The Corporate Government Merry-go-round.

        From time to time I look back at what I have written, just to see if anything has changed, or did I get it wrong. Quite often my little delve into the past just confirms my beliefs. This little blast from the past, something I wrote about 3 years ago, still rings true, and in my humble opinion is probably more relevant to day than then.

The Stench From That Thing Called Capitalism, Feb. 1st. 2016.

        Big business and government are so intertwined, that it is impossible to separate them. Corporations spend millions, if not billions, on lobbyists, politicians are offered lucrative positions, and little perks here and there, but of course, they'll tell you, that they are not influenced by these matters. They'll deal with each issue on its merits, with the welfare of the country and its people always to the fore, and the corporations will still continue to spend those millions or billions, just as a kindness to politicians, and get nothing in return. Isn't it a wonderful world? It is safe to bet that all politicians are relatively rich, most will have their filthy lucre, stashed away in shares in those very corporations that are pouring money into their little slush fund. We are expected to believe that none of these politicians would ever nudge legislation in the direction of helping their share portfolio, and might at times move to jeopardise their little stash.
         A world built on corruption, designed to further the wealth of big business and protect the wealth of those in power. It is not with little thought that I refer to our lords and masters place of business as the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption. Those who enter its marble halls by on large are very rich, when they leave, they are invariably, extremely more rich than when they entered. Big business makes sure of that. Out of generosity of course.
         If all this lead to was a group of parasites getting richer under false pretences, then it would be bad enough. However, their wheeling and dealing, their slicing and dicing, plays havoc with the health and well-being of the people they are supposed to represent. Decisions are made that drive people into poverty, ill-health, homelessness and of course heap the brutality of war on millions. History tells us the tales of hypocrisy and corruption are at the heart of governments, of the festering marriage between large companies and governments, but we never seem to learn.

       The following from the Politics in the Zeros site, is a case in America, but you are an idiot if you think this is unique to America, this is the way the game is played nowadays. Governments are not inanimate objects, nor are they fixed by the power of the holy tablets of stone. They are made up of people, usually very rich, very ambitious and very greed people, they play the game with the big boys, corporations, and in return for their obedience to the cause of profit, they are rewarded.

        Gosh there’s no conflict of interest here. Nearly a third of members of the federal Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee have financial ties to companies selling opoid drugs. In a shocking coincidence the panel has strongly opposed federal plans to recommend doctors scale back on prescribing legal heroin. Because that’s what these opoids are.
       Our government is essentially a drug pusher for highly addictive drugs. The FDA approved OxyContin for children without bothering to convene a panel of experts to make recommendations. Opiate addiction from legally prescribed pills is a major health problem nationwide among adults, to such an extent we have the obscenity of TV ads offering drugs to help with constipation caused by using opiates.
Any relation between this and a government that actually cares about the health of its citizens is of course strictly coincidental. And if this happened in a Third World country, we’d laugh at how corrupt they are.
The government advisory panel consists of federal scientists, outside academics and patient representatives. Of the 18 committee members at a recent meeting to discuss the government’s handling of pain issues, at least five had drug-industry connections.
One, a pain specialist from Duke University, has received thousands of dollars in payments from drugmakers, including OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceuticals, which sells generic painkillers. Another, a patient advocate, holds a nonprofit position created by a $1.5 million donation by Purdue.

        We should always remember, we are governed by consent, we can withdraw our consent at any time of our choosing, and start to take control of our own lives, how about now!    

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

The All Seeing Eye Of The Internet.

          Most of us love the Internet, most of us hate big brother, most of us detest the 24 hour surveillance society. There is some sort of contradiction in there, that needs to be resolved.

       An interesting article from Bob Morris at Politics in the Zeros:

        Silicon Valley wants 24/7 surveillance, as do governments. How convenient.

         Maybe it’s not so strange that a technology, the internet, that was started as a way to watch the public, continues to do exactly that, often with governments concealed behind the curtains as we get distracted by all the shiny new online toys.

        There is, of course, no going back. And the internet absolutely does many wonderful things for us. However we are being watched 24/7 and there’s no way to know who has that data and what they are doing with it. People on all sides of politics are getting alarmed. Joel Kotkin, a conservative, writes in the Orange County Register about the sinister side of Silicon Valley.

       How Silicon Valley went from ‘don’t be evil’ to doing evil
At the same time these firms are fostering what British academic David Lyon has called a “surveillance society” both here and abroad. Companies like Facebook and Google thrive by mining personal data, and their only way to grow, as Wired recently suggested, was, creepily, to “know you better.”
Whether one sits on the progressive left or the political right, this growing hegemony presents a clear and present danger. It is increasingly clear that the oligarchs have forgotten that Americans are more than a collection of data-bases to be exploited. People, whatever their ideology, generally want to maintain a modicum of privacy, and choose their way of life.
We have traveled far from the heroic era of spunky start-ups nurtured in suburban garages. But a future of ever greater robotic dependence — a kind of high-tech feudalism — is not inevitable. Setting aside their many differences, conservatives and progressives need to agree on strategies to limit the oligarch’s stranglehold on our future.

Yasha Levin’s new book explores the roots of the current surveillance.

       In Surveillance Valley, Yasha Levine traces the history of the internet back to its beginnings as a Vietnam-era tool for spying on guerrilla fighters and antiwar protesters–a military computer networking project that ultimately envisioned the creation of a global system of surveillance and prediction. Levine shows how the same military objectives that drove the development of early internet technology are still at the heart of Silicon Valley today. Spies, counterinsurgency campaigns, hippie entrepreneurs, privacy apps funded by the CIA. From the 1960s to the 2010s — this revelatory and sweeping story will make you reconsider what you know about the most powerful, ubiquitous tool ever created.

Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk

The End Of Privacy.

         We are moving ever closer to a society of total control, total surveillance. On top of countless thousands of CCTV cameras in all avenues of our life, we have a company in Sweden placing chips in the arms of employees, Glasgow's new experimental, mood and profiling surveillance system, and kids in schools useing palm or finger prints to access parts of the school. Do you honestly think that your life will be enhanced by your every movement, mood and conversation being monitored? Or is your welfare and well-being not on the list at all? 

This very interesting article from Politics in The Zeros:

Woo-hoo, little microscopic sensors will soon be everywhere, tracking us constantly, happily sending data back to motherships somewhere. This of course, will be done solely to help us all make informed decisions. So, no need to worry your silly little heads about, oh, businesses collaborating with governments and sending the data along to them or about what happens when these systems get hacked and exploited. Instead, let us behold our new surveillance society.

I recently wrote about Humanyze, a new startup that has created a smart employee badge to help track employee movements and social interactions throughout the day and correlate the data to company goals.

Humanyze, which doesn’t seem very human to me, monitors everything serfs employees say, including tone of voice, to insure they are being “loyal, plastic robots for a world that doesn’t care.” Whoops, how did that Frank Zappa lyric sneak into a discussion about the wonderfulness of your employer monitoring everything you do? my bad. “I’m sorry Bob, but you’ve been spending far too much time at the coffee maker and we’ve sent a message about this to your boss., and further, your tone of voice has been sarcastic and unhelpful lately.”

But wait, there’s more.

Oral B has a smart toothbrush. The toothbrush uses Bluetooth and a mobile app to capture data about your tooth brushing habits. It includes a timer to make sure you’re brushing for a full two minutes, and it maps your brushing so if you concentrate really hard on your bottom front and give short shrift to your upper molars, the app lets you know and gives you feedback.

Will it spend a nasty note to my dental insurance provider should I not properly brush my molars?

Cheaper sensors will fuel the age of smart everything, says TechCrunch, in a relentlessly perky article mentioning none of the downsides of such monitoring.

Who benefits from this? Hint, the consumer and the citizen are at the bottom of the list, after business and governments.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

WAR IS BUSINESS.

        In times of "austerity" our "democratic" governments still spend a whopping slice of your money and my money in killing people across the globe. We in the UK are the world's fourth largest spender on military budget, following behind America, China and Russia, all very large countries. We in this small island account for over 3.6% of the world's military expenditure, coming in this year at £57.5 billion, slightly down on last year because of our partial withdrawal form Afghanistan. Our defence budget accounts for just over 7% of our national budget, but when you add 5% for "state protection" not sure what that means, you can slice a total of more than 12%  off our national budget. Though we as a small island spend a disproportionate amount proportionally of our wealth on war and killing, I know some call it "defence", this is dwarfed by that land of peace, that pinnacle of capitalism, the good ol' U. S. of A.. This large country of peace insanely spends an unbelievable 60% of its national budget on war, sorry "defence". Its figures are mind boggling, 41% of the world's military expenditure is by the peace loving nation of America, it comes in at approximately $711 billion.  

        In times of "austerity", think of all that wealth and resource put to the benefit of the people, how would that alleviate the suffering of the many?  However, that is not what this system is about, it is about bring lots of wealth and its attendant power, to the few, and military spending and war does and will continue to, make those few parasites that control the arms industry extremely wealthy and powerful. The hope of changing things by asking those who gain from all this insanity, to give up on their wealth and power and see to the needs of the people, is insanity itself. We, have to change the system by ourselves, by organising against the system, creating small pockets of alternative systems, co-operating with each other and continually point out the insanity and injustice of the present system while emphasising that there are alternatives.

ann arky's home.