| American freedom: fighting freedom for freedom fighting |
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| Written by SyS64738 (Roberto Preatoni) | ||||
| Tuesday, 02 January 2007 | ||||
 I remember when I was a kid, at school the teachers tought me about US, "the land of freedom". You know, we Italians (most of them, at least) always considered US like the freedom-fighting superpower who freed us from the fascists and exported democracy, even at their own cost in terms of lifes and money (remember the D-day and the Marshall plan?) Today I did an experiment, I went on Google Images and I typed the word "freedom". Guess what? The first three images appearing were, in order: a portrait of the liberty statue, an American flag with an American eagle and an image of M. Luther King. Pretty obvious right? But there was also an interesting fact about the fourth image. It was about Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Then I went looking further in Google's report and I realised that most of the first page images connected to the word "freedom" where somewhat related to US, for the good or for the bad... Interesting, this makes a point. America is today in a monopolistic position (anti-trust action required please) about the definition of everybody's freedom. Even the search engines noticed it... Every morning, my first two hours (job/personal time in my case are the same) are dedicated to read the press. This morning I reached an online article posted on the English newspaper Daily Telegraph that reports: Anger over the deal allowing the American authorities to obtain detailed information about passengers flying to the US intensified last night as MPs across the Commons condemned the agreement reached by Brussels negotiators. Ministers were under pressure to spell out the full terms of the pact after The Daily Telegraph's disclosure that the US had demanded the right to inspect email and credit card accounts of foreign nationals travelling to America. Douglas Alexander, the Transport Secretary, faced demands for a full explanation from Chris Grayling, his Tory opposite number. advertisement In a letter to Mr Alexander, Mr Grayling asked for details of what safeguards were available to British citizens whose details were subjected to further scrutiny and how they could challenge any intrusion in the American courts. "The suspicion is that ministers have allowed the EU to write a blank cheque for the US administration in the shape of what are very extensive new powers," he said last night "It is simply not acceptable that they appear to have tried to cover their tracks, and that it is only as a result of a Freedom of Information Act inquiry that the detail of what has been agreed has become public. Ministers need to explain themselves as a matter of urgency." Peter Kilfoyle, a former Labour defence minister, described the disclosures as "outrageous". He added: "This raises a series of issues, both judicial and in terms of sovereignty, and it is up to our Government to protect the right of its citizens." Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, attacked the "unbalanced agreement". He said: "Once again the British Government, this time along with other EU governments, has been willing to short-circuit the normal protections given to British citizens in the face of repeated demands from Washington." This time I prefer not to comment the news, I'd like to give space to your comments instead, so you are welcome to post on this board. I just want to tell you this: the last time I have seen a democratic government asking to the local ISPs to hand over copies of each delivered/received email it was in year 1999. It happened in Russia and the request was done by the FSB (former KGB). At that time, all the democratic countries criticized Russia for this attempt. Needless to say, the Russian ISPs refused to comply to the request. Now, where's the freedom?
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