The Electronic Frontier Foundation has created a curriculum for high school students on the topic of Copyright. I spent some time reviewing it, and it looks like an excellent resource for anyone wanting to know more about this important subject.
I wonder if American children in civics classes are taught about the secret courts of America? Glenn Greenwald on Democracy Now.
That might be the most amazing thing about all of this, is that we have a secret court that meets in complete secrecy, with only the government present, and this court is issuing rulings that define what our constitutional rights are. How can you have a democracy in which your rights are determined in total secrecy by a secret court issuing 80-page rulings about what rights you have as a citizen? It is Orwellian and absurd. And I think one of the reforms that will come and is coming from our reporting is that a lot more light is going to be shined on the shenanigans that have been taking place within that court.And after we teach them about our secret courts, we are just getting warmed up. Civics classes should also include lessons that our phone companies are happy accomplices to spying on their customers:
We’ve known for a long time that the telecoms—AT&T, Sprint, Verizon—are completely in bed with the United States government. Remember, the scandal of the NSA in the Bush years was that—not just that the Bush administration was eavesdropping on the calls of Americans without the warrants required by law, but also that the telecoms were vigorously cooperating in that program and turning over full and unfettered access to the telephone calls and records of millions of their customers even though there was no legal basis for doing so. And, in fact, the telecoms were on the verge of losing in court and being sued successfully by millions of their customers that they had violated their civil rights and also that they had violated their privacy rights and broken the law, criminally and civilly. And it was only because the Congress stepped in, with the leadership of both political parties, and retroactively immunized the telecoms. But the telecom industry makes massive profits on their extreme cooperation with these—with the NSA to allow all kinds of unfettered access to the communications of their customers. And so, the telecoms are the last people that want transparency brought to their cooperation with the NSA, because that would really shock people to learn just how untrustworthy those companies are when it comes to protecting the privacy of their customers’ communications.What else is our government up to? That Snowden has created some sort of "dead man's switch" - whereby documents get released in the event that he is killed by the US government - was previously reported weeks ago, and Snowden himself has strongly implied much the same thing. That doesn't mean he thinks the US government is attempting to kill him - he doesn't - just that he's taken precautions against all eventualities, including that one (just incidentally, the notion that a government that has spent the last decade invading, bombing, torturing, rendering, kidnapping, imprisoning without charges, droning, partnering with the worst dictators and murderers, and targeting its own citizens for assassination would be above such conduct is charmingly quaint). Teach the children the truth. If you dare.
The St. Louis Art Museum has spent a ton of money, $160M, on a brand new wing, which I visited Sunday. It's spacious and bright. It's an inviting space for viewing art. There were a few dozen works of art in the new wing, and here are but a few:
Mississippi Circle. These are limestone rocks.
This piece is called Octagon, and it is a dyed canvas.
This work of art is called Fluorescent Lights. It is made of a long fluorescent light.
You can probably already guess my reaction: The Emperor Has No Clothes. I hate to feel and sound so negative, but very few of the works of "art" in the new wing caused any reaction in me other than sadness that they had spend so much to display such unimpressive things. I imagined all the groupthink that went in to the planning. I am sad to think that there are so many talented artists out there, in so many new and alternative media, yet the above efforts are the things that get the primo space in the St. Louis art museum. This is most certainly art that does not offend. Perhaps that is the point--after all, the museum agenda is controlled by well-to-do people. We certainly don't want art that spawns social justice. Maybe we are filling this space with stuff, so that we don't need to make difficult decisions about what kind of challenging art would take its place.
this display makes me want to administer a secret ballot survey to those visitors who view these works. That survey would include questions like these (along with my predicted answers:
1. Do you consider the above 3 items works of art? (22% yes).
2. Do you consider the above 3 items impressive works of art? (3% yes).
3. Should these works be replaced by something else? (95% would say yes with regard to 75% of these works)
Again, I am saddened to write this. I want to be proud of my city's new art museum.
I'm not making this up. Irresistible force meets immovable object, but easy access guns ended up beating the fear of terrorism. Unbelievable.
Glenn Greenwald verified then published this letter from former GOP Senator Gordon Humphrey to Edward Snowden. Snowden then responded. I continue to be impressed by the care Snowden has gone in presenting information, literally and between the lines.