Mulling over Rene Laederach to Steve Asher 02 Aug 2003

Hi Rene..

SA>  RL> The price is pretty steep, considering the fact that this is
SA>  RL> mandatory. A new tax?
SA> 
SA> A tax, for sure, but I would be very surprised if it is called a tax.

 RL> No, you call it "Umweltabgaben", or some other doo-hickey term. 

SA> That is what it looks like to me too, but again, the powers that be will
SA> "sex it up" to use one of their phrases to make it sound
like something
SA> desirable, to protect them from on-line fraud, "identity
theft", etc.

 RL> As usual. Taking guns away from people makes them safer, limiting
 RL> vehicles to drive 120 km/h on Swiss motorways via modifying the
 RL> engine electronics will lower the accident rate and so on...I call
 RL> that a nanny government. 

I call that archaic. A true nanny government will leave the illusion
of freedom - keep the guns, but undergo background checks to own them
or purchase ammunition, fit biometric safety locks on them, set up
registries of spent bullets & casings; fit GPS systems to all vehicles
to automatically generate road usage tolls, speed fines, demerit points,
revocation of licence etc, together with an audit trail of where the
vehicles are at any given time. Naturally, biometric interlocks will
be needed to access and start motor vehicles, to "prevent" theft &
use in subsequent crimes - ram raids, hold-ups etc.

SA> IIRC, he used a faked poll that summarised the bulk of the opposing 
 RL> views.

 RL> I also do some summarizing, but usually, I tell some network router
 RL> to summarize routes at the outbound interface.
 RL>  

SA> to "9/11", identity theft etc. I suspect that anyone planning to 
SA> board an aircraft & hijack it etc will make sure that they have 
SA> suitable credentials to fool the airline & gate staff, & probably 
SA> leave plenty of "evidence" behind, in the form of copies of the 
SA> Koran, last will & testament, box cutters (stanley knives), just 
SA> like they did in the USA.

 RL> As usual.

 RL> With 9/11, I'm slowly asking myself "Cui Bono?" - who drew
 RL> advantages? The islamic terrorists?

I don't think so. While we may never know who the architect of "9/11"
was, the beneficiaries seem to be those intent on entering a never
ending war on terror, at the expense of personal liberty.

SA> Its translation feature is quite handy for that. One page I found is 
SA> pushing for the inclusion of criminal convictions, along with the
SA> biometrics etc. It wouldn't really be necessary to put that stuff
SA> on the card, which would just act like a password to the masses of
SA> data held online about the person.

 RL> Like with convicted rapists where their addresses are published?
 RL> I'm still convinced of the validity of the concept that if one is
 RL> found to be guilty of the following crimes:

 RL> - premeditated murder
 RL> - rape
 RL> - sexual child abuse
 RL> - drug dealing, importation, manufacture and money laundering for
 RL> drug money - attemto to bribe public officials, government and
 RL> parliament members, as  well
 RL>   as the accomplished crime
 RL> - being a public official, government or parliament member and
 RL> taking bribes 

 RL> they should face the firing squad. Much better than to have them
 RL> lynched by  the masses. And also, it saves quite some taxpayer 
 RL> money.

SA> And when they find that the contractor(s) cannot deliver, or the software
SA> is too buggy, or whatever, the cost will blow out even further. By that

 RL> As usual, cost overruns. I'm working in that business as well, and
 RL> I'm suffering from such problems as well, but I usually have to
 RL> support that software.

SA> time, there will be a change of government, & the new govt can spend its
SA> term blaming its predecessors, while stuffing it up even more.

 RL> They should rather use some heavy-handed measures to slim down the
 RL> public expenses a lot.

Have you ever seen that happen? (Apart from in election propaganda)

Cheers, Steve..

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