“It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.”
–Sir Peter Ustinov, who died on Sunday.
|
|||||
|
As a dedicated fan of the Australian cricket team, I have been watching them play a series of one day internationals, and Test matches, in Sri Lanka. These matches went very well for Australia and concluded last night. (I write about such things here) Australia had played a series in Sri Lanka in 1999, and I had watched that also. In contrast to 1999, Sri Lanka looks to be a happier and more prosperous place now then it did back then. From what I could see on the television, the grounds this time were not ringed with military style police, and there was evidence of much new building, infrastructure, and normality. For example, one of the most prominent advertisers on the grounds was a mobile phone company. However, the peace in Sri Lanka is under pressure. Some background to the civil war can be read here, and news of latest incidents can be read here. The basic problem is that unity between the two sides in the civil war is breaking down, with dissention in the Tamil Tigers, and also within the Sri Lankan government itself. The President fired the Prime Minister and called for fresh elections. The issues can be read about here, and on first reading, I think Samizdata.net is hoping for the Prime Minister’s party to prevail.
I am bemused by the “Buddhist values” of an open economy… and not thrilled to read about farm subsidies! Not enough Sri Lankans are reading Samizdata! Anyway, if peace can be maintained, I might be able to visit Sri Lanka the next time the Australian cricketers go there. Many Australians went this time, and looked to be having a rousing good time. That sounds like my idea of a good time. March 29th, 2004 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
 One of the reasons for slightly less output on this august blog is that two of the editors and the inimitable Gabriel Syme were off meeting other sinister Illuminati in Prague for a fine Czech beer or six. 
No prize for guessing where the Illuminati meet in Prague Prague, like Bratislava, is known for its splendours… 
Hot… steamed in fact One of the upsides of the dire weather was that many of the usually crowded tourist attractions were almost deserted.  We meet one of the leading central European bloggers, Tomas Kohl (on the right)… 
Tomas sinks some fine Czech Pilsner with Adriana and Gabriel Syme March 28th, 2004 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
The government talks a lot about ‘investing’ in hospitals and schools. That is why we have to pay extra taxes. We all know that New Labour’s experiment with spending has been a flop, with the improvements to services tiny compared with the increased spending. One problem is that the cash we think is going to be spent on operations and classrooms gets diverted. Sometimes this is because of excessive bureaucratic layers, like Local Education Authorities. But sometimes it is rather more blatantly wasted. Like with government attempts to encourage ‘e-society’. The private sector worldwide has done a really good job at providing opportunities for e-society. Just look at AOL Instant Messenger, webcams, blogs, web site forums, Friendster and Orkut. But the fact that e-society is so abundantly provided by the private sector has not stopped the UK government thinking it should get involved. Back in the autumn, I got an e-mail from James Crabtree of VoxPolitix asking if I would blog about a new project called MySociety.org, run by his friend Tom Steinberg, a former No. 10 adviser. I have met Crabtree a couple of times and like him, so I thought I should do my bit. I tried for an hour or so to write a blog about this new project, but I just could not. The project was utter crap. And I just could not write anything nice about it with a clear conscience. Well, that project which I thought was ‘utter crap’ is now being funded by the government. It has just been awarded £250,000 as “part of something called the e-innovations fund, a pot of government cash set aside to stimulate useful and innovative new online projects”. March 28th, 2004 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Wired has a follow-up story on the case of Nebraska farmer and his identity card (Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of the state of Nevada, 03-5554). The justices of the Supreme Court heard arguments last Monday in a first-of-its kind case that asks whether people can be punished for refusing to identify themselves. The court took up the appeal of a Nevada cattle rancher who was arrested after he told a deputy that he had done nothing wrong and didn’t have to reveal his name or show an ID during an encounter on a rural road four years ago. Larry “Dudley” Hiibel, 59, was prosecuted, based on his silence, and finds himself at the center of a major privacy rights battle. Hiibel, dressed in cowboy hat, boots and a bolo tie, was defiant outside the court.
The case will clarify police powers in the post-Sept. 11 era, determining if officials can demand to see identification whenever they deem it necessary. Nevada senior deputy attorney general Conrad Hafen told justices that “identifying yourself is a neutral act” that helps police in their investigations and doesn’t – by itself – incriminate anyone. But if that is allowed, several justices asked, what will be next? A fingerprint? Telephone number? E-mail address? What about a national identification card? Hiibel’s lawyer, Robert Dolan, told the court:
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor pointed out the court never has given police the authority to demand someone’s identification, without probable cause they have done something wrong. But she also acknowledged police might want to run someone’s name through computers to check for a criminal history. Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said if Hiibel loses, the government will be free to use its extensive data bases to keep tabs on people.
March 28th, 2004 | Comments are closed
Spotted in Friday’s print version of the Evening Standard:
In other words: You are cannon fodder. The state is not your friend. Have a cheerful weekend. With thanks to Guy Herbert March 27th, 2004 | 43 comments - (Comments are closed)
U.S. government agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are being pitched many new technologies, but government technologists have an obligation to consider ethical and moral issues such as privacy when embracing new applications, concluded a panel of technology experts speaking at the FOSE government computing trade show. AFFIRM (the Association for Federal Information Resources Management) plans to launch a Web site addressing technology and ethics within weeks and eventually issue a white paper on related topics. Hastings and Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, questioned whether IT vendors can be expected to present the ethical issues when they pitch their products to government buyers. Sales people are not generally trained to address difficult ethical issues while trying to make a sale; they’re trained to tell potential customers what the customers want to hear, Paller said. The panel also addressed several questions from the audience, largely of government employees. One question was:
Reeder answered:
March 27th, 2004 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
Many people, Samizdatistas included, have wondered just where all of those billions of dollars of UN Oil for Food money went. It was rather apparent food and medicine were among the last things for which they were used. Someone has finally decided to audit the accounts. According to Senior CPA Advisor Dan Senor:
I can hardly wait to find out which bureaucracy embezzled more: the United Nations or Saddam’s Baathists. March 27th, 2004 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Some time ago I posted here that the weekly British publication, The Spectator, edited by Tory MP and jolly good chap Boris Johnson, had lost some of its quality and class. I can just about take reading Simon Jenkins on why we should stop worrying about terror, even if his comments are published on the day of the Madrid horror. I can even take reading Ross Clark on why we should learn to love speed cameras and pay inheritance tax, or learn from Sir Max Hastings as to why we British are so much finer military strategists than those awfully common Americans with their silly Apache helicopters. And of course the Spectator has the brilliant Mark Steyn, who looks increasingly uncomfortable amid the snobs, America-bashers, Murdochphobes and BBC castoffs like Rod Liddle. But that magazine’s ‘High Life’ columnist, Taki , is neither witty, interesting or informative. His writings frequently plummet depths I thought it impossible to tolerate in that magazine. He has got into difficulties before over his outspoken attacks on the often Jewish policymakers and intellectuals he associates with the neo-conservative movement. That of course is not necessarily proof that Taki is an anti-semite, and it is a charge one should only make with great care. But when you read about Taki’s thoughts in this week’s magazine (link requires registration) on the “wallet-lifting” Richard Perle, what on earth is one to suppose Taki is getting at? (“Those People, you know, very crafty with money”). One might ask why one should care. Well, I care about the fate of what has been at times the finest magazine in the English language, a place that has inspired me with writers of such grace as the late Colin Welch and the brilliant satire of the late, and much missed, Auberon Waugh. We also need, in a healthy media world, a weekly alternative to the awful New Statesman. But the Greek boy has always been the bad smell at the back. Time for him to go. Go on Boris, make my day. March 27th, 2004 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
I am not really in the market for big, long books about the Cold War, but I do like a good short one from time to time, and Communism by Richard Pipes, is looking good so far. I started by reading the conclusion, and now I am reading the penultimate chapter, “The Third World”. Here is what Pipes says about the relationship between poverty and Communism:
That rings true. In general, it has always seemed to me that the favourite metaphor of ‘rabid anti-communists’ (i.e. the people who underestimated the true depths of Communist disgustingness only somewhat), to the effect that Communism was like a disease, is dead right. And Pipes is asking: how strong was your country’s immune system? March 26th, 2004 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
But what is this? A former Archbishop of Canterbury daring to criticise Islam?
I just bet one is. I cannot find the original Telegraph piece that this BBC report refers to, but I did come across this, from 2001, when Carey actually was the Archbishop. Which is interestingly different from what he is now saying. The BBC report continues:
(Not that the BBC ever gives an unbalanced impression of anything.)
Which would be why President Bush doesn’t rely on “diplomacy” (that is to say, mere promises of future good behaviour from those in no position to keep them), but concentrates instead on hunting the terrorists down in their own back yards, and uses diplomacy merely to pressurise those who get in the way of that process. The West is learning. ADDENDUM: In the hilarious first draft of this, I attributed the paragraph about Bush chasing terrorists, as well as the paragraphs above that, to the BBC. The mother of all misplaced html commands, I think you will agree. I do not apologise, because this was too much of a laugh, and laughs are good. March 26th, 2004 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
More Tsarism, this time of the Euro variety:
White Rose has further EUro-reportage and links about similar EUro-stuff, here and here. This report also illustrates the point that EUrope is not just a machine to enable foreigners to muck the British around, it is also a machine to enable to British to muck the foreigners around: a sort of universal substitute empire for all the old European imperialists. Having been made to stop tyrannising over their previous imperial possessions, the tyrannising classes have switched instead to tyrannising over each other’s nations. Bad luck on the rest of us, but there it is, these people have to have someone to tyrannise over. Meanwhile, proof that when the Euro elite wants something, it just beavers away until it gets it:
Although, when the time comes that the people who want EUrope to fall to bits are finally in the ascendancy, they will have the perfect precedent for saying: “We are going to keep on destroying this thing until we succeed, and will ignore all counter-opinions, of, e.g. voters, because these opinions are anti-historical and do not matter. We are doing what we know to be best. Our opponents are deluded. That’s what the founders of this thing did when they started it, and we are merely following their inspiring example.” Trouble is, by the time that happens, those people may be even nastier. I will read this piece by David Carr to cheer myself up. March 26th, 2004 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
Recent Comments