President Trump and some members of Congress aren’t the only voices that must be held accountable for the January 6 insurrection.
The NRA is just as complicit. They bought off lawmakers. They donated to the January 6 event that turned violent, and they’ve repeatedly encouraged their supporters to be part of an armed rebellion.
The NRA has been pushing insurrectionist ideas for decades. Here's how the words of Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre helped foment the events that took place in our nation's capitol on January 6th, 2021.
For decades, the NRA and its top leaders have encouraged insurrectionism, urging Americans to purchase firearms to protect their liberty and fight against a tyrannical government. In 1994, Wayne LaPierre wrote, "People have the right … to take whatever measures necessary, including force, to abolish oppressive government."
Since then, there have been countless examples of dangerous rhetoric perpetuating the myth that the Second Amendment empowers Americans to violently overthrow a democratically elected government.
Guns Down America P.O. Box 34647 Washington, DC 20043 United States
There is no way we will finish the January funding-drive at this pace. With a very small percentage of you donating we would finish quickly. Meeting the organization’s obligations now becomes priority number one.
FOCUS: Jamil Smith | American Unity Is a Fantasy Jamil Smith, Rolling Stone Smith writes: "Donald Trump should be happy that he has presided over more than 390,000 deaths from Covid-19 in the United States instead of over the Flint water crisis. Otherwise, he might some day face legal consequences."
National harmony is impossible without true accountability, especially when a major political party enables sedition and white-supremacist terrorism
Former Michigan governor Rick Snyder was finally brought up on charges Thursday, more than six years after his administration oversaw the decision to switch the water supply for the majority-black city to the corroded Flint River. Thousands of adults and children were contaminated with lead and other pollutants, and at least nine people who contracted Legionnaires’ disease died. Snyder pleaded not guilty to two misdemeanor charges of willful neglect of duty. He is one of nine total officials facing a total of 41 counts, including 34 felonies, in connection to the Flint catastrophe.
Imagine the absurdity, if you will, of saying that this – accountability for actions that took human lives – was all too divisive. That having Snyder and his cronies finally face criminal penalties would not be what Michiganders needed to heal. Poisoning Flint’s water was surely terrible, but inflaming racial and political tensions is what we truly want to avoid, yes? Moving on is really the best thing.
However, while it would clearly be ridiculous and immoral to let Snyder and his cronies escape accountability in the name of “unity,” that’s exactly the approach Republicans are demanding we take to the white-supremacist mob that attacked the Capitol – and to the white-supremacist politicians who encouraged them.
Many a Republican this past week brushed away the seditious January 6th attacks as they sought to keep their president from being impeached by the House for a second time. The word “unity” may seem newly robbed of meaning when wielded by people who have themselves been, very recently, trying to overturn an election. In our current dystopian politics, these words are now opiates for the masses, intoxicating us daily with notions of American exceptionalism even as scourges of our nation grow more dangerous.
As violent extremists retreat to the deepest recesses of the internet to plan their next eruptions of entitlement, their elected representatives tell us that “unity” is in our collective best interests. It will surely work out well for the politicians and terrorists alike, helping both escape accountability, repentance, and remedies for their actions, as well as preventing any work necessary to reverse damage wrought upon our social fabric.
If we want to stop the next wave of white-supremacist violence, and root out the people and power structures that made the current one possible, we need to hold white supremacists accountable for their actions.
What should that accountability look like? Surely, a lot of people in and out of Congress need to lose their jobs. A lot of them, including the current president, should face prosecution for what they have done. However, we should exercise some caution. Addressing the racism within the Capitol Police would be a start, and overdue. However, The Marshall Project finds that civil-liberties experts fear that due to prosecutorial bias, responding to white extremist violence like what we saw at the Capitol with some kind of new “War on Terror” will undoubtedly result in harsher penalties for the very people supremacists target. Its report detailed that hate-crime laws unfairly target black Americans while but are under-enforced against white perpetrators: black people accounted for 13% of the U.S. population in 2019, yet were accused of 24% of the hate crimes. Conversely, white people were 60% of the population and made up only 53% of the defendants, respectively.
Unifying with those seeking white supremacy, voter suppression, and government overthrow seems like the very definition of madness. If Republicans were the only ones calling for this, it would be easier to dismiss. But consider that days before he was arraigned, Snyder joined his successor, current Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, “calling on people of goodwill across America to pray for peace, calm, and healing” after the Capitol riot and asking them to unify “to defeat our real enemy, which is the pandemic that has taken far too many of our friends, neighbors, and loved ones.” Unfortunately, both Republicans and Democrats are engaging in this vain pursuit of political unification at precisely the time when we should be focusing on reconciling the truth of Trump’s malevolent governance while at the same time putting forth policy that fully rectifies his shortcomings.
Joe Biden, the president-elect, made a speech in Wilmington on Thursday outlining a new, comprehensive $1.9 trillion “rescue and recovery plan” for the pandemic, which he called “the path forward with a seriousness of purpose, a clear plan with transparency and accountability with a call for unity that is equally necessary.” I couldn’t disagree more with that last part. How is unity as essential right now than the plan’s extended housing and nutrition aid? How is some amorphous harmony with people who have tried to deny Biden’s ascendance to the presidency with violence and death getting a $2,000 check into the accounts of Americans making $75,000 or less? (And not $1,400, as the Biden plan outlines, merely making up the difference of the Trump/Mitch McConnell $600 pittance. Give Americans what they should have had all along.)
The Washington Post reported that Congressional Republicans are already predicting widespread opposition to Biden’s sweeping plan, which includes a raise in the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour and $350 billion in state and local aid. The American economy and job market are heading, with even more precipitous speed, into the commode — yet these folks Biden wants “unity” with consider his proposal a “non-starter.”
I would ask kindly that the only party that ostensibly represents the interests of black people and other Americans of color stop trying to ally with Republicans, who could only get 10 of their 211 House members to vote to impeach a president who provoked a seditious, deadly, white-supremacist attack on the Capitol while all of Congress was inside, certifying the vote for the next President of the United States. Republicans mockingly refuse to wear masks, still — resulting, it appears, in at least three positive diagnoses for Democrats cooped up with them during the riot. Since the attack, they’ve petulantly avoided the new metal detectors. The party of Trump is an obstacle to be outmaneuvered, not a partner to be persuaded. And some of its members, frankly, should be expelled and prosecuted.
The calls for healing in the aftermath of the Capitol riot recall another egregious avoidance of accountability, one that serves as a cautionary tale. When President Lincoln in 1862 emancipated enslaved people in Washington, D.C., he paid their captors up to $300 for each human being they held in bondage. Even a passing look at what came next reveals the payments did nothing to win over enslavers to the cause of “unity.” Instead, they rewarded possibly the ugliest white entitlement there is. The United States has a long history, indeed, of ignoring the pain of its most downtrodden so that the salve of “unity” may be spread over the same festering wounds. In the wake of the Capitol riot, many are all too eager to repeat Lincoln’s mistake. As he begins his presidency, Biden should avoid doing the same.
MBTA to host virtual meeting on South Coast Rail Jan. 27
Published Jan 16, 2021
The MBTA will host a Virtual Middleborough Community Meeting on the South Coast Rail Project on Wednesday, Jan. 27 from 6:00–7:30 PM
The project team will present an update on Phase 1, the new Middleborough Station, and the start of construction in Middleborough. Following the presentation, the team will be available to take feedback and answer questions.
Information on how to join via Zoom is available at www.mbta.com/southcoastrail under
Upcoming Events. A recording will be posted after the event for those who cannot attend. For more information about South Coast Rail, visit the website: www.mbta.com/southcoastrail.
Please contact the project team with any questions at SouthCoastRail@dot.state.ma.us.
This is one of a series of community meetings that will be hosted by the MBTA. Future
meetings in other communities will be announced via email and on the project website,
www.mbta.com/southcoastrail.
This meeting is accessible to people with disabilities and those with limited proficiency in English. Closed captioning in English will be provided. Other accessibility accommodations and language services will be provided free of charge, upon request, as available. Such services include documents in alternate formats, translated documents, and interpreters.
For more information or to request a reasonable accommodation and/or language services, please email echristin@reginavilla.com or call 617-357-5772 x 16 by January 20.
Third Middleboro fire in less than 48 hours jumps across two buildings
Published Jan 15, 2021
MIDDLEBORO – The Middleboro Fire Department extinguished a fire that had spread across two buildings on Wareham Street Thursday night, Chief Lance Benjamino said.
It was the third structure fire in Middleboro in two days, including two on Wareham Street.
All occupants were able to safely exit before first responders arrived, the chief said. Two families were displaced from one of the buildings. No injuries were reported.
"This was the third significant fire Middleboro Fire Department has responded to in two days," Benjamino said. "Thankfully no injuries have resulted, and we've been able to call on several departments in the area to support our firefighting efforts."
The other fires occurred at around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday at 530 Wareham St. and at around 9 p.m. Wednesday at 2 Montello St.
At approximately 5:53 p.m. Thursday, the Middleboro Fire Department received several 911 calls about a fire at 9 Wareham St. Upon arrival at the scene the shift commander reported that the fire at the 3-story multi-family dwelling at 9 Wareham St. had spread to the adjacent 2 1/2 story mixed-use building at 7 Wareham St., according to a written statement from the fire department.
Due to the age of the building, which dates to the 1800s, the aggressive fire quickly extended through all three floors of 9 Wareham St. and into the second and third floors of 7 Wareham St., jumping across the 10 to 15-foot gap between the two buildings via the vinyl siding and soffit, the fire department said.
Firefighters attacked the flames at both buildings for nearly three hours.
The fire was knocked out at 7 Wareham St. first and was completely extinguished at 9 Wareham St. around 8:50 p.m.
Two families were displaced from 9 Wareham St. Both buildings sustained significant damage, and 9 Wareham St. is uninhabitable, Benjamino said.
Mutual aid at the scene was provided by the Carver, Bridgewater, Wareham, East Bridgewater, Plympton and Halifax fire departments.
The cause remains under investigation by the Middleboro Fire Department and State Police assigned to the Office of the State Fire Marshal. The Plymouth County Sheriff’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) also responded to the scene to assist with the investigation.
There is no way we will finish the January funding-drive at this pace. With a very small percentage of you donating we would finish quickly. Meeting the organization’s obligations now becomes priority number one.
Joe Biden's Looming War on White Supremacy Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic Brownstein writes: "For four years, Donald Trump downplayed the risk of white-supremacist violence and denied that racial bias is pervasive in law enforcement. In a single, searing day, the assault on the U.S." READ MORE
Throw the Book at Rick Snyder for Poisoning Flint's Water Ben Beckett, Jacobin Beckett writes: "Former Michigan governor Rick Snyder suspended democracy for the majority of the state's black residents, then oversaw Flint residents' poisoning in the city's ongoing water crisis." READ MORE
Watchdog Report on "Zero Tolerance" Immigration Policy Leads to Calls for Prosecutions, Reparations Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept Devereaux writes: "When faced with the heart-wrenching accounts of children systematically separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump administration officials routinely relied on the same defense: that the enforcement of their so-called zero tolerance policy did not aim to break up families." READ MORE
New Zealand City Closes Popular Road to Protect Mother and Baby Sea Lion Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch Rosane writes: "One city in New Zealand knows what its priorities are. Dunedin, the second largest city on New Zealand's South Island, has closed a popular road to protect a mother sea lion and her pup, The Guardian reported." READ MORE
Maria J. Stephan at Waging Nonviolence on the future of right-wing violence and how to respond.
—Erika
Following the Jan. 6 insurrectionary attack on the U.S. Capitol and on the country, the FBI has warned of violent actions being planned in all 50 states and D.C. nationwide next week. Last week’s assault, which was incited by Donald Trump, enabled by GOP officials and members of Congress, planned on social media, and buoyed by deeply entrenched white supremacy and Christian nationalism at the heart of our democratic dysfunctionality, were not attacks on any political party or ideology — they were attacks on all of us. The entire country has to be involved in responding to what could become a protracted violent conflict or, quite possibly, an insurgency. At the same time, this crisis, happening in the midst of a devastating pandemic, presents an opportunity to come together and build a country where liberty and justice are enjoyed by all Americans, without exception. It is an opportunity we should seize.
What happens over the next 10 days will set the tone for what happens over the next 10 months and 10 years. In the immediate term, the national response should focus on ensuring accountability and telling the truth about the election, exploiting divisions between those committed to democracy and those willing to destroy it, and preventing further violence from far-right extremist groups like the Proud Boys and QAnon. Longer term efforts require an honest reckoning with the white supremacist roots of our political malaise, addressing the toxic nature of polarization in this country fueled by social media platforms’ monetization of hate and division, and building and supporting movements capable of transforming our social, political and economic systems.
First, the politicians and officials who incited and enabled the attacks must be held accountable for their actions. Unless there are real consequences to engaging in illegal, dangerous or recklessly anti-democratic behavior, it will be impossible to reckon with our present and deter future attacks. Trump is a clear and present danger to the United States and should be removed from power and prevented from ever running for federal office again. The NAACP is organizing bipartisan support for Trump’s impeachment. Missouri Representative Cori Bush has filed a resolution calling for the expulsion of more than 100 Republican members of the House who voted against certification. Indivisible is mobilizing for the expulsion of members of Congress who supported the insurrection.
There are clear signs that the insurrection is backfiring and GOP enablers are paying a price. We need to learn from and exploit this backfire. Trump’s approval rating has plummeted to 33 percent and he was impeached Monday by the U.S. House for the second time. Major companies have suspended political contributions to members of Congress who voted against certifying the result of the election. A pro-Trump candidate for governor of New Jersey abruptly dropped his campaign. Republican Attorneys General who supported the election lawsuit are facing disciplinary complaints and the Republican Attorneys General association is distancing itself from robocalls urging supporters to go to D.C. to “fight” and overturn the election. Facebook and Twitter banned Trump and took down the accounts of over a thousand far-right groups while Google and Apple shut down Parler, a platform favored by extremists.
If you think the contents of this news letter are critical for the dignified living and survival of humanity and other species on earth, please forward it to your friends and spread the word. It's time for humanity to come together as one family! You can subscribe to our news letter here http://www.countercurrents.org/news-letter/.
In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
Countercurrents.org
Admiral Ramdas Appeals The Government To Repeal The Farm Laws
In a short video on the empirediaries.com YouTube channel, a protesting farmer camped near Delhi says that during lockdown and times of crisis farmers are treated like “gods”, but when they ask for their rights, they are smeared and labelled as “terrorists”.
In a short video on the empirediaries.com YouTube channel, a protesting farmer camped near Delhi says that during lockdown and times of crisis farmers are treated like “gods”, but when they ask for their rights, they are smeared and labelled as “terrorists”.
He, along with thousands of other farmers, are mobilising against three important pieces of farm legislation that were recently forced through parliament. To all intents and purposes, these laws sound a neoliberal death knell for most of India’s cultivators and its small farms, the backbone of the nation’s food production.
The farmer says:
“Corporates invested in Modi before the election and brought him to power. He has sold out and is an agent of Ambani and Adani. He is unable to repeal the bills because his owners will scold him. He is trapped. But we are not backing down either.”
He then asks whether ministers know how many seeds are needed to grow wheat on an acre of land:
“We farmers know. They made these farm laws sitting in air-conditioned rooms. And they are teaching us the benefits!”
While the corporations that will move in on the sector due to the legislation will initially pay good money for crops, once the public sector markets (mandis) are gone, the farmer says they will become the only buyers and will beat prices down.
He asks why, in other sectors, do sellers get to put price tags on their products but not farmers:
“Why can’t farmers put minimum prices on the crops we produce? A law must be brought to guarantee MSP [minimum support prices]. Whoever buys below MSP must be punished by law.”
The recent agriculture legislation represents the final pieces of a 30-year-old plan which will benefit a handful of billionaires in the US and in India. It means the livelihoods of hundreds of millions (the majority of the population) who still (directly or indirectly) rely on agriculture for a living are to be sacrificed at the behest of these elite interests.
Consider that much of the UK’s wealth came from sucking $45 trillion from India alone according to renowned economist Utsa Patnaik. Britain grew rich by underdeveloping India. What amount to little more than modern-day East India-type corporations are now in the process of helping themselves to the country’s most valuable asset – agriculture.
According to the World Bank’s lending report, based on data compiled up to 2015, India was easily the largest recipient of its loans in the history of the institution. The World Bank thus exerts a certain hold over India: on the back of India’s foreign exchange crisis in the 1990s, the IMF and World Bank wanted India to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture.
In return for up to more than $120 billion in loans at the time, India was directed to dismantle its state-owned seed supply system, reduce subsidies, run down public agriculture institutions and offer incentives for the growing of cash crops to earn foreign exchange.
The plan involves shifting at least 400 million from the countryside into cities.
The details of this plan appear in a January 2021 article by the Research Unit for Political Economy, ‘Modi’s Farm Produce Act Was Authored Thirty Years Ago, in Washington DC’. The piece says that the current agricultural ‘reforms’ are part of a broader process of imperialism’s increasing capture of the Indian economy:
“Indian business giants such as Reliance and Adani are major recipients of foreign investment, as we have seen in sectors such as telecom, retail, and energy. At the same time, multinational corporations and other financial investors in the sectors of agriculture, logistics and retail are also setting up their own operations in India. Multinational trading corporations dominate global trade in agricultural commodities. For all these reasons, international capital has a major stake in the restructuring of India’s agriculture… The opening of India’s agriculture and food economy to foreign investors and global agribusinesses is a longstanding project of the imperialist countries.”
The article provides details of a 1991 World Bank memorandum which set out the programme for India. It adds:
“At the time, India was still in its foreign exchange crisis of 1990-91 and had just submitted itself to an IMF-monitored ‘structural adjustment’ programme. Thus, India’s July 1991 budget marked the fateful start of India’s neoliberal era.”
It states that now the Modi government is dramatically advancing the implementation of the above programme, using the Covid-19 crisis as cover: the dismantling of the public procurement and distribution of food is to be implemented by the three agriculture-related acts passed by parliament.
The drive is to drastically dilute the role of the public sector in agriculture, reducing it to a facilitator of private capital and leading to the entrenchment of industrial farming and the replacement of small-scale farms. The norm will be industrial (GMO) commodity-crop agriculture suited to the needs of the likes of Cargill, Archer Daniels Midlands, Louis Dreyfus, Bunge and India’s retail and agribusiness giants as well as the global agritech, seed and agrochemical corporations. It could result in hundreds of millions of former rural dwellers without any work given that India is heading (has already reached) jobless growth.
As a result of the ongoing programme, more than 300,000 farmers in India have taken their lives since 1997 and many more are experiencing economic distress or have left farming as a result of debt, a shift to cash crops and economic liberalisation. The number of cultivators in India declined from 166 million to 146 million between 2004 and 2011. Some 6,700 left farming each day. Between 2015 and 2022, the number of cultivators is likely to decrease to around 127 million.
We have seen the running down of the sector for decades, spiralling input costs, withdrawal of government assistance and the impacts of cheap, subsidised imports which depress farmers’ incomes.
Take the cultivation of pulses, for instance. According to a report in the Indian Express (September 2017), pulses production increased by 40% during the previous 12 months (a year of record production). At the same time, however, imports also rose resulting in black gram selling at 4,000 rupees per quintal (much less than during the previous 12 months). This effectively pushed down prices thereby reducing farmers already meagre incomes.
We have already witnessed a running down of the indigenous edible oils sector thanks to Indonesian palm oil imports (which benefits Cargill) on the back of World Bank pressure to reduce tariffs (India was virtually self-sufficient in edible oils in the 1990s but now faces increasing import costs).
The pressure from the richer nations for the Indian government to further reduce support given to farmers and open up to imports and export-oriented ‘free market’ trade is based on nothing but hypocrisy.
On the ‘Down to Earth’ website in late 2017, it was stated some 3.2 million people were engaged in agriculture in the US in 2015. The US goverment provided them each with a subsidy of $7,860 on average. Japan provides a subsidy of $14,136 and New Zealand $2,623 to its farmers. In 2015, a British farmer earned $2,800 and $37,000 was added through subsidies. The Indian government provides on average a subsidy of $873 to farmers. However, between 2012 and 2014, India reduced the subsidy on agriculture and food security by $3 billion.
According to policy analyst Devinder Sharma subsidies provided to US wheat and rice farmers are more than the market worth of these two crops. He also notes that, per day, each cow in Europe receives subsidy worth more than an Indian farmer’s daily income.
The Indian farmer simply cannot compete with this. The World Bank, World Trade Organisation and the IMF have effectively served to undermine the indigenous farm sector in India. The long-term goal has been to displace the peasantry and consolidate a corporate-controlled model.
And now, by reducing public sector buffer stocks and introducing corporate-dictated contract farming and full-scale neoliberal marketisation for the sale and procurement of produce, India will be sacrificing its farmers and its own food security for the benefit of a handful of billionaires.
Colin Todhunter is an independent writer specialising in development, food and agriculture.
The farmers’ unions and organizations will be deliberating on the course of actions during the next few days. As they do so, the humble request of this writer will be to concentrate more on consolidation than on confrontation. While all movements need actions, the time at present is ripe for further consolidation, expansion and internal strengthening, not for too much of
The global death toll from COVID-19, identified also as coronavirus, pandemic topped 2 million on January 15, 2021. The number of dead, compiled by Johns Hopkins University, U.S., is about equal to the population of Brussels, Mecca, Minsk or Vienna. It is roughly equivalent to the population of the Cleveland metropolitan area in the U.S., or the entire U.S. state of Nebraska
For an honest-to-goodness civil war to break out, you need a struggle to the death between mutually incompatible systems—as was the case in the American, Russian and Chinese civil wars. This will not happen now. Despite right-wing clamor to the contrary, the left in the United States does not
pose an existential threat to the system. It is nowhere near the Rubicon of private property and free market capitalism, and has no plans to cross it.
In Europe we are not accustomed to seeing images on the television of thousands of Americans—right-wingers to boot—breaking the law, overrunning government buildings and violently attacking the police.
By rushing the Capitol, the heart of American democracy, President Trump’s supporters demonstrated that they are ready for a fight. Many of these fanatics would love to use their weapons beyond the firing range.
The students at the high school in Athens where I teach history asked me if civil war will break out in the United States. Their grim scenario goes something like this: Disappointing many of his critics, Donald Trump will not commit suicide (the American President is not made of the same stuff as the Capitol Police officer who took his own life on January 9.) Instead, he will create his own version of Twitter and rally his supporters and a segment of the armed forces and police. In a declining American economy, Donald Trump will galvanize support and grow his America First party into a force of the first magnitude that will hold power where it counts—in the streets.
Thankfully, this dire scenario is unrealistic and highly improbable. For all his swagger and tough posturing, Donald Trump does not have the stomach for the rough-and-tumble crowd that stormed the Capitol. The owner of Mar-a-Lago was repelled and embarrassed by the real time television footage he watched of these people in action. Some were graphic in their weirdness and many looked “cheap and poor” to him. After initially goading them on, Trump turned his back on them, even saying they deserved to be punished for breaking the law.
For an honest-to-goodness civil war to break out, you need a struggle to the death between mutually incompatible systems—as was the case in the American, Russian and Chinese civil wars. This will not happen now. Despite right-wing clamor to the contrary, the left in the United States does not pose an existential threat to the system. It is nowhere near the Rubicon of private property and free market capitalism, and has no plans to cross it. The left in the United States today is actually part of the system. This even applies to antifa, which is keen on fighting fascism but does not really challenge capitalism.
Racism is not the main reason so many more armed guards defended the Capitol during the summer’s BLM protests. There were black USCP officers present. More importantly, the BLM crowd and their white, Hispanic and Asian supporters include a lot of people who hate the system in a fundamentally different way than Trump’s radical supporters do. Many of these people have grown tired of trying to fix the system’s most egregious symptoms, including racism and sexism. They are convinced the system cannot be cured or reformed. Law enforcement understands this about them. In their minds, these crowds represent a potentially far more dangerous threat than Trump supporters.
Passions are running high in the land of the free and home of the brave. Looking ahead, it is likely there will be sporadic violence between disappointed Trump supporters and the police and/or left-wing groups like antifa. But there will be no civil war. Big business does not feel sufficiently threatened to condone any sort of coup by Donald Trump’s supporters. Big business does not need Trump the way the German elite needed Hitler in the early thirties to protect them from the communists. Any attempt by Trump’s supporters to challenge the establishment will be met effectively. This will not be difficult. One by one, the ringleaders will be arrested and the movement will cease to be a major problem for the authorities.
In the end, it wasn’t the left that stopped Donald Trump but big business. And Trump himself, of course.
Evel Economakis : I received a PhD in history from Columbia University in 1993. I have published numerous academic articles and my political commentary has appeared in various magazines, including The New Statesman and Dissent. An American citizen, I currently live with my family in Greece, and I teach IB history at Ionios Lyceum in Athens.
Prerogative of your privacy with the tech giants like WHATSAPP, TWITTER, FACEBOOK,INSTAGRAM,and like many others is being largely brought into questions and judicial overview as to what it actually constitutes in the strictest sense and what modalities need to be adopted to design the much-needed safeguards and framework of its judicial redressal in cases of brazen and conflagrant infringement, violations and exploitation for commercial gains that all social media platforms are vying for in this ever expanding digitized world.
Prerogative of your privacy with the tech giants like WHATSAPP, TWITTER, FACEBOOK,INSTAGRAM,and like many others is being largely brought into questions and judicial overview as to what it actually constitutes in the strictest sense and what modalities need to be adopted to design the much-needed safeguards and framework of its judicial redressal in cases of brazen and conflagrant infringement, violations and exploitation for commercial gains that all social media platforms are vying for in this ever expanding digitized world.
With WhatsApp’s new privacy policy has triggered an outcry worldwide with around fifty crores(500 million active users in India alone) about their unauthorized breach of personal data collection to be used by the third parties to target potential clientele and the users’ buying and shopping preferential trend researches for making bigger and wider inroads into the online shopping domains.
As usual WhatsApp’s implausible and perhaps inexplicable and standard response remains the same that you have agreed to the terms and conditions reading all the clauses for using the app and those who are willing to quit are welcome to do so brushing aside its moral obligation of safeguarding the users’ personal information and protecting them from any of their misuse or leakage through recurrent breaches, not uncommon these days in the hands of the seasoned hackers and mercenaries involved.
It is worthwhile to mention that even Zuckerberg, Facebook C.E.O when called before the US congress regarding fixing professional accountability and giving assurance about setting higher standards of practices of running these doyens of social media houses Zuckerberg had to confess and admit that there has been rampant breaches in costumers’ data protection and somehow accidentally the collected information reached the third party companies which in turn misused them for their marketing and commercial gains.
Although Zuckerberg left the core committee assured that they are committed and trying hard to stop this menace because any breach of personal information can damage an individual’s fundamental rights and freedom, including the risk of identity theft and many other fraudulent mischiefs that hackers or third parties involved may wantonly resort to without letting the principal, the first part’s knowledge and consent.
The need of the hour is not just an eye wash to the entire conundrum by certain companies and individuals agreeing to one another but the right intervention of the government which can intervene time to time and on occasions of disputes as the sole arbitrator because the issue is not just restricted to the individual rights of freedom and companies’ rights of business operations but also the social and national security of any sovereign state.
Recent blanket ban and suspension of Trumps’ Twitter account permanently is a case in point suggesting how powerful these social media platforms have become and it is no wonder that the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel and U.K parliamentarians along with some others have voiced their legitimate concerns over the sweeping powers being entrusted to these giant tech companies which can hold anyone on ransom. let alone the common individual who has got hardly any say in bringing them to book in case of the infringement of personal freedom and right to speech.
These social platforms should be seen as a double-edged sword and its non-judicious use might prove deadly for not just persons but the society at large, so it is imperative that there should be a fine balance between how much of leverage can be accorded to them in stipulating their binding terms and conditions, to be met by the gullible users and provisioning strictest penalties in case of their gross violations and irresponsible conducts or data breaches which has been witnessed so invariably lately .
Although it is never in the interest of any organisation to fail in ensuring data privacy protection because of the reputational risk involved and its core values definitely get eroded as they might lose the customers’ trust gained over the years, there still flagrant breaches of huge scales are being reported primarily because of unscrupulous tech giants have become a formidable force to reckon with and they have the audacity to lock horns with the governments also.
The companies or the tech giants and social networks need to ensure that their co-partner companies like suppliers, retailers or service providers don’t resort to such nefarious acts of stealing data and are well-equipped to handle them transparently, incorporating agreements about data breach notification obligations and cooperation in fulfilling data subject requests and such commitments.
In future newer regulations coupled with stricter requirements and steeper penalty provisions will be paramount to all the successes that these tech houses are aspiring for and these have to be imbed in the core competencies of all successful business models.
Mohammad Haseen Ahmed, King Abdulaziz University, English Language Institute, Jeddah,K.S.A mdhsnahmad@gmail.com
of heaven-based stories, written as fantasy yet very relevant to our times. The first part of the series appeared in Countercurrents.org dated December 11, 2020 under the title ‘ Mahatma Gandhi Returns to Earth’.
