free/Libre and
Open Source advocate and contributor. He has worked over six years in
global nonprofits like Mozilla, the Centre for Internet and Society

Contact: +91 8050515339, psubhash...@gmail.com

-- 

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Re: Fwd: Neoliberalism & alt-rght trolls

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2017-05-26 00:00, Florian Cramer wrote:
> On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 3:30 PM, Gabriella "Biella" Coleman <
> enid.cole...@mcgill.ca> wrote:
> 
>> I hope people did not actually think I am claiming the right and new
>> (and Internet-enabled) manifestations of it don't exist out of the
>> United States. That was not my point about the chans/alt-right. And 
>> sure
>> it can take off and kick off in those parts, though it has not done so
>> yet and it's just a bit harder compared to Anonymous which was begging
>> for adoption due to its early activist configuration.
> 
> It has done so in the Netherlands, with the full package of chan
> culture, Pepe memes and a politician of the extreme right rising
> in the elections literally wearing Pepe on his shoulder - no, not
> Wilders but the still-less-known Thierry Baudet and his new FvD party.
> (Coincidentally or not, the leaders of the Dutch Pirate Party defected
> to this party in late 2016, as I just recently learned from friends
> who are more in the loop.)
> 
> -F


All true (and put more rationally than my usual NL-bashing - no
apology, though ;-)

Thanks God, NL is a small country, because, with Thierry Baudet, and
the attraction he exercises in the country, one reaches the depths in
terms of dark intellectual and political matter.

Baudet is a young, dynamic, and highly certified intellectual/academic
'political pundit' (OK, if very thin, Wikipedia entry :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thierry_Baudet - and check out pics,
they tell 1000 words)

His alleged assertion to the effect that he is "the most important
intellectual of his generation in the Netherlands" might,
unfortunately, be justified. He is surely the most famous one. With
him, we have a kind of belated, Dutch version of the French 'nouveaux
philosophes' (Glucksmann, BHL, etq) - with a vengeance.

Thierry Baudet is very careful to 'tactically' keep his distance
towards Geert Wilders' demagogic approach (Wilders is another case of
not being really what he appears - continuing a method launched by Pim
Fortuyn - who had more panache). But he panders to exactly the same
constituencies' retrograde sentiments.

His well-known opinions against the EU, non-Western immigration,
and in favor of a return to a nationalist nation state, are in
my view not as frightening as is less publicised ones: a craving
for an elected dictatorship, which in NL would not be a 'strong
man' a la Theresa May ;-) but a collective of regents, as there
were so many when the 'VOC Mentality' (yet another Dutch wannabee
intellectual aberation) reigned supreme in the Low Countries (as in:
)

- and, just as in our 'Golden Era', the reinstitution of the death
penalty.

On his blog (https://wltrrr.wordpress.com/ - in Dutch) nettimer Walter
van der Cruijsen is a regular and perceptive analyst of Baudet's
not-so-subliminal messages. Maybe he could be persuaded to go a bit
more into this weird UTO ...

cheers from Bruksel, now vacated, together with his 'Beast', by 'the 
Donald' (pity Sicily ...)
p+2D!



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Re: Neoliberalism & alt-rght trolls

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2017-05-16 15:17, Gabriella "Biella" Coleman wrote:

> 
> Just to take two examples: As you note, above, the alt-right demands
> economic nationalism (in their own language they are anti-globalist).
> Anonymous, once it broke free of the chans became a far fling
> internationalist movement with nodes in India, Malaysia, the
> Philippines, Canada, South Africa, Australia, Japan, nearly every
> country in Latin America, Europe, even the Dominican Republic... Makes
> sense given their philosophy is premised an a radical opensourceness,
> repeating the mantra--anyone can be Anonymous--that allowed it to
> spread far and wide.
> 
> The Alt-right has failed to expand internationally and currently is
> configured largely as an American phenomena, so much so, that when
> they tried to meddle in the election in France, they failed.
> 
> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/technology/french-elections-alt-right-fake-news-le-pen-macron.html
> 
> 

While the alt.right might have flopped in France in its Anglo 
configuration - since France has a much older and far more efficient 
alternative, thank you very much - remember the French revolution, 
unlike the American one, was profoundly political, and hence has still 
not been properly digested, as Zhou EnLai noted. But in the Netherlands 
it is very much alive and kicking. That should not come as a surprise 
from that misty, muddy appendage in the European delta which for long 
has been a swamp for the most diluted and debased Anglo culture. (OK, 
that was our Dutch bashing session for the day)



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Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2017-04-06 04:01, d...@geer.org wrote:
> Praising disobedience on a page that doesn't work if you refuse 
> Javascript...

Curious what Unc'Karl would have said about the irresoluble 
contradictions of the Digital ...



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Re: [spectre] Lex CEU

[Patrice Riemens]

Problem is that in the specific Hungarian case (and all cases are 
specific) is that it raises the spectre/ skeletton in the cupboard 
called 'Trianon', the evil treaty that dismembered the 
Austrian-Hungarian empire after WWI punishing it far more than it did 
punish imperial Germany. Etnicity in the Hungarian context is both an 
issue of (allegedly non-Hungarian) foreigners within Hungary and alleged 
(Hungarian) foreigners in almost all countries around it. Irresolluble 
within the current dispensation, while the only way out would be 'more 
Europe', not less.


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On the Biggie Brexit Bandobust (re: Laurie Penny's Despair)

[Patrice Riemens]

This is a core statement:

"I’ve spent the better part of my youth thinking up creative insults for 
these men, trying to form and reform the contempt and disgust that 
almost everyone who came of age in the UK after the financial crash 
feels for the way these people have pissed all over our futures and told 
us to enjoy the gentle British rain. But now, when it comes to it, I 
find I can’t summon the bile. I can’t access the heat of rage that kept 
me writing all those late nights in filthy flatshares in between jobs, 
as my friends descended into pits of depression and anxiety and gave up 
on their potential, as more and more young people came out to protest 
and met only the business ends of police batons. I haven’t the energy to 
be angry, not right now. I don’t even feel contempt for these bloated 
little hypocrities that fucked up my country and cauterized the futures 
of almost everyone I care about. I feel nothing at all about them, still 
less for the millions of people they conned and called it democracy. 
It’s all catastrophically sad, and it’s going to be sad for a very long 
time."

Brexit is truly the end-of-the-road for Europe. Theresa May, meaning 
what she represents, is far worse than Donald Trump and everything that 
is behind him. Trumps is not a show, but the show elements in him/it 
feeds its opposition big time, even if unintentionally. May's politics, 
are like a cold, almost robotic, steel instrument cutting through the 
social fabric - meeting no effective opposition, because effective 
political opposition is impossible within the current socio-economic 
dispensation prevailing in England specifically, but in large tracks of 
Europe generally.

So if we want to keep our heart working (Laurie Penny again), it might 
be good, before acting, to have a (yet another ;-) look at our current 
(meta-?)political predicament: the collapse of 'the Left'.

I'll start with a proposition: the Right is subjectively divided, but 
objectively united, whereas it is the reverse with the Left: thinking 
it's one when it is so irremediably (for the moment) divided. And the 
simple reason for thar is: class.

Undoubtedly, the elephant in the room is the '1%' - actually it's a 
herd. And the biggest problem is that the herd getting larger by the 
day. Such a momentum makes it irresistibly atractive to the still rather 
large demography just under it  (aka 'middle classes'). Happily 
forgetting that for every new millionaire born, nine, or nineteen, or 
twenty-nine, or whatever number of people from that very same demography 
gets demoted to the level they most fear: the wrong half of the '99%'. 
No, they all think they are going 'to make it' thanks to their hard work 
and talent, and if not, that they will have failed, like the rest, the 
nine, nineteen, twenty-nine, etcetera.

'Losers! Such Losers' the Donald would blurt ...

It is a replica of sorts, at the level of society as a whole, of what 
has been observed in agriculture over the past 50 years or more: a 
constant, remorseless consolidation where the 'winners' went to look at 
their former collegues and equals as legitimate roadkills - not victims 
of the hazard of circumstances, but people who simply 'didn't have it'.

This 'false consciousness' cements the unity of the Right, drawing to it 
an electoral majority of supporters for the perfectly wrong reasons. And 
their day of reckoning is nowhere in sight.

But on the Left, the split is even more profound. Mostly a question of 
class, the Left has its rich (in 'power, knowledge, and income') and its 
poor (idem) too, but also of way of thinking - or maybe of thinking tout 
court. Remember: the Right does not think - that is where all conspiracy 
theories flounder - it simply does, or maybe better: it simply _is_. The 
eternal mistake of the Left, especially its more 'moderate' parts, is to 
believe that coming up with perfectly reasonable proposals which are 
bound to benefit everybody will convince a majority to vote for it.

Well, it won't.

But even before that, the established ('rich') part of the Left has 
been, and remain eternally unable to phrase a coherent programme that 
would benefit the majority of common people (the 'poor') - let alone to 
implement it when it is in power - look at France, where the socialist 
party has the presidency, the majority in both houses, presides over the 
largest number of provinces, and 'mayors' most large towns. Outcome: 
near-total stagnation + foreign military adventures ...

Why? Because most 'reasonable' (or 'rich') Left people do not 
understand, and have nothing to say, to the still vast majority of 'the 
poor'. Not at the level of 'gut feelings', which the Right is so apt at 
raising in the first place (out of nowhere? well, mostly), and then at 
exploiting to the tilt, but at the level of ordinary, everyday life, 
with all it brings in terms of challenges, issues, despair (amidst the 
ruins left by austerity for instance), but also of 

Charles Ferguson: Trump's real issue is his threat to the internet

[Patrice Riemens]

original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/27/trump-free-speech-media-bans-tweets-internet-deregulation


Forget Trump’s tweets and media bans. The real issue is his threat to 
the internet

Deregulation could allow the president to undermine freedom of speech in 
a way that was beyond even Nixon



Monday 27 February 2017

In one of the most jaw-dropping press conferences of all time, this 
month President Trump declared war on the entire news media, except Fox 
News and Alex Jones of InfoWars. Last week he doubled down with his 
speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, on the same day 
that the Guardian, New York Times, BBC and CNN were among news 
organisations barred from a press briefing.

All of this is occurring at a time of unprecedented financial pressure 
on the news media. For newspapers and magazines, both advertising and 
readership are shifting rapidly from print to the internet. Print 
advertising and circulation revenues are declining sharply.

Furthermore, as readership shifts to the internet, digital advertising 
revenues are shifting even more sharply away from the news publications 
themselves to the small number of technology companies that send them 
traffic. Facebook and Google now capture the overwhelming majority of 
digital advertising revenues.

When the Washington Post and New York Times, among others, faced off 
against the Nixon administration over the secret bombing of Cambodia, 
the Pentagon papers and then Watergate, they were enormously profitable, 
secure companies. So were Time, Newsweek, and other news magazines; and 
so, despite their dependence on regulation by the Federal Communications 
Commission, were the three television networks.

That world is gone. Newsrooms are being downsized, starting with 
investigative journalism, the most expensive kind of reporting. The 
Washington Post has sold itself to Amazon. The Los Angeles Times and 
Chicago Tribune are basically bankrupt. None of the major television 
networks or cable channels are independent any more, and most of them 
are under increasing financial pressure.
Advertisement

Against this backdrop, however alarming Trump’s attacks on the media 
are, they are less significant than other actions that, paradoxically, 
have received far less media coverage – but that present a very real 
threat to journalism and freedom of speech in America.

Donald Trump lost no time installing Ajit Pai as the new chairman of the 
FCC, which regulates broadcast and internet media. Pai has stated that 
he opposes net neutrality, the principle whereby service providers and 
regulators treat all data the same. Since his appointment Pai declined 
to say whether he will enforce existing neutrality rules, but if these 
rules are overturned then the small number of companies that dominate US 
internet access will be permitted to promote content of their choosing, 
placing other content and its providers at a disadvantage.

Pai has reversed a recent FCC decision that would have opened the 
provision of cable set-top boxes to competition. The move allows cable 
companies to retain control of not only set-top boxes, but also the 
software and programming content passing through them. This of course 
runs counter to Trump’s avowed principle of helping the little guy, etc 
– but that is no longer a surprise. Pai also blocked a programme 
designed to provide internet access to rural and low-income households.

There is potentially far more. The FCC holds sway over all 
telecommunications. As the newspaper and magazine industries convert to 
digital formats, they become dependent on services subject to FCC 
regulation. Given Trump’s personality, track record and various 
statements, it does not seem insane to worry that he might try to use 
the FCC to exert political pressure on the news media. It has been tried 
before, notably by Richard Nixon, when he was trying to persecute 
enemies and suppress the scandals of Watergate.

But the relaxation of oversight with regard to concentration of the 
media industry – mirroring other sectors, including banking, though 
receiving far less attention – is even more worrying. The FCC and the 
justice department both oversee competition, or antitrust, policy for 
telecommunications. And both have been asleep at the switch for years. 
The internet-access industry has become a tight oligopoly, which keeps 
the price and speed of US internet access far behind those of other 
industrial nations.

Even this isn’t the worst of it. The large internet providers are now 
acquiring the media properties for which, increasingly, their services 
are essential. Amazon has bought the Washington Post. Verizon is buying 
Yahoo and has already purchased AOL, the owner of the Huffington Post. 
AT is buying Time Warner, which owns CNN and HBO among other channels. 
A large portion of the news media will soon be owned by enormous 
companies with very strong special interests of their own.

Kim Foale: Tech culture is failing communities. How can we make it

[Patrice Riemens]

Original to: https://medium.com/@kimadactl/cf6f3d51ad13#.9udg819qg
Bwo HacktionLab/Mick Fuzz


Tech culture is failing communities. How can we make it better?
by Kim Foale

Californian design principles have taken over the internet, turning 
people into products. We need a roadmap towards truly community-owned 
technology.


The shift in internet and technology culture over the last decade has 
been phenomenal. Most of the services we use today haven’t been around 
long at all — Facebook is thirteen years old, Twitter ten, and Instagram 
six. The first iPhone — and arguably with it the modern concept of an 
“app” — was released in 2007. And yet despite all this technology that’s 
supposed to bring us together, social isolation is a major player in the 
current epidemic of depression, loneliness, eating disorders, suicide, 
and other social problems. How has this happened?

With these new technologies has come a rapid shift in the culture and 
industry which builds, markets, and owns them. Broadly, this has seen 
Californian men working alone in their bedrooms suddenly get pushed to 
global fame, propelled by a seemingly endless supply of speculative 
venture capital funds, themselves also overwhelmingly run by enormously 
wealthy white men. While we currently find ourselves in many other 
spheres challenging overly white, rich and male political structures, it 
feels like there has not been similar mainstream political critique of 
the ownership of our new, virtual, civic spaces.

The Lean Startup model has sparked a trend towards functionally limited 
but highly profitable software: doing “just enough” to justify a 
purchase point or app install. The hype around apps has meant that every 
new technology product is required to follow the same Californian design 
principles: vertically integrated, extremely expensive to produce, for 
the most part free at point of use, highly branded, with all data stored 
in the cloud and owned by the company. I’ve found it difficult 
explaining to clients looking to do something new that there are other 
ways to do things, or that an app is one solution of many, especially 
when solving social problems. Honestly, I still don’t quite understand 
what an “app” is when someone asks me for one — the concept seems 
wrapped up in a concept of a kind of experience that you’re expected to 
have with it. But I digress.

A decade ago, technically-savvy activists like me thought news sites 
like Indymedia were the future. We thought that aggregation with RSS was 
the eventual endgame for a decentralised, community-owned internet. We 
were talking about making cooperatively owned mesh wifi networks to 
provide free wifi for everyone, the obvious and inevitable move towards 
everyone using Ubuntu (or other Linux flavours), and building 
thin-client networks from recycled computers in community cafes to 
provide free internet and computer access. And now we’re talking about 
commercial apps, corporate social media, and Mechanical Turk. Any 
mention of communities and working with people seems to have vanished, 
in favour of an almost pathological focus on software and software 
culture itself. Something went wrong.

I’m developing a sort of manifesto to try and combat this, and get back 
to this kinder, community-oriented tech culture I remember from my 
twenties. I’m calling it a Community Technology Partnership, or CTP. 
Starting to write about this, I’ve discovered that the rabbit hole is a 
lot deeper than I thought. As a result, I’m going to syndicate the 
process of writing it up so I can get feedback and generate discussion 
along the way.

What follows is a list of overall values for a CTP manifesto. It was 
pointed out to me an event on post-fact politics at the weekend that the 
former concepts are all human; the latter ones all inhuman or robotic 
and part of that Californian design methodology that I critiqued at the 
start of this article. So maybe it really does all start on this basic, 
structural level. Following this will be more on the methodological 
principles, the overall aims and objectives, and information about two 
pilots I’m working on to develop the concept.


Complete > Perfect

Embrace messy data.

Programming is forgetting. All computer systems — from Facebook to 
Word — throw anything away they don’t understand. You can’t create a 
Facebook event and set the date later. You can’t do a painting in Word. 
More subtly, what a piece of information looks like is based on a 
designer’s desires: the concept of “a conversation” is different and 
incompatible between email, Facebook and Google Groups, for example. It 
simply doesn’t make sense to try and synchronise all those things; they 
are fundamentally incompatible.

Some of these systems are more prescriptive than others. Taking the 
Facebook event as an example, there’s a surprising amount of 
prerequisites. Not only you already have a Facebook account and friends 
on it (to make it worthwhile), you have 

Armin Medosch talks Technopolitics (2010)

[Patrice Riemens]

Armin Medosch - Technopolitics

Uploaded on Dec 16, 2010
Brian Holmes symposium - The Artistic Device
Saturday 27 November 2010"
https://youtu.be/H_l9MTd-qMU

Armin with us for almost one hour and half

Bwo & thanks to Barbara BaselThing Streber

Armin For Ever!
p+5D!

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Re: will someone explain

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2017-02-02 10:02, David Garcia wrote:

> Will one of the American nettimers take a few moments to explain
> something to a constitutional ignoramous such as myself.
> 
> For those of us outside of the long standing narrative put about is
> that the US constitution is so cunningly constructed with -checks and
> balences- so as to ensure that the President can never be a
> dictator/king/emperor.
> 
> And yet it appears (at least froma distance) that he is able through
> this instrument called -executive orders- to do whatever he likes. Can
> someone explain this apparent contradiction. Has he (or Bannon)
> introduced in his campaign (and now in government) the political
> equivalent of Blitzkrieg in which the sheer speed and number of
> initiatives create panic and confusion in his enemies?
> 
> Where, if any, are the lilekly constraints and when, if at all, will
> they be able to actually constrain?

Very short brutish answer: a constitution, or for that matter, 
long-standing political tradition (e.g. parliamentary democracy), does 
not help a bit, if 'everybody' get shit afraid of 'going against the 
will of the people'. Look at Brexit. Look at Erdogan getting 
all-powerful despite the Turkish constitution (well get yrself a new 
one, and have it referendum-legitimized), but maybe more important 
still, against a 'founding text' by the founding father of the Turkish 
Republic, Ataturk, who explicitly asked the youth to start a revolution 
if a current government was betraying his ('kemalist') principles.

http://yunus.hacettepe.edu.tr/~sadi/dizeler/hitabe2.html

Constitutions are like people: the do not govern beyond their grave.

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Re: January 30, Time To Wake Up

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2017-01-31 01:15, sebast...@rolux.org wrote: >January 30, Time To Wake Up

>"The media always has taken Trump literally. It never takes him 
>seriously." (Peter Thiel)
>
>What is beginning to dawn upon Americans is that the exact opposite is true: 
>That by taking
>Trump seriously, they completely misunderstood what he was telling them and 
>vastly
>underestimated his ambition; that instead, each and every announcement of his 
>government
>has to be taken literally.
 
 <...>

>Just like his attacks against Hillary Clinton, the New York Times, independent 
>judges, or
>the City of Chicago. Short of a popular uprising, this government will go all 
>the way.
>Shutting down news media, arresting the opposition, suspending the judiciary, 
>tanks in the
>streets? It's all in the cards.  If this sounds like the recent history of 
>Turkey, then
>Americans will have to study that history, look at each of its phases, find 
>out where they
>think it will stop in the U.S., how it will stop there, and what each of them 
>will have to
>contribute, personally, to make it stop.
>
>Further reading:
>
>Yonatan Zunger: Trial Balloon for a Coup? Analyzing the news of the past 24 
>hours.
>https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/trial-balloon-for-a-coup-e024990891d5

Hear! Hear!

What can one say more?

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Fr Cedric Prakash SJ: Murdering the Mahatma Today (January 30)

[Patrice Riemens]

Cf Sebastian's post "January 30, Time To Wake Up"

NB: The current prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, is an 
ideological heir of Nathuram Ghodse. In many aspects Modi, can be seen 
as a precursor of Donald Trump, and may be even, his 'guru'...


MURDERING THE MAHATMA TODAY!
Fr Cedric Prakash sj*



January 30th 1948 will remain etched forever in the conscience of
the nation. On that fateful day at evening prayer, Mahatma Gandhi
fell to the bullets of his assassin Nathuram Godse, in Delhi. Godse
represented the fascist, fanatic, fundamentalist and 'feku' forces,
which abhorred the values for which Gandhi, espoused all his life
and particularly the idea of an inclusive, pluralistic and secular
India. These forces unfortunately are still very alive in India and in
several parts of the world today!

There are certainly those who disagreed with Gandhi during his
lifetime and there are many who disagree with his philosophy and his
methodology even today. Nevertheless, few will be able to contest
the fact that Gandhi was a man of principles who lived and died
for a cause. His life was frugal and exemplary and unlike several
politicians today, he did not care leave alone crave, for the
privileges and the trappings of power.

In his lifetime, he internalized and propagated two cherished values
TRUTH (Satyagraha) and NONVIOLENCE (Ahimsa). This twin doctrine
is today more than ever needed, as sizeable sections of India and
other parts of the world fall easy prey to falsehood and hate; to
divisiveness and violence. Gandhi believed in the spirituality
of inclusiveness. For him, the Hindu Scriptures the Bhagvad Gita
and Jesus Sermon on the Mount?(particularly the section on the
'Beatitudes')had to be read and meditated upon simultaneously since he
was convinced that they resonated with one another. He refers to this
in his autobiography ?My Experiment with Truth?

There was plenty of violence and bloodshed in the run ?up to India?s
independence. Gandhi truly desired an undivided India, in which Hindus
and Muslims would live in peace and harmony. In October 1946, he
spent weeks in Naokhali (today in Bangla Desh) literally bringing to
a halt, in a non-violent way, massacres and mayhem between the two
communities. On August 15 1947, as India celebrated her independence,
there were no celebrations for Gandhi; he was back in Calcutta
with his protégé Abdul Ghaffar Khan. He encouraged people to be
non-violent and peaceful; he himself prayed, fasted and spun yarn.
Those actions of his had a profound impact on the people- peace was
restored. When C Rajagopalachari, the first Governor- General of
Independent India, visited and congratulated Gandhi for restoring
peace in the city, Gandhi said he would not be satisfied "until Hindus
and Muslims felt safe in one another's company and returned to their
own homes to life as before." He sincerely cared for those who were
forcibly displaced.

On the day Gandhi was assassinated Pandit Nehru, India's Prime
Minister in an emotional address to the nation said, "the light has
gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere!" He was just
stating a fact. Darkness continues to envelop a good part of the world
today; the very forces that murdered Gandhi continue to murder all
that he epitomized. True there are some hypocritical gestures like
usurping the place of Gandhi at the spinning wheel, for a picture on
an official calendar. Gandhi never subscribed to showmanship nor was
he arrogant. He fought against sectarianism and racism and would have
left no stone unturned today to take sides with the refugees and other
forcibly displaced people of the world.

Indian Catholics will observe a 'Day of Peace' on January 30th.
Significantly, in a message for the Fiftieth World Day of Peace
(celebrated officially on January 1st 2017) entitled 'Nonviolence: A
Style of Politics for Peace', Pope Francis emphatically states that,
'violence is not the cure for our broken world.' He calls for a new
style of politics built on peace and nonviolence, and at the same time
for disarmament and the eradication of nuclear weapons. Both Mahatma
Gandhi and Abdul Ghaffar Khan are referred to in this message as icons
of nonviolence and peace. We certainly have much to learn from them.

The world today is in a turmoil as never before. In ways both subtle
and direct; through discriminatory policies and executive orders;
through manipulations and coercion, we witness the gradual break-up of
our world, even as hasty and unwanted walls are built to keep people
out. We need to do all we can to prevent the triumph of these forces
who are inimical to the cherished ideals and values of Gandhi, the
Apostle of Nonviolence. We must cry halt to their murderous march now!

30th January 2017

Fr. Cedric Prakash sj
Advocacy & Communications
Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) MENA Region
Rue de L'Universitie Saint-Joseph
Achrafieh 11002150 BEIRUT  LEBANON







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Re: The Guardian's Summary of Julian Assange's Interview

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2017-01-02 22:45, C.Robbins wrote:

> Without question the article on Assange was the epitomy of "bad
> journalism", "Fake news" or whatever trending tagline one wishes to
> assign to biased delivery of, and 24/7 consumption of propaganda
> ... and, yes, Ben Jacobs, accompanied by thousands of other
> "journalists", should be hung out to dry by his virtual thumbs.

Meanwhile, the Guardian has corrected the article on the two points
made by Greenwald:

This article was amended on 29 December 2016 to remove a sentence
in which it was asserted that Assange “has long had a close
relationship with the Putin regime”. A sentence was also amended
which paraphrased the interview, suggesting Assange said “there
was no need for Wikileaks to undertake a whistleblowing role in
Russia because of the open and competitive debate he claimed exists
there”. It has been amended to more directly describe the question
Assange was responding to when he spoke of Russia’s “many vibrant
publications”.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/24/julian-assange-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-interview

But to me the most damning part is that The Guardian did not mention
that La Repubblica interview, to which it linked, was in English, on
that paper's site. I did click thru because I could have read it if
it had been in Italian, but most Guardian readers don't have that
knowledge, and thought they had to rely on The Guardian summary of it.
I assume it wasn't done on purpose, but it could well be a case of 'by
accident/default, but on purpose (Dutch loc. ;-)

The full interview _in English_ is here:

http://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2016/12/23/news/assange_wikileaks-154754000/



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Re: Steven Levy: Joi Ito Explains Why Donald Trump Is Like

[Patrice Riemens]

Here's the same as I posted to unciv

"A re-tweet is NOT an endorsement"

And I won't do you guys the pleasure of unsubscribing.

No cheers from Nijmegen either
("navigare necesse est")
p+0D! (forgot 'm, may my house burn)


On Thu, Dec 08, 2016 at 04:36:48PM -0500, Boris Klompus wrote:
>Exactly. I find comments like this disgustingly close in spirit to
>arguments from people who refuse universal health care: if those
>without insurance just worked harder they'd have more money to get
>their own.


§
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Steven Levy: Joi Ito Explains Why Donald Trump Is Like the Sex

[Patrice Riemens]

original to:
https://backchannel.com/joi-ito-explains-why-donald-trump-is-like-the-sex-pistols-943db42c9f47#.7t7fit60x

(bwo barbara Strebel, 'our Hippie from Basel')



Joi Ito Explains Why Donald Trump Is Like the Sex Pistols

The leader of MIT’s Media Lab on technological whiplash, nonviolent 
resistance, and the risk of Silicon Valley “floating away.”


In 2011, the MIT Media Lab — the smarty-pants citadel of digital 
creativity — picked a college dropout named Joi Ito as its director. It 
was a puzzling choice only to those who didn’t know him. Born in Japan 
and raised in Canada and the US, Ito had long been a vital strand of 
connective tissue between geeks and suits, an enthusiastic early adopter 
and canny interpreter who understood how networks, makers, and hackers 
would make their mark on the world. He had been equally at home in a 
crypto-anarchist crash pad and the Sony boardroom. And he immediately 
began rebuilding the storied lab’s mojo.

In Whiplash, a book published today, Ito and co-author Jeff Howe explore 
the strategies required to navigate Ito’s world, where digital 
technologies demand fast and radical responses. Organized into nine 
principles —such as compass over maps, pull over push, risk over safety, 
emergence over authority, and systems over objects — the book tackles a 
range of subjects from AI to crypto-currencies. But it came too late to 
include the recent election results. So when I interviewed the 
peripatetic Ito by Skype recently (he was in Dubai, by way of Marrakesh 
and Kuwait), that’s where we started our conversation.


Steven Levy: Reading Whiplash soon after the election, I wondered 
whether the book is an artifact of the culture the voters rejected — a 
sophisticated treatment of how science changes. It’s something that 
Secretary Clinton might read and discuss, but not Donald Trump.

Joi Ito: I don’t think so. To be honest, Donald is probably more tuned 
in to what we’re saying in the book than Hillary is.

Really?

Yeah. Hillary was about establishment, about structure, was about not 
being compass over maps, not being pull over push. She was running as 
part of a fairly traditional machine with some of the trim of 
technology. Donald was riding the wave of the network society. The stuff 
we talk about in the book involves the democratization of technology. 
It’s about working class empowerment. This election was more like the 
Arab Spring than it was like some well-orchestrated, well-designed 
political maneuver.

I wonder if you’re less excited about network waves now.

We write about what’s going on in the world today in a upbeat way 
because we want people to lean into it, but it’s not like only the good 
guys can use it. It just is. It’s the way everything is changing. Unless 
you figure it out, you’re not going to be able to keep up. Having said 
that, I don’t think that a lot of the people who voted for Trump are 
necessarily going to be up to speed on synthetic biology and AI.

You don’t think?

No. But I think AI can be just as destructive for investment bankers and 
lawyers as it is for doctors. It could be that it will be empowering 
pharmacists who go to one year of community college and become a 
doctor — screw the whole medical school. Disruption doesn’t necessarily 
advantage those with power.

One theme of your book is disobedience over compliance. That seems to 
define the transition so far.

Absolutely. People want a culture change, and this moment reminds me of 
the beginning of punk rock, or the beginning of the hippie movement. But 
I’d hate for Trump to be our millennial Sex Pistols or Timothy Leary or 
the Beatles. We need something like the Beatles that captures the hearts 
and minds of people. We’re ripe for a new cultural movement. Culture 
movements and art and punk rock thrive under bad presidents. The music 
was better under Reagan and Nixon than it was under Obama. I think that 
the doomsday scenarios tend to promote the arts. A lot of my energy now 
is in trying to provide tools to the young people to try to organize.

What kind of tools are you talking about?

I’m working right now with people like those in Gene Sharp’s 
organization, the Albert Einstein Institution, who are thinking about 
nonviolent action. Right now, when you see the protests even with Black 
Lives Matter, you see violence and you see hate feeding on each other. 
We recently invited John Lewis to one of our retreats and he told the 
story of when he and his friend were beat up by the Klan and left for 
dead in a pool. He explained to us that he trained for non-violence. In 
the dark basin of the church, they’d spit at each other, kick each 
other, and that strengthened them. Without that non-violent action, the 
humanity on the other side wouldn’t have been able to come out. Then he 
described how years later, a guy comes with his son to see him. He says, 
“I’m one of the Klansmen that tried to kill you. Will you forgive me?” 
The boy starts to cry, and 

Timothy Snyder: Twenty Lessons from the 20th Century

[Patrice Riemens]

"Sheldon Wolin Wrote that even looking forward to an assured defeat 
[-which has happenend in the meanwhile -PR] we do have the 'terrible 
resposibility' to fight on for justice, equality, andfreedom. "You don't 
win, or you win rarely. And if you win, it’s often for a very short 
time", he said in a long conversation with Chris Hedge (*), a few months 
before his death. He went on quoting German political economist Max 
Weber to the effect that he called for a very different conception of 
politics than the one we are accustomed to, where the issue is for which 
candidate or political party to vote, or about which issue one finds 
really important.  He wanted us to take one step back and ask ourselves 
for which kind of political orders and the values that go with it were 
we prepared to bring the ultimate self-sacrifice".
(Mars van Grusnven in 'De Groene Amsterdammer' November 3, 2016)

(*) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGc8DMHMyi8  (almost 3 hrs!)

context: Chris Hedge on Sheldon Wolin and Inverted Totalitarism:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/sheldon_wolin_and_inverted_totalitarianism_20151101

(here too, a 'tl;dr' warning applies ;-)




Twenty Lessons from the 20th Century



by Timothy Snyder, Housum Professor of History
Yale University

“Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield 
to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might 
learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so. Here are 
twenty lessons from the twentieth century, adapted to the circumstances 
of today
.
1. Do not obey in advance. Much of the power of authoritarianism is 
freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a 
more repressive government will want, and then start to do it without 
being asked. You’ve already done this, haven’t you? Stop. Anticipatory 
obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates 
unfreedom.

2. Defend an institution. Follow the courts or the media, or a court 
or a newspaper. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you are making 
them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don’t protect 
themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the 
beginning.

3. Recall professional ethics. When the leaders of state set a 
negative example, professional commitments to just practice become much 
more important. It is hard to break a rule-of-law state without lawyers, 
and it is hard to have show trials without judges.

4. When listening to politicians, distinguish certain words. Look 
out for the expansive use of “terrorism” and “extremism.” Be alive 
to the fatal notions of “exception” and “emergency.” Be angry about 
the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.

5. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. When the terrorist attack 
comes, remember that all authoritarians at all times either await or 
plan such events in order to consolidate power. Think of the Reichstag 
fire. The sudden disaster that requires the end of the balance of power, 
the end of opposition parties, and so on, is the oldest trick in the 
Hitlerian book. Don’t fall for it.

6. Be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone 
else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey 
that thing you think everyone is saying. (Don’t use the internet before 
bed. Charge your gadgets away from your bedroom, and read.) What to 
read? Perhaps “The Power of the Powerless” by Václav Havel, 1984 by 
George Orwell, The Captive Mind by Czesław Milosz, The Rebel by Albert 
Camus, The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, or Nothing is 
True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev.

7. Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy, in words and deeds, to 
follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But 
without that unease, there is no freedom. And the moment you set an 
example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

8. Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If 
nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no 
basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. 
The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

9. Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with 
long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to 
print media. Realize that some of what is on your screen is there to 
harm you. Bookmark PropOrNot or other sites that investigate foreign 
propaganda pushes.

10. Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in 
your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put 
your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends 
and march with them.

11. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is 
a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down unnecessary 
social 

Re: Thomas Frank: Forget the FBI cache; the Podesta emails

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2016-11-03 10:20, Armin Medosch wrote:

> this is a very bad article, I don't see the point of publishing it on
> nettime. the guarduian should never have published it. this is a
> critique of the elites? oh me god, how far has so called quality
> journalism sunk ...
 <...>

I cannot agree ('oeuf corse') that the article is that bad, but I can 
agree with the subliminal (?) critique that it brings nothing new we 
didn't know, or hadn't read about before. But that was not the idea 
behind my 'filtering' of this particular text. Thomas Frank (sorry, not 
Krank ;-), who, as the Dutch would say, 'has a reputation to lose' as 
author of politically illuminating arguments, gives here a snappy, and 
welcome, 'redux', indeed, of (next to) everything we already knew, or 
had read, about "what the (American - and other) ruling classes do when 
they rule" - to quote Goran Therborn. And concentrates are what make 
arguments stick.

Cheerio, p+2D!

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Thomas Frank: Forget the FBI cache; the Podesta emails show how

[Patrice Riemens]

original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/31/the-podesta-emails-show-who-runs-america-and-how-they-do-it



Forget the FBI cache; the Podesta emails show how America is run

WikiLeaks’ dump of messages to and from Clinton’s campaign chief
offer an unprecedented view into the workings of the elite, and how it
looks after itself

By Thomas Krank, the Guardian, Monday 31 October 2016




The emails currently roiling the US presidential campaign are part of
some unknown digital collection amassed by the troublesome Anthony
Weiner, but if your purpose is to understand the clique of people
who dominate Washington today, the emails that really matter are
the ones being slowly released by WikiLeaks from the hacked account
of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta. They are last
week’s scandal in a year running over with scandals, but in truth
their significance goes far beyond mere scandal: they are a window
into the soul of the Democratic party and into the dreams and thoughts
of the class to whom the party answers.

The class to which I refer is not rising in angry protest; they are by
and large pretty satisfied, pretty contented. Nobody takes road trips
to exotic West Virginia to see what the members of this class looks
like or how they live; on the contrary, they are the ones for whom
such stories are written. This bunch doesn’t have to make do with a
comb-over TV mountebank for a leader; for this class, the choices are
always pretty good, and this year they happen to be excellent.

They are the comfortable and well-educated mainstay of our modern
Democratic party. They are also the grandees of our national media;
the architects of our software; the designers of our streets; the high
officials of our banking system; the authors of just about every plan
to fix social security or fine-tune the Middle East with precision
droning. They are, they think, not a class at all but rather the
enlightened ones, the people who must be answered to but who need
never explain themselves.

Let us turn the magnifying glass on them for a change, by sorting
through the hacked personal emails of John Podesta, who has been a
Washington power broker for decades. I admit that I feel uncomfortable
digging through this hoard; stealing someone’s email is a crime,
after all, and it is outrageous that people’s personal information
has been exposed, since WikiLeaks doesn’t seem to have redacted
the emails in any way. There is also the issue of authenticity to
contend with: we don’t know absolutely and for sure that these
emails were not tampered with by whoever stole them from John Podesta.
The supposed authors of the messages are refusing to confirm or deny
their authenticity, and though they seem to be real, there is a small
possibility they aren’t.

With all that taken into consideration, I think the WikiLeaks releases
furnish us with an opportunity to observe the upper reaches of the
American status hierarchy in all its righteousness and majesty.

The dramatis personae of the liberal class are all present in this
amazing body of work: financial innovators. High-achieving colleagues
attempting to get jobs for their high-achieving children. Foundation
executives doing fine and noble things. Prizes, of course, and high
academic achievement.

Certain industries loom large and virtuous here. Hillary’s
ingratiating speeches to Wall Street are well known of course, but
what is remarkable is that, in the party of Jackson and Bryan and
Roosevelt, smiling financiers now seem to stand on every corner,
constantly proffering advice about this and that. In one now-famous
email chain, for example, the reader can watch current US trade
representative Michael Froman, writing from a Citibank email address
in 2008, appear to name President Obama’s cabinet even before the
great hope-and-change election was decided (incidentally, an important
clue to understanding why that greatest of zombie banks was never put
out of its misery).

The far-sighted innovators of Silicon Valley are also here in force,
interacting all the time with the leaders of the party of the people.
We watch as Podesta appears to email Sheryl Sandberg. He makes plans
to visit Mark Zuckerberg (who, according to one missive, wants to
“learn more about next steps for his philanthropy and social
action”). Podesta exchanges emails with an entrepreneur about an
ugly race now unfolding for Silicon Valley’s seat in Congress; this
man, in turn, appears to forward to Podesta the remarks of yet another
Silicon Valley grandee, who complains that one of the Democratic
combatants in that fight was criticizing billionaires who give to
Democrats. Specifically, the miscreant Dem in question was said to be:

“… spinning (and attacking) donors who have supported Democrats.
John Arnold and Marc Leder have both given to Cory Booker, Joe
Kennedy, and others. He is also attacking every billionaire that
donates to [Congressional candidate] Ro [Khanna], many whom support
other 

Re: Franco Berardi & Geert Lovink: Zero Work is the

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2016-10-26 23:05, Morlock Elloi wrote:
> Social can move a lot, without consequences. It is not clear at all
> that that any kind of "social movement" is effective way to change
> anything in the 21st century. Maybe we are in the post-social movement
> age, where some other mechanisms rule, and waiting for the "right"
> social movement is a total waste of time.

Morlock Elloi's going to kill all our illusions! Smash that barometer!
;-)


> Then again, one may apply the time-tested test as to what is
> effective: what can get you shot. Usually unrelated to keyboard
> activities.

And that last is not true at all (do I here someone shouting 'BS!'),
as the unfortunate kina dn friends of murdered Iraqi, Saudi,
Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian bloggers can attest (and probably in
many more nationalities in the Global South).

In our lands (the 'Global North') what has come recently to worry
me more is that advanced tech has made physical escape essentially
impossible. That came up in a conversation where escape scenarios for
Julian Assange out of his CD hole came up: none credible. With the
equipment now in hands of the power that be, you don't get your body
out of any place if they don't want you to. And I think, that's really
new, and part of the quantum jump towards total control technology has
made possible.

Welcome to the new world, it may be the same as the old world, but
then better - or worse. The old dream of the Indian Railways has been
realised: "ticketless traveller, you cannot escape!"

Nothing to cheer about,
p+2D!




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Cristophe Guilluy: At the periphery of progress (interview, La

[Patrice Riemens]

 holds territories
outside the metropolises for a negligible quantity in economic terms,
and has taken its leave from the popular classes which are by now
completely disenfranchised, and express that by either not voting,
or voting for extremist parties. The majority of the people have
zero confidence in the media, in the scientific community, or in the
political parties. People simply say no.

Facing de-legitimization, the political class waxes irate and gets
ever more contemptuous of the masses. One could witness that with the
totally irrational responses to Brexit: the elites blackball those who
oppose globalisation and wish to exit the EU, accusing them of being
xenophobes, morons, illiterates, nitwits with zero understanding, etc.
etc. This violence of the elites is a sure sign that 'the France from
above' [*] is brittle: every system under stress tends to get
tough with its opponents.

But the media and political class will not be able to go on for long
time in that direction, reality will overtake it sooner or later.
A system that no longer includes the majority does not last very
long. The economic model based on metropolisation and globalsiation,
despite the riches it creates, does not 'make society'. It cannot be
sustainable.

Q translation by Patrice Riemens
Amsterdam, October 19, 2016.




..

[*] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christophe_Guilluy

[**] Guilluy's main argument being that the neo-liberal economy is 
draining all resources towards the big cities (the 'metropolises') where 
power and money and the upper classes are concentrating/ed. The rest is 
simply abandoned to its own devices, both in terms of people and of 
territories.

[***] or in other words, back to Yanis Varoufakis' genial formula 
"Extend and Pretend" ...

[] title of a famous book by the infamous liberal thinker Alain Minc 
("the market is the natural state of society, democracy is not")

[*] title of CG's book this interview is about.

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Re: Hackaton exploring the digital landscape

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2016-10-15 13:50, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:

> Is it perhaps part of the political problem of our time
> 
> ... that some people actually believe that it is possible to change and
> repair social and political structures that have evolved over decades,
> within just a brief period of time, -- if only the collaborating
> "developers, hackers, artists, designers, psychologists, marketeers"
> have the right ideas and enough Club Mate to, for instance, "Redesign
> the Netherlands in 48 hours"?

 <...>

Frightening indeed. Thanks to Andreas for uncovering this (how many 
people on nettiume are subs to/ are following its '-ann' site?)
It all reminded me my 'Hack the State' residency in Sheffield's Access 
Space:

  https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Hack_the_State

(with apologies for the self-plug ;-)

Orban, Kaczyński are indeed accelerationist, but unaware of it, 
exercising power in accelerationist times. Many have called them not 
traditionalists, but hyper-modernists - and so 'the Donald' and 'la 
Marine' 5or even our own -NL- 'hydrogen-peroxided' one ...)

recurgitating on a Sunday morning ...
p+2D!


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#jakegate explained ... by a Dummy

[Patrice Riemens]

 and restraining citizen's rights and liberties end up so
smoothly in the statute books.

But near-zero awareness is surely not what can be ascribed to the
corporate intelligence contractors banding together with secretive
government agencies, a complex best represented by the concept
of 'deep state'(*). While the former 'partners' are primarily
concerned with protecting and extending their business interests
- which includes supporting, or at least not opposing, the most
outlandish repressive measures by the state agencies when it suits
them, the latter, on the other hand, will go in the end for outright
elimination, physical if necessary, of their opponents and critics, be
it individual or groups. These are the forces groups and organisations
'Jake' works(/ed) for are confronting - making them clear targets.
How precisely and to what extent is difficult to ascertain - beyond
at points of obvious contact, in the form of protracted harassment at
border crossings for instance. This gives rise to speculations fast
drifting into conspiracy theories - something that is not entirely to
the displeasure of aforementioned agencies. I neither wish nor can say
very much more about this, save than to presume that the situation is
both pretty much calamitous and also not amenable to any (re)solution.

Resistance may be the answer to what has probably become the essential
constitutional issue of our times, but I am afraid not to see a
positive outcome evolving unless it mutates into a real law and order
problem for the powers that be. And this is in my view exactly the
point where the above mentioned organisations and their associates,
supporters, and techie-activists fail to enact the effective mix of
political strategy, street-level tactics, and technological fixes,
usually by prioritizing the last option at the expense of the two
others.


In conclusion

As could be read, I have not at all addressed the question of Jacob
Appelbaum's (very?) possible culpability in the matter of sexual
harassment and uncivil/a-social behaviour - the mainstay of the
#jakegate brouhaha. This is on purpose, since all evidence, as evinced
in various interventions by equally various parties, point, to use
Facebook's inimitable phrase, towards a 'it's complicated' verdict.
Nonetheless, what I think is more important at this stage, also in
view of the above mentioned evidence, or alleged lack thereof, is the
conclusions the groups and organisations involved, as well as 'Jake'
himself will draw for the future, and how his personal situation
will evolve as a consequence. Now that he has been expelled from
pretty much all the outfits he was associated with (Wikilekas appear
to be an exception, for reasons that may - or may not - be easily
guessed) the question is one of what 'Jake' is going to do next.
For better or for worse, what has happened is beyond recall. With
his 'rockstar' status clearly revoked - a good thing - I believe
it is important for 'Jake' to start afresh and find sustainable
footing in a much more modest and withdrawn role, something that is
also the responsibility of his (former) 'Umfeld to make possible,
or at the very least not to try to thwart it in a senseless pursuit
of revenge. I am thinking of his pursuance of a Phd at Eindhoven
Technical University, something that could constitute a perfect
opportunity for retreat and 'reconfiguration'.

To people who feel they have been to have been aggrieved by 'Jake'
one way or another, and they might have good reasons to feel so,
I would suggest that some 'truth and atonement' get together be
organised, say in one year from now. In the end, whatever the way one
wishes to describe those concerned by or involved in '#jakegate' in
terms of a community (and that might also include some people in the
nettime readership), then that 'we' must strive, immo, to overcome the
conflict by learning its lessons ("no more rockstars" would be a good
starter), and not repeat the same mistakes, neither at the individual,
nor at the collective level.

--

(*) A good exposition is Mike Lofgren: Anatomy of the Deep State (2014)
(http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/)


Patrice Riemens
Amsterdam, October 7, 2016

NB (but see the other NB at the head of this post)

I started writing this story in Transylvania, 3 weeks ago. I dropped
it till now, but nothing appears to happened in between, just his
(quite empty) home page at Eindhoven T.U seem to have moved a few
ranks. In fact nothing (afaik) happened since the #jakegate blowup
in May/June (Jake's last Tweet is dated June 6), save for a long
interview in Die Zeit Digital mid-August:

http://www.zeit.de/kultur/2016-08/jacob-appelbaum-rape-allegations-contradictions

and

http://www.zeit.de/kultur/2016-08/jacob-appelbaum-rape-sexual-abuse-allegations



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Re: EUgoslavia

[Patrice Riemens]

Hi Alex,

Very nice analytics ;-) yet again, thanks!

On 2016-09-28 07:13, Alex Foti wrote:

> is the fucking old eee-you coming apart at the seams?

Yes, we're definitely in the zombie phase - and for quite some time now.

But be careful with the use of 'libertarian' (as in 'libertarian 
populism'). the concept has been 'captured' by Silly Valley to such an 
extent that it is no longer usable in international discourse. I suggest 
Chantal Mouffe's 'leftwing populism' (of leftist or progressive, 
whatever) instead - it's not because almost all left parties have 
betrayed the left that the name becomes invalid (and, immo, forget about 
'the left/right divide has become irrelevant' - yet another ideological 
victory of ... the right.

Cheerio, p+5D!

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John Gapper: Gawker was too liberatrian for Sillicon Valley (FT)

[Patrice Riemens]

Ogiginal to: 
https://www.ft.com/content/71feffa2-6914-11e6-ae5b-a7cc5dd5a28c
(watch ou for 'obstacles' ...)

Gawker was too libertarian for Silicon Valley

Technology entrepreneurs’ enthusiasm for rule-breaking runs out at
exactly the point when they suffer

by: John Gapper, FT, August 25, 2016.

Many English pilgrims have crossed the Atlantic to settle in the
new world, one less entangled by tradition. Nick Denton did so
in 2002, escaping strict British libel laws to found Gawker.com,
his swashbuckling gossip blog, in New York.

Goodbye to all that. Gawker was crushed this week, ceasing publication
in a flurry of defiance. He is bankrupt after a Florida jury awarded
Hulk Hogan, the wrestler, $140m damages for invasion of privacy.
Gawker Media Group, which operates six other websites, has been sold
for $135m to Univision but Mr Denton found that Gawker itself was
“too dangerous to own”.

It is impossible to write objectively about Mr Denton since we used to 
work together at the Financial Times, co-wrote a book on Barings bank, 
and are old friends who attended each other’s weddings. He would counter 
that journalistic objectivity is overrated and it is more honest and 
informative to mingle opinions, feelings and speculative gossip with 
facts, so here goes.

Gawker was more objectionable than objective even before it outed Peter 
Thiel, the technology entrepreneur, as gay in 2007. Like a press baron 
who enjoys making mischief and flaying hypocrisy, Mr Denton wanted that. 
Gawker.com was “an endlessly scrolling, eternally accessible record of 
prattle and wit and venom,” wrote Max Read, one former editor.

It did have an ethical mission: to be relentlessly honest, no matter how 
many it upset. In fact, the more people it outraged the better, in terms 
of traffic and advertising. Its story on Mr Thiel was undisputably true, 
as was the video it published showing Terry Bollea (Hulk Hogan’s real 
name) having sex. They were also highly intrusive.

Most people, me included, do not think that publishing salacious details 
and images of people’s personal lives against their wishes is much of a 
moral crusade but Mr Denton is an obstinate iconoclast.

He believes that radical transparency forces societies to become more 
tolerant. “The internet is a secret-spilling machine, and the spilling 
of secrets has been very healthy for a lot of people’s lives,” he said.

This sounds like humbug but one person to whom it could have made sense 
is Mr Thiel, who has donated $10m to finance lawsuits against Gawker, 
including Mr Bollea’s. Mr Denton and Mr Thiel are alike: both are gay 
European émigrés who “disdain convention”, as Gawker described Mr Thiel 
(who was brought from Germany as a baby). They are also libertarians who 
distrust government and preach disruption.

Mr Thiel’s libertarian beliefs are at the extreme end of the Silicon 
Valley spectrum. He supports, for example, the idea of “seasteading” — 
setting up communities at sea that would be as liberated from their 
native laws as the Pilgrim Fathers were in Massachusetts. As a 
co-founder of PayPal, he sought “a new world currency, free from all 
government control,” akin to bitcoin.

Such notions are not as outlandish in California as they would be in 
other places. Silicon Valley has a strain of counterculture 
libertarianism reaching back to the 1960s and San Francisco’s hippies. 
Entrepreneurs often talk as if their ambition is not to make money but 
to free people from government and turn “cyber space” into utopia.

He was less vulnerable to libel law than in the UK, but more at risk 
from damage claims for breach of privacy

“By starting a new internet business, an entrepreneur may create a new 
world,” Mr Thiel wrote in 2009. Internet enterprises such as Napster, 
founded as a peer-to-peer music sharing network, contrived to evade 
copyright law for a period. Social networks such as Facebook, in which 
Mr Thiel became an early investor, have “safe harbour” rights that 
partly shield them from liability for users’ behaviour.

Mr Denton’s vision for Gawker Media Group was equally utopian: “We were 
internet exceptionalists, believing that from blogs, forums and 
messaging would emerge a new world of unlimited freedom to associate and 
to express.” But he made two fatal mistakes.

First, he underestimated the risks of being a publisher and having no 
safe harbour. He was less vulnerable to libel law than in the UK, but 
more at risk from damage claims for breach of privacy. “Gossip is no 
longer the resource of the idle and of the vicious, but has become a 
trade,” wrote the judges Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis in an 1890 
article on mass newspapers, which led to tighter privacy laws.

Mr Denton’s second mistake was to misread Mr Thiel, whose libertarian 
philosophy did not extend to others taking liberties with him. That is 
the funny thing about Silicon Valley’s technology freethinkers: their 
enthusiasm for rule-breaking tends to run out at 

Re: Lacanian meets Trumpian

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2016-08-10 00:05, Morlock Elloi wrote:

> https://overland.org.au/2016/08/trump-fascism-putin-and-wikileaks-the-anatomy-of-a-liberal-nervous-breakdown/
> 
> Trump, fascism, Putin and Wikileaks: the anatomy of a liberal nervous 
> breakdown
> 
> By Olivier Jutel
> 8.Aug.16
> 
> Most presidential election cycles are dispiriting for the Left. As the
> official campaign begins, however, the hangover of a Sanders-induced
> optimism has added to this despair.

What is, for me at least, remarkable about this piece is how much, once 
shore of typical American (mostly foreign-) politics and a few more 
pieces of Beltway folklore, it pairs almost one-to-one with the 
predicaments of the European governing 'elites', and more specifically, 
of the social democratic description.

Cheerio, p+2D!

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Re: Statement from the TOR Foundation

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2016-07-29 18:10, Morlock Elloi wrote:
> One fact confirmed: there were allegations. Zero facts as to if they
> are true. Bullshit HR investigation of the criminal matter. No legal
> action. This stinks to high heaven.
> 
> On 7/29/16, 2:38, nettime's sub-committee wrote:
> 
>> Statement
>> Posted July 27th, 2016 by ssteele
>> https://blog.torproject.org/blog/statement-0


This whole 'Jakegate' affair is getting more shameful by the day -
on the side of those institutions/organizations which used to hype
him into high heavens, before letting him fall like a brick (Dutch
loc.). My guess is that they are just a bit to conscious of their
responsibility in making Jacob Appelbaum into the badman they accuse
him of being. But as a friend of mine used to phrase it "we admit all
responsibility but will accept none of the consequences" ...

Meanwhile I have it from what are arguably good sources that 'Jake' is
doing more or less OK, given the/his circumstances.

Doewie, p+2D!




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Decisionism and its discontents (was: ... well, Decisionism, etc. ; -)

[Patrice Riemens]

Hi,

Greetz from Izola/ Isola d'Istria (.si)

Re (Morlock E.)
:
> I would like to push forward this idea: we will develope to be an
> automaton-society. Mashinery will do a more and more growing part of
> everything that has to be done to create good and sustainable living
> conditions for everyone.

This seems to be the case - human work is getting redundant (even today 
only, 10-15% need to work to supply everything, from machines to 
government and prostitution.)

Customization of production may increase the demand but is not likely to 
create jobs. That dream went away with "Internet will create jobs" meme 
- it's still the machines doing the work.

When most of the population has no 'work' to offer for exchange for 
machine-produced goods (food, water, medical assistance), several 
outcomes come to mind, sorted by decreasing probability:

- Excess 99% of population is eliminated, the rest live in some kind of 
pastoral libertarian clan-based paradise serviced by autonomous 
machines. This is where things seem to be pushed to by the top 0.1% 
(brief nuclear war totally makes sense, they already have shelters and 
sex slaves). They are waiting for the fully autonomous machines so they 
can get rid of tech workers.

...

Basically the Peter Thiel dystopia described in The Guardian. Immo, the 
by far most probable probability (!).

There was a flaw in the PT reasoning (as per the Guardian): among the 
useless classes (blacks, immigrants etc.) there is also the ca 30% 
useless 'white trash', but that's precisely the electorate the Donald (& 
his pal PT) needs to achieve disruptive 'less democracy'. So what to do 
with them once the election are won? they remain useless. Kill 'm all? 
(Janos's interpretation of PT)

BTW the elimination scenario was sortof 'predicted' in an early WIRED 
article (in its 'Long Boom' epoch) when a "6 (or 8?) Circles' movement 
uprising of mass disemfrenchizeds was hypothised, alas to be nuked out 
of existence for total bliss finally to take hold for good for the 
deserving.
(can any one track back this article, and esp that book for me?)
.

- Some yet unknown political force enforces model for societal 
participation that is not work-based. On the optimistic side it's basic 
income or similar, on the dark side it's jails & wildlife preserves. 
What is troubling is that most brainpower today is wasted on doomed 
attempts to create 'demand', so it's not clear where this option can 
come from. As Zizek said, we can imagine everything except the end of 
capitalism.

.
So then, most probable scenario: Code 46 - the film. 
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_46)
.

- We figure out how to colonize the outer space. Issues postponed for 
few thousand years.

- Extraterrestrials enforce money-less Star Trek utopia.



Take a pick.

> come up, who owns them. We will have to develope a kind of mashinery
> that is suitable to be owned by the public.(e.g. the mashinery of

Somehow, "we" getting to own the means of production didn't quite work 
in the last few hundred years. What is supposed to have changed?





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Re: geography of copyright

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2016-07-19 19:02, Heiko Recktenwald wrote:

> Sorry, I overlooked it:
> 
> Am 19/06/16 um 14:46 schrieb Patrice Riemens:
>
>> On 2016-06-18 20:00, Heiko Recktenwald wrote:
>>> but the publishers in the East
>>> did trash their nicenst new books out of fear.
>>> 
>>> H.
>>
>> And then, weren't a lot of Ossi-printed books burned, yes burned,
> 
> I dont know. They did trash a lot. Dont think the West had anything to
> do with it.
> 
> Sorry, there was no repetition, in contrary, Eastern and Western PC
> united as well.
> 
> More or less...

I maybe shouldn't have been so definitive, I wrote from memory of those 
distant times ...

And, 'of course', it was not ideological, it was purely business. East 
German books were so much cheaper than the West German version & there 
was so much stock of them.

Same with pharaceuticals. I used to buy Nysilen - a homeopathic against 
flu - in DDR, made by some 'VEB  so-and-so Kombinat' for M 1,15 as 
against DM 9 in the West. The full formula was printed on the backlabel, 
enabling apothecaries in Pakistan and India to brew it for me on simple 
request.

Cheers, & Long Live Capitalism, Down Down Down with State Socialism!

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BEPS Blues

[Patrice Riemens]

Hej Hej,

BEPS stands for 'Base Erosion and Profit Shifting' and is the name of a 
biggie OECD policy framework to address the vexed issue of corporate, 
multinational taxation in the wake of the 2007/8 financial crisis and 
the recurring scandals about tax avoidance by big business, the 'Panama 
Papers' episode being the last.

Every now and then the FT carries a thick advertisement magazine simply 
called 'Tax' which is published by http://www.ey.com/ and aims to 
provide "insights for business leaders" (and this parasite) on matters 
of, well, tax. Its BESP issue provides for fascinating reading, and 
prime teaching material for anyone interested in illustrating the 
concept of complexity = obfuscation. OK, not always, but surely in the 
way big corporate has marshaled its global business arrangements and 
especially its tax (evasion) practices. Presently, they want us to 
believe that the OECD, that is the governments that matter, having 
finally decided 'to do something' - and they are making surprinsingly 
good progress at it - things are going to become even more intractably 
complex. Oh My.

But hey, there's a silver lining & an escape route, and, no price for 
guessing, it's called the Internet.

The OECD is quite upfront about the difficulties ahead in 'making 'm pay 
up'. The very first 'action' (they're 15 of them adressing all sorts of 
issues, e.g. coherence, collaboration, transfer pricing, 'aggressive' 
tax planning, etc) is about the digital economy. It reads, in Ey's 
interpretation:

"The OECD has found it was impossible to ring-fence (the?) digital given 
its integration with the whole economy. Rather than support specific 
measures, the organisation is promoting further work and monitoring to 
react to specific challenges which digital activity can create."

My translation: "The Internet has created a wholly new, massive, opaque 
and impenetrable tax haven, and we can do next to nothing about it."

Welcome (back?) to Cryptonomicon!

Hilsen, p+2D!

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Re: London's Replacement as City of Cupidity

[Patrice Riemens]

LOL!

However ...

On 2016-07-03 12:07, Mathilde muPe wrote:

> I cannot iunderstand why anyone with non-stoned mind could claim  that
> Amsterdam could be the next banking Valhalla. (Including dutch
> newspapers )

Bankers aren't stoned, they fuel on coke - makes them even crazier!

> Besides that Dutch government has capped bonuses for any employee.

But it might not apply to those on 'expat' status ... (OK, I haven't 
checked)

> There are more obstructive points;.  The city may look nice but in
> Amsterdam building ground have a pre defined destination stated by
> local government. There is hardly space for large building projects in
> the centre.

Under then new, weird political conservative - centrist - left of the 
left municipal govt. alliance things may change fast. Land ownership (up 
to now leasehold only) is being privatised, zoning laws might come for 
the chop next. The historic centre was almost razed in the early sixties 
to make way for 'modernism' (& road traffic), you never know if it won't 
still happen.

> And on the point of housing, it may seem cool to live on the canal,
> but those houses are under 'monumentenzorg ' (one cannot just breakout
> a wall to create inside a 2000 millennium version of that house).

Heritage conservation? Wait till some political party decides to 
'disrupt' this 'old school, s previous century' dispensation. And if 
it could happen in London, why not in Amsterdam?

  There
> is a shortage of housing, and that will also apply to the upper-market
> if the capital city would move here.

There is an even bigger shortage in London. Didn't prevent the rich to 
buy properties even if they didn't intend to live there.

Amsterdam cannot house the
> employees and entertainers of the banking city.

Oh yes it can. Needs only to get rid of all these pesky social tenants 
scandalously occupying prime real estate. Deport 'm all beyond the Ring 
.. or beyond ... (my GP advises me to stop here to avoid blood pressure 
harm ...)

  The only transport that
> works well in the centre is a bicycle or moped, the rest means dealing
> with congestion and shrinking public transport network.

True but relatively irrelevant. Somehow the rich always know how to 
transport themselves (check out Mumbai or Sao Paolo)

> Outside the ring it may be possible to create a luxury Valhalla but
> the major roads around the city are congested with traffic jams.  So
> even if I would set aside my concern about gentrification of
> Amsterdam, I don't think my home town can become a banking refugee
> resort.

I don't think either, but not for the reasons stated above.

> Since money is little issue for the banking city; I hope they consider
> other alternatives; Buy Detroit, or join the building project pissing
> contest in Dubai, create an island in the ocean and put a flag on it.

The latter is (was) also Peter Thiel's idea ('Seasteading)
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/welcome-libertarian-island-inside-frightening-economic-dreams-silicon-valleys

Morlock Elloi on this list suggested Ryad - good choice!, and for the 
moneyed and connected: booze (& coke) aplenty!

>Mathilde muPe

Cheers indeed!
p+2D!

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