Apologies to all for lack of posting on the site , Suzi and myself have been going through last term of  academic year hell and I’ve also made myself a glutton for punishment and been voted in as  Student Union President (again).

Pursuing my interest in the doctrine (or non doctrine) of anarchy, particularly the action, or non action of  forum use and the ‘feeling’ that being, in these anarchist forums is to them, a space of free thinking (or, to use Hakims Beys definition, a ‘ temporary autonomous zone‘)  I started a thread on an online anarchist community. So far so good. In a second year of degree act of stupidity I made too good an argument, leading to a situation where the forum users just blankly agreed with me.

Thing is, I used an androgynous handle (name) so I decided to stir things up a little and reveal explicitly that I was female-  can you guess what happened dear reader? Yep, the thread wasn’t pulled, but, my explicit reply was!  I  e-mailed the sites administrator to ask why my reply was pulled and  he replied that my mentioning radical womens squats ‘marginalised’  a lot of the forum users!  I’m sorry I forgot there are no female anarchists! My topic was valid and a useful talking point, oh, pat on the head for me then for being clever, erm WTF?

I’hm not immune to the notion that there is inerrant sexism in the world and on the net ,I just thought that there may be a little less sexism  on the net.  The net is a place of deception as well as a place of truth telling and yes you could argue that my handle gave no clue to my gender, but should it matter  on an anarchist website? In an anarchist utopia we are all equal and not subjected to the mindless actions of blokes in balaclavas smashing up shop windows and ‘us’ women keeping the collective home fires burning. We are elders as we always (and have been ignored for many a generation and governmental policy) have been within the collective, just as men pass on their wisdom, so do women.

I know I may sound naive but I really feel that this is 2009, I’m a working class, single parent woman and I am  free to be educated, select partners etc, however, I have to also acknowledge that  I’m blonde ,’skinny’, white with technological advantage.  I have to acknowledge this privileged in off-line life , but do I have to on-line? Why, if the Internet is a virtual space where everyone is supposedly equal am I bombarded with adverts for pink computers, dating sites and online bingo halls? Its time to campaign against on-line sexism as well as offline sexism.

I watched the last episode of Pulling. It was ok at times its quite sexist towards men. However,  hey how many times to you see a BBC programme where the women get the funny lines?

I`m reading ‘The Dispossessed’  by Ursula K.Le Guin. Anyone else read it? I’ll do a review in a few weeks time.

We are lucky enough to be able to host some amazing photos of Million Women Rise, taken by the very talented Rowan Fulton (who is also very lovely). Do enjoy the photos, and do also please consider writing to the major newspapers, who once again completely failed to highlight Million Women Rise. Whilst this does mean we get to host some excellent photos, I would much rather be seeing them in the paper, highlighting our cause!

All photos are Copyright of Rowan Fulton, Photographer

Browsing the net tonight I found two articles that caught my eye , over on Feministing ,about a lesbian being chased off and effectively banned from x-box live and the other over on the F-word about female I.T workers quitting their jobs because of the industry’s sexism.

To be honest , at first, I thought the headline `Lesbian banned from X-box live!` was a headline straight out of  The Sun in the `Freddie Starr ate my hamster` mould. It was absolutely ridiculous and laughed until I checked  out the whole article. I started to think about the last x-box game I completed (Fable II ), its a role playing game with fighting,magic and relies on interpersonal responses with the game virtual characters in order to fully assess renown.

Did it matter if I was a male or female character? A main unlock achievement in the game is to get married and was it a problem if I chose a member of the same sex? No .So sexuality equality is creeping into some games these days ,so why does it matter if you express your sexuality or just simply experiment? Its the old chestnut `just think about the children!` panic , in other terms ‘I don’t want to explain why some people have different sexualities , it makes me uncomfortable’.

That comment pointed to me over to the furor over a disabled woman presenting kids TV. A women with one able arm is presenting toddler t.v . So what?  most of the rational thinking population may think,but no, during a Radio 2 talk show a listener rang in and complained that this woman would give his kids nightmares. Well Mr phone man ,my kids are 3 and 4 and they didn’t bat an eyelid or comment on it!

Back to the game…upon completing the game I was shown the credits.  How many female programmers were credited? Two ,that’s right two. Out of thirty five! WTF! Why is that I thought to myself? Maybe I’m being naive here but I thought we lived in 2009 , and that technology and jobs within the tech industry were  about merit and not about gender. I’m wrong according to the excellent article over on The F-word. Sexism is rife in the I.T industry , apparently us ‘girls’ should stick to low paying call center jobs and making the tea at gaming studios.

I have now made a conscious decision to learn programming , I’m kind of into finding out what my p.c can do and regular readers know that I’m an advocate of open source software, and I like messing around with Linux operating system.

I used to work in pubs , I know that most men are socialized in a sexist manner but I thought that on-line we as women could be what we wanted to be , be it androgynous, lesbian, bisexual or a spider plankton from Mars. Who cares as long as you find  liberty and kinship which under pins the whole ethic of the World Wide Web or even the supposed male dominated Hacker world :-

“Hackers should be judged by their hacking , not bogus criteria such as degrees,age,race or position”.(Levy,S.Hackers(1994)Penguin.New York.

Will boys play any game?Of course they will according to this piss-take.

Latest black hat traps on facebook and twitter.

The Beeb and the digital roll out.

Medieval nerd girls?  Why the distinction between boy and girl nerds?

DOS attacks on Xbox Live gamers

Government opensource plans.

As my guitar hero controller languishes under a film of dust, I laugh at how far the obsession could of gone courtesy of South Park.

Free lemmings like puzzle game ,designed to waste time and drive you mad!

Surface computer,coming to a snooty bar/club near you soon.

Here are some useful links for you all
The best firewall protection I’ve come across. successfully stopped my laptop being `penetrated ` whilst on a  wireless network .

Suffering from Heroes withdrawal? Cruise this secure site for clips and spoilers.

For all you gamers ,prepare for piss takes of the big games.

Beginnings of Skynet (Terminator) anyone?

Ok it’s a Microsoft beta program,  but it’s still an excellent personal file sharing utility.

Info about the Open Source Movement in India.

Following on from the reports that the government intend to provide economically and socially deprived children a laptop and broadband my questions are these:-

Given the credit crunch and the pull back from implementing green technologies, will this policy also be put on the back-burner? I can’t find anything on the net to suggest that pilot schemes are going ahead.

Is this a ruse to free up teaching time? i.e “difficult” students could sent home from school and told to resume their studies on-line, therefore making them more socially isolated and marginally more susceptible to being groomed,it could also raise depression levels in socially excluded young people and increase the likelihood of them committing electronic crimes.

I do think this is a great scheme-  I’m certainly more liberated since going on-line at home. As a single mother it has enabled me to cyber socialize and self educate. Is this a case of “great idea, it’ll be a possible voter morale booster”? I really hope not, because children who live below the poverty line need the social capital enabling tool of the Internet.

So, according to the BBC our Internet service providers are being asked to retain and store our electronic traffic and, if needs be, inform the police if they find anything suspicious.The police then only need to get a warrant in order to look through your e-mails and text messages in order to gain evidence of any wrong doing.
Given that we live in the post 9/11 era we are ,apparently, all potential terrorists,I say this because every time the government trial these security ideas its because of the need to protect national security.

Let me ask you this- in the 1970′s & 80′s,were we all subjected to surveillance because of the terrorist threat posed by the I.R.A? Were all phones and paper mail bugged and tapped into? No. Why?  Well there wasn`t the technology then and a lot of people didn’t have telephones. So did terrorists communicate via carrier pigeon? No they met up ,the police then did police work (using human intelligence not using a programme to sift out the words bomb ,kill,maim etc). Human intelligence ,if I’m not mistaken, is what differentiates us from the rest of the animal kingdom and A.I.
Human intelligence and intuition is what guides us through life ,enabling us to make decisions (to what ever ends) and the police use it to catch criminals and to protect citizens.
Why does the government put more faith in monitoring systems than it does the actual human intelligence and the intuition skills of police officers? Could it be because its a cost cutting measure? Tell me,can monitoring someones electronic messages stop a knifing ,mugging,rape,domestic violence murder? Surely these crimes are more of a threat to national security than  the sensationalist statements of religious radicals.
We can`t rely on C.C.T.V . If you remember in the Mendez case the police used the C.C.T.V to back up their version of events, but in the end it was the human witnesses that convinced the jury of the truth. Yes the visual evidence of events were there, but it was manipulated so the police team could get a way with murdering an
innocent man and only with the honest testimony of human witnesses did the truth out.

There’s also the great moral panic about the electronic criminal,the electronic criminal who rips your credit card details of the net,the electronic criminal who clones your phone.
Listen carefully I shall only say this once…Hackers are not electronic criminals.
Why be afraid of the beast which is the electronic criminal, find the best firewall you can (you can download them free at Linux) ,change your passwords every couple of weeks, don`t use your birthday or name on your passwords and limit the amount of time you have blue-tooth switched on. If you knew someone had your debit card pin would you not change it? Would you walk down the street with your purse/wallet hanging out of your pocket so a pick pocket could easily lift it? Course not if you take the same precautions on-line as you do off-line then there’s a good chance you won`t be a victim of electronic crime.

So now here’s the bottom line: what a lot of people say is  “I don`t mind, I’ve got nothing to hide”. Well you know what, I’ve got nothing to hide either , I’m not a criminal , I’m just a citizen going about my business, but I do mind that I’m being monitored by my services providers,  whom I PAY for services, and likewise the Police (through taxes) .We are a nation that is paying for its own errosion of Liberty namely the right to privacy.

He who gives up liberty for security ends up with neither.
- Benjamin Franklin