Refusing to show ID on a public bus

[achilleus]

Thanks, Humpty-Dumpty, but I think the rest of us will stick to the standard English definitions.

BTW, do you really think that terrorism is nothing more than a "social ill"? Sure strikes me as a sort of war...complete with bombs and bullets. And if we are unlucky, and incautious enough, maybe with viruses and poison gases and radioactive fallout as well.

It's not a war anymore. Haven't you been following been paying attention to the the Bush Administration Dictionary? It's the Global Struggle Against Terrorism tm. Just like they the Iraqi's who attack us are not rebels or loyalists, but insurgents.

[Inquartata]

It's not a war anymore. Haven't you been following been paying attention to the the Bush Administration Dictionary? It's the Global Struggle Against Terrorism tm. Just like they the Iraqi's who attack us are not rebels or loyalists, but insurgents.

Yes, I can't keep up with the cant. Somehow that name makes it sound like a standardized test or something. "I'm taking the GSATs this week".

[Amadeus]

It's not a war anymore. Haven't you been following been paying attention to the the Bush Administration Dictionary? It's the Global Struggle Against Terrorism tm. Just like they the Iraqi's who attack us are not rebels or loyalists, but insurgents.

no. it's the global struggle against extremism. (probably because we're not going too well against the terrorists.)

[Philistine]

No, no, no. It's still The War Against Terrorism. TWAT, for short.

--Philistine

[Gav]

No it's not it's Strategically Halt Insurgent Threat. Keep up man!

Ess will agree with me when I point out that this is a Conservative Republican Agenda Propaganda situation.

[pigeonmeister]

Could you elaborate that last comment because I'm not sure I fully get it. Thanks.

The French police have been accused of over zealous demands for ID, especially amongst its large black and Muslim population. ID cards are not a legal demand in France, but 99% of the population carry them.

[pigeonmeister]

Hey Zilver.
With the camera's, I was speaking of the huge among of camera's in London that are observed/controlled by the government and tied into a central system/organization. That is just spooky as far as I am concerned. Sounds like they need an camera grinder man to go with angle grinder man

At the moment one of the biggest stories in the UK is the shooting and killing of a female police officer in Bradford (Yorkshire, North England) during an armed robbery. Bradford, coincidentally, has been trialing a system whereby the number plate of every car entering the city is logged and followed through various 'checkpoints'. This enables them to know if a stolen car has entered Bradford, as well as allow the police to track the movements of any car coming in or out of Bradford. This enabled the police to identify the car used in the robbery, but more importantly track its route out of Bradford. So the Police quickly found the car and reports are that arrests are very imminent.

If this had happened in another city, the police would have had a lot more trouble tracking the robbers and as such I think that we will see more camera 'supervision' in more British cities. I believe, also, that the London underground, in the wake of the bombings, is about to launch one of the most sophisticated camera sytems in the world.

Surely this can only be a good thing?

[Inquartata]

I don't know about good, but as long as it's in public I don't see where anyone has standing to object. I do think it will result in a sort of "Stainless Steel Rat" battle of wits between the authorities and the miscreants of the world eventually.

[esskreemr]

Milton Mayer on how Nazism overcame Germany (as quoted from "They Thought They Were Free", written in 1955, publ. in 1966)

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security....

This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter. ...

To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measures" that no "patriotic German" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.


"Pastor Niemoller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing: and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something - but then it was too late."

"Yes," I said.

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' Why not? - Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, everyone is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there will be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, 'It's not so bad' or 'You're seeing things' or 'You're an alarmist.'

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. ...

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked - if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come immediately after the 'German Firm' stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jew swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in - your nation, your people - is not the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God." ...