#when in fact it is a historically recent development coming out of the cult industrial complex

[thepoisonroom]

honestly there will probably never be a more concise summation of my personality than the time i told britt i'm racist against white people who do reiki

[uclexhibitionproject2016]

Still "streaking" beneath the Internet? See how cryptography can crack the user information privacy problem

50 years since the birth of the web, while enjoying its huge dividends and convenience, we are also forced to accept a lot of crises that place seeds early. For a long time, users haven't emphasized they are the experts of their own data. On the other hand, the actual rule of the web is that users are usually laborers of platform data, and customers are constantly outputting valuable information for the platform without understanding it. At least for an extended period of time in the past, nearly all users on the net have already been "streaking". Before the gunshots, everyone idea that privacy leakages were a long way away from them.

Eventually, events such as "Weibo Information Leakage" and "Area N Incident" occurred one right after another. Folks are rethinking the two propositions of "personal privacy" and "anonymity" in the era of huge data. In the era of ¨streaking〃 users, digital sovereignty must very first be retrieved to retrieve data privacy. Recently, some customers broke the news headlines that Weibo may drip hundreds of millions of user username and passwords, and that personal privacy data such as user telephone numbers and traditional passwords are being used by scammers through Telegram sell. In fact, the info leakage of Weibo isn't accidental. The same thing happened on platforms such as station A. Within the darkish web, user home elevators station A, including user IDs, user nicknames, and encrypted stored passwords, comes at a price of 9.5 BTC. Privacy leaks are usually nothing new. Earlier Facebook's user privacy information leakage incident also revealed the truth of user information "naked"-at least 600 million customers' accounts privacy data can be accessed by Facebook's 20,000 workers at will. When people finally begin to realize that personal privacy continues to be violated and commence to demand focus on information privacy and information sovereignty, everyone has turned into a "transparent person" in the period of big information. Of course, with regards to privacy protection, some people often think about anonymity. But the reality is that anonymity cannot be equated with personal privacy. Before few years, social softwares such as Telegram and Secret that highlight anonymity have gradually educates some niche markets with a sense of privacy protection, but at exactly the same time, anonymity has spawned a poor side-anonymous social software that does not have supervision and restraint is developing. Assist the perpetrators develop a "hotbed" of criminal offense. As well as the day-to-day obsession with playing, money laundering, pornography along with other gray goods dealings, Telegram has also become an "accomplice" in the recent sensational incident in Area N in South Korea. Telegram, which is as well private, is becoming another barren property lacking supervision and restraint, and all evils beyond ethics and morality breed of dog in an private paradise. Whether it is a microblog information leak or perhaps a representation on data safety brought about by the incident in Room N, what we can see is that users require a secure network that can talk about information privacy, but privacy is a lot more than anonymity. Regarding data personal privacy, listen to what specialists state we urgently require a complete remedy, which can help users hold information firmly within their hands while ensuring the personal privacy and value of data. Such a solution seems remote and difficult to attain. Recently, I arrived to connection with a teacher Wang Donglin that has 20 years of cryptography program encounter and entrepreneurial encounter in the IT field. He has been deeply involved in cloud processing and data safety for many years. Wang Donglin is based on Yottachain to solve the urgent personal privacy needs and information security needs of Internet surfers. He expectations to explore a fresh path for billions of Internet surfers and blockchain customers. In a far more in-depth discussion, Professor Wang Donglin told us about his most desired eyesight-"Everyone can enjoy digital sovereignty." In reaction to the recent regular incidents of Internet user data leakage in China, Wang Donglin explained that a lot of of the info security actions of home mainstream cloud providers are not encrypted, which is due to the administrator's inadequate idea of user privacy protection Strong, insufficient confidentiality. In his view, the best way to solve user data security is: "Rather than handing the info to Tiger Wolf and anticipating them to take care of themselves well, it is best to control your personal data." In Wang Donglin's view, the web has made excellent achievements in its 50th year, but the privacy problems brought because of it are quite severe: ¨Users' information privacy is messy. From the info leakage incident on Weibo, we can see that customers have no information privacy, but Alternatively, applications such as Telegram that achieve personal privacy through anonymity absence supervision and are breeding the evil aspect of over-privacy." Even if people see that centralized giants are monopolizing all of the evils of user data, this problem is not solved well. Wang Donglin believes that the best way to solve this problem is to return data rights to users. The best way to achieve this objective is to use decentralized storage solutions and decentralized essential management technology, so as not to leave a monopoly room for centralized giants. He more analyzed that decentralized storage space has countless nodes all over the world, and user information will undoubtedly be stored within their own balances instead of centralized servers, clear of any centralized third-party handle. In addition, customers can control an individual information stored over the chain through the key. The decentralized storage solution allows users to store their very own data without having to own a difficult disk, and does not need to be hosted in the hands of a centralized organization. However, we now have seen a lot of successful blockchain-based decentralized storage space solutions such as Filecoin / IPFS, Yottachain, etc. Why haven't they been trusted in the web world? In fact, when the blockchain storage method that emphasizes open up and transparent information will not depend on cryptographic encryption technology, it might be simpler to expose private data to risk. "Unencrypted data is equivalent to people not really wearing clothes. Also public data ought to be encrypted before becoming authorized for everyone to see, not forgetting personal data which should not really be disclosed. Moreover, data should never only be encrypted, but additionally have to be encrypted through zero-knowledge. Only by combining the TruPrivacy trademarked technology and taking into account the attribute of "cross-user deduplication" can we ensure the absolute safety of data in the industry sense." Wang Donglin said. In reaction to the trend of "an excessive amount of privacy" and "insufficient supervision" derived from anonymity in the N room incident, Wang Donglin believes that although anonymity may meet the privacy requirements to a certain extent, it is necessary to add corresponding measures to the specific adoption plan. Regulatory measures must balance personal privacy and supervision. Wang Donglin believes that digital identity is a very complex issue. As far as supervision is concerned, digital identity can associate the traditional behavior of digital users making use of their digital identity, and develop a "legislative and judicial" atmosphere on the public chain, thereby arguing against digital identity. Beneath the premise of not really violating privacy, particular supervision and supervision shall be carried out. Professor Donglin Wang gave a good example of a set of personal privacy and supervision strategies currently being utilized by Yottachain. At the moment, yottachain has set up multiple regulatory areas all over the world, as well as the regulatory company in each regulatory zone pays to block particular chain articles in its regulatory zone according to its own needs. But at exactly the same time, you are unable to view an individual account data. For example, whenever a cult company is damaged in a certain place, you merely need to get the hash value of the document stored by the cult company on the chain to stop the file. For example, in Islamic locations, the text from the Bible can be blocked.

In addition, due to the correlation between user behaviors and on-chain identities, yottachain's on-chain approach may also score and ranking on-chain identities through the user's scoring program, and even the historical credit of each reviewer is seen instantly. So it provides considerable credibility. Although this technique cannot prevent all evils from occurring in advance, it can avoid the perpetrators from constantly doing evil and stop new victims from being simply deceived. "The mix of DID (decentralized identity), decentralized storage space, and decentralized essential management can perform such privacy protection." Wang Donglin's interpretation is convinced that DID can free user accounts from the restriction of platform bans , Decentralized storage space and decentralized key management allow customers to control their very own information instead of handing them to others. Others must have the right to utilize the information through explicit authorization by an individual. IT Da Niu Wang Donglin, who has been in data safety for 20 years might be a bit not really acquainted with the title Wang Donglin, but Wang Donglin has dual identities like a scientist and an entrepreneur. It really is precisely due to his academic analysis and logical capabilities that Wang Donglin is way better at researching, studying and summarizing than common people, and he also cultivated their own exclusive sense of odor. As an business owner, Wang Donglin has generated application products for both 2B and 2C. Users of B-end products include all main ministries and commissions, all central businesses and all banking institutions in The far east, and C-end products have accomplished one million day to day activities (DAU).

The scholar group was run by Wang Donglin. Since 1996, Shusheng Group has surpassed many IT era changes and contains remained in the forefront of innovation. At the moment, the customers of Shusheng Group reach tens of a huge number, and most of them are main ministries, banks, main businesses and higher-level security-sensitive institutions. In fact, before establishing foot in neuro-scientific cloud computing, Wang Donglin had been well-known in the IT industry, and he was the initial data security pioneer. Wang Donglin may be the originator from the electronic seal technologies. As early as 1996, the electronic seal technologies invented by Wang Donglin has been commercially applied in the Agricultural Head office. Since then, the electronic seal and electronic official documents from the scholar firm have been widely promoted and utilized. The international-oriented UOML record library standard premiered, which is the world's very first operating regular for document details processing, and provides a feasible remedy for realizing the interoperability of different papers. On November 4, 2008, the UOML regular officially became an international industrial standard, getting China's very first internationally recognized software program standard. Shusheng has been rated among the nearly all noteworthy companies in China in the foreseeable future by Fortune newspaper. But the IT industry is always changing fast. Later on, Wang Donglin, who traveled in Silicon Valley in the United States, took the lead in viewing the eve from the IT industry's huge changes. When since america provides entered the era of cloud and mobile, and software companies continue to be marginalized, Wang Donglin made a decision to lead the team to switch to cloud storage space. Although the 2C cloud storage space service business model did not run through, it has gathered a strong storage space. Technical strength, and then use this technical advantage to function B-end users. Until now, Shusheng Group's TCP/IP distributed program and distributed shared storage space architecture are top technologies worldwide. As the only Internet company with country wide secret-related qualifications in China, Shusheng Group is specially good at information security technology, and it is good at protecting users' data safety under the disorders of insecure network, unsecure server, unsecure program, and unsecure background management personnel. In the cloud security link, Shusheng Security Cloud uses its own patented TruPrivacy? technology to realize the entire procedure for security and encryption. Even if the source program code is usually disclosed and server permissions are usually open, no-one can take data from the cloud. This is also the only real cloud storage safety technology on the planet that can make sure that back-end administrators cannot see user data. During 20 years of study, Wang Donglin provides invented a lot more than ten global leading technologies, creating a lot of milestones in China's IT industry. At the same time, Wang Donglin gained numerous praises from the scientific and technological circles for his unremitting technology and "dead technology". In November 2008, Wang Donglin was unanimously elected as the excellent youth of China's software industry (very first location) jointly selected by the Ministry of Information Industry as well as the Main Committee from the Group. In November 2010, Wang Donglin gained the "Seek Truth Outstanding Youth Achievement Transformation Honor" selected by the The far east Association for Technology and Technology. It should be recognized that the total number of awards in various industrial sectors and industries will not go beyond 5 each year. In Oct 2014, Wang Donglin gained the first "Exceptional Engineer Honor" selected by the Ministry of Technology and Technology in the first domestic "Exceptional Engineer Honor" called after "Engineer", getting the only winner in the software and Internet business... In the changes from the IT era, Wang Donglin is continually advancing with the requirements of the days. From software program, Internet, mobile Internet, cloud processing to blockchain, he's got personally experienced every transformation. Although Wang Donglin provides achieved fruitful results in neuro-scientific cloud processing and cryptography, he's still on his own path of technology. When the trend of the days changed to the blockchain, Wang Donglin discovered his "born destiny". As a scholar of deadly technologies, the blockchain is just such a new technology-driven track. At the same time, the blockchain also needs the blessing of cryptography technologies. This perfectly mixes Wang Donglin's many years of analysis in cloud processing and cryptography. Collectively. In Wang Donglin's phrases, once the blockchain came, all the things he had accomplished in the past were used. He sighed: "Finally understand that therefore many things have already been accomplished in this existence, all for your blockchain." In the blockchain industry, Wang Donglin's very first attempt was YottaChain to store public chains. But in fact, as soon as 2012, Wang Donglin arrived to connection with Bitcoin for the first time in Silicon Valley, United states. In those days, he had a solid need to reform Bitcoin. Nevertheless, after many years of infiltration and analysis in cryptography and the web, Wang Donglin began to transform his eyesight of reforming Bitcoin into blockchain storage space. When frequent information leakage incidents caused customers to question that centralized information storage methods could not guarantee user information safety, YottaChain, which tried to solve the issue of stored information security, was born at the proper time. Wang Donglin desires to utilize YottaChain to challenge the hegemony of all centralized storage on the planet. Soon, YottaChain also handed within an excellent record card. At the moment, YottaChain has become the world's very first commercial storage public chain, also it didn't take long for the mainnet to be online to attain the result of storing a lot more than 30TB of information per day. The YotaChain blockchain project, founded by Donglin Wang, rates among the top 30 on the planet with market value greater than 400 million U.S. bucks. It's the world's very first with regards to product technologies of storage open public chains. It has generated a lot more than 50 periods the earnings for investors in one year. Just because YottaChain has different industrial attributes from some other blockchain projects, its tokens also have commodity attributes. When the YottaChain project ushered in a influx of home based business users, new complications emerged. Wang Donglin found that business users are completely different from previous miners and gold coin speculators and don't accept the barriers to entry. Flattening the barriers for users to utilize has become a significant stage for YottaChain. After YottaChain enters the public beta, Wang Donglin intends to build an ecological supporting tool for YottaChain. When it had been really planning to begin the Ystar tool, Wang Donglin found that Ystar isn't just useful for YottaChain, but additionally has a key role for the whole blockchain industry. Encryption + distributed storage space, Ystar really wants to return digital sovereignty to customers Ystar's value to the blockchain, which is equivalent to the worthiness of the internet browser to the web. Just as the original Internet is not commercialized for 25 many years since its birth, the techie threshold of TCP/IP has restricted the web to a scientist's toy. It wasn't until NetScape invented the internet browser in 1994 that the web was pushed to the general public, and the door to the commercialization of the web was opened. Blockchain, which cannot be commercialized at the moment, is also dealing with a dilemma similar to that of the web. At present, a lot of concepts in the blockchain that are not understood by common people, such as public key, private essential, hash, and signature, have grown to be a significant bottleneck restricting the introduction of blockchain. At the same time, common users who don't have the ability to manage tips on their own are also unpleasant with this exorbitant threshold. As a result, the blockchain has always been limited to a very small band of geeks, and safety and ease of use have grown to be inextricable. More than 20 years of related program research has specific Wang Donglin a cognition beyond common people. He more thought and analyzed the key management problem. After all, the core of data safety is usually encryption + key management, and key management is in fact more important. As a result, Wang Donglin began to try to develop Ystar as an indie project. Soon, Ystar utilized the underlying core technology of the key management system to create a secure, easy-to-use, and insensitive essential program. Through Ystar's low-threshold budget with the idea of zero conception of private tips, the avant-garde blockchain globe will connect with the 4.4 billion traditional Internet population. Nevertheless, since people found out the bottleneck from the blockchain, many thousands of blockchain apps and wallets possess attempted to let customers manage their tips without perceiving the tips, but none of them succeeded. . Ystar's successful realization of this eyesight is inseparable from Wang Donglin's expertise in neuro-scientific cryptography-good at developing and applying cryptographic-based information security techniques, especially key management systems. Relying on the story of lowering the threshold from the blockchain world, Ystar ushered in a tide of pursuit, and there was a hot scene of super fundraising in the financing link. Beneath the bear marketplace where capital is usually rarely photo, capitals rushed to compete for quota. Ystar rapidly gained a $2 million angel round of financing brought by Consensus Laboratory, China's largest geek community CSDN, and Yotta Ecological Account. Ystar's unique technologies and its own clearly visible business value, the expected complete business closed loop and landable business applications in the foreseeable future are the fundamental reasons for its high financing in the bear market. As well as the favor from the management, the Ystar group is also full of big brands. The well-known CSDN founder Jiang Tao, blockchain token economics expert Meng Yan, and Mars Finance founder Wang Feng are Ystar project specialists. Wang Feng, Jiang Tao, and Meng Yan are comrades who accompanied Wang Donglin to enter the blockchain business from the IT industry. The key reason why the experts in the move and technologies circles can be asked is inseparable from the reliable technology from the project itself. Spectrum business model and reliable founding team. Along with flattening the barriers of blockchain, Wang Donglin is still thinking about a common topic for several mankind-how to return digital sovereignty to users. Wang Donglin has always believed that only by controlling the user's information can data safety risks be reduced. As a result, Ystar emphasizes that user data isn't stored about Ystar or any kind of centralized third-party server. Ystar's remedy combines the two top features of encryption and decentralization, taking into account data safety and information sovereignty go back to users. In Ystar, user information is stored on a decentralized storage open public chain, and user information is greatly reduced by the features of distributed storage space and redundant storage space to reduce the chance of user information loss. The decentralized storage space method also indirectly realizes that the info is not controlled by any centralized company or controlled by any alternative party. With the private key, an individual obtains their own data sovereignty. At the same time, this program also uses encryption technologies to protect the user's information privacy, so that no-one except the info owner and authorized person can snoop over the user's data. When users grasp data sovereignty, information monetization is much easier. Tokens with the economic features from the token often have dual values-equity value and commodity value. With the expansion of the entire Ystar ecosystem, advertising revenue will increase after traffic goes up, and the worthiness from the tokens held by users will also increase. This also encourages users to make better use manners on Ystar, and indirectly promotes Ystar's traffic value increase. Ystar shares revenue from marketers with customers through YSR tokens. The quantity of YSR issued is 10 billion, which is not only an incentive tool for users, but additionally a settlement tool for measuring the worthiness of user traffic and advertisers buying Ystar to place ads. Ystar promised that 95% from the platform's ecological operating income will undoubtedly be came back to Ystar's program to attract more traffic to enter a virtuous circle from the ecology built by Ystar. The blockchain industry continues to be between your bulls as well as the bears for quite some time. Many cadres have already been drained by the industry. Now what's left may be the low-key, hard-working group. At the moment, Ystar has made plenty of improvement in stages, also it will be the period of melancholy for value purchase. "Our plan is to very first attract customers with token bonuses, which is equal to sending money to attract earlier traffic. With the growth of users, we shall simultaneously carry out advertising and investment promotion and program development (similar to small applications)." About how Ystar can sustainably create Wang Donglin responded that in addition to recruiting marketers to feed back the ecology, sport apps will undoubtedly be prioritized when building or attracting company in the foreseeable future. It's estimated that over time, increasing numbers of people and apps will property on Ystar, ultimately getting 100, 1,000, 10,000 apps, users also elevated from 10,000, 100,000, and 1 million, developing a positive cycle. Standing at the moment when imagination is bound, it is difficult for us to judge the result of an avant-garde product, but those that dare to try are the warriors of the days, and every step of progress brings unlimited value. At the same time, in the current sluggish bear marketplace, the team that's really still working is more worthy of our attention and investment.

[felinevomitus]

Our Only Goal Is Death: Autopsia Interviewed

Autopsia in the 1980s, photograph courtesy of the artists.

Autopsia is an industrial art collective whose output incorporates sound, graphic arts, film, sculpture and installation. Influenced by the burgeoning punk and industrial subcultures of 1970s London, the group’s formative years were spent in Yugoslavia, before relocating to Prague in the 1990s.

Autopsia’s aesthetics incorporate ideas of industry, national identity, Arcadian idealism and political ideologies of an ambiguous nature. Appropriation plays an important role in the production of both their visual and sonic artworks. Whilst their graphics mine historical and pop culture sources that best express the themes touched on above, Autopsia’s music often, though not exclusively, opts for self-reflection through the means of sampling and remixing their own recordings.

At its core, Autopsia’s philosophy has maintained that death is the principal motivating force behind their creativity. The group cites the writings of Jacques Attali, Theodor Adorno and Martin Heidegger, among others, as key touchstones in the conceptual development of the project. Whilst one may be tempted to compare Autopsia with their contemporaries, Laibach (another industrial group from the former Yugoslavia), it pays to bear in mind that, in contrast to the latter’s measured rise in public consciousness, the former has remained militantly anonymous in its thirty-odd years of operations, keeping a relatively low profile in the public sphere and maintaining an air of seriousness with respect to its art production.

In 2016, the author Alexei Monroe published a monograph on the work of Autopsia, Thanatopolis. To date, Monroe’s book has been one of the few texts available about the group in English. With the following interview, IKLECTIK attempted to break through Autopsia’s barrier of anonymity to try and uncover the human element inside, but, considering Autopsia’s death drive, this undertaking was met with limited success.

IKLECTIK: It seems to me that the authoritarian nature of the Yugoslav state was the prime motivator for Autopsia’s art and actions. The writer, Alexei Monroe, mentioned that Autopsia was being monitored by the secret services. Were there any repercussions from the state or action taken by the police? Was there any real danger in your radicalism? Were there any specific moments that encouraged you to evaluate what you do or that fed into your work?

Autopsia: Throbbing Gristle also had problems with police, does this mean that the UK is a totalitarian state? With the Autopsia project we would probably have more difficulties in the USA than in Yugoslavia. To designate the former Yugoslavia as ‘authoritarian’ is totally wrong.

I would disagree. An overzealous police force does not immediately suggest that censorship of the arts is sanctioned by the state. Throbbing Gristle being in trouble with the police is one thing, but having a ‘president for life’ ruling the country is another.

The concept of totalitarianism, as constructed in the West, is rejected by Autopsia because its aim is to disqualify communism and disqualification of communism is nothing but the rejection of the idea of emancipation. All of this is in the interest of neoliberal capitalism. (As if capitalism is not totalitarianism.)

In other words, totalitarianism is a mere epiphenomenon of what one might call the sociality. There is nothing essential in it. Just like democracy is a form of sociality which, by the way, is also totalitarian, as recent developments prove. Nowadays it is called ‘democratism’.

Here, it is important to be aware of the intellectual situation in Yugoslavia between 1960 and 1980. YU was the only socialist country which, at the same time, was not Stalinist. Moreover, it was anti-Stalinist. YU was an Enlightenment project. Almost all intellectually relevant books published in the EU and USA were almost simultaneously translated and published in YU. Even pro-fascist authors, like Ernst Juenger and [Emil] Cioran, were freely published.

It troubles me that fascist authors would be freely published anywhere, but let’s change the subject. Autopsia seems to have a very intimate relationship to its own archive. Does that mean the group is less active now than it was in the past? Why do you frustrate your own narrative timeline by revisiting old material?

The building materials of Autopsia are reproductions of representations. Therefore, the production which is performed by Autopsia is the production of reproductions. In fact, Autopsia does not produce anything, in the usual sense of the word. It does not produce something out of nothing. It does not produce the original, but repeats the production.

The method of Autopsia’s production is repetition. First, the repetition of the production; second, the repetition of what is already produced; third, the repetition of the repetition as the production. The reproduction of the production and the production of the reproduction, which is repetition of the repetition, might be named only with one word: disproduction. Disproduction means de-structuring of the production in the way of infinite repetition.

The modus of Autopsia’s production is repetition. The repetition is a repeated announcement of the petition. The petition itself is ‘a supplication’, ‘a prayer’, then ‘a blow’, ‘an attack’, ‘a searching’, one might even say: ‘a demand’, ‘a proclamation’ (‘Our goal is death’; ‘Only death can save us, but not this one’, for instance, etc.). More precisely, the production of Autopsia is the repetition of repetition, or more precisely: the repetition of the repetition of repetition.

Indeed, one of your posters does proclaim that your only goal is death. This seems like a counter-productive aim. Once death is achieved, what is there left to do and how can you appropriately evaluate the success of such a goal when you’re dead?

In mirroring the forms, Autopsia recognizes the mask of death. For Autopsia, to be mortal is something very natural. Not to consent to mortality means to evade the authenticity of the Self and put oneself in an oppositional relation towards nature. In the oblivion of death, there opens an endless multiplication of its iconography. Death becomes the figure for some future event. A lot of hymns were sung and a lot of praises were painted to the glory of the Faustian contract. Autopsia trades with their articles regardless of their cultural origin and national characteristic. It emphasises the iconography of death to monumental intentions, using the theme of [death] as a cultural product.

Autopsia does not speak about death from the standpoint of individual experiences of death. Its motives are not directed towards some substitute. There are substitute concepts only if you think about death as an object. Mortality cannot be put in front of us and be observed. One’s own mortality cannot be shared with anyone else. This feeling cannot be ‘communicated’. It can only be poetically expressed – it can be spoken of indirectly, by means of a specific language.

Another recurring motif is the death of the 20th century, which appeared long before the century’s actual end. Antonio Negri talks about the 20th century being an aftershock of the 19th, with few defining characteristics of its own (with regards to political and social developments). Do you subscribe to his view? Were you celebrating or lamenting the death of the 20th century? What is the purpose of this motif now that the 20th century is, in fact, dead?

The only object of Autopsia is the image of Death – which in fact is the World. (The World is nothing else but an image of Death, the Death itself). The World, as an object, and also in general, is always already dead. The world is not dead (if one might say: the world is alive) only as a potentiality. As soon as the world comes into actuality, it is already dead. In this sense, Death for Autopsia is not a choice (an intention, an accidence, etc.) but a necessity. Since the number of the images of Death is almost limitless (it corresponds to the World itself), Autopsia takes and appropriates those images (let us not forget: language/writing is sound), which Autopsia considers worthy of becoming, not as an object, but an objection to the Great Oblivion. Autopsia, therefore, objectifies the objection.

Your answers read like mission statements, manifestos or even captor demands. Your performances are acousmatic with little or no stage presence. Your membership numbers are unknown and the members remain anonymous (at least to the general public). Why do you distance yourselves from your audience in this way?

The work of Autopsia is projected along elitist lines. This means that, already, in the intentions of the work, every possibility of the transformation into the product of mass-consumption is prevented. The growth of Autopsia’s products, to the extent which might be regarded as the beginning of mass interest, shall not mean that in the production of the work something is conformed to such an interest.

According to its basic attitude, Autopsia is directed toward the product and not to the exposition of the ‘personality’. This is what moves [Autopsia] away from the phenomena of mass media.

As you say, Autopsia may eschew the cult of personality, but your music and visual aesthetic suggest that Autopsia is a cult. What advantages do you gain, if any, when accruing cult status by openly rejecting notions of the cult? Does Autopsia thrive on contradiction?

Autopsia is interested in self-controlled, programmed ‘personality’ – completely aware of its own capacities and its place in the world. The individuality means the right to have one’s own identity at one’s disposal.

Autopsia is not a cult. Gnostic traditions, alchemy and mysticism have a role in the formation of the character of the project, but do not belong to the origins of its work. It is interesting to see how things, which seem incongruous, function. Because of its structural ‘incompleteness’ Gnosticism and alchemy are suitable for constructing new illusions. In Autopsia’s activity there is no mysticism, yet within its methodology there is understanding of the mystical body, but only to the extent that it tries to master certain forms and arrive at an understanding of their language.

The synchronization of emotions is a phenomenon of a religious-mystical order. Art is a call for mystery. Even beyond the religious expressions it may take, authentic art has a profound affinity with the world of faith.

Autopsia – Installation in Tito’s Bunker [Project D-0 ARK], 2013

Your visual aesthetic reminds me of postmodernist artists who also utilise photomontage and advertising/authoritative language (Barbara Kruger, Mark Titchner, Jenny Holzer), as well as industrial and post-punk groups, such as Cabaret Voltaire and the aforementioned Throbbing Gristle. What was the reason for choosing and then sticking with this aesthetic?

Autopsia is a mirror in the form of a sphere. The entire external surface is a mirror in which the World is mirrored. This, of course, is nothing new. The peculiarity of this mirror-sphere is that the internal surface of the sphere is also a mirror. In the centre of the sphere there is the eye of Autopsia, which looks at its own spherical reflection. Autopsia is self-sciousness. It brings, produces, throws the ‘-sciousness’ out of itself, as well as the truth about itself and the truth of itself.

Autopsia will make a rare live appearance at the Wroclaw Industrial Festival (2-5 Nov 2017). You can find out more about Autopsia from their website, twitter, bandcamp and the Illuminating Technologies label pages. Alexei Monroe’s ‘Thanatopolis’ is available to purchase from Divus and the IKLECTIK bookshop.

Ilia Rogatchevski Originally published by IKLECTIK, 12 July 2017

[angelicyoung-19]

Prompt A: How has our conception of “the city” changed throughout history?

There is so much about the modern city that has changed. When we look at how our cities have changed in the last 50 years, we cannot escape the conclusion that our physical surroundings must have had a part to play in this decline. Post-war buildings and planning are the product of the failed modernist ideal that transformed most aspects of twentieth-century life, from politics to painting, and that gave rise to our urban social ills and to urban ugliness. In architecture, modernism—the cult of abstract rationality and change for its own sake—has given us sterility and inhumanity instead of its promised progress and liberation. Utopian ambitions and professional arrogance have left our cities with decay and dereliction, the perfect breeding ground for the alienation and brutality that have undermined community life.

Some of us look to the cities we admire from the past for a solution. In traditional cities like Siena in Italy or Bath in England we can see something that is not only beautiful but alive and humane, the very qualities that modernism seems to have destroyed. One can't help feeling we could make our cities more life-enhancing if we were to build them like these traditional cities. Out of this impulse, a revival of traditional architecture and city planning has grown up; it is flourishing from Portland, Oregon, to Paternoster Square in London, from Brussels in Belgium to Seaside, Florida.

We call the places that have inspired this movement traditional, but, other than the simple fact of being old, how do we define a traditional city? I must confess that I do not know.

But the question is do any of us know really know? We talk about tradition and cities as if we all knew what these things were, and we make comparisons with the past on the assumption that we really can do something similar today. But what hope do we have if we are not even talking the same language?

The word "city" is derived from the Latin for citizen and originally meant a community of citizens. It does not mean that now. Any comparison we make with classical antiquity must also acknowledge huge differences in size. The average population of a pre-Hellenic Greek city would be a little over 5,000. A large provincial Roman city would have a population of 10,000 to 20,000. Not much changed in terms of size until the Industrial Revolution. Most medieval cities had fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. Even major Italian Renaissance cities rarely exceeded 50.000. Today, London counts 8 million inhabitants, Chicago contains nearly 3 million people, Paris 2.5 million, and even a small Italian city such as Perugia has a population of 120,000.

These differences in size make for very different dynamics of city life. So, too, do differences in social and political organization. Democracy in Greek city-states or Italian communes was unlike modern democracy and was a fragile flower easily and often crushed. Throughout the history of the city, it was much more common to be subject to oligarchic or tyrannical rule.

Equally  crucial to an understanding of the city is its economic base. Very early cities were fortified villages where people engaged in agriculture outside the walls. This did not last for long. Since antiquity, the city has been a consumer of goods produced in the countryside. It supported itself on trade or conquest. A city was a place where wealth free from the pressures of sufficiency could be enjoyed. Outside the city there was brute existence, the wilderness, the struggle for survival and danger; inside the city there was order, safety, wealth, and the leisure to pursue the finer things of life. This urban ideal may have been the lot only of some citizens, but it embodies the essential ideas that made the city a civilized place.

This ideal of civilization, however, is at odds with the modern concept of the city. The modern city is the wilderness, the urban jungle. The inner city is a dangerous place where brute existence is dominated by the struggle for survival. Anyone with sufficient wealth leaves the public city for a private place where there is safety, order, and the enjoyment of leisure.

In so many ways, the modern city is not the city of the pre-industrial past. The population, the social structure, the political organization, the economy, access to and from the city, and even the concept of the city is quite different. Above all, the citizen is a radically different creature. Modern aspirations and the understanding of citizenship have little similarity with any period in the past.

If all this does not define what a traditional city is, it certainly defines what a modern city is not. It is not an ancient Greek, medieval, or Renaissance city. We may wish to make it more like one of these, like part of one of these, or an amalgam of these types of cities, but to do that we must understand who will live in it and how they will live.

What has happened to all these people who no longer live in our city centers? They live in the suburbs.

As with the word "city," we have to be careful with the word "suburb," which originally referred to the place "suburbs"—below, under the power of, or just outside the city. As the population of cities has exploded in the last two centuries, and ever more people have spilled out into suburbs, "suburb" has come to mean a quite separate environment with its own way of life.

In fact, it can mean different things in different countries. In southern Europe, where denser patterns of living are acceptable, suburbs tend to be recently built, unregulated areas, no less dense than city centers. Often it is the suburb that is undesirable and dangerous and the city center that is desirable.

In northern Europe—and particularly in Britain—and in the United States, Canada, and other countries sharing an Anglo-Saxon inheritance, suburbs are quite specifically low-density areas of individual dwellings, each with its own lot. They cover large areas and sometimes, but not always, are a dormitory area for a city. In the Anglo-Saxon and

American world, unlike parts of southern Europe, it is the suburb that is usually desirable and safe and the city center that is undesirable and unsafe.

In southern Europe, suburbs often have arisen solely through population pressure. In the Anglo-Saxon world, they developed with the spread of railway travel and then of the motorcar, and were enthusiastically adopted.

The Anglo-Saxon suburb grew out of a very clear set of ideals. It began in England, where the social pattern of urban life is unlike that of most other European countries. The ruling aristocracy never really took to city living, and as a consequence English culture to this day is defined more by the country than by the town. The idea that to have your own house in the country is the best of all worlds is the Anglo-Saxon suburb's founding principle. Improved transport, the uncontrolled migration of rural workers into city slums in the Industrial Revolution (which affected Britain long before anywhere else), and the rapid increases in population and wealth that went with it, drew more and more people into the Industrial Age's version of the countryside—the suburb.

In the United States, the founding fathers (Hamilton excepted) inherited the English view of the countryside. When this ideal was added to the New World enthusiasm for the wilderness, the tradition of pioneering isolation, and the cult of the individual—and as the population grew unfettered by loyalty to historic towns-living in a suburban way seemed irresistible. In Britain and the United States, whole towns—Muncie, Indiana, for example, or Letchworth in Herefordshire—now conform to the suburbian model.

In one sense, both the Anglo-Saxon and the American suburbs have been a great success. Each household has its own lot where the individual or family can reign supreme, untroubled by the antisocial acts of others. The suburb answers one of the great social imperatives of the last two centuries—the increasing demand for privacy.

This demand for privacy can be traced through individual house design, mass housing design, and law. It extends from the detached house to the individual child's bedroom and to the proliferation of bathrooms. It has been enhanced by the private motor vehicle, the telephone, the television, and now the personal computer. In Britain it is being extended into laws on domestic noise and garden fires, and in California (always ahead) to smoking and even personal fragrance.

If we are to build cities today in the United States or in Britain, and if it is to be more than a minority exercise, we will have to design for the citizen who is now suburban or at least yearns for suburban amenities—for the citizen who will demand a level of privacy and will possess the technological means of isolation unknown to any citizen in history. We can no longer build on the classical ideal of the subordination of the citizen to the community. Suburban values are middle-class values, where the family and the individual take priority.

So building traditional cities, traditional modern cities, we have an interesting dilemma. We would not do this unless we thought it was a good thing. We must think that the city can be a desirable place, and yet the popular Anglo-Saxon and American concept of the city contains much that is undesirable. We can only think that the city is desirable because we have an ideal that differs from 112 the way that modern cities have developed. If the ideal is traditional and so necessarily historical, we know that in many respects it will not fit with present realities.

If it is our desire to reconcile the ideal of the traditional or historical city with the realities of modern life, we must realize that we will not be re-creating the past but creating something new. In doing so, we must first look beyond any superficial resemblance to the essential and desirable characteristics of the historical city that are missing from the modern city and then seek a mechanism for their introduction into a modern context.

Source: The Social Order, Tradition and The Modern City. Robert Adam 1995

Furthermore Many cities grew in a process called urbanization which is the process of making an area more urban. Many people have left the life they had of poverty and economic vagary in the countryside and moved to “the city” for the promises of jobs and more opportunities. However, the cities were not prepared for the sudden arrivals of many new people which means that were overcrowding housing in addition to primitive sanitation, which cause the city to be the sites of major public health epidemics. the 1793 yellow fever outbreak killed 5,000 people in Philadelphia. In 1849, St. Louis lost 1/10 of its population to cholera. Four years later, yellow fever killed 11,000 in New Orleans. 

One concept that Americans had 50 to 60 years ago about the city does still somewhat stand to this day and that’s the city is still better in many way. Most people tend to move out to the city such as New York City in search of better jobs, more opportunities, more freedom etc, especially if they tend to come from a small town.

1/17/2017

[gozel]

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:lUySqfOilM0J:www.versobooks.com/blogs/3262-the-sweetness-of-place-kristin-ross-on-the-zad-and-notav-struggles+&cd=1&hl=tr&ct=clnk&gl=tr

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"The Sweetness of Place": Kristin Ross on the Zad and NoTAV struggles    

     By        Kristin Ross      /      14 June 2017    

Two struggles have come to define the ground of activism in mainland Europe: the zad (Zone À Défendre - or the zone to defend), and NoTAV (the No to Treno ad Alta Velocità rail line). Despite these struggles being little known in the English-speaking world, each offers a continuation of the kinds of localised, spatial conflict whose genealogy can be traced from the Paris Commune, through Sanrizuka in Japan, the Zapatistas in Mexico and Standing Rock in America, a form of struggle which has been analysed most forcefully in the work of David Harvey.

In this extract from the introduction to the new ebook The Zad and NoTAV by the French collective Mauvaise Troupe, which offers English readers the first and most comprehensive narrative of the interlinked stories of the two movements, Kristin Ross offers an introduction to this "never-ending process of soldering together black bloc anarchists and nuns, retired farmers and vegan lesbian separatists, lawyers and autonomistas into a tenacious and effective community".

In recent years the rise in the number of occupations and attempts to block what have come to be known as ‘large, imposed, and useless’ infrastructural projects bears witness to a new political sensibility. It is as if some time toward the end of the last century, people through- out the world began to realize that the tension between the logic of development and that of the ecological bases of life had become the primary contradiction ruling their lives. And, in many rural and semi-rural regions throughout the world – in the Larzac in France, for example, or at Sanrizuka (Narita) in Japan – struggles sprang up against state-control of land management. These were movements whose particularity lay in being firmly anchored in a particular region or territory . . . From the 1988 opposition to a large-scale dam on the Xingu River in Altamira, Brazil, through the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, to the Standing Rock Sioux’s recent resistance to the North Dakota Pipeline, situated movements of this kind in the Americas have tended to be characterized by an indigenous base and leadership.1 The two most emblematic and ongoing European territorial movements, the zad and NoTAV, however, whose intertwined stories are recounted in this book, differ from the American examples in that each holds together and is held together by people of vastly different cultures and practices, with no one social or ethnic group in charge. But by trying to block what the book’s authors call ‘the inexorable extension of a nightmarish world’, they unite with their American counterparts in reconfiguring the lines of conflict of an era. In so doing, they make visible the silhouette of a new political grasp on the everyday and a way of managing common affairs. Henceforth, it seems, any effort to change social inequality will have to be conjugated with another imperative – that of conserving the living. Defending the conditions for life on the planet has become the new and incontrovertible horizon of meaning of all political struggle.

The occupation of a small corner of the countryside outside of the village of Notre-Dame-des-Landes in western France is the site of the longest lasting battle in the country today. For forty years the construction of an international airport on that spot has threatened to destroy 4,000 acres of agricultural land, wetlands, and woods. In the Susa Valley in the Italian Alps, the quasi-totality of a valley inhabited by 70,000 people has battled for over a quarter of a century the construction of a high-speed train line (Treno ad Alta Velocità or TAV) through the Alps between Turin and Lyon. While it is frequently said of indigenous peoples that they ‘stand in the way’ of progress, in each of these regions in Europe a heterogeneous but highly efficient coalition of people has effectively done just that. They have succeeded in delaying, obstructing and perhaps, ultimately – time will tell – blocking, the progress of construction and the destruction of their regions.

In the first chapter of this book readers will find the most thorough chronology of the two movements available in English – here, though, is a brief sketch of the two projects that generated the opposition.

The Airport and the Train

Justifications for, and sponsors of, a new airport on the outskirts of the city of Nantes in western France have changed over the years since their origins in the dreams and magical thinking of a regional bourgeoisie entranced by the booming developmental rhetoric of the peak years of the Trente Glorieuses. At one point, the airport was slated to be the departure and landing point for the Concorde, in an attempt to relieve Paris of the massive noise pollution this ill-fated technological wonder produced in its relatively brief life. After this, promoters of the project billed it as the third airport for the Greater Paris region. In recent years, it has been rebranded to become instead the ‘Great Airport of the West’, a kind of bid for prominence in the fierce regional competition over accessibility, tourism and commercial opportunities. But in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the project was first floated, one of the earliest (and still worth reading) critiques of the developmental rhetoric promoting it likened the project to the cargo- cults of New Guinea, where simulacra of airport runways were carved out of the brush to attract airplanes. Nantes businessmen believed that ‘if you build it, they will come’: they had decided the industrial destiny of their region was one that could soon make Germans and Japanese tremble. A new airport would transform the Nantes region

into the next ‘airian Rotterdam of Europe.’2 The sum spent on studies designed to give a scientific veneer to the project far exceeded the purchase price of the land needed for its realization – an area regularly described as ‘almost a desert.’ This description could only have been the echo of the familiar colonial trope indicating a perceived scarcity of population preceding invasion, since the area chosen was in fact largely wetland – an environmental category virtually unrecognized in the 1970s.

And so, an area of some 4,000 acres containing several dozen farms was designated in 1974 as the site for the future airport. The area was decreed by the state to be a ZAD, or ‘zone d’aménagement différé’, a zone of deferred development. This administrative status allowed the state time to begin buying up land from farmers willing to sell out or, in the familiar pattern of rural exodus, to buy whenever a farmer died and his children sold out. Yet while the slow process of expropriation was continuing, the energy crisis sunk the overall project into one of the intermittent long naps that mark its history. This one lasted throughout the 1980s and 1990s – the airport was forgotten, not entirely dead but not entirely alive either. In the meantime, though, the zone profited from what could only be called a secondary gain from the illness of having been destined to be one day covered over in concrete: much like Cuba during the Special Period, it had inadvertently been transformed, de facto, into a protected agricultural zone. Developers were hesitant to build near a future airport and no one wanted to live next door – the suburbanization that was befalling much of the area around Nantes was held at bay in Notre-Dame-des-Landes.

Opposition to the airport by farmers who refused to sell their land, some of whom were active in the Paysans–Travailleurs movement and had supported striking workers during the 1968 insurrection in Nantes, and townspeople living near the zone had gotten underway as soon as the project received administrative approval back in the early 1970s. But it was not until the new century, when the Socialist government under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin pumped life back into the construction agenda that something resembling the current coalition made up of farmers, townspeople and a new group, squatters and soon-to-be occupiers, began to take shape. With the arrival of the first squatters around 2008, the ZAD (zone d’aménagement différé) became a zad (zone à défendre) – the acronym had been given a new combative meaning by opponents to the project and the administrative

perimeter of the zone now designated a set of battle lines.3
One of the most peculiar aspects of the two infrastructural projects is their redundancy vis-à-vis existing services. An international airport exists already in the city of Nantes and a train line already runs through the Alps (usually operating at less than half capacity) between Turin and Lyon, in central France. Nevertheless, in 1991, a new high-speed line was planned in Italy to be added to the current one as a key element of the east–west corridor linking Lisbon to Budapest initially, and ultimately to Kiev. The initial goal of the project, a joint partnership between French and Italian governments and the European Union, was to enhance the movement of passengers and tourists, while also facilitating the integration of managers and corporate executives, between Italy and the Rhone region in France. Subsequently, the future train has been refunctioned to be used mainly for the transport of freight, despite the fact that the flow of goods between France and Italy has declined steadily since the beginning of the new century.4 The project elicited little opposition on the French side of the Alps. On the Italian side, however, in the Susa Valley, an area with a complex economy based in industry, agriculture, and tourism, and a historically united population known for its anti-fascist resistance and earlier opposition to infrastructural projects, reaction against their Valley being transformed into nothing more than a transit corridor was swift, with the first coordinated group of citizen opposition organized in 1994.

Space-specific, geographically defined struggles have a kind of refreshing flat-footedness about them. David Harvey has suggested this is because the fact of being bound to a particular space creates an either-or dialectic – something quite distinct from a transcendental or Hegelian one.5 Demands, concerns, and aspirations that are place- specific in kind create a situation that calls for an existential and political choice – one is either for the airport or against it. In the words of Marx to Vera Zasulich, writing in the context of an earlier rural battle against the state, ‘It is a question no longer of a problem to be solved, but simply of an enemy to be beaten . . . it is no longer a theoretical

problem . . . it is quite simply an enemy to be beaten.’6 A 57 kilometer tunnel will either be drilled through the Alps or it will not. An airport will either be built in farmland or it will not. Other countries know this well. In the most stirring and significant precedent to Notre- Dame-des-Landes, expropriation of farmland for the Tokyo Narita airport in Japan started in 1966, and by 1971 a decade of murderous battles between the state and farmers who refused to give up their lands, supported nimbly by far-left Zengakuren, had begun.7 It was these highly exemplary, even Homeric battles, immortalized in the films of Shinsuke Ogawa and Yann Le Masson – what I have come to regard as among the most defining combats of the worldwide 1960s – which, according to the testimony of many French militants of the era, inspired their own frontal and physical clashes with the police in the streets of Paris and other French cities. Breton documentary maker Le Masson’s film of the Narita battles, Kashima Paradise, screened in Nantes in the early 1970s, brought the Japanese example to the attention of early opponents in Notre-Dame-des-Landes. But the Japanese experience was not singular. A little earlier, an economic boom nourished an urge in Canada to build, outside of Montreal, and in time for the 1976 Olympics, what was destined to briefly become the largest airport in the world. Against the vigorous protest of the 12,000 farmers removed from their land, the Mirabel airport was built. But it was soon judged to be too far from the city and usage faded away in favour of the old Montreal airport. Mirabel was converted to a freight airport, but even that did not prove lucrative – for many years its desolate and empty terminal was used as a film set. Canadian prime ministers attempted to lure evicted farmers back to the region, with little success. In 2014 the terminal building was demolished at a cost of $15 million.

But it is Spain – home of the proliferating ‘ghost airport’ phenomenon – that provides the best contemporary example of the pillaging of public funds for useless structures.8 With a population of 47 million people, Spain now houses 52 airports. (Germany, a country with double the population of Spain, has 39). Out of those 52 Spanish airports over two-thirds are failing – in some, no aircraft ever lands or takes off. Yet the airports are staffed and maintained at enormous expense.

------------

1 See Arturo Escobar, Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008).

2 See Jean de Legge and Roger Le Guen, Dégage! . . . On aménage, Collection ‘La province trahie.” (Les Sables d’Olonne: Editions le Cercle d’Or, 1976). For a critical history of the developmental rhetoric and policies undergirding French postwar economic growth, see Céline Pessis, Sezin Topçu and Christophe Bonneuil, Une autre histoire des ‘Trente Glorieuses’: Modernisation, contestations et pollutions dans la France d’après-guerre (Paris: La Découverte, 2013). Here and elsewhere, translations from the French are mine.

3 The new definition of the acronym has entered the Grand Robert dictio- nary in France: a ‘zad’ is defined as ‘a (frequently rural) zone that militants occupy to oppose a development project damaging to the environment’.

4 See Michele Monni, ‘Italian Politics and the NoTAV Movement: The Resiliency or Failure of Citizen Activism?’ and Lucie Greyl, Hali Healy, Emanuele Leonardi, and Leah Temper, ‘Stop That Train! Ideological Conflict and the TAV’, in Economics and Policy of Energy and the Environment, n. 2 (2012).

5 David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 164–75.

6 ‘Marx-Zasulich Correspondence: Letters and Drafts’, in Teodor Shanin, Late Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and the Peripheries of Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), p. 116.

7 See David Apter and Nagayo Sawa, Against the State: Politics and Social Protest in Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984).

8 See Christine Delphy, ‘B comme Béton’, barricades-mots-zad.org/lettre-b.

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“Mekânın Şirinliği”: ZAD ve NoTAV mücadeleleri üzerine – Kristin Ross Tarih: 22 Haziran 2017

Yazdır

E-posta

Avrupa anakarasında eylemciliğin zeminini tanımlayacak iki mücadele ortaya çıktı: ZAD (Zone A Defendre – Savunma Bölgesi) ve NoTAV (Alta Velocita Tren Yolu Hattına Hayır).

İngilizce konuşan dünyada pek az bilinse de bu mücadelelerin her biri, en kuvvetli şekilde David Harvey’nin çalışmalarında analiz edilmiş bir mücadele biçiminin, soykütüğü Japonya’daki Sanrizuka’dan, Meksika’daki Zapatistalar’dan, Amerika’da Standing Rock’tan geçip Paris Komünü’ne kadar takip edilebilen bu bölgesel, uzamsal mücadelelerin devamını sunuyor.

Mauvaise Troupe kolektifi tarafından hazırlanan, İngilizce okurlara bu iki hareketin birbirine bağlı öykülerini ilk defa ve en kapsamlı şekilde sunan ZAD ve NoTAV adlı yeni e-kitabın giriş bölümünden bu alıntıda Kristin Ross, “kara blok anarşistleriyle rahibeleri, emekli çiftçilerle ayrılıkçı vegan lezbiyenleri, avukatlarla otonomistleri etkin ve direngen bir topluluğa dönüştüren bu sonu gelmez lehim süreci”ne bir girizgah sağlıyor.

Geçtiğimiz yıllarda, “büyük, dayatılmış ve yararsız” olarak bilinen altyapı projelerine karşı gerçekleşen işgallerin ve engelleme girişimlerinin sayısındaki artış, yeni bir siyasal duyarlılığa tanıklık etmemizi sağlıyor. Sanki geçen yüzyılın sonlarına doğru, dünya genelinde insanların, kalkınma mantığı ile yaşamın ekolojik temelleri arasındaki gerginliğin hayatlarını yöneten birincil çelişki haline geldiğini anlamaya başladığı bir zamandı. Ve, dünyanın pek çok kırsal ve yarı kırsal bölgesinde -örneğin Fransa’daki Larzac veya Japonya’daki Sanrizuka (Narita)- arazi yönetiminin devlet kontrolünde olmasına karşı gelişen mücadeleler ortaya çıktı. Bunlar bir bölgeye sıkı sıkıya bağlılığıyla belirgin hareketlerdi… 1988’de Brezilya’da Xingu Nehri-Altamira’da yapılacak büyük ölçekli baraja muhalefetten, Chiapas’taki Zapatista ayaklanmasına ve Standing Rock Sioux’daki (Siyu) Kuzey Dakota Boru Hattı’na karşı gerçekleşen son direnişe kadar, bu tür yerleşik hareketler Amerika’nın iki tarafında da yerli bir üs ve liderlik ile karakterize olma eğilimindeydi.[1] Bununla birlikte, bu kitapta iç içe geçmiş hikayeleri anlatılan, Avrupa’nın en sembolik ve devam etmekte olan iki bölgesel hareketi ZAD ve NoTAV, her biri tamamen farklı kültür ve teamüllerden gelen insanları bir arada tutmasıyla Amerikalı örneklerinden farklıdır. Ancak kitabın yazarları, “kabus dünyasının amansız büyümesi” olarak adlandırdıkları şeyi engellemeye çalışarak, Amerikalı meslektaşları ile birlikte bir dönemin çatışma çizgilerinin yeniden yapılandırılmasında birleşiyorlar. Bunu yaparken, gündelik yaşam ve ortak işleri yönetmenin bir yolu üzerine yeni bir politik kavrayışın siluetini görünür hale getiriyorlar. Öyle görünüyor ki, bundan böyle toplumsal eşitsizliği değiştirmek için harcanan herhangi bir çabanın başka bir zorunlulukla, yaşamı koruma zorunluluğuyla bağlantılandırılması gerekecektir. Gezegen üzerindeki yaşam koşullarını savunmak, tüm siyasi mücadelenin anlamının yeni ve tartışılmaz ufku oldu.

Fransa’nın batısındaki Notre-Dame-des-Landes köyünün dışındaki kırsal alanın küçük bir köşesinin işgali, bugün ülkede süren en uzun savaşın alanıdır. Kırk yıldır bu noktada, 4.000 dönüm tarım arazisi, sulak alan ve ormanı yok etmekle tehdit eden uluslararası bir havaalanı inşa edilmeye çalışılıyor. İtalyan Alpleri Susa Vadisi’nde, yüzyılın sonlarından bu yana Torino ve Lyon’u birleştirmesi planlanan yüksek hızlı bir tren hattının (Treno ad Alta Velocita veya kısaca TAV) yapılmasına karşı vadinin yarısını kaplayan 70.000 insan mücadele verdi. Yerel halk için “ilerlemenin önünü kestikleri” sıklıkla söylense de, Avrupa’daki bu bölgelerin her birinde, heterojen fakat hayli etkili bir halk koalisyonu tam da bunu yapmaktadır. Bölgelerini imha edecek bu projenin ilerlemesini engellemeyi, geciktirmeyi ve belki de tamamen engellemeyi -zaman gösterecek- başardılar.

Burada her iki hareketin yarattığı muhalefete dair bir taslak olsa da – bu kitabın ilk bölümünde, okuyucular iki hareketin İngilizce dilindeki en kapsamlı kronolojisini bulacaklardır.

Havalimanı ve tren

Bölgesel bir burjuvazinin kalkınma retoriğinin zirve yaparak patladığı Trente Glorieuses (şanlı otuz yıl) yıllarında başlayan, Fransa’nın batısındaki Nantes kentinin varoşlarında yeni bir havalimanına dair meşrulaştırmalar ve onun sponsorları yıllar içinde değişmiştir. Bir yerde, Concorde (Fransız uçağı) için kalkış ve iniş noktası olacak olan bu havalimanı projesi, bu teknoloji harikasının kısacık ömrüne nispeten yarattığı muazzam gürültü kirliliğinden Paris’i kurtarma girişimiydi. Projenin geliştiricileri, bundan sonra onu, Büyük Paris Bölgesi için üçüncü havalimanı projesi olarak fatura etti. Son yıllarda, “Batının Muhteşem Havalimanı” yerine, bölgesel rekabette öne geçme fırsatı olarak, erişebilirlik, turizm ve ticaret imkânları üzerinden yeniden markalaştırıldı. Fakat 1960’ların sonunda ve 1970’lerin başında proje ilk ortaya atıldığında, bu projeyi teşvik eden kalkınma retoriğine yapılan ilk (ve hâlâ okunmaya değer) eleştiri, projeyi geçen uçakları cezbetmek için fırçalar oyan Yeni Gine’deki Kargo tarikatına (Kargo kültü) benzetiyordu. Nantes iş insanları, “eğer inşa edersiniz, onlar da gelecektir” diye inanmışlardı: bölgenin endüstriyel kaderinin, pek yakında Almanları ve Japonları korkudan titretecek bir kader olduğuna karar verdiler. Yeni bir havalimanı Nantes bölgesini Avrupa için bir sonraki “Gökyüzünün Rotterdam’ı” haline getirebilirdi.[2] Projeye bilimsel bir imaj vermek için harcanan miktar, gerçekleştirilmesi için gerekli olan, hâlâ düzenli olarak “neredeyse bir çöl” olarak tanımlanan arazinin satın almaya yetecek fiyatı çoktan aştı. Bu açıklama ancak istila öncesinde bölgedeki nüfusun yetersizliğini belirten sömürgeci kinayesinin bir yansıması olabilir, çünkü seçilen alan aslında büyük ölçüde sulaktı -1970’lerde neredeyse hiç tanınmayan bir çevre kategorisi.

Ve böylece, birkaç düzine çiftlik içeren yaklaşık 4.000 dönümlük bir alan 1974’te gelecekteki havalimanının yeri olarak belirlendi. Bölge devlet tarafından bir ZAD, (Zone D’aménagement Différé) yani ertelenmiş bir kalkınma bölgesi olarak ilan edildi. Bu idari statü, çiftçilerin arazilerini kendi rızalarıyla devlete satmalarını veya tanıdık kırsal yerinden etme yöntemlerinde olduğu gibi bir çiftçi öldüğünde veya çocukları tükendiğinde devletin arazileri satın almasını sağladı. Yine de, kamulaştırma ağır ağır ilerlerken, enerji krizi genel projeyi, tarihine damga vuran düzensiz uzun uykulardan birine soktu. Sonuncu uyku dönemi 1980’li ve 1990’lı yıllar boyunca sürdü. Havalimanı unutulmuştu, tamamen ölmemiş ama tam olarak yaşıyor da değildi. Bu arada bölge yine de, beton ile kaplanacağı bir günün kaderi haline gelmesinin marazından ikincil kazanç denilebilecek bir kazanç sağladı: Küba’nın Özel Dönem’i gibi, kasıtsızca fiilen korunan bir tarım bölgesine dönüştürüldü. Geliştiriciler gelecekteki bir havalimanına yakın olmaktan çekindiler ve kimse çevresinde yaşamak istemedi. Nantes çevresindeki bölgelerin çoğunun başına gelen banliyöleşme, Notre-Dame-des-Landes körfezinde de tutuldu.

Bazılarının Paysans-Travailleurs hareketinde aktif olarak yer almış ve 1968 ayaklanması sırasında Nantes’te grevdeki işçilere destek vermiş olduğu, arazilerini satmayı reddeden çiftçilerin ve bölgenin yakınında yaşayan kasaba halkının havalimanına muhalefeti, süregelen proje 1970’lerin başında idari onay alır almaz, yola koyulmuştu. Ancak bu, Başbakan Lionel Jospin’in yönetimindeki Sosyalist Hükümet, çiftçilerden, kasaba halkından, gecekonduculardan ve yakında “işgalciler” olarak anılacak yeni bir gruptan müteşekkil mevcut koalisyona benzeyen bir şeyin şekil almaya başladığı inşaat gündemine hayat verdiği zaman, yeni yüzyıla kadar dayanmadı. İlk gecekonducuların 2008’de gelmesiyle birlikte, ZAD (Zone d’amenagement differe), ZAD (Zone a defendre) haline geldi -kısaltmaya projenin muhalifleri tarafından şimdi yeni bir mücadeleci anlam verildi ve bölgenin idari çevresi bir dizi savaş çizgisi benimsedi.[3] İki altyapı projesinin en garip yönlerinden biri mevcut hizmetler karşısında lüzumsuz oluşlarıdır. Nantes bölgesinde uluslararası bir havalimanı, Torino ve Lyon arasında Alplerden geçen (genellikle yarı kapasiteden daha az faaliyet gösteren) bir tren hattı zaten vardır. Bununla birlikte, 1991’de doğu-batı koridorunun anahtar unsuru olan mevcut Lizbon-Budapeşte hattı ile başta ve sonda ek olarak Kiev’e bağlanan yeni bir yüksek hızlı hat İtalya’da planlandı. Fransız ve İtalyan hükümetleri ile Avrupa Birliği arasındaki ortaklığın ilk amacı, İtalya ve Fransa’nın Rhone bölgesi arasındaki yöneticilerin ve şirket yöneticilerinin entegrasyonunu kolaylaştırırken yolcuların ve turistlerin hareketlerini arttırmaktı. Daha sonra, gelecek yüzyıldaki tren, Fransa ile İtalya arasındaki meta akışının yeni yüzyılın başından bu yana istikrarlı bir şekilde düşmesine rağmen ağırlıklı olarak yük taşımacılığının kullanımına sunulmuştur.[4] Proje, Alplerin Fransız tarafında küçük bir muhalefet yarattı. İtalyan tarafında ise 1994 yılında, tarihsel olarak anti-faşist direniş geçmişine sahip olan, endüstri, tarım ve turizm alanlarında karmaşık bir ekonomiye sahip Susa Vadisi’nde, önceki altyapı projelerine ve vadilerinin bir geçiş koridorundan daha fazlasına dönüştürmeyecek olan bu projeye karşı ilk koordineli yurttaş muhalefeti örgütlendi.

Mekâna özgü, coğrafi olarak tanımlanmış mücadelelerin, onları bir şekilde yenileyen düz-tabanlığı vardır. David Harvey bunun nedeninin, transandantal ya da Hegelci diyalektikten fazlasıyla uzak, ya-ya da (either-or) diyalektiği yaratan belirli bir alana bağlı olma gerçeği olduğunu ileri sürdü.[5] Bölgeye özgü talepler, endişeler ve umutlar varoluşsal ve politik bir tercih gerektiren bir durum yaratır -birisi ya havalimanı yanlısıdır ya da karşıtı. Marx’ın Vera Zasulich’e verdiği demeçte, devlete karşı daha erken dönem kırsal bir savaş bağlamında “Bu soru artık sadece çözülmesi gereken bir problem değil aynı zamanda basitçe yenilmesi gereken bir düşmandır… artık sadece teorik bir problem değildir… oldukça basit bir şekilde yenilmesi gereken bir düşmandır”.[6] 57 kilometrelik bir tünel Alpleri delip geçecek ya da geçmeyecek. Bir havalimanı tarım arazisine yapılacak ya da yapılmayacak. Diğer ülkeler de bunu iyi biliyor. Notre-Dame-des-Landes’ın en etkileyici ve en kayda değer örneğinde olduğu gibi, Japonya’daki Tokyo Narita Havalimanı için tarım arazilerinin kamulaştırılması 1966’da başlamış, toprağını terk etmeyi reddeden çiftçiler ve devlet güçleri arasındaki on yıllık ölümcül çatışmalar ile 1971’den itibaren aşırı-sol Zengakuren’in güçlü destekçileri oluşmuştu.[7]

Bu çokça benzeşen örnekte Shinsuke Ogawa ve Yann Le Masson’un filmlerinde ölümsüzleştirilen bu destansı savaşlar -1960’ların dünya çapındaki en belirgin savaşları arasında görmekte ve saygı duymaktayım- dönemin Fransız militanlarının ifadesine göre Paris’te ve diğer Fransız kentlerinde polisle yapılan sokak çatışmalarına esin kaynağı olmuştur. Breton belgesel yapımcısı Le Masson’ın 1970’lerin başında Nantes’de gösterilen Narita savaşları üzerine filmi, Kashima Paradise, Notre-Dame-des-Landes’teki öncü muhaliflerin dikkatini Japon örneğine çekmişti. Bir süre önce, Kanada’da Montreal dışında 1976 olimpiyatları için bir havalimanı yapılmış ve kısa sürede dünyanın en büyük havalimanı haline gelerek ekonomik bir patlamayı beslemiş, toprağından çıkarılan 12.000 çiftçinin şiddetli protestosuna karşı Mirabel havalimanı inşa edilmişti. Ancak bir süre sonra şehirden uzak olduğu gerekçesiyle hâlihazırda kullanılan Montreal havalimanı karşısında değerini kaybederek kullanımı azalmıştı. Mirabel bir nakliye havalimanı haline getirildi ancak bu bile kâr sağlayamadı ve uzun yıllar boyunca ıssız ve boş kalan terminal film seti olarak kullanıldı. Kanada başbakanları bölgeyi terk etmek zorunda kalan çiftçileri bölgeye geri döndürmeye çalıştılar ve çoğunlukla başarısız oldular. Terminal binası 2014 yılında 15 milyon dolarlık bir maliyetle yıkıldı.

Fakat yaygınlaşmakta olan “hayalet havalimanı” fenomeninin evi olan İspanya, faydasız yapılar için kamu fonlarının yağmalanması adına en iyi çağdaş örneği sunmaktadır.[8] 47 milyonluk bir nüfusa sahip olan İspanya şimdi 52 havalimanına sahip (iki katı nüfusa sahip olan Almanya’nın 39 havalimanı var). Bu 52 havalimanının üçte ikisinden fazlası başarısız –bazılarına hiç uçak inip kalkmıyor. Bununla birlikte havalimanlarının hepsinde personel çalıştırılıyor ve masrafları çok yüksek.

Dipnotlar:

[1] Arturo Escobar, Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008)

[2] Jean de Legge & Roger Le Fuen, Dégage! . . . On aménage, Collection ‘La province trahie.” (Les Sables d’Olonne: Editions le Cercle d’Or, 1976). Fransız savaş sonrası ekonomik büyümesinde kalkınma retoriğinin ve altında yatan politikaların eleştirel tarihçesi için Céline Pessis, Sezin Topçu and Christophe Bonneuil, Une autre histoire des ‘Trente Glorieuses’: Modernisation, contestations et pollutions dans la France d’après-guerre (Paris: La Découverte, 2013). Buradaki ve başka yerlerdeki Fransızca’dan çeviriler bana aittir.

[3] ZAD kısaltmasının yeni tanımı Fransa’da Grand Robert sözlüğüne girmiştir: bir ZAD (kırsal kesimde yaygın şekilde) militanların işgal ederek çevreye zarar veren kalkınma projelerine karşı koyduğu alandır.

[4] Michele Monni, ‘Italian Politics and the NoTAV Movement: The Resiliency or Failure of Citizen Activism?’ and Lucie Greyl, Hali Healy, Emanuele Leonardi, and Leah Temper, ‘Stop That Train! Ideological Conflict and the TAV’, in Economics and Policy of Energy and the Environment, n. 2 (2012).

[5] David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 164-75.

[6] “Marx-Zasulich Correspondence: Letters and Drafts’, Teodor Shaninin, Late Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and the Peripheries of Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), p.116.

[7] David Apter and Nagayo Sawa, Against the State: Politics and Social Protest in Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984).

[8] Christine Delphy, , ‘B comme Béton’, barricades-mots-zad.org/lettre-b.

[sherristockman]

Nutella Unmasked Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola If you haven't experienced a slice of toast with Nutella, you may not be missing as much as advertisers would like you to believe. Nutella, advertised as a pseudo-healthy sweet, is a chocolate spread used on pancakes, toast and fried in wontons. In fact, the product has a large group of enthusiasts both in Europe and the U.S. Unfortunately, while advertised as a healthy addition to your morning breakfast routine, Nutella doesn't live up to the hype. The simple ingredient list contains just five items, the greatest of which is sugar. Nutella has celebrated its 50th year anniversary and appears to be well established in their niche market of spreadable chocolate. Interestingly, crimes related to the product have also made the news. In 2013, thieves in Germany snatched a little over $20,000 of the jars from a delivery truck.1 In that same year, Columbia University discovered students were taking jars of Nutella from the dining facility, costing the school nearly $6,000 a week to replace.2 Ingredients in Nutella May Surprise You While customers seem to love the taste, bordering on addiction, its ingredients may surprise you. In this short advertisement from Nutella, you're told your children need the enticement of chocolate each morning to get them to eat breakfast. But, before you pop out to the store to get a jar, take a peek at what's inside. The advertisement talks about hazelnuts and a hint of cocoa, but neglects to mention refined palm oil and a massive dose of sugar. The label claims there are 8.5 grams of sugar in a 15-gram serving.3 That means more than half of any serving is composed of sugar. However, when dishing out Nutella, you likely are not weighing the product and there is no indication of a teaspoon serving size. In a statement, Nutella's parent company, Ferrero, said: "One of Ferrero's core nutritional beliefs is that small portion sizes help people to enjoy their favorite foods in moderation. The labeling on all our products enables consumers to make informed choices and helps ensure that Nutella can be enjoyed as part of a balanced diet." Sugar and Palm Oil Do Not Make for a Healthy Breakfast That sounds good, but an infusion of sugar is not part of a balanced diet. In fact, eating sugar triggers natural opioids in your brain and may be as addictive as cocaine to some people. Sugar increases your risk of disease, tricks your body into gaining weight and may trigger behavioral changes. Learn more in my previous article, "The Truth About Sugar Addiction." The second ingredient making the news is palm oil, which has predominantly been harvested from the forests of Malaysia and Indonesia, contributing to the deforestation of those countries and having a significantly negative impact on the environment and the animals who depend on palm trees for survival. Ferrero has made a point of using sustainable palm oil they claim is not contributing to deforestation and is part of a broad effort to create sustainable methods of production of palm oil.4,5 However, sustainability is not the only concern with the palm oil used in Nutella. Health Effects of Refined Palm Oil Called Into Question The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), akin to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, recently released a study6 finding the chemical contaminants that result from refining vegetable oils (including palm oil), may increase your risk of cancer. The substances causing concern included: glycidyl fatty acid esters (GE), 3-monochloropropanediol (3-MCPD), and 2-monochloropropanediol (2-MCPD) and their fatty acid esters. When refined at approximately 200 C (392 F), palm oil and palm fats had the highest number of contaminants, including GE. No tolerable or safe levels have been set for GE as the group found sufficient evidence it is genotoxic and carcinogenic.7 The panel's review did find levels of GE between 2010 and 2015 were cut in half through voluntary measures taken by producers. Ferrero claims their palm oil, refined to take out the characteristic red color and unusual taste, is responsible for the texture and taste of Nutella. The company states its palm oil is refined at temperatures just below 200 C and under low pressure to reduce contaminants. Moving away from palm oil would not only change the taste, but also have economic repercussions to the company. Cost Is a Factor in Production Palm oil is the cheapest vegetable oil, costing $800 per ton, compared to $845 for sunflower and $900 for rapeseed.8 Ferrero uses 185,000 tons each year, so switching could increase costs between $8 to 22 million annually. Although the World Health Organization and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization also flagged refined palm oil with the same risk, they did not recommend banning the ingredient. The palm oil industry, valued at $44 billion, has found a vocal and passionate supporter in Ferrero. Without prompting, and following the release of the study, a large supermarket chain in Europe decided to boycott processed palm oil. Barilla has also eliminated it from their products.9 However, Nutella, going on the offensive, began running a series of advertisements to assure the public in Italy their product is safe.10 Unilever and Nestle have also continued to include palm oil in their products despite the report from EFSA. However, Ferrero is the only company, to date, mounting such a public defense of their use of palm oil. Ferrero, a privately owned company, says global sales have been unaffected by the EFSA announcement and are continuing to grow approximately 5 percent per year.11 Health Benefits of Unrefined Palm Oil It isn't the effects of palm oil that are in question, but rather what happens to the oil during the refining process to remove the color and neutralize the smell. In an unrefined state, palm oil is high in healthy saturated fats and contains a number of nutrients important to your health. Historical accounts suggest palm oil was a part of the diet of indigenous populations. At present, it has become the second most traded oil crop in the world, after soy, with Malaysia and Indonesia as its main producers.12 In its natural state, palm oil is red. If you find white palm oil it has been refined and stripped of a dense nutrient profile. Studies have found that unrefined palm oil plays a role in promoting cardiovascular health. In one study published in the British Journal of Biomedical Science, it was reported that despite the high levels of saturated fat in palm oil, the oil did not contribute to atherosclerosis and/or arterial thrombosis.13 Researchers suggested that this is due to the ratio of saturated to unsaturated fats in the oil, as well as its rich nutrient profile. The tocotrienols found in palm oil support your heart against stress and have a protective property against heart disease. Studies suggest the antioxidant properties in palm oil help prevent various types of cancers including skin, gastrointestinal, lung, breast, prostate and other cancers. Palm oil is an edible oil you may use in an unrefined state to get the most nutritional benefits. It does have a strong taste you may not find to your liking. You may also apply it directly on your skin to enjoy some of the benefits. Injuries such as bruising, sunburn and cuts heal faster when unrefined palm oil is applied. To purchase palm oil certified sustainable, look for certification from the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil.14 Consuming large amounts of unrefined oil has no major adverse effects, save for a slight yellowing of the skin from high levels of carotenes in the oil. This change also means your protection against harmful UV rays is enhanced. Topically, the oil may cause your skin to turn a yellow-orange color that comes off with washing. The oil will stain your clothing. Slow Rise to Popularity Nutella has enjoyed a raving fan base in Europe for a number of years. Introduced in the U.S. in 1983, it took decades for the spread to become popular. After an advertising campaign that started in 2009, sales skyrocketed to $240 million. Thanks to a number of devoted fans, the spread is more than a financial success; it has become a food phenomenon.15 Admirers in the U.S. have created Facebook pages, recipe books, Twitter accounts and even developed a holiday, celebrated the first time on February 5, 2007.16 Initially the family owned business tried to squash the efforts of fans to spread the word, but the number of those devoted to Nutella has only grown. Interestingly, experts think Nutella's fame has grown as millennials do not want to eat the same nut spreads of their parents and are searching for something unique to their food culture. In Europe, Nutella has been on the shelves for decades, but in the U.S., it satisfies the desire for a growing cult-fan base bent on eating something different.17 Recognizing the need to stay ahead of the curve, the company has been vocal about its product safety, created advertising campaigns to reassure its fan base, and is holding strong to its brand which invented the hazelnut, chocolate and sugar concoction. Who's Watching Out for Your Health? Unfortunately, it is not possible to depend upon governmental agencies, manufacturers or even independent agencies to police the products and foods that make it onto the grocery store shelves and pharmacies before landing in your home. The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) is one such organization. The organization was started in 1978 to publicly support:18 " … evidence-based science and medicine. Then, as now, too much of what passes as "news" is little more than hype based on exaggerated findings. Activist groups have targeted GMOs, vaccines, conventional agriculture, nuclear power, natural gas and 'chemicals.'" While the rhetoric is believable, the historical comments from the organization fail to live up to their mission.19 For instance, in an article in the Huffington Post, Elizabeth Whelan, late founder and then president of ACSH, criticized the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for funding research into chemicals that may trigger disease in children, claiming:20 "Unfortunately, the recipients of the grants from EPA to study "environmental chemicals" include those who have built their careers claiming that trace levels of industrial chemicals make children sick … Despite conventional wisdom, there is no mainstream scientific evidence that points to children's health being imperiled by trace levels of chemicals in the environment." Whelan often found herself defending industries that partially financed her efforts against environmental groups and agencies.21 In a commentary, Mark Shapiro, author of "Exposed," a book evaluating global markets and toxic chemicals,22 wrote:23 "In her post, Dr. Whelan, President of the American Council for Science and Health, claims that 'there is no evidence whatsoever — not even a hint — of health problems from phthalates used by children or adults.' Alas, there is far more than a "hint" of such evidence. My book contains abundant, peer-reviewed evidence of such claims." ACSH Claims Carcinogenic Rating for Palm Oil Worse Than 'Fake News' Case in point is the ACSH's standpoint on DDT, a common insecticide used until 1972. During a radio interview Whelan commented that the fervor to ban DDT was based on emotion and not scientific fact.24 Yet scientists have linked DDT to obesity, type 2 diabetes,25Alzheimer's disease26 and an increased risk of heart disease.27 The ACSH continues to fight against health with their current stand on refined oils.28 In the organization's article commenting on the new research suggesting refined palm oil is carcinogenic, they write:29 "Anyone who searches long enough can find that pretty much everything has been linked to cancer. Bacon. Cell phones. Wi-fi … At some point the insanity has to stop. Unfortunately, we have yet to reach that point. Variations of the headline 'Nutella may cause cancer' are going viral. As usual, there is almost no support for such hysteria." The hysteria the ACSH refers to is the considered and evidence-based research that demonstrates significant negative effects on health. For instance, when vegetable oils are heated they become unstable, producing large numbers of dangerous oxidation products, including aldehydes associated with lung cancer.30 Vegetable oils also have large amounts of biologically active omega-6 fats that lowers the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats in your body,31 which may trigger cardiovascular disease, asthma, cancer, obesity and rheumatoid arthritis.32 When you eat foods high in omega-6 fats it increases the amount of inflammation in your body, contributing to the development of the illnesses listed above.33 The less omega-6 fats you eat the less omega-3s you need to maintain a healthy balance. An imbalance of omega-6 fats increases your risk of cancer,34 ,35 even without the additional toxic load of GE molecules from the refining process. According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), glycidol has been classified as a 2A carcinogen. In the IARC monograph they state:36 "Glycidol is probably carcinogenic to humans (Group 2A). In making the overall evaluation, the Working Group took into consideration that glycidol is a direct-acting alkylating agent that is mutagenic in a wide range of in-vivo and in-vitro test systems." Make Your Own Chocolaty Goodness at Home Nutella could easily be made in a healthier fashion that doesn't spike your insulin levels or increase your risk of metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. You can make similar desserts at home using the following recipes. The first recipe is nut-free courtesy of the Academy of Culinary Nutrition,37 and the second is one of my favorite chocolate recipes I commonly make with macadamia nuts, but you can substitute hazelnuts if you like. Hemp Chocolate Spread Ingredients • 1/4 cup hemp seeds • 1/3 cup raw cacao • 1/4 cup ghee or coconut oil • 2 tbsp honey • Pinch of sea salt Instructions Process all ingredients together until smooth. Add more sweetener as desired to taste. Dr. Mercola's Macadamia Nut Fudge Recipe Ingredients: • 300 grams (10.5 ounces) of cocoa butter • 200 grams (7.05 ounces) of coconut oil • 200 grams of raw, organic pastured butter • 300 grams of macadamia nuts • 8 full droppers of stevia (can use Luo Han as a substitute) • 1 teaspoon organic vanilla extract Instructions: 1. Mix the butters and oils under low heat for three to five minutes. Once the mixture cools, add the stevia drops and vanilla extract. Pour the fudge into 8-ounce wide ball jars. 2. Spread the nuts evenly across all jars. 3. Refrigerate until the fudge reaches the desired consistency. This macadamia nut fudge recipe makes eight servings.

[shesaidwithirony]

La Repubblica interview on Social Media in the Trump Era

Questions from Luciana Grosso (La Repubblica)

Luciana Grosso: What’s next? What is coming after the social network era? What will arrive after this social-mania, if it will ever end?

Geert Lovink: I do not mind to act like a futurologist but I have to disappoint you: we’ll be stuck in this social media age for some time to come. We Europeans failed to develop alternatives. There is no ‘market’ and we all let it happen: crippling monopolies are a fact, we’ve locked ourselves in and now we complain. Unless there’s going to be a global crisis or war, we will not able to free ourselves from the ‘tremendous’ addiction to these real-time apps. I have given up that individuals who make the courageous exodus will make a difference. Boredom or dispear won’t make a difference either; the physical, social and emotional dependency is already too big. We were naive to think that users would move on, as they did from Geocities to Blogger to Friendster to MySpace. Then it stopped at Facebook. Youngsters migrated to Whatsapp and Instagram, but these are owned by the same old Facebook Corp. and are currently being integrated into the same data empire. What’s left is the proposal of a public takeover of platforms (including the datacentre infrastructure). This a political proposal we need to further discuss and put on the table in this year of crucial elections.

For decades European elites deliberately looked away, convinced that the internet was a fad, a fashion that would fade away, and now they have been pushed to the sides. Brussels thought telcos such as Orange and Telefonica, and traditional technology players such as Philips and Siemens would develop alternatives. Nothing happened. Instead, we’re using hardware produced in China with services controlled in the United States. Lately Europeans have woken up and have installed austerity-driven neo-liberal ‘creative industries’ policies that try to foster start-up cultures. Ever since Evgene Morozov we know that techno-solutionism is not the answer. Developing an app is not a solution to overcome platform capitalism. For the social media drama it might already be too late, unless drastic measures are taken that implements anti-trust measures overnight.

LG: In the beginning, Internet was seen as a utopian place where the only rule was ‘no rules’: everyone was free to say and write and read whatever they wanted. Was this in fact the case at the time?

GL: There is no doubt that 1990s internet culture was more wild. But I am not nostalgic. There were far less users. The user base was homogeneous and the interfaces and operating systems didn’t work very well. These days we’re not often confronted anymore with crashing devices. Instead, dysfunctionality has moved to the level of society. The smoothness of today comes with a price. Jaron Lanier often points at the anarchic nature of individual homepages—a far cry from the standardized communication environments of Facebook and Twitter. Why learn Linux or XML anymore as an ordinary user? This overall loss of technical knowledge amongst users has lead to crisis in media literacy. The idea is that we do not need anymore instruction. All platforms are self-evident for a child—and this is what we actually see happening around us. This is also the case of moderation. That’s an art form: how to run a community, to overcome differences and structures debates (without policing them). One of the sources of the problem here is the lack of tools to develop communities. Social media are not built for that, on purpose. They are outward-looking with the aim to connect as much data with other data with the aim to sell the profiles to third parties for advertisement purposes. Everyone knows that social media is an alienating echo chamber and fosters narcissism as a necessary act in the struggle for self promotion. In the end, empowerment is not satisfying. We need a cold restart, from scratch, and build peer-to-peer networks that focus on collaboration and discussion, not just on ‘news’ that ‘shared’ and commented by ‘friends’. This has already been said time and again, but nothing happens. That’s how we got stuck. Many feel that way. That’s the disillusion of the internet, which is no longer a progressive tool nor a parallel reality but an abyss that takes us down further into a state of inequality, fear and hatred.

LG: How did that happen, a place celebrated for freedom becoming so dark, filled with lies, violence and fascism? Is this jungle what freedom looks like?

GL: I have not lost my belief in freedom and subversion. Let’s go back to Erich Fromm’s Fear of Freedom. There is so much fascinating literature that we can read together. Take Hannah Ahrendt, or Isaiah Berlin’s Two Concepts of Liberty. Promote such thinkers and contrast them with the libertarian dogma’s of Ayn Rand that is being promoted so much these days. Which freedom do we want? Many of us have second thoughts when it comes to radical openness. We can’t deal with the ‘open society’ and intuitively search for a ‘New Order’ as Michael Seemann, the Berlin ‘Kontrollverlust’ blogger and author of Digital Tailspin, calls it. What comes after radical transparency? Will we find a new equilibrium after the dust has settled? Do we withdrawal in a new cult of secrecy, as Byung Chul-Han in his Transparency Society proposes? Will we ever get used to the bright light of over-exposure, to put in terms of Jean Baudrillard? I would love to answer your question in an orthodox psycho-analytical way. Why do we want to punish ourselves after a period of excessive communication and radical freedom? How can we escape this vicious circle of orgy and remorse? Where is the psycho-historian Lloyd deMause, now that we need him? Who updates his epic book on Reagan’s America?

LG: Should we be afraid of fake news? Lies and the manipulation of the truth have always been around, ever since the times of Moses. Why is this suddenly a problem?

GL: As you say,  fake news has always been core business, it’s was once called ‘manufacturing consent’ or ‘public relations’. As Morozov tweets: “Messing with the media, celebrities, facts, etc does not really get in the way of getting the job done – for Trump, it’s *the* job.” Our problem is the ‘authenticity bonus’  of direct communication. We do not see the social media managers that operate behind their dashboards (as Douglas Rushkoff teaches us). Why the fake news question did not come earlier has got to do with moment in which social media became mainstream. Until recent, the Net was still looked upon as something unknown and new, at best an additional toy. Experts talked about multi-media as if it was some sort of symphony, a media concert in search for harmony between all the different channels. But the liberal ‘multimodality’ view of ‘remediation’ has been blasted away by the directness and real-time of social media.

Now that the introductory period of ‘digitization’ has come to an end, we are exposed to an unprecedented form of acceleration.  In the original idea of networked democracy it was assumed that the multiplicity of channels would lead to a greater diversity of voices. This did not materialize and it would be useful to reconstruct where precisely the process derailed. In classic internet fashion, things move fast, and that will also be the case with the fake news meme itself, which will be overruled by even more spectacular propaganda acts, pseudo-events–and historical tragedies.

LG: Is preventive censorship a solution?

GL: In past weeks we see that the  ‘perception management’ industry is busy figuring out which ‘anti-missile missiles’ they should invent to calm down the media frenzy. A Minority Report technique to isolate evil behaviour might work on the individual level but is no longer effective once the political upheaval has already started. Facebook is entirely naive as they still believe in filtering of ‘fake news’ by temporary consultancy firms such as Correctiv or Snopes, as if this problem can be solved and will disappear in a few months. There are also fact-checking firms on specific topics such as Ukraine or climate change. The next step is the ‘democratization’ of the meme design workshops, ‘meme sprints’ where multi-disciplinary ‘agile’ teams of designers, coders and ’trolls’ gather to unleash ‘meme wars’–and then disappear: organized networks that take the ideas of Adbusters one step further but shy away from the long-term commitment of the work that is done out of The Agency, a presumed ’troll farm’ office building in St. Petersburg (see also this Guardian article). Not far from here is the NATO observatory in Riga that looks in Russian social media manipulations.

LG: Will our grandchildren read Facebook or The New York Times?

GL: The New York Times, which by then will be owned by Facebook. That would be the Dutch pragmatist answer. The correct one is of course neither of them. The kids will navigate through Uber Entertainment. You must have heard from Alfabet, the mother company of Google, an umbrella structure for mega corporations, which is also likely to happen to Facebook as well. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, now owns The Washington Post. The new rubber barons are running the largest non-profits in the world (think of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). Others enter different industries such as space travel.  What we need is a new iteration of cyberpunk literature that takes us on a tour through corporate cities owned by Snapchat, Tesla factories that mass manufacture killer robots and the Huawei hacking bunker, a smart internet observatory, masterminded by Chinese hipsters.

http://networkcultures.org/geert/2017/01/25/la-repubblica-interview-on-social-media-in-the-trump-era/