Phill Goff has no mandate to be Mayor of Auckland - 39.5 % voter turn out to LOW

Good work everyone great to see Aucklamd is making a stand and deciding not to vote in the latest local body election. Hopefully we can get it down to 35% voter turn out next mayoral election. Currently we're sitting pretty on 39.5% so we're well on our way. Voting is a system that strips away all political expression from everyone living in Auckland. Year in year out we see career politicians like Phill Goof elected to run OUR affairs that the rate payer funds. I have a modest television I mean dream were we can drive down voter participation so low that we can force change in the way our city is run by the council and all those slimy beaurcrats wasting money and achieving fuck all. It really cheers my spirits to see people abandoning voting it is just veiled oppression of the people by big money and national political interests. If voter turn out isn't at 50% it should be declared a vote of no confidence by the public basic bloody stuff. Phill Goff does not have a mandate from the people to make OUR decisions on how to run the city to be blunt he needs to jog on and crawl back underneath that red Tory rock we all paid for!

http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/315243/low-turnout-prompts-online-voting-rethink

Bonded Slave Labour in Thailand Sex Industry

Wow I've been flicking through a book on the new form of slavery in the global economy in the book "Disposable People" by Kevin Bale and it's not a pretty read. Did you know a 'bonded labour' brothel in Thailand makes an average profit of $1 million U.S dollars a year. That's after all bribes and overheads are paid out. Unlike normal brothels were woman 'choose' to work at such places? in a bonded labour brothel a worker must payback an unserviceable debt to their employer. 

The estimated value of the sex trade in Thailand is estimated at around $26.25 billion u.s dollars a conservative estimate. When you read about the horrible working conditions of sex workers in Thailand and the pure form of exploitation of woman it does make you wonder why this is happening, until you factor in all the dirty money made from the industry. Contrary to what you might believe Thailand has enjoyed somewhat strong economic growth over a quite a few decades pulling millions of people out of poverty. Sadly the government and police suffer from systemic latent corruption and are heavily complicit in keeping the gravy chain of the sex industry churning over regardless of the human toll.

I was flabbergasted to hear that in the poorest areas of Thailand the northern mountain range region it is not uncommon recently for parents to sell a daughter to fund the purchase of a new television set. In contrast years ago but not to many a child was sold into slavery only as a last ditch attempt to save a family from destitution. Sadly though with the rampant consumerism taking hold of the Thai nation due to a healthier economy acquiring meaningless material goods is now seen as symbolic of prosperity and are treated as life threatening necessities. 

On a personal not I'm really glad I wasn't sold into slavery to fund a TV set during my youth, and worse still when your bought as a slave you incur a debt that you must pay back for your families sake as they are liable too. In the breakdown you get sold into slavery, your parents get paid the average $2000 dollars or less by the trafficker then you the newly coined slave have to pay it all back on-top of interest and all your expenses. Meaning that your value in reality when your sold is virtual nothing. Furthermore when it's all counted up all the labour you could've provided your family on the farm and domestically by remaining at home means that your parents don't even break even on the sale of their child! 

If you want to check out "Disposable People" here is the link: https://www.amazon.com/Disposable-People-Slave…/…/0520272919

Google and Facebook may be our best defenders against Big Brother - Doubt It

John Hurt as Winston Smith in the movie Nineteen Eighty-Four. Photograph: The Ronald Grant Archive

Link to Original Article: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/10/google-facebook-big-brother-reforms-data?commentpage=1

My Personal Reply:

Boo-Who Google don't have a monopoly on one Particular in the World
Although I don't want to be a cynic, as a young person I detest all companies either multi-national or the facade of modern government being allowed to surveil the public. In the common law there is such a thing as "the reasonable person". The civic figure (apparently the past tense is more relevant) was a person that symbolised the general views and opinion of society. And although I am not a great fan of society, I believe "the reasonable person" should not be monitored like a vanguard criminal. Perhaps a pertinent metaphor for everyone engaging in computer activities in the present tense is not unlike a bank robber. At least thats how I feel with a compute mouse in my hand I mean a stick of dynamite wired to the mainframe of the morons door running the world. At any rate I'm a deeply sceptical of the moral motivations of Google and Facebook. No doubt being denied a monopoly over their own "fibre optics" has been a truly new sensation to them. I'm glad those corporate capitalist monstrosities are suffering and not just the people around the world. Moss Bioletti Auckland, New Zealand

Jemima Kiss

Over a few weeks' worth of bedtimes in the summer of 1984, my dad read me Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Though the dystopian context would have been lost on nine-year old me, the pervasive malevolence and the futility of the struggle was not.

References to Orwell are never far off today, whether to Big Brother and the surveillance society, or doublethink and Room 101. The Orwellian dystopia is so familiar now to us – and so astonishingly real – that we might need a new cultural reference, a new literary vision to warn of what lies ahead.

It's the relentless creep of progress and development that inevitably makes our worst nightmares and most brilliant visions a reality. Fifty years ago, security expert Eugene Kaspersky told a conference last week, the public would have been protesting on the streets at the idea that cameras would be surveilling every public placeacross the country, all day, every day. Today, we just accept it.

At the same conference, Dublin's Web Summit, the vast audience in the hangar-sized hall was asked how many had abandoned consumer web companies in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations. Three people put up their hands – and this among well-informed, technologically confident people.

The gap between the shock of these revelations and the call to action is perverse. The story is huge, multifaceted and complex, which excludes all but the most committed. For others, the truth about services on which they are utterly dependent – we are all utterly dependent – is too inconvenient to want to act; far easier to declare, "I'm not doing anything wrong," and, "I don't care if I'm being watched."

In truth, the call to action is not that we consumers abandon our online lives and seek out anonymity tools such as Tor, or start encrypting all our email using PGP. It's no bad thing that more sophisticated security techniques are seeping into the mainstream consciousness; gleeful pub conversations about our how mobile phones double as microphones and how even the subtle differences in the sound of typewriter keys can be decoded. Kaspersky has his own currency of expertise to maintain, and he too recounts how he won't store any compromising data on a computer at all.

This is borne out by the testimony of the tech investors at Web Summit too. "We're just not looking for privacy-aware services," said Brad Burnham of Union Square Ventures. "There are so many compelling examples of value being created by sharing data, from traffic jams to healthcare. The problem isn't privacy but trust. We can't retreat into the dark ages." That means spending time influencing policy, he concluded. Entrepreneurs were falling over themselves to testify to their fierce protection of customer data; taxi-app Hailo is building up records of payment details combined with location data for account holders, whileEvernote records increasingly extensive personal notes covering everything from bank statements to work meetings. Both say they have not handed over customer data outside of specific warrants but as we now know, the NSA doesn't need permission – it will help itself. What are you sharing online?

The crisis is in public trust of both our governments – who, when it suits them, will seize the opportunity to criticise oppressive regimes who restrict free speech — and corporations whose reputation depends on credibility and trust. European nations have generally set up rigorous laws to protect their citizens from business, while its governments rely on the trust and goodwill of the public. In the US that situation is reversed, with citizens protected from government through the constitution, and business commercially dependent on trust, among other things. The lack of oversight and accountability has meant the security services never had to draw the line about what is acceptable, necessary, moral and legal.

This dynamic of corporate autonomy may end up creating the strongest fightback against the over-reaching security services, with Google and Yahoo's fury at the intercepts of their data networks and heavy lobbying in Washington. "We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fibre networks," said Google's chief legal officer David Drummond. "It underscores the need for urgent reform."

Surveillance is the undercurrent in every tech conversation now, a lens for understanding our vulnerability and exposure to every part of the online world. This is not a choice between catching terrorists and what David Cameron astonishingly described as some "la-di-da, airy fairy" views on free speech and the right to privacy. If we are happy to accept that our online lives are best represented by Google, Skype, Yahoo, Facebook and all the rest, despite the compromises we make on those commercial platforms, then we have to hope they have the best chance of clawing back our right to free expression and privacy, our right to relate the world around us without being watched.

Returning to Orwell, what will the state of our surveillance nation be in 2031? The worst that can happen is that the whole lot comes true.