Welcome to the world of Rotten&Co.: Corruption be warned, Tee shirts be worn.

A word too many from a concerned global citizen-contributor.

The world is a place of good and bad. A place of beauty, of cruelty, of moral conundrums and broken systems. It's better and worse than it used be, the good old days weren't great, but the bad new days aren't so bad. It's getting worse though, right? Before it gets better, I mean. I think you get the idea, it's complicated. This world, civilisation as it is, is messy and always has been. The human condition is a puzzle, it continues to baffle and amuse. Curiouser and curiouser, I suppose.

There is a lot going on at the moment, as there always is and has been, but with technological advancements, and civil discontent come new ideas and problems. There is a global crisis or two; the climate issue, environmental degradation, many kinds of inequality, poverty, healthcare, mental wellbeing, right-wing populism and authoritarianism.

There is something that links all these things, you guessed it, Donald Jamal Trump. It's all his fault that son of a businessman, jk. Seriously though, in that bigger picture we, Rotten&Co, see you, CORRUPTION, as an underlying root cause, because roots tend to underlie, but not always, you can farm upright without soil these days which ruins my metaphor somewhat. Anyway, CORRUPTION is a problem. It is the wind beneath the wings of many of the wrongs in the world today.

But what exactly is it? You may ask, or you may have already seen the IAQ+ page or first blog post, and have an idea. Corruption is many things, but a common definition is 'the abuse of power for private gain.' It encompasses a variety of abuses, misdeeds and crimes, including (but not limited to) bribery, embezzlement, cronyism, nepotism and kleptocracy. If you don't know what some of those are, check out the IAQ+ page under, 'What are common types of Corruption?'

It's the story you are likely familiar with, money makes the world go round. Governments and corporations do whatever it takes to make big money, to further their interests, profits and potential - to please the shareholders at any cost. Everyone else pays the price. Kleptocratic rulers steal the wealth created by natural resources, global big pharma/agriculture/tech/food control the governments via donations, lobbying and other bribes, the rich get richer. Fast fashion still has child and slave labour making your tee shirts to save a buck, prices go up, wages don't, the poor get poorer. Obesity is on the rise because corporations don't care about your health, and the disenfranchised don't understand that it's within their power to make the change, meanwhile food is taken from the hungry to feed the starving. Civil wars, proxy wars, invasions, threats and promises broken, the fact is that the deliberate abuse of positions of power is the cause of all these woes.

The inception and existence of Rotten&Co. is a pointed recognition of a greedy, egoistic, selfish people who lack decency and moral values. The rotten and corrupt, they have been enabled by an unjust, unprincipled capitalism, that has been shaped to allow those in power to wield it to their benefit only and disregard the majority of humans as collateral damage. We will tell you how it is, we will educate, collaborate, investigate and interrogate, until we make you understand that you are the ones that will make the changes to the system, you are Anticorruption.

The R&C take will be satirical, a pseudo-neo-capitalist pro-anti off-beat, hyper-normalized, uber-hyphenated look at the world of dodgy governments, finance and corporations, the realities of corruption and financial/economic crimes. We will be trying to shed further light on the whys and whats of corruption, of inequality, much injustice and very lack of many freedoms. The ideologies of many ISMs, capitalism, consumerism, elitism, classism, and so on, will be commented on. Humanity then and its many foibles and finagles, but also its heroics and the things we wholeheart. There are a lot of people and organisations that have been fighting this fight for a long time, we will acknowledge them and join the fight with our own angles of attack.

As Bobby Hundreds said, 'This is not a T-shirt' - our tees are not just tees, they are a call to action. We will share our thoughts with you and hope that you will wear them with purpose, because purpose drives progression, and it is progress that is required. The sooner we deal with corruption, the sooner we can have everyone in a position that they can afford and wear R&C gear, the world deserves better; better healthcare, better education, better governments and garments, like R&C.

These things are what makes the world infuriating and interesting, they are phases of thought and being. Practical problems, ideologies, best practice and ideas. We are in the middle of a kerfuffle, a nonsense, a verified and veritable omnishambles. We would like to help you make some sense of this place by sharing ideas and facts that may not be obvious, or may be confined to the shadow realms of government, mega-evil corps and academia.

So join us on this journey, as you can tell if you made it this far, I'm finna chat shit all day long, but R&C will provide a more reader friendly approach with occasional omnirambles by me and others.

Yours Terrifically,

Rottenchild #1

Contributor and concerned citizen.

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