Posts by giovanni tiso
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Funny thing is, LAX was vile long before the current panic. My first experience of it was being herded into a dirty transit "lounge" with no shops or anything en route back from London with a four-month old baby. I was flabbergasted by that.
I already told the story about being sequestered there on my way to my father's funeral, haven't I? Nobody's topping that, sorry. And it was also pre 9/11. Worse couple of hours of my life, or thereabouts.
-
You get rather used to bag and car checks by, often, machine gun toting polisi or guards.
Careful there, Simon, you're making me homesick.
-
I'm not sure whether it's because of terrorism or not
The ID card thing? No, it isn't, it's been going on for over a century. It's how the state was modelled, on the French and German models of bureaucratic control. Foucault writes splendidly on this.
-
And does Italy have arbitrary detention in a military prison, without trial or legal advocacy?
During our terrorism decade you bet we did. And we do for mafia crimes too, on and off. Plenty of snooping there too, the extent of the freedom to do so changes in waves depending on the government of the day (and how pro or anti-mafia they are, much more than pro- or anti- privacy).
-
I've observed many times that if Israel, Spain, or even the UK, responded to their historic (in Israel's case on-going) terrorist situations with the same vigour as the Americans have behaved post 11/9, everyone would be forced to walk their streets naked, if they were even allowed out at all, and houses would have to be constructed entirely of transparent glass so that the authorities could observe all goings-on therein.
I don't kow about Israel, but Europe started at a much greater level of bureaucratic meddling into the private lives of its citizens. In the States you can pretty much start a new life with a new name wherever you want - at least that's the film cliche. Check into a hotel showing your Disney Club card, you know... In Italy, if I move to another town the frist thing I'm supposed to do is tell the local police and the police in the rown I'm from (let alone all the other agencies that want to know where I live). Hell, when I came to New Zealand I was supposed to notify the police back in Milan. I didn't, until we had our first child, and then I had no choice but to do it. And we had ID cards way before the UK, and not carrying one gets you a fine if not a trip to a police station.
-
Er, yes. As I said in my post.
We don't read your posts anymore, Russell. We just comment on them.
-
I keep getting hits on my website with the keyword surveillance (today with very explicit anxiety "do we live in an age of surveillance") and they're mostly from the UK. I don't think it's going unnoticed there somehow, and there could be a tipping point that turns it into a cause worth fighting for.
I'm surprised OTOH at how in the US the whole surveillance thing - which goes so much more against their ethos and tradition of government - doesn't seem to have shocked the conscience quite as much. But maybe I've got this thing completely wrong.
-
I agree with others here, that why spend time remaking (or ruining) old shows and movies when there are so many unfinished stories out there.
I blame environmentalism - reuse and recycle seems to e the name of the game.
-
He's back playing for Auckland.
-
Lets have RB as far away from anything as we can, ok? He can't act and isn't funny. I can do without him gurning at the camera every two seconds.
The man's charms remain profoundly mysterious to me too.