nettime Dark Fibre review
Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture by David Cox (c) 2003 Dark Fibre is Geert Lovink's overview of the battles for control of the Internet and its myriad cultures of activism. The book takes its title from those bits of fibre optic broadband cabling which have not yet found use, or for which, use, outside of commercial reality, is considered irrelevant by the powers that be. Framing the contests between the local and the global in internet culture, how these are often played out in the arena of email lists, and the various anthropological realities of the way online-culture in general operates, Dark Fibre covers a lot of ground. It builds into its central argument much of the ad-hoc nature of net exchange of text and ideas. The book reads like an archive of hundreds of list postings, emails and personal notes and thoughts. As such it is not exactly a carnival of cyber-celebration, rather a serious examination on the highs and lows, and peaks and troughs, of the 1990s as the Internet decade, when the first forms of internet culture and its various manifestations took shape. Key among these is the still crucial global nettime list, which continues to be the testing ground for cyber theory and politics globally. There is Fibreculture which is an Australian variant, and myriad other net lists and societies whose development and character Lovink examines with the careful eye of the cyber-anthropologist. This is a cool, distanced, level-headed appraisal, not a rave party style celebration or heady utopian tract of the sort once popular at the Internet's first appearance in popular culture by breathless poster-boys like Douglas Rushkov. Yet throughout, Lovink, for all his rather sober pragmatism, privileges the need for us to reclaim imagination fantasy when it comes to building our societies around the networks and vice versa. His most direct vitriol is aimed squarely at the failed opportunities for more equitable social outcomes on display in the 1990s when several key defining factors dominated the development of global politics. One was the widespread uptake of the Internet beyond the limits of academe and government, and along with that, the tragically and in retrospect it would seem, inevitable, corporate takeover. I join him in lamenting the passing of that delicate twilight time in 1993 when the Internet still seemed open to possibility and not yet corrupted by the money grabbers and their apologists in government. Another failing worthy almost of a memorial of its own was the shift away from early 1980s style grassroots political action toward the now familiar social-reformist NGO model of representative political action. Movements followed increasingly corporate models of governance and in so doing rendered activism in general co-optable within the broader emerging globalisation model of international exchange: of ideas, of money, of people, and politics. Worse, they grew drunk on the new formalised managerialism such systems of organisation brought with them. Awash in a sea of representation, networks were thus 'empowered' and disempowered at the same time. Want to change the world? Fill in this form and receive our newsletter. Or join our list. It's all in the paperwork and advocacy, don't you know? Dark Fibre is very much about the dynamics at play within this new global culture of network-based social and political organization. In the 1990s many various models of hacktivism emerged. There was email-list culture, a range of new digital cities and of course, the PRAVDA of the right wing 'gee-whiz' online culture, Silicon Valley and its corporate ideological politburo, WIRED magazine. But there was also the types of direct action exemplified by the online Zapatista movement, the cultural sabotage of @rtmark, the hacktivism and online organization of the 1999 Seattle victory over the WTO and its flunkies. There was the amazing MUTE magazine, MEDIAMATIC, the legend of ETOY and the largely net-based showdown between burger giant McDonald's and a pair of advocates in London with mcspotlight.org. The chapter in Dark Fibre Push Media Critique frames the decline of WIRED magazine in terms of the conflict between techno libertarian conservatives and progressives within the company. Push media (basically net television and other forms of 'I send, you receive' digital media) are the logical post-web answer to declining web profits. But when those working for the company who wanted WIRED to go online as HOTWIRED are told that the list members are only good enough to be subject to the management's 'bozo filters' you know something is wrong. This and other schisms form the anthropological underpinning to the book and its modus operandi. There are many excellent stories of insider splits within organizations, groups and so on, all framed within the broader context of global economics and how nobody online could ignore these broader issues, even if they wanted to. Lovink, however,
nettime more machine than flesh review essay)
[A review essay of R. Brooks latest book published on Mindjack http://www.mindjack.com/books/fleshmachines.html for your entertainment. xp] More machine than flesh. A review essay of Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us written by J. Johnson. March 10 , 2003 Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us is the latest book by Rodney Brooks, Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technologys (MIT) Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The authors affiliation is telling. It informs the reader of Brooks academic and research accomplishments and, in addition, it prepares him/her for the enthusiastic, techno sophisticated view of the world for which the MIT is well known. Both premises are accurate. Flesh and Machines is a well researched book on the history and development of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). Brooks utilizes a jargon-free vocabulary to develop his arguments, and illustrates them with real life examples taken mostly from his personal experience. Thus, in spite of its fairly esoteric topic, Flesh and Machines is of easy access to all, even those with no prior knowledge of the subject. Unfortunately Flesh and Machines falters where so many other science and technology books have failed before, in its overly simple conceptual treatment of technology. Pop high-tech books unbridled technological visions of the future are often accompanied by scant treatments of the social transformations that create, and accompany it. Technologies are neutralized as tools, emptied of content or context. From this perspective artefacts are produced in the lab, by engineers and other geeky types, and are then consumed by the public at large. Period. Flesh and Machines is no exception. The feeble analysis of the social dimensions that accompany the high-tech society it postulates is not only worrisome but somewhat disturbing. Key to understanding of Flesh and Machines is Brooks definition of robots. He avoids the salvation or damnation dichotomy, that presents robots as the path to immortality or towards serfdom, by adopting a broader than usual definition of robots. Robots are not only mechanical beings (machine-machines), but also the entities that result from the merger of humans and machines (man-machines). In Brooks view, the human elements will not, so to speak, be lost, but rather augmented thus remaining always one step ahead of the machine. Flesh and Machines deals with the evolution of both species. For the sake of argument Flesh and Machines can be divided in three major sections. In the first Brooks recounts the history and evolution of the field of AI and details his contribution to it. In the second, the author projects the short term future of robotics, and portrays some of the features of the society that will embrace them. Finally, in the third and last part, Brooks turns to the ageless issue of the difference between humans and machines, and discusses the merger of robots and humans as the third way. Brooks contribution to the development and transformation of AI is noteworthy in more than one way for it challenged (and continues to do so) many of the sacred and unquestioned principles of artificial intelligence research. At a time when many were approaching artificial intelligence through the modeling and manipulation of symbols following logical rules, that is, creating complex worlds in which all behaviors are accounted for, Brooks developed a biological approach to AI. This biological framework takes as a starting point that intelligent creatureshuman or notare situated and embodied, that is, they are autonomous, rather than being controlled by a third party, and exist in an environment, constantly reacting to it. Thus, cognition does not result from withdrawing from the task at hand and analyzing it with step by step, but from direct, lived, immediate experience of the environment. Intelligence cannot be separated from its lived experience. Brooks then went a step further, and set out to take cognition out of its pedestal and replace it with perception and action. What if, he asked, reasoning is not the basis of cognition at all, but rather the ability to sense and react to the world as we encounter it? After all, beings like insects, display vast amounts of intelligent behavior, greater than most robots, since they can look for food and hideouts, avoid obstacles, mate, etcetera, but still score fairly low in the traditional IQ scale. Using this approach, and a subsumption architecturecreating layers of behavior that interact and regulate one anotherBrooks has built, and supervised the creation of, several robot-creatures which he describes with great detail and minutiae in Flesh and Machines. Brooks approach to robotics and cognition resembles that of Francisco Varela, the noted cognitive scientist, who also advanced an embodiedbased on perception and actionapproach to
nettime George Soros: An Allergic Reaction To The Bush Doctrine
TomPaine.com http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/7458 An Allergic Reaction To The Bush Doctrine George Soros is chairman of the Open Society Institute and of Soros Fund Management. Iraq is the first instance in which the Bush doctrine is being applied, and it is provoking an allergic reaction. The doctrine is built on two pillars: First, the United States will do everything in its power to maintain unquestioned military supremacy; second, it arrogates the right to preemptive action. These pillars support two classes of sovereignty: American sovereignty, which takes precedence over international treaties; and the sovereignty of all other states, which is subject to the Bush doctrine. This is reminiscent of George Orwell's Animal Farm: All animals are equal but some are more equal than others. The Bush doctrine is grounded in the belief that international relations are relations of power; legality and legitimacy are decorations. This belief is not entirely false but it exaggerates one aspect of reality -- military power -- at the exclusion of others. I see a parallel between the Bush administration's pursuit of American supremacy and a boom-bust process or bubble in the stock market. Bubbles do not grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality but reality is distorted by misconception. In this case, the dominant position of the United States is the reality, the pursuit of supremacy the misconception. Reality can reinforce the misconception but eventually the gap between reality and its false interpretation becomes unsustainable. During the self-reinforcing phase, the misconception may be tested and reinforced. This widens the gap leading to an eventual reversal. The later it comes, the more devastating the consequences. This course of events seems inexorable but a boom-bust process can be aborted at any stage and few of them reach the extremes of the recent stock market bubble. The sooner the process is aborted, the better. This is how I view the Bush administration's pursuit of American supremacy. President George W. Bush came into office with a coherent strategy based on market fundamentalism and military power. But before 9/11 he lacked a clear mandate or a well-defined enemy. The terrorist attack changed all that. Terrorism is the ideal enemy. It is invisible and therefore never disappears. An enemy that poses a genuine and recognized threat can effectively hold a nation together. That is particularly useful when the prevailing ideology is based on the unabashed pursuit of self-interest. Mr. Bush's administration deliberately fosters fear because it helps to keep the nation lined up behind the president. We have come a long way from Franklin D. Roosevelt's dictum that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. But the war on terrorism cannot be accepted as the guiding principle of U.S. foreign policy. What will happen to the world if the most powerful country on earth is solely preoccupied with self-preservation? The Bush policies have already caused severe unintended adverse consequences. The Atlantic Alliance is in a shambles and the European Union divided. The United States is a fearful giant throwing its weight around. Afghanistan has been liberated but law and order have not been established beyond Kabul. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict festers. Beyond Iraq, an even more dangerous threat looms in North Korea. The global economy is in recession, stocks are in a bear market and the dollar is in decline. In the United States, there has been a dramatic shift from budget surplus to deficit. It is difficult to find a time when political and economic conditions have deteriorated as rapidly. The game is not yet over. A rapid victory in Iraq with little loss of life could cause a dramatic reversal. The price of oil could fall; the stock market could celebrate; consumers could overcome their anxieties and resume spending; and business could respond by stepping up capital expenditure. America would end its dependency on Saudi Arabian oil, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could become more tractable and negotiations with North Korea could be started without a loss of face. This is what Mr. Bush is counting on. Military victory in Iraq would be the easy part. It is what follows that should give us pause. In a boom-bust process, passing an early test tends to reinforce the misconception that has given rise to it. That could happen here... Let us hope that... war will be swift and claim few lives. Removing Mr. Hussein is a good thing, yet the way Mr. Bush is going about it must be condemned. America must play a more constructive role if humanity is to make any progress. (This article first appeared in The Financial Times on March 13, 2003) # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg
nettime from the archives.... (1)
For those interested in the similarities and differences between the media envelope of this Gulf war and the previous one, here is an extract from Virtual Geography, in which I tried to tell the story of that war, and develop some concepts for it. -- Ken 1. Saddam / Sodom Dateline: Baghdad, Thursday, August 23th, 1990. Iraqi television shows President Saddam Hussein sitting in a television studio surrounded by fifteen British citizens. These people, now hostages, were residents of Iraq and Kuwait when Iraq invaded its Gulf neighbour. Saddam Hussein appears in a suit and tie with a little white handkerchief neatly folded in his left breast pocket. The Iraqis allow the foreigners to talk to their families while the rest of the world watches on. They listen as Saddam explains that the Western media have misrepresented the situation. In the past few days, he says, I have come across articles published in the Western papers urging President Bush to strike Iraq and actually use force against Iraq despite your presence here. Responding to a mother's worries about her child's education, Saddam Hussein offered to send experts from the ministry of education. Putting his hand gently on the head of seven year old Stuart Lockwood, he remarked, when he and his friends, and all those present here, have played their role in preventing war, then you will all be heroes of peace. While the broadcast appeared on Iraqi television, the program seemed entirely aimed at a Western audience. Western media picked it up quickly and broadcast it around the world the next day. It drew instant and predictable official and media responses. The British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd called it the most sickening thing I have seen for some time. Rupert Murdoch's English tabloid press dubbed Saddam Hussein the Butcher of Butcher of Baghdad. The American State Department called this event shameful theatricals. A repulsive charade said the British Foreign Office. More than moral outrage at the hostage taking fuelled this response. Two rather more elusive factors emerged in this extraordinary attempt at direct political communication along the media vector between widely differing cultural sites. One was that Saddam Hussein confounded our most cherished beliefs about the genres of television and the kinds of stories they legitimately tell us. Looking like a cross between Bob Hope and Geraldo Rivera, Saddam Hussein appeared to Western viewers as a demented talk- show host, in gross breach of the etiquette even of 'reality television', where only crooks, pimps, prostitutes and unscrupulous used car salesmen may be treated to raw acts of intimate verbal violence on camera. Or perhaps the format of the program looked uncomfortably close to Oprah Winfrey on a bad day, talking about bondage or child abuse. This offence to contemporary American sensibilities was compounded by another, much older and deeper one. Saddam Hussein unwittingly presented us with a repetition of an ancient and fearful superstition about Arabs, and what Slovenian psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek calls the threat to our sense of national enjoyment. We always impute to the 'other' an excessive enjoyment; s/he wants to steal our enjoyment (by ruining our way of life) and/or has access to some secret, perverse enjoyment. The 'fundamentalists', the only adherent of Islam one ever hears about, fall into the first category. The Iranian revolution, that otherwise unintelligible blow to the forward march of 'modernization', was the fault of the fundamentalists, who had stolen the pleasures of the modern consumer way of life not only from the Iranians, but threaten us too, with hostage takings and other high profile media events. That sacred libation of our everyday enjoyment was at stake here: oil. Until now, Saddam Hussain had in this scheme of things been 'our' Arab, a 'moderate', not an 'extremist'. As such he could be accommodated. When Saddam Hussein complained to the then American ambassador April Glaspie about a report on Voice of America radio critical of human rights abuses in Iraq, the ambassador informed him that its author had been sacked from the State Department. Moderate means, in other words, that the official story will moderate the worse abuses of tyrants who are compliant allies, so long as they remain as such. When the Western television news and the front pages of the newspapers carried the close-up of Saddam Hussein's hand stroking the boy Lockwood's head, he changed characters in the Orientalist vision the West has of the Middle East. Orientalism is a legacy of the colonial days, a collection of stories in which, as Edward Said says, it was axiomatic that the attributes of being Oriental overrode any countervailing instance. Saddam Hussein touching Lockwood forced Western viewers to place the gesture in a frame of cultural reference. He did not appear to be a Muslim fundamentalist, a denier of pleasure. In the absence of any other cultural memory
Re: nettime George Soros: An Allergic Reaction To The BushDoctrine
Uncle Soros and Mr. Hyde (A Tale of Two Georges) George Soros is one of those proverbial guys so perfect that if he didn't exist, you'd have to invent him. How else to prove that since the Enlightenment, individualistic, dog-eat-dog capitalism has gone hand in hand with the highest social idealism? What tickles me here is his craftsman's parallel between the job he knows best and some other issue of great human importance: I see a parallel between the Bush administration's pursuit of American supremacy and a boom-bust process or bubble in the stock market. Soros thinks that the way G.W. Bush has arrogated sovereign military power to the US alone, outside of any international law, will be initially self-reinforcing, like the stock-market bubble - particularly with military victory, which would be the easy part. Then at a given moment, this bubble of confidence could burst, Soros fears. And Bush would go bust. Apparently Soros perceives no other relationship between the 10-year stock market frenzy and the current war frenzy than the boom-bust cycle, which in his view is based on reality distorted by misconception. So he says: The dominant position of the United States is the reality, the pursuit of supremacy the misconception. This is a political translation of the notion that our economic system is fundamentally rational, but just occasionally gets taken over by fits of exuberance. One would expect such logic from a financier. But still there's something extremely suggestive in the following paragraph, and particularly the last sentence: President George W. Bush came into office with a coherent strategy based on market fundamentalism and military power. But before 9/11 he lacked a clear mandate or a well-defined enemy. The terrorist attack changed all that. Terrorism is the ideal enemy. It is invisible and therefore never disappears. An enemy that poses a genuine and recognized threat can effectively hold a nation together. That is particularly useful when the prevailing ideology is based on the unabashed pursuit of self-interest. The mystery of market societies is exactly that: what can possibly make people exclusively pursuing their own self-interest into a community? Or in other words, how to bind together a bunch of people who spend their entire day trying to make their company or stock or investment out-perform yours? Especially when they do it by every low-down, Enronic strategem imaginable? And with the exclusive goal of always having more for themselves alone? Well, one way is to say: there will be infinite economic growth, an infinitely expanding quantity of the one thing we all desire in common - that is, money, greenback dollars - so no matter how high Billy scores with his diskettes or Georgey with his hedge funds, somebody else can always make a killing in biotech. Hmm, great solution. In the US in the 90s, this solution was promoted to the point of getting not only middle-class professionals and retirees to put their money onto the spinning wheel, but even working people who could then dream of free beer. Of course, the only free beer or more likely, champagne, went to those at the top, since the whole thing fell apart right around the time the least well-off were lured into it. What I think - and I know there's no way to substantiate this - is that with the break-up of the stock market/ new economy frenzy in the US, market society is at a loss for something to bind it together. Bush has effectively used and abused the spectre of terrorism to project each one's fear of their scheming neighbor to the outside, to Afghanistan and Irak. Instead of a common desire, Americans now have a common enemy. But at the same time, Bush Co. have made fear of your neighbor into reality by instituting spying and denunciation programs. Plus, your neighbor may perfectly well be Muslim. All this would mean that whenever the national unity can no longer be found in an outside enemy, things could get pretty divisive in the US. But of course, we're all convinced that the economy will boom again after the war. Right? Right? Right? A little more to the Right? One side of Soros knows that the market society's volatile swings between confidence and fear are too dangerous for human existence. They have to at least be counter-balanced by other kinds of ties between people, based on other forms of reciprocity, such as cultural creation and exchange, education, the foundation of shared institutions outside the imperative to compete. This is what Soros built up (and then took apart: but that's another story) in the former East. The fallacy, extending far beyond Soros himself, lies in the belief that these cooperative relations can be constructed on the proceeds of speculative raids carried out against specific currencies, or through the mathematical inventions of hedge funds. The substitute solidarity of market-based charity is the thin branch onto
Re: nettime incoming! digest [valentine (x2), cantsin]
On Wed, Mar 26, 2003 at 08:18:58PM +0100, david garcia wrote: My suggestion: Donate blood, not rhetoric. Brandon's final suggestion treats us to yet another Bush like binary, another false dichotomy like theory vs practice. For us or against us! Blood or rhetoric. humanitarian relief or fury. Well lets donate both! they are not mutually exclusive. You forsake semantics to dwell on syntax. Let me assure you my diction was not chosen to indicate exclusivity. Rather my linguistic aim was deliberate mimicry of my ideological opposition's penchant for false dichotomy. Here are a few: Make love, not war. Food, not bombs. These things too are not mutually exclusive. Now, syntax aside, we examine the merit of the suggestion. We work under pretext of the given that time is scarce, which I assume any entrant into a debate to understand as natural fact.[0] Both tasks, humanitarian relief effort and public debate of substance[1], if done to any appreciable degree require substantial commitments of this scarce resource, time. If one treats these endeavors as anything other than mutually exclusive it follows that either one of three conditions result: 1) Relief effort and debate are performed with an equal commitment of time. 2) Relief effort becomes subordinate to debate. 3) Debate becomes subordinate to relief effort. One must consider whether these endeavors scale linearly or whether the relationship between time invested and return on investment is along a curve. I suspect that in both cases a curve is more likely. How severe is that curve? Can result (1) produce useful relief effort or debate of substance[1]? If not, then one endeavor must be subordinated to the other. That decision becomes a decidedly subjective moral judgement in which I already given you my preference: Donate blood, not rhetoric. You are welcome to your own interpretation of the merits of either course of action. [0] - The prevalence of postmodern subjectivism does nothing to validate its practictioners penchant for slothful induction and I neither condone nor entertain subjective reinterpretation of the objective. [1] - That is public debate which serves to inform, not misinform, public debate which adheres to dialectic rigor in honest attempt to secure the best answer, not the most ideologically satisfying one. Brandon D. Valentine -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.geekpunk.net Pseudo-Random Googlism: valentine is more than cards and candy hearts illustration by michael o'neill mcgrath # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: nettime Dark Fibre review
As someone who lives in Silicon Valley I thought Cox's review was quite good (since I have not read Lovink's book) and I intend to get our library to purchase if they have not. However, they do tend to buy a lot of books about the industry that still generates a lot of money for the library users, the towns, and the libraries benefit from this. I'd question the phrase 'bits' of fiber. I don't have stats, but with the telecom depression a lot of the fiber is dark, though it was not planned that way. I certainly agree with the positive aspects of the computer and net culture here in this part of California. My own study (and later participation in) the community networking activities leads me to recommend Fire in the Valley by Freiburger and Swaine as well as Bernard Aboba's Online User's Encyclopedia. There are two personalities that need mentioning; Bob Albrecht of the Peoples Computer Company which was more a publication and services and activities that included one of the first free access sites for youth, and there were gatherings that led to the Homebrew Computer Club meetings. Albrecht was and is involved in the way computers can be used in education. More info here: http://sumeru.stanford.edu/pcc/ Lee Felsentein who helped build Berkeley's Community Memory. He's still very active and is working on Linux PC's designed for use in rural Laos. www.jhai.org Steve Cisler 4415 Tilbury Drive San Jose, California 95130 http://home.inreach.com/cisler home page http://glocal.crimsonblog.com web log # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
nettime [IRAQ] Digitally correct Hackitivism: Al Jazeera and Downing
Street [3x] Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Precedence: bulk Reply-To: nettime's digest [EMAIL PROTECTED] Table of Contents: aljazeera in english hacked + some comments about digitally correct Hacktivism ricardo dominguez [EMAIL PROTECTED] Re: al jazeera please cpaul [EMAIL PROTECTED] Downing Street web site went down at height of protests last Saturday! ricardo dominguez [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 10:06:22 -0500 From: ricardo dominguez [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: aljazeera in english hacked + some comments about digitally correct Hacktivismo From [undercurrents on http://bbs.thing.net] aljazeera in english I actually heard an interesting news report tonight on Pacifica by the host of the hacker hour called OFF THE HOOK. he said that as soon as the al-jazeera site in English went up, known hackers started receiving emails from people begging them to hack into it and take it down. most of the emails came from hotmail addresses, but the hackers were able to trace many of them .mil addresses, which means US military is urging hackers to engage in the same cyberterrorism they want to make illegal. Coco [some comments about digitally correct Hacktivismo - r] Hacktivismo (digtially correct hackitivism) double helix of deep core code and free speech/anti - censorship ideology seems to plug-in (all too easily) into the current move by Home Land Security move to secure National Infrastructure. In a recent rough draft about the issue (which is not for distribution per request of the writer) entitled Hacktivism: Securing National Infrastructure. The author proposes that digitally correct hacktivism /(Hacktivismo) should start receiving support from the government and military organizations in order to facilitate an alliance between them. Hacktivist can aid in the defense of the National Infrastructure. cDc is specifically mentioned as a hacktivist group that fit this new post 9/11 ideology. Like white hat hackers in the past ethical hacktivist, like cDc, should be met half-way with new laws that would facilitate cooperation between hacktivists and law enforcement, and develop innovative programs that encourage responsible hacktivism and fuel hacktivists' innate love of a good challenge. As we move deeper into the RAND's vision of moving from a gated network/society and into a lock-down network/society - would the other digitally incorrect hackitivism (EDT or digital Zapatismo) that does not participate with this new ideology be automatically placed on the same tier as cyberterrorism/cybercrime. Which has been occurring for some time (read attached URL). Some have suggested that It will be important to have the digtially incorrect hacktivist communities in toto decide if the actions are within ethical protocols - but, to what degree the circuit between Hacktivimo and the law enforcement preclude any activist non-violent direct action (Electronic Civil Disobedience) out side that circuit form being pushed into cyberterroism/cybercrime paradigm - because it does not support the U.S. war on Iraq or NAFTA.with its actions etc. Well you get the general idea. Perhaps it will be the case that groups like EDT would have a general social power of definition, about what is VR sit-in or Virtual March and what is not. But, they will not get the support from the Homeland Securtity that the digitally correct hackitivist are getting or will get. ciao, r ps side note on question between digitally correct Hackivismo and digitally incorrect VR Sit-In: *Ruffin is the foreign minister of the waggishly named hacker group, the Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc). Unlike the EDT, which is a social-justice group using the Internet to spread its message, the cDc is a hacker cabal hell-bent on using technology for the betterment of humanity. One of the cDc's major accomplishments is the development of a tool called Peekabooty, which allows residents of countries with strict Internet censorship to bypass that censorship and view restricted webpages. Ruffin is especially critical of the EDT's denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Denial-of-service attacks, however they are positioned by the EDT, qualify as a destructive - and in my opinion unconstitutional - use of technology, he said. [They] are a violation of the First Amendment, and of the freedoms of expression and assembly. No rationale, even in the service of the highest ideals, makes them anything other than what they are - illegal, unethical, and uncivil. One does not make a better point in a public forum by shouting down one's opponent. Dominguez shrugs off Ruffin's criticisms, defending the EDT's mass actions as populist, versus the SWAT-like actions of hacker groups like the cDc, which look like
nettime Aljazeera VS. U.S
AL JAZEERA VS. U.S. By Jay Gatsby (http://principia_ny.blogspot.com) The 24-hour Arabic news network Al Jazirah has a very intersting place in the scheme of current events in the Middle East. Since 1996, Al Jazirah has become the most popular Arab news network, with over 50 million viewers. It has been highly acclaimed by journalists around the world for its in-depth, quality reporting. Like all quality news stations, however, it is controversial--particularly for western governments and their Mid-East allies. Jordan, kuwait, and Lybia, for example, have all banned Al Jazirah journalists from their territories. Over and over, whenever we hear anything about a Bin Laden tape or a statement by Saddam Hussein, in the American news, Al Jazirah is the cited source. News about the war on Afghanistan depends heavily on this channel, since the Taliban doesn't allow western media crews into its territory and Al Jazirah is one of only two Arab news networks that are permitted access. As well, the network is particularly reknowned for its reporting of humanitarian conditions throughout the middle east--especially the plight of Palestinians. I wouldn't be surprised if Al Jazirah had a lot to do with putting Palestine on the international agenda. Unlike the U.S media, they seem to give some historical context when reporting mid-east conflict. For example, they always mention the fact that the U.S put Saddam Hussein in power and supported him in the early 80's--things that are absolutely NEVER mentioned in the American press. The network did not exist during the first Gulf War.During the first 5 days of Gulf War II, however, Al Jazirah has already presented a challenge to the U.S: First by broadcasting Saddam Hussein's messages to the Iraqi people; second, by broadcasting vivid pictures of the Iraqi people who have been killed or injured by America's shock and awe campaign; third, by showing footage of the recent U.S and British prisoners of war, something about which U.S and British officials want to press 'embarrassment' charges; and fourth, by its coverage of the war on Afghanistan.Thus, we are now witnessing a clash between Al Jazirah and the U.S government. In fact, U.S secretary of state Collin Powell sent a letter to the Qatar government, requesting that it sensor Al Jazirah--to no avail. Within the past few days, Al Jazeera has been banned from the NASDAQ and from the New York Stock Exchange. Rumsfeld has talked about destroying all television and radio communication in Iraq. In recent days, the military has done just that, but Iraq has been able to restore its radio and T.V transmissions after every bombardment. During the opening stages of the war on Afghanistan, the U.S bombed an Al Jazirah bureau in Kabul. U.S officials claimed that the hit was 'unintended.' All of this has raised serious concerns within the International Federation of Journalists(http://www.ifj.org), which claims that the attacks are a direct violation of the Geneva Convention and has called for a U.N investigation of the destruction of Iraqi television stations. Al Jazirah is based in Qatar and a shut-down of Iraqi television will not prevent everyone else in the Middle east --everyone else period--from knowing what is going on in Iraq. Next to budgeting and finishing the war on terrorism, Al Jazirah is just about the biggest problem the U.S has in the middle east. Al Jazirah is available in the U.S through satellite T.V and an English version is due to come out on cable soon. The U.S government has recommended American businessmen to not advertise on this channel. - Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
nettime [IRAQ] 030327 digest [august, cox, buhard]
august [EMAIL PROTECTED] civilian casualties reported David Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] We Stand for Peace Justice (Zmag) Elnor Buhard [EMAIL PROTECTED] al jazeera please --- Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 10:23:21 +0100 (CET) From: august [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: civilian casualties reported below you will find a story of a severed hand. if anything, it will demonstrate the suffering and risk that have been inflicted on the Iraqi people. if anything, it will demonstrate the impossiblity of 'true' or 'empirical' reporting. if anything, it will demonstrate that in deed there are GREAT risks of civilian casualties. -august. Robert Fisk (on site in Iraq) writes: It was an outrage, an obscenity. The severed hand on the metal door, the swamp of blood and mud across the road, the human brains inside a garage, the incinerated, skeletal remains of an Iraqi mother and her three small children in their still-smouldering car. Two missiles from an American jet killed them all by my estimate, more than 20 Iraqi civilians, torn to pieces before they could be 'liberated' by the nation that destroyed their lives. see: http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=391165 --- New York times writes: BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 26 Two large explosions that detonated simultaneously in a working-class district of Baghdad this morning, killing 17 civilians and wounding 45, set off a scramble by Iraq to blame the United States for indiscriminate bombing, and prompted a suggestion from the Pentagon that the Iraqis themselves might have been responsible. of course, the nytimes writes that American officials said they do not know the cause but that ...they could not rule out an errant American bomb or missile,.. however, in the nytimes slideshow, it actually shows the severed hand... see: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2003/03/26/international/27BAGH_slideshow_hicks_5.html (if the link somehow doesn't work, you can find it on the front page under 'Blasts in Baghdad' slideshow) but comments: Iraqi officials said an American plane or missile was responsible for the blasts. --- From: David Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: We Stand for Peace Justice (Zmag) Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 19:52:14 +1000 http://www.zmag.org/wspj/index.cfm is the link to sign your name to the following: Please join Ezequiel Adamovsky, Vittorio Agnoletto, Michael Albert, Tariq Ali, Patrick Bond, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Bill Fletcher, Eduardo Galeano, Susan George, Marta Harnecker, Boris Kagarlitsky, George Monbiot, Suren Moodlar, Hector Mondragon, Tanya Reinhart, Carola Reintjes, Arundhati Roy, Lydia Sargent, Howard Zinn, and many more in signing the following statement by using this form -- and, even more, please join us in working to encourage other people to sign it, and for them in turn to get others to sign it. I stand for peace and justice. I stand for democracy and autonomy. I don't think the U.S. or any other country should ignore the popular will and violate and weaken international law, seeking to bully and bribe votes in the Security Council. I stand for internationalism. I oppose any nation spreading an ever expanding network of military bases around the world and producing an arsenal unparalleled in the world. I stand for equity. I don't think the U.S. or any other country should seek empire. I don't think the U.S. ought to control Middle Eastern oil on behalf of U.S. corporations and as a wedge to gain political control over other countries. I stand for freedom. I oppose brutal regimes in Iraq and elsewhere but I also oppose the new doctrine of 'preventive war', which guarantees permanent and very dangerous conflict, and is the reason why the U.S. is now regarded as the major threat to peace in much of the world. I stand for a democratic foreign policy that supports popular opposition to imperialism, dictatorship, and political fundamentalism in all its forms. I stand for solidarity. I stand for and with all the poor and the excluded. Despite massive disinformation millions oppose unjust, illegal, immoral war, and I want to add my voice to theirs. I stand with moral leaders all over the world, with world labor, and with the huge majority of the populations of countries throughout the world. I stand for diversity. I stand for an end to racism directed against immigrants and people of color. I stand for an end to repression at home and abroad. I stand for peace. I stand against this war and against the conditions, mentalities, and institutions that breed and nurture war and injustice. I stand for sustainability. I stand against the destruction of forests, soil, water, environmental resources, and biodiversity on which all life depends. I stand for justice. I stand against economic, political, and cultural institutions that promote a rat race
nettime al jazeera digest [costanza-chock, gatsby]
Sasha Costanza-Chock [EMAIL PROTECTED] ALJazeera needs mirrors!!! [fwd] jay gatsby [EMAIL PROTECTED] New English Al Jazeera Site in taken down in U.S. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: Sasha Costanza-Chock [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 17:10:41 -0500 Subject: ALJazeera needs mirrors!!! [fwd] -Original Message- From: Peter Costanza [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 4:48 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Media wars In the last 24 hours Al-Jazeera has been thrown out of the NY Stock Exchange, where it has been reporting from for years, and from the NASDAQ exchange. More importantly, both their Arabic and new English sites are down under massive DOS attacks. They should be given multiple mirrors in Europe and US. The mirrors could even use video feeds from their satellite TV, which I think is still up. There is no uprising in Basra, by the way. --- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: jay gatsby [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 13:12:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: New English Al Jazeera Site in taken down in U.S. Hi all, I am a new member of the nettime mailing list. I read the article about the newly lauched English-Language Al Jazeera web page. Unfortunately, on Tuesday morning the site's U.S servers were subject to a denial of access hacker attack. I am outraged that we Americans have been denied this alternative source of information. I think it is important tat we all realize how fearful some Americans can be about letting other points of view influence our thinking. The site has not yet been fixed. Here is the link to the washington post article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25491-2003Mar25.html Best, jay # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
