Professor protests U.S. fingerprinting policy (refuses job)

[Newsjock]

Past the sell-by date for LBN, so it's here.
http://1010wins.com/topstories/winstopstories_story_017152516.html

Jan 17, 2004 3:22 pm US/Eastern
(1010 WINS) (NEW YORK) An Italian professor of philosophy and aesthetics has canceled plans to teach at New York University because of the United States' new policy of photographing and fingerprinting foreign visitors.

Giorgio Agamben, a professor at the University of Verona, compared the new policy to being tattooed at concentration camps in a Jan. 8 article in La Repubblica, an Italian daily newspaper.

"I only want to suggest that it is probable that the tattooing at Auschwitz appeared like the most 'normal' and economic way to regulate the registration of deportees in the camp," Agamben wrote. "The biopolitical tattooing that today is being imposed on us to enter the United States is the start of a relay race of what tomorrow they could make us accept as normal registration of the identity of the good citizen in the mechanisms and gears of the state."

more

[Big_AJ]

1. That's nice

he won't be teaching those attitudes here.

AJ

[leesa]

3. Yes, let's keep our eyes closed tightly!

[Big_AJ]

9. And just ignore ...

our nation's being compared to Nazi Germany.

AJ

[TankLV]

11. And st ick your head in the sand when all the comparisons made to date

are extremely valid.

Care to name just one single thing that is being said in the comparisons that is not true!

Can you not see that this is exactly as the professor says?

OK, I'll give you an easy one. Just name one thing that this professor lists as a comparison that is not valid?

"Your papers please."

[Big_AJ]

13. Since he's Italian

he must know Facism - since an Italian invented it!

[Logansquare]

12. You're right, he should have mention Mussolini, as well

[alarimer]

15. just wait

it is becoming more like it every day! Four more years of Bush will all but guarantee it. I am glad that professor did what he did. Someone has to start standing up to these assholes.

[Occulus]

5. Hmmmm.

If you can't see what's happening right now in our own country, I would suggest you look around. Take a look at our archives- I'll even search terms of your choice for you so I can PM you the URLs to pages here with linked articles to, for example, sources discussing how the PATRIOT Act curtail Constitutional freedoms- and see things that were reported in the mainstream media such as what this man is talking about.

Your adage may be, "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about." Mine happens to be, "If I've done nothing wrong, 'they' do not have the right to surveil upon me."

Please PM me if you'd like me to search for articles from our archives for you. It just might open your eyes a bit.

[ithacan]

7. that's right, can't be questioning the Bush regime's crackdown...

can't be allowing people to actually THINK about what the Bush regime is doing...

Just salute and bend over.

[donsu]

2. thank you Giorgio Agamben for defending liberty

an Italian with spine

[RainDog]

4. I know other professors from Europe

who are not even political in any way, btw, and are the blond haired, blue-eyed "safe" looking Europeans.

who do not want to come to the United States anymore because of the Bush regime.

In other nations in which repressive regimes gained power, this same brain drain was also a feature...people don't want to go to such places.

The impact of Bush's total war on all levels of our society is staggering, actually, when you consider that the War College and all sorts of other people are on record as noting that a "War on Terror" is impossible and unsustainable and, frankly, stupid because it diverts resources from ways to truly fight terrorism, via sharing intelligence and increasing the ability to infiltrate terrorist cells to stop any planned acts.

[gandalf]

6. Is he a lonely fighter?

I admire his courage. My German newspaper printed his article.

But I wonder if he is the only one with access to the public who voices his critical opinion, whereas the rest says, ok, after all, the US have to fight terrorism, and if they had these procedures in 2001, some 9/11 terrorists would have been caught earlier (which is bs).

[Big_AJ]

10. What courage

did it take to refuse a job in the US because he doesn't like the immigration procedures?

[Military Brat]

8. "biopolitical tattooing"

That should make the fundie freepers think twice. Sounds sort of like the "mark of the beast" in Revelations, doesn't it?

I like the way this gentleman thinks. Resistance is not futile.

[Big_AJ]

14. "biopolitical tattooing"

Just make up a scary, silly term and it's an argument for a position totally bereft of evidence.

AJ

[creativelcro]

16. Sorry, I disagree... The comparison with Aushwitz is silly.

The fact that he can refuse to come to the US paradoxically proves that he is free to come here if he wants and free not to if he does not want to. Not a big deal. People who would be happy and willing to teach at NYU are a dime a dozen. He should probably spend his time talking about they way Berlusconi has been eroding democracy in Italy rather than making silly statements like the above.