Saturday, December 24, 2011
Siva Vaidhyanathan
Gossip is uncensored, unmediated, unfiltered, peer-to-peer communication. The term describes the method, not the subject, of communication. In pre-revolutionary France gossip was anarchistic in the sense that it grew and thrived outside of hierarchies and beyond the reach of the state, not that it necessarily advocated or caused the overthrow of the king, although it certainly did contribute. Unmediated and decentralized, gossip was anarchistic in structure if not in content.
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"The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System"
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Department of Culture and Communication, New York University
sivacracy.net
The Washington consensus was a form of market fundamentalism complicated by bad faith. Although its advocates claimed to champion "free trade" and "open markets," there was nothing free and nothing open about the Washington consensus. It was more Washingtonian than consensual, existing mainly among major institutions in Washington, D.C., and representing the vested interests of developed nations. While intending to empower market forces, it depended on coercion by institutions that resemble superstates with no direct democratic accountability. In practice, powerful multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank determine important policies of many nation-states. Clearly the multilateral institutions that enforced the Washington consensus serve the interests of a handful of rich, powerful states in North America and western Europe.
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