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Hot Damn also, David, when you write, you right! Downright
excellent.<br>
<br>
I'll be able to reply to this tonight after work, but right now I
have to scoot. <br>
<br>
More about Kapital and resistance and other stuff later tonight...<br>
<br>
-G.<br>
<br>
<br>
=====<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 14-02-03-Mon 6:43 AM, David Keenan
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CABhLtjw4ovqqPA+-jAG4DW0PHKd7j4d3eEEeOrnB4P8Wn9-qkg@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">damn, g. when you write you right.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>You're completely on point - but of course, I actually do
care a lot about this issue. All I was inferring is once in a
while the time comes to just shift productive energies into a
new paradigm and maybe stop playing whack-a-mole with
unsecurable modalities like email, and instead work on using
something better to replace it. Same with the declining fair
use and vanishing anonymity of the internet in general - the
wonderful work the mesh folk are doing are to me a really big
part of this solution. I almost mentioned something about
appropriation (or feeding biting hands styrofoam peanuts) as a
tactic being a noble way to cannabilize and take back our
infrastructure that our tax dollars largely built, so I am
100% with you there. I have also said many times myself how we
need to start a movement to have a right to data about
ourselves, so I am thrilled to hear you say the same thing.
Absolutely. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>When it comes to the event, we need to fight back with
technological tools, but also with ideas. Not sure which is
more important (or if thats even worth asking), they might be
equal, but for me it comes down on the side of ideas, as all
the tech in the world won't help if people don't give a hoot
because they're too exhausted by the Spectacle-induced trance
of capital etc to care, or dont see why its necessary or in
their self-interest. I fully support the cryptoparties - what
we also need are the crypto-semantic frames i guess, to help
us put this fucking insane world where companies pirate and
monitize our digital lives into a moral logic everyone, even
our grandmas, can all intuitively grasp and therefore resist.
Drive the demand as it were, for 'privacy'. I see events like
this being part of that conversation on the side of ideas, but
the cryptoparties, and making them less technically abstruse,
are the other half for sure. Theory + practice = praxis, we
need both.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>You know the only thing I'm not totally sure I agree with
is that money is information..if we're talking about money and
not capital I might agree, if we're talking about capital
(which of course is not just 'money') I'm too tired to know if
I agree or not. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>On the one hand, I am wary of what I see everywhere as a
massive informationalization of our lives and in our language,
of experience and of concepts... a scientism really thats
always trying to quantify the qualitative - or at least,
valorize the former and dismiss the later, if it cannot
transmute it. Its a naturalizing, essentializing cultural
phenomenon wherein we are led to simply accept without
question that the essential aspect of anything in the world is
ultimately 'information': Music is 'information', plants are
'information', we - online and in our 'genes' and 'dna' - the
universe - are fundamentally reduceable to codes, chemical
properties, etc. I suspect this aspect of our culture is tied
to capital ideology (marx: 'they don't know it, but they are
doing it') and biopower (think Patrick McCuehen saying 'I am
not a number! I am a FREE MAN!'), although I can't think of
how right now, because as I said I'm pretty tired, but anyway
its a real mythology that needs unpacking, or totalizing
kool-aid that needs a bit of unslurping. Nothing against
'information' or using 'information' as but one metaphor with
which analyze the workings of the world, but we should never
mistake our tools of analysis - i.e., our abstracted
representation of reality, like calling the smell of a rose
'information' - for reality itself, and it seems like that's
whats actually happening at some level. We must be
epistemologically reflexive and catch ourselves before we fall
into that trap. So, I have to think a lot before I decide that
money is 'at its root' essentializable as 'information', too.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Along the same lines another argument against money as
essentially, fundamentally 'information' thing is this notion
that its ultimately governed by 'math', or that the cycle of
capital exploiting our surplus labor value is ultimately
governed by math, or that financial markets are ultimately
governed by math. I'm not sure I agree, because markets are
also ultimately governed by human beings, who are not just
information, and human beings, as Plato well knew, but maybe
Adam Smith and Descartes did not, are simply not rational. At
all. This is in large part why game theory is a total fail,
why people vote against their economic self-interest, and also
why people are not outraged at the deprivation of their
digital liberty, etc. Scientific rationalism is in a way a
beautiful dream, like a wonderful, utopian idea, and a nice
way to organize a representation of the world, but it is not <i>the</i>
world, and we don't operate, for even one millisecond, as
rational creatures. Just as we do not build up the world out
of a series of concepts - we just ARE in the world, all at
once, and from that, we think of concepts to organize it with,
for ourselves. We are subject to cognitive and emotional
centers in our brain that were indirectly induced to connect
in accordance with certain decidedly a-rational cultural ways
and mores through processes of socialization of which we had
no control...</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Folks are tempted to think about 'math' as something pure,
a religion practically, but how often do people get reflexive
about math? Like the fact that we can't conceive of 'math'
without also simultaneously conceiving of metaphors that have
nothing whatsoever to actually do with math, but without which
we could not perform math: If I say one is a 'higher' number
than two, that has no strictly mathematical meaning. One is
not 'higher' than two. An increase in quantity is not an
increase in height. It's simply an increase in quantity. And
yet numbers go 'up'. Makes no sense man...mathematically. But
it does at the level of non-math, in real life, because if I
pour you a glass of water, the quantity increases as the level
rises. But what if we lived in a society where I we poured
water out on the floor and drank it from there. Would you say
that numbers go up or down? Hm. So math itself is actually
utterly imbricated with entirely qualitative dimensions that
only make sense from the perspective of human experience. And
so is not so pure: the basis for 'money', perhaps, after all.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Sleep now. Good nite.. and thanks for your awesome email..</div>
<div>-d </div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 5:15 AM, GtwoG
PublicOhOne <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:g2g-public01@att.net" target="_blank">g2g-public01@att.net</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> <br>
<br>
David, it's not to your discredit, it's to the discredit
of Kapital, and it's been foisted on the whole
Neo-Proletariat, which is anyone making less than six
figures a year (look up union wages in 1974 and then apply
increases at the rate of inflation every year with
compound interest: that's what we all _should_ be earning
right now). We shouldn't blame ourselves for getting
screwed.<br>
<br>
Here's another example of Kapital sinking its hooks into
our brains (I'm quoting you here not to criticize you, but
to illustrate how common this type of dynamic has
become): "Personally, once I gave up on email qua email
as being meaningfully secure, I sort of stopped caring who
my provider was."<br>
<br>
The emotional narrative in that sentence is: "...once I
gave up... I sort of stopped caring..."<br>
<br>
That's what the Bigs want us to do: give up and stop
caring, the better to spend our efforts producing and
consuming. And they are enormously clever at how they go
about it: too much work, just enough bread, and plenty of
circuses. About which more below under "Kapital."<br>
<br>
Where you say "I really don't have an answer for this
one," that makes the vitally important point that we ALL
need answers to this. The fact that we don't have
comprehensive answers and solutions shows exactly where
our efforts need to be. <br>
<br>
Agreed, email is broken. IMHO the whole internet
architecture is broken (don't get me started;-) but in any
case we need new infrastructure and a solid collaborative
effort to build it. Not just "good enough for coders
& geeks to use" but "good enough for your grandmother
to use without you providing tech support." You shouldn't
have to _teach_ people to use crypto: it should be
built-in, with nothing more than a check in a box to
encrypt/decrypt email. The global community of hackers
can build all of that and much more if we choose.<br>
<br>
Good point about "metadata" being a euphemism to obscure
the fact that it's OUR data. In the past I've used the
term "CDR" for "call detail records," a telephony term
that has lately been in the news since it's what NSA gets
from our phone calls (date, time, calling number, called
number, duration of call); it could also be used to refer
to email to/from addresses and subject headers. But "OUR
data," emphasis on OUR, is better, because it's so direct
and assertive. <br>
<br>
This translates to something specific we should be
demanding: personal ownership of all data about ourselves,
without compromise. Treat it like copyright with
exceptions for fair use. Make the maximum demand, so that
when the usual attempts at legislative watering-down
occur, we still get something better than if we had tried
to "be reasonable" and "pre-compromise" our demands. <br>
<br>
If it's necessary to use Facebook for publicity, the way
to do it is by using a fictitious name & email address
for the FB account, and then putting up a message on the
Facebook page saying "find us _here_ (link)," which goes
to a website on a more trustworthy hosting service. Then,
that website does not have the accursed Facebook
beacon-button on it that lets Facebook follow people
around like a stalker. (Anyone who can't bother clicking
a link that goes off Facebook, isn't worth the effort to
reach. Seriously.) <br>
<br>
That's the answer to having to feed the hand that bites:
Feed it styrofoam peanuts with no food value. Use its own
infrastructure sparingly and temporarily, as a way to get
people to leave it behind. For example, one of the topics
at the surveillance event ought to be a how-to for getting
the snoops & stalkers out of our lives: dumping
Google, installing security apps on your browser,
installing an OFF switch in your mobile device, etc., all
with specifics: this email service, this app, here's where
to find it, how to do it, etc.<br>
<br>
About Kapital:<br>
<br>
Karl Marx got it almost-right, but "surplus value" is an
abstraction: the real deal is the Second Law of
Thermodynamics. Kapital depends on "energy conversion."
What humans are to Kapital, are highly efficient
energy-converters that turn calories into money. The
abstraction layer is between the work output of the human
organism, and the translation of that into money. At
root, money is energy converted to information. And
information is ultimately Platonic, governed by math and
orthogonal to thermodynamics. <br>
<br>
The goal of Kapital is to extract every calorie that's not
needed to keep the energy-converters producing and
consuming. Latest example: Amazon's patent for
"predictive shipping," where they send you things that you
haven't ordered, but Amazon predicts you'll want, on the
premise that you'll probably keep them. Translation:
people will pay for the "stuff" because they're too tired
to deal with the hassle of returning it. Amazon
predicts, humans acquiesce.<br>
<br>
The reason that so many people "give up and stop caring"
is that they are being sucked dry. Think of all the "too
tired" moments and what they have in common.<br>
<br>
In the end, the scam is self-limiting. Kapital thrives on
the exponential function: the unlimited growth of money
and the economy despite the limits of a finite planet.
Kapital will break as it runs into resource limits,
including the limits of humans to relentlessly produce and
relentlessly consume. <br>
<br>
-G.<br>
<br>
<br>
=====
<div>
<div class="h5"><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<div>On 14-02-03-Mon 2:33 AM, David Keenan wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>Matt, I will bring up your point at the next
organizing meeting for sure. Thank you for being
willing to sponsor.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
Yardena - your point is exceedingly well taken, as
I sit here from my gmail account, writing about
how if want to do the event, we should post it on
facebook...sigh.
<div> <br>
</div>
<div>To my discredit, I really don't have an
answer for this one except that in my opinion,
email as a medium is itself an inherently broken
means of secure communication, a lotta people on
sudo have google accounts, and yeah sudo posts
regularly to facebook, which is why I asked..
Sometimes you have to reach out to people in an
archaic medium they already grok - like on a
listserv, or fb - in order to tell them that is
maybe not The Best Way. <br>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
Personally, once I gave up on email qua email
as being meaningfully secure, I sort of
stopped caring who my provider was. Or
teaching people how to encrypt their message
content, only to have them never get that
doesn't secure their attachments or the
"metadata" or render messages readable from
the web from any device anymore or or or (I
kind of hate the term metadata btw, as in mass
culture 'metadata' has seemingly come to infer
something other than 'our' data, and as if
metadata is not also our data, just like our
non-meta data). </div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">But yes for sure, if we
care about 'privacy', we DO need to be off fb
(and onto building up diaspora or something
similar), and, we need to be off email. And
use some darkmail, or otr or a private forum
or something else. </div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">I feel like for us to
all get off fb, we need a real alternative to
go to, and a campaign. Same with email. But
before we build that up.. using fb/email or
not using it, it seems like being caught
between a rock and a hard place when trying to
promote an event but not feed the biting hand,
you know?</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">As this is precisely
the position I feel like the system of capital
as a whole places us in, far beyond mark
zuckerberg and google and 'big data': We can't
help but feed the hand that bites us. We
'need' to be bitten, so our traumatized,
bitten selves can feed somebody or something
else..often while simultaneously handing a
bite to somebody else less powerful, as in in
the case of gentrification. If that partially
re-inverted idiom still makes any sense..which
um, no, looks like it doesn't. Well. Sorry,
tired. But I totally get you.</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">Yeah. Tired.</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">David</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Feb 3, 2014
at 1:12 AM, GtwoG PublicOhOne <span
dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:g2g-public01@att.net"
target="_blank">g2g-public01@att.net</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px
#ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> <br>
Re. "what does the rest of sudo think?"<br>
<br>
Microphones & cameras on
shot-spotters? What about the
software-controlled mics & cameras
on smartphones, that people carry into
indoor places where the DAC cameras and
mics can't go? If it doesn't have a
physical OFF switch or a removable
battery, it's always ON.<br>
<br>
NSA snooping your metadata? What about
Google Mail and Google Voice scraping
the full content of both sides of every
email & conversation for everything
down to the level of "sentiment
analysis" which is a euphemism for
spying on your emotions? "Targeted
advertising" is a distraction; Big Data
is the real product.<br>
<br>
DAC data center creepy? What about
Facebook creepy, and Sudo having a
Facebook page, even as Mark Zuckerberg
spends $16 million to buy up every house
on his block, so his neighbors can't do
unto him that which he does unto
others...? <br>
<br>
Big Power is inherently corrupt wherever
it resides. Big Data is Big Power.
Even if it has good marketing, cute
logos, total convenience, free apps,
free games, and endless entertainment.<br>
<br>
Corporate power says "don't bite the
hand that feeds you."<br>
<br>
Resistance says "don't feed the hand
that bites you."<br>
<br>
-G.<br>
<br>
<br>
=====
<div>
<div><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<div>On 14-02-02-Sun 11:12 AM, David
Keenan wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">Jeremy - Of
course! And we should.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>what does t<span></span>he
rest of sudo think?<br>
<div><br>
On Sunday, February 2, 2014,
Jeremy Entwistle <<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:jwentwistle@cryptolab.net"
target="_blank">jwentwistle@cryptolab.net</a>>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote
class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc
solid;padding-left:1ex">I
think that's an amazing
idea. How to do you feel
about the mesh and our
cryptoparty (2/23) being
mentioned? As both are very
practical methods of
promoting secure and
decentralized
communications.<br>
<br>
On 2014-02-01 21:58, David
Keenan wrote:<br>
<blockquote
class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc
solid;padding-left:1ex">
Hey all,<br>
<br>
The Bay Area Public School
has scheduled a
surveillance awareness<br>
event on Friday 2/21 7-9pm
in the common room
entitled Spied Upon:<br>
Surveillance &
Resistance. I was hoping
we (sudo) could co-host
this<br>
event with BAPS, because I
think it'd be really cool
if we start doing<br>
more events together. BAPS
can do most all of the
setup, but it'd be<br>
great if Sudo can do
outreach too, since I
think it'd be in the<br>
interest of both
communities.<br>
<br>
What do you think?<br>
<br>
There's a twofold focus on
informants and
technological
surveillance.<br>
Here's the Sudo Room
calendar EVENT LINK [1].
Details are below -<br>
<br>
SPIED UPON: SURVEILLANCE
AND RESISTANCE<br>
Join us Friday February
21st 7-9 pm at the Bay
Area Public School [2]<br>
& Sudo Room<br>
2141 Broadway (enter on
22nd), Oakland - three
blocks from 19th St.<br>
Bart!<br>
<br>
Between the ever-present
fear of informants to the
profusion of<br>
metadata collection and
the construction of the
Domain Awareness<br>
Center [3] (DAC) in
Oakland, the growing
problem of surveillance
has<br>
made it into the
mainstream dialog, but the
people and communities<br>
most affected are
sometimes being left out
of the conversation.<br>
<br>
Join us for an evening of
ideas, discussion and
questions about<br>
solidarity in the face of
this intimidation. How do
we support one<br>
another and our movements
when being targeted by
police, surveillance<br>
and informants? What are
the legal, community and
political responses<br>
that can best keep the
larger "us" safe and allow
our movements to<br>
flourish?<br>
<br>
- SPEAKERS -<br>
JASON KIRKPATRICK,
filmmaker and activist,
will show clips of and<br>
discuss his upcoming film,
_SPIED UPON_ [4].
Interviewing activists<br>
across the world and
telling his own personal
story, Jason will take<br>
us on a journey into one
of Europe's biggest
political surveillance<br>
scandals, documenting
growing movements of
resistance to surveillance<br>
along the way.<br>
<br>
ZAHRA BILLOO, Civil rights
attorney and Executive
Director at the Bay<br>
Area COUNCIL ON
AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS
[5] (CAIR), speaks on the<br>
use of informants in a
post-9/11 context, their
impact, the<br>
community's resistance and
lessons learned.<br>
<br>
RICHARD BROWN, Black
Panther and member of the
SF8 [6], will share his<br>
history with undercover
police and surveillance,
imparting the 'long<br>
view' of solidarity
learned from a lifetime of
activism.<br>
<br>
- PANEL DISCUSSION -<br>
Q & A with the
speakers will follow in
conversation with<br>
representatives from:<br>
BAY AREA ANTI-REPRESSION
COMMITTEE [7]<br>
BAY AREA COALITION TO STOP
POLITICAL REPRESSION [8]
(at AROC)<br>
LEGAL WORKERS OF THE
NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD [9]
(NLG)<br>
OAKLAND PRIVACY WORKING
GROUP [10] (OPWG /
anti-DAC)<br>
<br>
All donations gratefully
received will go to the
Bay Area<br>
Anti-Repression Committee
and the Legal Workers at
the Bay Area<br>
chapter of the NLG - two
groups long supporting the
Bay Area radical<br>
community with legal and
educational assistance.
Thank you!<br>
<br>
Links:<br>
------<br>
[1] <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://sudoroom.org/ai1ec_event/spied-upon-bay-area-premiere-baps/"
target="_blank">https://sudoroom.org/ai1ec_event/spied-upon-bay-area-premiere-baps/</a><br>
[2] <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://thepublicschool.org/node/36455"
target="_blank">http://thepublicschool.org/node/36455</a><br>
[3] <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://oaklandwiki.org/Domain_Awareness_Center"
target="_blank">http://oaklandwiki.org/Domain_Awareness_Center</a><br>
[4] <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://spiedupon.com/"
target="_blank">http://spiedupon.com/</a><br>
[5] <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.cair.com/"
target="_blank">http://www.cair.com/</a><br>
[6] <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.freethesf8.org/who.html"
target="_blank">http://www.freethesf8.org/who.html</a><br>
[7] <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://oaklandantirepression.wordpress.com/"
target="_blank">https://oaklandantirepression.wordpress.com/</a><br>
[8]<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://araborganizing.org/campaigns-our-work/coalition-to-stop-political-repression/"
target="_blank">http://araborganizing.org/campaigns-our-work/coalition-to-stop-political-repression/</a><br>
[9] <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nlgsf.org/national-lawyers-guild-mission-statement"
target="_blank">http://www.nlgsf.org/national-lawyers-guild-mission-statement</a><br>
[10] <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://oaklandprivacy.wordpress.com/"
target="_blank">https://oaklandprivacy.wordpress.com/</a><br>
<br>
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</blockquote>
<br>
-- <br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://twitter.com/jwentwistle"
target="_blank">https://twitter.com/jwentwistle</a><br>
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