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The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became known as the Night of the Long Knives.
Another sign of gathering storm clouds against the free sharing of information on technology platforms is the appearance of Australia’s domestic espionage agency, ASIO. Alongside Kershaw at the National Press Club, the agency’s chief, Mike Burgess, is also full of grave words about the dangerous imperium of encrypted chatter.
Feel worried. Shane Jones and a couple of his Cabinet colleagues are about to be granted the power to override any and all objections to projects like dams, mines, roads etc even if: said projects will harm biodiversity, increase global warming
Platforms such as Meta and X engage in their own forms of censorship and information curation, their agenda algorithmically driven towards noise, shock and indignation. All the time, they continue to indulge in surveillance capitalism.
Public service cuts are being enacted without the coalition government having a clue (or visible concern) about what the impact will be. The prior promise to go through this stuff “line by line” has gone out the window.
It is time for NATO to re-examine its 75-year-old legacy, and be courageous enough to change directions altogether - instead of opting for a state of non-peace, actually seeking real peace.