Oxford Technology Newswire Archive

PROPOSAL
The proposal was to set up “mini-cinemas” in official and autonomous spaces during the ESF, showing short, punchy activist films. The technology would be re-cycled computers which would be of sufficiently low value to be left unattended, placed in a box and with a continuously running playlist programmed at the beginning of the day. The screen would therefore be a computer monitor. The aim was also to enable people to “DIY” encode their own films for them to be added to an ever-expanding playlist.
Politically it would be an anarchic, upbeat intervention in the more hidebound conventions of the political conference. Practically it would provide the opportunity for the showing of activist shorts which conventional cinema screenings can be reluctant to programme. It would also enable screening spontaneity and last-minute, urgent, campaign-based screenings. Potentially it would be very transferable to other venues and events.
It would also offer campaigning film makers an opportunity for “copyleft” distribution via “Ruffcuts” CDs, and had the wider remit of helping to build an effective network of radical film makers. Read more >>

Nanotech industry front, group Institute of Nanotechnology have taken to using the UK Indymedia Newswire in an attempt to make contact with "Angels Against Nanotechnology". Read more >>

From 8 a.m. this morning, a group of people has occupied a crane of the Minatec building site in Grenoble (france), to stop work for the day. The occupying ones, supported by protestors on the ground, unrolled a banner against nanotechnologies and distributed leaflets to passers by inviting them to come to join them (see leaflet below in french).

Minatec is set to be the largest centre for Nanotechnologies in Europe and is currently being built next to the site of the super-collider in Grenoble.

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Activists in Grenoble France occupy construction site for Minatec Nanotech centre Read more >>

The is a short edit, just the highlights and clearer sound and a long edit of the whole action Read more >>

The Heavenly Righteous Opposed to Nano-tech Greed manifested at a conference of potential investors in the nano-technology industry today. Harry Swan, once in charge of PR for Monsanto and now trying to sell nano-tech to investors, was presented with a Can of Worms Award. Read more >>

leaflet from the event and logo Read more >>

A host of heavenly angels from THRONG (The Heavenly Righteous Opposed to Nanotech Greed) appeared today unto a nanotechnology business conference in order to bestow a "Can of Worms" Award on a representative of the Nanotechnology Industry. Chosen to receive the award was Mr Harry Swan, formerly of Monsanto, who is Nanotechnology manager of Britain's leading producer of carbon nanotubes, Thomas Swan & Co. Read more >>

Stagecoach Boss Brian Souter - one of the most homophobic rich men in britain who has personally bankrolled anti-gay campaigns - has announced that he will be using nanoparticle fuel additives in all stagecoach buses in the UK - Nanoparticle pollution from car exhausts is already a leading cause of child death - how can you claim to be environmentally friendly by adding more nanoparticles???
another nasty corporate person backing another nasty corporate technology? - more reason to boycott stagecoach... Read more >>

Dr Doug Parr, Chief Scientist of Greenpeace, will be talking the Precautionary Principle in relation to new technologies, GMOs, nanotechnology and wind power. He will argue that the Precautionary Principle can be applied in all these cases, but this can still lead to differing positions on what to do. This is because underlying some of these judgements is a differing set of values. He will attempt to draw out how this relates to three sets of people: (a) Greenpeace, (b) "the public" and (c) "the establishment" (both scientififc and political). His presentation will also draw out, with examples, how difficult it is for certain arguments to be heard which amounts to little better than censorship.
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here's an excellent open source poem - originally penned by the radical Supergirly and performed at the October Hammer and Tongue poetry slam. feel free to adapt, adjust, alter, rewrite and forward forward forward..

please post any new versions below. Read more >>

Their is compelling evidence that the new police radio communications system, TETRA, poses a considerable threat to health. See www.corporatewatch.org.uk/news/cancer_on_the_beat.htm Read more >>

2 student journalists have managed to break into the University's computer network. Read more >>

Short exciting video of one of the Sainsbury anti-GM blockades at Coleshill near Birmingham last Thursday night. Read more >>

The EU council yesterday voted to implement software patents in Europe. When they are implemented it may mean it's possible to patent any process (techies call this an algorithim). So we could have IBM 'owning' the "2+2" bit of 2+2=4! Read more >>

Oxford Indymedia are building a network of computers assembled from scrap, as a community resource, to be deployed at the OCSET community centre (220 Cowley Road, Oxford). Read more >>

'DUST OR MAGIC' is a conference about how people do 'good stuff' with computers: games, hypertexts, web sites, interfaces, software tools. It's for everyone who's seriously concerned about the fate of creative work and creative workers in the 'new-media' workplace. We talk about software and hardware, design, industry economics, workplace politics, psychology, each others' work, and the practicalities of making things that delight, as well as making a living.
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Unique distribution for documentary Read more >>

A nine minute video (in realvideo) of an anti-GM convoy and demonstration at DEFRA. Bags of GM taken from 17 trial sites around the country were dumped on DEFRA's doorstep to make clear that the public do not want GM crops. Read more >>