Am I getting paranoid?

Let us all savour this much under appreciated part of our lives while we still can, for that is one aspect of our lives which is becoming more and more eroded. Starting with customer cards, which in a food poisoning case in France helped the shop trace the purchasers. Just what information does a store get and keep from those? Then there are mobile phones whereby your whereabouts can be traced via triangulation. Not to mention Echelon and the other devices which enable your phone calls and emails to be monitored. On to your car where the toll machine also helps pinpoint your location. And the future holds tagging devices in your purchases and clothes, as well as biometric identity cards with chips which can be read at a distance by scanners http://www.alternet.org/rights/32645/. Lets not mention online shopping. Soon all your movements and conversations/emails will be monitored as well your consumption habits and search engine use.

Well at least home life, apart from phone and computer are monitor free? Well, not exactly, as kids in school are requested to write such happy essays as what a typical day is life "for the evaluation of scholastic aptitudes". Oh and of course in some countries the hotlines where you can report unusual behaviour. The satellite receiver also reports its location and use, as does the cable provider. Somehow we seem to be under more and more surveillance on a daily basis, not giving a thought to what happens to the information gathered.

My reason for the paranoia, was reading http://www.alternet.org/rights/32647/ about the way to deal with Fifth columnists and what the options are. Reading the article I realised I may be classified as one of them and can be easily monitored with the information available on me in electronic format. Not a pleasant thought.

PS: Some light relief: A church in our area is advertising itself with the slogan "Pimp my church". Did I miss something or is the church now sinking to the lowest level to attract worshippers?

Blogosphere, place of vulnerability

Over the last week, the Washington Post has been doing a series of articles on how the use of e-mail, Wikipedia, Google, chat rooms, and blogs in China is transforming and challenging that society.

This is a link to the first of the three articles, which also contains links to the ensuing two.

Some interesting aspects of those stories are how the Chinese government monitors e-traffic not just through actual surveillance of the cyber world, but also through the creation of an army of informal, unofficial informants (Cultural Revolution-style) among the general population as well as through having official, obligatory, weekly meetings between representatives of all major Chinese web-portals and officials of some Chinese ministry that basically handles information. It seems that there are just as many regular Chinese web surfers that support state control of their cyber-activities as there are free-thinking folk that are trying to bring about progressive reforms, and it looks as if instances of one cybernaught turning another in for things like anti-Chinese thinking are a daily occurrence over there now.

One reads these things with a certain aloofness, saying to oneself, "Poor guys, allowed a little leeway, but at the end of the day always having to kowtow to their oppressive masters." But do we really have any reason to feel so confident about our own standing in this regard? Or is it possible that we do nothing more in our so-called free world than inhabit a bigger, shinier, 3-dimensional, humanoid-adapted gerbil maze than they do? We are more free to speak our minds than the Chinese are, for the most part, but we are also kept extremely busy with the matter of making ends meet as well as entertaining ourselves. Busy enough to miss a lot of what's happening around us.

And as for controlling the thoughts of a nation, just how much easier is it for any government any where to keep tabs on who thinks what among it's most educated citizens now that we all use e-mail, chat rooms, groups, and blogs constantly? Well, it's a whole hell of a lot easier. It's actually a gold mine for anyone that wants to come up with new ways to influence us. My previous blog entry talks about an article describing how the military has endorsed a free online video game that effectively primes young men for battle from a very young age. How many other things are there out there like that?

Don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly happy for the authorities to use the internet to catch all the violent criminals that they possibly can. More power to them in that pursuit. But I am worried that catching criminals is not the only thing that authorities are doing with their newfound window into the thoughts, tastes, worries, etc. of anyone and everyone on-line anywhere.

Anyone?

Holy Burning Hunks of Havarti! Everyone needs to calm down!

Last September, a Danish newspaper published a series of cartoons featuring the prophet Muhammed as the culmination of a sort of contest where the paper asked people to submit that very thing. This caused quite a stir among Danish Muslims, and though they kept the issue alive for few weeks, it did finally seem to die down as a big deal, at least in Denmark. However, apparently an Imam residing in Denmark brought the cartoons with him on a sort of anti-defamation promotional tour of the Middle East in November presumably in order to show some of the brothers what life was like among the infidels. Again, ‘not necessarily anything earth-shattering there. This kind of thing happens regularly here in the US of A. There are Christians here in America who make it their vocation to promote the idea that Christianity is under siege here in this country (the irony!) and that everybody other than themselves is out to get them. And those fundamentalist Christians are regularly lampooned and made fun of in cartoons, thank God.

But back to the matter at hand, for lo did everything change in the whole Jyllands Posten saga, which was looking like a little bit of uninteresting news from last year when a Norwegian Christian magazine appropriately called “Magazinet” decided this January to reproduce the offending cartoons…you know, just for the heck it. The first thing that happened was that somebody burned a Norwegian flag in Gaza of all places. Then others caught wind of it, wondering why the heck a Norwegian flag was being burnt in Gaza, started asking where it all started, Jyllands Posten was brought back from a comfortably cooled off frying pan into the fires of heresy, and then the Danish flags were being torched in Gaza. While in other places like Baghdad they appeared to be burning boxes of Danish food. ‘Pity that, Danish food is pretty good. If it were some second-rate salt cod from Norway specifically sent down there to get rid of it, well that would make sense to burn. Jakarta seems to feel that the Danes should watch their offices being pelted with eggs and tomatoes. So be it, as long as that where it ends.

Now, in Europe, everyone and their brother suddenly has to be called upon to take a position on these infernal cartoons. More European papers have published the cartoons as a show of the power of an open society and more Muslims have become apoplectic with rage over it. And for what? I say enough. Let’s end it now. Everyone needs to cool down before somebody gets hurt. It’s obvious that the radical Islamists are milking this for all it’s worth. The more they can maintain the illusion that the West is out to get Islam, the more support they get from regular, otherwise uninterested Muslim folk. The same applies to the "white" right-wing movements of Europe. They must be just thrilled about this. Now they can say, “Look, here it is, it’s coming true, the evil Saracen is here amongst us and he is trying to dismantle our freedoms!” But don’t fall for it. Don’t let yourself get polarized just to please the tribalists on both sides of this nonsense.

As for the whole freedom of speech issue, well most people who can read a blog know what freedom of speech is, know that we who have it cherish it, and know that anyone who is of a mind to abuse it can easily do so. I have the right to take a bullhorn downtown and stand on a street corner saying the words, “I’ll take a great big smile with that burger please,” and saying it over and over again, all day, every day of the year. It doesn’t mean that I SHOULD do that, and it doesn’t mean that I should act like the victim of a human rights violation if someone asks me to stop.

Curious coincidences - Updated

Maybe I should join the paranoid group, but I get the sneaking suspicion that sometimes, just as an important story or event unfolds the media focus on something completely inane or different. So we have the Enron trial and Alito being appointed to the Supreme Court, so where is the media focus? It is on Iran, and somehow Osama and mates are also distracting attention.

And where is the story of the US Major-General being given a laughable sentence for torturing an Iraqi Army General to death under the supervision of some unnamed gentlemen? Nowhere, as Iran was more important.

And what was on Fox while the Iraq war was not finding those WMD? That's right, the Michael Jackson trial, far more important. There are more, if I could only remember them, anyone fancy lending a hand?

5/2/06
Just a thought, currently media and popular attention is focused on those cartoons, so who is paying atttention to the fact that Iran was referred to the Security Council, or that extra money had been requested for future wars, or that domestic spying issues, these have all become also rans in the media coverage. Where in 2003 the whole Security Council discussions on Iraq caused protests on the streets in Europe and the US, now all the moves are again being made to attack another country, but as we are so busy discussing whether or not we can draw cartoons of characters from the Quran, no protests are taking place. Why else drag up cartoons published last autumn now?

For other news bypassing massiv media attention I refer you to http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=8492

I aplogise

for thinking that it was only the US and the UK that were going well over the top on surveillance. After reading my local paper I now understand why so many Dutch are moving to France. If I were one of them, I would also be packing my caravan and leaving those flat plains. My local is a catholic paper, deeply devoted to our government and against nasty socialists.
It seems the Dutch have one of the most extensive camera monitoring system covering train stations and motorways. Policemen now have the power to stop and search people on the trams and buses. They have also introduced identity cards, last seen in Holland during the German occupation in WW II. Furthermore the have , and are actually extending this, closed of entire streets and asked all people found thereon to identify themselves, not letting them go unless this is done. Over the last year they have examined the telephone connections of 900.000 people ( Holland has only 16 million population, that means 5% of the population). The latest powers being pushed through will allow the government/police to investigate the holiday habits, the use of PIN cards and credit cards, and the hobbies of the population.

I will never again think of Holland as a happy liberal place where you can smoke certain substances legally, where abrotions are easy to obtain, and where the inhabitants seem to have an obsession with caravans. Instead, just like Big Brother on TV, your every move is monitored, particularly in the new high tech prison:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/01/19/high.tech.prisons.ap/index.html

For those interested in finding out more about the new Dutch, try
http://wwwbzminbuzanl.econom-i.com/default.asp?CMS_NOCOOKIES=YES&CMS_TCP=tcpAsset&id=8E4981FAFB1A447B87D01B653BBCF43C

http://www.justitie.nl/english/Themes/more_themes/Fight_against_terrorism/index.asp

And for those who are concerned at the consistent erosion of our privacy the following link you provides with some insight:
http://www.ipc.on.ca/userfiles/page_attachments/nat-sec.pdf