Social network sites are evil

Here's another reason I left Facebook...

BBC News: US wants Twitter details of Wikileaks activists

In 2007 I wrote a blog piece about the sinister data-mining types who ploughed millions of dollars into Facebook because they saw the obvious potential of having such a vast and up-to-date depository of information about social networks. Governments ain't stoopid, and now we can see precisely how they plan to use things like Facebook and Twitter to spy on their own citizens. All they have to do is subpoena the social network owners, who are hardly likely to refuse.

The mad thing is that governments don't even have to make any effort to gather the data. Gone are the days of the Stasi, who were almost admirable in their dedication to covert surveillance. Now the public voluntarily supplies tidily organised and digitally compiled information about their social lives.

The good old days

This is really not good. The Wikileaks activists are not terrorists. I doubt that terrorists tweet their terrorist plans. They are whistleblowers who have done nothing but expose factual documents that threaten the public image of the US military-industrial complex's international adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This latest development shows that by invoking 'national security' world governments will be able to get any information about anyone that happens to be stored by social networking sites. The temptation is simply too great for them to resist. And if this is happening now, who know what they might be doing ten years from now?

The worst thing about the threat of civil war

As far as I can tell this isn't meant to be ironic. It's good to know the BBC reporters have their fingers on the pulse of the British public.

BBC: Could Ivory Coast turmoil make chocolate more expensive?

History repeats itself

Here's a strange thing. This image is a nineteenth-century depiction of the Sack of Rome by the Goths in 410.


Here's a photo of US Marines in the centre of Baghdad in 2003.


Look at the composition of the two figures on the statue, the posture of the statue itself, the rope, even the guy at the bottom with the raised hand. Uncanny.

Less nudity in the second one, though.

A word from my hero

Chris Hedges, a voice in the wilderness (literally this time).

Rick Barber

This is the best election ad I've ever seen.

Beckship Troopers

During one of my occasional trawls through the blogosphere of the rabid left I came across a clip from Mr Glenn Beck's opinion show on Fox. Beck has hit on a genius formula of being so absurdly irrational and extreme that he is effectively beyond parody. He seems to frustrate the left in part because his arguments are not really arguments at all, but a series of disjointed assertions repeated in similar forms over and over again, like some kind of multi-layered conceptual jazz experience aimed at an audience of Neocon traditionalists.

Anyway, Beck is not very interesting any more. He's like a car alarm that's gone off outside your place of work and shows no sign of stopping; one just has to try to get on with things and try to ignore it. But he said something in the clip which actually made the sci-fi nerd in me laugh.

He was ranting about recent leftist groups who have been protesting against budget cuts in education. Apparently they've been waving suspiciously red banners and claiming that education is a universal right, and indoctrinating schoolchildren with such socialist propaganda.


Beck: Education is not a right, it's a privilege! How many of our students even look at that "right" as a privilege? They sit there, they don't listen! [dramatic pause] Because they don't have to earn it. Unless you earn it, you don't value it.

Leaving aside the fact that moaning about how children never listen in class rather undermines his claims that they're being successfully indoctrinated with anything, his words reminded me of the classroom scene from Verhoeven's classic 90s ultraviolent spacefest Starship Troopers, which, in case you haven't seen it, is set in a kind of Nazi Star Trek version of the future.


Michael Ironside: Let's sum up. This year we explored the failure of democracy, when the social scientists brought our world to the brink of chaos. We talked about the veterans, how they took control and imposed the stability that has lasted for generations since. You know these facts. But have I taught you anything of value this year? Hm? You - why are only citizens allowed to vote?

Student: It's a reward. What the Federation gives you for doing Federal Service.

Michael Ironside: No. No! Something given has no value!

He took the words right out of Beck's mouth. Beck strikes me as the kind of fellow who might watch Starship Troopers and not realise that the whole package is an ironic spin on Robert Heinlein's thoroughly un-ironic book.

It's bollocks, of course. None of us "earned" the right to be born in the first place. Does that mean we don't value our own lives?

We're not talking about university or college education here. The debate is about basic education. What kind of nutter goes on national TV and claims that no child in the country should have an automatic right to a free, state-provided basic education? What century is this guy living in? Not in the distant future century of Starship Troopers, sadly.

*

Someone commented that my blog wasn't allowing anonymous comments, so I've fixed that now. Sorry.