Wednesday, 26 April 2006

WI Bans RFID Implants || Freud Prophetic: Fundies =Satans Tools

Wisconsin Could Ban Mandatory Microchip Implants: "Re:Doesn't need to be mandatory
(Score:5, Insightful)
by Oldsmobile (930596) Alter Relationship on Tuesday April 25, @01:49PM (#15198965)
(Last Journal: Wednesday February 15, @04:53AM)
Jose Padilla was arrested in Chicago, though as of late has finally been indicted.

Nevertheless, habeus corpus was suspended for four years. Perhaps this means anyone can be arrested without charge for atleast four years?
--
'Then we should go through the minefield, they'll never expect that.' -Rambo"
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Re:Doesn't need to be mandatory

(Score:5, Insightful)
by Steffan (126616) Alter Relationship on Tuesday April 25, @12:54PM (#15198480)
"RFID chip implants don't have to be mandatory. All you have to do is make it a rule that you can't fly, or cross the border, or get a drivers license without one."

"Are you implying that Americans will just sit back and let that happen in the first place? I don't know a single person that would stand for the government pulling that one over on us."
Substitute:
  • The government will set up 'Free Speech Zones' where protesters must stand, set apart from regular crowds
  • People will be held without a trial for indefinite periods of time, without access to counsel and without even public mention made of the fact that they have been imprisoned
  • The government will perform wiretaps and searches without specific cause, and without receiving a court order, or with the permission of 'secret courts', the membership and findings of which must remain sealed
I'm sure all of us would have said...
Are you implying that Americans will just sit back and let that happen in the first place? I don't know a single person that would stand for the government pulling that one over on us.
...five years ago...
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"RFID chip implants don't have to be mandatory. All you have to do is make it a rule that you can't fly, or cross the border, or get a drivers license without one."

"Are you implying that Americans will just sit back and let that happen in the first place? I don't know a single person that would stand for the government pulling that one over on us."
Substitute:
  • The government will set up 'Free Speech Zones' where protesters must stand, set apart from regular crowds
  • People will be held without a trial for indefinite periods of time, without access to counsel and without even public mention made of the fact that they have been imprisoned
  • The government will perform wiretaps and searches without specific cause, and without receiving a court order, or with the permission of 'secret courts', the membership and findings of which must remain sealed
I'm sure all of us would have said...
Are you implying that Americans will just sit back and let that happen in the first place? I don't know a single person that would stand for the government pulling that one over on us.
...five years ago...
=================

And both the wars in which they could have been captured (Afghansitan and Iraq) have been declared as over for years - PoWs are supposed to be released as soon as practical after a war is over. As you said, they're there to keep them from jumping back into the fighting, not to punish them for having been fighting.
They seem to fit the definition of a PoW to me, and the fact that the organisations for which they were fighting are not signatories to the Geneva conventions is not a reason to not treat them in accordance with them - The US (the people holding them) ARE signatories and so are bound to treat them in accordance with the conventions (they specifically say this). If they are being held and they aren't PoW then they MUST be held as common criminals and charged swiftly and tried UNDER THE LAWS OF THE PLACE WHERE THEIR ALLEGED CRIMES TOOK PLACE - there is no other (legal) classification of prisoner.
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It is good news, but this isn't this titled incorrectly. Shouldn't it be something like "Wisconsin is the first state to pass a law making it illegal for companies to make microchip implants mandatory". The way it's written it sounds like someone has already made chip implants mandatory and Wisconsin is fighting it... They aren't, they are just being a bit proactive (for once).
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- -=# http://users.mtrx.net/funnypics [mtrx.net] #=-
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///eof:

by Valdrax (32670) Alter Relationship on Tuesday April 25, @01:48PM (#15198953)
RFID chip implants don't have to be mandatory. All you have to do is make it a rule that you can't fly, or cross the border, or get a drivers license without one.

Are you implying that Americans will just sit back and let that happen in the first place? I don't know a single person that would stand for the government pulling that one over on us.

Try flying, driving, or crossing the border without ID. Try opening a bank account without presenting your government ID number (aka SSN). Try getting insurance, a credit card, a home loan, a car loan, a place to rent, and utilities for that place without presenting a SSN.

Do you realize that we have a backdoor national ID card system right now? Legislation was passed to require an interlinking of driver's license record systems. Driver's licenses have to have biometric data encoded on them. A Supreme Court decision in the past few years means that you can't refuse to present them to law enforcement. Originally, this was portrayed as being intended to keep drunk drivers (especially commercial truck drivers) from just moving to another state to get a new license, but today it's being used by remote jurisdictions to enforce parking and speeding tickets with no means of appeal if the system has you wrong.

We set up an unaccountable national database of people who are not allowed to fly that is based purely on names and aliases instead of more reliable data. Senators have been kept from flying because of the list.

Police today can enter your home, plant listening devices, keystroke monitors, etc. and leave without letting you know and forbidding landlords from telling you about it. They can tap your phones if it's suspected that someone they might be interested in might use the phone (under their discretion). They can snatch records of what you read from the library, who you email and what sites you visit from your ISP, what potentially embarassing medical conditions you might have from your doctor, and any and all business transactions you make from your bank and credit card companies, and none of them can tell you under threat of criminal prosecution.

Our government imprisoned people without trial and without access to laywers in violation of the 6th Amendment. Our government spies on citizens without a warrant in violation of the 4th Amendment. It tortures prisoners in violation of the Geneva Convention as well as the 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendments, and there is a significant portion of the populace that approves of these actions since it makes them feel safer. It even prevents protesters from gathering outside of "Free Speech Zones" in front of the President in violation of the 1st Amendment, and people still aren't outraged.

Let me tell you what Americans will do. NOT A DAMNED THING. All this government has to do is explain how it will protect us against terrorists, child molesters, Iranians, or whoever the hell we're supposed to be most scared of today, and so-called citizens will line up to be sheared like the good little sheep they are.

If you think there is such a thing as public outrage at the loss of our rights, then you haven't been paying attention to in this post-9/11 world. Do you know what gets people angry? High gas prices, incompetent handling of a disaster, and the stink of failure in war. Civil rights doesn't even register as an issue thanks to the learned helplessness of the American people. Just shelter us from harm, and you can do anything with that guy's rights.

--
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the editors didn't read.
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Let me share with you friends, the deep, dark, scary secret that Starbucks is keeping. A secret so shocking that when it is released on the world, it will literally change things forever! I've only recently figured this out myself, so pay attention as I walk you through the sordid details.

Like many super-intelligent-people-in-the-computer-industry- that-write-for-a-magazine, I get a cup of Starbucks every morning. However, this morning was to be different than all the rest. You see, a brand new Starbucks opened up near my office. (Well, nearer-er than the old one.) This new Starbucks boasted an incredible new feature: A drive through window! I could drive up to the Starbuck as if it were a McDonald's, and order a cup of coffee from the comfort of my own car.

But then I got to thinking. What does Starbucks need with drive through windows? I mean, they're in the coffee business, not the fast food industry. People come into Starbucks to enjoy the environment, not grab their cup and run! Then it hit me! Starbucks needs drive-up windows because they are planning to bring that same environment to your vehicle! That's right, Starbucks wants to give you that same coffee-saturated, easy listening, comfortable seating feeling you get in their stores, but in your car. But how will they do it? Will they allow you to place your Venti cup in a cup holder and allow the smell to drift across your Caddilac? No!

There can be only one explanation: Starbucks is going to make cars. Nothing else makes sense! So two years from now when you're driving your Starbucks-mobile, remember this. You heard it here first. --John C. Dvorak

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Freud and the Fundamentalist Urge 30Apr'6


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/magazine/30wwln_lede.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2
At the center of Freud's work lies a fundamental perception: human beings are not generally unified creatures. Our psyches are not whole, but divided into parts, and those parts are usually in conflict with one another. The id, or the "it," is an agent of pure desire: it wants and wants and does not readily take no for an answer. The superego, or over-I, is the internal agent of authority. It often looks harshly upon the id and its manifold wants. The superego, in fact, frequently punishes the self simply for wishing for forbidden things, even if the self does not act on those wishes at all. Then there is the ego, trying to broker between the it and the over-I, and doing so with the greatest of difficulty, in part because both agencies tend to operate outside the circle of the ego's awareness. The over-I and the it often function unconsciously. Add to this problem the fact that "the poor ego," as Freud often calls it, must navigate a frequently hostile outside world, and it is easy to see how, for Freud, life is best defined as ongoing conflict. In a passage in "The Ego and the Id," Freud observes that the ego is a "poor creature owing service to three masters and consequently menaced by three dangers: from the external world, from the libido of the id and from the severity of the superego. Three kinds of anxiety correspond to these three dangers, since anxiety is the expression of a retreat from danger."

About this conflict — about this painful anxiety — what is to be done? Humanity, Freud says, has come up with many different solutions to the problem of internal conflict and the pain it inevitably brings. Most of these solutions, Freud thinks, are best described as forms of intoxication. What the intoxicants in question generally do is to revise the superego to make it more bearable. We like to have one glass of wine, then two, Freud suggests, because for some reason — he's not quite sure what it is in scientific terms — alcohol relaxes the demands of the over-I. Falling in love, Freud (and a thousand or so years of Western poetry) attests, has a similar effect. Love — romantic love, the full-out passionate variety — allows the ego to be dominated by the wishes and judgment of the beloved, not by the wishes of the demanding over-I. The beloved supplants the over-I, at least for a while, and, if all is going well, sheds glorious approval on the beloved and so creates a feeling of almost magical well-being. Take a drink (or two), take a lover, and suddenly the internal conflict in the psyche calms down. A divided being becomes a whole, united and (temporarily) happier one.

Freud had no compunction in calling the relationship that crowds forge with an absolute leader an erotic one. (In this he was seconded by Hitler, who suggested that in his speeches he made love to the German masses.) What happens when members of the crowd are "hypnotized" (that is the word Freud uses) by a tyrant? The tyrant takes the place of the over-I, and for a variety of reasons, he stays there. What he offers to individuals is a new, psychological dispensation. Where the individual superego is inconsistent and often inaccessible because it is unconscious, the collective superego, the leader, is clear and absolute in his values. By promulgating one code — one fundamental way of being — he wipes away the differences between different people, with different codes and different values, which are a source of anxiety to the psyche. Now we all love the fatherland, believe in the folk, blame the Jews, have a grand imperial destiny. The tyrant is also, in his way, permissive. Where the original superego has prohibited violence and theft and destruction, the new superego, the leader, allows for it, albeit under prescribed circumstances. Freud's major insistence as a theorist of group behavior is on the centrality of the leader and the dynamics of his relation to the group. In this he sees himself as pressing beyond the thinking of predecessors like the French writer Gustave Le Bon, who, to Freud's way of thinking, overemphasized the determining power of the group mind. To Freud, crowds on their own can be dangerous, but they only constitute a long-term brutal threat when a certain sort of figure takes over the superego slot in ways that are both prohibitive and permissive.


As the Nazis arrived in Vienna, many gentile Viennese, who had apparently been tolerant and cosmopolitan people, turned on their Jewish neighbors. They broke into Jewish apartments and stole what they wanted to. They trashed Jewish shops. They made Jews scrub liberal political slogans off the sidewalk, first with brushes and later with their hands. And they did all of this with a sense of righteous conviction — they were operating in accord with the new cultural superego, epitomized by the former corporal and dispatch runner, Adolf Hitler.

On the day after Hitler arrived in Vienna, a gang of Nazis stormed into Freud's apartment, at 19 Berggasse. They ransacked the place and made off with a fairly large sum of money. ("I never got so much for a single session," Freud, never at a loss, observed.) They only left, it is said, when the old man, trembling and frail, appeared from out of his consulting room and fixed them in his long-practiced stare. The Nazis, the story continues, scrambled for the door.

In his last days, Freud became increasingly concerned about our longing for inner peace — our longing, in particular, to replace our old, inconsistent and often inscrutable over-I with something clearer, simpler and ultimately more permissive. We want a strong man with a simple doctrine that accounts for our sufferings, identifies our enemies, focuses our energies and gives us, more enduringly than wine or even love, a sense of being whole. This man, as Freud says in his great book on politics, "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego," must appear completely masterful. He must seem to have perfect confidence, to need no one and to be entirely sufficient unto himself. Sometimes this man will evoke a god as his source of authority, sometimes not. But in whatever form he comes — whether he is called Hitler, Stalin, Mao — he will promise to deliver people from their confusion and to dispense unity and purpose where before there were only fracture and incessant anxiety. But, of course, the price is likely to be high, because the simplifications the great man offers will almost inevitably involve hatred and violence.

Freud's implicit morality is counterintuitive. Though Freud acknowledged the uses of mild intoxicants like love and art, he was nonetheless extremely suspicious of any doctrine or activity that promised to unify the psyche — or to unify the nation, the people — without remainder and to do so forever. Freud believed that the inner tensions that we experience are by and large necessary tensions, not because they are so enjoyable in themselves — they are not — but because the alternatives to them are so much worse. For Freud, a healthy psyche is not always a psyche that feels good. For Herbert Marcuse, author of a brilliant meditation on Freud, "Eros and Civilization," Freud's politics are potentially the politics of ecstasy. We can collectively undo our repressions and regress toward collective erotic bliss. For Philip Rieff, author of the equally perceptive and original "Freud: The Mind of the Moralist," Freud appears to be a deep political pessimist who thinks that the healthiest individuals will probably be those who turn completely away from politics. But another way to look at Freud is to see him as someone who suggests that a considerable measure of freedom and even relative happiness can come from following a self-aware middle way. If we are willing to live with some inner tension, political as well as personal, we need never be overwhelmed by tyranny or fall into the anarchy that giving into the unconscious completely can bring.
For Freud, we might infer, a healthy body politic is one that allows for a good deal of continuing tension. A healthy polis is one that it doesn't always feel good to be a part of. There's too much argument, controversy, difference. But in that difference, annoying and difficult as it may be, lies the community's well-being. When a relatively free nation is threatened by terrorists with totalitarian goals, as ours is now, there is, of course, an urge to come together and to fight back by any means necessary. But the danger is that in fighting back we will become just as fierce, monolithic and, in the worst sense, as unified as our foes. We will seek our own great man; we will be blind to his foibles; we will stop questioning, stop arguing. When that happens, a war of fundamentalisms has begun, and of that war there can be no victor.
NYT author = Mark Edmundson teaches English at the University of Virginia. He is currently completing a book about the last two years of Freud's life.
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http://dialoginternational.typepad.com/dialog_international/2006/05/when_adolf_met_.html

Freud recognized that that totalitarianism and the rise of the strong leader was an outcome of modern mass society as an artificial resolution of the necessary conflict between the primal urges of libido of the id and from the severity of the superego:

Where the individual superego is inconsistent and often inaccessible because it is unconscious, the collective superego, the leader, is clear and absolute in his values. By promulgating one code — one fundamental way of being — he wipes away the differences between different people, with different codes and different values, which are a source of anxiety to the psyche. Now we all love the fatherland, believe in the folk, blame the Jews, have a grand imperial destiny. The tyrant is also, in his way, permissive. Where the original superego has prohibited violence and theft and destruction, the new superego, the leader, allows for it, albeit under prescribed circumstances. Freud's major insistence as a theorist of group behavior is on the centrality of the leader and the dynamics of his relation to the group. In this he sees himself as pressing beyond the thinking of predecessors like the French writer Gustave Le Bon, who, to Freud's way of thinking, overemphasized the determining power of the group mind. To Freud, crowds on their own can be dangerous, but they only constitute a long-term brutal threat when a certain sort of figure takes over the superego slot in ways that are both prohibitive and permissive.

The piece is a good tribute to Freud and reminder of the dangers of fundamentailism in all of its guises. Good time as well to revist Freud's concept of Thanatos - the death drive which opposes the life force of Eros - as certain leaders reconsider the Nuclear Option.


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