The FBI, Pentagon, and CIA are “interviewing” Assange. Kwiatkowski writes:

Interviewing is the wrong word.  I’d like to say doctoring him, because it would be more accurate, except that word implies some care for a positive outcome.  Chemical Gina has her hands in this one, and we are being told that Assange is being “treated” with 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, known as BZ. 

BZ is a powerful drug that produces hallucinations. “Soldiers on BZ could remember only fragments of the experience afterward. As the drug wore off, and the subjects had trouble discerning what was real, many experienced anxiety, aggression, even terror,” the New Yorker reported. “…The drug’s effect lasted for days. At its peak, volunteers were totally cut off in their own minds, jolting from one fragmented existence to the next. They saw visions: Lilliputian baseball players competing on a tabletop diamond; animals or people or objects that materialized and vanished.”

Assange is being chemically lobotomized prior to being extradited to the United States to stand trial on bogus computer hacking charges that—and the corporate media won’t tell you this—passed the statute of limitations three years ago (see 18 U.S. Code § 371. Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States).

Forget about the statute of limitations. The US government has long violated both domestic and international law. It is a rogue nation led by an ignorant clown who opened the back door and ushered in neocon psychopaths notorious for killing millions. In normal times, these criminals would be in the dock at The Hague standing trial for crimes against humanity. But we don’t live in normal times.  

The message is clear: if you expose the massive criminal enterprise at the heart of the US government, you will be renditioned, chemically tortured (a favorite of Chemical Gina, now CIA director), chewed up and spit out until you’re a babbling mental case like David Shayler (who believes he is the Second Coming of Christ). Shayler, a former MI5 agent, made the mistake of exposing the UK’s support of terror operations in Libya. Shayler spent three weeks at Belmarsh after a conviction for breaching the Official Secrets Act. He emerged from prison broken and delusional. 

I seriously doubt most Americans care about the chemical torture of Julian Assange. On social media, liberals and so-called progressives, along with their “conservative” counterparts, celebrate Assange’s arrest, confinement, and torture. Members of Congress have called for his execution, while one media talking head (teleprompter script reader) demanded the CIA send a hit team to London and assassinate Assange. 

Americans are similar to the propagandized and brainwashed citizens of Nazi Germany. Most went along with Hitler right up until the end when their cities lay in smoldering ruins and their once proud country was carved up, half of it given over to the communists. They set up the Stasi to deal with East Germans who were not following the totalitarian program.

________________________________________

source: https://kurtnimmo.blog/

The post Julian Assange Tortured with Psychotropic Drug appeared first on Void Network.

Οι διαδηλωτές ζήτησαν ανάκληση των αδειών έρευνας και εξόρυξης, κοινωνική διαχείριση της ενέργειας ενάντια στον μύθο της ανάπτυξης, ενώ εξέφρασαν την  κάθετη αντίθεσή τους στο κυβερνητικό σχέδιο που υπερβαίνει το όποιο «εθνικό» πλαίσιο και εξυπηρετεί την κερδοφορία των πετρελαϊκών ομίλων.

Μερικά από τα πολλά πανό και πλακάτ έγραφαν: «Οι υδρογονάνθρακες είναι καταστροφή, όχι επένδυση», «Η Κρήτη, το Ιόνιο, η Ήπειρος, εκπέμπουν SOS» και «Ναι στη ζωή, όχι στις εξορύξεις», «Η ζωή στον πλανήτη πάνω από το κέρδος».

Στο κάλεσμα των πρωτοβουλιών από Αθήνα και Ιωάννινα,  Άρτα και το Βόλο, Πρέβεζα, Κεφαλονιά και Ιθάκη ανταποκρίθηκαν συλλογικότητες από τον αριστερό και αντιεξουσιαστικό χώρο, οι «Εναλλακτική δράση για ποιότητα ζωής», «Save agrafa» και «Greepeace».

«Εκτός από τις περιοχές στις οποίες έχουν αρχίσει οι ερευνητικές διεργασίες, το 2019 σχεδιάζεται να γίνει το ίδιο και σε άλλες στις οποίες έχουν γίνει παραχωρήσεις» δήλωσε στην «Εφ.Συν.» ο Tάσος Κεφαλάς από την Πρωτοβουλία Αθήνας ενάντια στις εξορύξεις υδρογονανθράκων αναφερόμενος στις εργασίες, που αναμένεται να ξεκινήσουν σε Αιτωλοακαρνανία, βορειοδυτική Πελοπόννησο, Κατάκολο, Πατραϊκό, Ιόνιο και θαλάσσιες περιοχές νότια και νοτιοδυτικά της Κρήτης.

ΔΙΑΒΑΣΤΕ ΕΠΙΣΗΣ το κάλεσμα της ΠΡΩΤΟΒΟΥΛΙΑΣ ΕΝΑΝΤΙΑ ΣΤΙΣ ΕΞΟΥΡΥΞΕΙΣ: https://voidnetwork.gr/2019/02/19/poreia-enantia-stis-eksorukseis-udrogonanthrakon/

The post «Ναι στη ζωή, όχι στις εξορύξεις»- Μεγάλη διαδήλωση στην Αθήνα ενάντια στην καταστροφή της Φύσης- Πεμ.21/2/2019 appeared first on Void Network.

The recent events throughout the Middle East certainly demonstrate the usefulness of social media. Protesters are able to take their case beyond their borders, and tell their story in their own words without having it subject to governmental or media spin. This is something new and very useful that social media offers: it gives activists communicative powers on a level that has never been possible before. But the importance of tools like Facebook and Twitter has been overstated in many ways. And, more importantly, the nature of this overstated importance tells us a great deal about the actual practice of successful political activism.

Social media, by providing a loose network of links that can quickly spread information from friends, to friends of friends, and eventually to total strangers, does not supplant or replace many of the most essential elements of any successful social movement. More than weak links between activists, successful social movements require a well-organized structure and comradery based on face-to-face contact and shared experience. Social media is simply a new tool that can spread ideas. The basic methods of successful political activism remain unchanged.

In a 2010 article for The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell makes a similar point. Using the lunch counter sit-ins of the 1960s civil rights movement as his main example, Gladwell argues that the secret to that campaign’s success came from the interpersonal connections between the participants, as well as the carefully structured organizations, such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), that helped direct the action. Without strong personal ties or a system for disciplined action, the systemic racism of the south would almost certainly have prevailed. However interesting his essay is, Gladwell actually overstates the unimportance of social media in social activism, and it is worthwhile to take a moment to distance ourselves from certain elements of his argument. Somewhere between the increasingly popular notion that social media has changed everything and Gladwell’s belief that it changes nothing, lies the truth of the matter.

Social media can spread information faster and more efficiently than anything that has previously existed, and is thus a very useful tool for rapidly spreading the news of an injustice or quickly mobilizing large groups of people. What social media does not change, however, is the best way to utilize these mobilized individuals. The relatively weak personal ties established on the Internet simply cannot provide the sense of solidarity with one’s peers required to face the violence and repression that is almost inevitably created when an established power structure is challenged or provoked. In the south in the 60s, activists were kidnapped and killed, churches were burnt, and the local police looked the other way. Logging in to Facebook or Tweeting about it cannot provide the wherewithal to withstand similar dangers. Word can be spread, but the required bravery comes from elsewhere.

The Fused Group

So, if social media does not change the mechanisms of social change, but merely acts as a new tool for activists, it seems fitting to ask, how does social change come about? How does it get started, and how does it get realized? There are at least two distinct mechanisms of social change. First, there are parliamentary methods that attempt to work within the confines of a given system to get laws and bills passed that will ameliorate particular problems. Secondly, there are those moments when people take to the streets and demand immediate, radical change through protests and direct action. Granted, there are many examples of overlap between these two types of social change, but for the purposes of this short essay, we will avoid unpacking this bit of complexity, and will, in fact, focus entirely on the second type. After all, it is these moments of massed protest and direct action that have led to so much discussion of the role of social media in political activism.

So, what is the mechanism behind this latter type of social change? Jean-Paul Sartre, in his Critique of Dialectical Reason, introduces the notion of the “fused group.” When a situation compels a number of people into a public place in the knowledge that many others will be gathered in response to the same situation, a fused group has formed. The fused group’s exact objectives may remain indeterminate, but a common danger has provoked a gathering. For example, when rampant unemployment and social unrest gripped Russia in 1917, people took to the streets and formed a fused group. They knew they were unhappy, but they did not have a commonly-held, specific program in mind for addressing their unhappiness. And they almost certainly were not clamoring for the formation of the Soviet Union.

But whatever a fused group is clamoring for, its aims cannot remain inchoate indefinitely. The energy of the initial gathering will inevitably dissipate, and the fused group will either give up and go home, or ossify. However disheartening this ossification may sound, it is actually necessary for the realization of a fused group’s goals. Yelling in the streets will just wear out one’s voice. Demands for something concrete, and plans for making these demands a reality will eventually need to be made. In Russia, people were out of work and out of food. The most well-organized political group was able to take control of the situation, and attempted, or at least claimed, to fulfill the common clamor for jobs and food. The Bolsheviks were thus able to take a demand for basic rights and turn it into one of the most brutal and ruthless regimes in human history. The lesson here is twofold. First, popular discontent needs organization and direction if it is to accomplish anything. A fused group will not remain fused for long. Second, the nature and philosophical outlook of political organizations matters immensely.

Systems Have Consequences

But wait, have we digressed? What does this have to do with Facebook or Twitter? Sartre never had a Facebook account, and Lenin never used Twitter. How are they relevant to the Internet age? Don’t worry. We are still on topic. As was argued above, social media does not fundamentally change the nature of social change. Rather, these new tools are just that: new tools. Social media can spread the news of an injustice or the meeting point for a potential fused group with incredible efficiency, all while sidestepping governments and mainstream news outlets. But even with these new tools, fused groups are still prone to the same dissipation and ossification. In the event of ossification, when a fused group transforms from an agitated gathering into a social movement, then the traditional methods for conducting a successful social campaign remain intact. A strong organization with strong personal ties remains the key to success.

In his New Yorker article, Gladwell makes similar points about the need for well-maintained organizational structures and strong personal bonds, but brings this point to a strange and erroneous conclusion. He claims, with SNCC as his main example, that a hierarchical structure is essential to a successful political organization. Apparently, according to Gladwell, it is impossible to have an effective organization and strong interpersonal bonds – his criteria, as well as mine, for a successful social movement – without a top-down pyramid scheme of an organization, complete with overlings, underlings, kings, and serfs. Gladwell’s assertion here is a bit absurd. It almost seems as if he is reaching for something counterintuitive and attention getting, as if once he makes the-currently-out-of-the-ordinary-but-hopefully-soon-to-be-widely-accepted claim that social media doesn’t really change everything about how we do every single thing, that he needs to then do himself one better and proclaim that things get done better when a few people assume control and boss everyone else around.

One need only recall the organizations that sprang up throughout Catalonian Spain during the Spanish Civil War in order to determine that hierarchy is not essential to efficiency. A system for assigning tasks and determining goals is necessary, but that system does not need a top-down chain of command. In fact, there are historical instances, such as the Bolsheviks’ rise to power, that suggest that an increase in more egalitarian, collectively run political organizations could work in humanity’s favor. The Bolsheviks represented the strongest alternative organization at a moment when a fused group had rendered the existing power structure obsolete. An authoritarian political sect with a distrust of open dialogue thus moved into a position of power, which really didn’t work out all that well for the peasantry, or really anyone outside the Politburo. But one should not expect a hierarchical organization to institute egalitarianism. Gladwell’s example of SNCC is actually much more the exception than the rule. SNCC used a centralized command structure, but its aim was the equal rights of an oppressed and marginalized group. To say that SNCC’s structure was essential to the realization of this aim is erroneous. To further impute that such a structure is essential to the realization of all other political goals is downright dangerous.

We still need to meet

The role of social media in political activism has been overstated. The excitement of the new has brought on an outbreak of hyperbole. But we need not join Malcolm Gladwell in declaring social media an irrelevant development in political activism. Twitter, Facebook, and whatever we will be using in five years are all useful tools for spreading information in our own words and gathering activists. These are new and exciting technological developments. But the steps required for a social movement to succeed remain unchanged. Activists need to meet face-to-face in order to build the solidarity and organizational strength required to confront entrenched power. The weak ties forged on the Internet have their role, but they do not supply the solidarity required to succeed.

And just as importantly, the nature of our political organizations matters immensely. In the recent events in Egypt, for instance, the existing power structure was not only left with no choice but to relinquish power, but it may have had no real power left to relinquish. In such instances, when people are yelling in the streets while disempowered politicians pack up their desks, there exists a need for someone to provide direction. The nature of this direction depends entirely on the types of organizations that already exist. Authoritarian organizations cannot be expected to become egalitarian when handed power. It is therefore important that our political organizations mirror the society we would like to see. And organizations like this can only be built the old-fashioned way – by meeting, talking, and building solidarity on a person-to-person basis. Sure, the meetings can be announced on Facebook, but we still need to meet.

Adam Michael Krause

source: http://new-compass.net

The post You Can’t Just Tweet Oppression Away- by Adam Michael Krause appeared first on Void Network.

When Melissa Drew, an adult content creator and model, logged in to Tumblr Monday afternoon, she was greeted by a deluge of unfamiliar posts and notifications. Her usual feed, perfectly curated after nearly a decade of tinkering, was awash with panicked posts from fellow adult models, memes about the policy change, and goodbye posts. Drew’s personal blog, which she had relied on as a public-facing way to tease the content available to her Patreon subscribers, was lit up with notifications from Tumblr informing her that most of her posts violated the new rules.

When Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion in 2013, critics warned that premium advertisers wouldn’t exactly be clamoring to run ads in a sea of porn. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer disagreed, arguing that targeting tools would keep content that isn’t “brand-safe” (read: porn) away from ads. In an interview shortly after the acquisition, Karp doubled down on the platform’s openness to porn. “When you have … any number of very talented photographers posting tasteful photography,” said Karp, “I don’t want to have to go in there to draw the line between this photo and the behind the scenes photo of Lady Gaga and like, her nip.”

But the nip line has indeed been drawn, and it’s a doozy. Though Tumblr’s Monday announcement had technically only prohibited depictions of sex acts, “human genitalia,” and “female-presenting nipples,” a much wider swath of Drew’s feed was quickly caught up in the ban. “I had everything from nude, censored nudity, and lingerie photos flagged,” she told WIRED. “I still haven’t dealt with removing all of them yet—I just sort of heavy sighed and closed the tab.”

Safe Space

In interviews and messages with WIRED, more than 30 sex workers, porn consumers, and creators on Tumblr lamented the loss of what they described as a unique, safe space for curated sexually themed GIFs, photos, and videos. Many users who had used the microblogging site as their primary source for porn were at a loss when asked where they would go after Tumblr’s ban on “adult content” goes into effect on December 17. For the thousands of sex workers who used the site to share their own explicit content in a controlled, relatively contained manner—not to mention the countless others who used that content to fill the hyper-curated feeds of some of the site’s most popular porn blogs—the crackdown’s consequences are even more difficult to unpack. And researchers say the ban could shrink Tumblr’s user base, which already appears in turmoil over the decision.

The move comes less than two weeks after Apple pulled Tumblr from the iOS App Store after child pornography was found on the site. Though the offending illegal content was removed quickly, according to Tumblr, the app has yet to return to the App Store (it was never removed from the Google Play Store). In its most recent blog post, Tumblr stated that its longstanding no-tolerance policy against child pornography should not be conflated with the move to ban adult content. The latter, Tumblr argued, was inspired by a drive to create “a better Tumblr.” But these sorts of decisions aren’t made in a vacuum.

In March, Congress passed the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Online Sex Trafficking Act (or FOSTA-SESTA for short). Lawmakers hailed the law as a means to give prosecutors more tools to combat combat sex trafficking. But the statute also tinkered with a bedrock provision of internet law, opening the door for platforms to be held criminally and civilly liable for the actions of their users. The law’s passage immediately led to the closure of several sex-work-related online venues, such as Craigslist’s personals section, numerous subreddits, and Patreon’s support for adult creators.

In interviews, more than a dozen sex workers told WIRED that the support and openness of adult-content creators on Tumblr had attracted them to the site. They described the site as notably more empowering and friendly than more traditional venues for explicit content, like PornHub, and relished Tumblr’s freedom and opportunity for virality. Many used the site to promote their paid content on other sites, interact with fellow sex workers, and screen clients.

Liara Roux, a sex worker and online political organizer, told WIRED via email that the options for finding adult content online are diminishing, and consolidating with big companies “and away from community generated content and independent creator friendly platforms.” This, Roux says, is dangerous: “As mainstream sites slowly remove sexual content, which often is how queer and other marginalized communities are able to connect, it will become difficult for both sex workers and these communities to have an online space to exist.”

App Store Sway

The ubiquity of the App Store gives Apple considerable influence over online content. Historically, Apple has taken a sex-negative approach to policing, with former CEO Steve Jobs once famously stating that “folks who want porn can buy an Android phone,” but the company’s influence extends beyond the iOS sphere. In the days after it was delisted from the App Store, Tumblr ramped up its moderation efforts, erroneously deleting numerous SFW and NSFW Tumblr accounts unrelated to child exploitation and abuse, and pushed out an update for its Android app that forced all users to have “safe mode” toggled on, restricting access to explicit content. Then came the porn ban.

Apple’s App Store review guidelines prohibit apps “with user-generated content or services that end up being used primarily for pornographic content.” The key word here is “primarily,” as all popular social media platforms are rife with porn, but Apple mostly seems to care about how easily accessible it is. Case in point: Apple pulled a number of Reddit apps from the App Store in 2016, citing issues with an NSFW content toggle, which, when activated, could be used to view pornographic content. The iOS Reddit apps currently available on the App Store have built-in features that prohibit porn subreddits from appearing in search, and make it extremely difficult for users to find NSFW content in-app without labor-intensive workarounds.

Tumblr likely could have instituted a similar content-censorship-based workaround, but it didn’t. Instead, it has gone with what appears to be an all-out-ban of “photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content—including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts.” Photos of nipples that appear to belong to a female-identifying person—which may be a difficult category to define, judging by the attempts of other platforms, like Instagram, to do the same—may be permitted so long as they are shared as part of a non-sexual context like a post showcasing breastfeeding, pre- or post-birth, post-mastectomy, or gender confirmation surgery. Written erotic content, along with nudity in art—“such as sculptures and illustrations,” says Tumblr—are alright, too. To draw the distinctions, the company says it will use a mix of machine learning and human moderation, and that all appeals for posts erroneously flagged as adult will be reviewed by “real, live human eye(s).”

Tumblr users are already finding problems with the flagging system. Classical paintings of Jesus Christ were flagged, as were photos and GIFs of fully clothed people, patents for footwear, line drawings of landscape scenes, discussions about LGBTQ+ issues and more. “In its early stages, Tumblr is using a poor system for flagging content,” says Abigail Oakley, a researcher at Arizona State University with a focus on Tumblr communities. “Having a certain number of flags on your blog (regardless of their validity) also removes the blog from Google searches, which is another form of censorship.”

Casey Fiesler, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado who specializes in fandom culture on platforms like Tumblr, thinks Tumblr’s crackdown will likely lead to a mass exodus of users. Fielser also worries that the LGBTQ people and sexual assault survivors who use Tumblr as a space for support could inadvertently be affected by the ban. “Even for fandom participants who don’t create adult content themselves, this kind of policy feels like an attack on the community,” she said.

Consumers and creators of porn on Tumblr aren’t entirely sure where they’ll go next. While many sex workers mentioned Reddit and Twitter as two popular alternatives, they lamented the platforms’ lack of community and sex-positive culture. Similarly, more than a dozen people who said they had used Tumblr as their primary source of porn for years praised the site’s social, judgment-free culture, which many cited as helping them understand their sexual orientation. “The technology is out there to allow users to continue browsing a variety of porn from independent producers, but it will require a shift back in how people think of the internet,” said Roux, the sex worker and political organizer. “I’m hoping these kinds of controversies encourage content creators to take as much control over their distribution channels as possible and inspires tech companies to solve the issue of bringing content to users without hosting the content themselves.”

text: S MARTINEA 12.04.18

source: Wired

The post TUMBLR’S PORN BAN REVEALS WHO CONTROLS WHAT WE SEE ONLINE appeared first on Void Network.

Άμα δε, βαρέσουμε κάνα προσκλητήριο, η μισή γενιά μας είναι κάπου μετανάστες.

Έρχονται λοιπόν τώρα και μας λένε να κάνουμε όλοι μαζί Εθνική Αντίσταση! «Αντεπίθεση-Εθνική Αντίσταση» φωνάζανε επευφημούμενα τα τάγματα των φονιάδων στη Θεσσαλονίκη, οι απόγονοι των ταγματασφαλιτών και των βασανιστών της Χούντας. Για ποιο πράγμα λοιπόν εθνική συμφιλίωση και εθνική αντίσταση;

Για να αποφασίζει ο λαός; Για να βρούμε καμιά δουλειά; Μήπως για τη γη και το ύδωρ που πήρανε οι πολυεθνικές; Ουχί! Αυτά είναι καλώς καμωμένα. «Ναι», ψήφισε ο Φράγκος.

Για τρίχες κατσαρές λοιπόν «εθνική αντίσταση». Ναι, για για τρίχες κατσαρές, για ένα θέμα που είναι ήδη λυμένο, για ένα ψέμα, που αρκεί να κοιτάξεις τον χάρτη και να ξεστραβωθείς να γκουγκλάρεις λίγο, να καταλάβεις ότι είναι η μεγαλύτερη απάτη μετά τα δισεκατομμύρια του Σώρρα.

Εθνική Αντίσταση λοιπόν, τα ξεχνάμε όλα, πάμε από την αρχή, για τρίχες κατσαρές, αλαμπρατσέτα με τους φονιάδες της Χρυσής Αυγής και τους μπράβους που στέλνουνε στις απεργίες, αγκαλιά με τη μαφία, τους ναρκέμπορους της μεγαλύτερης εμπορικής ναυτιλίας στον κόσμο, που δεν πληρώνει φόρους, και το σκοταδιστικό παπαδαριό, που το πληρώνουμε εμείς.

Ε λοιπόν, να λέμε τα πράγματα καθαρά, όποιος σιγοντάρει αυτή την απάτη, για πέντε ψηφουλάκια, τον Γρηγορόπουλο και τον Φύσσα φτύνει, κι όλους εμάς, που αυτό είμαστε, ο Γρηγορόπουλος κι ο Φύσσας κι η ζωή που μας φάγατε.

Και θα μας βρείτε μπροστά σας. Όλοι. Και τα φασισταριά και οι σανοπώλες, δεξιοί κι «αριστεροί» και κεντρώοι και διαγώνιοι. Δεν θα περάσει ο φασισμός.

The post ΔΕΝ ΘΑ ΠΕΡΑΣΕΙ Ο ΦΑΣΙΣΜΟΣ! – του Σωτήρη Σιαμανδούρα appeared first on Void Network.

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ΠΡΟΒΟΛΗ ΝΤΟΚΥΜΑΝΤΕΡ 

στο Ελεύθερο Αυτοδιαχειριζόμενο Θέατρο ΕΜΠΡΟΣ

Ρ.Παλαμήδη 2 Ψυρρή

ΤΡΙΤΗ 28/11/2017 ώρα 20.00

Μετά την προβολή θα ακολουθήσει συζήτηση με την αμερικανική συλλογικότητα UNICORN RIOT μέσω skype 

The post Προβολή ντοκυμαντέρ για την Εξέγερση των Ινδιάνων στo Standing Rock ΤΡ.28/11 BLACK SNAKE KILLAZ (USA)- documentary show at EMBROS- athens appeared first on Void Network.

The court awarded $15 million damages to the scientific publisher on the basis of 100 articles published by Elsevier that had been made available without permission on Sci-Hub and a similar site called LibGen. At the time of writing, Sci-Hub claims to hold 62 million scientific research papers – probably a majority of all those ever published – most of which are unauthorized copies. According to a report in the scientific journal Science last year, it is Elsevier which is most affected by Sci-Hub’s activities:

“Over the 6 months leading up to March [2016], Sci-Hub served up 28 million documents. More than 2.6 million download requests came from Iran, 3.4 million from India, and 4.4 million from China. The papers cover every scientific topic, from obscure physics experiments published decades ago to the latest breakthroughs in biotechnology. The publisher with the most requested Sci-Hub articles? It is Elsevier by a long shot – Sci-Hub provided half-a-million downloads of Elsevier papers in one recent week.”

Those figures help to explain why Elsevier has been pursuing Sci-Hub doggedly for some years. Back in December 2015, the same New York judge who has just awarded the $15 million to Elsevier issued a preliminary injunction against the site’s operator. Access to the original domain – sci-hub.org – was suspended, but it carried on using a different domain. Its servers, meanwhile, remain beyond the reach of US law, since they are located in Russia. In the age of VPNs, attempts to block the site are similarly pointless.

This might seem to be an ordinary cat-and-mouse story of a pirate site being pursued by affected copyright holders, and evading various legal moves to shut it down. But there’s an important difference here.

Most of the papers published by Elsevier and the other academic publishing houses and found on Sci-Hub were written by scientists and academics whose research grants were paid for by the public. Once written those papers were submitted to a relevant journal, where an editor or editorial board chose which ones should be considered for publication. To that end, the papers were passed to referees who scrutinized them as part of the peer review system, whereby fellow academics read the text, and judge whether it deserves to be published as is, or needs revisions and corrections. Typically, neither editorial boards nor peer reviewers are paid for their work, which is carried out as a kind of academic responsibility accepted by all as part of the job, and done for the greater good of society.

That is, most of the work writing, checking and editing a paper is carried out completely for free. The only costs that academic publishers incur are typically for production, which are limited if publication is purely digital, as is increasingly the case. Given the extremely efficient nature of the academic publishing system, it will come as no surprise to learn that leading companies in the sector – including Elsevier – have consistently achieved profit margins between 30% and 40%, levels almost unheard of in other industries.

Such elevated profit margins have come as the prices paid by academic libraries to subscribe to titles have increased rapidly. While the cost of living increased by 73% between 1986 and 2004, the expenditure by research libraries on subscriptions to academic journals went up by 273% in the same period. The trend has continued since then. This is not because academic libraries have been given larger budgets. On the contrary, they are finding it harder and harder to pay exorbitant subscription costs because of what is known as the “serials crisis”, and are often forced to drop some titles.

It was this inability to access key academic papers that prompted the neuroscience researcher Alexandra Elbakyan, who was born in Kazakhstan, to set up Sci-Hub in 2011. As she explained in a submission to the New York judge hearing the Elsevier case against her:

“When I was a student in Kazakhstan university, I did not have access to any research papers. These papers I needed for my research project. Payment of 32 dollars [the typical cost to access one paper] is just insane when you need to skim or read tens or hundreds of these papers to do research. I obtained these papers by pirating them. Later I found there are lots and lots of researchers (not even students, but university researchers) just like me, especially in developing countries. They created online communities (forums) to solve this problem. I was an active participant in one of such communities in Russia. Here anyone who needs research paper, but cannot pay for it, could place a request and other members who can obtain the paper will send it for free by email. I could obtain any paper by pirating it, so I solved many requests and people always were very grateful for my help. After that, I created sci-hub.org website that simply makes this process automatic and the website immediately became popular.”

Although the judge was unmoved by Elbakyan’s argument, academics around the world have flocked to her site. And not just from countries unable to afford expensive subscriptions. As the 2016 research published in Science revealed, users in the US were then collectively the fifth largest group of downloaders, and some of the most intense Sci-Hub users are to be found at US and European universities.

In part, that’s probably because Sci-Hub is much easier to use than most academic libraries, which require complex sign-on procedures, and restrictive license agreements. But another reason seems to be a common feeling among researchers that all this knowledge should be freely available on a site like Sci-Hub. After all, most of the work was paid for by the public, so it seems wrong that libraries and individuals must pay again to read the papers.

The reason why Elsevier and other academic publishing houses are able to claim copyright for papers written by others is because the authors are persuaded to assign licenses that let publishers sue on their behalf, whether or not the researchers would agree. As one of the most perceptive observers of this world, Richard Poynder, pointed out recently in an important essay, academic publishers have effectively weaponized copyright. They are able to extract extremely high levels of profit, with widespread access to the knowledge they publish relegated to a secondary consideration, and there is little researchers can do about it.

It seems unlikely that Elsevier will ever see any of the $15 million awarded by the court – Sci-Hub is run on a shoestring, and other than a few servers probably has no resources worth seizing. However, that has not stopped the American Chemical Society filing its own suit against Sci-Hub this week, although it is not clear what it hopes to achieve by doing so. While Russia refuses to enforce US courts’ rulings, Elbakyan is probably safe from extradition – although wisely she keeps her physical location a secret.

The fact that a global academic publishing company could be awarded millions in damages against someone trying to help other scientists to spread and access publicly-funded knowledge – exactly as science is supposed to work – is an indication of how broken copyright is today. Until that massive problem is fixed, Sci-Hub will remain what one leading academic called a “necessary, effective civil disobedience“.

About Glyn Moody

Glyn Moody is a freelance journalist who writes and speaks about privacy, surveillance, digital rights, open source, copyright, patents and general policy issues involving digital technology. He started covering the business use of the Internet in 1994, and wrote the first mainstream feature about Linux, which appeared in Wired in August 1997. His book, “Rebel Code,” is the first and only detailed history of the rise of open source, while his subsequent work, “The Digital Code of Life,” explores bioinformatics – the intersection of computing with genomics.

source: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2017/06/global-publishing-giant-wins-15-million-damages-researcher-sharing-publicly-funded-knowledge/

Read also

Open access: All human knowledge is there—so why can’t everybody access it?

We paid for the research with taxes, and Internet sharing is easy. What’s the hold-up?

The post Global publishing giant wins $15 million damages against researcher for sharing publicly-funded knowledge- by Glyn Moody appeared first on Void Network.

“We can imagine a horizontal and happy future for everybody – but we cannot impose this on society. The society has to come towards us, talk about it, prepare the revolution and manifest the revolution, as a society, not as an anarchist political organization. The society will do the revolution, not the anarchists. The anarchists will be there to offer their power and bodies to this struggle, but society has to decide: do we want totalitarianism, or do we want anarchy? There is no other question at this time.”

Tasos Sagris and Void Network were featured in the New York Times article Anarchists Fill Services Void Left by Faltering Greek Governance.

Interview Transcript via Antidote Zine / source: THIS IS HELL Manufacturing Dissent Since 1996

Helping Refugees Means Fighting the State. And Vice-Versa.

Understand that this is not a struggle that we do for the refugees but with the refugees. The refugees can take care of themselves, and they can self-organize. If we help them and if the society around them is beneficial and helpful to them, then they can establish their own horizontal assemblies and create free spaces.

Chuck Mertz: Anarchists are providing services in Greece now that the government is not, due to austerity. Let me repeat that: anarchists are doing what government cannot in Greece, and that is provide the necessary services to survive. So what is happening in Greece and why? And what is the New York Timesgetting so wrong about anarchism and Greece?

Here to tell us, Tasos Sagris is a member of Void Network, a poet, a theater director, and for 28 years has been an anarchist cultural activist. Welcome to This is Hell!, Tasos.

Tasos Sagris: Hello, hello.

CM: How much is there an organized group right now within Greece of non-state actors not only providing the services one would expect from the government, but also the social guidance usually provided by the government? How much are the non-state anarchists defining what Greece is today?

TS: We could say that this is part of a struggle that has been going for decades now in Greece from anarchists. Of course, me personally, I cannot speak as a representative of the anarchist movement, because the anarchist movement is very pluralistic. It includes many, many initiatives and many groups. I can speak only from my own perspective.

Greek society faces austerity measures; the poverty of the people and unemployment is becoming worse and worse. At the same time we have had a great influx of refugees from different places, they were in war and now are in other countries. Of course the natural instinct among anarchists on this phenomenon is to help these people, and to work with them for a better life. We can’t say that we replace the state. The fight against the state continues and intensifies, also through the paradigm of our help and solidarity towards the refugees.

Anarchists defend areas, neighborhoods, and social centers, the occupied buildings of the movement. Anarchists also created refugee squats, occupied the buildings where refugees can have their own assemblies and practice their self-organization with the help and solidarity of anarchists and autonomous people, also far-left people. All these people can fight together for a better future.

CM: One of the amazing things I learned through doing research about Void Network and about anarchism in Greece is that this apparatus for helping out the poor and the people who had been affected by austerity had been put into place, and then when the refugee crisis came about, that same system was ready to help out the refugees who were in a very scary position.

How much are refugees right now dependent upon the anarchists to provide them with the services that they so desperately need?

TS: The state calls it the refugee crisis; it is just an effort of people to escape from the war and try to come into Europe. Anarchists established camps on Lesvos island and on the other islands where the refugees were coming. Anarchists established welcome centers on the islands. Then anarchists created an open camp in the central park of Athens, where the refugees were passing through on their way to the north in Greece, to the border, on their way to Europe. There were anarchists in the welcome centers in the beginning; there were anarchists in Athens; there were anarchists in Thessaloniki, in the north of Greece; and there were anarchists at the borders. So we created a network of people who welcome and help the refugees to continue their way to Europe.

When the borders closed, of course we had to create spaces in the big cities to accommodate and shelter the people, to self-organize. Understand that this is not a project or a struggle that we do for the refugees butwith the refugees. The refugees can take care of themselves, and they can self-organize. If we help them and if the society around them is beneficial and helpful to them, then they can establish their own horizontal assemblies and create free spaces. The only reason that the anarchists are around is to defend the neighborhood from the police and the Nazis, and from other possible problems that they cannot bear alone. It is a mutual help. It is the real practice of mutual aid.

When winter came, they opened the first big squat in Exarcheia, on Notara Street, very near the park. Then other refugees were coming more and more, so the anarchists opened more and more buildings around Exarcheia square. Now there are around ten to fifteen buildings. Some of them are for accommodation areas; there is a building for kids; there is a community health clinic in the square that the refugees are using also. There is also a specific squat for men who are without family or without children, who stay alone in order to avoid problems with the families. So this network of buildings, they help each other and they coordinate their defense and everyday life.

In a society of inequality and exploitation, the organizing methods of anarchists look almost irrational. When you speak for horizontality, this doesn’t sound like “organizing.” The horizontal way of organizing among anarchists seems non-organized. But anarchist tools of organizing are becoming more and more popular all around the world.

CM: But all the actions that the anarchists have been taking, and the social services that they have been providing within Greece, as you pointed out earlier, date back to 1990. So this is not only in response to the current government, nor is this only in response to austerity, which is something that has just been imposed recently upon Greece.

So does it matter who is in government, or the policies that they implement, when it comes to anarchism and its social movement in Greece?

TS: As we have been saying for many years now: whoever is governing, we will be ungovernable. We continue a long struggle to try to communicate with society and to offer society the analysis that capitalism and the state destroy their lives. This is taking place with two different strategies. One strategy is attacks on the police and attacks on the state and capital: big demonstrations, public visibility, and of course riots and fights with the police. When there is political power that can confront and defend places, neighborhoods and social centers, then you can build social services from an anarchist perspective. As long as you do not have consistency of struggle and consistency of fighting the police in the city, then you cannot defend the public spaces, you cannot defend the squats.

It is crucial to understand that the effort that the comrades make and the risks that the comrades take to fight with the police in the city, in the streets, gives the anarchist movement the power to defend social centers and to defend occupied buildings. In these occupied buildings, we create revolutionary relations. We create horizontal assemblies where we put the revolution into practice. It’s in the streets and against the police, and against the state and against capitalism, that we fight the world as it is now. But inside the occupied spaces, inside the social centers, in the neighborhood assemblies, in the assemblies of the social centers, we have the existential experience of the revolution, of the anarchist society as we dream it to be.

So it is not that we wait for the future, for the anarchist society to appear. We create the conditions of the existential experience of the anarchist society now, and the social centers are open to everybody, to share this existential experience with us. So this is an experiment of the revolutionary anarchist society here and now, and this creates more power for the struggles in the streets and the fight against the police.

CM: When I saw the New York Times article back on May 27, headlined “Anarchists fill services void left by faltering Greek governance,” by Niki Kitsantonis, I was reminded of our conversation a couple years ago with Christos Giovanopoulos, of Solidarity for All, another activist group in Greece that is trying to provide social services for those who need them. Mr. Kitsantonis starts his story on anarchists providing services in light of austerity with this line: “It may seem paradoxical, but Greece’s anarchists are organizing like never before.”

What does it say to you about the author’s understanding of anarchism when he sees anarchism and organizing as paradoxical? And how are anarchism and organizing not necessarily contradictory?

TS: The thing is, in the eighties, the anarchists in Greece were seen by the public as more unorganized than they seem now. In every country, when the movement is young and new, and also small, it seems more antisocial because it seems much more against the common beliefs around anarchism. As the years go by, and more people come into the movement, and there are people who are older in the movement, and people from many different social backgrounds, from different workplaces, from different universities and schools, from different races or from different sides of life, the people also get a deeper analysis and more consistency.

In this way, you succeed in explaining directly to society more and more what the anarchists believe. Now in our times, after the struggle against austerity measures that included the participation of anarchists, and the analysis that anarchists offered to society through pamphlets, through postering—millions and millions of posters all around Greece, in each neighborhood—explaining the reasons for austerity measures, explaining to people why capitalism and the state destroys their lives…now society has an easier time understanding there is a lot of organizing behind all of these efforts.

Of course anarchists organize attacks against the state and capitalism. Anarchists use the methodologies of defense in the streets. Molotovs are the main tool of defense against the police, because it keeps the police away. When the police know that inside the big social demonstrations there are anarchists carrying molotovs, they cannot do whatever they want to the people.

When the movement is small and young and it’s just the beginning, the movement isn’t able to overpower the ability of the media to describe you as they want to. So in a way, the New York Times tried to offer this ‘paradoxical’ comment as the way that they want to describe the anarchist movement in America. The anarchist movement in America, though, as a historical movement, offered a lot of inspiration to us over the decades, from the First of May in Chicago up to today—the American movement is very inspirational to Greece. Even, of course, the struggle of the Black Panthers. The social services programs of the Black Panthers is something very influential to the anarchist movement in Greece. There were many, many activists listening to this paradigm and taking inspiration from it.

The New York Times is just trying to play with the popular idea about anarchists, that they are disorganized. But we have to understand that the anarchists are very, very organized. Still, in a pyramidical society, in a society of inequality and exploitation, the organizing methods of anarchists look almost irrational. In a society based on inequality, in an economy based on inequality, when you speak for horizontality, this doesn’t sound like “organizing.” When you have chiefs and bosses and prime ministers and all these hierarchies in society, the horizontal way of organizing among anarchists seems non-organized. But anarchists have their own tools of organizing: horizontality and solidarity.

We think very, very seriously that these tools, these methodologies, are becoming more and more popular all around the world, and they are becoming more and more logical all around the world. Because people are still really terrified by what governments do to their lives. So for sure they come to the point that they have to self-organize, and the only way to self-organize is the anarchist way to self-organize, the horizontal way.

CM: Here’s Kitsantonis writing in the New York Times again. He says, “Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, anarchists have joined leftist groups in occupying portions of Greek universities to promote their thinking and lifestyle. Many of those occupied spaces exist today, and some are used as bases by anarchists to fashion the crude firebombs hurled at police during street protests.”

How much are anarchists involved in firebomb-making? Because it seems to be something that the New York Times wants to make certain we know: that a big part of anarchist strategy in Greece is violence. How integral is violence to the anarchist cause within Greece?

TS: Of course I have to explain that because of the history of struggles in Greece, we don’t have this debate about violence and nonviolence. Greek society in the last hundred years, we’ve had four or five revolutions, and four or five civil wars. Violence and nonviolence is of course debated; liberals try to impose the conversation in the mainstream media, but in the general society, the violence and nonviolence debate is not very crucial.

To explain more: of course anarchists organize attacks against the state and capitalism. Anarchists are using the methodologies of defense in the streets. Molotovs are the main tool of defense against the police, because it keeps the police away. When the police know that inside the big social demonstrations there are anarchists carrying molotovs, they cannot come closer and do whatever they want to the people. This means that the use of molotovs produces distance between the people and the police. It also offers to all the normal people the opportunity to escape, to run away when the police attacks the people. The police uses unbelievable amounts of very strong tear gas against demonstrations in Greece.

On the other hand, we have to understand that the mainstream media will try to use the violence on the side of anarchists as something that brings them outside the movement or brings them outside of the society. In the same moment, the society that has the experience of all these austerity measures, and also the experience of the lack of power to reply to all these measures, they see they benefited from the attacks of the anarchists against the police, because the police cannot do whatever they want in the city.

Of course, they can use massive militant power and kill us all. Or they can throw tons of teargas and produce asphyxiation in thousands of people, thousands of demonstrators. How much are they going to do this? How many are they going to kill? Somehow, the refusal of the anarchists and of Greek society to appear like pacifists puts the state in its place. It sends a message to the state that you cannot kill us all. We are here to fight.

Society has to come towards us, talk about it, prepare the revolution, and manifest the revolution as a society, not as an anarchist political organization. Society will do the revolution, not anarchists. Anarchists will be there to help and offer their power and offer their bodies for the struggle. But society has to decide: do we want totalitarianism or do we want anarchism?

CM: You’re quoted in the New York Times article saying, “People trust us because we don’t use the people as customers or voters. Every failure of the system proves the idea of the anarchists to be true.”

What’s wrong with voting? Is anarchism anti-voting? And does that make them anti-democracy?

TS: Democracy is a very big conversation. When I was traveling in the United States of America on tour for theWe Are An Image from the Future book, all the anarchists in America were telling me—and normal people from America, from many different parts of America—they were saying, “You Greeks, you gave us democracy, now you have to tell us what to do with it.”

The problem with democracy is that it creates inequality. It forms inequalities and continues to use them. Of course the terminology of democracy is that the people have the power in their hands, can take their lives into their hands. But we cannot speak about representative democracy in this way. Representative democracy today doesn’t even exist, you know. The parliaments are so entrapped by huge economic interests around the world, it is not the parliaments that govern. They become soldiers. Technocrats and people who cannot speak politically get votes and come to parliament to “represent the people.” The people don’t feel represented anymore. Representative democracy is dead. We have to face this problem.

When you realize that representative democracy is dead, there are two ways: fascism or anarchism. There is no other way. Society has to decide. Does it want more democracy, which means dictatorship? The other side of democracy is dictatorship, because democracy is there to defend the rights of economic interests. When people revolt, immediately democracy passes into dictatorship, passes into a state of emergency. This state of emergency, like we see now in Turkey for example, is a dictatorship.

People have to decide: do they want more dictatorship? Do they want totalitarianism? Do they want a technocratic capitalism as a monopoly on the mentality of the people? Or do they want to think about something more than this?

If they want to think about something more than dictatorship, something more than a technocratic totalitarianism, then we are here and waiting for them. Anarchists are open-hearted people creating horizontal assemblies with people to give them the chance to speak for themselves, to organize together, and to find solutions together. We don’t have a political way of manipulating people. We don’t want to manipulate people. That’s why we say we don’t want the people as voters, we don’t want the people as customers. We want people to participate, to share their experiences, to share their hearts, take care of one another, and to build communities that can fight capitalism and fight the state. This is the first step.

We have visions for the future. We can imagine a horizontal and happy future for everybody. But we cannot impose this on society. Society has to come towards us, talk about it, prepare the revolution, and manifest the revolution as a society, not as an anarchist political organization. Society will do the revolution, not anarchists. Anarchists will be there to help and offer their power and offer their bodies for the struggle. But society has to decide: do we want totalitarianism or do we want anarchism?

CM: Tasos, thank you so much for being on This is Hell! this week.

TS: Thank you very much, and I hope all the people in the United States will understand what anarchism is, slowly, investigate what anarchism is, and take part in the struggle, because we need all of them. I hope that slowly the people will get more used to political analysis, because the problems are getting so big that the people will have to understand where they are very soon. Thank you very much.

_____________________________________________

more info about Void Network: https://voidnetwork.gr international site in English and Greek

Void Network facebook page (mainly in Greek): https://www.facebook.com/kenodiktuo/

This is Hell is a weekly longform political interview program broadcast across Chicago on WNUR since 1996.

Every Saturday morning, Chuck Mertz works off his news hangover by talking to the journalists, authors and activists working to make this world a slightly less hellish place. Expect in-depth conversations about the forces that drive politics, and gallows humor about a world with more questions than answers.

This is Hell! broadcasts every Saturday, 9AM-1PM US Central on WNUR 89.3FM Chicago and podcast to the world shortly after.

A special, one-hour version of the show airs Sundays at 11AM Central on WLPN: Lumpen Radio and Sundays at 11AM Pacific on KRFP: Radio Free Moscow.

Want This Is Hell! on your local radio? Get in touch, it’s free. https://thisishell.com/

The post Not a struggle for the refugees, but with the refugees: Anarchism at work in Greece. appeared first on Void Network.

Around 40 anarchists organized in a separate block participated in the demonstration with banners saying “For the people, the main social parasite are the bureaucrats, politicians and the police” (refering to the law against social parasites introduced 2015 that is the major reason for recent protests). To make the demonstration a little bit more fun, a samba band in black joined the block. Inside of the demonstration, anarchists were by far the most organized force that took a lot of attention from the police.

During the whole demonstration, 20-30 civil cops were constantly following the anarchist block and at the end of the demo tried to arrest some people. Anarchists together with other participants of the demo managed to unarrest people and get into public transport – a tactic that was quite successful in the past months, when anarchists managed to get out safely. However it was stopped a couple of minutes later by a bus without license plates and civil cops rushing into the public transport. To get the people out , the pigs used not only brute force beating up people, but also pepper sprayed the trolleybus (an action one of the football hooligans got 10 years in jail for in Belarus just last week). At the end of the confrontation, around 30-35 people were detained including several bystanders, who were trying to help people resist the police. By the end of the day, some activists were beaten up so badly that the cops had to call an ambulance.

Right now, all the arrested are in jail in Minsk police stations awaiting trial tomorrow. Judging from recent developments, most probably they will be punished with 15 days in jail.

Furthermore it has been reported that over 9 people from the demonstration were detained in Mogilev. Their destiny is not clear yet.

Lawyers and food parcels are covered so far by human right activists. But you can always support people with solidarity actions next to local embassies or Lukashenko’s mansions. Apart from that you can share the news, and make the topic more visible around you.

By the moment this article is written, over 150 people were detained and sentenced to fines or some short prison terms for protests in last weeks in Belarus.

Source: https://abcdd.org/en/2017/03/15/dutzende-anarchistinnen-wurden-nach-antiregierungsprotesten-in-minsk-festgenommen/

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