Despite the business lobby’s insistence that there is a labor shortage, millions of Americans are out of work today and hundreds of thousands of U.S. graduates enter the labor market every year looking for white-collar professional jobs with competitive pay and good benefits.
Already, the U.S. admits about 1.2 million legal immigrants every year. Another 1.4 million foreign visa workers are brought in annually to take American jobs, many in white-collar professions. The latest data reveals that nearly 6-in-10 workers in Silicon Valley, California — the tech industry’s hub — are foreign-born.
Amazon steps up violations of workers privacy with new surveillance methods
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man, unveiled to shareholders this month a plan to track workers' motions on the job to the point where the company will control which muscle groups are used on a given day.
He said they are “developing new automated staffing schedules that use sophisticated algorithms to rotate employees among jobs that use different muscle-tendon groups to decrease repetitive motion and help protect employees from MSD [muscular-skeletal disorder] risks.” Presented by Bezos as a way to prevent injuries on the job, this invasive program will be used to ramp up Amazon’s exploitation of its workforce.
This is only the latest in a series of recent invasions of workers’ privacy by Amazon. Last month, Amazon confirmed that it was requiring delivery workers to install company surveillance software in their smart phones via an application called “Mentor,” which tracks their location both on and, in some reported cases off, the job.
This revelation was followed by a CNBC news report that Amazon was installing camera apparatuses from a company called Netradyne in drivers’ vehicles, which record “100 percent of the time.” The corporation is a 2015 San Diego startup founded by two former senior Qualcomm employees.
Netradyne’s camera system is designed to capture the road, the driver, and both sides of the vehicle. The camera system, called “Driveri” is powered by Artificial Intelligence that not only can note any accident or near-mishap, but also drivers’ facial expressions, hand signals, and personal activity.
While Amazon management has responded to criticism by claiming these systems are to “improve driver safety,” this extensive surveillance is used in the first instance to pressure workers to work throughout their shifts at the fastest possible pace, at the expense of their own safety and sanity.
Amazon’s offsite monitoring mirrors the character of work in its warehouses, where workers are expected to complete a task every six to nine seconds. The surveillance tech is also used to degrade and demoralize workers, discourage socializing and conversation, and suppress free speech in opposition to unsafe working conditions and poor wages.
Amazon delivery drivers face grueling hours, intense scheduling, and increasing harassment from operational managers. The Mentor system developed by Amazon monitors the activity of contract drivers who provide “last mile” deliveries. The intent of such surveillance is designed to log the third parties’ performance while giving management a vast amount of data in order to exert power over the workers.
Amazon is at the forefront of a corporate campaign to normalize the most extreme forms of workplace surveillance. The invasive practices recall the infamous National Security Agency slogan revealed seven years ago by whistleblower Edward Snowden: “Collect it All,” “Process it All,” “Exploit it All, “Sniff it All” and “Know it All.”
Amazon’s new recording systems are a radical increase over previous forms of invasive surveillance. In the 1960s, crude time-based clocks or stenographs often graphed the time it took for professional drivers to travel to a location, the time spent there and the speed of travel. Managers would review the graphs and on occasion have reason to discipline drivers for failures to perform.
In the 1990s, barcode scanners were used to track packages from the point of pickup to the point of delivery. This allowed management to see the time it took for a package to travel from the initial pickup to the final destination. By the 2000s, most commercial truck fleets in the United States’ over-the-road industry used Qualcomm equipment mounted on top of their cabs to access satellites to see real-time vehicle movement and stop or down times.
Customers expecting delivery could track their shipment and know when to expect delivery. Such tracking is still in wide use today by the United Parcel Service, United States Postal Service, and FedEx.
Beginning around 2015, cameras mounted inside the windshield of vehicles, including motor coach buses, began to be used to follow the visual scene of the outside traffic movement as well as the driver. GoPro, Inc. was a popular vendor of these cameras often seen on the helmets of motorcyclists.
Amazon is developing this software to a higher and more sinister level, with every moment of a worker’s shift monitored from multiple angles, and a worker cannot so much as sneeze without a permanent video and audio record being logged into management databases and preserved for eternity. This “drive for safety” policy is the framework for blaming workers for all injuries and property damage that occur on the road, the result of stress or overwork or simply from conditions that workers have no control over.
Amazon has invested heavily to expand its fleet over the recent period. Mercedes-Benz/Dodge vans with Amazon’s logo on the side and similarly marked cars are a more common sight in US cities. Amazon is also investing millions in the acquisition of independent airplane fleets, much like the fleets owned by FedEx and UPS. With the growing reach of its monopoly, its abusive practices and systematic violations of workers’ privacy are finding their way into more and more industries.
In November, leaked documents revealed the activities of a secretive division of the company entitled the Global Security Operations Center (GSOC), which employs former government intelligence officials dedicated to compiling and analyzing data for the purpose of anticipating and suppressing opposition within the workforce. This was followed by revelations that Amazon has hired the infamous Pinkerton agency, which has specialized in strikebreaking for US companies since the late 19th century, to infiltrate its facilities, spy on workers, and provide data for GSOC.
Amazon’s surveillance of its workforce isn't limited to workers at the job. In 2018, the World Socialist Web Site exposed the hiring by Amazon’s workers’ compensation administrator Sedgwick of a private detective to spy on an injured worker in an effort to undermine her claim for compensation. In December 2020, Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced five services for sale to other companies that use sensors and artificial intelligence to monitor workers.
To defend their democratic rights in the workplace, logistics workers must organize rank-and-file committees to protect their democratic rights and privacy. Workers should subscribe to the International Amazon Workers Voice and link their struggle with fellow workers in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America to fight for workers’ rights and socialism.
How Much Worse Can it Get?
Things may actually get a little worse than they are now. The Democrats under the “Biden” administration have shed any last vestiges of pretense surrounding their desire to utterly remake the United States into some idealized version of their socialistic, utopian land where all the inhabitants’ lives are totally controlled and orchestrated by an all-knowing, benevolent government -- for the supposed good of the individual, of course. That the populace will then be totally and completely dependent on the government for everything is never explicitly disclosed, although this is actually the ultimate goal: unconditional control, no opposing viewpoint, no competing power, no hindrance to absolute Progressive domination.
Here’s the progressive wish list:
- Control the media and thus manipulate the exact message you want the voting public to receive.
- Continue to have elections, to maintain the appearance of national self-determination.
- Rig those elections in your favor and howl with protest when you’re caught doing so. The media will cover for you and forestall any serious fraud inquires, preserving your stolen elections.
- Mountains of bona fide fraud evidence will be ignored and not acted upon.
- Admit unrestricted numbers of illegal aliens, all of whom will become your voters, permanently shifting the voter demographic in your favor.
- Admit D.C. and Puerto Rico as states, collecting four additional progressive senators in the process.
- Eliminate the filibuster, making a simple Senate majority sufficient for passing any initiative, so you can “eliminate debate,” as one of your leading voices said so memorably.
Progressives are trying hard to do all of this, right now. If they should achieve total control, what do they want to impose on the country? What is their ultimate aim? There are several progressive goals, some more substantial and damaging than others. Taken as a whole, however, a progressive America will be starkly different than one you grew up in.
Their vision includes:
- Green initiatives, meaning zero carbon emissions, no internal combustion engine cars by 2030, no meat, and no oil, natural gas, or fracking.
- Greatly relaxed policing practices, elimination of cash bail, nonprosecution of ‘low-level’ crimes like prostitution and petty theft.
- A military hamstrung by politically-correct policies that place a higher priority on socially-acceptable appearances (“Maternity flight suits”) than maintaining an effective national security and preserving our ability to influence world affairs by dint of our military potential.
- A return to the America Second approach of the Obama era. Offer hotel accommodations, free health care and stimulus payments to illegal immigrants, while disabled American veterans have to beg for the generosity of private donations in order to be able to afford their rehabilitative care or be able to stay in their home. Think about that: Wounded Warriors Project and Tunnels to Towers depend on individual donations, while the progressives foot the bill for illegal immigrants’ room service -- on your dime.
- Reparations for slavery. A bill for this is working its way through Congress.
It’ll be interesting to see how reparations eligibility and payouts are determined. Who is “pure” black enough to receive a full share? Are Halle Berry, Tiger Woods and Barack Obama eligible despite their mixed parentage? Are only “African” Americans eligible or will Caribbean Island people of color -- like Kamala Harris or former Red Sox star David “Big Papi” Ortiz -- also qualify? The way this plays out will indeed be fascinating, although the betting here is that any portion of mixed background will receive the full payment, as long as that payment is confiscated from the approved hide.
As in any self-respecting central-government-dominated society, the privileged leader class will conveniently escape being forced to live under the same rules as the proletariat. The Pelosis, Schumers, and Kerrys of the land will always have their gated properties, complete with $20,000 freezers, unlimited heat and electricity and immediate access to private jet transportation.
However, at some point, there will be a reckoning, an awakening from the underclass, an anti-progressive voting wave. The Great Unwashed won’t take it anymore. The memories of a truer, more just daily life, the way it was just a short generation ago -- not perfect, perhaps, but infinitely better than the current progressive Utopia -- will bubble to the surface. Great swaths of the general population will demand an end to the progressive shell game that ruined life in America. As more and more personal rights are taken away and replaced by mandates, property-sharing and arbitrary quotas, there will be a huge voter backlash. Huge.
Many Republican governors are fighting hard right now against the progressive agenda to maintain some semblance of a sane life, especially with regards to Draconian COVID regulations, infringement on constitutional 2nd Amendment rights and the acceptance of illegal immigrants. This is all good. However, the key to this voter protest will be the traditional moderate Democrats. (Yes, there are still a lot of them.) Obviously, conservatives will be opposed to the progressives right from the start, but they only comprise 40-45% of the vote. In order for the really hard-core progressive movement to be stopped, it will take significant old-line Democratic participation.
This will be difficult, because emotional/team “rooting” in politics is a very high hurdle to overcome. To a snooty New England liberal who has always voted for the Democrat to all of a sudden vote for a Republican is a tall order indeed. But if things do get that bad -- if their personal finances are shredded, their career prospects are short-circuited and their kids’ education consists of even more one-sided leftist indoctrination than it does now -- then those Joe the Plumber lifelong Democrats will jump ship and join with conservative to wrest back control of the country.
Upper-crust liberals won’t care about a progressive transformation, because, like the privileged Soviets of fifty years ago, they already “have theirs” and so they’ll be unaffected by the new Progressive rules.
The voter backlash succeeds when the average Democrat -- the teacher, the plumber, the small-town doctor who isn’t making the big bucks -- realizes that most of their work is merely supporting others and the chances of them and their children really getting ahead in life are essentially nonexistent, thanks to the new progressive government policies.
The old saying goes that, “Things must hit rock-bottom before real change occurs.” Where is the progressive bottom? With even a modicum of luck, we’re almost there now and real recovery begins in 2022.
The tyranny of the big
Big Government allies with Big Business to the detriment of everyone else. This is a simple fact that everyone had better start taking to heart. Crony capitalists, high-powered lawyers, Hollywood studios/moguls, lobbyists, and Big Labor are all solidly and incestuously in this camp of the powerful. Big Education (where there are now often more administrators than instructors) and the rest of Big Media sycophantically and symbiotically cuddle with Big Government even as they attempt to persuade, misinform and help regulate the rest of us. Individuals, small businesses and the middle class as a whole get walloped. Bigger isn’t always better, especially for the little guy.
Worse, Big Labor, through Big Government, takes our taxpayers money and uses it to lobby those in government to give more to Big Labor, even if it is expressly against our wishes. What’s more, much of the money they take from us goes into often slick but always deceiving/misleading ads and commercials to convince us to vote for those candidates and/or policies that are detrimental to us and the nation as a whole…but good for them in the near-term! Candidates and policies that always expand government’s- and its public-sector unions- power. Their power over us.
The government responds to these factions that are “sophisticated” and wealthy enough to understand and utilize the government’s complexity for their own gain. Hence Democrats, largely responsible for the immensity and complexity of government, receive over 70% of lawyers’ political contributions, as well as the vast majority of contributions from those in Big Media, Big Education and Big Labor, of course. The largest U.S. companies, particularly the global giants with no particular or unique love for the U.S. (after all, China, India, etc. are bigger or potentially bigger markets) are more and more flooding the Democratic coffers with cash. They are “too big to fail” and might need a government bailout at some point in the future.
Starting to see the big picture? Angry yet?
This is why the former community organizer Barack Obama, not the famously wealthy Mitt Romney, carried 8 of America’s 10 wealthiest counties in 2012. And also why Trump’s message and policies resonated so well with working people in both 2016 and 2020.
It is the Democrats that proclaim their love for the “little guy” that in reality pee all over the working class. It is the coastal elites that look down their noses at the rubes clinging to their God and their guns in fly-over country.
True conservatives don’t promise everything to everybody outside of the “one percent.” They don’t promise to give everyone “free” healthcare and college educations, “free” birth-control and abortions, “free” breakfast, lunch and dinner, and freedom from responsibility and guilt. They know that the money has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is taxpayers’ paychecks.
If the administrators, professors and media-types, et. al., truly dislike the capitalist system and those who make good money, and really believe that education should be free, why don’t they simply volunteer…refuse to accept a salary? Or at least take a pay cut? That way everyone could actually get as close to a free education as is realistically possible.
What a great idea! Right, educators? Well?
Thought so.
All conservatives promise is to give us back some of our freedom.
And therefore, our country.
They don’t stand a chance against someone promising “free” birth-to-grave healthcare for our pets.
Come to think of it, I hope nobody actually picks up on that idea…they would likely win in a landslide.
Exclusive — Sen. Tom Cotton: Jeff Bezos Must Explain Why Amazon Canceled Clarence Thomas Documentary While Celebrating Leftist Terrorists
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos needs to explain why the technology company removed a documentary about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas from its streaming service, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said on Friday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow, author of Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption.
Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, a film profiling Thomas built upon hours of original interviews with the justice and his wife Virginia, was delisted from Amazon Prime in February, during Black History Month.
Amazon launched an “Amplify Black Voices” campaign in February while claiming to be “building an inclusive culture.”
Marlow said, “I have to ask you about … Amazon pulling [this] documentary, which I’ve seen — it’s wonderful — and I can’t believe this is happening. It’s so scary, but what are you doing here?”
Cotton replied, “Isn’t it a remarkable double standard that you can go on Amazon and get a documentary about the Weather Underground — a left-wing terrorist organization that firebombs buildings across our country? But you can’t get a documentary about one of the most courageous uplifting stories of a public man in recent American history.”
LISTEN:
“Amazon just inexplicably pulled this documentary about Clarence Thomas in the middle of Black History Month without any explanation,” he added. “So I and several other senators have written Jeff Bezos seeking answers on why this happened.”
Marlow responded, “I certainly hope you get them because this is an outrage. If the shoe was on the other foot, of course, it would be called racism.”
Cotton highlighted Twitter’s recently trending hashtag, #UncleTim — after Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-SC) response to President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday — as an example of Big Tech’s left-wing orientation.
“Look what happened to Tim Scott,” he remarked. “Tim Scott gives a good response the other night defending America, gets scurrilous charges of racism, and on social media, ‘Uncle Tim’ immediately starts trending — something he mentioned in his speech, [that] he gets called for being an African American Republican. Social media took 12 hours to even take that down from its algorithms. How long do you think it would have taken if it was Kamala Harris or Barack Obama?”
In a letter to Bezos, Cotton and 18 other Republican senators contrasted Amazon’s cancellation of Created Equal with the company’s hosting of documentaries celebrating left-wing domestic terrorists. They wrote:
Elsewhere in Amazon Prime’s movie descriptions, Amazon celebrates the FBI’s most wanted terrorist Joanne Chesimard, who murdered a state trooper in cold blood, as a “fantastic feminine freedom fighter” and hails the Weather Underground — a literal terrorist group — as “radical politics at its best[.]” Both films remain available for streaming today.
These decisions suggest that Amazon removes documentaries that feature conservatives while keeping documentaries that celebrate criminals and terrorists. And despite repeated inquiries by media outlets, the filmmakers, and would-be viewers, Amazon appears to have made no effort to explain otherwise.
Amazon's decision to pull Justice Thomas' documentary from their streaming service makes it clear Amazon isn't concerned with "Amplifying Black Voices," they're only concerned with "Amplifying Liberal Black Voices."https://t.co/7cv2SKh7mb
— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) April 29, 2021
On Thursday, Cotton tweeted, “Amazon’s decision to pull Justice Thomas’ documentary from their streaming service makes it clear Amazon isn’t concerned with ‘Amplifying Black Voices,’ they’re only concerned with ‘Amplifying Liberal Black Voices.'”
Breitbart News Daily broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
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