Of course having nothing to declare at customs is far more believable than not participating in social media but when travelling to the police states of the world—be it China that takes the full suite of finger-prints of its visitors or the US that just demands passwords to one’s social media accounts, one ought to be fully prepared to sacrifice something, like a decoy wallet with sufficient funds to score a high or a dummy but maintained account that might be enough to satisfy the goons at border control. One is penalised for opting out. As specious as the argument is that if one has nothing to hide, then one has nothing to fear, it is just as faulty as believing that the nebulous authorities already enjoy full-access anyway.
Granted that to a significant degree, we are individually protected by the size of the herd, there is still such a thing as privacy and personal space that the minions of security-theatre haven’t yet managed to infiltrate and some hosts with the integrity not to open the back-door to snoops and spies. Unlike in countries where private deportment can be punishable by death, the concern in the West is not so much that governments want to expose deviant leanings or infidelities—though that may not be far off under administration of holy-rollers, or would blackmail individuals with such information, but rather that incriminating materials or connections could be easily fabricated in order to assassinate the character of those not in step and critical of the regime and its policies. It would be a technical simple feat to scan one’s devices as they go through check-points and plant something illicit on them. Taking intrusion to the next level, social media access could be used to inflict all sorts of damage, setting off false daisy-chains of associations and label one as Status Non-Gratis for life. Forbidden materials wouldn’t be restricted to the physical memory of one’s devices, but could be deployed to the รฆther to be recalled when needed. Who knows? We subversives may already have a script floating out there somewhere, ready for our own consummation and famacide, once our usefully has lapsed.
Monday 13 February 2017
asking for a friend
catagories: ๐ฅธ, networking and blogging, travel
Sunday 12 February 2017
bundesebene
A special convention of 1 260 electors—majority of whom are politicians but also some important members of the community from different constituencies and รฉminence grises—designated Frank-Walter Steinmeyer, off-and-on Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2005 and member of the right-leaning (relatively) Social Democratic Party (SPD) will convene to select a replacement for Germany’s ceremonial president (DE/EN) Joachim Gauck, who will retire in March.
Previously, I’ve advocated that the titular head of state could be handed over to one of the dethroned dynastic royal families, not necessarily be recreated Germany as constitutional monarchy, but such pedigreed individuals could probably discharge those duties just as well, and would be willing to do it for the honour of servicing and would at least partially satisfy the Germans fascination with monarchy that’s now fully directed at the Battenbergs. At this juncture, however, I think it’s important and more than a little impressive that the government was able to cross party lines and elevate one whose opposed—but possibly more compliments the Chancellor, deputised as leader of the free world.
a for effort
semi-legendary
Although his Christian affiliation made him stop short of fully tracing back the lineage of revolutionary general and first president of the Republic George Washington to the Norse pantheon of gods, late nineteenth century genealogist and theologian Albert Welles, taking a cue from saga writer and fellow Christian Snorri Sturluson who demoted the gods to larger-than-life versions of good marshals and stewards of the tribe, essentially linked the individual also romanticised as Roman statesman and embodiment of civil virtue Cincinnatus, across thirty-two generations of Viking ancestors to Odin. Of course these myth-making sessions are important for the cohesion of a people and serve to legitimise leaders and their actions, and while this claim garnered no significant traction nor created pretensions of divine and ordained right, such Teutonic twists have in other milieu led to catastrophic conclusions.
catagories: ๐ฎ๐ธ, ๐บ๐ธ, myth and monsters