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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Nothing to add… To this piece by Frank Fisher:
When asked to name countries that impose extensive internet censorship, you might think of China, Iran, or North Korea; I doubt you’d think of the UK, but, after the home secretary Jacqui Smith’s speech to the International Centre for Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence today, you really should.
Britain is not a free country. It is free-er than most perhaps, but at most free-ish; and moving steadily towards a free-esque pantomime freedom.
For the inevitable commentators who think I’m whinging about nothing because I’m able to write these lines, consider this: Britain also has an historically low murder rate. Yet generally homicide is still deplored, and we would like less of it. No politician would dare stand up and call for more gang-violence because ‘known criminals’ being murdered is a good thing.
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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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Well, I’ve been ranting about how the IWF is another BBFC (a “self-censorship body set up by the industry to avoid government censorship that turns on its owners and does a more thorough job of censoring than a government would probably dare legislate) for some time and, truth is, hardly anybody cares, as nobody cares about civil liberties at all really, so it’s all a waste of time so I may as well not post this because we can just whinge about it but can’t do anything.
There’s a flaw in Fisher’s argument. He wants transparency, which is badgood in that it often provides a figleaf of legitimacy to that which doesn’t deserve one, but also he advocates the usual suspects to get involved, civil liberties groups and whatnot, more bloody pressure groups deciding things on our behalf, sigh.
The central problem, which as a purveyor of rudey things I only know too well, is governments “leaning on” industry etc without any mandate to do so except their own malignity. The governments (primarily USUK) have been leaning on the credit card companies for some time now to make life difficult for the adult industry- extra fees, ridiculous regulations etc, and there’s little we can do about it because we’re only tiny fish and VisaCard could just withdraw processing for adult stuff at a whim if we get too shirty. But bah, all of this is inevitable.
Something we need to remember is not to be too dewy-eyed about the past. There’s a tendency among libertarians to talk about how much freedom we’ve lost as if the past was Libertyville, Arizona. Truth is, Britain, America, all the great “free” countries, have always implemented arbitrary censorship of whichever media are current of the day- not so long ago theatre scripts had to be passed by the Lord Chamberlain’s office under very strict rules, and so on. As such, we shouldn’t argue for a return to the past, as that wasn’t much cop frankly either. Which is why I don’t much approve of libertarianism allying itself too closely with conservatism. We’ve never been muchly free. They sent my uncle George down the mines, you know. Britain didn’t climb into bed with dictatorship, but it’s certainly had a few dances with it.
The following is somewhat off-topic, but I just feel like a rant and can think of no place better for it.
Have any of you seen that “advertisement” running on the television at the moment, about the consequences of not paying your car tax? It is a sickening threat, “if you do not pay your car tax then we will destroy your vehicle and you will not be compensated.” The “advertisement” depicts a young couple approaching their vehicle, which then promply begins to crumple and crush in front of them, at which point the voiceover calmly informs us that the state has this power should you not pay your car tax.
Even putting aside the fact that the majority of tax revenue is squandered, and even when it ahieves its purpose, that purpose is something nobody would pay for if given a choice. Why threaten to destroy a vehicle? What exactly does that achieve? Will they begin to destroy peoples homes if they fail to pay some tax? Will another “advertisement” run where a young couple returning home discover a wrecking ball ripping through the walls? a consequence which will be depicted, as in the car tax “advertisement”, as being the young couples fault.
Imagine if a similar “advertisement” was run about anti-social behaviour, vandalism, or burglary. I can see it now, a thief breaking into a home suddenly discovers himself in handcuffs, is promptly slapped on the wrists, sent to counselling, asked not to burgle again and sent on his way. How about a bunch of drunk youths who smash up property, intimidate local residents and occasionally assault a tramp? Will we see an “advertisement” showing how they will be arrested and let free dozens of times, before finally being sent to a nice cushy prison cell for 6 months?
It’s a fucking joke.
Lee, that reminds me of a mundane trip to my local newsagents a while back (I have more fascinating slice ‘o’ life stories like this, anecdote fans!). The radio was on, and whatever tune finished and a succession of adverts ran, all of which were Big Brother threats of one sort or another along the lines you describe- “if you’re a benefits cheat we’ll find you, we know where you are”, another one about how they know we’re all beating our wives, all echoing voiceovers accompanied by ominous music, all like that. It wasn’t just me noticed it, the newsagent, his mrs., another customer, we all passed comment. It was like England, as directed by Paul Verhoeven.
We’ve been living in a repressive state for some time. We’re at that awkward stage where it’s not quite bad enough to shoot the bastards, as the saying goes. The collectivist paradigm has already failed; we’re now at the stage where they’re propping it up with propaganda and coercion.
Jesus Christ on a crutch.
Is this article true? Is this happening?
I don’t keep in touch with UK news to the extent I once did, and I miss a lot. I had no idea that this pack of slime balls had gone this far.
I have for years called NewLab facist lite, in the full understanding of the implications of the claim, and understanding Godwins Law(Link) and its corollaries, I now acknowledge that I was wrong; these cunts are NAZI lite.
Or, as an alternative but accurate label, Gramsciites(Link).
Australia’s new Labour government has already flagged that they wish to follow the UK lead, and use the same arguments that the UK government uses. There is something in the ‘zeitgeist’ that is profoundly repressive.
It is time,
It is time to stop talking about these things and start acting.
I know from experienct that people take notice of what I have to say, either to loath it or listen respectfully and discuss.
It is a small step, but I am going to join the Liberal Party here (Oz) and do what little I can.
Gramsci was right, cultural hegemony is important. So what to do? Break it.
The Nasties currently control the organs of the state, in all its forms; so we now start campaigning to break them.
The Universities were the first to be captured, in the sixties and seventies, and control has since spread. What to do? We start at the bottom, not with a counterveiling hegemony, but with a destruction of any hegemony.
From here on in, I will be campaigning, within the two party system, to abolish state control of the education system. Abolition of state mandated curricula and autonomy of schools within the system.
Our first step, give control of our children back to their parents. Let them choose. If a parent wishes their child to be taught the black armband version of Australian history, then fine, let them choose a school which teaches that. If a parent wishes their child to be taught a version of history which makes them proud of their British, or Greek, or Italian, or Turkish heritage, then fine, let them choose a school which teaches that.
Science? Humanities? Fine Arts? Let the parents choose.
Abolish state mandated curricula. Now.
The universities were one of the main groups, arguably the main group, who started it, over a century ago. The 60s was just the Great Leap Forward, if even that. They weren’t captured by anybody. They were taken over from within.
They were taken over from within.
Whatever.
They were the first and their output has captured the state.
Are you prepared to start acting? Or just keep talking?
Lee,
It’s worse than that. The BBC can have your car clamped for not paying them their 135.5 pounds of flesh a year. I wonder I assume at some point the DVLA will want quid pro quo and steal your telly for not paying vehicle tax.
Ian B,
It’s weird isn’t it? Us libertarian types might be anti-benefits and in favour of the rule of law but those benefit cheat adverts are just Stalinist in tone.
Countingcats is right. It’s time to start and education is the place.
It’s after lunch here and maybe I’m not thinking as clearly as I should, but I don’t follow the last paragraph of Guy’s post, or some of the comments although I think I agree with them.
Having a little bit of freedom to comment doesn’t mean we are properly free.
There shouldn’t be censorship of jihadist websites. Let US see what they are like.
And Jacqui Smith was wrong to try to change the language of the discussion by declining to refer to jihadist violence as jihadist violence.
20 odd years ago Margaret Thatcher wanted to deny the terrorists ‘the oxygen of publicity.’
She was wrong then and Jacqui Smith is wrong now.
Frank, truthful use of language, uncensored, is essential to preserve the freedoms we’ve got and to extend them as we need to do.
Nick,
Speaking of the forbidden, knowing your attraction to her, I am watching a documentary right now, on SBS, with Ms Dita von Teese commenting on movie kink.
Appealing on an intellectual level.
God, as I write – they are showing Betty Page in a spanking/bondage sequence.
With Dita discussing it.
I feel myself becoming depraved as I watch.
I feel myself becoming depraved as I watch.
After watching Dita and Betty in the one sequence, I certainly feel deprived.
Counting Cats, admirable though your determination to change things from within may be, it will fail. I sincerely believe that the problem is not with the people in the system but with the system itself. It corrupts those who take part, though they may have lofty and admirable goals to begin with. There is no other solution but to tear it apart and start from scratch.
This move by ‘our’ government is very nearly the final nail in the coffin of our liberty, they now have the power to suppress and censor anything which they deem to be undesirable, antisocial or vaguely activist in nature, and do it without our knowledge. I don’t think it will be long before sites like Samizdata will be blocked and the British version of the internet filled with the banal propaganda sanctioned by our insidious leaders which all other branches of the media are happy to distribute.
I’m off to iron my black flag…
Oh, so this is the “third way” that New Labour were touting. It seemed like such a good idea at the time, I mean it wasn’t the first way, or the second way, but a third way. This time things would be different, politics would become relevant to the people, and real change could happen. I mean, think about it, a a third way, it’s just so darn inspiring.
I guess those who wanted it got their wish, in a way. They’re certainly “making a difference”.
That’s pretty much my perspective. I’m not doing anything because I don’t believe I can do anything that will have any effect. We’re beyond that. We’ve lost. Not, we’re losing. We’ve lost. It’s a bit like
“By the gods Marcus, those Christians have closed the shrine of Jupiter! I’m going to petition the Senate! It’s time we DID something!”
But the pagans had already lost. The Movement have successfully taken over the world. Campaigning to stop state schooling is just going to be p*ssing into the wind.
I’m sorry, I’m a fatalist. I think we’re in the midst of history, and the tide is far too strong. The Era of Enlightenment is over. It didn’t win. It tried, but it failed. We’re returning to how the world always used to be won until a brief partial flowering of the freedom thang; by autocratic gangs.
It may be that things will change again; that there’ll be a reversal. If so, that will take some profound catalyst. But I don’t think any of us will live to see it. Sorry. All I can think of “doing” is whinge impotently on the internets, while I still can.
Talking of which, my guess is that the next stage of things regarding the internet will be the handover of control of it to the UN or an international authority affiliated with the UN, probably by the next Democrat president. You’ll then find getting a domain name requires masses of form filling, justifications for why you want it, great costs to pay for all that, and it’ll all be nicely wrapped into the corporate socialist ideal. Individuals and troublemakers need not apply. And that’ll be it, as the saying goes.
It’ll be very safe for children, though.
admirable though your determination to change things from within may be, it will fail.
The Nasties changed things from within, by a decades long campaign of taking over the institutions.
There will be no bloody revolution, society as a whole is demonstrating boiling frog syndrome. And even if there were, what on earth makes you thing your prefered side would come out on top? It is not as if the bolsheviks were anything other than a marginal group of agitators prior to October 1917 (or whatever other date is actually true).
We need to scrap the institutions we can, and by doing so, introduce diversity of thought into others. This will be a generational struggle, just as the previous Gramscian takeover was.
The nasties parrot the mantra of “diversity, diversity, diversity” incessantly, but by this they mean only diversity of skin colour. They HATE intellectual diversity, and I love it. With a passion.
Lets smash the hegemony, starting with the schools.
Much as I despise the Great Helmsman, let us use him against his acolytes – “Let a thousand flowers bloom”.
Where do you get the teachers, when the teacher training colleges are run by the enemy?
How will pupils go on to further education, when further education is run by the enemy?
How will your former pupils have careers, when the career structures are controlled by the enemy?
It’s all interlocked, each part protecting the others. And it’s international. Wherever you start, you’re starting in the wrong place.
Yours faithfully,
Eeyore.
Ian B,
Fine, enjoy.
The fight is breaking out all over the internet as we write, and you choose to preemptively surrender.
If I am going to go up against the wall regardless, and I will, I would rather go down fighting than tugging my forelock and muttering “Yas massa” as I climb into the cattle cart.
Which Jews do you admire most? Those who lined up against the wall? Or those who made the Warsaw Ghetto a no go area for the entire German army of occupation for a whole month? And later defended a country of their own?
Well, am I a lesser person than my father? Mid East and Pacific theatres, 1940-1945. Am I going to spit on his efforts? I admire the civilisation he fought for, and these bastards aren’t going to take it from me, not without a fight.
You do as you see fit.
There’s an important difference. The Gramscians believed they were overturning a cultural hegemony, but they weren’t. Their old order wasn’t organised. It wasn’t a hegemony. So it was easy for them to take over, because their victims (everboyd else) had no idea what was happening.
But we have a different problem. The Gramscians are watching for us. That is why they can thwart every attempt at entryism. They know full well what it is, and they know what to watch for and how to stop it. This makes the task orders of magnitude more difficult. The Gramscians were able to move slyly from institution to institution, unopposed. We have no such luxury.
Didn’t they all end up in death camps, with all due respect? What are you after here, a victory or a tragic gesture?
Ian B,
So Ezra Levant and Mark Stein should just roll over and get pissed on?
I, for one, intend to follow their lead. The monolith will be brought down by one individual at a time.
That is the issue, individuals matter.
As I said – you do as you see fit. If you don’t want to be part of the fight, at least try not to get in the way.
Quite right Ian, they own the system and know it intimately. It is theirs, and anything of theirs I want no part of.
The Gramscians believed they were overturning a cultural hegemony, but they weren’t. Their old order wasn’t organised. It wasn’t a hegemony.
Of course it was a hegemony. And they were successfull in undermining it, although the hegmonists even helped by centralising the organs of the state.
What we have got to do is decentralise them, and remove control from the state.
Use the language that will help do the job. Ask even your lefty friends if they actually like the idea of “a state mandated version of history”. If you won’t do this what value any complaints about the effect?
Interesting post nothing to add…
Not it wasn’t, not in Gramscian terms. There was an establishment, yes, various elites, and various received wisdoms, but there was no ideological hegemony in Gramscian terms. Gramsci presumed there must be one to explain away why Teh Masses weren’t rallying to the red flag. He presumed that they must be being actively mislead by a deliberate conspiracy- the cultural hegemony.
Lefties presume that those they are trying to destroy are as corrupt as themselves. They see a mirror image of themselves in their enemies. Because they themselves are committed to imposing a system, they presume that that which they oppose- even emergent phenomena such as the free market- are a socially constructed “system” (in that case, they called it “Capitalism”). Likewise, because they are ruthless propagandists themselves they presume that their enemy are also ruthless propagandists, hence their hatred of advertising which they believe is a propaganda campaign imposing the culturally hegemonic Capitalist System. Because they intend to brainwash everyone (“raising class consciousness”) they presume that the enemy capitalists brainwash people. And so on.
There wasn’t any hegemony. That was why they found it so easy. The mirror image of this problem is that because the non-left aren’t themselves a hegemony, they find it difficult to grasp that the Gramscians are one; and thus fail to defend against it adequately.
I haven’t got any lefty friends any more, not since that embarrassing incident with the radishes , but if I had I can tell you they’d be more than delighted at the thought of “a state mandated version of history”. That’s precisely what they want; again because they imagine that the imaginary cultural hegemony brainwash children with their imperialist nationalist racist propaganda and that must be defeated by centrally disseminating a “true” i.e. Gramscian version to raise the consciousness of the etc etc etc
Off to bed in a mo (keeping odd hours at the moment); one final more positive thought afore I go. Things do seem hopeless now, and I don’t believe individuals can do squat against the monolith. But they may have made one enormous tactical error; they’ve bet the farm on Global Warming. If we can win on that and properly exploit the victory we may be in with a chance.
Ian B:
I don’t think so. They’ve diversified their ideological portfolio much better than that; there are dozens of other issues they can successfully use in a similar way. And I think you’re naive if you consider the general public rational enough to recognize a case of spectacular false predictions and unfounded scaremongering and develop a negative view of the perpetrators. After all, just remember all the environmental (and other!) scares from the past that turned out to be flat false. Environmentalism has been growing in popularity ever faster even though it already has a history of no less than four decades of spectacularly false predictions of doom — does the name Paul Ehrlich ring a bell?
At the end of the day, no matter how wrong they turn out to be, they can always use the standard excuses and obfuscations. Yes, the disaster didn’t come as soon as we expected, but now it’s definitely around the corner; the disaster would have come if it wasn’t for the efforts we inspired; the disaster has happened — thousands of cute little penguins have been displaced, and so on.
Ian B:
Despite the utter brilliance of most of your comments, I think you’re expressing some common historical misconceptions in the above paragraph. In my opinion, neither was the rule of autocratic gangs a norm before the Enlightenment, nor did the Enlightenment on the whole do much to foster the spirit of political freedom, individualism, and science and free inquiry. On the contrary, it directly gave rise to the totalitarianism of the Jacobins, who made even the worst European autocrats of the 18th century look quite libertarian in comparison, and then to Napoleon, who engulfed the whole Europe in cataclysmic wars that set in motion some of the most destructive historical forces of the 19th and 20th centuries, from nationalism (especially German nationalism) to the concept of mass conscript armies. Of course, these latter developments had their ideological basis fixed by Enlightenment too. As for the science and scientific method, they had already been alive and welll long before the Enlightenment in the hands of people like Newton and Leibniz, whose worldview was for the most part a polar opposite of what the Enlightenment thinkers stood for.
On the whole, yes, it’s fun to read Candide and see how Voltaire was deriding the powers-that-be of his age, but the über-totalitarian visions of Rousseau and Babeuf were a part of the Enlightenment as much as the wit of Voltaire and the scientific brilliance of D’Alembert. After all, Marx and all the subsequent totalitarian ideologues who drew from him could easily find ample precedent for their ideas among the 18th century philosophers. Even the nowadays predominant soft-totalitarian concept of the omnipresent state that micro-regulates every aspect of human life is basically just a logical continuation of the Enlightenment ideas of how a state should be organized and how it should relentlessly act in the name of “reason”, rather than being constrained by any sort of custom, tradition, and extra-political social norms. And the supposedly “absolute” Ancien Régime was in fact very severely constrained in this regard, far more so than any modern state nowadays — the next time you read the words “L’État, c’est moi”, remember that the guy who supposedly said that didn’t have enough actual power to do so much as tax the rich or conscript the poor.
As someone has already noted in a comment in this blog a while ago, claiming that freedom and individualism are an invention of the Enlightenment (or Renaissance, Reformation, etc.) is not only a naive and cartoonish oversimplification of history, but also a horrible slander against our ancestors.
Ian B,
Countingcats is right Ian. If I shared your pessimism (and sometimes I do) I’d be down at the bottom of the garden with my head in the stream.
As I’m not, I’d best explain. The internet is not a “thing”, it’s a protocol for exchanging data packets. It is therefore invincible to Stalinist style control. It was designed that way to survive a nuclear war and it will survive NeuArbeit too. Of course the evil, mendacious politicos don’t get this but I suspect most of them couldn’t wire a frigging plug.
I appreciate you feel threatened because of your site (I’ve seen it – filthy but not quite my filthy – I prefer, as Mr Cats mentions, the likes of Ms Teese) but freedom only really dies when the free give up. This is not something we’re given, it’s something we take.
Never forget that.
Nick M
This thing about internet and nuclear war is an often repeated, but very misleading factoid. The Internet Protocol (a.k.a. IP) can be used to build networks capable of surviving an outage of a large number of nodes, but this is not how the actual internet of today is constructed. You can indeed design a decentralized IP network in which there are no central points at which it would be possible to easily eavesdrop and censor large parts of it, but the architecture of the modern internet actually offers ideal points for such activities.
Remember how in Soviet Union they used to register typewriters? Well, the internet has this functionality built in as an inherent part of its design. And it’s in fact far more advanced: whoever has access to the records of your ISP can not only easily find out what exactly you posted and published, but also what exactly you read, and with cooperation from other ISPs, also who exactly read what you posted. These records can be easily kept in a form as detailed as necessary, and they can also be stored forever in a form easily accessible by a few keystrokes. Imagine if a Soviet secret cop discovering a piece of samizdata (ha! :-)) had the ability to magically find out not only who exactly wrote and published it, but also the list of all people who have read it (and any other copies of it) so far. This is exactly what the internet makes possible (and in fact easily done).
Of course, the present political systems pretty much anywhere in the world aren’t nearly as interested in surveillance and censorship as the Soviet regime was, and the exceptions are found only in technologically backward, impoverished hellholes in which the presence of the internet is still negligible. But this may change in the future, and we are already seeing an increased political will for surveillance and censorship just about anywhere.
What ameliorates the situation somewhat is the fact that more technologically savvy users can make the task of censors and overseers more difficult by requiring them to piece together information that resides in different countries. However, things are also changing in favor of more control in this regard too. In the past few years, courts and law enforcement agencies around the world have been increasingly cooperative in exchanging the information necessary to police the internet.
Britain also has an historically low murder rate
Depends on when you place your marker. Compared to 50 or 100 years ago it is rather high.
But they may have made one enormous tactical error; they’ve bet the farm on Global Warming. If we can win on that and properly exploit the victory we may be in with a chance.
Can I suggest –
http://www.freeminds.org/psych/propfail.htm
Basically, it is a study pointing out that, when it comes to believing cultists, firm evidence of forecasts failing, Aliens will land on my front lawn at 8:34 tomorrow night, and they will peace to all the world immediately, does nothing to shake the faith. In fact, it can even reinforce it.
It will be interesting to see how the leaders of the AGW cultists (NewLab, the EU) react to further failure of their forecasts.
Something I picked up on this morning, further emphasising that if change is wanted, we must react with the wider community rather than just chattering amongst ourselves –
http://www.noapologies.ca/2008/01/quit-preaching-to-the-choir.html
Indeed, but luckily for us that doesn’t matter too much. As with any debate or argument, the objective isn’t to change your opponents’ minds; it is to sway the audience.
It’s not about getting the minority hegemonic Greens to admit they’re wrong, all we need to do (and it’s a big “all”, I freely admit, which is why I’m a pessimist) is to demonstrate that the Greens are wrong to everybody else.
As Green policies really start to bite (e.g. carbon rationing, food shortages, economic collapse) that wil be easier to demonstrate. At the moment people aren’t yet suffering enough to really care.
all we need to do … is to demonstrate that the Greens are wrong to everybody else.
The problem is, the nutters have captured the entire political machinery of Europe. All major parties in the UK and the rest of the EU parrot the claims, and it will take very brave people to break away from that concensus. Besides, with the power and control it is giving Brussels, do you realy believe the Eurocrats will abandon that?
No, I don’t, which is why we’re in an almighty bind. Anything we, or you, or whoever tries to do will meet the same problem; the entrenched, powerful, organised group who already control the machinery. That’s why I keep saying we’re not losing, we’ve already lost. It’s no use trying to argue your case rationally or win the argument, because analogically this is a kangaroo court. I don’t beleve one can succeed by, say, arguing for independent schooling from government, since the hegemony (God I hate using this post-Marxist language, it always comes across so tinfoil hatty) will know precisely what you’re up to and make sure you don’t succeed. You can’t win the argument any more than you can sway a court of kangaroo judges.
Instead if there’s to be any hope we must seek their vulnerabilities and exploit them, and we must be as sly as toads. That’s why I’m suggesting that one potential area is Global Warming, since it may be they’ve over-extended themselves. One of the great difficulties of course is that it’s such a nebulous theory that it can’t be brought down with a crash; it can be endlessly modified etc. But it is fake science, and as such is vulnerable. If the Earth does go into another cooling period, AGW will be vulnerable; especially if we’re living under anti-Carbon draconian conditions, food shortages, and so on. If that happens, and we are wise enough owls, it can be used as a wedge to open up a front against the entire technocracy. That will require organisation. It’ll mean keeping the NGOs, charities, and academia themselves in the firing line and not letting them get away with sacrificing a few of their own to escape judgement for the rest. And so on. As such, the more draconian the carbon dictatorship becomes, the more exposed they are if it can be brought down. Etc.
I’m just saying it’s one potential weak spot. Overall, they’re virtually invulnerable. We’re a few freedom fighters hanging out in the woods, surrounded by a mighty empire. Victory is far from assured.
Snigger
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/01/piggy-in-middle.html
Try and please the Greens and you are on a hiding to nothing. Whatever you offer the beast, it will take it, and then come back, demanding more.
Try and please everyone, and you just piss everyone off.
Ian B and others who reckon I’m suggesting a figleaf of legitimacy by pressing for transparency, you’re right. And you’re also right that getting civil rights groups like Liberty to oversea it will not guarantee anything. What I’d *like* is for the whole thing tobe scrapped, and one way I can see of doing that is to propose this simple fly in the ointment that, if they are the bastards I think they are, they’ll never permit, thus exposing their nasty ways even to their Guardian-reading chums.
Or, they might let me on their oversight panel and I’ll hammer the fuckers.