Quote of the day

"I have come to think, especially since my trip to Spain, that civil liberties must be protected at every stage... The trouble with an all powerful secret police in the hands of fanatics, or of anybody, is that once it gets started there's no stopping it until it has corrupted the whole body politic."

John Dos Passos


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A hundred flowers

From ChinaSMACK:

We Must Sternly Repress Counter-Revolutionaries (1951)

前三十年毛把中国弄成了人间地狱，后三十年拔乱返正，逐步走上正轨和理性！
The first 30 years turned China into hell on earth, the later 30 years has brought order to disorder, and now we are gradually getting on the right track with reason/rationality!

这里让评论吗，好害怕
Is commenting allowed here, I’m so scared.

查水表
"Here to check your water meter." ("Often used in responses to posts or comments that may be considered subversive or “inharmonious” by the government, suggesting that the police or authorities will be coming to the original poster’s home to arrest them under the guise of “checking their water meter”.)"

Ha, ha. And yet...




"Careers for linguists at GCHQ"

 

From The Guardian, 21 October 2014

 

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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Publish the lot

Currently there's a furore over here about the publication on the internet of the membership of the British National Party. Some of them look like scrubbed-up thugs, it's true, but I can't see them ever being anything but a cranky and resentful minority. However, if you are a policeman and hold officially-unapproved views, you will lose your job; and there are others for whom this cyber-unmasking will prove a permanent block in their careers.

But if we really want to set the cat among the pigeons, let's make public all political party membership, past and present. Then let's correlate the information with employment. For I recall reading in the 70s that it was pretty much career suicide for teachers in some London boroughs not to be members of the Labour Party, and I suspect the same issue would apply in other areas and other lines of work. And how about mapping the complex network of personal and employment-related relationships, as was done so damningly for Macmillan's government?

And who was in the International Marxist Group and other left-wing, semi-secret societies? The present Minister for "Justice", Jack Straw, has, I understand, called for and either weeded or destroyed the file on himself years ago, a luxury not afforded to many of us. And who went to those annually-advertised Marxist "summer schools" and carefully didn't join a political party, or let their membership lapse to maintain radio silence in their future missions?

Maybe we'll see where the real danger lies.