Walls of Ceuta & Melilla

Continuing (earlier here and here) on the topic of walls of segregation. Here is more on Ceuta and Melilla.
Unfortunately only available in French and Italian the Migreurop have published The Black Book of Ceuta and Melilla online. The work documents the atrocities being committed under the guise of controlling illegal immigration to the EU via the Spanish north-African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. The introduction to the publication is available in English here.

Statewatch writes that the book contains… “…analysis, photographs and extensive testimonies from migrants themselves, who are thus given the opportunity to describe their experiences of what EU institutions euphemistically refer to as an ‘integrated system to fight illegal immigration’, which is repeatedly, and annoyingly, considering that migrants have been shot, abandoned to die in the desert, hunted down and detained in inhumane conditions, followed by the phrase while respecting human rights.”

Read also Peio Aierbe’s The “assault” by “sub-Saharan migrants” in the media.
(via Subtopia)

Bolzano

On the 11/11 I will be in Bolzano, Italy attending the First International Annual Meeting of the Fellows of the FSFE this will be an excellent opportunity to meet the fellows and the team. In addition to this there have been promises of new projects that will be announced at the meeting. The event also coincides with the South Tyrol Free Software Conference which is in Bolzano on the 10th – unfortunately I will miss a large part of this event since I shall be travelling to Bolzano.

If I have some spare time (which I doubt) I hope to be able to pop in to the South Tyrol Archeological Museum, which hosts the Ã?tzi the iceman.
Ã?tzi is the nickname of a well-preserved natural mummy of a man from about 3300 BC, found in 1991 in a glacier of the Ã?tztal Alps, near the border between Austria and Italy. The nickname comes from Ã?tztal, the region in which he was discovered. He is Europe’s oldest natural human mummy, and has offered an unprecedented view on the Chalcolithic (Copper-stone Age) Europeans (Wikipedia).

Live in Umeå

Tomorrow I fly to Umeå to lecture at the cool and happening Humlab. My presentation will be on my PhD thesis. This is a bit strange in one way to present my thesis before it has been defended but the Umeå date was set before the final date of the presentation and I now see it as an excellent opportunity to give a focused presentation of my work.

For those of you who would like to be there but are not in UmeÃ¥ â??the revolution will be televisedâ??, or rather the presentation will be streamed online (this link will be active tomorrow at 15.00). I told you they were cool in UmeÃ¥.

Social Informatics – Slovenia

Well its Social Informatics in Slovenia. So far I am impressed by the discussions but less so with Slovenia. The hotel was actually the worst I have ever stayed in, this is an impressive position with some strong competition. After the hotel the food is the next thing on the “whats wrong” list. There cannot be many vegetarians in Slovenia, and the ones that are here cannot be well fed. But the worst thing is that connectivity is patchy at best…
So the academic is suffering for his art.

But the papers have been very interesting so far and I am looking forward to the rest of the conference.

Not a terrorist

On 12th August Raed Jarrar was forced to take of his t-shirt at John F Kennedy airport. The reason? It has a text in Arabic (and English) which read: “We will not be silent” (BBC article) He attempted to argue freedom of speech but to no avail.

He was given the ultimatum to change t-shirts or not get on the plane.

Not my idea of choice.

As a protest you can now buy t-shirts with the text – “I am not a terrorist” written in Arabic. The shirts are set to $1.00 more than the Spreadshirt (the manufacturer) base price â?? all profits will be sent to the ACLU. Get them here.

This is a good way of attempting to fight against the meaningless and degrading hysteria that has grown from the paranoia of fear of terrorism. Yes we should beware. The world is an unsafe place but the measures that have been taken over the past weeks are more racist than anti-terrorist.

Offline in London

If you have noticed that it has been quite from this corner of the Internet its because I have been offline in London. Partly I was there lecturing about Copyleft, Free Software and Creative Commons on an intellectual property course organised by Andrew Murray at the LSE. I naturally found time for shopping and culture.

The main cultural event was the Victoria and Albert Museum in general and the Che Guevara exhibition in particular. In addition to graffiti spotting (results will be online on flickr soon).

The shopping was mainly books (I really should try to cut down a little). I frequented mainly second hand stores and ended up with a dozen booksâ?¦ here are some highlights: Fareed Zakaria’s The Future of Freedom, Loretta Napoleoni’s Terror Inc, Peter Drahos & John Braithwaite â?? Information Feudalism. Two books by Paul Virilio (The Information Bomb and Negative Horizon) and Val Dusekâ??s The Philosophy of Technology.

Michael of Rhodes

It sounds like a fictional mystery â?? just look at the ingredients: a lost manuscript about an ancient mariner sailing the Mediterranean (and beyond), fighting naval battles and piratesâ?¦

At the age of 16, Michael of Rhodes signed onto a Venetian galley in 1401 as a common oarsman. Over the next four decades he sailed on dozens of voyages, either in the war galleys of the Venetian navy, or in the commercial galleys of the merchant fleet. He rose in the ranks, attaining a number of different offices, including the highest rank a non-noble could have in Venetian service. In 1434, Michael sat down to write out the manuscript for which he is remembered. The Michael of Rhodes manuscript was lost for 400 years until it resurfaced in 1966 and again in 2000.

Today selected pages of the beautiful work are available online along with maps and illustrations. It’s not all there and it’s not CC licensed (or similar) but it’s a great site.
(via BibliOdyssey)

Amsterdam

It’s Sunday and it’s Amsterdam! This is a fantastic city with great architecture. Unfortunately today has been spent in an all day meeting. A strange aside is that the meeting room overlooks the same garden that Anne Frank‘s room overlooked. The courtyard still has the same chestnut tree which she looked at. Here is a quickime film of the chestnut tree. The tree is unfortunately dying and the city is spending time and money to keep the tree alive.