Here is a nice tutorial for basic hand and forearm massage, using oils or cream, with giver and receiver sitting face to face at a table (beauty salon set up). It shows easy lovely moves, smoothly executed and described. It conveys good standards for care, with clear instructions for set-up in the beginning and remarks about hygiene and health precautions.
Hint: Observe how she warmly secures the person’s hand in hers when she needs to turn it.
Video tutorial By Homespa beauty
Neste workshop de dois dias, os participantes são introduzidos na arte da performance enquanto instrumento político, através da modificação dos corpos com recurso a diferentes tipos de próteses e da criação de identidades híbridas, que procuram ultrapassar dicotomias como natural/artificial, homem/máquina, humano/animal, homem/mulher, hetero/homo, arte/vida, ciência/pré-tecnologia, entre outras.
Akelarre Cyborg é um projeto de dois laboratórios artísticos, Transnoise e Quimera Rosa, que investigam e experimentam questões de género e sexualidade e as suas relações com as artes e a tecnologia. O seu trabalho centra-se na criação coletiva de artefactos do-it-yourself enquanto ferramenta de re-significação da nossa relação com a tecnologia e no seu papel na produção de subjetividade. Ao mesmo tempo, tenta criar um espaço recreativo através do desenvolvimento de organismos híbridos (cyber drag) num processo simbólico de mutação de objetos quotidianos.
Através da manipulação de pequenos circuitos eletrónicos serão construídas exoesculturas que serão usadas numa performance final.
Em inglês
Sala de Ensaios
Preço único 10€
excecionalmente não se aceitam reservas • venda disponível apenas até 48h antes do início da oficina
Máximo 20 participantes
Não é necessária experiencia prévia
Os participantes podem trazer os seus próprios materiais
TEATRO MARIA MATOS
LISBOA
Mais uma illustraçao, com exemplo Portugues, de como o mal enraiza-se nos sistemas de saude, atraves de conflitos de interesse, patentes industriais e acordos internationais oscuros, até ter consequencias dramaticas :
>> A governaçao cronica e o caso da Hepatite C, Julio Silvestre, Jornal Mapa (Abril Junho 15)
Here is a nice (and somewhat soothing) article on a subject that is maybe not discussed enough among caregivers, or not discussed with the right approach ? The author calls it “Compassion fatigue”. Exhaustion from caring. It doesn’t matter if you’re a professional or not. Caring. Sometimes a very special kind of fatigue sets in, hard to describe. Sleep doesn’t even seem to heal it sometimes. The author notes that, contrary to what most people think and ask all the time, “protecting” oneself from the emotions of the person we’re helping, or setting boundaries between them and you not only doesn’t make sense, it is impossible, and absurd to even want to try, like a dead end. So how then, to recuperate ? What self-care for caregivers ?
>> Compassion and Compassion fatigue: balancing your emotions in the treatment room, Tracy Walton, Massage today
Cette fin de semaine au Toulouse Hacker Space Factory, un programme de conférences, ateliers, performances. Poussy Draama a.k.a Le cabinet mobile du DocteuRe Duchesne sera avec son camion pour des consultations en sexologie/gyneco, open source, roots, DIY, <3.
Jerémie Zimmerman, co-fondateur de La Quadrature du Net et Hacker-with-care parlera droits et libertés sur Internet. RYBN présentera Flashcrash, And More. Bon Weekend et Lots of Love.
All the president’s psychologists
Description:
A new report by a group of dissident health professionals and human rights activists argues that the American Psychological Association secretly collaborated with the administration of President George W. Bush to bolster a legal and ethical justification for the torture of prisoners swept up in the post-Sept. 11 war on terror.
>> Full document HERE
Read
>> American Psychological Association bolstered CIA torture programme, report says – James Risen, NY Times, April 30 2015
>> First, Do harm, Justine Sharrock, Motherjones, July 14 2009
Find out about great Tactical Tech project for Holistic Security
>> Towards holistic security for rights advocates
“Human rights defenders, journalists, and activists continue to operate in a terrain fraught by ever-evolving risks to their physical and psychological integrity, along with those of their family, friends and associates.
The great proliferation of digital devices and information and communication technologies such as the internet, email, social networking tools, mobile and smartphone devices, has had a profound impact on the dimensions of these threats, both in broadening the kinds of surveillance and harassment to which HRDs can be subjected, and providing new and innovative ways for them to communicate, organise, take action and stay safe, both psychologically and physically.”
“For now, however, millions of people are exposing their personal health profiles to internet advertisers and data brokers, right at the moment they’re making the most confidential inquiries imaginable.”
“Health data is some of the most private data you have. That a data reveals a lot about you. There’s a reason that we have laws like HIPAA—unfortunately those don’t apply here,” Quintin said. HIPAA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, and it forces the government and doctors to keep patient medical records secure and confidential. It has no jurisdiction over search engine companies or data brokers who sap data “volunteered” by users.”
Read : Looking up symptoms online ? These companies are tracking you
“THIS IS WHY I DO QIGONG”
“It appears we have one new example that’s rather stunning: it looks like the worst of the Ebola outbreak from the past few months might have been avoided if key research had been open access, rather than locked up.”
Read: Don’t think Open Access is important ? It might have prevented much of the Ebola outbreak
La performeuse & sexo-hackeuse Poussy Draama vient de s’acheter un camion de pompiers et explique son projet de nomadiser-circuler ses consultations en DIY open source sexologie / alter gynécologie. Crowfunding en cours pour soutenir la première tournée dans le sud de la France, départ prévu en Mai.
5 March 2015 – 17 May 2015 at Foundation For Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool
Exhibition GROUP THERAPY: Mental Distress in a Digital Age
Originating from FACT’s extensive work within mental health and wellbeing, the exhibition explores the complex relationship between technology, society, and mental health.
“The three months of Spring,
they denote effusion and spreading.
Heaven and Earth together generate life;
the myriad beings flourish.
Go to rest later at night and rise early.
Move through the courtyards with long strides.
Dishevel the hair and relax the physical appearance,
thereby cause the mind to orient itself on life.
Give life and do not kill.
Give and do not take.
Reward and do not punish.
This is correspondence with the Qi of Spring and
it is the Way to nourish life.
Opposing it harms the liver.
In summer this causes changes to cold,
and there is little support for growth.”
From Huang Di nei jing su wen, Chapter 2: Comprehensive Discourse on Regulating the Spirit in accordance with the Qi of the Four seasons.
P. U. Unschuld annotated translation, University of California Press.
Richard Stallman on Love and Dance...
“To move in kindness with another person”
Richard Stallman goes to the doctor and is asked to sign a privacy policy consent form…
My doctor’s office asked me to lie, Richard Stallman, August 2011
Whistleblowers have a human right to a Public Interest Defense, and hacktivists do too, writes Carey Shenkman, first amendment, human rights lawyer, in HuffingtonPost.
“The United States’ war on transparency is making it an outlier in the international community. Just this week, a high-level European human rights body “urged” the United States to allow NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to return home and be given a meaningful chance to defend himself.
International human rights law has been clear for decades: anyone engaged in exposing gross abuses through whistleblowing and publishing is entitled to protection. Yet, the Obama administration has waged war on transparency, prosecuting more people for disclosing information to the press than Richard Nixon and all other U.S. presidents combined.
Not a single one of those prosecuted has been allowed to argue that their actions served the public good. Chelsea Manning, the alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower, exposed human rights abuses worldwide and opened an unprecedented window into global politics. Her disclosures are to this day cited regularly by the media and courts. Thomas Drake exposed massive NSA waste, while John Kiriakou exposed waterboarding later admitted to be torture in the recent Senate CIA Torture Report. The story of Edward Snowden’s disclosures of widespread NSA surveillance recently won an Oscar.
Whistleblowers cannot argue that their actions had positive effects, known as a “public interest defense.” The United States treats disclosures to the press as acts of spying — no matter what good they lead to. In response, European and international human rights bodies are urging the United States to adopt better protections for whistleblowers.
These protections should apply not only to insiders who blow the whistle, but also to other transparency advocates such as hacktivists. A public interest defense should have been available to Aaron Swartz, the Creative Commons creator and Reddit co-founder who tragically committed suicide following an overzealous government prosecution. His crime? Trying to make academic articles accessible to the public.
The defense could have helped Jeremy Hammond, who in 2013 was convicted for “computer trespass” and sentenced to 10 years for exposing that the private intelligence firm Stratfor spied on human rights activists. The Justice Department tried to cast Hammond as a cybercriminal. But Hammond’s supporters, which include human rights organizations and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, recognized that he was motivated to expose government and corporate surveillance.
In guaranteeing a fair trial for information disclosures, the United States lags behind other jurisdictions, including Canada, Denmark and Germany. Canada’s Security of Information Act offers a public interest defense, as does the Danish Criminal Code on disclosing state secrets. The defenses are not airtight, but they are better than nothing. For hacktivists, at least one German court has defended a digital sit-in as political speech, acknowledging that ‘hacker’ does not equal ‘cybercriminal.’
International norms support the human right to a public interest defense. The UN Human Rights Committee, interpreting the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, the world’s farthest-reaching human rights treaty, noted that governments must take “extreme care” to ensure that laws relating to national security are not invoked “to suppress or withhold from the public information of legitimate public interest.”
Additionally, the Johannesburg Principles, adopted since 1995 by international legal experts, stipulate that “No person may be punished on national security grounds for disclosure of information if . . . the public interest in knowing the information outweighs the harm from disclosure.” This principle was reiterated in 2013 in the Tshwane Principles–agreed upon by UN experts, civil society and practitioners around the world. The Tshwane framework outlined in detail specific categories of disclosures, like corruption and human rights abuses, that should be protected.
Finally, the European Court of Human Rights, Europe’s high human rights court, has provided for whistleblower protection on numerous occasions. For instance, in Guja v. Moldova, the court protected as a matter of free speech a whistleblower’s right to disclose wrongdoing committed by a public prosecutor. In reaching its decision, the court weighed the perceived damage suffered by the public authorities against the public interest of the information revealed.
This week’s statements from the Legal Affairs Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe follow a tradition of long-standing norms which consistently support the right to a public interest defense in information disclosures. None of these norms depend on the defendant being a government whistleblower; they can certainly protect hacktivists as well.
The free flow of information is necessary for a democratic society, and this flow cannot be purely in the hands of government. This is why the rights to expression and a free and open press are among the most widely recognized rights on earth. When those exposing wrongdoing cannot even defend themselves in court, this is ultimately a failure of the rule of law. It means that even judges cannot challenge the basis for government secrecy, undermining the basic tenets of democratic society.”
http://www.comede.org/Guide-Comede-2013
Comité Médical pour les Exilés
PERSONNES ETRANGERES MALADES PLACEES EN RETENTION ET/OU EXPULSEES de février 2013 à mars 2015.
“Les associations de l’Observatoire du Droit à la Santé des Étrangers ont le regret de vous faire part de l’expulsion imminente vers le Kosovo, par la préfecture du Doubs, de Monsieur B.
Il est enfermé au centre de rétention du Mesnil-Amelot depuis 10 jours avec sa femme. Au Kosovo, il ne pourra pas bénéficier de la prise en charge médicale que nécessite son état de santé. Ses jours seront en danger. Le ministère de la santé est alerté : il doit stopper cette expulsion.
Monsieur B n’est pas un cas isolé, depuis juin 2012 nos associations ont été informées de nombreuses situations similaires dont certaines ont conduit à l’expulsion. La mobilisation associative et citoyenne aura permis d’éviter que certaines de ces personnes ne soient renvoyées vers une mort certaine.”
La Cimade / Actualités
Nurture your hopes and make the most of the return of Spring with the writings of George Orwell on the “living creature with the most beautiful eyes” : Some thoughts on the common toad. Think and act for those who can’t be outside to enjoy it, because they are “ill, hungry, frightened or immured in a prison”.
“Certainly we ought to be discontented, we ought not simply to find out ways of making the best of a bad job, and yet if we kill all pleasure in the actual process of life, what sort of future are we preparing for ourselves? If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia? What will he do with the leisure that the machine will give him? I have always suspected that if our economic and political problems are ever really solved, life will become simpler instead of more complex, and that the sort of pleasure one gets from finding the first primrose will loom larger than the sort of pleasure one gets from eating an ice to the tune of a Wurlitzer. I think that by retaining one’s childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and — to return to my first instance — toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable, and that by preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship.
At any rate, spring is here, even in London N. 1, and they can’t stop you enjoying it. This is a satisfying reflection. How many a time have I stood watching the toads mating, or a pair of hares having a boxing match in the young corn, and thought of all the important persons who would stop me enjoying this if they could. But luckily they can’t. So long as you are not actually ill, hungry, frightened or immured in a prison or a holiday camp, spring is still spring. The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.”
“Homophobic social stigmas, the long-standing challenges of rampant sexual abuse, and a society steeped in a generations old puritanical mistrust of physical pleasure have created an isolating trap in which American men can go for days or weeks at a time without touching another human being. The implications of touch isolation for men’s health and happiness are huge.”
>> Touch isolation: How homophobia has robbed all men of touch (Mark Greene)
Wiseup Action : Join us for a Solidarity Vigil Monday 16th of March 2015 at 5 pm outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in Support of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, marking his 1000 days under the protection of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London’s Knightsbridge. We shall meet at 5pm on the pavement opposite the Ecuadorian Embassy at No 3 Hans Crescent, Knightsbridge, London.
On SPOUSE-BUSTING: Intimacy, Adultery and Surveillance Technology,
Melissa Gregg
“The rise in online communication has brought an accompanying demand for services that facilitate, obscure and discover intimate and adulterous behavior, from dating sites to detective services and location-based tracking devices. This paper takes recent examples of “spouse-busting” applications to investigate the relationship between intimacy, transparency and security. Adultery anxieties hold useful lessons for surveillance studies, since intimacy often means entitlement to a certain kind of knowledge – the provision of which equates to dominant ideals of commitment, care and trust. As Laura Kipnis argues, the modern relationship is one in which lovers “ must know everything there is to know about one another ”(2003, 162). This premise accords with broader transformations in intimacy encouraging openness and communication between self-directed individuals (Giddens 1992, Shumway 2003, Illouz 2007). According to Kipnis, the practice of “withholding information or having secrets is a definite warning sign of relationship distress ” , since “in principle nothing should be off limits (even if on occasion, ‘making sure’ may be required)”(2003,162-3). Spouse monitoring software provides the means for “ making sure”. It demonstrates a major tenet of contemporary intimacy in so far as it presumes there is no need for privacy “if there’s nothing to hide”.”
A look at some motives for not reporting suspicious activity to authorities, from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Individual and Community Preparedness Division + International Association of Chiefs of Police research and strategy Report on How to Improve Public’s Suspicious Activity Reporting (2012)
THE WORK OF WATCHING ONE ANOTHER –
Lateral Surveillance, Risk and Governance – Mark Andrejevic
“This article focuses on emerging strategies for what might be described as lateral surveillance: not the top-down monitoring of employees by employers, citizens by the state, but rather the peer-to-peer surveillance of spouses, friends, and relatives.”
(…)
“Lateral surveillance, or peer-to-peer monitoring, understood as the use of surveillance tools by individuals, rather than by agents of institutions public or private, to keep track of one another, covers (but is not limited to) three main categories: romantic interests, family, and friends or acquaintances. It also comprises several levels of monitoring, ranging from casually Googling a new acquaintance to purchasing keystroke monitoring software, surveillance cameras, or even portable lie detectors. Rather than providing an exhaustive taxonomy of surveillance technologies and practices, this section explores examples of monitoring strategies in an effort to elaborate the logic of peer-to-peer surveillance, one that it is hoped might prove of some use in illuminating a constellation of practices ranging from the use of lie detectors in reality TV formats to the growing market for home surveillance products, and the commonplace practices of peer monitoring via cell phone, IM, or the Internet. While some of the practices described below might seem absurd, such as submitting children to a portable lie detector test, others have become so commonplace that they have passed into unreflective use, such as caller ID, once a technology paid for by those with security concerns, now a service as ubiquitous as cell phones. The following sections explore three inter-related forms of lateral surveillance: the use of the Internet, the development of do-it-yourself information gathering technologies, and that of offline investigative tools. In each case the goal is to use representative examples of the technologies to provide some concrete examples of the argument developed in previous section as well as to illustrate developments in lateral monitoring that don’t receive the kind of attention –academic or otherwise –that more top-down forms of surveillance have generated. Of central interest to this paper is the constellation of monitoring practices that emerge from a consideration of the available technologies and techniques. They are, I would argue, worthy of consideration in their own right not as a unique phenomenon but as part of the monitoring assemblage associated with the deployment of new information and communication technologies.”
Article abstract:
This article explores a range of technologies for ‘lateral surveillance’or peer monitoring arguing that in a climate of perceived risk and savvy skepticism individuals are increasingly adopting practices associated with marketing and law enforcement to gain information about friends, family members, and prospective love interests. The article argues that the adoption of such technologies corresponds with an ideology of ‘responsibilization’associated with the risk society: that consumers need training in the consumption of services and the development of expertise to monitor one another. Rather than displacing ‘top-down’ forms of monitoring, such practices emulate and amplify them, fostering the internalization of government strategies and their deployment in the private sphere. In an age in which everyone is to be considered potentially suspect, all are simultaneously urged to become spies.
Yoga poses breakdowns and modifications for bigger bodies on instructor Amber Karnes BODY POSITIVE website.
Downward facing dog, Child’s pose, Pigeon pose, Sun Salutations…
Yoga instructor Amber Karnes reflects on her experience as large body and shares advices on how to create a welcoming learning environment, know what to modify and be a good teacher for every unique someone in the class.
“And it’s not just large bodies that need modifications to stay safely aligned. People with injuries, athletes of all stripes with tight muscles in various places, aging bodies, bodies recovering from surgery, bodies with prosthetics, and on and on—all can benefit when teachers offer multiple entry points to a pose.
But knowing how to modify poses is not enough. Modifications introduced in a positive way can be empowering, clarifying, and nurturing to students. On the other hand, when we teach modifications without a critical examination of our language and presentation, we can leave students feeling singled out, less-than, and ashamed. I’d like to offer six tips for teaching modifications in your classes and creating a body-positive environment of inclusivity:
>> What your bones have in common with the Eiffel Tower
“The Eiffel tower is incredibly well optimized to do what it was designed to do, to stand tall and stand strong, while using a minimum of material. Rather than hide its inner workings with a facade, Eiffel exposed the skeleton of his masterpiece. In doing so, he revealed its “hidden rules of harmony”, many of the same rules that give your skeleton its lightweight strength.”
– “To learn to touch, learn to keep quiet” –
Savoir faire silence pour accueillir l’autre : Une clé des soins par le toucher, livrée par Christian Heronimus dans son entretien pour la newsletter de la federation française de massage bien-être ICI
What is the punishment of Tantalus ? A very intimate light that warms my night
What is suicide ? Slowly descending with the leisure of going up
What is Love ? A very quiet street that you only cross once
What is really hungry ? A silver ink pot filled with blood
What is nobility ? The wind coming from the woods
What is courage ? A church inside a nut
What is a head bump ? An expansion on the back of the head
What is reason ? A letter from far away
What is the night ? A very ancient text sang by a multitude of frogs
What is fate ? Love to its entire length
What is childhood ? An island that is fast emerging
What is painting ? An immense Turkish bath
What is the monarchy ? A bag of stones asking to be carried
What are we doing ? The day
What do we expect ? Your hope
Who is your mother ? A beggar who waits until it’s dark to laugh
What are we ? The eyes of a bird who died travelling
Who was Mario Cesariny ? A distracted oracle who never told the truth
Where did he live ? In the lap of a statue made of flour
Why did he live ? Because there were those who wanted to kill him
Mario Cesariny
Artwork Bruno Borges / Oficina Arara
(Leslie + Alexander Lowen)
This yoga journal article breaks down group muscles, describes typical imbalances (in upper and lower body) caused by long hours of desk / computer work, comes with selection of postures to fix and prevent further injuries.
>> Suicidology Online is a peer-reviewed open-access journal in the field of suicide research. Original research, essays, book reviews…
Suicide as Escape from Self, is a theory developed by psychologist R. Baumeister, exposed in the 90’s journal article accessible here.
Article abstract :
“Suicide is analyzed in terms of motivations to escape from aversive self-awareness. The causal chain begins with events that fall severely short of standards and expectations. These failures are attributed internally, which makes self-awareness painful. Awareness of the self’s inadequacies generates negative affect, and the individual therefore desires to escape from self-awareness and the associated affect. The person tries to achieve a state of cognitive deconstruction (constricted temporal focus, concrete thinking, immediate or proximal goals, cognitive rigidity, and rejection of meaning), which helps prevent meaningful self-awareness and emotion. The deconstructed state brings irrationality and disinhibition, making drastic measures seem acceptable. Suicide can be seen as an ultimate step in the effort to escape from self and world”
Jesse Bering in Scientific American, sums up and comments on Baumeister’s theory: “According to Baumeister, there are six primary steps in the escape theory, culminating in a probable suicide when all criteria are met.”
They are :
1. Falling short of standards
2. Attributions to Self
3. High Self-awareness
4. Negative affect
5. Cognitive deconstruction
6. Desinhibition
Thoughts on suicide and the importance of taking care of each other, here in REMEMBERING AARON BY TAKING CARE OF EACH OTHER, by Clay Shirky –
Extract:
“The warning signs are well known. Persistent withdrawal. Mood swings. Previous attempts or family history. Talking about it. Self-erasure. The American Association of Suicidology has a good overview. There’s no perfect checklist, but we are better at knowing the signs in general than we are at acting on them in specific cases. Ask yourself “Whose suicide would sadden but not surprise me?”
The useful responses are well-known too. Reach out. Ask. Listen. Take casual mentions of suicide seriously. Be persistent about checking on someone. Don’t try to cure or fix anyone; that’s out of your league. Just tell them you care, and point them to professional resources. Wikipedia has a list of English-language suicide prevention hotlines. Help Guide has a good overview of what we know about prevention generally, and how to help the potentially suicidal.
We need to remember Aaron by supporting free culture, and by limiting prosecutorial abuse. But we also need to remember Aaron by taking care of each other. Our community is unusually welcoming of people disproportionately at risk, but we are also unusually capable of working together without always building close social ties. Github is great for distributing participation, but it is lousy for seeing how everyone is doing.
We need to remember Aaron by thinking of those among us at risk of dying as he did. Most of them won’t be martyrs — most of them will be people like Ilya and Will — but their deaths will be just as awful. And, as with every cause Aaron stood for, we know how to take on this problem. What we need is the will to act.”
Artist Theo Jansen makes these pacific beasts out of electric tubes, bamboo sticks, cables, they walk propelled by the wind on the beach of La Hague, they evolve year after year, and he calls them I.A.
Way more enchanting than Boston Dynamics beasts.
FYI: A Strandbeest + documentation are currently exhibited at Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
“Cuando una mulher empieza a excitarse sexualmente, el utero empieza primero a temblar, como una medusa suspendida en el oceano”
.. On pleasure in giving birth, Wilhelm Reich’s (and others) perspectives on the healthy – orgastic – uterine matrix, in spanish…
“Matt DeHart is a 30-year-old former US Air National Guard drone team member and alleged WikiLeaks courier, who worked with the hacktivist group Anonymous. After becoming the subject of a national security investigation — and allegations relating to a teenage pornography case which he vehemently denies — he fled from the United States to Canada with his family to seek political asylum and protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture. In what represents a moral victory for the DeHart family, the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board judge found that the teenage pornography case against Matt lacked credibility. However, because the IRB considered that the United States still had a functioning democracy, they denied his claim, and on 1 March, 2015 Matt DeHart was handed over into US federal custody.”
>> Information and support for Matt DeHart with COURAGE foundation, who named him their third beneficiary yesterday
“A new study found that 91% of health-related web pages reveal potentially sensitive information to third parties like data brokers and online advertisers.(…)
To conduct the study, University of Pennsylvania PhD student Timothy Libert analyzed the top 50 search results for 1,986 common diseases, some 80,000 web pages. He found that on 91% of the pages, third parties like social networks, advertisers, and data brokers could access information about who was viewing the page, like the user’s IP address. On 70% of the pages, those third parties could see information about specific “conditions, treatments and diseases” viewed.
Altogether, 78% of the health-related web pages sent information about you to Google, 31% sent information to Facebook, and 5% sent information to Experian, a credit bureau and data broker”
>> Your embarrassing online searches about health problems aren’t private
GYNEpunk‘s objective is to make emerge DIY-DIT accessible diagnosis labs and technics in extreme experimentation, down the rocks or elevators if is necesary. Has to be possible in a situated stable place or/and in nomadic mobile labs. Has to be able to perform as much as WE WANT, in a intensive way: smears, fluid analysis, biopsy, PAPs, synthesize hormones at will, blood exams, urinalysis, HIV tests, pain reliefs, or what ever WE NEED. Hack and build our own ultrasound, endoscope or ecography devices in a low-cost way. All this in a strict complementation with herbs and natural knowledges, oral traditions, submarine recipes, seeking with hunger generate superavit of DIY lubricants, anti-conceptives, open doula domains, savage caring of any visceral hands on technologies, as menstrual extraction, all elevated at maximun potential of common learning and radical self-body-power…!
Jesse Krimes prison artwork “Purgatory” is visible until May in Paris, in Le Bord Des Mondes, an unusual collective exhibition, particularly exciting to hackers-makers mind (see also Takis).
On his work and prison : “Incarceration marked a moment of personal crisis for me, providing an encounter with difference and generating desire and fear, enlightenment and profound disquiet. Being confined to a cell and mediated existence, all measure within prison seems to collapse, leaving only time to reflect. This reflection was the catalyst for significant shifts in my thinking that ultimately facilitated my body of work. The work I created in prison references the tradition of topographical reliquary, which links an object’s meaning to the sacred importance of its originating place. Interpreted through Robert Smithson’s concept of the non-site, the sheets, soaps, and playing cards correspond to Hegel’s non-being and therefore effectively represent anti-reliquaries or reliquaries from Hell. My temporary effacement from the world resulted in a limbo state between being and non-being, where my only interaction with the outside world was mediated and therefore virtual. Ironically, left with only myself, my life-long questions of self-worth and identity were finally answered. I am an artist. This sense of self fortified my identity and through my art I “escaped” prison.
Apokaluptein:16389067
My large-scale project, Apokaluptein:16389067 was conceived and executed within federal prison. The title references the Greek origin of the word apocalypse meaning to ‘uncover, reveal;’ an event involving destruction or damage on a catastrophic scale; the numbers reference my Federal Bureau of Prisons identification number. My process involved smuggling contraband works through the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the United States Postal Service, piece by piece, over a period of six years, resulting in a forced Exquisite Corpse with myself. Apokaluptein:16389067 is a series of 39 disembodied prison sheets sutured together, making up a collective installation of dimensions as vast as the history and timeline represented over my seventy-month absence. I used hair gel as a transfer medium and a plastic spoon hand-press to transfer images I collected from The New York Times. The fragmented images, removed from narrative sources are inverted and effaced from their supports. I then blended the images together through hand-drawn extensions in color pencil. The interior of the prison revealed, its skin defaced and simultaneously veiled with the transferred images of the daily reality it denies.
Purgatory
Purgatory is a series of 300 carved prison-issued soaps confined within used prison playing cards. Using a hand-printing technique, I transferred the New York Times portrait heads onto wet soap fragments, leaving inverse traces of the appropriated image. I began interpreting these “offender” portraits or decapitated heads as “ink-scaffolds,” the printed counterpart of the Foucauldian scaffold. I concealed the resulting soaps within used decks of playing cards. I sharpened the interior connector of a AAA battery on the cement floor of my prison cell as a tool to cut window-like structures into each card which were then adhered together using toothpaste and soap shavings to form containers to conceal the printed soaps. The playing card containers with altered suits and face cards expand the boundaries of chance to form new poetic constellations outside the systematic rules of the game.
>> JESSE KRIMES
“Security in-a-Box is a collaborative effort of the Tactical Technology Collective and Front Line Defenders, which was created to meet the digital security and privacy needs of advocates and human rights defenders. The Community Focus editions of Security in-a-Box are a series of guides which aim to better place digital security in the context of the work carried out and threats faced by different communities of human rights defenders.
Development of the guides is ongoing. The first two guides, for the Arabic-speaking and sub-Saharan African LGBTI communities, were published in 2013 and 2014 respectively.
The guides are researched and written in collaboration with human rights defenders. They include information about the particular digital security risks which the communities tend to face and also add to the existing material in Security in-a-Box to include new How-to chapters and Hands-on guides where necessary, in order to help you to better protect your information, yourself, and your community.”
With next edition soon in Puebla, Mexico, find out what went on last summer at THF! in the convergence report HERE, and from there access many resources. Feminist Servers, Gynecology Punk Bio-labs, Corporal Decolonization, Public Key Signing Ceremonies, Hacking the Baby / Family, (Let’s talk about) Death cafés, Crips Sexuality, Liberating technologies…
“Our aim is to contribute to the international Human Rights movement based on our research and professional experience in the health sciences. Health concerns are an important area in the HR-international mission that has, unfortunately, been neglected as primary focus by most of established HR NGOs. We have chosen to undertake this endeavour from an independent platform, as a new established organization independent from government or partisan-politic interests. We act upon the basis of the UN chart of human rights and the ethical norms of the World Medical Association. We seek no sponsoring from any institution. We are totally independent from government, and we will not receive any financial support from governmental or corporative entities.”
To draw to take the time to look at things, to perceive and to design, to be delicate, to sense beauty, to relate to it, to rejuvenate one’s mind after the ravages of emergency, or boredom, or blackness, to save one’s eyes.
Some thoughts and drawing exercises in the Three Letters for beginners of THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING, by John Ruskin
“5. Everything that you can see in the world around you, presents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colors variously shaded. Some of these patches of color have an appearance of lines or texture within them, as a piece of cloth or silk has of threads, or an animal’s skin shows texture of hairs: but whether this be the case or not, the first broad aspect of the thing is that of a patch of some definite color; and the first thing to be learned is, how to produce extents of smooth color, without texture.”
“21. You will see that all the boughs of the tree are dark against the sky. Consider them as so many dark rivers, to be laid down in a map with absolute accuracy; and, without the least thought about the roundness of the stems, map them all out in flat shade, scrawling them in with pencil, just as you did the limbs of your letters; then correct and alter them, rubbing out and out again, never minding how much your paper is dirtied (only not destroying its surface), until every bough is exactly, or as near as your utmost power can bring it, right in curvature and in thickness. Look at the white interstices between them with as much scrupulousness as if they were little estates which you had to survey, and draw maps of, for some important lawsuit, involving heavy penalties if you cut the least bit of a corner off any of them, or gave the hedge anywhere too deep a curve; and try continually to fancy the whole tree nothing but a flat ramification on a white ground. Do not take any trouble about the little twigs, which look like a confused network or mist; leave them all out, drawing only the main branches as far as you can see them distinctly, your object at present being not to draw a tree, but to learn how to do so. (…)”
“22. You cannot do too many studies of this kind: every one will give you some new notion about trees. But when you are tired of tree boughs, take any forms whatever which are drawn in flat color, one upon another; as patterns on any kind of cloth, or flat china (tiles, for instance), executed in two colors only; and practice drawing them of the right shape and size by the eye, and filling them in with shade of the depth required.”
Julian Assange em entrevista com ZH
“Nossas publicações de 2010 se tornaram a base para numerosas ações judiciais por vítimas de crimes e abusos de guerra pelos Estados Unidos, do Tribunal Europeu de Direitos Humanos aos tribunais britânicos, ao Tribunal Internacional Criminal para a ex-Iugoslávia e ao Tribunal Penal Internacional. Só isso é “mudança” – mudança muito real para pessoas reais, que eram incapazes de levar seus casos à justiça e fazer sua defesa, e agora o são. E há o grande número de grupos de direitos humanos e organizações da sociedade civil para os quais nossas publicações fizeram uma grande diferença. Grupos como Iraq Body Count (Contagem de Corpos no Iraque), que pôde usar nossos War Logs para calcular o verdadeiro número de mortos na Guerra do Iraque, ou Public Interest Lawyers, que foi capaz de usar os documentos como fonte para seus clientes em casos de prisão e tortura. Redes de ativistas de direitos autorais como La Quadrature du Net, que usou nossos despachos para investigar a utilização de lobbies corporativos secretos para introduzir restrições ao comércio e impor leis favoráveis aos Estados Unidos. Jornalistas investigativos como o Bureau de Jornalismo Investigativo, que usou nossos materiais para reconstruir a narrativa de sérios abusos contra os direitos humanos.”
Qual foi o impacto histórico do WikiLeaks até agora?
Nossas publicações também mudaram a forma como o jornalismo é feito. Antes do WikiLeaks, não havia precedente real para trabalho em larga escala com bases de dados. Desde que começamos a fazer isso, outros nos copiaram. Não havia precedente de amplas colaborações jornalísticas de interesse público entre jornais comerciais concorrentes. Demos início a isso, e outros estão fazendo o mesmo agora. Antes do WikiLeaks, ninguém dava importância a informações de segurança para jornalistas, ninguém pensava em usar criptografia para facilitar grandes vazamentos de fontes públicas. Agora essa é a única opção disponível. Mostramos o caminho para se fazer isso, e agora, como consequência também das revelações de Edward Snowden, que se apoiam nos avanços que possibilitamos, jornalistas estão levando isso a sério. Isso é um mar de mudança na cultura do jornalismo. Colocando um grande corpo de correspondência diplomática em domínio público, o Despachogate e suas sequelas elevaram o nível de alfabetização política para nossa geração. Nos últimos quatro anos, jornais de todo o mundo têm usado diariamente nossos materiais para apoiar suas apurações e noticiar suas consequências, em vez de correr para os analistas oficialistas. Essa é uma grande mudança em como nossa civilização entende suas circunstâncias históricas, e pode-se esperar que produza mudanças em cascata no futuro. Há também a imensurável, mas previsível consequência de nossas publicações, que é o fato de, depois das publicações, funcionários do governo americano saberem agora que cada palavra que escrevem pode um dia se tornar pública. Esse é um forte desestímulo contra os tipos de abusos sobre os quais podemos ler em seus despachos. Eles agora sabem que o segredo não vai proteger quem age de forma indevida. Essa é uma grande mudança, porque funciona como uma checagem da conduta dos burocratas do poder americano. E essas são apenas algumas das grandes mudanças. Mas há também aquelas mais particulares. Muitas pessoas argumentaram que nosso trabalho produziu mudanças muito concretas no mundo. Por exemplo, a Anistia Internacional e a BBC disseram que nosso trabalho contribuiu para o início da Primavera Árabe, porque nossas publicações foram uma causa das manifestações no final de dezembro de 2010 na Tunísia, quando a revolução começou. Os detalhes completos disso são dados no meu livro, mas muitos na revolução tunisiana, e mesmo um ex-ministro no governo de Ben Ali, disseram que nossas publicações “quebraram a espinha do sistema de Ben Ali”. Esses acontecimentos contribuíram para grandes mudanças históricas, nas quais outras forças intervieram, e desde então houve mudanças em cascata em todo o mundo. Nem toda mudança foi boa, mas uma parte foi boa. Isso é mudança?”
O destaque do projeto é o guia “Vai protestar? Proteja-se!“. Ilustrada, a publicação contém informações de fácil entendimento sobre o uso de tecnologias que protegem a privacidade. Através dela, os manifestantes podem também munir-se de dicas jurídicas sobre seus direitos e estratégias de mitigação de riscos em caso de vigilância ou abuso de poder antes de ir para as ruas.
