Daddy, I love you so much that I want to cut your head off and carry it around so I can see your face whenever I want. – Unnamed child
There was an unusual degree of backlash against the police/nanny state this week; unfortunately, it was more like thrashing about a bit in a fitful sleep than actually waking up, considering that 80% of Americans think that it’s perfectly OK for the government to restrict civil liberties for “safety”, and 26% think they haven’t been restricted enough yet. And though one of the week’s top stories should have been a former FBI agent’s revelation that the US government now records every single domestic telephone call without bothering to get a warrant, I’ll bet this was the first most of you even heard of it. There, I figured I’d get the worst of it out of the way up front; most of the rest aren’t quite so bad. Jesse Walker was our top contributor this week; you can thank him for the first video and all the links above it. The second video was provided by Nick Tolman, and the first three links between the two by my cat, Wendy Lyon and Luscious Lani (in that order). The next three were supplied by Grace (except for “AIDS patients” via Women With a Vision), and the rest by Brooke Magnanti (“Google”), Teller (“conjoined twins”), Walter Olson (“poor pets”), Kevin Wilson (“Muppets”), EconJeff (“porn law”), Scott Greenfield (“stop & frisk”), and Lenore Skenazy (“tools”).
- Best “selfie” of all time.
- Songs that sound like other songs.
- A collection of quotes to feed your paedophobia.
- Faux superheroes vs. faux anarchist clowns armed with silly string.
- Scientists support girl charged with felony for a mishandled experiment by “tweeting” about all the stuff they’ve blown up.
- Australian Cat Ladies buy abandoned fundamentalist site; hijinks ensue.
- The newsworthy part is that he was actually held accountable.
- Artist draws himself in 100 different animation styles.
- Welcome to our world, drivers and AIDS patients.
- Never do business with a cop, either.
- Paging the Doctor!
- Let me Google that for you.
- Chemical-free chemistry sets.
- 23-year-old conjoined twins are becoming teachers.
- Florida court declares it’s a felony for poor people to own pets.
- Peanuts recalled because bag lacks the words “contains peanuts”.
- Which Muppet would be most likely to successfully assassinate Hitler?
- What’s the difference between a porn magazine editor and a criminal law attorney?
- NYPD officials say they instituted “stop and frisk” program to discourage cops from laziness.
- Teacher suspended, charged with “possessing a weapon” for showing ordinary tools to students.
From the Archives
- Congresscritters challenge the ruling striking down the “anti-prostitution pledge”, while others toothlessly attempt to censor Backpage.
- Reading Pennsylvania sex work articles is like looking into a dirty toilet.
- Lawyer proposes decriminalization of drugs and prostitution in Detroit.
- Humorless neofeminists crucify a respected surgeon over a silly joke.
- The sleazy deal to impose the Swedish Model on Western Australia.
- Do you advocate that escorts adhere strictly to a referral system?
- I decide that the outing of anti-whore politicians is commendable.
- Lawheads love classifying various activities as “legal” or “illegal”.
- Reporter thinks that a cop raping a hooker is a rare occurrence.
- Real-life superheroes offer to protect working girls in New York.
- Cops in riot gear and masks save Houston from evil harlots.
- This is sleazy even by Ashley Madison’s abysmal standards.
- An early draft of one of my favorite books is auctioned off.
- Another serial killer targeting whores, this time in Detroit.
- A biography of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the “D.C. Madam”.
- My previous columns for May Day, May Eve and Floralia.
- Octomom says a masturbation video isn’t “really” porn.
- And all it took was triple jeopardy and lying to the jury.
- Drug decriminalization actually decreases usage rates.
- How can I make sure that a lady doesn’t have a pimp?
- Do you mind editing or deleting reader comments?
- Sadistic freak arrested after torturing sex worker.
- Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever.
- Arthur Huntington, AKA Agent Cheapskate.
- The FDA claims wet-nursing is dangerous.
- Genesis, Pretty Baby and Looney Tunes.
- Why “safe harbor” laws don’t work.
- CNN claims fat is like heroin.
- Politician. Whores. Yawn.
- Wet shelters.
This is probably going to sound rather clumsy, but I can’t help but consider those articles about polls on surveillance and that FBI agent in the intro in relation to Maggie’s position on moral panics and their eventual collapse. In the comments on the FBI article (and elsewhere) I see people making the point that in spite of all this surveillance, attacks such as Boston of course still happen. That of course feeds into the negative loop of ever more intrusive surveillance, but my question is how truly sustainable is that loop? It seems to me that sooner or later it’s going to collapse. My only hope is that it doesn’t take a WWI-equivalent to force that outcome, because situations like that, just as the current security state has, also run into the Law of Unintended Consequences real fast.
Exactly right. Totalitarianism is an intrinsically unstable situation; like an overloaded bridge, it must eventually collapse of its own weight (as the Soviet Empire did a generation ago). The larger any police state expands, the more it hastens its own demise; however, a lot of people get hurt in the meantime, and most of the collapses aren’t as quiet and gentle as the Soviet one.
Whenever I’m feeling depressed, I read about what happened to the Ceausescus and it perks me right up.
I agree up to a point, We’ve seen empires collapse (Rome, Byzantine, British, etc.), but are we really able to compare them to the true police state the USSR was or USA is becoming, simply by dint of lack of today’s technology? No one had seen a collapse like the USSR at the time, and I would hope ours would be different than the others, since ours has the capacity to affect far more people than the populations of the old Soviet bloc.
It’s not about technology, but about man’s limited ability to organize and the limits of human tolerance. No matter how good the surveillance and other controls get, there will always be countermeasures.
Okay, then perhaps the hope should be that those countermeasures would be the use of today’s technology for good rather than evil. After all, the French revolution’s countermeasure was the guillotine….
Do you think man, with his limited organization and tolerance, has progressed (dare I say evolved?) in the intervening centuries?
Since the French Revolution? Not remotely. You’d have to go back at least to the Pleistocene to discover a real difference in human behavior, though of course our philosophy and methods have developed considerably since then.
But are there none that can conceive of a smarter way of affecting change than putting others to the sword? Because as I said before, once that starts it can be incredibly hard to stop, and all that happens is the exchange of one security state for another. We all might think “gee, we really ought to destroy all the politicians” but how many realize that they just might get swept up in the purge as well, just as they are now at risk of being swept up in the current security state apparatus?
It’s a problem that one would think needs a leader to mold all the dissonance into a cohesive strategy, but we’ve seen that almost anyone who is given power, even if they begin with the absolute purest and non-evil of intentions, is just one or two turns of the screw away from becoming a tyrant who cares for nothing accept gaining more power and exercising it for their own gain. And we’re right back to where we started.
So who or what do we look to? I’d like nothing more than to simply look to myself and keep to myself, but I recognize the world today is far too crowded and complex to allow that. I’d even be willing to wager that’s why the world has gotten to the state it’s in, because most people are selfish (some more than others) and just want to live without making trouble without the added stress of being responsible for hundreds, thousands or millions of others. So perhaps we haven’t evolved (that might have been the wrong choice of words), but does that mean we’re doomed by that fact?
I apologize if this is long. I’m just trying to force my mind to work a bit faster so that I can participate in this discussion.
//And though one of the week’s top stories should have been a former FBI agent’s revelation that the US government now records every single domestic telephone call without bothering to get a warrant,//
It’s software that makes this possible, proprietary and closed source software especially. It’s one of the reasons the Chinese government is adopting open source software in favor of Miscrosoft (irony of ironies). They (not unreasonably) are deeply suspicious of Microsoft even though Microsoft makes the source code of all its software available to the Chinese authorities. My impression is that the increasing use of open source software is (another irony) an increasing threat to current US government surveillance programs. It’s easy to slip in malware or spyware when users can’t see the source code. I guess my point would be this: There are solid ways to circumvent snooping with a little effort and knowledge (though it shouldn’t be necessary).
Re: Time Crystals.
*swoons* If you all will excuse me, I’m going to go build a TARDIS.
If the government now listens to all our communication, how do we go on calling ourselves a democracy. Perhaps it’s time to admit the truth.
There are actually WORSE things than not being a democracy anymore. The U.S.A. is as fucked up as a soup sandwich.
Oh – and we’re also not a democracy anymore – well, we are I suppose – but the sheeple in this country engage in voting behavior that makes Democracy look like the most insane philosophy ever proposed.
Well, the US has never actually been a democracy per se; it used to be a democratic republic, but it become a syndocracy during the 20th century, and a fascist republic in the past generation.