September 10, 2012

Banksy's piece in central London

“Private Spies and Our Growing Surveillance State”

The fact that we know very little about how TrapWire operates—even though most of the company’s clients are taxpayer-funded organizations—cuts to the heart of the problem of outsourcing intelligence. Since private corporations are not subject to public records law, there are limited avenues by which we might learn more about what the firm’s technology is really capable of. That, like many other thorny issues TrapWire raises, is a problem that applies to all intelligence contractors. As more secrets are farmed out to private corporations, the public loses twice: we pay more for the privilege of being surveilled, and we lose crucial access to the very transparency mechanisms that are supposed to keep the intelligence agencies in check and operating within the rule of law.

From Kade Crockford’s excellent piece in The Nation.

10:15am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbyT7shE9
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: surveillance TrapWire law discipline privatize privatization intelligence privacy transparency public civil rights government freedom tyranny 
July 2, 2012

Glenn Greenwald talks about the pervasive nature of surveillance in America, its growth in recent decades and why it is critical for movements to subvert surveillance so they can be successful in organizing.

7:07pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbyOaGT0f
(Notes: 7)
  
Filed under: surveillance Glenn Greenwald America discpline security social movements culture politics organization privacy public state government police 
June 20, 2012

azspot:

“The American public is suffering from an education deficit. By this I mean it exhibits a growing inability to think critically, question authority, be reflective, weigh evidence, discriminate between reasoned arguments and opinions, listen across differences and engage the mutually informing relationship between private problems and broader public issues. This growing political and cultural illiteracy is not merely a problem of the individual, one that points to simple ignorance. It is a collective and social problem that goes to the heart of the increasing attack on democratic public spheres and supportive public institutions that promote analytical capacities, thoughtful exchange and a willingness to view knowledge as a resource for informed modes of individual and social agency. One of the major consequences of the current education deficit and the pervasive culture of illiteracy that sustains it is what I call the ideology of the big lie - which propagates the myth that the free-market system is the only mechanism to ensure human freedom and safeguard democracy.”

— Henry A. Giroux

9:47pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbyNod-aF
(Notes: 256)
  
Filed under: education critical thinking American public reason think reflect human freedom democracy social 
May 23, 2012

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Europe’s current malaise is the replacement of democratic commitments by financial dictates — from leaders of the European Union and the European Central Bank, and indirectly from credit-rating agencies, whose judgments have been notoriously unsound.

Participatory public discussion — the “government by discussion” expounded by democratic theorists like John Stuart Mill and Walter Bagehot — could have identified appropriate reforms over a reasonable span of time, without threatening the foundations of Europe’s system of social justice. In contrast, drastic cuts in public services with very little general discussion of their necessity, efficacy or balance have been revolting to a large section of the European population and have played into the hands of extremists on both ends of the political spectrum.

Amartya Sen writing in The New York Times

8:02am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbyL_znAW
Filed under: Europe austerity European Union European Central Bank credit-rating agencies democracy public John Stuart Mill Walter Bagehot social justice public services politics economics 
September 23, 2010
"Privatization, Arundhati Roy argues with respect to the Indian case, entails ‘the transfer of productive public assets from the state to private companies. Productive assets include natural resources. Earth, forest, water, air. These are the assets that the state holds in trust for the people it represents…. To snatch these away and sell them as stock to private companies is a process of barbaric dispossession on a scale that has no parallel in history.’"

— Arundhati Roy

3:41pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRby15-RwY
Filed under: privatization Arundhati Roy Indian public state private Earth forest air water people barbaric dispossession history capitalism primitive accumulation accumulation by dispossession