not

* Reduce the US’s carbon emissions 80% by 2050 and play a strong positive role in negotiating a binding global treaty to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol * Withdraw all combat troops from Iraq within 16 mo and keep no permanent bases there * Establish a clear goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons across the globe * Close the Guantanamo Bay d.c. * Double US aid to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015 and accelerate the fight against HIV/AIDS, tbc and Malaria * Open diplomatic talks with countries like Iran and Syria, to pursue peaceful resolution of tensions * De-politicize military intelligence to avoid ever repeating the kind of manipulation that led the US into Iraq * Launch a major diplomatic effort to stop the killings in Darfur * Only negotiate new trade agreements that contain labor and environmental protections * Invest $150 billion over ten years to support renewable energy and get 1 million plug-in electric cars on the road by 2015
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/

Naughton shows that, even if you are not interested in media audiences / users / participants (or whatever you want to call them), the changing nature of engagement with media – where more and more people can and do make their own – forces the whole system to adapt. So some changes on the audience/user side of things (people making their own stuff as well as consuming material made by traditional media companies, and other individuals) leads to a change in the whole ‘ecosystem’.
http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf

„Nepotrebujeme už žiadne ďalšie sociálne siete,“ vyhlásil O’Reilly na margo desiatok klonov megaúspešných služieb ako Facebook či MySpace. „Potrebujeme sa znova vrátiť k budovaniu niečoho, čo je naozaj dôležité a čo má zmysel.“ O’Reilly pomenoval aj pár príkladov: Patientslikeme.com napríklad umožňuje kontakt ľuďom trpiacim rovnakou chorobou a 23andMe.com ľuďom s rovnakými génmi, EveryBlock.com zverejňuje hyperlokálne informácie stiahnuté z vládnych databáz. To sú však stále len drobné aplikácie – v skutočnosti by sa mali aj tvorcovia webov snažiť riešiť tie najväčšie problémy, len tak bude svet lepší, zaburácal O’Reilly.
http://pocitace.sme.sk/c/4148432/web-20-vdaka-za-financnu-krizu.html

The resistance was formulated in terms of ‘class warfare’, Wall Street against Main Street: why should we help those responsible (‘Wall Street’) and let ordinary borrowers (on ‘Main Street’) pay the price for it? Is this not a clear case of what economists call ‘moral hazard’?/What left and right share in this case is their contempt for big speculators and corporate managers who profit from risky decisions but are protected from failures by ‘golden parachutes’. / While it is true that we live in a society that demands risky choices, it is one in which the powerful do the choosing, while others do the risking./‘Socialism’ is OK,it seems,when it serves to save capitalism. But what if ‘moral hazard’ is inscribed in the fundamental structure of capitalism? / Hypocritical defence of the rich: if you want people to have money to build, dont give it to them directly, help those who’re lending it to them. / Real dilemma is not ‘state intervention or not?’ but ‘what kind of state intervention?’
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v00/n03/zize01_.html

Today’s Left might accept the hegemony, but continue to fight for reform within its rules. Or, it accepts that the hegemony is here to stay, but should nonetheless be resisted from its ‘interstices’. Or, it accepts the futility of all struggle, since the hegemony is so all-encompassing that nothing can really be done except wait for an outburst of ‘divine violence’. Or, it recognises the temporary futility of the struggle, and defend what remains of the welfare state. Or, it emphasises the fact that the problem is a more fundamental one, that global capitalism is ultimately an effect of the underlying principles of technology or ‘instrumental reason’. Or, it posits that one can undermine global capitalism and state power, not by directly attacking them, but by refocusing the field of struggle on everyday practices. Or,it takes the ‘postmodern’ route. Or,it wagers that one can repeat the classical Marxist gesture of enacting the ‘determinate negation’ of capitalism
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n22/zize01_.html

At the center of current financial problems is the failure to adapt standard financial regulation to new financial institutions, such as broker-investment banks, off-shore based hedge funds and large derivatives markets that remain, for the most part, outside of the traditional authority of regulators. However, when things go wrong, as they did with Bear Stearns last March, their demise threatens to destabilize the entire financial system and handy government bailouts are quickly called in. // The U.S. financial problem is not one of liquidity, (there is plenty of liquidity provided by the Fed when banks and brokers can borrow at will newly printed dollars from the Fed’s discount window) but one of solvency, weak balance sheets, risky assets and debt liquidation. That’s a horse of a different color. // U.S. government should correct an anomaly of the 20th Century, that is the semi-private status of its central bank.
http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/tremblay=1095

It is permitted, indeed, to suspect that the office of Vice President Cheney could have been interested in provoking a dispute with Russia over NATO, in order to shift the political debate in the U.S. away from the economy and more towards the issue of national security and international affairs. // Palin: being a fervent Pentecostal Christian who is anti-abortion (even for rape and incest victims), pro-state-imposed-death penalty, anti-sexual education, anti-same-sex marriage, anti-environment, pro-creationism, pro-censorship, pro-gun ownership, and pro-war. More to the right than that, and one falls over the cliff!
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10098

that FACEBOOK leaves a cookie in your browser which enables other Internet sites to identify your FACEBOOK identity; FACEBOOK is informed about your activities from over 50 big Internet sites that have partnered with Facebook; October 24, 2007, Facebook has agreed to sell a 1.6% stake of the company to Microsoft for $240 million. This means Microsoft, as an exclusive third-party will get access to every FACEBOOK information; If the FACEBOOK headquarter was located in the European Union the FACEBOOK Privacy Terms would definitely be illegal; Zuckerberg (owner) admitted that FACEBOOK receives personal information from other Internet sites without users permission (even after the user has deactivated his FACEBOOK account!)
http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5585067263

Communication tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring. Jonathan Zittrain points out that the ‘ever-increasing usability [of Web 2.0]has been accompanied by the deliberalising of user rights’. To believe that competitive pressures will lead providers to offer more freedoms is like expecting the commercialisation of news to improve the quality of reporting. ‘Mass amateurisation’ ~ racing car driving is difficult, so we have professionals for whom driving is not a means but an end; driving a normal car is so easy that amateurs can do it while trying to achieve other things. Activist academics who like to think of themselves as progressives yet covet their positions as consultants to conservative business and government ~ Self-censorship at work. The total absence of controversial issues creates the narrow scope typical of books written by consultants.
http://www.metamute.org/en/content/analysis_without_analysis

Ako sú Briti sledovaní: l Bezpečnostné kamery – jedna pripadá na každých 14 ľudí, typického obyvateľa mesta kamery zachytia v priemere 300x/deň. l Rozoznávanie ŠPZ – kamery schopné prečítať ŠPZ boli pôvodne určené na sledovanie teroristov, dnes už kontrolujú aj uhradenie poplatku za vstup do centra Londýna a automaticky udeľujú pokuty za rýchlu jazdu. l RFID čipy – miniatúrne zariadenia vkladané do tovaru môžu umožniť aj jeho sledovanie za bránami obchodu. l Sledovanie polohy mobilu – britská polícia už rutinne používa dáta od operátorov na zistenie, kde sa hľadaný človek nachádza. l Električenky – v Londýne umožnujú sledovať pohyb ľudí po staniciach metra. l Zdravotné záznamy – Británia práve buduje jedinú masívnu databázu, kde sa budú nachádzať údaje o zdravotnom stave všetkých občanov. l Monitorovanie telefonátov zamestnávateľmi – čoraz viac firiem zaznamenáva telefonické hovory zamestnancov.
http://pocitace.sme.sk/clanok.asp?cl=2988928

surveillance and data mining; censoring leftist group (moveon); terminated accounts stay @server; advertisers’ ads @BNP site; private data even to third parties
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook

public tv? private schools? NGO’s (Amnesty Intl) commercials in tv? noncomm rss-feeds embedded in ad sites? There are not precedents where the meaning of “commercial” has been tried. Yet.
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0501/msg00006.html

Google, says its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, is “a company that’s founded around the science of measurement,” and it is striving to “systematize everything” it does. Drawing on the terabytes of behavioral data it collects through its search engine and other sites, it carries out thousands of experiments a day, according to the Harvard Business Review, and it uses the results to refine the algorithms that increasingly control how people find information and extract meaning from it. What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the work of the mind.

The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

Merijn Oudenampsen spísal článok o amsterdamskej kultúrnej politike Creative City (starosta pred troma rokmi riekol, že ňou podporí kreativitu všetkých obyvateľov mesta), o (nevydarených) paralelách k myšlienkam situacionistu Constanta Nieuwenhuysa o spoločnosti, ktorú automatizácia oslobodila od ťarchy industriálnej práce a nahradila ju nomádskym žitím kreatívnou hrou mimo domén ekonomiky a funkcionality, a o tom ako tiahnutie kultúrnej politiky ku kultúrnemu priemyslu tlačí umelcov do role kultúrnych podnikateľov.
http://www.variant.randomstate.org/31texts/issue31.html#L6