The heartwarming response to the terrible suggestion from the racialist Northern Leagues Minister of the Interior that Roma children should be fingerprinted was instantaneous and unanimous rejection. The Head of State, Italian Jewry, the professions, all major newspapers and other media, the Church, and all of us are as one in dismissing fingerprinting any children. Claims to be protected from such practices are entrenched in the Constitution and its adjuncts. Any such legislative attempt would run headlong into the embedded protections, particularly of minors, in the citizens' defences against authoritarian governance. Routes to redress are explicit and accessible.
People are just as repelled by the fingerprinting of children as young as five in England. Unfortunately the continuous assault upon the accepted attitude and sense of propriety that our constitution needs to make it function, coupled with the persistent introduction of authoritarian formal enabling legislation followed by undiscussed orders, over the New Labour years has led inevitably to loss of unanimity in opposition to such practices. It is considered by some that the presence of legislation justifies its use.
We cannot go back to our destroyed constitution, and it is becoming increasingly urgent that formal defences for the citizen against authoritarian governance are drawn up and thir implementation put beyond regime reach. Next September little fingers will be inked and rolled onto a permanent record. We have come a long way from finger paints and innocence.
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13 comments:
Chipped, would be easier.
Fattening though, S.
Italian politics is not my forte, but I wonder is this the same outfit that has just agreed to abandon their objections to Italy ratifying the Lisbon Treaty? If so, what did Mr B offer them in exchange?
Agree on the general point that fingerprinting children can wait a few years until they get caught with their fingers in the till.
It looks as if they have demanded carte blanche on their population programmes, Nomad. Lucky there are other sources of power and rules that they cannot over turn.
One of the first strong objections and threats of over-ruling ethic finger-printing came from Brussels, though. Fair is fair.
It's being done for the purpose of issuing library books.
Once the finger prints are electronically registered who knows where they can end up.
DNA testing and finger printing for people released without charge too.
Sackerson mentions chipping.
Have you heard the bar code rumour, HG ?
Beyond belief - I'll bring you a credible link if my internet research pulls anything up.
Phew !
It IS nonsense. Well that's a relief.
http://www.virtualsalt.com/barcode.htm
:-)))
Of course, there is the agricultural practice of plastic-tagging, or alternatively making distinctive cuts in, the ears of cattle. Given the proliferation of tattoo parlours, rolling-out such a program would be quite easy, and perhaps it would gain ready acceptance were it pointed out that ID-tagging is a genuine mark of the individual.
Or there are the facial slashes on some West African peoples and German youth from places like Heidleburg, though the practice was falling into disuse. I suppose they were class, caste and tribal markings too, rather than individual identifiers. Perhaps it could be used to reduce the cost of the programme under our regime if instead of individual IDs the identifiers were awarded to entire classes or settlements or otherwise commonly identified groups.
We do it already with our haircuts and writing on our clothes. It needs transferring onto our bodies.
I agree, S, DNA typing is very individualistic. almost unnecessarily uppity and self-assertive.
As the corpses of unsuccessful African migrants continue to wash up on the beaches of Lampedusa to the disgusted surprise of the sun-soaking Hun on the same beaches, the prospect that tribal facial scars meet Heidelberg duelling scars is a real one. Though remote.
But the poor Italians feel under seige; from the Africans from the south, from the Albanians from the east, from Turks, Iraqis, Kurds and swarthy Semites who arrive with the trucks travelling on roads more ancient than time. The Roma are an old hate; baby stealers in folk memory, with suspicions of blood sacrifice and Satanic rites. A Sicilian shepherd would raise his rifle to a Roma as to a wolf. They will stand proxy for all the strangers that set the dogs barking at night.
In a way it's at once reassuringly Italian and frighteningly fascist.
And as one who wears his tailor's, shirtmaker's and shoemaker's labels inside his clothes I agree it would be vulgar indeed to display one's DNA as a 'designer' signature. It would soon be counterfeited by cheap Chinese sweat-shops and sold in inner London markets for £5 and would probably last a week before the stitching on the double helix came loose and strands of Mitochondrial nucleic acid fell in people's drinks and food.
Hello R, lots of laughing over your last para. Lots of pointing that despite conscientious German homework completion I can't spell Heidelberg in a hurry.
Some discussion over which way round penultimate para should should be: reassuringly fascist and frighteningly Italian has its supporters.
Your series on Jack Straw's misrepresentation of parties has been a joy to read.
When I told one of my friends I was upset that my fingerprints were now on record (following the recent arrest) he said "mine are too; at primary school we went on a field trip to a police station and everyone had their prints taken, and we spent an hour in a cell"
Lucky he didn't visit a magistrates' court and get sent down for a couple of weeks. After the Garden House (against the celebration of the Greek colonels' regime by the tourist board) some were sent on to the court in Hertford and and did 18 months. I heard years later that Melford Stevenson, who was the judge funnelling undergraduates into jail, had a fling with the magistrate who sent them up before him.
Demonstrations go so wrong, so fast and are invariably accompanied by arbitrary displays of power. The picking up of the No to ID picketers outside the 'consultative' meeting held in secret and by late invitation only, in Edinburgh means they will all have joined you too, LD. Our generation is recorded in some very fine, clear photos which (sadly) we no longer resemble at all. In the end they'll have the whole planet twice over, once in reality and once variously listed and collected, with no way to access the data or match one to the other.
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