they told me over a drink we have ways of making you think

August 30, 2009 in action, brains, socialism

There is a fascinating paper here on how people believed that there was a link between Iraq and Al-Qa’ida. Essentially, if you give people enough free-floating emotional energy, they are likely to decide that if you care so much, then there must be an explanation for the holes in your logic. It’s called inferred justification, [...]

first mover advantage

August 9, 2009 in Blair, Cameron, ORGANISE, action, economics, privatisation, protest

If it’s possible to get Americans to start a string of minor riots in order not to have at least $80bn worth of national healthcare, surely it must be possible to start a good row about whatever it is the Conservatives have in store for us? We stand to lose at least that and more. [...]

action: D-day, 8th July

July 5, 2009 in ID, action

OK, it’s coming down to the wire. Next week, on Wednesday, 8th July, the Government is going to put three regulations before the House of Commons. These are the crucial executive orders that put the guts of the Identity Cards Act in place; specifically, they are the ones that make it possible to force anyone [...]

spam

June 28, 2009 in Internet, Iran, action, censorship, hacker

Arbor Networks has a great post with data on Iranian Internet censorship. As well as the deliberate transit shortage, they seem to be targeting specific protocols, notably SSH, the secure shell protocol one uses to administer servers and also quite often to provide a VPN tunnel. This isn’t surprising, really, but it is depressing; practically [...]

Loonies 2.0

June 28, 2009 in Blair, Cameron, Gordon Brown, LibDems, London, academies, action, libertarian, open source, politics, prediction, privatisation, socialism, special relationships

What is the legacy of the so-called “loony left”? The conventional wisdom is clear; it was all their fault, for panicking the swing voters and preventing a sensible, Newish Labour solution emerging earlier. Well, how did that work out?
And it has always seemed disingenuous for the Labour Party establishment to blame local councillors for [...]

what is cyberwar?

June 17, 2009 in 4GW, Internet, Iran, action, hacker, networks, protest, space

People are talking about using “cyberwar” to assist the Iranian opposition.
Let’s put some of our new cyber-warfare capabilities to the test, quietly and covertly of course, to disrupt Tehran’s ability to shut off the flow of information to Iranians and between them
This makes no sense at all, even less sense than “cyberwar” usually does. What [...]

it’s like welfare reform but with politicians

May 10, 2009 in action

What is the time value of scandal? One of the curious things about the current MPs’ expenses row is that the whole thing is pointless. Empty. The whole lot is going to be published anyway. So it’s interesting that the political-press complex is so obsessed by getting hold of – or concealing – information that [...]

tearing up the astroturf

March 22, 2009 in Internet, action, fisking, intelligence and stupidity, special relationships

Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads has a hell of a story. Now, I’ve not always been totally convinced by Tim; he spends an inordinate amount of time pursuing minor politicos for breaches of netiquette I think I’d just forget. But two of the crucial principles of journalism can be summed up as the clam ethic – [...]

thanks, ICO!

March 7, 2009 in action, surveillance

There’s a weird 1970s-80s retro feel this week; the anniversary of the miners’ strike, the renewed salience of some old ideas, and this story: it seems that a political blacklisting operation which kept files on trade unionists in the construction industry has been busted.
Rather like the old Economic League, which lasted from 1919 to [...]

write to them

February 14, 2009 in Internet, action, hacker

The RBC’s Andrew Sabl wonders whether it’s best to write, e-mail or what? your elected representatives in a political pinch. What, what, what if there was a Web service that accepted, say, your ZIP code, found the relevant state and federal legislators, and routed your message to an online fax service? Well, there is, if [...]