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Privacy has gone. CCTV is everywhere. Have we allowed ourselves to have our freedom taken away from under our very noses?
Share your experiences, get something off of your chest. Have a rant. Enlighten us. Scare us. Wake us up.
"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. ... We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. ... How does one man assert his power over another ... By making him suffer.
Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is inflicting pain and humiliation. ... A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. ...
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--for ever."
From '1984' by George Orwell
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Comments on Airstrip One
May 30, 2008
Feb 15, 2008
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AlfieGoodrich says: Afghanistan, the Taliban and the Bush Oil Team....One of the theories for 9/11 is that Taleban were pissed at ties being cut between Hamid Karzai, Bush and themselves over a deal to run an oil pipeline through their territory. Michael Moore talks of this in one of his books, about Bush being told by advisors that maybe having top Taliban leaders over at his ranch in Texas for a cookies and a chat was probably not wise and that he should shut the whole plan down. Furious at the loss of potentially $3 billion in revenue, the Taliban orchestrated 9/11.....
Read about the links between Bush, his puppet in Afghanistan [and former director of Bush linked company UNOCAL] Hamid Karzai and the Taliban here:
"According to Afghan, Iranian, and Turkish government sources, Hamid Karzai, the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan, was a top adviser to the El Segundo, California-based UNOCAL Corporation which was negotiating with the Taliban to construct a Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan."
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MAD201 A.html -
AlfieGoodrich says: Pakistan, a CIA agent and nukesThere was a big pice in the Guardian newspaper on this just before I left the UK last year. Makes interesting reading....
"He was the CIA's expert on Pakistan's nuclear secrets, but Rich Barlow was thrown out and disgraced when he blew the whistle on a US cover-up. Now he's to have his day in court. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark report...."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/oct /13/usa.pakistan
Dec 11, 2007
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AlfieGoodrich says: Egypt fabricates terrorist groupThis is what happens or can happen when governments seek emergency powers at any cost to control their population....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7 137950.stm
Nov 30, 2007
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Jrim says: Business as usual...
"Is the 71 percent of the vote [Vladimir Putin] received in 2004 convincing evidence of his popularity? I have never met anyone who likes Putin as a person. One answer to the riddle of his electoral success is quite simple and quite sad. For virtually the first time in history, Russian citizens were given the primary instrument of political democracy: direct and competitive elections. But they do not know why they need this instrument or how to make use of it. Eleven hundred years of history have taught us only two possible relationships to authority, submission and revolt. The idea of peacefully replacing our ruler through a legal process is still a wild, alien thought for us. The powers-that-be are above the law and they're unchangeable by law. Overthrowing them is something we understand. But at the moment, we don't want to. We've had quite enough revolution."
Sergei Kovalev in The New York Review of Books, November 22
Today, The Guardian reports that the Kremlin is quite brazenly attempting to rig Sunday's election - touted as a referendum on Putin himself. If Putin's United Russia party wins - and, judging from this, they almost certainly will - then chances are we'll be seeing a lot more of the man who has spent the past 8 years reviving the authoritarian excesses of the Soviet era. Then again, George Bush once described him as a "very straight forward and trustworthy" man, so I'm sure Russia would be in safe hands.
Nov 23, 2007
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AlfieGoodrich says: 50,000 UK Children on DNA databaseWhy?
More than 500,000 children under the age of 10 in the UK have already had their DNA added to a database? In what the UK government calls having a `clear public benefit`.
Answers on a postcard as to what that benefit might be.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4 991982.stm
Nov 22, 2007
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Jrim says: Think of it as a friendly house call...A Korean friend of mine who lives in Tokyo got a visit from immigration yesterday. Though he's a student at a major university, registered with his ward office &c., five guys turned up at his door and demanded to see his gaijin card, then inspected his one-room apartment to check he hadn't got any illegals hiding there.
He isn't the first person I know who has had this kind of experience, either. Last year, a friend of mine who was living in a gaijin house in Suginami-ku got raided by immigration at 6 in the morning. Again, she was registered with her ward office and working here legally. She didn't hang around in the country for long afterwards, mind you...
Has anybody else had this kind of thing happen to them? Fingerprinting the gaijin is one thing, but barging down their front doors takes it to a whole new level.
Nov 21, 2007
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AlfieGoodrich says: Hot spring owners 'sprung'Does anyone have a copy of the news story about the onsen owners recently discovered and fined for recording people naked in the washing area and selling the tapes?
My wife told me about this one today. Apparently it was on the news today. -
AlfieGoodrich says: Orwell's old house surrounded by CCTV
According to the latest studies, Britain has a staggering 4.2million CCTV cameras - one for every 14 people in the country - and 20 per cent of cameras globally. It has been calculated that each person is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/artic le-23391081-details/George+Orwell,+Big+B rother+is+watching+your+house/article.do
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AlfieGoodrich says: They even want the shirt off of your back....
One from August this year back in the UK:
"A man spotted wearing a T-shirt bearing an "offensive" slogan in a city centre has been warned he risks an £80 fine if he is caught again."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cambr idgeshire/6943734.stm
I wonder where this leaves the French Connection fashion chain and all their FCUK garments? :-)
Obviously no rule about being offensive as long as you can't spell properly.
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Mili
PinkRivet
thedudemeister
Operation Leopard is exactly the sort of intensive policing that can bring persistent offenders to their senses - involving daily police visits to their homes, repeated warnings for the hard core of trouble-makers, and relentless filming of them and their associates throughout the day and night.
Jacqui Smith, Home SecretaryThere's extensive coverage of Operation Leopard in today's Guardian - a controversial new method of policing that involves subjecting young offenders to constant surveillance. Employing the forward intelligence team model used effectively against football hooligans and hunt protesters, police are using cameras and camcorders to conduct in-your-face surveillance of (generally young) people in high-crime areas who they've identified as persistent offenders. "Harass a hoodie," as the article puts it - and one officer comes out with the killer quote that "You have to weigh up causing a bit of annoyance to 12 or 14 youths, against the 2,000 or 3,000 residents whose lives have been improved."
Well, of course. What gets me, though, is that this doesn't sound all that different from the routine harrassment that passes for policing in the US - or, at least, that you see in every episode of The Wire. Though police are trumpetting the initial success of the scheme, I'm not convinced that this will do anything in the long run besides breeding yet more animosity between the police and the policed.