And this is actually how politics has been evolving, over the last 30 years in particular. More and more money buys influence and buys political power. It also structures the media. Increasingly we find it dominates what’s going on inside of universities. It dominates our educational system, so that universities increasingly become places where all you learn is neoliberal ideology. Where all you learn is corporatist manegerial techniques. And those corporatist manegerial techniques are about actually how to squeeze more and more money out of those who can least afford it.

David Harvey at Occupy London / November 12, 2011 / International Day of Solidarity from Elaine Castillo on Vimeo.

Get the full transcript here.

Confronting the crisis and seeing clearly the way it is being managed by the current political system, young people populating the various encampments are, with an unexpected maturity, beginning to pose a challenging question: If democracy — that is, the democracy we have been given — is staggering under the blows of the economic crisis and is powerless to assert the will and interests of the multitude, then is now perhaps the moment to consider that form of democracy obsolete?

I became interested in using open source software for the same reason that many do — no licensing fees. It soon became apparent to me that I should use it with my students for the same reason. If I taught them using Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop, they would have to shell out to use these products at home. If, instead, we agreed to use Open Office and GIMP, they could download these programs at home for free. When a newer version appeared, the whole class could upgrade without forking out cash.

At Moodle Moot it begins to dawn on me exactly how subversive these ideas are and I am feeling more like a teacher-ninja by the minute. What Downes and the other speakers are advocating is the right to keep the tools and ideas of our age open and available to all rather than packaged and sold to the few who can afford them. “The more expensive it is to develop educational systems,” Downes instructs us, “the greater push there is to commercialize programs.”

The discussion pulls up a little short, limiting FLOSS to its use in instruction. I would suggest such a discussion ought to extend to the institutional framework of public education, which pays out immense amounts of its precious resources to companies like Microsoft et al to stock their classrooms and administrative offices with licensed software and operating systems. (And then certifies tech support and offers classes on how to run their systems). Imagine full implementation of free and open source operating systems! Though at the present juncture, there are several features in addition to the lack of political will that stand in the way of such a proposal: lack of knowledge in IT departments, scaling issues around the software itself, the capability of some of the OS makers to provide institutional appropriate tech support, etc.

That said, the sentiment of the article is bang on, and is something crucial for educators to think about in the digital era.

The government is set to ram through a new set of electronic surveillance laws that will allow authorities to access private information of any Canadian, at any time, without a warrant. You’ll be forced to pay for this online spying scheme.

The government has failed to inform Canadians about the privacy and data security implications of this scheme, but Canadians are stepping up to the plate. Share these important citizen-made videos with everyone you know before it’s too late—let’s stand together and make our voices heard.

53. An elector who has received a ballot and returns it to the deputy returning officer declining to vote, forfeits the right to vote and the deputy returning officer shall immediately write the word “declined” upon the back of the ballot and preserve it to be returned to the returning officer and shall cause an entry to be made in the poll record that the elector declined to vote. R.S.O. 1990, c. E.6, s. 53. [emphasis added]

A 21-year-old page lost her job Friday after walking onto the Senate floor during the speech from the throne to protest against Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

This act by such a young person has caught the attention of the media across the country, and rightly so. It was an act of bravery by a member of a generation that have been variously labelled as apathetic, lazy, politically disengaged, etc. Not that miss DePape is necessarily a voice of her generation, but certainly we can no longer make such sweeping generalisations about the under 30 set.

In typical fashion, much of the uproar has focused on the style and form of the protest, and not on the content of her (and many others’) objections to the Harper regime and it’s anti-democratic policies. Green leader Elizabeth May has called the protest “inappropriate,” Conservative blowhard senator Mike Duffy dismissed it as a “stunt,” and Bob Rae – in language that echoes the types of conservative resistance to African American integration and women’s rights – has noted that such ceremonies (the throne speech) are sacred and ought not to be disrupted. (watch the accompanying videos on the article).

Such a non-partisan  reaction to DePape’s act is evidence of the supine attitude of today’s entrenched political class; and this is precisely why actions such as DePape’s are needed. How else is dissent to be voiced if it first must conform to the “proper” expectations of the ruling class? There is no such thing as “legitimate protest;” such an oxymoron fails to account for the greater necessity to challenge the sedimentation of procedure and “legitimate” process – what is allowed and what is not. A protest that is sanctioned by ruling elites does little to undermine and drill down to the root cause for the existence of and adherence to such procedures/processes/traditions: the establishment and maintenance of hierarchical power relations; the institutionalisation and perpetuation of power for the few over the many.

DePape’s tremendous act, combined with the focus on its disruption of procedure and the ruling class’s uniform dismissal provides further evidence that dissenting views (or, in DePape’s electoral/mathematical language, the 3/4 of us who do not hold “conservative values”) are spoken in a language that simply cannot be understood by the ruling elite. This is a dissent characterised by, among other things, voter absenteeism (not always a case of apathy) and disregard for proper procedure. And  ruling elites have no investment in or means for communicating with such dissent: why would a government able to form a “majority” by winning 60% of 40% of all the eligible votes be interested in enticing all of those who didn’t vote to come join in? Why would a parliamentary system that hinges on the idea that one can represent the many be interested in hearing the voices of those who speak themselves and not through their appointed representatives? In this sense, dissent is speaking truth to power in a way that power simply cannot and will not understand. But does this mean that dissent needs to change its language to match that of the dominant? I’d argue no.

Could it not be the case that the political establishement’s reaction to DePape’s protest is informed by some sort of (subconscious?) acknowledgement that, in fact, her message was not directed at them at all? And by not directing it at them, could she be effectively undermining their authority as arbiters of right and wrong? Indeed, since parliamentary chambers are places of tradition and “proper procedure” a simple placard would have little effect in such a space. Her means of protest will find and has found greater resonance in the media and across the discursive terrain of the Internet than it will/has in any parliamentary registry or minutes sheet. Thus, like tired old kings whose decrees fall on deaf ears or are blatantly ignored, the ruling elites scream “foul”: she’s not playing by our rules…and we don’t like it! They fetishise “rules” and process as a means of distracting us from the illegitimacy of their power.

Forms of civil disobedience, like the rejection of staid parliamentary procedure, not to mention damaging corporate property and the subversive use of technologies (pirate radio, media piracy), serve to highlight the inability and unwillingness of ruling classes to live up to their empty promises of “democracy” and “freedom.” They further highlight the necessity of such forms of protest in an era where dissent has been commodified in the form of increasingly divisive and hyper-individualised PR campaigns such as Product RED or “green” profiteering. Moroever, such acts reinforce the need to carve out and expand spaces for voicing  dissent; spaces that are not determined in advance by law enforcement and safely placed far from the eyes and ears of power, subject to strategic anti-democratic modes of surveillance, scare tactics, and punitive discipline.

Democracy and freedom are not embodied in 19th Century regalia and tradition any more than they are in Greek statuary, Romanesque columns, Stars and Stripes, battlefield memorials, or checkboxes on ballots. They are acts, continuous disruptive events that make and remake the world. What better place to do this than in the seat of Canadian democracy?

Bravo!

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials, because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox in 4 parts without commercial interruptions.

The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.

The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.

The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run, or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.

NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32 or report from 29 districts.

The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers in the instant replay. There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers in the instant replay.

There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.

There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and women will not care if Dick finally gets down with Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day.

The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o’clock news and no pictures of hairy armed women liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.

The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb, Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.

The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.

You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.

The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat.
The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;

The revolution will be live.

This means we’re looking at a future where ISPs will charge per byte, the way they do with smart phones. If we allow this to happen Canadians will have no choice but to pay MUCH more for less Internet. Big Telecom companies are obviously trying to gouge consumers, control the Internet market, and ensure that consumers continue to subscribe to their television services.

These Big Telecom companies are forcing small competing ISPs to adopt the same pricing scheme, so that we have no choice but to pay these punitive fees.

This will crush innovative services, Canada’s digital competitiveness, and your wallet.

We urgently need to send a clear message to Ottawa, saying that we won’t stand by while some of the most profitable companies in the country indiscriminately add new fees to our Internet bills. Enough is enough.

UPDATE: The CRTC just made a decision that paves the way for new internet fees to be added to your bill. To stop this we need to raise our voices now more than ever.