Facebook, Vladimir Putin's Best Buddy

Recently, at the request of Roskomnadzor, the Russian government’s internet monitor, Facebook erased an event page created by two Russian dissidents for a peaceful demonstration on January 15 2015 supporting leading opposition figure Alexei A. Navalny (above, courtesy Wikimedia). The page can be seen around the world, just not in Russia. Fat lot of good that does. 

Navalny is one of Putin’s most prominent and vocal critics, currently on trial for alleged embezzlement and fraud. The prosecutors have said they will call for a ten year prison sentence. Judge Yelena Korobchenko will announce the trial verdict on January 15 2015. He started out as an anti-corruption blogger and is now leader of Russia’s Progress Party. Last year he was convicted on another charge and sentenced to 5 years. The sentence was quickly commuted to a suspended one, but then Navalny was arrested again, facing more dramatic charges, and placed under house arrest. This is business as usual for Putin; he gets rid of opponents by trumping up charges against them, seizing their assets and sending them to jail.  

The rally on January 15 is purely in support of Navalny. Ergo, Facebook is directly supporting a corrupt regime. And it’s business as usual for Facebook, which has taken down thousands of pages at the behest of governments; 29 Russian pages in 6 months (only 4 last year in the same period) and 1,773 in Pakistan, up from 162 in the previous six months. But it leaves pages that bully and trash young kids until they commit suicide.

Since I learned that Facebook was a sponsor of the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2014, along with the likes of Koch Industries and the National Rifle Association, nothing it does surprises me but it increasingly disgusts and alarms me. I don’t know how much Zuckerberg has to do with these decisions but it’s still his business.

Anyone who can create a business as successful as Facebook has my admiration for sheer creativity and gutzpah. But when what you do with your business actively enables corrupt governments admiration turns to disgust and more.

One of the greatest advantages of and most beautiful thing about social media is how it unites people who need group support to be able to protest injustice; how it can be used to bring down a corrupt regime, even peacefully. It’s great for Zuckerberg; it adds an aura of social responsibility to Facebook and makes people want to use it even more. It makes good business sense and it’s decent. But surely a business can’t have that and collusion with a regime as corrupt as Putin’s government and not be affected?

Whether it is affected or not the social consequences are terrifying. In response to the understandable outrage around the world, a New York Times editorial made the point that Facebook isn’t a government; it’s a corporation, so it’s not bound to care about freedom of speech or civil rights. When it does business in a country and earns significantly from that business, it makes business sense to not break the law and risk losing all that lovely moolah. Right now the law in Russia is that rallies (which Roskomnadzor calls ‘unsanctioned mass events’) with more than 3 people are illegal. Hallo apartheid era South Africa. No doubt if Facebook had been around then it would have taken down all ANC pages.

The NYT editorial is right. Facebook owes nobody anything. It’s not a government, so it’s not morally bound to preserve and protect human rights.

But here’s the problem. When a government has huge control over people’s lives there’s always some way of fighting against it. Facebook’s control has developed from Zuckerberg’s insight into how easy it is to manipulate us through our need to connect and our voracious narcissistic tendencies. He’s always seen his ‘subjects’ as idiots. When a corporation has this kind of control then starts colluding with corrupt regimes, who’s going to stop it? We have no socially developed means to counter the ill effects of control that knows no boundaries and has no ethics at all.

Facebook, once mostly a tool for broadening our minds, making connections all over the world and liberating the repressed, is now also a tool for destroying freedom. Don’t take it personally, it’s just business.

I take it personally. What’s to be done? Somebody sarcastically said we get what we ask for. If everybody wasn’t so narcissistically fascinated with themselves and ‘sharing’ every intimate detail of their lives, Facebook wouldn’t have any power over us. So if we don’t want the ill effects we can boycott it. At first I thought, I don’t agree. People can post blogs etc. exposing Facebook for what he is, dismantling the myth that Zuckerberg's the good guy. But the best way to counter unethical Facebook policies is to use it to post original stuff, protect privacy, never subscribe to another site from it and desist from ever clicking on an ad.

Then I gave it a bit more thought and realized that Facebook doesn’t give you the option to block your friends from giving your information away. Which they do every time they subscribe or even just log in to another site with their Facebook details. Gotcha!  

My sarcastic friend also added that it’s none of our business what happens in Russia. That one I definitely disagree with. Not feeling outraged when somebody else suffers isn’t a good thing, which you discover when you’re under threat and somebody who isn’t directly affect by whatever is threatening you says “it’s not my business” and walks on.

Besides, this particular action doesn't directly affect anybody outside of Russia but the driving principle, that corporate money is more important than people's freedom, does affect us all because it underpins all of Zuckerberg's policies, one of which is sponsorship of US conservative politicians. And whether we live in America or not we do need to worry about that. Everything’s connected these days.

I presume the rally will happen. I hope nobody gets arrested and that Alexei Navalny doesn’t spend the rest of his life in jail on more trumped up charges and eventually get his freedom when he’s been destroyed. He doesn't look like a man who'll let himself be destroyed.

Like Mikhail Khodorkovsky (above, courtesy Wikimedia), once Russia's wealthiest man, imprisoned for ten years on trumped up charges, assets seized and now a reformed man. Recently released and living in Zurich, he works towards overthrowing Putin.

As for whoever is making the final decisions on Facebook – and Zuckerberg has to be a part of that – they and he won't suddenly develop integrity. From this point they'll sell more of their soul - and ours - to the devil. I can't think of adjectives strong enough to describe what I think of Zuckerberg for letting this happen. All I can hope is that he gets what he deserves. Loss of business because he and all corporate giants can toss off “don’t take it personally it’s just business” and you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of them all of the time. Not forever. I hope.

The Outrage Over NSA Surveillance - Should American Pay for their Own Security?

The haves in Western society have gotten used to being able to have their cake and eat it, and to not have to pay for the consequences of their actions, and even for their freedom. Somebody else pays, but that doesn’t trouble us too much.

In times of recession the have-less slip down the ladder dangerously close to the have-nots, but in boom times so far enough have recovered enough to keep the system going, despite that they’re paying too high a price. Working for wages that don’t reflect their contribution so that corporations and their shareholders can profit. Spending beyond their means so that banks can make a profit.

And then everybody kind of becomes unaccountable. The have-nots of course pay for everything and over time that group gets bigger and bigger. But a lot of people look the other way. It won’t happen to me. Even if it did happen once, it won’t happen again. It seems to be human nature. Until you’re down and you just can’t get up again. Then you realize, I have the power to change this. And then the whole world changes for you.

But those people are in the minority. Just as it happens at an individual level, it does with societies. The majority believe that what they do in their lives from moment to moment and the choices they make have nothing to do with the trouble that their country gets into. Of course they’re right in some ways. Leaders fabricate wars to oust inconvenient rulers or parties or squander budgets. Politicians steal the money and/or do what the wealthy and powerful want them to do. Bankers bankrupt entire economies and get away with it: correction, are rewarded for it.

But none of it could happen if every citizen actively participated in elections, which means finding out everything there is to find about candidates before they’re elected. Then communicating with them on everything they do. Protesting every single time they step out of line.

Some do it more than others, but the majority of us wait until something really disastrous happens then we wait for the next election and we vote differently, unless we allow ourselves to get seduced by bland election promises or we’re blinded by our prejudices. We’d rather hold onto them than properly inform ourselves.

And when an unjust war is started on the pretext of protecting our freedom, we accept it and look away from the fact that somebody else is paying for that real or imagined freedom. The soldiers, for one. Innocent civilians for another, just wanting to live their lives in peace, learn their own lessons in their own way, being smashed to pieces. Maybe dying, maybe surviving to live the rest of their lives in hell, their family, town and country destroyed.

Americans are being given the choice of actually paying the price themselves for their own security now, with the Obama Administration’s intelligence gathering. Isn’t it better than making others pay? Creating a fake war on a false pretext and bombing the hell out of a country? Conning US soldiers who get physically and mentally maimed or destroyed into believing they did something noble? Conning parents into believing they're sacrificing their children for something great, so that they'll  encourage the rest of the children to give themselves up like so much fodder? Illegally holding 'suspects' and illegally torturing them, treating them like animals?

For the war in Iraq the US military sent its missionaries into poor urban areas and targeted young men who had no jobs, no resources, no opportunities. Congressmen and Senators didn't send their own sons to fight. In fact they made sure their sons didn't fight. That’s not the worst kind of intrusion into privacy?

With this latest intelligence gathering story, the real intrusion on privacy would be if content were being mined which it isn't. And a much greater threat to individuals is when violent response, most of it inappropriate, fosters more hatred and more terrorism. When the superwealthy and giant corporations get away with not contributing adequately to society. When wages are too low so profits can be high and shareholders and CEOs can make a fortune. When a Republican governor squanders $24 million to further his personal agenda and says he didn't know what it cost and he didn't care. Shortly after he had cut $10 million from after-care programs in poor schools, $12 million from hospital charity, and refused to spend $25 million on early voting.

In comparison to the alternatives, intelligence gathering is a peaceful and non-violent method of dealing with the terrorist threat. It would be great if there was no threat. But there is one and something has to be done. The question is simply, who’s going to pay for the security? The people who receive it, or those who don't?

Iraq War - And The Winners Are?

In January 2003 a CBS poll showed that 63% of Americans wanted a diplomatic solution to the US’s problem with Iraq. 62% believed that war would increase the threat of terrorism. 77% wanted real proof that Iraq had nuclear weapons. But in March that year the US, UK, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq, ostensibly to protect the world from an immediate and intolerable threat from weapons of mass destruction, and to free the Iraqi people. In 2005 the CIA released a report stating that no such weapons existed in Iraq.

From an analysis of 31,500 violent incidents between 20 March 2003 and 14 March 2013, Iraq Body Count reported that between 112,017 and 122,438 Iraqi civilians were killed. Reuters, cited on Huffington Post, puts that figure at 125,000, and deaths of soldiers at about 130,000.

An additional 1.7 million people have been displaced and 365,000 have been wounded. Now that’s freedom for you. After the fall of Hussein, US Commander in Iraq General Tommy Franks is reported to have said “we don’t do body counts” [Reuters]. Inconvenient, I guess. These figures don’t take into account subsequent deaths indirectly caused by the war. Suicides. Disease. 

Anybody with any sense could see that the war in Afghanistan was a thinly veiled preparation for a war in Iraq for which there was no justification and which took such a toll on human life. The financial cost was huge, also. President Obama put the cost of the war in Iraq at $1 trillion. But in all, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan over the past ten years have cost the US about $3.7 trillion and counting. And the winners were?

In the short term, the contractors providing services at the expense of the US taxpayer - $138 billion worth of government contracts. Controversy about corruption rages over the company that got the lion’s share, Haliburton, awarded a $7 billion contract in a process that only allowed them to bid.

Once the war was ostensibly over, contractors stayed for security and to rebuild Iraq. Haliburton got a $2.5 billion contract to restore Iraqi Oil. It was supposed to pay for itself and for the reconstruction of the whole country.  

The project was a horror story from start to finish. Haliburton tried to drill a tunnel through a geological fault zone that they had been warned was unstable and impossible to drill. The New York Times reported that when army geologist Robert Sanders came to inspect the work in 2004, his comment was “no driller in his right mind would have gone ahead.” Money was poured down the toilet, and accountability blatantly avoided.

Getting off the subject of bungling winners, enter China, today. It has been pouring workers and billions of dollars into Iraq’s oil industry. It buys nearly half of everything Iraq produces and is currently bidding for Exon Mobil's stake.

China’s oil companies are state-owned and don’t answer to shareholders. They’re not in it for the profit, they’re in it for the control. So they accept Iraq’s rigorous terms, which western oil companies reject or balk at. And China doesn’t care how little its workers make or under what conditions they work. Nor do Chinese interfere in religious matters. Ironically, that Chinese investment has contributed to Iraq’s oil production shields the US. From a spike in oil prices caused by sanctions on Iran.

So everybody wins. Except for the dead. And the Iraqi citizens whose lives are still in turmoil. Whose country is still torn apart. 

Public domain photo of US soldier and Iraqi child

Honor Amongst Thieves? Bloomberg News Reporters Cross the Line

 

It’s not often that something happens on Wall Street that should and could make news but gets mentioned casually in passing instead of being thoroughly investigated. But that seems to have happened in the reporting about the latest accusations leveled at Bloomberg financial data and news by public relation chiefs Jake Siewert of Goldman Sachs and Joe Evangelista of JP Morgan Chase.

The accusations are that Bloomberg reporters have been crossing the line drawn in the contract that states they may not use information gleaned from the terminals for reporting. Accusations surfaced when a Bloomberg reporter noticed that a Goldman executive hadn’t logged in for a few days. He called the Hong Kong office to ask what had happened to the executive. When news of it got to Siewert he called Evangelista, who said the same thing had been happening to JP Morgan’s execs.

Bloomberg investigated, admitted that reporters were crossing the line and breaching the terminals contract and agreed to put a stop to it. One would imagine lawsuits and huge press would have ensued but nothing seems to have really happened. It’s a bit of a damp squib, news-wise.

What hasn’t been explained is that the contract allowed reporters a limited period during which they could access help desks and log ins. If they couldn’t use that information why were they allowed to access it?

Much more interesting, though, is that this isn’t the first time executives have complained about reporters crossing the line. So when Siewert took the latest complaint seriously, some executives – reported on by the New York Times on condition of anonymity – admitted to having tried to use the breach to bargain down the price of the terminals! It’s blackmail. Soft blackmail, maybe, no threats, no bad guys, no anonymous notes, but blackmail nevertheless. In a country where people sue for the most tenuous reasons and even win, that nothing came of this is pretty extraordinary. Honor amongst thieves, I guess.

That anybody in Wall Street would be accusing anybody else of crossing the line is amusing. That execs would even openly admit to indulging in blackmail is testament to how much Wall Street believes itself to be above the law. That’s still amusing but in a rather sinister kind of way. 

What’s puzzling is that these two aspects of the same company exist as bedfellows. There are many complaints that Bloomberg News reports destructively on Wall Street goings on, yet Bloomberg financial data terminals are everywhere. And this despite that they’re by far the most expensive at $20,000 apiece. 

Maybe it’s explained by the fact that Bloomberg News is part of Bloomberg L.P., a multinational mass media limited partnership that’s based in the city of New York. Revenue in 2011 was $7.6 billion. Global revenue for the financial data market was $16 billion. No wonder nobody really challenges Bloomberg. And with all those connections, why would they have to bother reducing the price of their terminals? For once Wall Street is on the receiving end. Of a corporation that  probably controls Wall Street. Which pretty much boils down to one man. Michael Bloomberg, the 7th wealthiest man in the US, owns 88% of Bloomberg L.P.