China's All-Seeing Eye 358
krou writes "Naomi Klein writes in Rolling Stone Magazine about China's Panopticon-like experiment called 'Golden Shield' taking place in Shenzhen using technology supplied by companies such as IBM, Honeywell, and General Electric. Klein writes: 'Chinese citizens will be watched around the clock through networked CCTV cameras and remote monitoring of computers. They will be listened to on their phone calls, monitored by digital voice-recognition technologies. Their Internet access will be aggressively limited through the country's notorious system of online controls known as the "Great Firewall." Their movements will be tracked through national ID cards with scannable computer chips and photos that are instantly uploaded to police databases and linked to their holder's personal data.' According to Klein, this is more than just a Chinese experiment, it's also one that holds ramifications for America and elsewhere: '...the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state... The global corporations currently earning superprofits from this social experiment are unlikely to be content if the lucrative new market remains confined to cities such as Shenzhen. Like everything else assembled in China with American parts, Police State 2.0 is ready for export to a neighborhood near you.'"
uh oh (Score:5, Funny)
heh, well ibm helped nazis too, so why not (Score:5, Interesting)
IBM making money at the expense of morality; nothing new here.
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/articles/auschwitz.html [ibmandtheholocaust.com]
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Re:heh, well ibm helped nazis too, so why not (Score:5, Insightful)
In a fascist economy, everything is secondary to industrial growth. It's an "ask what you can do for your country" world. You better not ask what your country can do for you, since you don't count. The strength of your country and its economy does. This goes hand in hand with laws that prefer the interests of industry and commerce, while ignoring the needs of the people.
Bluntly, this is closer to what China is like today than any socialist or communist model. And thinking about it, we're moving there, too.
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I think what the original submitter tried to insinuate is that *American* companies (you know, the land of the free, defender of democracy, etc. etc.) would participate in such "oppressive" schemes. But America has become a lot less free post-9/11, as I assume most would agree, and is moving into the same direction (courtesy of tech probably even supplied by the same companies).
What disturbs me is that many other countries are implementing similar Big-Brotherish measures than America is. Since some of them
1984 Quote (Score:5, Insightful)
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who controls the present controls the past - Page 32
1982 Quote (Score:5, Interesting)
My lasers trace / everything you do,
You think you've private lives / think nothing of the kind,
There is no true escape / I'm watching all the time!
CHORUS:
I'm made of metal, my circuits gleam
I am perpetual, I keep the country clean.
I'm elected, electric spy,
I'm protected, electric eye.
Always in focus / you can't feel my stare,
I zoom into you / you dont know I'm there.
I take a pride in probing / all your secret moves,
My tearless retina takes / pictures that can prove...
(Chorus)
Electric eye (in the sky)
Feel my stare (always there)
There's nothing you can do about it, develop and expose,
I feed upon your every thought, and so my power grows!
(Chorus)
I'm Elected -
Protected -
Detective -
Electric -
Eye.
- Judas Priest, Electric Eye, 1982.
Orwell's 1984 isn't the only functional specification out there, after all.
Germany was the proof-of-concept. Stalin's Russia and the Cold War Warsaw Pact countries were the alpha, which failed due to scaling concerns. China is the beta test site and release-candidate. Unistat goes live in 2009.
Re:Redundant? Modtard! (Score:4, Interesting)
I have (had - he died in 1979) a great uncle that served as an intelligence officer in Palestine during the Mandate, and heard from him first hand about the terrorism conducted by Irgun, Rosh Haganah and their like.
Funnily enough, he was quite complimentary about the Arabs.
I think that may have coloured my opinion somewhat.
Thanks for your solicitude, though - if I fancy a warm death I will certainly consider your advice.
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But I'm not antisemitic - hell, I went to a school that was about 1/4 Jewish, and had a lot of non-Zionist Jewish friends.
George Orwell, anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
BTW, has 1984 ever been translated into Mandarin? If so, whoever did it, that person should have a statue erected in every Chinatown in the western world, just like Dr Sun Yat-Sen eventually in Shanghai and Beijing.
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Re:George Orwell, anyone? (Score:4, Informative)
i think many slashdotters have an incomplete information about the current status of internet freedom in china. i saw many threads on great firewall in slashdot. but hardly any discussion on the free speech on china's internet. presumably, i think, nobody reads chinese internet forum.
if you look at some largest internet forums: tianyaclub.com, netease.com, sina.com. you will be very surprised to find out the freedom of speech.
taking tianyaclub.com for example, it has 270,000 online readers (statistical data @ moment of writing this comment). old bbs-style threads are full of criticisms to the government. the official propaganda TV/newspapers are frequently derided. china's internet is not entirely as free as in the states. but freedom of speech is not entirely suppressed either. as long as the language doesn't
cross the line, i.e., overthrowing the government, nobody cares. polices are busy at keeping the social unrest at poor rural areas under control.
i had read rolling stone's article. frankly, i am quite surprised by the reaction. there are little discussion on the internet here. it is not that it is a tabooed topic. pretty much every thing could be openly debated on internet here. (of course, not including getting ride of ruling party). as far as i can tell, people are more concerned about corruption, rising house price, inflation.
btw, George Orwell's books are available here in english book store. 1984, animal farm,etc...
Re:George Orwell, anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:George Orwell, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:George Orwell, anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
There indeed is a lot of censorship. When was the last time you heard the media criticize the government? Like never. And what does 99% of the people see? Internet forum postings or television/newspaper?
So to say that China is "almost" as free as other democratic countries is just as ludicrous as saying a mouse is as big as an elephant.
Re:George Orwell, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:George Orwell, anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
Hell, I picked up a copy of the Federalist Papers at the Xinhua state-controlled bookstore.
You guys need to calm down and stop jumping to conclusions. Very little is banned, and that not very well.
Re:George Orwell, anyone? (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, somebody give this guy a Nobel Prize for his exhaustive research and well-reasoned conclusion.
Is it April 1, 2009? (Score:2)
Re:Is it April 1, 2009? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are confused (Score:3, Interesting)
You are confusing communism in theory with communism in practice. It's a common error and your reeducation team will be around presently to correct the error.
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There is no such thing as practical communism, it's a theoretical model with no real-life application due to human nature. The chinese state is a semi-feudal society.
Practical communism exists (Score:2, Insightful)
I could not explain my family life otherwise.
It just doesn't scale up.
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The former poster is not confused, because he is hinting this sort of abuse can come from any government, and the story too points to how commercial entities can pressure this sort of thing into our existence. This is why we need to be vigilant and never allow people to forget.
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Re:Is it April 1, 2009? (Score:5, Interesting)
- Stalinism wasn't Communist, it was Stalinism. In that regard, whatever China's government practices, it's not Communism.
- Communism on paper was never about putting antifreeze in toothpaste or lead in child toy's paint. That's the exact opposite, Xtreme Capitalism.
It's heartbreaking how the least enlightened people end up running so many countries, and that goes for China present and past, too.
Ever heard about The Great Sparrow Campaign? In the late fifties, the Mao government decided that sparrows, who ate seeds, were a public menace and implemented a nationwide campaign to kill the sparrows. They succeded, by having the population bang pots and pans in the streets, keeping the sparrows in the air until they dropped dead from exhaustion.
As a result, locusts flourished, with their natural predator virtually gone, devastating the countryside, generating a famine that killed, by most estimates, between 35 and 40 million Chinese. All of it covered up, of course, there is not a single photograph that documents this massive catastrophe, even in the second half of the XX Century.
Another fine example of unthinkably ignorant and incompetent government at work, in full effect, and never mind the symbolic Communist tag.
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Re:Is it April 1, 2009? (Score:5, Interesting)
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It's heartbreaking how the least enlightened people end up running so many countries, and that goes for China present and past, too.
The guys at the top these days are pretty competent.
Mao was a charismatic leader who's probably much better leading troops than governing a country. There's no doubt that however you hold him as a person, he did blunder quite a bit with his economic policies. The leaders today are better. The economy is growing, people are *generally* getting richer, and say what you will about China's human rights situation, it's *slowly* getting better, and at least not getting worse. Then look around and see many other
Feeding the poor (Score:2)
China has dragged more people out of poverty in the last 30yrs than the rest of the planet combined and it has done so on a fraction of the resources available to the wes
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How are we any different? (Score:3, Insightful)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see nothing in the above that we're not already doing here or have announced that we will be doing soon. And the amazing thing is this really big giant coincidence that it's also happening everywhere else. What gives? It's like a world government has been instituted or something.
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What are the NSA secret rooms at phone companies for then? Coffee breaks? Why do the phone companies want immunity if they're not being asked to do blatantly illegal things?
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What is different about "us" is that when these things come to light(wiretapping..etc), they are considered as a scandal because they go against the values "we" build our nations on. When they happen in China, the state may or may not publish the information itself, usually
No problem (Score:4, Funny)
Dewd!!! (Score:2)
China is not commie (Score:4, Insightful)
From TFA: "Remember how we've always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state"
Free markets require the freedom to chose without coercion in order to be efficient for everyone involved. China does not have a free market. The transactions are not efficient for the low man on the totem pole, namely the worker. China is fascist, and the country is a giant form of monopoly that has huge profit margins by manipulating the labor supply and the rights afforded to individuals to drive down costs. Just because China is having huge profits does not mean they are more efficient.
A lot of people will go on about the horrible violation to civil liberties all of these things China does are, but no one ever talks about the horrible damage these things do to the economic well being of the country.
China IS going to undergo serious reform or revolution. It won't be possible to maintain any level of efficiency without the proper rule of law or a Meritocracy. China WILL become more efficient once more people start demanding a larger share, and the only way they can do this is through greater representation and markets, markets that need informed consumers who are not being forced to act against their best interests.
All successful revolutions have come from the middle to upper class capitalists who are feed up with kings and lords ruling by mandate cutting into their bottom line. China is no different.
From TFA "With political unrest on the rise across China, the government hopes to use the surveillance shield to identify and counteract dissent before it explodes into a mass movement"
If someone is dissenting that means there is something that needs to be changed. That is the best example of why china, like the USSR, will hit a standard of living wall. Efficiency requires freedom.
Re:China is not commie (Score:4, Informative)
It would be unbelievably inefficient for an army if every soldier during a war had the freedom to second guess or change his orders, and maybe go have a snack or watch a movie when he should be guarding the pass. That's freedom, and it's NOT efficient.
The truth is that authoritarian systems are better adapted economically at producing goods cheaply and efficiently. It doesn't help if they don't also have smart people at the top, just like the most efficient army can still make mistakes with bad generals.
The other issue about economic efficiency is that it's a silly goal in itself. People want to live their lives according to their own wishes, not according to the place that economic efficiency has in store for them. You might be extremely good at washing dishes, yet still prefer to be a poet at half the pay. If the goal is economic efficiency, then you'll be employed as a dish washer to maximize profit, instead of writing for a literary magazine. So the side effect of making efficiency the "goal" for a country is to make more people miserable than if the goal was something else.
Ah the joys of watching the ants roam around (Score:2)
I've met numerous security folks over the years who have acknowledged often using security cameras for their personal pleasure, such as stalking and voyeurism.
Ron
If it hasn't worked for England, why anywhere? (Score:5, Interesting)
If police cannot effectively track and follow criminals, what makes anyone think China can do any better tracking and following dissidents? It's a lot more obvious on a camera when a real crime is being committed, far less so when a thought crime is...
What makes anyone think we should not laugh at the Chinese for attempting this? Let them waste their money on this fruitless pursuit of technology that someone with a square of cloth or a bit of paint can work around.
People would be wise to remember that China has done a lot worse things than point cameras at people in the past. It seems like dissidents would be better off with a China that has fewer actual agents on the streets to collect and track people, and more worthless cameras collecting so much data they are unusable.
Re:If it hasn't worked for England, why anywhere? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not even sure that this unspoken opinion is wrong. If cameras can be sufficiently automated, or even just enough people can be put on duty watching them, then they can be used to compile behavior habits which don't pass the threshold of crime but which can be used for other oppressive purposes. The big worry with the proliferation of cameras in free societies is that the push to make use of the cameras will result in those societies becoming much less free.
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Wait.... (Score:2, Interesting)
If you are concerned about human rights and the right to privacy in any country, please feel free to spread this image around:
http://a819.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/8/l_16c58f4c82c1b2155b841ff67aeb02ba.jpg [myspacecdn.com]
just following the UK's lead (Score:2)
sadly, whilst this is a vague attempt at humour, it's also mostly true.
I did have a longer response but the stupid new slashdot posting mechanism caused me to lose it when I accidentally clicked on something using my overly sensitive touch pad, had to click back and of course its gone.
Job creation... (Score:2)
Yeah, sure that'll work, (Score:4, Funny)
You dont have to jail a billion (Score:3, Insightful)
She's coming (Score:3, Interesting)
"Up you go", he said to himself. Into the shower, into his polo shirt, into his fucking docker kakhis. Out the door, neighbors in their own fucking kakis. Neighbor wives into their own fucking kakis.
A fucking brown golden retreiver got him to think about the color kaki and to wonder about why does it contrive such peacefullness to him. He disregards that thought. He moves on.
He gets in the brown bus, heading to the brown office of Brown-Red Hat food division. He does not stop for lunch: its waiting for him in the cafeteria the exact momento his meal time comes up.
"Just in time, is how the japs did it, just in time is how i like it", its eleven o'clock, he finishes lunch. He goes back to the office. He gets no calls. He only codes two lines, and hits the green button, then the machine tells him what to do next. If he does not hit the green button every exactly one minute, a big red buzzer comes up, and that lady from up there will come and look down on him, she will tell him how he is endangering the possibilities of their kids, he is telling him about the new legal provissions that provides for the automatic inheritance of both credit and work records to his children.
She will drop a final line about the war, about how the red-chinks are going to "get us" because we do not know how to work for a common goal, as a team, and they can. Theyve learned to sacrifice for the lot. Theyve learned to trust their leaders.
Theyve learned that the gene-fight the cultural-fight is for the long run, and while we, a young occident, were fighting about whats the right ammount of freedom, they were building the mega-machine-economic-behemot covering from Moscow to Tokio, from Siberia to Malasya. And we are loosing this war because of selfish people that do not understand the importance of the green button. It allows us to plan on the long run, to calculate mistakes, to get ahead of them, to be more productive.
"You should feel fortunate", she would say, turning on her heels and moving away, gesturing as if she were crying, just like the Corporate Human Resources IT Coach Management Manual says she should gesture.
Re:Bla bla bla (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bla bla bla (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bla bla bla (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a heckuvalot more informative than your post, and raises legitimate issues (ie. mechanisms in use to circumvent laws specifically forbidding export of law enforcement equipment to China) even should you choose to ignore the editorializing.
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You've been Punk'd.
Re:Bla bla bla (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, you can print an article outlining all the gross incompetence and criminal behavior of the current administration, but then you can kiss any hope of being invited to a presidential press conference ever again. And, when you start becoming the last news outlet to print stories about politics, your readers switch to another news station that gets the stories faster, even if the other station consistently has a pro-administration slant.
The problem with U.S. media isn't one of bias - it's one of business needs trumping journalistic integrity.
Re:Bla bla bla (Score:5, Insightful)
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Do you actually read Rolling Stone? Sensationalist? More like soporific a lot of the time.
Re:Bla bla bla (Score:5, Insightful)
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and it has already generated quite a bit of attention outside of slashdot
I read the article earlier in the week and it is indeed thought provoking. It's a shame it was posted on Slashdot at this hour on a weekend. At the time I post this at least 50 other people have posted and if a single person actually read the article they have chosen to hide that fact. It's a damn shame because there is much in it that would interest people here if they took the time.
And before someone asks - no, I am not new
I'm being entirely serious. (Score:2)
What news sources and/or publications would you suggest to stay informed?
-Grym
Re:I'm being entirely serious. (Score:5, Insightful)
So you are suggesting that once we succeed at being our own news source we keep that info to ourselves? If I chose Rolling Stone to disseminate the information I gathered firsthand it would immediately be devalued?
The RS article is old news, all of which I have seen reported elsewhere in recent weeks, but I fail to see how it is counterproductive to publicize the evolution of surveillance states.
On a side note, Rolling Stone being a glossy mag came about as a nod to the power of photojournalism in popular culture. There are anthologies published of RS photos and they hold significant historical and artistic value. As a disclaimer, I haven't been interested enough in pop culture to actually pick up an issue in years, but that doesn't mean the value isn't still there for others.
Re:I'm being entirely serious. (Score:5, Funny)
how can we trust these lousy reporters, 'burn the lot of them' I say.
Lets have everyone, all 300 million of you Americans go and pack up all your bags, move to China, walk up to a chinese government official, and ask them "what's going on?"
thats a brilliant idea! you should go and get right on that.
or, for the sake of efficiency, we can have a small number of people go into an area and report on things for the rest of us!
yea!
We could even give those people special training!
Maybe they could even make a career out of going to these far away places on our behalf and reporting on events, situations and politics! what a brilliant idea!
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Re:I'm being entirely serious. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have visited Shenzhen twice and posted my photos of Shenzhen [cgstock.com]. I took photos in public with a large camera/lens with no trouble from the authorities. I was hassled by the shoe-shine scammers and massage parlor hawkers near the Shangri-La hotel in Luohu, but my photos were not sensored by customs and my gear was not stolen/confiscated.
Re:I'm being entirely serious. (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically your response is to tell people to discredit a source because you don't like them. This isn't even weak proof, since your subjective opinion is worth less than even Rolling Stone's. Any moron can get a
Yes, I won't take the spin as fact since spin is opinion. but the actual events seem worth further examination, and are easily verifiable.
The same goes for the "spin" you yourself are projecting...
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Re:Bla bla bla (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Bla bla bla (Score:5, Interesting)
You know what the Greek term is for the citizen who does not participate in public affairs? Idiotis. Rolling Stone has planted the seed to obliterate the idiotis for a huge amount of people.
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But actually, the more interesting thing, in my opinion, is the Slashdot commentary about it:
An article in Rolling Stone? The pop-culture rag? How important can it be? Why haven't I heard of this before? Can this source be trusted?
Let's consider the article itself, found on RollingStone.com. There, next to the boring black-and-white text (that you actually have to read) are lovely
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Illustrative. Typical. Boring. An0nymous.
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I bet you still think the anti-Saddam war was a great idea. Not great enough for you to participate, but almost that great, right?
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Re:Goodness, what trash (Score:5, Insightful)
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In the digital age its increasingly possible to actually listen to everything and let computers sort out the keywords and red
Re:Goodness, what trash (Score:5, Insightful)
I think its open to debate if China is remarkable for its "efficiency". It mostly just has lots of cheap labor, no labor unions and very weak pollution and safety regulation which means its a cheap place to do things like manufacturing. There are quite a few things working against its economic efficiency.
A. The party officials that run the place are extremely corrupt. Corruption is good for business only if it swings your way. If it swings against you, or for your competition it is quite bad for business, and the unpredictability of corruption is especially bad for business.
B. The legal frameworks in the country are extremely poor. This is a plus if you ware a bootlegger ripping off your competition's product, its not so good if your IP and products are the ones being ripped off.
C. Not sure exactly why but China did apparently pass new labor laws around the first of the year and they undid some of the slave labor aspects of being a worker in China. Workers did actually get some rights under the new laws and it appears they are going to cause a significant spike in the cost of labor, along with the simple fact labor isn't as abundant in China as it once was. This along with a number of other factors is causing wage inflation and making China less and less attractive to Capitalism. The factors that made China boom can also work against it and lead to a bust and for the boom to move elsewhere.
D. China's one child policy is starting to cause a severe shortage of young workers since it began in 1979. Their population is going to start become senior citizen heavy like Japan and the U.S. which has a lot of negative economic consequences. Most older workers can't stand the dormitories and 6-7 day work weeks in China's factories so as the young labor pool drops its going to hammer their sweat shop manufacturing industries.
E. Censorship might have its positives in that it helps eliminate dissent but it also means you can do some incredibly stupid stuff and get away with it because you can suppress knowledge of your stupidity. A free press and a free Internet can server a useful purpose in that it can eventually expose corruption, incompetence and stupidity and led to corrective action if the press and freedom of speech works. For example in the U.S. the free press went dysfunctional after 9/11 and untold stupidity was perpetrated by the Bush administration like the war in Iraq, torture and domestic spying. The press still isn't very healthy but America has started to throw the Republican's out of power for their incompetence, though the Democrats are much of an improvement. In China is if the ruling party turns bad, there are no alternatives except for changing one set of Communist party leaders for another in an internal power struggle.
F. The spiking cost of oil is suddenly starting to work against globalization. Not sure how accurate it is but someone on CNBC said the cost to ship a container from China to the U.S. has quadrupled recently from $2K to $8K and if oil prices continue to spike its going to be less and less attractive to ship goods half way around the world. Its already working against heavy goods with a low labor component like steel. The more expensive fuel gets the less likely you are going to offshore manufacturing for the U.S. and Europe to China. Mexico may become increasingly attractive again for the U.S. labor pool.
What capitalism is (Score:4, Informative)
Capitalism is not industrialism, nor is it corporatism. It is the inclusion of the passing of time in economic calculations, which means three things: connecting markets of different time periods as in connecting present offer with future demand (speculation), integrating time preferences (interest in loans), and anticipating risks in your costs (insurance). The first two features have been in extensive use since at least the 1st century B.C., as is evident in the Roman Empire's banking system. The last one was invented in the 13th century by a monk and has, too, been in extensive use from then on. Capitalism has been in full use ever since. It's not to be conflated with any political system in particular - no political system can abolish capitalism since they can't abolish the passing of time and its effects on people's trading habits, they can only suppress trade directly.
I think its open to debate if China is remarkable for its "efficiency". It mostly just has lots of cheap labor, no labor unions and very weak pollution and safety regulation which means its a cheap place to do things like manufacturing. There are quite a few things working against its economic efficiency.
You hit the nail on the head here. The very particular ownership regulations of China, which are still very communistic in both spirit and letter, prevent the integration of a great many costs in the economic calculations. For example the land is owned by the state and cannot be owned and traded by the people making use of it: the owners have no incentive to increase or protect its value, so instead they milk it off as fast as they can for immediate gains in influence, renting it out as cheap dumping ground for industries that employ the citizens. The value lost here is monumental, and it does not make it to the GNP because there is no market for it - no valuation, no losses recorded. Same goes for homes, which are still extremely regulated, and a million other things they Chinese are not permitted to have and trade on their own.
Re:Klein's a Leftist with an agenda, not a journal (Score:2)
Re:Klein's a Leftist with an agenda, not a journal (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Klein's a Leftist with an agenda, not a journal (Score:4, Informative)
Sadly, you're so blinded by your ideology you don't even see the lack of factual accuracy in this statement. There is a long tradition of authoritarian capitalism, here are just a few, for your reflection:
- Tsarist Russia
- The Second Empire (Napoleon III)
- Prussia, later Germany
- Nazi Germany
- The authoritarian/fascist states of central and eastern Europe between the wars and during WWII
- Spain under Franco
- Greece under the Colonels
- Iran under the Shah -- a violent and repressive regime if ever there was one
- Chile under Pinochet
- Brazil under authoritarian military rule
- for that matter, all other Latin American dictatorships: Mexico, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Peru, etc. etc.
- Indonesia under Suharto
- South Africa under Apartheid
- The Philippines under Marcos
- South Korea under Military Rule
So as you see, the correlation between capitalism and true democracy is actually quite weak. I don't think the facts can be accused of being "illogical".Re: (Score:2)
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Re:Klein's a Leftist with an agenda, not a journal (Score:5, Interesting)
If the United States is the guiding light to Capitalism and Freedom around the world, how come the U.S. is so closely aligned with so many repressive regimes. The answer is because capitalism has no real correlation to freedom. Capitalism is just as much at home in repressive right wing states as it is in liberal democracies. There is no real correlation between economic system and governmental model.
Capitalism does in fact flourish in right wing states, often very oppressive ones. Unbridled Capitalism has a nasty tendency towards wealth concentration in the hands of an elite few and the people with all the money almost inevitably seek to control all the levers of political power because it protects, supports and nourishes their economic interests. This is a cocktail which often leads to right wing dictatorial governments which are no friends to freedom. In particular they often are extremely fond of breaking up labor unions, because labor unions are good for workers but bad for profitability. They are also fond of rigging elections or getting rid of them all together because ruling elites are small and easily outvoted if you let all the poor unwashed masses have an actual say in their government. In the U.S. this has been accomplished by a two party system where both parties are controlled by the ruling elites and which never offer an actual choice to ordinary people.
The U.S. being a free society can mostly be attributed to the immense wisdom of our founding fathers who did create a remarkable framework for a free society. Unfortunately, its been slowly unraveling ever since. I think if the founding fathers saw the horror that is the Federal government, the state of civil liberties, and our two party system today, they would no doubt launch a second revolution to topple it and restore the government outlined in the Constitution which has been almost completely obliterated by our two political parties and the corporations and ruling elites which own them.
Capitalism is about profit, pure and simple. Freedom doesn't really have anything at all to do with profitability and often gets in its way. Capitalism and Freedom can coexist, in fact Capitalism is a helpful ingredient for freedom since it is extremely beneficial to control your own wealth rather than letting a bureaucratic state do it for you. Unfortunately Capitalism can and does flourish in repressive right wing states, always has and probably always will.
Re:Klein's a Leftist with an agenda, not a journal (Score:4, Insightful)
The right balance between keeping the rift-raft under control and keeping them motivated and working hard = maximum profit.
This goes a long way to explain why the memes of "America land of the free", "America the greatest country in the world" and "In the US everybody has a chance to make it big-time" are constantly being pushed by US media, even though nowadays they are all false:
But hey, it's still better than North Korea.
Signed: One European that has been exposed to one too many ignorant American.
PS: In my experience, most Americans I've met that actually spent some time living and working in a country other than the US - vacations do not count - are usually much more well informed and realist about the US itself and the rest of the world than most of those who didn't.
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The U.S. fosters repressive regimes just because they are anti communist, anti worker, anti socialism and pro big business and Capitalism.
Some of the big historical reasons for U.S. sponsored coups are control of natural resources in countries when the population realizes they are being exploited by foreign multinationals. In the case of Iran the U.S. and Britain ran Operation Ajax to overthrew Mohammed Mosaddeq because he was nationalizing Iran's oil fields beca
Re:Klein's a Leftist with an agenda, not a journal (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, for all the accusations of communist wingnuttery that abound on the internet, the substance just isn't there. Apparently, Daily Kos is supposed to be a far left hate site, but when I go there, all I find are disaffected liberals and social democrats. I'd love to believe that there are authoritarian leftists just waiting to turn Western countries into police states, but I just can't find them.
Klein is a slightly cute Canadian lefty liberal. That's about it.
On the other hand, you cannot go anywhere on the internet without finding an endless supply of free market nutcases who are obvious fanatics, and who continue to pontificate on about Austrian Economics, an economic doctrine that no reputable economist endorses and which has never been shown to work. For all their problems, at least the communists managed to keep a society together for longer than ten minutes, and sometimes actually achieved stuff (like putting a guy in orbit).
The vast conspiracy of leftwing nutcases is in fact a conspiracy imagined by the vast actual conspiracy of rightwing market fundamentalist nutcases projecting their nuttiness on others.
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Re:US + China connected? (Score:4, Funny)
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But then again, political effervescence brings out the irrational in people, even some true Slashdot veterans, and within minutes your post was modded Troll.
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Funny, last time I checked, I've been resisting soma for the last seven years.
I've lived a bit and have experienced our world for what it really is.
All hail our supposititious messiah... or else!
I guess Obama is my pick for prez because I'm looking for a fresh approach, at the risk of being obvious and maybe even stereotypical. At this point, gimme the youngest Baby Boomer available, maybe he/she will be closer to enlightenment! So far, the post-war kids (Bushes and Clintons) have been declaring the throne theirs, for the last twenty years
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Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)