Direct from Quare's Website...

[eredien]

...is a picture of this terrifiying police poster in Britain.

The commentary below the poster talks about Orwell's 1984, but I was reminded of the excellent graphic novel V is for Vendetta - the art style, the strange surrealist atmosphere of parts of it, the colors, the message. Everything.

It's really sad to think that this poster is not a movie prop for either of those distopian visions.

Comments

[thespooniest.livejournal.com]

Terrifying, you say?

Good word for it. Maybe you could have used something a shade stronger, though. This particular concept is one of the few things for which I reserve the term "abomination".

and even more...

[weirdquark]

I found this a few days ago on that libray newsgroup I'm on. Reminded me of V for Vendetta. I meant to post on my LJ but couldn't come up with anything more than incoherent rage and a really deep sense of foreboding. Distopia. We do not want to live in that world. No. Bad. Scary.

Why is there anyone that thinks this is a good idea?

UK GOVERNMENT PLANS CELL PHONE TOWER TRACKING SYSTEM
The government of the U.K. is funding secret radar technology research that
uses mobile phone masts to enable security officials to watch vehicles and
people in real time almost anywhere in Britain. The Celldar technology,
which works wherever there is cell phone coverage, "sees" the shapes made
when radio waves emitted by the towers meet an obstruction. Signals bounced
back by immobile objects, such as buildings and trees, are filtered out by
the receiver, and what's left on the screen are images of anything that
moves. When combined with technology that allows individuals to be
identified by their mobile phone handsets, the Celldar system would enable
security officials to locate and track a specific person from hundreds of
miles away. An individual using one type of receiver, a portable unit a
little bigger than a laptop, could even create a "personal radar space"
around his or her location for security purposes. Researchers are also
working on an "X-ray vision" feature that would enable the devices to "see"
through walls and look into people's homes. UK Ministry of Defence
officials are hoping to introduce the system as soon as resources allow,
but civil liberties advocates have been quick to complain: "It's an
appalling idea. The government is just capitalizing on current public fears
over security to introduce new systems that are neither desirable nor
necessary," says Simon Davies, director of Privacy International. (The
Observer 13 Oct 2002)

Re: and even more...

[thespooniest.livejournal.com]

Why is there anyone that thinks this is a good idea? There are two types of people who do.

One type is, as we all know, the power-hungry bastards who want to control people. Luckily, in the past they never managed to get all that far. Thus, while their existence was cause for concern, they were never much of a real problem.

Unfortunately, 9/11, the sniper, and such, have given rise to a bunch of cowards, running to a government for protection it can't give them and deep down they know that but they're not willing to face the reality with anything remotely resembling courage because it's just not as comfortable as before. These people wouldn't be a problem either, except that the aforementioned power-hungry bastards have latched onto this group, and are doing everything they can to make that group as big as possible, because they could get their plans implemented with the support of the sheep.

I'm afraid I don't see too much hope in the situation. Not unless someone or something can inspire real courage in the masses again.

Eeps

[arcturax.livejournal.com]

I posted this to ~sos_usa as well. Thanks for pointing it out! *snugs*

Re: and even more...

[weirdquark]

*sighs* yeah. I know, I know. Sometimes I like to pretend the world is as rational as I am, but it's just not so.

Gotta do something about those masses. Don't know what, thought, I'm afraid.

"Abomnation"

[eredien]

I reserve abomnation for this. (The tone of voice just doesn't come through, even with italics...maybe that's a good thing. I bite the words off when I talk about this.)

Re: "Abomnation"

[thespooniest.livejournal.com]

OK, you win.

That's fairly old news, though. We were discussing this on the MacNN boards a long time back. It was rather dismaying how many deaf people on the boards supported the mothers in this deliberate inflicting of a disability on their child. Then again, most of them apparently don't consider deafness to be a disability.

Which, I mean, I can see them not wanting a stigma attached to it, but denial isn't a healthy way of dealing with things.

Re: "Abomnation"

[homasse.livejournal.com]

OK, so maybe I'm a freak, but I didn't see what the big problem was, here. both of them were deaf. If one of them had been a man and they'd had a child biologically together, the child would have been deaf. Plus, they see it as a cultural identity and do not see it necessarily as a handicap. You say they are "inflicting" this on their child, and yet, like I said--the child would have been deaf if one of them was a man and they biologically had a child. Are you saying that deaf parents who willingly have deaf children are doing the same thing? Because you're really close to that, if you think about it.

And why should deaf people say that being deaf isn't a disability? Yeah, maybe it is, but deafness is profoundly different from other disabilities in that it creates a different kind of culture. It has it's own language. When you create a language, you create and culture, and you identify yourself within that culture. These two people live in a deaf world. They live in a deaf society. We consider it a disability, but then, 50 years ago, would you have wanted to be a Black man living in the South? Black skin was in a lot of ways just as disabling once upon a time, after all.

Re: "Abomnation"

[eredien]

I think this: black skin was a handicap, yes. But those people in the South did not choose it. The two deaf women have a perfect right (and indeed ought to) introduce their child to deaf culture. It's rich and beautiful and has its own language. I wish I knew more about it and plan on doing research. But they chose that lifestyle for their child without his consent.

If it had been a deaf man and deaf woman together the liklihood that their child would have been deaf would probably be very high, yes. But there is also a slight possiblity that the child would have been almost-hearing, or hearing. And therefore the lifestyle choice would not have been sure entirely.

Every disablity creates its own culture with its own subsets of language or language itself (Braile, for example), not just deafness. That's just one of the most visible cultures.

Honestly (and I hate to say this, because I think it may be misinterpreted, but it's really what I believe) anyone who has a disability such as deafness or blindness or even severe mental illness who believes that they don't really have a disabilty is deluding themselves.
Now, I'm not saying that in some ways their life might not be better for the disability. I've come to some of the best realizations about myself and others around me in some of my own most depressed moments and believe that disabilities might be there for a variety of reasons, the best of which can be to help people discover just how amazing they themselves are and can be.

But also, I can't help but think that at least once those women must have wondered what hearing, really hearing, might be like. And at some points wondered what they were missing out on. And at some points, for maybe just a flash of time, may have become deeply jealous of hearing people, despite all the benefits of a truly rich cultural life and the moments of realization and uplifted-ness that they may have had.

And wanted to hear.

And I don't understand and don't know why they at least wouldn't give their child the chance at that opportunity.