Aaron Swartz: Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

HERE

Sarkophag Oberndorf: Saving life with architecture

VIA

Open letter to artist Barbara Kruger

Criticism is raining down on Danske Bank, one of the largest financial institutions in Northern Europe, for their latest marketing campaign ‘A new normal demands New Standards’. How and why this campaign ever saw the light of day is a big question for people in Denmark. For some, the ‘why’ overshadows the ‘how’, which for us has become the most pressing question in these past few weeks.

Danske Bank called on the advertising agency Mensch and artist-photographer Peter Funch, co-owner of Gallery V1 to produce the campaign. The gallery is celebrating its 10 year anniversary and is presenting, among others, famed artist and political activist Barbara Kruger, whose work has become emblematic with a practice of institutional critique and political awareness in a world where machinations, as she would call it, have lulled us to sleep with consumerism and false beliefs.

Barbara Kruger has felt the embrace of the mainstream she calls out, and she would probably claim that there is no out, other than what you carve, with the very same weapons used by the  market.

The advertising industry has always had an especially acute sense for the latest, greatest and hottest in culture when it comes to appropriating its iconography for marketing. It is a means to an innovational end – namely branding. And it has also become a more or less accepted fact that this also means disarming everything that could serve as a threat to corporate entities.

The latest advertisement from Danske Bank seems to defy the myth that advertisement cannot go too far, and almost becomes a parody. The campaign was released on top of the medias lessened interest in what could rightfully be called the greatest theft ever to have been committed in Denmark, the ‘permanent’ loan amounting to the sum of 4 billion in U.S dollars, to which the bank answered with this hated campaign: that this loan was permanent and would not be repaid. It is ironic that if anything, the billboards and commercials succeed in waking the ever dormant feelings of dissent.

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[-empyre-] Debt Culture--types of debt (Brian Holmes)

Annie McClanahan wrote: Because the state is so incredibly powerful, any student debt mass default/debt strike movement would have to set up really powerful structures for mutual aid. That's why I find the Student Debtor's Pledge (http://www.occupystudentdebtcampaign.org/student-pledge/) in which signers pledge to default once 1 million others have similarly promised a much more powerful organizing model than the Rolling Jubilee (which uses a philanthropic system to collectively buy back non-secured loans, anonymously, but in no way threatens the debt system as a whole

I agree with the above, signed the plege almost a year ago (as adjunct faculty) and began researching about student debt, writing about it and talking about it publicly whenever possible. However, the sobering thing is that to date, only some 4,500 debtors have signed that pledge, and only some 600 faculty. Like Annie, I doubt the moral argument is the decisive one that stops people from taking action. The stronger forces appear to be fear of the legal system and simple apathy, or the sense that one has no agency whatsoever to effect change. Perhaps a third force is self-interest, since the expansion of the university system from the 1970s up to 2008 was predicated (without anybody ever talking about it) on each university's capacity to draw in the revenue stream of student debt. And it's still going on.

How can crippling debt become an issue on campus, given that the students have yet to be affected by it, while the faculty are actually paid with student debt? How to break the status quo of isolation and corruption? What can we do to transform the basis of social solidarity that Annie talks about in her post?

One of the things that always interested me was how the rebellious students of the 1960s were reintegrated to the capitalist system after a decade of deep disaffection. In the late 1990s, the rhetorical mechanisms of this reintegration were demonstrated in books like "The Conquest of Cool" by Thomas Frank or (with a more extensive sociological apparatus) "The New Spirit of Capitalism" by Boltanski and Chiapello. The basic idea was that changes in marketing and management styles had put to rest the alienation experienced by young cadres in the 1960s and 70s, to the point where we were living in a new kind of networked dream world (a new ideology). Demonstrating this in detail seemed like a breakthrough at the time. Yet the magnitude of the current problem makes that work appear totally inadequate.

In fact the crisis of the 1970s, and the threat it posed to capitalism as a whole, was overcome through a tremendous expansion of middle-class status, representing not merely an ideological but also an economic cooptation of those who were needed to manage the major social transformations that we call globalization. From the 70s onwards the core functions of governance became Trilateral (US-Western Europe-Japan) and a transnational capitalist class gradually emerged (as described by Leslie Sklair or William Robinson). The 1990s and especially the 2000s were marked by the urban phenomenon of megagentrification, or the construction of giant new metropolitan centers to serve this new class, whether in Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, or in the older core regions. Today, the Trilateral envelope has been ruptured. State, financial, corporate and millitary actors now have to contend with sovereign forces across the entire planet. Members of the global middle classes (that's us) use computer networks to contact peers across the world, to organize business, pleasure, or occasionally, revolt. But how did this occur? How did we get here?

Right now I'm reading "The New Depression" by Richard Duncan, who gives a surprising answer (you can also read a long interview with him, posted for free at newleftreview.org). According to Duncan, we got here by shifting from capitalism to creditism. In 1968, Johnson revoked the law requiring the US to back its currency with 25% reserves in gold. The Bretton-Woods system then collapsed in 1971, and not only did the world's currencies begin to float against each other, but also the US began issuing increasing amounts of paper and electronic dollars. Meanwhile we began importing far more than we exported. Corporations in the producer countries, especially Japan and later China, ended up with the excess dollars. The governments of those countries then printed more of their own money, bought up the dollars, and invested them in US bonds (including huge amounts of government-backed housing bonds). All this sovereign money creation served as the basis for the issuance by private banks of much larger amounts of credit -- and the capitalist system expanded wildly on the basis of what Marx would have called "fictitious capital."

The point, however, is that the fiction was effective. The endless factories and entirely new cities that now cover the coastline of China are there to prove it -- and on a smaller scale, you might also have a look at the shiny new physical plant and complex corporate and international partnerships of all the more successful universities. The global middle classes were created and integrated to the neoliberal version of capitalism by means of a credit bubble that has expanded continuously since the 1970s.

Since 2007, the Federal Reserve has isued many trillions more dollars worth of this imaginary but effective money, most recently via the QE3 program that is designed to pump out $40 billion *per month* for an indefinite period. This is being used to go on bailing out the banks and sovereign investors by purchasing toxic assets, especially those based on mortgages, which account for some 40% of total US debt. The immediate effect of quantitative easing is to reflate stock and commodity prices (incidentally sending food prices through the roof). Over the middle term, the aim appears to be to bring everything back to the status quo ante. The current economic model - from wage stagnation and predatory lending to global just-in-time production and devastating climate change - is being propped up by the Fed with help from the EU, Japan and China. It is as though they believed a new expansion of capitalism were possible, that all the currently disaffected people could be brought back into the system once again, and that we could end up with a fully integrated global governance: the scenario of the 1980s and 90s, reloaded at a higher power.

The other, undiscussed but in my view far more likely scenario, is one of major breakdowns in international economic relations, resulting in conflicts exacerbated by climate change. Something like a variation on WWII, a rolling planetary civil war whose first act has been the Arab Spring - arguably sparked by the historic rise in food prices in 2010.

How to make student debt a focus of struggle on college campuses? How to challenge the reckless pursuit of creditism on the global scale? The questions are linked. Because of the orders of complexity involved, only the university can produce a counter-discourse to the neoliberal creditism that currently governs our planetary society. But we know how the university works: people just get lost in all that complexity. Only a social movement of students, grads, adjuncts and (with more difficulty) professors, acting in solidarity with the other debtors in our societies, can give such a counter-discourse the force of acts, the real power to refuse the status quo.

let's do it,
Brian

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empyre forum

EMPYRE MAILING LIST

Rolling Jubilee

A bailout of the people by the people. We buy debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, we abolish it. We cannot buy specific individuals' debt - instead, we help liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal.

The Jubilee begins November 15 with "The People's Bailout," a variety show and telethon in NYC. All proceeds will go directly to buying people's debt and cancelling it. Want to donate while we're still setting up?

Find out more about the Jubilee.

The Yes Men Are Revolting

Inflatable - Eclectic-Electric Collective

We give an inflatable workshop in MÜSZI,an artist centre in Budapest to prepare for the demonstration at the 23rd of october. The 23rd of october is a national holiday as the hungarians commemorate the insurrection against the Soviet Union in 1956. The demonstration is against the present right-wing Fidesz government that in its "centralisation policy" in f.e. the field of education, media, law is showing autocratic traits.

Workshop: Sunday 21.10 & 22.10.Müszi, Blaha Lujza Square 1

Start: 12am noon till 8pm.

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How does it feel to be free?

Pussy Riot member vows more protests

Washington - A member of the anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot freed unexpectedly from prison on Wednesday vowed defiantly hours later that the group's protest actions would continue.
HERE

vluchtelingen op straat zetten nieuw kamp op in am*dam

Zo’n 25 migranten van ‘WIJ ZIJN HIER – VLUCHTELINGEN OP STRAAT’ hebben in amsterdam nieuw-west een nieuw kamp opgezet aan de notweg 32 nadat ze om onduidelyke redenen weg moesten uit de grote tuin aan de herengracht van de protestantse diaconie amsterdam... MORE HERE

Voina Wanted. Political Prisoners. Krakow, 2012

Genderbent: the Barbie Liberation Organization

Kill Kirill

 Sex assault on the pop Gundyaeva was committed activist movement FEMEN Jana Zhdanova at the gangway of personal aircraft of the patriarch. During a briefing on the occasion of the arrival at Kiev Gundyaeva, topless, terrorist attacked the Blessed shouting "Come out out!" in order to grab claws exhausted by fasting and prayer, the body of the righteous. Offer FEMEN KILL-KIRILL calls for the destruction of the moral scum Gundyaeva mummers and all stinking Putin Legion urchins with him. FEMEN blames unscrupulous grandfather, named Cyril, anti-state activities to draw Ukraine into evroaziopsky "Canaan," which threatens the collapse of Ukraine and the civil war. FEMEN imputes Gundyaeva unlawful arrest anti-Putin activists committed disgraceful trials, under the Kremlin's insane screaming hypocrites. Moscow denies FEMEN thieving priest moral right to commit didactic visits to free evroaziyskogo patriarchal bullshit free European country. VIA

Fuck for forest

  FFF is an erotic, non-profit ecological organization. By showing the beauty of love, nudity and real sexual adventures - we wish to direct attention to, and collect money for threatened nature. Sex is often shown to attract us to buy all kind of bullshit products and ideas, so why not for a good cause? We think it is important to show a more liberal relationship to our bodies, as a contrast to the suppressed world we live in. In FFF we make photos and videos of ourselves or with friends, having sex or being naked. If you wish to get member access to watch us, you need to donate money for our ecological work, or join us as an erotic activist. Everything FFF makes is based on real, non-profit, erotic adventures - for pleasure, excitement, freedom and nature. Saving the planet IS sexy! Why not get horny for a good cause? It makes it easier for you and me to stay positive in an already too suppressed world. Read our "War on error" and "love manifest" to know more about the FFF philosophy. HERE

Suit Invasion

Hashtag Activism, and Its Limits

If you “like” something, does that mean you care about it?
It’s an important distinction in an age when you can accumulate social currency on Facebook or Twitter just by hitting the “like” or “favorite” button.

The ongoing referendum on the Web often seems more like a kind of collective digital graffiti than a measure of engagement: I saw this thing, it spoke to me for at least one second, and here is my mark to prove it. MORE HERE

WHY I GO TO THE SQUARE As they beat

Thais, a young photographer and video artist, winner of our contest video about the elections, " Eye for an Eye , "said OPENSPACE.RU about how she was beaten at the picket in support of Hope and Mary Tolokonnikova Alekhine (presumably - members of the group Pussy Riot) March 14 the building of the Moscow City Court. Barefoot beat her, Alexander, a member of the Presidium of association.

In his LiveJournal, he writes : "Although perhaps the next time still to be meat. Too many I called and they found fault that did not call. To arrange a lynching is quite possible - to collect 50-100 people, perverts dragged by the hair into the crowd and link up to the cops. And what is there in the crowd to make them fulyuhany - ktozh knows? ....
by the way received the full approval of his actions from the head of the AOC and Zhuravleva. Vsevolod Chaplin. True scolded me that matter ... but that was it, the emotions. "


We stood in solitary pickets, as expected, one at a distance of thirty meters. first came Nashi, easily recognizable by the level of intelligence. In addition, I have seen them before. They were, as always, with two cameras, asking provocative questions vile. For example, how we relate to orgies and when the next (but much more than a dirty word used). There is one among them is the vile, who parasite on Pussy Riot , he calls himself Dick Riot , and wears a black hat is the same. One of the commissioners as "Nashi" calls himself a "freelance journalist". He immediately began to insult me as a woman. Then, when it beat me, he, too, was detained under the hot hand. He sat there in the paddy wagon without the cap. Miserable so very afraid, and asked me to confirm that he did not attack, do not hurt me, even asked for forgiveness. I confirmed and he was released. But, in general, after the "Nashi" have appeared at some point, a man and a woman. They began to pour all of us with water, the water they had plenty of bottles in a bag. At the same time saying no, no, do not worry, this water is holy. If the request does not sprinkle it continued. Sprayed in the face. I now realize that this too was violence.

HERE

FEMEN @ Chiambretti Sunday Show (26.02.12)

FEMEN @ Chiambretti Sunday Show (26.02.12) Part2 from Eugene Smirnov on Vimeo.

Shut down the coorporations

Why Direct Action?

The F29 Shut Down the Corporations National Day of Action is calling on activists across the country to engage in day of mass non-violent direct action. Direct action is a means of obstructing practices we protest and reclaiming our agency in creating the world we live in. Direct action manifests in many ways such as sit-ins, strikes, blockades, boycotts, banner drops, culture jamming, and performance among many others. The roots of direct action are deep and range from Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. to Rachel Corrie and Tim DeChristopher. Our social fabric is woven with direct action from the Boston Tea Party, to the Silent Sentinels’ pickets for women’s suffrage, the NW timber workers strike of 1935, SNCC sit-ins and the Freedom Rides, the occupation of Alcatraz, actions against nuclear power and weapons, the forest defense movement and the shutdown of the WTO in Seattle. Through direct action we can begin to build another world based upon cooperation, mutual aid, and social as well as ecologically connected community

HERE MORE

Russian Art Group Voina Burns Police Car On New Years Eve (VIDEO)

"Who the fuck needs art when there are trash vampires, trash trucks and werewolves in uniform about? This fire engulfing the trash must be an Eternal Fire... Let's destroy all prisons! Freedom to all political prisoners! Feds don't fuck us - we fuck feds! Happy New Year, comrades! HERE