You aren't safe. Neither are your children. The world is an increasingly dangerous place. The culling of civil liberties and the growth of 24/7 surveillance is for your own good. Never, never allow your children to walk to school. Report any and all suspicious behavior, no matter how innocent it might appear at the time. Too much freedom is what brought us to this terrible time. 9-11. 9-11. 9-11. Remember, rapists, child molesters, and terrorists are sitting on your back porch ready to strike at a moment's notice.
That last paragraph was meant to scare you. It was also, hopefully, sufficiently over the top that you caught a whiff of its stink. Those messages, however, are constantly hurled at us by an increasingly suspicious, distrustful, and militarized society. And we're falling for it. As our politicians talk about the heroes fighting for our freedom here and abroad, it is important -- make that vital -- that we recognize an even more frightening truth. We are dangerously close to throwing away the rights and freedoms that earlier heroes have fought and died for in numbers we can't begin to comprehend today.
CBC Radio runs a wonderful program called Ideas. In their program, The Suspect Society, Ideas explores our society of fear and the worrisome erosion of civil liberties for the sake of security. You can listen to the show by following this link to the CBC. This is an extremely important program that you need to listen to. Listen, then share with others.
My thanks to Michael Willems for directing me to this topic.
Suspicious Linux Users
Linux users who want to use mplayer to listen can use this link, rtsp://media.cbc.ca/cbc.ca/ideas/media/2008/the-suspect-society-ep1.rm for part 1, and this one, rtsp://media.cbc.ca/cbc.ca/ideas/media/2008/the-suspect-society-ep2.rm for part 2. Just right-click on the links and select "Open with" then choose mplayer (or vlc). You can also just take it to the command line like this:
If you wanted to save the stream, this works nicely too.