Robert Sharp

Pupil Barrister

Category: Diary (Page 140 of 300)

Things that happen to me, or things I do

#Egypt, The Most Important Data Nexus on the Planet

4 February 2011 / / 1 Comment

Amid all the uncertainty and violence happening in Egypt, I was struck by a story from Alexandria.  Youths have been organising to protect Bibliotheca Alexanadrina, ‘The New Library of Alexandria’.

The young people organized themselves into groups that directed traffic, protected neighborhoods and guarded public buildings of value such as the Egyptian Museum and the Library of Alexandria.  They are collaborating with the army.  This makeshift arrangement is in place until full public order returns.
The library is safe thanks to Egypt’s youth, whether they be the staff of the Library or the representatives of the demonstrators, who are joining us in guarding the building from potential vandals and looters.

A major early move by the Egyptian government was to ‘flick the switch’ and choke Internet communications.  In the short term this has clearly given Mubarak and his cohort the upper-hand, by keeping the pro-democracy groups divided and chaotic.  However, the short-term gain might weaken them in the future.  As the the freelancer journalist Ashraf Khalil just tweeted from Cairo:

Told Nile TV that the main economic damage to #egypt is from Net shutdown (estimated $90 mill) and images of violence scaring away tourists

The stories of the Library and the net shut-down recall an old Wired article by Neal Stephenson, where he traces the paths of fibre-optic cables around the world (I actually mentioned it last December when discussing Wikileaks). Stephenson’s travels take him to Egypt, where a major new communications cable is being landed in Alexandria, at a most historic location:

If you turn your back on the equipment through which the world’s bits are swirling, open one of the windows, wind up, and throw a stone pretty hard, you can just about bonk that used book peddler on the head. Because this place, soon to be the most important data nexus on the planet, happens to be constructed virtually on top of the ruins of the Great Library of Alexandria.

Just one more reason why we are all bound up in Egypt’s fate.  Let’s hope that the people who marshalled to protect their museums, are the ones to prevail.

Obama at Tucson

13 January 2011 / / 1 Comment

Here’s Obama’s speech at Tucson:

The wild applause of the crowd seems slightly odd at times, though that is the case with a lot of political speeches. A full throated approval in the auditorium sounds tinny and inappropriate. Or perhaps it is the presence of younger people in the audience, more comfortable with vocal expression than with the simple clapping of hands.
But the speech is fantastic – an affirmation of free speech and democracy.

Liberty, Whatever the Cost [Updated]

12 January 2011 / / 0 Comments

“There is not enough poxes for your houses” says Jay Rosen to the pundits discussing #Tucson.  Well, here’s an astonishing quote from a non-pundit which goes places no politician dares to tread:

This shouldn’t happen in this country, or anywhere else, but in a free society, we’re going to be subject to people like this. I prefer this to the alternative.

That was spoken by John Green, the father of Christina Green, 9-year-old girl killed at the shootings on Saturday.  His statement eloquently explains the tough trade-off between liberty and security.  He acknowledges the limits of Government, and that ackowledges that horrible things will happen in a free society, and explicitly says that this is a preferable state of affairs.  It is a difficult case to make at the best of times (I have tried on a few occasions, regarding cannabis, ID cards, and other civil liberties). For Mr Green to say it at the depth of his grief is truly courageous.
Compare this to Nick Clegg and David Cameron, who seem to want to have it both ways.  If you want to argue for more civil liberties, I think you must acknowledge that the mythological state of absolute security does not exist, that there can be negative consequences to liberty… and that we should all be comfortable with that.

Update

When I read this quote I instinctively assumed it was referring to the idea of liberty in general, and did not think too much about the particular tyoe of liberty that Green was advocating. However, a colleague points out that he can only be referring to gun-control (or lack thereof in the American system). And as many others have been arguing these past few days, liberty and the unfettered ‘right to bear arms’ do not necessarily go hand in hand.  Indeed, surely the whole point of consituting a state is to get away from all that! So it is worth adding a line here to emphasise that I do not share Mr Green’s views on gun control, and am relieved that we do not have that sort of ‘liberty’ here in the UK.  There’s no point in whitewashing my original post though – I think it best to leave my excesses and embarrasments for all to read.
Having said that, I think my central point remains.  Mr Green acknowledges that his ideology has negative aspects, and he embraces them anyway.

#Tucson

10 January 2011 / / 0 Comments


The shootings in Tuscon present a difficult conundrum.  On the one hand, we cannot seriously suggest that Sarah Palin and the other Tea Party demagogues literally sponsored or otherwise provoked the spree.  But on the other, the inflammatory rhetoric of recent American politics has made many people (including myself) very uneasy, and this massacre feels like something expected, inevitable.   Jonathan Raban’s column in the Independent today seems to strike the right balance, rightly pointing out that it is the entire discourse and culture that is at fault:

The gunsights were intended as an eye-catching metaphor in the metaphor-stuffed rhetoric of the Tea Party movement, which loves to harp on a fanciful parallel between today’s opposition to healthcare reform, the stimulus package and the bank bailouts, the case for providing amnesty to illegal immigrants, and all the rest, with the great patriotic war of the American Revolution in the 1770s. It’s the sort of historical comparison designed to appeal deeply to people who are ignorant of history, and it generates a stream of metaphors for heroic resistance, involving muskets, funny trousers and tricorn hats.
…
There is a chance, if rather a slim one, that the Tucson massacre will make both politicians and commentators draw back and reconsider their terms. Politics is not warfare. The Democratic party is not a colonialist tyranny. Obama is not George III. To live in a slew of overheated metaphors, in language vastly disproportionate to the occasion, is to invite and license the kind of atrocity that happened the day before yesterday.

Some on America’s extreme right have already begun to hit-back those who have criticised Sarah Palin for the gun-sight imagery she used on a campaigning website during last year’s mid-term elections.  But I don’t think this criticism of Palin is cynical.  Rather, it is an inelegant erruption of a thousand ‘told you sos’, from all those who have been concerned by the Tea Party’s divisive rhetoric.  Explaining why statements like “a second ammendment solution” (Nevada senate candidate Sharon Angle) are dangerous and undemocratic usually takes a fair few paragraphs of historical and political blogging to get right.  In the face of an hysterical, pseudo-patriotic libertarian fervour, the more compassionate and reasoned of our American cousins have struggled to articulate a counterpoint.  The Arizona shootings are sick and twisted, but they have also made a complex set of ideas seem very simple indeed.  A single word, ‘#Tuscon’ will now suffice to refudiate and dampen the more sinister and threatening political rhetoric.  A single face will come to symbolise how far the pendulum can swing.  This is in itself reductive, however.

Christina Taylor Green. Born on 9/11, murdered in Tuscon Arizona.

Christina Taylor Green. Born on 9/11, murdered in Tuscon Arizona.

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2026 Robert Sharp

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑