Boing Boing » austerity

Documentary on hidden victims of Greek austerity that's crowdfunded, free & CC-licensed

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:50:02 +0000

Into the Fire writes, "Into The Fire is a film with a difference. Besides being a hard hitting documentary which shows the plight of refugees and migrants amidst a collapsing Greek economy, it's also an experiment in new film production and distribution techniques. A year ago, we made a first, crowd-funded trip to Athens. We filmed shocking levels of racism, police brutality, and right-wing extremism - as well as the courageous and inspiring people who are organising against it.

"Into the Fire will be released on 21st April on the internet. We crowd-funded the film and crowd-sourced the subtitles: it's been translated into eight languages using the open subtitler Amara. We are also using crowd-sourcing as the release and distribution strategy for the documentary: anyone who signs up to participate will receive embedding details ahead of time, and the film will be released on various websites simultaneously. The audience becomes the distribution network."

Austerity economics only works if you make an Excel formula error

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:22:55 +0000

A new paper called Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff by Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin from UMass Amherst tries and fails to replicate the classic work on austerity, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff's 2010 Growth in a Time of Debt.

Reinhart-Rogoff is the main research cited in favor of cutting public services and spending in bad economic times. It's a big part of why the local library is shutting down, why they're kicking people out of public housing, shutting down arts programs, slashing education and public transit, and laying off public employees. It purports to show that countries with high debt-to-GDP ratios of 90 percent or more are a "threat to sustainable economic growth."

In the new Amherst paper, the authors reexamine Reinhart-Rogoff's original data and conclude that the numbers don't add up. They show that Reinhart-Rogoff cherry-picked which years of high-debt GDP they measure, that they put their thumbs on the scales with "unconventional weighting" and made a "coding error" that "entirely excludes five countries, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, and Denmark." This last error -- literally the wrong formula in a spreadsheet cell -- badly skews the outcome.

Here's the tl;dr: "the average real GDP growth rate for countries carrying a public debt-to-GDP ratio of over 90 percent is actually 2.2 percent, not -0.1 percent as [Reinhart-Rogoff claim]."

Selective Exclusions. Reinhart-Rogoff use 1946-2009 as their period, with the main difference among countries being their starting year. In their data set, there are 110 years of data available for countries that have a debt/GDP over 90 percent, but they only use 96 of those years. The paper didn't disclose which years they excluded or why.
Herndon-Ash-Pollin find that they exclude Australia (1946-1950), New Zealand (1946-1949), and Canada (1946-1950). This has consequences, as these countries have high-debt and solid growth. Canada had debt-to-GDP over 90 percent during this period and 3 percent growth. New Zealand had a debt/GDP over 90 percent from 1946-1951. If you use the average growth rate across all those years it is 2.58 percent. If you only use the last year, as Reinhart-Rogoff does, it has a growth rate of -7.6 percent. That's a big difference, especially considering how they weigh the countries.
Unconventional Weighting. Reinhart-Rogoff divides country years into debt-to-GDP buckets. They then take the average real growth for each country within the buckets. So the growth rate of the 19 years that the U.K. is above 90 percent debt-to-GDP are averaged into one number. These country numbers are then averaged, equally by country, to calculate the average real GDP growth weight.
In case that didn't make sense, let's look at an example. The U.K. has 19 years (1946-1964) above 90 percent debt-to-GDP with an average 2.4 percent growth rate. New Zealand has one year in their sample above 90 percent debt-to-GDP with a growth rate of -7.6. These two numbers, 2.4 and -7.6 percent, are given equal weight in the final calculation, as they average the countries equally. Even though there are 19 times as many data points for the U.K.
Now maybe you don't want to give equal weighting to years (technical aside: Herndon-Ash-Pollin bring up serial correlation as a possibility). Perhaps you want to take episodes. But this weighting significantly reduces the average; if you weight by the number of years you find a higher growth rate above 90 percent. Reinhart-Rogoff don't discuss this methodology, either the fact that they are weighing this way or the justification for it, in their paper.

Researchers Finally Replicated Reinhart-Rogoff, and There Are Serious Problems. [Mike Konczal/Next New Deal]

Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff

(via Techdirt)

Spanish locksmiths won't help banks evict people from their homes

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:45:14 +0000

As the subprime bubble continues to burst in Spain, locksmiths find themselves complicit in putting families out on the street. In Pamplona, the local locksmiths have banded together and will not accept work from the banks changing locks or opening doors, even though it's costing them business:

Tired of accompanying court officials to evict unemployed people as banks foreclosed mortgages, De Carlos consulted his fellow Pamplona locksmiths before Christmas. In no time at all, they came to an agreement. They would not do the dirty work of banks whose rash lending pumped up a housing bubble and then, after it popped, helped bring the country to its knees.
"It only took us 15 minutes to reach a decision," says De Carlos amid the racks of keys in the family's shop in the centre of this small northern city best known for its annual bull-runs and the adoration heaped on it by Ernest Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises. "We all had stories of jobs we had been on where families had been left on the street. When you set out all you have is an address and the name of the bank, but I recall an elderly, sick man who was barely given time to put his trousers on."
The logic behind their decision was clear and simple. While Spain's banks mop up billions of euros in public aid, they are also busy reclaiming homes that in some cases they lent silly money for. At the height of Spain's housing madness, banks were, in effect, offering mortgages of more than 100%. They aggressively chased clients – especially among the immigrants who arrived from Latin America in their millions to build new homes – creating an uncontrolled spiral of self-fulfilling, but ultimately doomed, demand. Complex networks of guarantors were pieced together by middlemen among immigrants who often barely understood what they were doing.

Pamplona's locksmiths join revolt as banks throw families from their homes [Monica Muñoz and Giles Tremlett/The Guardian]

(via We Make Money Not Art)

Best-of Canadian Conservative government blunders for 2012

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 01:46:02 +0000

Dave sez,

This little blog is my attempt to keep track of all of the comings and goings of Canada's Conservative government. Every week I spend an hour or two putting together a weekly round-up of the bad things done by the Conservatives in the name of "fiscal responsibility" and "family values". Honestly, there's always so much material to work with that it practically writes itself. I figured it would take no time at all to put together a nice little list of my favourite Conservative moments/people/events of 2012. But there was just so very much to work with I very quickly became sad, angry, confused, overwhelmed and then sad, all over again. There's a few holes and a few things missing, but this list should provide a nice little primer for anybody that wants to know about the fantastic accomplishments of Canada's Government in 2012! Highlights include:
- A Conservative MP who keeps falling asleep at work and then gets really angry when people ask him about it
- An incompetent energy company attempting to hack a pipeline through the wilderness of British Columbia
- A Conservative Minister who attempted to destroy Internet privacy but threw a hissy fit when the details of his divorce were made public (spoiler: he may-or-may-not have slept with the babysitter!)

24 Percent Majority: 2012 Best Of - Week 87 - Dec 25-Jan 1 (Thanks, Dave!)

Student Riots in Italy: a dispatch from Jasmina Tesanovic

Jasmina Tesanovic — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 20:05:02 +0000

When I myself was a protesting student, I remember vividly remembered the cold warning in the text by Pier Paolo Pasolini. He reminded us youngsters that the police we faced in the streets were also someone's children, that not all young people were fortunate enough to be in colleges rather than wearing uniforms, and that we should join all together against the general oppressor, the system, capitalism, the corporations, name it…

That was then, and this is now, and while the students and policemen still have the same interests, they are still on the opposite sides of the barricade. Austerity has driven Italy to its knees. Day by day the future of Italy's young people is vaporizing, and now the streets are flooded by torrential rains, to boot. Italian cities rocked by earthquakes might as well settle for witchcraft, rather than find responsible and competent government officials who can rescue the nation's casualties.

A Facebook comment from my Italian friend:

Is it possible that all these years every time there is a demonstration we have to expect the same song: attention to the provocateurs + protestors cruelly beaten by the police + poor policemen beaten by provocateurs = Am I missing something: Democracy!

In Torino, a 15-year old high school student posted on her Facebook a photo of two girls kissing in front of the heavily armed police. With these words: this is how we should face the forces of order!

She told me: those horrible Black Bloc destroy our attempts to do something peacefully, and we are not protesting only because there is no money left in our schools, but also as Europeans who understand that austerity program kills the students in rich as well as in poor countries.

Yesterday during the "No Austerity day in Europe", proclaimed by students and trade unions in major towns in Italy, the protests turned to riot and turmoil. In Torino, three policemen were injured, one badly. The number of students/citizens injured in Torino is not yet known. Chantings and peaceful legal manifestations degenerated into beatings and insults.

In Rome, along with a general strike of transportation, the Tiber flooded, paralyzing the nation's capital. Even on its best days Rome can barely move.

The targets of protesters were banks, public administration offices, and even the twelve-starred European flag, a flag so deliberately dull that it rarely attracts a passionate attention. The center of protests are the countries in crisis, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy…but even the well off northern countries are crippled by the Austerity, which is rapidly become a crisis much worse than the Crisis it was supposed to fix. Choked by Austerity, Europe is sliding into Recession again, and there's no sign that this approach will ever restore prosperity.

The word Austerity, that calm and bureaucratic term, is enough to cause panic in the streets of Europe now. National majorities know that it's a weapon against their own interests. Where is the "Austerity" for the one percent of the population dominating the economy? They don't apply any example of severe austerity to their own habits and aspirations. Secured in private jets, or within their high tech mentally-gated communities, they wonder why the streets grow slick with blood, sweat and tears.

This is something new in the world. It's rather like the alienation and anomie of the Industrial Age, but it's a new cybernetic detachment -- the atomized individuals of the Network Society, super-connected to screens, but failing to live and breathe together as a civilization. The Smart City shows its dark side as a gridwork of surveillance, as the peaceable consumers of the 1990s become a rabble to be kettled up!

United Europe just won the Nobel Prize for Peace. Where's the peace and Union from Austerity?

Spain's pocket communist utopia, Marinaleda

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 04:04:01 +0000

Dan Hancox sez,

You may have heard about Spain's 'Robin Hood Mayor', Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo - who last week made global headlines after he led farm labourers into supermarkets to expropriate basic food supplies, which were then distributed to the massed ranks of the local unemployed (currently 34% in Andalusia).
The Spanish economic miracle has become a catastrophe; with a government whose cuts have pushed miners to armed conflict (firing home-made rocket launchers at riot police), an Economics Minister whose last job was director of the Spanish branch of Lehman Brothers, and a lost generation of 'indignados' with no homes, no work, and no faith in the system. And right in the middle of it all, Marinaleda, a self-described communist utopia led by the charismatic poet-rebel, Sánchez Gordillo: a town of landless labourers who for over 30 years since the death of Franco, have fought capitalism - and won. 'Utopia and the Valley of Tears' is their story, published this week. There is a short extract in The Guardian.

Utopia and the Valley of Tears: A journey through the Spanish crisis

Man in a coma is "fit for work," loses disability benefits

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 09:24:49 +0000

A post in a thread on rightsnet.co.uk claims that ATOS (a French private company that administers disability benefits assessments for the UK Department of Work and Pensions) has declared a man in a coma to be fit for work and cut off his benefits. This is part of a the stepped up campaign to stop "benefits cheats" by requiring complex paperwork from claimants. A companion piece on Libcom has comments from others who've been cut off, including a man who's suffered brain injuries that caused him to file his paperwork late.

Client’s husband is in hospital in a coma. He was sent ESA501.
Client contacted DWP to explain situation and was asked to obtain letter from hospital confirming he is in a coma. Did so. Was told to send it to ATOS rather than local BDC. Did so. Husband has now received decision letter – yep, as he has failed to return the ESA50 without good cause and is therefore capable of work [he is] no longer entitled to ESA…

Coma patient fit for work

Get a free copy of "Share or Die" - strategies for a shared, post-austerity world

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 22:02:32 +0000

Share or Die is a new anthology from Shareable.net (whose mandate is to promote sharing in all its guises), written by 20-somethings struggling through austerity and econopocalypse, who find in sharing a solution to some of their problems. I was privileged to write the book's foreword, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. You can buy a copy or get a PDF for free -- all the book's publishers ask is that you tweet the fact that you've gotten a copy yourself. Here's a snip of my foreword:

This was supposed to be the disconnected generation. Raised on video-games and networked communications, kept indoors by their parents' fear of predators and the erosion of public transit and public spaces, these were the kids who were supposed to be socially isolated, preferring the company of video-game sprites to their peers, preferring Facebook updates to real-life conversations.
The Internet's reputation for isolation is undeserved and one-dimensional. If the net makes it possible to choose to interact through an electronic remove from "the real world," it *also* affords the possibility of inhabiting the "real world" even when you've been shut away from it by your fearful parents or the tyranny of suburban geography.
Even as entertainment moguls were self-servingly declaring "content is king," they failed to notice that content without an audience was about as interesting as a tree that falls in the deserted woods. Conversation is king, not content. If we gather around forums to talk about TV shows or movies or games or bands, it's because we enjoy talking with each other, because "social" is the best content there is. Content is just something to talk about. That's why telcoms -- the industry that charges you to connect with other breathing humans -- is 100 times larger than entertainment.
Which is to say that our "disconnected" generation is more connected than any generation in history -- connected via a huge, technologically augmented peripheral nervous system of communications technologies that gives them continuous, low-level insight into their peers and the world they inhabit. Which is not to say that being wired up to the net's social radar is an unadulterated good: adding capacity and velocity to your nervous system can be a recipe for disaster, creating race-conditions in which minor disagreements snowball into vicious fights, where the bad as well as the good can find itself magnified through positive feedback loops that ratchet minor stimuli into feedback screams.

Download a Complete Copy of Share or Die

Austerity Jubilee: unemployed workers tricked into being Jubilee stewards, denied toilets, left to camp in the rain

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 12:44:42 +0000

Long-term unemployed workers say they were bussed to London to act as stewards for the Queen's Jubilee, told they would be paid for the work and cared for while in town. When they arrived, they were told they wouldn't get paid (this was "work experience" not a job), and were made to strip down and change into uniforms in public, pitch tents in the rain, sleep under a bridge, and left without toilet facilities for 24 hours. They were told that if they didn't accept this "training," they wouldn't be considered for work during the Olympics.

Close Protection UK confirmed that it was using up to 30 unpaid staff and 50 apprentices, who were paid £2.80 an hour, for the three-day event in London. A spokesman said the unpaid work was a trial for paid roles at the Olympics, which it had also won a contract to staff. Unpaid staff were expected to work two days out of the three-day holiday...
A 30-year-old steward told the Guardian that the conditions under the bridge were "cold and wet and we were told to get our head down [to sleep]". He said that it was impossible to pitch a tent because of the concrete floor.
The woman said they were woken at 5.30am and supplied with boots, combat trousers and polo shirts. She said: "They had told the ladies we were getting ready in a minibus around the corner and I went to the minibus and they had failed to open it so it was locked. I waited around to find someone to unlock it, and all of the other girls were coming down trying to get ready and no one was bothering to come down to unlock [it], so some of us, including me, were getting undressed in public in the freezing cold and rain." The men are understood to have changed under the bridge.
The female steward said that after the royal pageant, the group travelled by tube to a campsite in Theydon Bois, Essex, where some had to pitch their tents in the dark.

Unemployed bussed in to steward river pageant

Petition to save Canada's National Archive

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 13:13:56 +0000

Peter sez,

The Canadian federal government recently announced that they are cutting $9.6 million from the budget of Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Canada's national archives. This will seriously undermine the archives, which was already struggling due to chronic underfunding to live up to its mandate 'o preserve the documentary heritage of Canada.'
Hundreds of other archives across Canada will also be negatively affected by these cuts because LAC is terminating the National Archives Development Program (NADP), a long-running contribution program that helped fund projects by small archives to preserve documentary heritage locally and make it publicly available. The NADP cost only $1.7 million annually, but has done a world of good in helping to ensure that Canadian history survives and is accessible by all. If you want to help fight these devastating cuts to Canada's archival heritage, please sign the online petition to save the NADP and spread the word about these harmful cuts.

Make it Better - Write a Letter. Help save Canada's National Archival Development Program. (Thanks, Peter!)

Austerity obliterates ecology: Canadian budget to make environmental impact statements optional, class eco-groups as money-launderers

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 06:43:25 +0000

Chris sez, "The budget bill currently before the Canadian Parliament (Bill C-38) does a bunch of things that don't seem to have much to do with the budget--including completely gutting Canada's federal environmental laws. The Environmental Assessment Act is being completely repealed and replaced with a regime that gives the government the power to basically approve any project they want without any environmental review--including mining projects in Alberta's Athabasca Tar Sands and the Canadian portion of the Keystone XL pipeline. And while environmental protections are being slashed, $8 million is going to the Canada Revenue Agency to audit charities (with the understanding that the main targets will be environmental charities--which the government has labelled as money launderers working for foreign interests). By putting this in a budget bill, the Conservative government has ensured that there will be minimal debate on these changes, and they will almost certainly be passed by the majority-Conservative parliament. Canada's largest environmental groups have organized a website blackout on June 4 to protest and raise awareness of these changes."

BlackOutSpeakOut - Welcome / Bienvenue (Thanks, Chris!)

Austerity obliterates transparency: budget cuts mean cuts to Canada's Freedom of Information

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 14:53:53 +0000

A reader writes, "Yet another voice calling attention to the ever narrowing access to information in Canada as the Harper Government repeatedly thumb their nose at the Canadian Access to Information Act." And the CBC's Meagan Fitzpatrick reports:

Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault reported today that the federal government's budget cuts could jeopardize a "fragile" access to information system that has been improving... Legault said the access to information areas within government departments tend to be vulnerable when there are cuts and she has already heard from some requestors that they've been told their files are being delayed because of cuts.

Budget cuts threaten access to information, watchdog says

Austerity obliterates history: Canadian heritage docs no longer available through interlibrary loan

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 13:53:23 +0000

A reader writes, "Canadian heritage documents that used to be accessible through inter-library loan will be no longer accessible. If you want to access documents of Canada's history, be prepared to do some traveling, and even at that, those documents may no longer exist since standards of preservation may be compromised. This is of particular concern since the Harper government has revealed revisionist tendencies in the past."

From Laura Mueller in Nepean/Barrhaven Local Community News:

"Unless something is done soon, Canadians are at risk of losing key parts of their historical and cultural record," Harder wrote to Minister James Moore. "Preservation of our country's heritage is not something we can afford to sacrifice."
The Ottawa Public Library system relies on the national library for key Canadian heritage documents accessible through inter-library loans.
"It's going to have a huge impact on inter-library loans," said Jennifer Stirling, OPL's manager of service and innovation. "(The archives contains) Canadiana that just can't be replicated elsewhere ... it's very sad to see this happen."

Here's the national campaign to save Canada's archives.

Federal archive cutbacks impact local libraries, Canadian heritage archives will no longer be accessible by inter-library loan

Canada's national archives being dismantled and scattered

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 28 May 2012 00:45:15 +0000

A reader writes,

The Canadian government is slowly doing away with Canada's ability to access its own history.
Library and Archives Canada's collection is being decentralized and scattered across the country, often to private institutions, which will limit access, making research difficult or next impossible. It should be noted that Daniel Caron, the new National Archivist hired in 2009, doesn't even have a background in library nor archives but, a background in economics.
"The changes and cuts are being justified by reference to digitization. A generous estimate is only 4% of the LAC collection has been digitized to date -- a poor record that will be made worse by the cuts announced on April 30, 2012, which reduced digitization staff by 50%."

Save Library & Archives Canada

Innovation Under Austerity: Eben Moglen's call to arms from the Freedom to Connect conference

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 27 May 2012 20:55:43 +0000

Last week saw the latest installment of David Isenberg's Freedom to Connect conference in Washington, DC. One of the keynotes came from Eben Moglen, formerly chief counsel of the Free Software Foundation, now the principle agitator behind the Software Freedom Law Center. Eben's keynote is one of the most provocative, intelligent, outrageous and outraged pieces of technology criticism I've heard. It's a 45 minute lecture with a 45 minute Q&A. I ripped the audio and listened to it while walking around town today and kept having to stop and take out my headphones and think for a while.

I found out about it via a message forwarded to me by the Open University's Marian Petre from the ACM's SIGCSE mailing list, where Adelphi's Stephen Bloch cherry-picked some of the best quotes from the talk, which I've pasted in below to give you a taste of what awaits you, should you be willing to give Eben such a generous chunk of your time. I think it was a very good use of my time.

Innovation under austerity is not produced by collecting lots of money and paying it to innovation intermediaries. [Several examples of disintermediation: TV, encyclopedias, book publishing, music recording, magazine publishing] Disintermediation -- the movement of power out of the middle of the net -- is a crucial fact about 21st century political economy.
Intermediaries that did well in the past ten years are limited to two categories: health insurers in the U.S., owing to political pathology, and the financial industry. Health insurers in the U.S. may be able to capitalize on continuing political pathology to remain failing and expensive intermediaries for a while longer, but the financial industry crapped in its own nest and is shrinking now and will continue to do so.
The reality that disintermediation happens and you can't stop it becomes a guiding light in the formation of national industrial policy. The greatest technological innovation of the 20th century is the thing we now call the World Wide Web. That innovation both fuels disintermediation by allowing all sorts of human contact to take place without agents, and is itself a result of disintermediated innovation.
The browser made the Web very easy to read. We did not make the Web easy to write. So a little thug in a hooded sweatshirt made the Web easy to write, and created a man-in-the-middle attack on human civilization. That's the intermediary innovation that we should be concerned about. We made everything possible... and then intermediaries to innovation turned it into the horror that is Facebook. It's intermediated innovation serving the needs of financiers, not the needs of people.

What do we know about how to achieve innovation under austerity? We created the Cloud. We created the idea that we could share operating systems and all the rest of the commoditizable stack on top of them. We did this using the curiosity of young people, not venture capital. Venture capital came towards us not because innovation needed to happen, but because innovation had already happened.
That curiosity of young people could be harnessed because all of the computing devices in ordinary day-to-day use were hackable, and so young people could actually hack on what everybody used. That made it possible for innovation to occur where it can occur without friction, which is at the bottom of the pyramid of capital. Hundreds of thousands of young people around the world hacking on laptops, hacking on servers, hacking on general purpose hardware available to allow them to scratch their individual itches -- technical, career, and just plain ludic itches ("I wanna do this; it would be neat") -- which is the primary source of the innovation which drove all of the world's great economic expansion in the past ten years. The way innovation really happens is that you provide young people with opportunities to create on an infrastructure which allows them to hack the real world and share the results.
All of that innovation comes from the simple process of letting the kids play and getting out of the way. Which, as you are aware, we are working as hard as we can to prevent, now, completely. Increasingly, around the world, the actual computing artifacts of daily life for individual human beings are being locked so you can't hack them. The individual computing laboratory in every 12-year-old's pocket is being locked down. If you prevent people from hacking on what they own themselves, you will destroy the engine of innovation from which everybody is profiting. The goal of the network operators is to attach every young human being to a proprietary network platform with closed terminal equipment that she can't learn from, can't study, can't understand, can't whet her teeth on, can't do anything with except send text messages that cost a million times more than they ought to.
Disintermediation is beginning to come to higher education. [Coursera vs. MITx] Every society currently trying to restart innovation needs more education, delivered more widely at lower cost. Free software is the world's most advanced technical education system. It allows anybody, anywhere in the world, to get to the state of the art in anything computers can be made to do, by reading what is fully available, by experimenting with it and by sharing the consequences freely. True computer science: experimentation, hypothesis formation, more experimentation, more knowledge for the human race. We needed to expand that to other areas. The universalization of access to knowledge is the single most important force available for increasing innovation and human welfare on the planet.
Disintermediation means there will be more service providers throughout the economy with whom we are directly in touch. That means more jobs outside hierarchies and fewer jobs inside hierarchies.
We use the word "privacy" to mean several distinct things. [Secrecy, anonymity], autonomy: the ability to live a life in which the decisions you make are unaffected by others' access to secret or anonymous communication.
March 21, 2012, after close of business, press release announcing "minor changes to the Ashcroft Rules": government information about individuals of whom nothing is suspected will no longer be retained for a maximum of 180 days, but rather for a maximum of five years. In other words, infinity. We are moving from the society we've always known, which we quaintly call a "free" society, to a society in which the U.S. government keeps a list of everybody every American knows. What should be the Constitutional procedure for doing this? Should there be, for example, a law? They didn't need a law; they did it with a press release, on a rainy Wednesday after everybody had gone home. Very rapidly, and with no apparent remorse, the two largest governments on Earth (the U.S. and China) have adopted essentially identical points of view: a robust social graph connecting government to everybody and the exhaustive data-mining of society is both government's fundamental policy with respect to their different forms of stability maintenance.
It isn't just our civil liberties that are at stake. The other part of what that costs us is the very vitality and vibrancy of invention, culture and discourse, that freedom to tinker, to invent, to be different, to be nonconformist. This is what sustains social vitality and economic growth in the 21st century. There is no tension between the civil liberty policy of assuring the right to be let alone and the economic policy of securing innovation under austerity. They require the same thing. Free software, free hardware we can hack on, free spectrum we can use to communicate with one another without let or hindrance, free access to educational resources to every person on earth without regard to ability to pay."

(Thanks, Marian!)

Pirates win more seats in German state elections

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:16:37 +0000

The German Pirate Party has taken seats in the fourth consecutive regional election, this time in North Rhine-Westphalia, where it received 7.5% of the vote, which will likely translate to 18 seats. These state-level elections are being viewed in part as a referendum on austerity and other Merkel doctrines, and there's a growing tide of disgust with business-as-usual across Europe. The Pirates are doing a good job of presenting themselves as a real alternative, albeit one with a specialized agenda. The trick will be for the Pirates to articulate the equation that all copyright policy ends up being Internet policy, and all Internet policy ends up being policy for everything, since everything we do involves the Internet. So far, many people are taking that idea to heart. Party founder Rick Falkvinge provides some analysis of the German PP phenomenon:

The first reason is that the German Piratenpartei was long-term from the get-go. Where most pirate parties are started like any internet project – “we’re going to change the world come next weekend” – the Germans knew they would be around for a long time, and invested early in the organizational foundation for that.
The second reason is timing and ripples on the water. When the Swedish Piratpartiet had its breakthrough in the European Parliament, and was in media all over the world, the German Piratenpartei was able to exploit that momentum when a local minister named Ursula wanted to create a net censorship to fight CP. T-shirts with the name “Zensursula” were common, zensur being German for censorship. The goverment did not win the narrative on that one, and the idea of censorship was abandoned while the Piratenpartei raked in new members. I’d say that this was the breakthrough in activist critical mass.
The third reason is Germany’s federal party support. Having won 1% in the European elections and 2% in the federal elections in 2009 entitled the Piratenpartei to considerable governmental funding, which is paid out to all parties that beat the half-percent mark in elections. This has allowed the Piratenpartei to buy themselves the appearance of an established party out in the streets – their posters and banners are everywhere on paid billboards, as well as on streetlights and more activist-associated locations. But all of it looks professional, yet with a new message. It looks electable, which is key.

German Pirate Party Scores Fourth Consecutive Election Win - Falkvinge on Infopolicy

Austerity is Europe's mutual suicide-pact

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 17:55:43 +0000

Laurence Lewis's Daily Kos editorial, "The cruel stupidity that is economic austerity," is a blazing indictment of austerity as a means of recovering from recession, and it cites experts and statistics showing that austerity programs (in Europe, particularly) are deepening the recession, destroying lives, and demolishing vital social institutions that are especially needed in economic downturns. Lewis's citations are not to the usual suspects in the fight against austerity, but rather to rock-ribbed conservatives and publications like The Economist, the chief economist of Standard Chartered, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. And there's Joseph Stiglitz, who compares austerity to medieval blood-letting: "when you took the blood out, the patient got sicker. The response then was more blood-letting until the patient very nearly died. What is happening in Europe is a mutual suicide pact."

How bad is it?
* In Greece, we now have record unemployment, which includes the majority of young workers. Homelessness is up 20 percent, with soup kitchens in Athens reporting record demand, and the usually low suicide rate having doubled.
* Portugal has complied completely with the austerity demands it accepted for its bailout deal, but its debt is growing and its economy is shrinking, its unemployment rate continues to reach new heights, there is a crisis in medical care, and a 40 percent rise in emigration, with the Portuguese government acknowledging its own failure by actually encouraging its citizenry to leave.
* In Spain, austerity has resulted in falling industrial output and deepening debt, with record unemployment and a stunning rate of 50 percent youth unemployment. And the Spanish government's incomprehensible response is to impose even more crushing austerity.
* Ireland has fallen back into recession as austerity has led to falling economic output. A better future is being sacrificed, as young workers look for work abroad, "generation emigration" expected to number 75,000 this year.
* The success of Italy's wealthy technocrat government was concisely summarized in similar terms: Italy's austerity measures are stunting activity in the euro-zone's third-largest economy, recent budget and economic data show, suggesting the steps are backfiring.

The cruel stupidity that is economic austerity (via Making Light)

(Image: GREEKS PROTEST AUSTERITY CUTS, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from piazzadelpopolo's photostream)

Great Squanderland Roof: funny BBC radio drama about austerity

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 02:01:07 +0000

Julian Gough sez, "I get the feeling you and some of your readers are, um, not entirely unconvinced by austerity as an economic strategy. So you might like the BBC's free Drama of the Week podcast. It's a satire on Eurozone austerity economics called The Great Squanderland Roof, by, er, me. It's free, downloadable worldwide till Friday, and it stars some great actors, like Dermot Crowley who was in Fr. Ted and, er, Return of the Jedi. What can we do but laugh? Hope you like it. Here's the official BBC blurb on it:"

Jude lives in a henhouse with no roof, in the bankrupt Republic of Squanderland. Purchased for ten million euro at the height of the credit bubble, his henhouse has been rated the asset in Europe most likely to default. To solve this small but symbolic problem and restore confidence in the markets, Europe's leaders need a plan. Sadly, putting a roof on Jude's henhouse quickly escalates out of control. Soon they are committed to building a roof over the entire country, half a mile above the startled voters... But what happens when a structure that's too big to fail finally fails? To the horror of Europe's bankers and politicians, Jude comes up with a dramatic (and rather romantic) solution to the Eurozone crisis... 'The Great Squanderland Roof' stars Rory Keenan as the hapless Jude (whose recent credits include 'The Kitchen' at the National, 'A Dublin Carol' at the Donmar and 'Birdsong' on BBC TV) in his debut BBC Radio role, Dermot Crowley as a banker turned government minister, and Stephanie Flanders, the BBC's Economics Editor.

The Great Squanderland Roof 2 Mar 12 (Thanks, Julian!)

America's tent cities

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:00:25 +0000

The BBC's Panorama looks at the rise of semi-official homeless tent-camps in American cities. These are springing up in states where austerity "balanced budget" drives are severely cutting services. Especially concerning is the report of homeless children who are going hungry, going to bed hungry, getting dizzy from hunger, waiting through the weekend to go to school (with subsidized meals) to eat. City services -- shelters, emergency rooms, police -- actually send people to the tent cities, because there is no official place for them to go.

According to census data, 47 million Americans now live below the poverty line - the most in half a century - fuelled by several years of high unemployment.
One of the largest tented camps is in Florida and is now home to around 300 people. Others have sprung up in New Jersey and Portland.
In the Ann Arbor camp, Alana Gehringer, 23, has had a hacking cough for the last four months.
"The black mould - it was on our pillows, it was on our blankets, we were literally rubbing our faces in it sleeping every night," she said of wintering in a tent.
The camp is run by the residents themselves, with the help of a local charity group. Calls have come in from the hospital emergency room, the local police and the local homeless shelter to see if they can send in more.

America's homeless resort to tent cities

All is not well in Greece

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 05:03:57 +0000

A gasoline bomb explodes at riot police during a huge anti-austerity demonstration in Athens' Syntagma (Constitution) square February 12, 2012. Historic cinemas, cafes and shops went up in flames in central Athens on Sunday as black-masked protesters fought Greek police outside parliament, while inside lawmakers looked set to defy the public rage by endorsing a new EU/IMF austerity deal. Below, a protester hurls rocks at riot police; another flees.

(photos: REUTERS)

UK education minister: times are tough, let's spend £60M on a new yacht for the Queen!

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:15:00 +0000

Britain's flamboyantly weird education secretary Michael Gove sometimes seems to me to be some kind of secret saboteur, bent on discrediting Tories as out-of-touch rich nutjobs. Education budgets are being hacked and slashed, teachers being laid off, class sizes ballooning -- so he proposes stuff like "Let's give every child a Bible!" and "Let's make Latin mandatory!"

But his latest suggestion is weird even by Gove's lights: "Let's buy the Queen a £60M yacht! Because that will help us all celebrate the diamond jubilee and put us in a great mood!"

Clegg who was responding to a question about the idea after giving a speech on the economy, said he wasn't going to comment on leaks – Gove's letter punting the idea – but joked about "haves and have-yachts".
In the confidential leaked letter that Gove sent to fellow ministers, he urged: "In spite, and perhaps because of, the austere times, the celebration should go beyond those of previous jubilees and mark the greater achievement that the diamond anniversary represents." He suggested "a gift from the nation to her majesty" such as "David Willetts's excellent suggestion of a royal yacht".
Tom Watson, the Labour party chairman, said the whole idea showed how out of touch Gove was. In a blog, he posted that although the diamond jubilee should be celebrated, Michael Gove has shown he is "out of touch" with this proposal.

Downing Street rejects diamond jubilee royal yacht idea

(Image: Mega-Yacht, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from simiant's photostream)

Margaret Thatcher reimbursed for more than £500K in expenses by UK taxpayers

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 09:38:23 +0000

Margaret Thatcher leads Britain's former prime-ministers in claiming expenses back from the taxpayer. She's been reimbursed more than £500,000 in the past five years.

Figures revealed by the Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, in response to a written parliamentary question by the Conservative MP Philip Hollobone, show that Thatcher has received £535,000 from the state since 2006, and John Major, who set up the allowance in 1991, has received £490,000. Tony Blair has claimed since 2007 and received £273,000. The figures reveal he received £169,076 in 2008-9, more than his salary in office.
The public duties cost allowance is administered by the Cabinet Office and claims must be supported by documentary evidence. Thatcher, who has suffered ill health which limits her engagements, still attends some public events, including an address by the Pope in the UK. According to figures released last year the maximum allowance claimable doubled from £47,568 in 1997-98 to £100,205 in 2008-9. Defending the allowance's value for money, Maude said: "The public duties cost allowance is kept under review."

Margaret Thatcher's £500,000 expenses claim revealed

(Image: Margaret Thatcher, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from bixentro's photostream)