“The necessary consequence of an egalitarian program is the decidedly inegalitarian creation of a ruthless power elite.”
— M. N. Rothbard
Tag Archives: power
Bill Lets President Seize Emergency Control of Private Cyber Networks
In the news:
“Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.
They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.
The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for “cybersecurity professionals,” and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.”
Read more here.
My Comment
Please note “behind closed doors.” This was supposed to be an ultra-transparent administration, right? To make up for the secrecy and tyranny of George Bush…..
Remember?
Robespierre Contra Danton: Power Versus the People
This is an insightful segment from the powerful French film Danton (1983), by Polish director, Andrzej Wajda
The film is based on the short story, Danton’s Tod by the Romantic German playwright, Georg Buchner, and contrasts two of the leading figures of the French Revolution – Georges Danton and Maximilien Robespierre. The two revolutionaries fall out when Danton, the man of the people, dissents from Robespierre’s post-revolutionary Reign of Terror.
Wajda made the film in France but used Polish actors for Robespierre and his flunkies to convey his contempt for the Communist government in Poland, which was at the time trying to break the popular movement, Solidarity, by imposing martial law on the land. The French actor, Georges Depardieu, is tremendous, especially in the scene before the Revolutionary tribunal that condemns him to die. But this scene too is powerful, if a little black and white, in its contrast of the sickly theorist and vain “idealist,” Robespierre, who claims to speak for “the people,” and the vital, if corrupt, man who is actually one of them.
The scene makes a fitting commentary on a certain malignant strand of liberalism in America today.