What can you expect from a pig but a grunt?

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

28 October 2013

Britain’s extremist rightwing Prime Minister David Cameron does not mince his words. In a speech prepared for the final day (2 October 2o13) of his Conservative Party’s annual conference in Manchester, he set out the classic case for raw uncompassionate blue-blooded capitalism:

“We know that profit, wealth creation, tax cuts, enterprise – these are not dirty, elitist words. They’re not the problem, they really are the solution because it’s not the government that creates jobs. It’s businesses that get wages in people’s pockets, food on their tables, hope for their families and success for our country.”

It is certainly true that it is not Cameron’s government that is creating jobs. In fact, it is doing the contrary. It is flogging off major public enterprises – the country’s “family silver” – for example, the national postal service and the national health service – to its own supporters in the private sector.

The result of such privatisation is always the same: a falling-off in the quality of service provided, a slimming down of the workforce together with degraded pay and working conditions for the remaining employees – and fat profits for the asset-strippers.

As for the tax cuts championed by Cameron, these benefit private businesses but they have resulted in a radical cutback in social security payments and welfare services for millions of poor Britons, not excluding disabled people, whom this vicious government has taken a sadistic pleasure in singling out for impoverishment.

It’s not for nothing that the Conservative Party is popularly referred to as the “greedy pigs” party. Or, alternatively, as the “nasty” party.

What a contrast with the attitude towards profit held by the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius (Mengzi).

According to tradition, Mencius lived from 372 to 289 BC. He was a peripatetic political philosopher who moved from state to state advocating ethical government during the chaotic and brutal Warring States period (403-221 BC) when seven states battled it out in China for supremacy. Liang, sometimes referred to as Chin, was one of the seven warring states.

The passage italicised below is taken from Book I, Part A, of the 2003 revised translation of Mencius by D.C Lau published in Penguin Classics in 2004.

Mencius went to see King Hui of Liang.

 ‘You, Sir,’ said the King, ‘have come all this distance, thinking nothing of a thousand li [a li is a little over 400 metres]. You must surely have some way of profiting my state?’

 ‘Your Majesty,’ answered Mencius. ‘What is the point of mentioning the world “profit”? All that matters is that there should be benevolence and rightness. If Your Majesty says, “How can I profit my state?” and the Counsellors say, “How can I profit my family?” and the Gentlemen and Commoners say, “How can I profit my person?”  then those above and those below will be vying with each other for profit and the state will be imperilled.

[For further development of this theme, see our post Lessons from Mencius for Warring States ]

But we don’t need to go to East Asia or as far back as Mencius to find dissent from Cameron’s position.

No less a person than the last British Tory Prime Minister Sir John Major has just lashed out at the crude capitalist ideology being peddled by Cameron.

In a speech at a lunch for parliamentary journalists at Westminster on 22 October and reported in the London Guardian the next day, Major urged the Tory party to show compassion for the “millions of have-nots locked into lace-curtain poverty”.

“Governments should exist to protect people, not institutions,” he said. “We Conservatives shouldn’t be afraid to show that we have a heart and a social conscience. If we do, we might not only regain seats that are at present no-go areas for Conservatives, but, far more importantly, we might transform lives as a result.”

In particular, Major called for a one-off windfall tax to be placed on the rocketing profits of Big Heat – the oligopoly of six major energy companies that control Britain’s energy supplies –  to fund government help for people struggling with rising energy bills.

According to the Guardian, Major was unequivocal that these companies were profiteering: “I do not see how it can be in any way acceptable that, with energy prices rising broadly 4 % in terms of costs, the price for the consumer should rise from 9 to 10 %.”

He said:

“We’ll probably have a very cold winter, and it is not acceptable to me, and ought not to be acceptable to anyone that many people are going to have to choose between keeping warm and eating.

“With interest rates at their present [rock-bottom] level, it’s not beyond the wit of man to do what companies have done since the dawn of time and borrow for their investment rather than funding a large proportion of their investment out of the revenue of families whose wages have not been going up at a time when other costs have been rising.

“The private sector is something the Conservative Party supports, but when the private sector goes wrong, or behaves badly, I think it’s entirely right to make changes and put it right.”

Ouch! This from Cameron’s own predecessor as Conservative Prime Minister from 1990 to 1997. An unprecedented onslaught – not by some unreconstructed Marxist-Leninist but from within their very own ranks – on the current social darwinist devil-take-the-hindmost law-of-the-jungle capitalism being foisted on Britain by toff Cameron and his have-a-lot snob-school-educated poshocrat cronies.

The reaction from Downing Street (Cameron’s office) to Major’s diatribe was not long in coming: “The government has no plans to impose a windfall tax”. There was no need at this stage, the government felt, to consider providing extra help for the poor to cope with their spiralling heating bills.

As my father used to say, “What can you expect from a pig but a grunt?”

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in China, Economics, Literature, Politics, UK | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Caviare to the general

Posted on October 27, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

27 October 2013

大聲不入於里耳。

《折楊》、《皇荂》, 則嗑然而笑。

是故高言不止於眾人之心。

至言不出, 俗言勝也。

Great music is lost on the ears of country folk, but play them “Felling the Willow” or “Bright Flowers” and they break into a grin. In the same way, lofty words make no impressions on the minds of the common people.  A high-fallutin’ message will not get through to them.  It will be drowned out by coarse talk.

 

This is an extract from the concluding section of Chapter 12 (“Heaven and Earth” 《天地》) of the Chinese Taoist classic “Chuang Tzu” (《莊子》, which is also transliterated as “Zhuangzi”).

The translation owes a little to “The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu” translated by Burton Watson and published by Columbia University Press in 1968.

The philosopher Chuang Tzu is traditionally said to have lived from 369 to 286 BC, but the work cited dates in something like its present form from the beginning of the Han dynasty in 206 BC. In the passage quoted Chuang Tzu was having a dig at the po-faced moralistic teachings of his arch-rival, the earlier sage Confucius, whose pontifications, according to Chuang Tzu, went over the heads of most of those who listened to him. Confucius 《孔子 》(also transliterated as “Kongzi”)  is said to have lived from 551 to 479 BC.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in China, Literature, Philosophy | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Red carpet for China’s fat cats

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

26 October 2013

BUM’S RUSH FOR CHINA’S PAUPERS

British Treasury chief George Osborne and London Mayor Boris Johnson were in Beijing this month touting for Chinese investment in Britain and, to that end, easing visa restrictions on Chinese business people – as well as high-end tourists – wanting to visit the United Kingdom.

At precisely the same time in London, the UK Border Agency was raiding businesses in Chinatown in order to hunt down and deport clandestine Chinese immigrants working illegally.

Mixed messages? You bet.

On 22 October 2013 London’s Chinese community had had enough and took to the streets in protest at the 13 raids mounted by the border agency in recent months.

Lawrence Cheng, secretary general of the London Chinatown Association, which organized the demonstration in Gerrard Street, is quoted – in the 23 October edition of the London Guardian – as saying that the raids had damaged business.

“These raids are very disruptive, putting owners in a shutdown situation,” he said. “Procedures are not being followed. People are being pushed around.”

Mei Lee, who works as a manager in the area, is reported as saying that the raids had made the Chinese community furious. “It is just racist,” she said. “You have Boris Johnson in China trying to woo China and in Chinatown they are trying to throw people out. It is outrageous.”

Restaurant owner Yip Fai Liu is quoted as saying that a serious labour shortage in London’s Chinatown was being exacerbated by the raids.

The Guardian also publishes a riposte by the border agency defending the raids: “Businesses must carry out the correct checks on the staff they employ. Illegal working is not a victimless crime. It defrauds the taxpayer, undercuts honest employers and cheats legitimate jobseekers out of employment opportunities.”

Antigone1984:

Fair enough. The UK Border Agency makes a fair point. One might add that illegal workers themselves are often exploited by unscrupulous employers who threaten to expose them to the authorities if they complain about rock-bottom pay or  atrocious working conditions.

However, there is undoubtedly a whiff of double standards in the UK stance.

The fact of the matter is that what the British government and the London mayor want is not poor Chinese immigrants desperate for a job. These people, if they can track them down, they will deport lickety-split.

It is another story when it comes to high-rolling tourists and deep-pocketed Chinese tycoons who want to invest in Britain. These people the UK government welcomes with open arms. “You want to stay in London, Sir? No problem. We shall take care of all the formalities.”

Difficult to know how this not-so-subtle double message will play in China.

 ——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in China, Hong Kong, UK | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Here’s a toast to the Prince of Wales!

Posted on October 25, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

25 October 2013

“Most Chinese people do not enjoy the beauty of ancient real ruins. Instead, they like dazzling new high big things…”

This is a comment by Chinese heritage conservationist He Shuzhong who attributes part of the blame for the recent catastrophic restoration of a set of delicate centuries-old murals in north-east China to the Chinese public’s aesthetic philistinism.

The murals in question are in the hall of the Yunjie temple built during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) at Chaoyang, which is situated about 300 kilometres from Beijing in Liaoning Province.

They have recently been painted over with crude modern cartoon-style characters to replace the original decaying classical figures.

In the words of Wujiaofeng, the blogger who first publicized the damage, “The last trace of history in the temple has been erased.”

According to a report by Tania Branigan in the London Guardian on 23 October 2013, the necessary approval for the restoration was not sought from the provincial government and the work was carried out by an unqualified local firm.

Two officials are said to have been sacked as a result of the damage while a third has been reprimanded.

According to the Guardian report, He Shuzhong claimed that most restorations [in China these days] were over-restorations.  Experts as well as officials lacked understanding of the value of cultural remains, he claimed, and did not appreciate the need to preserve the original work instead of recreating or altering it.  They also wanted to finish projects quickly, he said, whereas correct restoration required research and took time. “China’s modern circumstances… lead to the situation where either no one cares about the cultural remains or there is over-investment and over-restoration.”

Taking the same line, Chinese archaeologist Li Zhanyang condemned local government officials involved with restoration projects as “uneducated, unreasonable and ignorant of the law”. They even applied the term “restoration” to new projects. “We have the law but we don’t implement the law,” he lamented.

Antigone1984:

This is just one example of the philistinism that has been systematically eroding three and a half millennia of Chinese culture during the past three and a half decades since the death of Chinese communist party chairman Mao Zedong (1883-1976).

Following Mao’s death, the collectivized economy developed since the establishment of the communist People’s Republic in 1949 was rapidly dismantled by his effective successor as leader, the revisionist Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997), who swapped revolution for reaction.

Deng’s mission was to replace the Eastern-style communism of China’s economy by Western-style capitalism red in tooth and claw. The focus henceforth was to be on the self-promotion of the individual regardless of what happened to their neighbours. Social ties were dissolved, social darwinism – the survival of the fittest – became the order of the day. The Marxist slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” was replaced by the Ayn Randian injunction “From each according to his skills, to each according to his contribution”.  In contrast to the communist bias against self-enrichment, Deng informed the masses: “It is glorious to be rich”. The extensive, if minimal, social security developed under Mao was abolished in accordance with Deng’s mantra: “We must smash the iron rice bowl”.

There is no question but that, in terms of capitalist expansion, the results of Deng’s policies in China have been spectacular.

The impact on the cultural sphere, however, has been catastrophic. The botched restoration of the temple murals at Chaoyang is a microcosm of the devastation that has occurred.

Examples include the “restoration” work at Badaling on the Great Wall of China and also in the sanctum of sanctums, the Imperial Forbidden City in Beijing. In another act of crass vandalism, the capital’s characteristic hutongs (narrow lanes lined by courtyard dwellings for communal living) have been bulldozed into oblivion, the communal houses being replaced by brick and plate-glass office blocks often thrown up by western architects who did not have a clue – or a care – about Chinese building traditions.

Philistinism of this ilk is not limited to Eastern China. According to media reports, much of the age-old Uighur city of Kashgar (Kashi) situated at a historic Silk Road junction in the shadow of the Pamirs, has been razed to the ground – to be replaced in part, unbelievably, by a Disneyland of fake folkloric imitation Uighur-style structures.

Of course, it is not just the Chinese who are turning their backs on their historic cultural heritage. This appears to be a feature common to many societies in the transition from relatively isolated agricultural or proto-industrial economies to modern global capitalism. We can see this in the Middle East – the surreal Blade Runner cityscapes of Dubai are a good example – and also around Moscow. It seems to be characteristic of the lack of taste of the nouveau riche class.

The motto seems to be: “Out with the Old and in with the New”.

And over-restoration is not peculiar to China either. As the Guardian report points out, the recent ham-fisted touching- up of an ancient image of Christ in a church at Borja near Zaragoza in Spain was so spectacularly bad that the botched restoration has itself become a tourist attraction!

We give the last word to architectural buff Prince Charles of Wales, heir to the British throne. His Royal Highness (HRH) has made no secret of his view that enthusiasm for the present need not entail contempt for the past.

And so say all of us!

Ladies and Gentlemen, raise your glasses and let us drink a loyal toast to HRH the Prince of Wales!

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in China, Dubai, Russia | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Democracy not incompatible with dictatorship

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

24 October 2013

“In Germany, the rise of Hitler and his Nazi Party was unquestionably connected to the Great Depression. But the connection was not a simple one. The Nazis did not march on Berlin at the head of an army of unemployed; there was no ‘seizure of power’. Hitler did not have to topple a weakened government as the Bolsheviks did, nor threaten the head of state, like Mussolini. He came to power through participation in Germany’s democratic process and, at the invitation of the lawful authorities. It is beside the point that he and his ruffians were anything but democrats or constitutionalists at heart.”

From the widely acclaimed “Europe: A History” by English historian Norman Davies, published 1996, page 966.

Davies goes on to point out that during the peak of the Great Depression, in the turbulent years 1930 to 1933, the Nazis took part in five parliamentary elections and “in a very short time they had established themselves as the largest single party in the Reichstag”.

In January 1933, the German establishment, represented by the aristocratic Junkers Paul von Hindenburg (then President of Germany) and Franz von Papen (a former Chancellor), naively decided to appoint Hitler as Chancellor in order to counter the “red menace” from the troublesome German Communist Party.

Hitler, however, had his own idea about puppets.

After winning 44 per cent of the popular vote in 1933 in parliamentary elections that followed the unexplained fire which burned down the Reichstag (parliament building), Hitler passed an “enabling act” granting himself dictatorial powers for four years.

The following year, in 1934, following President von Hindenburg’s death, he declared the office of President vacant and staged a plebiscite to approve his own newly minted role as “Führer and Reichskanzler” (Leader and Imperial Chancellor) with full emergency powers. Ninety per cent of those who voted supported him.

Davies takes up the story again (op. cit., page 969):

“Hitler was in control.  In the final path to the summit, he did not breach the Constitution once….Hitler’s democratic triumph exposed the true nature of democracy. Democracy has few values of its own: it is as good, or as bad, as the principles of the people who operate it. In the hands of liberal and tolerant people, it will produce a liberal and tolerant government; in the hands of cannibals, a government of cannibals.”

Antigone1984:

Davies appears puts the blame for the failure of  democracy  in Germany’s Weimar Republic (1919-1933) on the faulty principles of the people who operated it, ie the German political establishment.

However, this seems to us to let the voters themselves too easily off the hook. It was the people of Germany, not the political establishment alone, who voted in the plebiscite to give Hitler dictatorial powers. Even taking into account the impact of Nazi propaganda, it is hard to escape the conclusion that a majority of the German population agreed with the violent, racist, national supremacist, warmongering and dictatorial policies glorified by the Nazis.

This is what can happen, unfortunately, when otherwise decent individuals allow themselves to be whipped into a frenzy of hatred and become transformed, as a result, into a ravaging herd.

We witnessed something similar in Europe not so long ago in the 1992-1995 Bosnian War when Serbs massacred Muslim neighbours with whom they had lived in relative harmony for centuries.

We take the view that democracy – genuine democracy, that is to say, and not the fake democracy of the partitocracy – is in general the best form of political governance.  However, there are higher values than democracy.  For example, respect for the basic rights to which every human being is entitled. People who vote to abridge human rights have no right to do so, according to us, even if they take their decision in accordance with established democratic procedures.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

Posted in Germany | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Life of Others

Posted on October 23, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

23 October 2013

“A state’s appetite for collecting intelligence expands in direct relationship to its technical ability to do so.”

This is the “Stasi” principle defined by US journalist Clive Irving of the Daily Beast.

The reference is to the former East German secret police, the Stasi (Staatssicherheit, ie State Security), which compiled a massive secret archive of data on the citizens of the German Democratic Republic. The methods used by the Stasi to infiltrate German society at all levels were exposed in a 2006 film “Das Leben der Anderen” (The Lives of Others) directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.

At the time the film came out, Westerners on the whole naively imagined that this sort of thing only went on in the Communist East.

The recent revelations by Edward Snowden, a US spy turned whistle-blower,  show that nothing could be further from the truth.

It is now clear that for decades the United States, the self-styled democratic leader of the free world, has built up a massive database of secret information on the lives of private citizens, the official communications of governments and the transactions of businesses throughout the globe.

The data is collated by the US National Security Agency (NSA) aided and abetted by Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

Reaction from countries subjected to US espionage has been slow in coming but a head of steam now appears to be building up.

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff has delivered the most robust riposte by cancelling a trip to Washington scheduled for today 23 October. The NSA is reported to have intercepted communications by Rousseff herself as well as her aides and to have bugged Brazil’s state-run oil company, Petrobras.

Earlier this week French politicians from President François Hollande down expressed outrage at the gigantic espionage operation directed at France by the NSA.

Today it is Spain’s turn to become incensed. The lead story in the country’s main daily, El País, claims that the US has turned a deaf ear to the explanations demanded by US allies, including Spain, regarding the massive interception of national communications by the NSA.

What is more, according to the paper, Washington is blocking the activities of joint US-EU working parties set up in Brussels to clarify the situation and has refused to allow US representatives to appear before the European Parliament to account for American snooping operations.

Two major factors make it easy for the US to undertake espionage wherever it wants.

The first factor is that most of the world’s giant web companies – AOL, Google, Paltalk, Facebook, Apple, Skype, Youtube, Microsoft and Yahoo – are based administratively in the US. Ditto for many of the companies responsible for much of the world’s telecommunications infrastructure, such as Verizon, AT&T and Level 3 Communications (which includes Global Crossing). Not only that but many, if not all, of these businesses are reported to be collaborating, passively or actively, in the sweeping data trawls being mounted worldwide by US intelligence.

The second factor is that the US has so arranged things that it is in pole position to control the regulatory agencies that administer the internet, such as the Los Angeles-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which manages domain names.

However, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is on the case.

Following a stinging denunciation of US surveillance at the UN last month, she is reported to have called for the construction of a Brazilian national internet infrastructure independent of the US.  She is also reported to have enlisted the backing of India for an attempt to challenge the US stranglehold on internet regulation.

“The United States does not have any allies. It has only targets [enemies] or vassals.”

Remark by Jean-Jacques Urvoas, chair of the legal committee of the French National Assembly (the lower house of the French parliament) and author of a report on the legal provisions governing intelligence services in France (Le Monde, 23 October 2013, page 2).

 ——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

ICAA

Posted in Brazil, Europe, France, Germany, India, Spain, UK, USA | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Telling it like it is

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

22 October 2013

Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is 100%.

R.D.Laing (1927-1989), Scottish psychiatrist.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Health, Philosophy, Scotland | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Big Brother is watching you

Posted on October 21, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

Paris, 21 October 2013

The big news here today is the revelation in the newspaper Le Monde that the United States has been secretly spying on French officials, politicians, businesses and private individuals on a massive scale for an indeterminate period.

What has shocked the French public is that France is a staunch ally of the United States – “our oldest ally,” as US Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed recently – not a sworn enemy.

They ought to have studied Hansard (the report of British parliamentary proceedings). In a speech recorded in the Hansard report for 1 March 1848 (Column 122), the future Prime Minister Viscount Palmerston, then Foreign Secretary,  said: “We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

The Americans, by contrast, seem to have clicked the “like” icon when they read Palmerson’s cynical declaration and then signed up as loyal followers.

According to Le Monde’s 22 October edition (on sale, as usual, the afternoon prior to the date of publication), in the thirty days between 10 December 2012 and 8 January 2013 alone, the US National Security Agency (NSA) made 70.3 million recordings of French telephone communications.

On the surface, the French Government is in a huff about this.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius summoned US Ambassador to Paris, Charles Rivkin, to the Quai d’Orsay today for a dressing-down.

And French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he was “deeply shocked”, adding: “It’s incredible that an allied country like the United States at this point goes as far as spying on private communications that have no strategic justification, no justification on the basis of national defence.”

The revelations made in Le Monde are based on data supplied by Edward Snowden, the former US spy turned whistle-blower, who has fled to Russia to escape American vengeance.

French businesses that have been targeted by US spies are said to include telecommunications specialist Alcatel-Lucent and mobile phone business Wanadoo (part of Orange).

One implication is that the US may be using its intelligence agencies not just to track down terrorists but also to gain commercial advantage for US businesses by snooping on commercially sensitive data owned by rival overseas companies.

The data appear to show that, apart from France, the US secret services have been spying on a whole raft of allied countries, not just those like Russia and China, which are deemed hostile to the West.

These are said to include Germany, Austria, Belgium and Poland as well as “Anglo-Saxon” allies such as Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Moreover, the NSA is said to have bugged not only European Union (EU) offices in Washington and at the UN in New York but also the Justus Lipsius building which houses the EU Council in Brussels.

Britain, however, seems to fall into a special category since, at least according to the reports in Le Monde, the US is intercepting the electronic communications of British citizens – with the agreement of the UK Government!

In fact, this is hardly surprising as earlier reports using data disclosed by Snowden have revealed that Britain’s GCHQ (General Communications Headquarters), a secretive government agency which specializes in eavesdropping on electronic telecommunications, has been co-operating wholesale with the American spooks – in exchange for financial bungs from Washington.

Britain’s assistance to Washington is said to have included intercepting the telephone calls and computer communications of diplomats and heads of state who attended the G20 summit in London in 2009.

In fairness to the Americans, it is not only foreigners that have been the subject of clandestine surveillance. The Snowden data suggest that US intelligence has been spying on US citizens as well.

Now what could be fairer than that! “We spy on our own people as well as yours. So where’s the problem?”

There is also a suspicion that the French government is making a song and dance about the latest revelations solely in order to show French public opinion that they are not afraid to stand up to the Americans.

Because it seems that the French too are up to their eyes in it. In July this year Le Monde revealed that the French Directorate General for External Security also intercepted electronic and telephone communications.

According to a BBC report today 21 October, the White House has claimed that “all nations” conduct spying operations. According to US National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden, “As a matter of policy we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations”.

So that’s all right, then! They’re all doing it. Which, of course, makes it OK.

What makes the bid for full-spectrum surveillance particularly chilling is that major non-government corporations, many of them household names, appear to have been co-operating secretly and unprotestingly with the machinations of the spooks.

Le Monde today fingers the following web giants as the source of data for “Prism”, the NSA’s major electronic surveillance programme: AOL, Google, Paltalk, Facebook, Apple, Skype, YouTube, Microsoft and Yahoo.

Naming other firms in the telecommunications field, Le Monde claims that these have been the source of data for surveillance programmes run by GCHQ under the code name “Tempora”. The firms are: British Telecom, Vodafone Cable, Verizon Business, Global Crossing, Level 3, Viatel and Interoute.

Antigone1984:

Readers of our Mission Statement will know that the double inspiration for this blog came from the ancient Greek play “Antigone” by the tragedian Sophocles (496-406 BC), which depicted the tyrannical suppression of political dissent, and the novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” by the English writer George Orwell (1903-1950), which describes a totalitarian state where individual privacy has been eliminated. Wherever they go in this sinister state, its browbeaten subjects see a poster with the following words:

              “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”

 ——-

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Europe, France, UK, USA | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Paris in the Fall

Posted on October 20, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

Paris, 20 October 2013

Chanson d’Automne

Les sanglots longs

Des violons

De l’automne

Blessent mon coeur

D’une langueur

Monotone.

Ode to Autumn

 

The lingering sobs

Of the violins

Of autumn

Lacerate my heart

With a monotonous

Languor.

 

Paul Verlaine (1844-1896), French poet

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

Posted in France, Japan | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Filthy habit

Posted on October 19, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

19 October 2013

A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless…..Herein is not only a great vanity, but a great contempt of God’s good gifts, that the sweetness of man’s breath, being a good gift of God, should be wilfully corrupted by this stinking smoke.

From “A Counterblast to Tobacco”, a treatise written by King James I of England (who was also King James VI of Scotland) in 1604.

The habit of smoking tobacco was noted by the Genoese admiral Columbus among the native populations of the West Indies, the existence of which he discovered in 1492. The Spaniards subsequently introduced tobacco to Spain about 1520. Around 1560 Jean Nicot, French Ambassador to Portugal, sent tobacco samples to France. Nicotine, the active ingredient of tobacco, was named after him. Shortly after this, around 1565, the English pirate and slave trader, Sir John Hawkins, introduced tobacco to Elizabethan England.

According to Wikipedia, Nazi Germany saw the first modern anti-smoking campaign with the National Socialist government taxing tobacco and funding anti-smoking research. In 1941 tobacco was banned in various public places as a health hazard. The anti-tobacco campaign was also – surprise, surprise – associated with racism and anti-Semitism, Jews being blamed for its initial importation. Opposition to smoking stemmed from the need to keep the “master race” healthy.

 ——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment