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It’s around 8 pm London time, and so far the result is only in the form of exit polls, but it looks, touch wood, as if Sweden has voted NO to the EUro.
An exit poll suggests that Sweden has narrowly voted to reject the euro, in a referendum days after the killing of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh.
The Swedish television poll of 7,000 people gives the No side 51.8% to the Yes side’s 46.2%.
Preliminary results are expected at 1930 GMT (2130 local time), one-and-a-half hours after polls closed.
Lindh was the main face of the Yes campaign, and her stabbing in a Stockholm department store appeared to trigger a last-minute sympathy vote.
Anna Lindh murdered. The Swedish establishment united in favour of the EUro. Yet still they couldn’t bully it through.
The establishment here is anything but united if favour of the EUro, so this result means that Britain is that much more unlikely to be joining it in the foreseeable future. So this is a big blow to the entire project.
I’ve been watching a EUro-yes-man on the TV saying that if Britain stays out of the EUro, that means that we’ll be in the same silly position as we’ve been in for the last fifty years, namely playing “catch-up”. We will eventually, grudgingly, joining a EUro-institution which we had very little part in shaping. But that’s a double-edged argument, because there is another way for Britain to be more decisive about the EU as a whole. We could get the hell right out of it. We wouldn’t be playing catch-up then, would we? The chances are, if the EU doesn’t meanwhile improve its economic policies, that we’d be the ones they’d then be trying to catch up with. Which is why I’ve never understood this argument that non-membership of the EU, or of the EUro, will diminish Britain’s power. Do you reckon that Sweden today is having no major impact upon the European Union?
Did Hong Kong, by “staying out of China” for so long, have no influence on China, just because its political bosses didn’t constantly share dinners with Red China’s bosses and constantly get told what to do by them, in exchange for the occasional “concession”, concerning, I don’t know, not locking up dissidents for a few more years? Did Hong Kong, by “going it alone”, thereby deny to itself “power”?
Meanwhile Estonia, in contrast, is definitely voting YES to joining the European Union as a whole, by a big margin. Having visited Estonia for several days about twelve years ago, I know all about that place. They were dead set on getting into the EU then, and on paying whatever was the price of entry, basically to protect themselves against any future that Russians might one day dream up for them. So it’s no surprise to me that this is still their majority attitude now. And if they don’t get any protection against Russia, they’ll leave the EU and look for another club to join.
More from today’s New York Times, this time about a high tech company which makes its mega-bucks by betting that future security/Patriot Act legislation will be more intrusive than it is now. This is the Security-Industrial Complex getting into its stride, and its vested interests getting dug in.
This company makes X-ray snooping kit. There must be hundreds more doing similar stuff which we aren’t necessarily ever going to hear about.
This from the New York Times speaks for itself:
WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 – For months, President Bush’s advisers have assured a skittish public that law-abiding Americans have no reason to fear the long reach of the antiterrorism law known as the Patriot Act because its most intrusive measures would require a judge’s sign-off.
But in a plan announced this week to expand counterterrorism powers, President Bush adopted a very different tack. In a three-point presidential plan that critics are already dubbing Patriot Act II, Mr. Bush is seeking broad new authority to allow federal agents – without the approval of a judge or even a federal prosecutor – to demand private records and compel testimony.
This may not be quite so central to the White Rose agenda. I don’t know. Are more severe punishments part of our beat?
Mr. Bush also wants to expand the use of the death penalty in crimes like terrorist financing, and he wants to make it tougher for defendants in such cases to be freed on bail before trial. These proposals are also sure to prompt sharp debate, even among Republicans.
But this is definitely for us:
Opponents say that the proposal to allow federal agents to issue subpoenas without the approval of a judge or grand jury will significantly expand the law enforcement powers granted by Congress after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And they say it will also allow the Justice Department – after months of growing friction with some judges – to limit the role of the judiciary still further in terrorism cases.
Indeed, Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, who is sponsoring the measure to broaden the death penalty, said in an interview that he was troubled by the other elements of Mr. Bush’s plan. He said he wanted to hold hearings on the president’s call for strengthening the Justice Department’s subpoena power “because I’m concerned that it may be too sweeping.” The no-bail proposal concerns him too, the senator said, because “the Justice Department has gone too far. You have to have a reason to detain.”
There’s a lot more. My thanks to David Sucher for the email that made sure we noticed this, and which definitely got us noticing it quicker than otherwise.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Government agencies will be able to access e-mail and phone data, under measures unveiled by ministers.
Local councils will be among the bodies able to use surveillance to investigate crimes, protect national security and protect public safety.
They will be able to use the powers to collect taxes.
It should.
Initial plans to revise legislation were dubbed the “snooper’s charter” when announced by home secretary David Blunkett last summer.
Yes, I remember that.
In a separate development phone companies and internet service providers will be told by the government to keep records of phone calls and internet visits for a year.
Is anyone complaining?
The civil rights campaigners Liberty have denounced the latest plans which give agencies such as fire authorities, jobcentres, the Postal Services Commission, the Gaming Board and the Charity Commission the power to use surveillance to investigate crime.
Liberty director Shami Chakrabati said: “This underlines the uncomfortable fact that the British public are the most spied upon people in the Western world.”
“The government has failed to learn from its mistakes.
“After the original “snoopers’ charter” was published last year, the government was forced to retreat after enormous public outcry. We hope the same happens again”.
What the government seems to have learned is: if at first you don’t get your snoopers’ charter, try, try and try again.
This Guardian article, which basically starts out as an extremely optimistic take on the domestic possibilities of new computer and camera and screen technology, has White Rose Relevance.
Nanotechnology – science at a billionth of a metre – and mobile technology could together turn the house of the future into something out of science fiction, according to scientists at the British Association science festival yesterday.
Which is not very White Rose Relevant at all. But gradually this changes.
“There are all sorts of things that can happen, from simple lighting through computing, security labelling, getting rid of bar codes and checkouts in supermarkets – just wheel your trolley through a gate, it will be scanned and the cost will be deducted from your bank account – electronic noses, maybe, sitting in your fridge and telling you if anything is off, and so on.
Getting a bit nearer to our territory.
Long before the walls of the house became sentient, the objects within it would be in touch through mobile technology. Nigel Linge of the University of Salford told the conference that he and colleagues were already working with the Greater Manchester police on a potential project called Crimespot.
Crimespot. Now it’s getting a bit creepier.
“We are therefore creating a future in which your mobile device knows everything about you, including your current location to within a few metres, and what you are presently doing,” he went on.
“Does this bring back memories of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, where Big Brother kept careful watch over everyone and, if you stepped out of line, whisked you off to room 101?”
Room 101. Bloody hell.
In fact, the watchful house could keep an eye on people who needed extra care.
Extra care. That’s how it spreads. What makes all this potentially so scary is that it is potentially so helpful. If it was nothing but scary, it wouldn’t be scary, because it would never catch on. As it is, you can see the genuinely security-driven private sector setting all this stuff up, and then the government moving in and demanding to have access to everyone’s mega hard drive. So that it can care for us all even better.
Posting looks as if it may be thin here today, so a quick comment on the economics of the internet.
The usual story is that the big, bad, old organisations could be in trouble now as the internet whistles into existence a million new nimble players to run rings around the big, bad, etc. … blah blah.
But how about this for a train of thought?
Selling text on the internet is working, okay, sort of, but it hasn’t really taken off. There’s too much free stuff, and anyway, people don’t want to pay. Maybe they’re scared that if they start surrendering £30 here and £30 there, it will never stop and they’ll be bankrupt. Maybe they just reckon the prices will come down, and they’re waiting.
But what if you are a huge, globally celebrated organisation which wants to be able to swank even more than you do now about how much beneficial impact you are having on the world, to your donors, charitable or political, and would actually quite welcome the simplicity of not having to be too businesslike about it all, and to have to chase every last cent for every bit of virtual stuff that you part with?
What if you are the BBC? Despite all that our bit of the blogosphere may say, the BBC still counts for a hell of a lot in the world; that’s why our bit of the blogosphere complains about it so much.
Or what if you are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology? → Continue reading: Big brands getting even bigger by giving it away
This seems interesting, from the BBC on Monday:
China, South Korea and Japan are to boost joint research into a new computer operating system to rival Microsoft Windows.
The project, expected to be open-source software, was proposed by Japan and is intended to give a helping hand to Windows rivals, such as Linux.
The Japanese Government has already earmarked one billion yen (US$85.5m) for the project.
The Japanese Government, contrary to collectivist myth, has a record of earmarking billions to computer schemes which later prove to be embarrassing failures. Remember that “Fifth Generation” fiasco? And then, of a more private sector (but “cooperative”) nature, there was that amazing moment around twenty years ago now when every Japanese electronics conglomerate there was produced a near-identical version of the same doomed games console/Sinclair computer clone, only bigger and clunkier than the Sinclair. (Remember Sinclair? Oh dear, I’m showing my age.)
Even so, I’d be interested to hear what our more computer-literate commenters think of this. I suggest we try to avoid reprising the usual Linux (good, ridiculous) Microsoft (good, tyrannical) arguments. I’m keen to learn whether this particular announcement is likely to make any difference to anything.
This news has been all over the place. I first found it here:
Saudi Arabia’s religious police have declared Barbie dolls a threat to morality, complaining that the revealing clothes of the “Jewish” toy – already banned in the kingdom – were offensive to Islam.
And God forbid anybody should be offensive.
In the category of “better late than never”, I don’t think White Rose noticed this CNN story from Aug 13 first time around:
JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) – Students in Biloxi public schools started classes this week under the watchful eye of Webcams that will keep track of every classroom and hallway.
I glanced through the WR archives from around then and couldn’t find anything. Presumably these webcams are still operating.
There’s a lovely case of the punishment fitting the crime to read about at Dave Barry’s blog.
On Aug 31, Barry wrote a Miami Herald article, describing the menace of what they call in the USA telemarketers, and what we call here junk fd*&%$ing phone calls.
… the telemarketers are claiming they have a constitutional right to call people who do not want to be called. They base this claim on Article VX, Section iii, row 5, seat 2, of the U.S. Constitution, which states: ”If anybody ever invents the telephone, Congress shall pass no law prohibiting salespeople from using it to interrupt dinner.”
And for all I know that is, approximately speaking, what the US Constitution says. Plus, if junk phone calling stopped, lots of junk phonies would be out of their junk jobs. Much the same, Barry pointed out, applies to muggers. Anyway, what’s the answer? → Continue reading: Junk phoners junk phoned
This must have happened before, but it’s the first big example of it that I’ve heard about at all recently. Tomorrow’s British press is apparently full of reports of what Mr Blair “said” to a bunch of trade unionists. In other words, the press printed the stuff that they had been given by Downing Street beforehand. They printed a whole load of stuff that he was going to say. The trouble is, BBC2 TV’s Newsnight has just reported, several trade union leaders who were present at the meeting at which all this was going to be said are adamant that Blair didn’t actually say it.
There must have been occasions where the print media have written reports in the past tense about events that had yet to occur, only for them not to happen as scripted, but it is somewhat unusual for our Prime Minister to be directly involved in such a mess-up. Why didn’t Blair follow his own script? Did he chicken out? Did he set the papers up on purpose? Did he think the whole thing would remain permanently in two separate compartments, with the trade unionists getting one message, and the rest of us getting another, without anyone comparing notes?
Maybe this sort of nonsense happens every day, and the government has (had) a gentleman’s agreement with the BBC that what it says it is going to say is what it said, regardless of what it really said. And if the newspapers print a load of bollocks they are too embarrassed to admit it, and it all dies the death without any embarrassment to anyone. Except, that – maybe, could be, I don’t know, I’m guessing – the government forgot that the BBC now hates it. → Continue reading: And the news is that … the news we just said may not have actually happened
Car tracking news from New Zealand:
Motorists face being taxed on how far they travel under government plans to generate cash.
Transport Minister Paul Swain said with vehicles becoming more fuel efficient, revenue from petrol tax would drop and alternative charges needed to be considered.
It is one of a number of transport schemes being looked at by officials, including a Big Brother-style project to equip every car with a personalised microchip so law-breaking motorists can be prosecuted by computer.
And Declan McCullagh offers a different angle on the same technology.
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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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