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Category: WorldAffairs

The Leviathan and the Whale: How Blocs Are Our Last, Best (and Probably Failing) Hope Against Corporate Overlords
Right, let’s talk survival in the 21st century. It’s not enough to be a nation anymore; you’re either part of a gang, or you’re shark bait. I’m talking about the “blocs” – the EU, NATO, whatever economic pact is flavor of the week. And then you have the “whales,” the tech titans, the financial behemoths, those unelected corporate leviathans that are turning us all into their personal playthings. It’s a messed-up world, and frankly, if you’re not in a bloc, you might as well be wearing a “kick me” sign on your back.

The Blocs: Necessary Evil or Just Evil?

Let’s face it, the whole “bloc” thing is a bit of a con. Nations, puffed up with their ancient flags and national anthems, huddling together for “strength in unity.” It’s a bit like watching toddlers build a fort to keep out the neighborhood bully. Sure, they might look formidable on paper with their “shared interests” and “collective defense” buzzwords, but it usually boils down to bureaucratic nightmares and compromised sovereignty. But, let’s be honest, in this shark tank, you need a bigger boat, even if the boat’s leaking.
- The Necessity of the Gang: Let’s be brutally frank. If you’re a mid-sized country not named “USA” or “China,” you’re basically a tasty treat for the whales, unless you have bloc protection. These corporations can – and will – exploit your resources, manipulate your markets, and influence your politics until you’re a hollowed-out shell. So, being in a bloc? Kind of a necessary evil, like a poorly-maintained shield against the corporate hordes.
- Bureaucracy: A Feature, Not a Bug: However, blocs, by their very nature, are bureaucratic monsters. They are slow, lumbering, and about as agile as a three-legged elephant. Decision-making gets bogged down in endless meetings, while the whales, light on their feet, dance circles around them, gobbling up whatever they want.
The Whales: Unstoppable, Untouchable, and Unethical

And then, of course, we have the whales. They are the true power brokers of the 21st century. These companies control our information, our communication, and increasingly, our finances. They’re not constrained by borders, constitutions, or any pesky notions of human rights. They are profit-maximizing, data-hoarding, algorithm-wielding machines, and you’re all just pieces on their digital gameboard.

They operate in a realm where accountability is a quaint myth, and their only loyalty is to their bottom line. You don’t elect them, you can’t vote them out, and any attempts at regulation just seem to make them stronger. They’re the digital equivalent of a natural disaster, and we’re all just trying to build sandcastles on the beach.

Civil Liberties: Gone With the Tide?

So, how are these power plays impacting your everyday life? You guessed it – badly. Here’s a grim recap:
1. Unaccountability: The Whale’s Favorite Sport: The whales play by their own rules and have no need to justify their actions. They collect your data, manipulate your emotions, and push you around without ever facing any consequences. They are untouchable. They don’t even pretend to give a damn. [1]
2. Democracy, A Relic of the Past: Whales are practically buying politicians in bulk. Your elected representatives are like puppets, doing whatever their corporate masters tell them to do. They’re just there to offer the illusion of democracy, while the real power resides in the boardrooms of the whales. [2]
3. Social Media: The Brainwashing Machine: Platforms like Facebook, X, YouTube aren’t platforms; they’re carefully designed propaganda machines. They amplify the worst of humanity while suppressing dissent, all in the name of engagement and profit. And the digital barons? They’re fine with this, as long as the clicks keep coming. [3]
4. Privacy: What Privacy?: Big Tech views your data as their personal piggy bank. They collect it, sell it, and use it to manipulate you, all under the guise of “personalized experience.” And you? You’re just giving it all away. For “free” access to their services. [4]
5. Censorship: By Algorithm: The whales now decide what information you get to see, and what you don’t. They’re the gatekeepers of the internet, and they’re not exactly fair-minded about it. And if they disagree with your views, well, too bad, they will just ban you. [5]
The Bloc’s Dilemma: Be Big, Be Agile. Can It Be Done?

So, the challenge for nations is clear: you need to be in a bloc for protection, but blocs tend to be slow and cumbersome. The central problem? How do you create a large, powerful entity (a bloc) that also has the agility and dynamism of a smaller, more flexible entity?

It’s like trying to design a cargo ship that can also win a speed boat race. It’s a contradiction, but that’s the bind we’re in.

A Few (Probably Futile) Ideas

So, what to do? It’s a long shot, but here’s the plan:
- Demand Actual Democracy: Seriously, make politicians earn their keep, not the corporations.
- Regulate the Whales: Enact real laws with real teeth to keep these corporations in check. And don’t let them “self-regulate”. That is like asking the wolf to guard the sheep.
- Become Social Media Literate: Learn how to spot the scams and manipulation tactics of social media. And then spread the word.
- Fight for Privacy: Stop giving away your personal information for free.
- Support the Resistance: Find the people trying to challenge the status quo and back them, whatever it takes.
The Grim Conclusion

Look, we’re not in a good place. We’re being squeezed between lumbering blocs and power-hungry whales. The odds are stacked against us. But if we don’t start demanding change, we’re all going to be swimming in data and propaganda, and no one will even remember what “freedom” meant in the first place. So, get angry, get organized, and get ready to fight – because no one else is going to do it for you.

References:

[1] Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. PublicAffairs, 2019.
[2] Lessig, Lawrence. Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It. Twelve, 2011.
[3] Vaidhyanathan, Siva. Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy. Oxford University Press, 2018.
[4] Lyon, David. Surveillance after Snowden. Polity, 2015.
[5] Morozov, Evgeny. The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. PublicAffairs, 2011.
18 January 2025
Three thoughts on April 14.

I probably could have had a better, more clicky title.

Can the crowd save the world?

My wife and I had a BBQ today. It started out as my idea and it worked beautifully, the end, it was ‘our’ BBQ – everyone who attended.

At one point there were going to be 50 people coming to it – our friends their families.

Catering would be expensive for one person to shoulder. So we said –

bring some food for you all and a little extra for the table.

And that’s what everyone did – some folk brought more than a little and some brought less. But there was plenty for everyone without a strain on anyone.

Even better was lots of people offered to help with this and that, it became a group BBQ. Very few of them knew each other and I didn’t know everyone that came either.

Might a model like this work for the world – could a simple thing like “do your weekly shop and spend 10% more towards the weekly food needs for the homeless” transform localised food inequality?

What would happen if for every €10 spent to educate a child in the wealthiest countries, €1 was contributed to a practical, effecient fund to educate a child in the less wealthy countries.

You see where I’m going with this.

Should we be removing dents in the world instead?

I read this by Fred Destin and it made me think ‘dent in the world???’

It’s a reference to Steve Jobs’ famous ding / dent in the Universe quote

“We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?

Perhaps we aren’t here to put a dent in the Universe.

Perhaps the universe is already dented – blasted by human, environmental and ecological assault. Dents that lend to our World’s broken-ness.

Corruption, wealth inequality, man-made ecological and environmental destruction, slavery, the disconnection of humanity from itself all seem like major dents to me.

Perhaps we are each here to smooth out the dents or at the very least not make them worse?

Can we get to a new world by using the same thinking that got us to this one?

My friend Doug Scott and I chat alot about “Kansas has been destroyed”.

The ‘Kansas’ we mean is in reference to The Wizard of Oz – where Dorothy is swept away from Kansas by a powerful hurricane, and taken to the magical land of Oz and all she wants to do is get back to where she came.

Doug and I speak of a New ‘Oz’ like world, significantly different from this one (which is Kansas) – operates on radically different principles, structures and purpose.

I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that this world of the pursuit of unlimited growth, profit is entirely unsustainable, that a new world is possible and urgently required and the strongest possibility to create it is by discovering, connecting and empowering more #linkybrains in our population.

If you don’t know what a LinkyBrain is – go read this.

Now imagine a world with 100 Elon Musks (Elon, being as Linky as they come!), each working on 3 of the most pressing challenges facing our world, with the urgency, creativity and resources of the Elon Musk we currently have.

Imagine 1000 or 10000 or 10 million Elon Musks.

But can we get their with the structures, language, rules, motivations and processes that we currently have?

What do you think?

15 April 2018
I can't write about colonialism or the Commonwealth

I’ve been trying, without success, for the last month to write a blog post on the curse of colonialism and the abomination that is the Commonwealth.

As I explore my thoughts and organise them into something coherent, I become paralysed by the scale of the destruction that the UK has wreaked and continues to wreak with its imperial history.

Britain has truly changed the world, in a way that world is worse off.

From language to cultural identity, to the idea of sovereignty – colonialism shifted it all. From the idea of what is beautiful, to who is intelligent – Britain orchestrated a deliberate collective mind-fuck through time and space bending and breaking once powerful cultures to its shallow, defunct own.

So, I can’t write about this right now, partly because of the scale and mostly because I am so incredibly sad about it.

Perhaps one day.

12 January 2018
I finally get Trump

From the moment Donald Trump threw his hat into the US presidential campaign back in June 2015 until his controversial win in November 2016, I’ve experienced a range of emotions from hilarity, incredulity, fear, disappointment and now – lingering sadness and disappointment.

Why do I care, why do any of us – non-Americans – care what happens in American politics. Are we obsessed and chattering about Ugandan elections – such as they are – or Indonesia? Or any other country for that matter?

We care because America has been the military, cultural, economic – and therefore – global political empire of the last 70 years. “Has been” is the key part here – this empire is dying – there is no doubt about that. Every empire ends, regardless of how long, how great or how wide its sphere of influence.

I – like the rest – of the world expected a certain type of global leadership from the President of the United States. In part, this expectation has been set by history. With a few exceptions (ahem, George ‘Dubya’ Bush), American presidents and their administrations have maintained the global status quo – dealing respectfully with their allies and being the leader that was needed.

Not anymore. Trump is not maintaining the status quo, not in any sphere of his administration. He has asset stripping CEOs in his cabinet, Russian-buddying, obviously dodgy-as-fuck campaign managers. His administration pursues policies that devalue life, hurt innocent people, create divisions and actively demonstrates aggression to everyone.

Personally, he seems to have the morals of a brothel keeper, no sense of decorum, very little social skill, is unwilling to listen, extremely egotistical and seems to have very little goodness. He even fails at the very basic requirement of the office – being there as a voice of reason, measure and comfort for his country when it experiences tragedy.

I finally get him. He is a terrible United States President.
He is also the best one to catalyse the demise of this dying empire.

His latest ( 5/Dec/2017) – bucking of convention is to announce that the US administration is recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. This is causing huge anger and response from pretty much every corner of the political space.

Jerusalem is central to three of the worlds big religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It’s dumb and shouldn’t matter who controls it politically, but the Muslim world wants a piece of it under Muslim control through the stalled peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The hitherto best chance for peace between those two is a two state solution with shared control i.e. division, of Jerusalem. Israelis and their obsession with ‘the chosen people and special relationship with God’ narrative claim an ‘undivided Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people’.

But back to Trump – he is a simple man. Some may even say, simple minded. He is a pussy grabbing, McDonald’s munching, unashamed capitalist and his administration is driven – perhaps more than any other previous one – by his own personal narrow world view. This world-view, like most people is informed by those we hang around with, what we hear and are exposed to daily. By our relationships.

He is very much pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he be? the world of finance and big business in the US and especially in New York is awash with Jewish and pro-Israeli relationships. Truth be told, so it has always been. The Clintons, Obama, Bush etc have all had deeper relationships – personal and professionally with pro-Israeli people compared to pro-peace/pro-Palestinian people.

So – Trump says ‘Jerusalem is Israel’s capital’. This is stating the obvious. The US will recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – so what? Trump spouting it doesn’t magically make it so.

Jerusalem is already Israel’s capital.
The Israelis treat it as such and no amount of condemnation or support is going to change that. Will other countries follow suit – I strongly doubt it – no Arab/Muslim country that has diplomatic ties with Israel will be moving their embassies to Jerusalem. The Germans might, but they would anyway – because of the perpetual national guilt they carry for the Holocaust. Will the UK? Probably not – they are facing Brexit and looking to increase trade with many Muslim countries to mitigate that disaster – now is hardly the time to court more controversy.

China and India have so far been very diplomatic about it all but have their own global ambitions. Russia picks its fights very carefully and this is not one it is interested in and besides, for countries like China, Russia and India, being led on this by the US is not a reasonable part of their big global ambitions, it would show subservience, not independence.

What happens when any nation strays too far beyond the range of acceptable behaviour? Unfailingly, they get sidelined. The UK and Spain are prime examples, post Ottoman Turkey is another. Their relevance as global powers are questioned, their standing in the family of nations diminishes whether they choose to recognise it.

From domestic gun control to global climate change, from tackling wealth inequality in the US to North Korea, Iran and Cuba – Trump has shown he is willing to do the unreasonable thing. He has nearly done enough for the rest of the world’s nations to sideline him and his country, nearly enough to seal the irrelevance of their leadership.

So, I get it. Trump is the driver of the United States’ unrelenting , full-speed trajectory to global mediocrity. That is a better and more achievable definition of Making America Great Again. By ‘great’ meaning back to living in its own bubble and helping the world by not being able to fuck it up. I, for one, welcome it.

7 December 2017
Day 1: I am Rohingya #51Days

Today as part of my #51days act of solidarity, I shall change my twitter profile to

‘I am Rohingya”

The Rohingya are an ethnic group that live in Myanmar – formerly Burma – they are mostly Muslims in a country that is predominantly Buddhist.

For a toxic mix of reasons – ranging from religious difference, land grab, ethnic hatred to simply being – the Rohingya have been persecuted almost out of existence. First by successive military juntas and now from a democratically elected government itself led by a former political prisoner and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Rohingya seem to be the favorite whipping boy of everyone with power in Myanmar and the world seems mostly deaf and mute to their persecution.

Myanmar is signatory to multiple human right treaties and conventions – pretty much all the ones that matter. It has obligations to protect the rights of indigenous people, women, children, the disabled and pretty much everyone in its jurisdiction.

The Rohingya do not deserve to be murdered, their women raped, their leaders tortured and disappeared. No one does. If they have committed a crime – charge and apply the law against them. To the best of my knowledge, their only crime, as a group, is to exist.

The violence and discrimination is both by agents of the Myanmar start under the pretense of security and by private militias with the tacit and often, active, support of the State.

Today, I stand with the Rohingya.

Please learn more about this here: http://www.rohingya.org/portal/

Photo by AK Rockefeller

6 November 2016
51 days of solidarity and advocacy.

There are 51 days until Christmas 2016.

For each of those days,I will change my name on Twitter to reflect a cause I want to support and bring some attention in a small way.

Why?

There is so much wrong with the world. There is so much that is right too.
We are each nodes in a big network of humanity and when we refuse to pass on the right or suppress the wrong, we degrade the network. It stops working and it lets the mundane overshadow the truly meaningful.

But I’m only a node and over the next 51 days, I’m going to be a little better at being that.

How?

I’m pretty active on Twitter. I blog about things that interest me, I jump into conversations, I rant. My tweets are shared, liked and retweeted that creates reach beyond the 3000+ people that follow me. A change in name – especially one that provokes curiosity spreads my message. It might just provoke the right action from the right person.

What can I do to help?

Retweet me, like my tweets.
Tweet about this action – if you support the same cause or simply want to support my activism.
Share this post.
Share the messages that have the hashtag #51days – they will be about the issue of the day.
Join me – if you’re on Twitter, change your twitter name in solidarity.

Or simply just share about this stupid thing Mike is doing now.

It all helps.

Just. Don’t. Do. Nothing.

Photo by OnTask

Photo by jared

6 November 2016
Je suis Souleymane

A recent incident on the Paris Métro has troubled me ever since I heard the story. Let me summarise what I’ve read from the media.

Three men were in a fairly crowded carriage on the Paris’ Metro. Along came a commuter who tried to board the carriage, he was visibly blocked from entering the carriage and then shoved out entirely. The commuter made another attempt to board the train and was again shoved out.

It further turns out that the commuter , whose name is Souleymane , is black and the people who shoved him from the train were white – apparently British football fans in town for a Chelsea vs Paris St. – Germaine game. They also sang a racist chant after they forcibly prevented him from boarding.

The entire incident was captured both on the stations CCTV and by a bystander with a phone – in colour and with sound.

Restricted Solidarity

This incident follows only a few weeks after alleged religious extremists killed 7 people in various seemingly coordinated attacks on Paris , including at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo – prompting a monumental outpouring of solidarity under the banner of ‘Je suis Charlie’

I am curious to understand why – at a time of heightened awareness of what Parisian society will tolerate – no one spoke out on the train. Why no one challenged these racists. Why no one stood with Souleymane in defiance of this oppression.

Why wasn’t there solidarity for Souleymane?

Parisians are apparently “shocked” by this incident – the racism, not the lack of intervention. But post-event shock is no longer enough – When will shock turn to action?

Bystander Apathy

There is a social phenomenon called ‘Bystander Apathy’ where, in a group of people witnessing some event that requires action – no one seems prepared to act. This has been observed in some pretty vicious crime – physical and sexual assaults and worse, murder. They’ve happened in broad daylight and often in crowded places like trains and stations.

It is phenomenon that also happens in business and professional settings too. There is often work or actions to be taken and even when they are obviously laid out, no one steps up to take responsibility. It is a curious phenomenon indeed.

Was this at play during the Metro incident – how can it be avoided?

What kind of society do you want?

There is a curious saying that goes –

You get what you are willing to accept

I have often pondered what it means and it seems this incidence really touches at the heart of the matter.

If I am willing for bullies under any guise – race, religion, gender, economics – to trample on my fellow human being then they will and once they start unchallenged, they won’t stop and then- perhaps one day – they will try and trample on me.

I think what would I have done on that Metro and without a shadow of a doubt I would have spoken up for Souleymane. If it came to blows, I would have fought for Souleymane. Just as much for Souleymane as for the society I want to see and for my children to grow up in.

I’ve stopped trying to save the world, but if I can make my street , neighbourhood, city better – even by a tiny bit – I would have the moved the world along.

If we are break out from this apathy, we must be prepared to stand together against things that we believe are unjust. Everyday.

What would you have done?

Photo by JBrazito

26 February 2015
#MH370 – Are we believing our own hype?

By: Forest and Kim Starr – CC BY 2.0

As the painstaking search for MH370 continues and as families wait desperately for news – any news – of the fate of their loved ones, I can’t help but think we are in a dangerous mindset as a global community – that we are believing the hype of what we can and cannot do as a global civilisation.

Fact has merged with fiction – science fiction especially – and we now think that we have capabilities that will fix any and every thing.

What we believe we have is not what we have

Ongoing revelations of the capabilities of Intelligence agencies to spy on and store everything from everyone all the time add to the illusion that all information about everything is known or even knowable. It serves Big Brother well for us to think this – it curtails what we say and to whom. Fighting this is the core of the privacy movement.

From Hollywood we get the continual onslaught of militaristic salvation – any threat from anywhere will be defeated by our armies and our brave warriors – even if those are super heroes from comic books. We can carpet bomb, annihilate with nuclear devastation. We can even explore distant planets and keep in constant touch with our robotic vehicles on them.

Advances in medicine are offering promising defences against our micro-predators – we may soon even defeat aging. Technology is giving us exponentially faster, more ‘intelligence’ gadgets that give us more control on our architected environments and our man-made infrastructure.

All this unavoidably seeds the thought that, as a civilisation, are invincible – even if those capabilities are not actually universally available or applied. But nevertheless, there is a sense that when something truly tragic happens, we can harness our global capabilities to save lives and triumph in the adversity. But sadly, we can’t. The best we can do is pick up the pieces of disaster.

In reality – whilst we are not in the Dark Ages, we are still a small player in this big world. We are as nothing to the whims of weather. In the battle for planet Earth, she will always win, even if that means we become extinct. When we raise alarm about climate change, global warming and rising sea levels, it is not because we fear for the planet. We fear for ourselves and life as we know it.

Once upon a time, we knew our place in the system

Hundreds of years ago, when science was still in its infancy and knowledge was in the hands of relatively few people and the distribution network was basic at best, humans accepted – more easily- that tragedy happens and there is nothing we could do about it.

Ships would go out into the treacherous open oceans and may never return – the ocean bed is littered with unheard cries for rescue and salvation. As desperate as it sounds, humans had a more realistic understand of what they were capable of.

We knew our place within the system. Our place has not really changed – we have no more real responsibility than we ever had, we instead have increased our ability to meet the responsibility we have always had. Neither has the consequence of disrupting the balance of the our natural systems changed. Earth will whip our collective asses in the same ways – only the effects on us will be more devastating.

Be kind to the people who are doing their best

Against the backdrop of this misplaced belief that we can find anything are the people who are actually looking. They are discovering first hand that what they thought they had doesn’t really cut it. Hundreds of people using truely sophisticated technology – some so secret, we can only guess – are discovering that all this tech isn’t yielding any more than speculation.

The Malaysian government – as politically dysfunctional as any – are trying to do the best they can. But they are clueless – not because of a lack of competence – but because there really aren’t that many clues and even fewer promising ones. If everyone is grasping at straws, perhaps it is because there are only straws.

So let’s be kinder to them and everyone involved in both addressing the tragedy and breaking the news to us that we are believing our own delusions of invincibility. Perhaps we would be better engaged in trying to understand what we think we can do versus what we actually can do.

Will we ever find MH370 – I don’t know, I sincerely hope we do. Finding this plane – in whatever state it is in will ease the pain of not knowing for the desperate families of the passengers and crew.

Hope is what fuels us through adversity. We must be hopeful that we can be better and do better, but it mustn’t blind us to the false hope in capabilities we do not yet possess, because life and nature will call our bluff over and over again.

22 March 2014
What happens on #Twitter when someone like #Mandela dies

I was going to title this post – ‘What billions of silent voices screaming at the same time look like’ – but it seemed too dramatic.

As I was about to release the pre-beta of my new app Hashies, the news came on the wire that Nelson Mandela had died. I wasn’t particularly shocked – more relieved actually. I do feel like I have lost a beloved grandfather – I think most of the world feels the same. But in the last few months, the situation around him and the media frenzy was grotesque to say the least. I wished nothing more than a peaceful passing on for Mr Mandela and when it came I felt only relief and gratitude for a beautiful brave life.

Hashies tracks what people are saying on a hashtag in near real time. Given the news, ‘#Mandela’ seemed the way to go. Before I heard the news – it was going to be ‘#JustinBeiber’ – glad it wasn’t!

Enough said, here is what it looked like.

And just to be sure – there is no one quite like Mr Mandela. And there is unlikely to ever be. RIP Madiba.

6 December 2013
We Are Frogs in a Pot

Image may be subject to copyright.

Climate change is a no brainer.

There are 6+ billion human frogs and untold number of other species in this pot we call earth and it is literally boiling – slowly but surely.

Yet, some are noticing it and raising the alarm, others notice and wish it would go away and , by simple reason, there must be some who genuinely don’t think there is a problem – they are happily doing backstrokes while the temperature rises.

There are some who think that maybe something is happening and it’s all natural – part of a rather long cycle that our current data doesn’t cover and there really is nothing to worry about. Personally I don’t buy this – even if this were true, the outcomes of those ‘natural’ long cyclic events have not been experienced in mankind’s time on Earth and from what we can observe so far, it will be catastrophic for us – all of us.

Personally, I think we are huge contributors to either the pace of the adverse changes or the intensity or both. Frankly, to think we played *no* role in it would be an enormous case of willful blindness. Ultimately it doesn’t matter whether we did – aside from figuring out what we are doing and reducing it – what matters now is that these changes are happening and we need to figure out how to cope with their effects in terms of avoiding mass destruction and loss of lives.

I’m really worried about this and feel pretty powerless mostly because it seems to me to be an all or nothing deal – either we all work to reduce the effects or we do nothing. Scary.

Are you worried by adverse climate change? Share them and let’s see what we can do together. Tweet or comment below.

14 October 2013