Daily Archives: Sat, 23 February, 2008

We don’t need no education

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One of the most often paraphrased sayings runs along the lines of “those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat its mistakes” (or variations on the theme – don’t get pedantic). While this is a touch simplistic (it seems even studying history wont save you) it has a comforting ring of truth, and it is often sadly accurate (*). Despite this an amazing number of people seem either wilfully ignorant of history or to have drawn some mind-numbing inaccurate lessons from it. This month I have come across two pretty large examples of this weird mindset, so I will try to dissect them here. Please feel free to let me know what you think.

First off, Time Magazine from the start of the month had this titbit in its letters pages:

Power [Samantha Power, 28 Jan 08 Time Magazine] recommends engaging Iran, including high-level negotiations. It’s not very reassuring to see how little we’ve learned from history. The ghost of Neville Chamberlain rides again.
Greg Lifschultz, Rowlett, Texas

Poor old Neville Chamberlain eh? He is constantly used as a bogeyman every time there is a debate about using military force. This is, interestingly enough (well not that interesting) an exact match to a debate I had repeatedly with various Americans last year (both in the flesh and online).

Now, it is true that with historical hindsight, Chamberlain’s desire for “peace at all costs” was a mistake in the 1930’s but does that mean it is an applicable lesson? Chamberlain was Prime Minister of a country with a reasonably small military. He was faced with a large, aggressive nation that had repeatedly flouted international laws and agreements. Chamberlain was faced with an opponent that had annexed several previously sovereign nations against international will and caused all manner of death and suffering. Chamberlain was wrong to try and negotiate with a country set on war. This is reasonable and we can all agree that if Chamberlain had been more forceful the course of WWII would have been different (not necessarily “better” though, be careful of historical assumptions).

Here is my problem. Using this analogy requires more assumptions than the current evidence will allow. Nothing about the current situation matches the historical one in the way Greg (for example) seems to imply. Iran is militarily the weaker nation, the US has invaded two of its neighbours and is threatening the do the same to Iran, not the other way round. If anything, the Iranians are behaving like Chamberlain… It is saddening, not reassuring, to see how little people like Greg have learned from all their education. (**)

The next weird history bit is more recent and from the Guardian Comment is Free but is equally false. Ranting about UK – Israel relations, this commenter felt the need to highlight how the UK is very much anti-Israel with his list of hate:

1. Britain refused to grant entry permits to hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees to Palestine in the 1930s and ’40s, effectively causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews during the Holocaust..

Erm, I have two issues with this. First off, the deaths were caused by the Germans not anyone else. Secondly, Britain pretty much met its international obligations to allow the movement of people escaping the Nazis. We even fought the Germans (not over the Jews but that is a different issue).

2. Britain killed hundreds of Jewish freedom fighters during the Mandate and fought a ferocious war in order to keep Palestine out of Jewish hands.

Wow, just goes to show one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. I seem to recall the Stern Gang were not trying to “reclaim” land they had once occupied (unless we allow centuries to be an acceptable gap). I have no qualms whatsoever with the state of Israel, but trying to re-interpret its Origin Story is a BADTHING™. In the early post-war years, the Jewish terrorists (as they were at the time) killed hundreds and fought a ferocious war to claim land away from both its natural inhabitants and the occupying power.

3. Britain took the side of the Arabs during Israel’s War of Independence and supplied them with arms and military advice.

Really? Well, actually I don’t need to ask. This is largely nonsense. The Arabs who attacked the fledgeling state of Israel in 1948 did indeed have British tanks and weapons but then so did Israel. This is largely down to all the crazy countries being recent escapees from the “oppressive” British control.

4. Britain has consistently sided against Israel with the Arabs since the Suez War.

Crap.

5. Britons are in the forefront of anti-Israel boycotts and campaigns to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish State.

Hmm. Hard to challenge this use of language. It is reasonable to assume there are British citizens who are in the forefront of pretty much anything. That implies nothing about official government policy nor the “general” stance of the public (if there even is one – I suspect most British people are neither for nor against “Israel” and a goodly percentage couldn’t find it on a map).

6. Britain has the highest number of physical and verbal attacks on Jews of every country in Europe.

Two counts of crap here. First off it is simply wrong but even if it wasn’t it still carries a “so what?” with regards to this debate.

7. Britain tolerates extremist clerics genocidal anti-Semitic rhetoric in it’s Moslem communities.

So allowing freedom of speech means you are anti-Israel? Interesting. Britain no more tolerates anti-Semetic rhetoric than it tolerates anti-Church of England rhetoric. This is a massive example of special pleading which some pro-Israel types have a tendency to fall back on. It is not anti-Israel to afford people the right to criticise Israel and its policies.

8. Two British suicide bombers killed dozens of Israelis in Tel Aviv in 2003.

Bwahaha. Four British suicide bombers killed dozens of British people in London in 2005. Dozens of Jewish terrorists killed scores of British in Palestine in 1947 does that make Israel anti-British? The actions of two people do not signify either the will of the public or the government.

It seems that education really is no longer important. People can surf the internet, pick up a few historical facts and then argue the toss with national newspapers. Isn’t that great? Isn’t that liberating? Isn’t it ironic that the same people are often complaining about others not learning from history…

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(*) I could talk for a while about how the US seem to be repeating most of the mistakes from Vietnam in Afghanistan and the UK seems to be repeating all the mistakes of early 1970s Ulster in Iraq but that would be boring…
(**) Please don’t make the mistake of thinking I am “anti-war” or “pro-Iran” on the basis of what I have written here…

It is all for your own good…

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Well, while I have been away it seems like our accelerating progress to the 1984 Utopian Ideal has been a pretty prevalent topic for this blog. Unfortunately this is simply a reflection of what is current “news” as almost daily we see more and more about how a socialist government is trying to turn us into a dictator’s fantasy land. In about two generations we (the UK) have gone from a shining example of a “free nation” to a state in which a stunning amount of state monitoring seems to be normal.

We can start with DNA databases. The news this week has been clamouring about how we need a bigger national database (see Heather’s previous post) – despite the fact the government already has the largest DNA database in the world. As always, there is a never ending stream of talking heads who say how the perpetrator of Crime XYZ would have been identified in a few seconds if we had a national DNA database. These commentators range from the understandably grieving relatives (who are always the WORST people to have opinions on a topic) to, in at least one case, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).

There is certainly a strong argument that recording the DNA of every person in the UK (including, I assume, all visitors and immigrants) would increase the detection rate of some crimes. On national news yesterday one senior police officer even went as far as to say that crimes were taking longer to solve because police had to use “traditional” methods to determine who the offender was. This is certainly the line taken by relatives of dead people and large portions of the right wing media.

However, it has (IMHO of course) some major fundamental flaws. The most basic of these is the overhaul of the presumption of innocence. If we had a national DNA database the police could turn up at a crime scene, sample any DNA found and then arrest who ever it matched in the database. The person whose DNA has matched is then put in the position of having to prove that they are innocent of the crime and give alternative reasons for their DNA being present. Now they must do the almost impossible task of proving their innocence.

In a similar vein, we (the public at least) have no idea of the accuracy with which a DNA match is made. If you think of all the steps required to collect a national database, store it, collect crime scene DNA and then compare it, there are numerous stages where an error can creep in. If we assume the process has an error rate as low as 1 in 1,000,000 (which would be bloody impressive) then it becomes really scary.  At any given time there are around 60 million residents and another 10 million transients within the UK. That DNA sample found at the crime scene could, through sheer accident alone, match any one of 69 innocent people. What is really scary is that it is unlikely anyone will ever actually know what the false positive rate is – does anyone know what the accuracy bars of a fingerprint match are? Will a jury be able to understand the statistics when the person in the dock is claiming they are innocent? Or will the CSI magic take effect and sentence innocent people?

Last (for now) but certainly not least, would you trust any government or private organisation with that much data? For a DNA database to work as a crime solving tool it needs to have details on who you are, where you live, how the police can find you (etc). This is a scary amount of information to put in one place. If you think ID fraud is rife as a result of people getting hold of your bank statements just think what can happen if all the data is housed in one place…

The most worrying thing about centralised data registries (such as national ID cards, DNA databases) is that no one wants to pay for them. The staff who maintain them are often the lowest grade in their organisation and quite often the ones with no prospects of advancement. It is trivial for Nefarious Individual X to offer poorly paid (and usually badly managed) person Y some money to either get access to the data or have an “accident” with it. When we establish the national register as the “Gold Standard” it becomes impossible for people to escape the consequences.

A tragic example of this was ironically headline news today as well. A couple lost their lives after a “gangland boss” infiltrated the “witness protection” scheme that was looking after them (quotes from the Guardian). More worryingly, this was not actually a case of gangsters infiltrating the Police Witness Protection scheme (which you would hope was one of the more secure government institutions) but the simple case of bribing BT employees to do lookups of confidential phone records:

The Stirlands [The couple killed] were ultimately betrayed by two BT staff misusing computer records at the request of the gang, without knowing or asking why they were wanted.

It really is that easy. This was nothing more than an act of revenge, so can you imagine how much bargaining power a gangster could bring if he wanted to, for example, get the national DNA register to point to an innocent person rather than him…

This blog has mentioned it many times in the past, but one of the biggest problems of total state surveillance is the significant shift in the balance of power. The government and public bodies serve the will of the people. They should be worried about the people. They should be 100% accountable to the public who grant them their rights and privileges. With the steady shift towards 1984 this is changing. The people will have to learn to worry about the government and what it is doing in “their” name.

When I was growing up I remember seeing TV programmes and news items about how Communist Russia was the great Evil and how oppressive regimes like Nazi Germany (and East Germany post WWII) were symbolised by how they oppressed the public – demanding “papers” on a regular basis, controlling who could travel and where and when, bugging everyone calls and monitoring their every movement. All my life I thought this was supposed to be teaching people what was wrong with some nations – I never realised it was a blueprint for the new millennium.