We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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It was with something akin to delight that I saw the Times, not a newspaper overly concerned with civil liberties, have on its front page* an article about objections to Britain’s developing surveillance state.
This is modern Britain
If we cannot get these issues out in the open, we will indeed see Britain ‘sleepwalking’ into what may some time in the future be a panoptic nightmare. Blair or Howard are not going to be having the security services doing ‘midnight knocks’ on the doors of those they disfavour (well, maybe for a few people in the Finsbury Park area) but make no mistake about it, the infrastructure of repression is being put in place at an astonishing rate and someday (hopefully long after I have decamped to New Hampshire) this information is going to be used by statists of both left and right with fewer qualms than Tony Blair to order every single aspect of people’s lives in Britain in ways that places the state at the centre of everything you do in ways earlier totalitarianisms could only dream of… for your own good, of course.
We have a serious battle to win and the more these issues are out of the committee rooms and in the more general public arena, the better we can argue the case for resisting the emerging Panopticon State.
When the state watches you, dare to stare back
* = Readers outside the UK may have difficulties accessing this link once it is archived due to the benighted policies of the Times newspaper.
It was with something akin to delight that I saw the Times, not a newspaper overly concerned with civil liberties, have on its front page 1 an article about objections to Britain’s developing surveillance state.
This is modern Britain
If we cannot get these issues out in the open, we will indeed see Britain ‘sleepwalking’ into what may some time in the future be a panoptic nightmare. Blair or Howard are not going to be having the security services doing ‘midnight knocks’ on the doors of those they disfavour (well, maybe for a few people in the Finsbury Park area) but make no mistake about it, the infrastructure of repression is being put in place at an astonishing rate and someday (hopefully long after I have decamped to New Hampshire) this information is going to be used by statists of both left and right with fewer qualms than Tony Blair to order every single aspect of people’s lives in Britain in ways that places the state at the centre of everything you do in ways earlier totalitarianisms could only dream of… for your own good, of course.
We have a serious battle to win and the more these issues are out of the committee rooms and in the more general public arena, the better we can argue the case for resisting the emerging Panopticon State.
When the state watches you, dare to stare back
1 = Readers outside the UK may have difficulties accessing this link once it is archived due to the benighted policies of the Times newspaper.
(Cross posted from White Rose)
President Bush has announced, and not a moment too soon, that the US will undertake a massive reorganization of its overseas deployment, moving troops out of theatres where war no longer threatens (e.g., Europe). Apparently, most of the troops would be brought home to the US.
As I have noted before, the security guarantee that the US extends to its nominal allies can be counterproductive, encouraging irresponsibility and anti-American attitudes in such allies. For nations, as for individuals, there is no substitute for self-defence.
It is awfully strange behaviour for an imperial hyperpower, though, isn’t it? Surely the evil Bushchimpler realizes that bringing troops home is no way to expand global hegemony. Whatever could he (or his puppetmaster Karl Rove) be thinking?
Update: Mark Steyn weighs in.
Biometric testing of face, eye and fingerprints could soon be used on every resident of the UK to create compulsory identity cards. BBC News Online’s Tom Geoghegan volunteered for a pilot scheme and looked, unblinking, into the future.
What was interesting about article that it is obvious that Home Office is trying to make the process as ‘palatable’ to people, so it is not too Big Brotherish…
This isn’t a test of the technology – that’s likely to change in the future as things move on – it’s the process. We’re looking for customer reactions and perceptions, and any particular difficulties.
Just don’t make it feel like Big Brother although that’s what you’ll be getting.
The Times reports that Britain’s information watchdog gives warning today that the country risks “sleepwalking into a surveillance society” because of government plans for identity cards and a population register.
Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, says that there is a growing danger of East German Stasi-style snooping if the State gathers too much information about individual citizens.
He singles out three projects that he believes are of particular concern. They are David Blunkett’s identity card scheme; a separate population register planned by the Office for National Statistics; and proposals for a database of every child from birth to the age of 18:
My anxiety is that we don’t sleepwalk into a surveillance society where much more information is collected about people, accessible to far more people shared across many more boundaries than British society would feel comfortable with.
Downing Street responded to warnings issued by Richard Thomas,
saying there would be a watchdog to prevent situations in which personal information gathered by one Whitehall department was made indiscriminately available to other civil servants without the individual’s knowledge.
We have made it clear that there are going to be guarantees about function creep. That is not what is going to happen. There is going to be proper oversight.
Oversight. Hm, so anyone trying to access the national database will be carefully monitored by CCTV and any other available surveillance technology. Phew, that really puts my mind to rest.
Also on BBC:
Watchdog’s Big Brother UK warning
The case of Gayle Laverne Grinds highlights one of the most important issues of our time.
I wonder how many adverts for fatty, calorie-laden food this woman viewed during the six years she spent on the sofa in front of the television. I suppose the free marketeers would claim that exposure to these commercials had no bearing on the foods this woman consumed during her six years on the couch, and that she had the “personal responsibility” to choose not to eat them and to choose not to soil herself every day. But public health experts predict that by 2010, one person in three will die this way, and that 72 per cent of all schoolchildren will be one with sofas of their own. With increased funding for public education on the dangers of sofas and junk food, those rates could be substantially reduced. As it is, the government departments in charge of such education are criminally underfunded – and still the right-wingers and libertarians cheer on as tax cuts for the wealthy kill us and kill our kids.
The real question is this: How many innocent people have to die after spending six years on the sofa, eating unhealthy food, defecating and sitting in a mound of their own filth before we put big business in its place and tell these fast food and junk food companies that they cannot continue to run roughshod over the public?
We consider this our duty – to defend humanity against the scourge of intolerance, violence, and fanaticism.
– Ahmed Shah Massoud
Judging by the many dreadful reviews I have seen regarding Catwoman, this should be a turkey of epic proportions.
Well… bollocks to that.
It actually is not that bad. Sure, even a connoisseur of B-movies such as myself can see that it is not a great movie… the special effects were pretty good in places but during some scenes it was painfully obvious that they were computer generated. The dialogue was serviceable rather than inspiring, the story was derivative and predictable with some feminist claptrap tacked on. The acting was of variable quality – Halle Berry’s job was to shake her ‘thang’ and be alternatively sexy, confused, sexy, predatory, sexy, all of which she did to perfection; Ben Bratt’s job was to shake his ‘thang’ and be a ‘tough-but-nice-guy’, which he did engagingly; Sharon Stone’s job was to be sympathetic, unsympathetic, menacing and sexy, all of which she utterly failed to deliver which was rather disappointing.
But what strikes me is not the failings of this flick, which are indeed many, but the fact I found it vastly better than the reviews would have lead me to believe. It was by no means a waste of a few quid/bucks/euros and just confirms my suspicions that for most reviewers, sneering at things is a safer and more ‘credible’ option, a default mode in fact.
It is not a great movie, or even a particularly good movie… it just does not suck. Bored this weekend? You could do far worse than look at the exquisite Halle Berry strutting her stuff very effectively in Catwoman.
This is without a doubt the movie I have most anticipated seeing since spotting a certain trophy in the background of a few frames at the end of Predator 2 back in 1990.
Oh yeah. I mean, OH YEAH!
Looks like the US is playing hardball and refusing to compromise with the Islamists in Iraq. All to the good, I suspect.
The best chance for a reasonable long term political settlement in Iraq will come when Moqtada al-Sadr and as many of his supporters as possible are dead. Getting there will require resolve in the ongoing attrition battle but if the casualty numbers are even close to accurate, then things are going as well as can be reasonably expected in such a grim business.
… yet another blog party at Samizdata.net HQ…
There are so many new bloggers ‘on the party circuit’ now that we have to rotate our invitation lists. So if you did not get an invitation, we (probably) still love you… maybe next time.
As my father used to say, diplomats are very good at marrying rich women and making polite conversation at cocktail parties, but don’t ever expect them actually to do something.
Taki
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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