Where Worlds Collide

No, not that Big Brother. I’m referring to Tony Blair’s galactic database which will merge all the data that exists on every one of us. Ian P tells a horror story about the likely result.

Tony Blair thinks that creating a super database for everyone in Britain is a good idea, then ponder that combined with all his new laws lets look at the story of Average Joe Soap, clean, honest living man.

When Joe Soap arrived at his local Jobcentre to look for work, he had little idea of the nightmare that was about to unfold.

What’s scary is that the story seems disturbingly plausible. The best-case outcome of this project is it ends up wasting billions of pounds of taxpayer’s money without ever actually working. The worst case scenario is, well, just read the thing.

Link from Charlie Stross, who adds

But remember: it could always be worse! We could have a BNP government instead of caring, sharing, New Labour. But of course, if you’re innocent you’ve got nothing to fear, as John Reid never tires of telling us. Sleep tight.

Yes, before anyone says it, I do know Ian P seems to believe 7/7 was a false-flag operation. I think Ian P is wrong on that count. But it doesn’t mean his story of Joe Soap should be dismissed as paranoid fantasy.

So Saddam is dead.

I don’t agree with the death penalty, regardless of how horrible his crimes have been. It’s never acceptable to take life in cold blood, and as far as I’m concerned that’s a moral absolute for which there can be no exceptions. There is nothing that his death will solve that wouldn’t have been solved by life imprisonment. Not that he deserves any tears. Norm Geras thinks much the same thing.

Saddam should not have been hanged. He should not have been, because judicial execution is not a morally defensible practice. Apart from other reasons, it brutalizes the community that inflicts it.

And Saddam should not have been hanged now, before having to come before a court to answer for his greatest crimes.

As for those greater crimes, Jim Henley doesn’t mince his words.

[T]he US and its Iraqi allies chose to try Saddam on one of his relatively minor crimes because if they did so they could get him safely hung before they had to try him for the major ones, the gas attacks and massacres that happened during The Years of Playing Footsie with the United States. The Dujail reprisals were a war crime, no doubt about it, a bigger sham of justice than Saddam’s own trial, by two orders of magnitude. They were also the sort of war crime that people like Ralph Peters and a hundred other pundits and parapundits think the United States should be committing. Every time you read a complaint about “politically correct rules of engagement” you are reading someone who would applaud a Dujail-level slaughter if only we were to perpetrate it. Those are the people who are happiest of all about tonight’s execution. Smells like — victory! It’s the pomander they don against the stench.

But there’s no point in accusing the Freepi of hypocrisy; that only works for liberals or traditional conservatives, people who possess actual moral principles, and have some sense of shame. This doesn’t apply to the wingnut right. All they recognise is power. Just like Saddam himself.

Jim Macdonald has a depressing post on Making Light explaining how the misadventure in Iraq has long gone irrecoverably pear-shaped, and no amount of ’strategy changes’ can turn it round. Not that it will stop the Freepi from trying to blame the likely final unravelling on the left, particularly now the Democrats now control the US congress.

But I pray that Charlie Stross is wrong about the likely endgame:

The “last helicopter out of the embassy in Saigon” scenario is optimistic.

It was obvious that the war was illegal, immoral, and to be fought under false pretenses as far back as summer 2002, when the White House and Downing Street began spinning on the pretext for hostilities in a manner that would have made Joseph Goebbels blush. (I’m not kidding. Re-reading Shirer’s “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” with an eye for the propaganda campaign against Poland during spring and supper of 1939 makes the parallels utterly, blatantly, clear.)

It was also obvious that the aftermath was going to be a complete clusterf**k when the rift between the Powell State Department and the Ministry of War^W^W^WRumsfeld-controlled DoD resulted in the DoD trashing State’s detailed plans for administering Iraq after the invasion.

I don’t know what drugs the neocons were taking to come out with that rubbish about being greeted with flowers, but they seem to have actually believed it, which only makes the resulting fiasco pathetic as well as stupid.

Finally, when the military governor sacked the entire Iraqi army … then it was clearly only a matter of time before it was going to be “occupation: game over, you lose”. (Six. Hundred. Thousand. Men with automatic weapons. And no jobs. WTF did they think kicking them out of their barracks and mess tents was going to achieve? The mind, she boggles.)

But this latest idiocy …

“12-18 months” indeed.

In 12-18 months the remaining allied forces in Iraq will have their work cut out to evacuate all their personnel, abandoning their bases in place, and fighting their way out to the border with Kurdistan or Kuwait. If they manage to organize the evacuation for autumn/winter/spring (avoiding the 50-degree death march of summer) and if they can protect their ammunition and fuel dumps along the route, they might survive. If not, it’s going to look more like the First Afghan War than Vietnam.

I’d been hoping against hope that we hadn’t yet reached the tipping point. But the stories coming out Iraq have been getting more and more depressing of late, and can no longer be written off as defeatist propaganda from a traitorous leftist media. I think we passed the final tipping point several months ago. We’ve lost. If there ever was a chance of a favourable outcome, then the criminal incompetance of Rumsfeld, Bremer and the rest have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

There’s an old story about a motorist hopelessly lost in country lanes in a remote part of Ireland, who stopped to ask the local the way to the town he was trying to reach. “If I were you”, said the local, “I wouldn’t start from here”.

Iraq is like that.

I really don’t know what’s the best course now, but it’s looking increasingly likely that we’ll have to choose between the least bad of several pretty appalling options. Unfortunately Bush and Blair, along with a diminishing band of True Believers, still seem to be in denial.

I realise that haven’t posted anything about the American elections. But a few day’s pause does give time to assess the impact.

Unlike some anti-American idiots of the left, I have always believed that the majority of the American people, although ill-informed by the corporate-controlled media, and restricted by an hopelessly corrupt and gerrymandered electoral system, are not stupid or evil. And this election represents the moment where the electorate have woken up and smelled the coffee. They’ve collectively realised that dick-swinging macho posturing is not the same as decisive moral leadership, and is no substitute for competent administration. People have remembered Abu Ghraib and Hurricane Katrina. So George Bush has been thwacked by the clue bat, and not before time. And it’s great to see the dismissal of that hubris-filled Donald Rumsfeld, the architect of everything that’s gone wrong in Iraq. He’s not fit to be a rat catcher in Scunthorpe. I hope he gets investigated for war crimes.

I don’t think it’s the end of conservatism in America. America is and always has been a small-c conservative nation by European standards; their centre of gravity is several degrees further to the right compared with ours, and we have to recognise and live with that. And I think it’s more that the Republicans have lost, rather than the Democrats have won. But then that’s true of almost every election where power changes hands.

But it is a major defeat for the so-called ‘Conservative Movement’, that bastard offspring of Cyrus Scofield and Ayn Rand. As many people have pointed out, it’s not really conservative all all, but radical right. And no matter how the wingnuts try to spin it, they’ve lost big time. Orcinus has some good analysis on this.

All this has left Tony Blair twisting in the wind. It’s patently obvious that British foreign policy is being decided in Washington, and our government doesn’t actually know what’s going to happen next, even though our soldiers (and civilian population) are still very much in the firing line. It was telling to see what people said on BBC1’s “Question Time” on Thursday. We had former Labour Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon weaseling, while former Tory Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind launching a blistering attack on the war in Iraq. If a time traveller from the 1980s had watched that programme, his head would probably have exploded as soon as he realised which one was Labour, and which one was the Tory.

It’s going to be a very turbulent next two years.

Richard Hall’s Economics and Theology blog reviews John Wilding’s God’s Unfinished Business: Evolution of Humanity. I thought I’d mention it, because not only am I related to the reviewer, I also know one of the authors.

TWO Pendle men have appeared before Pennine magistrates accused of having “a master plan” after what is believed to be a record haul of chemicals used in making home-made bombs was found in Colne.

What race and religion were those accused terrorists? South Asian Muslims, perhaps? Well, no. It turns out that they’re members of the neo-Nazi BNP.

This story is all over the British blogosphere, on sites like Pickled Politics and Harry’s Place. Even some American blogs have picked up on it. But so far the national media has completely ignored the story. No screaming headlines in the racist Daily Express of the sort we’d be seeing had those two would-be terrorists been brown people.

The British media hasn’t made much of the ugly ‘deal’ between George Bush and the US Congress, which legitimises torture in all but name, and defines ‘Enemy Combatant’ so dangerously broadly that it could include just about anyone that George Bush doesn’t like.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden has collected a lot of blogosphere responses, culminating with this quote from Jim Henley

It is now official United States policy that our security depends on hiding people away and torturing them, said decision to be made in secret without review. This is what the United States says about who we are.

Dave Neiwert, who the usual suspects amongst the Freepi dismiss as a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist, is not the only person to use the F-word.

Fascists are particularly fond of torture because it represents such a complete expression of the fascist will to power. So when a nation adopts torture as an officially condoned policy — as the United States has just done — it immediately raises the specter that, indeed, it may be descending into the fascist abyss.

Neiwert goes on to look at Robert O. Paxton’s nine “mobilizing passions” of fascism, and compare them with what’s happening with the American right. The conclusions he comes to are disturbing.

The appearance of legal torture as part of the American landscape is a profound change, and certainly signals the approach of the totalitarian state, though it may not herald its actual arrival. And considering that a right-wing regime is involved, discussing the specter of fascism is not only appropriate but necessary.

Even if it does not signal the actual arrival of fascism, it’s the clearest warning sign of its approach yet. Torture is a quintessentially fascist act; codifying it means that the massive brick in the wall that it represents has been plunked into place. And it’s the kind of brick that can be the cornerstone of a massive national pathology of apocalyptic proportions.

The terrible truth is that those of us who consider outselves ‘liberal’ are fighting a war on two fronts. The Jihadi are a genuine threat; there really are nihilist fanatics out there trying to kill us. Anyone who thinks that the July 7 London bombings were some kind of false flag operation is off in tinfoil hat land. But the authoritatian elements within our own ruling elites represent just as big a threat to freedom and democracy. They’re using the fear of Islamist terror as a pretext for a power grab of their own.

And don’t think it just applies to America. Some of the recent utterances by John Reid are little different from the words use by Republican senators supporting the torture bill.

As commenter “Midwesterner” said on Samizdata.net

If a 21st century superpower can’t defend itself from 7th century jihadists without sinking to their level, (or even sinking appreciably) we are doomed and might as well fold our hand now.

The conduct of terrorists and torturers does not make it acceptable conduct for us.

The Herald and Sunday Herald journalist Ian Macwhirter on John Reid in Comment is free:

Most didn’t notice, but in his farewell speech Tony Blair set out Reid’s leadership prospectus by saying that Labour should attack David Cameron for being soft on criminals and too anti-American. This was a direct appeal to Reid as the only man willing to take on the Tories from the right, rather than the left.

Tony Blair was extravagant in his praise for Reid conference speech, the opening bid in Reid’s campaign for the leadership. But if Labour installs him as its leader, the party will complete its transition to an authoritarian party of the populist right. It will mean riots at home; new wars abroad. There will be imprisonment without trial, a massive increase in police powers, curbs on immigration.

This must not happen. If Reid becomes leader, I will be voting for David Cameron.

This is the man who two months ago threw Britain’s airports into chaos, disrupting the travel plans and wrecking the holidays of tend of thousands, not because there was any real immediate thread, but just so he could play the role of the strutting he-man.

This makes me glad I live in a Liberal Democrat held constituency (Cheadle). Having come of political age during Thatcherism, and suffering daily from the results of railway privatisation, I’d really have to hold my nose in order to consider voting for the Tories.

I wonder what will Ming Campbell will do in the event of a hung parliament with a Reid-led ‘Labour’ as the largest party? I hope he has nothing to do with this Stalinist thug.

From Slacktivist

If you feel your religious tradition has been slandered, falsely accused of promoting violence and the “command to spread by the sword the faith,” then it’s probably best not to respond to such remarks violently. Bombing churches tends not to be an effective way of convincing others that your religion has not become corrupted by the adoption of violent coercion as a means of spreading/defending the faith. It may, in fact, be counterproductive — reinforcing and providing evidence for the negative criticisms of your faith.

Also: If you’re upset with something said by the Roman Catholic pontiff, then it makes no sense to take out this anger with violence against a 1,425-year-old Greek Orthodox church. That makes about as much sense as invading Iraq in retaliation for Sept. 11.

And while we’re on the subject, Rob has discovered the ultimate reality show

Yet another Heathrow horror story, again showing that the BBC and other mainstream media have been giving a ridiculous rose-tinted version of how bad things really were. I think we’ve going to be seeing more and more stories like this in the coming days

If there really was a serious threat (something that’s looking increasingly unlikely), BAA’s correct response should have been to close the airports and cancel all flights, at least until the extent of the threat was known.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Calder reminds us of a Guardian profile from four years ago about the Stalinist John Reid.

In private, for none will speak on the record, Reid’s enemies in the party accuse him, among other things, of being: over friendly with a wanted war criminal, an unprincipled dogmatist, both a vacuous New Labour hack and a back-stabbing Old Labour schemer, and a man so in love with the sound of his own logic that he never stops to examine his false initial premise. Worse yet, Reid is a lone Blairite traitor within the ranks of the Scottish Labour party. He remains a relatively isolated figure even within New Labour. Without Blair’s blessing, he’d be in the wilderness. He is more of a functionary than a potential leader; an apparatchik. If we had a Politburo instead of a cabinet, Reid would probably be running the State Security Division. And he’d probably be good at it.

That sounds much like the sort of man we’re seeing at the moment, shedding crocodile tears about the large-scale human misery his authoritarian overreactions have caused, and claiming all the delays, lost luggage, missed weddings and broken laptops is a price worth paying to keep us safe from evil terrorists.