Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Links on race and living in the USA

A few links for you all as we head into the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US.

1. A story of how someone(s) defaced Gap's advert and Gap's response. Much has been said on this and I won't repeat it but a) this is New York City. New bloody York. Bastion of civilization and all that. Pshaw. b) The chap is a Sikh and people have mistook him for Muslim ("make bombs"). c) Of course, if he *were* Muslim, it wouldn't make this sort of thing any better.

I"m assuming it wouldn't be difficult to know who did this. After all, subway stations should have CCTVs. But, while Reddit and its ilk are pretty keen on figuring out (wrong) "terrorists" during mass murder events (see the Boston bombings), there's far less interest in figuring out hate-related issues. Or, racism.

2. Talking of racism, the latest NSA story discusses how various prominent and non-prominent Muslims were kept under surveillance and their porn-viewing habits tracked in case (note this: in case! Not when. Not as) they do something nefarious. There are a lot of things to be upset about in this whole NSA surveillance saga but this is absurd.

3. Finally, here's the story of how TSA spent $900 million over the last 5 years on "behavior detection officers" to detect high-risk travellers. How many travellers were caught? 0. Yup, zero.


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