The Postmodern Anarchist

Nice list of Open Source Tools for eActivism at Designing for Civil Society. I found out about it through the anthill communities' blog Ant's Eye View.

Jay Smooth ponders the Democrats' progress.

San Francisco sex workers continue organizing efforts.

ALA fails to support jailed librarians in Cuba.

Actually this new virus may be SCO's doom. They're the ones that are currently trying to fuck the development of Linux. But not all SCO opponents are happy about this approach to digital warfare.

Patents (like SCO's) are going to be a continued issue in relationship to free software and open source software, as this fairly radical take on the topic explicates.

I just saw the first episode of the late 60s British tv series called The Prisoner. Apparently it was also shown on CBS and later A&E released it on video. I'm sure the history is more complex and I would have read about it on The Prisoner Appreciation Society website but there was an annoying popup box that wouldn't go away and wouldn't work when I clicked on it. Perhaps it's bad javascript. Perhaps it's a psychological experiment, like those practiced on The Prisoner.

Starring Patrick McGoohan as Number Six, The Prisoner begins with the resignation of Number Six (or whoever he was before he became The Prisoner/Number Six) from his duties as something secretive and important. After being drugged, he wakes up in The Village. The rest of the episode involves his attempts to figure out where he is and to take action to escape. Since there are many episodes to go, obviously that doesn't work out so well. But his efforts to figure out what's going on are matched by the viewer's efforts to do the same. Although we get more information, it's still all rather mysterious with nice surreal touches.

I'm looking forward to seeing at least five more episodes and then scouring local video stores to see if more are available round here. This first episode has a lot of nice surveillance elements and I look forward to seeing how long it takes for him to internalize this surveillance. I would love to hear what Michel Foucault would have said about this show. There's a really nice panoptic nerve center and lots of other prisoners who have clearly internalized their surveillance. Check out the Foucault Issue of Surveillance & Society if you're a theory head, no reviews of The Prisoner but nice surveillance cam critiques.

In case you haven't noticed, this entry signals a change in emphasis for this blog. I want to introduce more personal elements and a wider range of topics, in addition to the kinds of things I'm already doing. I'm also going to start adding Amazon links, in keeping with the overall attempt at netweed to pay the bills. One of Clyde's big interests with netweed is to create a anarcholeftist cultural project that pays for itself. Endless series of benefit shows and out of pocket support is an approach that neither Clyde nor I are particularly interested in. Purity was such a modernist thing, you know.

Available from Amazon:
The Complete Prisoner Megaset
The Prisoner: A Televisionary Masterpiece.
Michel Foucault's Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison.

Are you interested in postmodernism and anarchism? Why don't you email me and drop a few lines on the topic? I feel like I should be more explicit about such subjects, given that I claim to be The Postmodern Anarchist!! As I've mentioned before, I should probably be called The Poststructural Anarchist. But it just doesn't have the same ring or marketability. Nevertheless, you could write me about poststructuralism and anarchism. My hope is to have some quotes from people who care about such things to include in future postings. So if you write, let me know whether you mind me posting a quote or not.

I just found out that Margaret Cho has a blog. I used to work with her in a bookstore in San Francisco around 1990. She was a very cool person and I'm glad she's done so well for herself. I'd love to be in touch but I'd feel weird about writing her right now. It's like, you get famous, everybody remembers that they used to be your friend, kind of thing. In any case, big ups to Ms. Cho.

American Leftist is a smart blog by a hardworking leftist blogger named Joe. That's all the name I could find. His blog led me to chandrasutra by Mel. Couldn't find a full name on that one either but it's more about visual images and discussing them and stuff. Man, I'm feeling inarticulate but, if you want politics, see Joe, if you want aesthetic awareness, see Mel.

Speaking of aesthetics, there's a nice piece in the NYT on the radical media collective Ant Farm that was particularly visible in the 70s. There's also an interesting review of the dvd release of some films by John Cage, better known for his incredible influence on music and dance in the 20th Century.

Finally heard the Howard Dean scream. What a bunch of nonsense to get worked up over. My recent interest in electoral politics is quickly fading. I probably should have known better. I just so want to get Bush out of office. I even registered to vote for the first time in many years. I'll let you know if I follow through.

I'm growing tired of this election shit, especially now that all the fuckheads have fixated on the Dean scream. However I did find an interesting article about the young people the Dean campaign brought in to Iowa to work the streets. I also find John Kerry's membership in Skull & Bones quite interesting as well.

I posted previously about a political puppet theater event called Hiroshima Maidens so I should also mention this Hiroshima Maidens review and related article in the Village Voice.

Have you heard about the Avian flu outbreak in Vietnam and Thailand? Thanks to big drug companies, the conditions for a genetic shift to an even deadlier strain are growing rapidly.

In news related to themes I follow:
Online Worlds
Currency speculation at the Gaming Open Market
Open Source
Government agencies worldwide leave Microsoft for Linux
Art and Technology
Billy Kluver passes on
RFID
Safeway says RFID will become "ubiquitous"
U.S. Government Oppression
Political ad limitations limit free speech.

Before I get really nasty and berate various manifestations of human stupidity, let me tell you about something good. Voline is an online anarchist journal that is in the process of being born. If you're an anarchist and have work you'd like to see online, please check out the site and submit your essays.

You know, I've always been supportive of Cuba, against the embargo and all that kind of shit but the lack of civil liberties there makes it tough. And there are no credible arguments for doing things like blocking citizen's access to the Internet, comrade. But then, I'm an anarchist, not some Leninist or Stalinist prick that wants to be the architect of revolution. I used to be, but that's not another story!

The US Patent Office has totally fucked up again and basically given a patent to a patent lawyer for something he didn't invent. Apparently the abstract/summary describes an Internet related process that is actually different from the body of the text, which describes the domain system which these people had nothing to do with creating. The Patent Office needs to get it's shit together before they fuck things up even more. That, or I'm patenting the use of oxygen to power a biomechanical system commonly called the human being.

By the way, I've applied to be a participant in The BIG Blog Show!. It's highly unlikely I'll be chosen, but I feel like they need someone like me. So what the fuck.

PS - Please forgive my unusually profane posting. I don't go out of my way to curse, I just talks like dat! Plus, it's good practice for The BIG Blog Show!

So Clyde that netweed guy's been badgering me about this new Aaron McGruder book A Right to Be Hostile. It's a collection of the comic The Boondocks and, now that I've spent some time with it, I have to say it's pretty damn good. Since I no longer find Doonesbury to be relevant, I'm happy to see The Boondocks keeping it real. Lots of great attacks on Bush and bad hip hop musicians from Huey, the star, plus particularly thuggish insights from his little brother Riley.

Here's a Huey rant that resonated with me since I recently took down an American flag decal from my office window at work. I'm guessing it's been there since 9/11. I just got moved to a new office and I'm glad to finally have a window but the flag had to go. As you well know, dear reader, I'm not a fan of the American flag, but I love to watch them burn.

Anyway, here's the post-9/11 rant from p. 193 of A Right to Be Hostile:

"You have to wonder how sincere people are about all this patriotism and American unity. I mean, is it just a short-term reaction of a frightened populace trying to feel empowered and safe?"

"I was personally thinking how six months from now all those mail-order flags that you can attach to your car window will be collecting dust in basements alongside people's Rubik's Cubes. How "God Bless America" and "United We Stand" may become post-modern incarnations of "Where the Beef?""

Go, Huey, Go!

Although I usually avoid commercial offers on this blog. I should point out, since Clyde insists, that you can buy A Right to Be Hostile at Amazon and netweed will benefit in a tiny way (ok, 5% if you must know!).

There's been a lot of news lately about RFID tags (radio-frequency identification tags). Basically these are tiny trackable devices that are being deployed in many sectors, apparently most often to identify and track goods from warehouse to shopping carts. I've tended to focus on the privacy threats inherent in such a technology as has Katherine Albrecht at CASPIAN. Her efforts to raise awareness and confront the makers and deployers of this technology at every turn have born fruit and resulted in oddball attacks from RFID advocates that have recently been in the news.

It's very important that people pay attention and respond to the privacy issues inherent in RFID now, because this technology is unstoppable. Even if it were only used for tracking inventory, it has the potential to streamline those processes in ways that will greatly reduce costs, especially as the technology becomes cheaper. Various recent headlines will give you an idea as to how widespread the deployment of RFID will be. Note the involvement of Microsoft and Verisign, two rather large companies noted for their past violations of privacy.

Microsoft retail project taps into RFID
Techs line up to track retail goods
VeriSign chosen to run RFID tag network
Casino chips to carry RFID tags
RFID could contain future SARS outbreaks

RFID search at Google News.

I'm happy to say that I can now post to this blog again. You know, it's one thing to go out partying and miss some posts. It's another to be stymied by the technology that enables the posting in the first place. But perhaps it's like Judith Butler's take on oppressive systems. Forms of resistance are enabled by the system itself. Or something like that. The longer I'm out of academia, the less I can recall the nuances.

To follow up on my earlier post about Alt Burlesque, I found this article on the SuicideGirls Burlesque Tour to be really pretty good. Lots of nice contextualizing going back to Kathleen Hanna and Bikini Kill.

A couple of posts back I posted a bunch of NY Times links including a couple on the new show The L Word. Here's another, entitled
Women Having Sex, Hoping Men Tune In. It's a good title for an ok article. It reminds me that when I mentioned On Our Backs as lesbian erotica for lesbians in the Alt Burlesque post, that a lesbian friend of mine in San Francisco said the bookstore that she worked at mainly sold On Our Backs to men and that the writers and publishers were mostly bisexual or, as they put it, lesbians who had sex with men. Bisexual women making lesbian porn for heterosexual men?

I'm not really keeping up with the metrosexual thing too closely. It basically seems like more of a marketing maneuver, especially since gay men have always introduced fashions that straight men later embraced, usually when their girlfriends told them what to wear. In any case, Giorgio Armani is now doing his part to further the development of metrosexual style, something the author describes as a "melding of gay sensitivity with straight guy clothes." Thanks Giorgio! I can't wait to see the NBA go metrosexual!

I ask you, with Saddam incarcerated, why don't we feel any better? Could it be because so much danger is homegrown and government certified?

Remember biodiversity? The insights learned there are apparently quite relevant to issues of computer network vulnerability to viruses.

Apparently netweed must shift servers again. This may affect the availability of this blog. But you know I'll be back cause I need the attention. I'm told that all this will be over by this weekend. Let's hope so.

If you read this blog with any regularity, you too probably are disgusted with the whole post 9/11 turn of events. I remember after the attacks, as people were rounded up for investigation, thinking that nothing like that happened after the Oklahoma City bombings. In the first days after that event there were various foreign terrorist conspiracies floated around. When it came out that white right wingers were responsible did we see anybody rounding up fascists with short hair? Did we see short haired white guys being questioned at airports? Fuck no. I'm sure other people have thought this as well, but Bill Berkowitz is the first person I've found that's writing about it.

I'll have to say I'm also quite glad to see Paul O'Neill come out with insider revelations from the Bush administration. So glad that I'm willing to post a link to an article from Time magazine. The thing is, it will take insider involvement for this administration to fully unravel, barring widespread national revolt, of course.

Back in the 80s a lot of us spent a lot of time battling U.S. intervention in Central America. That period was where I got to see how the more credible mainstream news sources could use the veneer of objectivity to present news in a slanted manner that helped intelligent people ignore oppression and that included the NY Times. I think part of the problem is the rather debased forms of investigation that pass for journalistic research, although some journalists manage to do great work. And sometimes the NY Times publishes great stuff like the following:

A really nice interview with Wallace Shawn that I found much more humorous and politically aware than his actual plays.

An interesting piece about the music of Phil Kline who has made songs out of the ramblings of Donald Rumsfield and sayings written during the Vietnam War by GIs on their Zippo lighters.

A discussion of a puppet show by Dan Hurlin called Hiroshima Maidens that considers an encounter between a pilot who bombed Hiroshima and some of the survivors.

And a couple of pieces responding to the Showtime drama about LA lesbians, The L Word, with one focused on Jennifer Beals and the other a lesbian's take on the representation of lesbians.

I guess they're best at being the liberal intellectual's version of People.

In case you didn't know, the Treasury Department is not to be trusted, no matter what they say. Plus, even if information is not classified, the U.S. government continues to find ways to keep it private.

On a more positive note, fresh issues of First Monday, an online internet research journal, and the Online Community Report, are now available.

George W. Bush and klan, I mean, clan, continues to chip away at what passes for freedom with the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004. Social networking websites have privacy issues and their CEOs don't really give a fuck. And Ralph Nader wants us to know that dealing with car dealers is about to get worse.

But at least our dogs can get testicular implants once they've been neutered.

In Strip Till You Drop Alison Pollet and Page Hurwitz discuss the marketing of stripper culture and naughty thongs to teens. It covers a lot of interesting developments and raises questions that are unlikely to be resolved anytime soon, including the commodification of sexuality and the fact that teens are sexually aware beings that wish to explore their autonomy.

As porn and stripping become ever more mainstream, various alternatives have emerged including porn that features goths, punks and related species and a nationwide wave of burlesque groups. SuicideGirls.com is exploring both areas with their highly successful altporn website and their new project, Suicide Girls Burlesque Tour. I have to wonder how many of these developments first emerged in the activities of bi-women and lesbians. For instance, On Our Backs has long explored experimental lesbian sexuality featuring a convergence of real human bodies, many with piercings and tattoos, with "deviant" sexuality. And I remember living in San Francisco around 1990 and talking to a lesbian sex worker who told me about the differences in stripping for men and women at a time when lesbians stripping for lesbians was a growing phenomenon.

For a patron's view of strip clubs, check out the blog Strip Club Memories.

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

Now that God's blessed George W., why is Howard Dean still running? Perhaps it's to better market his video game. Or maybe he wants to continue his consideration of 9-11 so the press can have something to pick at.

Edward Castronova continues to raise important questions about the economies of synthetic worlds and their relationship to offline worlds.

Did you know that a "sailor mongering" law from 1872 could be used against your social change organization at an undisclosed future date?

And if you hadn't heard all this before, then you heard it here first!

Life is good.

It looks like everything's back to normal at netweed except for the archives for this blog and also for Hip Hop Logic. Soon, all will be well, at least in bloggerville.

Bush-Bashing Ads Move Online

Your Body, Your Superfund Site

24-Hour Movie People

Swap That Ugly Sweater, Online.

I strongly believe in following intelligence news, since that's where a lot of politics occur. For example, Scott Ritter on How the British Spy Agency MI6 Secretly Misled A Nation Into War With Iraq.