Truthdig – Ear to the Ground – Obama Keeps Renditions In the Toolbox
I wish I could say that I’m surprised by the fact that Obama is electing to keep ‘renditions’ as an option. I guess it fits in with escalating the war in Afghanistan and linking that conflict with Pakistan (a nuclear power in a permanent state of tension with India). I feel ever so much more secure. I’m thinking that Blowback should be added to the presidential reading list.
From Guy Gavriel Kay in the Globe and Mail today:
globeandmail.com: The greatest Russians of all time?
Denying, suppressing, falsifying the past, however savage it might have been (perhaps especially when it was savage) exposes a society to the raw power of history when it isn’t dealt with. And that is a power strong as glaciers grinding everything in their path, shaping a landscape. It is critical to realize that this isn’t some abstract, intellectual issue. It defines the world today, from Moscow to the Middle East, Kosovo to Kenya.
Border Biometrics: “Zero Benefit”? – The Technology Liberation Front
Good summary: “We’re doing ourselves more harm than we’re preventing with border biometrics…”
Also worth noting is the comment that “terrorists are fungible”.
Criminals infiltrating Canada’s airports: RCMP
A national RCMP inquiry has concluded that all of Canada’s major airports have been infiltrated by organized crime.
This has to be right up there with a headline like, “Member of Overeaters Anonymous found working in food services” Geez Louise, OF COURSE organized crime is seeking to be embedded in airports – that’s the sensible place to be to bring contraband in and out. It might be easier to deal with this if we hadn’t put so much money into the essentially useless passenger screening and no-fly lists. Those exercises are political security theatre, instead of real measures.
Md. Court Weighs Internet Anonymity – washingtonpost.com
My two cents, separate from any particular legislative requirement, is that on-line anonymity is:
Report: War on terror violates privacy – UPI.com
“Counter-terrorism efforts rob citizens of basic privacy rights, which undermines rather than improves security, a leading European human rights official said.”
and further…“General surveillance raises serious democratic problems which are not answered by the repeated assertion that those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. This puts the onus in the wrong place: It should be for states to justify the interferences they seek to make on privacy rights…”
When will the purveyors of paranoia realize that at least one purpose of terrorism is generate fear? The best ally that terrorism has is those that over-react and throw us all into Code Red Syndrome.
TheStar.com | Canada | U.S. air security called ‘Kafkaesque’
New U.S. rules intended to beef up air security threaten the privacy of Canadians, pose financial headaches for small airlines and could disrupt the plans of sun-seeking travellers, critics say.
I just liked the title of this post. But past the title is the real concern about mandatory decryption and the transformation from citizen to suspect.
How to electrify the world – International Herald Tribune
You have to love this quote, “…the next president will give America a public relations boost simply by not being George W. Bush.”
According to this piece, CanWest is pushing the boundaries of free speech … backwards. The stick they are using is the Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation or SLAPP suit.
Canadian Dimension Blog / Distribute widely: CanWest Free Speech Petition
Don’t Let Canwest SLAPP* Briemberg and YOU