Socialist Appeal
The Marxist voice of Labour and youth
It has been revealed that the US National Security Agency has been given backdoor access to telephone exchanges and a long range of online accounts from major service providers, underlining how the state breaches users’ privacy on a massive scale in order to get intelligence. Niklas Albin Svensson looks at the latest manoeuvres of the capitalist state and the implications for the labour movement.
The cat-and-mouse game between piracy supporters on the one hand and state authorities and major multinational companies on the other is heating up. Over the past few years there has been a marked increase in the persecution of websites and individuals involved in piracy. Democratic rights are being thrown overboard and the full force of the state applied in the media industry’s ruthless pursuit of profits.
Pharmaceutical companies bend or withhold scientific data and lie about their drugs, in ways which endanger, harm or kill sick people, to make a profit. That is the shocking reality laid bare in Ben Goldacre’s new book, ‘Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients’. This is a prime example of the way the profit motive rewarded by Capitalism stands in front of human progress.
Climate change, melting icecaps and new opportunities for access to valuable resources have reawakened a struggle for power in the Arctic. The Great powers are jockeying for control of the region. The imperialist plundering of the resources, accompanied by a huge waste of money on military spending, will not bring prosperity to the peoples of the Arctic.