At the E3 in Los Angeles, one of the world’s biggest orgies of commercial capitalism, Rockstar Games unveiled an upcoming game loosely premised on the violent elements of the anti-WTO mass protests in Seattle [Indymedia Newswire]. Sometimes the world is just so damn surreal that it defies commentary….

Stephen O’Connor points out that President Bush’s faith-based initiatives are nothing new, and some of its likely limitations can be found by examining the history of government-funded religious child welfare groups in New York City [NY Times].

Freedom of expression online is again under assault, as the FBI and Secret Service have begun to target the Seattle IMC in intimidating fishing expeditions, demanding that they turn over server logs despite the fact that federal agents have admitted that the IMC itself was not suspected of any criminal activity and there was no violation of US law. Thankfully, a sane judge has lifted the gag order that was imposed on Seattle IMC, so they have been able to publish their side of the story; federal sources leaked information about the story with impunity before the gag order was rescinded, showing that apparently the FBI’s only concern was to be able to spin the story as it pleased without backtalk.

In other good news, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is standing up for the IMC on this one, and the FBI’s fishing expedition is so blatant and poorly constructed that it will hopefully be laughed out of court. But this sets a very troubling precedent for the revival — or continuance, really; it never much stopped — of the FBI’s repressive surveillance against activist organizations. As the left / anarchist activist coalition grows in power, power brokers are getting scared. You could see this already in the Summit of the Americas, World Economic Forum, etc. buckling down into cities temporarily turned into militarized police states. The growing willingness of the free world’s states to use these kind of repressive tactics is something that we really have to keep a watch on, and fight back against.

It behooves you to check out http://security.tao.ca if you are an activist or otherwise concerned about online privacy. Tons and tons and tons of great resources.

Speaking of open and democratic schools, TECHNOS features an interview with Daniel Greenberg about his experiment in democratic schooling, the Sudbury Valley School, which is still running successfully after 33 years. All school governance is democratic (on the New England Town Meeting model), there aren’t any fixed curricula or pre-set courses (though students arrange for courses of study with instructors and do their own self-initiated independent study), and the only requirement for graduation is to adequately–in the judgment of the school community–defend in writing the thesis that they have taken responsibility for preparing themselves to be effective adults in the larger community.

I would like to see a couple more things before I really judge (simply judging from an interview of a school founder is not always the best way to go). Specifically, I’d like to see some experiences (and not just advertising brochure testimonials, but real experiences) from students. I’d also like to see some more comments about how these voluntary courses do end up being set up. Is it all one-on-one study, or do students usually get together and form study groups around a common list of reading (which I think is really beneficial for a lot of subjects, particularly in the humanities), or what? But on the face of it, it really sounds like an amazing opportunity for kids to learn in exactly kind of the environment that I was talking about–one which is open, democratic, respectful, and conducive to imaginative, critical, self-directed learning.