Police beating up G20 protesters – and bystanders

Posted on | April 9, 2009 | No Comments

What is it with some law enforcement officers and their absurd way of keeping peace during protests against financial summits such as the recent G20-meeting? It seems that the people protesting against hypercapitalism are considered as outlaws by just being present. How many examples of police brutality against such rallies have we seen in recent years? Some police offers (I am not generalizing here) tend to go nuts when dealing with people who are critical towards the current economical structure of the Western world – why is that? And why is it not dealt with on the very top level within their own ranks?
I am not in favor of any violent uprising, but when a large mass of protesters stand peacefully holding their arms in the air, chanting, “This is not a riot.” – how can any country live with having some of their cops start beating those people up?

Cory Doctorow, one of my heroes, wrote about this on the Boing Boing blog.

See the footage of the police attack here.

As if that wasn’t enough, an innocent bystander coming home from work also died of a heart attack during the G20 protests. As amateur footage now reveals, it turns out that the heart attack was caused by a preceding unprovoked and very violent assault by a police officer.
From Doctorow on the Boing Boing blog: “A London cop charged Ian Tomlinson, an innocent bystander at the G20 demonstrations who was on his way home from work, who was walking peacefully with his hands in his pockets, clubbing him and throwing him to the ground without provocation. Shortly after, he suffered a fatal heart attack.”

Watch the video of the assault below, and read a detailed account of the event, covered by UK newspaper The Guardian. It is truly shocking.

Fictitious Capital

Posted on | April 3, 2009 | No Comments

Was Marx right? Richard Metzger asks in this thought-inspiring post at the Boing Boing blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Watching the news with the G20 protesters in London carrying banners reading “Capitalism Failed Us” and “Marx was Right!” I felt quite good about the day’s events. In 1983 and 1984, I was living in London and going to protests like this myself and it brought back long-forgotten memories. When I was younger, I considered myself a staunch socialist, but as I got older that way of identifying myself fell away. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of the Soviet Union, it seemed like Marxism was something that the world had moved on from and so did I. During the dotcom era, I was as greedy a capitalist as the next guy. Five years ago, slimming my library down for a cross country move, I unemotionally tossed all of my “Karl Marx and related” books. Boy do I regret doing this now!

One recent evening, I was writing something and I thought I’d coined a nifty new phrase to describe a major factor in the economic meltdown: “fictitious capital.” I decided to Google the term and it’s a good thing that I didn’t pat myself on the back too hard because it’s something that Karl Marx came up with about 150 years before me.”

Read the whole post here.

aXXo – superstar of the new millennium

Posted on | April 2, 2009 | No Comments

As the world is constantly changing, so are it’s celebrities. We’ve been used to people worshipping reality-tv stars and tracking every single move they make. Now, in this web 2.0 world, however, a new sort of superstar is rising, namely the anonymous, faceless web supergeeks – such as ‘aXXo’, one of the worlds most renowned torrent uploaders, famous for providing free, copyrighted, quality-ripped content to a wide range of torrent trackers. Although aXXo does not deserve comparison with forementioned empty-headed pop-culture icons, the admiration and attention his fans (of which I am one) give him, does – and this is what has lead to a series of posts and articles in the blogosphere these last couple of days from people noticing that the usually very active torrent idol has not uploaded a single torrent in over three weeks! Where is aXXo? Has he been caught? Is he alright? We need your content, aXXo! Come back!

Read this TorrentFreak article on the issue.

Save the Union Square Pavillion

Posted on | April 1, 2009 | No Comments

Since moving back to Denmark from New York City in February 2008, I’ve followed the public debate of the Union Square Pavillion closely. In short, the great landmark is facing privatization by being sold to private entrepreneurs that will turn it from being a public accessible building into becoming a up-scaled restaurant.

If you have ever been to the Union Square (just north of the East Village, on 14th Street and 3rd Ave) you will know that the square is one of the most magnificent public spaces not only in New York City, but in the world. Historically, such a large part of New York’s and the United States’ record have taken place there. From the famed speeches by Emma Goldman to acting as emergency and evacuation station during the 9/11 aftermath – and every day all year round, the open square with the beautiful trees and impressive surrounding buildings acts as an epicentrum and venue for street artists, students, bohemians, seniors, skaters, kids and tourists. I think no one can argue that in Union Square you can cut a slice of true New York atmosphere every single minute and every single day of the year.

This space is now being compromised for sheer profits. What an incredible shame.

What can we do? The magnificent people behind the Union Square Not For Sale group sent out this mail today:

Fellow Fans of Union Square,

Yes, its true, Supreme Court Judge Jane Solomon dismissed the lawsuit that had been protecting the glorious Pavilion building by preventing the city and the Union Square Partnership from turning it into a private restaurant.  It is also true that we are dismayed by this decision, even pissed off.

But this fight is far from over.  The politicians and fat cats that are pushing to take away our public space and put it into private hands are vulnerable to public pressure, and we need to make them feel it.  Councilmember Rosie Mendez needs to answer the question of why she signed off on this destructive, short-sighted plan in the first place.  Danny Meyer needs to be called out publicly for hatching the scheme to take away play space for kids and performance space for artists.  The Pavilion was designed and built with taxpayer money for public use.  Privatizing it so that only paying customers can use it is just plain wrong.

In the coming weeks and months we will be strategizing on how to prevent this travesty from occurring.  Your attention and presence will be absolutely necessary.  In the meantime, tell Rosie and Danny how you feel.  Their contact info is below

Stay Tuned,
Union Square Not For Sale!
unionsquarenotforsale.org

Contact info…

Rosie Mendez 212-677-1077
Rosie.Mendez@council.nyc.gov

Danny Meyer at Union Square Hospitality Group
212-228-3585
info@ushgnyc.com
dannymeyer@ushgnyc.com

Let’s help them out by sending Rosie and Danny an email.

Here is the one I just sent them:

Dear Mrs. Mendez & Mr. Meyer,

as a Danish citizen that used to live in New York City, I earlier today learned that you have played a major part in facilitating the privatization of the pavillion at Union Square, and that the pavillion will turned into a restaurant. An act that will minimize the public space at one of the world’s most famous, most pleasant and most unique squares. When I lived in New York as an exchange student, I spent many hours of leisure time in the sun with my new American friends and enjoying the laid-back unique social togetherness that exist in this particular space in the greatest city in the world.

I feel that it would be an incredible shame if the public space of Union Square is compromised by the privatization of the pavillion. Once that move is made, it will likely never return to the benefit of the common good.

I urge you to re-evaluate your stance in this matter. Thank you.

Kind regards,
Christian Villum
Denmark

www.autofunk.dk
www.autofunk.dk/freeform101_web

Dropped my coffee

Posted on | April 1, 2009 | No Comments

What a scare, today’s first April fool. Dropped my coffee before realizing the scam. Damn you Swedes! 🙂

Warner Bros. Acquires The Pirate Bay

Microsoft discontinues Encarta

Posted on | March 31, 2009 | No Comments

Another symbol of the old proprietary world falls: Microsoft Encarta will be discontinued on October 31.
No wonder – who wants to pay for an encyclopedia, when everything is on Wikipedia for free? With updates every minute – and written by the people of the world, not only biased first-world historians.

Read Microsoft’s announcement here.

Remixes of British anti-terror posters

Posted on | March 27, 2009 | No Comments

Time for another funny post based on dead-serious background: The brilliant Boing Boing blog has thrown a remix challenge, where it’s readers were asked to “mock the ridiculous new ‘anti-terrorism’ posters the London police have put up that tell you to spy on your neighbors.”

Here are the best 25 of what people came up with.

Reverend Billy for mayor of New York!

Posted on | March 22, 2009 | No Comments

Reverend Billy, of the advocacy group Church Of Life After Shopping (previously Church of Stop Shopping), has announced running for the position of mayer of New York City for the Green Party of the United States! While his chances are slimmer than zero, I can think of no New Yorker I would rather see sit in that chair – or at least have influence on the running of the city. With this campaign, I sincerely hope that Rev Billy, whom I’ve written several posts about in the past, will be able to gain even more exposure and hopefully influence many more New Yorkers into rethinking consumerism and gentrification – and into putting their money in local shops  rather than the big-box chain stores.

Bonnichsen receives another idealist prize

Posted on | March 13, 2009 | No Comments

Former head of Danish law enforcement intelligence agency PET, Hans Jørgen Bonnichsen, has received another idealist prize – this time given by the Livia Foundation, a proliferation of Center For Konfliktløsning (Danish for the Conflict Resolution Center). Read the piece in Danish newspaper Politiken.

For those unfamiliar with Bonnichsen, he is known to be an advocate of humane and dialogue-based approaches towards conflict resolution in national security – something that he also practised while being head of the Danish intelligence agency, which has since his retirement turned 180 degrees and is now known to be absolutely ruthless and is even practising breaches on the Geneva Convention Of Human Rights (by advocating the so-called Tuneserloven (“Tunese Law”) that allows containment of non-sentenced individuals – much like the US’s ‘illegal combatant’-status given to detainees of Guantanamo).

Bonnichsen is seen by many as a diplomat of the type the West really needs in order to resolve the problem of terrorism – contrary to the current fight-fire-with-fire type hawks dominant especially in the enforcement agencies in the rogue countries who are part of the coalition of the willing (Denmark included, unfortunatey). Too bad he is retired (Read more about Bonnichsen at Danish Wikipedia).

Bonnichsen also reasently received Danish major newspaper Politikens Idealist Of The Year prize.

“Click-fraud” civil disobedience campaign

Posted on | March 13, 2009 | No Comments

I love civil disobedience campaigns like this one (found at Slashdot): “In response to Google’s recently announced plans to expand the tracking of users, the international anti-advertising magazine Adbusters proposes that we collectively embark on a civil disobedience campaign of intentional, automated ‘click fraud’ in order to undermine Google’s advertising program in order to force Google to adopt a pro-privacy corporate policy. They have released a GreaseMonkey script that automatically clicks on all AdSense ads.”