News & Analysis
UK Surveillance State Deflates?
The most radical redistribution of power from the state to the people for 200 years is to be made by the new coalition Government, Nick Clegg is to claim ... The public will be asked what laws they want ripped up, in far-reaching reforms designed to put back "faith in politics", the Deputy Prime Minister will say. The reordering of power will sweep away Labour legislation and new criminal offences deemed to have eroded personal freedom. ... It will involve the end of the controversial ID cards scheme, the scrapping of universal DNA databases – in which the records of thousands of innocent people have been stored – and restrictions placed on Internet records. The use of CCTV cameras will also be reviewed. Dubbed the "Great Reform Act", the measures will close down the ContactPoint children's database. Set up by Labour last year, it includes detailed information on all 11 million youngsters under 18. In addition, schools will not be able to take a child's fingerprint without parental permission. In an attempt to protect freedom of speech, ministers will review libel laws, while limits on peaceful protest will be removed. Mr. Clegg said the Government wanted to establish "a fundamental resettlement of the relationship between state and citizen that puts you in charge". – UK Telegraph
Dominant Social Theme: We have heard you, British voters, and now we will act to rein in Labour's laws.
Free-Market Analysis: We are not sure that Britain's coalition government will do anything, ultimately, other than expand the state in ways that Labour was not able to do toward the end of its latest disastrous era. But that is not the point of this analysis. We cover power elite memes, and these dominant social themes are shifting right before our eyes – and yours. The mainstream media along with political announcements are a kind of semaphore of power elite intentions and distress. And, as we have reported previously, we think the power elite is feeling fairly stressed these days (as stressed as anybody can be with a couple of hundred trillion in the bank).
Anyway, we think the language being used by this new British coalition is most interesting. One can almost watch the political elite (and the power elite itself) scrambling back (rhetorically, anyway) from the Orwellian nightmare that Britain has become under Labour, its economic crack-up artist Gordon Brown, its war-monger Tony Blair, etc. This would be expected anyway (for it is the way elite promotions work – regime change is supposed to pretend to bring "new thinking" to tortured democracies) but nonetheless, the frankness of the language that is being used by this strange coalition of right and left wing politicians is surprising. As a site (the only one) that daily analyzes the dominant social themes of the power elite, we think this language means something. Something has changed – maybe a little, maybe a lot.
Before we move further into this analysis, let us provide some additional background. It's no secret (given that we write about it regularly) that we believe the power elite is losing at least some control of its fear-based promotions as a result of the Internet. Not to blow our own horn (or not too much) but we have a pretty good track record over the past two years (and actually long before that for different publications).
• The Bell's staff reports were perhaps the first to state publicly mid-last year that the elite's central banking meme was in trouble, specifically the Federal Reserve in America – problems with credibility that have now spread abroad to the EU. And, yes, the Fed is in trouble, having bled credibility and dissipated its small store of good will among the American public during the financial crisis of the past few years. Many simply don't believe anymore that a small group of men can fix the price of money and then print fiat dollars out of thin air to support the public "economic good."
• The Bell was also among the first, if not the first, to report that the authoritarian Chinese government had a big problem on its hands with inflation and that generally the Chinese economy at its most powerful levels was a kind of communist hoax – a Potemkin Village of banks and industrial firms that masquerade as competitive enterprises. This, too, has been borne out over time with others reporting the same thing. (And please note, dear reader, the Chinese have yet to get a handle on their real-estate inflation, which is actually symptomatic of a much larger problem that is bound to explode sooner or later in a fiat-money blow-off.)
• The Bell was among the first publications to analyze in some depth the reality of the American Tea Party movement, its Sarah "Palinization" and generally the schism between its conservative and libertarian factions.
• The Bell anticipated by several years the ongoing problems of the EU and predicted the acrimony between Europe's various tribes (ie: Germany and Greece).
• The Bell has been ahead of the curve in predicting that the war in Afghanistan is not going well and has explained why America and its NATO allies (the ones that are left) will have a tough slog pacifying 40 million Pashtuns increasingly exercised about the destruction of their way of life and of civilian deaths.
• The Bell was one of the first publications to explain in detail how the global-warming promotion worked and how it generally paralleled the Bell's larger presentation of the exercise of elite dominant social themes.
Our heads are not swelled despite the above results! We know there are other alternative sites with sterling forecasting results – perhaps better than ours, or more practical or detailed. And, yes, we know that power elite promotions are extraordinarily stubborn things that persist simply because of the money-power behind them. But our point here is that none of the mainstream press (so far we are aware) has anywhere near this record of forecasting.
Of course, we are not very big resource-wise, compared to multi-billion dollar outfits like CNN and Fox, either. Yet like some other alternative news and analysis sites, we regularly accomplish one important thing that the mainstream media simply cannot: Our reporting proceeds from fundamentally REALISTIC analysis of the way the world works. We do not duck the obvious reality that there is a historical power elite and that its fear-based promotions have come into conflict with Internet truth-telling in the 21st century. We regularly acknowledge the reality of free-markets and what drives the great truths of Austrian (free-market) economics towards inevitable victory over regulatory manipulations and central bank price manipulations.
And what now? What do make of this latest series of pronouncements from the new British government? Hm-mm. We think the elite is feeling the heat. The power elite in particular has been trying to drive Western society toward a far more authoritarian construct in the 2000s. We've been startled frankly by the level of aggression and naked manipulation this has entailed, especially given a blogosphere that quickly reports on and often rebuts the most obvious and evident promotions. But we sense some give now, some flex.
The power elite uses a Hegelian dialectic to position its fear-based promotions. And one can gain a pretty good perspective on how confident the elite is of its prospects by scrutinizing the positions that the elite via its mainstream news organizations is taking on both sides of a given argument. Based on this approach, we'd have to say that the elite is scrambling pretty hard away from the authoritarian side of the field at the moment. Many mainstream publications have seemingly turned far more querulous about central banking, about the EU, about the endless Anglo-American wars, about global warming, etc.
Of course, this doesn't mean that the elite has given up its authoritarian dreams – or is not in some cases near realizing them – only that its various tools, especially the mainstream media, have been acknowledging the changing conversation of the West and have, with varying degrees of efficiency begun to acknowledge the new conversation.
We try always in our analyses to be level-headed about the progress, if any, that is being made against power elite promotions. And given that we believe an elite has haunted the Western world's city-states since the advent of the Neolithic age, we don't think anyone can take us for sunny optimists. But we do see changes. The changes may be in large part rhetorical, but rhetoric is of absolute critical importance to the elite, which has spent billions if not trillions in trying to figure out the best ways to propagandize the citizens of (especially) the West.
Naked apes are above-all tool-using creatures, but the making and wielding of tools requires as a prerequisite an intense level of yapping. Humans talk everything to death, and if you can control the conversation, then you control share of mind and ultimately the actions that people take. Lose control of the conversation and you have lost most ... if not all. And, yes, the elite is losing some of that control (at least currently).
When the elite-controlled conversation itself begins to change and when its political mouthpieces (Cameron and Clegg are surely two) begin to espouse freedom and free-markets – fewer laws and less governmental intrusion generally – then something is going on above business as usual. Again, it is only rhetoric, but the statements being made are fairly over-the-top. Is this new coalition really going to engage in "the most radical redistribution of power from the state to the people for 200 years?"
Here's some more from this Telegraph article:
In a speech in London [Clegg] will say: "This Government is going to transform our politics so the state has far less control over you, and you have far more control over the state. This Government is going to break up concentrations of power and hand power back to people, because that is how we build a society that is fair." He will describe the plans as "the biggest shake-up of our democracy since 1832, when the Great Reform Act redrew the boundaries of British democracy, for the first time extending the franchise beyond the landed classes".
He will say that reform will not simply mean "a few new rules for MPs [or] the odd gesture or gimmick to make you feel a bit more involved". Mr. Clegg will announce that he wants to hear about which laws should be scrapped to roll back the state encroachment into people's lives. "As we tear through the statute book, we'll do something no government ever has: We will ask you which laws you think should go.
Because thousands of criminal offences were created under the previous government. Taking people's freedom away didn't make our streets safe. Obsessive law-making simply makes criminals out of ordinary people. So, we'll get rid of the unnecessary laws – and once they're gone, they won't come back. We will introduce a mechanism to block pointless new criminal offences." The measures to repeal so-called surveillance state laws will be included in next week's Queen's Speech.
Mr. Clegg will add: "It is outrageous that decent, law-abiding people are regularly treated as if they have something to hide. It has to stop. "This will be a government that is proud when British citizens stand up against illegitimate advances of the state. That values debate, that is unafraid of dissent."
Let us take stock, dear reader. Many power elite fear-based promotions (intended to consolidate wealth and increase the power of a handful of already intensely powerful people) have gone awry in the past few years as the Internet has made increasing inroads into the believability of these malevolent campaigns. And since the Internet and the ramifications of its truth-telling have really just got going, we would anticipate that the elite will have even more difficulty in the future than it has had in the immediate past.
Rhetoric is not all, but rhetoric is important, because it presages change that may actually occur. When the elite's mainstream media dialogue begins to shift, when the political rhetoric changes dramatically, when the facts on the ground begin to move radically away from acceptance of the elite's promotional messaging, then a trend is taking shape that may move things in a new direction. This is important to note as a citizens of the Anglo-American axis, of the West generally and certainly as an investor.
Conclusion: In the 20th century one could bet with almost absolute certainty on any one of a number of elite campaigns and institutions. In the 21st century, such bets seem less certain. From global warming to the euro, to the EU itself, to central banking and fiat money, to stock and bond markets, and maybe (now) to the surveillance state and the industrial effluvia that provides its "services," nothing is seemingly as certain as it once was. Some may find this distressing.
Latest Daily Bell Articles
Feedback


Posted by Gail on 05/27/10 08:30 AM
We can start with a system that allows other parties; Libertarian and Free markets to have a dominant voice. I can see no difference in either the Republican or Democrat party, besides we need a CHANGE from all their propaganda!
Why can't all children in all schools be required to read " The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire "?? It would go along way toward educating our future leaders.
Posted by Linda Maddox on 05/23/10 09:56 AM
Posted by John Acord on 05/21/10 05:47 AM
Posted by Andrew From London on 05/20/10 05:33 PM
F.Beard - "Let's get real. The purpose of the UK police state (similar to the one in the US) is to intimidate its domestic Muslims while British troops kill Muslims abroad. "
Tosh. I've visited 25 countries and would happily swap some aspects of Britain (Summer weather, sea temperature, cafe culture, amount of unpopulated countryside, fiscal policy, house prices) for the alternative. I'd certainly keep the British police force. Anyone who calls the UK a police state really loses all credibility with me (a British resident for 45 years). The UK is not a police state or anything remotely near it.
The interesting dilemma is that many (sometimes a majority) of British voters do not approve of some of these proposals for greater "freedom". More CCTV cameras are POPULAR, because most people trust the police to use them to reduce crime. ID cards might be popular (I don't know for sure), because they prevent fraudsters from stealing taxpayers money and similar anit-social behaviour. DNA databases are supported by many, because they are used to solve violent crimes and deter criminals. The Liberal-Democrats have some very idealistic views on freedom, but these are mostly minority views imho. Most people dislike the idea of criminals having their human rights protected more than their victim's.
This is not a simple choice of black and white freedom vs oppression. The arguments on an issue such as ID cards are complex. I don't know the answer on ID cards, I think that on the whole I support their use for anybody trying to claim major support from the state.
Reply from The Daily Bell
"Anyone who calls the UK a police state really loses all credibility with me (a British resident for 45 years). The UK is not a police state or anything remotely near it."
Just Google "British police state." You'll get an eyeful.
Here's but one sample ...
Click to view link
It's Happening There: Britain's Emerging Police State
[Peter Brimelow writes: Nearly forty years ago, I was immensely impressed with The New Totalitarians a brilliant study of Swedish political culture by Roland Huntford, making the point that totalitarianism, in the sense of complete political control of society, can be brought about by bureaucracy as well as brute force. (To my amazement, this book's influence on my own book on Canada, The Patriot Game, is cited"currently"in its Wikipedia entry.) Sean Gabb reports here that it's coming soon to another common law country near you"Britain. Indeed, the British government's current drive to force the anti-immigration British National Party to admit immigrant minorities to membership is the very essence of totalitarianism: no private sphere can be allowed; in Mussolini's words 'Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. This is why the passage of the so called Hate Crimes legislation, lauded by President Obama in his recent State of the Union address, was such a disaster"yet almost unopposed by the Beltway Right. It's happening there. It can happen here.]
By Sean Gabb
At the moment in Britain, the Labor Government's Equality Bill is completing its progress through Parliament. The purpose of the Bill is to bring all the various 'equality laws and rulings made since 1965"race, sex, sexual preference, age-based, religious, etc"within a single statute, and to enable a single scheme of enforcement, the quasi-judicial Human Rights Commission. It also tightens these laws so that such 'discrimination as has continued to exist will be made illegal.
The exact meaning of any proposed law is hard to judge in advance. We need to see the final Act of Parliament. We need to see the hundreds of pages of regulations that it enables through its delegated legislation sections. We need to see how it will be enforced by the authorities, and how the courts will rule on its interpretation.
But outlines of the law are already reasonably clear. It is, for example, illegal for a Jewish school not to accept gentile children. It is illegal for a Christian hotelier to refuse to let two homosexuals share a bed together. It is illegal for an employer to exclude job candidates who belong to a group of which he might"for whatever reason"disapprove, or to confine recruitment within those groups of which he does approve. The same applies to landlords.
It is also illegal for the British National Party to confine its membership to those it regards as indigenous to the British Isles"an unmistakeably totalitarian violation of the principle of freedom of association.
snip---------------
Posted by F. Beard on 05/20/10 05:52 AM
The best thing for the UK to do is to quit provoking Muslims abroad so that it can live peacefully with those within its borders.
Posted by MetaCynic on 05/20/10 02:03 AM
We might imagine that, for millennia, the Power Elite have, hand-in-hand, marched in lockstep toward their vision of world domination. Yet Austrian economics and chaos theory tell us that the bigger the central plan the greater the likelihood of a flaming crash. If even a united front is doomed to fail, then what are the world domination prospects for factional, quarrelsome, back-stabbing, dog-eat-dog, treacherous humans? There is no honor among thieves, even elite ones, and especially when the going gets rough. There will be a falling out.
As DB has repeatedly opined, the internet communication revolution has probably derailed the elites' juggernaut. We can be sure that lots of finger-pointing, fracturing of alliances and even some defections are now taking place behind the curtain. That's how humans behave during crises. It's entirely realistic to assume that a Power Elite setback is really a setback and not some complicated conspiracy by elite geniuses to hide strength behind the appearance of weakness.
Just as Gorbachev was smart enough to realize that to survive its failures, Communism needed a human face makeover, the UK's new rulers also see the need for damage control. By admitting that the subjects are indeed over controlled and over criminalized, they are attempting to keep the nation's growing anger from going postal. This is an astonishing admission to make. Elite politicians never admit to such fundamental shortcomings in the system of which they are a part.
Strange times do produce even stranger behavior. Whether his intentions were genuine is irrelevant. Gorbachev's reforms released the freedom genie. Clegg's proposals, even if only cynically rhetorical, will also release that same genie. We all know about the difficulty of stuffing the genie back into the bottle.
Maybe Clegg is a reckless gambler, or a hubristic blunderer. He could be a defector from the ranks of the elite or even a libertarian mole. Regardless, he has made history offering to roll back the state's power, and people should take him up on that offer.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Thanks so much for this feedback which eloquently and concisely states much that we were trying to bring across.
Posted by The Gimlet Eye on 05/20/10 01:15 AM
I can only conclude that they have plenty more "false flag" events and other surprises up their sleeves, and they have every intention of using them against us. I don't trust them any farther than I can throw them. I never hear of any damned government in the annals of history that "put you in charge." Put you in charge, indeed!
In fact, here in the U.S., many strange things and trends continue to happen. We are still "at war" with no end in sight. We have been transformed into "debt slaves" with no end in sight. Our skies are daily filled with toxic brew known as "chem trails," the contents of which are known only to a few insiders (and they are not talking). Has anybody noticed this stuff? What is going on? Everybody, take a look at this most disturbing video:
Click to view link
Want to talk more, visit me: Click to view link
Reply from The Daily Bell
We are tracking such rhetoric because we believe it is significant. Time will tell, of course.
Posted by Weeble on 05/19/10 08:53 PM
Courtesy of Monty Python's Flying Circus - The Philosopher's Song
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya'
'Bout the raising of the wrist.
SOCRATES, HIMSELF, WAS PERMANENTLY PISSED...
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away;
Half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart: "I drink, therefore I am"
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed!
Twang! (Onomatopoeia added)
The UK DNA database has been copied onto every nook and cranny of the UK ZX81 array, the US Commodore 64 powerhouse and UN Cray supercomputer, so I can't see that ever being deleted. I think they are telling people what they want to hear, somewhat like a ladies man cooing in the ear of his next victim.
The communist "purge" that McCarthy did in the 50s failed to get any commies, in fact it created more commies. But at least the control of the people ebbs and flows like a tide. How relaxing. Ever been to sea, Billy?
I think the 2 man funny team is just letting the masses know there is another goalpost, and they want to overtly kick it down the field, while covertly switching the ball for something with TNT and a sparkling fuse sticking out of it. No, it's not a bomb, are you crazy? Hmph.
They are scrambling, though. Merkel is doing her little Naked short / CDS sideshow (the visual on that one is something to behold), and the IMF is paying lipsky service in Japan. It's like a 1, 2, 3 punch today. They are wildly pressing buttons. I sense their fear. I see fear in Merkel's eyes. She has aged a lot recently.
The 2 man funny team is still in their honeymoon phase; all smiles and chuckles. Remember their first day, something about a new law against illegal lumber? Like that is important, eh? And the IMF does not want to comment on Merkel, except to say that the ECB buying the toxic dump of EuroBadDebt is "very timely".
Oh yes, it's the meme thing every day now. That beautiful wool sweater they have sported for the last 4000 - 6000 years has got caught on the internail fence surrounding the stadium. It is unravelling as they bob and weave on the soccer pitch of life. They haven't noticed yet, but the whole world is watching this game and laughing.
The Power Elite does read DB, by the way. @ 4 million hits, they would tend to raise their heads.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Many good points, thanks - especially for the poetry.
Posted by Lila Rajiva on 05/19/10 06:33 PM
Maybe we need to know how to operate ethically as human beings without committing ourselves to absolutist ideas of what constitutes good and evil, sometimes..
Even in the Bible, Lucifer the Morning Star is described in terms very similar to those used to describe Jesus.
It's interesting that in medieval manuscripts you can find depictions of the cross with the serpent nailed onto it, in the place of Jesus, thus suggesting an equation between Lucifer (the Great Dragon, or Serpent) and the Redeemer that might make Christian fundamentalists today very uncomfortable.
This symbolism appears suggestively also in the Mosaic story of the serpent that is turned into bronze in the desert (if I recall it right), which then becomes an instrument of healing..
The raised serpent that heals is very similar to the serpent of kundalini rising through the spine in yoga.
In the east, the snake (and the dragon) are not seen as evil so much as wise.
When we learn to rule ourselves from within, we will need neither external rule nor the objectification and projection of evil and good onto others.
The serpent will then no longer be Satan but the healer....another face of the Redeemer.
In this way, the occult (which only means hidden) actually supports a libertarian and not an authoritarian social order. One in which opposites are understood and balanced as medicines/tonics needed in different ways and at different times for the health of the body-politic..
Not as categories to be reified and then exalted or negated..
![]() |
Posted by William3 on 05/19/10 06:21 PM
Thank you, DB, for your humble response. I will take up your challenge within my own humble capability. Maybe applying science to something as individually driven as humans is unworkable. But are we so unpredictable? Are sociopaths? Keep up the good work.
Reply from The Daily Bell
@ William3
"Maybe applying science to something as individually driven as humans is unworkable."
We are applying something - though honestly call it a science is far to specific. A paradigm? A point of view? A perspective. Maybe we would call it a human-action oriented/free-market analysis of power elite themes.
Posted by Imhotep on 05/19/10 05:18 PM
I am amazed at your level of ignorance to be honest!
Firstly, Ancient Egypt precede Chaldea by thousands of years and if there was any influence, it was from Egypt to Mesopotamia!
Secondly, what allows you to describe a civilization that illuminated the ancient world for 5000 years as " satanic"! The Egyptian mysteries are still the foundations of today's pseudo-monotheistic religions and western philosophy. Pythagoras, Thales of Miletus, Plato, and countless of ancient philosophers and scientist ran to attend the Egyptian schools. Alexander the Great established his capital in Egypt to the dismay of the local population. The way of the Ma'at is still the light that can enlighten the spiritual emptiness that pervade in today's world.
The misunderstanding of the divine element by "misguided" minds are partially responsible for the ignorance that is observable among the supposed " Religious" Nation of this world.
Don't you dare call the way of the Ma'at " Satanic'!
The amusing issue with you is that your spiritual foundation is established on a supposed " lie" that occurred in a " garden"!
How can you begin your spiritual journey through a "lie"? The way of the math is established on truth, justice, balance and order!
The problem with today's world is that our leadership act against the precept of the ma'at, thus creating "disorder and chaos"! Ma'at gives man the full responsibility of his action and it is up to him to decide whether he will act " good" or " bad"!
Ma'at doesn't judge you, you will judge yourself! Egyptian spirituality is extremely Libertarian and the insight you gain by understanding their philosophies and mysteries allow you to rise above simplistic confusion like " the Garden of Eden."!
Educate yourself before making empty ignorant and misguided value judgments.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Wow. You are both erudite and most interesting feedbackers. Can we just calm down a bit as we go?
![]() |
Posted by William3 on 05/19/10 04:43 PM
As far as tooting your horn, give it a good blast. It feels good to be correct about your predictions... and you deserve to give yourself tribute for the original and yeoman work you've done in this arena.
Yet predictions about human behavior, as you well know, are just guesses -- hypotheses based on past data of human patterns. The richer our data, the clearer the patterns appear to be, and the more accurate our predictions become. But the real learning opportunity, any true scientist will tell you, comes from failures -- having incorrect hypotheses.
Perhaps you could present a summary sometime of your INCORRECT predictions. Then you can toot your horn even louder, because you will have fully demonstrated how you've expanded your -- and ultimately our -- understanding of these historical bandits, the Elite.
Reply from The Daily Bell
"Perhaps you could present a summary sometime of your INCORRECT predictions."
Hm-mm. As Austrians, we have always stated that trend projections are useless because of people's predilection for taking human action. So this should mean that like econometric economists we so dislike, we should always be arriving at wrong conclusions,
In our defense, we would perhaps need to qualify, first of all, the kinds of human action that Mises was referring to. Mises' idea of human action, as we understand, had much to do with the instinct of humans to seek the liberty to take care of themselves, their loved within their local environs. (We would explain this as a tribal instinct which encompasses some 99 people at a time.) Within these parameters, and accepting this instinctual context, we believe we have made some generally accurate predictions about how the world works in the 21st century.
If human beings were generally evil or sought as a rule to do violence to each other, then our predictions would be based in a false paradigm and we would generally tend to be less accurate in our opinion.
You know, we test our perceptions every day in the acid bath of reality - and our feedbacker's perspectives (which are often dauntingly literate and economically informed).
So we toss your insightful and challenging question back to you. Feel free to point out when we are incorrect, especially on major trends and elite promotions.
We stand with Mises, free-markets and out belief that in each man's breast is a yearning for liberty. But as you point out, no one is perfect, personally or institutionally, least of all the Bell.
Posted by Owe Steen-Hansen on 05/19/10 04:23 PM
To DB. I don't suffer, I am not frustrated and I find some insights in the articles, but do not agree with some basic dogmas. The whole world is between absolute ignorance and absolute knowledge.
Lack of insight is amusing, and to understand reality, you have to experience false minds. That is entertaining. I am learning about libertarian minds and their narrowness and hybris and can use the experiences to prevent that kind of mental illness to spread to Norway. The best country in the world to live in. One og the few countries which has not suffered from the crisis.
I am not writing to you, but to the readers and to have some training in writing English. What is the purpose to write to somebody who you now in advance will not listen, who do not have arguments?
Obviously you have misunderstood a lot and suffer from ignorance. That's hard to acknowledge. That's human, but when you learn to understand the wisdom of knowings ones limits, it will be better.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Calm down. When you write a feedback, you should try to address it via an article - that way it will likely post immediately. You see, Owe Steen-Hansen, despite your philosophy you have jumped to an erroneous conclusion. Anyway, we welcome your contributions even though we are puzzled by your ongoing irritation with the Bell. As we indicated before, we wonder why you bother to read the Bell when it so obviously annoys you.
--------
Ha! We just noticed this quote: "I am learning about libertarian minds and their narrowness and hybris and can use the experiences to prevent that kind of mental illness to spread to Norway. The best country in the world to live in."
Libertarians are mentally ill and Norway is "the best country in the world to live in." Are you you sure? This is some philosophy!
Posted by Gene on 05/19/10 04:17 PM
Authoritarianism by the state has a fine line, once crossed repercussions can lead to chaos, all bets are off.
"People should not be afraid of their governments, government should be afraid of the people."
V for Vendetta
Posted by Lila Rajiva on 05/19/10 04:06 PM
From that perspective, Steen-Hanson fails as a philosopher, quite thoroughly.
The best scholars wear their scholarship very lightly...especially when writing for popular media.
On that ground too he fails. Ergo, he can't be that much of a scholar.
A gentleman puts others at their ease....especially on their own blogs.
No gentleman he.
Three strikes.
He should be out.
Lila Rajiva
Reply from The Daily Bell
You have made a very good point, and one that we should remember generally: It is more effective to educate politely than to belittle someone else's putative lack of education.
Posted by Lance E. Schultz on 05/19/10 04:04 PM
Pythagorus never studied in Babylonia but Egypt! Let's get the fact clear once for all.
Of course, the word, "Mysteries" always refers to the Satanic Mysteries religions of Babylon and Egypt. These "Mysteries" as I am SURE you known all originated in the depraved degenerate reprobate mind of Semiramis in ancient Bablyon or Chaldea and which later translated themselves on into ancient Egypt.
But yes let us go get one thing perfectly clear. The story of the TRUE source takes place in a garden with the first LIE ever told unto man. That ye could be as God and that surely if ye taketh and eateth of the fruit of it then ye shall not know death. Hell is now riddled with such men as Pythagorus who would believeth such a LIE. It matters not where such a fool learneth his folly as it matters that he never learns enough to save his very soul.
Posted by Imhotep on 05/19/10 12:46 PM
Pythagorus never studied in Babylonia but Egypt! Let's get the fact clear once for all.
Posted by Mr Carpenter on 05/19/10 12:05 PM
Click to view link
Posted by Mr Carpenter on 05/19/10 11:46 AM
The United States? Not so much (yet).
Click to view link
Posted by Owe Steen-Hansen on 05/19/10 11:38 AM
My experiences with DB and the Post Feedback is CONFORMISM, not critical thinking, even more conformistic than my worst experiences with the marxist-leninist-maoists from the end of the sixties and beginning of seventies in Europe. They also talked endlessly about the power elite and freedom.They also didn't respect erudition, science, philosophy, free thinking,the western culturell tradition which,for the most part, is the fruit of more or less freedom of thinking.
Philosohers love the truth not dogmas, so they have to investigate have much truth there is in Austrian economics and not a priori accept it as absolute true. Our work does not begin with love or hatred as do DB. We discern belief and knowledge. Love or hate, or how much love and how much hate someone deserves, cannot be determined a priori, according to personal instincts, because that is not freedom of thought. We have to reflect upon our reflection to investigate how much they are determined by personal socialized and thus collective instincts.
The irresponsible relation to truth from DB is revealed with the statement of "several years". That's not true. And it is not a hobby.
If you do not understand, Socrates told us to ask and not pretend as we know. It is interesting to experience that DB is not interested in erudition.
|
|





