Posts by Rich of Observationz
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"Plus people may google search you if apply for jobs or email them out of the blue."
I think this is a real problem. I don't mind my identity being known to people who ask nicely, but having your life (as expressed in writing on the Internet) available at the click of a mouse is a bit much for me, and I think for others. Besides employers and clients, there is also the growing surveillance society to consider. How long before bodies like customs get a report on their screen as to people's net activity when they arrive in a country? Remember, the US authorities attempted to subpoena Monica Lewinski's bookshop records! Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramerbooks_&_Afterwords
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i love how at the domestic airport they're all really serious about photo ID to be able to collect your boarding pass, then when you go through to the 'secure area' area you only need a boarding pass and nobody cares who you are.
You can order a boarding pass to be sent as a PDF to you. With any name you want on it as far as I can tell (or maybe it's only travelcards that allow to book tickets when your credit card name doesnt match the traveller). I've never been asked for ID except when I've had to pick a ticket up from the counter 'cos the machines aren't working.
(Even when you check in on the machine, all it reads - all it *can* read - is the cleartext name on the magnetic strip)
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And cooks in the catering facilities would still have knives, aircraft and plant mechanics would have tools, police and "air marshals" would have guns. Plus the pilots could still ram their own aircraft into a building if the feeling took them..
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The Register demonstrated some time ago on how the use of "liquid explosives" was impractical http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/17/flying_toilet_terror_labs/print.html
So the whole premise for banning liquids is somewhat unfounded. Apart from the need to maintain a constantly increasing level of fear in the absence of much, if any, actual terrorism.
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You can buy CDs of music which have a public performance license included (The performers have signed their rights away, and either it's out of copyright classical etc, or it was composed for the purpose). It's called lift music or muzak. See http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/ for instrance.
If you wish to anaethetise your customers in this way, you can avoid paying APRA.
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I don't believe it's the job of the NZ (or any other government) to help businesses to prop up an unsustainable business model.
Imagine I decided to set up a business renting bicycles. The bikes would be left at collection stations around town with an honesty box for people to deposit a gold coin. Would it be the job of the cops to catch people who stole the bikes or failed to pay? I think not.
People have *always* copied music. When I was a kid I'd tape the John Peel show off the radio, tape friend's records, etc. Digital copying is no different - it just increases the scale of copying.
The music industry needs to find more robust routes to value. Possibly the existing record companies won't be able to make this shift and will become history. That's just the way the world works.
We should not be criminalising kids, holding back technological progress and boosting monopolies in order to try and abate change. We didn't do it for the railways or the freezing works - so why should the music business be different.
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If it was Muslims saying that they didn't have to obey secular laws because they only accepted God as their judge, you can bet the whole right-wing world would be jumping up and down in protest.
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Our democratic rights are far less under attack than, for example, those of women in Saudi Arabia, and yet confronted by the dreadful George Bush, we've forgotten our internationalism.
But "we" didn't elect the Saudi government or the mullahs. We bear responsibility for them only insofar as we buy their oil and sell them weapons. A reasonable response to this would be to depend less on oil and stop selling weapons to unpleasant governments. An unreasonable response is to use this to justify erosion of rights on the grounds that "Saudi is far worse".
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“Terrorism inspired by Islamist ideology is widespread today”
In the developed world, it isn't. There have been just *three* succesfull Islamist terrorist attacks in the west since September 2001, including the WTC attacks.
Over a ten year period, the number of attacks in the west by right wing fanatics matches that of Islamists (and without the WTC "success" would have been as bloody):
- the 1999 one man bombing campaign by David Copeland
- the 1996 Olympic bombing
- the 1995 Oklahoma City bombingNotably, there is no mention of the need to combat right wing fanatics in the "manifesto".
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I hope this doesn't turn out like CiF where every discussion (even on subjects as innocuous as cricket) turns into a flame war between the neo-imperialists and the crypto-islamists (as they categorise one another).
Having said that:
I think the "Euston Manifesto" is an amazing piece of disingenuity. Outwardly, they are keen on human rights, motherhood and apple pie. They then justify torture, detention without trial, illegal occupation, etc. as necessary in order to impose liberal democratic rule upon the "savages".
There is also a distorted idea of responsibility. In my view, I share responsibility for the actions of my government and its forces - because I helped elect it. I only have responsibility for the Saddam Husseins and Osama bin Ladens of the world insofar as "we" helped them get to power. The neos deny this and believe that it is our job to "right every wrong" and further, that we are able to engage in any form of atrocious behaviour to do so provided we don't quite reach the levels of the "despots".
It's easy to see how this is attractive to former Marxists. The ideas of driving for utopia and of the ends justifying the means were both popular aspects of Marxism.