New World Academy Reader #3: Leaderless Politics, with International Pirate Parties (2013)

The international Pirate Parties consist of about 40 political parties worldwide, initiated by the founding of the first Pirate Party in Sweden in 2006. The parties present themselves as practitioners of leaderless politics, convinced as they are that the cult of leadership has long undermined the possibility of a true, direct democracy. The parties defend a process of permanent voting through an approach they term Liquid Democracy, in which online forums are maintained by each Pirate Party that give members the opportunity to continuously vote on new proposals. Despite the fluid nature of their programs, the parties nonetheless remain committed to defending several of their key causes, which include supporting a free and open Internet, common intellectual property, and the establishment of strong privacy laws to protect Internet users.

With contributions by Heath Bunting, Becky Hogge, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Geert Lovink & Merijn Oudenampsen with Willem van Weelden, Matt Mason, Metahaven, and Dirk Poot.

Edited and with an Introduction by Jonas Staal, in dialogue with Dirk Poot
Publisher BAK, Utrecht, 2013
ISBN 9789077288207
146 pages
Out of print, now open access

Pirate Academy (event, December 2013)
Publisher

PDF, PDF

Plato: The Republic (c380-360 BCE–)

The Republic (Περὶ πολιτείας; Peri politeias) is Plato’s best-known work and has proven to be one of the most intellectually and historically influential works of philosophy and political theory. In it, Socrates along with various Athenians and foreigners discuss the meaning of justice and examine whether or not the just man is happier than the unjust man by considering a series of different cities coming into existence “in speech”, culminating in a city (Kallipolis) ruled by philosopher-kings; and by examining the nature of existing regimes. The participants also discuss the theory of forms, the immortality of the soul, and the roles of the philosopher and of poetics in society.

Passages, manuscripts, editions, translations and studies (Monoskop wiki)

Heidi Boghosian: Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance (2013)

“Until the watershed leak of top-secret documents by Edward Snowden to the Guardian UK and the Washington Post, most Americans did not realize the extent to which our government is actively acquiring personal information from telecommunications companies and other corporations. As made startlingly clear, the National Security Agency (NSA) has collected information on every phone call Americans have made over the past seven years. In that same time, the NSA and the FBI have gained the ability to access emails, photos, audio and video chats, and additional content from Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, YouTube, Skype, Apple, and others, allegedly in order to track foreign targets.

In Spying on Democracy, National Lawyers Guild Executive Director Heidi Boghosian documents the disturbing increase in surveillance of ordinary citizens and the danger it poses to our privacy, our civil liberties, and to the future of democracy itself. Boghosian reveals how technology is being used to categorize and monitor people based on their associations, their movements, their purchases, and their perceived political beliefs. She shows how corporations and government intelligence agencies mine data from sources as diverse as surveillance cameras and unmanned drones to iris scans and medical records, while combing websites, email, phone records and social media for resale to third parties, including U.S. intelligence agencies.

The ACLU’s Michael German says of the examples shown in Boghosian’s book, “this unrestrained spying is inevitably used to suppress the most essential tools of democracy: the press, political activists, civil rights advocates and conscientious insiders who blow the whistle on corporate malfeasance and government abuse.” Boghosian adds, “If the trend is permitted to continue, we will soon live in a society where nothing is confidential, no information is really secure, and our civil liberties are under constant surveillance and control.” Spying on Democracy is a timely, invaluable, and accessible primer for anyone concerned with protecting privacy, freedom, and the U.S. Constitution.”

Foreword by Lewis Lapham
Publisher City Lights, San Francisco, 2013
Open Media series
ISBN 0872865991, 9780872865990
352 pages

Publisher

EPUB