Nomen Nescio posted:
> AmtrakUs Bad Trip
>
> If our national passenger rail line can't turn a buck running trains, maybe it can
>by enlisting in the drug war.
>
> By Michael W. Lynch
>
> In addition to its high prices, weak coffee, bad food, and horrible service, hereUs
>one more reason to avoid Amtrak: It gives federal drug cops your travel itinerary.
>
> If the narcs donUt like how you paid for your ticket (helpful hint: avoid cash), or
>find a digit wrong in your phone number (or find none at all),
You need phone numbers to buy train tickets? Why? Since when? The USA
may be a wonderful country but over here where we we employ
sharpshooters to assassinate sheep and burn a million cows on pyres of
used tyres and railway sleepers (they are thinking of using napalm to
save money) no-one ever asks you for your phone number when you buy a
train ticket. Trust me, I have bought hundreds. Thousands. Why the hell
does a train company want to know your phone number? Do they call you up
and try to sell you things? Every passenger? No wonder they can't run
trains, if all the staff are wasting their time phoning people.
On the other hand you have great censorship laws over there. Freedom of
speech rules - except when you tread on the toes of large media
corporations while trying to say something unfashionably anti-racist,
like Alice Randall's "Wind Done Gone" which is supposedly a parody of
"Gone with the Wind". (And by the sound of it probably pretty dire -
but that's not the point). Parody and knocking copy are protected by
law in some countries. I look forward to smuggling copies of the banned
book into the US - it'll be a sort of poetic comeback for Spycatcher
(which I picked up of an American at an sf convention when it was still
banned in the UK)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1288000/1288997.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/arts/newsid_1284000/1284888.stm
Ken
