A very, very big hat-tip to the folks over at Naked Capitalism for turning me onto: a powerful new, short (32-minute) documentary on our surveillance state from Journeyman Pictures, titled: “Naked Citizens,” via blogger, journalist and sci-fi author Cory Doctorow’s BoingBoing website. And, an equally as quick recovery from that “terrifying and amazing, must-see glimpse of the modern security state” (those are Doctorow’s words, not mine) which you’ll obtain once you read one of the most inspiring essays on political thought, conspiracy theories and social activism that I’ve read in quite awhile: “I Want To Believe,” by Jarrod Shanahan over at The New Inquiry blog.
First, this must-see, short documentary…
Kafka, meet Orwell: peek behind the scenes of the modern surveillance state
Cory Doctorow
BoingBoing
12:00 pm Mon, May 27, 2013
Journeyman Pictures' short documentary "Naked Citizens" is an absolutely terrifying and amazing must-see glimpse of the modern security state, and the ways in which it automatically ascribes guilt to people based on algorithmic inferences, and, having done so, conducts such far-reaching surveillance into its victims' lives that the lack of anything incriminating is treated of proof of being a criminal mastermind:
"I woke up to pounding on my door", says Andrej Holm, a sociologist from the Humboldt University. In what felt like a scene from a movie, he was taken from his Berlin home by armed men after a systematic monitoring of his academic research deemed him the probable leader of a militant group. After 30 days in solitary confinement, he was released without charges. Across Western Europe and the USA, surveillance of civilians has become a major business. With one camera for every 14 people in London and drones being used by police to track individuals, the threat of living in a Big Brother state is becoming a reality. At an annual conference of hackers, keynote speaker Jacob Appelbaum asserts, "to be free of suspicion is the most important right to be truly free". But with most people having a limited understanding of this world of cyber surveillance and how to protect ourselves, are our basic freedoms already being lost?
Here’s
THE LINK to check it out over at BoingBoing. (Worth the extra click, IMHO.)
And, here it is via YouTube, direct…
“Naked Citizens”
After your quick documentary tour through corporatocratic, Orwellian hell, I thought it would only be appropriate to guide you back from the edge into a beautiful piece of sanity and quite awesome inspiration (below is just a brief excerpt; you REALLY should read the entire piece, IMHO)…
I Want to Believe
The New Inquiry
By Jarrod Shanahan
Just because we can hear the black helicopters doesn’t mean they don’t exist
My old co-driver Nick and I would pass the time on interstate furniture deliveries by assessing the incipient mass movements taking off around the world. We debated the potential of the Arab Spring, Occupy, anti-austerity strikes in Europe, daily wildcats in Chinese factories, and other tantalizing glimpses of working class self-activity. And before long, we always reached the same impasse.
“I agree with you” he’d object, “but how can you expect everyday people to get behind all this?”
“Well, you’re just a truck driver” I’d reply with a smile, “and you seem to know what’s up.”
One day a new co-worker sat grumpily wedged between us, saying nothing as our usual debate took shape…
…
…If the myths we have ceased to believe in are being replaced by those more absurd still and equally fated to unbelief, perhaps the challenge becomes crafting better myths; more convincing myths, myths grounded in the material reality of daily life, of daily work and life in common; myths which smash the artificial divisions between us, myths which know that the past cannot be recaptured but that the future remains unwritten. Or, to invoke a word blasphemous to the relativistic mythology of our time, do we have the courage to offer the truth?
Facing the imminent threat of ecological ruin and unprecedented human suffering which capitalist states are powerless to reverse, the stakes of the proletariat’s historical mission become even higher than its 19th century prophets could imagine. As we cast aside illusions and face the sobering reality that it’s either us or nobody at all, “everyday people” will discover that the biggest conspiracy of all is the one which has undermined their power as a class for so long. Experts agree.
What do you want to believe?
(That’s about it from me this early morning.)