Prime Minister Dick Shove's cell phone ban is another example of political theatre – Yup

Prime Minister Shouf is getting a standing ovation for his decision to ban laptops, smart watches and cell phones from cabinet meetings from now on. It seems pretty much Harmony: HTruly a minister who understands the dangers our country is facing and how the enemy is watching us, listening to us and mocking us everywhere electronically. The days of naivety are gone forever.

But the impact of this decision is limited. After their deliberations, the ministers immediately retrieve their electronic resources from the safe, making them – so to speak in an old-fashioned way – vulnerable to spying devices as usual. Only the conversations exchanged in the meeting room remain, provided that the minutes-taker does not later copy them to a computer connected to the Internet.

The agenda and related documents for discussion should be printed in advance. There may be ways to get them before or after the deliberations. This material will certainly not be printed by a secretary on the historic Adler, and then the tape of this device will be carefully burned. No, this decision by the prime minister is stage fright, aimed at convincing citizens that our country is a fortress under siege. Many people on social media have rightly pointed out that the Cabinet, with all these Freedom Party cheerleaders in the Kremlin, is an open book for Russians anyway.

Prime Minister Schaffar took a lot of questions during his weekly press conference, but the journalists present did not ask the most important question: “What about us?” Do our spies infiltrate cabinet meetings in every country? Do we have a line to European Commission meetings? Are our microphones in the Kremlin and in the office buildings of the Chinese Communist Party? Or are we as a nation too high or too moral for that? If Schaffar is ambiguous, we know enough.

I always think of this kind of political theatre and charades. If Stone Weekly. This was a very small newsletter from the 1950s and 1960s. The author, I.F. Stone, was a famous investigative journalist in America, who constantly provided sharp analysis and discoveries. He did not attend press conferences. He did not ask specific questions. He studied official documents carefully. Most governments write down their evil deeds and the plans they made for them. You can find them by searching, comparing, and reading a lot. You will not discover the real meaning of the public talk unless you know the primary documents. For example, I.F. Stone discovered that the Tonkin Incident, the so-called attack by North Vietnam on American naval ships, was the work of the US Navy itself.

This is also the best way to deal with Schoof's curiosity cabinet.

View the 1953-1961 volumes of IF Stone's Weekly here. Or watch the documentary below in which Stone himself explains how he did it. The film is narrated by Tom Wicker, a prominent New York Times analyst at the time.

As for the rest, I am of the opinion that the surcharge scandal should not disappear from public attention, nor should the issue surrounding the natural gas in Groningen, even though the last well has now been closed. I also consider the Party for Freedom to be a far-right party.

Listen to The Memory Palace, Han van der Horst and John Knierim's weekly podcast on politics and history. Now: The diverse premiere of science.