Re: John Naughton on Shoshana Zuboff: 'The goal is to automate us': welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism
E. Morozov's long take is at https://thebaffler.com/latest/capitalisms-new-clothes-morozov Tl;Dr: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’s most pronounced shortcomings have to do with the relationship it establishes between capitalism and surveillance capitalism—as well as the way in which it prioritizes the problems of this new market form over those of capitalism itself. ... By seeking to explicate, and denounce, the novel dynamics of surveillance capitalism, Zuboff normalizes too much in capitalism itself. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: Paul Mason: Britain's impossible futures (Le Monde diplomatique, English edition)
On 2019-02-04 15:48, David Garcia wrote: Paul Mason wrote: The left at a crossroads By the end of February it is likely that May’s attempt to renegotiate Brexit will fail, stockpiling of food and medicines will increase, and sterling and growth will fall sharply. In an atmosphere of crisis, May’s bluff will be called. It is unlikely that all her cabinet members would remain in office if she sets her sights towards the finishing line of a No Deal Brexit. To prevent No Deal, the cabinet is going the have to pull the plug on Article 50, or on May herself. For either May or her replacement, the option then would be to embrace Labour’s proposal of a customs union plus single market alignment, to get Brexit through with Labour votes. That would split British conservatism strategically, probably for decades. There is however another an equally plausible scenarion which is that after May’s latest attempt to re-negotiate fails she will continues to pander to the Rees-Mog’s (ERG) hard right wing of the Conservative party (which is supported by the bulk of Conservative party members) leading her to grit her teeth and go down the hard-brexit “no-deal” rout and take us over the edge. Why would she do that? A clue lies in May’s ’sisterly’ advice she gave when she sacked former Chancelor, George Osbourn on coming to power. She advised him that if ever he wanted to become PM he should go out and “get to know the party”. This offers an important indicator.. that it is not the MPs that matter most to her (or even economic future of the country). Her emotional priority is staying close and true to the instincts and prejudices of the dwindling population of of Tory members (about 124,000 members) in the country. This group are far more in tune with Reece Mogg, Johnson and yes Farage than they are with the majority of Tory MPs who fear what the reality of a no-deal Brexit would mean. In the end she might well calculate that either way the party will split but the split might be worse if she betrays he instincts of the Tory grass roots. So it may be the moment for us locals to start stock-piling... For the Labour party the dillema is precisely the opposite as Mason so eloquently describes.. In the article Mason argues that it is not classic leftist arguments against the EU that determined his ‘luke warm’ attitude to a public vote that his party agreed to at Conference but his belief that the moral authority of the refferendum result could not be dismissed. My memory however is that Corbyn was equally luke warm to the remain cause during the refferendum campaign itself.. when asked out of 10 how enthusiastic a member of the EU he was ? He replied “7". True he participated in the campaign and showed up on the hustings but if you compare it to the energy of his campaign for the party leadership and the general election he never really looked like he had his heart in it. But othere may disagree on this... Nice and quite credible viewpoint / analysis (immo), David. At least as far as Theresa May is concerned. As she behaves in a fairly inscrutable way your take is as good and probably better than another. Regarding 'Jeremy' it is in a sense even more inscrutable, and reminds me of what Joan Robinson once said bout he Indian economy: "anything you may care to say about (it) is true - but so is its opposite". To me the most amazing, and truly 'fresh approach', element in Paul Mason's piece was the reference to the new, 'global' UK defense policy. Meanwhile, 'Bruksel' must still be completely perplexed at what the (Dis)United Kingdom, or at least its current government, really wants. Over and above that the said government doesn't appear to have a clue itself. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: Paul Mason: Britain's impossible futures (Le Monde diplomatique, English edition)
Paul Mason wrote: > The left at a crossroads > > By the end of February it is likely that May’s attempt to renegotiate Brexit > will fail, stockpiling of food and medicines will increase, and sterling and > growth will fall sharply. In an atmosphere of crisis, May’s bluff will be > called. It is unlikely that all her cabinet members would remain in office if > she sets her sights towards the finishing line of a No Deal Brexit. > > To prevent No Deal, the cabinet is going the have to pull the plug on Article > 50, or on May herself. For either May or her replacement, the option then > would be to embrace Labour’s proposal of a customs union plus single market > alignment, to get Brexit through with Labour votes. That would split British > conservatism strategically, probably for decades. There is however another an equally plausible scenarion which is that after May’s latest attempt to re-negotiate fails she will continues to pander to the Rees-Mog’s (ERG) hard right wing of the Conservative party (which is supported by the bulk of Conservative party members) leading her to grit her teeth and go down the hard-brexit “no-deal” rout and take us over the edge. Why would she do that? A clue lies in May’s ’sisterly’ advice she gave when she sacked former Chancelor, George Osbourn on coming to power. She advised him that if ever he wanted to become PM he should go out and “get to know the party”. This offers an important indicator.. that it is not the MPs that matter most to her (or even economic future of the country). Her emotional priority is staying close and true to the instincts and prejudices of the dwindling population of of Tory members (about 124,000 members) in the country. This group are far more in tune with Reece Mogg, Johnson and yes Farage than they are with the majority of Tory MPs who fear what the reality of a no-deal Brexit would mean. In the end she might well calculate that either way the party will split but the split might be worse if she betrays he instincts of the Tory grass roots. So it may be the moment for us locals to start stock-piling... For the Labour party the dillema is precisely the opposite as Mason so eloquently describes.. In the article Mason argues that it is not classic leftist arguments against the EU that determined his ‘luke warm’ attitude to a public vote that his party agreed to at Conference but his belief that the moral authority of the refferendum result could not be dismissed. My memory however is that Corbyn was equally luke warm to the remain cause during the refferendum campaign itself.. when asked out of 10 how enthusiastic a member of the EU he was ? He replied “7". True he participated in the campaign and showed up on the hustings but if you compare it to the energy of his campaign for the party leadership and the general election he never really looked like he had his heart in it. But othere may disagree on this... # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
PS: Paul Mason: Britain's impossible futures (Le Monde diplomatique, English edition)
On 2019-02-04 13:53, Patrice Riemens wrote: A woman harasses Brazilian skateboarders on a London street, demanding they stop speaking ‘Brazilian’. The confrontation, emblematic in its stupidity, goes viral on Twitter on 29 January. It was not easy to find the incident Paul mason is refring to: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/speak-english-when-youre-walking-on-this-street-couple-subjected-to-vile-rant-for-speaking-portuguese/30/01/ it was on FB not Twitter It was a couple, not skateboarders It was Portuguese not Brazilian, though the shouting woman did see the couple as 'Brazilian') Just a little exercise n fact checking ... ;-) # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Paul Mason: Britain's impossible futures (Le Monde diplomatique, English edition)
Orignal to: https://mondediplo.com/2019/02/01brexit Brexit deadlock as countdown continues Britain’s impossible futures The UK parliament is at an impasse, the latest vote producing a majority for a renegotiation of its departure from Europe that the EU cannot grant. Both main parties risk fracture. So does the UK. by Paul Mason, Le Mnde diplomatique, January 29, 2019 A woman harasses Brazilian skateboarders on a London street, demanding they stop speaking ‘Brazilian’. The confrontation, emblematic in its stupidity, goes viral on Twitter on 29 January. The chief executives of major supermarkets, plus McDonalds and KFC, warn of significant supply disruptions if there is a No Deal Brexit. The government admits on 27 January that it has contingency plans to introduce martial law to avoid ‘death in the event of food and medical shortages’. On the night of 29 January, Britain’s parliament votes for something it cannot enact: Conservatives, Ulster Unionists and a few opposed to immigration from the right of the Labour party combine to demand that the EU make changes to a deal the British government had agreed last November. EU leaders immediately emphasise that no eleventh-hour renegotiation is possible. If a hostile power had scripted Brexit, this is how they would have written its final act. Unfortunately, the British people have scripted it for themselves (1). How did we get to this pinnacle of unreality? Because the UK’s political class has fragmented over issues that are too fundamental to be contained by the party system, and because much of the ideological glue that held British civil society together for two generations no longer sticks. For the Conservative party, the relationship with Europe has been a chronic psychosis. It split Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet in the 1980s, destabilised John Major’s government in the 1990s, then kept the party out of office for 13 years, crashed David Cameron’s premiership, and has now destroyed the credibility of almost every politician associated with the May administration. The sources of Euroscepticism have changed over time. In the early 1970s, there was still nostalgia for the days of empire. By the time of Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges speech in September 1988 (2), it had become a project to restrain the Franco-German impulse towards political union, while maintaining the then EEC (European Economic Community) as a liberalised market in which the British business class could lead a low-wage ‘race to the bottom’. Thirty years on, the business class has itself changed shape. The globalisation of manufacturing, with the financialisation of the world, has produced separate business elites in Britain: a managerial class overseeing the locally based plants of stock-market listed companies such as Nissan, Honda, Airbus and BAE Systems; and a class of money managers, commercial lawyers and property developers who represent the interests of global finance and (unofficially) of corrupt oligarchic power. During the crisis of neoliberalism, the second group called the shots, not just within the Conservative party but through, and across, the media. The relationship was symbolised by the £250,000 annual salary once paid by the owners of the anti-EU Telegraph newspaper to Boris Johnson, before he became May’s foreign secretary, for writing one column a week. After 2008, the money men began to conceive of Britain’s future as primarily a supplier of business, technology and financial services to emerging markets such as China and India, and as the financial manager of the world. A project of ever closer European union wasn’t necessary for that future. Doctrine of ‘global reach’ However, British conservatism is never simply the sum of the intentions of the elite. It has also to incorporate ideas formed in the bars of suburban golf clubs, and in the tearooms of seaside resorts full of retirees. From the mid-2000s, sentiment here became hostile to the restraint Europe-wide regulations imposed on a low-wage, low-regulation capitalism, and intensely hostile to migration. Only one underlying myth could hold together the golfers, the small-town van drivers and the British hedge fund guys domiciled in Dubai: the myth of empire. After the Conservatives took power in 2010, the place to study the evolution of this myth was defence policy. Out of nowhere, and almost without scrutiny, the Conservatives introduced the doctrine of ‘global reach’ that same year: in addition to all its NATO commitments, Britain would build a ‘war-fighting division optimised for high intensity combat operations’ (3). Military planners became obsessed with the idea that, as Britain is a major importing country, its defence must begin with a naval presence in the Singapore Strait. Since austerity had depleted the armed forces, commentators assumed global reach was a political conceit. Its true meaning was revealed once the politi
