Aquí estamos, viviendo el fragor y el cariño y el individualismo del último HOPE, Hackers On Planet Earth.
Otro punto más del hub de conexiones de hackers internacionales, y esta vez bastante más relacionado al CCC de lo que me imaginaba… muchas caras conocidas. También al parecer ha sido muy importante el tour que la gente de aquí hizo por Europa en el “hackers on a plane“, un charterque se alquiló para ir al CCC summer camp en 2007, y que luego derivó en un tour por muchos espacios en Europa (principalmente Austria y Alemania). Hoy he estado en una charla muy interesante sobre ellos, que sellamaba Hacker Space Design Patterns, dada por Jens Ohlig y elaborada junto con otros miembros del CCC.

Fue un poco difícil remover todas las heridas de Riereta una vez más… notar que siguen tan frescas y que no me permiten comprometerme con los proyectos tanto como antes de la debacle. Al mismo tiempo es reconfortante que se otra gente haya visto los mismos errores que yo vi, y que los problemas que tuvimos sean tan comunes y tan serios. Más de esto cuando vuelva a localhost.

I endorse the franklin street statement released by autonomo.us.

This is a very important step towards updating the concept of Free Software and its meaning in a rapidly changing context of web based software. Almost everyone I know uses some kind of web based service, be it flickr, facebook, myspace or just email. When I mention the idea of email software to people, they are generally confused. It’s clear that most computer user’s relation to software and the very notion of software is rapidly changing. Similarly to this issue of software and where it resides or runs, many users of computers are baffled by the notion of hierarchical file systems and think that C:/ and / are a total mystery. Even software like iTunes, which runs locally, continues to hide the actual working of the file system from users,  automatically managing files and folders.

Online services have massive clear benefits, and thats why people use them. Yet the present a serious loss of control over where data is stored and what software is being run. The very notion that you should be able to look at the code of an application you’re running is abstracted far away from users of services like flickr.

Because of all this, this new initiative towards creating web based services that are free and use open, interchangable data formats is hugely important for anyone who cares about the freedom to use your computer however you want to.

One important issue that comes up for me in thinking about this is the question fo resources. Writing some C or perl code and putting it online to share with others, the way free software has been done in the past, doesn’t require a lot of server resources. A service like flickr or gmail clearly is supported by vast networks of storage and computing power. Indymedia, for example, has continually been faced with the difficulty of finding the resources to maintain services like video.indymedia.org (while also developing the software and creating some of the content!). It seems that to do what this document suggests, create free open alternatives to services like flickr, youtube and facebook, what we need is an initiative to create free networks of hosts and develop ways for services to be widely geographically distributed in their hosting, but still fast. This is no easy task. Services like gmail obviously run on clusters that are in the same building, rapidly sharing and accessing data. So not only do we need to start a movement of writing free software for web services, we need a movement of hosting it and developing the ways for that infrastruture to be distributed and still have the quality of existing services. As far as I know, Indymedia hasn’t gotten far in this effort, although its been discussed.

Let’s see what awesomeness autonomo.us comes up with next!

Monday, I canceled all my classes and went to the picket lines, joining AFSCME in their strike. Because of the injunction, it seems like no one besides AFSCME is respecting the picket line and the rest of the university is working, based on the threat of being fired and not being rehired based on the decision of the injunction. One TA told me he was afraid to even let his section have a day off that he was planning, to get back in line with the rest of the classes schedules, because he thinks the administration is monitoring classes to make sure classes are going on according to schedule.

The AFSCME workers need your support. If you can make it out to the Gilman parking structure, that’s where the main marches and rallies are taking place. Just enter UCSD from the Via La Jolla entrance, by the hospital, or come off the Gilman exit on the 5 and drive until you see the green tshirts and picket signs!

On Monday, they marched around Gilman, making their presence felt in the center of the school. We even marched down to La Jolla Village Drive at 4:30pm, letting all the people sitting in traffic know that the UC pays poverty wages.

The strikers are out, in shifts, from 4:30am to 12:00am at night. If you can make it out to march with them, they greatly appreciate your support. If you can even stop by and offer your words of support. It means a lot. I believe that at the ucsd hillcrest medical center there are more patient care workers striking, but I haven’t been there myself. Details are here:

http://www.afscme3299.org/

All week, the service workers at all UC’s are on strike including janitorial, grounds, patient care and building maintenance people. Watch this film to learn more about why they’re striking:

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/07/11/18515279.php

One UCSD employee in the video has worked there for 6 years and still has to work a second job, working 7 days a week just to pay her rent aand barely pay her bills. While the UC has millions to pay the Chancellor and to pay for defense research, they don’t have the money to pay their employees a living wage? The UC manages the Lawrence Livermore labs and Los Alamos, known for nuclear weapons development. (http://labs.ucop.edu/)

Over 8,000 employees are on strike this week. Yet, a California court has issued an injunction claiming that the strike is illegal because it endangers people. What is really endangering people is the UC regent’s decision not to pay people a living wage. Read about the injunction here:

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/07/11_afscme.shtml

Recently UCSD announced the Staff and Academic Reduction in Time, a “voluntary time reduction personell program, to achieve salary savings”, apparently offering people the choice to work less in anticipation of budget cuts.

http://adminrecords.ucsd.edu/Notices/2008/2008-5-12-3.html

This makes is very clear where the UC’s priorities are, on high paid executives and on research for warfare, not on the employees that make the university function.

As the students drove past the picket in their cars, they seemed unaware of what was going on, unaware that their future rights as employees are on the line with this strike, as the chorus of bosses saying that we just have to buckle down for hard economic times and work more for less money rises, these workers are bravely standing up and saying NO. With this week’s economic bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, people are literally running on the banks and pulling out their money. Its already beginning to sound like the days before the uprising in Argentina in 2001, with a story I heard on the radio yesterday saying that the police had to intervene to calm down a situation at a Freddie Mac branch in escondido. Yet with all of the uncertainty, AFSCME service workers are braving the threats of being fired to collectively stand up and demand that they be paid a living wage because it is perfectly clear that the university has millions, it just chooses to spend it on the people it thinks are more important. The injunction itself proves how important these workers are.

[UPDATE02] Once or twice a week I get the question, "I'm thinking about using Meraki's equipment, what do you think?" And I always start my answer much the same way. [As a disclaimer, I've known the Meraki folks since their time back at MIT -- my development teams used to collaborate actively with them.]

Meraki is a great system for quick do-it-yourself networking. The technology is elegant and the graphical user interface (mostly) intuitive. If you want a plug-and-play technology immediately deployed, it's a good solution. But that is far from the whole story.

As many of my readers know, I've been advocating for open tech for years and years -- so how does Meraki stack up? The core technologies in Meraki are open source -- but they've been smothered in a proprietary wrapper that makes Meraki little different from most "black box" solutions. Users can't easily view the code, change features (or add features, for that matter), fix bugs, or otherwise adapt the technology for their own uses. As a number of open source projects have discovered, even gaining access to information that was covered by existing open source licenses has become increasingly difficult as Meraki has become increasingly proprietary.

Most people think Meraki's back-end is free. They are wrong. In fact, Meraki plans tomay eventually charge for the use of their services. As a recent GovTech article reported, Meraki's founder stated that their solution "includes three years of its data center services in the price of the hardware." For those who forget, Meraki's hardware used to cost $49 for an indoor node, then the cost went up to $149 -- if you wanted more equipment, you had to pay a rate three times as much, and since Meraki's equipment is sole-sourced, you had to pay whatever they charged.

I fully expect that we're going to see the same problem with Meraki's back-end services. Most users (and certainly just about everyone in the general public) thinks that once you buy a wireless access point that it will continue to work indefinitely (or at least until the hardware fails). With Meraki, however, you're getting a package of hardware and software -- and you can't run a Meraki network without Meraki's proprietary back-end. So how much will the service cost at the end of your 3-year "free" period? I have no idea (though if you know, please let me know). [EDIT: As Meraki CEO, Sanjit Biswas, clarified on this blog (see comments), "the cost the hosted backend service is included for the lifetime of the device with the current line of products at $149/$199. We may decide to unbundle the pricing with future products, but it will be clear to the customer and not a hidden fee." So current hardware should remain free to use. And what happens if you've been a Meraki network over that 3-year periodand are now about to get a huge monthly charge? Probably you'll either have to pay whatever they cost or parts of your network will cease to work. I'm not sure that I would agree with Sanjit that this is not a hidden fee -- most Meraki customers are not aware of the possibility that future compatible hardware might carry additional fees.]

Hundreds of projects, organizations, and municipalities are rolling out Meraki-based networks, yet few seem to understand that they're buying a bundled service not just a piece of hardware. Over time, these initiatives will end up paying an unknown amount of money to Meraki just to keep their system running. It is, in fact, the ultimate bait-and-switch paradigm -- you think you have a one-time hardware cost, instead you get vendor lock-in, recurring charges, and path dependencies.

These and other reasons are why it remains so important to support and utilize truly open technologies. The simulacrums are getting better and better -- but inevitably you're getting a worse deal than you think.

Yep, after working like there is no tomorrow for G+J in Hamburg for a few months — hence the silence here — I am officially on the road again. Still hitch-hiking, but now accompanied by a fully featured small fold-up bike (R+M Birdy premium + mud guards + back carrier) — I call it hitch-biking. Getting from Hamburg to Vienna via Schwerin and Munich was surprisingly easy, despite the relatively big cargo. This tells you how much unused space there is in cars on the road. One empty truck took the bike into its empty cargo room — there would have been room for hundreds of bikes, even unfolded! Anyway, all those moments when I badly wished for a bike while walking for kilometres from a drop-off point to the next good starting point are now past. Unfold bike, mount Greenpeace bags, be cycling happily, cycle a little further just for the fun of it. :)

Just so you have a better chance to get hold of me, here is my current Travel Plan for this summer.

Fischer & Maus: Reflection, Widrig & Booshan: Binaural

5 Days Off MEDIA: Frozen
Wed 2 through Sat 26 July 2008
Melkweg Mediaroom & Paradiso, Amsterdam

• Andreas Nicolas Fischer & Benjamin Maus (DE)
• Leander Herzog (CH)
• Marius Watz
• Daniel Widrig & Shajay Booshan (UK)
• Sound: Freiband / Frans de Waard (NL)
• Sound: Alexander Rishaug (NO)

Frozen (part of the 5 Days Off MEDIA festival) is an exhibition of experiments in the representation of sound in media beyond the auditory. It examines the sound signal as a virtual space, presenting possible mappings that visualize or interpret the structures contained within the soundwaves.

Frozen was proposed and commissioned by Jan Hiddink and the 5 Days Off MEDIA festival in Amsterdam, and consists exclusively of original work. It was conceived with Generator.x 2.0 as a conceptual reference (all four artists in the show were also involved in Generator.x 2.0), but with a clearly defined focus: The representation of sound as spatial structures, realized as physical objects through the use of digital fabrication technologies.

For more information, see the documentation in the Frozen Flickr set, Leander Herzog’s FFT set or the blog posts by Benjamin Maus and Andreas Nicolas Fischer.

Frozen: Sound as space

Leander Herzog: Untitled / Marius Watz: Sound memory (Oslo Rain Manifesto)

Over the past years, there has been an enormous development in the field of live-presented audio-visual performance art. Owing to digital techniques, image and sound are connected in a way that was previously unthinkable. Frozen is headed in the opposite direction. Frozen pulls the plug and presents audio art, prints, and sculptures as independent, but interconnected works of art.

In the Mediaroom at the Melkweg multi-channel sound pieces can be experienced over an advanced speaker setup, accompanied by sound in a "frozen" form: Images and sculptural objects made using sound as input. These artworks use audio analysis and custom software processes to extract meaningful data from the sound signal, creating a mapping between audio and other media. Frozen will feature digital prints as well as four "sound sculptures" created using digital fabrication technology such as rapid prototyping, CNC and laser cutting, which allow for the direct translation of a digital model into physical form.

Frozen arose in collaboration with the Norwegian artist and curator Marius Watz, whose Generator.x project investigates the implications of generative systems and computational models of creation. The recent exhibition Generator.x 2.0: Beyond the Screen brought together artists and architects to explore the potential of this new mode of creation.

‘Audio sculptures’ will be on display by Andreas Nicolas Fischer (DE) & Benjamin Maus (DE), Leander Herzog (CH), Marius Watz (NO) and Daniel Widrig & Shajay Booshan (UK). These sculptures are based on audioworks by Freiband (Nl, Frans de Waard), and Alexander Rishaug (No).

Frozen is presented in the Melkweg Mediaroom and at Paradiso.

5 Days Off MEDIA is part of the 5 Days Off festival for electronic music from Wed 2 through July 6. 5 Days Off MEDIA presents three themes: Crosswire, Frozen and Roots. Locations: Melkweg, Paradiso, Dutch Institute for Media Art and Heineken Music Hall.

Aquí en Estados Unidos la democracia es un poco rara.

De partida, el tema del bipartidismo del que se quejan en muchos otros países es mucho más real aquí: aquí es REAL que hay sólo dos partidos, y es muy difícil ser parte de las elecciones. En muchos estados, incluso, hay sólo un partido en algunas elecciones.

Porque tener un partido en las urnas cuesta mucho dinero. Por ejemplo si te toca votar en Boston para la elección de senadores puede ser que en tu lugar de votación no haya ningún candidato republicano, como le pasó a un colega hace un tiempo. Porque los republicanos saben que no van a ganar allí y directamente no ponen energía en la campaña. Así que te encuentras sólo con un partido para votar!!! Otras cosas que te pueden pasar por ejemplo es que cuando entregas tu papel el tipo que lo recibe lo mire, o que si la máquina de contar los votos no funciona, pongan el papel en una caja de cartón y te prometan que los van a pasar cuando se arregle.

Por ejemplo, Ralph Nader, el candidato del Partido Verde, no se puede votar en todos los estados. Hay lugares en los que todavía no ha recibido suficientes firmas para poder ir a las elecciones, y además los Demócratas intentan impedírselo. Para ver los estados en los que se puede votar a Nader, pues visitar Vote Nader.

Mucha gente acusa a Nader de haber favorecido que la gente no votara por Al Gore en las últimas elecciones presidenciales, provocando con ello la segunda presidencia de Bush. Pero ¿de verdad creen que Al Gore hubiera sido mejor? ¿Por qué no piensan en toda la gente que votó a Bush cuando podría haber votado a Gore, o toda la gente que directamente no fue a votar?O en los LIV, como los llaman, los Low Information Voters.

Después de estos días en Estados Unidos, y aunque no tenga por qué tener una opinión informada… a pesar de ver diferencias en los dos partidos no puedo ver realmente mucho positivo en los Demócratas, que tiran bombas y quitan servicios públicos de la misma manera que los republicanos. Pero a la izquierda cómoda de aquí le gusta pensar que Obama será diferente, aunque ya se ha llevado el primer fiasco con lo de la FISA. Si hasta Hillary votó en contra!

Mientras tanto los dejo con un humorista norteamericano que me ha encantado: George Carlin, hablando de votar.

WOO! I’m so excited that I upgraded my wp version today and finally added a tag cloud. To see the glorious tag cloud, scroll to the bottom of the page. But more importantly, check out this post I’ve been working on this week…

Dreaming of Molly Millions, the Panther Moderns and Body Hacking

“It was the style that mattered and the style was the same. The Moderns were mercenaries, practical jokers and nihilistic technofetishists.

The one who showed up at the loft door with a box of diskettes from the Finn was a soft-voiced boy called Angelo. his face was a simple graft grown on collagen and shark-cartilage polysaccharides, smooth and hideous. It was one of the nastiest pieces of elective surgery Case had ever seen. When Angelo smiled, revealing the razor-sharp canines of some large animal, Case was actually relieved. Toothbud transplants. He’d seen that before.”

- William Gibson, Neuromancer

See this real neko interviewed in the trailer for the film Flesh and Blood, about suspension and new forms of body modification.

Looking back at William Gibson’s Neuromancer, I wonder, why has so much geek energy and time gone into creating one aspect of his vision in the book, cyberspace, and not others, like body hacking? Yes, I know that Vernor Vinge came up with the concept of Cyberspace before Gibson, but Gibson’s book is the one most often cited as the huge cultural influence at the root of contemporary cyberculture. I recently read the phrase “the Gibson generation”, and I think I’m not part of it. Sure, I read Gibson, but I dislike these generational names, as if there was a clear marker, and if anything, I hope I’m part of the generation after the Gibson generation, but the quote above about the Panther Moderns gives me pause.

Biotechnology, as it exists today, is still surely limited, and often makes claims much greater than it can actually achieve, such as feeding and feuling the world. The food riots around the world should attest to this fact. Changing global economic policies and encouraging local sustainable food production instead of structural adjustment policies which promote export crops is much more likely to solve the world’s hunger problem than rice which has been genetically engineered to have more nutrients and terminator seeds that farmers have to pay for every year.

Still, there are major advances in biotechnology that are undeniable. Today we have face transplants, cybernetic limbs that move at will and manufactured organisms like Synthia. So, why are these advances only happening in multimillion dollar laboratories? Where is our Apple Is of biology? And, our garage hackers aren’t using HP calculators, but quad processor machines with 2 gigs of memory, so what else might come out of a garage?

The term body hacking seems to have been coined by Quinn Norton, to describe low cost, DIY approaches to body modifying medical procedures. While some have taken her claims to mean that there might be a “second enlightenment”, I think that the first one did enough damage to our relationships with our bodies, thank you. I’d prefer to hope that more widespread body hacking might lead to new genders, new forms of expression, new ways of being and new relationships with our bodies that can slip out of the grip of biopower by not registering in the protocols of control that biopower works through.

Where can we see body hacking today? There are lots of examples that have been around for a long time of DIY body modification, like tattooing, scarification and piercing. But I would argue that hacking is often engaged with exploring technology and its potentials and ramifications, so we might see contemporary body hacking as novel or unexpected uses of technologies which modify the body. One example of this are the botox parties that the media is fond of talking about where people inject their friends with botox at parties to remove wrinkles. This is perhaps not a very liberatory use of body hacking, as it seems concerned with meeting the demands of biopower, of common beauty standards, at the risk of personal danger. Yet perhaps we can think of prolonging the beauty of youth as fundamentally changing the conditions of culture? I’m avoiding the use of the term “human condition” here intentionally, since it is my hope that body hacking might broaden the notion of what we think human is. Too often the word human, as in human rights, leaves out marginalized groups, often in the service of the economy. Who is human today? Who was yesterday? Still, I’m not sure about botox. I think there is a lot to be said about the ethical differences between cosmetic treatments like botox and surgical procedures that transgender people get and other forms of body modification, and the role of agency, oppression and biopolitical norms.

Perhaps we might see a merging of body hacking and computer hacking practices emerge. In Neuromancer, they seem to both be equally common. Molly injects herself with “endorphin analog” whenever she needs some. Today, the military is experimenting with using fear reducing drugs in conjunction with virtual reality as a treatment for PTSD, but this is not an everyday application. With today’s virtual reality technology, it seems like Dramamine will be a lot more common than endorphin inhibitors as a treatment for Simulator Sickness.

So, what is preventing a broader body hacking practice from developing? The technology is cheaply available. I found lots of medical supplies at an educational store in San Diego. Surely artists are paving the way in this kind of experimentation. Yet why aren’t there more body hackers? Why does saying to someone “i’m a body hacker” seem to imply more that you’re a psychopathic killer than that you’re part of an emerging culture of knowledge exploration, challenging the limits and definition of knowledge itself?

Perhaps it is a question of “critical mass”, that people need to just start doing it, if they’re interested, to create a culture of body hacking. Synthetic biologist Drew Endy at MIT thinks that what we need is a biohacker culture, using freely available software and protein and genome databases to imagine new lifeforms and new biological possibilities. The scifi blog io9.com even recently announced a contest using the Biobricks platform to design a new lifeform, nudging this emerging area along.

Culture was definitely a major part of how I got into hacking. I remember sharing a deep friendship with my buddy who I used to dumpster dive for passwords with and try out phracking software late at night at payphones around Miami. 2600 magazine was a very functional part of the culture and starting the Miami 2600 meeting was such an exciting part of “being a hacker” for me. I think that wanting to “be a hacker”, a major part of why I went into computer science, was tied up with my identity and my conception of myself and having that conception reinforced socially. Note the large number of geek joke t-shirts that I still own, like the 8008135 calculator and the “there are only 10 types of people in the world: those who know binary and those who don’t”. Yes, those shirts both have a hugely different meaning for me today, but geek t-shirts do attest to the cultural currency of geekness and hacking. Even Kevin Mitnick, who is one of the most well known crackers, admits that much of what he did was social engineering, impersonating IT people over the phone. When I read John Markoff’s book Cyberpunk as a young aspiring hacker, one of my favorite stories was of the woman in one of the hacker groups described in the book who would sleep with members of the air force to go through their wallets for passwords while they slept. I don’t remember the exact group name, and I wonder if the story is true.

Libidinal economies must have a large role in body modifications, as well. There are cultural refrences for what tattoos and piercings mean, including sexual attitudes. But how does a cat person fit into the libidinal economy? There must be a point at which it goes beyond novelty and people decide on their sexual relation to these new kinds of bodily expression. Queer and transgender communities are a place where one can clearly see this at work. Often one chooses a particular gender expression to attract a particular person, but in queer communities, one can see clearly the shifting of these choices and the multiple intersections of gender and sexuality at play, with shifting intensities, in any given room, say at an event at the Rubber Rose in San Diego. This kind of sexual economy can act as a limiting factor on new forms of gender and bodily expression if one finds it hard to find those who are attracted to a particular expression. Yet it can also be a driving factor when one encounters a community rich with a diversity of expressions and possibilities.

Another place we can see body hacking today, that has been around for a long time, is in the transsexual community. While some argue as to whether or not transsexual body modification is just meeting the demands of patriarchy and western beauty standards, I personally think it is a form of resistance to them. A major part of biopower, in my view, is to ensure that you are limited to the body that you’re given, and so changing it disrupts the way biopower functions. If “women” and “people of color” are more exploited in contemporary society, which I definitely believe they are, then how does biopower continue to function if anyone can change their gender or skin color on a daily basis? Transgender people have been hacking psychiatric and medical systems for years. It is widely known that psychiatric tests of transgender people that have been required are ineffective because transgender people know what answers to give to get what they want. Similarly, transgender people are often known to get hormones outside of the medical establishment, even though this may be dangerous. How does this kind of hacking arise? From social exchanges within the transgender community, from people sharing knowledge of how to beat an oppressive system which takes away their agency over their bodies. Hopefuly, as body hacking culture emerges and grows, we will see a day in the future where people have more freedom and control over their bodies. If people want to spend their days as Nekos or Orcs or fantasize about having cybernetic eye implants to improve their vision, how long will it be before people start doing it?

Another factor here is our attitudes towards health care, which are totally broken. The current models of health care at work in the United States promote a model where the doctor is the only person with valid medical knowledge and the patient should just take their pills and shut up. Clearly, this is impossible, since the patient knows best about their own lives and bodies and the doctor can only ask questions. This is exactly what Guattari was writing about with the concept of transversality, the relationship of the psychoanalyst to the patient. Guattari proposes in the essay “Transversality”, which he describes as:

“opposed to:

(a) verticality, as described in the organogramme of a pyramidal structure (leaders, assistants, etc);
(b) horizontality, as it exists in the disturbed wards of a hospital, or even more, in the senlie wards; in other words a state of affairs in which things and people fit in as best they can within the situation in which they find themselves.

Think of a field with a fence around it in which there are horses with adjustable blinkers: the adjustment of the blinkers is the ‘coefficient of transversality’. If they are adjusted as to make the horses totally blind, then presumably a certain traumatic form of encounter will take place. Gradually, as the flaps are opened, one can envisage them moving about more easily.”

Guattari goes on to explain the notion as an attempt to get out of established roles like patient and doctor and to facilitate communication across all levels of a group, resulting in more, better information. I think that this describes the situation within cyberculture or network culture well, where the myth of the Apple garage is well known and it is expected that anyone can come up with a good idea and radically change the industry. While that myth may not be applicable in this well developed stage of the internet economy, examples like GNU/Linux continue to prove it’s value. Today, one can see this kind of deterritorialized knowledge production emerging in biology with body hacking, biohacking and even undergraduate students forming new biological fields like comparative proteogenomics.

The subrosa cyberfeminist collective have discussed how early witch hunting was closely related to the establishment of medical institutions of power and had the stated goal of stopping women from spreading their medical and sexual knowledge. subrosa’s book states that “The Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches) was the manual for witch-hunters. As defined in this book the crimes of the witches were: religious heresy, being sexually active, organizing women, having magical powers of healing and hurting, possessing medical and obstetrical skills and knowledge.” Many contemporary moves toward DIY health care and holistic medicine aim at recovering these lost pathways to knowledge. As we rethink the meaning of scientific knowledge in our contemporary art and acivist practices, we can rethink who is and isn’t a scientist, as subrosa’s book goes on, “the witch was the scientist of her time, while the Church still believed in the mumbo-jumbo of prayer… The banishing of common (and female and people’s) knwoledge gained from centuries of inquiry, experimentation, and practice, represents one of the greatest losses to the medical and scientific world in Western history.”

“‘There is always a point at which the terrorist ceases to manipulate the media gestalt. A point at which the violence may well escalate, but beyond which the terrorist has become symptomatic of the media gestalt itself. Terrorism as we ordinarily understand it is innately media-related. The Panther Moderns differ from other terrorists precisely in their degree of self-consciousness, in their awareness of the extent to which media divorce the act of terrorism from the original sociopolitical intent…’

‘Skip it,’ Case Said…” - Neuromancer, William Gibson

It’s very interesting that Gibson makes the Panther Moderns, one of the most overtly political characters in the novel, some of the most biologically modded characters as well. Surely the situation with biology today is ripe for hacking. With the human genome sequenced and many more genomes being sequenced every week and massive computing power cheaply available, there is a massive opportunity for people to explore the possibilities of biotechnology and of their own bodies. While so much remains unknown, like the way that proteins unfold and act independently of genetic determinations, I’m personally still hoping for the garage body hackers to radically change the potential of what we can physically “be”, and not just hoping, but working on it myself…

Body Modification artist Steve Haworth says, “If they come after me, I’m gonna fight em, tooth and nail. I’m an artist.” While the potential is still scary to people, much of that fear is rooted in ideas of the sanctity of the flesh, ultimately rooted in religious beliefs that are totally insignificant to many of us. Given the way that the body is seen as an “emerging market area” and the law enforcement applications of bioinformatics, the contemporary power structure will definitely find this new kind of hacking scary and discourage it. But hasn’t that always been an important part of the role of the hacker? To challenge power?

Estos días en Worcester me han dado oportunidad de experimentar de primera mano una experiencia totalmente norteamericana:  Los burnouts.

Los 2008 Worcester Summer Nationals Burn Outs, que convocan todos los años a gente del resto de Estados Unidos, son encuentros en los que la gente viene con coches antiguos o modernos, dispuestos a quemarles las ruedas con el freno de mano puesto.

Tienen su origen en un hecho práctico, de las carreras de coches: cuando los coches están por correr, se les calientan las ruedas de esta manera para que estén calientes y se peguen mejor a la carretera. Aquí en Worcester no hay carreras, o al menos no como parte del encuentro.

Sólo vienen a mostrar el coche y quemarle las ruedas.

En un lugar donde es difícil ver gente caminando y el transporte público prácticamente no existe, imagino que será normal que la diversión pase por hacer cosas con los coches… A pesar de que todo el mundo esté preocupado por el precio de la gasolina. De hecho durante los burnouts he podido ver más gente caminando que en el resto de los días

Muchas motos también, muchos chevys, y muchas banderas norteamericanas. El humo de las llantas se podía sentir durante toda la semana, ahogandote un poco, en el valle de la ciudad.

Aquí les dejo unos videos de la historia:

Non riesco a scrivere. I post finiscono miseramente nella memoria, nel vuoto, inghiottiti  dal frammento di tempo, tra quando penso a quando le mie dita toccano la tastiera, persi tra il  momento in cui avrei dovuto salvare  e quello in cui lo scritto non c'e' piu'. In fondo non sta succedendo nulla. Anche io sono inghiottita in qualche frammento, non sono ancora ma non sono gia' piu'. Una sensazione di disagio mi accompagna da giorni: piove, fa freddo, esce il sole, diluvia, l'aria si scalda, si raffredda, esce il sole, ancora, per poco.

Sole, solitudine. Non mi sentivo cosi' da tempo: il tempo. Passo le giornate cincischiando da una stanza all'altra: consulto l'oracolo, leggo Philip Dick, non esco. Fondamentalmente non mi va. All'improvviso sento la chiamata. Mi sveglio, guardo indietro e piango. Sono commossa: il passato, gli amori il lavoro i canali le biciclette... ZIP!  All'improvviso, il passato era passato per sempre. Tra una lacrimuccia e l'altra sono scesa di corsa al parco, e abbiamo pisciato sui miei vent'anni.

Il giorno dopo tutta un'altra energia: di ottimo umore, energica e frizzante, mi fisso a guardare per ore la mappa di Londra, in stato di contemplativa generazione. Ecco il  futuro, che forse e' presente.

Se la vita fosse semplice, sarebbe forse noiosa? Non so.

In questo stato delirante di malinconie ed entusiasmi, sogni ed ossessioni, cambiamenti, ecco che spunta la variabile piu' critica, quella che in ogni algoritmo riesce comunque e sempre a far saltare tutto il sistema: la famiglia.

Xname per un attimo si sente un po' come il papa, Papa Giovanni, affacciata alla finestra di noblogs benedisce gli attivisti con sostanze psicotrope e additivi aggiunti. 

Dicevamo, appunto, la famiglia. Non sono mai andata al museo di Van Gogh, e, dopo cinque anni in Olanda, ecco che finalmente i miei sono miracolosamente pronti per venirmi a trovare! Che bello, davvero! Peccato io sia completamente persa in me stessa, piove e sto traslocando. Nell'impossibilita' di dire si, e nell'impossibilita' di dire no, mi trascino da giorni dal salotto alla cucina, dalla cucina alla camera da letto, con il cuore ancora una volta spezzato. Se fossi un vampiro, basterebbe un bastoncino di legno di ciliegio, ma io, che sono una bambinetta, mi stappo il cuore con un cavatappi e lo spingo a due mani nel freezer, e mentre il sangue gocciola nella stanza, imbrattando il frigo e il pavimento, pretendo sia solo caffe'.

Insomma, e' tutto molto semplice, dici che te ne vai, ma quando finalmente lo stai per fare, ecco che spuntano .... e questo e quello e quello. Ma io ... ma io ...

Come dire, vorrei scomparire entro una settimana.

Ubik poco fa ha fatto una cosa ... una cosa buffa e schifosa che ripete ogni tanto, e che io, restia ad accettare la realta' bieca, tendo a reinterpretare alla ricerca di una metafora illuminante. Insomma, il cane alza la gamba e caga :D

E vabbhe'... ogni tanto si sbaglia, e caga in aria verso il cielo. Cosa vorra' mai dire, Xname? Cagare con la gamba alzata, ecco la soluzione di tutto, il numero nascosto, la risposta che cercavo. 

Insomma, non ho molto da dire: vivo isolata, non fumo, non bevo, non dico parolacce.

In verita' digrigno tra i denti una quantita' di bestemmie che il rosario del vicino si e' frantumato e se poco poco assaggio una canna o bevo un bicchierino, sarei a pronta a strafare, accendo il calumet, limono con tutti, e finisco immancabilmente a letto da sola, perche' ad un certo punto la gente mi stanca e mi stufa e preferisco star sola tra macchine e cane, e l'alcool e il fumo non li reggo piu', il mio corpo rifiuta. Forse sto per diventare un Santo, forse un coglione. 

Sono prigioniera in casa, cerco il coraggio di fuggire,  cerco un passaggio  verso Sud, cerco me stessa e non mi trovo. Non ho voglia di far nulla. Il vero niente assoluto, la noia.

Non ascolto musica, quasi. Stato  pericoloso, quello del silenzio che non si vuole ascoltare. Cosa succede laggiu'? Non suonavo da mesi. Inizio a strimpellare qualcosa: dalle cuffie escono ragni e cimici e mostri neri come scarabei ed altre cose scure e dense piene di male. Mentre sputo il mio veleno, vedo lo sciame allontanarsi da me. Eseguo una musica cosi' paurosa e profonda, che anche il diavolo trema, accovacciato ridente sul mio davanzale.

Si, otra vez hablando del aborto. Las cosas están poniéndose difíciles de nuevo, incluso en lugares donde el tema parecía estar solucionado, como en la vieja y supuestamente democrática Europa.

Más allá de las típicas diatribas del Papa que nunca ha corrido el riesgo de quedarse embarazado como todas sabemos, ahora también los ginecólogos se dedican a meter el dedo en el útero femenino. En España, reclaman que a partir de la 22 semana de gestación el aborto no sería la interrupción de un embarazo sino la “destrucción intrauterina de un feto viable” según José Manuel Bajo Arenas, presidente de SEGO [1], otro hombre. La ginecóloga Rosa María Sabatel recalca que estos casos son muy puntuales y sólo se llevan a cabo cuando el bebé presenta malformaciones incompatibles con la vida, y son el 2% de los casos de los abortos llevados a cabo en España. El 90% de las interrupciones del embarazo en este país se practica dentro de las primeras 12 semanas de gestación [2].

Esta es la realidad, por más que la Iglesia presente casos como el de Gianna Jessen para contrarrestar el derecho de las mujeres a decidir sobre su cuerpo. Gianna nació prematuramente el día que su madre se iba a practicar un aborto a los siete meses y medio de embarazo. Sus padres tenían entonces sólo 17 años de edad. No sabemos qué circunstancias llevaron a estos adolescente a buscar un aborto tan tardío, ni sabemos si recibieron antes de ello educación sexual. Es una experiencia dolorosa y traumática, es un riesgo mayor de complicaciones y es más trabajo para los médicos. Su historia se hizo famosa en Estados Unidos cuando el político republicano Ted Harvey la utilizó de manera demagógica para intentar arruinar la celebración de los 90 años de la asociación estadounidense Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood. Como se puede ver en su sitio web, cuando no lucha en contra del derecho al aborto Ted Harvey apoya el derecho de la gente a tener armas. Me pregunto cómo habrá hecho para tener sólo dos niños ya que está en contra de la planificación familiar.

En España también se siente la ofensiva, a pesar de que el número de abortos se está reduciendo en ese país. A causa de las persecuciones que sufren las clínicas abortistas, miles de personas se acercaron a los juzgados para autoinculparse por haber abortado, entre ellas la dirección de Izquierda Unida. La alarma surgió cuando a partir de una denuncia del grupo antiabortista La Vida Importa que reclamaba que en la clínica Isadora se realizaban abortos a mujeres en avanzado estado de gestación, un juez llamó a declarar a 27 mujeres que habían abortado en la clínica, a pesar de que el análisis de los restos fetales ha demostrado que ninguno superaba las 22 semanas de gestación. Sin embargo, la derecha sigue su ofensiva y las mujeres españolas se van a abortar a Francia, como en tiempos de Franco.

Vamos a ver si de una vez por todas la gente entiende esto: las personas que estamos a favor del aborto no consideramos el aborto la única solución a la planificación familiar, ni la mejor. Lamentablemente, mientras la iglesia siga impidiendo que la población tenga acceso a la educación sexual, muchas mujeres se seguirán quedando embarazadas sin quererlo. De hecho, en España el 98% de las chicas entre 15 y 19 años no buscan la gestación y más de la mitad la interrumpen.

Como diría el Lord Steel de la Cámara de Lores británica, que votó en 1967 la ley de aborto inglesa, “es una ironía que la mayoría de las personas que se oponen al derecho de las mujeres a abortar se opongan también a la educación sexual“, cuando esa es la vía más segura a la disminución de los abortos. Esta opinión fue respaldada, entre otros, por el ministro de Salud de Argentina, Ginés González García.

Es terrible que esta gente se dedique a manipular con sentimentalismos una situación que no deja de ser económica y, por qué no decirlo, de clase. Es verdad, un aborto es un niño menos, pero un mes sin quedarnos embarazadas también es un niño menos. Cada eyaculación tiene millones de niños por nacer. Cada niño que nace, hay millones de otros niños que no nacerán.

Cada madre que aborta (y sobrevive) puede volver a ser madre, en mejores condiciones, cuando desee. Cada madre que se ve obligada a criar un hijo cuando las circunstancias son difíciles llevará una vida difícil para ella y para el hijo, no podrá proveer a su hijo de comodidad ni seguridad, ni podrá dar a su hijo una infancia libre de preocupaciones.

En Argentina, donde el aborto es todavía ilegal, resulta a fin de cuentas ilegal sólo para los pobres, ya que las mujeres de clase alta siempre podrán conseguir un aborto en una clínica clandestina limpia y donde serán bien atendidas. Las mujeres que en Argentina no pueden abortar son las mujeres pobres. Y si acuden al hospital tras las complicaciones de un aborto hecho en malas condiciones, pueden ser incluso hasta denunciadas por ello. Se estima que entre 600 y 700 mujeres mueren al año en Argentina a causa de abortos mal realizados, la primera causa de muerte por gestación de las mujeres pobres, con situaciones como la de Jujuy, por ejemplo, donde hay un aborto por cada dos partos que se realizan.

¿Qué es lo que pretende la Iglesia con este “derecho a la vida” que defienden tanto? ¿Por qué no se preocupan de la calidad de vida de los chicos que ya están en este mundo, que pasan hambre o no reciben la educación necesaria para no terminar en el ejército o en la cárcel? Una persona no es sólo un número más. Y tener un hijo no es sólo esperar nueve meses vestida de rosa juntando ropitas. Estar en contra del aborto, es estar a favor del aborto ilegal. Esa es una realidad.

Manteniendo a las clases bajas en la cuerda floja, poniéndolos a producir más hijos en cuanto puedan, sin tiempo de lograr una educación ni una base económica, serán más fáciles de controlar y manipular. Y ya se sabe que la religiosidad va de la mano con la falta de educación. También, como veremos más abajo, hay estudios que indican que los hijos no deseados tienen más posibilidades de incurrir en comportamientos criminales.

De acuerdo con datos oficiales, plantea el estudio [El Plan Más Vida: un programa bonaerense a favor de las madres y sus hijos], en la provincia de Buenos Aires más del 30% de las madres vive en situación de pobreza (el 9,2% es indigente); el 49,2% no terminó el secundario y el 6,4% no terminó el primario; un 44,6% no tiene mas cobertura de salud que la del sistema público; el 6,7% está desempleada; “41,4% trabaja en condiciones de informalidad y 24,7% se desempeña en el servicio doméstico, y aportan con sus ingresos monetarios el 39,3% y el 42,7% del ingreso total familiar, respectivamente” (los datos surgen de la Encuesta Permanente de Hogares).

Soledad Vallejos- Página/12 4 de Julio de 2008

Un hijo es un esfuerzo muy grande. Un esfuerzo de varios años. Un esfuerzo que muchas mujeres no pueden o no quieren permitirse. En las webs que hablan de Gianna Jessen no se habla de la miseria, de la pobreza. No sabemos qué circunstancias de vida tenía su madre biológica, ni sabemos por qué no pudo hacerse un aborto antes, o si recibió educación y soporte para llevar a cabo una planificación familiar antes de quedar embarazada.

El año pasado hablé mucho de maternidad con mis amigos en Inglaterra. Allí hay bastantes mujeres que se dedican a tener hijos y viven del dinero que el estado les da por sus hijos. Si no tienes trabajo ni hay posibilidades de tenerlo puedes simplemente hacer un niño y el estado te ayudará a mantenerlo. Mi amigo Ben me decía: el problema es que no son hijos, son sólo “más gente”.

En los países del primer mundo, la maternidad es tardía, y reducida. España ha subido su nivel de maternidad principalmente gracias a los inmigrantes, por primera vez desde 1990. Mientras tanto, 860.000 parejas (si no tienes pareja no te aceptan) están en lista de espera para lograr una fecundación asistida.

En Estados Unidos los antiabortistas tienen un montón de frentes abiertos. Planned Parenthood, la ONG más antigua de Estados Unidos (más de 90 años!) que trabaja dando atención gratuita a mujeres, asesorándolas sobre planificación familiar y también haciendo abortos cuando se necesita, está bajo continuo acoso de la derecha religiosa. Acosan no sólo a los médicos, sino también a las empresas constructoras que construyen estos centros, enviando cartas y mails, llamando por teléfono, haciendo piquetes en las casas de la gente que trabaja construyendo un centro nuevo, asustando a los niños del barrio.

La derecha también tiene tácticas desinformativas y de acoso a las mujeres, a través de la red “Crisis Pregnancy Center“. Esta red, que ha recibido donaciones estatales de 60 millones de dólares entre 2001 y 2006, aparte de otras donaciones, se dedica a poner centros cerca de los de Planned Parenthood con carteles que dicen: Free Pregnancy Tests. Cuando entras, una señora muy amable te intenta convencer de dar tu bebé en adopción, mostrándote fetitos de plástico (”tu bebé es ahora mismo de este tamaño”), miente diciendo que el aborto aumenta tus posibilidades de cáncer de mama, y puede impedir que vuelvas a quedar embarazada en el futuro. Te hace rezar en el lugar. Toma tus datos y luego se dedican a llamarte por teléfono y decir: “hoy podría haber sido el cumpleaños de tu bebé”. ¿Esta es la gente que se dice partidaria de la vida? Mientras esperas los resultados del test de embarazo, te sientan a mirar videos antiabortistas. Te siguen a tu casa o te llaman por teléfono. Te hacen sentir culpable de todas las maneras posibles. No dan información sobre métodos anticonceptivos o ligaduras de trompas. Y eso en el país de Roe v. Wade! Me pregunto qué piensa esta gente del estudio de Steven Levitt y Donahue que plantea que el descenso en la tasa de criminalidad de Estados Unidos de los años 90 se debe a la legalización del aborto en 1973, que a su vez redujo el número de niños no deseados, que muchas veces se convierten en criminales.

En Rumania todavía están abiertas las heridas que la prohibición del aborto por parte de Ceaucescu causó en la población femenina. Se estima que “entre 10.000 y 50.000 mujeres murieron como consecuencia de operaciones que acabaron mal durante los 23 años en los que se aplicó la ley”. “Había tarifas para los abortos, que correspondían más o menos a un mes de salario, y todo un lenguaje cifrado para establecer la cita porque la Securitate podía estar vigilando. Las intervenciones se hacían sin anestesia y como las paredes de los bloques de viviendas eran muy malas y se escuchaba todo, a las mujeres les ponían un trapo en la boca para que no gritasen. Para evitar que hubiese testigos, las mujeres se quedaban solas durante las horas cruciales posteriores a la intervención”, relata Silvia Kerim sobre aquellos tiempos. En 1989, al caer la dictadura, unos 100.000 niños rumanos se apiñaban en los orfanatos del país en condiciones de miseria a causa de esa prohibición. ¿Esa es la vida que protegen los antiabortistas? Defendiendo la vida de una persona que todavía no ha nacido, condenan a la miseria a su familia o a los propios niños.

Repitámoslo una vez más: para acabar con el aborto, cosa que todos queremos al fin y al cabo, la solución es clara:

• mejorar la educación sexual,
• mejorar el acceso a los diversos métodos de planificación familiar,
• mejorar las condiciones de salud de la población que impedirán las malformaciones fetales relacionadas con la falta de alimentación

Nadie quiere abortar. El aborto no se busca ni se recordará con cariño. Nuestra sociedad tiene que trabajar mejor en la prevención del embarazo no deseado, ya que los abortos casi siempre dejan secuelas psicológicas en las mujeres que los realizan, y muchas veces físicas si se realizan clandestinamente.

La culpabilidad que la iglesia pretende difundir en las mujeres que han abortado o piensan en abortar ese hijo que no pueden no es sólo irresponsable y egoísta, también tiene un objetivo claro: mantener a las clases creyentes en la pobreza, porque son los pobres los que mantienen la iglesia. Son las clases desfavorecidas las que van a la iglesia, y en cuanto la sociedad mejora, los primeros síntomas son la reducción de creyentes, la demora de la mujer en convertirse en madre, en descenso en el número de hijos, la independencia, en fin, de la mujer. La institución clientelista y mantenedora de las líneas de poder que sostiene a la Iglesia impide que sus propios trabajadores tengan hijos a fin de no tener que mantener a sus “viudas”, aunque todo el mundo que haya vivido en un entorno cristiano sabe que existen. Los curas muchas veces tienen mujeres e hijos, aunque por supuesto estos no tienen ningún derecho con respecto a sus padres biológicos. Los que no tienen una “amiga” en la Iglesia, mejor que los vigilen porque puede que se estén desfogando con los niños que visitan la institución. La derecha pretende que nada de esto existe, y protege a los acusados de la cárcel y la miseria en la que deberían estar.

Dicen que estos hombres de la iglesia se preocupan por la familia y por la gente, pero sus acciones son siempre dañinas para los pobres, especialmente si son mujeres. Al igual que la oposición al uso del preservativos, campañas en las que gastan miles de dólares sólo para que los pobres se sigan muriendo y sigan siendo pobres. Yo me pregunto, todas estas personas progresistas de la iglesia, ¿van a seguir dejando que estos carcas maten gente con su propaganda y se metan en la vida de los demás?

¿Dónde están los progresistas de la Iglesia cuando los obispos manipulan a la población pública y presionan para acabar con la separación de la iglesia y el Estado? Cuando hablan conmigo me dicen que no, que su congregación es diferente, que es más honesta, más moderna, que ellos no están en contra de la anticoncepción o de que personas no católicas realicen abortos, que eso es una cosa “de conciencia”, que la iglesia no es toda así. Pero cuando sus superiores, en nombre de todos ellos, sacan leyes para impedir que los pobres, sí, que los pobres, aborten en condiciones sanitarias decentes… El sector progresista de la iglesia no hace más que mandar uno o dos comunicados. Me pregunto cómo duerme esta gente por las noches, me pregunto cuándo comenzarán a apostatar de una institución que los utiliza para legitimarse, ¿cuándo abandonarán a la iglesia católica que evidentemente está muy lejos de practicar lo que Jesucristo proponía? A la iglesia le quedan los días contados si se juzga por la escasez de monjas y curas que entran en el sacerdocio. En España muchos antiguos seminarios se reconfiguran en hostales para realizan cursos o en instituciones culturales. Pero los curas, como nadie va ya a misa, se pasan todo el día en el parlamento, en internet, acosando a la gente y presionando para poder ejercer su propaganda en la escuela, para evitar que la gente que no profesa su fe viva su vida tranquila.

Llamo en este escrito a que todos los cristianos de base que están a favor del respeto por los derechos humanos abandonen la institución de la iglesia católica y profesen su fe en un marco que no permita la muerte de toda esta gente. Ustedes no necesitan al Vaticano para tener fe, el vaticano los necesita a ustedes. El Vaticano y sus sedes (una en cada barrio) utilizan a toda la buena gente de la iglesia como excusa para llevar a cabo sus planes maquiavélicos, manipuladores, abusivos. Es vuestra responsabilidad como cristianos abandonar a estos dinosaurios para que se hundan solos. No más muertes por propaganda. No más lobby de la Iglesia en asuntos estatales.

What happens when GoogleDocs goes down? A good question.

All privacy concerns aside -- one of the problems with the whole "Software as a Service" angle is the non-proximity of the problem. If, like me you've been wondering what happens after 30 seconds lasts far longer than 30 seconds, it's an important reminder of the dangers of over-reliance on any one medium. Single points of failure suck -- it's a good thing I have local back-ups of all important GoogleDocs.

Ticker of Worldwide Actions Against the G8 inHokkaido

“The G8 2008 is taking place in Hokkaido, Japan, from July 7th to July 9th. As in the past years, people from all over the world are protesting this summit and the capitalist system it represents, both in Japan and in many places around the globe.

On Saturday the 5th of July, the International Day of Action Against the G8,there were protests worldwide against this year’s G8 Summit. In Japan, around 5000 people took to the streets in Sapporo despite ongoing police repression [Photos | Videos 1 | 2 | 3] International solidarity actions took place in several cities, including Bilbao, Stuttgart, Dordrecht, Nijmegen, Paris, Singapore and Berlin.”

More English language coverage and links from Indymedia UK

Call for Solidarity with Counter-G8 Protesters in Japan

From the No! G8 Legal Team
July 6, 2008

* Arrestees are still in jail and face years in prison
* Local organizers may face arrests
* Arrestees and organizers friends and families are facing harassment
and possible house raids by police

Activists and organizers are asking local groups and individuals to
call, e-mail, visit and protest at Japanese embassies over the unjust
arrests, detentions, deportations, and repression occurring around
counter-G8 mobilization in Japan.

Japanese police continue to escalate repression against protesters of
the Group of 8 Summit.
This is part of a growing trend of the
suppression of human rights in Japan.
Yesterday’s demonstration of
approximately five thousand was lined with, and sometimes boxed in by,
several thousand police in full riot gear.
At least four people –
including a Reuters reporter – were arrested.
In one arrest, the
police shattered the window of a sound truck and dragged out the
driver.
Hours after the demonstration ended the legal team had already
received numerous reports of police misconduct.

This latest action comes after weeks of repressive activity on behalf
of the police and government.
Activists throughout Japan have been
arrested at demonstrations and in their homes, often on “technical”
charges, such as not registering a change of address.
Overt
surveillance of activists, academics and reporters has been taking
place for months, and with some local activists for years.

International conference participants and protesters have been
interrogated for hours at the border and many have been denied entry
into the country without warrant.
The legal team sees this as a
violation of people’s right to freely exchange ideas.

“What we have witnessed in the streets of Sapporo is part of an
ongoing and escalating campaign to suppress the movement for real
democracy in Japan,” said Marina Sitrin, professor and member of the
National Lawyers Guild, a US based human rights organization that is a
part of the No! G8 Legal Team.

“We were surprised by the excessive force used by police in today’s
demonstration,” said Ko Watari, of WATCH, a Japanese legal network
created to document police and government misconduct during the anti
G8 protests.
“This was a non-violent demonstration where no acts
against property or people took place, or even appeared likely to take
place.
” The arrested Reuter’s cameraman was standing on a public
sidewalk when seized by plainclothes police; his video camera was
confiscated and has not been returned.
The arrest of the sound truck
driver followed immediately thereafter.
Footage of the driver’s
arrest shows him screaming in pain as the police pulled him out of the
truck, his foot stuck in the steering wheel.

Protesters are organizing various events in the upcoming days of the
G8 Summit, between the 7th and 9th of July.
The No! G8 Legal Team will
be paying close attention to the behavior of the police and
government.
“Labor and peace movement leaders are concerned that the
police will arrest them for organizing these protests, search their
homes and interrogate their family members,” said Dan Spalding, Legal
Worker Vice President of the National Lawyers Guild.

Japanese law permits police to hold and interrogate suspects in the
police station for 23 days without formal charges.
They can
interrogate suspects for up to 12 hours at a time.
While detained
arrestees can be forced to sit on their knees the entire time they are
awake, not being able to move, even to use the bathroom without asking
permission. This permission is not always granted.

“We take all arrests very seriously, and the specifics of the
procedure, such as the 23 day detainment in the police station, the
absence of lawyers to oversee the conditions of process, the physical
violence involved in the interrogations, not being allowed medication,
the fear of putting friends, family, and affiliations at risk are only
a part of the damage.
Its also about the anger and sense of shame
which stays and creates more damage.
It’s the humiliation of not being
able to take care of your own.
” Commented Gen, a participant in the
counter G8 protests.

He continued: “I am personally grateful for the presence of activists
from throughout the world.
The spirit and experiences, levels of
militancy they bring, for just being here in solidarity.
Overall it
has been a very energizing experience, and we are in high spirits.
I
am grateful for your continued presence and support.
It is what
authorities have tried to prevent through repressive measures.

International solidarity and pressure at this moment will bring us to
another level.
”

*International pressure can help prevent more people being arrested.

*Please call, fax, and visit your local Japanese Consulate or Embassy.

Ask to meet with or speak to the Consul General.

*Make a formal request that they report your human rights complaint
with officials in Japan.
Consulates are supposed to report all
complaints regarding human rights to their home country offices when
it is requested formally.

Link to footage of brutal arrest of sound truck driver:
*http://www. youtube. com/watch?v=frfl_qdi2Y8* <http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LnlvdXR1YmUuY29tL3dhdGNoP3Y9ZnJmbF9xZGkyWTg=>

Link to footage of Reuters reporter arrest, the truck driver and some
of the demonstration.

*http://blip. tv/file/1052811/* <http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vYmxpcC50di9maWxlLzEwNTI4MTEv>

Below is a list of Japanese Consulates and Embassies:

Embassy of Japan in Buenos Aires, Argentina - Bouchard 547 Piso-17,
Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Tel: 3188200 Fax: 3188210

Embassy of Japan in Canberra, Australia - 112 Empire Circuit,
Yarralumla, Canberra A.C.T.2600, Australia.
Tel: 62733244 Fax: 62731848

Consulate General of Japan in Sydney, Australia - Level 34, Colonial
Centre, 52 Martin Place,Sydney, N.S.W. 2000, Australia. (G.P.O.Box No.

4125 Sydney 2001) Tel: 92313455 Fax: 92216157

Embassy of Japan in Bahrain, Bahrain - 55 Salmaniya Avenue, Manama
Town 327, Bahrain. (P.O.
Box 23720) Tel: 716565 Fax: 715059

Embassy of Japan in Dhaka, Bangladesh - Plot No.
5 & 7, Dutabash Road,
Baridhara, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Tel: 870087, 871965 Fax: 886737, 883670

Embassy of Japan in Minsk, Belarus - Pr.
Masherov 23/1, 8th Floor,
220004, Minsk, Republic of Belarus.
Tel: 2236233, 2236037, 2234481
Fax: 2104180

Embassy of Japan in Brussels, Belgium - Avenue des Arts 58, 1000
Brusseles, Belgium.
Tel: 5132340 Fax: 5131556

Embassy of Japan in La Paz, Bolivia - Calle Rosendo Gutierrez No.
497
esq.Sanchez Lima, La Paz, Bolivia. (P.O.
Box 2725) Tel: 373151, 373152,
366859, 366860 Fax: 391052

Embassy of Japan in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina - Mula Mustafe
Baseskije 2, 71000 Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Tel: 209580~2
Fax: 209583

Embassy of Japan in Brasilia, Brazil - Avenida das Nacoes, Lote 39,
70425, Brailia, D. Federal, Brasil.
(Caixa Postal 07-391) Tel:
2426866, 2446912 Fax: 4439685, 2420738

Consulate General of Japan in Sao Paulo, Brazil - Avenida Paulista
854, 3-andar, CEP 01310-913 Sao Paulo, Brasil.
Tel: 2870100 Fax: 2889460

Consulate General of Japan in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - Praia do
Flamengo, 200-10 andar, 22209-900 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.
Tel:
2655252, 2451714 Fax: 2057135

Embassy of Japan in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei - No.1 & No.
3 Jalan
Jawatan Dalam, Kampong Mabohai, Bandar Seri Begawan 2092, Negara
Brunei Darussalam.(Mail to : Embassy of Japan, P.O.
Box 3001 Bandar
Seri Begawan1930, Brunei) Tel: 229265 Fax: 229481

Embassy of Japan in Sofia, Bulgaria - Ul.
Lyulyakova Gradina 14, Sofia,
Bulgaria.
Tel: 9712708, 9713437 Fax: 9711095

Embassy of Japan in Ottawa, Canada - 255 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario
K1N 9E6, Canada.
Tel: 2418541 Fax: 2412232

Consulate General of Japan in Montreal, Canada - 600, rue de la
Gauchetiere ouest, Suite 2120, Montreal, Quebec, H3B 4L8, Canada.
Tel:
8663429 Fax: 3956000

Embassy of Japan in Santiago, Chile - Av.
Ricardo Lyon 520,
Providencia, Santiago, Chile.
(Mail to : Casilla 124, Correo 35,
Santiago, Chile) Tel: 2321807 Fax: 2321812

Embassy of Japan in Beijing, China - 7 Ri Tan Road, Jian Guo Men Wai,
Beijing, People’s Republic of China Tel: 65322361 Fax: 65324625

Embassy of Japan in Bogotá, Colombia - Carrera 7 No.
71-21,Torre B(Piso
11) Edificio Avenida Chile, Santa fe de Bogota, Colombia.
(Mail to :
Apartado Aereo 7407, Santa Fe De Bogotá, Colombia) Tel: 3175001 Fax:
3174989

Embassy of Japan in San Jose, Costa Rica - Barrio Rohrmoser, Sabana
Sur , Detras de la Contraloria General de la Republica , Oficentro la
Sabana , Edifico 7 , Piso 3 , San Jose Costa Rica. (Apartado No.
501 y
No.
10145) Tel: 2321255 Fax: 2313140

Embassy of Japan in Zagreb, Croatia - Ksaver 211, 1000 Zagreb,
Republic of Croatia.
Tel: 4677755 Fax: 4677766

Embassy of Japan in Havana, Cuba - Calle N No.62 Esq.
15, Vedado,
Ciudad de La Habana, Cuba. (Apartado No.
752) ( Mail to : Paseo de la
Reforma No.395, Col.Cuauhtemoc, 06500 Mexico, D.F.
, Mexico (Apartado
5-101) Tel: 333355, 333454, 333507, 333508, 333598 Fax: 333172

Embassy of Japan in Prague, Czech Republic - Maltezske namesti 6,
Prague 1-Mala, Strana, Czech Republic.
Tel: 57320561~4 Fax: 539997

Embassy of Japan in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic - Torre BHD 8
Piso, Avenida Winston Churchill, Esquina Luis F.
Thomen Santo Domingo,
Republica Dominicana. (P.O.
Box 1236) Tel: 5673365~7, 5668023 Fax:
5668013

Embassy of Japan in Quito, Ecuador - Calle Juan Leon Mera, No.
130 y
Avenida Patria, Edificio de la Corporacion Financiera Nacional, 7-
Piso, Quito, Ecuador. (P.O.
Box 1721-01518, Quito, Ecuador) Tel:
561899, 563127, 563011 Fax: 503670

Embassy of Japan in Cairo, Egypt - 3rd Floor Cairo Center Building, 2
Abdel Kader Hamza Street, Garden City, Cairo, Arab Republic of Egypt.

(P.O.
Box 281) Tel: 3553962~4 Fax: 3563540

Embassy of Japan in San Salvador, El Salvador - Calle Loma Linda #258,
Colonia San Benito, San Salvador, El Salvador, C.A.
(Apartado #115)
Tel: 2244740, 2244612 Fax: 2986685

Embassy of Japan in Tallinn, Estonia - 3rd Floor, Tallinn Business
Center, 6 Harju Street, EE0100 Tallinn, Estonia.
Tel: 310531, 310532
Fax: 310533

Embassy of Japan in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - House No.
653, Kebele 7,
Woreda 18, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (P.O.
Box 5650) Tel: 511088 Fax: 511350

Embassy of Japan in Suva, Fiji - 2nd Floor, Dominion House, 1Suva,
Fiji. (G.P.O.
Box 13045) Tel: 304633 Fax: 302984

Embassy of Japan in Helsinki, Finland - Etelaranta 8 00130, Helsinki,
Finland.
Tel: 633011 Fax: 633012

Embassy of Japan in Paris, France - 7, Avenue Hoche, 75008 Paris,
France.
Tel: 48886200 Fax: 42275081

Embassy of Japan in Bonn, Germany - Godesberger Allee 102-104, 53175
Bonn, Bundesrepublik Deutschland.
Tel: 81910 Fax: 379399

Consulate General of Japan in Berlin, Germany - 4 Etage.

Kleiststrasse. 23-26, 10787 Berlin, Bundesrepublik Deutschland.
Tel:
210940 Fax: 21094222

Embassy of Japan in Accra, Ghana - No.8 Josif Broz Tito Ave.
, Off
Jawaharlal Nehru Ave., Accra, Ghana. (P.O.
Box 1637) Tel: 775615,
775616 Fax: 775951, 761696

Embassy of Japan in Athens, Greece - 2-4, Messoghion Avenue, Athens
Tower Bldg., 21st Floor, Athens, Greece.
Tel: 7758101~2, 7233732 Fax:
7758206

Consulate General of Japan in Guam, Guam - Suite 604, Guam
International Trade Center Building, 590 South Marine Drive Tamuning,
Guam 96911, U.S.A. (Mail to: P.O.Box AG Agana, Guam 96932, U.S.A.
Tel:
6461290, 6465220 Fax: 6492620

Embassy of Japan in Guatemala City, Guatemala - 10 Piso, Edificio
Torre Internacional,Avenida Reforma 16-85, Zona 10, Ciudad de
Guatemala, 01010 Guatemala, C.A. (Apartado Postal No.
531) Tel: 3672244
Fax: 3672245

Embassy of Japan in Tegucigalpa, Honduras - Col.
San Carlos, Calzada
Rep. Paraguay, Tegucigalpa, D.C., Honduras, C.A.
(Mail to : Apartado
Postal 3232, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, C.A.
) Tel: 2365511 , 2362628~9
Fax: 2366110

Embassy of Japan in Harare, Honduras - 18F Karigamombe Centre, 53
Samora Machel Avenue, Harare, The Republic of Zimbabwe. (P.O.
Box 2710)
Tel: 757861 Fax: 757864

Consulate General of Japan in Hong Kong - 46th & 47th Floors, One
Exchange Square, 8 Connaught Place, Central, Hong Kong.
Tel:
25221184~8 Fax: 28680156

Embassy of Japan in Budapest, Hungary - 1125 Zalai ut 7, Budapest,
XII, Hungary.(P.O.
Box 78) Tel: 2751275 Fax: 2751281

Embassy of Japan in New Delhi, India - 50-G, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi,
India.
Tel: 6876564, 6876581~3 Fax: 6885587

Consulate General of Japan in Calcutta, India - 12, Pretoria Street,
Calcutta 700 071, India.
Tel: 2422241~5 Fax: 2420954

Embassy of Japan in Jakarta, Indonesia - Jalan M.H.
Thamrin 24,
Jakarta, Indonesia.
Tel: 324308 Fax: 3152859

Consulate General of Japan in Jakarta, Indonesia - Jalan M.H.
Thamrin
24, Jakarta, Indonesia.
Tel: 324308 Fax: 3152859

Embassy of Japan in Tehran, Iran - Bucharest Avenue, Corner of the 5th
Street, Tehran, Iran. (P.O.Box No.
11365-814) Tel: 8717923, 8713396,
8713974, 8717664, 8717922 Fax: 8713515

Embassy of Japan in Dublin, Ireland - Nutley Building, Merrion Centre,
Nutley Lane, Dublin 4, Ireland.
Tel: 2694033, 2694244, 2692980 Fax:
2838726

Embassy of Japan in Tel Aviv, Israel - Asia House, 4, Weizman Street,
64 239 Tel-Aviv, Israel.
Tel: 6957292 Fax: 6910516

Embassy of Japan in Rome, Italy - Via Quintino Sella, 60 00187 Roma,
Italia.
Tel: 487991 Fax: 4873316

Consulate General of Japan in Milan, Italy - Via Privata Cesare
Mangili, 2/4, 20121, Milan, Italia.
Tel: 6241141 Fax: 6597201

Embassy of Japan in Kingston, Jamaica - Mutual Life Center North
Tower , 6 th floor , 2 Oxford Road , Kingston 5, Jamaica. (P.O.
Box
8104, C.S.O.
Jamaica) Tel: 9293338~9 Fax: 9681373

Embassy of Japan in Amman, Jordan - Between 4th and 5th Circles, Al-
Aqsa Street, Jabal Amman, Amman, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

(P.O.
Box 2835, Amman 11181) Tel: 5930486, 5931487, 5930428 Fax: 5931006

Embassy of Japan in Almata, Kazakhstan - Kazibek Bi Road 41, Almaty,
Republic of Kazakhstan.
Tel: 608600 Fax: 608601

Embassy of Japan in Nairobi, Kenya - 15F.
ICEA Building Kenyatta
Avenue, Nairobi, Kenya. (P.O.
Box 60202, Nairobi) Tel: 332955~9 Fax:
216530

Embassy of Japan in Seoul, Korea - 18-11 Choonghak-dong Chongro-ku,
Seoul, Republic of Korea Tel: 7335626~8, 7334273, 7334274, 7345378,
7345379 Fax: 7344528

Embassy of Japan in Kuwait, Kuwait - Area No.9 Plot No.
496, Jabriya,
Kuwait. (P.O.
Box 2304 Safat 13024) Tel: 5312870 Fax: 5326168

Embassy of Japan in Vientiane, Laos - Road Sisangvone, Vientiane, Lao
People’s Democratic Republic.
Tel: 414400~03 Fax: 414406

Embassy of Japan in Beirut, Lebanon - Officers’ Club Street, Qarter of
the Presidential Place, Lot No.2963-BAABDA, Beirut, Lebanon. (P.O.
Box
3360) Tel: 922001, 922002, 922004, 924345~9 Fax: 922003

Embassy of Japan in Tripoli, Libya - Organization of African Unity
Road, Dhat Al-Imad, Tower No.4, Halls No.
13 & 14,Tripoli, Great
Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. (P.O.
Box 3265) Tel:
3350056, 3350057 Fax: 3350055

Embassy of Japan in Vilnius, Lithuania - Vivulskio Str. No.
6/8-1, 2009
Vilnius, Lithuania. (Mail to : P.O.Box 2940, Central Post Office, 2000
Vilnius, Lithuania) Tel: 231816 Fax: 231426

Embassy of Japan in Luxembourg, Luxembourg - 17, Rue Beaumont, L-1219
Luxembourg, Grand-Duche de Luxembourg. (Mail to : B.P.92 L-2010
Luxembourg, Grand-Duche de Luxembourg) Tel: 464151 Fax: 464176

Embassy of Japan in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - Levl l26 , Menara Lion
165 , Jalan Ampang , Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia Tel: 2427044 Fax: 2426570

Consulate General of Japan in Penang, Malaysia - No.
2, Biggs Road,
10350 Penang, Malaysia.
Tel: 2268222, 2268306, 2268416, 2268496 Fax:
2265257

Embassy of Japan in Mexico City, Mexico - Paseo de la Reforma No.
395,
Col. Cuauhtemoc, 06500 Mexico, D.F., Mexico.
Apartado 5-101) Tel:
2110028 Fax: 2077743

Embassy of Japan in Ponhpei, Micronesia - “Pami Building” 3rd Floor,
Kolonia, Pohnpei, F.S.M.96941. (P.O.
Box 1837) Tel: 3205465, 3206366
Fax: 3205470

Embassy of Japan in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia - Marks Street, Sukhbaatar
District, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. (Central P.O.
Box 1011) Tel: 320777
Fax: 313332

Embassy of Japan in Yangon, Myanmar - No.
100, Natmauk Road, Yangon,
the Union of Myanmar.(P.O.
Box 841) Tel: 549644~8 Fax: 549643

Embassy of Japan in Kathmandu, Nepal - Panipokhari, Kathmandu, Nepal.

(P.O.Box No.
264) Tel: 426680 Fax: 414101

Embassy of Japan in The Hague, Netherlands - Tobias Asserlaan 2, 2517
KC, The Hague, The Netherlands.
Tel: 3469544 Fax: 3106341

Embassy of Japan in Wellington, New Zealand - The Embassy of Japan
Level 18 & 19, The Majestic Centre, 100 Willis Street PO Box 6340,
Wellington Tel: 4731540 Fax: 4712951

Consulate of Japan in Auckland, New Zealand - Level 12 , ASB Bank
Centre , 135 Albert Street , Auckland , 1 , New Zealand .
Tel: 3034106
Fax: 3777784

Embassy of Japan in Managua, Nicaragua - Plaza Espafia 1 cuadra abajo
y 1 cuadra al lago, Bolonia, Managua, Nicaragua.
(Apartado Postal
1789) Tel: 668668~71, 661773, 660924, 663206 Fax: 668566

Embassy of Japan in Lagos, Nigeria - Plot 24-25 Apese Street, Victoria
Island, Lagos, Nigeria. (P.O.
Box 2111) Tel: 2613797, 2614929,
2615984, 2616827 Fax: 2614035

Embassy of Japan in Oslo, Norway - Parkveien 33-B, 0244, Oslo 2,
Norway.
Tel: 551011, 551012 Fax: 442505

Embassy of Japan in Muscat, Oman - Villa No.760, Plot No.
14/3, Jamiat
Adual Al Arabya Street, (Arab Countries League Street) Way No.
3011,
Shati Al Qurm, Sultanate of Oman. (P.O.
Box 3511, Postal Code 112) Tel:
601028, 603464 Fax: 698720

Consulate General of Japan in Karachi, Pakistan - 233,E.I.
Lines Raja
Ghazanfar Ali Khan Road Karachi, Pakistan Tel: 5681332, 5681331 Fax:
5684627

Embassy of Japan in Islamabad, Pakistan - Plot Nos.
53-70,Ramna 5/4
Diplomatic Enclave 1 Islamabad, Pakistan Tel: 279320, 279330, 218063,
218068 Fax: 279340

Embassy of Japan in Panama City, Panama - Calle 50 y 60E, Obarrio,
Apartado No.1411, Panama 1, Republica de Panam.
Tel: 2636155 Fax:
2636019

Embassy of Japan in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea - 1st & 2nd Floor,
Cuthbertson House, Cuthbertson St.Port Moresby, NCD, Papua New Guinea.

(P.O.
Box 1040) Tel: 3211800, 3211483, 3211305, 3211367 Fax: 3214868

Embassy of Japan in Asunción, Paraguay - Avenida Mariscal Lopez No.

2364, Asuncion, Paraguay. (Casilla de Correo No.
1957) Tel: 604616,
604617, 603682, 606900 Fax: 606901

Embassy of Japan in Lima, Peru - Avenida San Felipe 356, Jesus Maria,
Lima, Peru. (Apartado No.
3708) Tel: 4630000 Fax: 4630302

Consulate General of Japan in Lima, Peru - Avenida San Felipe 356,
Jesus Maria, Lima, Peru. (Apartado No.
3708) Tel: 4630000 Fax: 4630302

Embassy of Japan in Manila, Philippines - 2627 Roxas Boulevard, Pasay
City, Metro Manila, 1300, Philippines.
(Mail to : Embassy of Japan,
P.O.Box No.
414, Pasay Central Post Office, Pasay City, Metro Manila,
Philippines) Tel: 5515710 Fax: 5515780

Consulate General of Japan in Manila, Philippines - 2627 Roxas
Boulevard, Pasay City, Metro Manila, 1300, Philippines.
Tel: 5515710
Fax: 5515780

Embassy of Japan in Warsaw, Poland - Atrium Business Center 1F,
Al.Jana Pawla II 23, 00854, Warsaw, Poland.
Tel: 6539430 Fax: 6539431

Embassy of Japan in Lisbon, Portugal - *Av. da* <http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vQXYuZGE=> Liberdade, 245-6 1250
Lisbon, Portugal.
Tel: 3110560 Fax: 3534802

Embassy of Japan in Doha, Qatar - Doha West Bay, Diplomatic Area,
Doha, The State of Qatar. (P.O.
Box 2208) Tel: 831224, 831225 Fax: 832178

Embassy of Japan in Bucharest, Romania - Strada Polona No.
4, Sector 1,
Bucharest, Romania.
Tel: 2100790~2 Fax: 2100272

Embassy of Japan in Moscow, Russia - Kalashny Pereulok 12, Moscow,
Russia.
Tel: 2918500, 2918501 Fax: 2001240

Embassy of Japan in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - A-11 Diplomatic Quarter,
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (P.O.
Box 4095) Tel: 4881100 Fax: 4880189

Consulate General of Japan in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia - Al - Islam St.

No. 32, Jeddah, 21431, Saudi Arabia. (P.O.
Box 1260) Tel: 6652402,
6653421, 6604933 Fax: 6670373

Embassy of Japan in Singapore, Singapore - 16 Nassim Road, Singapore
258390 Tel: 2358855 Fax: 7331039 E-mail: eojs04@singnet.com.sg <mailto:eojs04@singnet.com.sg>

Embassy of Japan in Pretoria, South Africa - 2nd Floor, Sanlam
Building Hatfield, 353 Festival Street, Hatfield, Pretoria 0083,
Republic of South Africa.
Tel: 3422100~4 Fax: 433922

Embassy of Japan in Colombo, Sri Lanka - No.
20, Gregory’s Road,
Colombo 7, Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (P.O.
Box 822
Colombo) Tel: 693831~3 Fax: 698629

Embassy of Japan in Karthoum, Sudan - House No.
67, Street 43, Khartoum
One, Khartoum, Sudan. (P.O.
Box 1649, Post Code 11111) Tel: 471601~2
Fax: 471600

Embassy of Japan in Paramaribo, Suriname - Gravenstraat #23-25,
Paramaribo, Suriname.(P.O.
Box 2921 Paramaribo) Tel: 474860 Fax: 412208

Embassy of Japan in Stockholm, Sweden - Gardesgatan 10, 115 27
Stockholm, Sweden.
Tel: 6630440 Fax: 6618820

Embassy of Japan in Damascus, Syria - No.
18 Al Mihdi Bin Baraka
Street, Damascus, Syrian Arab Republic. (B.P.
3366) Tel: 3338273,
3332553, 3339781 Fax: 3339920

Embassy of Japan in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania - Plot No.
1018, Upanga,
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. (P.O.
Box 2577) Tel: 115827, 115829, 117383,
117384, 115831 Fax: 115830
Embassy of Japan in Bangkok, Thailand - 1674 New Petchburi Road,
Bangkok 10320 Tel: 2526151-9 Fax: 2534153

Embassy of Japan in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago - 5 Hayes
Street, St. Clair, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.(P.O.
Box
1039) Tel: 6285991 Fax: 6220858

Embassy of Japan in Ankara, Turkey - Kirlangic Sokak No.
9,
Gaziosmanpasa, Ankara, Turkey. (P.O.
Box 31-Kavaklidere) Tel: 4660414
Fax: 4660421

Consulate General of Japan in Istanbul, Turkey - Bayildim Caddesi No.

2, Macka, Swissotel the Bosphorus, Suite Tower 2nd Floor, Besiktas,
80680, Istanbul, Turkey.
Tel: 2276810~4 Fax: 2276991

Embassy of Japan in Kampala, Uganda - Sheraton Kampala Hotel 3rd
Floor, Ternan Avenue, Kampala, Uganda. (P.O.
Box 23553) Tel: 347317,
347319 Fax: 347348

Embassy of Japan in Kiev, Ukraine - Regina Business Centre, 7th & 8th
Floor, 4, Muzeyny Lane, 252001 Kyiv, Ukr Tel: 4620019, 0020, 2475500
Fax: 2475502

Embassy of Japan in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates - Abu Dhabi,
United Arab Emirates. (P.O.
Box 2430) Tel: 435696 Fax: 434219

Consulate General of Japan in Dubai, United Arab Emirates - 27th
Floor, Dubai World Trade Centre Building, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

(P.O.
Box 9336) Tel: 319191 Fax: 319292

Embassy of Japan in London, United Kingdom - 101-104, Piccadilly,
London, W1V 9FN, U.K.
Tel: 4656500 Fax: 4919348

Embassy of Japan in Washington, United States of America - 2520
Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Washington D.C., 20008-2869, U.S.A.
Tel:
2386700 Fax: 3282187

Consulate General of Japan in Washington, United States of America -
601 Union Street, Suite 500, Seattle, Washington 98101, U.S.A.
Tel:
6829107~10 Fax: 6249097

About twenty motivated comic painters met last friday at the brick5 in Vienna where they stayed 24hours together and produced as much as they could or wanted to… the results will be shown as an exhibition at the Brick5. 24h Comics - exhibition Opening: 8th July - 6pm Exhibition opening hours: 9th July to the 13th July; 3pm to [...]

To quote another artist exhibiting at Sonar, ‘I hate crowds, but I’ve never hated a crowd this big.’ SonarMatica (the multimedia exhibition inside Sonar Complex) turned out to be a nice place to escape from the relentless chaos and irreparable ear damage. Be warned, there is nothing in this blog about music and only very [...]

3 reasons to put the video online, even though it’s out of date since the “Interactivos” Workshop is over since ages: 1. Nova Jiang’s installation “Stage Fright” is still exhibited at this years sonar exhibition 2. I always wanted to try portrait shaped video online 3. the video is shot with a construction, that was built by Sytse [...]

I just want to drop a short entry about this crazy week I just had. So if you’ve been following my blog you know that it was my first week on hormones. Thanks a lot to everyone for their words of support and for their comments. I’ll be writing more about that as it goes on.

But on top of that, last week I handed in my master’s thesis to the European Graduate School! Even better, this week they accepted it, with distinction! I’m so happy and relieved. I really can’t believe I’m done. It seems so recently that I was just thinking about applying, but it also seems like so many lifetimes away, if that makes any sense.

Here’s the thing, it makes me kind of crazy to think that I spent all that time on a 69 page document that only my committee and a one or two of my friends will ever read. So, I’m thinking about how to get more people to read it and I’m thinking that trying to get it published or included in a journal or something is good. Does anyone have any suggestions? Have folks tried self-publishing? What was your experience with it? I got EGS to agree to my licensing it Creative Commons (by attribution - share alike). So, imho, that means I can do with it what I want.

The title is “Trans desire, towards an unbounded biopolitics” and it brings together queer theory, psychoanalysis and biopolitics to argue for queer media production, queer porn production specifically, as a form of world building as in the alter-globalization movement, as a form of resistance against biopower and as a way of creating new subjectivities through building community. If you have some suggestion as to how I can get more folks to read it, then send it my way. I’m just not sure that posting it on a blog or an email list is the best thing to do. Actually, I’m pretty sure its not.

Also, I just posted over a hundred photos in my flickr photostream and made some new sets. The photos go way back, including a few from last summer in zurich on my way home from EGS, the awesome new years eve holiday sweater party (yes aisling i finally posted them!) , a trip to tijuana with kyong park’s class, Nikki and the mongoloid at the city heights free skool, my last trip to montreal and the “into the folds” workshop, Bikes del Pueblo - a bike kitchen, and the Sharing is Sexy release party! Check em out!

There’s so much change happening now in this city. So many of my friends are moving away, houses are changing, even I’m planning on graduating in less than a year and looking for phd programs and teaching jobs in other cities. Seeing all of these photos of the people I love so much makes me kinda sad, but its also awesome to see how much fun we’ve had this year, and its only half over! Whew!

[IN SWEDISH]
Så här med några dagars distans: Vad kan extrapoleras från debatten kring riksdagens numer ökända beslut om den utökade signalspaningen?

Feltänk, felriktat, felslut
Det vi först av allt kan slå fast uttrycks bäst av Jon Karlung, VD för Bahnhof, som nu flyttar sina servrar utomlands: ”Den som vet att den är avlyssnad kommer naturligtvis inte utbyta några viktiga hemligheter, så hela idén är bara dum egentligen”. Som jag påpekade redan 2006 har sådan här övervakning inga relevanta syften, då de potentiella brottslingar eller främmande militärmakter som åsyftas ju knappast kommer att fortsätta kommunicera i dessa former. Istället riskerar vardagsparanoian göra sig påmind istället, bland alla oss 99.99% av befolkningen som inte är terroristmisstänkta eller sysslar med grov brottslighet.

Politiker utan ideologi
Fram till nu trodde jag att liberalismen var den enda överlevande ideologin efter murens fall. FRA motbevisar detta, även i Sverige. Åtminstone om vi med liberalism åsyftar de upplysningsvärden som har med individens frihet och integritet att göra: vad gäller marknadsdogmatismen-slash-panglossliberalismen som är påtaglig framförallt bland svenska liberaler så har ju den inte mycket att säga om FRA, ja det är rentav möjligt att härleda de borgerliga riksdagsledamöternas ideologiska härdsmälta till just detta.
Kanske är det detta som är nyliberalismens signum, den eftergivenhet som den kännetecknas av; gentemot marknaden, men också som här gentemot de starkaste spelarna (USA, EU, NATO). Är det uppgivenhet detta i förlängningen innebär? Cynism? Är nyliberalen och strebern egentligen en nihilist?
Den svenska riksdags- och inte minst regeringspolitiken verkar idag kännetecknas av politiska varelser som likt Bodström och Blair inte håller på något lag från början, utan helt enkelt håller på det lag som ser ut att vinna. Orden för detta är helt enkelt opportunism, vad gäller den egna relationen med offentligheten, och tjänstemannastyre vad gäller den interna relationen till hur landet skall styras och frågor behandlas. Åsa Linderborg och Erik Wijk skrev häromåret om exakt detta vad gäller Bodström, och Anthony Sampson har skrivit om det vad gäller Storbritannien, vars tendenser till massövervakning av medborgarna, nyliberal ”anything goes”-mentalitet vad gäller maktens medel och mål, samt skrämmande eftergivenhet till den amerikanska militärapparaten de etablerade stora partierna nu ses genomföra även i Sverige. Man behöver knappast vara konspirationsteoretiker för att se hur den senaste tidens uppsjö av övervakningslagar också har direkta anknytningar till USA, och till utlovade eftergifter deras administration ger våran om vi går deras ärenden. Historiskt sett, inte mycket nytt under solen: tidigare illegalt spionage, som exempelvis IB-kartläggningen av kommunister, hade en liknande bakgrund.
Men att det är svenska liberaler som så uppenbart bugar sig för hökarna?Det är ju just detta som är grejen – folk i Sverige förknippar liberalism med Timbro, folk i anglo-amerikanska länder förknippar liberalism med en tolerant, kulturradikal, ofta vänstersinnad person med hjärtat på rätta stället.Finns det inga svenska liberaler i det amerikanska ordets bemärkelse? Jodå, men kanske inte så många. Dessa, som kritikerna lite nedsättande brukar stämpla som libertarianer eller frihetsfrontenfolk, är ju framförallt rikt förekommande i bloggosfären och har ibland en skrämmande produktivitet...

”Bloggokrati”?Ska vi i detta land avskaffa de allmänna valen och i stället införa bloggokrati, innebärande att det är bloggarnas åsikter som ska ha påverkan på vad riksdagen beslutar?frågar sign. visionären på magasinet Neos blogg.
Nja, ”bloggokrati” är att dra på för hårda växlar, och dessutom bidrar det till ett onödigt polariserat tänk vad gäller journalistik: Är inte ett grymt välunderbyggt blogginlägg på flera sätt jämförbart, om inte ibland överlägset traditionellt grävande journalistik?
Och det är huvudsakligen på nätet många unga människor lever och hämtar sin information.
Vad FRA-debatten framförallt visat är något jag och Karl Palmås har snackat en del om, att många nuvarande rörelser på nätet – som ju har rötterna i ett 99-tänk snarare än ett 68-tänk – är politiska i sin egen rätt, någonting som 68-människorna har haft svårt att förstå. Ända till nu, får vi hoppas.
Ofta får man ju känslan att framförallt fildelningen brukar avfärdas av medelåldersproppen Orvar som ett lyxproblem. Men i och med detta missar denna propp också den större bilden – där ”fildelningsdebatten” ju endast