A week ago last Sunday night, I was sitting around a table at a friend’s house with two other friends in the Plateau East neighborhood of Montreal, having a quiet & delicious dinner after the Anarchist Bookfair weekend, when at 8 pm, we heard the singular noise of someone banging on a pot in the nearby distance, then two, and maybe three or four. My friend got up to peak around the corner, to see which of his neighbors was making the noise, telling us that there was a Facebook call to bang pots & pans in solidarity with the student strike (as it turns out, it was a professor’s idea, and he did indeed post a FB page for it).

Last night, May 27, that same friend and I met up with other friends at the “usual” corner on Mont-Royal near St-Denis on the Plateau West side of this Montreal neighborhood. At first a handful came, right at 8 pm, like us, and then dozens, growing quickly to hundreds. It was my second night at this intersection, near to the home of another friend, and already I recognized most of the faces, and people nodded at each other, and more of them talked to each other (and my two friends and others are busily organizing toward their first neighborhood popular assembly this coming Saturday).

As we moved from crossing with the light, to crossing at the traffic light, to finally taking the intersection, a group of young children–barely teens–among the many young children on the streets with us, decided to lead a breakaway march, skirting past the police car that had now arrived to “help” us manage the traffic. We adults quickly ran after them, laughing, as our ...

Mexico’s presidential elections are less than six weeks away, and for now it appears that opposition candidate Enrique Peña Nieto remains the clear favorite. His party’s reliance on traditional media, however, has ignited a firestorm within the country’s “Facebook Generation.”

Younger Mexicans expected this to be the first presidential election cycle in which social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn would transform the political landscape. Instead, they’ve found, Old Media is striking back.

At last check, Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) held a 20-point lead over his rival Josefina Vázquez, from the ruling National Action Party (PAN). 

Vázquez, a Social Media sensation, got millions of women Tweeting, and enlisted millions of youth as “Friends” on Facebook. But her campaign has run up against a PRI advertising blitzkrieg that has blanketed the country’s newspapers, billboards and airwaves.

Concepción May is a PRI member. For the past few months she has been hard at work organizing neighborhoods – handing out T-shirts, making sure voters have transportation to polling places and delivering campaign posters people can hang on doors and windows. “This is a campaign and the winner will be chosen by people who get away from their computers and go vote,” she says.

That’s a far cry from her sister, who supports the PAN candidate but spends her time on the sofa with her Facebook friends. “She might as well be playing video games,” May says. “I doubt she even knows where to vote.”

The PRI, which expects to win the presidency after 12 years of PAN presidents (Vicente Fox and the ...

In Mexico City’s daily life — in the shops, taxicabs, cafes and lines waiting for the bus — one could hear conversations between people of all ages saying Enrique Peña Nieto would, without a doubt, win the presidential elections. “Either something huge will happen,” a taxi driver told me, “or he will win.” And when people referred to “something huge happening,” they were referring to violence, or some unbearable crisis.

But it hasn’t happened like that. Far from anything originally expected, it is the Mexican youth and university students who are doing “something huge.” They have altered the political agenda in the country to prove that no one wins an election until the election itself.

The gathering began on May 23 at the Estela de Luz, or Pillar of Light — a monument that has caused much controversy due to the billions of pesos the government invested in its construction. The students appropriated this symbol of corruption to illuminate it with their democratic demands in a key pre-electoral moment.

With only forty days left in the race, the protest was provoked by the manipulation of information and the imposition of a candidate by the corporate and media elites during the hype of the electoral campaigns. In the end, twenty thousand students from different universities, public and private, marched for four hours along the main avenues of Mexico ...

At this time of year, at graduation ceremonies in America and elsewhere, those about to leave university often hear some final words of advice before receiving their diplomas. To those interested in pursuing careers in finance – or related careers in insurance, accounting, auditing, law, or corporate management – I submit the following address:

Best of luck to you as you leave the academy for your chosen professions in finance. Over the course of your careers, Wall Street and its kindred institutions will need you. Your training in financial theory, economics, mathematics, and statistics will serve you well. But your lessons in history, philosophy, and literature will be just as important, because it is vital not only that you have the right tools, but also that you never lose sight of the purposes and overriding social goals of finance.

Unless you have been studying at the bottom of the ocean, you know that the financial sector has come under severe criticism – much of it justified – for thrusting the world economy into its worst crisis since the Great Depression. And you need only check in with some of your classmates who have populated the Occupy movements around the world to sense the widespread resentment of financiers and the top 1% of income earners to whom they largely cater (and often belong).

Follow Project Syndicate on Facebook or Twitter. For more from Robert J. Schiller, click here.

While some of this criticism may be over-stated or misplaced, it nonetheless underscores the need to reform financial institutions and practices. Finance has long been central to thriving ...

With daily headlines focusing on war, terrorism, and the abuses of repressive governments, and religious leaders frequently bemoaning declining standards of public and private behavior, it is easy to get the impression that we are witnessing a moral collapse. But I think that we have grounds to be optimistic about the future.

Thirty years ago, I wrote a book called The Expanding Circle, in which I asserted that, historically, the circle of beings to whom we extend moral consideration has widened, first from the tribe to the nation, then to the race or ethnic group, then to all human beings, and, finally, to non-human animals. That, surely, is moral progress.

We might think that evolution leads to the selection of individuals who think only of their own interests, and those of their kin, because genes for such traits would be more likely to spread. But, as I argued then, the development of reason could take us in a different direction.

On the one hand, having a capacity to reason confers an obvious evolutionary advantage, because it makes it possible to solve problems and to plan to avoid dangers, thereby increasing the prospects of survival. Yet, on the other hand, reason is more than a neutral problem-solving tool. It is more like an escalator: once we get on it, we are liable to be taken to places that we never expected to reach. In particular, reason enables us to see that others, previously outside the bounds of our moral view, are like us in relevant respects. Excluding them from the sphere of beings to whom we owe moral consideration can then seem arbitrary, or just plain wrong.

Follow Project Syndicate on Facebook or Twitter. For more from Peter Singer, click ...

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, up for debate in the House of Representatives today, has privacy activists, tech companies, security wonks and the Obama administration all jousting about what it means – not only for security but Internet privacy and intellectual property. Backers expect CISPA to pass, unlike SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act that melted down amid controversy earlier this year.

Here’s a rundown on the debate and what CISPA could mean for Internet users.

What exactly is CISPA?

The act, sponsored Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., would make it easier for private corporations and U.S. agencies, including military and intelligence, to share information related to “cyber threats.” In theory, this would enable the government and companies to keep up-to-date on security risks and protect themselves more efficiently. CISPA would amend the National Security Act of 1947, which currently contains no reference to cyber security. Companies wouldn’t be required to share any data. They would just be allowed to do so.

Why should I care?

CISPA could enable companies like Facebook and Twitter, as well as Internet service providers, to share your personal information with the National Security Agency and the CIA, as long as that information is deemed to pertain to a cyber threat or to national security.

How does the bill define “cyber threat”?

The bill itself defines it as information "pertaining to a vulnerability ...

We speak with Jacob Appelbaum, a computer researcher who has faced a stream of interrogations and electronic surveillance since he volunteered with the whistleblowing website, WikiLeaks. He describes being detained more than a dozen times at the airport and interrogated by federal agents who asked about his political views and confiscated his cell phone and laptop. When asked why he cannot talk about what happened after he was questioned, Appelbaum says, "Because we don’t live in a free country. And if I did, I guess I could tell you about it." A federal judge ordered Twitter to hand over information about Appelbaum’s account. Meanwhile, he continues to work on the Tor Project, an anonymity network that ensures every person has the right to browse the internet without restriction and the right to speak freely. This interview is part of a 4-part special. Click here to see segment 1, 2, and 4.

READ FULL POST 7 COMMENTS

For it was during the country’s civil society mobilization against the former government that social media first gained popularity as a platform for airing grievances here. 

Now, as Banda begins to purge the Malawian government of corrupt officials and woos international donors back in an attempt to ease the country’s economic woes, users on social media have increased. 

The news of President Bingu wa Mutharika’s death began circulating as rumors on Facebook newsfeeds in Malawi two days before it was officially confirmed by government officials on Apr. 7. 

The subsequent appointment of former Vice President Banda as the new head of state, and the first female president in southern Africa, only amplified the level of online activity as messages of support and optimism sprouted up all over Twitter and Facebook. 

July protests stir up online community

But the country’s online community was first stirred to action during last year’s protests. On Jul. 20, 2011, the apparently peaceful country of Malawi broke out into nationwide anti-government protests in response to a deteriorating economy and political mismanagement. Persistent fuel and foreign exchange shortages added to the frustrations. 

The protests lasted two days and resulted in 20 deaths. 

So when the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA) temporarily shut down private broadcasters and popular news websites were blocked, Malawians turned to social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter for the latest information. 

"There’s a tendency among officials — especially government politicians ...

If you're a regular reader of Natural news, you're already well aware of the fact that government, the courts, and private industry have all essentially disregarded the intent and meaning of the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment privacy protections in the age of information technology. It seems that you give up your right to be "secure" in your "persons, houses, papers, and effects" if you dare to use a social media network or virtually any other information exchange system.

The latest onslaught comes from the FBI, which is only the most recent federal agency seeking to monitor all of your conversations on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The bureau has placed a request from tech firms to develop a program that would enable agents to sift through waves of "publicly available" information, ostensibly to look for keywords related to terrorism, criminal activity and other threats to national security.

'Early warning' system?

The goal, according to the bureau's request, is to develop a sort of early warning system that provides real-time intelligence to improve "the FBI's overall situational awareness." The proposed program must "have the ability to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence that will allow SIOC to quickly vet, identify, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats."

The FBI joins DARPA - the secretive Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency- and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in searching for a program that can "monitor" ...

Last month, Internet users and companies rallied together to defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, two proposed U.S. bills that sought to give media corporations the tools to combat illegal file-sharing but would have potentially had chilling effects on free speech. It was an innovative protest waged almost exclusively online, and American Internet users rightfully celebrated the despised bills’ demises. However, two of the very same companies which pushed hard to maintain a free and open Internet in the U.S. gave indications that they would not do the same for users in the rest of the world.

On January 26, Twitter noted on its blog that, as it expanded overseas into regions with more restrictive Internet policies than our own, it would be willing to censor tweets on a country-by-country basis when requested by legal authorities. This unfortunately timed announcement, coming on the heels of the anniversary of the start of the Arab Spring protests in Egypt, for which Twitter received much credit for at the time and after, was widely panned. Twitter itself once proudly asserted, “Our position on freedom of expression carries with it a mandate to protect our users’ right to speak freely.”

READ FULL POST 1 COMMENTS

The Onward State tweet that erroneously reported Joe Paterno's death Saturday night and led to an avalanche of false reports in other outlets was based on the work of two student reporters: One was snookered by a false email, and one overstated his knowledge of the events, according to the site's co-founder.

A third student, Managing Editor Devon Edwards, decided to pull the trigger on the tweet. Edwards resigned Saturday night.

The independent, online-only, student-run site is an agile and highly collaborative organization with a staff of 30-50, including eight editors. Each story is run through two editors, and major decisions are hashed out among editors and reporters through Yammer, an internal messaging system.

The fateful tweet was no snap decision. The site has a complex editorial process that's designed for the Web and has earned praise for its vision — but like any editorial process, it can easily be disrupted by bad reporting and pressure-packed situations.

"I'd have to say that this event … taught me how ego can be a very toxic thing for a news organization,” said Davis Shaver, who co-founded the site as a Penn State freshman in 2008. "Ego to act like you know something you don't, ego to want to be the first person to break it.”

The Breakdown

The two reporters appeared to be offering what the editor believed was independent confirmation of the same fact: that a high-ranking athletic ...

Wednesday, Jan. 18, marked the largest online protest in the history of the Internet. Websites from large to small “went dark” in protest of proposed legislation before the U.S. House and Senate that could profoundly change the Internet. The two bills, SOPA in the House and PIPA in the Senate, ostensibly aim to stop the piracy of copyrighted material over the Internet on websites based outside the U.S. Critics, among them the founders of Google, Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, Tumblr and Twitter, counter that the laws will stifle innovation and investment, hallmarks of the free, open Internet. The Obama administration has offered muted criticism of the legislation, but, as many of his supporters have painfully learned, what President Barack Obama questions one day he signs into law the next.

First, the basics. SOPA stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act, while PIPA is the Protect IP Act. The two bills are very similar. SOPA would allow copyright holders to complain to the U.S. attorney general about a foreign website they allege is “committing or facilitating the commission of criminal violations” of copyright law. This relates mostly to pirated movies and music. SOPA would allow the movie industry, through the courts and the U.S. attorney general, to send a slew of demands that Internet service providers (ISPs) and search-engine companies shut down access to those alleged violators, and even to prevent linking to those sites, thus making them “unfindable.” It would also bar Internet advertising providers from making payments to websites accused of copyright violations.

SOPA could, then, shut down a community-based site like YouTube if just one of its millions of users was accused of violating one U.S. copyright. As David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer and an opponent of the legislation, blogged, “Last year alone we acted on copyright takedown notices for more than 5 million webpages.” ...

The Stop Online Piracy Act is proposed legislation which threatens to restrict and regulate streaming video, music, and other copyrighted content on the internet. It would potentially make some common online activities, such as video streaming of copyrighted content, a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. It would also allow the Department of Justice and copyright holders themselves to seek out court orders to take down or censor websites and other online content providers who they accused of acting in violation of the new measures. Industry lobbies that support the bill argue that it will provide much needed improvements over law enforcement’s existing ability to enforce the law on the internet and will bolster intellectual property protections in the entertainment industry.

Online activism against the Stop Online Piracy Act has been widespread since it was introduced as legislation in October. Opponents argue that SOPA would constitute internet censorship and would be in violation of first amendment free speech guarantees. Groups of internet users have come together to boycott pro-SOPA corporations like GoDaddy.com - who supported SOPA and simultaneously ensured itself exemptions from the law. So far Congress seems set to pass the legislation quietly despite the public outcry against it.

Grassroots opposition to SOPA has not been fruitless, and has been joined in protest by some big corporate allies. Markham Erickson, the head of the NetCoalition trade association, confirmed that tech industry giants like ...

For "renaldomacias" on Twitter, $40 extra a paycheck means "buying a full bag of groceries OR filling the car with gas to get to work. Without that $40, we'll be doing neither." BaldEmotions writes, "#40dollars a paycheck through the entire year is what it costs us to send our daughter to public preschool." Fink820 sent this Twitter message: "#40Dollars means gas 4 a wk so that I can get to work to earn #40Dollars for the next week. #40Dollars means ALOT to ALOT of us middle class."

But to House Speaker John Boehner and the House Republicans who appear to be leading him rather than the other way around, $40 extra a paycheck for two months isn't worth the trouble. Rather than taking the simple step of accepting a bipartisan Senate-approved two-month continuation of a payroll tax break, Boehner and his Tea Party brethren chose to be obstinate and arrogant.

After all, the tan one said, all that's involved is "a measly $166." Making sure that workers aren't hit with the loss of that "measly" amount of money is too much to expect of the "job creators" out there, he went on to say.

"“The Senate only goes for two months, but businesses send their taxes in, write the check – I used to write the check to the IRS, but it’s done on a quarterly basis. And so you’re gonna have a couple of months of this and another month of this … trying to figure out what your obligation is, is going to be difficult,” he said.

Waaa!

This afternoon, there are reports that Boehner may finally be trying to find a way to gracefully back down and accept some sort of short-term tax extension, after a 24-hour period in which Boehner was rebuked by even ...