• On 25th July 2004, the secret #surveillance court allowed the #NSA to resume bulk collection under the court’s own authority: http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-surveillance-architecture-includes-collection-of-revealing-internet-phone-metadata/2013/06/15/e9bf004a-d511-11e2-b05f-3ea3f0e7bb5a_print.html - Now why is the court’s opinion classified ? There isn’t even a single security benefit in hiding mass surveillance from the public - except shielding the government against the citizen’s legitimate anger. #democracy

  • The Next American Revolution Has Already Begun: An Interview With Gar Alperovitz | 2013-06-08

    http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16847-the-next-american-revolution-has-already-begun-gar-smith-interviews

    What Then Must We Do? (the title is borrowed from Tolstoy) explores a challenging premise: “The coming painful decades may be the prehistory of the next American revolution – and an evolutionary process that transforms the American system, making it both morally meaningful and ecologically sustainable.”

    In fact, this is already well underway. Beneath the surface level of politics-as-usual, continuing political stalemate and the exhaustion of existing approaches have begun to open up some very interesting strategic possibilities. These are best understood as neither “reforms” (policies to modify and control, but not transcend, current corporate-dominated institutions) nor “revolution” (the overthrowing of current institutions), but rather a longer-term process of “evolutionary reconstruction”—that is, institutional transformation that unfolds over time.

    Like reform, evolutionary reconstruction involves step-by-step nonviolent change. But like revolution, evolutionary reconstruction changes the basic institutions of ownership of the economy, so that the broad public (rather than “the one percent”) increasingly comes to own more and more of the nation’s productive assets. As the old system decays, an evolutionary reconstruction would see the foundations of a new system gradually rising and replacing failing elements of the old.

    Though the press doesn’t much cover this, such processes are already observable in many parts of the current American system. Some numbers: There are now ten thousand worker-owned companies of one kind or another in the country. And they are expanding over time, and they’re becoming more democratic rather than less. There are 130 million people who are members of one or another form of cooperative. A quarter of American electricity is produced by either municipal ownership or cooperatives. Twenty-five percent of American electricity is, in other words, “socialized.” There are neighborhood corporations, land trusts, and other municipal and state strategies. One can observe such a dynamic developing in the central neighborhoods of some of the nation’s larger cities, places that have consistently suffered high levels of unemployment and poverty. In such neighborhoods, democratizing development has gone forward, paradoxically, precisely because traditional policies have been politically impossible.

    All this has been building in scale and sophistication to the point that growing numbers of people now talk about a “New Economy.” It doesn’t yet compare to the giants of Wall Street and the corporate economy, of course. But it is growing to the point where challenges are also becoming possible. Move Your Money campaigns have seen billions transferred out of Wall Street banks into credit unions and local and community banks. If you add up the credit unions they are the equivalent of one of the largest US banks, knocking Goldman Sachs out of the top five.

    –--------------------------

    "What Then Must We Do?"

    Une conférence par Gar Alperovitz donné le 27 Avril 2013

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX-MocuuOfc

    #economie #Wirtschaft #coops #cooperative #Kooperative

    #autogestion #co_working

    #États_Unis #USA
    #democracy #démocratie #Demokratie

    #livre #book #Buch

  • Occupy Gezi: The Limits of Turkey’s Neoliberal Success

    http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12009/occupy-gezi_the-limits-of-turkey%E2%80%99s-neoliberal-succ

    There are two telling, though widely neglected, details about what initiated and popularized the groundbreaking protests in Taksim Square, Istanbul: the protests started out as a response to the governing neoliberal party’s project of urban transformation or urban renewal; yet, urban questions quickly took a backseat as the protests became massive. Understanding these two facets of the mobilization sheds much light on what is happening in Turkey and why.

    #turquie

    • Où est la différence entre l’autoritarisme d’un Erdogan et d’un Victor Orbán ? Le dernier dirige un état autoritatif sécularisé avec beaucoup moins d’importance dans des relations globale géopolitiques. Et même en ce cas là, avec beaucoup moins des risques du contrôle politique et géostratégique, l’autoritarisme hongrois se n’est pas vu profondément critiqué longtemps par des autorités Européennes comme on l’aurait supposé et trouvé nécessaire par beaucoup des initiatives des droits démocratiques intérieur et extérieur du pays. On voit bien : l’autoritarisme postdémocratique est à la mode. Il est plutôt un modèle pour expérimenter ouvertement avec dans des pays ex-socialistes et islamiques, encore plus avec des perspectives assez précises. Ainsi il ne se trouve que critiqué en cas qu’il manque de se comporter selon les règles des jeux imposées par des global players et leurs propres intérêts, surtout leurs médias, en imitant la façade d’une constitution garantie.

      À propos #démocratie et #violence : Samedi dernier à #Francfort il y a eu une manifestation contre la politique de l’austérité avec des réactions immotivées agressives et violentes par la #police #allemande du Land de Hessen - quelques impressions : http://blockupy2013.soup.io

      #postdémocratie #autoritarisme #austerité
      #postdemocracy #authoritarianism #austerity
      #Turquie #Hongrie #Hungary

      #Autoritarismus #Postdemokratie
      #Türkei #Ungarn
      #Frankfurt #Polizei #Gewalt #Austerität #occupy

  • Best analysis of the situation in the Middle East so far: “Theocratic regimes back secularists; tyrannies promote democracy; the US forms partnerships with Islamists; Islamists support Western military intervention. Arab nationalists side with regimes they have long combated; liberals side with Islamists with whom they then come to blows. Saudi Arabia backs secularists against the Muslim Brothers and Salafis against secularists. The US is allied with Iraq, which is allied with Iran, which supports the Syrian regime, which the US hopes to help topple. The US is also allied with Qatar, which subsidizes Hamas, and with Saudi Arabia, which funds the Salafis who inspire jihadists who kill Americans wherever they can”
    Source : http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/nov/08/not-revolution/?pagination=false
    #Iran #Iraq #Syria #Qatar #USA #Hamas #Egypt #democracy

  • Patriotism in the service of silencing dissent
    Akiva Eldar

    http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/patriotism-in-the-service-of-silencing-dissent.premium-1.512081

    “When Ambassador Michael Oren says the makers of “The Gatekeepers” are compromising the state’s public relations efforts, his are just the latest words in a worrying trend of trying to quiet anyone who dares to be critical.
    This past week, Ha’aretz reported that Israeli diplomats were having a hard time dealing with the film “The Gatekeepers.” Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, outdid all the others when he claimed that the heads of the Shin Bet who were interviewed for the film compromised the state’s public relations efforts, which he said were "in a kind of war.”
    His statements join other similar ones that have been made of late – statements that express one of many symptoms of a dangerous disease that has been attacking Israeli society over the past few years. Other symptoms include increasing delegitmization of the left wing (and the Haredi population as well), with the purpose of silencing legitimate voices in public discourse; Culture Minister Limor Livnat’s call to artists to practice self-censorship; the Education Ministry’s dismissal of civics studies supervisor Adar Cohen because his liberal views were not to the liking of former education minister Gideon Sa’ar; the barring by Israel of Professor Rivka Feldhay from participating in a joint Israeli-German academic conference, apparently for her support for Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the Palestinian territories; and the attempts to shut down the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University. All these are symptoms of the attempts to suppress free speech in Israeli society.
    Oren and those who share his opinion claim that criticism of the leadership’s policy is tantamount to damaging the State of Israel’s standing and harming its interests. For the regime’s spokesmen, their methods, ideology and goals are an inseparable part of the state. Therefore, disagreeing with them is equivalent to harming the state, and critics betray the state’s interests. This approach is reminiscent of the spokesmen of the Chinese regime, who use the same reason to silence criticism from within and exert tight control over the media, cultural works and academia. The approach of Oren and his colleagues must therefore justify regimes that attempt to silence criticism of anti-Semitism in their countries for fear that making such criticism public might damage their countries’ image and interests.
    In professional terms, the attempt to create an absolute identity between the method of a particular group and the goals of the state is known as “monopolizing patriotism.” This is done by attaching conditions such as support of the leadership and its policies to the definition of patriotism. That is how people who do not meet those conditions are excluded from the patriotic camp and only those who meet those conditions may be considered patriots. Patriotism is thus transformed into an effective mechanism for shunning entire groups within society that do not agree with the leadership’s policies.
    Oren and his ilk do not accept the basic principle that patriots who love their country and their people are allowed to disagree with the political leadership’s vision and policy. They deny the approach that heterogeneity of thought is one of the most obvious and necessary signs of an open and pluralistic society. Not for a moment does it occur to them that perhaps their goals and policy are what is causing damage to the state.
    Individuals and groups in society have different opinions, and it is important that these opinions be expressed in the public discourse, in cultural expressions, in textbooks, in classroom discussions. Attempts to restrict free speech and weaken critical discussion – whose intent is actually to repair society – harm democracy and lead the state down the road of becoming a totalitarian regime in which everyone must express an identical opinion. The demand to express full support for the leadership’s methods and refrain from criticism sabotages any attempt to promote a solution to the crisis. Defining the situation as “a kind of war” is a demagogic and manipulative use of words whose purpose is to convince people to support the leadership.
    Oren and those like him are dictating to the public what the government believes to be the rules of appropriate behavior. Conservative groups operating on the ground strengthen these messages by keeping track of statements that are made or written and then smearing anyone who expresses opinions that differ from the leadership’s. This is how a political climate is constructed in which people are afraid to express their opinions and where free speech, one of the most prominent characteristics of a democratic society, is restricted”.

    Daniel Bar-Tal is a professor of political psychology at Tel Aviv University. Akiva Eldar is the political commentator at Al-Monitor.

    #Israel #Patriotism# #Free_speech# #monopolizing_patriotism #democracy

  • Over 100 Guantánamo Prisoners on Hunger Strike, Citing Threat of Return to “Darkest Days Under Bush” | #DemocracyNow!
    http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/13/over_100_guantanamo_prisoners_on_hunger

    More than 100 detainees held in the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay are reportedly entering their fifth week of a hunger strike sparked by deteriorating conditions. News of the hunger strike first emerged last week, but it appears the action involves far more prisoners than previously thought. In a letter to his attorney, one detainee wrote: “We are in danger. One of the soldiers fired on one of the brothers a month ago. Before that, they send the emergency forces with M-16 weapons into one of the brothers’ cell blocks. ... Now they want to return us to the darkest days under [George W.] Bush. They said this to us. Please do something.” We’re joined by Pardiss Kebriaei, senior staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights and counsel for one of the hunger strikers. [includes rush transcript]

  • The #Cosmopolitanisation of #Cartography Raising The Specter of Legitimacy in #Geography

    This work is about arguing that the maps of the world should be reconsidered in a #global_dialogue: in a process that opens the dispute of boundaries between union-states, regions, zones, or other similar #geo-political terms. David Marquand, in his important opus The End of the West (2011) reminds us that #West and #East perhaps never existed and in the case wherein we are told that they do, have, and are: such are parochial and illegitimate claims.

    BY DR JEAN-PAUL GAGNON | APRIL 16, 2012

    We shall have to put the (Indian) inventors of Arabic numerals in our pantheon alongside the Greek inventors of geometry, and Ibn Rushd alongside Aristotle. We shall have to abandon our self-centred and patronizing belief that #democracy and free discussion were exported to a backward “East” by a progressive “West,” and reconstruct our mental universe to take account of the indigenous Indian tradition of public reasoning and religious toleration that long antedated the “Western” presence in the subcontinent. More generally, we shall have to recognize that the familiar “Western” narrative of global history, in which uniquely precious and, in evolutionary terms, uniquely successful “Western” values moulded the modern world in our great-grandparents’ image, is a parochial distortion of a far more complex truth. (Marquand, 2011: 176-77)

    His argument, I feel, is important because it challenges what many in this world have come to take for granted. In the case of this paper, it is the maps we are familiar with, the design of the globe that we have on our desks or which are offered to our children, which are parochial and relics of imperial abuses. This discussion is a needed one, as we have for example, no clear indication as to where Europe stops and that indigenous peoples for example have not had the inclusive and legitimate chance to contest the territorial boundaries which often split their nations. It is an attempt to bring a democratic legitimacy to cartography which is patently lacking.

    This will be done firstly by discussing in a broad and simple way why current maps are parochial and relics of #imperial_domination. We will then follow this argument up with another broad argument detailing how we could begin a global dialogue designed to spark debate over maps and to form a call for the democratic reform of cartography. Essentially, it argues that we must give people and groups a chance to define their boundaries and not have them imposed on us by those holding the Maxim Gun. Lastly, we will engage this discussion in relation to China’s territorial claims.

    http://cesran.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1422%3Athe-cosmopolitanisation-

  • How the #West de-democratised the #Middle_East

    Rather than promote democracy in the Middle East, the West has a long history of doing the exact opposite.
    Melbourne, Australia - With the momentous convulsion in the Middle East sparked by Mohamed Bouazizi’s martyrdom in January 2011, it is time to ask what happened to the question which for long dominated Western discourse on the Middle East: Is Islam compatible with democracy? The predominant answer for many years was “no”. Among others, Elie Kedourie, MS Lipset, and Huntington advocated such a position. Bernard Lewis, “the most influential postwar historian of Islam and the Middle East”, who offered “the intellectual ammunition for the Iraq War”, was most vociferous in upholding this position. Their main argument was that, unlike Christianity, Islam was unique in not differentiating religion from the state and hence democracy was impossible in Muslim polities. Against this doxa, I make three arguments.

    First, the position that Islam is incompatible with democracy was false from the beginning, because it served imperial ambitions of the West and violated Muslims’ self-perception that, not only is Islam compatible with democracy, it was one of the engines of democratic empowerment.

    Second, I argue that the West’s discourse of democratisation of the Middle East is dubious because it hides how the West actually de-democratised the Middle East. My contention is that, from the 1940s onwards, democratic experiments were well in place and the West subverted them to advance its own interests. I offer three examples of de-democratisation: The reportedly CIA-engineered coup against the elected government of Syria in 1949, the coup orchestrated by the US and UK against the democratic Iran in 1953 and subversion of Bahrain’s democracy in the 1970s. I also touch on the West’s recent de-democratisation in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Third, I explain that the Middle East was de-democratised because the West rarely saw it as a collection of people with dynamic, rich social-cultural textures. The Western power elites viewed the Middle East as no more than a region of multiple resources and strategic interests; hence their aim was to keep it “stable” and “manageable”. To Ernest Bevin, foreign secretary (1945-51) of imperial Britain, without “its oil and other potential resources” there was “no hope of our being able to achieve the standard of life at which we [are] aiming in Great Britain”.

    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/201232710543250236.html

    #democracy

  • THE NEW #ISLAMISTS by Olivier ROY

    The following is an excerpt from the book The Islamists Are Coming: Who They Really Are, which will be released on April 18 by the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

    The longstanding debate over whether #Islam and #democracy can coexist has reached a stunning turning point. Since the Arab uprisings began in late 2010, political Islam and democracy have become increasingly interdependent. The debate over whether they are compatible is now virtually obsolete. Neither can now survive without the other.

    In Middle Eastern countries undergoing political transitions, the only way for Islamists to maintain their legitimacy is through elections. Their own political culture may still not be democratic, but they are now defined by the new political landscape and forced in turn to redefine themselves — much as the Roman Catholic Church ended up accepting democratic institutions even as its own practices remained oligarchic.

    At the same time, democracy will not set down roots in Arab countries in transition without including mainstream Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Ennahda in Tunisia, or Islah in Yemen. The so-called Arab Spring cleared the way for the Islamists. And even if many Islamists do not share the democratic culture of the demonstrators, the Islamists have to take into account the new playing field the demonstrations created.

    http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/16/the_new_islamists?page=0,0