Off the Main Page

Is ultimate fantasy immoral?

2006-01-21T14:03:00.000Z

This comes from the forum Infinite Directions, the thread of the same title, @ BetterHumans.com and is mirrored here as it relates to my post "Crime & Punishment" [title link] on the main page of DLA:

Here's a moral dilema. Today we see hundreds of video games where killing people is the order of the day, and although it can be frowned upon if the context is deemed unappropriate, we generally accept it.

Pretty strange then, that if someone made a "virtual reality" experience or video game that allowed us to do something such as, say, rape a child, it would be frowned upon pretty heavily.

One could argue that we shouldn't allow vile paedophiles the chance to experience their sick desires. But we let people kill in a fantasy world, so how is that any different? Even if the person playing the game has no desire to kill in real life, the game is still out there, pleasing those who want to kill.

I've long believed that if someone thinks something, no matter how horrible it is, then they aren't being immoral unless they act up that thought. That being the case, shouldn't we allow paedophiles the chance to fulfil their fantasies in a virtual world? If the experience was real enough, would it not remove their need to fulfil their desires on an innocent child? Would that not be a good thing?

The reason I thought of asking this is because there will always be peadophiles, and maybe this is a better way to stop them harming children than just banning them from doing it...

The same principal could apply to any act that we deem immoral. There are a lot of sadistic people out there. If we make it possible for people to act out these deeds in VR/AR, then maybe we can stop them doing it in real life.

Author: Cemiess

06/18/01 Email to my MP.

2006-01-18T04:41:00.000Z

This relates to my post, "Shit! ...SHIT, SHIT, SHIT!!" and is an edited version of further correspondence with my MP, which if you sent a version of my earlier communication to yours, you might want to also send. If you didn't send the previous one, i'll urge you to edit this and send it now. You can find your MP's contact details here.

Dear [insert MP's name],

further to my email of [insert date], i've done some more research regarding UK Criminal Law and Conspiracy. It turns out that the 1977 Act was superceded by the Criminal Justice (Terrorism and Conspiracy) Act 1998, which, since it states:

"Section 5.-(1) 1A.

(6) In the application of this Part of this Act to an agreement in the case of which each of the above conditions is satisfied, a reference to an offence is to be read as a reference to what would be the offence in question but for the fact that it is not an offence triable in England and Wales."

Would clear up any question of jurisdiction regarding a Criminal Conspiracy to Torture taking place within England and Wales, even though the act of Torture was committed in Uzbekistan, taking it possibly outside the remit of a domestic Court's jurisdiction.

However, the Act also states:

"Section 5.-(1)

(14) Nothing in this section-

(b) imposes criminal liability on any person acting on behalf of, or holding office under, the Crown."

I am horrified beyond the ability of my grasp of english to express it. What we have here, enshrined in law, is licence for the government or its agents to enter into Criminal Conspiracy on behalf of The Crown.

I would like you to ask Tony Blair, at your earliest convenience, just how he expects anyone to take his "Respect Action Plan" seriously when his government have presided over legislation which gives carte blanche for it's agents to engage in any kinds of dishonesty or human degradation without fear of criminal liability whilst at the same time advocating the abolition of due process of law for UK Citizens on the grounds that it is better for some innocents to be punished than the guilty go free.

Please also tell me your view on this matter.

In addition, reading this Act, it seems from the way it is set out that some of the latter subsections were added later, possibly as ammendments. So, since, in my opinion, many of the latter subsections have clearly no other purpose than to excuse criminality by certain persons under certain circumstances, i want to know the history of the Bill including who proposed what ammendments to it, who voted for them and also who voted for the whole thing in its present form.

Yours sincerely,

[insert your name]

Email to my MP.

2006-01-15T01:38:00.000Z

This is an edited and annotated version of an email i sent to my MP, about the UK Govt. complicity in Uzbek torture, and referred to in my posts "Well i'll be dipped in dogshit" [title link] and "I'm not arsing about here". I've edited it like this so that you can simply copy and paste, adding your own views or not, remove my annotation and send. You can find your MP's contact details here.

Dear [insert name],

I would like you to make representations on my behalf to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office regarding their policy of turning a blind eye to, and possible complicity in, Uzbek torture. However, I have little faith that the FCO will actually do anything other than repeat the franky shameful blandishments which have characterised their position on this matter, but I want them to know of my concerns anyway. Before I go any further, I'd like to request to know your view of the UK Govts. conduct in this affair and also of what I understand is an All Party Parliamentary Group to highlight this issue.

On the matter of "evidence," I'll ask you to take a deep breath and relax, because it's a long one:

UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

Adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 39/46 of 10 December 1984

entry into force 26 June 1987, in accordance with article 27 (1)

PART I
Article 1

1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession...

2. This article is without prejudice to any international instrument or national legislation which does or may contain provisions of wider application.

Article 2

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.

2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Article 4

1. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture. 2. Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature.

Article 5

1. Each State Party shall take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over the offences referred to in article 4 in the following cases:

(a) When the offences are committed in any territory under its jurisdiction...

3. This Convention does not exclude any criminal jurisdiction exercised in accordance with internal law.

Article 6

1. Upon being satisfied, after an examination of information available to it, that the circumstances so warrant, any State Party in whose territory a person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is present shall take him into custody...

2. Such State shall immediately make a preliminary inquiry into the facts.

So that's what I think is most relevant in the law the UK is a signatory to. If you do the deed for whatever reason: you are guilty. If you participate or are complicit in the deed, you are equally guilty. There is nothing that excuses complicity if the deed is done under another Party's jurisdiction. The sticking point seems to be article 6, but I'll get to that after excerpts from what Craig Murray told the UK Govt:

16 September 02

Terrible torture is commonplace: the EU is currently considering a demarche over the terrible case of two Muslims tortured to death in jail apparently with boiling water. Two leading dissidents, Elena Urlaeva and Larissa Vdovna, were two weeks ago committed to a lunatic asylum, where they are being drugged, for demonstrating on human rights...

18 March 2003

I was stunned to hear that the US had pressured the EU to withdraw a motion on Human Rights in Uzbekistan which the EU was tabling at the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. I was most unhappy to find that we are helping the US in what I can only call this cover-up.

I watched George Bush talk today of Iraq and "dismantling the apparatus of terror and removing the torture chambers and the rape rooms". Yet when it comes to the Karimov regime, systematic torture and rape appear to be treated as peccadilloes, not to affect the relationship and to be downplayed in international fora. Double standards? Yes.

JULY 04

We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek intelligence services, via the US...

I gather a recent London interdepartmental meeting considered the question and decided to continue to receive the material...

We indeed need to establish an SIS presence here, but not as in a friendly state.

In the period December 2002 to March 2003 I raised several times the issue of intelligence material from the Uzbek security services which was obtained under torture and passed to us via the CIA...

I was summoned to the UK for a meeting on 8 March 2003. Michael Wood gave his legal opinion that it was not illegal to obtain and to use intelligence acquired by torture. He said the only legal limitation on its use was that it could not be used in legal proceedings, under Article 15 of the UN Convention on Torture.

On behalf of the intelligence services, Matthew Kydd said that they found some of the material very useful indeed with a direct bearing on the war on terror. Linda Duffield said that she had been asked to assure me that my qualms of conscience were respected and understood.

a meeting was convened in the FCO at the level of Heads of Department and above, precisely to consider the question of the receipt of Uzbek intelligence material obtained under torture...

I understand that the meeting decided to continue to obtain the Uzbek torture material. I understand that the principal argument deployed was that the intelligence material disguises the precise source, ie it does not ordinarily reveal the name of the individual who is tortured...

I have dealt with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met with very few where torture, as defined in the UN convention, was not employed. When my then DHM raised the question with the CIA head of station 15 months ago, he readily acknowledged torture was deployed in obtaining intelligence. I do not think there is any doubt as to the fact.

At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family's links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services.

And Michael C Wood's 'legal advice':

13 March 2003

Craig had said that his understanding was that it was also an offence under the UN Convention on Torture to receive or possess information under torture. I said that I did not believe that this was the case, but undertook to re-read the Convention.

I have done so. There is nothing in the Convention to this effect. The nearest thing is article 15 which provides:

"Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made."

This does not create any offence. I would expect that under UK law any statement established to have been made as a result of torture would not be admissible as evidence.

The UK Govt. clearly knew it was in receipt of information which had been obtained in contravention of International Law to which it is a Party, because it was told so repeatedly by it's Ambassador to the country where it was happening. The matter was so serious that the EU attempted to do something about it but were stymeed by the US and the UK Govt. took the matter seriously enough to have 'high-level' meetings about it. They also sought legal advice. Are we seriously to believe that this kind of thing goes on routinely? No. It is patently obvious that they knew.

At the very least then, since Murray reports that there was no SIS presence in Uzbekistan, the UK Govt. is guilty of not seeking to implement the provision that "any State Party in whose territory a person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is present shall take him into custody" (Article 6) and Article 4 does not say anything about where the offence may have taken place, then for all the UK Govt. knew torturers could have been wandering in and out of it's Embassy or Aeroplanes (jurisdiction) on a daily basis, but they had no means to establish whether or not they should be taking them into custody. While we're on this point, it seems that the CIA representative Murray mentions should have been arrested and investigated, because what he is reported to have said seems tantamount to an admission of complicity in torture.

This however is to engage in what Murray rightly calls "casuistry" in the full text of his July 04 telegram. It is quite clear to anyone who can read that the purpose and spirit of the UN Convention against Torture was to strengthen earlier law in an attempt to finally stamp out the disgusting practice. In the opening statement, after listing that previous legislation and the relevant parts of the UN Charter, it says:

"Desiring to make more effective the struggle against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment throughout the world"

What this appalling situation all boils down to is this: what is the definition of "complicity" under international law and how much more blatantly obvious does the evidence have to be before the UK Govt, a "State Party" will be "satisfied" and "immediately make a preliminary inquiry into the facts?" Are we to accept that an FCO meeting, without directly sourced data from its own intelligence service, "at the level of Heads of Department and above" constitutes such and fullfils the UK Govts. obligation to "take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over the offences?" Who knows, but given the "grave nature" of the possible offences, these are questions which should be heard before an International Court and I therefore urge you to give Kofi Annan's office the 'heads up' on my behalf. I'd be pleased if you would go further and send it directly to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights also, in the spirit of cutting out the middle man.

Now I'm sure you're getting bored, but there's more. Because whether or not anything comes of this on the international stage is, let's face it, highly unlikely. Western Governments make the rules, they don't submit to them: but I'll ask you to proceed anyway, because one never knows, there is after all a first time for everything. However, UK Criminal Law is something which recent years' events have proved that even high ranking MP's cannot avoid.

Criminal Law Act 1977

Section 1

(1) Subject to the provisions of this Part of this Act, if a person agrees with any other person or persons that a course of conduct shall be pursued which, if the agreement is carried out in accordance with their intentions, either . . .

(a) will necessarily amount to or involve the commission of any offence or offences by one or more of the parties to the agreement, or

(b) would do so but for the existence of facts which render the commission of the offence or any of the offences impossible,

he is guilty of conspiracy to commit the offence or offences in question.

UNCAT states, "Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law." Now I know that there are likely to have been further developements in UK legislation and case precedent regarding Conspiracy since 1977, however, I also know for a fact that the gist of it remains law: to join with another in an enterprise which breaks the law is an offence, which I believe carries a maximum life tariff. So if you wouldn't mind bringing this to the attention of The Director of Public Prosecutions and the Police of The City of Westminster, I'd be obliged.
[you may want to replace this next paragraph to reflect your own views more accurately]
Sincerely, I'm not going to go away on this. I am truly disgusted that the values I've grown up believing are at the heart of what Britain stands for are being dragged into the worst kinds of ordure and for what? To kow-tow to US "Full Spectrum Dominance" policy. That's not in our interests, quite frankly it not in their interests, but the advanced state of unbridled corporate power over there is incapable of long term planning, so I hardly expect anything to alter their headlong pursuit of the last few dollars to be had out of oil. Our interests would be better served by disentangling ourselves and developing a new high technology industrial model, things that we are good at.

Yours sincerely, [insert your name]

Let's play house

2006-01-12T14:51:00.000Z

From Let's play house on Chicken Yoghurt, this relates to my post "He is a dick, but he's our dick." on Disreputable Lazy Aliens.

Friday, January 06, 2006

So anyway. When I waddled in from the pub last night and turned on the television I thought I was hallucinating. I had, after all, one of my drinking companions had told me, been having a pint or few in the pub where Derren Brown relaxes when he's in town.

George Galloway is on Celebrity Big Brother.

I don't usually watch Big Brother, celebrity or otherwise, after realising that spending one's life watching other people spending their lives doing nothing is probably not the best use of one's time. But bloody hell, I couldn't drag myself away from it last night. It was some of the most excruciating, morbidly fascinating, utterly compelling television I've ever seen.

The urge to change channel in squirming embarrassment while George sat glassy eyed listening to Michael Barrymore's whining self-justification was almost irresistable. And the bit where George exchanged small talk with cross-dressing basketball player, Dennis Rodman, was pure comedy gold ("Are you still playing, Dennis?" and "I'm here to get our message out"). I liked the "our".

The bit where he fumbled around trying to explain to Rodman that he was hoping to get across to people who wouldn't necessarily have heard of him was priceless: "The kind of people who watch this show" or somesuch. He didn't quite say proles or The Great Unwashed but you could see he was casting around for a non-derogatory term for people more interested in reality television than the travails of Gorgeous George.

Are the people who voted for him angry or relieved that he's decided to take himself off the streets of their constituency for an extended period again, do you think?

All the housemates were seated around the kitchen table talking as I retired. The ever visually arresting Pete Burns from Dead or Alive was waxing lyrical about how he loved cities and wanted the world paved over. George was ready for bed by this point, his navy blue pyjamas buttoned all the way to the top, tight around his neck. "Big Brother" asked over the PA system that all housemates make sure their microphones were positioned correctly. Cue much shuffling and wriggling as microphones were adjusted.

Not from George though. He remained quite still, his microphone perfectly positioned in the lapel of his pristine, powder blue dressing gown.

Oh, his voice is going to be heard all right.

7/1/06: Gorgeous' constituents are out of luck, it would seem.

Still, at least George took the time to salute Michael Barrymore's indefatigability: "You're a funny man, Michael, you'll be back, and you'll be back big." Funny how? Funny ha ha or funny peculiar?

I always though[t] what happened to Stuart Lubbock was a bit, well, funny.

From the comments there:

At 7:56 PM, January 07, 2006, Porkbeast said...

I find the assertion that GG does not get up the nose of the establishment pretty...well i apologise, but pathetic is the only word. He has obviously got up a monkey’s nose.

There is a lot of “emperor’s new clothes” about GG so called failings. The continual assertion that he is a clown without engagement of your critical faculties is –willingly or otherwise - a part of the character assassination project. It is now “common sense” in many circles that he is a clown. Gramsci would point out how this has been engineered. Let’s get real here. He is on our side and some of us are willing to do the dirty work for the forces of conservatism in this country by supporting this culture of personality. You are being duped. You do not have to like him,or agree with him on everything (my position) but I ask the question again, do you disagree with his analysis of the war in Iraq? Has he brought this analysis to a mass audience? Could anyone else have done it with such style?

Oh by the way if you are not aware of who the enemy is what you doing on a leftist blog? Let please try to stick with the issues rather than getting into bed with the Mail and Telegraph's cult of personality agenda.

At 12:31 AM, January 08, 2006, Nosemonkey said...

With your astounding insight and wonderous wordplay with my interweb pseudonym I am intellectually crushed.

The thing you are missing, old man, is a little thing called nuance. Galloway is anti-war, yes. But anti-war in the wrong way, as far as a good number of people are concerned.

How's this for an extreme example? Just because Stalin, like (old) Labour, wanted certain industries to be nationalised does not mean that supporters of the (old) Labour party also wanted to see the slaughter of 20 million innocents. To agree on one thing does not mean you have to accept the whole package. The whole package can, however, demean the one thing.

(Apologies if this makes no sense, but I am pissed up on booze)

At which point i opened with:

At 9:34 PM, January 09, 2006, edjog said...

Anti-war in the wrong way, nosemonkey old man? That seems like sophistry beyond the call of duty, what? Either that or it's masking the same kind of Sour Grapes at Harry's Place.

And nosemonkey came back:

At 10:20 AM, January 10, 2006, Nosemonkey said...

Not really, edjog. Galloway is antiwar in a manner that gives rise to accusations (founded or not it doesn't matter - the preception is also important) of supporting terrorism and totalitarianism. That is (as far as I and many others are concerned) anti-war in the wrong way. I - and others - refuse to ignore his faults just because we agree with him on one issue - is that so hard to understand?

Here, as this is the internet and it's a political discussion, let's bring Hitler into it:

Hitler was socialist, but in the wrong way.

By your Galloway logic, any lefty types should ignore Hitler's mass-slaughter merely because (aspects of) his economics were sound.

That's precisely the sort of attitude that led people like Galloway to blindly support Stalin despite all the evidence of Soviet genocide - so I can't say I'm surprised that it seems to be the common fall-back option for Galloway's supporters.

My reply is the subject of "He is a dick, but he's our dick." [title link]

Craig Murray's documents

2006-01-06T03:48:00.000Z

So yeah, they're just taking up to much room on the main page of DLA so now they'll live here:

Letter #1
Confidential
FM Tashkent
TO FCO, Cabinet Office, DFID, MODUK, OSCE Posts, Security Council Posts
16 September 02
SUBJECT: US/Uzbekistan: Promoting Terrorism

SUMMARY
US plays down human rights situation in Uzbekistan. A dangerous policy: increasing repression combined with poverty will promote Islamic terrorism. Support to Karimov regime a bankrupt and cynical policy.

DETAIL
The Economist of 7 September states: "Uzbekistan, in particular, has jailed many thousands of moderate Islamists, an excellent way of converting their families and friends to extremism." The Economist also spoke of "the growing despotism of Mr Karimov" and judged that "the past year has seen a further deterioration of an already grim human rights record". I agree.

Between 7,000 and 10,000 political and religious prisoners are currently detained, many after trials before kangaroo courts with no representation. Terrible torture is commonplace: the EU is currently considering a demarche over the terrible case of two Muslims tortured to death in jail apparently with boiling water. Two leading dissidents, Elena Urlaeva and Larissa Vdovna, were two weeks ago committed to a lunatic asylum, where they are being drugged, for demonstrating on human rights. Opposition political parties remain banned. There is no doubt that September 11 gave the pretext to crack down still harder on dissent under the guise of counter-terrorism.

Yet on 8 September the US State Department certified that Uzbekistan was improving in both human rights and democracy, thus fulfilling a constitutional requirement and allowing the continuing disbursement of $140 million of US aid to Uzbekistan this year. Human Rights Watch immediately published a commendably sober and balanced rebuttal of the State Department claim. Again we are back in the area of the US accepting sham reform [a reference to my previous telegram on the economy]. In August media censorship was abolished, and theoretically there are independent media outlets, but in practice there is absolutely no criticism of President Karimov or the central government in any Uzbek media. State Department call this self-censorship: I am not sure that is a fair way to describe an unwillingness to experience the brutal methods of the security services.

Similarly, following US pressure when Karimov visited Washington, a human rights NGO has been permitted to register. This is an advance, but they have little impact given that no media are prepared to cover any of their activities or carry any of their statements.

The final improvement State quote is that in one case of murder of a prisoner the police involved have been prosecuted. That is an improvement, but again related to the Karimov visit and does not appear to presage a general change of policy. On the latest cases of torture deaths the Uzbeks have given the OSCE an incredible explanation, given the nature of the injuries, that the victims died in a fight between prisoners.

But allowing a single NGO, a token prosecution of police officers and a fake press freedom cannot possibly outweigh the huge scale of detentions, the torture and the secret executions. President Karimov has admitted to 100 executions a year but human rights groups believe there are more. Added to this, all opposition parties remain banned (the President got a 98% vote) and the Internet is strictly controlled. All Internet providers must go through a single government server and access is barred to many sites including all dissident and opposition sites and much international media (including, ironically, waronterrorism.com). This is in
essence still a totalitarian state: there is far less freedom than still prevails, for example, in Mugabe's Zimbabwe. A Movement for Democratic Change or any judicial independence would be impossible here.

Karimov is a dictator who is committed to neither political nor economic reform. The purpose of his regime is not the development of his country but the diversion of economic rent to his oligarchic supporters through government controls. As a senior Uzbek academic told me privately, there is more repression here now than in Brezhnev's time. The US are trying to prop up Karimov economically and to justify this support they need to claim that a process of economic and political reform is underway. That they do so claim is either cynicism or self-delusion. This policy is doomed to failure. Karimov is driving this resource-rich country towards economic ruin like an Abacha. And the policy of increasing repression aimed indiscriminately at pious Muslims, combined with a deepening poverty, is the most certain way to ensure continuing support for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. They have certainly been decimated and disorganised in Afghanistan, and Karimov's repression may keep the lid on for years â€“ but pressure is building and could ultimately explode.

I quite understand the interest of the US in strategic airbases and why they back Karimov, but I believe US policy is misconceived. In the short term it may help fight terrorism but in the medium term it will promote it, as the Economist points out. And it can never be right to lower our standards on human rights. There is a complex situation in Central Asia and it is wrong to look at it only through a prism picked up on September 12. Worst of all is what appears to be the philosophy underlying the current US view of Uzbekistan: that September 11 divided the World into two camps in the "War against Terrorism" and that Karimov is on "our" side.

If Karimov is on "our" side, then this war cannot be simply between the forces of good and evil. It must be about more complex things, like securing the long-term US military presence in Uzbekistan. I silently wept at the 11 September commemoration here. The right words on New York have all been said. But last week was also another anniversary â€“ the US-led overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile. The subsequent dictatorship killed, dare I say it, rather more people than died on September 11. Should we not remember then also, and learn from that too? I fear that we are heading down the same path of US-sponsored dictatorship here. It is ironic that the beneficiary is perhaps the most unreformed of the World's old communist leaders.

We need to think much more deeply about Central Asia. It is easy to place Uzbekistan in the "too difficult" tray and let the US run with it, but I think they are running in the wrong direction. We should tell them of the dangers we see. Our policy is theoretically one of engagement, but in practice this has not meant much. Engagement makes sense, but it must mean grappling with the problems, not mute collaboration. We need to start actively to state a distinctive position on democracy and human rights, and press for a realistic view to be taken in the IMF. We should continue to resist pressures to start a bilateral DFID programme, unless channelled non-governmentally, and not restore ECGD cover despite the constant lobbying. We should not invite Karimov to the UK. We should step up our public diplomacy effort, stressing democratic values, including more resources from the British Council. We should increase support to human rights activists, and strive for contact with non-official Islamic groups. Above all we need to care about the 22 million Uzbek people, suffering from poverty and lack of freedom. They are not just pawns in the new Great Game.
MURRAY
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter #2
Confidential
Fm Tashkent
To FCO
18 March 2003
SUBJECT: US FOREIGN POLICY

SUMMARY
1. As seen from Tashkent, US policy is not much focussed on democracy or freedom. It is about oil, gas and hegemony. In Uzbekistan the US pursues those ends through supporting a ruthless dictatorship. We must not close our eyes to uncomfortable truth.

DETAIL
2. Last year the US gave half a billion dollars in aid to Uzbekistan, about a quarter of it military aid. Bush and Powell repeatedly hail Karimov as a friend and ally. Yet this regime has at least seven thousand prisoners of conscience; it is a one party state without freedom of speech, without freedom of media, without freedom of movement, without freedom of assembly, without freedom of religion. It practices, systematically, the most hideous tortures on thousands. Most of the population live in conditions precisely analogous with medieval serfdom.

3. Uzbekistan's geo-strategic position is crucial. It has half the population of the whole of Central Asia. It alone borders all the other states in a region which is important to future Western oil and gas supplies. It is the regional military power. That is why the US is here, and here to stay. Contractors at the US military bases are extending the design life of the buildings from ten to twenty five years.

4. Democracy and human rights are, despite their protestations to the contrary, in practice a long way down the US agenda here. Aid this year will be slightly less, but there is no intention to introduce any meaningful conditionality. Nobody can believe this level of aid â€“ more than US aid to all of West Africa â€“ is related to comparative developmental need as opposed to political support for Karimov. While the US makes token and low-level references to human rights to appease domestic opinion, they view Karimov's vicious regime as a bastion against fundamentalism. He â€“ and they â€“ are in fact creating fundamentalism. When the US gives this much support to a regime that tortures people to death for having a beard or praying five times a day, is it any surprise that Muslims come to hate the West?

5. I was stunned to hear that the US had pressured the EU to withdraw a motion on Human Rights in Uzbekistan which the EU was tabling at the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. I was most unhappy to find that we are helping the US in what I can only call this cover-up. I am saddened when the US constantly quote fake improvements in human rights in Uzbekistan, such as the abolition of censorship and Internet freedom, which quite simply have not happened (I see these are quoted in the draft EBRD strategy for Uzbekistan, again I understand at American urging).

6. From Tashkent it is difficult to agree that we and the US are activated by shared values. Here we have a brutal US sponsored dictatorship reminiscent of Central and South American policy under previous US Republican administrations. I watched George Bush talk today of Iraq and "dismantling the apparatus of terrorâ€? removing the torture chambers and the rape rooms". Yet when it comes to the Karimov regime, systematic torture and rape appear to be treated as peccadilloes, not to affect the relationship and to be downplayed in international fora. Double standards? Yes.

7. I hope that once the present crisis is over we will make plain to the US, at senior level, our serious concern over their policy in Uzbekistan.
MURRAY
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Letter #3
CONFIDENTIAL
FM TASHKENT
TO IMMEDIATE FCO
TELNO 63
OF 220939 JULY 04
INFO IMMEDIATE DFID, ISLAMIC POSTS, MOD, OSCE POSTS UKDEL EBRD
LONDON, UKMIS GENEVA, UKMIS MEW YORK
SUBJECT: RECEIPT OF INTELLIGENCE OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

SUMMARY
1. We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek intelligence services, via the US. We should stop. It is bad information anyway. Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the US and UK to believe, that they and we are fighting the same war against terror.

2. I gather a recent London interdepartmental meeting considered the question and decided to continue to receive the material. This is morally, legally and practically wrong. It exposes as hypocritical our post Abu Ghraib pronouncements and fatally undermines our moral standing. It obviates my efforts to get the Uzbek government to stop torture they are fully aware our intelligence community laps up the results.

3. We should cease all co-operation with the Uzbek Security Services they are beyond the pale. We indeed need to establish an SIS presence here, but not as in a friendly state.

DETAIL
4. In the period December 2002 to March 2003 I raised several times the issue of intelligence material from the Uzbek security services which was obtained under torture and passed to us via the CIA. I queried the legality, efficacy and morality of the practice.

5. I was summoned to the UK for a meeting on 8 March 2003. Michael Wood gave his legal opinion that it was not illegal to obtain and to use intelligence acquired by torture. He said the only legal limitation on its use was that it could not be used in legal proceedings, under Article 15 of the UN Convention on Torture.

6. On behalf of the intelligence services, Matthew Kydd said that they found some of the material very useful indeed with a direct bearing on the war on terror. Linda Duffield said that she had been asked to assure me that my qualms of conscience were respected and understood.

7. Sir Michael Jay's circular of 26 May stated that there was a reporting obligation on us to report torture by allies (and I have been instructed to refer to Uzbekistan as such in the context of the war on terror). You, Sir, have made a number of striking, and I believe heartfelt, condemnations of torture in the last few weeks. I had in the light of this decided to return to this question and to highlight an apparent contradiction in our policy. I had intimated as much to the Head of Eastern Department.

8. I was therefore somewhat surprised to hear that without informing me of the meeting, or since informing me of the result of the meeting, a meeting was convened in the FCO at the level of Heads of Department and above, precisely to consider the question of the receipt of Uzbek intelligence material obtained under torture. As the office knew, I was in London at the time and perfectly able to attend the meeting. I still have only gleaned that it happened.

9. I understand that the meeting decided to continue to obtain the Uzbek torture material. I understand that the principal argument deployed was that the intelligence material disguises the precise source, ie it does not ordinarily reveal the name of the individual who is tortured. Indeed this is true â€“ the material is marked with a euphemism such as "From detainee debriefing." The argument runs that if the individual is not named, we cannot prove that he was tortured.

10. I will not attempt to hide my utter contempt for such casuistry, nor my shame that I work in and organisation where colleagues would resort to it to justify torture. I have dealt with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met with very few where torture, as defined in the UN convention, was not employed. When my then DHM raised the question with the CIA head of station 15 months ago, he readily acknowledged torture was deployed in obtaining intelligence. I do not think there is any doubt as to the fact.

11. The torture record of the Uzbek security services could hardly be more widely known. Plainly there are, at the very least, reasonable grounds for believing the material is obtained under torture. There is helpful guidance at Article 3 of the UN Convention;

"The competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the state concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights."

While this article forbids extradition or deportation to Uzbekistan, it is the right test for the present question also.

12. On the usefulness of the material obtained, this is irrelevant. Article 2 of the Convention, to which we are a party, could not be plainer:

"No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

13. Nonetheless, I repeat that this material is useless â€“ we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful. It is designed to give the message the Uzbeks want the West to hear. It exaggerates the role, size, organisation and activity of the IMU and its links with Al Qaida. The aim is to convince the West that the Uzbeks are a vital cog against a common foe, that they should keep the assistance, especially military assistance, coming, and that they should mute the international criticism on human rights and economic reform.

14. I was taken aback when Matthew Kydd said this stuff was valuable. Sixteen months ago it was difficult to argue with SIS in the area of intelligence assessment. But post Butler we know, not only that they can get it wrong on even the most vital and high profile issues, but that they have a particular yen for highly coloured material which exaggerates the threat. That is precisely what the Uzbeks give them. Furthermore MI6 have no operative within a thousand miles of me and certainly no expertise that can come close to my own in making this assessment.

15. At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family's links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services.

16. I have been considering Michael Wood's legal view, which he kindly gave in writing. I cannot understand why Michael concentrated only on Article 15 of the Convention. This certainly bans the use of material obtained under torture as evidence in proceedings, but it does not state that this is the sole exclusion of the use of such material.

17. The relevant article seems to me Article 4, which talks of complicity in torture. Knowingly to receive its results appears to be at least arguable as complicity. It does not appear that being in a different country to the actual torture would preclude complicity. I talked this over in a hypothetical sense with my old friend Prof Francois Hampson, I believe an acknowledged World authority on the Convention, who said that the complicity argument and the spirit of the Convention would be likely to be winning points. I should be grateful to hear Michael's views on this.

18. It seems to me that there are degrees of complicity and guilt, but being at one or two removes does not make us blameless. There are other factors. Plainly it was a breach of Article 3 of the Convention for the coalition to deport detainees back here from Baghram, but it has been done. That seems plainly complicit.

19. This is a difficult and dangerous part of the World. Dire and increasing poverty and harsh repression are undoubtedly turning young people here towards radical Islam. The Uzbek government are thus creating this threat, and perceived US support for Karimov strengthens anti-Western feeling. SIS ought to establish a presence here, but not as partners of the Uzbek Security Services, whose sheer brutality puts them beyond the pale.
MURRAY
__________________________________________________________________

From: Michael Wood, Legal Advisor

Date: 13 March 2003

CC: PS/PUS; Matthew Kidd, WLD

Linda Duffield

UZBEKISTAN: INTELLIGENCE POSSIBLY OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

1. Your record of our meeting with HMA Tashkent recorded that Craig had said that his understanding was that it was also an offence under the UN Convention on Torture to receive or possess information under torture. I said that I did not believe that this was the case, but undertook to re-read the Convention.

2. I have done so. There is nothing in the Convention to this effect. The nearest thing is article 15 which provides:

"Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made."

3. This does not create any offence. I would expect that under UK law any statement established to have been made as a result of torture would not be admissible as evidence.

[signed]

M C Wood
Legal Adviser

Craig Murray's website.

THE IMPACT OF NEW TECHNOLOGY

2005-12-17T04:50:00.000Z

So, i wrote this @uni in spring 2002, but i felt it belongs here rather than on the main page of Disreputable Lazy Aliens:

How significant are cultural factors as change agents in the production and/or adoption of new technologies?

Spawning the designation 'Information Age' for our current era, Information Technology (digital data processing and/or communication, hereafter IT), has become so central to so much of modern human activity that it will be the defining component of any technological advances for the foreseeable future.

Since the Industrial Revolution, a concurrent rise in living standards, education and leisure time within our "affluent society"(1), has led to a diversification of cultural experience for many people and a concomitant broadening of expectations from life. These growing expectations can be seen as an increasingly significant cultural factor in determining which technologies are wanted, or will be accepted, and by which sections of society. Indeed, taking into account the efficiency of modern IT and mass media in disseminating cultural ideas, the global nature of such communication and the business infrastructure that services consumer requirements, added to the importance which such business places on sociological research to determine which projects to fund(2); we could conclude that consumer desires are the most significant cultural factors acting as change agents in the production and/or adoption of new technologies.

This view would coincide with neoclassical economics and monetarist theories of 'supply and demand' market forces such as Friedman's(3) 'macro-economics'. Human activity, however, is never determined solely by economic considerations, and even where they are a high priority,

"[every] culture distinguishes itself from others by the specific solutions it chooses to certain problems."(4)

Many economic and/or societal models are purported to describe some of the other factors involved. Some of the more relevant are: economic waves (Kondratiev, et al.), 'S' shaped curves describing technology adoption over time and bell shaped population graphs describing adopters: from 'innovators' to 'laggards'.(5)

We have now reached a stage in technological development where the sums of money involved are so huge and the potential consequences of mistakes so costly, that the most significant cultural factor, progressively and more obviously, will be political control. This tendency will be further reinforced and justified by the increased potential for mischief available to disaffected persons in a largely unregulated system. No unplanned change will be allowed.

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."
Henry Louis Mencken, 1880-1956, US essayist: 'The Sage of Baltimore'.

The greatest barrier to understanding any issues surrounding human activity is to take at face value the publicised intent or purpose of any individual or organisation involved. That is not to say that everyone is a liar, all the time, but that psychological, sociological and anthropological research(6) has shown that people are often guided by unconscious forces. Furthermore, even if they do become aware of these forces at some point, they are unlikely to admit it in public.

Bradshaw(7) states that upto 85% of North American families are emotionally dysfunctional and that figures in Europe and elsewhere are likely to be higher, because of a larger social stigma attached to psychological counselling. The result, then, is that most people are unable to respond, in an integrated manner, to any situation involving emotional triggers, such as communicating with each other. We are forced, to an extent dependant on the severity of our dysfunctionality, to react; relying on 'coping strategies' designed to protect our self esteem. These strategies are always manipulative and often dishonest.

So who are the individuals and organisations involved? Galbraith states that

"in the affluent society no useful distinction can be made between luxuries and necessaries"(8).

A person may require all kinds of goods and/or services, prioritising payment for any, because a minimum level of the basics can be reasonably expected. Thus, this security allows the use of disposable income in any manner a person sees fit.(9) All of us then, in the industrialised world, are the consumers and most of us will prioritise that consumption with some reference to an emotional coping strategy. This is the basis of modern advertising and Public Relations(10). Suggestions as to what we want/need are made to us, alluding to a bolstering of our self esteem and then these things can be bought, or voted for, maintaining our illusion of free will.

Whilst humorous, Mencken's above quote succinctly encapsulates the contempt with which we, as a society, regard the notion that an individual can be trusted to behave responsibly(11). Perhaps, given Bradshaw's assertion, this is no bad thing. However, such an attitude, openly espoused, would hardly sit well with our self liberating march of progress, delivering freedom and prosperity to all. The dysfunctional stance we take in order to reconcile these contradictory positions is exemplified by the practice of parliamentary democracy itself(12).

"The real test of whether or not a political system can be called democratic is clear evidence that whatever government is in power it can be peacefully removed by a majority decision of the people, through a fair and open electoral system."
Unattributed, The Hutchinson Dictionary of Ideas

Disregarding the cultural bias attendant on the widespread practice of sparsely populated rural areas being over represented in comparison to inner cities, our systems still fall short of this reasonable definition. This, despite our leaders' rhetoric, often using very similar phraseology, particularly when comparing our 'freedom' with another system. The disparity is due to the massive cost of promoting oneself for election, not only the cost of advertisement, but also of campaign strategy consultants and PR managers et al. This means that whoever we can choose as our preferred candidate, whether independently campaigning or from whichever political party, he/she will always belong to a single small group: those candidates who are acceptable to people with enough money to fund a political campaign ('old money' or successful business people). The uncommonly heard word for a small group controlling a country is 'oligarchy'(13); perhaps the more commonly heard use of the sobriquet 'Junta' is not an unconscious attempt to draw attention away from comparison. What starts to look suspiciously like a coping strategy however, is the almost unreasoning hatred and refusal to consider the potential merits of other systems to which we have become accustomed in our mass media(14) and the way in which a majority of our populations readily go along with it.

The problem, with regard to the production of new technology, is that our lawmakers are at the mercy of business and therefore, inherently conservative.

"Picture the Soviet Union during its final days...

One could well believe the leaders of the Soviet Union expected their society as a whole would be better off under freedom but also believed they would not be able to extract enough of that social gain to make them individually as well off...

Now picture the leaders of dominant industries, faced with a disruptive technology...

Most obviously, they could use the force of law to stifle innovation that challenges their power. Or they could use market power to chill the willingness of innovators to challenge their position. Or they could use norms to stigmatize the deviants. Or they could use architecture to hinder the opportunity for innovators to innovate."
Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School.(15)

One can easily imagine that the forces of law and markets could be ignored by the most stubborn new technologists. Even that the highjacking of architecture could be circumvented, if the idea was good enough, like David Hughes's pioneering of high speed Internet access using digital radio broadcast in the Kingdom of Tonga(16). However, as Lyotard(17) states in his book "The Postmodern Condition: a Report on Knowledge", the costs of using high tech equipment to obtain the proofs necessary to convince other scientists of the validity of an innovator's ideas put them beyond the scope of all but the best funded research. This tends to link science to the economy and 'Truth' to the rich and powerful. An unproved theory is a very difficult stigma to overcome within the scientific community.

To understand why large businesses would continue to doggedly maintain their practices, despite the opportunity to exploit more efficient methods or even upgrade to producing a whole better range of products(18), it is necessary to consider what is the real motivation behind their activity. According to Trompenaars(19), big business falls into two categories which he describes as 'The Family' model and 'The Eiffel Tower'. Both nomenclatures relate to their corporate culture, the one with a parent type boss and sibling workers; typical of Latin European and Asian firms, and the other with a steep hierarchy composed of middle management leading to the lofty heights of The Board, all supported by a large base of low status workers; typical of North American and North European firms. Whatever their cultural bias, equally important to the production of goods and profits, the provision of jobs is a necessity if our capitalist system is to continue(20). A sudden increase in efficiency has always been succeeded by large scale unemployment and its' attendant social unrest, particularly difficult for a 'Family' model business to contemplate. This is quite apart from the narrow minded pragmatism which Lessig refers to above.

We might expect that a small, dedicated, business team [Trompenaars' 'Guided Missile' model] might somehow reproduce the unprecedented success of the early personal computer pioneers(21), becoming big enough to fund their own research and development, thus challenging the dominance of older firms. However, as Lessig describes(22) the sheer number of granted and pending patents within high tech fields is a very real barrier to innovation because of the potential 'mine field' effect of incurring royalties for accidental infringement. This is especially so because patent lawyers actively discourage innovators from reading published patents, because the process of registering a new one requires that its' inventor disclose his/her influences. A process which could lead to accusations of plagiarism and infringement later. This is a classic example of how big businesses, which have sunk considerable resources into acquiring large patent portfolios, are manipulating the law to strengthen their own positions. Patent publishing is designed to enhance scientific development by making the knowledge contained within them public, whilst protecting the right of the innovator to be paid for their work. We are now approaching the ridiculous situation where the only people who read and use published patents are lawyers filing suit against each other.

Lessig also describes how many entertainment companies are now buying into the communications infrastructure. By buying cable TV distributors which also supply broadband Internet services in North America, they circumvent regulations that prevented Telecoms companies from owning both the content and means of distribution. This is because the Cable TV companies have successfully negotiated an exemption from anti-trust regulations which are designed to curb practices which threaten the competition deemed healthy for a capitalist economy(23). This exemption is intended to protect their right to make a decent return from their investment in the light pipes which they are providing, a position which makes no sense at all if they are then bought by a company that has a strong financial interest in the means of distribution being expanded as quickly as possible so that they can supply their products to more consumers [such as Time Warner AOL].

Because the Internet is provided to most users by connection to a central server, each domestic computer gets a temporary Internet Protocol (IP) address from their Internet Service Provider (ISP). This 'intelligent network' is already a restriction upon the uses that the net could be put to, even if the only ways that we may notice it currently are a disparity between download and upload data rates and the file size restrictions on our e-mail attachments. The original conception of the World Wide Web(24) was as an unlimited network with all the intelligence at the periphery, an end-to-end network (e2e). Without a stable IP address, it is impossible to reliably implement large data transfers, directly from one computer to another (defined as a peer-to-peer system or p2p), without making use of an application such as MSN Messenger, Kazaah or Napster. This leaves one open to whatever bill board advertising that the application administrators choose to deploy and means that the ISPs and Web Hosting companies can charge a premium rate for the provision of an uncluttered service; essential to business web sites.

These restrictions are chilling innovation in the area of multiplying the diversity of uses the Internet is put to. What could be a true Information Superhighway is in fact turning into nothing more than a complicated broadcasting network. A corollary effect of web hosting on central servers is that owners of copyright material can, with some justification, claim that unlicensed material appearing on a web site has been broadcast without their permission, unlawfully. A 'cease and desist' order sent to the web hosting company is enough to get the site closed down for fear of legal action. It is possible that a challenge to this practice could be mounted in the courts, because if a person experiences copyright material whilst visiting another, that is determined 'fair use' of the work. A web site stored on a computer in one's house could be argued to be an extension of that house and a browser to be a visitor. Given the haranguing that the writers and distributors of Napster received and the fact that so far attempts by Record Companies to graft copy protection onto existing format Compact Discs have been largely unsuccessful(25), it will be a long time before we see any services that may increase the potential for piracy.

The introduction of Extensible Mark-up Language (XML), is heralded as a great breakthrough in functionality for the internet, offering applications information about what type of data is being transported. In fact this is merely another layer of intelligence added to the network and it will probably not be long before that information is used either by one company to discriminate against a rival company's data travelling through its' hardware or to add to the cost to the consumer of making certain types of data transfer.

The most compelling reason for control has yet to make its' presence really felt, that of military security. Certainly, the US State Dept. designated the Apple Macintosh G4 a super computer and therefore a weapon, because of the parallel processing capability of its 'Velocity Engine' motherboard design, but this only meant that it could not be legally exported to certain countries which the US disapprove of. Lessig reports that a network of computers has been used to crack 'strong encryption'(26), using the spare processor cycles of computers permanently connected to the internet. A screen saver was utilised to connect to a central server, whenever the computer became inactive, it would then receive a small part of a complicated processing task, complete it and upload it back to the server. The same method was used recently by American scientists to find a vaccine for anthrax.

Moore's Law(27) states that

"Every eighteen months, processing power doubles whilst cost remains the same."

This has held true since the invention of the microprocessor and has led us from 8bit processor, kit computers to dual 1GHz machines, on our desktops, in just over thirty years. We can easily foresee a time in the near future when the ability to network combined with sheer processing power will render current standards of encryption obsolete. Combine this with the ability to compile and rapidly search huge databases of information concerning people and we can deduce that encryption cracking programs could be given a head start by being able to predict the sort of passwords particular individuals are likely to use. Long before this could lead to a genuinely significant security risk, military intelligence organisations will insist that their governments chill product development to prevent such technology becoming widely available, until such time as effective countermeasures can be invented.

Negroponte's vision of a totally integrated on-line service that encompasses wires, fibre optics, air waves, buildings and mobile computers, each optimised to carry those data that are most appropriate for the medium(28) could be here within ten years, given the political will to achieve it. However, as a society, we are still reeling from the shock of the potential offered by the paradigm shift(29) in economic practice heralded by the wholesale digitisation of information(30). Instead of welcoming with open arms the opportunities for beneficial change such as a vastly improved education for the entire world and a huge pool of working hours that could be freed up and converted into providing adequate food and shelter for everybody, we are instead, wringing the last few currency units out of a dead system. All this at a time when, if Kondratiev is to be believed, we are about to enter another deep trough of economic depression.

"Which is the most universal human characteristic:
fear or laziness?"
Louis Mackey, Professor of Philosophy & Comparative Literature, University of Texas.

edjog, spring 2002

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arthur, Charles, "Going For The Burn", Hotline: Virgin Trains Magazine, (spring, 2002), 52 - 54.
Bradshaw, John, Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child (New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1992)
Cringely, Robert X, Accidental Empires (Penguin, 1992)
Curtis, Adam (auth. & prod.), The Century of the Self (TV Broadcast)(London: RDF Television, Channel 4, spring 2002)
Galbraith, John Kenneth, The Affluent Society (London & New York: Houghton, 1958).
Lechte, John (ed.), Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers: From Structuralism to Postmodernity (London & New York: Routledge, 1996)
Lessig, Lawrence, The Future of Ideas: the Fate of the Commons in a Connected World (New York & Toronto: Random House Inc. & Random House of Canada Ltd., 2001)
More, Sir Thomas, Utopia (England: self published, 1516)
Negroponte, Nicholas, Being Digital (Knopf, 1995)
Norton, Anne-Lucie (ed.), The Hutchinson Dictionary of Ideas (Oxford: Helicon Publishing Ltd., 1997)
Pearsall, Judy (ed.), The New Oxford Dictionary of English (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)
Thornton, Jon, Video Killed the Radio Star, Here's one I made earlier..., The Ultimate Triumph of the Matt Black Box, The New Highwaymen N - N - N - Nineteen..., And the Geeks shall inherit the Earth, Say hello, Wave Goodbye, .NET (Lectures)(University details supplied on request, spring 2002)
Trompenaars, Fons, Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business (London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing Ltd., 1995)

ENDNOTES
(1) Defined by JK Galbraith (US economist and and advisor to US president, John F Kennedy) as a society in which most people have a 'disposable income', left over after the basics such as food and shelter have been paid for, i.e. an industrialised society, in his book The Affluent Society.
(2) Most new product ideas are tested out, modified and adopted or rejected, using 'focus groups', or panels of people predetermined to be typical of the product's intended target market. Century of the Self, Channel 4 TV.
(3) Milton Friedman, born 1912, Professor of Economics, Chicago University 1948-1979. Nobel Prize for Economics winner, 1976.
(4) Fons Trompenaars, in his book Riding The Waves of Culture, explains how national cultures feed into corporate and professional attitudes to business practice. How attitudes that seemingly make no sense, in terms of profit maximisation, when understood in a wider, cultural context, make perfect sense.
(5) Jon Thornton, in his lecture 'Say Hello, Wave Goodbye', explains how some economists use wave theories to predict economic cycles and market behaviour.
In his lecture 'The Ultimate Triumph of the Matt Black Box', he explains how predictive modelling can be used, with limitations, to approximate consumers' reactions to new technology.
(6) As early as 1846, EH Webber conducted published research on social touching. The field first came to popular attention in 1900 with the publication of Sigmund Freud's 'The Interpretation of dreams'.
(7) John Bradshaw, an eminent practitioner and author in the fields of Behavioural Research and Psychological Counselling, in his book 'Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child', explains how these coping strategies can become compulsive disorders such as an over identification with the work place, i.e. 'workaholism' and other addictive or self harming behaviours. They range, initially, from such seemingly innocuous characteristics as arrogance or over emphasising certain traits whilst denying the existence of others, to more serious issues like domestic violence or road rage.
(8) Galbraith, JK, Op. Cit.
(9) A situation which, Galbraith argues, leads to an overproduction of consumer goods and under investment in infrastructure, without government intervention. Ibid.
(10) PR was an outgrowth of the science of propaganda, originally based on the work of Sigmund Freud by his nephew, and was designed as a way of controlling the masses, to protect us from our 'uncontrollable base instincts'. 'Century of the Self', Channel 4 TV.
(11) If we did believe in personal responsibility we would not continue to spend so much effort in devising laws to govern almost every sphere of human life and promoting religions to cover the remainder.
(12) Democracy: a system of government by the whole population or all eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives: a capitalist system of parliamentary democracy. - The New Oxford Dictionary of English, 1998. (emphasis added)
(13) Oligarchy: a small group of people having control of a country, organisation or institution: the ruling oligarchy of military men around the president. Ibid.
(14) Witness US policy toward Cuba, despite its' high standard of healthcare and education for all citizens.
(15) To be fair to Lessig, in his book 'The Future of Ideas: the Fate of the Commons in a Connected World', he is talking only about business leaders, whereas I, in the light of my previous chapter, am lumping business and government together.
(16) Lessig, L, Ibid.
(17) Jean-François Lyotard, Professor of Philosophy, University of Paris VIII (Saint Denis) until 1989. Quoted from: Lechte, John (ed.), 'Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers: From Structuralism to Postmodernity'.
(18) And they have in the IT sector, at least. - Robert X Cringely, 'Accidental Empires'.
(19) Trompenaars, Fons, Op. Cit.
(20) Witness the large sums granted in tax breaks by governments as incentives to companies to create new employment.
(21) The revolutionary nature of which is fully described by Robert X Cringely, Op. Cit.
(22) Quoting: Shapiro, Carl, 'Navigating the Patent Thicket: Cross Licenses, Patent Pools and Standard-Setting' (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001) - Lessig, L, Op. Cit.
(23) Lessig, L, Ibid.
(24) Created by Tim Berners-Lee with his invention of Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML) and Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (http), the methods of encoding, linking and transferring documents over the Internet.
(25) In November, 2001, BMG released 'White Lilies Island' by Natalie Imbruglia without telling record stores or the public that the CDs contained spurious data written into their error correction information. The intention was to stop the discs from being copied by making the audio unreadable by a computer CD-ROM drive. The album did contain an MP3 version which would play on a computer but many customers complained. European Law permits copying for one's own use and so BMG simply replaced all returned copies with an unprotected version rather than go to court. - Charles Arthur, 'Going For The Burn'.
(26) Lessig, L, Op. Cit.
(27) Gordon Moore, founder of Intel.
(28) Nicholas Negroponte describes steps that could be taken to bring closer a vision of a technological utopia in his book 'Being Digital'.
(29) Thornton, Jon, 'Here's one I made Earlier'.
(30) 'Atoms to bits', Negroponte, N, Op. Cit.

Wasting Tax Money on Prayer Lawsuits

2005-12-15T11:00:00.000Z

This comes from Mike G. Gaither's blog libertyWatch and relates to my post: More American Idiocy.

Before the lawsuit, when Great Falls South Carolina held a town council meeting, it was always opened with a Christian prayer. When town resident Darla Kaye Wynne, herself a practicing Wiccan Priestess, suggested maybe the prayers should be more inclusive of other beliefs, her requests were rebuffed. Eventually, in light of the town’s stubborn refusal to modify their behavior, Wynne sued.
This is not rocket science, and the decisions handed down by Supreme Court after Supreme Court, have all sided against the idea of the government endorsing a specific religion, (and holding a targeted religious worship at a town meeting is certainly an endorsement). It is precisely because the majority of Americans are Christian that government entities must not discriminate against those who follow other faiths, not the other way around.
Great Falls SC has a total population of slightly more than 2100 citizens, not what one would consider a massive tax base, but the city leaders decided to fight Wynne’s suit rather than follow the American Constitution. And they lost, lost, lost, and finally lost again. Not only did these people lose in court and the tens of thousands of dollars it cost them in attorney fees, they also have been forced to pay Ms Wynne’s attorney fees as well. The taxpayers of Great Falls SC are out another $53,000.00 dollars and they had to negotiate a payment plan because they were out of funds.
This is money wasted by the city council that could have fed for a year 145 of the starving orphans pictured on late night TV, or it could have bought a pile of new textbooks for the local school, or maybe paid for an additional teacher. Instead, it’s just about enough money to buy an attorney a new Lexus or BMW, and that’s just the money they spent on Wynne’s attorney. Who knows how much they paid to their own legal buddies to argue the case.
Enough is enough! Americans are and should be free to practice their own personal religion free from government interference and compulsion. That’s what “freedom of religion” means. If you find it absolutely essential that you say a prayer before a meeting, knock yourself out. No one is trying to keep you from praying, just don’t do it as part of an official government function. It is not patriotic to oppose freedom; it is un-American to do so. Local governments, school boards, state governments, and federals, should all strive to follow the Constitution, not try to break it.

Soul

2005-12-10T15:44:00.000Z

So this comes from The PBA and, in the light of my recent experience with a Goddess of my understanding, i'm reproducing it along with my reply, because it made me think. The original post was by PaulEdward Snyder and to check it go to: PaulEdward Snyder's blog.

There are so many things going on around us constantly that we could not possibly assimilate all at once. We must pick and choose what is necessary for our survival. We choose what we see. We choose what we hear, what we feel, what we smell, what we taste. We select from this chaos around us what we need to know and we ignore the rest until and unless it becomes necessary to our survival. You may respond that there are many things you are aware of that do not contribute to your survival. I would suggest that in reality there is nothing you are aware of that does not contribute to your survival or does not make you feel more secure in your survival.

Let’s take the next step. You not only select what you perceive, you process that information to suit your particular needs and your particular expectations. As perception builds on previous perceptions and as that accumulation of perceptions is processed individually and collectively, a world view begins to emerge. That world view will henceforth influence what you perceive and how you process what you perceive. This world view becomes your truth.

No two people have exactly the same experiences, and if they did no two people would perceive exactly the same things as necessary to their survival. That is partly responsible for why some of us survive and others do not. Even if two people had exactly the same experiences from their moment of conception and even if they perceived exactly the same things as necessary to their survival, they would not process that information exactly the same way. We are far too complicated an organism to make the same decisions under the same circumstances again and again, and each decision we make opens up new possibilities and makes other possibilities more unlikely for us. We are in effect the sum total of all our decisions, not of our experiences or even the processing of those experiences, but of the choices we make. This is our soul. This is who we are.

If we are so different, then how can we communicate with one another? We can’t really, but we can approximate. We approximate by assuming we understand exactly what another person says and does and that that person understands exactly what we say and do. We approximate closely enough (since survival skills, though not identical, are similar if successful) to influence the behavior of each other if not the mutual understanding of one another. By assuming an understanding based on the response to our approximating, we coexist and interrelate adequately.

There are two basic perspectives. They are outside-inside and inside-outside. The outside-inside perspective sees reality as action-reaction. The inside-outside perspective sees reality as consumption-conversion. Viewing reality from the outside-inside, you see the world working through predictable phenomena. Viewing reality from the inside-outside, you see the world consuming and converting. Living in an outside-inside world demands that you separate yourself from who you are. You must view the world through God’s eyes so to speak. You soon learn that because phenomena are predictable you can control reality by understanding and manipulating these phenomena.

Living in an inside-outside world however forces you to view the world subjectively – as the consumer and the consumed. As you watch the world being changed, you perceive something you cannot control consuming and/or changing that world. You realize that as part of the world, you are also being consumed and/or changed. To protect yourself from being consumed and/or changed you must become involved in the process by somehow determining how you are going to avoid being consumed or changed and if that is not possible how to influence when and/or how you are consumed or changed.

Since we are rational animals subject to both objective and subjective evaluation of the world around us, these two conflicting perspectives are engaged in a constant struggle within us. Some of us resolve the struggle by forcing one of these perspectives into submission and assuming it has been either destroyed or rendered ineffective in our struggle for survival. This is a serious mistake; because we only suppress the perspective. We cannot destroy or render helpless that which is so much a part of us and consequently force what should be an ongoing conscious and healthy struggle, resulting in compromise as each situation develops, into a rebellious repressed unconscious that sabotages attempts to better understand and respond to difficult situations lest in times of stress we suddenly find ourselves controlled by the very perspective we had thought defeated.

From "Rodent Relief" on Disreputable Lazy Aliens

2005-12-10T15:25:00.000Z

Victims of Animal Rights Extremism website 'VARE'
anounces that harassing vivisectionists & their suppliers works!

Closure of Darley Oaks Guinea Pigs Farm
The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry expressed its best wishes to the Hall family, following the announcement today that they are to stop the breeding of guinea pigs for life-saving biomedical research.
CLOSURE OF DARLEY OAKS GUINEA PIGS FARM - STATEMENT FROM THE ASSOCIATION OF THE BRITISH PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY

The principal members of the Hall family are nearing retirement and the long and sustained campaign of intimidation by animal rights extremists has led to this "regrettable but understandable" decision.

"Guinea pigs have provided essential information to support biomedical research into respiratory disease resulting in real breakthroughs in the development of new medicines," said Dr Philip Wright, the ABPI's Director of Science and Technology.

"The activities of a few animal rights extremists have placed impossible pressure on those going about their legitimate business. While animal rights extremists are likely to be only one factor in the final decision, it does underline the need for greater protection of those individuals and companies targeted and committed long-term resources from the Government to back up the recently-introduced legislation."

Guinea pigs are used for a small but important part of world-leading biomedical research in the UK and the animals from this farm have a particular role to play in developing new and better treatments for respiratory diseases, such as asthma. While new technologies and techniques lead to the replacement of animals in this research, the use of animals remains essential. The closure of the breeding facilities makes it less likely that investment in such research will be made in the UK, which has the tightest regulation and world-leading standards of animal welfare.

& Then there's this...

2005-10-17T03:56:00.000+01:00

This has been moved here from Disreputable Lazy Aliens, being the full text of the post under discussion in my thread 'Bigotry & Disrepute' & a link to the original follows from the title herein.

The original post, by zArk, goes as follows:

Jordan, K'tee, Kloe and Bobbi-Jo are all names to make some teachers' hearts sink, apparently.

Poppys are seen as hyperactive, Kayleighs as a pain and Ryans as hard work, according to chat on the website of the Times Educational Supplement.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4274318.stm

ahhh lets go with this from the point-of-view of these retarded teachers;

Mohameds are seen as volatile
Tonys are seen as agitators
Georges as 'special'

Mirrors are banned from schools as the image is seen as self-reflective

I am naming my kid "Fuck you, you bitch cunt. I am gonna give you a mental breakdown you jelly brained, sub-standard thinking, poor replacement for an ex-servicemen
_________________
www.torrentreactor.to/torrents/view_60507

pentagons new map - thomas barnett
6/2/04
US imperialist plan - Empire building - The world under control

Somewhere later on this chunk of donkey knob cheese called OOPz added:

its gunna be largely BS... BUT!...
Simple fact is, theres some names that just stink of ill-educated, simpleton parents.

For example, using the names of posh and becks (whatever their real names are.... i forget... coz.. its utterly irrelevant in just about every way, shape and form (this being the first time iv ever needed them)), or whatever the current fashion name is, are likely to be consumer half wits... i believe there called chavs now... (something like that anyway)

Also the rash of making up names.. (which.. in theory i have nothing against at all, but in practice) is primarily done by the same sort of limited potential individual.

The fruit just dont fall far from the tree... and when your processing a couple of hundred new fruits per year, i think your qualified to observe patterns.
_________________
Someone stole my witty signature phrase (Honestly, that is this person's signature. i mean, what a wanker! Indeed, OOPz has since got rid of it...)

Now, this is precisely what we're up against, fellow DLA's, despite the fact that this OOPz is likely something of a fellow traveller, or (s)he wouldn't be posting there at all. i have to report that i quibbled for all of 3ms (expending as much as 59 micro gorms/s in mental energy) before deciding to tackle the matter thusly:

Some were appalled, complaining that children were being labelled and pre-judged before they had even stepped inside a classroom.

~From the original website: best smother the little darlings now if you don't want that to happen to them, i say.

OOPz, you are a cunt: go and fall from a tree yourself, try to catch yourself with a rope, around your fucking bigoted neck, you arse-wanking moron.

love'n'peace, ex

Which statement and suggestion, i felt, covered the angles quite adequately. OOPz was not to be put off though and came back with the reply which i then quoted in full for my resonse to it:

Isnt it nice to see such a well reasoned, balanced arguement.. let me guess, your part of your university debating team right?.. ya certainly dont pick up verbal jousting skills like that from, oh.. say, a 14 year single mother with a crack addiction that forces you to be raised on the streets of your councel estate by a combination of homeboys and wild animals.... oh wait...
yes, thats exactly where you get that sort of fuckwitery from....

& what if i were to ask if you were a failed applicant for your kindergarten's spelling bee? however, unless it was to expound my argument, i wouldn't, knowing full well that appearances can be deceptive.
in my life so far i've spent 4 years in further education, @2 different colleges, & 2yrs @uni, i'll be back next september to complete my honours degree @ the most prestigious uni in europe for my subject, with a high probability of achieving a 1st. the uni in question does not have a debating team, we don't need 1, we say all we need to say with our artistic output. to get the place @all, i was 1 of 30 picked applicants out of over 2000. just goes to show you where your prejudices lead to really, eh?

my Mum is a highly respected health care proffessional, my Dad is retired from a life career as an aero-spatial engineer and is also a member of the Football Association... again, talking out of your arse a bit, eh?

if you knew me @all, rather than your preconceived ideas about me, you'd know that i am not only erudite but incisive in my perspicacity...

however you don't and with an attitude like your's: you likely never will.

so let me take this oportunity to tell you that, in the face of your snobbery and contemptuous discrimination, i find that my understanding of etymology is challenged to discover words expressing the necessary venom with which to rupudiate your callow pomposity and furthermore, you can fuck off and die, but not before first raping yourself up the bum with a broom handle wrapped in barbed wire: sideways, without vaseline.

& a good day to you, sir! ex

Back to 'Bigotry & Disrepute'

Richard Sennett: The Disorder of Anarchy as A Beautiful Pattern

2005-10-17T01:31:00.000+01:00

Robert W. Lancaster

Often the best plan is to have no plan at all, or so the urban radical Richard Sennett tends to argue in his 1970's book The Uses of Disorder. The war in Viet Nam and the civil rights movements were the vanguard of social conscience by the adolescent in the 1960's. Sennett, in recognizing the disruptive control anarchy attained over the adolescent, didactically explains that the more we allow for orderly and planned interaction that serves to instill a strict definition of humanism within the realm of the community, while the very infrastructure of our social potpourri is then segregated and the individual is propelled to a higher level individualism without the need of the community. Affluence is the creature that forces the adult society to seek comfort in the form of rigid and planned interaction, and it is only through the new eyes of the adolescent that we can see affluence for the social wedge that it is, and the thread to repair society that it could be.

The counter-culture of the 1960's had a revolutionary effect on Sennett who would conclude that the chaos of true social disorder would offer the course of least resistance as a means to return individuals back to viable areas of social interaction, where the immediate emancipation of a modern society of formerly adolescent individuals would depend upon attaining "the freedom to accept and to live in disorder represents the goal which this generation has aimed for, vaguely and inchoately, in its search for 'community.'" (Sennett, p.xviii) Sennett, an opponent to the rigid structuring and order that the 'planned' city offers society, is a proponent of a high level of disorder that a society slovenly awashed in a high level of anarchy. Planned order is argued as the negative force creates the one dimensionality of the Marcusian 'I' and is behind the current selfishness of the individual in society. The 'We' of the whole, that constitutes the positive force that recreates communities, is lost to a comfortable and complacent society of individuals. Sennett thus challenges the individual to seek out the "'otherness' of the people around them," to regain the 'we' lost through actual community participation, taken by "the repression of deviants" that concocted the 'them' in society; silently expunging the 'I' from society and casting them out those "communities whose people fee related to each other by virtue of their sameness...." (Sennett, p.38; p.44) But why search for a community of otherness when we have a society where the individual appears to have so much?

Anarchy, revolution against a legitimate government, is not an option; or at least that is what we are told 'by the powers that be.' However, as early as the 1920's, the pragmatist John Dewey who, when asked how democracy could be pursued without institutional change, would logically point out that in the 18th century, "The American revolution was a rebellion against an established government" and everyone seemed to logically agree with that outcome. (Dewey, p.87) But those revolutionary Colonials were a hungry bunch, rich in interaction but poor in the affluence that material abundance allowed. High levels of affluence in our contemporary society have brought so many individual comforts to so many, until the individualistic society is no longer hungry. The adolescent craves this hunger of interaction. Yet, this hunger is suppressed by the conventions of an adult individualistic society, forcing the adolescent to become first insulated, then complacent, to the needs of the growing community that surrounds. It is then that the metamorphosis is complete.

Affluence, revered as a holy grail and sought by earlier generations, is now, by the 1960's, "becoming an intolerable weight to those who supposedly enjoy it," as it creates a false comfort of independence within the various individuals that has since evolved into a lack of socially interacted co-dependence, and thus is the source of the force that has led to this voluntary social degradation (Sennett, p. 188). Sennett argues that "abundance in urban community life has only made it possible for this deep-down passion for slavery to express itself....What the past decades have taught us is not how rotten abundance as such is, but how rotten are the uses to which it is put." (Sennett, p.107) Affluence has disenfranchised the individual, and borne a new type of poverty in our society, though "This is an emotional poverty rather than material poverty, and it is voluntary." (Sennett, p.107) The adolescent, by rejecting affluence and complacency, its companion, as the culprits that twain the community, volunteers to enhance social values over individualism. Yet, the adolescent who seeks out the social confrontation lost to the adult is too often forced to face reality alone.

Romanticizing the past brings to the forefront the crisis that has led to the ordering of simple sameness in society, that of the urban crisis, though the crisis is not the dying of the city nor attributive of a rush to the suburbs, but the death of the "multiplicity of 'contact points'" found on everyone's "Halstead Street" (Sennett, p.56).The local markets and the social clubs, even the brothels and pool rooms, all set along side the churches, the schools, and residential dwellings, were the sub-cultures, the very adolescent-to-adult growth matrixes, that allowed for social intercourse within the community and the positive growth of adolescent to adult, where "Each piece of the city mosaic had a distinct character, but the pieces were 'open,' and this was what made life urban." (Sennett, p.57) Yet, it was the selfish individual, whose voluntary exodus to the suburbs would leave what was once open on Halstead Street closed for business.

Dull should never be a word applicable to the city. The powers that be within the cities must be made to recognize that centralization of planning policy must be taken away from the omnipresent planner who "can steel himself against the unknown outside world," and be returned to those social groups of individuals that live in it. (Sennett, p.8) Too often, the adolescents of modern society are forced to gather on street corners to complain that 'there's nothing to do,' yet these adolescents are unwittingly compiling the results of the only uncoerced social interaction remaining, namely that of making and relaying a collective decision, though the conclusion, in relation to the multitude of choices available, may not be the popular nor the desired choice, but a collective decision none the less. (Sennett, p.8) The city planners in fact shun spatial conglomeration, and soon, everyone's Halstead Street is razed by adult reasoning. With futures adolescents planned, they are then injected with high levels of social individualistic indoctrination inherent to previous adult generations, social detachment seeps in and supplants the inquisitive nature of the adolescent, thus continuing this closed social cycle. Over and over again, until boredom sets in. Societies of sameness know from experience that such massing forces individuals to realize the differences that exist, though such individual differences, if avoided, become social voids.

Disorder, onset by anarchy in its purest form, would surely offset the pure boredom of order. With revolutionary disorder, Sennett envisions survival communities as the new social norm. "I believe diverse communities do not arise spontaneously, nor are spontaneously maintained, but instead have to be created and urged into being." (Sennett, p.157) And with that, Sennett offers this simple plan: revert from the extreme strict ordering of the bureaucratic city to the extreme chaos demanded by anarchy. Under the disorder of the new revolution, Sennett would severely mute the policing powers of the city, both the power inferred through its bureaucracy and then physically through the cop once on the beat. Violence, in this new anti-utopian community, would be addressed as an individual social issue, "where men must confront differences around them," where the arguments and violence of "disorder is better than dead, predetermined planning..." (Sennett, p.139, p.142) To hell with those pseudo-professionals of the real estate industry who falsely argue for "homogeneity...because people feel uncomfortable unless they know that their neighbors are mostly like themselves." (Sennett, p. 160) Such argument is simply a thinly disguised ploy to sell housing in most conforming economy of scale example available as homogeneity is the plan of the city planners to neatly segregate individuals into individual groups for the ease of maintaining urban control.

The disordered city would indeed be chaotic to the blinded adults in the urban bureaucracy, though in such a "complex city, the new eyes of the adolescent would find nothing out of place. Complexity brought on by disorder would offer an inchoate society where "a young person must become an active being, a man, and not an abstract thinker discoursing on the evils of society at large." (Sennett, p.145) And these adolescents in the new disordered city would miss the decentralization indoctrination of the old ordered city, thus allowed to grow and become new, now-aware adults. The new city of disorder is where "Men would find in the places where they worked community problems and community experiences, as well as community conflicts...," where everyone's Halstead Street would return and again provide the necessary "Multiple points of contact with different elements in a city diffuse hostility...." (Sennett, p.156, p.155)

Sennett targets the "omniscient" city planners, who ironically with "the projection of a rigid group self-image similar in its motivation to the rigid individual self-images seen in the young revolutionary," have, over the course of the 20th century, groped but for one purpose for life. (Sennett, p.100, p.7-8) These paternalistic planners, then with slide-rules in their hands, and now with computers on their laps, have retained but one goal for the future projective needs of all components of any society, be it the development of roads, issues of zoning, or urban renewal: simply to simplify social life to its purest; to make it easier for the "ideal person" to get from point A to point B. (Sennett, p.23)

Diversity, to the city planners, is the enemy, but shoot before you see the whites of its eyes. But getting from point A to point B should always be more than just a couple of dots on a comprehensive plan. In fact, point A for Sennett is symbolic of the positive force of adolescence that "is commonly thought to be a period of wandering and exploration" and is a time of the individual's life that knows no boundaries; the whole world but an oyster. (Sennett, p.13) Yet, when the plate of the planned city is filled with the omnipresent comprehensive structuring of city planners who continually bombard society with high level grafts of the sterility inherent in individuality as a positive, such a course "unavoidably" overwhelms the adolescent who is then transformed into just another underwhelmed adult who "has learned how to exclude disorder and painful disruption for the conscious consideration." (Sennett, p.20-1) Sennett's point B is the negative force of the adult, who not only has been absolved from his adolescent uniqueness, but is now, thanks to our righteous city planners, no longer expected to interact with any other individuals in a social capacity, restricting the choice of social intercourse and/or discourse available to the individual, rendering the individual to raise his own adolescent without the benefit of interdependence of unstructured social interaction. Growth from the inquisitive adolescent to the continually-informed adult is planned out the fabric of the city. If the question is how long will the individuals of society be able to suppress the Freudian inner-child that was once native within us all, the answer, according to the latest statistics just in from Planning & Zoning, is perpetuity. If a society of individuals is to return to the status of a community, Sennett argues that we must devolve. Indeed, we must ask how to reverse the process.

For Sennett, the city planners simply must fail at a policy that is bound in the simplicity of structured order. "Instead of planning for some abstract urban whole, planners are going to have to work for the concrete parts of the city, the different classes, ethnic groups, and races it contains." (Sennett, p.102) The plan of the planners must be changed, returned the wants and needs of a people who once "actively involved in shaping their social lives" and not held hostage by, and for, the individual (Sennett, p.100) Sennett agrees with Lewis Mumford who said "that it is necessary to learn to use tools in humane ways, not abandon them in order to be humane." (Sennett, p.86-7) Sennett thus envisions revolution as the tool, and anarchy as the desired humane result.

It will take a great deal of work to return that individual society back in a community, often more work than the community is willing to put forth, though the affluence of society is in place. Sennett agrees that decentralization will cause great fragmentation in the pollical forum, but "when people become active, they begin evaluating political power in terms of effective networks, because they have defined for themselves their needs or their desires in terms of action... The more powerful the process of rejecting, the more complete, the more purging an event it would be." (Sennett, p.168; p.173)

Bureaucracies can be altered, and those in the positions of city power should learn the two new terms that have been worn out in the modern public sector: down-sizing and out-sourcing. To the city powers, we should be inspired by Peter Finches' most stunning, and oft quoted, soliloquy from the movie Network, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" and take back the cities that, before the negative onset of affluence and individuality of the 20th century, belonged to us.

In American society today, the battle against the boredom of affluence must take the forefront as the preeminent issue facing the people as a whole, for we live in a society of such affluence that even the poor have well defined levels. Oliver Goldsmith, in The Deserted Village, proffers a most powerful forecast, to Sennett's disordered vision with

Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen who survey
The rich mans's joys encrease, the poor's decay
'Tis yours to judge, how wide the limits stand
Between a splendid and an happy land. (lines 265-8)

And without decentralization, without at least a measure of disorder, without an end to a planned urban boredom that is supported by rampant, planned affluence, without ending the vicious social cycle that robs our adolescent and adult, then there will be no one socially correct individual left with the sufficient social insight that is befitting an 'affluent' adolescent "to judge."

So, i've lifted this article from the University of Kentucky's website whole and parked it here because i find it very interesting and, since it has no proper document title, was worried that it might not remain available.