Month: January 2008

Ending The “War On Terror”

The British government will stop using the phrase:

The Director of Public Prosecutions said: ‘We resist the language of warfare, and I think the government has moved on this. It no longer uses this sort of language." London is not a battlefield, he said.

"The people who were murdered on July 7 were not the victims of war. The men who killed them were not soldiers," Macdonald said. "They were fantasists, narcissists, murderers and criminals and need to be responded to in that way."

The Clintons And The Race Card

By all means necessary:

Sen. Barack Obama has had the most trouble winning support of older and rural voters, according to polls. In Cherokee, one Clinton precinct captain who asked that her name not be used questioned his prospects: “We’ve got to keep an eye on electability,” she said. “Is America ready for a black president?”

Odinga’s Dilemma

It’s more complicated than Al Gore’s in 2000. The Kenyan election was almost certainly rigged, but contesting it violently could tear Kenya part on tribal lines and undermine its recent progress. But leaving the result in place is no panacea either:

The head of a European Union team of observers, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, promptly spoke about deep misgivings concerning the counting process. Diplomats in Nairobi, the capital, pointed the finger at the Kikuyu old guard, men who had feared that they would lose their fortunes if Mr Odinga had made it into State House. Even if Mr Kibaki’s cronies are innocent of charges of vote rigging, he will have no national mandate: outside of the Kikuyu lands, Mr Kibaki was soundly beaten across the country, including in Nairobi.

And yet a legal challenge could be endless and fruitless. One Kenyan blogger saw it coming:

The harmless grand father seated inside State House was asked by a BBC journalist 3 days ago whether he would hand over power peacefully if he lost the elections. His reply was in Swahili and so rude that many Kenyans reading this will still not believe that it is Mwai Kibaki. He said: Wacha Kuniuliza swali ya Upumbavu. (Stop asking me a stupid question.)

Another fears the country is a few steps away from Rwanda’s recent fate. More blogger reax from the scene here.

The Surveillance State

Map

Big Brother is watching you as never before – and those countries with the proudest histories of individual privacy and freedom have been among those most desperate to abolish privacy for the chimera of security:

In terms of statutory protections and privacy enforcement, the US is the worst ranking country in the democratic world. In terms of overall privacy protection the United States has performed very poorly, being out-ranked by both India and the Philippines and falling into the "black" category, denoting endemic surveillance.

The worst ranking EU country is the United Kingdom, which again fell into the "black" category along with Russia and Singapore.

Full data here.