Blog Archives

Tracking the trackers (TED lecture by Gary Kovacs)

May 27, 2012
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As you surf the internet, information is being collected about you. Web tracking is not 100% evil — personal data can make your browsing more efficient; cookies can help your favorite websites stay in business. But, says Gary Kovacs in this TED lecture, it is your right to know what data is being collected about you and how it affects your online life. He unveils a Firefox add-on to do just that.  Gary Kovacs is the CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, where he directs the development of Firefox.  [I am] not even two bites into breakfast, and there are already nearly…

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Recording everything: digital storage as an enabler of authoritarian governments

May 18, 2012
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The Brookings Institution recently published a paper entitled “Recording Everything: Digital Storage as an Enabler of Authoritarian Governments“. The executive summary reads as follows: Within the next few years an important threshold will be crossed: For the first time ever, it will become technologically and financially feasible for authoritarian governments to record nearly everything that is said or done within their borders—every phone conversation, electronic message, social media interaction, the movements of nearly every person and vehicle, and video from every street corner. Governments with a history of using all of the tools at their disposal to track and monitor their citizens…

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Julian Assange and Slavoj Zizek interview David Horowitz (The World Tomorrow)

May 12, 2012
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Slavoj Zizek and David Horowitz are the guests for the second episode of Julian Assange’s interview show, “The World Tomorrow“. “Intellectual superstar” Slavoj Zizek is a philosopher, psychoanalyst and cultural commentator. David Horowitz is a hard-line American conservative and unrepentant Zionist. The tone of the conversation between Zizek, Horowitz and Assange alternates between combative and friendly. The topics covered include Palestinians and Nazis, Joseph Stalin, Barack Obama, the decline of Europe, and the tension between liberty and equality. Episode 2: 

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Julian Assange interviews Moncef Marzouki (The World Tomorrow)

May 12, 2012
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In Episode 3 of The World Tomorrow, Julian Assange interviews the president of the Republic of Tunisia, Moncef Marzouki. He is a trained physician, and was a long time opponent of the dictator Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. During the early 1990s, his vocal opposition to Ben Ali led to his imprisonment. He founded the National Committee for the Defense of Prisoners of Conscience, and was President of the Arab Commission for Human Rights. Persecuted and harrassed, Marzouki left Tunisia for exile in France. With other Tunisian exiles he founded and chaired his political party, the Congress for the Republic. He has…

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Iceland’s president explains why the world needs to rethink its addiction to finance

April 27, 2012
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A few days ago, Adam Taylor, journalist for the Business Insider interviewed Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, who has been President of Iceland since 1996, and announced last month he would be running for a fifth term. Keep reading to hear his thoughts on Iceland’s recovery, and how a large financial sector can ruin a nation. Ragnar Grímsson connects the dots in a openly manner that unfortunately proves to be very rare in contemporary politics all around the world. Definitely a must-read. You can find the full transcript on Business Insider. Some noteworthy paragraphs: Whereas in many other countries, until recent months,…

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Power, knowledge and the universities (by Tarak Barkawi)

March 1, 2012
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Tarak Barkawi, associate professor in the Department of Politics, New School for Social Research recently published an article named “Power, knowledge and the universities” which appeared on Al Jazeera. He presents a number of conclusive examples to highlight contemporary problems with the intertwines of governmental, public and esp. corporate influences and interests in university education. Some representative quotes of the full article will be highlighted in the following: Institutions concerned with producing knowledge, whether universities, publishing houses, news media, think tanks, and so on, require power to do their work. They need money, of course, but also a legal and…

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Too big to jail (by Simon Johnson)

February 28, 2012
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Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the IMF, and co-founder of a leading economics blog, BaselineScenario, a professor at MIT Sloan, and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics published recently published “Too big to jail” on project-syndicate. Though I highly recommend to read the whole article, the first paragraph sums it up quite nicely: Among the fundamental principles of any functioning justice system is the following: Don’t lie to a judge or falsify documents submitted to a court, or you will go to jail. Breaking an oath to tell the truth is perjury, and lying in official documents…

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The ethics of internet piracy (by Peter Singer)

February 25, 2012
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Recently an article by Peter Singer was published by project-syndicate, discussing the ethics of internet piracy.  While the whole article is absolutely worth reading, here are a few paragraphs that seem to catch the essence: If I steal someone’s book the old-fashioned way, I have the book, and the original owner no longer does. I am better off, but she is worse off. When people use pirated books, the publisher and the author often are worse off – they lose earnings from selling the book. But, if my colleague had not sent me the book, I would have borrowed the…

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