Politics of StarWars

[kres24GT]

There was a special on the History Channel about this. Anyway part of the special was how a democratic/republican government becomes a dictatorship/totalitarian government.

One of the big things is using fear to increase power. Reminded me of how politicians are constantly asking us to sacrifice our freedom in the name of safety/comfort and how we are all to eager to go along with it.

"Vote for me or the terrorists win."
"Vote for me or you will lose social security."
"Vote for me or children will starve."

etc. etc.


Looking more and more like we will be a totalitarian government in my lifetime.

[Mr. Blue]

It's so easy to give away freedoms for a false sense of security.

One thing I've been noticing is how technology is moving to tag us all. In your car you have onstar, in your cellphone you have GPS standard on most, you see people giving up freedoms for convenience, for safety, etc. You have cameras popping up everywhere now.

I really think we'll be in a full big brother state within a 10 year time period.

[kres24GT]

It's so easy to give away freedoms for a false sense of security.

One thing I've been noticing is how technology is moving to tag us all. In your car you have onstar, in your cellphone you have GPS standard on most, you see people giving up freedoms for convenience, for safety, etc. You have cameras popping up everywhere now.

I really think we'll be in a full big brother state within a 10 year time period.


Probably so, although I have no problem with people giving up their freedom on an individual level. It's when they use government to rob me of my freedom I have the problem. Good point though, the private sector is somewhat ironically going to make it easier for us to shift to a totalitarian government.

[stefan segal]

I read an article about video-cams set up in London park with a live viewer monitoring. In this piece, a woman threw a cigarette-butt on the sidewalk while getting up to leave. Then, over a hidden speaker, a man said to her something about trashing the park and she should go pick up the butt..."NOW".

It also mentioned in passing that a pedestrian in London's streets is videoed something like 400 times every ten minutes of walking...I wonder...as did the author, how many of these were manned?

I understand that when arguing against being videoed when simply brousing around town one comes up against the concept of the expectation of privacy...on the streets, there is none of that expectation...so the argument falls through.

But there has always been the expectation of one of a herd, that moves with no face or name along with the thousands of others...a sort of invisability except to those who actually know you and care to make their presence known to you. It is a sort of expectation of invisability...but one that is totally wiped out by video, integrated face recognition and live monitors...a practice which I believe is a violation of our privacy.

I also fear that such an action against these practices will not even reach a court, as it an be easily proven that stored tapes are instrumental in the legal processing of criinal acts.

We don't even have that opportunity to give up or fight this infringement of our personal life....as we happen to share that life with criminals in public places. That could, and might already be, carried to public restrooms using the identical argument...we have no means of verifying this either way.

Our reality is that we are collateral damage in the gang war between the government criminals against the street gang criminals...the suit and tie criminals are happily mixed, but only show their messegination on their bottom lines for tax displays, and dont much care about the war, as no side really intends either to win...where balance is the optium condition.

Stefan