nettime Policy Analysis Market
Of the 266 Google news links about Policy Analysis Market this morning, most of the headlines trumpet Defense Department Taking Terror Bets. Policy Analysis Market is an attempt to use the wisdom of markets to predict crises and attacks in the Middle East. The organizations behind the project include the Economist Intelligence unit, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (they funded the original Internet), and Net Exchange, a spinoff from the California Institute of Technology devoted to commercialize computational combinatorial deal-making (CCDM). PAM states this about the whole concept: Analysts often use prices from various markets as indicators of potential events. The use of petroleum futures contract prices by analysts of the Middle East is a classic example. The Policy Analysis Market (PAM) refines this approach by trading futures contracts that deal with underlying fundamentals of relevance to the Middle East. Initially, PAM will focus on the economic, civil, and military futures of Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey and the impact of U.S. involvement with each. What is controversial is that market futures about the overthrow of King Hussein of Jordan were included and have offended politicians here in the US and undoubtedly in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc. . Others are upset that a trader can actually make some money if he/she predicts fairly accurately. Trading starts October 1, 2003, and you can signup now. There will be a cutoff after 1000 registrants, and while they hope to have a globally distributed network of participants, what if a significant number were nettime readers? I first ran into this market concept about ten years ago. The Iowa Political Stock Market successfully predicted the outcome of the 1992 U.S. presidential election within a few tenths of a percentage point for all three candidates (including Perot). It was more accurate than 8 major polls. Since then there have been many other experiments with other markets: Hollywood Stock Exchange where people bet on future box office receipts and Foresight Exchange where traders bet on the outcomes of unresolved scientific and societal questions. http://www.hsx.com/ Hollywood Stock Market http://artificialmarkets.com/ Articficial Markets http://www.policyanalysismarket.org/ Policy Analysis Market Steve Cisler # 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 ricardogram [x2: chiapas, australia]
[digested @ nettime] Ricardo Dominguez [EMAIL PROTECTED] CHIAPAS: The Thirteenth Stele Electronic Action in Australia against Education Reforms - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 06:55:47 -0400 From: Ricardo Dominguez [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: CHIAPAS: The Thirteenth Stele CHIAPAS: The Thirteenth Stele ZAPATISTAS PLAN DRAMATIC REORGANIZATION The Zapatista National Liberation Army, in the voice of Subcomandante Marcos, outlined a dramatic reorganization plan this week that will include regional governing centers and a profound deepening of the autonomy process: For various years, the Zapatista indigenous communities have been involved in a process of construction of autonomy. For us, autonomy is not a fragmentation of the country nor is it separatism, but rather the exercise of the right to govern and to govern ourselves, as established in Article 39 of the constitution. Since the beginning of the uprising, and long before, the indigenous Zapatistas have insisted that we are Mexicans, but also indigenous. In other words, we claim a place in the Mexican nation, but without giving up who we are. In a series of communications, Marcos criticized corrupt and ineffective political structures, and announced a complete break with all of Mexico's political parties. In some of the strongest language of the week, Marcos rejected the Fox administration's Plan Puebla Panama as a development strategy that fragments Mexico into the North, an enormous maquiladora, the Center, a giant mall, and the South, a huge ranch. In no uncertain terms, Marcos warned in our rebellious lands the infamous plan will not be permitted. ... This is not a threat, but rather a prophecy. Non-governmental organizations that impose development projects without considering the actual needs of Zapatista communities also came under attack. The new Zapatista initiative comes in the context of recent congressional elections in which Fox's National Action Party took a serious beating, losing one-quarter of its seats in the lower house. Fox will likely be a lame duck president with little real authority until the next presidential elections, scheduled for 2006. In addition, 60% of eligible voters abstained nationally, and 70% abstained in Chiapas. While some abstention may be due to laziness or disinterest, the Zapatistas are interpreting the historically unprecedented abstention rate as a sign that many Mexicans are fed up with politics as usual and are looking for alternatives. The new autonomy initiative will advance the stagnant San Andres Accords, signed by the EZLN and the federal government in 1996 but never implemented into constitutional reforms. It is a bold and creative move that will force many elements in civil society to choose sides - defending autonomy as a viable political project or defending the Fox administration's claims to a new era of democracy in Mexico. The Zapatistas invite national and international civil society to participate in the launching of this new initiative on August 8-10 in Oventic, Chiapas. The Mexico Solidarity Network encourages grassroots activists to come to Chiapas and participate in this historic event. For more information, contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] Originally published in Spanish by the EZLN ** Translated by irlandesa Miércoles 23 Julio 2003 CHIAPAS: The Thirteenth Stele Part One: A Conch Dawn in the mountains of the Mexican southeast. Slowly, with an unhurried but continuous movement, the moon allows the dark sheet of night to slip off her body and to finally reveal the erotic nudity of her light. She then reclines across the length of the sky, desirous of looking and being looked at, that is, of touching and being touched. If light does anything, it delineates its opposite, and so, down below, a shadow offers the cloud its hand while murmuring: Come with me, look with your heart at what my eyes show you, walk in my steps and dream in my arms. Up above, the stars are making a shell, with the moon as origin and destiny. Look and listen. This is a dignified and rebel land. The men and women who live it are like many men and women in the world. Let us walk, then, in order to look at and listen to them now, while time hovers between night and day, when dawn is queen and lady in these lands. Take care with that puddle and the mud. Better to follow the tracks which, like in so many other things, are the most knowing. Do you hear that laughter? It is from a couple who are repeating now the ancient rite of love. He murmurs something, and she laughs, she laughs as if she were singing. Then silence, then sighs and muted moans. Or perhaps the other way around, first sighs and moans, afterwards murmurs and laughter. But lets continue on ahead, because love needs no
nettime Luther Blissett's Q
Luther Blissett, Q, William Heinemann, 2003 reviewed by McKenzie Wark [EMAIL PROTECTED] Q is a terrific read, an epic from the bowels of history.(517) The story follows two main characters. One wants to overthrow the social order. The other is a spy in the service of the forces who want to maintain it. Q is the spy, in the pay of Father Carafa, an ultra conservative figure, rapidly rising up the hierarchy of the Catholic church. The other main character is a radical protestant, who sets himself against both the corrupt power of the Catholic church, and also against Luthers Protestant reformation. For the more radical protestants, Luther is a political tool in the hands of a rising mercantile class, not a friend of the peasants and artisans. His is just a new kind of authority, which is putting a priest in our souls (353) These two characters cross paths many times, from one end of Europe to the other, until coming together for a final confrontation, in Venice, where their identities will finally be revealed to each other If that were all there were to it, this would be a fascinating, but ultimately over-long genre novel the historical thriller. But Q is not so much a novel as an anti-novel. The confrontation between the two characters ends up something of an anti-climax. It provides a narrative impulse to get the reader through to the end, but the real narrative strategy it conceals is quite different. In Q, conflicts are never resolved, merely deflected, transformed, shifted to another level. Yet that does not mean that in renouncing the bourgeois novels sense of narrative closure and harmony, that Q falls for the other dominant form, pulp serial fiction, which creates the necessity for each new installment out of the inevitable incompleteness of the episode. In Q, our hero learns from his struggles, grows wiser, avoids old mistakes. This is a didactic novel, but with a different purpose. It is about learning how to struggle against the ruses of power and get by. One of Qs lessons is not to get too bogged down in identity. Our hero changes his name many times. He adapts, he sheds failed strategies. He finds new friends, new structures of belief and methods for reading the signs. This is not unlike the authors of the book themselves. The Luther Blissett who wrote this book is Roberto Bui, Giovanni Cattabriga, Federico Guglielmi and Luca Di Meo. They emerged out of a milieu in which Luther Blissett was a popular pseudonym for all kinds of radical actions, avant-garde provocations and spectacular pranks. But they too have moved on, and now call themselves Wu Ming. In Q, the Blissett crew finds a form and a narrative to hold together a popular account of all that a generation has learned in various struggles. The book can be read as an allegory for the history of the late 20th century. The folly of Mao and the prudence of George Soros can all be read between the lines in the actions of the books many walk- on characters. Or, one can read Q as a more local allegory, for a series of struggles waged by the Italian left from the 80s to the 90s. It may not matter whether these allegorical readings are actually intended. One of the effects of the book is to encourage allegorical reading and some skepticism about it. The many radical protestant leaders who populate the first third of the book are forever using the bible as an allegorical machine for reading the signs of the times with very mixed results. Just as 60s Marxists read every hiccup of capitalism as heralding the crisis, Qs true believers see everywhere the coming apocalypse. English language readers will find some of the background material familiar if they have read Norman Cohns book about radical sects, The Pursuit Of The Millennium, or Raoul Vanegeims The Movement of the Free Spirit, or even Greil Marcus Lipstick Traces. The latter was famous for insisting on a subterranean link between the Sex Pistols John Lydon and the radical Anabaptist John of Leyden. Leyden is a featured character in Q, but a much less romantic one. This Leyden is emblematic of the reactive, persecutory forces that can seize hold of a radical movement from within, just at its moment of triumph. There is a remarkable study here of the forces and pressures that can lead a militant movement into self- delusion, worthy of Guattari. Those familiar with radical European avant- gardes will find much to chuckle over in Q. In this version of the 16th century, radical forces use theology and religion in much the same way as the avant-gardes use theory and art. There is a useful dialogue with the Situationists in these pages. Blissett seems to have a fondness for the practical strategies of the SI. The derive, or the drift: the wandering through cities, cutting across the order of the working day is artfully applied here to give wonderful portraits of medieval Venice, Antwerp and Münster. The whole book can be read as one long exercise of the other SI
