Month: April 2013

Corporate control: we see it everywhere. Can any of us be blind to the ‘take it or leave it’ attitude that passes for customer service these days? It’s not just technological advancement that’s resulted in every large corporation greeting our telephoned requests for attention with some digital menu that spins us round in ever decreasing circles, and eventually spits us out, dissatisfied, at the other end.

Not that you’d recognize this utter lack of concern for customer satisfaction from the glossy advertising and blurb that is the staple of all corporate marketing strategy.

Perfectly manicured females, with their photo-shopped smiles, are the norm when we’re being seduced with empty promises of wondrous goods on offer, in exchange for our hard earned dollars. It’s not until the newly acquired washing machine floods the laundry, or the super-size TV puffs smoke from its rear, that we realize this delicious doll is no more than a digital mp4 file droning out monotony down our ear-hole, and leaving us with about as much chance of connecting with a real human being as Kristen Stewart has of winning an Oscar for ‘The Twilight Saga’.

It’s all a result of perfectly acceptable companies growing so huge – often due to take-overs or mergers with larger corporations – that they no longer see the necessity for a personal service. It’s more important to divvy out a few more dollars to the shareholders, than pay a living wage for someone prepared to answer a telephone and provide some genuine customer satisfaction.

“Too big to fail” has become the catchphrase of corrupt politicians and bent Wall Street economists, who realize any such ‘failure’ means they’ll become drastically poorer very quickly. It’s come to signify the awesome power of the banking sector, but applies equally to other, overly-gigantic, corporate establishments.

While corporate and political corruption in so-called ‘Western democracies’ has reached levels on par with dubious African and Eastern European dictatorates, far more disturbing is the degree of control this corrupt association of political and corporate power has unleashed on us – the people.

As competition is swallowed up wholesale by the mighty jaws of corporate monstrosity, not only are we denied choice, but the very way we live our lives and conduct our business is being dictated by those anonymous corporate controllers who have gained the power to decide our future.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the technology/internet industry. Microsoft’s control of the commercial computer operating system market is just one example of we, the people, losing control of our computers. Microsoft dictates how we operate our virtual lives (unless, of course, you’re running a Mac, in which case, it’s Apple).

Then there’s Google. This mammoth’s top man, Larry Page, (worth around $23 billion) is constantly striving to tell us how jealously his company guards our privacy, while doling out our personal information to the US government at the rate of 5,900 instances in 2011, and rising every year. It can be argued that Google’s cooperation with crime fighters helps keep us safe, but it’s a short step from there to spying on all our internet activities. We have no way of knowing if Microsoft, or Google, is recording our website visitations, and where that information may be ending up, but we do know it’s used to benefit the bank balances of other corporations, who pay well for the information.

Google is also dictating our preferences with its software. Only recently we learned ‘Google Reader’ is to be discontinued in favor of its latest creation, ‘Feedly’. Is ‘Feedly’ better equipped to record our RSS interests? Perhaps not, but we have no way of knowing.

It all begs the question: what can we do about it? After all, these corporate monsters are in control and have the politicians in their pockets. It’s not easy, but there are ways. The Achilles heel of all capitalist corporations is their bank balance. We, the people, make them wealthy. Isn’t it time we looked at alternatives?

Whether it’s Walmart or Microsoft, Goldman Sachs or Google, it behooves us to kick them into touch, if we can, and seek out alternatives that might help whittle these behemoths down to a more manageable size. After all, without we, the people, Walmart would still be a struggling grocery store somewhere off main street.

There are alternatives to Microsoft and Google. Linux is still a pain in the butt to install (as I’ve found out to my cost), but it’s getting better all the time, and above all, it’s free! As is all its open source software.

There are now Coop stores in most towns throughout the US, stuffed with fresh organic foodstuffs, and lacking the chemical fertilizers so beloved of Walmart produce. It is more expensive, but with careful shopping the weekly bill may not prove too disastrous to the bank balance, and it’s healthy, nutritious, and great for the environment.

As for Goldman Sachs, and all the many other financial institutions grown fat and wealthy from our hard-earned dollars, the choice is between them and a Credit Union run not-for-profit, with better dividends, virtually no fees, and staff that don’t look down their nose at you when you dare ask them to part with a few of your own dollar bills.

There are times when the monolithic corporations seem much too powerful to ever be thwarted, but it pays to remember that it’s we, the people, that made them that way. Without our money none of them would exist. And, just as we created those monsters we, the people, have the power to shackle them, tame them, and, if necessary, bring them down.

The corporations don’t own this world. We do. Isn’t it time we said enough is enough?

Tonight, it was my intention to discuss the Boston bombings, but I’ve just sat through God-knows how many hours of Brian Williams and NBC News putting on free entertainment for the American masses; a show so packed with inaction and supposition it, no doubt, held the US public mesmerized, as nine thousand law enforcement officers descended on Watertown to apprehend one nineteen year old kid.

Nine thousand to arrest one? PC George Dixon of Dock Green would have managed it on his own. “Evenin’, all!”

(If you’re too young to know who the hell George Dixon was, then you’re definitely young enough to Google him, and maybe discover how policing was once carried out, before every law enforcement officer metamorphosed into Robocop).

While nothing can condone the murderous atrocities committed in Boston this week it seems likely the surviving (alleged) bomber was very much under the thumb of his older brother – his partner in the crime. In his haste to earlier escape the law, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ran over his brother with a car as he lay on the ground following a police shoot-out.

Quite why two Chenchens, resident in the US, should take it upon themselves to commit a terrorist act is yet to be reasoned. It’s one of the few areas in the world where US interference has been minimal. One possible explanation is the United States’ pact with Russia to fight Islamic terrorism, though it hardly seems cause for such an atrocity.

The use of nine thousand to apprehend one is highly reminiscent of that old adage about flies and sledgehammers. There is little doubt Tsarnaev would have been apprehended eventually, had the whole matter been left in the hands of the State police.

No, this was less law enforcement, and more politics. A clear sign to the world outside: “Don’t mess with America. We only get caught with our pants down once.” Which would be fine, if only they didn’t turn the whole sad process into a nighttime’s entertainment.

Equally sad, and perhaps even more indicative of the malaise affecting this nation, was the failure by Congress this week to commit themselves to any action on gun control. One man stood out from the rest – Wyoming’s Republican senator Michael Bradley Enzi.

Michael’s stance was a simple one (in more ways than one). It’s the parent’s fault. We don’t need any gun control legislation; we don’t need background checks. All it takes is for parents to teach their kids it’s wrong to kill people.

There is no doubt that we need to do more to curb the senseless acts of violence that continue to occur in this country. One of the things we need are parents, parents to be more careful and more repetitive at telling their kids that it is not right to kill people. It’s not even right to bully them. And it’s definitely not right for them to kill themselves. Until we can get that message across to our kids, I hope that we don’t rely on a few votes by this body to make everybody feel comfortable that all the problem is taken care of.”

Okay, Michael, if you’ll walk this way there’s a nice old people’s home with senility nursing capability just waiting to welcome you.

Thank you, Congress. You’ve just proved the kids of Sandy Hook Elementary School died in vain. Your rejection of sanity, in return for whatever favors the NRA offered you, also prove you don’t give a damn about dead children, their grieving parents, or the vast majority of your voters who are demanding stricter background checks on gun purchases. In fact, you don’t give a damn about anyone other than yourselves and, of course, your overly-fat bank balances.

The one question remaining is why the fuck your constituents voted you into office in the first place? The only answer I can come up with is that they are even more stupid, and self-obsessed, than you are.

The demise of Margaret Thatcher, as mentioned in the last post, was not a subject to be pursued further by this author. There is, however, another matter far more serious that’s arisen as a result of her recent death.

Since the 1960s, the BBC has broadcast a weekly “Top of the Pops” program, featuring bands and recording artists whose records have either reached the “Top Twenty” in Britain, or are so successful as to make it just a matter of time before they do so.

Following the death of Margaret Thatcher, one record – a very old one – catapulted its way into these charts at number ten and has now reached the number three position, just twelve thousand copies behind the number one single, P!nk’s “Just Give Me A Reason”. It’s predicted to make the top slot.

Following pressure from high-falluting, right-wing, Tory pressure groups, the BBC has decided not to feature this record, in its entirety, on this week’s program. Instead, they’ll play a five second clip of, “Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead”, from the 1939 movie, “The Wizard Of Oz”, followed by “…a news item during the Radio 1 Chart Show on Sunday.”

The Guardian explains further:

The BBC has taken the unprecedented step of deciding to insert a news story into the show to explain to younger viewers why a track from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz has suddenly leapt into the top 10. Radio 1 has a target audience of 16- to 24-year-olds, none of whom will recall Thatcher’s premiership first hand…Hall [The new BBC director general] went into firefighting mode as soon as the row intensified on Friday with three Tory-supporting papers – the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and the Sun – rounding on the corporation for a plan to play the track. Gerald Howarth, a Tory MP, said it would be a “serious dereliction of duty”.

Hall spoke with the BBC1 controller, Ben Cooper, and the acting BBC director of radio, Graham Ellis, before making the decision not to play the Wizard of Oz song in full…The BBC also took the politically astute step of tipping off John Whittingdale, about their decision. The Tory MP, who chairs the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, was among those calling for the BBC not to play the song.

If it was to get his approval, it worked, as Whittingdale told the Guardian that he thought the BBC had made the “right decision” in difficult circumstances.

“I would have been very unhappy if the chart show was used to make a political point, not to mention the issue of taste. On the other hand, it would have been odd if it didn’t mention it. But putting it into context, I think, on balance, it is a sensible way of dealing with it,” he said…^[1]

A sensible way of dealing with it, or political censorship? Quite obviously, if the song is about to become the top selling record in Britain, it’s because a majority of the British people want to hear it – for whatever reasons. What right do a bunch of Tory MP’s have to block it? And, more importantly, what right has the BBC – an independent broadcasting company paid for by the British public via a licence fee – to demur to their demands?

The BBC may be controlled by a bevy of pseudo-aristocratic layabouts who spend all their time swilling brandy in the posh, Moroccon-bound, armchairs of their Mayfair clubs, but Sparrow Chat isn’t.

Below is the complete version of, “Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead,” and it’s dedicated to all those poor wretches tortured and murdered in Chile under the foul regime of Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, whose vile death squads tortured and slaughtered thousands of innocents during the military junta’s reign of terror from 1973 to 1990.

Why? Because General Augusto Pinochet was a ‘dear and close friend’ of the late British ex-prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.

Which, perhaps, says more about her as a human being than any of her political machinations ever could.

^{[1] “Ding dong, the … BBC to cut Thatcher protest song short” Guardian, April 12th 2013}