Iceland Is Crowdsourcing Its Constitution

leftliberty:

Just after the United Nations declared internet access a human right, Iceland is crowdsourcing its constitution. No joke. In the wake of Iceland’s 2008 banking collapse, the 25-member consitution council is starting from scratch by posting drafts of laws to its website, and then incorporating suggestions posted by citizens on its Facebook wall. The process should take three to four months, the council estimates. Already, worldwide applause is flooding in though its Twitter and YouTube accounts.

You might predict that wacky ideas are muddying up the document, but that’s not the case. So far, rather than pandering to a hodgepodge of interests on the fringe, the constitution has well-reasoned democratic rights. Some of them are even downright innovative. For instance, it protects human rights regardless of “genotype.”

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(via proletarianinstinct)

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Alan Moore on Anarchism

twoplustwoequalsfour:

I believe that all other political states are in fact variations or outgrowths of a basic state of anarchy; after all, when you mention the idea of anarchy to most people they will tell you what a bad idea it is because the biggest gang would just take over. Which is pretty much how I see contemporary society. We live in a badly developed anarchist situation in which the biggest gang has taken over and have declared that it is not an anarchist situation—that it is a capitalist or a communist situation. But I tend to think that anarchy is the most natural form of politics for a human being to actually practice. All it means, the word, is no leaders. An-archon. No leaders.

Mythmakers & Lawbreakers — Alan Moore on Anarchism

Most TV cooking is repulsive. Frathouse cocksuckers with gimmick hairdos and catch phrases, hooting and hi-fiving, ‘bringing it,’ celebrating gluttonous sports bar chow. Dipshits abbreviating their ingredients and making childish, cutesy-poo ‘comfort food’ full of ‘yummy veggies,’ shit like that. Detestable.

Legendary Chicago recording engineer, Shellac frontman, cooking blogger, and opinionated bastard Steve Albini. Guy Fieri, you’re on notice. (via L.A. Weekly)

He gets articulates the common-sensical so sagaciously: There were squirrels.

In the digital era, that message is more important than ever. If you don’t believe me, take a look under the hood of your car. There’s a computer in there. And computers are now integral to nearly every conventionally blue-collar profession, from police work to cargo loading to trucking. For the generation of kids graduating today from Booker T., digital technology is going to be a part of pretty much any job they might want. That is why it is so essential that we make investments in math and science education now. We’re already seeing a “disappearing middle” in the workforce, as the middle class starts to look more and more like the conventional working class. And the working class job of tomorrow is going to be a digital job. The American economy can’t stay afloat and the American workforce can’t stay working unless we teach kids the ins and outs of digital technology.
Blue Collar’s Digital Future - B. Bonin Bough - Be Digital - Forbes (via infoneer-pulse)

(via infoneer-pulse)

Human Rights Are Universal: "Universal" tacitly Excludes Adolescents?

The title links to systematic procedures for seizing your human rights from the institutions that would bar you from them.

Two decades after “creating the internet,” Berners-Lee has recognized that web access is a univeral human right:

…humans have become so reliant on it that access to the Web should now be considered a basic right. In a speech at an MIT symposium, Berners-Lee compared access to the Web with access to water. “Access to the Web is now a human right,” he said. “It’s possible to live without the Web. It’s not possible to live without water. But if you’ve got water, then the difference between somebody who is connected to the Web and is part of the information society, and someone who (is not) is growing bigger and bigger.”

Berner-Lee, an authority with some clout in technology-but perhaps not in political action-echoes action initiated by the United Nations and realized in a few European states.

Wikipedia:

The United Nations has proposed that Internet access should be a human right. This push was made when it called for universal access to basic communication and information services at the UN Administrative Committee on Coordination. In 2003, during the World Summit on the Information Society, another claim for this was made.[2][3]

In some countries such as Estonia,[4]France,[5]Finland[6] and Greece,[7] Internet access has already been made a human right.

Whether pitched as a civil liberty or a universal human right, it seems adolescents in the United States are the last empowered, last enfranchised, the community with the most at stake, and perhaps the one positioned to be the largest threat.

Let’s contend - or perhaps fantasize - that Foucault always intended to address adolescent oppression as his final analysis of dynamics power and resistance.

Source: blog.sudobits.com

I loathe blogs when I look at them. Blogs look to me illiterate, they look hasty, like someone babbling. To me writing is a considered act. It’s something which is a great labor of thought and consideration. A blog doesn’t seem to have any literary merit at all. It’s a chatty account of things that have happened to that particular person.

Paul Theroux discusses blogging, travel writing, “Three Cups of Tea,” and his new book “The Tao of Travel.” Read the whole interview at The Atlantic. (via theatlantic)

Paul Theroux is the last person who should be elitist with regard to voice. From a composition and rhetoric perspective, we grok his point. Not all the people have the education or the life experience to know the writing process that works best for them. Paul Theroux taught me this.

The truly educated become conscious. They become self-aware. They do not lie to themselves. They do not pretend that fraud is moral or that corporate greed is good. They do not claim that the demands of the marketplace can morally justify the hunger of children or denial of medical care to the sick. They do not throw 6 million families from their homes as the cost of doing business. Thought is a dialogue with one’s inner self. Those who think ask questions, questions those in authority do not want asked. They remember who we are, where we come from and where we should go. They remain eternally skeptical and distrustful of power. And they know that this moral independence is the only protection from the radical evil that results from collective unconsciousness. The capacity to think is the only bulwark against any centralized authority that seeks to impose mindless obedience. There is a huge difference, as Socrates understood, between teaching people what to think and teaching them how to think. Those who are endowed with a moral conscience refuse to commit crimes, even those sanctioned by the corporate state, because they do not in the end want to live with criminals—themselves.

Chris Hedges - Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System (via drinkthe-koolaid)

Provokes a question then: is this a tacit call for compulsory education? Is such a mandate contrary to our other values? Or the foundation of them?

(via sluteverbabe)

Source: truth-out.org

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