Tag Archives: Activism

RIOT MEDICINE

Hakan Geijer released the first edition of Riot Medicine “a public domain book to help street medics in the struggle for liberation, autonomy, and dignity for all”

Download for free here: https://riotmedicine.net

From the introduction:

“Riot medicine is the practice of medicine in an adversarial environment.It exists outside of formal and State sanctioned medical services. Practitioners of riot medicine go by many names (riot medics, street medics,demonstration medics, action medical), but at the end of the day, their goals are the same. They take to the streets as part of the diverse system of mutual aid that allows individuals to engage in protest. The duties of a riot medic may include handing out water during a peaceful demonstration, providing late-night jail support for arrested comrades,caring for injured protesters and bystanders during a riot, or extracting and providing lifesaving interventions for combatants during an armed uprising. The lens of riot medicine rather than street medicine was chose to help you focus more on how to provide medical care during demonstrations and physical engagements rather than to inform you on how to run a volunteer clinic or provide care for injuries sustained outside of short lived confrontations. The aim is to provide enough medical and tactical knowledge to enable riot medics to support short mobilizations on the scale of several hours to several days.”

“The most important thing” Free Ola Bini

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On the same day Julian Assange was handed over by Ecuador and arrested by UK Police at the embassy, April 11th, the Police in Ecuador arrested Ola Bini, a Swedish free software developer and  privacy advocate who had been living there for the last years. His arrest and detention since have in many ways been unlawful. There are no solid grounds for Ola’s ongoing detention other than what looks like Orwellian Thoughtcrime (they found books !),  ignorance and misunderstanding around Ola Bini’s field of research, or guilt by association (Ola Bini visited Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London).

Activists, intellectuals, software developers, wrote a letter to Swedish PM expressing their concerns and asking Sweden to step up.

From his detention, Ola Bini wrote a letter, The Most Important Thing, where, quoting Aaron Swartz, he shares his thoughts on the most important thing he could devote his life to – and invites us to ask ourselves again : What is the most important thing you could do? Are you doing that? If not, why not?

Stay informed, spread the word, support  FREE OLA BINI <3

 

 

Gendersec Curricula public release

The Gendersec Curricula is a resource that introduces a holistic, feminist perspective to privacy and digital security trainings. Informed by years of working with women and trans activists around the world, this free resource covers over 20 topics such as Hacking Hate Speech, Strategies of Resistance, Creative Uses of Social Media,Technological Sovereignty, Handling Anxiety, Releasing Physical Stress, Information Mapping and Identifying Risks. Trainers can access the workshops and adapt them to their communities to help Women, activists and Human Rights Defenders to protect themselves from online and offline threats.

The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture

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Following up on so many discussions about justice and healing is this painful and violent world, in relation with two workshops on consent in hacker culture (THF 2016, Montreal), this article is a deep proposition to care for emotions , nurture ourself and each other and develop emotional  intelligence in order to heal from rape culture. Lacking skills about consent is something that touch all of us, but even more those who were educated in a culture where emotions are not welcome, not valued or not understood. Emotional intelligence can be developed, along with communication skills and we all need it, so much. Nora Samaran wrote this text about a year ago, and I keep looking at it, as a way forward, as a healing path.

The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture

 

Holistic Security: Well-being indicators as Security Indicators

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Below is an excerpt of the chapter on Security Indicators in the Holistic Security Strategy Manual for Human Rights Defenders, by Tactical Tech (a recommended resource/read). It describes indicators of health and well-being as security indicators. A security indicator being defined as  “anything out of the ordinary that we notice which may have an impact on our security”.

Indicators in our health and well-being :

“It can be easy to overlook our health and well-being, but changes in our health can indicate a reaction to an external problem such as increased stress, which in turn impacts our security situation. As activists we sometimes continue to push ourselves, but in doing so we risk causing lasting damage to our health over time, or hindering our ability to analyse our security situation. We may not be used to monitoring our own health and changes can occur gradually, so adopting a methodological approach to our physical, emotional and psychological selves is a good start. One way of doing this is by making a stress table, like in the exercise below.”

These considerations are followed by an exercise in the form of a stress table, to “help you to identify your limits concerning different kinds of stress, how to recognise these limits and measures to counter stress.”

 

“Create something new” – Nafeez Ahmed on making a difference

“We are, therefore, in the midst of a momentous civilisational transition, the outcomes of which are not set in stone. In this context, the chronically bad news we see everyday is not just bad news: it also signals the inevitable decline of a particular way of being in the world. But this also opens up, here and now, opportunities to forge what comes after.

Within the very accelerating failure of the present paradigm, the opportunity to explore and build new paradigms that work also accelerates.

So what can we do? What can you, as one person do?

Here’s, roughly, what I tell people when they ask me this, based on my own limited experience and efforts.”

>> How to change the world in 3 easy steps, by Nafeez Ahmed, investigative journalist, founder of Insurge Intelligence

An End to Self-Care, B. Loewe

“I’m going to say it. I want to see an end to “self-care.” Can we put a nail in self-care’s coffin and instead birth a newer discussion of community care?

As I most often hear it, self-care stands as an importation of middle-class values of leisure that’s blind to the dynamics of working class (or even family) life, inherently rejects collective responsibility for each other’s well-being, misses power dynamics in our lives, and attempts to serve as a replacement for a politics and practice of desire that could actually ignite our hearts with a fuel to work endlessly.

Talking about how we sustain ourselves, honor our personal needs, and prioritize our well-being in this brusque and brutal world is a huge advance from movement culture generations before.  However, centering that conversation on ‘self-care’ devoid of our place in the collective misses the central point of why we need to care for ourselves. And that is because we must have all of our strength in place to counter the systems which, without our ability to resist and transform, without the self-preservation Audre Lorde describes, would see us destroyed.”

>> Continue reading  An End to Self-Care, by B. Loewe, and visit Organizing Upgrade for more thoughts on the subject and community care resources

Captain Paul Watson doesn’t do Stress

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Sea Sheperd Captain Paul Watson who knows a thing or two about about stress shares his insights and tips :

“I am often asked how I deal with stress considering I’m wanted by Japan and Costa Rica, I have a price on my head from the shark fin mafia of Costa Rica, we have numerous ships on the sea in dangerous campaigns, I am being sued, threatened and harassed continuously and I have a lot of enemies, critics and people who wish me harm.

The answer to this is simple. I don’t deal with stress, because I do not suffer from stress. And these are ten primary reasons why, and for anyone suffering from anxiety, worry or stress, I would like to offer this advice.”

Continue reading “Dealing with that Killer called Stress”, by Paul Watson

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MIAU !

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Quinta-feira, dia 8, às 19h
Filme MIAU: Movimiento insurrecto por la autonomía de Una Misma
* seguido de conversa de boca cheia sobre saúde sexo e autonomia

“Convidamos todas e todos a assistir a este documentário!
É uma chamada a todas as que ignoramos o funcionamento do nosso corpo e nos vemos submetidas a qualquer estrutura machista e patriarcal, seja a médica, a farmacêutica ou qualquer pessoa ou instituição que nos tente silenciar.
Nós lutamos para viver numa sociedade livre e enquanto o fazemos, criamos laços de confiança e compartilhamos o conhecimento aprendido, esperando que se entenda que aí está a graça, em aprender e ensinar, com generosidade, matando o ego e a usura.
Por isso este documentário é uma prenda, porque é conhecimento livre.”

Sexta-feira, dia 9, às 18h
Workshop livre – Calendário menstrual e partilha de experiências

>> MIAU no vimeo

>>JORNADAS LIBERTARIAS PORTO

ZEN and the art of making tech work for you

Gender and Tech Ressources >> ZEN and the art of making tech work for you,  complete manual (Tactical Technology Collective + Association for Progressive Communication)

From the Introduction:

“This manual is a community-built resource for our growing community of women and trans* activists, human rights defenders and technologists. It is designed to be a living, growing collection of practical guidance and information that uniquely speaks to our needs, experiences, and activism, both online and offline. Content listed in the manual was created in response to our community’s requests for ideas and guidance they needed, but couldn’t find elsewhere. Therefore, this initial manual content doesn’t cover many other topics that we hope to add with your support and input as it evolves here on the wiki. The current manual explores two overlapping issues:

  • First, how can we craft appropriate online presences (or a series of them) that strengthen our ability to communicate and work online safely?
  • Secondly, how can we collaboratively create safe online and offline spaces that enable our communities to share, collaborate, and communicate safely?

This is a process: Stay centered, cultivate patience, and practice self-care

The first most important thing to remember when using this manual, is that we have used the concept of “zen” in the title to highlight the importance of embracing technology with the calm understanding that it won’t always work perfectly. Sometimes you might need to spend time pondering technology and the significance of it in your life, in your community and in the world. And other times you might need to take a break and come back to it.”

The Lifelong Activist guide

The Lifelong Activist is a self-help guide for activists by Hillary Rettig. Topics include Manage your mission, manage your time, your fears, your relationship to yourself and to others. Translations section with Indonesian, Italian, Spanish..

“I believe that progressive activists are the world’s most precious resource. We tackle the most difficult and important problems— including hunger, war, disease, poverty, violence, cruelty and exploitation— and work to further humanity’s evolution in the direction of compassion and kindness. Conservatives may create more wealth, but we create more of the values, including justice, equality and freedom, that make life worth living. As history has repeatedly shown us, and as we are unfortunately witnessing in the United States today, wealth without the tempering of progressive values and mores leads inevitably to corruption and despair.”

 

Police infiltration, traumatized trust

“The news that people we knew, trusted, worked with and loved are not who we thought they were, has come as a shock to many people. For some, it has meant that close and intimate relationships were not what they seemed, representing a massive personal betrayal. Others may not have known the police infiltrators so closely, or even at all, but the news can still have a big impact on us, as individuals, groups and movements.”

Read Activist Trauma Support leaflet on the sickening effects of police infiltration, how to heal, support each other – and find more resources (on PTSD, self-care in activism..), contact info, on their website.

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Watch “Lily”, Harry, and Jason’s talk about their experience at Chaos Communication Camp 2015:

“Resisting surveillance: It’s not just about the metadata. The infiltration and physical surveillance of activists.

 

Au lit avec une Histoire: La Commune, Louise Michel

Sur Librivox (Acoustical liberation of books in the public domain), lecture dans nos oreilles des souvenirs de La Commune par Louise Michel

Louise Michel (1830-1905) était une anarchiste française très active dans la Commune de Paris de 1871. Son livre “La Commune” écrit en 1898 raconte ce qui s’y passa durant cette période.

Louise Michel (1830-1905) was a french anarchist very active during the Paris Commune of 1871. Her book “La Commune” written in 1898 describes what happened in that event.

Pas Sage en Seine @NUMA, Paris 18-21 Juin

Ateliers, conférences, accès libre de aujourd’hui à dimanche, au NUMA rue du caire à Paris. Le programme est ICI.

Suggestions:

Samedi à 18h, Benjamin Sonntag avec “Turing, Asimov, Orwell, Huxley: 70 ans d’histoire de l’informatique et de la surveillance” et à 21h, les inculpés et amis de Tarnac “Hacker veut dire se rendre ingouvernable”

et Dimanche à 13h, “Un an de campagne avec La Quadrature du Net” par Adrienne Charmet

+ une chiffro fête aka cryptoparty

Bonne fin de semaine

>> Pas Sage en Seine

>> Pas Sage en Seine, 4 jours d’haktivisme au coeur de Paris, Jerome Hourdeaux sur le blog de Mediapart

 

The Body as a sound Post Gender instrument – Akelarre Cyborg workshop @Lisboa 6-7/06

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

Less is more: THSF 14-17 Mai @Toulouse

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.

Towards Holistic Security – Tactical Tech

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.”

Absolutely right

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.”

COURAGE for Matt DeHart

“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

Tools and Tactics for LGBT communities in Arabic region and sub-Saharan Africa

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.”

Proteja-se nas ruas e na rede

 

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.

 

 

Compassion in Care – Call for Edna’s law and public inquiry into whistleblowing

“Edna was a defenceless elderly lady who died after terrible abuse and neglect in a BUPA care home even though the “BUPA Seven” had notified management.  This campaign is dedicated to Edna’s memory and to all those who have suffered or died because a whistle-blower was ignored or too afraid to speak out.”

Compassion in Care is a charity funded by caregiver-whistleblower Eileen Chubb

Go to Info and Petition page

 

Barrett Brown sentenced to 63 months in prison

“Good news! The U.S. government decided today that because I did such a good job investigating the cyber-industrial complex, they’re now going to send me to investigate the prison-industrial complex. For the next 35 months, I’ll be provided with free food, clothes, and housing as I seek to expose wrongdoing by Bureau of Prisons officials and staff and otherwise report on news and culture in the world’s greatest prison system. I want to thank the Department of Justice for having put so much time and energy into advocating on my behalf; rather than holding a grudge against me for the two years of work I put into in bringing attention to a DOJ-linked campaign to harass and discredit journalists like Glenn Greenwald, the agency instead labored tirelessly to ensure that I received this very prestigious assignment. Wish me luck!”

Barrett Brown, after receiving his sentence

and here was his allocution / sentencing statement :

“Good afternoon, Your Honor.

The allocution I give today is going to be a bit different from the sort that usually concludes a sentencing hearing, because this is an unusual case touching upon unusual issues. It is also a very public case, not only in the sense that it has been followed closely by the public, but also in the sense that it has implications for the public, and even in the sense that the public has played a major role, because, of course, the great majority of the funds for my legal defense was donated by the public. And so now I have three duties that I must carry out. I must express my regret, but I must also express my gratitude. And I also have to take this opportunity to ensure that the public understands what has been at stake in this case, and why it has proceeded in the way that it has. Because, of course, the public didn’t simply pay for my defense through its donations, they also paid for my prosecution through its tax dollars. And the public has a right to know what it is paying for. And Your Honor has a need to know what he is ruling on.

Continue reading HERE

And, latest Barrett Brown’s review of Arts and Letters and Jail: If anyone needs me, I’ll be in Prison

Writing from Prison : Barrett Brown

“A week before Christmas, a half-dozen guards at the Seagoville Federal Detention Center pulled me from my cell, handcuffed me, and took me to the hole, where I was processed and put in another cell, before being ushered out and placed in the prison’s receiving/departures section to await transport to a different jail, all for reasons that the administration did not quite manage to articulate. The act of suddenly transferring inconvenient inmates is referred to as “diesel therapy.” I noted a few months back that CIA torture-leaker John Kiriakou, who’s also been putting out a column from behind bars, reported being threatened with identical treatment after writing about prison administration misconduct. I, on the other hand, have been the very picture of discretion; it’s not as if I had publicly revealed, for instance, that Thompson, the pudgy white officer at Seagoville known for yelling incoherent threats at black inmates during evening prisoner count, and sometimes even locking them in the showers, is openly affiliated with a Fort Worth gang. So, frankly, I am a little hurt.”

Continue READING letter from January 7th – I got kicked OUT of a prison

READ ALL previous The Barrett Brown Review of Arts and Letters and Jail

Info and Support : FREE BARRETT BROWN

Writing from Prison : Jeremy Hammond

“The most obvious form of prison exploitation in the federal system is UNICOR: Federal Prison Industries, more commonly known as the military sweatshop in nearly every institution. It’s a quasi-public corporation that produces everything from armor plating and camouflage uniforms to office supplies. Because they are not bound by pesky things like minimum wage laws, they are frequently criticized for cutting prices and outbidding other free-world competitors for government contracts. The UNICOR here at FCI Manchester employs hundreds of prisoners sewing all-purpose combat uniforms used in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. UNICOR is the highest-paying job on the compound, taking home $50-$200 a month.

In addition, because the BOP does not want to pay for additional officers, prisoners maintain nearly every aspect of the institution ourselves: cooking, food, washing dishes, cutting grass, mopping floors, fixing plumbing and electricity, and so forth. This means that , fortunately, there are other jobs available if you do not want to participate in the imperialist genocidal “war on terrorism.”

READ “There’s nothing wrong with a little get-back : Jeremy’s stay in SHU”

Find out about and Support Jeremy Hammond       

Une Arme de choix / Weapon of choice (Florence Tran)

Une Arme de Choix from florence TRAN on Vimeo.

La caméra peut être une arme de prise de conscience et de résistance. Pendant la révolution égyptienne, réalisateurs et cinéastes égyptiens ont essayé, chacun à leur manière, d’agir, de témoigner, de peser sur ce long et complexe processus de transformation. Dans un contexte chaotique, explosif et volatil, comment donner du sens à tous ces bouleversements ? A travers leurs choix et leurs témoignages, ce film est une radiographie d’une société au cœur de la tempête, un état des lieux des défis et des dilemmes qui la traversent. Ceux qui filment essayent de comprendre, posent un diagnostic, proposent aussi des pistes pour s’en sortir… et surtout rester engagés, malgré les difficultés.

Weapon of Choice from florence TRAN on Vimeo.

A day in Tahrir hospital + Portrait of trauma surgeon Seif Khirfan (Florence Tran)


A day in Tahrir hospitals from florence TRAN on Vimeo.

Seif Khirfan from florence TRAN on Vimeo.

Seif is a trauma surgeon who was shot in Tahrir the 25 th of January. This triggered a complete transformation in him. He is now a presenter for a TV program called “Let me hear you”. He goes in the field and listen to Egyptians who have positive and citizen initiatives.

Hacking (with) Care @ 31C3

 

Soon is the 31st Chaos Communication Congress “annual four-day conference on technology, society and utopia.” Some might remember Hacking (with) Care was present last December at 30C3, cocooning, massaging, sharing and caring with La Quadrature du Net at their tea house.

This year, we invite you to drop by La Quadra’TeaHouse again, where you can learn and practice together a self-care body routine from our video tutorial, observe-hack-massage each other, enjoy heart-warming, mind-sharpening cups of tea, and share thoughts on what could “hacking with care” mean and be for you, me, us …

The four days promise to be intense, here is the program of talks. There are, indeed, many subjects of interests, and more than one can chew in four days. Below is a selection of suggested lectures, assemblies, projects… somewhat related to HWC topics and interests.

Lectures:

(27) Personal tracking device and online identity 

(27) Mobile self-defense 

(27) Crypto tales from the trenches 

(27) Citizenfour (film)

(28) The Invisible Committee Returns with “Fuck Off Google”

(28) Hacking ethics in education 

(28) Internet of Toilets: Trend in the sanitarian territory

(28) From Computation to Consciousness: How computation helps to explain mind, universe, and everything

(28) Reconstructing Narratives – Transparency in the service of Justice 

(28) Doing right by the sources, done right (whistleblowers and sources protection)

(29) Freedom in your computer and in the net

(29) Security Analysis of a full-body X ray Scanner

(29) The Machine To Be Another : Exploring identity and empathy through neuroscience, embodiment, VR and storytelling

(30) The Taste of Surveillance: Artistic responses to invasive observation

Assemblies, projects, self-organized sessions..

Kidspace

Food Hacking Base

Move that body martial arts  

QueerFeministGeeks 

Crying on the bathroom floor for no apparent reason

Dev-Human 

Practical Whistleblowing  

Tails 

SEX Seed EXchange

Hillhacks – Hackers without borders 

Found Hugs  

How will surveillance and privacy technologies impact on the psychological notions of identity ?

After discussing the developments of surveillance and privacy technologies (with privacy protection lagging behind), Ian Brown (Oxford University) argues that they are likely to :

> Bring about Distrust in personal relationships and technology

“Control of information disclosure is an important part of managing personal relationships. Between partners and friends, controlled disclosure builds intimacy and trust, while the ability to tell “little white lies” can be essential to smooth over conflict. If new surveillance technologies do not come with adequate privacy features, this disclosure control will be damaged. This could erode social ties and potentially contribute to family breakdowns and fewer quality relationships. ”

> Negatively affect Social mobility and cohesion

“Private and public-sector surveillance and profiling will lead to individuals increasingly being offered differentiated products and services based on past behaviour, and to a more targeted exercise of power in areas such as criminal justice and social security (Anderson et al. 2009). Unless approached carefully, this could significantly reduce aspiration and social mobility. It may also cause a reduction in social cohesion, if levels of common experiences and the perception of equal treatment are reduced.”

> Create Conformity and stigma 

“The Internet has given individuals greater freedom to explore different identities, reducing constraints on finding information about and participating in online discussion with similar others (McKenna 2007). Greater surveillance could constrain such “potential” selves, and force the revelation of stigmatised identities and interest in fringe ideologies – as well as reinforcing feelings of isolation, difference and shame”

> “Criminalize” citizens and be counter-productive in catching criminals : (mis) Judgment by authority

“While the use of privacy technologies (such as e-mail encryption) remains relatively unusual, users could be wrongly identified with those attempting to hide criminal activities. ”

> Disable the Plural society 

“Surveillance can have a significantly constraining effect on political debate and protest, and hence reduce the broader public debate on socially contested issues, and the ability of weaker groups to resist power.”

“Despite the technological opportunities for sousveillance, Ullrich and Wollinger (2011) note that power asymmetries remain for protestors. Police are “better equipped, outfitted with public legitimacy, more trusted by courts, in possession of other preventive and repressive instruments,” and can also seize protestors’ recordings for their own use (Ullrich and Wollinger, 2011: 24). They conclude that “a technical arms build-up of open and concealed surveillance… signals the encroachment of authoritarian concepts of the state and is a potentially dangerous attack on political participation from below” (p.33). ”

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

 

 

 

Boot Sequence

Here is a video tutorial for day-to-day self-care: a “boot sequence” of movements to wake up, warm up, unlock, stretch, strengthen. Recommended in the morning, before physical activity, or to restore some flow after prolonged stillness.
Dedicated to the many courageous people striving for a good fair world.
May this help you take care and stay strong <3
Special dedication to Julian Assange of Wikileaks.

—————————————————

Julian Assange is the founder and editor in chief of Wikileaks.

The publication by Wikileaks of US diplomatic cables and the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs in 2010, exposing US wrong doings and crimes to the public, has brought considerable heat on him and the organization.

In 2012 Assange entered the embassy of Ecuador in London asking for asylum, which he was granted in protection against the political persecution and threats to his life coming from the USA. Indeed in the USA, a secret grand jury is investigating him and Wikileaks, and public figures have called for his assassination, meaning exceptional (illegal?) law and bad treatments most probably await him there (see how Manning was treated).

Contrary to what medias are spinning, Assange is not trying to escape justice in Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning (and not charged) in relation to alleged sexual offenses. Only Sweden is not giving guarantees he would not be extradited to the USA should he travel there for the investigation, nor is the Swedish prosecution accepting alternatives proposed by Assange’s legal team – among other dubious bizarreries in this case.

Meanwhile, the UK keeps the Ecuadorian embassy under constant police watch, refuses Assange safe-passage to his host country, ready to arrest and extradite him to Sweden should he set foot outside.

Consequently Assange has not been able to leave the building and see daylight in over two years, a situation effectively equivalent to pre-charge detention and a violation of his rights denounced by 59 international organizations.

More info and support : 

“The siege of Julian Assange is a farce”, John Pilger

“We are Women Against Rape but we do not want Assange extradited”, Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff

This day in Wikileaks 

Free Assange Now 

justice4assange

 

 

 

Whistleblowing in healthcare @ Logan Symposium, 5-7 Dec

December 5-7 in London will be the Logan Symposium organized by the Center For Investigative Journalism, for journalists, hacktivists, and all who care about the defence of freedom and democracy. Among the speakers will be Eileen Chubb, a former care worker who blew the whistle on the bad treatment of the elderly in their care homes. She has since been active in the protection of whistleblowers and of the vulnerable elders, working closely with the media. She is the founder of the charity Compassion In Care and co-founder of The Whistler.

Check out the program up HERE.

 

Oficina Cyber – Crypto Party, 8/10 @ PORTO

A tecnologia que nos controla ou a tecnologia que nós, cidadãos, controlamos ?
Guerra cibernética ou paz cibernética?
Que futuro queremos para a tecnologia, e de que forma podemos combater a vigilância em massa?
Nesta oficina será abordada a história das redes, ética, co-respondabilidade e co-dependência, os ciclos virtuosos e os ciclos viciosos.
O tema central será o anonimato, a descentralização e o software livre, a alternativa ao Google, Skype, Dropbox, entre outros.

Não é obrigatório trazer um dispositivo próprio (laptop, tablet ou telefone).

A oficina será orientada por Jérémie Zimmermann, engenheiro informático Francês co-fundador da La Quadrature du Net, grupo de defesa das liberdades fundamentais dos cidadãos na internet.

Jérémie foi um dos contribuidores para o livro “Cypherpunks: freedom and the future of internet”, de Julien Assange.

Quarta feira, 8 de Outubro, na Sonoscopia, PORTO
Das 15H às 20H
Preço Livre

 

Protein synthesis danced

“Only rarely is there an opportunity to participate in a molecular happening. You’re going to have that opportunity, for this film attempts to portray symbolically yet in a dynamic and joyful way one of nature’s fundamental processes: The linking together of amino acids to form a protein”.

This is Protein synthesis: an epic on the cellular level, from Stanford department of chemistry, 1971.

Watch the Ribosomes, “depicted in the film as tumbling, rolling, clusters of bodies, amorphous by themselves but organized and structured when in the act of translating a message”

This little gift was found reading WHEN GOOGLE MET WIKILEAKS, by Julian Assange.

ONE of the many gems with which his interview with Google’s Eric Schmidt & crew is paved, including the fantastic footnotes. Educational, empowering, curious, challenging, frightening but also invigorating and heart-warming… BRILLIANT, and not only for tech experts.

To paraphrase JA last words in ” The banality of ‘don’t be evil’ : “ WGMW is “essential reading for anyone caught up in the struggle for the future, in view in one simple imperative: KNOW YOUR FRIENDS

Feeling grateful 🙂

“Calibration of feeling”

Julian Assange on emotions as body states, cultivation of character, passion, and purpose. From the archive of his Interesting Question, IQ.org.

j-577

Tue 12 Dec 2006 : Calibration of feeling

Words have no power to change except when there’s a fork in the road with equally attractive paths.

In your position, I’d take a deep book, a backpack of food and a tent and go walking for three months along the.au or .nz coast. You need to recalibrate your emotions through recalibrating your body. Emotions are body states. The mind can not be strong without strength in its relation to the body. ‘Whatever’ is then quickly answered; wake with the sun, take the next step, eat the next bite and behold people and chairs become a delight. It’s hard for you to see this now, since future visions are colored with present emotional responses. But these emotional responses are just another part of your flesh, built from the integration of your neurons and body. It’s material, stuff, like muscle, constructed from last weeks potatoes and environmental stimulus. You can strengthen your will through overcoming physical hardship.

The natural environment provides man with ready motivational gradients, but civilization has filled them in. Hyper-civilized influences, such as computing, artificial lights, drugs, films, instant food supply, telephones and reading decalibrate by disconnecting behavior and reward and failing to provide the sense data that our biological mental and physical structures have evolved to require.

There’s little difference between a mouse exploring a new maze or a scientist realizing the greatest intellectual act of the age. Both are motivated by the same primitive brain regions that control feelings.

‘The point’ comes when feelings demand it. It can only be rationalized from the axioms of primitive emotion. If these axioms are weak due to decalibration by civilization, ‘the point’ eludes us. If they are strong, we pursue our goals with passion and vigor.

Sat 16 Jun 2007 : Everyone and no one wants to save the world

When the world extended to one’s surrounding hills and mountains and over them was only legend, saving the world was approchable and a natural activity to all of independent character.

You do not need to justify the possession of these noble instincts. Such attributes are normally distributed. You have a constellation of these attributes and that makes you who you are. Recognise that the substantial ones are invariant.

You must satisfy your invariant instincts or you will be at odds with your own character. It is only when we are not at odds with our basic makeup that we can find life meaningful.

To exercise your instinct for saving the world, requires saving what you perceive to be the world.

Being modern, educated and wordly, the world you perceive is immense and this is disempowering compared to the valley world of your ancestors where your feelings were forged and where saving 10 people saved 10% of the “world”‘s population.

Here lays the difficulty in actualising your character. Your perception is of a world so vast that that you can not envisage your actions making a meaningful difference.

People try to fool themselves and others into believing that one can “think globally and act locally’, however to anyone with a sense of proportion (not most people, btw) thinking globaly makes acting locally seem to be a marginal activity. It’s not setting the world to rights.

To meaningfully interact with the world, you have to either constrain your perception of what it is back to valley proportions by eschewing all global information (most of us here have engaged on just the opposite course which is what has provoked this discussion), losing your sense of perspective, or start seriously engaging with the modern perception of the world.

That latter path can be hard to find, because it is only satisfied by creating ideas or inventions that have a global impact. Perhaps I have found one, and there’s others out there, but for most people of your character a combination of eschewing knowledge of those parts of the world they can’t change, and robust engagement with the parts they can is probably optimal.

Do not be concerned about when one is to do good, who defines good, etc. Act in the way you do because to do otherwise would to be at odds would to be at odds with yourself. Being on a path true to your character carries with it a state of flow, where the thoughts about your next step come upon waking, unbidden, but welcome.

I support similarly minded people, not because they are moral agents, but because they have common cause with my own feelings and dreams.

Tue 18 Jul 2006 : Laughter

Laughter is fear and relief. Fear is all around. Every step is conditioned by the fear of falling. It is the relief from primitive anxiety and alarm responses that give rise to laughter. The release of the breath that wasn’t needed. That sudden surprise rendered harmless by higher perception. Wonder, when accompanied by the expression of laughter is the unknown and fearful transformed. A transformation by subconscious brain functions typically of sub second duration. A transformation that takes the unknown and therefore possibly lethal and yields up the unknown and harmless to observe. Something to be explored, understood and remembered by wide eyed curiosity. Those eyes wide to suck in the world and a memory hungry for its details. A psychological and physiological stance that makes the unknown known. A state of maximal observational learning. 

  

Black Cross Collective First Aid for Radicals and Activists

http://www.blackcrosscollective.org

>>>> Basic first aid and safety for protesters, advice about medication in jail, protection against pepper spray and tear gas, tips for emotional / injury/ chemical weapons aftercare… A zine, the Activist’s Guide to Basic First Aid, to read / print /share…

“Black Cross Health Collective is an affinity group of health care workers who live in Portland, Oregon. We formed after the WTO protests because we saw a need for medical care that is specific to the radical community. We think our needs as radicals are different, and that groups like the Red Cross don’t give us the skills we need to keep ourselves and each other safe in the streets. So we called upon our own medical experience (as nurse practioners, nurses, EMT’s, clinical herbalists, and more), as well as our experience in demos
and direct actions, and formed Black Cross. Since then, we’ve done first aid trainings in Portland and around the country, provided medical support at local and national demos, and are conducting trials looking for a way to neutralize pepper spray.

We believe that health care is political. The kind of care we do or don’t receive, where and how we receive that care, who provides that care, who has access to training to provide care, and what kinds of trainings are smiled or frowned upon, all involve inherently political issues. We believe the system needs to be changed… the health care system right along with all the others.

We’ve put this zine together mostly to go along with a first aid training. While doing the trainings we realized there was way more to say about first aid than we would have time to say it in. So we thought a little reading would maybe be helpful to y’all.

Remember the most important words you can ever learn to say are “I don’t know.”

Fight the power, do no harm.”

Black Cross Collective 

TransH@ckFeminist (THF!) 2014, Calafou (Spain) 4-11/08

“The TransH@ckFeminist (THF!) camp, organised in collaboration with Calafou & /etc (eclectic tech carnival), is a gathering of intersectional feminists, queer and trans people of all genders interested in better understanding, using and ultimately developing free and liberating technologies for social dissent, as a alternative to the corporatisation of technologies and the digital world. We understand technologies in their broadest sense including computer systems, (distributed) networks, “pirate”, community and/or independent radio/ tv, guerilla knitting and gardening, looming, hardware hacking as well as gender hacking.”


transhackfeminist.noblogs.org/

 

THF – TransHackFeminist Evento (Español) from stoopt on Vimeo.

Search Inside Yourself (mind GOOGLE)

SIY-book-bild

Google has mindfulness meditation courses for its employees (so do/did the military and Monsanto). The program, called Search Inside Yourself, focuses on attention training, self-discovery, self-mastery, and the creation of useful mental habits. The objectives are personal, inter and trans-personal, which include better efficiency, resiliency, innovation, vision, peace & like in the workplace and of course in business, and ultimately… World peace ?

Never-mind if meanwhile outside of Google, San Francisco residents rather suffer from the “growth”, and – while in the Silicon Valley – never-mind the mindfulness, happiness, and well being of the people mining coltan in the DRC, or the people assembling iPhones at the infamous Foxconn sweatshops (in what some call Buddha Abuses).

The head of the program, Chade Meng Tan, portrayed in this Guardian article, has these words : “Also if you treat everybody with kindness, they’ll like you even if they don’t really know why. And if they like you, they want to help you succeed. So it’s good for your soul and it’s good for your career.”

No doubt the skills can come in handy for a variety of individuals and groups with a variety of agendas and understanding of the word “kindness” (does it also sound like some PSYOP art of deception ?).

Chade Meng Tan compiled his teachings in a book, so that the outside world wouldn’t be left out. It is called Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace)

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, says about the book :

“This book and the course it’s based on represent one of the greatest aspects of Google’s culture—that one individual with a great idea can really change the world”

Oh really ?!

In 2011, Eric Schmidt met with Julian Assange, Wikileaks’ founder and editor in chief, to discuss the “New Digital Age”, which would later become a book written by Schmidt (the transcript of their meeting is here). When the book was published, Julian Assange gave his opinion about it in the New York Times in June 2013, in an article very well titled The Banality of “Don’t be Evil”.

Soon, a new book by Julian Assange will be out : When Google met Wikileaks, about the encounter, and in which Assange will expose his understanding of “Google’s culture”and his vision of the future of the Internet. The publisher OR Books says the book will include his proposal for “a radical overhaul of the naming structure of the internet, one which would revolutionise the way information is accessed”

Capture d’écran 2014-07-28 à 17.55.24

 

In the meantime, for an overview / reminder of what else “mindful” Google is up to, check the related timeline on the TerminatorStudies news archive. Nothing to relax about.

 

Le vent en *POOP* festival à bricoler soi-même 14 et 15 Juin PARIS

Poop2014-affiche

Le weekend prochain aura lieu le POOP -Portes Ouvertes Ou Pas- festival de hack et bidouille multidisciplinaire à bricoler soi-même organisé par Le Loop à Paris. Le programme par définition participatif est rempli de bonnes choses à partager, des savoirs, des expériences, et bien sûr des moyens pour réaliser ces mises en commun. Jetez un oeil au programme et venez prendre soin de vous, des autres, du monde dans lequel vous voulez vivre, que ce soit en découvrant des moyens de réaffirmer et protéger la vie privée dans les communications à la chiffrofête*, en apprenant à cuisiner du seytan, en scannant des livres, en écoutant le récit de la campagne pour la neutralité du net menée par La Quadrature du Net, en soutenant Nos oignons et plein d’autres choses encore.

Quant à moi je serai là avec un Atelier de Massages de l’outil MAIN le samedi de 17h à 19h (+ de détails dans un autre billet). Ce sera aussi l’occasion de se rencontrer et de discuter de Hacking with Care avec qui voudra !

D’un point de vue du soin et de la santé, la question du Libre appliqué au vivant (Valentin Lacambre) et le Retour sur l’usage du jeu vidéo dans un atelier psy avec des enfants (Zora), tout deux au programme de samedi après-midi, retiennent mon attention… Comme beaucoup d’autre choses !!

Au plaisir de vous rencontrer !

* Qu’est-ce qu’une Chiffrofête ou Cryptoparty ?

Les outils techniques qui permettent de conserver un peu de vie privée sur un réseau Internet où nous sommes constamment espionnés et surveillés (par les publicités, les réseaux sociaux, les gouvernements…) ne doivent pas être l’apanage d’une petite poignée de gens plus habiles que les autres avec l’informatique. Chacun est en droit de s’approprier, à la hauteur de son niveau de compréhension, de ses besoins, de ses envies, ses différents outils.

Les chiffrofêtes sont donc des événements dédiés à l’apprentissage de la sécurité des communications en environnement numérique (Internet, mais également téléphoniques (SMS)). Le maitre mot étant la pédagogie.”

Edward Snowden un an après: Asile politique, Reconnaissance et Rise Against The Machine

Capture d’écran 2014-07-08 à 20.08.25

SNOWDEN, TERMINATOR ET NOUS, par Jérémie Zimmerman

“Il y a un an jour pour jour, un courageux jeune homme nommé Edward Snowden a sacrifié une grande partie de sa vie et de ses libertés pour nous révéler la dure réalité du monde dans lequel nous vivons. Ses révélations en cours nous enseignent et nous permettent de comprendre à quel point notre relation à la technologie a changé à tout jamais, et pourquoi nous ne pourrons plus faire confiance aux machines. Edward Snowden nous a aussi montré le chemin à emprunter pour reprendre le contrôle des machines, et l’importance de cette tâche que plus personne ne peut ignorer.”

Lire la suite sur le blog de Mediapart ICI 

EXIGEONS L’ASILE POLITIQUE POUR EDWARD SNOWDEN ! par La Quadrature Du Net

“Le 5 juin 2013 paraissait le premier d’une série d’articles de Glenn Greenwald et Laura Poitras et une vidéo d’Edward Snowden. L’onde de choc des révélations d’Edward Snowden n’a pas fini d’ébranler l’édifice monstrueux du partenariat public-privé de surveillance planétaire de chacun d’entre nous. Ce même jour, chacun découvrait le pouvoir des actes d’un seul être humain, dévoué aux valeurs démocratiques et aux droits fondamentaux, lorsqu’ils sont relayés à destination de tous. Hélas, nous découvrions également l’indifférence, ou pire : la complicité d’États qui ne cherchent qu’à nier leur propre responsabilité, ou à légaliser rapidement leurs propres atteintes à la vie privée des citoyens”

Lire la suite ICI 

Caption by http://terminatorstudies.org