Critical Mass 26 June - Iran Solidarity

Please join in attending your local city Critical Mass bicycle ride this Friday and wear green in solidarity with the people of Iran. Flags, bands, masks, horns, trumpets, bells...

Critical Mass Listings

10 Youtube videos on Iran

Poem for the Rooftops

Calling all citizen journalists - socialisation via technology

I have been so impressed with the incredible rise of citizen journalism, through the use of social networking sites. I have joined Twitter in order to follow the progress of the people's revolt against the coup in Iran. I will also use it as a platform to post news and updates on visual/performance/live art, politics, activism, participation and agitation. I wont though be following anyone who posts personal anecdotes, I am mostly interested in media distribution and topics of citizenship.

http://twitter.com/CAMUSLIVEART


While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.

How twitter can make history "The moment our historical generation is living through, is the largest increase in expressive capability in human history."

Parades & Processions: Here comes everybody

Exhibition at Parasol Unit, Foundation for contemporary Arts "The exhibition features works by twelve UK-based and international artists who take their inspiration from the traditional meanings of ‘parades’ and ‘processions’, creating works that epitomise the social and political context of our time."

Okay epitomise is a strong word for this exhibition. Though I post to give credit to concepts of interrelationships and community my comment in the exhibition book read: 'Less irony, more participation'.... somehow notions of community get put aside for a cult of artistic statement, but alas the finer of the arts....

Iran's Green Revolution (updated)

The situation in Iran is intense and I just received this incredible first-hand report of the protests happening right now. This is information that is not posted in most western media outlets and is incredibly informative. The report was sent via an Iranian friend, you can check out his facebook for more links and information.

They have requested we please share this, so I am blogging it and ask you to forward it as well:

" 'So this is what a coup d’etat looks like,' said a friend today. You go to bed and wake up the next day and see the police everywhere. The “military” government announces its unprecedented victory, calling it a sign of “divine approval”. And any sign of unrest is immediately dealt with through a show of the police state’s force. Is this it? Being in the middle of such events
makes it difficult to try and compare it with what one knows from history, or, the image of that history that one has in one’s mind."

Click to continue reading Part 1

Update:

"Why does it feel so natural to say just that: ALLAHU AKBAR? If I wanted to, I could have stuck with the more politically charged “Death to Dictatorship”. But there are very clear reasons why I, and I am not alone (of course, this is not to doubt that other people may have stronger religious sentiments than I do), choose to participate in this, with absolute confidence in saying it: ALLAHU AKBAR. It is an invocation. On the one hand, it is strategic for all of us to use this system‟s own language against it: by saying ALLAHU AKBAR, we show that we are not against the Islamic Republic. We show not only a unity with one another, but also with the same system that has stolen our vote, spat on our integrity, the same system that sends its police and plain-clothes militia men to the streets to beat and stab people in the name of “God”."

Click to continue reading Part II (updated 14 June 2009)

World Public Opinion

This is a website housing statistical studies made by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. An interesting gauge on public opinion on sociopolitical matters....

worldpublicopinion.org

Global Collectivist Society

This article by Kevin Kelly is a take on open source virtual networking and what it mean to us as a globalised society in redefining socialism as a digital tool instead of a political one:

"When masses of people who own the means of production work toward a common goal and share their products in common, when they contribute labor without wages and enjoy the fruits free of charge, it's not unreasonable to call that socialism."
Keep Reading