Paul wrote:
What country does respect freedoms? The US is getting to the point
where emgrating becomes a serious consideration for me.
I lived in Greece during the 1967-1974 dictatorship. Later I've lived in England, in Germany, in Sweden and the Netherlands. Of all these countries, Greece is the one whose laws afforded its citizens the least freedom. A bloody dictatorship is what it was back then, complete with torture by police and military and exile on uninhabited islands for dissidents, even though the conditions on those islands were far better than those in Guant�namo today.
Yet, the total inefficiency and incompetence of the state at that time allowed for quite a lot of informal freedom. Basically, as long as you were a bit discreet and didn't advertise what would get you in trouble, you were fine most of the time. There was no freedom of press whatsoever, yet the press learned to write very clear text between the lines and the citizen learned to read that text. Rumors spread faster than forest fires in the summer and were, most of the time, accurate and detailed. Despite efforts of the government to block access to foreign news, its interference transmitters were an utter failure and the Greek could listen to BBC, the voice of America, radio Moscow or radio Peking according to his preferences on the standard AM radio that could be found in every home. Hell, you were supposed to be badly beaten and go to jail for singing songs of the communist resistence, yet people kept gathering and singing them all over the place in sheer defiance even though there weren't even communists.
Comparing that situation to these days, technology has not only brought new possibilities, but also new problems. While the internet has made possible a tremendous flow of information in both directions, not only to the citizen but also from him, it has also made monitoring him so much easier. TV and FM radio are so commonplace that hardly anyone has a long/medium/short wave AM receiver any more; these could be outlawed tomorrow and nobody but the usual suspects would protest. The eagerness of governments to know everything and to control everything has been constantly increasing in pace with their ability to do so and under every kind of pretext. Before Our Beloved Leader's war on terrorism, Our Great Leader's war on drugs was the patent pretext for total control. Tomorrow it will be something else, but I don't see the trend changing any soon.
All in all, if you're looking for more freedom through relocation, I'd say don't bother looking for a country with good laws. Look for a country with an impoverished and unstable government instead, and try to pick one that is not next on the list to be "liberated". The one thing you really don't want is to find yourself in the same situation as the German Jew who emigrated to France in 1935 to avoid persecution, only to find himself in a cattle wagon headed back to Germany in 1942. If you're American, Paraguay and thereabouts could be a good choice.
Z
-- Framtiden �r som en babianr�v, f�rggrann och full av skit. Arne Anka _______________________________________________ Support mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.support Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/support Or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
