Google doing evil?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/apr/02/google-privacy-mobile-phone-industry
Jeff Jarvis, in his book What Would Google Do? (Collins Business, 2009) doesn’t think so (except in China) however we must be vigilant as the ruling classes won’t give up any power without a fight, and those powers they lost in the post-World War II settlement, they want back.
Many of the posts on this page have been about the dangers of surveillance however due, as Jarvis would put it, to Googlejuice the technologies can work to our (ie the people’s) advantage. 30 years ago (23 April ‘79) Blair Peach was killed allegedly by the police whilst on a demo. Tomlinson died a couple of weeks ago, he wasn’t even on the G20 demo, but the probable cause is on camera and in the public domain (well done that American tourist).
I’ve written below that it’s an offense to photograph the police; I think I’ve got this wrong: the police want it to be an offense. I wonder why?
Drifting toward’s Orwell’s dystopian vision
You don't just watch Big Brother...
Waiting at Leeds station that regular announcement, ‘Do not leave baggage unattended as the security services will remove and destroy it’, managed to penetrate my consciousness; or, rather, the term ’security services’. This term could’ve been out of any Orwellian vision of the future such as Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, V for Vendetta by Alan Moore or THX 1138 (1971, directed by George Lucas). Here the phrase has sinister connotations; now it’s simply about trying to make sure there isn’t a terrorist bombing. However…
…when you add facts that it’s now an offense to film or photograph the police, the security services have increasingly become part of the private sector, and the UK government wants to make available all our emails for monitoring, then Orwell’s vision is clearly becoming a reality.
Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, has regularly reiterated that we our sleepwalking toward a ’surveillance society’ (see below). Of course ‘if we’re doing nothing wrong then we’ve nothing to fear’ – a naive view, everyone makes mistakes, especially the security services, and prejudice remains a major problem; Everton’s Nigerian striker, Victor Anichebe, was recently questioned because he was looking in the window of a jeweller’s shop! It’s 2009 not the 1970s. However, it could be Orwell’s vision from the 1940s that’s shaping our future. Don’t let the bastards do it.
Surveillance society: Erosion of freedoms?
They are watching us
The ‘war on terror’, which even the government now admits is an incorrect term, has been used as an excuse to further limit our freedoms. When Facebook decides to keep emails of people who’ve ‘unsubscribed’, a user’s protest forces them to change their mind. When the government decides that it wants all emails to be saved…? Well it won’t change its mind unless we protest very loudly.
A number of commentators have talked about how British freedoms are being eroded. Whilst it’s true freedoms are being restricted, the assumption that there was a Golden Age when us Brits were free never existed, as David Marquand says:
The task today’s democratic republicans is ot to fight a backward-looking battle in defence of the mythical freeborn Briton. It is to mobilise our fellow-citizens in a forward-looking campaign for a democratic constitution based on the principles of inalienable human rights and popular sovereignity… (‘How Free are We?‘, History Today, March 2009)
In the interests of shareholders…
Give ME the money (www.zooomr.com)
It’s been a blackly-comic experience listening to free-marketeers explaining what’s happening in the world’s financial markets. For those on the left, the crash is only surprising in terms of how long it took to happen. Is anyone now convinced that ‘free markets’ are best way to run the economy? Probably, but free markets where never free as they require all participants to have equal access to information. Clearly the private shareholder can never compete with institutions’ banks of analysts watching developments 24-7, not to mention their inability to access inside information (illegal, yes, but rife). The pseudo-nationalisation of many banks gives us an opportunity to run the economy for the benefit of the many rather than the few; however vested interests need to be blown away for this to happen.
One of the keystones of capitalist economics is that business should be run in the interests of shareholders. These interests are often not in the interests of the business’ workforce or the country in which business operates. In addition, this ‘interest’ is usually narrowly defined as ‘return of investment’ and so the aim of business is often to ‘extract shareholder value’, which may not even be in the long term interest of the business itself. This short termism, along with obscene ‘market driven’ bonus systems, is at the heart of the credit crisis. The renumeration of executives has, for many years, been an absolute sign of capitalist hypocrisy as they (and politicians) argued that the bosses must be paid the market rate, a market set by themselves, but public servants, for example, need to ‘tighten their belts’ for the good of the country.
In the UK, the crisis has given Gordon Brown, and Labour, a chance to set an election winning agenda that will return the party to its Socialist roots. The Conservatives are hamstrung by their adherence to the free market so when George Osborn writes (in the Daily Telegraph):
‘The political world is slowly waking up to the new economic realities. Gone are the lazy assumptions of never-ending growth, stability and easy credit. In have come the hard truths of recession, banking failure, currency collapse and the grim rise in unemployment.’
we know the ‘lazy assumptions’ are Conservative assumptions. We are living in ‘interesting times’: economic and ecological disaster loom; we must lose our infantile need to consume and work out ways to make the world a better place for everybody.
Sport
The ‘Collective Joy’ of Cricket
Barbara Ehrenreich, in Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (Granta Books, 2007), offers a fascinating insight into how those in authority constantly tries to repress the unruly. Her final chapter focuses on sporting events where spectators create, and enjoy, a carnival atmosphere. This is particularly true of test cricket in the UK where fancy dress, communal singing, conga dancing and baiting of stewards is almost as much fun as the cricket.
When England lost the series against S.Africa (in Birmingham, August 2008 – pictured) I noticed how the authorities were trying to reign in the unruly, carnival atmosphere. During breaks in play, the plastic glasses were collected to prevent towers being made and passed around. They have a fancy dress competition thereby institutionalising the absurdity of turning up to a match dressed as Scooby Doo, the Village People or storm troopers. However, the cricket states that spectators dressed unsuitably will be refused entry. Streakers have long faced a £5000 fine.
Clearly if someone is so pissed that they are spoiling others enjoyment they should be ejected but why do the authorities always need to control crowds?
UK Police State
Thought crimes
Kent’s assistant chief constable, Gary Beautridge, said his officers had found bolt cutters, superglue and climbing ropes in the raid at the end of last week.
“We wanted to police lawful protest, recognising that this is the right of people in a free country,” said Beautridge. “However, equipment we seized from the site suggests that some protesters were clearly intent on unlawful action.” source
Language
Now that politically correct language has fallen from favour, demonised and discredited, where should we go next? Can we afford to ignore the return of derogatory language directed at black, Muslim, gay, disabled or elderly people, anyone deemed different? http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/15/equality.humanrights
Inequality
The rich are different: they are self-deluding arses: “Single people . . . get pregnant and get a flat and more money. You just see everybody pushing prams, then they’ll get more income and a little flat that they can stay in for life.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/aug/04/workandcareers.executivesalaries
Health
After 11 years of stealthy privatisation in the health service, it is little surprise that doctors are up in arms over polyclinics – themselves a cover for commercialisation. The NHS, for so long an international model for a universal, public-owned and public-controlled service, is now the world’s laboratory for privatisation.
Labour’s 1997 manifesto promised: “Our fundamental purpose is simple but hugely important: to restore the NHS as a public service working cooperatively for patients, not a commercial business driven by competition.” But from the outset, New Labour had four targets in its sights: ending public ownership and control of the NHS; developing a large for-profit private sector using Treasury and NHS funds; creating a flexible workforce for that sector; and changing the public’s resistance to markets in healthcare. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/11/nhs.health1
Food
Between 1995 and 2005, $165bn of American taxpayers’ money was used to support US agricultural commodities. Soya, corn, rice, wheat and cotton accounted for 90% of that money. Sugar was also heavily subsidised. The real beneficiaries of this system of government support have not been US farmers, who have gone out of business in their thousands, but the mainly US-based trading giants. For subsidies have allowed them to export grains at less than the cost of production, making it impossible for other countries to compete, while bringing the money from added-value markets back home. In this they mirror the patterns of trade established between previous empires and their colonies. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/16/food.biofuels
The figures are staggering. Wal-Mart currently dominates the global grocery trade with profits reckoned by the UN at the start of the century to be ‘bigger than the gross domestic product of three quarters of the world’s economies’. Today those profits have doubled. Five companies control 90 per cent of the global grain supply. The world tea market is in the hands of three. Eighty-one per cent of American beef belongs to four giant processing companies. None of these companies is answerable for what they do to anyone but themselves. They are ruthlessly anti-competitive, largely above the law, and more than able to impose their own, often ruinous conditions on the countries that supply them.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/scienceandnature/story/0,,2284454,00.html
Europe
Ireland’s referendum
The fact is that Europe’s political and business elite avoids giving voters a direct say wherever possible – because it knows it is likely to be turned over by a public that regards EU institutions as remote and unaccountable, whatever it feels about European integration in principle. The long-established practice has therefore been that whenever a referendum becomes absolutely unavoidable and the voters get the answer wrong, they are made to go back and vote again until they get it right. That was what happened to Denmark over the Maastricht treaty in 1992, and Ireland when it rejected the Nice treaty in 2001. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/12/ireland.eu
Racial discrimination
Seumas Milne is right to say the fingerprinting of Roma and Sinti people in Italy is a source of shame for the whole of Europe (Comment, July 10). When he says barely a murmur of protest has been heard from EU governments he is right too, but it is important to point out that on Thursday MEPs voted to condemn Roberto Maroni, the Northern League home affairs minister, for adopting a policy reminiscent of Italy’s fascist past. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/15/italy.race
