Bon Jovi may have raised my ire, but at the end of the day he’s just one of many rock dinosaurs stomping creakily around, peering confusedly at the scurrying, productive mammals underfoot, and as such deserves only mild scorn and gentle mocking.
“The social media which is championed by those revolving door apparatchiks moving between the State Department and silicon valley (eg) is not organisation itself, but merely a means to it and, as it turns out, a dispensable means.”
So quickly forgotten by well-intentioned, excitable futurists!
Even among friends I’ve heard more excitable talk about Google’s (admirable if potentially misguided) efforts to allow Egyptians to tweet than about, say, the extremely impressive grassroots organisation on display in Egypt.
Perhaps it is simply that for many Western people it is easier to relate to the use of social media than it is to relate to those reacting with passion, courage and dedication to a corrupt and authoritarian government.
The Orwellian online scheme was dreamt up by Devon company ‘Internet Eyes’. They want people to sign up and monitor multiple real-time CCTV feeds from shops and businesses – and then compete to correctly alert them of any perceived suspicious behaviour occurring. The most eagle-eyed snooper each month can win a £1000 prize. But beware! Falsely alert too often and you could be booted out of the game.
The obvious ethical and moral implications of all this aside, for those nosey punters wanting to feel the power of armchair policing, the reality of watching endless hours of the dullest TV ever conceived while maintaining enough concentration to correctly separate crime from lingering, is tiring and demanding work. So Internet Eyes will reward you for it – at staggering rates ranging from 50 pence for 30 hours hard surveillance work in a month…right up to a whopping £1.50 for 60 hours. And you thought sweatshop labour got a raw deal.
To top it all, the masterstroke is to make you pay to sign up – £2 a month or £13 for a year (meaning if you fail to win the monthly prize, you have to put in eight and a half 60-hour months before you break even). For the company, 500 mugs signing up is your monthly prize covered – everything else is gravy while you sell the service for top dollar to businesses. Ker-ching!
Apparently there has been a shameful lack of press coverage in response to Calais Migrant Solidarity’s recent press release, and visiting reporters didn’t manage to coincide their visits with those of large numbers of activists. I figured I’d do what little this blog can do to help get the word out and reproduce the release below the cut – so click read more to view that. CMS maintain there own blog here and a Facebook group here. I’ve written previously about CMS and their treatment by the British press here.
Here are two videos, via the New Left Project, that relate to Israel/Palestine and are worth watching.
First up is a short 3-minute piece that restates some of the simple facts about the siege of the Gaza Strip and the recent assault on the aid flotilla.
Although it was originally released in 2004, and I bought it in 2005, it was only this year that I finally read this book – which courted some controversy when it originally shot up the bestseller lists. The short summary is that this purports to be an autobiography which focuses on some of the most significant events of the author’s life in relation to US foreign and economic policy. In Perkins’ college years he was put under observation by the NSA, who felt that he fit the psychological profile of an economic hitman, EHM for short; a combination of intelligence, patriotism and manipulable weakness. He joined the peace corps for a spell in South America after which he was recruited by an organisation known as MAIN, a US engineering and consultancy firm which specialised in overseas contracts for states the NSA wanted to bind together with the USA in a mutually beneficial economic arrangement. This meant that these nations would either accept development loans from the IMF and World Bank or utilise their own wealth, which funds would then be funnelled into US corporations who would modernise private and public infrastructure in the client states.
The general facts of these relationships are not particularly controversial these days; it’s common knowledge that the IMF and the World Bank are institutions in which the USA has a lot of power, and that states which accept development funds are obliged to adopt certain neoliberal doctrines (primarily privatising state assets and infrastructure and opening them up to bids from international, often US, corporations). It’s also common knowledge that this process of ‘modernisation’ often does as much bad as it does good. Where natural resources are opened up to exploitation indigenous peoples see their lifestyles destroyed; where hydroelectric dams are constructed tens or even hundreds of thousands of people find themselves forcibly relocated. Serious health risks can arise as a result of pollutants or disease; funds often find themselves funnelled into the pockets or pet projects of elites in client states at the expense of those who are worst off.
“I would say that this is a very very dangerous situation. We are entering a new phase which respectively… what we have been living so far in terms of concrete application of neoliberal policies might appear as just a kind of mild starter compared to what is happening now.
“This is the importance of the Greek case. Greece is the weak link because Greek capitalism is perhaps the most fragile, at least in Western Europe, but it is the weak link also because it is the country where the level of social resistance … and popular struggle is the highest.
“The ruling classes are very much aware of this and they want to make Greece a test case, so everyone should be aware of the stakes now. Solidarity and [sharing] information among all the people, the working people and the young people of Europe is absolutely indispensable because the adversary is common and therefore we need to converge.”
The banks have pronounced which party they want to govern us, and the Credit Rating Agencies are preparing to tell us who’s really in charge
An alliance of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties to form a British coalition government would “almost guarantee” a credit downgrade, BNP Paribas SA said, recommending investors sell the pound against the dollar.
A cut in the rating is likely “since both parties agree that early expenditure cuts could harm the economy,” a team at BNP Paribas led by London-based Hans-Guenter Redeker wrote in a research note today. “A Labour/Liberal government is the least- liked option by markets.”
You know, I really don’t know why we bothered with an election.
I predict this will be all over the Tory media within an hour.
And attention should be paid to these people precisely why? Respectful attention should be paid to their words and analyses and opinions and self-interest for what reason? They are the greedy fools who first fucked themselves and then fucked us. Well, no thanks. They should be consigned to history, an anecdote in a high school textbook with little cocks drawn next to them by disinterested teenagers.
