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segunda-feira, 12 de dezembro de 2011

Sucesso de vídeo na web paga cirurgia e tratamento de menina


"Não fecha a porta, tá!? Tranquilo?", diz Isabela, 2. A frase é de uma menina loirinha, de olhos verdes e sapeca está num vídeo, acompanhado de uma legenda feita pelo pai e tradutor, Felipe Horst, 28, que ganhou o mundo virtual a ponto de conquistar cerca de 29 milhões de exibições no site Youtube.
Isabela mora em Montenegro, Rio Grande do Sul, e sempre foi arteira, falante e divertida ao extremo, características que faziam passar despercebido uma deficiência no braço direito dela, causada por complicações no parto.
Mas os adjetivos, comuns em crianças da idade dela, fizeram tanto sucesso na internet a ponto de atrair anunciantes para o site de vídeos e gerar receita suficiente para bancar uma cirurgia e o tratamento da menina. É o que informa reportagem de Giba Bergamim Jr. publicada na Folha desta segunda-feira (íntegra disponível para assinantes do jornal e do UOL, empresa controlada pelo Grupo Folha, que edita a Folha).



Não fecha a porta, tá!? Tranquilo?", diz Isabela, 2. A frase é de uma menina loirinha, de olhos verdes e sapeca está num vídeo, acompanhado de uma legenda feita pelo pai e tradutor, Felipe Horst, 28, que ganhou o mundo virtual a ponto de conquistar cerca de 29 milhões de exibições no site Youtube.
Isabela mora em Montenegro, Rio Grande do Sul, e sempre foi arteira, falante e divertida ao extremo, características que faziam passar despercebido uma deficiência no braço direito dela, causada por complicações no parto.
Mas os adjetivos, comuns em crianças da idade dela, fizeram tanto sucesso na internet a ponto de atrair anunciantes para o site de vídeos e gerar receita suficiente para bancar uma cirurgia e o tratamento da menina. É o que informa reportagem de Giba Bergamim Jr. publicada na Folha desta segunda-feira (íntegra disponível para assinantes do jornal e do UOL, empresa controlada pelo Grupo Folha, que edita a Folha).


Hoje, ela consegue mexer o braço --algo impossível até um ano e meio atrás, quando o primeiro vídeo foi postado pelo pai.
Onze gravações estão num canal do Youtube chamado "As Aventuras da Menina Isabela". As declarações da garota, sempre acompanhadas de gestos engraçados, despertaram a simpatia dos fãs.

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Natural gas trade group spent $200K lobbying in 3Q



NEW YORK (AP) — A trade group for natural gas utilities spent $200,000 lobbying Congress in the third quarter on regulation of drilling, support for low income families and promotion of natural gas vehicles, according to a recent disclosure report.
That's 23 percent less than the $260,000 the American Gas Association spent in the third quarter of last year. It's 12 percent more than the $178,000 the group spent in the second quarter of 2011.
AGA, based in Washington, represents utilities and other companies that deliver and sell natural gas to residential, commercial and industrial customers.
It said it opposed legislation to "restrict or discourage natural gas production," citing proposals in the House and Senate to regulate the gas-drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking. The technique has boosted production, pushed gas prices down, and encouraged more use of the fuel, but environmentalists say it could contaminate ground water.
The association lobbied Congress to increase heating assistance funds for low income families. Most households in the U.S. use natural gas for heating.
AGA also lobbied Congress to keep taxes on dividends from rising and in favor of subsidies to increase sales of vehicles powered by natural gas.
The group disclosed its spending for the July-to-September period in a report filed with the House clerk's office Oct. 20. Lobbyists are required to disclose activities that could influence members of the executive and legislative branches of government under a federal law enacted in 1995.


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Learn the Basics of Coding





Smartphone apps, desktop apps, and web apps are some of the best tools we have to get things done, express ourselves, and yes, sometimes have fun. You may have once thought programming was the domain of anti-social neck beards living in basements across the world, but the fact is, anyone can code, and almost everyone can benefit from knowing a little bit about programming. This week's episode of Lifehacker is an introduction into the basics of coding.
This is the sixteenth episode of season two of Lifehacker. Today's episode highlights:
In lieu of downloads, we rounded up some of our favorite resources for your journey into the world of coding:
Hungry for a little more? Check out all the episodes from our current season, catch up with the entire first season of Lifehacker, or pick up a few episodes of our summer series.
Grab it in any format you like: If you don't want to watch it in your browser right now, you can catch the show wherever you want, and in nearly whatever format you like. Visit the episode page on Revision3 to download HD or phone-friendly versions of the show in MP4 or WMV. You can also subscribe in iTunes or via RSS, watch it on YouTube and subscribe to our channel there

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Romney dismisses $10K debate bet, criticizes Obama


WASHINGTON (AP) — Mitt Romney is dismissing his offer to make a $10,000 bet with Rick Perry as merely "an outrageous number to answer an outrageous charge" — namely, Perry's claim that Romney made changes to parts of his book.
Romney said Monday he made the offer in the weekend GOP presidential debate because Perry erroneously claimed that he deleted parts of his book, "No Apology" that referred to Romney's support for a health care mandate.
Romney told Fox News his bet offer was meaningless hyperbole, akin to saying "I'll bet you a million bucks."
The bet sparked charges that Romney, a wealthy businessman, is out of step with economic challenges facing ordinary Americans.
Romney said what the American people are tired of is President Barack Obama deflecting blame for his failed economic policies.

Obama's 2012 Strategy

There are two ways a president can run for reelection. The first is to boast about your success in your first term, and promise to build on it in the next. That’s what Dwight Eisenhower did in 1956; it’s what Ronald Reagan did in 1984; it’s what Bill Clinton did in 1996. For the strategy to work, Americans have to be relatively satisfied with their lot, and relatively optimistic about the future.
For Barack Obama today, with unemployment over 8 percent and three-quarters of Americans convinced that the country is going in the wrong direction, that’s not an option. So he’s relying on strategy number two: telling Americans that their unhappiness is not his fault. It’s the fault of his political opponents, opponents whose victory would doom any hopes for better days to come.
Obama began laying out that argument last week in Kansas, and continued it Sunday on 60 Minutes. The story goes like this: Once upon a time, in the middle of the 20th century, the American economy was strong, and it benefited all Americans, up and down the class ladder. Then, at some point—perhaps in the 1970s or 1980s, perhaps during the George W. Bush years—things began to go wrong. “Long before the recession hit,” Obama declared in Kansas, “hard work stopped paying off for too many people. Fewer and fewer of the folks who contributed to the success of our economy actually benefited from that success.”
Then, the story continues, all hell broke loose: “For many years, credit cards and home equity loans papered over this harsh reality. But in 2008, the house of cards collapsed.” As president, Obama tried to remedy the situation, but was stymied by the very people who had created the disaster in the first place. As he told 60 Minutes, “I think the Republicans [in Congress] made a different calculation, which was, ‘You know what? We really screwed up the economy. Obama seems popular. Our best bet is to stand on the sidelines, because we think the economy’s gonna get worse, and at some point, just blame him.’” In other words, the same Republicans who destroyed the broad-based prosperity of the post-war years, and laid the foundations for the financial crisis, have refused to help fix either problem. And now they want the White House so they can ensure that the problems they created never, ever, get solved.
From Obama’s perspective, this narrative has its advantages. In the face of Republican claims that his policies have failed to revive the economy, Obama is turning the blame on the Republicans themselves. Instead of arguing that his policies have succeeded in keeping the recession from being worse—an argument that could easily sound defeatist—Obama is implicitly conceding that his economic recovery strategy has failed, but laying the responsibility at the feet of the party trying to unseat him. His narrative also lets him insist that the Republican nominee is not a fresh face with fresh ideas, but rather a reincarnation of the people who destroyed the economy in the first place.
The fuzziness comes when Obama tries to explain how exactly the Republicans created this mess. In Kansas, he took aim at “you’re on your own” economics, which, as he noted, has been a critique progressives have been leveling since Theodore Roosevelt’s day. But while that may be a plausible summary of the policies that have been hurting middle-class Americans for decades now, it doesn’t really capture the policies that contributed to the financial crisis. The financial crisis wasn’t primarily about rampant individualism. If it had been, the Wall Street bankers who gambled away billions would have, as individuals, paid the price. Instead, after profiting individually when the market went up, they forced the rest of the country to save them when the market went down. The financial crisis was an example of what happens when the richest Americans are allowed to practice “you’re on your own” economics when it suits them but demand that everyone else bail them out when it doesn’t.
Successful presidential candidates do more than simply tell a story. They tell a story that captures the conditions and mood of the country at a particular moment in time. Obama doesn’t need to fully embrace Occupy Wall Street, but he needs to understand why the movement has caught on: Because many Americans believe Wall Street plays a central role in the warping of our economic and political system. A generic attack on Republican individualism isn’t good enough. Most Americans still don’t know why Barack Obama believes the roof fell in on America in 2008, and why he’s still more capable of repairing the damage in a second term than his political adversaries. Unless he answers those questions better over the next 11 months, he won’t get the chance.
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Russia billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov to challenge Putin


Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov attends the opening ceremony of the 5th Krasnoyarsk Book Fair in the Siberian city in November 2011 Mr Prokhorov is one of Russia's richest men
Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov has said he will challenge Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in next March's presidential election.
Mr Prokhorov said the decision was "the most serious decision" of his life.
Saturday saw Russia's biggest demonstration in many years by protesters calling for fresh parliamentary polls over vote fraud.
Mr Putin's party United Russia barely scraped a majority in the elections held earlier this month.
"I have made the most serious decision of my life. I am running for president," Mr Prokhorov said at a news conference.
Earlier this year, the metals billionaire and owner of the US NBA New Jersey Nets basketball team made a short-lived effort to challenge the United Russia party in this month's parliamentary elections.
He later resigned from his own party following an internal power struggle that he blamed on the Kremlin.
Mr Prokhorov is ranked by Forbes as Russia's third richest man with a fortune of around $18bn (£11bn; $13bn euros).



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Hexacopter that detects motion and breathing


21 March 2011
By

Phoenix 40A
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., March 21, 2011 — TiaLinx, Inc., a developer of remotely controlled mini-unmanned aerial and ground vehicles integrated with mm-wave miniaturized radars, today announced the launch of the Phoenix40-A. The mini-UAV system is capable of performing dual functions as a motion detector as well as probing for breathing of a hiding person in a compound. The mini-UAV can be remotely controlled at long standoff distances from ground or an airborne asset.
The lightweight and agile mini-UAV with programmability to fly to or land at multiple waypoints has been integrated with TiaLinx’s fine beam ultra-wideband (UWB), multi-Gigahertz radio frequency (RF) sensor array. The system provides long standoff surveillance of a premise to track movement as well as to detect motionless live objects. TiaLinx’s real-time UWB RF Imaging development was sponsored by a SBIR Phase II from the Army’s PEO AMMO, PM-CCS.
Through a software-controlled interface which is integrated into a laptop or joystick controller unit, Phoenix40-A can be remotely guided from long distances to perform mission critical tasks. In addition to the programmed GPS guided multi-waypoint visits, the integrated video cameras allow for day and night landing and monitoring of a premise under surveillance for enhanced situational awareness. Capability to probe a compound at standoff keeps the operator and the Phoenix40-A out of harm’s way.
The RF Scanner is mounted on a lightweight mini-UAV and transmits wideband signals that are highly directional and can penetrate reinforced concrete wall at an extended range. In the receiver, a signal detector circuit is employed to capture the reflections from targets. Amplitude and delay information are then processed in an integrated signal processor.
“Phoenix40-A’s introduction is intended to provide another breakthrough in miniaturization of advanced life detection sensors that provide the capability to sense-through-the-wall (STTW) remotely. Like its sister product Cougar20-H that was launched last month, Phoenix40-A can also be remotely programmed to survey a compound at multiple way points. It can scan a multi-story building and provide its layout. It is also capable of scanning in-road and off-road horizontally to detect buried unexploded ordnance (UXO),” commented Dr. Fred Mohamadi, Founder and CEO of TiaLinx. “TiaLinx is constantly miniaturizing and upscaling its UWB RF imaging core competence to enable standoff sensing of a premise for enhanced situational awareness, to assist rescue operations in hard-to-reach terrains such as collapsed buildings after an earthquake, and to eradicate land mines to save lives.”


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Spanish king distances himself from son-in-law



MADRID (AP) — King Juan Carlos's son-in-law will stop taking part in official ceremonies because of business dealings that are under investigation, Spain's Royal Palace said Monday as it sought to dissipate a whiff of scandal.
The decision regarding Inaki Urdangarin, husband of the monarch's daughter Princess Cristina, was a mutual one made by Urdangarin and the Royal Palace, its chief of staff Rafael Spottorno said in a rare meeting with Spanish media.
Urdangarin, 43, is reportedly suspected of siphoning away funds from public contracts awarded from 2004 to 2006 to a non-profit foundation he then headed.
The allegation looks terrible for the royal family at a time of acute hardship and economic crisis in Spain, where unemployment stands at 21.5 percent.
Urdangarin has not been charged with a crime. He issued a statement Saturday saying he regrets the "damage" the case is doing to the royal family but admitted no wrongdoing.
Spottorno insisted on presumption of innocence and urged investigators to conclude their probe soon as he announced Urdangarin will for now be removed from the royal family's agenda and no longer attend any official ceremonies involving it.
Spottorno said it was not yet known if the princess would also stay away from such activities.
The couple and their four children now live in Washington, D.C., where Urdangarin works for Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica, S.A.
No court papers have been made public, but Spanish newspapers quote investigators as saying Urdangarin is suspected of having taking part of about euro6 million ($8 million) the foundation received from the regional governments in Valencia and the Balearic Islands for organizing events such as sports seminars.
The money is said to have gone to for-profit companies Urdangarin ran.
The case is part of a broader, long-running corruption probe involving the regional government in the Balearic Islands, the capital of which is Palma on the island of Mallorca.
The Urdangarin slice of it has been front-page news for the past two weeks, and forced the Royal Palace to take the rare step of addressing publicly the activities of one of its members.
Spottorno also said that by the end of the month, the Royal Palace website will publish a breakdown of the money earmarked for the family in the government budget. In 2011, it was euro8.43 million.
King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia have three children. Crown Prince Felipe is the youngest, Princess Cristina is the middle child and the eldest is Princess Elena.


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Al Qaeda members flee in south Yemen jailbreak: officials




ADEN (Reuters) - At least 16 prisoners, including members of al Qaeda, escaped from a prison in the southern Yemeni city of Aden Monday, Yemeni officials said.
A security official in the south of the country, where Islamist fighters have seized chunks of an entire province, said detainees fled by digging a tunnel leading beyond the prison's walls. Sixteen were at large, another local official said.
It was the second major jailbreak involving al Qaeda members since June, when dozens of al Qaeda militants escaped from a jail in another city, Mukalla.
Nearly a year of protests demanding the ouster of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, punctuated by bouts of fighting between his forces and tribesmen and military units who oppose him, have seen Islamists gain power in the south.
Deteriorating security in the area, where parts of the Abyan province are under control of Islamist fighters, have fanned fears in Saudi Arabia and Washington -- which long backed Saleh in its campaign against al Qaeda -- that the Yemeni branch of the group may gain a foothold near key oil shipping routes.
Al Qaeda members, including one convicted in a 2002 attack on the French-flagged oil tanker Limburg off Yemen, escaped from a jail in the capital Sanaa in 2006, helping to revive the group after Saudi security forces weakened it in that country.
Saleh's foes have accused him of deliberately letting Islamists in the south grow stronger to reinforce his argument that his rule alone can prevent the country sliding into chaos that would empower al Qaeda, whose Yemeni wing has planned abortive attacks on U.S. and other targets.
(Reporting by Mohammed Mukhashaf; Joseph Logan)

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Metallica reunite original lineup at 30th-anniversary show




Dave Mustaine and Ron McGovney perform with metal monoliths for first time in three decades
Metallica perform with Dave Mustaine
And justice for all … Metallica perform with Dave Mustaine at 30th-anniversary show. Photograph: Tim Mosenfelder/WireImage
Metallica have wrapped up an extraordinary week of anniversary shows by reuniting with former members. Saturday night saw the return of Dave Mustaine and Ron McGovney, who performed with the band for the first time since 1982.
After 30 years, Metallica still know how to throw a party. For four nights, the metal legends rocked San Francisco's Fillmore, inviting friends and collaborators, as well as hundreds of prize-winning fans. There were video tributes by U2 and Slipknot, jams with a New Orleans brass brand, and the premiere of unreleased studio recordings. The band didn't just fly in their most recent musical partner, Lou Reed – they brought in everyone from Glenn Danzig to Apocalyptica, as well as members of Judas Priest, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Saxon and Alice in Chains. When they played Iron Man and Paranoid on Saturday night, it was with one half of Black Sabbath – Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler.
But the most touching team-ups were with former members. Fans were thrilled by the Wednesday night appearance of bassist Jason Newsted, who played with Metallica from 1986 to 2001. "[He is] someone who lived with us, and toured with us and did stuff with us for 14 years," James Hetfield said from the stage. On Saturday night, the biggest surprise was Mustaine, fired from Metallica in 1983. Although the band had already reconciled with the Megadeth frontman, almost three decades had passed since he and his former bandmates played Hit the Lights.
Formed in 1981, Metallica are one of the biggest bands of all time, sellling more than 100m albums.

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Saudi woman beheaded for 'sorcery'


Agence France-Presse
Riyadh, December 12, 2011
First Published: 15:40 IST(12/12/2011)
Last Updated: 15:41 IST(12/12/2011)

A Saudi woman was beheaded on Monday after being convicted of practising sorcery, which is banned in the ultra-conservative kingdom, the interior ministry said.

Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar was executed in the northern province of Jawf for "practising witchcraft and sorcery," the ministry said in a statement carried by SPA state news agency.

It is not clear how many women have been executed in the desert-kingdom, but another woman was beheaded in October for killing her husband by setting his house on fire. The beheading took to 73 the number of executions in Saudi Arabia this year.
In September, Amnesty International called on the Muslim kingdom where 140 people were on death row to establish an "immediate moratorium on executions."
The rights group said Saudi Arabia was one of a minority of states which voted against a UN General Assembly resolution last December calling for a worldwide moratorium on executions.
Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law.
Amnesty says Saudi Arabia executed 27 convicts in 2010, compared to 67 executions announced the year before.

Saudi Arabia executes woman convicted of 'sorcery'

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi authorities have executed a woman convicted of practicing magic and sorcery.
The Saudi Interior Ministry says in a statement the execution took place Monday, but gave no details on the woman's crime.
The London-based al-Hayat daily, however, quoted Abdullah al-Mohsen, chief of the religious police who arrested the woman, as saying she had tricked people into thinking she could treat illnesses, charging them $800 per session.
The paper said a female investigator followed up, and the woman was arrested in April, 2009, and later convicted in a Saudi court.
It did not give the woman's name, but said she was in her 60s.
The execution brings the total to 76 this year in Saudi Arabia, according to an Associated Press count. At least three have been women.
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Syria holds local polls as violence continues



Syrians vote in local elections, but turnout expected to be low after activists call for boycott and deaths continue.
Last Modified: 12 Dec 2011 12:03




Syrians are casting ballots in local elections, but turnout is expected to be low after activists called for a boycott of the polls.
The SANA state news agency showed pictures of people voting and reported that voters had "flocked" to the polls on Monday.
Almost 43,000 candidates are standing for 17,588 seats in the country's 1,337 administrative units.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Revolution General Commission said six people had been killed in protests on Monday.
The elections and deaths come a day after, hundreds of army defectors in the south have fought with loyalist forces in one of the biggest armed confrontations in the nine-month uprising.
Earlier on Sunday, troops from the 12th Armoured Brigade, based in Isra, 40km from the border with Jordan, stormed the nearby town of Busra al-Harir, the Reuters news agency reported.
Al Jazeera's Nisreen El-Shamayleh, reporting from near the Jordan-Syria border, said that the clash started when "tens of tanks mounted with machine guns opened fire in that area earlier on Sunday morning to try to put an end to a general strike" called for by the opposition.

Syrian blogger Rami al-Jarrah speaks to Al Jazeera about his detention and teaching citizen journalism
The sound of explosions and heavy machine guns was heard in Busra al-Harir and in Lujah, an area of rocky hills north of the town, where defectors have been hiding and attacking military supply lines.
At least 26 people were killed by government troops on Sunday, including a woman and four children, activists said. Nine of them were killed in the city of Homs, six in Hama, three in Deraa, two in Idlib and another two outside of Damascus.
At least five Syrian soldiers, including a military officer, were also reportedly killed.
In another development likely to raise international pressure on President Bashar al-Assad, French Foreign Minister
Alain Juppe said on Sunday that Paris believed Syria was behind attacks that wounded French peacekeepers in neighbouring Lebanon on Friday.
Meanwhile, the opposition across Syria launched an indefinite general strike on Sunday as part of the first phase of a civil disobedience campaign to pile pressure on Assad to quit.
General strikes
Opposition activists said they had shut down much of the capital and other towns with a strike, the biggest walkout by
workers since the protest movement demanding Assad's removal erupted in March.
The Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC), a Syrian rights group, organised the civil disobedience campaign, including the closure of shops and universities in protest, as well as sit-in demonstrations across the country.
"This strike is really a desperate action, a desperate cry from the Syrian people, the last civilian action we could do," Ashraf al-Moqdad, a member of the Syrian opposition calling for civil disobedience, told Al Jazeera.
"We've been demonstrating peacefully for nine months. Thousands of us have been murdered by Assad and his thugs. We've been waiting for real concrete action from the international community ... What else can we do?
"This is part of our desperate action to get the attention of the international community to look at us. Please look at our situation. We are desperate now."
Security forces in Syria told striking shopkeepers on Sunday to open up their stores or they would be smashed.
"We heard reports that troops burned down at least 178 stores and shops in Deraa to try and take revenge against civillians who have shut down their stores and shops and are basically observing this general strike," our correspondent said.
Syria has barred most independent journalists from the country, making it difficult to gauge the extent of participation in the strike.
A witness who toured Damascus said most shops were closed in the main shopping street of the old Medan quarter in the centre of the capital where there has been a heavy security presence. The main souq in Old Damascus remained open.
Central parts of the capital and the business hub Aleppo seemed calm, though there are reports of strikes taking hold in some areas on the outskirts of both cities.

"There is nothing going on," said Rula, a schoolteacher in Damascus. "Nothing seems out of the ordinary."
The opposition used Facebook and online videos to call for an open-ended "Strike for Dignity" to begin on Sunday.
The LCC has termed the strike "the first step in an overall civil disobedience" campaign to overthrow the government.
Navi Pillay, the UN human rights commissioner, has said that "more than 4,000 people" have been killed in the government crackdown on dissent in Syria since protests broke out in March.

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WikiLeaks: A tale of two worlds - Opinion - Al Jazeera English



WikiLeaks: A tale of two worlds
WikiLeaks, 4Chan and Anonymous are examples of how rogues can thrive against the will of empire.
Last Modified: 12 Dec 2011 12:52
Listen to this page using ReadSpeaker
The WikiLeaks logo 'works as a sort of graphic manifesto', argues the author [AFP]
Melbourne, Australia - There is something eerie about the WikiLeaks logo (see above). It works as a sort of graphic manifesto, an image of dense political content stating a notion of ample consequences. A cosmic sandglass encloses a duplicated globe seen from an angle that puts Iraqi territory at the centre.
Inside this device the upper and darker planet is exchanged, drip by drip, for a new one. The power of the image lies in the sense of inexorability it conveys, alluding to earthly absolutes like the flow of time and the force of gravity: a bullish threat that grants the upper world no room for hope. The logo narrates a gradual apocalypse, and by articulating this process of transformation through the image of the leak, WikiLeaks defines itself as the critical agent in the destruction of the old and the becoming of the new world.
What has become manifest since late November 2010, with the release of what is now known as "The US Embassy Cables", is that the narrative implicit in the WikiLeaks logo, that of a world disjunct, describes a greater struggle against the global power held diffusely by transnational corporations and enforced by governments around the world. This power is under attack by a relatively new actor that can be called, for now, the autonomous network.
The conditions that allow the network to challenge the power of governments and corporations can be traced to the origin of the Internet and the Cold War zeitgeist that made the network we know possible. It was only because Cold War strategists had to narrate to themselves the unfolding of convoluted thermonuclear apocalypse scenarios, a dark art that peaked with Herman Kahn's surreal book On Thermonuclear War, that a computer network with the characteristics of the internet was implemented.
"I loved this concept of the purest things in the universe being unowned. The early Internet was so accidental, it also was free and open in this sense. "
- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak
The idea of imminent apocalypse was so extraordinary that it allowed for the radical thinking that over a decade evolved into the TCP/IP computer protocol suite, a resilient network protocol that makes the end user of the network its primary agent. The design philosophy of the internet protocols represents a clean break from the epistemes and continuums that had historically informed the evolution of Western power, as traced by Foucault and Deleuze from sovereign societies to disciplinary societies to societies of control.
Steve Wozniak has written, "I was also taught that space, and the moon, were free and open. Nobody owned them. No country owned them. I loved this concept of the purest things in the universe being unowned. The early internet was so accidental, it also was free and open in this sense".
To produce a commons is indeed an accident for Empire. Dismissed as a never-meant-for-the-masses autonomous zone, by and for the military and academia, it was allowed to evolve out of control. But this accident that happened because of daydreaming an extreme future never stopped happening.
It evolved.
At some point it gained an accessible graphic interface, and spilled all over the globe. By then it was too late to disarm what is now the increasingly contentious coexistence of two worlds, as the WikiLeaks logo registers. One world is a pre-apocalyptic capitalistic society of individualism, profit and control; the other a post-apocalyptic community of self-regulating collaborative survivors. The conflict arises from an essential paradox: Because the web exists, both worlds need it in order to prevail over the other.
The "cyber war" announced so spectacularly (in the Debordian sense) in the days following WikiLeaks' US Embassy Cables release is not really about the DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service), "denial of service" attacks that barely obstructed access to the MasterCard website for a few hours. If anything, the ephemerality of the disturbance leaves the sensation that Anonymous, the group that launched it, is far from being a structural threat. What journalists around the world have failed to narrate is the tale of a network that increasingly challenges, bypasses and outcompetes the global corporate-government complex. This is a struggle about the obsolescence of the very idea of the nation-state, and an almost unanimous coalition of governments, led by the US, fighting furiously to regain control by exerting legal, financial, symbolic and, perhaps most concerning, technical violence on their adversary.
Rogue episteme
Approaching the history of the internet through the Cold War zeitgeist helps us see a sort of Schumpeterian quality in the network. It is essentially a destructive entity that, like the Terminator, comes from the future (the imagined end of civilisation) and is set loose in an arcane environment (the present) that fights back. Perhaps the fact that Anonymous defines itself using a tone and vocabulary that closely resemble the description of the Terminator in James Cameron's 1983 film is not a coincidence but a sign of the epistemic brotherhood of two post-apocalyptic entities.
The Terminator:
Listen. Understand. That Terminator is out there. It can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with… it doesn't feel pity of remorse or fear… and it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are dead. (James Cameron, director, The Terminator)
Anonymous:
Your feelings mean nothing to us. … We have no culture, we have no laws, written or otherwise. … We do not sleep, we do not eat and we do not feel remorse. We will tear you apart from outside and in, we have all the time in the world. (extract from entry on Anonymous in the Encyclopedia Dramatica)
Network-native structures and their resulting communities are fuelled by hybrid motivations often alien to the material struggles seen by Marxism to lie behind the motion of history. In his book Hacking Capitalism, Johan Söderberg proposes the notion of "play struggle" as opposed to "class struggle" as the force that drives hackers as well as diverse realms of the network society.
Similar to labour in that it is a productive engagement with the world, play differs in that it is freely chosen and marked by a high degree of self-determination among the players. At its heart, the politics of play struggle consist in the distance it places between doing and the wage relation. Play is a showcase of how labour self-organises its constituent power outside the confines of market exchanges.
Söderberg proposes that play is labour within an exchange system external to the autocratic determinations of materialism. With the notion of "play struggle", we can understand Anonymous and its instant response in the wake of the WikiLeaks attack.
Anonymous emerged spontaneously from 4Chan.org, which has a curious set of features: (a) anonymity, (b) "lack of memory" (as opposed to "cloud computing", no record is kept in its servers but rather in the collective memory sedimented in the minds and hard drives of its users), (c) emphasis on visual conversation (through the intervention of images), and (d) a non-censorship policy that is only afraid of the police (as opposed to the market). Therefore, Play: These characteristics are all instrumental to placing in 4Chan an insurmountable distance "between doing and the wage relation". Its unique policy, its origin, ownership and ethos, and its substantial and highly engaged playful community make 4Chan the internet's most prolific semiotic laboratory.
It is telling that the software used to perform the denial of service attacks on MasterCard, PayPal and Amazon is a relatively simple programme called LOIC, for Low Orbit Ion Cannon, a fictional weapon in the Command & Conquer series of video games. Play drives Anonymous. It is the glue that ultimately holds it together, and the threat of state/corporate control triggers its reaction. Serious play is at the core of the rogue episteme. When play follows only its own logic it necessarily escapes commodification.
To play seriously is often counterplay, to set the system itself as the locus of play (even 4Chan has been a victim, because it is funny, of its own DDoS attacks). Instead of commodification by the mainstream, it is 4Chan that exploits the mainstream deconstructing its text, inverting and problematising its original intentions in a way that exceeds fan culture. 4Chan.org is a primary node in the fundamental clash of the centre and the indigestible fringe of contemporary digital culture.
For an average individual, visiting 4Chan, and particularly its main forum called simply '/b/', can be either repulsive or disappointing. Its content is distasteful to sensibilities constructed by the twentieth century's mammoths of consumption-driven mass media, and their resulting version of reality. Its autonomous project requires a stage of disorientation because its method is continuously to produce and evolve a language of its own. After all, how can autonomy be claimed while using the language of the oppressors? How can a new epistemological commons come to be if not by the crafting of an alternative language? Perhaps 4Chan is not exactly what Sean Cubitt had in mind when interrogating digital aesthetics, but it is certainly a model that seems to hold its ground against the "insidious blandness" of the corporate site:
Digital aesthetics needs both to come up with something far more interesting than corporate sites, and to act critically to point up their insidious blandness and global ambitions. Subversion of the dominant is inadequate. In its place, it is essential to imagine a work without coherence, without completion and without autonomy. Such a work, however, must also be able to take on the scale of the cyborg culture, a scale beyond the individual, and outside the realm of the hyper-individuated subject. By the same token, aesthetics must move beyond the organic unity of the art object and embrace the social process of making.
Anonymous and 4Chan currently play a strategic and necessary role in the struggle: the construction of an alternative episteme based on the commons of play rather than on consumption and commodities. Yet their political impact, in the case of the WikiLeaks embargo, was blown out of proportion. Mainstream journalism focused on the ultimately symbolic skirmishes starred by Anonymous, hyping the spectacular narrative of a cyberwar fought by an otherised and widely misunderstood cultural movement that cannot be called "hacktivist". As Richard Stallman has explained, a DDoS attack is not really hacking, but the digital version of mass protest.
If code is law, then protocol is the constitution.
Coup de net
"There is no remote corner of the internet not dependent on protocols." The point Laura DeNardis wants to get across in her book Protocol Politics: The Globalization of Internet Governance is that network protocols are a matter of huge political value, value that only grows as the net spreads. Lessig inaugurated this line of thinking when he famously stated "code is law".
But protocol runs deeper than software: If code is law, then protocol is the constitution. This is why, as long as attention is diverted towards the spectacular (like tactical and superficial DDoS attacks), governments can start the demolition of the protocols that grant the possibility of autonomy to the network. In reaction to the release of the US Embassy Cables, the UN called for the creation of a group that would end the current multi-stakeholder nature of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to give the last word on internet control to the governments of the world. The almost illegible resolution calls for the UN:
"to convene open and inclusive consultations involving all Member States and all other stakeholders with a view to assisting the process towards enhanced cooperation in order to enable Governments on an equal footing to carry out their roles and responsibilities in respect of international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet but not of the day-to-day technical and operational matters that do not impact upon those issues."
I have emphasised the fragments where the meaning hides: to "enable Governments to carry out their roles and responsibilities in respect of international public policy issues pertaining to the internet" is of course a nice way to talk about enabling the surveillance, censorship and control that the current protocols still make porous. The closing "concession" gives away the true intentions, "but not of the day-to-day technical and operational matters that do not impact upon those issues" means that once control is reinstated, people shall go on thinking they are free.
After Hillary Clinton stated that the leaks are "an attack on the international community", the move to gain control of the IGF is unsurprising. It fits the conflict outlined by the WikiLeaks logo. Even if the motion is defeated, which is currently possible, a card has been shown. More moves of this nature, on all possible fronts, will follow until the coup de net is complete. The IGF episode matches Douglas Rushkoff's analysis of the ongoing "net neutrality" debate:
"The moment the 'net neutrality' debate began was the moment the net neutrality debate was lost. … [the internet] will never truly level the playing fields of commerce, politics, and culture. And if it looks like that does stand a chance of happening, the internet will be adjusted to prevent it."
Protocols are the defining battlefield in the struggle between governments and corporations and the autonomous network. The UN’s attempt to take over the IGF is a true act of cyber war with the strategic warfare plan of hacking the internet to finally eradicate its aspirations for autonomy.
In an ambivalent world that is simultaneously exploring new territories of freedom and being subjected to heightened measures of control, the gradual reclamation of the commons is the crucial operation. The internet fosters processes of decommodification that effectively challenge capitalism. Rather than being the result of a violent class struggle, the end of capitalist hegemony might be the result of a slow internet-enabled process of migration, a dripping (to abuse once more the WikiLeaks logo) towards societies that organise around commons.
What is interesting is that WikiLeaks, after all, is still up and running. Someone still hosts it (poetically, a hosting company located in a Cold War-era anti-nuclear bunker), and their fund-raising channels have diversify to bypass the embargo (with partial success). WikiLeaks is an example of how a rogue can still thrive against the will of Empire, supported by an emerging ecology of more autonomous actors. MasterCard, PayPal and Amazon don't need to be shut, just bypassed or outcompeted. As the autonomous ecology matures, it allows for more complexity. This is where the war stands to be won: in the building of autonomous structures of all sorts (structures that bypass and outcompete existing ones) on top of other new structures until the entire old world is unnecessary.
Nicolás Mendoza is a scholar, artist and researcher in global media from The University of Melbourne and a member of the P2P Foundation. His recent work can be found here.
Follow him on Twitter: @nicolasmendo
A version of this article was previously published in the Journal of Radical Philosophy.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

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Collor pagou e recebeu dossiê Cayman, afirma PF




DE SÃO PAULO
Hoje na Folha Investigação da Polícia Federal afirma que a família do senador e ex-presidente Fernando Collor (PTB-AL) pagou em 1998 pelo dossiê Cayman, conjunto de papéis forjados para implicar tucanos com supostas movimentações financeiras no exterior.
A informação é da reportagem de José Ernesto Credendio, publicada na Folha desta segunda-feira (a íntegra está disponível para assinantes do jornal e do UOL, empresa controlada pelo Grupo Folha, que edita a Folha).
Segundo o inquérito, o senador teria recebido pessoalmente a papelada das mãos de um envolvido, em Maceió.
As conclusões são baseadas em investigações da Polícia Federal, do FBI (nos Estados Unidos) e da Interpol.
OUTRO LADO
Na última quarta-feira, a Folha procurou o senador Fernando Collor de Mello, por meio de sua de assessoria de imprensa, para que se manifestasse sobre o caso.
Após o primeiro contato, Collor chegou a telefonar pessoalmente para a reportagem pedindo mais detalhes sobre o conteúdo da documentação a que a Folha teve acesso.
Todo o relatório foi encaminhado à assessoria do senador. Sua equipe chegou a confirmar o recebimento dos documentos e respondeu à reportagem que aguardaria uma manifestação de Collor sobre o assunto.
Desde então, a reportagem espera novo contato da assessoria do ex-presidente. Até o fechamento desta edição, contudo, não houve resposta do senador alagoano.

Editoria de Arte/Folhapress
Leia mais na edição da Folha desta segunda-feira, que já está nas bancas.

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