\\ sirla birla
>Slovene culture is obsessed with the notion that, although a small nation, >we are a cultural superpower: We possess some amalgam, a hidden intimate >treasure of cultural masterpieces that wait to be acknowledged by the wider >world. Maybe, this treasure is too fragile to survive intact the exposure to >the fresh air of international competition, like the old Roman frescoes in >that wonderful scene from Fellini Roma which start to disappear the moment >the daylight reaches them. Such narcissism is not a Slovene specialty. There >are versions of it all around Eastern Europe: We kall it hope. mine is bigger and more relevant than yours. >the fresh air of international competition, Principle issue is ost.europa life forms still believe in fairy tales and all occident fairy tales = neutered >Rejecting such a fixation on the hidden national treasure in no way implies >ethnic self-hatred. NS. http://www.membank.org/dataset/n/zizek.o.mp3 >The point is a simple and cruel one: All Slovene artists >who made a relevant contribution had to "betray" their ethnic roots at some >point, either by isolating themselves from the cultural mainstream in >Slovenia or by simply leaving the country for some time, living in Vienna or >Paris. All slovene artists [as all artists] who have made a "relevant" contribution betrayed themselves and became immortal. >It is the same as with Ireland: not only did James Joyce leave home >in order to write Ulysses, his masterpiece about Dublin; Yeats himself, the >poet of Irish national revival, spent years in London. The greatest threats >to national tradition are its local guardians who warn about the danger of >foreign influences. Bunch of sissies. My grandfather would ride his donkey all over their sissy occident komponents. >Furthermore, the Slovene attitude of cultural superiority finds its >counterpart in the patronizing Western cliche which characterizes the East >European post-Communist countries as a kind of retarded poor cousins who >will be admitted back into the family if they can behave properly. Recall >the reaction of the press to the last elections in Serbia where the >nationalists gained big-it was read as a sign that Serbia is not yet ready >for Europe. A similar process is going on now in Slovenia: The fact that >nationalists collected enough signatures to enforce a referendum about the >building of a mosque in Ljubljana is sad enough; the fact that the majority >of the population thinks that one should not allow the mosque is even sadder; Majority of the population = always right. Majority of the population feeds zizek. faktz are not sad. >and the arguments evoked (Should we allow our beautiful countryside >to be spoiled by a minaret that stands for fundamentalist barbarism?, etc.) >make one ashamed of being a Slovene. In such cases, the occasional threats >from Brussels can only appear welcome: Show multiculturalist tolerance.or >else! Ma daiii. let the belgian. dutch. austrian. german. british etc occident fkz enter ost.eu + we'll build a forestful of v.relevant art works with them / introduce them 2 that amalgamation of all meaningful serenities http://www.donlinke.com/drakula/vlad.htm#Atrocities >At the same time, however, it >reproaches the ruling coalition for undermining Slovene national identity by >advocating full Slovene integration into the Westernized global capitalism >and thus drowning Slovenes in contemporary Americanized pop culture. The >idea is that the ruling coalition sustains pop culture, stupid TV amusement >and mindless consumption in order to turn Slovenes into an easily >manipulated crowd, incapable of serious reflection and firm ethical stances. Sounds like cutting edge artists opening their legs for 1x relevant EU grant >While pressuring Poland to open its >agriculture to market competition, Western Europe floods the Polish market >with agricultural products heavily subsidized from Brussels. Progress = inevitable = 01 good thing >How do post-Communist countries navigate in this sea with conflicting winds? Prostitution = 01 good thing >"What does Woman want?" Something Good + Relevant [SGR] # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Nazification of Serbia
http://www.endkampf.net/ Anyone who knows German, or even those who don't know German but are familiar with the 'final solution' rethoric, would understand that 'endkampf.net' must be a Nazi site. What most people would make a mistake is to expect a site written in German. The site is written in Serbian, however. In cyrillic letters (if you did not configure your browser to display cyrillic you'd see just gibberish). Nevertheless, it is a Nazi site. It prominently features a link to "Internet Serbian Parliament", which ad says: "If you are banned from B92 forums ... this is a place for you." It starts with a quote from Nietzsche: "The time has come for a final conflict about the domination of the planet: it will be fought in the name of philosophical doctrines brought to their ultimate consequences." It's name 'Konacni Obracun' (FINAL RECKONING) would fit nicely with similar ultra-right organizations in the U.S. And to globalizationist delight, this german-domained, serbian-written site is registered in - France. Registrant Contact: ChrystelJean, 210 Rue Des Orteaux 34, Paris, FR 75002 Far from being unique, Endkampf is just one of many ultra-right sites dominating the Serbian Internet today. They, not B92, whose listeners and viewers grew old (55% are above age of 40), dominate the views of Serbia's youth. Please, check the T-Shirt on this youth: http://www.videlo.org/grafika/nbroj.jpg At least, to the chagrin of a Croatian culture-supremacist, this is European, Western - German, to be correct - influence, not Ottoman, Turkish, and oriental. Serbia, in other words, by adopting classic Nazi ideology, is becoming more a part of the Western Europe than it was so far. And with neo-nazi movements blossoming across the old continent, Serbian right may find itself far from being isolated and ostracized. Here is some other sites to look at, if you read cyrillic and understand Serbian: http://www.komentar.co.yu/ http://uk.geocities.com/sulajkovski/ http://pogledi.co.yu/id1.php3?id=573&izv=81 http://www.videlo.org/ This guys are better organized as a movement - they actually travelled en-masse to Kosovska Mitrovica last March to protect Serbs there from Albanian revenge killings: http://www.obraz.org.yu/ There are 19 of them in a "ring" that they all joined within last 2 years. http://www.ringsurf.com/netring?ring=komentar;action=list Have fun contemplating the future of the Balkans ivo - Ivo Skoric 19 Baxter Street Rutland VT 05701 802.775.7257 [EMAIL PROTECTED] balkansnet.org # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Radio, the World, the Discrete
( from an ongoing analysis at http://www.as.wvu.edu:8000/clc/projects/plaintext_tools/ ) Radio, the World, the Discrete Not only is radio tremulous in its reception of the stars themselves; it is also analogic, requiring no decoding; what you hear, what you record, is what there is. The opposite holds for online radio, packet-protocol radio, no matter how shipped; like a jpg image, it requires specific constructs to make sense of it all. And such constructs tie into very notions of software coding, intellectual property, corporate and personal privacy. What the antenna registers, what the wires contact, may be contacted by all; they are primordial, inert. Give a wavelength or wave- length bundle, give a direction or directions or omni-directions, and what comes in, comes in to any living creature, ready for the interpretation or not, Rosset's idiocy, or the muteness of the world. Move to the Net, Net radio, already the raster is at work; there is a fineness, an absolute floor and absolute ceiling, of the recording/playback - of the apparatus itself - that cannot be bypassed; extrapolation is trusting at best - that nothing in-between, no out-of-packet information, exists to trouble the rest. This is the differend at work, surely, and it is the differend that characterizes the digital - what is not permitted to speak, what is literally circumlocuted. Radio brings the unknown to bear; the Net brings the known to the bearable. Given a text/image/audio/whatever file - that is all there is, nothing more; it exhausts itself and is exhausted and the play of content, the semiosis, exists in the perceiver, not 'out there.' This is secondary narcissism, looping through the machine; primary narcissism is the realm of the analogic, our cosmological identification. === The history of radio is merged with the history of the electromagnetic, and given the movement towards packet and protocol, it is interesting to observe a movement from externality to internality, from brass spheres through the Wimhurst generator, from the crystal detector through the audion. Within the audion, and early triode, the filament glow was visible, an electronic hearth boiling off electrons. This was the analogic pulse of vacuum-tube radio, a pulse of light and heat and the quietest of sounds still sought by rock guitarists and audiophiles alike. Transistors internalized current into the literal black-box, and integrated circuits and circuit boards eliminated almost all of the hand-wiring. With the digital, the unit becomes tight, compact, although as always, still hack- able; repairs are another matter. The analog was a transitive filter, passing along the cosmos within rough bandwidth; the digital is active sampling. The transparency of the analog was reflected in the transparency of the radios themselves (capacitors and transformers etc. notwithstand- ing); the opaqueness of the digital, the complexity of the protocols and their arbitrariness, is reflected in the opaqueness of CPUs. It's both ironic and fascinating that mod cases now bring the hearth-glow back into the heart of the machine, with lights that do nothing but illuminate silent circuitry. We still believe we are among beings; we always will, and that is part and parcel of our cosmic reach, no matter how mediated it becomes. The mistake is to take the mediation and machinic for things themselves; certainly, on the level of _object,_ and certainly not on the level of _function._ We design within the imminence of potential wells, both analog and digital; otherwise we would never hear a thing. _ # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: commercial communism
hi Craig, >> .US corporations have long seemed to have >> become communal organizations by way of >> childcare, housing, eating, healthclubs, >> recreation when off work with employees, >> etc. and the role of ideology in culture >> is reinforced by these same mechanisms. > > For a minuscule portion of the working population of the .US perhaps, > but for the vast majority (and still growing) they get nothing of the > sort from their paymasters. true, most have none of it and few have some of it, though i wonder if it may function as part of the 'ideal' that drives ideology that this system does work at some point in some way- and possibly there is an element of the casino logic to it, to win big by landing in such jobs with the right education, etc. the yearly lists of 'best corporations to work for' judge these based on employee perks, etc. and during the dot-com boom in San Francisco, getting massages or playing ping-pong may also qualify in some way as to how the 'corporate campus', lifestyle even, may not be benign fun but a human resources gambit. Google retains this lifestyle and now is at the top, and yet it almost function as if a secret society, having replaced the machined IBM uniformed workforce. though it is not limited to international business, look at universities that are adding rock climbing walls, spas, and other cultural accouterments (at the price of affordable education, etc.) which may further serve this 'lifestyle' as a way of social, economic, and political control of the cultures. it may be related to some type of deterministic approach, a fixed-belief system about values, and with respect to the commercialist-communist axis, this may function as ideology: a corporate self- serving utopia of what the market already offers to consume). it would then function as a closed system, based on certain assumptions that cannot be questioned, by most anyone involved except at the top/center of the hierarchies. whereas with a social-capital viewpoint, it may be considered with a more open questioning based on a different evaluation/value system. in the former (CC vs. SC) there is one sociality, one economic, one political system being served as if an automated mechanism. in the latter, there are many options could be evaluated given a particular context and outcome, though less easy to place in similar universality because the ideas may still be 'open questions' and thus not predetermined for rightness, etc. just throwing some ideas out here in case there are any econos/others who might be able to flesh the ideas out further. the main response to the question raised would be, then, that it may be a difference between the ideals that drive ideology (commercial communism) versus the realities that drive the ideas of social capitalism, and actions. fwiw. regards, brian bc-microsite: http://www.electronetwork.org/bc/ # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: re: zapatistas
Quoting "dr.w" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > what do nettimers think the recent communiques mean ? > > the return of the shooting war, zapatistas in the electoral system ? ... > > a broadening of the struggle ? > > > re: en) Chiapas, EZLN: A letter of explanation...or, perhaps, farewell > > > from > http://irlandesa.blogspot.com/ >Hola all, The Zapatistas are "not planning renewed combat" - but they are planning to disturb the spaces of power of the PRI, PAN and the PRD in the days to come. They will not allow the Presidential elections of 2006 to forget the indigenous peoples - the Mexican State (PAN) "will have to demonstrate, whether now, at the end of their six years term of office, they are capable of understanding the example of integrity and humility that the indigenous people of Chiapas have shown once more." The international communities of support must be ready to help spread the new initiative "The Sixth Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle" when it emerges in the next few days by whatever means necessary and as has always been the case with the Zapatista Intergalactic protocols it will become extremely important to maintain constant multidimentional pressure on all the Mexican Parties in the days to come. >From the navel of the world D.F Mexico rdom PS 3 reports follow: Subject: Reuters,Mexico's Zapatistas to launch new political phase,Jun 27 Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 12:44:24 +0200 Mexico's Zapatistas to launch new political phase Mon Jun 27,11:14 PM ET MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's Zapatista rebels emerged from a week of internal meetings on Monday and said they would launch "a new political initiative" to be outlined in coming days. Subcomandante Marcos, the group's enigmatic leader, issued the latest in a series of cryptic public statements since he declared a red alert a week ago in communities controlled by the Zapatistas, also known as the EZLN, in the southern state of Chiapas. "With the approval and backing of the great majority of its members, the EZLN will begin a new political initiative of national and international character," said Marcos, who achieved international fame by appearing in public disguised in a black ski mask. The statement signaled that the rebels are moving further away from the violence they espoused when they took up arms more than 10 years ago. The rebel leadership will soon release a series of texts constituting what Marcos called "The Sixth Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle." The Zapatistas shocked the world when they emerged from the jungle in 1994 to demand Indian rights. About 150 people died as the rebels seized towns and clashed with security forces, but there has been little fighting since then. Then in a surprise move last week, the rebels declared a red alert, abandoned their villages in Chiapas and shut down their radio station to consider "a new step in the struggle." Marcos said meetings were held in more than 1,000 indigenous communities across the poor, largely Indian state last week, and tens of thousands of supporters were consulted. The vast majority had approved a new phase of the struggle. "After analyzing and discussing the advantages and disadvantages, the dangers and risks, everyone had a personal and free vote on the proposal," he said in the six-paragraph communique. The latest move comes a year before Mexico elects a new president, and some have speculated that the Zapatistas want to define their role ahead of the election. In 2000, the election of President Vicente Fox ended 71 years of single-party rule and raised high hopes that the Zapatistas could be brought back to peace talks. Instead, the rebels have been holed up in their Chiapas jungle stronghold since 2001, when the Congress watered down an Indian rights bill sought by the Zapatista leadership as a prerequisite for returning to the negotiating table. They set up civilian "good government councils" in Zapatista communities to run without government aid, and the pipe-smoking Marcos began a new career as a crime author, co-writing a serialized novel. (((MORE))) Subject: Jornada,Intense military movement in conflict zone, Jun 26 Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 15:50:52 +0200 Intense military movement in conflict zone Elio Henriquez, La Jornada, June 25th, 2005 San Cristo'bal de las Casas, Chiapas, June 24th. The withdrawal of four military camps of the Mexican Army in the municipalities of Chenalho', Bochil and Ixtapa, signifies "no modification of their military strategy" in the so called conflict zone of Chiapas, affirmed the Centre for Political Analysis and Social and Economic Investigation (CAPISE). In a report titled "The Olive Green Occupation", the organisation relates that the federal Army holds at present 111 positions in the territory of Chiapas, most of them in the Highlands (los Altos), the Selva and the North of the state; as a consequence the indigenous peoples "suffer an alarming military occupation". In a press conference on the release of
Re: AUTISTICI org in trouble: host Aruba says ...
I phoned and spoke with the 'Ufficio Legale' of http://www.aruba.it/ They say they 'have no idea of what has happened'. And they 'have no idea why Autistici published that things' Now why do I get that d=E9j=E0 vu with the Rackspace story and the seizure of the Indymedia servers about 3/4 year ago? I have been phoning across seas and oceans and asking a lot then, to find out that 'nobody knew anything', upto the FBI who also stated they knew nothing about it, it had not been them, and "they didn't keep copies of the discs" (yes, that's what they told me, literally). But yes, I've just started now with these last developments ;) -c- > -Oorspronkelijk bericht- > Van: Cecile Landman > Verzonden:Thursday, June 23, 2005 10:16 AM > Aan: 'nettime-l@bbs.thing.net' > Onderwerp:AUTISTICI org in trouble: This is not a private matter, > even if it's a privacy matter > > > http://autistici.org/ai/crackdown/comunicato_en_210605.html > > ARUBA-POSTALE 1 / PRIVACY 0 <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: The hope and reality of money
The link to Kushner on Miller should be http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20050613&s=kushner # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
bifo, Info-Labour and Precarisation
Info-Labour and Precarisation http://www.generation-online.org/t/tinfolabour.htm Franco Berardi (Bifo) "We have no future because our present is too volatile. The only possibil ity that remains is the management of risk. The spinning top of the scenarios of the present moment." (W. Gibson: Pattern recognition, tr. It. L'accademia dei sogni) In February 2003 the American journalist Bob Herbert published in the New York Times the results of a cognitive survey on a sample of hundreds of unempl oyed youths in Chicago: none of their interviewees expected to find work the n ext few years, none of them expected to be able to rebel, or to set off large scale collective change. The general sense of the interviews was a sentiment of profound impotence. The perception of decline did not seem focused on pol itics, but on a deeper cause, the scenario of a social and psychical involution that seems to cancel every possibility of building alternatives. The fragmentation of the present time is reversed in the implosion of the future. In The Corrosion of Character: the Transformation of Work in Modern Capit alism (Norton: 1998; tr. It. L'Uomo Flessibile), Richard Sennett reacts to this existential condition of precariousness and fragmentation with nostalgia for a past epoch in which life was structured in relatively stable social roles , and time had enough linear consistency to construe paths of identity. "The ar row of time is broken: in an economy under constant restructuring that is based on the short-term and hates routine, definite trajectories no longer exist. Peop le miss stable human relations and long term objectives." (R. Sennett: The corrosion of character) But this nostalgia has no hold on present reality, and the attempts to reactivate the community remain artificial and sterile. In the essay "Precari-us?", Angela Mitropoulos observes that precariousne ss is a precarious notion. This because it defines its object in an approximate m anner, but also because from this notion derive paradoxical, self-contradictory, in other words precarious strategies. If we concentrate our critical attenti on on the precaricious character of job performance what would our proposed obj ective be? That of a stable job, guaranteed for life? Naturally no, this would b e a cultural regression that would definitely subordinate the role of work. S ome started to speak of Flexicurity to mean forms of wage independent of job performance. But we are still far from having a strategy of social recomposition of the labour movement to extricate ourselves from unlimite d exploitation. We need to pick up again the thread of analysis of the soci al composition and decompositon if we want to distinguish possible lines of a process of recomposition to come. In the 1970s the energy crisis, the consequent economic recession and fin ally the substitution of work with numerical machines resulted in the formatio n of a large number of people with no guarantees. Since then the question of the precarity became central to social analysis, but also in the ambitions of the movement. We began by proposing to struggle for forms of guaranteed incom e, uncoupled from work, in order to face the fact that a large part of the y oung population had no prospect of guaranteed employment. The situation has ch anged since then, because what seemed a marginal and temporary condition has no w become the prevalent form of labour relations. Precariousness is no longe r a marginal and provisional characteristic, but it is the general form of th e labour relation in a productive, digitalized sphere, reticular and recombinative. The word 'precariat' generally stands for the area of work which is no lo nger definable by fixed rules relative to the labour relation, to salary and t o the length of the working day. However if we analyse the past we see that the se rules functioned only for a limited period in the history of relations be tween labour and capital. Only for a short period at the heart of the C20th, un der the political pressures of unions and workers, in conditions of (almost) full employment and thanks to a role more or less strongly regulatory of the s tate in the economy, some limits to the natural violence of capitalist dynamic s could be legally established. The legal obligations that in certain perio ds have protected society from the violence of capital were always founded o n the existence of a relation of a force of a political and material kind (work ers' violence against the violence of capital). Thanks to political force it b ecame possible to affirm rights, establish laws and protect them as personal ri ghts. With the decline in the political force of the workers' movement, the nat ural precariousness of labour relations in capitalism and its brutality have reemerged. The new phenomenon is not the precarious character of the job market, but the technical and cultural conditions in which info-labour is made precariou
re: zapatistas
what do nettimers think the recent communiques mean ? the return of the shooting war, zapatistas in the electoral system ? ... a broadening of the struggle ? re: en) Chiapas, EZLN: A letter of explanation...or, perhaps, farewell from http://irlandesa.blogspot.com/ -- sig/ * - / \ | ^ http://www.weareeverywhere.org http://www.uhc-collective.org.uk/toolbox.htm http://www.eco-action.org/dod http://www.noborder.org http://www.makeworlds.org http://www.ainfos.ca http://slash.autonomedia.org http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/3909/index/links.html http://www.reclaimthestreets.net # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Two Servers Siezed in the UK
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/06/315042.html Alternative Servers Attacked: "Not a Private Question: A Question of Privacy" 27-06-2005 20:32 Two alternative servers have been attacked by the police: The Italian independent non-profit server autistici and the server of Indymedia Bristol, a local alternative media project. On Monday, June 27th, Indymedia Bristol's server was seized by the police. Last week, police demanded access to the server to gain the IP details of a posting. The alternative media outlet is receiving advice from civil liberties organisations and the NUJ. Before being legally forced to hand over the server, Indymedia Bristol stated: "We do not intend to voluntarily hand over information to the police as they have requested". Italy-based server autistici found out that the authorities have copied the keys necessary for the decryption of their webmail a year ago [statement 1 | 2]. Since then, the authorities potentially had access to all the data on the disks. Autistici's provider did not inform them about this. Apparently, this is connected to the same investigation as the one that caused an international law enforcement operation in London last October: A few days before the European Social Forum, Indymedia servers in London were seized, prompting a wave of solidarity statements [report]. Note: Indymedia UK is preparing to provide grass-roots non-corporate coverage for the forthcoming G8 protests and events. Additional http mirrors would help with increased traffic and external disruptions. If you can offer a mirror, mail imc-uk-contact at indymedia.org. Donations can be sent here. -- encrypted mail preferred // gpg key id 0x250E12BF // http://deleteTheBorder.org http://radioActiveradio.org http://sandiego.indymedia.org http://organicCollective.org # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
