DiEM25

Creative Resistance Session on June 3rd 2018 – A Report

June 9, 2018 / Subliminal Guy / Comments Off

Last weekend was a busy one for DiEM25 Germany – and especially for the DSC Berlin. In Frankfurt the german electoral wing of DiEM25 has been founded and four members of the DSC Berlin have been elected to its executive collective. Only one day later the DSC Berlin organised a six-hour session on Creative Resistance.

First of all, Lorenz Nolting from the Peng! Collective showed us how to catapult political activism into the wider public using intelligent and precisely planned actions. Here is an example how Peng! hacked a greenwashing campaign by the oil-corporation Shell.

Lorenz also explained the so-called Streisand effect . This is a phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet. You simply use the PR machine of your political opponent to spread your message.

Before we proceeded with the lecture by Viki Alexander (DiEM25), subliminal_guy showed us a short clip about how video games can be used for progressive and critical interventions. The programming collective Molleindustria has developed a whole bunch of games under the slogan »Political Videogames against the Dictatorship of Entertainment«.

Viki’s main aim was to illustrate the resonance theory by Hartmut Rosa using some film clips. He started with a shocking snippet from Shaun Monson’s film Earthlings, which convinced a lot of people to become vegan. Furthermore he spoke about Plastic Paradise and showed us a campaign video by Bernie Sanders that has been hugely successful and effective as a viral video with approx. 50 million views.

Mr. Trump, listen to these Patriotic Millionaires who want their taxes raised, not cut. pic.twitter.com/heoPX7VWkV

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 4, 2018

According to Viki the question is how to present abstract political issues in a way that they are able to trigger strong physical reactions. This could be the crucial catalyst for many people to become politically active.

The final lecture was conducted by Johannes Hummler (DiEM25), who introduced the Theater of the Oppressed by Augusto Boal. Johannes was accompanied by our special guest the egyptian choreographer, dancer and writer Nora Amin who studied with Augusto Boal.

Johannes began by explaining the theoretical foundations and presented various forms of the »Theater of the Oppressed« (newspaper theater, invisible theater, forum theater and legislative theater).

After that Nora Amin told us about her work in Egypt. There she used the forum theater to confront members of the audience (SpectActors) with their oppressor in a playful way. As an example she gave us a situation in which a child has to face his violent father. Unfortunately the tremendous impact which the “Theater of the Oppressed” can have on conflict management and legislative processes can not be adequately adressed in this short report. If you like to learn more, please ask for the protocol through the channels mentioned below.

After so much input the participants were exhausted and so we continued with the second part – the search for a common working method / basis – after an extended lunch break.

We continued with an discussion about whether or not it limits the creative scope, if one puts artistic actions in the service of a political movement. I personally also see the danger of making superficial or flawed art, if one thinks too one-dimensionally about artistic activism. Nevertheless I believe that Creative Resistance – if you look at it as an extended media strategy – can be used as a clever tool for communicating beyond the activist bubble. We agreed that we would pick a common theme from the DiEM25 range of topics and then find an accompanying artistic strategy.

We will now begin to share ideas and concepts through our mailing list or via Mattermost, and we want to involve other DiEMers (and anyone else who is interested in Creative Resistance) in this process.

Do you have an idea or would you like to attend the next meeting? Do you want to join our mailing list? Write an e-mail to david.schwertgen@de.diem25.org or hit me up on twitter. More information is also available in the Mattermost team of the DSC Berlin in the channel “art not art”.

Find more infos on our communication platform Mattermost here.

The calendar with information on our next meeting can be found here.

Censorship Machines, Upload Filter and Link Tax

June 5, 2018 / Subliminal Guy / Comments Off

Urgent Call for Action:
On 20-21 June, the European Parliament will vote on the Copyright Directive. Members of the parliament are the only ones that can stand in the way of bad copyright legislation.
Tell them you need them to protect your Internet against surveillance and censorship machines!

changecopyright.org
#SaveYourInternet

»The internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.«
Principle 2 of The Mozilla Manifesto

We at DiEM25 see the Internet as the most powerful resource for communication and collaboration resource that humanity has ever had. The possibilities of freedom of expression and civil discourse – despite the many problems such as Fake News – are to be defended. The internet has made it possible for thousands of artists, activists, creators, authors and bloggers to speak out. An important means was and is the internet meme culture.

What if this image was illegal?

Memes are an effective way to communicate and have already affected a whole generation of users to creatively use digital resources. The Art of Collage, Remix and Creative Recycling of texts, sounds, images and ideas is a crucial part of the cultural repertoire of the 20th and 21st century.

»Individuals must have the ability to shape the internet and their own experiences on it.«
Principle 5 of The Mozilla Manifesto

In his project »Everything Is a Remix« the filmmaker Kirby Fergusson has impressively shown how not only film and popular culture, but the whole human history of knowledge is based on copying, recombining and transforming existing ideas.

The end of remix and sharing culture?

On 25 May, the European Council agreed to a negotiating position on the draft copyright directive. This will allow the presidency of the Council to start negotiations with the European Parliament on mass monitoring and filtering of internet uploads and a chaotic new “ancillary copyright” measure that will make it harder to link to and quote news sources.
Diego Naranjo

This reform proposals contains two toxic suggestions:

Upload Filter

Every upload to an internet platform should be automatically filtered to prevent copyright infringement. The responsible systems are already being accused of making ridiculously wrong decisions – the so-called algorithmic over-blocking – and a lack of transparency.

What is algorithmic over-blocking? Christophe Bruno has collected some amusing examples in his project logohallucination :

Ancillary Copyright

The proposed law includes powers for media giants to charge licensing fees for posting links, through a new type of copyright, aka the link tax.

Update: Member State governments have just adopted their position on #copyright, with no significant changes to the #CensorshipMachines and #LinkTax provisions. It is now up to Parliament to stop them and #FixCopyright. https://t.co/1JwNvQn24n pic.twitter.com/KAgqV3YYG1

— Julia Reda (@Senficon) May 25, 2018

What can we do to save our internet?

In our thematic DSC “Democratic Technologies”, we work on the regulations of the future and on preventing or correcting undesirable developments, as described above.

We have a lot of plans and we still need fellow combatants. If you want to join us now or in future meetings, please find more infos in the Mattermost-Team of the DSC Berlin in the designated channel “P7 Tech Sovereignty”, write an e-mail to bogdan.gradinaru82@gmail.com or spiritsparrow@riseup.net or hit me up on twitter.

Find more infos on our communication platform Mattermost here.

The calendar can be found here.

Useful links:

EU Member States agree on monitoring & filtering of internet uploads

EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

News from the pillars: European New Deal

April 19, 2018 / Subliminal Guy / Comments Off

The conversation about DiEM25s strongest pillar – the European New Deal – is ongoing. For members who are not participating in a taskforce or a thematic DSC on that topic it may be hard to grasp its whole extent. Some members of DiEM (e.g. DSC Andalucía, DSC Porto and AP member Ulf Clerwall) have organised a series of Zoom talks about the topic. The effective reach of these talks is rather small and and at times overspecialised for the general membership (not to mention the interested public).

To address this problem I created a prototype interactive video – featuring Adam Newby – explaining some of the basic content of the European New Deal.

(Note: Click on the little “K” to start the interactive video in a new tab)

The website is updated regularly as i’m currently adding ~~subtitles and~~ more videos ~~(e.g. about the Universal Basic Dividend)~~.

If you want to comment on the project or give some feedback, please find more infos in the Mattermost-Team of the DSC Berlin in the designated channel “P1 New Deal” or hit me up on twitter.

Find more infos on our communication platform Mattermost here.

The calendar can be found here.

News from the pillars: Tech Sovereignty

March 24, 2018 / Subliminal Guy / Comments Off

We inside DiEM25 want to change Europe – for the better. We want a democratic, solidly united and visionary Europe. To foster this, we are currently working on a Progressive Agenda for Europe. DiEM25 members from all over Europe are developing common whitepapers for our seven pillars. And each whitepaper will be created with the input of all of DiEM25’s members as well as a range of experts in the field. While some pillars are already pretty advanced (e.g. the European New Deal), others are still under construction.

The 7th pillar of DiEM is Technology or “Tech Sovereignty”. On the occasion of DiEM25s 2nd birthday, on February 10th, Renata Avila and Christoph Schneider established the thematic DSC “Democratic Technologies”. And because we are now talking about this 7th pillar, here is a picture of a rasterized dummy beeing penetrated by Ones and Zeros.

Why a technology pillar, you may ask yourself. What ought to be developed in technology? Aren’t deregulated captalist market just doing fine in producing innovation at the speed of light? Well, while it is indeed true that there is no lack of smartphones, self-driving cars, HD-displays and specialized AI (e.g. Alexa, Siri) etc., there is also the question at what cost this is beeing done. Is technology beeing deployed wisely or is it maybe much worse than it could be, given the current mode of production?

An example: In these days you read and hear a lot about the Cambridge Analytica Con in mainstream media:

“Cambridge Analytica inappropriately accessed Facebook profile information belonging to 50 million people and then used that data to construct a powerful internet-based psychological influence weapon.”

Yasha Levine argues, that the media coverage is entirely misleading:

It “makes it seem to readers unfamiliar with the long history of the struggle for control of the digital sphere as if the main problem is that the bad actors at Cambridge Analytica crossed the transmission wires of Facebook in the Promethean manner of Victor Frankenstein—taking what were normally respectable, scientific data protocols and perverting them to serve the diabolical aim of reanimating the decomposing lump of political flesh known as Donald Trump. (…) What Cambridge Analytica is accused of doing—siphoning people’s data, compiling profiles, and then deploying that information to influence them to vote a certain way—Facebook and Silicon Valley giants like Google do every day, indeed, every minute we’re logged on, on a far greater and more invasive scale.”

Levine concludes with the remark, that

“Today’s internet business ecosystem is built on for-profit surveillance, behavioral profiling, manipulation and influence. That’s the name of the game. It isn’t just Facebook or Cambridge Analytica or even Google. It’s Amazon. It’s eBay. It’s Palantir. It’s Angry Birds. It’s MoviePass. It’s Lockheed Martin. It’s every app you’ve ever downloaded. Every phone you bought. Every program you watched on your on-demand cable TV package.”

Indeed the problem is not, that there was a rogue company that played “unfair” and “stole” data from facebook. Even Silicon Valley-CEOs admit that the problem goes deeper and is embedded in the very structure of today data-mining-driven internet.

We're in the very early stages of a major shift in software. As more of the world goes digital, the responsibility of tech companies grows exponentially. The days of arguing that (and acting like) tech companies are merely platforms and pipes are behind us.

— Aaron Levie (@levie) 20. März 2018

We at DiEM25, especially in the thematic DSC “Democratic Technologies”, are trying to find out, how this problem can be visualized, understood and adressed. Is it the user that has to stand up and fight for his/hers digital rights? There are already highly usable tools and manuals like e.g. Data Detox Kit available and we urge you to use them. But this maybe like the biblical battle between David and Goliath – using the Data-Detox-slingshot against a Valley full of High-End-Specialists.

Meanwhile – as fas as eu-government official are concerned – this picture seems to pop up when it comes to Cybersecurity:

Fortunately regulation attempts aren’t as fruitless as it may seem:

“On May 25 (…) the power balance will shift towards consumers, thanks to a European privacy law that restricts how personal data is collected and handled. The rule, called General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR, focuses on ensuring that users know, understand, and consent to the data collected about them. Under GDPR, pages of fine print won’t suffice. Neither will forcing users to click yes in order to sign up.

Instead, companies must be clear and concise about their collection and use of personal data like full name, home address, location data, IP address, or the identifier that tracks web and app use on smartphones. Companies have to spell out why the data is being collected and whether it will be used to create profiles of people’s actions and habits. Moreover, consumers will gain the right to access data companies store about them, the right to correct inaccurate information, and the right to limit the use of decisions made by algorithms, among others.”
(via Wired)

If this regulation is beeing applied forceful, it should be at least more difficult to maintain a business model based on Datatrade an Advertisement – in Europe.
But also the USA is already more regulated as you may think.

“The FTC has a modicum of authority, and has used it when companies grossly overreach—as it did against Facebook in 2011, when the company failed to keep its promises regarding how it treated their data. In the Cambridge Analytica case, the FTC could fine Facebook up to $40,000 per violation—with 50 million people impacted, the potential fine hypothetically stretches into the trillions.”
(via Wired)

We at DiEM25 believe, that this can only be the starting point. In our thematic DSC “Democratic Technologies” we are developing the internet and technology policies of the future. – A future that contains a decentralised, secure and transparent internet, that doesn’t sell its users to the highest bidder. To have a glimps on what such a legislation would look like, please click here. Anyway here is another picture of some matrix-style rootkit code:

If you want to join us now or in future meetings, please find more infos in the Mattermost-Team of the DSC Berlin in the designated channel “P7 Technology”, write an e-mail to bogdan.gradinaru82@gmail.com or spiritsparrow@riseup.net or hit me up on twitter.

Find more infos on our communication platform Mattermost here.

The calendar can be found here.