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The Speculative Archive for Historical Clarification is a long-term project that produces documents that investigate the political and cultural implications of state self-documentation. Its work focuses on the processes through which covert government activities are documented, classified for reasons of national security, and, at times, selectively declassified. Founded in 1999 by Julia Meltzer and David Thorne, SAHC has recently completed a series of interviews with government officials involved in the regulation and release of secret government information. Below are excerpts from three of these interviews.

A Movement Without Demands? 

In this essay, we claim that far from being a strength, the lack of demands reflects the weak ideological core of the movement. We also claim that demands should not be approached tactically but strategically, that is, they should be grounded in a long-term view of the political goals of the movement, a view that is currently lacking. Accordingly, in the second part of this text, we argue that this strategic view should be grounded in a politics of the commons. Before addressing the politics of the commons, however, we dispel three common objections that are raised against demands during general assemblies, meetings, and conversations people have about the Occupy movement.

• politics,
• public space,
• public domain,
• occupy

Manifesto: Greed breaks the sack In favour of a free culture of citizens who share 

10 solutions/facts plus one.

A citizen response to the recent attacks on freedoms in the name of an incoherent concept that carries the name "intellectual property".

• copyleft,
• copyright,
• free culture

Realizing The Promise of Open Source in the Non-Profit Sector 

Every so often, a technology or protocol emerges that is touted as a ?magic bullet? either by the company or consortium promoting it or a core group of enthusiasts using it. Examples of this are WAP, OS/2, ISDN etc? The technology is initially promoted as having ?earth-changing? significance that will revolutionize the way things are done. Eventually most of these either fall by the wayside or take their rightful place as effective [but less hyped] mainstream tools in a much larger toolbox of solutions. The problem with the magic bullet approach is that it over-promotes particular technologies and often obfuscating the real benefits they could provide if evaluated and positioned in a more realistic context. For the for-profit community investing in failed magic bullets, the fallout is typically nothing more than an unfortunate R&D decision which can be expensed before moving on to the next IT investment.

Notes for a R-evolution 2 (version 2.0): Stage two: Vices vs. New Tactical Virtues 

What we've learnt from the Net and how we can extrapolate it to all spaces of struggle.

(Some thoughts geared towards action, compiled for the Radical Community Manager courses that we organise at X.net)

• politics,
• activism,
• post-governmental organisation,
• info-activism,
• free culture,
• occupy