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Government Proposes to Forbid London Urban Explorers From Speaking To Each Other for 10 Years

February 26, 2012 /

Last year four members of the London Consolidation Crew were caught exploring the abandoned platforms of Aldwych tube station four days before the Royal Wedding. They were let off with a warning. But now Transport for London is trying to stop the group from even associating with each other:

Last month TfL applied to issue anti-social behaviour orders which would not only stop them undertaking further expeditions and blogging about urban exploration but also prohibit them from carrying equipment that could be used for exploring after dark. Extraordinarily, it also stipulates they should not be allowed to speak to each other for the duration of the order – 10 years. […]

For Garrett, part of the goal is helping to iron out the security loopholes they exploit. But this “service to the city” has proved a double-edged sword. “What this all comes down to is the Olympics because what we’re doing could make London’s security seem weak, which is embarrassing for TfL,” he says.

“But rather than stifling our free speech to tell Londoners there are security weaknesses all over the system, they should probably call us and bring us on as consultants to help fill these gaps.”

Guardian: Underground ghost station explorers spook the security services

See Also:

Place Hacking, a blog on urban exploration with tons of photographs and videos.

Night Vision

This news story on Ningunismo and the late Agent 222 (aka Roy Khalidbahn aka Rodrigo Sierra)

Thousands Attend Anti-Putin Rally in Moscow

February 26, 2012 /

Thousands of Russians have joined hands to form a ring around Moscow city centre in protest against Vladimir Putin’s expected return as president in an election next week.

Protesters stood in a long line on Sunday, around the 16-km Moscow Garden Ring Road, wearing white ribbons that symbolise the biggest opposition protests since Putin rose to power 12 years ago.

Putin is all but certain to win the presidential election on March 4, but the growing protests have highlighted demands for greater democracy and openness from mainly urban voters fed up with widespread corruption and one-man rule.

Al Jazeera: Thousands attend anti-Putin rally in Moscow

See also: Russian prime minister counting on rural, less-educated voters as popularity slips ahead of March vote

See also:

Surpressed GQ article on Putin now available online and in Russian

Henry Rollins and RE/Search’s V. Vale on Occupy Wall Street

February 26, 2012 /

At the LA Zine Fest, V. Vale tells Henry Rolls about about his idea for an “Occupy Handbook” collecting posters and slogans from the movement worldwide. Rollins talks about his collection of George W. Bush graffiti from around the world.

(via V. Vale on Twitter)

See also:

The official RE/Search site

Richard Metzger and R.U. Sirious on Occupy Wall Street

When Microfinance Goes Wrong: Over 200 Microfinance Related Suicides in India

February 24, 2012 /

The AP reports that it has obtained internal documents that link SKS Microfinance to a rash of over 200 suicides in India. According to a report commissioned by SKS, the company’s employees had verbally and physically harassed borrowers, even going so far as to tell a borrower to commit suicide. One employee watched another borrow drink pesticide in a failed suicide attempt. Another blocked a women with a sick child from going to the hospital, demanding payment first.

10 Years On, Drug Decriminalization Reducing Drug Use in Portugal

February 13, 2012 /

Health experts in Portugal said Friday that Portugal’s decision 10 years ago to decriminalise drug use and treat addicts rather than punishing them is an experiment that has worked.

“There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal,” said Joao Goulao, President of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction, a press conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the law.

The number of addicts considered “problematic” — those who repeatedly use “hard” drugs and intravenous users — had fallen by half since the early 1990s, when the figure was estimated at around 100,000 people, Goulao said.

AFP: Portugal drug law show results ten years on, experts say

(via Cat Vincent)

Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: State of the World 2012 (Highlights Part 1)

January 5, 2012 /

It’s that time of year again. Some good stuff this year. Sterling starts off talking about what he sees as the key drivers of global change:

I’ve tended to emphasize climate change, urbanization and demographics. Those are big and significant changes in the world, but also pretty easy to measure and quantify. That’s like hunting for futurity under the street-lights where it’s nice and bright.

So I often tell people that the mid-century will be about “old people in big cities who are afraid of the sky.” I think that’s a pretty useful, common-sense, plausible assessment. You may not hear it said much, but it’s how things are turning out.

Sterling then runs through the futurism of various localities, including fringe groups, including:

Chemtrails. These guys are pitiable loons, but they’re interesting harbingers of a future when even scientific illiterates are deathly afraid of the sky. It’s interesting that we have cults of people who walk outside and read the sky like a teacup. I’ve got a soft spot for chemtrail people, they’re really just sort of cool, and much more interesting than UFO cultists, who are all basically Christians. Jesus is always the number one Saucer Brother in UFO contactee cults. It’s incredible how little imagination the saucer people have.

Sterling’s bit on the mud machine of Italy could apply almost equally in the U.S:

The “Mud Machine.” This is the Berlusconi media empire, which engages in the unique practice of suppressing dissent by suggesting that everybody in Italy equally useless and crooked, so why even bother. After all, everybody in Italy would have orgies involving underage illegal-alien Moslem prostitutes if they had the chance, so why get all worked up; mind your own business. The Mud Machine works because Italians enjoy being cynical about themselves. Nobody wants to be seen as the chump, so everybody ends up being victimized.

Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: State of the World 2012

For an important angle on urbanization check out this Grist interview with professor of urbanism Witold Rybczynski.

Also, the Grinders are running their own state of the world style conversation. You can submit questions for them on Formspring.

Inside the Secretive World of MegaUpload

December 26, 2011 /

wan chai hong kong

OWNI reports:

Last year, journalists from New Zealand’s Investigate Magazine looked into the identity of the mystery man at the centre of MegaUpload. Kim Schmitz is a former German computer hacker with something of a chequered past. He made a name for himself infiltrating some the best protected computer systems in the world (including NASA’s) and has been accused of getting rich on the back of fraudulent transactions and insider trading. In the early 2000’s, Kim Schmitz discovered Internet streaming. He created MegaUpload Limited in 2005 with a Finnish passport, presenting himself as Kim Tim Jim Vestor. Alternately using his German passport (where he is identified as Kim Schmitz) and his Finnish passport, he set up several companies – Kimpire and Kimvestor – in Asia following the Mega model. At the end of 2010 he relocated to New Zealand. […]

The management of the majority of Mega sites is carried out via the company MegaUpload Limited, located in the Won Chaï business district in Hong Kong. Founded in 2005, the company was likely set up there to capitalise on Hong Kong’s extremely flexible regulations for foreign companies, which include exemption from corporation and income taxes.

OWNI: Inside the Secretive World of MegaUpload

Fascinating stuff. Cyberpunk came true.

Alejandro Jodorowsky Leads Group Psychomagic Ritual for Casualties of the War on Drugs

December 6, 2011 /

Psychomagic

Alejandro Jodorowsky made a rare public appearance in Mexico City to lead a group psychomagic ritual with over 3,000 participants:

It was billed as “the first act of collective psycho-magic in Mexico.”

The call made by the cult mystic Alejandro Jodorowsky said the event would seek to “heal” the country of the cosmic weight of so many dead in the drug war, by gathering for something he called the March of the Skulls.

On Sunday, on a wet and frigid morning in this mountain capital, hundreds of Jodorowsky fans answered the open convocation (video link in Spanish).

They donned black top hats and black shawls, and carried canes and Mexican flags colored in black. They wore calavera face paint or masks to give themselves the look of stylish skeletons gathered in this often-surreal city in the name of Mexico’s tens of thousands of sometimes nameless drug war dead.

LA Times Blog: Cult mystic holds ‘march of skulls’ for Mexico’s drug war dead

Update: You can find a collection of links to more pictures here.

(Thanks Trevor!)

The CIA Using Sentiment Analysis to Gauge Regional Stability

November 8, 2011 /

human geopolitical chess

From The Atlantic:

How stable is China? What are people discussing and thinking in Pakistan? To answer these sorts of question, the U.S. government has turned to a rich source: social media.

The Associated Press reports that the CIA maintains a social-media tracking center operated out of an nondescript building in a Virginia industrial park. The intelligence analysts at the agency’s Open Source Center, who other agents refer to as “vengeful librarians,” are tasked with sifting through millions of tweets, Facebook messages, online chat logs, and other public data on the World Wide Web to glean insights into the collective moods of regions or groups abroad. According to the Associated Press, these librarians are tracking up to five million tweets a day from places like China, Pakistan and Egypt.

The Atlantic: How The CIA Uses Social Media to Track How People Feel

See also: Predicting the future with Twitter.

The Military-Gang Complex

October 28, 2011 /

John Robb at Global Guerillas points to a report from the FBI that finds a a rise both in the number of gang members in the military and in the number of former military members in street gangs.

There are some problems with the report. For example, listing juggalos as gang members is absurd (here’s my prior writing on the subject). But if this trend is real, it could lead to some serious problems. As described by Robb:

The big worry about gangs in the US military is a repeat of what happened in Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed. When the Soviet Union collapsed economically, hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers with fresh combat experience in Afghanistan (and little to offer in terms of skills) were dumped onto the street and into the waiting arms of criminal organizations. This process quickly turned Russian economics into a shooting sport. A place where wealth and firepower became synonymous.

The US, currently running a $1.5 trillion a year deficit with the spectre of HUGE cuts in the military (reduction in force) as an absolute certainty, will dump hundreds of thousands of combat vets onto the street w/o an economy able to absorb them. This is particularly true with the US economy about to start its next contraction w/o even recovering from the last one. Guess what happens next…

Global Guerillas: US Military + Gangs

Giganticon wrote on Twitter: “In many states with strict gun laws being a vet can bypass them, probibly desirable in a gang recruit.”

Nicholas Pell mentions that an episode of Gangland covers this subject as well.

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