My dear friends in the United Kingdom,
I'm sure there is nothing more annoying than political meddling from an outsider from one of "the colonies," but ...can you say snap election?
The Metropolitan Police's anti-terrorism unit's raid on the editorial offices of The Guardian, a pre-cursor to the Securi-Bobbies' Heathrow detention of Guardian investigative reporter Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda just revealed today, shows the Miranda detention was not just a stupid mistake, but part of a concerted, and very stupid policy: to try to crush press freedom and hide from citizens facts about what their elected leaders are up to.
To put it mildly, such actions are anti-democratic, and show the British Government's fear of and contempt for ordinary citizens.
In short, the happy chumps who Guardian Editor-in-Chief Alan Rusbridger says forced Guardian personnel to destroy computers and hard drives before his astonished eyes were also putting David Cameron's feet deep into the shite, because I have a hunch, this nano-Krystallnacht for journalists, will not go down well with the British public.
So, if I may suggest...
Step #1) Put it to Nick Clegg and Simon Hughes -- is this the policy of a government you can still support, still accept co-responsibility for? Suggested answer: No.
2) After the Lib-Dems withdraw from Cameron's Government, they should immediately join Labor in asking for a special session of Parliament for a vote of No Confidence.
3) After that vote passes, and with the support of leaders of both parties it can hardly fail, call for snap elections.
4) Polls suggest that the popular romance with the public school boys is already over; that their version of Thatcher II has been publicly judged to be not just mean-spirited, but incompetent. If George Osborne's profits and impunity for the lending class, and higher unemployment, lower wage scales and crimped benefits and services for the struggling class weren't electoral burden enough, let David Cameron explain this week's security police crackdown. It reeks of Mrs. T's bloody mix of simple-minded bossy-pants and single-minded intolerance.
5) Even in our narrow little world of journalism, there is a fine distinction to be made. On the one hand there are Cameron's relations with Rupert Murdoch, coddling his attempts to mislead Parliament, dominate news coverage, corrupt the cops and invade a dead girl's privacy, while professionally and personally cuddling with Murdoch's minion and mignonette, the indicted former chief editors of the late News of the World Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks. On the other, there would be campaign promises by all anti-Tories to protect the freedoms of papers like The Guardian, while vigorously prosecuting the crimes of the right-wing Aussie-American publishing tycoon.
6) I would also humbly suggest the anti-Tories demand a public airing and political reconsideration of Government's domestic spying and (shades of President George W. Bush's "lapdog" Tony Blair) enabling of America's attempts to spook everyone in the world. Cameron has acted out the role of the "old school" elitist, ignorant about and dangerous for the most widely-used freedom in the world, communication through digital devices. Almost everyone, certainly almost every voter, has a computer, mobile phone or tablet and uses them to gather information and express ideas. Therefore almost everyone can instantly recognize the futility as well as the ugliness behind trying to eradicate a message by chilling a messenger and and killing a few copies. This Government is too dumb to live.
7) With speed and daring, its opponents can get voters to prove that.
8) Here in the States, we don't have snap elections, but we do already have a fiery reaction, from the Tea Party Right to the Progressive Left to the unrestrained and dishonest NSA surveillance machine. Barack Obama will have to do much more than pay attention; he'll have to pay respect to that reaction, its logic and its values, or he will face political paralysis even worse than he experienced in his first term, and disgrace like he's never seen before. Many have already noted Obama's kinship with the much-regretted President Richard Nixon, their paranoia about dissent, their hypocritical abuse of words like "transparency" and "reform." But now they are revealed alike in their devotion to "imperial" Presidencies. But where Nixon was infamous for his love for imperial fripperies like uniforms for White House servants and guards, Obama is intent on the essence of imperialism, absolute control of information and communication. How fortunate for us, and for the world, that imperialism as as dead as secrecy and, alas, privacy.
Again, I apologise for being a buttinsky, but, unless I'm dead wrong, these are themes you'll be hearing plenty of from your own folks.
Hoping for the best,
dmarash
No comments:
Post a Comment