RANT: THE SMUG CANADIAN REPORT: BITS AND BYTES: BREAKING EDUCATION

 

CALL ME A CYNIC but I don’t think our governments or our betters elites always have our best interests at heart. I know that may come as a shock to some who might need some persuading to look behind the curtain or take the red pill. But our trying days of Covid have given us time to think, and now that we’ve been forced off the merry-go-round for a while, there are a lot of us who are a lot less inclined to jump back on. Business as usual for many is no longer the way to go. In the United States, for example, there are  reports about companies not being able to find enough workers,* a phenomenon tersely labelled The Great Resignation that came as a surprise to economists and members of the business community. It seems many people are far less interested in returning to jobs offering low wages, few benefits and have poor working conditions.

Additionally, over the past few months we’ve witnessed lockdowns and vaccine-passport protests in many countries, including Canada. 

People want changes in their lives and societies.

And governments, financial elites, and business interests also desire change, or as some would have it, a “reset”—one that is favourable to them, of course. As I discussed in an earlier post, digital vaccine passports may be a first step towards developing extensive digital surveillance regimes in our societies—something elites (and intelligence services) would find desirous and profitable. The potential scope of mass surveillance systems was brought to the public’s attention in 2013 by Edward Snowden’s shocking exposé, which revealed how easily American Intelligence agencies could acquire vast amounts of data about citizens’ private cell phone and internet activities.

 

WITH THE ADVENT OF COVID-19 and the implementation of digital vaccine “passports”, an important building block for data collection and collation is being created. Is it that far-fetched to imagine an even more vigorous and ubiquitous suite of surveillance programs, ones capable of monitoring virtually every digital input, transaction, personal record, and activity of every citizen in the country? While this sounds like something from the pages of a dystopian novel, China is leading the way with its digital “social credit” initiative. According to Wikipedia, “Social Credit is a unified record system so that businesses, individuals and government institutions can be tracked and evaluated for trustworthiness.”⁺ [Italics mine] The article goes on to say that such a system “is closely related to China's mass surveillance systems such as Skynet, which incorporates facial recognition, big data analysis, and artificial intelligence.” Interestingly, the system began in the 1980s when the Chinese government created an on-line banking and financial services network for small businesses and individuals in rural parts of the nation who lacked access to such resources. I discussed a similar system, currently being rolled out in India, called the “Aadhaar” network¹. It, too, started with similar goals a few years ago.

SUFFICE IT TO SAY THAT, as technology advances—with AI, quantum computing, block chain platforms, etc.—there is the potential (and temptation!) to build upon such systems, to add layers of additional surveillance and data collection by merging public and private information platforms with the Internet of Things, biometric devices (“wearables”), and facial recognition software. As well, corporations will increase their lobbying efforts for favourable legislation to sanction their growing private data networks, including creating research foundations, media campaigns, public-private enterprises, etc. It may be already all but inevitable that businesses, financial elites, and governments (along with data-hungry intelligence services) will steadily gather and collate information about their respective populations on a scale hitherto unimaginable.

 

TAKE THE EXAMPLE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION. As a sector, it has long been coveted by big business for its potential as a highly lucrative “revenue stream” (particularly in the United States.) Charter schools, private schools, the privatization of ancillary services, public-private ‘partnerships’, all have made inroads into the system, and because of the pandemic, tech companies have been able to enlarge their footprint in the education landscape by providing remote learning programs and networks, curriculum guides, computers and tablets, smart phone apps used in the classroom, etc. More efficient, tech-savvy schools, that’s a good thing, right? 

NOT SO, says John Klyczek, writing at the Unlimited Hangout blog, where he examines proposals put forward in this spring’s “Re-imagine Education” campaign promoted by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) to help students “cope with the vexing challenges [that] are all around us”. In Klyczek’s post, entitled: “America’s Largest Teachers’ Unions Push Vaccine Mandates That Will Usher In Technocratic Digital ID”, he concludes that

 

“...the AFT’s…campaign seeks to assimilate students into the transhumanist future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This “revolution” essentially aims to “reimagine” the human species into a cyborg collective of human resources commodified through biotech and nanotech that are controlled by AI for the purposes of “human capital management” in a Social Credit-based technocracy. Meanwhile, to facilitate this post-humanist Social Credit system, Microsoft is advancing the ID2020 project to set up a global digital ID grid linked to blockchain vaccine passports and other DLTs that can log Social Scores based on biopsychosocial data, including EEG algorithms from transhumanist brain-computer interfaces (BCIs).” (Unlimited Hangout)

    

On first reading, his startling claims about the AFT’s unstated agenda seem hard to take seriously, and my initial response was probably like yours: “Come on, John! That’s a bit much, don’t you think?” However, the links he provides to other web pages, articles, and studies [all the above are from his original article], make many of his claims seem less improbable than they first appear. The “Social Credit-based technocracy” link alone is well worth a look.

SO IS THERE A CABAL of the über rich living in high-tech enclaves hidden in the Swiss Alps, controlling everything and everyone in our world?

Well, yes. And no. Let me explain. First of all—there really are conspiracies. (Not all the time. But most, maybe?) Ever since humans first discovered fire there have been those seeking to corner the dry sticks and tinder market, situating themselves comfortably at the head of the tribe. Fast forward a million years or so to that grassy knoll in Dallas, Texas, in ’63, where we all know a guy in camo slipped away into the crowds that day. My point is that people conspire to gain or keep power, to acquire riches, fame, sex (natch!), and a whole host of less-noble desirables. 

And, in some times and circumstances, we’re oblivious to them; we're like fish swimming in water, so enveloped by our environment we fail to see it’s even there. Like conspiracies. Some are hidden in deep, dark holes, while others are nearly transparent, floating by, hiding in plain sight, so to speak.

IN READING JOHN'S ARTICLE, even my blunted “spidey senses” begin to tingle as he lays out some rather transparent connections ($) between Bill Gates and the aforementioned American Federation of Teachers². The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) has contributed millions to the federation and other teacher unions over the years and has launched several public-private projects with school boards in various parts of the United States and abroad, spending hundreds of millions of dollars, but with results that often receive less than thundering applause. Johanna Miller of the New York Civil Liberties Union says “[t]heir ‘reform’ model is all about standardizing education. It relies heavily on high-stakes testing and make-or-break evaluations.” (NYCLU)

BMGF is in the forefront of support for “distance” education, “machine-learning” and promoting the use of “digital ID” and “vaccine passports” for students (in the US and abroad). The advent of Covid-19 has been a boon for the tech industry, and corporations like Microsoft are more than happy to work with school boards and local, state/provincial and federal governments, as well as with non-profit organizations, whose ultimate aim, Klyczek writes, is to create digitalized “Social Credit” systems in the schools.

 

“In the final equation, thanks to staunch support from the AFT and the NEA, [National Educational Association] school vaccination mandates will roll out the blockchain digital ID infrastructure necessary to institute an IoT-IoB [“Internet of Things-Internet of Bodies”] Social Credit matrix that can data-mine psychometrics from ed-tech products in order to profile students with Social Scores which will determine their access to educational advancement, job placement, healthcare treatment, social welfare entitlements, and even civil and criminal due process.” (Unlimited Hangout)

 

And in an Activist blog post entitled, “A ‘Brave School World’ of Tracking Student Data for ‘Social Credit’” he adds:

 

“In brief, the Gates-financed “Reimagine Education” project is bankrolling public-private partnerships with edu-corporations such as InnovateEDU, which is setting up digital data-mining that funnels student-teacher data directly from Google Classroom into BigQuery, which is Chainlinked to Hedera Hashgraph: one of the fastest growing DLT [Distributed Ledger Technology] platforms which can monetize, or tokenize, an exhaustive array of behavioural data, including workforce-training data, through “smart contracts” that calculate “Trust algorithms” for Social Credit.” (Activist)

 

THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT, and the wet dream of tech tyrants everywhere, is to have a melding of the public school system with private corporate interests to digitally capture and monetize the educational system, i.e. to make schools profitable for corporations. I won’t go into how that monetization would (will?) work—that’s one rabbit hole where my head keeps getting stuck but, most definitely, I’d think twice before accepting any candy from smiling billionaires.

 

A FINAL THOUGHT: I began this essay by talking about "The Great Reset", vaccine passports and the possibility of "digital dictatorships" in our futures. One way to get a population to buy into these draconian, and frankly fascistic, elite schemes is by starting early and brain-washing training our youth.  So, what you do is to gather up their young, malleable brains and cram them into meat grinders of machine learning, social-credit score keeping, make them compete for digital "badges" and "certificates" (like in Scouts, but without that nature thingy), as well as lacing their curriculum with lots of "game-ifying" study modules. Next, tenderize and corporatize their learning, and soon, Bob's yer uncle! You're well on your way to raising a well-trained and compliant adult population. SIRI: Why do I say: "baa-aaa" all the time?

NEEDLESS TO SAY, if only a tiny portion of Klyczek’s predictions are indeed planned for our children, there are no words adequate enough to express how despicable anyone is who would contemplate implementing such a dystopian hellscape. Snake would not be amused. ‘Nough said.

 

That’s a lot of info and links and things to ponder on for now, I think. Oh, for those old-fashioned school days when it was just readin', writin' & 'rithmetic, and not a fuckin' tablet in sight!³

 

Cheers, Jake. 

 

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 * Not so much in Canada.  A CIBC (Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce) report suggests it may be because of wage subsidies the federal government put in place to keep workers on company payrolls during shutdowns. But there are regional labour shortages, for example, in the oil sector (in Alberta and Saskatchewan) where workers have moved on and there now is a rising demand for oil which has producers scrambling to ramp up production.

 

⁺ Might such a system, with the help of ever-more powerful AI technology, someday rate, for example, how well a citizen participates in their personal health regimes: how much daily exercise they take, their diet, and so on, and then calculate their cost to the nation’s health system by being a smoker, and what they, in turn, are eligible to receive in health benefits. (“Ms. Smith,” says the AI, “I see you’re a smoker. That’s too bad. Your Social Credit Score doesn’t qualify you for chemo, I’m afraid. Here’s what we can offer you, though…”)

 

¹ As the excellent report by Jeremy Loffredo and Max Blumenthal reveals, the Aadhaar system still has a few bugs to work out!

 

² Gates has long been involved in the education field, both in America and internationally.  In 2004, as head of Microsoft, he partnered with UNESCO to provide education software to developing countries, notably in Africa. As I was “rabbit-holing” the other day, I ran across an archived letter, written to UNESCO by several NGOs and government functionaries from developing countries that raised concerns about the international body accepting “free” products from the tech giant. The letter’s heading was “Microsoft/UNESCO Agreement: neocolonialism in the computer era”. It states,

“Today, with the conclusion of this partnership agreement, we feel that this honourable institution [UNESCO] moves away from a real opportunity to reduce the digital divide in developing countries.

What will be the long-term effects for both parties? Microsoft is clearly looking at increased business opportunities while southern countries are facing 'negative consequences'. In return, the firm gains the opportunity to increase its commercial presence in Southern countries, aided by the prestigious reputation of a large international not for profit organization.” (APRIL)

The letter complains about “proprietary software”, on-going service costs and licensing fees, culturally irrelevant curricula. Most interesting to me was their concern that the software and systems provided by Microsoft would not be “secure”. They cite a 2000 study by France’s Delegation of Strategic Affairs (part of the French military) claiming there was “collusion between the NSA [National Security Agency] and Microsoft.” And in 2004, a French parliamentary report expressed the same concerns that American intelligence agencies had connections to the software manufacturer, thus raising security concerns over the use of Microsoft’s products and services, a lot like today’s hubbub around the Chinese firm Huawei and their proposed 5G network. 

³ One ‘tell’ as to whether such schemes are afoot is if digital passports continue to be used post-pandemic. I think it will be more of a ‘carrot’ versus ‘stick’ implementation, with ‘rewards’ like digital “badges”, and tokens, for example, being handed out to those participating in such systems which, in reality, act as data "vacuum cleaners", hoovering up every bit and byte of a student’s day along with greater intrusions and manipulations into the lives of the rest of us. Fun times! And not without consequences. 

 

 

 

Webb, Whitney. “This Biden Proposal Could Make US A Digital Dictatorship”. From website: Unlimited Hangout,  April 25, 2021. https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/05/investigative-reports/this-biden-proposal-could-make-the-us-a-digital-dictatorship/ 

Klyzcek, John. “A ‘Brave School World’ of Tracking Student Data for ‘Social Credit’”. From website: Activist Post, December 24, 2020. https://www.activistpost.com/2020/12/a-brave-school-world-of-tracking-student-data-for-social-credit.html

Loffredo, Jeremy  and Max Blumenthal. “Public health or private wealth? How digital vaccine passports pave way for unprecedented surveillance capitalism”. From website: The Grayzone, Oct 19, 2021. https://thegrayzone.com/2021/10/19/health-wealth-digital-passports-surveillance-capitalism/

--“’Cloak and dagger’ military-intelligence outfit at center of US digital vaccine passport push”. From website: The Grayzone, Oct. 26, 2021. https://thegrayzone.com/2021/10/26/cloak-dagger-military-intelligence-digital-vaccine-passport/

 

 

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