We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Goodbye privacy, hello censorship if secret TISA pact is approved

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from Systemic Disorder.

I've been wondering how and when our masters in the capitalist class would come after dissident bloggers like me. In the so-called "liberal democracies" they still much prefer indirect methods, frequently in legal form as cover, to deal with dissidents or people who interfere with profit opportunities of the ruling capitalist class. Here is another effort negotiated in secrecy by our masters to interfere with the internet, which was developed with taxpayer money, on behalf of corporate interests.
U.S. telecommunications corporations bitterly oppose net neutrality because, under this principle, they can’t speed up or slow down online content according to who pays them, or doesn’t, for special treatment. And any dilution of net neutrality opens the floodgates to censorship of the Internet, whether government or corporate.
.... That the Trade In Services Agreement, or the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), have to be negotiated in total secrecy, with only corporate lobbyists having access to texts or meaningful input, speaks for itself. The empty shell of formal democracy under capitalism gets ever emptier.