Saturday 13 February 2010

Linkliste unbehandelter Themen

The soundtrack for your reading: "Percussion Gun" by the White Rabbits, a six-piece band from New York City (why is vimeo so much prettier than youtube?)

While I completely support the Robin-Hood-notion of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor (yes, "Leverage" is something I look forward to every week, even though Christian Kane looks like a little girl with that hair bring on the hate), I think the whole idea becomes a little bit problematic when governments engage in the purchase of stolen goods to fight tax evasion. You fight tax evasion with policy and binational agreements, and no, getting back more money than you invest in the purchase of said stolen good does not make it any more right. 

The EU-directive about "Vorratsdatenspeicherung " isn't just currently under review in the German constitutional court , there is also an effort among lawyers and judges to have it repealed. My internet provider definitely knows more about me than most people in my life (ugh. is that bad?) and it's a little bit scary that people don't actually care about this a little bit more. As this is a huge programme to be only used for the "Fight against terrorism", it will naturally slowly grow into something of relevance in the fight against illegal filesharing and (what? DIVORCE?). Pandora's box. 

I've avoided the issue so far but here it comes: "Anwesenheitspflicht" for asylum seekers is the rainbows and unicorns version of incarceration. It's unconstitutional, so why are we even discussing it? The "we have to be able to talk about everything" doctrine sounds nice (let's talk about adoption for gay couples! hey, where did you go?), but this conversation should go something like this: "So we've thought about detaining asylum seekers for weeks inside the reception centres because that will clearly help to avoid conflicts" / "But that's unconstitutional" / "OK, next idea."

To soothe the feelings of frustration and hopelessness, pretty leaves art.   

Look, an entire post without mentioning ... almost oh and this 

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