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Locking Out the Voices of Dissent (Truthdig)
Chris Hedges on how the security and surveillance state, after crushing the Occupy movement and eradicating its encampments, has mounted a relentless and largely clandestine campaign to deny public space to any group or movement that might spawn another popular uprising.
Tomorrow’s Surveillance: Everyone, Everywhere, All the Time (TechCrunch)
What civil libertarians should be worried about isn’t online snooping and wiretapping. It’s the surveillance that’s already becoming pervasive, if not ubiquitous, throughout the real, physical world. It’s a government that knows where you are at all times, and has an indelible record of everywhere you’ve ever been, and everything you’ve ever done in any public space.
NSA scandal delivers record numbers of internet users to DuckDuckGo (The Guardian)
Gabriel Weinberg, founder of search engine with zero tracking, credits Prism revelations with prompting huge rise in traffic
DHS warns employees not to read leaked NSA information (The Washington Post)
The Department of Homeland Security has warned its employees that the government may penalize them for opening a Washington Post article containing a classified slide that shows how the National Security Agency eavesdrops on international communications.
The Social-Media Bubble Is Quietly Deflating (Bloomberg Businessweek)
New buzzwords have arrived: Big data and cloud companies are grabbing the imaginations of venture capitalists.
Thank You For Using The Internet! We Regret To Inform You That Your Free Trial Has Expired. (BuzzFeed)
The internet got us hopelessly addicted, all for free. Now we’re coming to terms with paying for it all.
Meat industry doesn’t want to tell you where your meat comes from (Grist)
Eight meat and livestock groups sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture in federal court in Washington Monday, July, 9, 2013, to block implementation of a new labeling rule that requires meat labels to detail where animals grown for meat were born, raised and slaughtered.
Global survey: Majority feel corruption has worsened, think governments can’t fix it (CBS News)
The protests that have raged globally in the past few months, from Turkey to Brazil, to the ongoing turmoil in Egypt, have appeared to share a common root: a widespread feeling of government mismanagement and cronyism.
Don’t Call Them Superheroes: An Interview With Zero and Dark Guardian of the New York Initiative (Disinformation)
They’re real-life “superheroes” trained in martial arts and parkour. They don’t wear bright superhero costumes or pose for photos with tourists. They live in no-frills apartments filled with exercise equipment and go out “on patrol.” And they’re setting up branches all over America.
The Glory of the Commons (Washington Monthly)
Jonathan Rowe’s brilliant posthumous meditation on the shared, non-commercialized realms of life that sustain us.
Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep by Jonathan Crary: Sleep is a standing affront to capitalism (New Statesman)
When hungry digital companies measure success in “eyeballs” is sleep the last remaining zone of dissidence, of anti-productivity and even of solidarity?
“World’s oldest calendar” discovered in Scottish field (BBC News)
“Our excavations revealed a fascinating glimpse into the cultural lives of people some 10,000 years ago — and now this latest discovery further enriches our understanding of their relationship with time and the heavens.”
Army admits helicopters buzzed town in Washington state (USA Today)
The Army apologizes for an unannounced chopper training mission over a town in Washington state.
Army apologizes for copters that ‘terrorized’ Port Angeles (Peninsula Daily News)
Army special-operations helicopters on a training exercise buzzed the Port Angeles area late Thursday night in an episode that the mayor says “terrorized my city.” Dozens of alarmed residents called police to ask what was going on and said the noise and lights panicked horses and other livestock. Residents said they were awakened from their sleep, and that spotlights stabbed down from the low-flying helicopters into their backyards.
Rupert Sheldrake and Jill Purce: Liberating Minds and Voices (Extraenvironmentalist)
In this talk Rupert Sheldrake and Jill Purce discuss the dogma of scientific materialism and the shaky foundations on which they are based. Jill demonstrates resonance with her voice and through leading the group with chants. Rupert discusses resonance and what its implications are for the scientific worldview.
That was an interesting article about late capitalism. It is becoming an ever more strange and scary world. Human society is about to make its next leap in evolution and no one knows where that might lead or what we will become.