Over the last decade I’ve become increasingly cynical about, and frankly afraid of Americans. Not all of them–I know they’re not all the same, and there are lots of them I love–but Americans in the aggregate. I had some hope that things were changing there last year, but when I read statistics like 58% of US voters favour the use of torture in gathering information–specifically in a case where there is no ticking bomb–I am more scared than ever. Factor in that the rate is even higher for younger people and I’m left wondering if there will be anyone left who understands that this isn’t how things should be. Those numbers about how many people think the US legal system is too worried about individual rights make me despair for humanity, and for the American voting public’s ability to read.
(3 Comments)Posts Tagged ‘police powers’
You can learn something new every day
Monday, January 4th, 2010I followed a stay Twitter link today that lead to this short discussion of how to deal with someone acting racist: I found that interesting enough that I spent some time looking at other vlogs from the same dude, which lead me to this one, East Coast Cats and Christopher Street Boys, which I particularly [...]
Peter Watts on Daily Kos, and Just Worlds
Thursday, December 24th, 2009Nice to see the Watts story get some coverage on one of the larger political blogs. I quite like this bit: It’s ironic, though, that the same day I was arrested one Mary Callahan, chief privacy officer for Homeland Security, was up here in Canada reassuring us that the border isn’t so bad a place [...]
When The Black Wind Blows
Monday, December 14th, 2009I’ve been very busy the last few days, with a combination of post-moving stuff (hey, look, we’re close to family now, and it’s the holidays), and with some important changes at work (on which I shall write a very journal-y entry shortly). Which explains why I haven’t already written about an utterly unacceptable, and miserably [...]
It’s actually not a joke, although it’s easy to come up with a punchline
Thursday, August 7th, 2008I’ve been quick to criticize American history for HUAC, and CoIntelPro, and the general internal espionage of the early FBI, as well not recognizing the lessons of history when they swing around again, so I should probably also point out that we do a lot of the same stuff. As you can see in the [...]
Organizational Pathology
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008Did you see the ACLU press release today about how the American terrorist watch list now has more than one million people on it? “America’s new million record watch list is a perfect symbol for what’s wrong with this administration’s approach to security: it’s unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources, treats the rights of the [...]
Putting My Own House In Order
Friday, May 23rd, 2008Or rather, bitching about my own country’s politicians for a change. It seems like I can’t turn around lately without seeing another story that just embarrasses me as a Canadian. The classic example, which I’ve talked about here before, is the Tories’ continuing attempt to force a DCMA-style law down our throats. After getting his [...]
Can Not Process Data
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008You know those hoary old SF stories where the hero defeats the robot/intelligent energy matrix/computer/whatever by giving it information that can not be logically processed–isn’t “Is the following statement true? ‘This statement is false.’” the classic one?–and thus causing the super-powerful processing of the robot/intelligent energy matrix/computer/whatever to burn out, usually accompanied by a nice [...]
Even More Things I Did Not Know
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008Science has brought us a permanent, but easily-removable, tattooing ink. Does this change the metatext of tattooing? I mean, the pain is still there, but if the permanence isn’t part of the subtext anymore, what does that mean for the story? Is it to obvious to predict the rise of a serial-tattooing culture, or a [...]
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