I'm part of the editorial team for the Counterfire website which was launched last Monday. During its first week the site had around 10,000 visits, an extremely promising start.IT TAKES JUST 1-2 MINUTES
USE STOP THE WAR'S SURVEY: GO TO http://bit.ly/8X35fk
It's very simple. You enter your postcode. You get a list of the candidates in your area. You send your message which goes to all candidates. The message can be the Stop the War letter provided, or you can edit it to send your own text.
The responses we get will be published on the Stop the War website, and a list of any candidates who do not respond.
We have had nine years of politicians waging wars that were not supported by most people in Britain. The main parties will try to avoid the issue in the election because they all support the
> unjustified and unwinnable war in Afghanistan. We believe electors considering how to cast their vote on May 6 have a right to know the views of all the candidates on this issue.
Please do this now. Candidates in this election need to be flooded with requests for them to say where they stand on the issue of the war. Only then can the electors make an informed decision when deciding who will get theirvote.
DON'T LET THEM IGNORE THE WAR IN THIS ELECTION
USE STOP THE WAR'S SURVEY NOW: http://bit.ly/8X35fk
Woman: I don't give a damn. I'm an anarchist and frankly I'd like to
bring down the whole capitalist system!
Wooooooo, you go girl
Sent from my iPhone
Cheers to Richard from the excellent Third Estate blog for alerting me to this fab piece. He promises he's going to write more in the Internet, and from an Arendtian position (?!) - is that a sort of post-Heideggarian technology/nature stance then? Anyway, totally looking forward to it.
This started to change a few years ago with the release of the MacBook (bear with me here, all will be revealed). The switch from Motorola to Intel microchips means that any Mac can run Microsoft Windows as well as Apple’s own software. Today, the iPad is released on the US market – and expressly enables other companies to develop their own software (‘Apps’) for the iPad. While Apple has got its own ‘iBooks’ (yes, really), there’s also going to be Apps from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and, when the iPad gets released in Britain later this month, undoubtedly iWaterstones and eFoyles will make appearances as well.
All those best sellers just lining up to be best sold
As you can tell, the big plus about the iPad is that it supports ebooks like never before. Even though Amazon released the Kindle last year, whose screen is actually seen by many as superior to the iPad’s, the book über-emporiorum stated that they “look forward to making Kindle available for iPad very soon.”
What? ‘But Kindle’s a piece of hardware!’ I hear you say. ‘How can a piece of hardware be made available on another piece of hardware?’ A very good question indeed. What Amazon means by this enigmatic little nugget is that they’re going to be releasing software called something naff like iKindle, to be used on iPads to buy eBooks. This burgeoning market of small letter software is about two main things: adverts and publishers.
What the Times sees as a great deal for consumers, in which a price war makes ebooks cheaper and cheaper, is actually a really good method for ensuring that big publishing houses increase their control in the market, not just be being able to offer ebooks at a price that cuts below that needed by any publisher to support writers and researchers. I don’t want to give an impression here that this is about starving novellists, poets writing in the garret by the light of the moon and the glow of the screen. This is about journals, newspapers, magazines. It’s about high quality independent research and cutting comment.
Already we’ve seen over the past 6 months alone all sorts of clamp downs on the unadulterated free content promised by the internet. From the Digital Economy Bill to Google Books, from Sky News to the New Yorker, the days of free online content are coming to an end. ‘Hey, there are always ways to get round these things!’ I hear you interject again. ‘I mean Napster and Pirate Bay might be hounded by big governments and corporations, but we’ll find a way, right?’
Wrong. Because, just like with big book stores, most people aren’t going to be using the small independent software on their iPad – their going to be relying on big business to give them access to the world of words. But this time it’s all digital, which means its a lot, lot easier to control and manipulate.
When I read history essays or NEF reports online, no one interferes with my experience at the moment. But just as we’ve seen that change with music, so it might well change with books. Youtube videos now come with pop up adverts and dollar signs; Spotify seems to be increasing its advert to music ratio each day. All these new ebook reading applications are going to support these kinds of tie-ins: buy three volumes of Freud and get a pop-up ad for Lady GaGa.
The Communist Manifesto ebook: now with added rotation!
But most importantly, the technological control of information allows for the clawing away of that access in a state of emergency. This doesn’t just mean the effective banning of radical texts, something which, remember, we’ve seen in the last few years both on the left and on the right. It can also be for the smallest, most ridiculous-seeming reasons: it’s worth recalling that the first call for state monopoly of the printing presses came from an Italian humanist to the Pope in 1471 (a mere ten years after Gutenberg’s invention), complaining that the quality of the Latin texts produced were so poor that the Vatican should legislate all printing activity immediately.
While the rest of the world is Pope bashing, maybe we should stop and examine the activities of our own growing church of ideas – all hail the Corporations of the Text! Maybe to elucidate a bit more where I’m coming from on this, here’s the excellent James Boyle:
“I care about the Web not because I want to live my life there, but because of what it has allowed us to achieve, what it represents for the potential of open science and culture… In place of what we have today, I think…we are trying to reinvent a tamer, more controlled Web and to change the nature of the underlying networks on which it operates. We would restrict openness of access, decrease anonymity, and limit the number of actions that a network participant could perform.
“The benefits would be undeniable. It would cut down on spam, viruses, and illicit peer-to-peer file sharing. At the same time, it would undercut the iconoclastic technological, cultural and political potential the Web offer, the ability of a new technology, a new service to build on open networks and open protocols, without needing approval from regulators or entrenched market players, or even the owner of the Web pages to which you link.”
I’m not saying there’s anything in particular we can do about all this: at least, no one’s told me a course of grass-roots action we could take yet. I’m certainly not about to go on a bout of boycotting. But at the least we should be aware of this almost inevitable drive towards the restriction of the free information age.
From an email list...
Hi All,
This event is all about the arms industry, it relates directly to those of us who campaign against Palestine, to those who campaign against state surveilance, military repression amd armed violence, who campaign against the Colombian conflict, the conflict in Sri Lanka, in the Congo, the state repression in Zimbabwe, and the numerous other forms of state and corporate sponsored violence worlwide, including our own military violence inflicted in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the police surveilance that works to suppress the political activism we ourselves are involved in.
As activists this is a point that should unite us all, that we fight against those that profit from violence and oppression. We need to confront those that sell, market, make and employ these weapons and surveilance systems.
For more information, please see www.dsei.org
hope to see you there. Please circulate widely.
Assemble 12 Noon, Olympia Way, W14, on Wednesday 14 April.
Sponsored by arms company Thales, and organised by Clarion Events—responsible for Defence & Security Equipment International (DSEi) the world's largest arms fair, the Counter Terror Expo(http://bit.ly/5v698y) takes place between 14-15 April 2010 at Olympia, London.
Officially supported by a plethora of military, police and private security organisations, the Expo will host over 250 exhibitors including leading arms companies such as BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin, and is endorsed by state agencies such as the MoD and NATO.
Western governments and arms manufacturers make huge profits from terrorising populations around the world both by creating new conflicts and exacerbating existing ones—for example, British made F16 components were used during the bombing of Gaza in 2008 killing 400 children.
Surveillance systems will be a major focus of the expo, with companies promoting biometric and data gathering/mining technologies(http://bit.ly/b4lRA0)—technologies promoting "freedom" through ever greater control and documentation of our daily lives.
Say no to living in a climate of state and corporation induced terror.
Join Disarm DSEi, confront the counter terror expo, resist our ever encroaching surveillance society, and expose the exploitation of fear for profit.
http://www.dsei.org/confront-counter-terror
This is the email from KCL UCU:
Last Tuesday's (30 March) strike in defence of education at King's exceeded all expectations. More than 250 people joined loud and vibrant picket lines on all four King's campuses. Security guards at one campus indicated that numbers entering their building were as much as 75% down. At the main building on the Strand only a small trickle of students and staff went in.
Support for the strike was boosted after the latest hapless intervention by senior management, who refused to allow non-UCU staff to take annual leave yesterday. This prompted more than sixty of those obliged to work on the Strand to sign a card expressing solidarity with the pickets. Members of other unions on all sites brought refreshments out to colleagues on strike and stood with them during breaks. Local cafes displayed UCU material explaining our reasons for striking. Students brought cakes for pickets, played musical instruments, set up stalls and hung a huge banner over the entrance to the Strand: 'Education massacre: do not enter.'
Messages of support have flooded in from King's alumni, students and non-UCU staff, as well as from universities and colleges across the country. Colleagues brought solidarity greetings and donations in person from UCL, Westminster, QMW, London Metropolitan University, the Institute of Education, Southwark College, City and Islington College, Tower Hamlets College, the University of the Arts and the London Nautical School. Supporters also came along from local workplaces, including the National Theatre and the National Gallery, and from other unions, including the NUT, PCS, Unite and Unison.
Around 50 people attended a lunchtime rally at Waterloo, while more than 200 students joined pickets for a rally on the Strand, which took place in an electric atmosphere. The huge crowd heard speeches from UCU representatives at King's and elsewhere, from members of other unions and from a Sussex student who told of their struggles with their own management. Many students heard for the first time of the appalling treatment of our colleagues in Engineering by King's management. The 'We Support our Teachers' campaign was a lively presence throughout the day. Dozens of students expressed their disdain at the way the College's senior management addresses them in Orwellian 'Newspeak'. Many have written to the Principal and Vice-Principal complaining that they feel patronised by senior management.
Our campaign in defence of education at King's is partly about our colleagues' livelihoods, and about the lack of regard shown to them by senior management. But it is clear that it is also about much more than this. The creeping culture of managerialism in universities is also an issue. The support we have received from students, and from colleagues who are either members of other unions, or not yet members of UCU, is an indication that this campaign is also about defending the values that underpin education at King's and elsewhere, which include collegiality, respect for individuals, cooperation, intellectual integrity and academic independence.
The verve, humour, creativity and imagination of yesterday's pickets offered us all a glimpse of the potential that exists within this institution for staff and students to make education at King's more rewarding and more enjoyable. All too often this potential is either stifled or by-passed by the dead hand of senior management.
Our thanks and congratulations go to all who took part yesterday, and to everyone who showed their support for our campaign. Senior management teams across the country are offering no resistance to government cuts. They are determined to follow the example set by King's and impose redundancies and department closures on their staff and students. The magnificent collective response to these attacks that we have seen at Leeds, Sussex, Kent and King's is a powerful reminder to all that if we stand together we can defend our education system from the ministers and managers who want to turn it into a marketplace.
Jim Wolfreys
President KCL UCU
Please continue to send donations and messages of support to: ucu@kcl.ac.uk
For more information on our dispute see: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/ucu
