CrisisCamp London, Saturday, 23 Jan. 2010
The London Knowledge Lab is hosting a series of CrisisCamp workshops in January and February. The first of these events will be on this Saturday, 23 Jan. 2010, from 10:00 to 17:00.
A CrisisCamp is an individual event with an overall purpose to create specific tools for a specific problem. Before a CrisisCamp, organizers reach out to responder organizations – governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and others – seeking requests for technological supports. We organize into teams to support those requests. We also develop around things that are just good ideas. What we create is open-source – meaning that it’s free for anyone to use, the labor has been donated, and the user community is encouraged to take it and build on it … to make it work for them. The London Crisis Camp will join the other Crisis Camps in building vital tools for Haiti.
For further details, see the crisiscommons wiki:
http://wiki.crisiscommons.org/wiki/Crisis_Camp_London
The event is organised by Vinay Gupta. If you wish to participate, or have any enquiries, please contact him at: hexayurt+ccl@gmail.com
Hashtag: #crisiscampldn
Short URLs: http://link.lkl.ac.uk/crisiscampldn, http://link.lkl.ac.uk/ccl
Where Does My Money Go? the beauty of open data
The good people of the open knowledge foundation have just released a prototype of their visualisation tool for UK gov spending. This on the same week that the gov announced radical plans for opening their data. Makes the heart soar.
Open data needs to be seen, not just done.
UN-happy about censorship?
@szabgab tells me that UN security forces destroyed their poster at IGF for mentioning China’s firewall.
An anti-censorship group holding an event Sunday at the United Nations-sponsored Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, was disrupted by UN officials who demanded removal of a poster that mentioned Internet firewalls in China.
According to a Pakistani delegate, Shahzad Ahmed of Bytesforall.net, a reception hosted by Open Net Initiative (ONI) was rattled by IGF security, who objected to a poster advertising “Access Controlled“, a book being introduced at the event. “The poster was thrown on the floor and we were told to remove it because of the reference to China and Tibet. We refused, and security guards came and removed it. The incident was witnessed by many,” Ahmed reported.
The poster promoting ONI’s forthcoming book, “Access Controlled” was removed by the IGF’s organizers because a sentence in the poster apparently violated UN policy. The sentence in question reads, “The first generation of Internet controls consisted largely of building firewalls at key Internet gateways; China’s famous “Great Firewall of China” is one of the first national Internet filtering systems.”
“If we cannot discuss topics about Internet censorship and surveillance policy at a forum about Internet governance then what is the point of something like the IGF,” said Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies and one of ONI’s principal investigators.
Deibert, one of the organizers of the reception, said he will file a complaint against the censorship of the event and send it to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
“We condemn this undemocratic act of censoring our event just because someone is trying to impress or be in the good graces of the Chinese government. It is ironic that while people are allowed to gather here to discuss freedom of expression online, censorship and surveillance practices on the Internet, we are being restricted in expressing our views,” said Al Alegre of the Foundation for Media Alternatives, a member of the ONI Network.
I find this deeply disturbing. Please help spread the news widely and pressure the UN for explanations.
chain e-mail is murder
Not many things provoke a violent reaction from me. I must confess, to my shame, that chain mails are one of the exceptions. apologies to all my well intending friends. Perhaps its time I explain the rationale for my rage.
So you received an email saying that Charles Taylor would like to repent for his sins, and pay a dollar to UNICEF for every mail sent with this message. You spend 30 seconds on it, and decide ‘not bloody likely, but hey – what’s the harm?’ and forward it to 5 friends. Within 13 minutes you have wasted 2.5 lifetimes. That’s the harm. Just do the maths.
| rounds | seconds | hours | days | years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 30 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2 | 150 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 3 | 750 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 4 | 3750 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 5 | 18750 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| 6 | 93750 | 26 | 1 | 0 |
| 7 | 468750 | 130 | 5 | 0 |
| 8 | 2343750 | 651 | 27 | 0 |
| 9 | 11718750 | 3255 | 135 | 0 |
| 10 | 58593750 | 16276 | 678 | 1 |
| 11 | 292968750 | 81380 | 3390 | 9 |
| 12 | 1464843750 | 406901 | 16954 | 46 |
| 13 | 7324218750 | 2034505 | 84771 | 232 |
| 14 | 36621093750 | 10172526 | 423855 | 1161 |
| 15 | 1.83105E+11 | 50862630 | 2119276 | 5806 |
| 16 | 9.15527E+11 | 254313151 | 10596381 | 29031 |
the climate migrants are coming!
This morning Oxfam put up an installation called “Climate change migration camp” at the head of the millennium bridge in London. Climate change is currently predominantly caused by rich, northern countries and suffered by poor southern countries. This installation is a brilliant reminder of why that is only a temporary illusion. Quite simply, when their countries turn to dust or are covered by the sea, the people in the effected countries will not disappear. They will find a way, and they will come here.
So even if you have not one moral cell in your body, you should be concerned. I mean, even Nick Griffin should be worried about climate change.
ralph lauren FAIL
Ralph Lauren is threatening BoingBoing with legal action:
www.boingboing.net/2009/10/06/the-criticism-that-r.html
Get creative! Post your artistic response to:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/ralphlaurenfail/
Political Prosecution of Yesh Gvul
Yesh Gvul is “an Israeli peace group campaigning against the occupation by backing soldiers who refuse duties of a repressive or aggressive nature”. Yesh Gvul grew out of the first Lebanon war protest. They are one of the longest standing organisations supporting refuseniks, and they supported me before and during my term in prison.
The new Israeli government has decided to crack down on refusenik organisations. As part of this campaign, the leaders of Yesh Gvul are being investigated for “incitement” charges. Here’s the latest update from Peretz Kidron:
From: Peretz Kidron
“they wanna set me up like Howaida Taha”
Blogger and Journalist Wael Abbas (@waelabbas) is staging a sit-in at Cairo airport, protesting his political harassement. 3arabawy reports:
Wael was heading back from Sweden where he was attending a social media conference. His plane arrived around 3am in Cairo. His passport was taken by State Security Police for four hours, and was only returned to him after he staged a sit in with a banner. Now the customs agents have taken his laptop and said they won’t be returning it except after investigating it.
He was tweeting live up to a point, not sure what’s happening now.
Persepolis 2.0
Persepolis 2.0 describes Iran’s post-election uprising and spreads the word about Iranians’ historic struggle against repression. Based on the graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi and edited by two Iranians living in Shanghai.
http://www.spreadpersepolis.com/
