[DerbyX]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

I'd feel a little more sorry for the scrutinty they are under if they weren't advocating widespread police-monitored surveillance cameras here in Vancouver. Hey--you want to spy on me 24/7? Well we'll just spy on you then!

Are they proposing a CCTV monitoring system. Britain implemented it quite a while ago and I remember it was met with lots of big brother comments and such. I do recall seeing a documentary that it was used successfully in many areas (I think Leeds was the locale for this one) where violence was common place. The example they used was some guy just out of the blue cold-cocking an unsuspecting man out walking with his GF then kicking him on the ground. Even before he has the chance to run the police are there to arrest the prick.

Of course it isn't fool proof. Once when my mate and I were coming home from the bars in Brighton 3 cops stopped all of us. The simply told us to remain where we were without explanation. No idea what was going down. After about 10 minutes they let us go just like that sans explanation. We knew they were talking to someone over radio so we figured they were talking to the people running the CCTV to tell them if we were the guys they were looking for. We weren't.

It probably can do a lot of good in certain areas and its the kind of thing people will resent until they need it.

[ttruscott]

$1:

...that violence indeed breeds violence.

Who says?

Excuse me but the quote is:

$1:

And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand. ~ George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"

from a piece of FICTION by George B.Shaw, whose view of morality was confined to: "morals are a luxury of the rich."

Did the Dalai Lama say it? No, he said:

$1:

According to the Dalai Lama, “If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.” (Seattle Times, May 15, 2001).

Elsewhere, the Dalai Lama said:

$1:

"if the situation was such that there was only one learned lama or genuine practitioner alive, a person whose death would cause the whole of Tibet to lose all hope of keeping its Buddhist way of life, then it is conceivable that in order to protect that one person it might be justified for one or 10 enemies to be eliminated—if there was no other way. I could justify violence only in this extreme case, to save the last living knowledge of Buddhism itself."

George Orwell warned us the loudest about the corrupting power of power. So let us NEVER forget the his quote:

$1:

He (Kipling) sees clearly that men can only be highly civilized when other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to defend and feed them.

Even the father of Indian independence and one of the world's most famous pacifists, Mohandas Gandhi, observed in 1927,

$1:

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of its arms as the blackest."

a far cry from denouncing the use of force.