Unlike R.J. Reynolds, Pfizer, or Bank of America, the U.S. populace lacks the access to public officials required to further its legislative goals
All across the United States, large and small cities are closing public libraries or curtailing their hours of operations. Detroit, I read a few days ago, may close all of its branches and Denver half of its own: decisions that will undoubtedly put hundreds of its employees out of work. When you count the families all over this country who don’t have computers or can’t afford Internet connections and rely on the ones in libraries to look for jobs, the consequences will be even more dire.
A Country Without Libraries by Charles Simic (via infoneer-pulse)
This is a tragedy and a travesty. The rate at which America continues to devalue literacy and education as a whole is staggering.
(via infoneer-pulse)
Source: nybooks.com
What Islamist Terrorist Threat?
Reason magazine makes an argument worthy of its name.
I suggest that one way of looking at WikiLeaks is as a human/machine symbiosis that has re-routed against a damaged democracy.
The leaders of Myanmar and Belarus, or Thailand and Russia, can now rightly say to us: “You went after WikiLeaks’ domain name, their hosting provider, and even denied your citizens the ability to register protest through donations, all without a warrant and all targeting overseas entities, simply because you decided you don’t like the site. If that’s the way governments get to behave, we can live with that
Source: vruz
The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve.
Source: jerrybrito
Government Isn't the Problem, Private Enterprise Is: The Global Terrorism of Al Qaeda, BP and Goldman Sachs
Agree or disagree, this is a powerful, worthwhile read.
Source: 3quarksdaily.com
In Toronto the Good, we saw a law passed and enforced that was more anti-democratic than the War Measures Act. And we saw more people arrested than took place during the October Crisis in Quebec forty years ago — more than 500 at last count.
Steve Paikin, host of TVO’s The Agenda
This weekend, I saw the city in which I’ve lived for over seven years transformed into something unrecognizable. I’m still processing it all, waiting for a cooler head to prevail, but there’s no mistaking that Steve is right. Democracy in Canada has suffered a tremendous blow.
Source: tvo.org
McCain Moves To Block the FCC's Net-Neutrality Rule
The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday approved a proposal for an open Internet. Proponents such as Google, eBay and more than a dozen others have voiced support, while opponents, including Comcast, Verizon Communications, and AT&T, say the government needs to take a close look its involvement.
Just hours after the FCC moved to create the new rules, U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) introduced legislation to block the rules. His Internet Freedom Act would bar the FCC from implementing rules stopping broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing Internet content and applications.
Isn’t it interesting that with regard to matters of the United States legislature “freedom” means precisely the opposite?
Source: infoneer-pulse
It is increasingly apparent that modern copyright law is utterly and completely incompatible with the right to privacy. This is at the core of the Pirate movement in Europe… and the Pirate Party in Canada.
Kris Kotarski of the Calgary Herald
Setting aside one’s political sensibilities, the mere fact that a party premised on the ideals of the pirate (not merely “piracy”) has achieved some level of legitimacy in Europe and is on its way to North America should sound alarm bells for those vested in the status quo. Copyright is broken.
Source: 3quarksdaily.com
