Video intercom, another ancient idea come true

Another ancient prediction come true. This one from June 1993, an idea I had and developed with my colleague Chris Winter. Simple idea, just link a video camera on the front door to the network so you can screen people remotely for entry.

Here’s the latest incarnation in today’s paper. Surprising that it has taken so long really. I was concerned in 1993 that it may have been too obvious:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3253768/Peeple-Caller-ID-door-camera-film-peephole.html

Here’s my original description:

Videophone Intercom, 10 Jun 1993
ID Pearson, Chris Winter

To summarise, the videophone intercom is a device located at a household front door. A caller would push the button, whereupon an autodialler would call up the resident at his remote location (e.g. at work). The resident would then be able to identify the caller, check ID, and then arrange access if appropriate.
The cost of video cameras on chips has fallen dramatically – in bulk, they can shortly be obtained for as little as £10. Many users will soon have videophones on their desks or at home. Autodiallers and intercom systems can also be made very cheaply. The whole system cost could therefore be quite low. Such devices would offer a much higher level of security than simple audio systems. The number to be dialled could be changed remotely.
Useful additions might be to add a video terminal or phone inside the house, perhaps even just on the inside of the door to give enhanced security before opening the door to a stranger. There need be no way of telling from the door whether the resident is using his home display or a remote videophone.
There are equivalent other industrial uses, such as remotely manning a salesroom or stores.

The future of Jihad

Another in my ‘future of’ alphabetic series, finally managed to muster the energy to write something on J. ‘The future of jobs’ is just too dull to bother with, so is justice, but jihad is topical.

From Wikipedia:

Jihad (English pronunciation: /dʒɪˈhɑːd/; Arabic: جهاد jihād [dʒiˈhæːd]) is an Islamic term referring to the religious duty of Muslims to maintain the religion. In Arabic, the word jihād is a noun meaning “to strive, to apply oneself, to struggle, to persevere.”

The common everyday understanding of jihad is associated with holy war, proselytize Islam by peaceful or military means, e.g. Jihadi John and his ISIS colleagues, and that’s what this blog is about.

About 20 years ago or so, Europe decided on a ‘soft warfare’ approach to defense. It seemed quite clever at the time. Here in the UK, we were all watching Neighbours, an Australian soap, scheduled just before evening meal as a wind-down from work (that was before we all worked 8 to 6). As a result, many Brits wanted to emigrate to Oz. Without firing a single shot, Australia managed to get Britain to yearn for its ways of life and treat it with greater respect. If you think about it, that’s what war does. You kill enough of the enemy and cause the rest enough pain and suffering until they finally submit and accept your way of doing things. Neighbours might not have been intended as a soft warfare campaign, but it succeeded tremendously. That idea spread through the Euro-elite which decided that ‘winning hearts and minds’ were the way to go, basically being nice instead of shooting people, using foreign aid to propagate EU ideals of democracy instead of old-style colonization. It has stuck pretty well, and fits especially well with the left-wing mindset that dominates decisions in most of modern Europe. Hawks are out of fashion.

Since then, a few actual wars rather spoiled the purity of soft warfare, but even in the Middle East conflicts, the hearts-and-minds approach has a real presence. It undoubtedly saves a lot of lives on both sides.

However, let’s look at how ISIS and its nouveau jihad is also adopting that same idea.

I wrote recently that Islam is badly in need of modernization:

https://timeguide.wordpress.com/2015/07/13/the-future-of-isis/

Well, ISIS gleefully makes good use of social media to recruit followers around the world, and understands well about influencing hearts and minds as part of their approach. It is ironic that the most medieval, anti-modern-world branch of Islamism is the most comfortable with modern technology and marketing (‘marketing’ is the word we use now for propaganda, when ‘education’ isn’t appropriate).

However, since I wrote that blog just 2 months ago, the world has changed substantially. Europe has shown utter incompetence in dealing with the migrant crisis (refugee crisis if you watch Channel 4 or the BBC). Our leaders totally ignored my advice on what was then merely the Mediterranean Crisis, but then again, it is extremely unlikely that they read my blog: https://timeguide.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/the-mediterranean-crisis/

Instead they made the problem a whole lot worse, greatly amplifying the numbers attempting the journey across the Med and thereby inadvertently causing more deaths by drowning as well as destroying much of the good will between countries that holds the EU together. The idiotic open doors policy advocated by Angela Merkel and Co. has broadcast a loud message to the entire developing world that anyone that would like to be richer but doesn’t want to bother with quaint ideas like law and order or applying for immigration can just pretend to be fleeing something, force their way past a few overwhelmed security guards, and will be given a free home, medical care, education, welfare and generally a life of relative milk and honey in the EU. All they have to do is throw away their papers and say they are from Syria or another war zone. The British approach of focusing on helping actual refugees instead of economic migrants has been widely condemned as utterly uncaring. Estimates vary wildly but anything up to 80% of those entering the EU are economic migrants. Many of the ones fleeing wars or  persecution have passed through perfectly safe countries on their way, so when they left those countries they stopped being asylum seekers or refugees and started being economic migrants. Few can genuinely claim that the EU is the first place of safety they have reached. But if the doors are wide open, why accept less than the best deal around?

ISIS are well aware of this, and have openly stated that they intend to use the mass migration to move ISIS terrorists into Europe, hidden among the crowds. Those terrorists, and those whom they infect with their ideology on arrival, are a direct part of their Jihad. They cause people to flee, and then hide among them. So that’s the first part of the nouveau jihad, the hard jihad, an actual invasion by the back door, with lots of help from useful idiots in government, media and assorted NGOs.

The second part of the Jihad is the Islamification of Europe via cultural aggression, soft warfare, soft Jihad. As often is the case in war, truth is the first casualty, and since Orwell, we know that language is the key to perception of truth. That insight has been harnessed in peacetime every bit as much as in war. By simple verbal inversion of morality that has been achieved in the last two decades, anything West (or Christian) is bad and anything anti-West is good. That has left Europe and America extremely vulnerable to this soft jihad. Moral equivalence and political correctness have eroded confidence in our own morality, even inverted some of it. Even when comparing with the worst atrocities of ISIS, many people will immediately raise anything the West has ever done that wasn’t 100% perfect as if it is absolutely equivalent. Harnessing language as a soft warfare tool, Islamist activists have managed to achieve the victory that to criticize anything coming from Islam is called Islamophobia to make it sound like the person doing the criticism is in the wrong. Furthermore, they have also manipulated the lack of cohesiveness in the Muslim community to conflate Islam and Islamism. The extremists use the whole Muslim population to demand protection for their smaller Islamist subsection, hiding among genuinely peace-loving people, masquerading as part of that ‘overwhelming majority of peace-loving Muslims’ while simultaneously preaching jihad. Even the police are so terrified of being called racist or Islamophobic that they have allowed crimes such as child abuse, rape and violence against women to flourish in some areas, suggesting it is just ‘cultural difference’. By capturing just a few words, Islamists have managed to get a free pass, with the police defending them instead of those they oppress. With a few more words, standards of animal welfare have been sacrificed and many food chains now only stock halal products. With a few more, dress codes in some areas are enforced. Desperate to protect the Muslim community against any retaliation, in London a significant rise of crime against Muslims was widely reported and condemned, whereas a far larger increase in crimes against Jews went almost unreported and unmentioned.

For reasons I don’t understand, media around Europe have tried to help government hide their incompetence in the migrant crisis by conflating the terms migrants and refugees and pretending that every one is deserving of help. Every report seems to use the word ‘desperate’ and every camera seems to be aimed at lovely families with adorable young children in genuine need of help rather than the healthy young men who comprise 80% of the migrants. Every report finds those most deserving of asylum and ignores the rest. Acts of violence by migrants are ignored. This almost universally welcoming message is seen by those everywhere who want a better life, and the fittest compete to get here before the doors close. Anyone wanting to escape justice, or wanting to bring Islamism or criminal enterprise to our countries, can hide in the throng and with many having no papers or false papers, they can be sure of escaping identification. Many that need help most won’t get it because someone less in need has already taken their place.

The jihad effects are already appearing. Germany is reportedly already facing problems, with crowds of young men causing problems, and widespread rape, women abuse and child abuse in migrant camps, with locals being told to cover up so as not to offend the Muslims in case of ‘misunderstandings’. Worse still, the police apparently adopted a policy of attempting to hide these problems, because they don’t want people to turn against Muslims. Even as the first wave has entered Germany, the resident population has been told firmly that it is they who must adapt to Islam, not the migrants who must adopt German values.

Here in the UK, it is a daily occurrence to hear of instances where something has been banned or a speaker refused permission to speak in case it might offend Muslims. The latest is Warwick university Student Union, refusing to allow Maryam Namazie, an ex-Muslim who escaped persecution in Iran, to speak there because she wanted to speak against such oppression. The excuse was because they didn’t want Muslims to be offended. Her own response is worth a read: http://freethoughtblogs.com/maryamnamazie/2015/09/27/wsu/

No reverse protection exists for those offended by Islamic values. They must remain quiet or be arrested as Islamophobic, even though, as Namazie clearly points out, it is not the person they hate but the belief.

That is the ‘soft warfare’ jihad. Capture the left, the media, the police, and finally the law. To ensure peace, Islam must be protected from criticism while anything in conflict must be adapted to Islamic values, because Islam won’t change to accommodate host society.

Our culture has a legally enforced Islamic diode. Unless that changes, jihad will be successful.

Soft jihad has already been extremely successful, and will be amplified further via migration, while the migrant crowds will bring the hard jihad hidden in their midst.

Ironically, the worst to suffer from this may be the 68% of Muslims who just want to live in peace and harmony with everyone else. They suffer just as badly from inevitable backlash and prejudice as the 32% who don’t, and often suffer directly from Islamist oppression too.

 

The future of immigration: rational v emotional response

People use emotions and rational thinking in parallel. There is a clear role for each. Emotions create a driving force towards a goal, and rational thinking works best to figure out the best strategy to achieve it. So, you see a delicious cake that you’d very much like to eat, emotional bit complete. Your rational thinking kicks in and works out that you need to enter the shop, indicate your choice, hand over some cash and then take the cake and bite into it. Your rational thinking also interrupts with some possibly relevant queries – is it good value compared to the one next to it that looks just as nice? Do you have your best suit on and is it likely to ruin it? How many calories might it be? That sort of thing is a typical everyday challenge we all face and a well-developed brain allows emotions and rationality to work in perfect harmony to add pleasure to our day within our means. Emotions and intellect should also work in harmony when we are faced with danger or unpleasant situations such as seeing others in danger or suffering.

This last few months, we’ve all seen the trauma suffered by millions of refugees from tribal and religious wars in the Middle East and Africa, and most of us want to help them. The photo of the drowned toddler this week made lots of people suddenly very emotional, but in response to their resultant wave of competitive emoting and sometimes quite sickening sanctimony, the rest of us might reasonably inquire firstly why these people didn’t care beforehand like the rest of us and secondly why they think that the best way to respond is to switch off their brains. People have been suffering years, not just this last week. One toddler death is very sad but so are the many thousands of deaths beforehand that didn’t get photographed. And the way to avoid future deaths isn’t necessarily to do the very first thing that pops into your head.

UK Rational Response

With its well-established values, the UK was culturally-emotionally driven to help and has done more to actually help so far than any other European country, including giving 50% more to help refugees so far than Germany. Cameron often makes idiotic decisions, but he is right this time that the best way to help is not to let everyone into Britain but instead to contribute heavily to making effective safe havens and refugee centers near the refugee sources, e.g Syria. This is by far the best policy for a number of reasons.

Doing that helps genuine refugees. The inhabitants of refugee camps are far more likely to be genuinely fleeing from danger and in need of protection, far less likely to be economic migrants.

They are also far less likely to be ISIS terrorists trying to get entry to Europe to cause trouble, or criminals fleeing from justice than those fighting their way through train stations and disobeying police.

Better still, the UK policy helps the most vulnerable refugees – the old and the frail and the too young or too afraid to make the journey all the way to Northern Europe. Some of the most vulnerable will be allowed to come to Britain from those refugee centres.

The UK policy also helps genuine refugees without contributing to ISIS and the other likely destinations of the people traffickers fees. Each migrant squeezed onto an unsafe boat is another £2000 to a terrorist or criminal group, making the problem worse.

Using refugee centers and safe havens near to their own country avoids some of the long term problems associated with immigration to a foreign land, such as cultural conflicts.

Best of all, the UK policy of taking people from the camps and refusing those that have made the long and perilous journey to demand entry discourages people from taking that risk and therefore reduces the problem. Fewer toddlers will drown if people realize that it is best for their family to stay put than to take a huge risk to travel to a closed door.

Emotional response

Contrast this with the policy advocated by those sanctimonious emoters screaming about how wonderful and loving they are and how heartless everyone else is – that we should let everyone in. If we adopted that policy the result would be increased death and misery:

More and more people would want to come if they realize that the door to a better life is wide open.

The number of deaths would sharply increase as more and more criminal gangs and terrorist groups start trafficking.

Greater revenue would flow to ISIS and other terrorist and criminal groups, increasing their power and consequent problems in the countries people are fleeing from.

Allowing in those that made the journey might look charitable but actually it protects the strong rather than the weak. The weak could not come. Why allow a fit young man entry and deny a pregnant mother who wasn’t able to make the trip? Surely the young man should have stayed to fight to protect his vulnerable compatriots instead of fleeing for his own safety?

The number of terrorists and criminals entering among ordinary migrants and refugees would greatly increase (ISIS has already stated its guidance to followers try to enter the UK to commit terrorist acts here) leading to greatly increased security problems here, and resulting in probable backlash against genuine refugees, making it worse here for genuine refugees as well as the rest of us. Levels of crime and terrorism would increase greatly. (One of the reasons Saudi Arabia and some other Middle Eastern countries have stated why they won’t accept refugees is because terrorists and criminals are likely to try to hide in their midst.) I have previously estimated the likely scale of ISIS type terrorism in the UK and it is a big potential problem indeed. Increasing the numbers of supporters, recruits and even actual terrorists won’t help.

The numbers of economic migrants would also greatly increase. If the sheer weight of numbers of migrants coupled to political pressure from emotional activists means that no clear distinction is made between genuine refuges and all the others, then most people in the developing world might soon consider Europe an attractive option. There is no upper limit to migrant numbers until Europe is reduced in attractiveness to levels similar to migrant countries of origin.

Low-paid workers in host countries would find even greater downward pressure on wages, resulting in greater unemployment and poverty. Homeless people would find it harder to get homes. Sick people would find it harder to get access to medical care. All citizens would see greater pressure on public services and infrastructure. There are already significant conflicts throughout Europe between immigrant communities and host societies due to resource competition, and these would increase greatly as immigrant numbers put high pressure on infrastructure, public services and welfare. Cultural conflict is increasing too, especially with Islamic immigrant communities. Racial and religious conflict would increase.

The result would be a broken society, with increased poverty, increased crime and terrorism, decreased safety and security for everyone, increased social conflict, greater racism, and the inevitable rise of extremist groups on both sides.

Managed Immigration and Asylum

We need immigrants. We don’t educate enough doctors or engineers (or many other worker groups) so we need to fill posts with people from overseas. That need won’t go away. However, with very limited spare capacity in our already overpopulated country, we should limit normal immigration to those people we need and just a few others.

On top of that, humanity demands that we do our best to help people in need elsewhere. Obviously we don’t have enough resources to make everyone in the world wealthy so we must do what we can using our foreign aid budget and personal donations to whatever charities we think do a good job. Where people are displaced due to conflict, we should do what we can to give them safe havens, preferably without building instability and making future problems worse. Using our own and allied military to provide no-fly zones can make swathes of a country safer. UN peacekeeping forces could also be used if need be to protect people in those zones. That allows people to stay in their own country or an adjacent one with similar culture. Costs of providing and managing safe havens could be shared across all the rich nations, reducing unwillingness of potential host nations to offer them.

It is not always necessary to offer full immigration to people just to give them safe haven. Asylum should be reserved for those who genuinely cannot stay where they are, and where a problem is temporary, such as conflict, asylum could also be temporary. There is no reason to confuse short term and long term solutions.

A refugee stops being a refugee once they have found a safe refuge. If they carry on beyond that because another country offers a higher standard of living, they become an economic migrant and should only retain refugee status in that first safe country. It is good policy to ensure that refugees register in the first safe country they come to and Europe should enforce that policy and Europe should choose where to house them, not allow or encourage people to shop around for the best deal. It is entirely possible for the costs of providing them with safe refuge could be distributed among richer nations, wherever they are actually placed. Where asylum in another country is appropriate, asylum seekers should be welcomed as far as socio-economic capacity allows. Few people object to hosting and welcoming genuine asylum seekers.

Economic migrants should apply for immigration according to normal procedures. Those trying to jump the queue by forcing their way in, demonstrating and resisting police, clearly have little respect for the laws and well-being of the countries they wish to enter and should be returned to where they came from and barred from future entry. Looking at the very high proportion of healthy young men among the occasional refugee family, women and children, it is clear that this group represents most of the number currently migrating. Most are not genuine refugees but economic migrants. It is easy to understand that they want a better and wealthier life, hard to see why they should be preferred as an immigrant over a law-abiding and highly skilled alternative. Queue-jumping should result in being put to the back of the queue.

With properly managed policy, safe havens would protect refugees. Those in need of asylum could be provided with it, the rest protected where they are, or even returned to safe havens if they do not properly qualify. With economic migrants turned away and barred from future entry, the numbers attempting the journey would reduce, and with it the number of deaths and the support for terrorist groups.

In closing, I don’t think I have said much that hasn’t been said many times, but adding to the weight of such comment offsets to a small degree to over-emotional and counter-productive sanctimony I see every night on the news. In short, we should do what we can do to help people in danger and distress, but we won’t do that by creating problems in our own country.

Knee-jerk emotional responses that are socially, economically and even militarily unsustainable such as tearing down national boundaries and letting everyone in who has made the journey to our door will make things a lot worse for everyone.

Open your heart and your wallet and help, like the UK has, but don’t switch your brain off, as Germany and others advocate. Germany is not for the first time making Europe a more dangerous place, ironically due to a national guilt trip on account of the previous occasions.