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Urgent Appeal To Save Iraq's Teachers

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A little known aspect of the tragedy engulfing Iraq is the systematic liquidation of the country's academics.  Even according to conservative estimates, over 250 educators have been assassinated, and many hundreds more have disappeared. With thousands fleeing the country in fear for their lives, not only is Iraq undergoing a major brain drain, the secular middle class - which has refused to be co-opted by the US occupation - is being decimated, with far-reaching consequences for the future of Iraq.

Already on July 14, 2004, veteran correspondent Robert Fisk reported from Iraq that: "University staff suspect that there is a campaign to strip Iraq of its academics, to complete the destruction of Iraq's cultural identity which began when the American army entered Baghdad."

The wave of assassinations appears non-partisan and non-sectarian, targeting women as well as men, and is countrywide. It is indiscriminate of expertise: professors of geography, history and Arabic literature as well as science are among the dead.  Not one individual has been apprehended in connection with these assassinations.
According to the United Nations University, some 84 per cent of Iraq's institutions of higher education have already been burnt, looted or destroyed. Iraq's educational system used to be among the best in the region; one of the country's most important assets was its well-educated people.

This situation is a mirror of the occupation as a whole: a catastrophe of staggering proportions unfolding in a climate of criminal disregard. As an occupying power, and under international humanitarian law, final responsibility for protecting Iraqi citizens, including academics, lies with the United States.

With this petition we want to break the silence.
1. We appeal to organisations which work to enforce or defend international humanitarian law to put these crimes on the agenda. 

2. We request that an independent international investigation be launched immediately to probe these extrajudicial killings. This investigation should also examine the issue of responsibility to clearly identify who is accountable for this state of affairs. We appeal to the special rapporteur on summary executions at UNHCHR in Geneva.
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You can sign this petition by clicking:
 
This petition was launched by the BRussells Tribunal and is already endorsed by CEOSI (Spain), the Portuguese hearing of the WTI, Iraktribunal.de (Germany), the Swedish Antiwar committee, the IAC (USA), the International Association of Middle East Studies (IAMES), the German Middle East Studies Association (DAVO) and the European Association for Middle Eastern Studies (EURAMES), and several personalities, like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, John Pilger, Michael Parenti (see more complete list underneath).
See also the call for action underneath and more information on:


explodingtelevision.net

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 EXPLODING TELEVISION: TEA TIME TV Dates: Friday 27 January -  
 Wednesday 1 February 2006,

 Location: Witte de With/TENT., Witte de Withstraat 50, Rotterdam  
 Admission: free

 Website: www.v2.nl  | www.explodingtelevision.net

 Live video stream available from http://www.v2.nl/live


Swing Space Open House

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Please come help us celebrate the end of our Swing Space, to see work by this season's THING.residency artists and to hear about our new office location.

OPEN HOUSE
Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2006
6:00 - 8:00 PM - FREE
32 Avenue of the Americas (between Canal and Walker)
New York City
RSVP recommended: rsvp@lmcc.net

Featuring new work by Swing Space grantees:
Oscar Alzate
Aissa Deebi
Dave Eppley
Joshua Howard
Timothy Hutchings
Cynthia Lovett
Pamela Matsuda-Dunn
THING.residency artists: Daniel Pflumm, Jan Gerber, 0100101110101101.org and Luka Frelih


Dark Places

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Dark Places

An experimental group exhibition

Curator: Joshua Decter

The Santa Monica Museum of Art presents Dark Places, conceived and curated by Joshua Decter, with an installation design by the architectural collective servo. An experimental group exhibition, Dark Places features the digitized works of 76 international artists and architects, organized into eight “curatorial scripts." The show is comprised of the simultaneous interplay of eight distinct micro-exhibitions. These sequences of works are displayed via eight projector units incorporated within a translucent architectural armature suspended in the museum’s space. Relationships among art, architecture, media, and technological design are reanimated here, generating a new kind of immersive environment—the hallucination of a futuristic noir scenario inside the frame of the museum.


New From Autonomedia/CAE Defense Fund

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Here's a mid-January update on some of what's been going on around Autonomedia.

* * *

1. Critical Art Ensemble: trial update, new book
2. Shut Them Down!: New book on the G8 protests in Scotland
3. 50% off 2006 Autonomedia Jubilee Saints calendars
4. Some highlights from the Interactivist Network

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1. Steve Kurtz (and by extension, the Critical Art Ensemble) was denied a motion to dismiss his trial last week in Federal court. Critical Art Ensemble are the collective authors of a series of Autonomedia books analyzing the authoritarian uses of science and technology, particularly where these mechanisms operate with a positive, "everyone's a winner" face (the full-stomached promises of food genomics, for example, or the healthy-and-smart-kids promises of the reproductive industries). Not content to be armchair critics, the CAE also produce art and performance that brings their analysis to museum and gallery audiences and into the public sphere, demystifying the spectacle of what they've called the "military techno-security cineplex."

Of course, this got Steve in big trouble with the security-happy administration, and for close to two years now he's been under investigation for an artwork found in his home at the time of his wife's death. The absurdities of the case seem apparent to nearly everyone except the court itself, which insists on draining everyone's resources to pin a mail-fraud charge on him.

There is good news, though. Despite these many months of strain and stress, CAE has another book in the pipes, scheduled to be published in the early Spring of this year. It's called "Plague March", and rips apart the fear economy at the foundation of bio-warfare alarmism. That's all I'll say about it just now, except that one of the appendices to the book comes from Claire Pentecost, of the CAE Defense Fund, analyzing the real reasons the State has chosen to prosecute Steve's case. This text is well worth reading online at our Interactivist site, at the following address: http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=05/05/30/2348202

Also, please read the forwarded email at the bottom of this Autonogram, from Lucia Sommer of the Defense Fund, and check their website from time to time: http://www.caedefensefund.org

* *

Autonomedia has recently collaborated with the Dissent Network in the UK to produce "Shut Them Down! The G8, Gleneagles 2005, and the Movement of Movements", a new collection that takes as its starting point the protests in Scotland last summer. Not content to just rehash what went on there, the book addresses issues fundamental to the globalized resistance to capital, such as the nature of openness and "horizontality" and limitations of the "activist" identity. More on the book, including a table of contents and list of contributors, is at http://www.shutthemdown.org, and you can order the book from our new online bookstore. We'll be shipping these books as soon as they're received from the UK.

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50% off Saints calendars! Another tradition of mid-January around here (aside from hot buttered rum-soaked toboggan races across the East River with Team Autonomedia) is trying to sell off the remaining Calendars of Jubilee Saints still in our inventory. $4.98 gets you a fresh copy here.

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Interactivist Info Exchange: Recent Headlines

Please make a regular visit to our online Interactivist Info Exchange. Read a story, leave a comment, engage, debate, illuminate! Here are some recent hotties:

http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=06/01/17/2225239 is a recent interview with Italian Autonomia philosopher/agitator Paolo Virno, discussing his history, immaterial labor, etc. (and http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=05/12/27/0513241 for Steve Wright's discussion on some of the same)

http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=06/01/07/1727205 on the recent death of Zapatista Comandante Ramona (and http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=06/01/03/1459209 for Marcos' transition to Candidate Zero)

http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=05/12/13/1414210 for an analysis of Chomsky's anarchism.

http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=06/01/03/199257 for efforts by WalMart employees in Florida to use collective action and mutual aid to deal with problems on and off the shop floor.

* * *


VJ: Live Cinema Unraveled

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VJ Live Cinema
 "VJ : Live Cinema Unraveled" is now available for purchase!

 
It is a signed, limited edition book on VJing and VJ Culture. The launch party last Saturday in L.A. was a success, and the book is available for the general public online, via the book site. Payments can be made using PayPal (with or without an account).

http://www.vj-book.com

Probing into topics such as technological mobility, audience, environment, and codes of the medium, it explains the various dimensions of this emerging practice. Part design, speculative theory, reference and practical guide, this book links live cinema with its historical origins, and then describes the various offshoots and branches that are occurring now in the twenty-first century on a global scale.

If there are any questions, you can get in touch via this email address: info(at)vj-book.com


Troika Ranch at Eyebeam

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Troika Ranch
Presented by Troika Ranch in association with 3 Legged Dog


January 18 - 28, 2006
8pm nightly
540 W. 21st St.

EYEBEAM is pleased to host

16 [R]EVOLUTIONS
 Presented by
TROIKA RANCH
 IN ASSOCIATION WITH 3 LEGGED DOG

 Lush imagery vibrates against funnel clouds of physicality as Troika Ranch presents 16 [R]evolutions on January 18-25 & 27-28, 8pm at Eyebeam. Tickets are $20 at the door.

For more info visit http://www.troikaranch.org/16revs

 


le podcasteur et le workshop

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GH Goes to France
 
 

Farewell Luka Frelih

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Farewell Luka
 THING.residency artist Luka Frelih strips down his FRIDA V. bicycle and heads back to Slovenia.
 
 
We'll miss Luka. His THING.residency at Death Star was a high point in what turned out to be a pretty dismal 2005 what with the transit strike, continuing lack of support and funding and all the rest of it. He engaged a notoriously bike-unfriendly New York fearlessly and cheerfully and it was a shame more people didn't get to know him or come to his presentation last Saturday. Well, that's their loss. We hope he'll come back soon and more New Yorkers will come out of their self-obsessed careerism and go for a ride.
 
Or maybe we should just move to Ljubljana?
 
For those of you in NYC who missed Luka we'll be having an official LMCC Swing Space "open house" on January 24th from 6-9pm where we'll show some of the work he did here along with work done by the other THING.residency artists. It will also be our swan song at Death Star as we have to move out the next week and as of now don't know where we'll go.
 
THE THING does a lot with very little so if you're feeling generous and want to support future projects please consider a donation:
 
THE THING, Inc.
459 West 19th Street
New York, NY 10011 

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