Peer2Politics

“What is novel about the Kurdish struggle for self-determination is its very definition of self-determination. The concept, when applied to nations, is generally taken to mean the right of nations to secede and form states of their own, but the Kurds see it differently. Many believe an experiment in democratic confederalism is what the region really needs.

“Drones are essentially flying–and sometimes armed–computers,” the Brookings Institution noted in a paper published last month. They’re robots who follow the curve of Moore’s Law rather than the Pentagon’s budgets, rapidly evolving in performance since the Predator’s 2002 debut while falling in price to the point where Make magazine recently carried instructions on how to launch your own satellite for $8,000.

Janet Biehl biographer of Murray Bookchin discusses the deep influence of his writings on Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan

The ongoing Snowden revelations about NSA surveillance have all sorts of implications for the rule of law, constitutional democracy, geopolitical alignments, human rights and much else.  The disclosures deserve our closest attention for these reasons alone.  But what do these revelations have to do with the commons?

“The hype about everything “cyber” has obscured three basic truths: cyberwar has never happened in the past, it is not occurring in the present, and it is highly unlikely that it will disturb the future. Indeed, rather than heralding a new era of violent conflict, so far the cyber-era has been defined by the opposite trend: a computer-enabled assault on political violence.”

“The use of modern communication technologies promises maximum range and the option to reach millions of people “with just a few clicks.” Behind this promise, however, often hide very powerful companies that prosper on data collection. “Data mining”, i.e. the mass gathering and subsequent sale or utilization of user data is big business in the 21st Century. Even countries and their security forces, such as intelligence agencies and the police, are very interested in access to such data and interfaces via automated skimming. This creates a large gap between the fantastic opportunity to communicate with millions of people for free and the protection of privacy in the digital age. A solution to this dilemma is the establishment of decentralized communication systems which are in the hands of activists themselves and which ensure both data protection and the access to as many people as possible in the global network. The building blocks for this are already there: free software, creative ideas, technical programming expertise.”