Why autocrats hate social media

Its official. The Dear Leader hates social media and warns darkly of its many ills. 

We have witnessed the corrupt use of social media including the internet, to create domestic unrest and cyber crime".the President observed.

"Youth have been targeted, and they have become pawns of the misplaced agendas. These are dangerous trends that need to be arrested, and addressed...

He is not alone in this view either. The question is why?

In a word - its about control. Traditional media can be controlled; through a variety of means ranging from licenses to abuse of the tax code to intimidation. The number of media houses in a country may be few dozen and their identities well known which makes control possible.

The problem with social media is that one is dealing with hundreds of thousands of individuals, some of whom are anonymous. Since the individuals are not as easy to track and monitor as organisations they are a lot harder to get a hold of, let alone control. Lacking any obvious restriction they start to talk about things that the rulers would rather not hear about.

Some of what is said on social media may be foolish or trivial but amongst all the chaff there may lie seeds of doubt. Seeds that may cause people to think, or look at something differently. Something that may break the spell. In other words, very dangerous.

Doubtless todays autocrats look back with nostalgia to an earlier age, when ideas had to be shared on paper. In Romania Ceausescu  wanted every typewriter owned by the state registered with the Securitate, along with a sample of its type. A new decree forbade the renting or lending of typewriters, and the ownership of a typewriter required special authorisation.

Ah, they sigh. How much simpler things were then! Working out how to control social media is now uppermost on the minds of all self-respecting autocrats, and this is what they seemingly do when they meet at forums such as the Conference on Interaction and Confdience Building Measures in Asia (CICA) where the president uttered his missive against social media.

Interestingly the CICA was founded by Nursultan Nazarbayev, the strongman of Kazkhstan. According to the Economist he is:

...not only the president but also the “Leader of the Nation” and he can stand for re-election as long as he lives.

With more than two decades at the helm, Mr Nazarbayev has not built a system based on rule of law; instead he oversees a patronage network in which he stands as the final arbiter.

There are more than a few parallels with Kazkhstan, such as this:

In late 2011, a long-simmering strike in the western town of Zhanaozen, where oil workers were demanding higher wages, boiled over. Video footage showed police shooting unarmed protesters in the back as they fled. At least 15 people died, all of them civilians

 Birds of a feather will flock togther, no?

We have witnessed the corrupt use of social media including the internet, to create domestic unrest and cyber crime".the President observed.
"Youth have been targeted, and they have become pawns of the misplaced agendas. These are dangerous trends that need to be arrested, and addressed effectively through this forum.
- See more at: http://www.dailynews.lk/?q=local/social-media-subversion#sthash.mSO6CQcj.dpuf

We have witnessed the corrupt use of social media including the internet, to create domestic unrest and cyber crime".the President observed.
"Youth have been targeted, and they have become pawns of the misplaced agendas. These are dangerous trends that need to be arrested, and addressed effectively through this forum.
- See more at: http://www.dailynews.lk/?q=local/social-media-subversion#sthash.mSO6CQcj.dpuf

We have witnessed the corrupt use of social media including the internet, to create domestic unrest and cyber crime".the President observed.
"Youth have been targeted, and they have become pawns of the misplaced agendas. These are dangerous trends that need to be arrested, and addressed effectively through this forum.
- See more at: http://www.dailynews.lk/?q=local/social-media-subversion#sthash.mSO6CQcj.dpuf

The imploding economy

It has not gone down with a bang, but with a whimper, deflating slowly over the past couple of years, as this report points out.

The Government, is desparately trying to do something to boost it, including promoting pawning. I think pawning is connected with poverty but with such limited demand for credit I suppose they do not have much options.

There are of course some other ways to revive things such us restoring the legal system, reducing corruption, improving transparency and generally allowing a framework in which businesses can work. Limiting the participation of the state, reducing taxes and managing the fiscal deficit will also help.

Naturally, not one of these will even be considered since they go against the very grain, the very foundations of the regime.

Businessmen are slowly waking up to the reality that things are not quite good, although not many have the capacity to connect the dots to see the larger picture. Dreams of a postwar economic boom have faded, the promised boom being as false as the peace on which it was supposedly built.

Meanwhile we can continue to expect rosy pronouncements on how well the country is doing and how great the shiny new buildings and roadways look. That they are all built with debt, probably cost more than they can ever earn back over their life and are, in financial terms, white elephants is not often understood.

I think the good Governor should start hosting his own show, I can even provide him with a title "Cooking with Cabral". At least it would give Nigella Lawson a run for her money.



  

Treachery most foul

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it." ~Terry Pratchett, The Bromeliad 

And here I was, wondering why it was so difficult to maintain an open mind! The theme of the month is the anniversary of the war victory. As it draws closer the saviours are preparing for a suitably rousing celebration, with lots of sparkle and bang.

But what of the betrayers? Those who sold their souls (or other organs, where souls were lacking) for, in the words of Corporal Nobby Nobbs, a pot of massage?

For a change, should we not use the opportunity to denounce them?  It would be good to maintain a list, just so that we know who they are and shudder appropriately when their dreadful names are mentioned.

So here we go:

The Tea Party must be promoting tea, which is a good thing for us tea exporters. In old England it was Guy Fawkes who tried to have a bit of a party, in the Paradise Isle there was a varied lot including:

1. Rauff Hakeem and seven others.
2. The six of the UNP (Abdul Cader, Lakshman Seneviratne, Earl Gunasekere, Manushya Nanayakkara, Upeksha Swaranamali, Nimal Wijesinghe).
3. The LSSP and CP.
4. P H Piyasena of the TNA
5. Citizen's Front MP, Sri Ranga


These are not very 'big' names politically, speaking. Rauff Hakeem is the most prominent, probably because of his habit of criss-crossing the political firmament like a comet.

What these non-entities did in this instance was to vote in favour of the 18th Amendment, the thing that scuttled the ship. These were all opposition MP's, had they not voted the bill would not have passed. To add insult; Hakeem was quoted as saying "My conscience is clear. I know I have not sought any opportunistic favours".

Perhaps what liberals should do is organise a Bonfire Night every 8th of September, to commemorate the passing of the 18th amendment, complete with fireworks, bonfires and the burning of the Guy. Why let the infamy pass, or pass up an excuse for a party?

ps. The Le Monde diplomatique has come good commentary on the 18th Amendment.

New state-of-the-art military hospital opened

The President opened a new military hospital, supposedly the largest in the country last week. Equipped with state-of-the-art facilities, it has cost around Rs.3,500m; equivalent to around 9% of the entire capital expenditure budgeted for health in 2014.

While I am generally opposed to an enlarged role of the state in public life, spending on health and and education are generally benign. The spending in these areas still requires rigorous scrutiny to maximise the public good, but it is much better than, say,  spending it on the bureaucracy (which is expected to swallow Rs.317,000m in salaries and allowances alone in 2014).

The need for a new military hospital arose because of the need to free the land occupied by the old military hospital in Galle Face, for development. The old military hospital was a part of the army headquarters at Galle Face that contained some rather gracious colonial buildings.

(The old military hospital, borrowed from here)

 I hope whatever development is planned preserves the nicer old buildings, it's been a long time since I went that way but remember that they seemed quite impressive. The hospital had wide verandah's, a bit like the Galle Face Hotel.

The more serious question is whether the spending priorities are right.

As I write, my father is sitting in an ordinary ward of the National Hospital in Colombo, awaiting treatment for a fractured toe. The hospital is crowded and the cleanliness leaves something to be desired, a far cry from the conditions in a private hospital. The family tends to be a bit traditional in outlook, they would not consider spending on a private hospital. At least he has a bed of his own and we have brought him a few extra pillows and sheets. The standards in rural hospitals, though, may be worse.

Instead of putting down tonnes of concrete on airports and ports that receive no traffic, wasting billions running airlines why don't they spend on something that would be of real use to the public? Something that is a real necessity? Sri Lankan Airlines lost Rs.30.1bn in 2014, over eight times the cost of the new military hospital.

On questions of health, the public are faced with a choice of paying through their nose for private care or poor conditions in the state system. Company medical plans usually cover private hospitals but for pensioners or retirees it unaffordable and there is no real halfway house between the two.

Actually there is a very decent halfway house between the two extremes, the Merchant's Ward of the National Hospital. This offers good care and conditions at very reasonable rates, something that is affordable to the middle class. (Rajaratarala has a good post on the conditions in the Merchant Ward).

The problem is that it is impossible to get into the Merchant Ward, since it is always occupied by politicians. We have hundreds of these bandits and they all use the Merchant ward so its impossible for ordinary people to access, unless one is very lucky.

This is the really sad irony of our Banana Republic, not only is the country being raped by the political class, they also perversely monopolise access to essential infrastructure. The Merchant's Ward is supposed to be 95 years old, who built it or why I do not know, I can only say it would be a lot more useful to invest in things like this than the grandiloquent infrastructure mushrooming everywhere.