The Thomas Chronicles

***Update below 6/7/07***

Since my last posting on Great Britain, I thought I’d share some more good cheer about Great Britain that most Americans aren’t aware of. Almost as though it was deliberately crafted to the end of transforming Britain into Orwell’s 1984, Britain is now called the “Surveillance Society“.

Britain has more than 4 million closed-circuit security cameras, more than any other Western democracy. Police say the average Briton is on as many as 300 cameras every day, usually unaware. The density of surveillance is significantly higher than in any other Western democracy, says Jen Corlew, spokeswoman for Liberty, a London-based human rights group.

And the laughs don’t end there folks. In a true Orwellian twist, those cameras are now talking!

Yet the country’s surveillance network, which boasts one camera for every fourteen citizens, is no longer merely facilitating observance: It has now begun talking back. In a scene eerily reminiscent of Orwell’s dystopian vision of 1984, loudspeakers in one small-town center in northern Britain scold anyone they catch engaged in “anti-social behaviour,” including littering, drunkenness, or fighting.

Observing a bank of monitors in the council “control centre,” Middlesbrough town officials use the technology to broadcast warnings to deviants in real-time. The crime-fighting strategy behind the “speaker cam” draws upon the humiliation of being rebuked in public. A representative explained its function to the BBC in April as being to “embarrass” misbehavers into following the rules. Reports of wrongful chiding have been plentiful.

In an age of terrorism and asymmetrical warfare, we should be asking ourselves what the line should be. At what point and to what degree should we surrender our freedoms in order to identify and apprehend terrorists? These are serious questions that should be asked in a high-tech democratic society.

Thus far in the US, I think our endeavors have found a delicate middle ground between the cliff Britain just jumped off of (to the wholehearted approval of many of the British) and maintaining our liberties. President Bush’s surveillance programs and their monitoring of fluctuation in monetary transfers walks that fine line whereby citizens are protected from terrorists while keeping their freedom. But what of all these emerging technologies that could be turned against us?

For instance, it was reported by The Smoking Gun that the terrorists who planned to blow up JFK Airport used Google’s “Google Earth” feature to gain intelligence for their attack. Should Google be forced to shutdown this capacity that’s open to the public? Another example is one we see advertised on TV: The Visa Pay-as-you-go card. This will make money transfers extremely difficult to trace. I think it was conceived as a way for resident aliens and illegal immigrants to transfer money back to their home country, but terrorists can use it as well. So, should Visa be forced to shut this program down?

I don’t know the answer here. I’m just posing the question. Whatever else, I think we should take it one step at a time and case by case.

Update:

Here part of a transcript from Foxnews’s Special Report on April 5th:

HUME: The newest tool in law enforcement in Britain is not a fancy new gun or computer program, it is relatively traditional loudspeaker. And the way those speakers are being used has some people saying they can hear the voice of Big Brother. Correspondent Amy Kellogg has a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMY KELLOGG, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From this control room in the English town of Middlesbrough, officials say they’re taking back the streets from violent dogs and litterbugs. Not content to just watch their citizens, the local authorities use speakers on security cameras to give them a dressing down when they’re caught doing anything inappropriate in public.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You’re in an illegal area and you get a ticket.

KELLOGG: With a large student population and a depressed local economy, the speakers have been busy. Here, they prevent a young reveler from taking home a roadside souvenir.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Remember to put your litter in the rubbish.

KELLOGG: And elsewhere in town, they remind residents it’s not nice to litter.

HARRY MASON, CCTV CONTROLLER: We try and be firm, but not be rude or aggressive.

KELLOGG: The town security coordinator says the system is a good way of countering antisocial behavior.

JACK BONNAR, SECURITY MANAGER: It is the element of surprise that somebody is talking to you.

KELLOGG (on camera): Great Britain is already crammed with CCTV cameras. The average Brit is photographed 300 times a day by some estimates. (voice-over): And for that reason, a lot of people call Britain “Big Brother Nation.” They say that security cameras are intrusive enough, but putting speakers on them would add insult to injury.

GARETH CROSSMAN, CIVIL LIBERTARIAN: It might be of some very limited use in dealing with very minor activity. But this is not going to stop any sort of real serious crime taking place.

KELLOGG: Still, back in Middlesbrough, the camera speaker system has drawn a generally positive response.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is a bit Big Brotherish, but I think it’s doing a good thing rather than a bad thing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People just drop litter and I mean, other people should say something to them, but they don’t.

KELLOGG: Local officials even suggest the system could play in the states with local concerns in the U.S. about community security. That remains to be seen, but it’s moving ahead here. Similar systems will be installed in 20 areas in the coming months.
In London, Amy Kellogg, FOX NEWS.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Here is the BBC’s report on the new talking Orwellian cameras.

Amazingly, not many of the people interviewed were perturbed in the least. Most of them just kind of shrug. Not even concerned enough to be riled up at all.

Or as T.S. Eliot so aptly wrote:

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

BreitBart reported today that Mohammed will likely be the most popular name given to newborn boys by the end of this year. The most popular name for the moment is “Jack” followed by “Joshua” then “Oliver”.

Mohammed will likely become the most popular name for baby boys in Britain by the end of the year, The Times reported on Wednesday, citing government data.

Though official records from the Office for National Statistics list the spelling Mohammed 23rd in its yearly analysis of the top 3,000 names given to children, when all the different spellings of the name are taken into account, it ranks second, only behind Jack, according to The Times.

There are various different spellings of the name because when it is transliterated into English from Arabic, families spell it as closely to their own pronunciations as possible.

In total, 5,991 baby boys were given some version of the name Mohammed, with 6,928 baby boys named Jack.

Thomas was third with 5,921 names, with Joshua and Oliver rounding out the top five.

According to The Times, if the growth of the name Mohammed continues — it rose by 12 percent last year — the name will take the top spot by the end of this year.

I guess Great Britain is more European than I thought instead of being the great Anglo-Saxon island nation who once ruled a fourth of the earth…

The TimesOnline reported today that British history teachers are dropping sensitive historical events because it might cause irreparable damage to the mental well-being of some of their students. Among the dropped topics are the Holocaust and the Crusades. It does not take a genius to figure out from their circumlocution that they are referring to the school’s Arab Muslim students.

Schools drop Holocaust lessons to avoid offence
Alexandra Frean

Teachers are dropping controversial subjects such as the Holocaust and the Crusades from history lessons because they do not want to cause offence to children from certain races or religions, a report claims.

A lack of factual knowledge among some teachers, particularly in primary schools, is also leading to “shallow” lessons on emotive and difficult subjects, according to the study by the Historical Association.

The report, produced with funding from the Department for Education, said that where teachers and staff avoided emotive and controversial history, their motives were generally well intentioned.

“Staff may wish to avoid causing offence or appearing insensitive to individuals or groups in their classes. In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship,” it concluded.

However, it was concerned that this could lead to divisions within school, and that it might also put pupils off history.

And just before we get all self-righteous about this blatant rewrite of history, there is our own beloved Ward Churchill and Leftist professors to think about. Not to mention all the revised songs in our elementary schools (”We wish you a merry Winter, we wish you a merry Winter, and a happy new year!”) and how our kids don’t even know the patriotic song, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee“. The world’s just got a few screws loose…

Not according to a recent YouGov poll.

Less Than A Third Of Brits ‘Feel British’
Thursday, 29th March 2007, 07:19

Fewer than one-in-three Brits regard themselves as British, reveals a new survey.

And young people in particular are turning their back on the Union Jack by having more loyalty to their county than their country.

Meanwhile only one-in-25 Britons (four per cent) believe themselves to be in any sense European, according to the YouGov poll of 2,300 people.

Overall only 30 per cent said they were British with almost as many (29 per cent) putting their kingdom - England, Wales, or Scotland - first.

And more than a fifth (22 per cent) had turned their back on any form of national flag – instead defining their loyalties to their county or their village.

But the importance placed on local communities is not being driven by the older generation - those perhaps that can remember the “good old days” of local life with a plentiful supply of local shops, post offices and milkmen.

It’s the “digital” generation of under 25s that have grown up with the global reach of the Internet, text messages and an impersonal call centre culture that are driving a return to the local community.

The over 55s are those most likely to define themselves as British (36 per cent) or English (33 per cent) whereas the under 25s are those most likely to be loyal to their village, town or county (29 per cent) - compared with only 17 per cent who define themselves as British.

You can read the rest here.

I see this development in British psychology as a good sign that they’re not diving headlong into a globalist European Union. Far from it. Instead, they’re introverting by focusing on their immediate surroundings. The county, their village, their immediate home.

And the shocker is that the iPod, cellphone, internet generation is driving the change!

Many would see this reversion to locality as a return to tribalism. This could very well be the case since it is the case throughout most of the world, even here in some parts of the United States, but this can also be the start of a renewal in the British people.

One of the most virulent diseases of our age is how people reduce humanity into ideologies and utopian schemes. Communism, Fascism, Socialism, Environmentalism, etc. are all abstract ideologies that focus on the distant and neglect the local. By straining to reach the distant, you almost invariably trample on what’s just right next you, as though the people in front of you are so much cement to be shoveled around.

The British young, however, are beginning to turn that around.

Peter Lock, who commissioned the survey, said:

“People want their community and identity back. With the nation’s youth driving the move back to localness the future of local community traditions and values seem in safe hands.”

***Further thoughts below***

***Further further updates below***

As Tony Blair’s rhetoric heats up against Iran, Britain’s hostage crisis doesn’t seem to be moving any closer to a resolution. Like it as not, modern Great Britain ain’t the Great Britain of yesteryear. I blogged on this topic in late January and garnered the attention of captain of the royal navy. I meant to return to the topic after conducting further research on the matter, but after poring through hours of news accounts and hard numbers from the Ministry of Defense, I became too despondent to even write about it.

Fred Thompson’s article yesterday reminded my of Britain’s impending calamity. It seemed he read the same Telegraph article I read…

Tony Blair’s getting angrier every day. But if past Iranian hostage takings are an indication, he may be upset for a while. The American-embassy hostages were held for 444 days, and the Israeli soldiers kidnapped last year by Iran’s Hezbollah puppets still aren’t free.

Blair is threatening to escalate to a “different phase,” but Iran’s leadership knows something that most Americans don’t. Two months ago, Britain’s government announced plans to mothball almost half its naval fleet due to defense-budget cuts. Much of its existing navy is already so degraded; it would take over a year to get into action. According to the British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, senior naval officers say that the cuts “will turn Britain’s once-proud Navy into nothing more than a coastal defense force.”

In fact, the British naval forces have been so neglected; the U.K. probably couldn’t pull off the Falkland Islands mission today. The world’s fifth-largest economy now supports an army that ranks 28th in size.

What are they thinking?

Commentor Greg Laurich opined in my previous post that, “There is still some bulldog left on that island.”

Frankly speaking, I’m not so sure.

Further thoughts:

Perhaps this entire situation would slam the Brits awake to the dangers lurking out there, and it’s a danger that Continental Europe cannot help them with.

When all is said and done, Britain is a maritime power and it’s grand strategy rests on controlling the seas. It’s an island after all. Otherwise, it would be completely defenseless to starvation, economic implosion and invasion. Would they risk that as part of the price for joining the EU?

Is it not ironic that Britain’s deadliest enemies have traditionally come from the European Continent? France, Spain, Germany, Russia… And now they plan to unilaterally disarm in the face of Islamofascism and the rising tide of fascism in general across the world.

Truly, the universe does not support boldness… and certainly not of the sort evinced by the Brits.

Update:

Britain is really gearing up to challenge Iran now. Blair and company is getting all worked up and threatens Iran with… a big, fat, happy UN Resolution.

How this changes anything is beyond me. If anything, by resorting to the UN just shows how impotent Britain truly is. How many UN resolutions have Iran defied without any meaningful consequences? Ah, I’ve lost count. It is a truism in the affairs of nations that if a country does not have vigorous navy, its means to project power is very, very limited. Britain is mothballing about half its fleet.

While it is true that Britain can threaten to nuke Iran off the face of the planet, Iran knows they won’t do it and risk economic meltdown and being ostracized from the rest of the world. This national embarrassment could go on for a long time unless we intervene and do what the Brits are unable to.

(cartoon by: http://www.coxandforkum.com/)

Update Again:

Commentor Ymarsakar wrote:

An elaboration on my point is that AIDS is more than just a disease, it is also a method by which to subvert something (a civilization) that you cannot defeat in a straight up match. If you can’t overpower someone, deceive them, right?

So Britain’s corruption has been ongoing for awhile now, Thomas. Any laments are perhaps, nearing the epitaph end of the spectrum.

Like many people, I read Melanie Phillips for the take on Britain. Now I can easily imagine that if things are bad now, that they must have been going worse since 1950s.

If you can’t take down a civilization in 50 years… well.

Yes, Britain has been in decline for the past fifty years, but that is to be expected. After WWII, they lost their empire, they lost most of their colonies, their nation was in rumble, and they were in a constant state of starvation all the way up into the 1960’s. The 20th century after WWII was really just a touch and go situation with Britain all the way around. She was lucky she didn’t fold then and there. People forget what a calamity WWII was… Just for some perspective, from the start of the century to the end of WWII, there were just a handful of countries that didn’t undergo a revolution with Britain being one of them. You could probably count the number of the countries that survived on just two hands. It’s hard for us to see sometimes but Britain really wasn’t in a position similar to ours after WWII, untouched by war on a vast continent stacked to the gills with natural resources.

So, I can’t really fault the British for being susceptible to the dream of socialism. It’s an alluring dream, especially to one that’s been through a whole wallop of trauma, but it’s dysfunctional at best and diabolically evil at worst. In comparison to most social engineering endeavors, Britain’s attempt was pretty benign… for now.

Even as late as Maggie Thatcher’s Prime Ministership, the British held that dignified stoicism that I so admired. I usually fault Labour with its demise, but I doubt that’s the case. The British people had fundamentally changed, a fact that Queen Elizabeth II had to face immediately after the death of Diana.

As to the why’s and wherefores, I contend that politics and the manipulations of social constructs had much, much less to do with with that than the collapse of Christianity in Britain.

Shortly before C.S. Lewis’s death, I heard he gave an interview where he said something to this effect (I’m paraphrasing):

“I’ve fought for the faith all my life. But the battle for Christianity in England is lost. Morality will follow. America will hold on grimly for another 50 years. Then the storm will break.”

Personally, my opinion is that any engraving on Britain’s tombstone now would be premature. I think they are still at a place demographically and technologically where they can recover and soldier on. But if they finally decide to wake up, it won’t be a very pretty sight. In fact, if they tried to reverse it, the ensuing civil unrest and violent protests would be the least of their pains.

Navies are ruinously expense, but they can rebuild under our naval umbrella. That is, if they’re smart and not piss away our Grand Alliance.

Related Posts:

Bookworm: That head scarf
Neo-Neocon: It’s “parading for the cameras” time
Michelle Malkin: Iran plays games, Britain wants condemnation
Hot Air: Hostage update: Blair threatens to …
Ace of Spades: Iran Demands Admission of “Trespass”