Thursday, August 1, 2013

Britain's tax exiles of the 1960s

Dr Desmond Morris

Our Director, Dr Desmond Morris, has written an important and fascinating book 'The Naked Ape' which has had widespread success even before publication.

Owing to the present system of taxation which is particularly inconsiderate towards authors and artists in general we are now faced with the probability that he will be forced to move out of this country if he is to retain more than an absurdly small fraction of his legitimate and in this case unprecedented earnings.

It seems unlikely that this situation can be avoided and in consequence we can only congratulate him on his good fortune and prepare with great regret to part company.

A further announcement of future plans for the ICA at this crucial time will appear in the next Bulletin.

- tipped in sheet, ica bulletin, October 1967, number 174.
Institute of Contemporary Art, London

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

The Art Of Punk - documentaries, interviews

The Art Of Punk debuts on MOCAtv with an episode on Raymond Pettibon and the artwork of Black Flag.

The stories behind the art of the Dead Kennedys will debut on June 18, and June 25 will see the release of the Crass episode, all of which will be available at:

www.youtube.com/MOCAtv

Thursday, July 4, 2013

"Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States "

"Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States "

U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement - NYT, 3 July 2013

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Google Ends SMS Search Service

in another move which violates the "don't be evil" prime directive you can no longer get simple search results by texting a message to 466453

attention google: not everything needs to be monetized, fuckers.

"Google's decision to shut down the SMS search service only serves to widen the information divide between the haves and have-nots," wrote user dadamn in a May 10 post. "I could always get some info via the very simple text message—an address and phone number for a business can be very handy in a pinch, or when traveling.  For those of us who can't afford a data plan or smartphone, or for those who aren't techno-savvy enough to navigate the web on a cellphone or learn a new 'app world,' the SMS has helped us to function in a society that increasingly assumes everyone worth reaching has a smartphone. Google, I'll challenge you to take a look at this service from a social-justice lens. Please cut the crap about 'beautiful technology that will improve people's lives' when you're only talking about improving things for the techno-elite."

http://www.eweek.com/mobile/google-ends-sms-search-service-apparently-without-warning/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/14/google_sms_search_shutdown/

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

sexual assults in the military

Sexual assaults in the military are a growing epidemic across the services and thousands of victims are still unwilling to come forward despite a slew of new oversight and assistance programs, according to a new Pentagon report.

Troubling new numbers estimate that up to 26,000 military members may have been sexually assaulted last year

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20130507_ap_militarysexassaultreportsupchangesordered.html

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

EFF 2013 Who Has Your Back report on internet companies and data protection

When you use the Internet, you entrust your conversations, thoughts, experiences, locations, photos, and more to companies like Google, AT&T and Facebook. But what do these companies do when the government demands your private information? Do they stand with you? Do they let you know what’s going on?

In this annual report, the Electronic Frontier Foundation examined the policies of major Internet companies — including ISPs, email providers, cloud storage providers, location-based services, blogging platforms, and social networking sites — to assess whether they publicly commit to standing with users when the government seeks access to user data. The purpose of this report is to incentivize companies to be transparent about how data flows to the government and encourage them to take a stand for user privacy whenever it is possible to do so.

https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013