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Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, with his Google Glass. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

It seems like only a few years ago that we began making wry jokes about the doofus minority of people who walked down the street while texting or otherwise manipulating their phone, bumping into lamp-posts and so forth. Now that has become the predominant mode of locomotion in the city, to the frustration of those of us who like to get anywhere fast and in a straight line. Pedestrian accidents are on the rise, and some urban authorities are even thinking of installing smart kerbside sensors that alert the phone-obsessed who are about to step into oncoming traffic. New technologies, asAdam Greenfields tremendously intelligent and stylish book repeatedly emphasises, can change social habits inunforeseen and often counterproductive ways.

The technological fixes to such technology-induced problems rarely succeed as predicted either. It was, after all, to address the issue of people staring at handheld screens all day that Google marketed its augmented-reality spectacles, Google Glass. It rapidly turned out, however, that most people didnt much like being surveilled and video-recorded by folk wearing hipster tech specs. Early adopters became known as Glassholes; the gizmo was banned in cool US bars, and it was eventually abandoned.

Early adopters became known as 'Glassholes'; the gizmo was banned in cool American bars, and it was eventually abandoned

It is a story, as Greenfield shows, repeated in many different contexts: our visionary tech masters suppose that things can be disrupted by a single new device or service, only to learn belatedly that unexpected things happen when technical novelty rubs up against established social mores, embedded structures of power and money, and sometimes even the laws of physics. There is an excellent discussion here, for example, of how the verification of bitcoin transactions works through the enormous expenditure of energy on computing deliberately useless problems: it is probably doomed asa currency, Greenfield suggests, by simple thermodynamics. Meanwhile, the emancipatory dream of 3D printers enabling everyone to make anything they want is currently economically unlikely, and besides the one thing that is very popular in 3D printing is untraceable parts for assault rifles.

Greenfield calls all these things radical technologies because they could usher in vast changes that lead to very different potential futures: either what is known sexily as fully automated luxury communism, or a dystopia of total surveillance and submission to the networks of autonomous computerised agents that might replace human governments altogether.

Greenfield, indeed, believes that some kind of machine sentience is coming down the pipeline sooner rather than later: in this, he implicitly agrees with the Singularity theorists who yearn for the coming of true artificial intelligence something that historically, like nuclear fusion, has always been 30years away. (Greenfield, though, is rightly perturbed by those thinkers haste to become post-human and shuck off the flesh.) At the end of the book he offers some detailed sci-fi sketches of such possible futures. The bad ones are dismayingly plausible, but there is also a delightful one he names Green Plenty, where material scarcity is a thing of the past, and sweet-natured machines do all the work. (I for one welcome our new robot underlords.) Its very reminiscent, in fact, of the fully automated luxury communism portrayed in Iain M Bankss classic Culture novels. But howcan we get there from here?

By paying intense and critical attention, Greenfield suggests. His book melds close readings of the small experiences of normal life as mediated by new technologies (how, for example, time has been diced into the segments between notifications) with techno-political-economic philosophical analyses of the global clash between Silicon Valley culture and the way the world currently works. Its about what Greenfield calls the colonisation of everyday life by information processing, and this new colonialism, in the authors view, is so far no better than past versions. He gives excellently sceptical accounts of wearable technologies, augmented reality like Pokmon Go (now an inbuilt feature of the iPhones operating system), the human biases that are always baked into the ostensibly neutral operation of algorithms; or theworld of increasingly networked objects, about which he waxes humanistically poetic: The overriding emotion of the internet of things is a melancholy that rolls off of it in waves and sheets. The entire pretext on which it depends is a milieu of continuously shattered attention.

What seem to be potentially anarchic, liberating technologies are highly vulnerable to capture and recuperation by existing power structures just as were dissident pop-culture movements such as punk. Greenfield makes this point with particular force when discussing automated smart contracts and the technology of the blockchain, a kind of distributed ledger that underlies the bitcoin currency but could be used for many more things besides. Despite the insurgent glamour that clings to it still, he points out, blockchain technology enables the realisation of some very long-standing desires on thepart of very powerful institutions. Much as he scorns the authoritarian uses of new technology, he also wants to warnprogressives against technological utopianism. Activists on the participatory left are just as easily captivated by technological hype as anyone else, especially when that hypeis couched in superficially appealing language.

Critical resistance to all these different colonial battalions is based on Greenfields observation, nicely repurposing the enemys terminology, that reality is the one platform we all share. If we want to avoid the pitiless libertarianism towards which all these developments seem to lean unsurprisingly, because it is the predominant political ideology among the pathetically undereducated tech elite then we need to insist on public critique andstrategies of refusal. Radical Technologies itself is a landmark primerand spur to more informed andeffective opposition.

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Lifeis published by Verso. To order a copy for 16.14 (RRP 18.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99.

Originally posted here:
Radical Technologies by Adam Greenfield review luxury communism, anyone? - The Guardian

"All I know is if I don't pay, these people disappear."

Miguel Cabrera loves his homeland, and there is much to love about it. Venezuela is a wonderful nation filled with wonderful people.

But right now, its being held hostage by a dictatorial, communist regime. And while he is not the type to spout about politics, today the Detroit Tigers superstar first baseman decided hed had enough. The video is in Spanish, but were going to embed it anyway along with key passages translated below:

Cabrera splits most off his time between Detroit during the season and his home in Miami in the offseason. He only gets to Venezuela a few weeks out of every year, but he has many family members who still live there, including his mother, and apparently he is forced to pay protection money to keep his mother from being kidnapped:

I am tired of hearing that they are going to kidnap my mother, and I dont know whether it is a policeman or a bad guy, I dont know who they are. All I know is if I dont pay, those people disappear.

Cabrera also called for free elections, and while he didnt mention Nicolas Maduro by name or necessarily side with anyone, its clear from this passage what he knows needs to happen:

I am Venezuelan and I protest for the truth. Communism in Venezuela has to come to an end. I cant speak any plainer. I am not with a dictatorship, I am not with anybody. We have to fight for our country. We have to find a solution.

And: Hello to the people of the resistance. You are not alone. We continue to support you.

Cabrera apparently catches some heat for having made millions in America. There is no reason he should apologize for that. Hes in the midst of a 10-year contract with the Tigers that pays him about $29 million a year. Despite the fact that hes having an off year this year (for him), hes earned every penny of that money as one of the best players in baseball and probably the best hitter in Tigers history. If Al Kaline says so (and he does), that pretty much settles it.

But while Cabrera doesnt often set foot in Venezuela these days - and its hard to blame him for that - he has sent considerable aid there in the form of food, medicine and other supplies. Now, he says, people are asking him to send weapons.

That requests comes as the death toll from the anti-government protests has reached 92, with more than 1,500 injured. This was all entirely avoidable, of course, but the Maduro regime choose to consolidate its power and oppress dissidents rather than reverse the socialist policies that have led to widespread deprivation and misery.

And I cant remind you often enough: If the Democratic Party was able to impose whatever policies it preferred in America, it would impose the exact same socialist policies that have devastated Venezuela. Miguel Cabrera is right. Communism in Venezuela has to come to an end. And the notion that socialism or communisim would be in anyones best interests needs to come to an end throughout the world.

But especially in the United States.

Dan Calabreses column is distributed by CainTV, which can be found at caintv.com

A new edition of Dans book Powers and Principalities is now available in hard copy and e-book editions. Follow all of Dans work, including his series of Christian spiritual warfare novels, by liking his page on Facebook.

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Excerpt from:
Miguel Cabrera in Instagram video: 'Communism in Venezuela has ... - Canada Free Press

Capitalism is an empire rooted in white supremacy, patriarchy, chattel slavery and genocide of Black and brown people.

Capitalism is a system in which the means of production are privatized and held by corporations and other powerful groups of people, is founded on the idea of the free market (laissez-faire), privatized personal gain and is reliant on imperialism to exist. The Taino of Hispaniola were among the first to feel the wrath of Spanish imperialism and exploitation for the construction of the white supremacist empire founded on stolen commodities from the Taino and their forced labor along with the enslavement of Africans who were forced to the region.

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Capitalism, imperialism and colonialism resulted in the development of capitalism itself as a system, the shift from precolonial communism to capitalism, the mass genocide of the Taino people, the exploitation of Taino resources for the socio-economic gain of European imperialist nations, the establishment of white supremacist racial hierarchies on the island, and the shift from precolonial matriarchy to capitalist patriarchy.

Primitive communism is a Marxist term referring to precolonial societies in which the inhabitants lived communally through hunting and gathering, there was no private property, no currency, no state, no class system, and people lived with and for the rest of their communities.In"The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex," Gayle Rubin states that inThe Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,Friedrich Engels discusses the existence of matriarchal, primitive communist societies particularly in non-Western regions; Friedrich Engels'The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State documents the existence of matriarchal societies for thousands of years.Thoroughly researching what he calls 'primitive communist societies,' Engels shows that for the bulk of the human timeline, women were in positions of power in the family and community.

Primitive communism upheld matriarchy and woman dominance in sociopolitical aspects of the respective society.Moreover, an essential instance of primitive communism was the Taino society of Quisqueya/Ayiti, also known as Hispaniola, which is the contemporary Dominican Republic and Haiti. Furthermore, the Taino did not use currencya crucial aspect of communismand one of the most notable characteristics of their society was the prevalence of social solidarity, particularly among clan members, and the social structure perpetuated tribal unity.Ties between clans, groups and tribes strengthened as families grew and marriages increased-all due in part to the matrilineal order.

In regards to Taino political organization, they all spoke a common language and shared a common religion and there were intertribal marriages between caciques of at least two of the five confederate Taino tribes.The five confederate Taino tribes on Hispaniola were led by caciques Guarionex, Caonabo, Behechio, Goacanagarix, and Cayoa.The flatlands and over seventy leagues in the center of the island were controlled by Guarionex meanwhile Behechio governed the western region. Former Carib cacique Caonabo governed the kingdom in the mountains and he also married Behechio's sister Anacaona.

According to historian Frank Moya Pons in his bookThe Dominican Republic: A National History,Caciques were the heads of the government and their assistants were called nitainoswho were the noblemen within Taino social structure.Nitainos were usually the closest maternal relatives of the caciques or notable clan chiefs who formed the vital link between the caciques and the people.Cacique power was exercised through assistance by nitaino chiefs from confederate tribes who would then legitimize the cacique and their decision. A servant class called the naborias served the caciques and nitaino class and their existence helped explain testimonies of early chroniclers who stated that all land was communally owned through primitive communism.The naborias were dedicated to supporting the caciques and their families and permitted the majority of the population to share goods and services publicly as opposed to working for wages in order to support the caciques.

Prior to European invasion, Hispaniola had a relatively low density in population and a favorable person-to-land ratio, which enabled the Taino to obtain abundant food from their environment with ease; however, forced labor at the hands of the colonizers, along with exposure to European diseases, abortions and mass suicides with the purpose of escaping slavery, resulted in a rapid decline of the population to near extinction.

With European invasion came a counterrevolution to Taino primitive communismwhich came in the form of the birth of capitalism, the enforcement of private property, the development and incorporation of chattel slavery, and the construction of a white supremacist empire fueled by colonialism and stolen Taino and African goods; Eric Wolf makes this case inEurope and the People Without History,Wallerstein's explicitly historical account of capitalist origins and the development of the 'European world economy.'This world-economy, originating in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, constitutes a global market, characterized by a global division of labor.The search for profit guides both production in general and specialization in production. Profits are generated by primary producers, whom Wallerstein calls proletarians, no matter how their labor is mobilized.Those profits are appropriated through legal sanctions by capitalists, whom Wallerstein classifies as bourgeois, no matter what the source of their capital.

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Dominican Republic Deportations and the Global Economy

The free and cheap forced labor of Taino people and enslaved Africans are what were used to fuel the private means of production of capitalism, through which the Spanish bourgeois colonialists would appropriate the profits of the oppressed nationalities' labor as well as forcefully import their goods such as gold to Spainwhich is also evidence of how capitalism and imperialism go hand in hand, capitalism is an empire rooted in white supremacy, patriarchy, chattel slavery and genocide of Black and brown people.

Here is the original post:
How Capitalism and Spanish Imperialism Served as a Counterrevolution to Taino Primitive Communism - teleSUR English

Name changes dont bother me. I transitioned peacefully when Siam decided to continue its national life as Thailand. Ditto when Burma became Myanmar. Theres a little bit of name-changing going on at every wedding. The only name change I find puzzling is the one right now boiling over in the streets of Hamburg.

Can anyone tell me what the all-of-a-sudden anti-capitalists were before last week? Is it the new name for communists? And, if so, how on earth did they ever succeed in getting all the media to fall into line and describe the destroyers of Hamburg as anti-capitalists? It came across as though the lawyer for all the worlds communists appealed to some Media Central Command and begged to be known hereafter by a name that doesnt trigger nearly as much negativity as communists, whereupon Central Command agreed and complied!

I asked a millennial if he knew why the wielders of the wrecking ball in Hamburg, the same ones we used to call communists, now were dubbed anti-capitalists. He replied that there are many things you can be other than communists if youre against capitalism. Im still thinking about that one. Certainly its possible, but I couldnt help much if the professor demanded an essay-answer.

Whoever the suddenly-arrived anti-capitalists are, its hard to give them a robust welcome. Hitler and Mussolini brownshirts and blackshirts were perfect gentlemen compared to these nouveau-thugs in the early stages of their takeover tyranny. The media tell us a handful of these anti-capitalists conceal their identity as they go about their destruction, and among their objectives is to project the illusion that all hundred-thousand of the overwhelmingly law-abiding and orderly demonstrators are part and parcel of their mob. Thats a gargantuan lie, but it worked in Hamburg. Who are these predators? Whats their political past? Whos paying them? What are their intentions? Above all, where is the medias curiosity?

Obviously theyre not shy about their disdain or hatred for capitalism. And if they dont want to be thought of as communists, theyre practicing very unsafe politics. One hopes theyre more prudent in their sexual lives than in their political exhortations. They interest me more than Ill ever interest them. Theyre literally living on what I find to be the most fascinating playing field in the entire world of politics.

Please note that these anti-capitalists are doing their cavorting and proclaiming in a country that is one of capitalisms major success stories. After World War II, Germany became a living laboratory of real-life communism (East Germany) versus real-life capitalism (West Germany). Good breeding prevents me from jumping up and down upon the result when all those millions of Germans chose sides. Never has a visiting American presidents unsolicited advice been more enthusiastically obeyed than when President Ronald Reagan hollered, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

The other side of the coin is just as embarrassing to the anti-capitalists. Were not hallucinating when we detect a preference for socialism, collectivism or communism lurking in the heart of those who smash windows and burn cars in the name of anti-capitalism. Is there no awareness or respect for the reality of Venezuelas sad plight while all this anti-capitalism is raging onward? That most-fascinating political playing field I referred to is simply this. How can there still be full-throated advocates of socialism after weve witnessed 39 socialist economies fail with never one single success?

Ive asked that question every time good fortune tosses me into the company of those who prefer socialism, and the answers I get explain why theres so much fascination here. Take it all in from the top. There have been many capitalist success stories. I dont know of a single failure. Im certain theres never been one in a major way in a major country. Why, then, should we listen to socialists who cant point to a single success?

Get your desperate hands off Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Those Scandinavian successes are all capitalist successes. They have high taxes and broad welfare, but the means of production are in private hands and those countries are free, freer than America in some respects.

If you had a cat that tore up 39 of your sofas would you buy an additional sofa for him to play and prey upon? The answers I get from the avowed communists and socialists and anti-capitalists are fascinating.

They dont deny the facts. They cant. Instead, they say, The Russians were unprepared for socialism. The Poles were too coerced. The Chinese were too brutal. The Hungarians were too technocratic. The Czechs were too wedded to the West. The Albanians were too backward. And then they get to their political punchline thats supposed to knock your socks off, even if youre wearing pantyhose. However, they insist, We are the ones who know how to do it right!

We still have a presidential election scheduled for 2020. Your vote is sorely wanted.

We may wind up hating the anti-capitalists, but right now I think the appropriate emotion toward them is pity.

I suspect our anti-capitalist brothers and sisters are those who cannot see a fat man standing beside a thin man without concluding that the fat man got that way at the expense of the thin man!

Media wishing to interview Barry Farber, please contact media@wnd.com.

Here is the original post:
Media turn 'communists' into 'anti-capitalists' - WND.com

The attacks on President Trump, his family and his cabinet are the results of years of internal communism and socialism in America.

Socialism is a lower form of communism. Both have the identical goal economic control of the people and each is a deadly enemy of freedom.

Some of the weapons and techniques of communism are as follows. Destroy the morals of the people and you destroy that nation. Another being used on President Trump is, tell a lie, tell it long enough, and many citizens will believe it.

This is what is going on regarding the "Russian question," that the Marxist influenced left wing media is using against our president to force him out of office. In addition to the media, many in the Democrat party and their socialist leaders, are attacking President Trump and cannot get over the fact, that they lost the presidential race.

The Democrat Party has been infiltrated by communism, and are dupes to their own programs, to take over America and destroy our Constitution and our freedoms.

A good book to read on the infiltration of communism in our government is: THE ENEMIES WITHIN: Communist, Socialist, and Progressives in the U.S. Congress, by Trevor Loudon. In addition, the author has a revealing DVD, ENEMIES WITHIN: Could your Congressman Pass an FBI Security Check? It is available online at amazon.com.

The problem is that many in congress are not obeying their oath to the Constitution. They have been brainwashed, and are supporting socialist programs that could lead our nation to bankruptcy. This has to be stopped, if our America is to remain free! We Christians, who voted for Donald Trump, must stand up and defend our president, and pray for him, and that our America will return to the biblical principles that we were founded upon.

Fred Coleman,

Americans for Constitutional Government

The rest is here:
Letter: Assault on Trump is assault on Democracy - Greenwood Democrat