Worst Day of Riots So Far

At 19:05 June 20th
Place: Karekar Ave., at the corner crossing Khosravi St. and Salehi st.

A young woman who was standing aside with her father watching the protests was shot by a basij member hiding on the rooftop of a civilian house. He had clear shot at the girl and could not miss her. However, he aimed straight her heart. I am a doctor, so I rushed to try to save her. But the impact of the gunshot was so fierce that the bullet had blasted inside the victim's chest, and she died in less than 2 minutes.
The protests were going on about 1 kilometers away in the main street and some of the protesting crowd were running from tear gass used among them, towards Salehi St.

Stay tuned for time and place of a protest in solidarity with Iranians being organized by local Iranian-Americans here in Columbus.

Protests Over the Presidential Election in Iran

YAH's resident Persian has sent the following links for our consideration:

25khordad at Wordpress
Rayeman kojast? at Wordpress
tehranlive.org
Daneshgah Sanati Esfehan at blogspot

My limited Farsi knowledge tells me that these are all pretty much from university areas. Note that these are pictures and videos from Iranian bloggers and activists from the past couple of days in the wake of the re-election of Ahmadinejad, who is believed to have stolen the election from the reform candidate Mousavi due to the unprecedented number of young voters (think the past US presidential election except Obama loses by a landslide). It's pretty intense.

Smash the Suburbs!!!

Intriguing Plan in Michael Moore's Home Town: Bulldoze the Ghost 'Burbs, Return Them to Nature

By Tom Leonard, The Telegraph (UK). Posted June 13, 2009.

Concept of razing post-industrial "rust belt" empty neighborhoods draws interest in Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore and other cities.

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, Michigan, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 percent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.


http://www.alternet.org/environment/140629/intriguing_plan_in_michael_moore%27s_home_town%3A_bulldoze_the_ghost_%27burbs%2C_return_them_to_nature/

Redheads Protest Wendy's

Redheads Protest Wendy's

Check Out This Site and Help End Poverty

http://hoenir.himinbi.org/

I’ve always admired Hunter S. Thompson. I love his sense of a story from the edge of something. I also love the idea of duplicating him. Wouldn’t “crazed rambling drunk” be an awesome job? To Hunter S. I dedicate these two weeks of semi-coherent rambling.




(I can’t figure out how to get rid of that sidebar player atm, sorry.)

I’m not going to watch the video before posting it and most of it is a blur, but I know I said I had a plan to save the world.

I actually do have a plan to save the world. My goal for this little experiment is to sell people on an endearing mix of rambling and philosophy so they’ll follow me on Twitter. A week and a half from now I hope to be taping these videos on my way to Oprah’s show. I actually do have an idea that can fundamentally alter how our economy works. I just need fame since I’m too poor to pay people to do all the things I need done to move the plan forward.

The ending poverty idea is more entertaining than the Homage to Hunter S., a million Twitter followers and the siege on Oprah, so by all means stumble this post and stop by again. If enough people do, I’ll get my audience with the queen.

Free Artem Loskutov!

When I was in Russia I spoke to a few people about their interactions with the KGB and it is FUCKING SCARY to know that post-Soviet interrogation practices are more-or-less the same.

On May 15, the young contemporary artist Artem Loskutov was arrested in his native Novisibirsk and charged with possession of a narcotic substance (marijuana) by the local branch of the Interior Ministry’s notorious Center for Extremism Prevention (Center “E”). Loskutov and his supporters claim that the police planted the marijuana in his bag in order to incriminate him. As one of the inspirations behind the annual “Monstration”—a flash-mob street party in which young people march with absurdist, non-political slogans—Loskutov had long been an object of the Center’s attentions. At a pre-trial custody hearing on May 20, it was revealed that the Center had been tapping the phones of Loskutov and his friends for the past six months. In April and on May Day itself, Loskutov had been summoned to the Center for “discussions”; his parents had also been called and told that their son was a member of a dangerous sect. The circumstances of the case and the way that he was arrested thus point to a campaign of intimidation directed both at Loskutov and his fellow free-thinking “monstrators” in Novosibirsk.

"Judge: This person is guilty!
Fighting for increased wages - guilty!
Not loving the police - guilty!
For the inclination towards critical thought - wanted!
Cosmopolite. Internationalist. Atheist. Extremist. Are there any such people among you? Are any of you extremists???"

http://www.metamute.org/en/free_artem_loskutov

FIELD TRIPS

(YOU ARE HERE) FIELD TRIP TO THE DAYTON AIR SHOW JULY 18th or 19th
-confront the militarized spectacle!

http://www.usats.org/

more details soon...

_________________________

also im sure you have all heard-

G20 SUMMIT TO BE HELD IN PITTSBURGH SEPT 24th and 25th
-oh SHIT!

xo
brett

Post-Authentic Authenticity

Brian Massumi's "Realer than Real" is a great rip on Baudrillard and all those other simulacrum hacks.

Didn't they know that it's the age of post-post-irony?

This cannot be done by whining. The work of Baudrillard is one long lament. Both linear and dialectical causality no longer function, therefore everything is indetermination. The center of meaning is empty, therefore we are satellites in lost orbit. We can no longer act like legislator-subjects or be passive like slaves, therefore we are sponges. Images are no longer anchored by representation, therefore they float weightless in hyperspace. Words are no longer univocal, therefore signifiers slip chaotically over each other. A circuit has been created between the real and the imaginary, therefore reality has imploded into the undecidable proximity of hyperreality. All of these statements make sense only if it is assumed that the only conceivable alternative to representative order is absolute indetermination, whereas indetermination as he speaks of it is in fact only the flipside of order, as necessary to it as the fake copy is to the model, and every bit as much a part of its system. Baudrillard's framework can only be the result of a nostalgia for the old reality so intense that it has difformed his vision of everything outside of it. He cannot clearly see that all the things he says have crumbled were simulacra all along: simulacra produced by analyzable procedures of simulation that were as real as real, or actually realer than real, because they carried the real back to its principle of production and in so doing prepared their own rebirth in a new regime of simulation. He cannot see becoming, of either variety. He cannot see that the simulacrum envelops a proliferating play of differences and galactic distances. What Deleuze and Guattari offer, particularly in A Thousand Plateaus, is a logic capable of grasping Baudrillard's failing world of representation as an effective illusion the demise of which opens a glimmer of possibility. Against cynicism, a thin but fabulous hope--of ourselves becoming realer than real in a monstrous contagion of our own making.

Know Your Memes, Ya'll

The Rocketboom Institute for Internet Studies presents
"Know Your Memes"
Documenting Internet phenomena: viral videos, image macros, catchphrases, web celebs and more…

http://knowyourmeme.com/

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