DancingSamurai.ca

A great essay putting in one place all the smart things Bruce has said about security theatre and terrorism over the years:

Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country’s way of life; it’s only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage. The more we undermine our own laws, the more we convert our buildings into fortresses, the more we reduce the freedoms and liberties at the foundation of our societies, the more we’re doing the terrorists’ job for them.

I’ve posted a few times before about Lenore Skenazy’s book Free-Range Kids (she has a blog, too). I read Tim Gill’s book “No Fear: Growing up in a risk averse society” which basically has the same point. Mr. Gill is a lot more… British… in his writing, but is even better researched (or at least, footnoted). It is a damning indictement of the culture of fear we have built up, especially surrounding the impossible – and incredibly harmful – attempt at creating a perfectly safe world for children.

Since his book was (and perhaps still is) available for free on the Internet, I’ve attached it to this post. I also quote some of my favourite sections below.

No Fear by Tim Gill [PDF]

(more…)

Quick little update regarding interesting mutterings in the blogosphere:

• BoingBoing reports on a handy graph of how much health care costs in various countries. Guess who stands out?
  
• Wired has a great article on anti-vaccine hysteria & the evidence. (via BoingBoing):
  

  At this year’s Autism One conference in Chicago, I flashed more than once on Carl Sagan’s idea of the power of an “unsatisfied medical need.” Because a massive research effort has yet to reveal the precise causes of autism, pseudo-science has stepped aggressively into the void. In the hallways of the Westin O’Hare hotel, helpful salespeople strove to catch my eye as I walked past a long line of booths pitching everything from vitamins and supplements to gluten-free cookies (some believe a gluten-free diet alleviates the symptoms of autism), hyperbaric chambers, and neuro-feedback machines.

  To a one, the speakers told parents not to despair. Vitamin D would help, said one doctor and supplement salesman who projected the equation “No vaccines + more vitamin d = no autism” onto a huge screen during his presentation. (If only it were that simple.) Others talked of the powers of enzymes, enemas, infrared saunas, glutathione drips, chelation therapy (the controversial — and risky — administration of certain chemicals that leech metals from the body), and Lupron (a medicine that shuts down testosterone synthesis).

  Offit calls this stuff, much of which is unproven, ineffectual, or downright dangerous, “a cottage industry of false hope.”

• Bruce Schneier comments on zero-tolerance policies:
  

  These policies enrage us because they are blind to circumstance. Editorial after editorial denounced the suspensions of elementary school children for offenses that anyone with any common sense would agree were accidental and harmless. The Internet is filled with essays demonstrating how the TSA’s rules are nonsensical and sometimes don’t even improve security. I’ve written some of them. What we want is for those involved in the situations to have discretion.

  However, problems with discretion were the reason behind these mandatory policies in the first place. Discretion is often applied inconsistently. One school principal might deal with knives in the classroom one way, and another principal another way. Your drug sentence could depend considerably on how sympathetic your judge is, or on whether she’s having a bad day.

Dr. Dawg weighs in on the recent push to ban burkas in Canada, and he is incredibly eloquent and right on the money:

Summing up Fatah’s arguments, then, if some women in Canada want to walk around in niqab, they are in fact oppressed by a mediaeval, non-religious, misogynist custom, and must be rescued from themselves.

Hard-line feminists have said much the same thing in the past about miniskirts, heels and fishnets, although I don’t recall their demanding government legislation to enforce an alternative norm. Once again, they had a point, but it wasn’t the whole story. Social interaction, indeed the very construction of the “self,” is complex, volatile, always in flux, with numerous contending forces at play.

It’s funny because it’s true:

(via Dawg’s Blog)

Matt Taibbi on the US Health Care crisis:

The system doesn’t work for anyone. It cheats patients and leaves them to die, denies insurance to 47 million Americans, forces hospitals to spend billions haggling over claims, and systematically bleeds and harasses doctors with the specter of catastrophic litigation. Even as a mechanism for delivering bonuses to insurance-company fat cats, it’s a miserable failure: Greedy insurance bosses who spent a generation denying preventive care to patients now see their profits sapped by millions of customers who enter the system only when they’re sick with incurably expensive illnesses.The cost of all of this to society, in illness and death and lost productivity and a soaring federal deficit and plain old anxiety and anger, is incalculable — and that’s the good news. The bad news is our failed health care system won’t get fixed, because it exists entirely within the confines of yet another failed system: the political entity known as the United States of America.

via Dawg’s Blog.

About time, I say. See this Globe & Mail article, ‘At the Mercy of the Government’:

If you are in trouble overseas and go to a Canadian embassy, Canada’s government believes that it has the option, but not the obligation, to help. If the government is fond of you, like Brenda Martin, it may help with papers or a private jet home, but if it scorns you, like Mr. Abdelrazik, it may revoke your passport and exile you. The choice is the government’s alone.

No laws govern this relationship, the government says. As then-Mr. Justice Konrad von Finckenstein of the Federal Court wrote in an earlier case, “Canadians abroad would be surprised, if not shocked, to learn that the provision of consular services in an individual case is left to the complete and unreviewable discretion of the minister.” Except for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the minister’s exercise of the prerogative is absolute.

What this means is that Canadian citizenship is less than it appears.

Dr. Dawg is already all over this one, and it seems (shockingly) that the Liberals are against such Protection of Canadians. I suppose it makes sense, as the Abdelrazik thing started under their watch, after all. But Ignatieff, who has shown not even a shadow these last few months, is not making much of a positive impression on Canadians – at least, this Canadian.

I just received a link to a CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority) survey about their WHOIS policy. As you may know, sometime last year, due to privacy concerns, hid individual users’ names and contact details from the public WHOIS results. (I mentioned it briefly years ago).

Many have commented (see for example Michael Geist’s article on CIRA) how weak this protection actually is, since ‘law enforcement’ can just claim to be investigating you and get your details. (Oh, they have to claim its related to terrorism… but they claim EVERYTHING is related to terrorism these days.). Not to mention, the loophole that if someone has an intellectual property right claim against you… they can get your details.

If it’s a legitimate complaint, get a court order. How hard is that?

So, it seems they’re asking for input. Is it too much to hope for that they are rethinking their ways, or is this just a show to appease the critics? Unfortunately, I remain sceptical… a lot of questions were asking about EXPANDING the above loopholes…