The Thomas Chronicles

Imagine being fined or fired from your job because of the direction you part your hair. You prefer to part it to the right, others to the left, and still others right smack dab in the middle.

Or how about his, imagine being fired for putting too much sugar in your morning coffee. The boss would like to have a regulated amount dispensed into every container of coffee and excessive amounts will be penalized.

I know, I’m being circuitous about this, but I view this anti-smoking persecution in the same absurd light. Truly, what business is it of anyone if someone decides to smoke?

First, they created smoking sections inside public buildings. Understandable.

Then, they kicked them outside. For the public health.

Next, they congregate them into a area outside the building away from doors. The smell drifts in.

And then, they won’t allow smokers to smoke inside cars with non-smokers or minors. It’s really for their interest.

Then, they won’t allow them to smoke inside their apartments because the smell lingers in the hallway. It’s inconsiderate to others.

Not only do smokers bear the brunt of utter strangers berating them about their “filthy, disgusting, stinking” habit, they are now being fired from their jobs, forced to take blood tests from employers (which violates privacy), and even forced the offenders’ spouses to take blood tests.

This. Is. Tyranny. And bigotry. And discrimination. And persecution.

It’s all this in order for a others not to be inconvenienced because, God forbid, what would happen if they catch the scent of a cigarette on the street somewhere.

Howard Weyers tried the “carrot” approach by giving his employees incentives and encouragement to quit smoking. But when that didn’t work, he resorted to the stick. A big stick.

Weyers, owner of a health care benefits administrator in Lansing, Mich., gave his 200 employees an ultimatum in 2004: Quit smoking in 15 months or lose your job. He refused to hire smokers. Ultimately, he extended his smoking ban to employees’ spouses and monitored compliance through mandatory random blood testing.

Weyers’ method, while effective, wouldn’t fly in California because the state has laws that prohibit employers from making hiring or firing decisions based on employee participation in a legal activity. But participants in a smoking cessation forum hosted Monday by the Commonwealth Club of California found the idea nonetheless intriguing.

“We’re talking about ending an epidemic. This is a global pandemic,” said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, likening Weyers’ approach to controlling an outbreak of disease.

What happens when you’re the one doing the minority behavior? When you’re the one targeted by the mob?

What then?

I keep thinking about the deteriorating American landscape in Atlas Shrugged. Train derailments (here, here, and here), abandoned factories, nationalized industries (In the book, it was a rail line in Mexico), etcetera, etcetera .

Excellence, industry, creativity is regulated and repressed, and it is done under the obscene pretense for the concern of the common man or some noble cause. These things are replaced with mediocrity and self-righteous indolence; but excellence and industry is primarily replaced with looting.

Yes, looting.

We are lesser men looting over the carcass of others long past, whose achievements built the foundations upon which we stand. Their voices, once a resounding trumpet across all the nations and across all the world, are now soft whispers lingering there in the back of our minds.

They are our forefathers, the men who fashioned this nation into being and breathed life into a near empty wilderness continent.

Are we to devolve into vultures picking off the wealth and industry of our forebearers instead of adding to it? Have we become nothing but looters who think themselves superior because of our new laptops and iPods?

These were the thoughts scrolling through my mind as I read the article from my last post. Here is a fuller rendering of that section in that article:

Jeffrey Sachs, who runs the U.N.’s “Millennium Project,” says that the U.N. plan to force the U.S. to pay 0.7 percent of GNP in increased foreign aid spending would add $65 billion a year to what the U.S. already spends. Over a 13-year period, from 2002, when the U.N.’s Financing for Development conference was held, to the target year of 2015, when the U.S. is expected to meet the “Millennium Development Goals,” this amounts to $845 billion. And the only way to raise that kind of money, Sachs has written, is through a global tax, preferably on carbon-emitting fossil fuels.

Their plan is clear. Divest America of her self-created wealth to jumpstart a world government, a New World Order, as it were. However, if we allow the United Nations to tax us, we’ve just given up one of the most basic elements of sovereignty, the right to rule ourselves as we see fit.

If these Internationalists, if these Globalists win, our freedom will not be far behind, for how can free men stand free when our very ability to make decisions is taken from us?

That, my friend, is not freedom. It is the chains of slavery.

***Update Below***

Good ole’ Google, in addition to imposing internet censorship on China and perhaps unknowingly on other countries, is going a bit too far with their maps. I don’t know if I blogged about their “Street View” feature when it was first rolled out in San Francisco and Las Vegas; if I didn’t I should have.

What they are doing is insane. I can see my parents’ neighborhood in Houston from the adjoining street. This kind of intrusion into one’s privacy is unconscionable whatever anyone says. I know someone is going to say that it doesn’t infringe upon personal liberty because you can only see houses from the outside. This, I submit, is beside the point. Everyone who has watched real TV these past few years knows that a person behaves differently when observed as opposed to when he is not.

An apt analogy for this kind of phenomena is the Panopticon. No, this isn’t a fancy digital do-hickee. This is the name of a type of prison.

In this prison, as the structural theory goes, no inmate has any privacy whatsoever. The structure is so arranged to where all the cells are facing each other in a circle. One inmate can see what another inmate is doing on the other side, and the other inmate can also see him as well. Most importantly, however, is the center guard tower, which monitors and sees everyone. This the panoptic effect where, as the theory goes, inmates would behave better if they know with certainty that they are constantly being observed without cessation. The Panopticon tower sees them, if not their own fellow inmates.

Like a disobedient child under the observation of a strict school teacher, this Panoptic Eye constricted the behaviors of the inmates for fear of being disciplined.

And if I remember Jeremy Bentham’s essay correctly (it has been eight years ago), this psychological tactic worked brilliantly in the modification of inmate behavior. It made them more malleable.

Can’t it be said that Google with their “Street View” feature and other such programs are doing much of the same thing on a mass nationwide level? For people scoffing that such a thing can’t be done, who think this is much to science fiction in tone and manner, they can take a long hard look at Britain. Far from just implementing these intrusive cameras, in true Orwellian fashion, they have given them voice and speech, with an authority figure behind the camera issuing commands.

However, issuing commands to unwitting pedestrians to throw away their trash in the trash cans isn’t the main thrust and purpose of these talking cameras. Like the Panopticon, it’s main purpose is to assure you that someone is watching, and so, you had better behave yourself. The fact that Britain now has live people behind those cameras berating itinerant pedestrians simply lends it more teeth, but give cameras a voice box isn’t entirely necessary.

This tyranny of the seeing eye makes prisoners of us all.

Update:

I found this tidbit off the Drudge Report tonight. It’s an article from Britain talking about their latest expansion of the CCTV talkie cameras in Norwich Park.

“We want CCTV because it means people will use their parks and aren’t frightened to be there,” added Mr Bremner. “People are asking for it. We have surveyed the whole city and the response is incredibly positive.

“We are not in a police state, we are in a democracy and people understand we are doing it for their safety. This will help make these places safe.”

Although critics have likened the new talking system to the nightmare vision of the future George Orwell wrote about in his novel 1984, many people believe the advantages are worth it.

I think it is the measure of England’s moral and intellectual bankruptcy that they cannot see the tyranny in this. The justification for the implementing this tyranny is so mind-blowingly facile, you have to double take, re-read it and pinch yourself to make sure this isn’t some bizarre Twilight Zone dream. The British gave up their liberties just so that can feel nice and safe, as though a disembodied voice will stop a murder, a robbery or make a prig less prig-ish.

Obviously it won’t. What it will do is to tyrannize otherwise decent people, and shred any hope of privacy. The loud speakers will berate you publicly for leaving a candy wrapper on the ground, but it will be powerless in the face of a violent crime.

Indeed, I’ve been hearing reports here and there of the police completely ignoring a person shouting up to the cameras for help in desperate matters. If there were police nearby, they’d just drive by, and the person in desperate straits might as well rule out any action taken by that person behind the camera. In effect, these cameras prey on the average citizenry while the criminals still do what they’ve always done since time immemorial. Breaking laws.

And it seems America is going full speed in the same direction. Virtually overnight, these CCTV cameras have popped up in cities all over the United States at street intersections. I don’t recall us ever voting on the measure as a people; either on the national level or city level. It seems the decisions have been made for us by judicial and legislative fiat.

And the lack of protest on this matter in the land of Liberty is deafening.

***Update Below***

YahooNews reported today that the American Medical Association just approved the use of radio frequency identification tags, or RFIDs, to improve “”safety and efficiency of patient care”.

Oh joy.

CHICAGO (AFP) - Doctors could soon be storing essential medical information under the skin of their patients, the American Medical Association says.

Devices the size of a grain of rice that are implanted with a needle could give emergency room doctors quick access to the records of chronically ill patients, the nation’s largest doctors group said in a report.

The association adopted a policy Monday stating that the devices can improve the “safety and efficiency of patient care” by helping to identify patients and enabling secure access to clinical information.

These radio frequency identification tags (RFIDs) are already used by Wal-Mart and other businesses to speed up their shipping systems by sending out small signals that can be scanned more easily than bar codes.

Implanting them in people “can improve the continuity and coordination of care with resulting reductions in adverse drug events and other medical errors,” said the report prepared by the association’s ethics committee.

….

They may also cause interference with electrical devices like defibrillators and it has not been determined what impact they would have on prescription drugs.

The report concluded that it is “likely that utilization of RFID devices for medical purposes will expand.”

….

The FDA may eventually approve “active” devices which contain internal batteries and can be updated as a patient’s condition changes.

While I can understand all the arguments against this device, such as it interfering with a heart defibrillator and all the concomitant privacy concerns, I have a very simple argument against this. The Christian one.

He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.

This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666.

-Revelation 13:16-18

Is this what they meant by “active” devices?

These devices have been around for quite a while now, but they’ve been sitting below the radar. Back in August of 2005, Foxnews had a special report about these devices and concluded that Americans have a widely held deep distrust of RFID implants.

Arthur Caplan, PhD, who is the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania believes that American distrust of these devices are understandable but irrational.

Americans may think their medical information is top secret. But Caplan says that we have far less privacy than we think we do, given the number of people who can legitimately see our medical records. And the potential benefits of RFID implants outweigh their risks, Caplan argues.

“You are more likely to die or be harmed by lack of medical information about you than by people knowing too much about your medical information,” he says. “In an emergency, it’s important for doctors to know what your allergies and medical problems are, who your relatives are and how to reach them, your blood type, and so on.”

But Caplan says that Americans’ distrust of things like RFID implants runs deep.

“The idea of putting something in your head or in your arm frightens people and stirs up privacy worries, even if they don’t make a lot of sense,” he says. “Americans have an almost obsessive drive to protect their personal privacy.”

Halamka, however, is already dreaming about future upgrades.

“If a chip could also serve as a GPS, reporting my location, or act as an emergency transponder, requesting rescue, I would definitely upgrade,” he says.

The AMA’s approval of this device went down without a whimper. Apparently, its passage wasn’t important enough for Americans to protest…

The ironic part of all this is that we have had one movie after another practically screaming to warn everyone of a potential technological tyranny. 1984, Brave New World, Minority Report, THX 1138, The Island, The Matrix— the list is endless.

And we are going full speed ahead. Just ask the British.

Update:

Seeing that this is a very serious subject, I thought I’d further clarify my comments above about the chip being related to the Mark of the Beast. The key thing in my understanding of this scripture is the willing surrender of the individual will to the Beast. That is, if someone sneaked the chip into your body unawares, I don’t think that means automatic damnation. I think it turns of the renouncing of Jesus the Christ.

That, however, is just my opinion. I think all Christians should be asking Jesus on this matter and take their direction straight from Him. This is far too important a topic for personal opinions to decide.

***Update below 6/7/07***

Since my last posting on Great Britain, I thought I’d share some more good cheer about Great Britain that most Americans aren’t aware of. Almost as though it was deliberately crafted to the end of transforming Britain into Orwell’s 1984, Britain is now called the “Surveillance Society“.

Britain has more than 4 million closed-circuit security cameras, more than any other Western democracy. Police say the average Briton is on as many as 300 cameras every day, usually unaware. The density of surveillance is significantly higher than in any other Western democracy, says Jen Corlew, spokeswoman for Liberty, a London-based human rights group.

And the laughs don’t end there folks. In a true Orwellian twist, those cameras are now talking!

Yet the country’s surveillance network, which boasts one camera for every fourteen citizens, is no longer merely facilitating observance: It has now begun talking back. In a scene eerily reminiscent of Orwell’s dystopian vision of 1984, loudspeakers in one small-town center in northern Britain scold anyone they catch engaged in “anti-social behaviour,” including littering, drunkenness, or fighting.

Observing a bank of monitors in the council “control centre,” Middlesbrough town officials use the technology to broadcast warnings to deviants in real-time. The crime-fighting strategy behind the “speaker cam” draws upon the humiliation of being rebuked in public. A representative explained its function to the BBC in April as being to “embarrass” misbehavers into following the rules. Reports of wrongful chiding have been plentiful.

In an age of terrorism and asymmetrical warfare, we should be asking ourselves what the line should be. At what point and to what degree should we surrender our freedoms in order to identify and apprehend terrorists? These are serious questions that should be asked in a high-tech democratic society.

Thus far in the US, I think our endeavors have found a delicate middle ground between the cliff Britain just jumped off of (to the wholehearted approval of many of the British) and maintaining our liberties. President Bush’s surveillance programs and their monitoring of fluctuation in monetary transfers walks that fine line whereby citizens are protected from terrorists while keeping their freedom. But what of all these emerging technologies that could be turned against us?

For instance, it was reported by The Smoking Gun that the terrorists who planned to blow up JFK Airport used Google’s “Google Earth” feature to gain intelligence for their attack. Should Google be forced to shutdown this capacity that’s open to the public? Another example is one we see advertised on TV: The Visa Pay-as-you-go card. This will make money transfers extremely difficult to trace. I think it was conceived as a way for resident aliens and illegal immigrants to transfer money back to their home country, but terrorists can use it as well. So, should Visa be forced to shut this program down?

I don’t know the answer here. I’m just posing the question. Whatever else, I think we should take it one step at a time and case by case.

Update:

Here part of a transcript from Foxnews’s Special Report on April 5th:

HUME: The newest tool in law enforcement in Britain is not a fancy new gun or computer program, it is relatively traditional loudspeaker. And the way those speakers are being used has some people saying they can hear the voice of Big Brother. Correspondent Amy Kellogg has a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMY KELLOGG, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From this control room in the English town of Middlesbrough, officials say they’re taking back the streets from violent dogs and litterbugs. Not content to just watch their citizens, the local authorities use speakers on security cameras to give them a dressing down when they’re caught doing anything inappropriate in public.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You’re in an illegal area and you get a ticket.

KELLOGG: With a large student population and a depressed local economy, the speakers have been busy. Here, they prevent a young reveler from taking home a roadside souvenir.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Remember to put your litter in the rubbish.

KELLOGG: And elsewhere in town, they remind residents it’s not nice to litter.

HARRY MASON, CCTV CONTROLLER: We try and be firm, but not be rude or aggressive.

KELLOGG: The town security coordinator says the system is a good way of countering antisocial behavior.

JACK BONNAR, SECURITY MANAGER: It is the element of surprise that somebody is talking to you.

KELLOGG (on camera): Great Britain is already crammed with CCTV cameras. The average Brit is photographed 300 times a day by some estimates. (voice-over): And for that reason, a lot of people call Britain “Big Brother Nation.” They say that security cameras are intrusive enough, but putting speakers on them would add insult to injury.

GARETH CROSSMAN, CIVIL LIBERTARIAN: It might be of some very limited use in dealing with very minor activity. But this is not going to stop any sort of real serious crime taking place.

KELLOGG: Still, back in Middlesbrough, the camera speaker system has drawn a generally positive response.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is a bit Big Brotherish, but I think it’s doing a good thing rather than a bad thing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People just drop litter and I mean, other people should say something to them, but they don’t.

KELLOGG: Local officials even suggest the system could play in the states with local concerns in the U.S. about community security. That remains to be seen, but it’s moving ahead here. Similar systems will be installed in 20 areas in the coming months.
In London, Amy Kellogg, FOX NEWS.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Here is the BBC’s report on the new talking Orwellian cameras.

Amazingly, not many of the people interviewed were perturbed in the least. Most of them just kind of shrug. Not even concerned enough to be riled up at all.

Or as T.S. Eliot so aptly wrote:

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.