The Postmodern Anarchist

FBI urges police to watch for people carrying almanacs!

Ninth Circuit Court rules that the Feds can't outlaw personal medical marijuana crops.

As social networking continues to grow as an online phenomenon, from Craigslist to Friendster, keeping an eye on commercial attempts at involvement is one way of understanding how business finds its way into grassroots developments.

Recent features at Democracy Now:

Guilty of Being Palestinian

PSYOPS in Iraq

Lenny Bruce Pardoned

An Hour With Noam Chomsky

Browse the features from the last few weeks at Democracy Now.

netweed will not be switching servers till the New Year. Weblog posting will be intermittent till then. Happy Holidays!

Here at netweed, folks will be taking as much vacation as we can get away with. However, I promise to post occasionally between Christmas and New Year's. And, just so you know, netweed will be down for a couple of days as we switch servers, probably starting Monday evening.

Here's a bunch of news to keep you busy.

There's been a lot of legal action on the file sharing and P2P networking front and Clyde has posted some headlines at netweed's File Sharing page.

I've been posting a lot of NY Times headlines which should be fairly permanent links that don't require logins. This service is courtesy of an agreement between the NYT and Radio Userland, a news aggregator and blogging system. Though I use Blogger for my blog publishing, I find having a Radio Userland account a great way to access the NY Times as well as other news services.

From the NY Times:
U.S. Rarely Seeks Charges for Deaths in Workplace - OSHA is fucked.
Lost? Hiding? Your Cellphone is Keeping Tabs - Cellphone surveillance.
A DVD Face-Off Between the Official and the Homemade - Users remake popular culture.
Dumpster-Diving for Your Identity - Identity theft.
Crayon-Colored Excursion Into Positive Thinking - Review of "A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant."

From Other News Services:
The Best of British Blogging - Guardian awards.
Year in Review: Linux Under Attack - Open source news.
Copyright Doesn't Cover This Site - Artistic collaborations and recombinations.
Minn. Shuts Down Controversial Police Database - Surveillance news.
China Opens Wallet to Homegrown Online Game - Gaming news.
Naked Injustice - Abuse of sexworkers.

One of the things I loved about Bruce Sterling's Distraction was the depiction of the everyday nature of surveillance in a near future U.S., especially the discount bug bins at department stores. So when I heard about camera phones, I realized the implications immediately. Though in some ways they're old news, phone cams are now inspiring legislation in the U.S.. But that won't stop the creative geniuses of sites like Mobile Asses. I'd suggest keeping up with developments by following such sources as picturephoning.com. You can also check out netweed's Privacy page for news and web links related to surveillance and privacy.

I write about computer games and online worlds because they are the site for the development of future environments that will become a much bigger part of the online experience in ways that aren't about games at all. But I'm also interested in old-school games and their cultural role. If you share such interests, you'll find the following of use:

In politically incorrect news, "slightly liberal Republican" Shane Messer has created a game called Find Those Weapons, a document heavy project that focuses on the search for weapons of mass destruction which seems to have gone into the O.J. Simpson "I'll find the killers out here on the golf course" phase.

Another disturbingly brilliant project called Ghettopoly continues to make news. Future installments are planned called Hoodopoly, Hiphopopoly, Thugopoly and Redneckopoly. I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. Maybe I'll just send in a suggestion for Reaganopoly.

The professionalization of online games continue and one of the hotbeds is South Korea, a nation known for its incredibly high percentage of broadband Internet users.

I must go now and consider these issues with philosophical guidance from the Theory.org.uk Trading Cards. And by the way, I'll gladly trade my Psychoanalysis card for your Michel Foucault.

I've been trying to find out about experimental art in Thailand and found this site for a New Media Art Festival that happened last spring along with related documents including lots of pictures.

I found the Thai site from the site of Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga, an artist based in New York, who explores technology and world culture in his interdisciplinary art.

BlogAfrica is a blog about bloggers, in Africa.

As technology facilitates global communication, the outsourcing of technology production in countries such as India moves from building things to creating intellectual property.

Unfortunately the occupation of Iraq continues and will continue for a long time, ultimately by economic means and political proxies long after the troops are gone. Occupation Watch will help you keep up with the down side of globalism.

Speaking of Iraq, what would Saddam Hussein be tried for? Oh yeah, hiding those weapons of mass destruction so successfully.

In other weapons news, the latest technological benefits of Israeli occupation of Palestine may be useful in the U.S. occupation of Iraq, where the ability to shoot around corners would be handy.

Back when the Village Voice was a much more important source of national and international news and investigative journalism, I always appreciated Nat Hentoff's columns and his attention to issues that left/libs should have been concerned about but managed to ignore, often due to ideological blinders. And, as far as I can tell, he's never let up, with recent pieces on Castro's persecution of librarians and the ongoing abuses of power by the FBI.

While the Village Voice may not be as important as it once was, you can now read it online for free. Plus you get other great things like James Ridgeway's Mondo Washington column, this week putting the capture of Saddam Hussein in perspective, and Kareem Fahim's ongoing coverage of the Howard Dean campaign.

Machinima.com is a site devoted to films based in virtual reality settings. I'm still figuring out the implications of this, but it's another radical use of online worlds, among other things.

Wonderella Printed is a unique press focused on rather odd things, my favorite being the Guide to Lost Wonder, an "activity book for the Museum of Lost Wonder." Further background information can be found in this article from the SF Weekly.

In other happy news, after a Denial of Service attack last week that shut down the website of SCO, the grinch that is trying to steal Open Source, another attack occurred over the weekend. Interestingly, the first of these two attacks has been debated as a possible con job on the part of SCO. For more from those who question SCO, you can check out ongoing discussion at GROKLAW, a weblog by Pamela Jones, a paralegal who has became a leading reporter on the SCO controversy.

Howard Dean's star continues to rise with the endorsement of Al Gore and the support of his legendary campaign manager Joe Trippi.

Ralph Nader is considering running for president again under less inviting circumstances than before. All sorts of smart people are telling him not to. Join them in giving your negative feedback at NaderExplore04. For example, I pointed out that he ran a half-assed campaign before with a running mate who barely walked and that he's already too late for this campaign. I don't buy the spoiler routine. I just don't think he knows how to run for president.

Dubya kicks off his campaign with a television spot for his dog and a pretend to get tough on Halliburton announcement while trying to divert attention from the deaths of Iraqi civilians and of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

In related news, Eminem's desire to "see the president dead," is no longer under investigation.

Israel trains US assassination squads in Iraq
Particularly useful for the extensive links to related reports as well as the reminder of the covert aspects of any such engagement.

Revealed: how drug firms 'hoodwink' medical journals
Yo, those motherfuckers are tricky!

If you're interested in the development of online worlds, you'll find the following of interest:

Virtual Worlds Review
A guide to online worlds.
The Alphaville Herald
News blog for an online world with more general relevance.
Player Auctions
Center for commerce related to online worlds.

RTMark is one of the coolest avantart projects fucking with corporate consciousness that I've ever seen.

I'm not sure if The Journal of Aesthetics & Protest is just very occasional or only a two issue project but it's fun reading, especially if you're a theory head that enjoys statements like "documenting the collapse of political and aesthetic practices into the singular field of 'media' as a function of globalization."

The New Formulation: An Anti-Authoritarian Review of Books is clearly biannual, available in PDF and contains a variety of interesting articles by interesting authors on anarchy and the literary arts.

Cory Ondrejka has joined Terra Nova and is starting out strong with a post on Real v. Virtual Worlds that discusses the "intrusion" of the "real world" into "virtual worlds." He takes an interesting stance in contrast to some who would prefer that so called virtual worlds remain divorced from external economic activity. He also has a paper available in PDF form called Escaping the Gilded Cage: User Created Content and Building the Metaverse, referencing Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

A related issue is the interest in modifying games, a development that computer game companies are starting to embrace.

I put virtual worlds in quotes above because I tend to make a distinction between virtual and digital and I consider these online environments to be digital worlds or, at least, attempts to create digital worlds. I put real world in quotes above because I find the world to be real wherever I go and generally distrust the analysis of people who mobilize such terminology. But I think the term virtual is useful when it's referring to something that resembles but isn't something, such as virtual reality when it's attempting to look like a physical rather than a digital environment. But mostly I don't bring such distinctions up cause most people don't give a fuck and the point is to be understood and you probably know what people mean when they say virtual something or other anyway.

A couple of weeks ago, protestors in Miami responded to the Free Trade Area of the Americas talks in a continuation of antiglobalism protests. I've been remiss in following such events, but further material about police assaults on street medics and the embedding of journalists in police contingents have recently appeared in the Miami New Times.

Dada Mail is a free email list management system orignally called Mojo Mail. The creator, Justin Simoni, has designated the new version an art project in a unique response to the assholes at Mediaplex who registered the name Mojo Mail three years after Simoni first released his software. I'm not sure the art route will protect small timers from corporate piracy, but it's an interesting approach. Another interesting approach would be hacktivism.

The Institute for Anarchist Studies has a nice Anarchist Summary that summarizes a variety of anarchist material online as it's released with links to the sources. IAS has a great site which I find easier to follow from their emailed newsletter than from their home page.

Autonomedia has 2004 calendars available, Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millenium and Sheroes and Womyn Warriors.

I've wanted more sex in this blog, so here's a beginning with a focus on people who tell sex-related stories online.

Belle de Jour is a blog by a London call girl who tells stories of her life and the everyday world of a prostitute without really talking about sex all that much.

True Porn Clerk Stories are just that and I find this stuff rather interesting. Archived on a message board, this journal was written during 2002.

And, in China, an Internet sex column has gained a huge audience and been throttled by the government.

And I thought I had a radical perspective:
The Mad Prophet Blog.

The December issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter is now available online.

Howard Dean continues to grow as an important candidate.

In case you didn't know, celebrity sex tapes have quite a history.

Online social networks continue their development with new patent applications.

Jay Smooth discusses the limitations of Buy Nothing Day.

Nathaniel Jones killed by Cincinnati cops. More news from Google News and a response from The SOULution Online that includes a link to the cops' videotape of the beating.

The December issue of First Monday is now available online with such topics as open source in developing countries, Internet gift economies and a comparison of peace and hate group websites.

More from Yahoo news, this time on the Pentagon's interest in the Segway as a tool of war. Lots of other Segway and Dean Kamen links as well.

Also, more on implantable RFID chips from CNET News with useful links in the text.

I tend not to check Yahoo news a lot but this extensive article from the
Washington Post on dirty bombs caught my eye, plus there are a lot of useful links on the left sidebar. I was particularly impressed by an aspect that I'd never considered for some reason. After a radiation attack, a large urban area could be uninhabitable for quite a while. And there's a lot of radioactive material available these days. It's news like this that makes me think that, basically, we're fucked.