No barrier beween Government surveillance and Corporate surveillance

[BikerDude]

Jeremy Hammond in prison now for hacking into the private (government contracted) security firm Stratfor.
He exposed the fact that the Government in consort with large corporations are busy establishing total surveillance and data aggregation of .... well everybody.
Of course they threw him in jail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYPjWEi6pmw

Long documentary on Jeremy Hammond
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggqZzUVMcqo

[jgiffin]

Sonofa...

Just watched the shorter clip. I hadn't heard about this. Fucking outrageous. Prosecute the whistle-blowers and ignore the underlying atrocities perpetrated by the government and/or corporations. This just further shows there is no meaningful distinction to be drawn between the two.

I read Hedges' book American Fascists: The Christian Right's War on America. Saw his larger point but disagreed about fascism necessarily being a rightward movement. I think today's machinations move beyond "Left" and "Right." At this point, those are just labels used to shield the fundamental fact that the political and corporate elite have coalesced against the populace.

I need to check out the longer clip later. Probably need some Crestor or Zoloft before engaging that shitstorm, though.

[BikerDude]

Sonofa...

Just watched the shorter clip. I hadn't heard about this. Fucking outrageous. Prosecute the whistle-blowers and ignore the underlying atrocities perpetrated by the government and/or corporations. This just further shows there is no meaningful distinction to be drawn between the two.

I read Hedges' book American Fascists: The Christian Right's War on America. Saw his larger point but disagreed about fascism necessarily being a rightward movement. I think today's machinations move beyond "Left" and "Right." At this point, those are just labels used to shield the fundamental fact that the political and corporate elite have coalesced against the populace.

I need to check out the longer clip later. Probably need some Crestor or Zoloft before engaging that shitstorm, though.

The Origin is neither right or left.
The outcome is far right. Totalitarian in the end.
But generally the whole left right paradigm is lip service and complete bullshit.
It was like calling everything in the Soviet system "The Peoples bla bla".
It was terminology. The ideology never manifest in any meaningful way.
The people never got shit out of any of it. Or had any real say in it.
And the general principles of today's "new conservatives" would make Traditional conservatives do flips in their graves.
If it can go full circle it has little meaning.
But if it has meaning it would be something like (yeah it's wikipedia but I got shit to do)

The Scottish sociologist Robert M. MacIver noted in The Web of Government (1947):

    The right is always the party sector associated with the interests of the upper or dominant classes, the left the sector expressive of the lower economic or social classes, and the centre that of the middle classes. Historically this criterion seems acceptable. The conservative right has defended entrenched prerogatives, privileges and powers; the left has attacked them. The right has been more favorable to the aristocratic position, to the hierarchy of birth or of wealth; the left has fought for the equalization of advantage or of opportunity, for the claims of the less advantaged. Defense and attack have met, under democratic conditions, not in the name of class but in the name of principle; but the opposing principles have broadly corresponded to the interests of the different classes.[16]

Political scientists have observed that the ideologies of political parties can be mapped along a single left?right axis.[17] Klaus von Beyme categorized European parties into nine families, which described most parties. He was able to arrange seven of them from left to right: communist, socialist, green, liberal, christian democratic, conservative and right-wing extremist. The position of agrarian and regional/ethnic parties varied.[18] A study conducted in the late 1980s on two bases, positions on ownership of the means of production and positions on social issues, confirmed this arrangement.[19]

Which actually tracks to what our political parties claim to be. In reality there is no meaningful left.
At least in federal politics. If fascism is an unholy allience between corporations, church and government as it is generally said to be, then it clearly is "right wing".Pro corporate. The far left would be "equalization" taken to it's extreme. Total socialism/communism. Anti corporate.
But of course there is no party in our system that does not serve corporate interests.


Hedges is cool but he struggles with hypocrisy. Most of it IMO goes back to his background. His father was a Minister and he tries to serve 2 masters. For instance he's fond of using the image of Nixon and Kissinger being frightened that the anti war protesters, who had surrounded the white house, would break through the barriers and over run them.
Hedges will tell us that is "exactly where we want power to be". But then he is critical of the "black block" of the occupy movement and any use of violence. These 2 positions are very very nearly irreconcilable.

He also IMO misinterprets the "new atheists" when he calls them fundamentalists as a criticism.
New atheism is not addressing the concept of fundamentalism but the underlying beliefs.
To the new atheist it is obviously fine to be a "fundamentalist" in beliefs against slavery or genocide or whatever particular form of intolerance you want to mention. In fact to be as black and white in rejecting this sort of evil as the religious fundamentalist is in accepting it.His position is a defense of the sloppy arm chair feel good type of religion that is so common in America. That they should enjoy less ridicule (and by extension all religion) because they reject so much doctrine and as a result are not so deplorable. It's an absurd position. Most Christians (except for fundamentalists) in America are as Christian as Pizza Hut is Italian. Anyone who is at all intellectually honest must concede that. But the reality of what being Christian or Muslim is not changed by mere consensus or force of numbers any more than a "kinder and gentler Nazi" could still be considered still a Nazi. That definition tracks with the formal statements of belief.
But of course he (Hedges) was apparently raised with this sort of bullshit. It's amazing how poisonous the "Business" of religion is.