You Maniacs !

Repeated some of same thoughts/arguments recently on Twitter, but said all I really had to on the subject here, and haven't changed my mind since.  I won't much mourn the EU, if it inevitably collapses, but I will mourn British English & Welsh voters, for what they've done to themselves.

Oh well, it is what it is, and a democratic result, decades of right-wing propaganda notwithstanding.  Congrats. Farage, congrats. UKIP, congrats. Hannan & co.  Enjoy yer victory.

Exit Stage Right ?

I'm a procrastinator.  Through and through.  And on political questions, as much as anything else, especially when I have the luxury of holding off on making a decision, or not making one at all.  Take the question say, of which Republican candidate I see as a greater threat in the upcoming US presidential elections, Donald Trump or Ted Cruz...  As for my preferences overall, clearly I'm leaning towards Bernie, and frankly I want nothing to do with the Republican party, the supposed 'moderate' candidates of which, would have been the far-right of just a few decades ago.  I still feel I should have an opinion though, and I've just left the notion of choosing between these two maniacs percolate in my mind the last year or so.  Then, somewhere between tweeting this, & a few days later this, I just made up my mind.

Strange as it seems to say it, I fear Ted Cruz as the GOP candidate more than Donald Trump.  a), Because all the head-to-head polls show Cruz as the greater threat in the general versus either Clinton or Sanders on the Democratic side.  And b), because, while I know Ted Cruz to be an extremist, an ideological bomb-thrower & theocrat, I don't honestly know what the fuck Trump is.  He increasingly looks and sounds like a fascist, but some of his economic talking-points* sound more like those of Sanders, his absurd rhetoric regarding ISIS aside, he seems less a warmonger on foreign policy generally than Clinton, and despite his newfound paper-thin pretense at being a devout Christian, he still sounds more liberal on social issues than his fellow Republican lunatics.  Never mind the fact, that everything he's doing or saying right now could all be an act.  Trump's a gamble, to be honest.  I don't really know what the hell he truly stands for (neither do his own supporters, apparently)**, but given a choice between a possible lunatic fascist and another proven lunatic fascist, who's a dyed-in-the-wool theocrat to boot, I can't honestly say that Cruz isn't at least equally scary.  He's more subtle and more soft-spoken sure, but he's still an evil fucking snake.  And if a Trump candidacy destroys the Republican party...well woo-hoo, party-time !  All our birthdays and Christmases come at once.***

Which is all a very roundabout way to get to the question of...Europe.  More specifically, a so-called 'Brexit' -- Should the United Kingdom exit the European Union ?  I've been on the fence about this forever, and even now, I'm conflicted.  I'd call my attitude towards the EU historically Euro-sceptic, were it not for the fact that that term was adopted long-ago by those who, far from being merely sceptical about the EU, were dead-set against everything it stood for.  I like the idea of the European Union in general terms, the notion of (Western) European nations transcending centuries of bloodshed & hatred to unite around shared values & traditions, in a new liberal democratic union.  And after the end of the Cold War, I had hopes that the EU could help balance American power in global affairs.

Instead...the EU consistently does the US' bidding on foreign affairs; the actual government has become a bloated bureaucratic mess sprawling across multiple cities; membership of former Soviet-bloc countries was rushed through to provide Western businesses with cheap labour, and new markets, with membership frequently floated for the likes of Turkey, Georgia, and even North African nations****; the shared currency has impoverished Southern European nations to Germany's benefit, one of which has been routinely blackmailed, looted, and humiliated in the name of paying debts it should never have been allowed to take on in the first place; as with the case of said country, and with trade-deals like TTIP, the EU has consistently been an anti-democratic force, placing the interests of banks & multi-national corporations ahead of both democracy & national sovereignty; and the EU has not only proven unable to control its borders, but the most prominent national leader therein, one Angela Merkel, actually worsened the worst refugee/migrant-crisis since WWII by inviting millions of refugees and economic migrants to disregard both actual refuge, and their own safety, by making the dangerous and unnecessary journey to Northern Europe.  Why ?  Because big business wants even more cheap labour, even more downward forces on the economic status of existing citizens and workers.  And I haven't even mentioned yet the lunatic ideologically driven class-warfare of so-called fucking 'Austerity'.  I could go on and on and on...

Now, after years of the 'Eurosceptic' voices being largely marginalised, and despite the sizable support of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) being suppressed through archaic first-past-the-post voting-practices, we find ourselves following the economic crisis of 2007-2009, following decades of class-warfare & globalisation, following the utter humiliation of Greece, and in the midst of oppressive economically dubious policies of Austerity, and a migrant-crisis worsened considerably by Merkel's idiocy...here.  David Cameron, having made an election-pledge to allow an in/out-referendum on EU-membership that he never expected to have to follow through on, with the expected outcome of the election, and having failed utterly to get a new settlement for Britain from the EU, that isn't found laughable by the entire political spectrum, has put Britain on the verge of seriously leaving the shared community for the first time since 1975.*****

Less than four months from now, British citizens will be asked 'Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?'  And that vote might eventually lead, to the slow dissolution of a union six decades in the making...  Seems, almost every time I go on Twitter now, I'm confronted with a poll on this subject, and, depending on the wording, I either answer 'Don't Know', or pass it over altogether.

My opinion of the European Union is the lowest it has ever been in my lifetime, and the last few years have been an embarrassing time to be a European.  Than again, they've been an even more embarrassing time to be a Brit.

The coalition-government formed in 2010 lost its lustre fairly early on, and was becoming an embarrassment towards its end.  Then, despite the disgraceful behaviour & rhetoric of the Tory party in the wake of the (narrowly won) referendum on Scottish independence, despite the warnings and exhortations of what a returning Tory party would do to Britain, and not so much despite of as because of a viciously malignant fearmongering campaign by the Tories and the establishment-media to convince the British public that voting for Labour would bring about a) A sinister deal w/the SNP resulting in the end of the Union, and b) Economic armageddon (partly based upon the continuing lie that Labour was somehow responsible for the global economic meltdown of 2007-9), the British public (or, a sufficient plurality thereof under first-past-the-post voting) gave the Tories not just the chance to form the next government, but an outright majority of seats in Parliament.

Hence, amongst other things, the referendum on leaving Europe, Cameron never actually intended to preside over.  Hence the loss of what little moderating influence the Liberal Democrats had been able to provide under coalition-government.  Hence the enabling of the more right-wing and more 'Eurosceptic' Tory backbenchers.  Hence David Cameron's government turning the dial on Austerity-politics up to eleven, as they slashed regional & local budgets wherever they could, even as they entered into more expensive and unnecessary military adventures & promised to renew the ever-more expensive Trident nuclear-deterrent.  Hence, the DWP's escalating war under that monster Iain Duncan Smith on the very most vulnerable members of society...  How many have died in recent years, many at their own hands out of total despair, as a result of ideologically driven cuts & sanctions under his regime ?

If you've read the first paragraphs above, you already have an idea of my opinion of the GOP, the Republican Party in the USA.  Even lacking some of the more explicitly theocratic tendencies of the GOP, I find the modern-day Conservative party worse.  I despise those evil fuckers and everything they stand for !  One of my (admittedly selfish) reasons for opposing Scottish independence, is the fear of a right-wing Tory dominance of England & Wales for decades to come.  And I have similar fears about the loss of the relative moderating influence on civil liberties of the European Union under a so-called Brexit.

The United States at least has a modicum of constraint on abuses of its' citizens' rights via a written constitution (abused and distorted as that has become over the last two-hundred plus years).  Britain has the last disintegrating shreds of Magna Carta, and the supposed balanced powers inherent in division of government between a now completely neutered monarchy, the now completely corrupt vessel of political patronage****** that is the House of Lords, and the ever less democratic institution that is the House of Commons.  Absent the likes of the European Convention of Human Rights, where would the government draw the line in restricting civil liberties in the name of 'Security', in the name of the so-called 'War on Terror' ?  What limits on indefinite detention without trial ?  What protections for freedom of speech & assembly ?  What to stop the government stripping anyone it doesn't like of citizenship at will ?  Having them murdered by drone in secret ?  What would now stand in the way of these fascist fuckers turning the UK into an out-and-out police-state ?

But, but, restoring our sovereignty...But, but immigration...But, but TTIP...

What kind of utter naïve blind fool would you have to be at this point, to think that any of the major mainstream parties, let alone the whores to Big Business that the Tories have become, give a damn about sovereignty, give a damn about ordinary people's jobs, incomes, futures ?  They're bought and sold by the biggest bidder.  They're selling all Britain's remaining state-owned assets, including to the likes of the People's Republic of China, in whom they apparently intend to entrust the building, and control of Britain's future nuclear reactors.  They're pulling away at every loose thread in the National Health Service, salivating at the prospect of finally privatising the crown-jewel of Social Democracy and the post-war consensus.  And whether, under the name of TTIP, or some new trade-deal, the Tories (probably the biggest proponents of TTIP on the entire European subcontinent) will absolutely give away Britain's sovereignty, making British governance subservient to not just the quasi-democratic influence of Brussels, but to the absolutely undemocratic power of completely unaccountable multi-national corporations.*******  And absolutely, one way or another, they will find a way to justify ever more immigration from the poorest nations on Earth, in the name, yet again, of driving down labour-costs, of reducing the working man to the lowest common denominator conditions possible.

There'll be less bureaucracy under a 'Brexit', I suppose.  Fewer stories in the Daily Mail about bans on bendy bananas, or 'political correctness gone mad'.  Also, less restriction on the ability of huge companies to poison the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe; to 'frack' Britain from Land's End to John o' Groats; to contribute even further to Anthropogenic Climate Change...  We can't even claim any economic advantage to dropping the shared currency, the Euro, since Britain never abandoned the Pound in the first place.  Just about the only benefit I can think of in Britain leaving the EU, is that Britain, the great tax-haven for foreign billionaires & tyrants, that a London-dominated finance-centric Britain has become, would no longer have to contribute financially to the upkeep of the bloated EU bureaucracy, or to supporting its poorer neighbours...Any guesses where such a windfall (even assuming it weren't cancelled out by a decline in trade with the continent) would go ?...  Not into your pockets.  Not into crumbling infrastructure.  Not into rebuilding what remains of the welfare-state, certainly.  I don't even need to say it.  You already know what would happen to the damn money...

The ironic thing is, the European Union is ripe for reform.  Desperately in need of it, to create an edifice that reflects the democratic interests & aspirations of the subcontinent's citizens, rather than a mechanism to funnel more and more wealth & power into the hands of the planet's elites.  If Britain goes, it almost certainly won't be the last, and I can't blame the citizens of every nation in Europe for being fuming mad at what their governments have done to them, for wanting far better.  And if he and/or his party were remotely serious about reforming Europe, David Cameron could have gone to the EU with a far-more credible plan at reforming not just Britain's place in the EU, but the EU as a whole.  Instead of which, he comes back with pledges to restrict benefits for migrants.

Which is where I really started with my thinking on this.  I listen to the language surrounding this debate, and it's all about denying benefits to migrants, who time after time we see are striving to come to Britain very specifically for jobs and not welfare.  It's all about Othering, about spreading fears that the migrants, be they from Kraków or Kabul, will not only steal your jobs, but rape your wives, and enslave your daughters.  That any moment now, your town will fall under sharia-law, and the ISIS flag rise over the town-hall.  And fuck, I'm just about as right-wing on such matters as most, but the blatant racism, the hatred, the incitements to violence, it's too much to bear.  And then I see the public faces of 'Brexit', such inhumane fascistic monsters as Iain Duncan Smith, and I think 'whatever my doubts, whatever my fears, do I really want anything to do with a movement championed by such an evil piece of excrement as this ?!!'

I can't really apologise for the European Union, such as it is -- it's a g-d-awful mess, in need of probably quite radical reform, if it is to survive at all in the longer term, never mind as the shining hope of the world some may have hoped it to become.  And I can't blame Brits, any more than other Europeans, for wanting out.  But I'm not remotely convinced that the leaders of the Exit campaign have Britons' best interests at heart, I don't see any sign that the real problems blamed on the EU would be solved by an exit, and if anything, especially under the current far-right political regime, I fear things could get even worse.

As meaningful reform isn't on the table, as any kind of real return of sovereignty isn't in the offing, as the current government would likely be only further enabled by exit, and the continuing crushing war on the working-classes and the most vulnerable in society only escalate, and as Britain would lose what remaining influence it had in the EU, to even attempt at a better direction for Europe, I'd have to say...Stay.

Not happy, not comfortable, not even entirely sure.  But sometimes I just know where I must stand.




* What word am I supposed to use here ?  Would be dishonest to call them ideas, never mind actual policy-proposals.

** Shit, I could've said the same of George W Bush for that matter.  Even Obama maybe.

*** Well also assuming, the Democrats kick his ass in the general...obviously...

**** Most of which are either geographically or culturally not European; in some cases, neither.

***** Common Market/EEC at the time.  I'm not going to go into the whole history, including the various treaties between then and now, partly because it's beyond the scope of what I'm talking about here, partly because I'm not remotely qualified to do so.

****** Thanks again, Tony Blair !

******* And oh yeah, if America says 'Jump !'...

In Which The Telegraph Smears Tor

Been a long time since I talked about the Telegraph here.  But yesterday, I came across this particular piece of bullshit reporting from that 'journalistic' organisation, and felt compelled to say something.

That headline above, is frankly...a lie.  First off, Tor is a network, or a technology, not a browser, even if the browser download is the way in which most users will experience Tor these days.  The browser download, being a simplified bundle of the core Tor & proxying software with a modified version of Firefox.  Secondly, the study in question doesn't in any way speak to to the 'overwhelming use' of the Tor browser, but specifically to the use of the so-called Dark Web.  Back to the Telegraph...

There is an "overwhelming" amount of illicit and illegal content on the dark web, a new study shows.

That statement might seem self-evident. But the Tor browser - also known as the dark web or deep web - was created to protect the anonymity of vulnerable people online. It is a web browser just like Google Chrome or Internet Explorer, but it masks the identity of who is browsing and what they're looking at.

The Tor browser is perhaps known as 'the dark web or deep web' -- by fucking idiots !  The so-called 'dark web' is a fear-mongering slur utilised by the government for any services over the internet that in any way bypass conventional IP/HTTP routing, and thus implicitly threaten governmental control and surveillance thereof.  Tor is one of many services that can be used for such means, in this case, via the use of .onion addresses, that are only routeable via the Tor network.  It is not the only technology providing such hidden services, the hidden services are not the primary purpose of the Tor network, and in fact, the hidden services component was a much later addition to Tor.

Don't believe me, that the hidden services, the 'dark web' are not the primary purpose of the Tor network ?  Well, let's look at the study in question, shall we ?

The Tor architecture provides two services – anonymous browsing (property 3), and hosting of anonymous information exchanges (property 5) – through one piece of software, the so-called ‘Tor Browser’. Although distinct, both services employ roughly the same protocols and rely on the same distributed infrastructure. But that is where their mutual dependency ends. There is no technical requirement for anonymous browsing and anonymous hosting to be bundled. Indeed, browsing is overwhelmingly more popular than hosting. Most Tor users have never visited any hidden website at a *.onion address; hidden services account for around 3–6% of overall Tor traffic.²⁷ Most users instead use the software merely to browse the internet's conventional address space more securely or anonymously. An analogy illustrates the significance of anonymous browsing. Alice, who lives in a small town, wants to buy a pregnancy test, but doesn't want to be seen doing so by the shop owner, Bob, a friend of Alice's father. Rather than simply going to the store, Alice wears a mask, walks a detour, and pays in cash. Bob will not be able to identify her or trace her. Alice's privacy and anonymity are assured. Anonymous browsing is not part of the ‘dark web’; it is a legitimate and laudable service that Tor provides.

This is from the very study upon which the Telegraph's scary misleading headline is based.  It says right there that most users have never visited any .onion 'dark web' sites at all, and that hidden services account for around 3–6% of overall Tor traffic.  Three to fucking six percent !  Hell, I've been familiar with Tor since long before there was such a thing as a 'Tor Browser', and I don't think I've ever visited or had reason to visit any hidden 'dark web' sites via Tor myself.  Because...why the fuck would I ?  Tor's primary purpose is, and always has been, simply to provide a modicum of anonymity in browsing the Internet, and the vast majority of users are most likely using Tor in entirely legitimate ways, in entirely legitimate pursuits.

In fact, the US government has repeatedly promoted the use of Tor for such purposes as enabling dissidents and human rights-activists living in authoritarian regimes, to communicate freely, bypassing restrictive governmental policies and controls, to promote liberal Western-style values.  The US government continues to this very day to provide a vast amount of the funding for the Tor project, and to utilise the network itself, and the Tor software was originally in fact invented by the United States Naval Research Laboratory & DARPA.

That's right, this evil evil 'dark web' software, the users of which the Telegraph apparently wishes to smear, was created by, and continues to be funded by the government of the United States of America.

So, in case you're not familiar with how Tor works, and is used by, as noted above, the vast vast majority of its users, here are some illustrations from the EFF.

Tor doesn't provide uncrackable security, certainly not for the likes of the NSA or other US govt. security agencies, and that much more certainly not when they have been involved in its creation and funding of its development from day one.  It simply obfuscates the path of traffic through a random series of nodes, making it difficult for a would-be adversary to monitor the traffic, without control of, and therefore the ability to monitor traffic through, all the nodes in question.  It isn't that inherently secure, even if you trust that the US government hasn't inserted its own backdoors into the system, and any one relying solely on Tor to run, say an international drug-smuggling operation, without detection, would be very stupid indeed.  Of course, the vast majority of users aren't doing anything of the sort.

Back to the Telegraph...

In the first study of its kind, researchers at King's College London found that 57 per cent of sites on Tor facilitate criminal activity, including drugs, illicit finance, and extreme pornography.

The findings are not unexpected - if anything that figure is lower than expected. Tor has been associated with child pornography, gun trading and murder long before now. 

"We expected something along these lines," said Thomas Rid, professor of Security Studies at King's College London and co-author of the study. "Previous studies have established that it's a pretty nasty place."  

Scary, scary fucking stuff indeed !  Child pornography, murder, drugs, extreme pornography !  Sounds pretty nasty huh ?

Did we mention that the 'dark web' sites in question were a product of a secondary (and not inherently illegitimate*) function of Tor, not even utilised by the vast majority of Tor users ?

Tor offers anonymous browsing to people across the world. Users in countries with strict censorship laws, like China or Iran, can use it to access mainstream sites - like Facebook - securely. Rid and Moore found that the vast majority of material on Tor was not just illegal in places like China or Iran, but in more liberal jurisdictions too.

Here, in the same fucking paragraph, the Telegraph conflates the anonymous browsing (such as use of fucking Facebook), which is the sole usage of the vast majority of users with the hosting of illegal materials on so-called 'dark web' sites.

The sites included marketplaces for drugs, fire arms and weapons, and explicit, illegal pornography. The study found a "near-absence" of Islamic extremist sites on Tor.

"Militants and extremists don't seem to find the Tor hidden services infrastructure very useful. So there are few jihadis and militants in the darknet," said Rid. "It's used for criminal services, fraud, extreme, illegal pornography, cyber attacks and computer crime."

Know why that is ?  Because, they're not fucking stupid !  Because they know full well, that if the US government wants to find them on an US-govt-designed and funded network of mild anonymity, it can, and will.  The US government could crush the Tor network any time it wanted to, but insofar as a) Tor isn't any meaningful threat to security-services, b) Dissidents in foreign competitor states utilise Tor, and c) Agents of the US govt. itself utilise Tor, it has no compelling reason to do so.

What the US government, and its proxy poodle in Westminster, would like to do, is utilise fearmongering rhetoric about 'terror' attacks, to convince the public, and technology-companies, that it is in the public interest that the privacy of Western citizens be intentionally compromised, via the dilution of encryption technology, and the building of government-accessible backdoors into common security software.  The sort of breathless hyperbole in which right-wing publications such as the Telegraph specialise is perfect for such a purpose.

Rid and Moore commend Tor for offering vulnerable people access to anonymous browsing. But they said Tor needs to work harder to encourage its community to build a safe and legitimate browsing experience.

Did they say that ?  I must have missed it...

"The developers made Tor for a different purpose - they wanted security, not crime. It's up to them to change the direction," said Rid. "It's up to them to have a sensible discussion about ways to reduce crime, to get more legitimate users in." 

Now here, I can only assume the quotation is the result of an interview (what, the Telegraph doing actual reporting...like actual journalists ?), as I don't see such language in the report.  Regardless, this is shit.  We've already established that the vast majority of usage is merely anonymous browsing (which is, in the authors' words, 'a legitimate and laudable service that Tor provides'), and how the hell can Tor's developers be held responsible for the content provided by the 'hidden services' on their network, without fundamentally compromising the relative anonymity that is the whole raison d'etre of the Tor network to begin with ?

Is the argument that as the functionality of hidden services could theoretically be used for ill purposes, that it should be removed ?  The same is true of the anonymous browsing functionality, innocent as the vast majority of usage may be/probably is.  The same is true of all technology.  Hell, in the US, special constitutional protections are given to the ownership of tools (i.e. guns, firearms), whose primary if not sole purpose is to murder living beings.  But the fact that a subset of the functionality of a mildly anonymising technology might be used for illicit purposes, that...that is a reason for ripping apart what little guarantee of privacy is currently available to us on the internet ?

Tor's example will no doubt be used in the encryption debate that is circulating around the snoopers' charter, according to Rid and Moore. 

"Tor's ugly example should loom large in technology debates," Rid and Moore conclude. "The line between utopia and dystopia can be disturbingly thin."

This is just...WTF ?  Wait, why am I still quoting the fucking Telegraph ?

The other quandary is how to deal with darknets. Hidden services have already damaged Tor, and trust in the internet as a whole. To save Tor – and certainly to save Tor's reputation – it may be necessary to kill hidden services, at least in their present form. Were the Tor Project to discontinue hidden services voluntarily, perhaps to improve the reputation of Tor browsing, other darknets would become more popular. But these Tor alternatives would lack something precious: a large user base. In today's anonymisation networks, the security of a single user is a direct function of the number of overall users. Small darknets are easier to attack, and easier to de-anonymise. The Tor founders, though exceedingly idealistic in other ways, clearly appreciate this reality: a better reputation leads to better security.⁸⁵ They therefore understand that the popularity of Tor browsing is making the bundled-in, and predominantly illicit, hidden services more secure than they could be on their own. Darknets are not illegal in free countries and they probably should not be. Yet these widely abused platforms – in sharp contrast to the wider public-key infrastructure – are and should be fair game for the most aggressive intelligence and law-enforcement techniques, as well as for invasive academic research. Indeed, having such clearly cordoned-off, free-fire zones is perhaps even useful for the state, because, conversely, a bad reputation leads to bad security. Either way, Tor's ugly example should loom large in technology debates. Refusing to confront tough, inevitable political choices is simply irresponsible. The line between utopia and dystopia can be disturbingly thin.

Less oblique, less misleading, less blatantly crass government-propaganda.  Still crap.

But, now I'm getting into the realm of disputing the report's findings & conclusions, which wasn't where I started, with the Telegraph's blatantly misleading headline.  So, let's step back a bit...

See those results above, from Google News ?  The bottom three accurately characterise the report's findings, and the subject thereof.  Only the one at the top from the Telegraph manages, unintentionally or not, to completely conflate the lesser functionality of 'hidden services' with the wholly legitimate purpose of 'anonymous browsing', and to smear the vast majority of Tor users as a result.  Fuck, I hate the Telegraph...


* Imagine say Iranian or Chinese dissidents, wanting to not merely communicate freely over Tor, without detection of government authorities, but also wanting to provide a stable hosting source of shared documentation within their groups.

British Pathé: Christmas is for All

Very much a product of its era, and a cool time-capsule, as these things often tend to be.  Best part has to be (from 3'16) Mike and his Merseymen (the Trends) doing Good King Wenceslas.  Some pretty girls dancing there also, must say.

Audio of same can be found on YouTube here, and, for some more of the Merseymen, here we have photos, some video, including what looks to be behind-the-scenes from the Pathé filming, and names of the band-members at the end, accompanied by a selection of the band's other songs.  Enjoy.

Rowson on ISIS and...

...and I don't know where CiF is currently, but the more mystery the better figuring this shit out.  Love Rowson.

Schrank: Justice Delayed

Steve Bell on Osborne's Defeat on Tax Credit Cuts

Way too early to count Gid. out, but great to see him taken down, if only temporarily.

A Reminder from the Telegraph to Turn Back the Clocks

Gave me a chuckle.  And actually works on multiple levels really, considering Cameron's Britain.

This Seems About Right

Love that Gideon haz a sad.

Dave Brown on Xi Jinping's Visit to the UK*

* Sorry, make that the overseas province of the PRC formerly known as America's Bitch.  Sorry, The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The New Statesman on Robots & Capitalism

Laurie Penny:

Do androids dream of a three-day week? This week, Professor Stephen Hawking weighed in on the topic that’s obsessing technologists, economists and social scientists around the world: whether a dawning age of robotics is going to spell mass unemployment. “If machines produce everything we need,” Hawking wrote in an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit, “everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared – or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution.”

As technology advances, the question is no longer whether or not robots are coming for your job. The question is whether or not you should let them take it. 

...

We’ve seen this pattern before. In successive waves of technological innovation from the industrial revolution to the automative leaps of the 1950s, millions of working people found themselves replaced by machines that would never inconvenience their owners by getting sick or going on strike. This time, however, it’s not just working class jobs that are threatened. It seems that Robespierre was right – it’s the prospect of angry unemployed lawyers and doctors that really prompts the elite to panic, or at least to produce urgent hardbacks and suggest to major news outlets that wealth redistribution might not be such a bad idea after all.

There is little to argue with in Kaplan and Ford’s basic predictions. Whatever happens, it seems that by the time most of us reach retirement, machines will be doing far more of the jobs that nobody really wanted to do in the first place. In any sane economic system, this would be good news. No longer will millions of men and women be stuck doing boring, repetitive, often degrading work for the majority of their adult lives. That’s fantastic. Or it should be. Did you really want the job those thieving android scabs are about to take from you? Wouldn’t you rather be writing a symphony, or spending time with your kids, or plucking your nose-hair? All else being equal, don’t you have better things to do than spending most of your life marking time at work to afford the dignity of not starving?

All else, however, is very far from equal – and that’s the problem. Technology is not the problem. The only reason that the automation of routine, predictable jobs is not an unmitigated social good is that the majority of the human race depends on routine, predictable jobs, and the wages we get for them. The rioting textile workers who smashed their weaving machines in the eighteenth century did not do so because they simply loved working twelve-hour days in dangerous, dirty conditions. They did it because they had been given a stark choice between drudge work and starvation. Two hundred years after the Luddite rebellions, most of us, when you get down to it, would not work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for forty years if we had a choice – but the necessity of earning a wage gives us no other option. In fact, advanced automation should for some time have made it unnecessary for any of us to work more than a handful of hours a week, as originally foreseen generations ago by thinkers like John Maynard Keynes – but somehow, most of us are working longer hours for lower wages than our grandparents.

The problem is not technology. The problem is capitalism. The problem is that in order to sell seven billion people on the necessity of globalisation, we’ve created a moral universe where people who do not work to create profit are considered less than human, and used as surplus labour to drive down the cost of wages. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a single parent, an unemployed veteran or an unpaid intern – the logic of late capitalism grants you no right to live unless you are making money for someone else. If our economic system defines the basis of human worth as the capacity to do drudge work for someone else’s profit then the question that has troubled science fiction writers for a century is solved: not only are robots human, they may soon be more human than us. ...

No comment needed here really.  I had some shit written for another recent post from the New Statesman (regarding the absurd Tory policies on housing as it happens), but in this case, I don't disagree with enough of anything in this piece to even attempt a commentary.  Just read it if you haven't already.*


* Steph's take here, since I featured her cartoon: http://skewednews.net/index.php/2015/08/31/robots-step-aside-gravediggers-capitalism-still-flesh-blood-workers/

NTNON on the Conservatives

These seem oddly topical still today...

Brookes on Corbyn & the Privy Council

Don't like to run cartoons back-to-back too much, and often ideologically disagree with The Times, but the choice of 'reading-material' sells me here on this genius from Brookes.

Come Friendly Meteorites

Just a small one.  Only a small meteorite do I wish Manchester's way.  One just large enough to take out a convention-centre, say.  And perhaps a few smaller hotel-sized and taxi-sized buggers.  Evil fuckers can't all be in one place at the same time, I suppose.

Ministers should waste no time to make unpopular cuts to pensioner benefits, a think tank director has said.

Many of those hit by a cut to the winter fuel allowance might "not be around" at the next election, said Alex Wild of the Taxpayers' Alliance.

And others would forget which party had done it, he added.

At the group's meeting at the Conservative conference in Manchester, former defence secretary Liam Fox said spending cuts must be "for keeps".

Mr Wild said the Tories could not wait until a year before the next election to make the necessary cuts to the winter fuel allowance, free bus passes, the Christmas bonus and other pensioner benefits.

Mr Wild, who is research director of the think tank which campaigns for lower taxes and highlights examples of Government waste, said the cuts should be made "as soon as possible after an election for two reasons".

"The first of which will sound a little bit morbid - some of the people... won't be around to vote against you in the next election. So that's just a practical point, and the other point is they might have forgotten by then."

He added: "If you did it now, chances are that in 2020 someone who has had their winter fuel cut might be thinking, 'Oh I can't remember, was it this government or was it the last one? I'm not quite sure.'

"So on a purely practical basis I would say do it immediately. That might be one of those things I regret saying in later life but that would be my practical advice to the government."

You might well regret it indeed, you fascist piece of shit.  The few pensioners who manage to not freeze to death, not die at the hands of cuts to the NHS, and not lose their memory to Alzheimer's, should remember those words the next time the 'Conservative' Party comes knocking at the door with promises of 'Security.'


* References to meteorites hitting Manchester above are in the name of Hyperbole.  References to fascism are in the name of Accuracy.

Let This Be the Last Word on PigGate

Took me a moment...

Dave Brown Does Corbyn à la van Gogh

A Year Already ?

Prob'ly won't have many more till the eventual divorce.  Thanks DC.

Let It Be

Corbyn

He may never be prime minister...and nor would I particularly want him to be.  But if Corbyn's victory helps reorient the overall spectrum of British politics (back) leftwards, that's something I celebrate unequivocally.  Labour has a leader again.

BBC: Why Germany needs migrants more than UK

Robert Peston:

There is an economic and demographic backdrop to the differential policies towards asylum-seekers of Germany and the UK - to Germany's relatively open door, that compares with the UK's heavily fortified portal (which will be opened just a bit by David Cameron later today).

The two relevant points (leaving aside moral ones) are that:

1. the UK's population is rising fast, whereas Germany's is falling fast;
2. the dependency ratio (the proportion of expensive older people in the population relative to able-bodied, tax-generating workers) is rising much quicker in Germany than in the UK.

So to put it another way, it is arguably particularly useful to Germany to have an influx of young grateful families from Syria or elsewhere, who may well be keen to toil and strive to rebuild their lives and prove to their hosts that they are not a burden - in the way that successive immigrant waves have done all over the world (including Jews like my family in London's East End).

Here are the European Commission's projections from its Ageing Report that was published earlier this year.

It projects that Germany's population will shrink from 81.3 million in 2013 to 70.8 million in 2060, whereas the UK's will rise from 64.1 million to 80.1 million.

As you can see, what is striking is that the UK is set to become the EU's most populous country, ahead of Germany and France, as a result of a relatively high fertility rate and greater projected rates of net migration.

It is probably relevant that the Commission forecasts that the proportion of the German population in 2060 represented by migrants arriving after 2013 would be 9%, compared with 14% in the UK. So Germany would be a lot less multicultural than the UK.

As for the dependency ratio, the percentage of those 65 and over compared with those aged between 15 and 64, that is forecast to rise from 32% to a very high 59% in Germany by 2060.

Or to put it another way, by 2060 there will be fewer than two Germans under 65 to work and generate taxes to support each German over 65.

...

Here is the thing. Wherever you stand in the debate on whether immigration is a good or bad thing - and most economists would argue that immigration promotes growth - right now immigration looks much more economically useful to Germany than to the UK.

That is perhaps one of the unspoken reasons why Germany is being much more welcoming to asylum seekers from Syria and elsewhere right now.

That said, some business leaders and a couple of Tory ministers gave me what can only be described as an off-message critique of David Cameron's approach to the migrant crisis over the weekend.

They said that Angela Merkel is creaming off the most economically useful of the asylum seekers, by taking those that have shown the gumption and initiative to risk life and limb by fleeing to Europe.

Precedent suggests they will be the ones that find work fastest and impose the least economic burden on Germany or any other host country.

By contrast, David Cameron appears to be doing what many would see as the more morally admirable thing - which is to go to the Syrian camps and invite children and the most vulnerable of refugees to Britain....

Ah, the politics of population-replacement...

Here we are in the age of the robot, and yet still we talk of too few workers.  One might think our policies...and our politics might reflect the same...As if !  What they do reflect, as always, are the interests of capital.

The Beeb has a poll out on public attitudes in the UK towards taking in more refugees.  They note that those of a working-class background are much less supportive (24% to 54%) than the middle-classes.  Wonder why that might be ?*


* No, not that they are simply uneducated and/or racist.