This is going to be the last Shameless Self-promotion Sunday for the next couple of weeks, so let’s make it a good one.
As some of you already know, I’m going to spend the next week clearing the deck as well as possible, and then departing for a voyage to India. (I am visiting L. during the last two weeks of her study abroad; we’ll be visiting Kochi, Mumbai, Dehli, and a few points in between, and coming back together toward the end of September.) I’ll be almost completely incommunicado while I’m away; which means if you want to get Shameless, you’d better get while the getting’s good.
So what have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.
Schumer Bill Sends Reinforcements, Drones to Border. www.nydailynews.com (2010-08-28):
The Senate passed a $600 million bill tonight to beef up border security by adding 1,500 new enforcement agents and sending airborne drones to search for illegal immigrants. The bill, backed by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), targets the Mexican border...
In which "Progressive" Democrats pursue a sensible to comprehensive immigration reform by massively increasing the violent enforcement of border policies that they themselves criticize as arbitrary and irrational and desperately in need of a radical overhaul. The United States Senate's notion of "making the border more secure than ever" is of course to further militarize the 200 mile free-fire zone, among other things creating a paramilitary "strike force" of 1,000 new border guards to interdict, harass or shoot immigrants trying to cross an imaginary line in the sand, and expropriating $32,000,000 to pay for unmanned drone warplanes to help them spy on the borderlands. Schumer, progressive humanitarian that he is, wants us to know that at least the drones won't be armed with air-to-surface missiles. Yet. So just who is this policy of increased spying and border militarization making more "secure"? Not people living on or near the border, that's for sure.
It’s Sunday. Everybody get Shameless.
You know what the day is; and you know that Shamelessness is the reason for the season. So, what have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.
Surveillance, Security, Privacy, Politics. Ian Bicking: a blog (2010-08-18):
I hang around people who talk about security and privacy and activists quite a bit. When talking security beyond the typical attackers — people committing identity theft, simple vandals, spammers, etc. — there’s the topic of government surveillance and legal attacks, and privacy as a way to defend political activists...
I'm running a fever right now and suffering from the physical effects of several vaccines combined with a too-large dose of direct sunlight earlier today. But I wanted to link this while I have the chance. I hope to have something more to say about it once I've recovered a bit; in the meantime, though, just read the whole thing.