Swedish police have asked the military for assistance as peace activists from across Europe head to Swedish Lapland to demonstrate against a NATO aerial exercise.

NATO’s Response Force (NRF) will be in the northern reaches of Sweden on June 8th to begin an eight day exercise involving over 50 fighter jets and 1,000 soldiers from ten countries.

Sweden is not a member of NATO and peace activists from Germany, Finland and the UK are expected to descend on the country for demonstrations to protest against the exercise which has been given the name “Loyal Arrow.”

… While Swedish forces are not participating in Loyal Arrow the country is a designated host country and is providing logistical support including air space, airports and areas to bomb.

To get involved in the protest actions, or find out more, visit Ofog’s info page: Royal Error

The British Government is holding an Armed Forces Day on 27 June.

Peace News is calling on peace groups and individual activists around
the country to celebrate Unarmed Forces Day instead!

Unarmed Forces Day is a celebration of the power of nonviolence, and a
protest against an attempt by the British government to shore up
support for its unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by rallying the
British public around the armed forces.

Men work together. Thousands Stream into the industrial plants and offices—they come in cars, and subways, in buses, in trains—they work together, according to a rhythm measured by the experts, with methods worked out by experts, not too fast, not too slow, but together; each a part of the whole…. Produce, consume, enjoy together, in step, without asking questions. That is the rhythm of their lives.

What kind of men, then, does our society need? What is the “social character” suited to twentieth-century Capitalism?

It needs men who co-operate smoothly in large groups; want to consume more and more, and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated.

It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority, or principle, or conscience—yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected, to fit into the social machine without friction. How can man be guided without force, led without leaders, be prompted without any aim—except the one to be on the move, to function, to go ahead…?

The concept of “maturity” and “mental health” in this view, corresponds to the desirable attitude of a worker or employee in industry or business. To give one example for this adjustment concept, I take a definition by Dr. Strecker, on emotional maturity. “I define maturity,” he says, “as the ability to stick to a job, the capacity to give more on any job than is asked for, reliability, persistence to carry out a plan regardless of the difficulties, the ability to work with other people under organization and authority, the ability to make decisions, a will to life, flexibility, independence, and tolerance.” It is quite clear that what Strecker here describes as maturity are the virtues of a good worker, employee or soldier in the big social organisations of our time; they are qualities which are usually mentioned in advertisements for a junior executive. To him and many others who think like him, maturity is the same as adjustment to our society, without ever raising the question whether this adjustment is to a healthy or a pathological way of conducting one’s life.

Despite the cold outside, it was a nice, interesting event. I spent a few minutes presenting the Five Filters project in the open forum, but best of all, I got to catch up with the lovely Susanna again.

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while. During work on the Five Filters project we came across a few online services which turned web feeds (RSS/Atom) into pretty PDF documents formatted in the style of a magazine or newspaper. The software we were working on was supposed to take corporate newspaper content as input and give users related news from alternative, non-corporate sources as output. These services did a good job formatting that output into something we could print. The main problem with them is that they’re not free (no access to code, we can’t run it ourselves and modify it). So this is my attempt at creating a free alternative. If you like how it works, you can download the code and host it yourself, you can also modify it to work however you like.

The script that ties the whole thing together is licensed under the AGPL. The main reason for this is to prevent companies downloading and making changes, running services based on the code but not letting users do the same - a worrying trend in so many web applications running on the cloud.

Any feedback appreciated.

Interactivos? is a research and production platform for the creative and educational uses of technology. Its main goal is to expand on the use of electronic and software tools for artists, designers and educators, thus contributing to the development of local communities of cultural producers in this field.

Interactivos? events are a hybrid between a production workshop, a seminar and an showcase. A space for reflection, research, and collaborative work is created, in which proposals selected by an international open call are developed, completed and displayed. The process is open to the public from beginning to end.

I was there to work on my proposal to look at the propaganda model of the media through an interactive installation. I didn’t have a clear idea of what the end result would be, but I knew I wanted to use real newspaper clippings as input. My initial ideas were to pull in related content from non-corporate news sources (such as ZNet, Indymedia UK, Medialens, Schnews) and to try and identify the newspaper that carried the original story. Identifying newspapers turned out to be difficult because the OCR output wasn’t very accurate - it picked out most of the text correctly, but to identify the paper we needed close to 100% accuracy. So early on in the workshop we decided to focus on finding related stories from non-corporate sources. I won’t go on about the rest of the process as you can find all that on the wiki. The installation is available to use at Medialab-Prado until 20 March 2009, so if you’re in Madrid, feel free to drop in. (We now have a version running as a Java applet available online at fivefilters.org.)

I also got the opportunity to see the excellent Patio Maravillas social centre. It’s a squatted building that’s open to the public and put to very good use (there are regular meetings and events including film and documentary screenings, bicycle repair, workshops on technical subjects, art, photography, and lots, lots more).

The centre also has an active hacklab (Hamlab) with hacktivists working on various projects and organising Hackademies - courses where you can learn technical skills using free software. One of their projects is Hack4Gaza - a website where you can access news on Gaza from both alternative and mainstream Spanish sources. The site is still being developed but already lets you view photos, video and news stories about Gaza. It also has pages letting you vote for the worst TV channel reporting on Gaza and information on how to take action. Tha Hamlab hactivists are very friendly and I’m glad we got the chance to discuss our projects together.

All in all, I had a great time in Spain. I’m very grateful to the wonderful collaborators who worked with me on the project: Fernanda Reis, Alon Chitayat, Raul Dominguez, Jorge Dueñas Lerín, Helena Piñán. Thanks also to Pix (Steven Pickles) for his help setting up OCROpus on a stubborn machine; all the staff at Medialab-Prado; Critical Art Ensemble; Hamlab; Lalya Gaye for telling me about the event; and the lovely Suzi for brainstorming ideas with me.

Here in Gothenburg, Sweden, there will be a demonstration starting in Götaplatsen at 2pm and marching to Gustav Adolf Torg at 2.30pm.

UK Indymedia is reporting on university occupations happening around the UK, the latest one in Oxford…

Following the occupations at SOAS, LSE, King’s College, Essex, Sussex and Birmingham universities, over 80 Oxford University students have occupied the historic Bodleian building to demand that the university releases a statement condemning the attack on Gaza and cancel the lecture series at Balliol College inaugurated by Israeli war criminal Shimon Peres.

You can see photos and read more here: Oxford Occupation in Solidarity with Gaza!

Update (2009-03-17): occupations.org.uk has lots of information on UK university occupations that have taken place.

A few other pieces on Gaza worth reading…

An Eye for an Eyelash: The Gaza Massacre by Medialens

The Facts About Hamas and the War on Gaza by Norman Finkelstein