StopG8 Convergence Centre - Talking to the police before the eviction happens:

This is the state of the #stopG8 twitter account as the main convergence center is raided by hundreds of police:

Using individual Facebook accounts - who sees the content they post is decided by the advertising driven algorithms of Facebook and everything they post is sent strait to the corporate and governmental agency’s they are fighting against. 

The website they have built is not only dysfunctional (it only allows corporate embeds of video all opensource or activists embeds are blocked - only google owned youtube works) it's a control freaks love affair and a re-creation of the Soviet Union.

UPDATE: the video embed whent up in the end https://network23.org/stopg8/media/video

Am writing posts on the politics of the internet. Can anyone find any simple explanations for how the internet works - this is a good one but only covers inside local networks:

The web is fundamentally a peer to peer network, as are human relationships. Let's look at a recent activist website built for the G8 protest in London https://network23.org/stopg8. It is a one way approach – a directing tool for a small minority of unknown and unknowable people to direct the majority of people, with limited ways for the majority to talk back or take part in the web organising.

Wordpress the tool used here is a a top-down tool, original a single user blogging platform, thus its useful for hierarchical opaque organising, which goes hand in hand with “closed security” minded geeks and activists - the problem oveasuly lies in the fact that such tools restrict peoples online involvement and this leads to a dampening and shrinking of offline involvement or the moving of open organising onto the closed web of Facebook etc. Wordpress is fine for a noticeboard site or personal blog but not for any form of self organising or group networking, its broken as a way of building a dynamic social moveme

A more obvious activist approach would be to use opentools such as wikis and forums, and self organising web spaces to build a creative movement “open security” model were people could could build “trust” by activity feeds. A tool for this would be single sign in site built on liferay such as http://visionon.tv

“Closed security” gives the dangerous illusion of anonymity were non exists, this both gives control to a small group of unaccountable activists and dampens self organising – the life blood of activism.

“Open security” widens ownership and builds spaces for creativity, its based on transparent trust networks. It builds security as the is no foles sense of anonymity – if you wont to organise something “spiky or norty” you whisper at the back of the pub.

The is no security in centralised activist infrastructure as you don’t know who actually runs them and you don’t know who is upriver of their hosting providers. The is a clear danger that this pseudonymous is mistaken for true anonymity and this danger comes at a clear organising cost.  At the moment we have a clear failer of activist web culture, which can be seen in the shrinking of activism ( and its replacement with clicktivism) – post a comment if you would like to have a go at fixing this.

Escaping the UK if it all becomes to much...

Made 2 films with nearly a million views each on youtube, in both cases part of the reason they are "successful" is because people are hating on them.

More than thirty climate activists and local residents took mass direct action to prevent excavation work on Britain's biggest ever open-cast coal mine at Ffos-y-fran in South Wales.

Many people are learning to live sustainably, without money. In this video, they discuss their struggles, how they got to and developed kew bridge eco-village.

Its interesting how parasitic traditional media is, an idea or a news story will come out in a sub-culture (contemporary media) weeks or years before it becomes a “story” in traditional media. This time lag – together with the general lack of connection in traditional media to where story’s come from/break is noticeably dysfunctional in our new connected world.

This parasitical behaver will continue in-till we solve these issues in contemporary media:

* financial support for the production of grassroots per-per media – something like flattr is an example of an attempt to solve this problem.

* Ethical norms of linking and aggregation in per-per production need to solidify and be coded into contemporary media projects. An example of this would be the OMN project.

* a general discrediting of traditional media as a reliable source of information – shifting peoples behaver of linking away by providing better working contemporary media projects. An example of this would be the http://visionon.tv project.

The current connections between contemporary and traditional media are largly broken, do we try and fix it or not is the relevant question? Do we actually need these old gate keeping institutions and if we do, are they flexible and lean anufe to survive anyway? I think diversity of strategy’s are probably helpful here. 

Insulation is importent for comfort and to stop rot/rust issues with condensation on boats.

http://www.spray-insulation.co.uk/Measuring.htm

http://www.sprayfoaminsulation.co.uk/services/marine-boat-insulation

The will have an added effect of absorbing/dampening engine noise - as I have herd that the lifeboats can be very noisy. Its going to be expensive - around £500 http://www.foamseal.co.uk/diy-spray-foam/index.php?cPath=3800006 but can leave this till the end of the summer.

Am thinking about getting one of these to covert into a live-in open media centre. They vary from 7-9m in length and have seating (like sardines) for 30-60 people. 

Proposed mission would be to: 
* remove most of the seats to open the space up 
* paint it so it wasnt bright orange (need a good weeks dry weather to 
do this) 
* put in some very basic live in space, bed, table etc. 
* fit some basic solar panels, batterys etc. 
* steam punk it up a bit. 

This would be done wombling style if anyone wont's to help. 

They are fresh off oil rigs so should be in working condition with all survival gear in them.  It seams that one of the reasons the is a lot of surplus lifeboats is that oil rig workers are getting fat (PDF) so the current lifeboats aren't large anufe.

Am going up to Scotland to have a look (and maybe buy) end of the week, then put it on the river lee/canal to do the rest of the fitting out over the summer.

Outline cost of liveaboard in the UK

BSS costs (4 years) £150

insurance (1 year) £120

Gold licence, all rivers and canals (1y) £643 (less for only rivers or canals)

Craning off truck into water on river lee £142

Red diesel Propulsion is about 0.75ppl

Licence initially would be continues cruising - Optional cost Mooring £1000-5000 (1y)

Here is the law on continues cruising – you can stay for two weeks in many spots http://canalrivertrust.org.uk/media/library/633.pdf

Here is the width of canals - Red and blue are good for the lifeboat size wise - Gray likely not http://www.jim-shead.com/waterways/mwp.php?wpage=Inland-Waterways-of-England.htm

The is breakdown cover for boats like the AA - river rescue 

Things to look at:

insulation

Lifeboat dft (PDF) 

BSS handbook