“Thanks to corporations, instead of democracy we get Baywatch”
– George Monbiot, in today’s Guardian
Sounds good to me. When do we start?
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Totalitarian systems are not sustained at the top, but at the bottom, where a system of mutual surveillance prevails. The influence of Desert Islam on the region has engendered just such a totalitarian system, whereby a woman who refuses to wear the hijab is stigmatised, and possibly threatened with violence. Even in liberal Lebanon, where women have historically been highly expressive in their dress, the present generation is increasingly adopting the hijab and shaming those who don’t. Some people see this trend as a reaction to the West and modernity. It is anything but. It is merely a succumbing to the encroaching influence of Saudi-funded Desert Islam, a totalitarian system expounded by highly rational modern means. Note: This article was published on Social Affairs Unit blog and someone (we do not know who) redirected the url of www.islamchannel.com to point at it, to much consternation of the Islam Channel and bafflament and bemusement of the Social Affairs Unit. It also attracted some atypical commenters… September 6th, 2005 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
 And another thing to think about when we start pointing fingers is this. The government is never equipped to handle a crisis like this. There’s too much bureaucracy – initiative-stifling bureaucracy which prevents swift, effective action. I would like to hear from government employees on this. The nature of that bureaucracy is such that you have very specific guidelines to follow for even the most minute tasks. You need approval for just about everything, and the person you need approval from usually needs approval to give you the approval. It’s not as easy as say rounding up 4 of your co-workers and saying, “We’ve got someone at such and such an address, let’s go grab her and get her out of there.” Now add a destroyed or disabled command and control center to that bureaucracy and you’ve got a total and complete mess. You (as a civilian) don’t need “Approved” stamped on 3 different forms before you can run into your neighbor’s house and pull them out. I hope this makes sense. Anyway, I’m sure there’s been human error in this catastrophe. How could there not be? But what I’m saying is that I’ve come to expect poor decision making and a total lack of initiative from government. They can’t even balance a budget, at the federal, state, or local levels. I could balance my checkbook and spend within my means when I was a teenager. But I’m not gonna point fingers and get into the blame game. If you want me to blame something besides the storm herself, I blame the nature of government in the first place. It’s too big, it’s too slow, it’s too inefficient, it’s too bloated, and it’s too intiative-stifling to be effective in normal circumstances, much less in a disaster. It’s a systemic issue, more than an issue of individual people in government. – The Interdictor writing yesterday September 5th, 2005 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
September 3rd, 2005 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
What an exciting time it is to be alive: ours still is the golden age of scientific discovery, creationists and other ignoramuses notwithstanding. –Abiola Lapite, commenting on yet more advances in genetics. September 2nd, 2005 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
I had never heard the word blogger until May 25 . But now I know them well because of all the amazing coverage they had of the protests. My friends overseas all followed what happened through the blogs, because they have more credibility than the mainstream media. August 24th, 2005 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
We spent all this money to do things legally and right, and all the sudden it becomes illegal to do something legal The state is not your friend, Nick. August 23rd, 2005 | 65 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is no “tolerance”, there are only changing fashions in intolerance. August 22nd, 2005 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
“I do not really think the House of Commons is ‘My Cup of Tea’, I am too much of an individualist, and also, too self-centred and set in my ways. Enough if I remain a mute, just adequate back-bencher, but frankly most of the problems that so excite ‘the Hon. Members’ leave me quite cold and indifferent.” – Sir Henry “Chips” Channon in his diary entry for December 5th 1935. August 15th, 2005 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
August 13th, 2005 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
A minority of musicians not only dislike the capitalist world, but they believe they can eschew it. Some of them have set up the sort of micro-firms that capitalism makes so easy to do. So they have spurned being sub-contractors or suppliers to large firms, and have become entrepreneurs instead – and think of it as rebellion. – Richard D. North in Rich is Beautiful August 12th, 2005 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
GR: Do you think our technological civilization *is* fragile? SS: On the contrary, I think it’s immensely resilient. Note that famines generally occur in countries where peasant farmers are still the majority! It’s precisely the complexity that makes it so hard to damage; economies are like ecosystems, they’re more stable as they grow more complex. They work around damage. – Science Fiction writer S.M. Stirling (interviewed by Glenn Reynolds), stating something that is pretty obvious when you think about it. I think I would also argue that the global communications and global supply chains that have come into existence in the last few years make it dramatically more resilient rather than less. There are vastly more brains linked together and these supply chains actually contain massive redundancy. August 11th, 2005 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
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