Fats, Vitamins and Minerals

For the folks out there who are still patronizing Coca-Cola products, apart from health reasons, below are more reasons why you should stop.

Pass on.

CBS, “Bottled H2O Backlash,” July 8, 2009
Millions of Americans prefer bottled water over tap. But, as Kelly Wallace reports, a new congressional report indicates there is little evidence as to what is actually inside those bottles.
See Video

Notebook: Bottled Water, July 8, 2009
Katie Couric questions how much Americans know about the bottled water they drink. Researchers say tap water is often as good as the water that costs two dollars.
Watch video

Courier Leader [Michigan], “Brockovich representative declares action has started against Coca-Cola,” By Deborah Klinger, July 6, 2009
Read Article
” Paw Paw residents experiencing well water contamination are moving forward with a lawsuit against Coca-Cola North America. Robert Bowcock, chief investigator for environmental crusader Erin Brockovich, held his second town hall meeting in Paw Paw Monday night. Bowcock, stepping in for Brockovich, whose scheduled appearance was canceled due to illness, announced that the Brockovich group now represents people from the area. He said that with the law firm Weitz & Luxenberg, P.C., of New York, they would be filing suit against Coca-Cola for groundwater contamination. The contamination is allegedly caused from the spraying of juice waste on fields located behind the Paw Paw facility. Juice waste sprayed on fields in large quantities can strip metals from the soil and make them soluble in groundwater.”

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “A look at Coke around globe: ‘Devil’ takes readers on worldwide journey.Author chronicles how PR powerhouse ignores victims of its practices.” By Gina Webb, June 28, 2009
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“Do things always go better with Coke? Not necessarily. Colombia, El Salvador, Turkey and India are some of the places where British comedian and political activist Mark Thomas traveled ‘to find the reality behind the PR image of the world’s most famous brand, Coca-Cola’ —- a harsh reality that formed the basis for his book ‘Belching Out the Devil…’

“What Thomas discovers is shocking: According to workers and human rights organizations, Sinaltrainal, after more than a decade of union-busting attacks and intimidation by paramilitaries allegedly hired by the Coca-Cola plants, is struggling to survive.”

Newsweek, “We Read It So You Don’t Have To: ‘Belching Out The Devil’, ” June 6, 2009
Read article
“…he writes, the iconic white-and-red ribbon is a slick PR blindfold for child labor, union crackdowns and even violence, all to protect cash flow and the supply chain…The company, Thomas contends, looked the other way as some bottlers in Colombia and elsewhere intimidated and attacked union organizers, who ‘walk with a gravestone’ on their backs. Pressured to audit Colombian plants in 2005, Coke helpfully noted a substandard number of fire extinguishers at one, but didn’t address the charges.”
Buy Book from Amazon or Powells

The Coca-Cola Co. Pays Big Bucks for Another Award

Advertising Age, “Ad Council to Honor Coca-Cola Chief: Muhtar Kent to Receive 56th Annual Public Service Award”
“The Ad Council has selected Muhtar Kent, chairman-CEO of Coca-Cola Co., to receive its 56th annual Public Service Award. The award will be presented at the Ad Council’s annual dinner Nov. 18 in New York.”
Read Article

Each time Coca-Cola receives an award, a bit of research shows that a Coke executive is on the board of the company giving the award or Coke is a large contributor to the company. In the case of the Ad council, Coke is listed as a member of the company’s President’s Circle, contributors of more than $150,000.
Check list of contributors

Associated Press, “Venezuela: Coca-Cola Zero has harmful sweetener,” By Fabiola Sanchez, June 12, 2009
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“Venezuela’s Health Ministry said Friday it banned sales of Coca-Cola Zero because the company failed to declare that the no-calorie soft drink uses an artificial sweetener allegedly harmful to health. Health officials said tests show the cola contains sodium cyclamate. Coca-Cola Co. disputes that, saying the product sold in Venezuela uses different artificial sweeteners, Acesulfame-K and Aspartame. (see below re: aspartame)”

Financial Times, “Venezuela bans Coke Zero, citing ‘harmful’ ingredients,” By Benedict Mander in Caracas, June 11, 2009
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“Health minister Jesus Mantilla said the zero-calorie drink ’should be withdrawn from circulation to preserve the health of Venezuelans,’ while the government investigated its ingredients which it said could be ‘harmful’.”

Coke has used sodium cyclamate in its drinks in some parts of the world. While not allowed to use it in the U.S., the company was using the artificial sweetener in Mexico until about a year ago. However, replacing cyclamates with aspartame is not a solution (see the piece by Betty Martini below).

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “ZERO TO ZERO IN MEXICO: Same name, new sweetener: After protest, Coke publicly dumps cyclamates,” By Jeremy Schwartz, March 13, 2008
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“Coca-Cola has reformulated the Mexican version of Coke Zero, removing a controversial artificial sweetener that is banned in the U.S. and caused an outcry from consumer advocates in Mexico.

“The company said the change will give the diet drink a taste closer to that of Coca-Cola Classic and had nothing to do with concerns over sodium cyclamate [the usual Coke Co. denial], a sweetener banned in the U.S. 39 years ago by the Food and Drug Administration after lab findings suggested it posed a cancer risk.”

“Coke’s Aspartame Campaign to Bring You Pain – Gets Award,” By Dr. Betty Martini
Read Article
“…That word is aspartame, and [Coke’s] only recourse is denial, denial, denial, though every ad and commercial builds higher the scaffold upon which Coke shall surely hang. Reality is in that twisted Diet Coke can. It’s poison. It’s killing the unborn, raining tumors and seizures on the population, destroying children, incapacitating workers, mimicking MS, erasing memory and blinding. Inexorably Diet Coke visits a plague of 92 symptoms listed by our FDA on a secret report they’ll never show that names diet soda as the top cause of aspartame disease. And yes, Death was one of the 92.

“Diet Coke is poison! And it’s addictive; some victims drink several liters a day and keep it on their nightstands. If Coke changes the formula to remove aspartame the world will heal and the surge of hatred and vengeance by the disabled and bereaved shall certainly destroy Coca Cola.

“The poison in Diet Coke is aspartame. As a member of the National Soft Drink Association, Coke opposed FDA approval of aspartame for beverages. Their objections, running to several pages published in the Congressional record of 5/7/85, said aspartame is uniquely and inherently unstable and breaks down in the can. It decomposes into formaldehyde, methyl alcohol, formic acid, diketopiperazine and other toxins. In a test on 7 monkeys 5 had grand mal seizures and one died, a casualty rate of 86%.

“Coke knew; and knowing, broke their good faith contract with customers, a breach shown by their English plot to program vending machines to kite the price with the temperature. Dissatisfied with selling flavored sugar water plus phosphoric acid, they switched to pushing an addictive formula called “Diet”. Addiction multiplies consumption, so Diet Coke soared off the sales charts, spreading obesity. We’re fatter because aspartame suppresses serotonin and makes us crave carbohydrates.”

The New York Times, “[New York] State Agencies to Phase Out Use of Bottled Water,” By Sewell Chan, May 5, 2009
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“Citing both financial and environmental reasons, Gov. David A. Paterson signed an executive order on Tuesday directing state agencies to phase out the purchase and use of bottled water at government workplaces.

“The order will gradually terminate the use of state money for the purchase of single-serve water bottles and larger, cooler-sized water bottles. Each executive agency will have to provide alternative water sources, like ordinary tap water fountains and dispensers.”
NYS Gov David Patterson’s Executive Order

The Massachusetts Daily Collegian, “UMass students boycott Coca-Cola: Call for end to ‘exclusive pouring rights’ contract,” By Hannah McGoldrick, May 3, 2009
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“Today, the ‘Campaign to Stop Killer Coke’ at the University of Massachusetts will be holding a boycott against all Coca-Cola products.

“The campaign at UMass is a nascent organization beginning to gain ground among students. Boone Shear, a member of the organization and an anthropology doctoral candidate at UMass, said ‘the boycott is meant as a symbolic beginning and as an informational, consciousness-raising exercise.’ ”

Momentum, “UCATS Reaffirms Coke Ban–NYU Lifts It,” By Rob Lesko, Spring 2009
Union of Clerical, Administrative & Technical Staff at NYU, Local 3882, NYSUT, AFT, AFL-CIO
Read Article
“After reviewing the ILO report, the UCATS executive council has come to the same conclusion as the advocates of the Coke ban—it does not address the murders of union activists at Coke’s bottling plants in Colombia. On March 11th, the UCATS Executive Council voted to re-affirm our 2005 resolution to boycott Coca-Cola products for our member events and we call upon our members to avoiding purchasing Coke products until further notice.”

I just realized that the flock of birds, the swallows, presents a beautiful picture of modern fascism. And the birds are all free:

Our Organization has the most legitimate hold on the concept of Freedom. You see, our critics and opponents need to regulate and guide the movement of their forces. We don’t need to do that. The multitude of people who know our Brand adhere to it in complete Freedom, so our staunchest supporters are those who value the most Freedom. They will never give up easily, and they will stomp down the dissidents among them, those who threaten their comfort - without our command, they will work long and hard - in total Freedom, because they fervently believe that our interests are their own.

In a number of occasions I have seen how the linking of “globalism” with “fascism” (and “imperialism”) clarify the complexity of problems that the world faces today. Perhaps it is useful to dissect this link.

How should I know if I am in the company of wolves in sheep’s clothing? Or perhaps sheep who believe they are wolves?

“Our commercial development, following the course of our territorial expansion, logically and inevitably, has expanded the vigor of our growth function internally, between the two oceans rather than externally upon either; but this inter-oceanic process having completed the subjugation of the obstacles to it, the energies of national growth became freed to operate upon new fields of activity… The extremities of the hardships to be endured, or the terrors or dangers to be confronted, do not enter into the national question of expansion at all [but rather] the outflow of national energy obeyed the laws implanted in the national organization as blindly and instinctively as do the swallows the laws of their migration.” (The Freedom, on The Philippines and Trade, in justifying US imperial expansion in the Philippines, 1898)

In my mind’s eye is the sunset reflected on the sea in Baclayon earlier this day. I have kept record of past sunsets, many of them. But not this season. The sea in the sunset rain must be quite a sight.

Isn’t that absolutely fantastic. Google Evangelist Vint Cerf says, “The Internet is for Everyone” and they’re all working really hard on getting the next billion people on the Internet. In developing countries like the Philippines, that’s really cool stuff and we’ve got our government working with NGOs and private sector, especially those really generous telcos, to get Internet access for everybody.

But we’re all evangelizing the great power of this Internet and Web thing because our people are so hungry for what’s out there - online. And it’s all free! And this really great democratizing new tactical and empowering thing called Web2.0 is just so cool. Facebook is booming in Turkey and Indonesia. YouTube’s audience has nearly doubled in India and Brazil. Fantastic!

Well, here’s what the Web2.0 industry really thinks of you hungry people:

Last year, Veoh, a video-sharing site operated from San Diego, decided to block its service from users in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe, citing the dim prospects of making money and the high cost of delivering video there.

“I believe in free, open communications,” Dmitry Shapiro, the company’s chief executive, said. “But these people are so hungry for this content. They sit and they watch and watch and watch. The problem is they are eating up bandwidth, and it’s very difficult to derive revenue from it.”

“Whenever you have a lot of user-generated material, your bandwidth gets utilized in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, where bandwidth is expensive and ad rates are ridiculously low,” Mr. Volpi said. If Web companies “really want to make money, they would shut off all those countries.”

- From “In Developing Countries, Web Grows Without Profit”

And you’ve heard of “evangelism” too right? Like “Google Evangelist” or “Microsoft evangelist” or those “Internet Evangelists.” Isn’t that just amazing, the charisma of those people who really care about us. Here’s how it works:

“Mind share. Mind share is the most important concept in evangelism. To control mental output, you have to control mental input. You’re going to control what the developers write, the code they write. You have to control what they’re thinking, which means you have to control the input to their brain. The way you do that is by taking control of the channels by which the developers receive their information. And in that I’m including the marketing slime and the VPs and execs and so forth. Thus you control mind share, by controlling input.”

-”Power Evangelism” by James Plamondon, from (Plaintiff’s exhibit 2456) in Comes vs. Microsoft

And the lot of you Internet and IT professionals, you go to those conferences, those really big expensive prestigious events here you meet your favorite evangelists. They all love it, and here’s how they swing it at you:

Conferences. When you actually go to a conference, leverage the crap out of those. Always get some kind of a meeting room. We did these at the December PEC in 93. We had a bunch of meeting rooms set up and called our (independent software vendors) ISVs beforehand and arranged (at least I did) to pack the meeting rooms with ISV visits during the show, because developers coming to this location from all over the world, let’s leverage the hell out of that and meet with people who are so far away we don’t want to go there, OK? And it’s also an opportunity to just sort of put up a sign that says “The evangelist is In,” and if you want to talk to the evangelist, you know, schedule some time here. Those can be really random and a complete waste of time, but every now and then they can be really interesting. They can be companies that are up-and-coming. And, you know, they’re very interesting companies to work with. They’ll be a good source of quotes and magazine articles and stuff, but they won’t do a lot in the market, OK? But you never know about these guys unless you let them come to you. We are not all-knowing or all powerful. We cannot select everything as well as we might let them come to us.

But you can do even better. You even organize your own ICT road shows acoss the country, spreading love to everyone. It’s like that great “OneWebDay” event where we’re all “as one.” And it’s open for everyone, big players, small players, tiny payers, and all. It’s a level playing field -everyone’s welcome. In these road shows people come in and be amazed!

Road shows. Road shows are…DRG used to do this a lot. We’d put together a road show and do a twelve-city tour presenting the same all-base seminar over and over. We’ve shifted to a model more recently where we broadcast the road show content by satellite to theaters all over the world, and that works a lot better. So you pay $25 to go into the theater and sit in a darkened room with a whole bunch of other dweebs eating popcorn and watching Bill. It’s a tribal thing.

-”Power Evangelism” by James Plamondon, from (Plaintiff’s exhibit 2456) in Comes vs. Microsoft

And you think, well, we’re doing independent conferences, we don’t get that kind of thing, and we don’t just do this for big business, we do this for “the community.” Sure, of course, Big Brother loves you:

So at independent conferences, or rather those controlled by the enemy vendor, just gather information. At independent conferences, subvert them. Find the people who choose who goes on the agenda and who doesn’t. Send that person all the free software in the world they want. Find out if their kids are in school, find out what school they go to, send them free software; see what kind of car they drive, send them a little keyring with that car’s logo on it, you know. Anything, anything. Love those people. Just suck up to them so hard your face collapses. I mean, those people…those people are so valuable to you, it’s beyond belief, because they control who goes on that session or not.

-”Power Evangelism” by James Plamondon, from (Plaintiff’s exhibit 2456) in Comes vs. Microsoft

What about you folks who call yourselves “independent consultants.” You “independent” folks who got mind of your own. Sure, it’s all part of the evangelical system:

Consultants are really important. Consultants are independent evangelists. They’re people who are out there doing our job for us, or doing somebody else’s job against us, without even being paid for it. We don’t even have to pay ‘em nothing! This is great. We don’t even have to give them stock options. They must be on the bleeding edge in order to sell their services. The only reason you hire a consultant to do something is because you don’t know how, because consultants are, by definition, these expensive guys who help you go around and help you do something that you haven’t figured out how to do yet, get your projects started, and so on. So they have to be on the bleeding edge, which means they have to be in tight with Microsoft, or somebody else, or else they can’t do their job well. Sucking up to consultants pays off very well.

They also have the patina of objectivity: this very thin layer, they can say, I don’t work for Microsoft, I’m not just spouting the Microsoft party line, but…here’s the Microsoft party line, OK? So, a very thin appearance of objectivity. Contract programming houses are the same way. If you need some sample code written, or a book or an article, or anything like that, for God’s sake don’t write it yourself. Get them to do it, because then you can do something else, like getting somebody else to do part of your work for you.

It’s not only frees you up to do something else, it’s getting them to do something so that now they’re committed to it, right? They’ve written this book on OLE. They’ve learned a lot about OLE. If that doesn’t pay off for them, then they’re losing all that time, so it’s in their interest to stomp open.doc into the ground and to make OLE successful, right?

You want to get these people bought into stuff. You do that by throwing business their way. Consultants are one of the primary keys to effective evangelism.

-”Power Evangelism” by James Plamondon, from (Plaintiff’s exhibit 2456) in Comes vs. Microsoft

So you think - hey, I got nothing to do with these techie things. I’m just an Internet user, a “netizen” and a computer user; I’m just a consumer, and we consumers have got our rights too. Well, here’s what one of America’s most “prolific, provocative and brilliant judges, legal scholars and public intellectuals of all time” has to say about you users and consumers, especially in today’s economic crisis:

“A serious, protracted economic crisis can result in changes in consumer behavior that persist after the end of the crisis. A change in consumption, even in some sense involuntary, can be a learning experience. People make what they think will be merely temporary adjustments in their consumption behavior to reduce financial distress but may discover that they like elements of their new consumption pattern; and businesses too, which have reduced their newspaper (and other print-media) ad expenditures drastically. They may never go back.”

- From Judge Richard Posner on his proposal to toughen copyright law to make linking without permission illegal

Yep, that’s one great American mind, even that fantastic lawyer Lawrence Lessig who gave us Creative Commons said of Judge Posner, “There isn’t a federal judge I respect more, both as a judge and person.”

So, you hungry freeloading fans of Evangelist America, Big Brother loves you but don’t you think you got a mind of your own because the Evangelist knows how to make you pay!“Vint Cerf’s “The Internet is for Everyone” and what Evangelist America really thinks of you” By Fatima Lasay, ex-president of the (unincorporated) Internet Society-Philippines, 2009, and ex-member of the Internet Society.

Some three years ago, I wrote a short paper for a Unesco DigiArts workshop on art, technology and education, held in Linz, Austria. Although I was already in Denmark for a different but related event just a few days before the workshop, and my intention was to stay with Trevor in Amsterdam between Denmark and Austria, I was unable to attend the workshop because I was given only a 4-day valid Schengen visa, and it takes over 2 weeks to get another visa.

That year, 2004, was a very creative year for me, despite all the visa woes - it was the time I stopped teaching and decided to challenge myself with problems and situations outside the shelter of my university, my country and my home. My mind was full of ideas, and I was constantly mulling over many important issues around art, technology, culture and society.

Below are some of the things that had gone on in my mind on that workshop I missed in Linz. I wrote about it to Tereza Wagner/Unesco DigiArts who originally invited me to be there. Initially, in September 2004, I wrote to her about the visa problems, and how it might affect a Pacific Rim conference scheduled for 2006 in the US:

I told Roger Malina and Joel Slayton about a cultural programme in Armenia wherein the Armenian programme itself provides the visa to accepted applicants. There seem to be a cooperation established between the programme and the Armenian Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Perhaps such similar kind of government-institutional agreements might be made (for example between the US government/Foreign Affairs and the College Art Association (CAA) or the San Jose State University). Such an agreement can be made only specifically for the ISEA2006/Pacific Rim New Media Summit events and any preliminary face-to-face meetings. If UNESCO intervention will make such agreements easier, especially that several countries will be involved, then it would be a lot of help. It is true what Roger Malina said that if visa difficulties are not addressed (especially when entering the US which is very very strict with issuing US visas), then the Summit will definitely be a disaster.

On education, the subject of the Linz workshop, I proposed a concept I initially described as “culture and computing.” While the Linz workshop focused on the Mediterranean and the Arab States, I was conceptualizing the Asia Pacific experience. The first issue that I took was the issue of the dependencies between culture and commercialism.

Roger Malina talks about the “importance of well connected sub regions in driving economic development within the emerging new cultural practices that exploit information technologies” in his Linz presentation. I agree with this and but should add that stakeholders in information technologies also have the capacity to exploit cultural practices and therefore control and limit the economic development especially within the developing countries. The bigger the connected sub regions are, the bigger the market for commercial information technology vendors, and the greater the dependency created between commercialism and cultural practices. This would be opposed to the concept of sustainable development.

A specific example of this is our case at the University of the Philippines (UP). We started our information infrastructure with proprietary commercial software, particularly Microsoft Windows systems and applications software. This was driven by the visit of Bill Gates in the Philippines a few years ago, with pledges of support to the Philippine government. But now the president of the university said: “We need approximately P12 million to license the new MS Office 2000 in the entire UP System. In addition, we have to pay P8 thousand per computer for the latest Windows operating system. This enormous amount might as well be used to buy more computers.” So the president has issued an appeal to all units and colleges in the university to consider migrating to open source technologies, starting in February 2003. His appeal was received positively.

I also mentioned here a soft policy of FOSS for public institutions, ensuring that commercialism is never to be established as a default, just as FOSS is not to be fascistly imposed. In a soft policy, proprietary and open source systems are used depending on actual needs.

The second issue that I took was the importance of resistance and intelligence (and of intelligence as resistance) in the implementation of ICT in education. In this issue I took note of the remarks made by two people at the workshop, Mohammad Ayish and Derrick de Kerckhove.

Mohammad Ayish said, “Institutions of higher education in the Arab world need to adopt an integrated approach to the use of interactive multimedia tools by initiating strategic visions regarding the future of education in the age of the digital revolution. The issue here is not only about funding new e-learning projects, but also about creating a culture that is receptive to innovative instructional techniques on the part of both faculty members and students. Research has shown that the introduction of new innovations in traditional settings is likely to be faced with certain resistance.”I would like to add that the resistance, in my observation with my own students and with myself as a student in an e-learning environment, is very valid and should be listened to. I believe that the resistance is not only because of the introduction of something new to an old learning tradition, but more because we have not been able to reconceptualize and restructure the meaning of education thoughtfully enough to take the best advantange of our new technologies. Students and faculty have a valid reason to resist when they see that e-learning is used to compress the teaching and learning process. Often, the compression happens when there is a perceived need to deliver education to many. This could become a fatal mistake, when technologies are used in mass production and assembly-line type of education.

Derrick de Kerckhove said, “Another topic to examine is to what extent the Internet, the Web, blogs and other hypertextual practices lend themselves to an art of networking specific to different social associations in various parts of the Arab world. The art of networking on line stems from practices off-line. It is an art of intelligence.” I agree with this important point, and especially when we talk about e-learning situations, the use of on-line teaching tools, web-based databases, web-delivered course modules, and interactive learning objects. We design and develop these tools, databases, modules and learning objects always in consideration of the social practices from which they are inspired and for which they are used to augment. So it is good practice to conduct on-line learning with face-to-face meetings and develop their structure and content in a coherent and supplemental way.

The link that I (perhaps subconsciously) made between the remarks by Mohammad Ayish and Derrick de Kerckhove is extremely significant to me now. Resistance may indeed be seen as a form of intelligence, and that there has been very little resistance going on now, and that resistance has earlier been dismissed as ignorance and fear, we see how the context for the commercial exploitation of culture has been established.

The third issue I took was something I called an “iterative system of development” (which Trevor and a programmer friend of ours call bootstrapping), as the most desirable way of approaching the art, technology and education agenda.

An iterative system of development: I think that this system might be very useful in developing a (international) masters level course that is multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural in nature. The nature of the course demands a multi-lateral and multi-disciplinary/cultural approach to its own development. If it is an iterative system, then the courses are developed dynamically and will always be sensitive to the changes of the times. One way of implementing this is through an experimental pilot programme wherein the teachers themselves are also the students, and the student project proposals are selected and discussed in terms of how their deliberation and implementation will contribute to developing the content and structure of the final program.

I proposed an implementation of this system in a concept paper I submitted to a school in Sierre where I spent several weeks that same year. At that time, I naively described the concept as “a multi-disciplinary multi-site and multi-cultural project” and thought it similar to what Tereza mentioned about “digital aesthetics” (referencing a high level teaching in such a field as digital aesthetic, whereby “the intention is not to train digital artists or musicians but to introduce the artistic and aesthetic approach and skills to the computer science and computer technology degree”). I added:

However, in this proposal, there is not only the aesthetic implication on programming (or the computer sciences) but also on another discipline which I have identified to be very important in a country such as the Philippines - and this is the discipline of agriculture technology, in particular seedsaving and plant genetic diversity. In this project, there is a very “organic” (viral and ecological) way of seeing and working with the idea of computer languages (programming), and focuses on an important Philippine resource - agriculture - and the issues of seedsaving and plant genetic diversity. In this framework, it is also possible to articulate how programmers can overcome limitations set by meager tech resources - perhaps one can say that it is an aesthetic and ecological approach to computing and technologies. So here, not only are the cultural-historical roots important in defining the range of a multi-cultural cooperation in post-grad level education, but the economic strengths and needs are considered important as well.

Looking back at the thought behind these remarks I realize that I was patterning “aesthetics” with “agriculture”, in essence affirming that in my book and in my culture, the practice and theory of agriculture is an aesthetic, and that there can be numerous aesthetics with varying levels of significance to various communities. I was more interested in the many manifestations of these various aesthetics rather than the various expressions that one can make with digital technology.
Then I wrote about relocating to Europe, something that I would decide against a year later:

My plans for the next six months include relocating to Europe (on my own expense but I am also seeking work or a studentship or other form of cooperation to support myself) so as to have access to institutions, people and resources there in further developing my skills and knowledge and completing my researches within a reasonable time-frame. I have been teaching here for the past eight years and have had to struggle with bureacratic systems, numerous economic impediments to knowledge and resource access and creation, as well as visa restrictions that have severely limited my capacity to collaborate in international dialogues. While I seek to establish a base in Europe, I keep my contacts in the Philippines…

And from here I mentioned a whole load of Philippine institutions, both private and state, engaged in technology education and research, which in my naive optimism I described as “prominent and active” but now I realize they have always been monolithic institutions that only respond to market factors.

Given this, I - until now - have still chosen to remain in the Philippines because such “monolithic institutions” are after all a global tradition.

Then I went on with observations on the Arab States programme, and proposed the framework for the Asia Pacific: “So far, looking at how things develop in the Arab states programme, I think it would be good to approach the content and structure development with a synthesis of factors such as the learner’s profile, the subject matter/discipline factor (aesthetics, computing, etc), and societal factors. It’s a fairly basic design framework for education development which will need to be tailor-fit for the needs and demands of new conditions.”

In essence, now looking back, I had a strong but unexpressed objection to the phases of curriculum development that was being presented before me as this involved simply contributing content for a module with 3 parts: 1) a theoretical/philosophical/historian seminar to be launched through online self-study with assignment; 2) face to face creative workshop on sound and/or image digital thinking will then be organized for a selected number of students, and 3) the module will end with a final study project which will require online groupwork with assignments.

The process to me seemed ‘tutorial’ and top-down, signifying no philosophical reflection upon the process itself, and thus no opportunity for the learner to become a proactive part of the shaping of the process. It also had no bootstrapping or that thing I called “an iterative system of development.” As an alternative, I proposed a curriculum development process that was itself part of the learning and teaching process, in particular: “To enable a solid framework for curriculum development before any content or methods specification and implementation can be made. The framework is intended as a model on which curriculum guides for culture and computing (or art, design and technology) will be used in different parts of the region may be based. It would be good to invest in the development of a framework that allows adaptation to more local conditions by its (continuous) use on an experimental basis. The framework should also allow for studies of local needs to be used as context in which objectives are to be achieved and content developed locally through regional curriculum and learning centers.”

In implementation, I drafted the following process, many sections of which I may no longer agree with, thus reaffirming the theoretical and practical significance of the iterative system:

Phase I Defining the Culture and Computing Masters Programme
- Assembling and organizing information deemed relevant to curriculum building on: 1) Asian society; 2) the Asian learner; and 3) theories and trends in art, design and technology education at the postgraduate level.- Establishing the needs of the Asian learner, the demands of the society on this learner, and the possibilities which the social context and developmental level allow the learner.- Drawing up a set of guidelines that will link the framework to be developed to the established needs. These guidelines are intended as the necessary link between existing needs and the curriculum proposed to meet such needs. They are to serve likewise as a set of criteria for evaluating whether every factor that serves as a curriculum determinant has been considered in the framework.

Phase II Defining Content, Implementation Methods and Evaluation of the Culture and Computing Masters Programme
- Validating the guidelines for content with the help of at least three (3) experts from different countries within and outside the region in curriculum planning and development especially for the arts and technologies.

- Setting up the philosophy, the objectives and the content of the curriculum with Phase I as determinants and guide.

- Developing a system of evaluation that will provide clues for the further improvement and refinement of the framework. It must be found out how far curriculum guides that will be based on the framework will work. It must be found out if the objectives set are being realized. It must also be found out if the framework provides teaching content which represents reasonable choices of teaching materials that will be valid to the learner in terms of the objectives.

Phase III Implementation of a Pilot Masters Programme in Culture and Computing
- Implementation of an experimental use of the framework through a pilot programme on culture and computing at the postgraduate level through a sustainable network of selected universities and learning institutions, and invited teachers and students, through a strategic cooperation within and outside the region.

I would not, for example, separate the framework into three linear phases as what seem to be the case above. Perhaps I was seeking a means of ensuring non-linearity by embedding processes of “validation” between each phases every now and then. I would also be very careful in using the term “experts” or “masters course”, which carry with them fixed definitions based on external perceptions and therefore irrelevant to the learning environment and the learners.

My frustration is perhaps still there as these ideas never materialized nor even met feedback, although these frustrated feelings are less as I am essentially living out these ideas and processes in my everyday work. But a bit more feedback and encouragement or even resistance from other people would have been nice, as these allow me to move on with the development of the ideas faster and more efficiently. And they do in turn generate more energy for the next steps.

I hope to explore and develop these thoughts further if our projects push through in 2008. But even if they didn’t, I will still move on. I was just discussing this with Trevor, beginning with what I moodily called a cycle of luck. I thought that perhaps “bad luck” was when we expect too much of others, and “good luck” was not necessarily expecting less, but rather facing in the direction of those who make the most of the least in expectations. In other words, to simply keep flow with the good waters.

In many places, resistance is futile (you will be assimilated). So yes, artists can provide new insights and new forms of resistance in these situations, insofar as they take great effort in understanding how the system works, and that their works enable others to understand how the system works too, and not just be auto-therapeutic visual statements made at the expense of the public.

- From The Spirit of Resistance

Indeed, I believe the greatest social change that I have witnessed over the 30 odd years that I was actively involved in research and teaching aspects of computer/art (in the Netherlands) involved the systematic destruction of knowledge and the “thinking” process.

Back in the 1960/70’s computers were huge expensive (and rather dimwitted) “monsters” that could only be accessed via institutions involved in the active development of (specialised) knowledge. In this context, the computer was a research tool -and so was explicitly documented in ways that would allow the researcher to exploit the maximum potential of their expensive investment. Similarly, the “researcher” also needed to conceptualise their research (and their expensive presence) within the context of the institution they were working in.

However, the situation changed rapidly with the rise of the PC (originally a generic term for a personal computing device -before the term became a commercially encapsulated reference to a specific brand of architecture). The consumerisation of the computer meant that the fruit of many years of slow and painful research by (institutionalised) individuals was bundled and commercially marketed as part of a “miracle machine” that could turn every isolated individual into a master of the universe.

The point that was carefully overlooked in all this was the difference between “performance” and “competence” -i.e. a parrot can repeat English phrases but it does not understand the English language. Similarly, an ‘artist” using an electronic “paint by numbers” system may be producing an image but does not understand the artistic process of investigation. By focuussing on the end product and not the process that produced the product -the public were being sold creative dead ends disguised as creative strategies.

With the rise of the internet -the previous (democratic) “loss of knowledge” was propagated globally by the new “experts” as the latest wisdom. It is frightening to see the way the ancient and forgotten (pre-PC) knowledge was successfully implemented (as effective tools for social engineering) while the total irrelevance of these same conceptual tools were being promoted by a whole new industry of global web-based pundits: All busy synchronising (via on and off-line global conferencing) the promotion of the uselessness and undesirability of any form of systematic enquiry or understanding that might actually reveal the true nature of what was really happening on a global scale.

(If I was a fascist dictator I’d lock up Endemol people for crime against humanity).

- From The Spirit of Resistance

If I was one -then I’m afraid many employees of the universities, the media and many commercial companies would probably join them….. accused of global cultural genocide.

According to the UN, one language disappears across the world every two weeks.

Pagbabalik-tanaw tungkol sa aking nakaraang post (Baranggay Eleksyon: maka-taktak! maka-tarat!) … Sa kasawiang palad, ang mga kabataan ay inilululong at inihahanda na rin ng barangay sa maduming mundo ng pulitika…

Starting ‘em young: “Kickbacks” and “love gifts” an SOP for some SK execs
AVIGAIL OLARTE
11/06/2007 | 08:17 AM

Sangguniang Kabataan (SK*) council member Lira Sanchez (not her real name) remembers the first time she received her “SOP,” the so-called standard operating procedure, otherwise known as love gifts or kickbacks, from projects in their barangay in Metro Manila.

She was 16 years old then, and the sight of the P6,000-cash being handed to her made her hesitate. “Di po ba ito bawal (Isn’t this illegal)?” the girl asked. She was assured that it wasn’t, adding: “Kahit si Kap meron niyan (Even the barangay captain has his share).”

Mula sa balita.