The Yes Men assume the complainant was Exxon. “Since parody is protected under US law, Exxon must think that people seeing the site will think Vivoleum’s a real Exxon product, not just a parody,” said Yes Man Mike Bonanno. “Exxon’s policies do already contribute to 150,000 climate-change related deaths each year,” added Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum. “So maybe it really is credible. What a resource!”

After receiving the complaint June 15, Broadview added a “filter” that disabled the Vivoleum.com IP address (64.115.210.59 ), and furthermore prevented email from being sent from the Yes Men’s primary IP address (64.115.210.58). Even after all Exxon logos were removed from both sites and a disclaimer was placed on Vivoleum.com on Tuesday, Broadview would still not remove the filter. (The disclaimer read: “Although Vivoleum is not a real ExxonMobil program, it might as well be.”)

Broadview did restore both IPs on Wednesday, after the Vivoleum.com website was completely disabled and all mention of Exxon was removed from TheYesMen.org .

While this problem is temporarily resolved, the story is far from over. Meanwhile, though, two bigger problems loom, for which the Yes Men are asking your help:

1. The Yes Men’s Server Needs a New Home

Broadview Networks provides internet connectivity to New York’s Thing.net and the websites and servers it hosts, including the Yes Men’s server. Thing.net has been a host for many years to numerous activist and artist websites and servers.

At the end of July, Thing.net will terminate its contract with Broadview and move its operations to Germany, where internet expression currently benefits from a friendlier legal climate than in the US, and where baseless threats by large corporations presumably have less weight with providers. At that time, the Yes Men and two other organizations with servers “co-located” at Thing.net will need a new home for those servers. Please write to us if you can offer such help or know of someone who can.

The Yes Men Need a Sysadmin

The Yes Men are desperately in need of a sysadmin. The position is unpaid at the moment, but it shouldn’t take much time for someone who knows Debian Linux very well. It involves monitoring the server, keeping it up-to-date, making sure email is working correctly, etc. The person could also maintain the Yes Men’s website (which will be updated next week), if she or he wants.

Thing.net also needs a sysadmin: someone living in New York who knows Linux well. The Thing.net position involves some money and the rewards of working for an organization that has consistently and at great personal risk supported groups like the Yes Men over the years.

Mademoiselle Montreil, let me introduce a friend. There was a bed, a small water basin on a dresser, and an indoor toilet down the hall. There was a naked man with blood coming from his head. It was gin that sank him into stupor every night, and gin that revived him every morning. There was a passive, lovely look on her face. Dort haben es die Liebespaare besser.

A most poor man, made tame to fortune's blows, Who, by the art of known and feeling sorrows, Am pregnant to good pity. There was a blue line connecting the warrior to his former body.

Vladimir visited the tombstone. There was a peculiar softness, as of rainwater, in both the colour and the texture of the glass.

A British government Ministry of Defence report outlines a nightmare future society in which the population are forced to accept brain chips, immigration and urbanization ravages communities, class warfare ensues, and biological and neutron weapons are used to combat overpopulation.

The MoD's Development, Concepts & Doctrine Center drew up the document to crystallize the "future strategic context" likely to face Britain's armed forces, according to a report in the London Guardian today.

Since every deliberate action of government and industry is working to realize this future, we should look at this as a strategy plan rather than a warning of things to come.

The report hypothesizes what the world will be like in under 30 years and is an "analysis of the key risks and shocks" the planet is likely to face. Its predictions include:

• The development of neutron weapons that destroy living organs but not buildings and "make a weapon of choice for extreme ethnic cleansing in an increasingly populated world." Such weapons would be dispersed by means of unmanned vehicles, leading to "application of lethal force without human intervention, raising consequential legal and ethical issues."
• Within 30 years implanted brain chips as standard for all citizens in developed nations.
• A mass revolt on behalf of the middle classes of the developed world in opposition to rampant immigration, an urban under-class and the deterioration of social order.
• The revival of Marxism as a replacement for religion in an increasingly morally relativist age.
• Unchecked globalization that effectively ends the nation state and leads to wars based on territorial belief systems rather than country against country.
• A sharp decline in the population of white Europeans but an 81% increase in the population of sub-Saharan Africa and that of Middle Eastern countries by 132%.
• Endemic unemployment, instability and threat to the social order as a result of population increase.
• The emergence of a "terrorist coalition," an alliance of belief systems that oppose the state, from environmentalists to "ultra-nationalists" and remnants of religious groups.

The clear implication from this report is that any political or religious group that expresses opposition to the atheistic and dictatorial agenda of the state will be collectively demonized as terrorists and targeted for elimination and ethnic cleansing.

This is the very new world order that the establishment have sought to create by allowing rampant immigration, using the progress of technology to enslave us, launching endless war and shaping the course of history to construct a prison planet.

The elite are deliberately steering world events and engaging in psychological warfare to achieve this self-fulfilling apocalypse. They are hell-bent on manufacturing an end-times scenario similar to that described in Revelations, and whether you believe in the Bible or not, our future is being decided by maniacal psychopaths sworn to destroy humanity.

Every time we study government white papers and strategy documents, whether it be RAND, PNAC or any other major think tank, we come across an obsession with thinning the population by means of horrific acts of ethnic cleansing. In this instance, the plan isn't even veiled under the umbrella of terrorism, it clearly implies that states will deploy weapons of mass destruction to wipe out huge swathes of the population, and particularly those who express opposition to government.

"…advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool."

Who wrote these words in their own strategy document? The Nazis? The regime of Pol Pot?

No, it was Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, William Kristol, Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of the Neo-Con collaborators that formed the Project for the New American Century—the ideological framework of the Bush administration.

Armed Forces Journal, a mouthpiece for the military-industrial complex, last year carried a strategy plan for completely redrawing the borders of the Middle East written by retired Major Ralph Peters.

The document cites peak oil, an economic crash in 2008 and global warming as reasons for a chaotic convergence that will require harsh action on behalf of government.

"Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history," writes Peters, "Ethnic cleansing works."

"There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing."

Ethnic cleansing is also popular amongst the establishment scientific community who advocate mass scale eugenics programs to "cull" humanity down to manageable levels. One such example is Dr. Erik Pianka, who made headlines last year when he gave a speech to the Texas Academy of Science in which he advocated the need to exterminate 90% of the population through the airborne ebola virus. The vast majority of his audience, students, scientists and professors alike, stood and cheered when Pianka labeled humanity a bacteria that had to be eliminated.

Similar sentiments are echoed by people like Prince Philip, who in the foreword to his 1986 book If I Were an Animal, wrote, "In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation."

"The simplest answer is that the world's population should be about two billion, and we've got about six billion now," media mogul Ted Turner told E Magazine, an environmentalist publication. [Note that Turner has five children, so he's done his part to increase the population]

Turner went even further in an interview with Audubon Magazine. "A total world population of 250–300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal."

In a 1991 interview with the UNESCO Courier, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the famous Emmy award winning film producer who went on to be a kingpin of the environmental movement said, "It's terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day." [Note that Cousteau had four children, so his plan to eliminate 350,000 people a day should start with them]

The global elite and the military-industrial complex have already sworn to inflict genocide to ethnically cleanse world population down to levels that are more easy to control and enslave. This is the ultimate end game of the New World Order—giving birth to the apocalypse and manufacturing hell on earth.

No longer can this be dismissed as a paranoid conspiracy theory when the very architects of this horror are openly discussing it on a regular basis in their own planning documents.

source: "Government Report: Bio-Weapons Could Be Used To Combat Overpopulation: MoD dossier outlines nightmare vision of new world order, ethnic cleansing, class warfare, brain chips by 2035." Paul Joseph Watson. Prison Planet. 9 April 2007. http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2007/090407bioweapons.htm

→ more info

Copenhagen, Denmark—Anarchists from across northern Europe flocked to join protesters in the Danish capital on Saturday after two nights of riots sparked by the eviction of squatters from an abandoned building that had been a center for young leftists and punk rockers.

More than 500 people, including scores of foreigners, have been arrested since the riots started Thursday. Authorities said more than 200 were arrested early Saturday following overnight clashes in which demonstrators pelted police with cobblestones and set fire to cars.

A school was also vandalized and several buildings damaged by fire overnight Saturday. One protester was reportedly wounded in the violence, while 25 were injured the night before in what police have called Denmark's worst riots in a decade.

Police said activists from Sweden, Norway and Germany had joined hundreds of Danish youth in the protests. Sympathy protests were held in Germany, Norway, Sweden and Finland.

Critics said the demonstrations were misguided because they target a Scandinavian welfare state that ranks among the world's most egalitarian countries.

"The spoiled kids in the Youth House woke up to reality in Danish society where you have a job and pay rent," Anders Fredrik Mihle of the governing Liberal Party's youth wing said, referring to the building where the squatters had been evicted.

Like its neighbors, Denmark has a generous welfare system supported by high taxes. Education is free and health services are heavily subsidized. However, leftists have criticized the center-right government for eroding the system with proposed reforms including raising the retirement age and trimming student grants.

The protesters see their fight to keep the "Youth House," a four-story building used by young squatters since the 1980s, as symbolic of a wider struggle against a capitalist establishment.

"This is a display of anger and rage after more than seven years of struggle to keep what is ours," said Jan, a 22-year-old activist who has been coming to the building for the last 10 years. He declined to give his last name, saying that was the norm among people frequenting the building.

The riots were sparked when an anti-terror squad on Thursday evicted the squatters from the red brick building with graffiti-covered walls. Built in 1897, it was a community theater for the labor movement and a culture and conference center; Vladimir Lenin was among its visitors. In recent years, it has hosted concerts with performers like Australian Nick Cave and Icelandic singer Björk.

As news of the riots spread, sympathizers around Europe rallied support for the protesters. The Danes warned like-minded foreigners Saturday that the borders were tightening after two nights of clashes had turned the normally quiet streets of Copenhagen into a battle zone.

"Solidarity among people has no borders, just like the Spanish civil war or the youth rebellion in the late 1960s. People recognize themselves in such causes," said Rene Karpantschof, a sociology lecturer at the University of Copenhagen and former squatter.

The eviction had been planned since last year, when courts ordered the squatters to hand the building over to a Christian congregation that bought it six years ago. The squatters said the city had no right to sell the building, and they demanded another building for free as a replacement.

Police spokesman Flemming Steen Munch said officers searched more than 10 homes in Copenhagen in an effort to track down activists. Meanwhile, vandals covered Copenhagen’s famed Little Mermaid statue with pink paint, but Munch could not say whether the vandalism was linked to the riots.

Copenhagen residents had mixed feelings about the demonstrations.

"The idea of an alternative society is good," said Berit Larsen, 57, as she watched a peaceful demonstration against the eviction on Saturday afternoon. "We need to have room for everyone but the violence we have seen is not what I consider an alternative way for society."

Associated Press Writer Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, Sweden, contributed to this report.

via ABC No Rio

The artists featured in Open City create their work outside the confines of the gallery. Respecting the original context for this work, Open City considers the culture of its creation through the artifacts of its makers. Among the means and materials presented will be: digital projection, spray paint, urban pranks, robotics and custom machinery, site-specific sculpture, homemade markers and ink recipes, the internet, hacking and re-appropriation of existing urban systems.

Open City hopes to inspire its audience to make their own tools for public action. A series of screenings, presentations and workshops exploring tool building, tactics and approaches to communication by any means necessary within the urban context, will turn Eyebeam into an active and participatory environment for the duration of the show.

Invited participants include: Aram Bartholl [Berlin], BORF [Washington D.C.], Graffiti Research Lab [NYC], Institute for Applied Autonomy [USA], Improv Everywhere [NYC], Mark Jenkins [Washington D.C.], KATSU [NYC], KR [NYC], Object Orange [Detroit], Leon Reid [NYC], Matthias Wermke [Berlin], Krzysztof Wodiczko [PL/NYC]

1 March–7 April 7 2007
Tues–Sat, 12–6pm
opening reception 1 March 2007 . 6–8 pm
540 W 21st St
→ more info

Domestic spying takes a major setback in court. Judge Haight just released his long awaited decision in the motion to enjoin police photosurveillance of demonstrations.

The videotaping or photographing by the NYPD of any individual or individuals engaging in political activity must be conducted in accordance with the Modified Handschu Guidelines, and in a manner consistent with this Opinion.

There are many questions to be answered, but it seems like the police have to be in uniform while spying, and should pre-register before the spying takes place. Come to the panel discussion featuring lawyers, Martin Stolar, Gideon Oliver, and Dave Rankin to learn more.

1 March 2007
8 pm
Time's Up! Space, 49 East Houston
→ more info
→ New York Times article on Barbara Ellen Handschu [23 Feb 2007]

As [Bernie] Krause tells these tales of peril, his voice resonates with a certain fearlessness developed during his worldwide, nearly 40-year quest to record the earth's rapidly disappearing "biophony"—a term he coined to describe that portion of the soundscape contributed by nonhuman creatures. Biophony, Krause has theorized, is unique to each place; nowhere in nature sounds exactly like anywhere else. This idea has led him toward a controversial way of thinking that would broaden the scope of today's evolutionary biology. Many animals, he argues, have evolved to squeeze their vocalizations into available niches of the soundscape in order to be heard by others of their kind. Evolution isn't just about the competition for space or food but also for bandwidth. If a species cannot find a sonic niche of its own, it will not survive.

Krause's "niche hypothesis" may seem more plausible after you've listened to his recordings of dense tropical jungles, polyphonous soundscapes packed with whistles and whinnies, whoops, hoots and howls, deep bass throbbings and shrieking buzzes. Krause employs supersensitive recording equipment and computer programs to create spectrograms of these group vocalizations, visual printouts indicating the stratified sounds according to time and frequency—not unlike a symphonic score. Using his trained eye, Krause is then able to locate the sonic signature of each animal. "What you're listening to is an animal orchestra, very finely tuned and constructed and conducted—there's no accident here," Krause says. "They all coalesce in a way that's not planned but cooperative or competitive, one creature in relation to another."

[…]

[…] Edward O. Wilson, the famed Harvard biologist, admits to an initial skepticism about Krause's work but says he ultimately finds legitimacy in it. "I assumed it was all a New Age thing, of little interest to scientists," Wilson wrote in a recent email message. "I was wrong. … His originality, research and above all basic knowledge of the sound environments in nature are impressive."

[…]

Which is why, in addition to trying to find an archival home for his sound library—"so people can understand what we're losing"—Krause keeps trying to capture pure natural sound. Last spring he traveled to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to record the soundscape of springtime there. "If we don’t take the opportunity to form a baseline understanding" of natural soundscapes, "we'll lose part of our own humanity," Krause says. "These sounds taught us to dance, and they're part of our language. I think we owe them something."

• → "The Noises of Nature". Jeff Hull. New York Times Magazine. 18 February 2007
• → New York Society for Acoustic Ecology
• → American Society for Acoustic Ecology

a friend of ours is doing research for a Grassroots Media Conference workshop she's teaching on managing one's information web 2.0 style.

she's looking for additional ideas on resources, such as social bookmarking services, feeds, specialized search engines, etc.. she'd also like to include a sampling of information profiles—like, "Kate is a producer for a show on a community radio station. She uses _X_ to keep up with _X_ topic in the news, and she uses _X_ technology to be more effective doing _X_."

any help would be much appreciated!

"i pity the fool!"
south side of richardson st, off lorimer st
brooklyn, ny 11211

The 2007 My Brooklyn Photo + Essay Contest is about what makes this borough unique to you. From the faces and places to the events, food, and attitude, show and tell us about your Brooklyn and you could win a $500, $ 300 or $ 100 U.S. Savings Bond and have your work exhibited at Brooklyn Public Library. From DeGraw Street to DiFara's, from Carroll Gardens to the Cyclone, from Greenpoint to Greenwood, Brooklyn is everywhere—show us where it takes you.

My Brooklyn, a photo and essay contest sponsored by Brooklyn Public Library [BPL] and Con Edison, encourages everyone everywhere to share what Brooklyn means to you through pictures and words. You don't have to live here to have a thought, feeling, memory or favorite person, place, or thing in the borough to enter. In fact, anyone may enter, except BPL and Con Edison employees and their families.

→ guidelines, online application form, and past winners

The Rockefeller Foundation yesterday announced the creation of a Jane Jacobs Medal to honor that author and urbanist, who died in 2006 at 89. The medals, to be awarded annually, "will recognize two living individuals whose creative vision for the urban environment has significantly contributed to the vibrancy and variety of New York City," the foundation said. One award will recognize lifetime contributions; the other, new ideas and activism. The selection of the 2007 medal winners and how the $200,000 in prize money will be allocated is to be decided by the members of a jury whose chairman is George Campbell Jr., president of the Cooper Union, and Agnes Gund, president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art. The award will be administered by the Municipal Arts Society. Nominations can be submitted to: http://rockfound.org/efforts/jacobs/janejacobs.shtml until 5 p.m. Eastern time on March 2. The 2007 recipients will be announced in June.

bad shannon
644 lorimer st
brooklyn, ny 11211

roebling st
between n 8th st and n 9th st

… a month after Manchester's accidental festival of psychogeography ended, Morag from Twangorama has been back in touch:

After the accidental festival a few of us decided we'd like to keep exploring psychogeographical territory together—and that we would meet on the first Sunday of every month to go for a wander.

We'll be meeting at the basement [24 lever street] at 2pm on sunday 4 february—Alex has some exciting plans for a topical dérive—no clues but it looks like a winner to me.

according to Mancubist, it also sounds like there is another loiterers resistance movement zine on the way.

egg
135 n 5th st
brooklyn 11211

the good news is that we fixed the error and all future communique will find it's way to us intact. the bad news is that we have no way to respond to your questions about milwaukee!

so if you see this post, please try contacting us again here. we apologize for the hassle!

p.s.—if you're looking for old pics of milwaukee, try Milwaukee Neighborhoods: Photos and Maps 1885–1992 or the Milwaukee Urban Archives. good luck!

shortly after posting our first brooklyn pic, laflaneuse invited us to join this cool flickr group:

altered peds—What else can a stick figure do [or who else can it be] while crossing the street? Photos of PEDESTRIAN CROSSING signs or signals [or other closely-related signs] that have been altered.

it seems the most common alteration of the ped x sign is the application of a hula-hoop sticker [string cheese incident style], but our favorite is either the chainsaw crossing [left] or this one.

san loco mexico
160 n 4th st
brooklyn 11211

not only are we happy to see bluestockings receive the publicity, but we're always happy to learn about daily photo blogs. plus it gave us an idea for a new project. coming soon, but in the meantime support bluestockings [stephen duncombe is speaking 7 february 2007] and check out new york daily photo!

Logo Cities: A Symposium on Signage, Branding, and Lettering in Public Space
Concordia University
Montréal, Québec
May 4–5, 2007

A two-day symposium presented by the Logo Cities project.

Cities are awash in "public lettering": street signs, newspaper mastheads, road signs, high-rise corporate logos, store/shop/restaurant signs, engravings on buildings and monuments, etc. They are at once branding and promotional devices; names [of buildings]; labels; locating devices; material and technological artifacts; pieces of graphic, typographic, and industrial design; architectural heritage; industrial detritus; personal and cultural narratives. They are also intricately linked to the dominant preoccupations of the city: high-rise logos, for example, eloquently describe the commercial, financial, civic, even religious priorities of a particular urban locale—especially at night.

It is all the more surprising, given their sheer ubiquity, that signs have received relatively little coordinated attention—critical, creative, or otherwise. The Logo Cities symposium aims to draw together scholars, designers, artists, and artisans to foster an informed, critical dialogue about signage, branding, and lettering in public space. We invite expressions of interest and proposals for scholarly papers, presentations and screenings that critically and/or creatively interrogate the intersections of signage, branding and lettering in public space. We are especially interested in historical case studies; design and typographic studies; activist, artistic, and new media interventions; and, critical cultural analyses, that offer new and adventurous insights into these phenomena. [nb We are less interested in advertising billboards and graffiti, given the substantial attention they have already received.]

Informal enquiries and formal proposals to Matt Soar, Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University. Tel: (514) 848-2424 x2542. Email: logocities [dot] symposium [at] gmail [dot] com. For more information and continual updates on the symposium, including speakers and special events, please visit logocities.org. The Logo Cities website also features a variety of work derived from an eponymous research/creation project focusing on signage, branding and lettering in the city of Montréal.

Deadline for formal proposals: 28 February 2007.

"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"

"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.

—A.A. Milne . The House at Pooh Corner

thanks, jqln!

Build/Decay studies art and beauty and the way these concepts can be destroyed. It explores the suspense of the build-up, its newness, but also the erosion of finality, the parts of a whole.

Build/Decay is an evening-long festival of art, installation, performance and music, Saturday, February 17 at the Tank. We are looking for interpretations of this theme: How can it be represented in your medium? What is your reaction to it? Does it involve recreation, creation or destruction? Contact kiku at as200 dot org with a written proposal and, if possible, an example of your piece. Please write "build decay" in the subject heading. Deadline January 31, 2007.