Security

Winston Churchill’s definition of history was simple but true: “One damn thing after another.” That’s the way the summer has unfolded, particularly the sticky and steamy month of August, historically a month when nerves are frayed and conflict simmers underneath an oppressive sun. So many events. So many angry voices. So little time spent on self-reflection. American fascism is back in the public eye, flaunting its wares and waking up the domestic population, which tends to snooze through the application of its imperial variant to all variety of freethinkers abroad.

In the classroom of international security, Australia remains an infant wanting attention before the older hands.  During the Paris Peace talks, Prime Minister William Morris (“Billy”) Hughes screamed and hollered Australia’s wishes to gain greater concessions after its losses during the Great War, urging, among other things, a more punitive settlement for Germany.

The war drums are beating again, this time for the Korean peninsula. And if a conflict occurs, no one believes it would be a cakewalk. Total casualties almost certainly would be in the hundreds of thousands; the destruction throughout highly industrialized South Korea would be unimaginable. It is a sequel no sane person wants to see.

(ANTIMEDIA)  — “Saying that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.”

Police state, corporate state, denuded duncery state — a blistery bunch of 80 percenters lost in a carnival of debt, malignant food, maladjusted education and the folly of a full-throttle powerfully propagandist media like a proverbial copper girdle wire around our collective consciousness. That So Called Liberal (sic) Press (sic) playing triple dirges for the death of any emaciated version of democracy with a capital D for dollar.

Following the latest terror attacks, we must yet again ask how much of our freedom we should relinquish for security. Must we pay the price with the confiscation of our rights to privacy and liberty?

Elitist western political commentators and politicians frequently talk about the need to stop ‘extremism’, but this is a deeply inaccurate way to describe the policy, cultural and social malaise from which terrorism can foment and flourish.
The Oxford Living Dictionary defines the world perversion in the following way:

“Distortion or corruption of the original course, meaning, or state of something”.

The unprecedented campaign to destroy President Donald Trump and re-litigate the November election has caused irreparable damage to what remains of American democracy, political institutions, and foreign policy.  Trump won’t always be president, while the attempts to de-legitimize him will instead be the de-legitimizing of a system of government and how media cover politics.

We have separate credentials for nearly every service we interact with but often reuse the same simple passwords, leaving ourselves vulnerable. Our credentials and sensitive data are then stored in databases with thousands or millions of other users, creating attractive targets for hacking and theft. There are better paths to follow.

The RIAC (Russian International Affairs Council) has published yesterday a conference report prepared in conjunction with the London-based defence and security think tank RUSI (Royal United Services Institute)  that summarises the discussions at two bilateral meetings held in London and Moscow between experts from the UK and Russia.