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Without the state

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March 25, 2008

links for 2008-03-25

Posted by Ian Bertram on March 25, 2008 at 12:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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March 21, 2008

We will tell you what to think...

From the Wiltshire Gazette and Herald.

Defence Secretary Des Browne today asked the High Court to outlaw the use of language strongly critical of the MoD in inquest verdicts on soldiers who have died on active service.

The application came in a test case relating to Territorial Army soldier Pte Jason Smith, who died of heatstroke in Iraq.

Oxfordshire s assistant deputy coroner, Andrew Walker, recorded in a November 2006 inquest verdict that Pte Smith s death was  caused by a serious failure to recognise and take appropriate steps to address the difficulty that he had in adjusting to the climate .

The 32-year-old fell ill in temperatures of 60C  140F  in August 2003 at the Al Amara stadium, southern Iraq.

The coroner s narrative verdict described how he was taken to the medical centre at Abu Naji Camp, where he died.

The coroner said Pte Smith s difficulty in acclimatising to the heat should have been recognised.

The wording of his verdict came under attack at the High Court in London today before Mr Justice Collins.

Sarah Moore, appearing for the Defence Secretary, said the coroner should not have made reference to a  serious failure  to take appropriate steps.

Why bother having an inquest I wonder? After all the government knows what is good for us better than we do doesn't it?


Posted by Ian Bertram on March 21, 2008 at 11:27 AM in Reclaim the State | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
 
March 17, 2008

links for 2008-03-17

Posted by Ian Bertram on March 17, 2008 at 12:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
 
March 14, 2008

links for 2008-03-14

Posted by Ian Bertram on March 14, 2008 at 12:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
 
March 08, 2008

links for 2008-03-08

Posted by Ian Bertram on March 08, 2008 at 12:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
 
March 07, 2008

You are ours...

Ophelia Benson at  Butterflies and Wheels on the new Iranian Penal Code.

So two people you don't know have sex; one of them is a Muslim; you are conceived as a result of that sex act; you're a Muslim, and you can't not be a Muslim or we'll kill you.

You can't say fairer than that, can you!

Posted by Ian Bertram on March 07, 2008 at 04:51 PM in Human Rights | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
 

Remixing the London police's anti-photographer terrror posters fascism, originally uploaded by illegalphotos.

Responding to the London Metropolitan Police's new anti-photographer snitch campaign, wherein posters urge Londoners to turn in people who might be taking pictures of CCTV cameras, many people have taken a crack at redesigning the posters to point out the absurdity of them.

via Brenda and Boingboing

Posted by Ian Bertram on March 06, 2008 at 06:35 PM in Current Affairs, Human Rights, Humour, Reclaim the State | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
 

World's fastest Broadband

Sigbritt Löthberg's home has been supplied with a blistering 40 Gigabits per second connection, many thousands of times faster than the average residential link and the first time ever that a home user has experienced such a high speed.
The secret behind Sigbritt's ultra-fast connection is a new modulation technique which allows data to be transferred directly between two routers up to 2,000 kilometres apart, with no intermediary transponders.

According to Karlstad Stadsnät [the local council's network arm,] the distance is, in theory, unlimited - there is no data loss as long as the fibre is in place.
"The most difficult part of the whole project was installing Windows on Sigbritt's PC," said Jonsson. [Head of Karlstad Stadsnät]

via Fred First

Posted by Ian Bertram on March 03, 2008 at 01:06 PM in Innovation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
 
March 01, 2008

The barrel of a gun

From slacktivist

Participating in civilization -- particularly in a democratic civilization, a civil society -- requires accepting certain rules, regulations, mores, laws, and, yes, taxes in your own best interest and the best interests of others, i.e., for the common good. It also requires that we constantly and vigilantly question every rule, regulation, more, law or tax to evaluate whether it is necessary, fair, wise, efficient, effective, useful, proportionate, etc. But once we accept that as our task -- evaluating each on its merits and demerits in accord with the common good rather than dismissing them all, categorically, as by definition illegitimate -- then we become liberals and not libertarians.

And one of the nice things about being a liberal is that you never need to pretend that you re actually a barbaric hoodlum who only behaves civilly due to fear of punishment from the 101st Airborne.

I don't really think many modern internet 'libertarians' are actually such. If they were, they wouldn't be quite so poisonous about 'liberals' and they wouldn't be so quick to equate 'liberal' with 'socialist'. There are obvious exceptions, but your average internet libertarian is often anti-intellectual and fairly ignorant of the philosophy they claim to support.

Forty years ago, when I gave up Militant on going to university, it was precisely because of the attitudes and behaviour of the sort you see in any Libertarian discussion on the internet. I began to describe myself as a Libertarian Socialist, following Bakunin, but eventually abandoned that self-description and submerged myself in middle of the road Trades Union and Labour Party politics.

With the increasing autocracy of the Labour party however, I am no longer happy to be seen as a supporter and have returned to those anarchist ideas that inspired me in the late 60s. I don't really think I am an anarchist, I just think that we need some conception of a Utopia.

We should be, without hesitation or embarrassment, utopians. At the end of the twentieth century it is the only acceptable political option, morally speaking. I shall not dwell on this. I will merely say that, irrespective of what may have seemed apt hitherto either inside or outside the Marxist tradition, nothing but a utopian goal will now suffice. The realities of our time are morally intolerable. Within the constricted scope of the present piece, I suppose I might try to evoke a little at least of what I am referring to here, with some statistics or an imagery of poverty, destitution and other contemporary calamities- But I do not intend to do even this much. The facts of widespread human privation and those of political oppression and atrocity are available to all who want them. They are unavoidable unless you wilfully shut them out. To those who would suggest that things might be yet worse, one answer is that of course they might be. But another answer is that for too many people they are already quite bad enough; and the sponsors of this type of suggestion are for their part almost always pretty comfortable.

I agree with Norman Geras too that even a Minimum Utopia is a revolutionary objective.

The claim that there could not be, even with all the burgeoning facilities of today’s information technology, anything better than capitalist economic organisation and capitalist markets, I am content to meet with a simple counter-assertion. I don’t believe it.

This I believe is where the internet libertarians fall down. They appear to have no conception of activism except perhaps shouting that the government is holding a gun to their head and no idea of civil society except drawn from the 18th century agricultural economy of the US.

This is something I just don't understand about my libertarian friends here in cyberspace. For them, the menacing threat of armed government tyranny seems to be the only reason they can conceive of for complying with any law, rule, regulation or -- heaven forfend! -- tax.

And that's just, well, odd.

What it boils down to - and call me slow if you want - is the belated realisation that a desire for small government and a concern for individual liberty do not of themselves make you a libertarian. Those are concerns for liberals - and if the pyjamas libertarians are unhappy with that it is their problem, not mine.

A follow up post at Slacktivist here, from the comments on which comes this great one liner:-

I guess libertarians consider corporations as individuals -- overlooking the fact that if corporations were human we'd call them sociopaths.

Posted by Ian Bertram on March 01, 2008 at 05:55 PM in Reclaim the State | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
 



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