Showing posts with label Big Brother. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Big Brother. Show all posts

Monday, February 6, 2023

Florida's Big Brother Says Hide Those Books Or Go To Jail

 

You would think that George Orwell had Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in mind when he wrote 1984. Of course he didn't, but like a painter who has found a perfect model, DeSantis would have been Orwell's ideal standard for Big Brother. Yes, the despot DeSantis is a certified dictator borne out by the fact that in this case, Florida teachers have to hide perfectly acceptable books to a fair-minded person, but not to the unbalanced bunch that governs the dubious sunshine state. 

Here's the scenario from The Washington Post...

"Students arrived in some Florida public school classrooms this month to find their teachers’ bookshelves wrapped in paper — or entirely barren of books — after district officials launched a review of the texts’ appropriateness under a new state law." 
It seems, "the State Board of Education ruled that a law restricting the books a district may possess applies not only to schoolwide libraries but to teachers’ classroom collections, too." It "mandates that schools’ books be age-appropriate, free from pornography and 'suited to student needs.'” Get this, they have to "be approved by a qualified school media specialist." This person apparently receives training from the duly appointed minions of, who else, Ron DeSantis.

'Outrageous': Don Lemon reacts to Florida book law championed by DeSantis...


This all comes down to the fact that these frustrated teachers cannot order books for over a year. And in many cases it is the interpretation of the law in what is bad and what is good by a radical right that confuses teachers. And would you believe, if any teacher errs in the display or use of books, DeSantis the destroyer doesn't approve of, they could face up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine? And here are the results...
Marie Masferrer, a board member of the Florida Association for Media in Education and a school librarian. says former colleagues have told her that students are struggling.

First, Ron DeSantis aids and abets in the deaths of 84,927 Covid pandemic deaths, along with 7,443,954 cases of the virus. Now, the delusional DeSantis wants to put teachers in prison for teaching their students. According to Market Realist, Florida faces a teacher shortage of over 9,000 unfilled positions. It can only get worse as long as Florida is run by a dictator.

READ MORE...

 

Thursday, March 12, 2020

Trump just causes more confusion with coronavirus speech


Donald Trump tries to paint a rosy picture of the coronavirus pandemic rather than addressing its real status and working towards a solution...

Image result for dufusThe White House dufus might as well have stayed in the residence and tweeted out more malarky rather than get before a television audience of millions and make a fool of himself. That, plus complete confusion on his plans, which seem to just flee off the top of his head while he's talking. Here is what he said...
"The virus will not have a chance against us. No nation is more prepared or more resilient than the United States," the President said, before painting a rosy picture of an economy that is already taking a beating from the virus fallout.
The chance coronavirus doesn't have against us is already past the point of threatening the United States with over 1,000 cases and 33 deaths from the virus. And the fact that this is increasing regularly. T-rump thinks a travel ban will be his liberator, but as he implements band-aids like this, American citizens go untested. 1,900 in U.S. compared to 140,000 in South Korea. Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois commented...
"I don't think anyone is going to leave that briefing [Thurs. for both chambers of Congress] satisfied with what's going on with testing right now ... bottom line, you leave that briefing and we are not where we need to be and not sure when we are going to get there. We are flying blind."
Incompetence and Big Brother collide, 

Trump embraces Big Brother again


With coronavirus now deemed a pandemic by WHO, Donald Trump is hiding certain pertinent info on the disease from staff, Americans and the world...

See the source imageJust when transparency is the most needed, the Oval Office lunatic has decided to classify "top-level coronavirus meetings," where decisions are made and judgments decided that should be known throughout the government structure. It is also information that should be shared with the American public and made available to other world leaders to help contain the virus. Here's the scenario...
"officials said that dozens of classified discussions about such topics as the scope of infections, quarantines and travel restrictions have been held since mid-January in a high-security meeting room at the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), a key player in the fight against the coronavirus."
Reuter's reported, "Staffers without security clearances, including government experts, were excluded from the interagency meetings." An official commented...
“We had some very critical people who did not have security clearances who could not go. These should not be classified meetings. It was unnecessary.”
 Hiding "the scope of infections" from those charged with maintaining control of coronavirus seems unconscionable in light of Donald Trump's completely inept response to the situation from the beginning, just adding more roadblocks to bringing it under control in the United States. According to CNBC it was...
"the National Security Council (NSC), which advises the president on security issues, ordered the classification. “This came directly from the White House.”
Only the "proles" can defeat Donald Trump in November...


By putting a lid on specific information, it could delay response to the crisis. It also illustrates to what lengths Donald Trump will go to protect his favorability rating leading into November. And then an NSC spokesman confused the issue by defending the administration's move but with a mixed reply on...
"transparency across federal agencies and noted that meetings of the administration’s task force on the coronavirus all are unclassified. It was not immediately clear which meetings he was referring to."
Here's CNBC's opinion of the Trump administration on coronavirus transparency...
"Critics have hammered the Trump administration for what they see as a delayed response to coronavirus outbreaks and a lack of transparency, including sidelining experts and providing misleading or incomplete information to the public. State and local officials also have complained of being kept in the dark about essential federal response information."
Image result for big brother and trump 

Common Dreams added...
Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale epidemiologist who has been publicly critical of Trump's response to the coronavirus outbreak, tweeted Wednesday that Trump's order to classify coronavirus meetings shows the president is "trying to cover his tracks" as he continues to face backlash over his handling of the outbreak.
 "Yes, Donald Trump has botched the response to coronavirus pandemic," said Gonsalves. "But classifying deliberations makes it harder for health experts in government without security clearances to be in key meetings."
"This is unprecedented, unnecessary, and damages our ability to respond to the pandemic," Gonsalves added.
In George Orwell's 1984, in the beginning, the government would pick and choose what information it wanted the Proles to know. Then it swooped down and they were surrounded by a world of complete disinformation, controlling everything they were to know. 

Thursday, March 30, 2017

Trump Internet privacy action spells doom called BIG BROTHER


I worked in the junk mail industry for over 35 years and can vouch for the fact that your personal data is neither private nor is it protected to the extent it should be. So, it comes as no surprise to me that the Congress has just sent Donald Trump legislation that literally obliterates any advances in privacy that former President Obama was able to get passed. Here's the Washington Post's coverage of that milestone by the Federal Communications Commission. It blocked many of the plans of...
"...AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, which had hoped to use their privileged access to user data to build lucrative businesses by targeting advertising across multiple devices."
The greed for data is never-ending and many people ask me, why do you keep harping over the loss of more personal information like this if you claim that most of it is already out there...all over the world? My answer is the same when questioned about my advocacy for gun control, stating that putting more guns on the street won't help the problem like the NRA claims. It just results in more violent deaths as we've seen. Likewise, putting more personal data out there is a huge benefit to businesses wanting to track your personal data, but can end up resulting in more identity theft.

The simplest amount of private information can benefit the identity thieves in finding your most personal and exclusive data, like bank records, passwords, investments, etc. That small need is no more than name and date of birth. That's right, that small measure of data can be matched to your address, which is available everywhere including Facebook, which turns the crooks on to all the bells and whistles they use to walk right into your bank account. If you have never been to the Internet Underground take a look. You'll find your Social security number there if you look hard enough.

So, the Republican morons of Congress, because they want no obstacles in the way of corporate profit, have opened the door to "...what companies could do with information such as customer browsing habits, app usage history, location data and Social Security numbers..." by freeing the likes of AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from earlier restrictions. Here's more from the Senate...
"The Senate has already voted to nullify those measures, which were set to take effect at the end of this year. If Trump signs the legislation as expected, providers will be able to monitor their customers’ behavior online and, without their permission, use their personal and financial information to sell highly targeted ads — making them rivals to Google and Facebook in the $83 billion online advertising market."
Your personal data is sold to junk mail companies for solo offers and their catalog mailings which are in the billions every year. It also goes to other marketers and the financial industry, providing all of them the information necessary to come up with a profile of you that is so scary, it challenges the imagination. It's called targeting, and companies are getting so good that they can very accurately predict the results from any advertising campaign. And get this...
""...the Federal Communications Commission, which initially drafted the protections, will be forbidden from issuing similar rules in the future."
In other words, you no longer have even the minimum of protections, and I would make a bet right now, identity theft incidences will start climbing and 2017 could be a banner year.

Want to know what happens the minute you open your browser and start searching? How-To Geek explains the whole process...
"...your web browser stores data about your browsing history. When you visit a website, your browser logs that visit in your browser history, saves cookies from the website, and stores form data it can autocomplete later. It also saves other information, such as a history of files you’ve downloaded, passwords you’ve chosen to save, searches you’ve entered in your browser’s address bar, and bits of web pages to speed page load times in the future (also known as the cache)."
After reading this, think all is lost? Not really if you choose to use Chrome's "Incognito" window, or Private Browsing, or InPrivate Browsing, sites that will improve your ability to stay private, but are not proof positive. As an example, here is Incognito's caveat...
"Pages you view in incognito tabs won’t stick around in your browser’s history, cookie store, or search history after you’ve closed all of your incognito tabs. Any files you download or bookmarks you create will be kept.
However, you aren’t invisible. Going incognito doesn’t hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, or the websites you visit."
So, with Donald Trump in the White House and as long as Republicans have control of Congress, my advice to you, and also from the top privacy advocates, GO INCOGNITO OR PRIVATE! 

If you're not completely sure yet, read this admonition from Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy...
“Today’s vote means that Americans will never be safe online from having their most personal details stealthily scrutinized and sold to the highest bidder.”
Privacy advocates have been attempting to convince the public for years to be careful who they give their private information to, especially things like your Social Security number and driver license number. Either of those numbers plus a name and address is an invitation for identity thieves to come in and help themselves to everything personal about you. Of course there is some credibility to the fact that the use of this data could help marketers to better target your needs. The problem with these people is, they never know when enough is enough. And the consumer is always the one who suffers.

By the way, the changes in the privacy rules were brought to you by none other than our do-willie Arizona Senator, Jeff Flake, who certainly lives up to his last name. He has been in office for three years and was polled as the most unpopular Senator in Washington, replacing Mitch McConnell. Now, in my opinion, anyone who could replace this asshole must be lower than the bottom of the barrel. Contact Jeff Flake and tell him what you think: AZscheduling@flake.senate.gov Tell him we're all sick of Congress letting big business trample our rights.

Friday, January 27, 2012

George Orwell lives and so do his “1984” predictions

Geo. Orwell at typewriter
I was prompted to write this post because of another of those privacy naysayers who claims that, although identity theft, which results in the exposure of your most personal data, and which is the number one consumer problem for the Federal Trade Commission, we only have ourselves to blame for its loss.  Pete Cashmore, writing on CNN, says the fact that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was dumped proved George Orwell’s 1984 “woefully incorrect.”  He couldn’t be more wrong.

Agreed, there are those individuals out there—probably in the millions—that willingly give up their private information, mostly due to promises of certain conveniences that seem to these folks more important than protecting their personal data.  There is also a culture that has been expended by data gatherers that has convinced this same group that their information is safe.  It is not.  To support this theory, take a look at a recent NJ post that shows that in 2011 there were 419 breaches of private information exposing 22,918,441 personal records.

Watch a good synopsis of 1984 below:



One of the primary reasons I am so cynical over the security of your personal data is that the junk mail industry grosses over $4 billion annually from selling names and personal information with some placing profits over security.  My authority on this comes from being a junk mail data broker for 35 years.  I have seen the cracks in the damn and some of them still remain despite some efforts by this business to clean up its act.  And hackers may be around to haunt us forever.

Over the years I have written numerous articles you can see here on Orwell, 1984, and how Big Brother is ever present in a society that is driven by information.  Corporations picked up this thirst to know everything about you they can several years ago and maintain huge databases capturing every tidbit of data you will provide.  What the public doesn’t seem to understand is that once it is out there, it is there forever.

Take Google and Facebook alone and you have probably the most massive storehouse of private information available in the U.S.  Facebook’s Zuckerberg has been cited repeatedly for not protecting user data and Google just recently announced they would combine all their databases into one for more ease in profiling Internet surfers.  In my experience one of the worst things that affect consumers’ privacy is the combination of data which can virtually lay out a person’s life in its entirety.

What bothers me most is Pete Cashmore’s blasé attitude toward people giving up their data so easily.  He even compares this to the lack of control in 1984 by the citizens of Oceania where the thought police are everywhere.  There is absolutely no difference between that and the uncontrolled collecting of private information today that lingers in databases across the world which almost any first rate hacker can access. 

And the fact that consumers compound that by giving up their personal data so willingly only means that we are on the way to an unavoidable major disaster.

Research shows that Orwell actually predicted the Internet in the second draft of his dystopian novel but decided to cut this before publication.  There is no way to know just how the man envisioned this current feat of genius but it would be clear to me that he would not approve of it in any way challenging the right to privacy of Americans or the citizens of Oceania.

For the best site to explore George Orwell and 1984 go to Orwell Today.

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