The Epstein scandal, Gaza genocide and 50 years of neoliberalism have shown beyond doubt that our “mis-leadership” class don’t give a flying fig about “the children”.
If the past half century of unfettered neoliberalism has taught us anything, it is that the people in power couldn’t care less about the general populace — especially the children, since they are the future and neoliberals care not for the future. As Richard Murphy explains, “neoliberalism is not a mistake, but a system built to shift power from people to corporations. This politics of destruction delivers an economics of failure with underfunded public services, rising inequality and shrinking democracy.”
Lambert boiled it down to two simple rules of neoliberalism: They are:
Rule #1: Because markets.
Rule #2: Go die!
The results speak for themselves. Across many of the world’s most advanced economies, younger generations are experiencing collapsing living standards, slower wealth accumulation, and higher costs of living compared to their parents and grandparents. In the US, the world’s richest country (in terms of total private wealth), life expectancy is collapsing. The children of the new generations will presumably grow up in even worse conditions than their forebears, especially if AI destroys as many white-collar jobs as hoped/feared.
Again, this is not a mistake. The revelations of the recent partial release of the heavily redacted Epstein files have confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that many among the West’s “mis-leadership” class (h/t Max Blumenthal) care not a jot about child welfare or wellbeing.
Just imagine what we might learn if all six million pages of the Epstein files were released, with only the victims’ personal details redacted. Independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to investigate Epstein and his associates, who include some of the most prominent figures in global politics, business, science and culture, have warned that the abuses we know about may constitute “crimes against humanity.”
From Al Jazeera and Reuters (emphasis my own):
The [UNHCR experts] explained that the records tell a story of dehumanisation, racism and corruption.
“So grave is the scale, nature, systematic character, and transnational reach of these atrocities against women and girls, that a number of them may reasonably meet the legal threshold of crimes against humanity,” the experts wrote…
They added that the revelations from the files suggest a “global criminal enterprise”.
“All the allegations contained in the ‘Epstein Files’ are egregious in nature and require independent, thorough, and impartial investigation, as well as inquiries to determine how such crimes could have taken place for so long,” the experts said…
In Tuesday’s statement, the experts on the UN panel slammed the heavy redactions in the Epstein files that appear to shield the identities of powerful figures.
“The reluctance to fully disclose information or broaden investigations, has left many survivors feeling retraumatized and subjected to what they describe as ‘institutional gaslighting’,” the UN experts said.
Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and the US’ suffocating energy blockade of Cuba — both supported, tacitly or explicitly, by most of the “liberal democracies” of the collective West — are further confirmation, if needed, that the people in government do not give a flying family blog about the children, especially poor brown-skinned ones in the so-called “Global South”.
In early November 2023, the UK’s then-Labour Party leader and current prime minister, Keir Starmer, said Israel “must have the right” to cut off the water and electricity to the people (and children) of Gaza, just as the US is cutting off all energy to the people (and children) of Cuba. For Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, the collective punishment of 2 million Gazans, of whom around 50% are under 18, is a perfectly reasonable form of self-defence for Israel.
Starmer, of course, also appointed Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the US despite knowing at the time that Mandelson had stayed at Epstein’s New York townhouse while Epstein was serving a prison sentence for, among other things, procuring a child for prostitution.
In short, senior Western politicians like Starmer don’t care about the welfare or wellbeing of children, apart from perhaps their own. Which is why every time they tell us that their escalating assaults on online speech, privacy and anonymity are necessary in order to “protect the children” from the dangers of the Internet, it should be treated with total disdain.
That’s not to say that the Internet, as currently constituted, doesn’t pose serious risks to children. As the German financial journalist Norbert Häring argues, something should have been done a long time ago to protect children and young people from harmful and dangerous content, online and smartphone addiction, bullying and manipulation (machine translation):
This should have been addressed at least a decade ago. Some of this also applies to adults. The only question is how to do it, and with which intentions.
It takes little imagination to think of effective measures that could have been taken a long time ago: Enforcement of data protection law. Bans on algorithmic suggestion systems for social media to prevent tech companies from deliberately creating online addiction, opinion manipulation and artificially increased radicalisation. Only filters under the control of the users (or their parents) should have been allowed. Development of a child protection app by digital corporations or governments that allows parents to effectively protect their children from pornography and online addiction. Smartphone bans in schools.
Instead, governments like the UK’s did next to nothing for more than a decade and are now launching an unprecedented — and quite possibly, irreversible — assault on online speech, privacy and anonymity, which was the goal all along. As the UK’s Home Secretary recently admitted, “her ultimate vision” is to “achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon… that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times.”
In recent days, Starmer has confirmed that his government is examining new powers to move beyond social media age limits and begin imposing ID checks for VPN use and chatbots — for the children of course.
When the UK’s Starmer government made age verification checks mandatory for accessing pornography and other supposedly adult content online in July, it sparked an explosion in the use of VPNs, which allow anonymous access to the Internet use. As we had previously warned, these online age verification checks, that are now proliferating across the collective West’s ostensibly liberal democracies, trap not just minors but everyone in their web.
The Starmer government’s predictable response to the explosion in VPN use was to double down by including amendments to its Orwellian-titled Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that seek to ban children from using VPNs.
“The only way such restrictions could be enforced effectively would be for VPN providers to require all users to undergo age-assurance measures,” said Maya Thomas, Big Brother Watch’s Legal and Policy Officer. “Having to provide ID or a biometric face scan to access a VPN utterly defeats the point of a technology designed to enhance privacy online.”
The Starmer government is by no means an outlier. When it comes to imposing age verification rules, including on VPNs, the collective West appears to be acting in almost perfect unison…
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Nick Corbishley 