Slashdot Mirror
Pentagon Soft-Pedals Total Information Awareness
PizzaFace writes "Congress was concerned that the Pentagon's 'Total Information Awareness' program would invade citizens' privacy, so it gave the program the red light until the Pentagon addressed Congress's privacy concerns. DARPA, the Pentagon technology agency that brought us the Internet in more innocent times, showed its Total Marketing Awareness by renaming the TIA program, 'Terrorism Information Awareness.' The gist of its report seems to be that data may be collected from everyone, but it will only be used against evildoers. You can read DARPA's report and a background story from the Washington Post."
What more innocent times were these, exactly?
What they are trying to do is make us believe that this is a feature, and not a bug? Are members of our government actually human? Or is this a ploy to steal all of our freedoms right out from under us. Next thing I know I'll be sitting alone in my room afraid to say anything because they might be listening. My TV will always be on because there will be no way to ever turn it off, and my name will be changed to something lame like Winston.
Remember that it's the State who will define who an "evildoer" is, and what constitutes "evildoing".
Doesn't matter what it's called, Orwellian surveillance systems will always be a gross breach of a citizen's right to privacy, and will always be open to abuse by those in power.
but it will only be used against evildoers
You don't say. Whom did they intend to use it against if congress hadn't stopped them? Anyone who changes sides because of an argument like that deserves to be deported to a police state where, of course, all laws are for the good of the people, too.
While they're at it, maybe they should change the logo as well to something less sinister, and appoint someone who is not a convicted criminal to run it.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Darpa-"Hey were going to collect all your data so we can know everything about you" :-(
Congress-"Hmm that sounds like it could invade peoples privacy"
Darpa"Ok - well err hmm its for terrorism"
Congress-"Well why didnt you say so , do whatever you want"
i wonder if the riaa will try this to get their anti piracy laws through- they probly already are
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
but it will only be used against evildoers
Should the government be trusted ? I don't think so, given this and this I don't think their history is so clean.
You in the US have been and always will be circling the same issues about security and rights of freedom etc. You need to feel hugely secure about yourselves, and still cling to your freedom of speech and freedom to bear arms. Would you feel lot safer with modified laws about all of those? Neither one cannot be compromised. Make an omelette without violating the rights of the egg.
Well, I find it merely amusing. That's all.
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
I like how they changed nothing about this plan exept for the name, Do they really think we're all that stupid?!
oh yeah, that whole arresting thing is going out the window too. It's become unfashionable to arrest people, now you just throw them in a cell forever in connection with another case, one which you are not required to mention.
The phrase, "May you live in interesting times" never sounded so scary...
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Changing that T to Terrorism was brilliant. I'd forgotten for a minute that they were about to totally invade privacy. Cuz we gotta fight terrorism right, and anyone who opposes is probably a terrorist and all. They could do better though, and change it to Patriot Information Awareness, or Patriot Act II. That has a nice ring doesn't it.
-Look lively. LOOK LIVELY!!! --Mr. Shmallow
Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if, behind the scenes, DARPA says something like "well, members of Congress will, of course, be exempt!", at which point Congress will immediately approve it.
I really wish, in this race to the bottom, some country would get there first in time to allow other countries to finally figure out that shit like this is really a very bad thing. But it looks to me like all of the countries are more or less operating in lockstep with each other, so they'll all hit bottom at about the same time.
Still think I'm full of shit when I say that the world is going to turn itself into a police state and that the end result will be a stable form of government capable of lasting thousands of years?
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Sometime back, MS dropped the name Palladium and called it Next Generation Secure Computing Base, or some such silly name. The trick is to give a bad name to a bad project and then all of a sudden change the name to something else - problem solved.
It happened with Trustworthy Computing Platform Alliance as well - TCPA is now TCG.
Since TIA has been extensively criticized, especially at Slashdot, why not give it a very bad name indeed - Terrorist Information Awareness, and get away with it! Bright idea. The magic word terrorist seems to open all locks.
When I get my hands on LongHorn, I'm gonna try username terrorist and password Billyboy. Should be interesting to see what happens.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
The US government read 1984 and went ahead and stole the ideas from that book. But hey, I'm sure they will have good old book burnings soon, and perhaps we'll set fire to a art gallery or a government institution and take away even more rights!
We'll replace these rights with newly corrected "wrongs" and end all this terror. Whats wrong is right and whats wrong for them is right for us and we're right and they're wrong. Atleast I think that's how it is going now.
One day we won't have the right to insult Katz! IMAGINE!
This is 1984 coming 20 years later than planned. What a horrible, horrible government.
An editorial in today's NY Times notes that one of the ways the TIA will track people is by their walk. Observantly, Dowd parallels this to Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks. Apparently, this method of detection can be overridden by wearing a long coat.
I feel safer already.
Can't change it to PIA. The acronym is supposed to remind you of the one for "Thanks In Advance"
Of course if they changed the program name to "Massive Information Act" the resulting acronym might be more apt.
It appears more than a few people are concerned about total information awareness (that's what it is, and that's what I will continue to call it) and losing their basic rights. With bullsh!t like this, the US is no longer the land of the free. Police state, here we come. *starts writing futile letters to greedy representatives*
Oh well. I wasn't using my Civil Liberties anyway.
Personally, the following bugs me a little bit:
*snip*
oversight board composed of senior representatives from DoD and the Intelligence Community, and chaired by the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition, Technology and Logistics).
*/snip*
How about some civilians or "average joe" types to be appointed to that oversight board? The composition of this "oversight" board seems to be all intel and DoD guys... a bit too much agency inbreeding there. How about a joe citizen to give some civilian "little guy" perspective?
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
to move to canada
BUt he must have misread it. I think it was probably 2004 but we are definately on the slippery slope down. Changing the T to Terrorist was a stroke of genius (from there point of view), now the public will lap it up and the few thousand of us on /. will know what it really is. The majority won't hear about this till they are arrest and informed of their rights ie none.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
You know, shortly after the main conflict in Iraq recently resided, there were lots of news reports stating just how much information Saddam Hussein's regime kept on the populace. One of the soldiers was quoted as saying, "Jesus, they've got files on everybody! The whole freakin' country is in here!"
Do we really want to be like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or Nazi Germany, or Stalinist Russia for that matter? Subtracting privacy almost never adds security. Even if you watched everyone, all day, everyday, there'd be shit that slips through the cracks. Just look at how often Palestinians suicide bomb Israelis...and Israel brags it has the most stringent security in the world.
Oh yeah, to stay on topic, um, yeah TIA is bad. We can safely say that terrorism and the boogey man live together and have the same job, to scare us into doing something out of fear.
--ACs can have sigs too. You didn't know?
The best repsonse to this is to demand the database be 100% realtime public-access (r, not rw) over the internet.
It's asymmetric information avialability that is the problem - a system where all the data is only available to a control-freak elite is terrible, but if everyone has access to the information, the playing field is kept level.
No, it's not nice the database exists. No, it's not going to go away. Better that it be open to all then in the hands of a secret few.
Freedom should always trump Privacy.
dont get me wrong, im far from the ancient european critising the USA.
But there are times when living in the UK is sooo much more attractive than living in the US, at least we have a strong Data protection Act that gives us access to any information gathered by us.
And shamefully (being a privacy crusader myself) have even been put off travelling to the USA now as my information is already passed to airport security (my name, visa card number, what meal i had on the plane (true) etcetc) before the place has even had time to taxi down the runway.
I know that this will be flamed or trolled out becuase of the patriots within the slashdot crowd or i will have many responses based on the, but we are America and better, but bear in mind this is not supposed to reflect on the nation as a whole (paranoid although it is) or the poeple just a simple statement based on the privacy of the people.
A
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
Right....
I don't suppose anyone's heard of the events this week surrounding Texas Democrats and the Department of Homeland Security, eh?
Long story short: all 51 Democrats from the Texas State Legislature ran to Oklahoma for 4 days to prevent the State from addressing some redistricting issue (there wouldn't be a quorum of legislators, and thus nothing could be voted on). Anyway, pretty much all the Republican legislators shit a brick, and somehow it seems the Department of Homeland Security got dragged into the search for the missing Democrats (yes, the same federal agency supposed purpose is to protect the entire U.S.A. from terrorists). Oh, and if that isn't enough, it seems that all Texas Department of Public Safety documents regarding the Department of Homeland Security's involvement in this fiasco were ordered destroyed.
So, forgive me if I take a wee bit of convincing on this whole "TIA will only be used on foreigners" thing...
P.S.: Seriously, folks, it scares the shit out of me that the big news organizations aren't picking this story up and running with it.
like civil forfeiture will only be used against those evil drug dealers. Sure, sounds like a great idea. Where do I sign up?
Something is horribly wrong in this Nation; not in the usual
"corruption and racism" way, but far far worse in the "fascism and rogue
police state" way.
I now know how the Jews of Germany felt as they saw the vise-grip of
Nazism clamp down. Insiduously and calculatingly, the Nazi party coopted
and overran the legitimate elements of Germany's government. Nazism
failed only by the grace of God and because Hitler overreached, and
through sheer sacrifice by free people.
Tomorrow the world may not get off so easy.
Bush did not win the election. He remains the commander in chief
because his family and party connections illegally scuttled Gore's
contestation of the ballot-count. That illegal manoeuvering was effectively
cloaked in false legitimacy and hidden from public view, and amounts to a
successful coup de'tat against the legitimate government and sovereign
power of the United States of America.
These are dark times for the land of the free, the home of the brave.
As grave as that one issue is, I am not writing this letter in
condemnation of it alone nor is it the only Hitler-order threat to Freedom and
Democracy.
September Eleventh, 2001 has left a trail of unanswered questions and
betrayed trusts. The act of terrorism which took thousands of American
and foreign Human lives has been followed by events which to say the
least threaten the continued functioning and existence of our Democracy,
and point to a threat, possibly internal, which must be investigated.
These investigations have been called for and they have been impeded and thwarted
by the very entities which have fallen under suspicion.
These facts in themselves warrant a total investigation with all
urgency and priority as this Nation can muster. My belief in the just nature
and effective coordination of my Country, the United States, would
allay my suspicions and I would stand observant as established processes
assessed the facts and derived the truth, except this:
Bush has quietly gutted the very laws which make this nation Free and
Just, and openly pushed bills like the Patriot act I & II which put any
dissent into deep freeze or worse.
All these problems are beyond unnacceptable and it is in the character
and interest of the United States to meet them openly and with vigor.
The reality that our supposedly "liberal" media quietly ignore these
facts when they should be shouting them from every rooftop, lends ultimate
urgency to our problem: Our Nation, the torchbearer of humanity, is
under assault AND WE THE PEOPLE ARE LOSING.
The assault must be halted and routed if we are to prevent this
government and its' sacred values of Freedom, Liberty, and Justice for all are
not to perish from this earth. The defilers have craftily and
skillfully put up strong barriers to their prosecution but as a Nation WE CAN
defeat those barriers IF DARE. The mechanisms of our government are
being dismantled but the Nation is still fundamentally free; a well
performed campaign to bring the truth into the mind of every man and woman
must not fail, can not fail. The only failure is in not trying! And it is
our duty to those who died in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War,
every foreign war and to the victims of September Eleventh 2001 to Stand
UP for the Truth!
We have nothing to fear but fear itself. We have nothing to lose that
we will not lose if we do not Speak Out. We must marshal every resoure
at our disposal and launch the counteroffensive now; we have already
waited too long. The threat to our way of life, indeed to our lives
themselves, grows with each day. The threat fouled one election without
control of the White House -- in 2004, the adversary will not even need to
rig a single ballot. A second victory will cement their control. The
fall of the nation has begun and it wil
I say we give the Pentagon to China, since they seem to have some pretty compatible thoughts on freedom.
In retaliation against the US House of Representatives changing the names of French fries and French toast to Freedom fries and Freedom toast in their cafeteria, the French government has announced that they will NOT change the name of American cheese.
Could someone please tell me what Americans are so afraid of? Why do you put up with the government invading your privacy? The US have gone to war to liberate other nations from government which have done similar thing (Not on the same level of cause and with less advanced tecnologies). Why are you letting them do this to you?
I don't get it, the US is suppose to be the land of the free, isn't it ?
Many of you will probably be aware that in Spain there is a terrorist group called "ETA", that wants the Basque country (a bit in the North-West of Spain) to be independant. They are terrorists, no question, and they should be stopped. However, the current president of Spain (Aznar) hates that any of the regions of Spain wants independence, and is tending to brand anyone who wants independence as supporting terrorism. Political parties are being banned if they have members which are on a list of (several hundred) individuals which the state has decided are supporting terrorism. This means that practically any political party that is pro-independance for the Basque country is now banned. I believe this is obviously a real blow for democracy in Spain, and highlights the fact that a few terrorists can reduce the freedoms of a huge number of people if the government reacts in the wrong way.
Just my thoughts.
a bit in the North-West of Spain
Sorry that should have read North-East.
Not at the moment, but I am considering it. Does that count?
Today I watched Michael Ruppert defending his theory regarding massive government collusion in the 9-11 terrorist attacks. The other panelists, predictably, were not convinced, and the arguments they used to refute Mr. Ruppert were the same ones we have heard repeatedly every time this particular "conspiracy theory" starts to see daylight. Why were military jets not scrambled to intercept the hijacked planes? Human error. Why did American intelligence ignore the warnings from foreign sources regarding the impending attacks? Outdated and bureaucratic organizations that don't talk to each other. How did a rag-tag bunch of known troublemakers manage to board the doomed flights in the first place? Lax airport security.
A point-by-point refutation of Mr. Ruppert's argument holds up well on the surface. Why? Because it is just that - a point-by-point refutation. Any one of these arguments, taken by itself, makes sense, particularly to a people who are still dumbstruck and grieving, a people who have been educated, both through the school system and through daily interaction with their friends and neighbors, to believe that the Americans are the Good Guys, decent and benevolent, right-thinking and honest.
And most Americans are just that. So facing people who are not that way sets up a clamor of cognitive dissonance that can be heard from from sea to shining sea. Into that cacophony of disbelief step the clean-up crews, the experts and pundits who emanate from government-sponsored think tanks, and participate in panel-style discussions such as the one with Mr. Ruppert. These "experts" are quick with the anecdotal counterpoints - and they seem pretty believable until - and unless - one takes the time to step back and take a longer view.
In an excellent piece entitled, "Uncle Sam's Lucky Finds," published by the Guardian Unlimited on Tuesday, March 18, 2002, Anne Karpf deftly navigates the scattered, pundit-tossed bread crumbs, and offers an extremely compelling view of American intelligence propaganda at its finest.
For while it is credible to assume that the various alphabet soup agencies that constitute our national security system might have missed India, France, and Russia chirping something about terrorist attacks as early as last spring, it is not credible to argue that these same agencies - who prior to September 11 could not find their arse with both hands - had, within weeks of the attacks, successfully identified all the hijackers. Following a trail of fortuitously placed flight manuals, Korans, "terrorist handbooks," (and please think about that one for a moment), and most amazingly of all, an unscathed fragment of Mohammed Atta's passport, the feds moved swiftly to construct a case implicating royal Saudi bad boy, Osama bin Laden.
It is possible, I suppose, that one of the hijackers would become careless and leave a flight manual lying around, or that the hand of some unseen deity would pluck Mr. Atta's smoldering passport out of the ruins of the WTC, (and then lay it gently at the feet of an FBI super-sleuth), but taken together, the improbability of such serendipity rapidly begins to become an impossibility.
Due to the enormity of the operation - and perhaps also due to the Pentagon's budgetary needs - shortly after the event, the terrorism experts began speculating about how September 11th could have been planned, financed, and perhaps even rehearsed, without arousing suspicion. They posited that underground cells of terrorists had lain hidden in sleepy suburban bedroom communities for perhaps as long as a decade, flying under the radar and waiting for their appointed hour to strike.
Again, taken by itself, this is a plausible explanation. But lay these stories next to the ones that tell us of devout Muslim suicide bombers preparing for a holy war by making a trip to Hooters, drinking heavily, and then leaving their apartments strewn with terrorist paraphernalia. That's when the official version begins to leak like a used condom. Are we to b
the more insidious Government's intentions. Whenever someting has "Security", "Peace" or "Freedom" in it you can reliably predict they are about the opposite, from an ordinary citizen's point of view.
"DARPA affirms that TIA's research and testing activities are only using data and information that is either (a) foreign intelligence and counter intelligence information legally obtained and usable by the Federal Government under existing law..."
I feel particularly reassured as a non-US citizen. Am I right I thinking there are no legal restrictions at all in the US on what intelligence they can gather on me?
I think it's about time the citizens of the extended United States of America got the vote. Currently those of us who live in places like the UK and Iraq are effectively ruled by the US but have absolutely no say in the government ...
This thing is inredible in scope! It will be limited only by the amount of data available. Of course, that's infinite. What exists to stop this program from gaining access to all records of all conduct by all people? I can easily imagine a time when all communication is monitored and probably recorded. All transactions of any type will be logged and entered into the database. All public movements will be captured by electronic eyes, analyzed and stored forever. The location of each car, phone, and every piece of currency will be tracked by satellites. Birds will have cameras implanted and flies will carry tiny microphones. There seems to be no way to stop these things from being developed. Bankers and businessmen will build bunkers below ground, eventually forming a race of subterranean rulers with absolute control of the surface dwellers. I'm sorry, it's too difficult to read about the TIA and not drift into psychotic sci-fi paranoia. /endfile
Senate Scraps Low-Yield Nuke Weapons Ban
please make it stop
It is your global duty to make sure Bush and his cronies do NOT get re-elected, an arms race + 1984 doesnt sound like a world i want to live in.
i will be glad when i die, but my children im not so sure.
Hope for you it doesn't get this harsh. Terrorism is the perfect excuse for them: even though the last years were the lest violent in a terrorist point of view in Spain, our (spanish) government's politics on terrorism are way more frightening. They wrote a law in order to illegalize political parties which condones or does not condemn terrorism, now a second nationalist political party (AuB) is illegalized because 40% of their members were members of the previously illegalized EH. Now this sunday we have to vote, and the two most strong political parties are joining to get most of the basque country cities as a big part of the voters are 'illegal' and they'll have no votes.
Also, two newspapers have been closed: Egin about three or four years ago (still without any judicial sentence, just by suspicions) and Egunkaria some months ago. No judicial sentence, either.
Sadly, we know a lot about what the terrorism excuse can bring... now, when the second political party (socialdemocrats) says the spanish restaurant blown up in Morocco is a consequence of attacking Iraq, the government denies any relation and accuses them of justifying terrorism...
T.I.A. = Técnicos de Investigación Aeroterráquea: The Funniest Secret Agents on Earth, since 1958!
Don't miss the T.I.A. club X'-D
Try Ubuntu GNU/Linux, it's great!!!
they/we know who you/they are/were.
of course we'll knead just a little information about you.
so tell us.....
If the info is only going to be used against evildoers, then I have no problem with it.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Well, so is Kevin Mitnick but most Slashdot readers hold him in close proximity to God.
One has to assume that any politician is always seeking as much power as possible. It is not even a criticism - political systems specifically select those individuals who want power and are good at accumulating and trading it.
It's always cute to see how people are surprised when their "democratically elected leaders" turn out to have just the same tendencies as self-elected tyrants and dictators.
I believe the current tendency towards a centralization of power in the US is a self-defeating gambit, pushed by Ashcroft, but against the deeply ingrained beliefs of the political wing that put him into power, which has always distrusted big government. The attempts to turn "terrorism" into citizen control is a bit sad, really, since the minority views of the right-wing consituents in the US depend for their very existence on a open-minded and liberal democracy. Today, a register of information on everyone. Tomorrow, a national policy on morals. The next day: revolt from the conservative right-wing and fragmentation of the Republican party.
The point of democracy is not to elect the best leaders - this is a laugh - but to allow every policy, no matter how "vital to the State's interests" to be debated. Eventually such instruments will become the subject of discussion (allow 5 years for the Sept.11 trauma to wear off), and someone, somewhere, will be elected on the basis of protection of privacy. At which point we will see a swing back to smaller government and dissolution of the more blatant links between business and power.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Of course I'm going to get modded to hell for this, but here goes anyway: Why shouldn't the military have the information needed to protect us against our enemies? In this era, power isn't restricted to iron, but also information. The Gov't has always held a military advantage over the populace. I understand the concerns regarding the database, but how many people really believe that the government is out to get them? Face it, you're just not that important and your life just isn't that interesting. Even with existing technology, if the goverment wanted to spy on you, you're SOL. Remember, an entity's funding determines how well they can track you and get to you. You may be safe against most companies, but the Gov't already has you beaten. Now Mohammad Atta's life they would be extremely interesting. While no one's making any promises, what if such a system had been able to prevent 9-11? What about the next time? Do you really think that the 9-11 attacks will be the last by terrorists on US soil? How many more people will be killed when a biological or dirty bomb goes off? When doing a cost-benefit analysis, there's really no question. In this day and age, where terrorists are our primary threat, we need to be able to locate them quickly. Uncle Sam really isn't going to be looking closely at Joe Smith--he's too boring. There ya go, flame away.
"illicit" rather than "illegal".
One breaks the spirit of the law, the other breaks the word of the law.
It's a bot more complex than that, but it's a good pallpark summation.
Just call it Anti-Terrorist or Patriotic
And anybody who says no is either a Terrorist or non patriotic.
Or like Bush said, you are either with us or you are with the terrorists.
Did you say Terrorist Information Awareness?
Oh. And here I was thinking you were planning Total Information Awareness.
Carry on.
The US has been having its woes from terrorism and the economic downturn.
Why aren't the government trying to expel all foreign nationals, freeing up jobs for the indiginous populace?
(Just a thought for consistency sake; I don't necessarily agree.)
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
One of the problems is that the government can do this because there is no Constitutional right to privacy.
It is long past time for an amendment to grant one.
'Total Information Awareness', sheesh. What's next? Pretty soon I won't even be able to post to Slashdot as 'Anonymous Coward' anymore.
State Monitors War Protesters
Actually, i wasn't trolling. And actually, its not a false claim. I am positing that Bush only appears to have won because some dirty dealing was done with the deck. And I included links at the bottom in case the literate and informed members of the community cared to do the homework I have done.
As far as soundbite politics goes, that's what I'm trying to fight against.
>> son, bush got more votes in florida than gore did.
I disagree and I think there's been a scam. I think that the public discourse has been artificially deflected from the real issue to hide the truth. If you disagree, great. Lets talk about it. Like we're doing. Attacking me personally doesn't solve anything. It only obscures the issue.
>> we know this to be true since it was counted nine times, and bush had a taller stack of ballots each time.
And there's a mass of unrefuted evidence that points to dirty deeds on behalf of the Bush side.
>> when one candidate has more votes than any of the others, that candidate wins the electoral votes.
Thanks for insulting my intelligence. Are you fighting dirty because you don't need to, or do you just hate me for excercising my right to freedom of speech?
>>
when bush's electoral votes were totaled up, he had more than gore.
I reiterate, I posit that this is because bush cheated and then covered it up. The trail of conflicts of interest and "no comment" comments is why I feel the need to pursue the issue, in public.
>> so then, little boy, go take your MSNBC soundbite politics and troll around somewhere else with them.
MSNBC is a mouthpiece for that which I would see exposed. And, I am not trolling, I am sincere. In fact, I think I correct. If you are sure I am wrong, why not provide counterpoint instead of lambasting someone you don't know just because you don't like what they say? I feel that, if all the ammunition you have is blatant insults, then I have scored "a point".
>> too many literate and informed folk for that to work around here.
Ahhh.... so that's why it got modded up to +2, insightful?
Anyone who cares to discuss this issue, please do so. I sent what I wrote above (main parent) to the ACLU and posted it here as an afterthought. Anyone who wants to continue this discourse at length, i created an email account: slashdotfreedom@yahoo.com
As an American, I feel compelled to discuss this issue. If you are mad at me, I can understand that. If you just try to rile me, I will not respond. If you agree with me, lets take the message forward. God Bless America.
ConCur (as in Criminal Dog) as maybe some involved ...?
... yep, include the colloquialisms.
...), about Apples (NYC or ...), or Goofy people over at the brother-in-law's (Mickey's, ...) house, or the spirited debate (between friends at Berkley) on Egyptian Mythology and the sun god "Ra" .... I guess software has gotten to this level. Now, other related stuff about friends, family, and stuff is transmitted by FAX (you know bits describing black pixel separation information) that can be OCRed (easy) when recognized ... whoops it is just a picture there are no recognized text characters ... it is a picture of (maybe) Arabic characters.
... Hum, Do y'all really think it is going to work beyond Western European like Cultures and languages? Yep, the implied is ...?
Here is my funny for thought.
All the data collected by TIA, based on English and Foreign Languages.
Define multipurpose words and phrases
Define Cultural/Regional usages of words and phrases. Will it notice a terrorist speaking, flawless English (or French) in west Texas (or Alberta Canada, or
This TIA stuff is an amazing advance in technology. We should embrace the Omniscient Technology as god-like.
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
"At which point we will see a swing back to smaller government and dissolution of the more blatant links between business and power."
Just because the current government believes less in taxing the hell out of the private sector (business AND individuals) does not mean that business controls the government.
"I disagree [Bush got more votes in Florida] and I think there's been a scam."
Bush won all the counts of votes, even the one Gore demanded. The only way to get Gore to win is to count ballots without Gore votes and imagine that Gore votes are on them (the so called "undercount")
"Because the corporations that benefit from cheap foreign labor are the ones who put our current government in place..."
First, the ones who put the current government in place are the people, who voted in enough states to get enough electoral votes (corporations had nothing to do with it: no corporation has even one vote)
Second, these foreign nationals do many jobs better than Americans. Hence, everyone benefits.
"I am a member of what Bushy considers a group of "evil-doers", the Democratic party."
You are a member of the Democratic Party because you are either mean-spirited, or ignorant about the issues. Hard to change character, so I suggest learning about things and you will soon quit the party.
...that having even 99.999% accurate profiles gives 0% protection against 100% determination?
Really, do they not understand they need to root out the *reasons* people oppose the US politics, not just the *symptoms*?
"Terrorists" are not pissed off at the US out of envy of your economic wealth and civilian liberties, and even less so out of religious considerations -- they're pissed off because your wealth and freedom are maintained, in your name, at their expense... In this sense, the only Good Thing is Bush seems to stupid to cover it up, it's now out there or all to see. Or is it?
Curious, anxious, frightened, to see where all this will lead to..
"America, land of the free if you are white, straight, anglo-saxon, and protestant, but not if you are anything else."
Sorry, the examples you used of why American outside this group are not free are out of date. Indians can leave reservations, and the civil war did take place a little while ago. It is now the land of the free whether or not you meet those 4 requirements. (Another example: Protestant? Not limited even to that, not at least since JFK was elected).
This has WRONG written all over and in it. Parts of TIA "aim to provide security with privacy". Hello! So far this hasn't been done in anywhere... simply because it's not possible. It is not "privacy" to let gov. to know certain things, and it is not ok to let gov. know such stuff. Especially American government. It WILL misuse this kind of information (that's why it wants it).
Goto Http://WWW.MoveOn.org why? like you really need to ask This isn't even "terrorist information awareness" No serious "ODHOC" or terroist are charging chemicals for bombs on there credit cards! It Is Total Market Awareness obviosly! Marketers already use public information databases to help target there intended audence. The pentagon probably already does this on a small scale. With a huge database with PRIVILAGED INFORMATION worth money it WILL be HACKED! that or just put on a disk and SOLD.
There are few states in the world where the 'BIG BROTHER syndrom' is more apparent than in the US. With the FBI, CIA, PENTAGON and the NSA. And mentioning the NSA, one thing especially comes to mind; ECHELON, which captures and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax, email and telex message sent anywhere in the world(according to their own sources). Where, then, is the need for TIA?
---- I dedicate this post to Steveo, Billy and Linny
Goto Http://WWW.MoveOn.org and sign the petition!
why? like you really need to ask
This isn't even "terrorist information awareness" No serious "ODHOC" or terroist are charging chemicals for bombs on there credit cards! It Is Total Market Awareness obviosly!
Marketers already use public information databases to help target there intended audence. The pentagon probably already does this on a small scale. With a huge database with PRIVILAGED INFORMATION worth money it WILL be HACKED! or just put on a disk and SOLD to REAL TERRORISTS.
to subsidize research - historically including automation, jet engines and of course information technology - that may be useful to the private sector.
Yes, everything I say is Chomskyist.
So - what do we have here? We have the pentagon developing an incredibly sophisticated, expensive technology. No private sector entity could ever muster the resources - I mean expertise, not just the finances - to make a comprehensive project like this work. Not even Microsoft (they'd screw it up anyway.) ONLY the defensive department can do it.
I should qualify that - Total Information Awareness could be implemented as open source, if we had motivation to do so. However, that wouldn't serve the purposes of the administration's corporate backers, who's goals do not include clarity and transparency.
Technology much like this already exists in the hands of corporations ("unaccountable private tyrannies," the man can sure turn a phrase) but it is not sophisticated enough for their needs in predicting our behavior - almost everything you do has a commercial component, and would be of interest to someone business, so saying that this is restricted to commercial activities is facetious.
If your primary objection is to the government getting it's hands on the data in the first place, keep in mind that a host of completely unaccountable private organizations - international corporations - already have it. In order for the government to develop such a technology, they need the information in question - so they need new legal powers to get it. The same is not true of corporations, who can and do simply trade the information with eachother.
Once the technology is developed, however, it absolutely will become available as a tool for use by the private sector, who already have the information needed to make it work.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
"Goto Http://WWW.MoveOn.org and sign the petition!"
What a terrible site; part of problems and not sollutions. In one part, they support censoring media, and in another part, they support wasting tax money on overpaid bureacracies.
"there is also the issue of the thousands of people who were illegally and arbitrarily denied their right to vote on the grounds that their name was similar to someone who was not allowed to vote."
This flawed system was put in place by a Democrat, and it weeded out voters without regard to race, or party affiliation.
"What is important is that Bush leaves office as soon as possible."
What is important is that Bush is re-elected in 2004. He is far less fascist than his predecessor, and less fascist than opponents like Gephardt who want a nice Stalinist government-controlled and government-ruined health care system.
This, along with threatening, imprisoning and sueing foreign programmers based on the DMCA, is just the kind of shit why I've decided not to visit the US anymore in the near future unless I absolutely must. No more Game Developer's Conferences, E3's or other trade shows. And certainly no holiday trips.
Totalitarian Information Awareness, unbelieveable.
We are connected, we are accessable, we are living in a time of a choice. Data collection goes on everyday in everyway. From the push to move money to check cards, to the signing of returned merchandise. It is clear that we are being lead towards a point of over-control to a clear and absolute control.
Just as the internet has giving us the ablity to communicate, and share. It has also drawn us into our minds. This has cut us off from each other while giving others the chance to more directly control us.
>The gist of its report seems to be that data may be >collected from everyone, but it will only be used >against evildoers.
Whose ancestor was "Kill them all and let God sort them out".
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Exactly. Americans are too comfortable. As long as "the trains run on time" we'll probably sit here fat and happy while our freedoms go the way of the dodo. We'd have to be much more oppressed, or have deeper religious convictions about right and wrong, before anything will happen. Unfortunately.
Constitutionally Correct
"are no such things as Native Americans, we all migrated here at one time or another from Eurasia"
Speak for yourself. I was born here, as were most people I know. We never migrated, except from one part of the US to another. Most of the rest migrated from other parts of the "New World" if they are not native.
"but you used death penalty on people guilty of nothing else than having subversive political views (like the Haymarket Riot prisoners)."
Sorry, participating in large-scale acts of destruction, violence, and mayhem is not just "having subversive views"
Am I right in thinking the US have refused to sign any International agreements banning or controlling the development of Biological & Chemical weapons and are probably researching, developing and manufacturing large quantities of the above themselves ?
I'm so glad their civil liberties oversight group consists of people from "DoD and the Intelligence Community". In the past, these guys have always cared about safeguarding our privacy and civil liberties.... NOT
The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to be plausible.
The reason they are pissed off is because we are free..
..because we stand in the way of their goal of extermination/subjugation of Jews in the Middle East.
Uh, no they're really not. They're pissed off because they see the U.S as secular and immoral when measured against their version of morality. Plenty of groups in the U.S do this with each other, too. Would you argue that an Anti-Abortionist is pissed off at a Pro-Abortionist because the Por-Abotionist is Free?
I guess you mean Isreal. This is a country that was formed by taking land from Arab states to build a Jewish state. A state that started a war on its first day (Really. I guess being given a whole country wasn't good enough, they had to have more.) A state that practices segregation and subjection of its non-Jewish population. A state that has its own non-disclosed nuclear weapons program.
Yeah, Isreal is the poor victim in all of this!
Isreal needs to stand on its own two feet and play nice with its neighbours. Most Arab states that directly border Isreal wouldn't care too much about these days, if it would just stop throwing its U.S-backed weight around like a spoilt child.
Right now, TIA and other similar orwellian laws and systems are pushed, but they are not going thru unopposed. Should any of the more extreme ones pass, they would immediately be challenged by civil liberties groups and would probably not survive an encounter with the supreme court. There is still some common sense left in the system.
However... there has been recent rumors that the Bin Laden 'boys' are planning yet another terror attack - on US soil (those car bombs in africa etc are not big enough of a deal).
Should there be a serious terror attack now on US soil, and you could bet your farm that all the people opposing these orwellian measures would be quickly silenced (regardless of the fact that most of these measures have little to do in catching actual terrorists).
As it stands right now, US system is on the brink. It only needs a small push (another few hundred dead in a 'big name' US mainland target clearly linkable to muslim terrorist groups) and we have scary situation in the US. Just like right after 9-11, US passed laws that would never go thru today in the name of 'fighting terror'. They could pass all kinds of loony stuff in the wake of another terror hit.
Darpa are also soliciting proposals for a comprehensive, searchable database of individual human lives encompassing every communication, encounter, transaction and even 'feeling' generated by a lifetime of social interaction. This article on the register describes it.
"Uh, no they're really not [pissed off because we are free]. They're pissed off because they see the U.S as secular and immoral when measured against their version of morality"
The secular and immoral part means that religion is a lot more free in the US and so is morality. So they are pissed off at our freedom.
"I guess you mean Isreal. This is a country that was formed by taking land from Arab states to build a Jewish state."
No, Israel was formed by taking land out of British colonial territories.
"A state that practices segregation and subjection of its non-Jewish population."
No, it does not. Palestinians inside Israel's border enjoy complete full rights.
"A state that has its own non-disclosed nuclear weapons program"
Good for them. They are faced with neighbors that want to exterminate them.
I have posted on the subject of surveillance many times before. Here is an extract regarding the psychological aspect. This particular part was wrote by another and did a better job of explaining than I could:
"Foucault focused on Bentham's prison model, or the Penopticon as Bentham called it - which literally means, that which sees all. The Penopticon prison, which was popular in the early nineteenth century, was designed to allow guards to see their prisons, but not allow prisoners to see guards. The building was circular, with prisoner's cells lining the outer diameter, and in the center of the circle was a large, central observational tower. At any given time, guards could be looking down into each prisoner's cells - and thereby monitor potentially unmoral behavior - but carefully-placed blinds prevented prisoners from seeing the guards, thereby leaving them to wonder if they were being monitored at any given moment. It was Bentham's belief that the "gaze" of the Panopticon would force prisoners to behave morally. Like the all-seeing eye of God, they would feel shame at their wicked ways. In effect, the coercive nature of the Panopticon was built into its very structure."
Full text is here and also on my personal website.
Well, I for one feel better now. Terrorist Infomation Awareness is much better that Total Information Awareness. Since they promise to only use it on bad people then there is no reason to not trust them! This just puts my heart at ease.
This begins my fight. It's not "Soft-Pedals", it's "soft peddles" as in sells. For the love of Christ, people! This is your native language!
DARPA dreams up futuristic technologies it thinks might be useful and gives money to North American universities to look into those idea. Any Orwellian references here are so far off the mark its laughable. This technology is nowhere close to existing, but reseach into the fundemental technical problems it poses is actually quite interesting and will undoubted find commerical application before the military can use it.
Anyone who thinks DARPA is in the business of deploying military technologies has it all wrong. DARPA is in the business of rseaching interesting problems that may have military applications.
An example should help to clarify my thoughts. A system capable of "connecting the dots" the way DARPA descibes would be applicable to an immense range of problems. Consider an operating system that could fiqure out why it is crashing and fix the problem. Or how about program that could analyze your purchasing and find you ways to save significant amounts of hard earned cash?
The implications of DARPA research go way beyond the Pentagon. Prejudging this type of reseach is simply foolish.
No, Israel was formed by taking land out of British colonial territories.
Arab countries that were under British rule. That didn't make the land any less Arab or belong to those counties any less when British rule ended at the end of World War II.
The secular and immoral part means that religion is a lot more free in the US and so is morality.
Look, they don't like the secular morality that persists in the U.S and other Western countries. Freedom is a political and social concept that has fuck all to do with religion or morality.
No, it does not. Palestinians inside Israel's border enjoy complete full rights.
Where did you get that little gem from? Know a lot of non-Jewish Israelies do you? I'm sure they email you once a week to tell you how peachy life is.
Good for them. They are faced with neighbors that want to exterminate them.
Yeah! Lets just ignore the fact that it is the exact thing that we accused Saddam of and that the U.S and U.K have funded Israel for over sixty years and have ignored their weapons program all that time in contridiction of the non proliferation treaties, because its Israel and that makes it all right.
Ar your datar ar berong to us!
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
Isn't spin wonderful?
I suggest that everyone who votes Bush next time round be pilloried.
Cheers
S.
"Arab countries that were under British rule. That didn't make the land any less Arab or belong to those counties any less when British rule ended at the end of World War II."
There has always been a Jewish presence in Israel, even after the Arab invasion. And no, they were not Arab countries. The country of Palestine never existed, for example.
"Look, they don't like the secular morality that persists in the U.S and other Western countries. Freedom is a political and social concept that has fuck all to do with religion or morality."
Again, you are admitting that they hate freedom. Secularism means that the people choose religion, not the State. Same with morality.
"Where did you get that little gem from? Know a lot of non-Jewish Israelies do you? I'm sure they email you once a week to tell you how peachy life is."
Yes, it is true. Please check into it. There are even Palestinian members of the Israeli parliament.
"and have ignored their weapons program all that time in contridiction of the non proliferation treaties,"
Israel is loathe to admit its nuclear weapons, let alone pass them around. No non-proliferation problem there. And you dare compare Israel to Saddam's Iraq. There is a big difference, as Saddam ran an aggressive imperialist country.
Like WOW
Hidden elements of the U.S. government have become the most violent force the world has ever known, with a long history of acting in a violent manner and supporting violent dictatorships: The U.S. government has bombed 24 countries in the 58 years since the Second World War. The list below includes only countries bombed, not countries in which the U.S. government was responsible for other violence. The list includes only violence since the Second World War, not the extensive violence before the war. Most U.S. citizens are surprised and skeptical when they see the list, so a few links have been provided to supporting information. For more information, try the Google search engine or see the links below.
There are many sources for this information. For example, see this PBS web page: PBS: A Chronology of U.S. Military Interventions (PBS is the Public Broadcasting System in the U.S.) Also see From Wounded Knee to Afghanistan: A Century of U.S. Military Interventions [zmag.org] and The government of the United States is a consistent opponent of international law. [
> renaming the TIA program, 'Terrorism Information Awareness.'
I will also be using this strategy.
I will be robbing banks under the "Terrorist Defunding Program."
I will be growing and selling drugs under the "Terrorist Mellowing Program."
I will no longer be paying any tax under the "Emergency Funds Caching Against Terrorist Activity Program".
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Whatever their intentions, these are the seeds of a police state.
How can people be so stupid?
The potential for abuse of such a system is enormous. I would think that anyone with the ability to build it would be smart enough not to.
"such as the NSA, CIA, and FBI, have become global police that operate mostly in secret, without control or oversight by the people."
This is misleading. These executive departments have the same sort of oversight, or lack of it, as the FDA and Ag Department. They are controlled by elected representatives.
As for the list of countries, many of these are true. The US bombing of invader forces in Bosnia to liberate this place is well documented. The rest of them involved for the most part attacking the invaders of those countries. I see your list did not mention "during WW 2", where I suppose it was terrible that the US bombed those nice Nazis.
However, what is disturbing is that you pepper your list with links to fringe web sites and extremists magazines, and the made-up "US War Crimes Against Iraq", seemingly composed by Bagdad Bob. Do you have any credible sources?
You could also add to that list 'suspected terrorist'.
When the Patriot Act was enacted after Sept 11, 2001, it included a provision to allow US companies to discontinue services with a suspected terrorist. At my company, a large anonymous insurance company, we are being asked (in lieu of $10,000,000 fines) to compare every claimant, vendor, and any name we come across to a database of suspected terrorists provided by the Treasury Department.
If the name matches, we are to withhold payment of the claim until we mail a form to the Treasury Dept, and they investigate the suspected terrorist.
So, if a person is injured on the job, is out of work, and wants to collect workers compensation from his employer's insurance company, he wont be able to if he has the same name as someone on the Treasury Dept's list. So, he wont be able to work because he's injured, and he wont be able to collect any insurance. Where's he going to get money to live on while the Treasury dept investigates?
Needless to say, I was appauled that we had to program these features into our claim system.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
A fascist government is an oppressive one with strong central control.
"facist == right wing authoritarian. Survival of the fitest etc. Hilter, Mussolini etc
When you look at left-wingers like Lenin, Stalin, and Pol Pot, you can see they fit perfectly with this. The difference between the extreme fascist right and extreme fascist left is a superficial one of style. Remember, also, that Hitler's group was a socialist party.
"Stalinist == left wing authoritarian. The state will assign everyone a job, a house, a doctor, a car if you need one, a school, enough food to survive but not enough to thrive. Stalin, Mao Tse Dung, etc"
No more and no less than right-wing fascists. Stalin's and Mao's regimes each contained many millions starved to death and forced from their homes.
"OK both type viciously put down opposition and have a state controlled single party system. Of course you americans have two virtually identical parties so you're nearly there"
No, we have many parties here. The only thing is, just two of them bother to put forth popular policies. Also, the two parties certainly are not identical; they have differences on most of the issues that matter to most Americans.
"I think you're wrong about state run health (and education), they work well and are efficient, but then I'm european and we care about our fellow man."
They do not work that well. Care about our fellow man? We all know how much Europeans care: famous Europeans like Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Franco, Mussolini.
The apache helicopter.
An American was machine, named after a group of people that had genocide commited against them.
I hope I'm going to die young and without any kids (poor bastards), I wish my mum had.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
This will never be used for partisan political purposes, either. Just like the Ministry of Homeland Security wasn't used recently in Texas.
Winston
"Just like the Ministry of Homeland Security wasn't used recently in Texas."
There are no Ministries in the U.S. or Canada. Must be something to do with separation of church and state and keeping ministers out of government.
You're only 20 years late, but that's only double-plus ungood.
Feh.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
getting/having this than the government.
And they already do, with FAR less oversight than TIA.
Far less security, far fewer rules as to what they can/will do with all that 'marketing' information. Far less structure to weed out bad/incorrect records.
We can (hopefully) vote out foolish leaders. The heads of corporations are there as long as they want, doing whatever they want.
Much better sources are available, for example, books. The ones I supplied came from a quick googling.
The activities of the FDA and Agriculture Department are openly discussed. Twenty years ago, most people in the U.S. did not know the CIA was training terrorists to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, for example. That training is now used against United States citizens. The CIA calls this "blowback".
Nobody is ever "forced" to join a union. The Homland Security dept said "no unions ever" which I think is a pretty shitty thing to do. People have the RIGHT to unionize.
Allowing Americans the right to organize for a better standard of living is putting National Security low how? You have just proven my point very nicely, thank you.... Agree blindly with GW's cronies or you must be against security!!
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
--the issue of the vote recount in florida can be looked at another way. To me, it makes little difference. If you do even a short analysis of all the "front runners" in major elections, you'll find that basically, you are given the opportunity to "vote" for various corporations, think tanks and groups. They share this for the most part. A vote for either one of the basic "two" candidates still results in the combination of (just a broad generalization here) the CFR, Rand corporation, etc, several along those lines, and some multinational corporations and large banks (again international and cross over spillage with the humans involved) and some various "think tanks" and study groups "winning" the election. It doesn't matter, either candidate winning gives the same exact power blocs the election.
What you see with these candidates (and whomever "wins" of course) are media spokespeople,actors and script readers, they are puppets who's strings are pulled at much higher levels. They are told what to do. These elections now give the illusion of voting, they give an illusion of choice, they give an illusion of major differences, they give an illusion of representative government. And they do an admirable job in keeping people divided, and not looking one inch further than "party" differences, they keep the focus at that level and no higher for most people, and it is "politically most correct" for the string pullers to have it remain that way, so they push it. That's why you see so little major difference in the controlled media, follow the ownership chain of command high enough, only a few people in the good old boys club are there. Sure, they throw "liberal" and "conservative" columnists out there, again, to maintain the focus just *so far* politically, but to SQUASH it beyond that point beyond which they don't want you looking.
It is not totally completely 100% there, but it is so close I feel confident stating the above as "true facts", because any remaining differences are trivial, no different from a high level mafia conference and some of the local capos squabbling over this or that issue. It's still "the mafia".
This is as much a levels of awarness thing as anything else. People have a tendency to stop looking at their exact comfortable/uncomfortable level. Once it makes them uncomfortable, where what they are seeing is getting to the area of causing actual psychological pain for them, this "paradigm shifting" event threshold, they stop looking, retreat one step or level, then fixate exactly at that level, and anything above that becomes "deniable" it "doesn't exist" because "everyone knows that".
This is somewhat easily proven. In the US we have these two major "parties". For decades now, generations really, there are examples of high level lying, corruption, malfeasance in office. It is in both these "parties" that most people associate with, this forced schism of "left and right". The more focused and vocal cheerleaders of both parties quite obviously ignore, deny, refute, all the top level scandals and examples of corruption, they deny the lies. Go to the two largest political forums on the internet, democratic Underground and Freerepublic. You can see this happen, both places. both places find plenty of faults with 'the other side", but once faults start showing up with their own side, the "uncomfortable level of awareness" political pain threshold is met, frequently even the mere posting of data gets nuked into oblivion, let alone any conclusionary analysis of it. In the last two administrations, the slang terms for these people are "clintonistas" and now "bushbots". They readily point out obvious failures, crimes, examples of corruption, etc with the OTHER side, but are in amost total denial on "their side". Both sides are correct in their analysis of the other side. Data is just data, conclusions based on data available to anyone to look at tend to become more or less obvious. The ramifications should then be even more obvious- the differnces in this "party" system are tr
The country of Palestine never existed, for example.
The modern country of Israel never existed until is was created 60 years ago, either. Whats your point?
Again, you are admitting that they hate freedom.
No, you simply use the word "Freedom" to describe it, yet you know full well that "Freedom" in the sense we are discussing it refers to a political system which in the case of the U.S is framed by the United States Constitution. The terrorists don't hate that, certainly not directly as you seem to imply. What they hate is that the U.S version of religion and morality do not match their "God given" version of religion and morality. They see the U.S as immoral.
Just because the particular brand of Islam that Osama subscribes too also creates politically non-Free states such as Afghanistan under the Taliban is simply nothing to do with the feelings of Al Queda towards the U.S.
Israel is loathe to admit its nuclear weapons, let alone pass them around.
WHOOOSH! That was the sound of the point rushing over your head.
It is that the U.S, U.K and France are guilty of abiding the proliferation of nuclear weapons to a non-nuclear state through an official policy of turning a blind eye, or even in some cases, directly helping. Not Israel.
I can't believe nobody's yet mentioned this classic 1984 reference from 8-10 years ago.
"Nobody is ever "forced" to join a union"
Wrong. In most states, workers are not protected by "right to work", and they are thus given the choice: "join the union or be fired" in many workplaces. About 1/3 of union members are "forced" members this way.
"The Homland Security dept said "no unions ever" which I think is a pretty shitty thing to do."
Actually, nothing stops them from giving whatever money to the union of their choice. Or not.
"People have the RIGHT to unionize"
I agree. They also have the right not to unionize, which you oppose. I support an individual worker's rights on this.
"Allowing Americans the right to organize for a better standard of living is putting National Security low how?"
It doesn't, but forcing them to organize against their interests harms their livelihood.
Theatetus's law states that once two people have disagreed on the Israel/Palestine situation, no amount of argument by one will ever convince the other, so it's time to stop. Thank you
All's true that is mistrusted
The question is not whether the links are good. The question is whether the information is true. Most people in the U.S. are not aware of the U.S. government's support for violent dictatorships, for example. But that support is not disputed by those who have studied the history. There are even U.S. government web sites that document support for violence dictatorships, for example.
[nt]
(disclaimer: I work for a company that made a proposal for TIA and lost)
I'm glad to see TIA making a comeback, because in my opinion it would be a shame to see it killed. Why? Because it's a program with some damn good ideas, hampered by technically savvy but politically-challenged leadership (Poindexter). He had NO CLUE that the logo would scare people, or that the wording of its mission statement would terrify a populace already weary from assaults on their civil liberties. And his difficulty grasping why some folks have privacy concerns about TIA may very well cripple the program.
TIA aims to create for databases what ARPANet did for computers -- develop common platforms and protocols for establishing relationships between disparate sources of information. It aims to enable queries and searches that make Google look like a random URL generator -- you'll be able to find bus schedules that'll take you to the bookstore where your favorite author is giving a reading, B&Bs in Amsterdam that have nonsmoking rooms with TVs that will be showing your favorite football team's game at 3pm next Tuesday, companies incorporated in Singapore whose CEOs went to U.Missouri with Kenneth Lay . . . all in a few clicks or keystrokes.
Yes, it's something that could be abused by the US government. However, that doesn't mean we should give in to blind Luddism and reject such a promising technology outright. Rather, TIA should address security and privacy concerns from the get-go (I'm particularly fond of Latanya Sweeney's research in this regard), as a layer of recommendations and best-practices atop the fundamental architecture that TIA aims to produce.
We've been watching you...
"The modern country of Israel never existed until is was created 60 years ago, either. Whats your point?"
An Arab polity named Palestine never existed.
"The terrorists don't hate that, certainly not directly as you seem to imply. What they hate is that the U.S version of religion and morality do not match their "God given" version of religion and morality. They see the U.S as immoral"
So what it boils down to is that they hate freedom. The Constitution as you mention gives/protects the secular religious freedom. The U.S. is to them immoral because we have religious freedom...the religious morality is left to the people due to this freedom.
"Just because the particular brand of Islam that Osama subscribes too also creates politically non-Free states such as Afghanistan under the Taliban is simply nothing to do with the feelings of Al Queda towards the U.S."
It has everything to do with it. They favor a system of forced Islam called "Shariah": antithetical to a secular, free system.
"[Israel is loathe to admit its nuclear weapons, let alone pass them around]. WHOOOSH! That was the sound of the point rushing over your head."
Perhaps it is because your point was so weak, i tried to get the next obvious point. Your point is still very weak, even restated. The problem is only when bad guys have these things.
A "mass of unrefuted evidence" that the Democrats in general, and Gore in particular, have simply ignored?!?
I think not.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
...that's exactly what they told you. "This will only be used against enemies of the People"
No, this is not another "In Soviet Russia" joke.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"No! It can and must go away, its a matter of the citizens being informed, something that is becoming increasingly hard to do (with only 6 Media Conglomerates under Right Wing control"
Not true. First, most of the big national TV news outlets are left wing (CBS, CNN, ABC, NBC).
Second, if you look beyond TV, there are thousands of media operations out there with no conglomerate control.
"If we had a government that wasn't totally run by a single, paranoid, money motivated, proud to be stupid (as in "look at those snobby educated liberals"), corporate controlled party, this would not be happening!!!"
Currently, there are two parties in US government, and neither is corporate controlled.
"We are at a turning point in history of the US! Lets not lay down our rights as humans beings in the name of safely! Lets not believe the lies!!!"
Exactly! Hence my reaction to your lies.
I wonder what the goal of creating such a "Fake" story would be? Why would someone go to the bother of it?
I cannot see how it makes anyone feel differently about the United States military, one way or another. The only person I feel strongly favorable toward is that Iraqi lawyers who helped Lynch, and I do not see how that helps a "propaganda war".
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"Plus John Poindexter outright lied to congress and showed no hesitation"
Tom Daschle lies to Congress day after day with no hesitation. I guess it is OK for him to do it since he is on your side.
(this is a cut and paste)
THE FIFTY STEPS TO WORLD WAR & FASCISM
( an adaptation of Author Thom Hartman"s "When Democracy Failed,
1. THE GOVERNMENT RECEIVED WARNINGS OF AN IMMINENT ATTACK.
2. THE WARNINGS WERE IGNORED.
3. THE NATION'S LEADER WAS ILLEGITIMATE, ELECTED BY A MINORITY.
4. HE WAS A SIMPLETON WHO SAW THINGS IN BLACK AND WHITE ONLY.
5. HIS LANGUAGE WAS COARSE AND OFFENSIVE.
6. AS A YOUNG MAN, HE JOINED A SECRET SOCIETY WHOSE RITUALS
INCLUDED SKULL AND BONES.
7. HE KNEW THE TERRORIST WHO WAS GOING TO STRIKE.
8. HE STOOD ON THE RUBBLE OF THE BUILDING ATTACKED.
9. HE DECLARED ALL-OUT WAR AGAINST EVIL.
10. A DETENTION CENTER FOR TERRORISTS WAS SOON BUILT.
11. LEGISLATION WAS ENACTED BANNING FREE SPEECH, PRIVACY AND HABEAS CORPUS.
12. SUSPECTED TERRORISTS COULD BE IMPRISONED WITHOUT ACCESS TO LAWYERS.
13. A PATRIOTIC "DECREE" WAS PASSED WITH A 4 YEAR SUNSET PROVISION.
14. LEGISLATORS DID NOT HAVE TIME TO READ IT.
15. SUSPICIOUS PERSONS WERE ARRESTED WITHOUT ACCESS TO LAWYERS OR THE COURTS.
16. THOSE OBJECTING WERE IGNORED BY A MAINSTREAM PRESS.
17. PROTESTING CITIZENS WERE FENCED OFF IN ZONES.
18. THE COUNTRY WAS REFERRED TO AS THE "HOMELAND".
19. IT WAS OUR HOMELAND VS. ALL OTHERS.
20. THE LEADER DECLARED THAT AN INTERNATIONAL BODY WHICH DID NOT ACT FIRST IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE NATION WAS IRRELEVANT.
21. HE WITHDREW FROM THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.
22. HE CLAIMED HIS MOTIVATIONS WERE ROOTED IN CHRISTIANITY.
23. HE FELT THAT THE VARIOUS AGENCIES WERE NOT COORDINATED TO DEAL WITH THE TERRORIST THREAT.
24. HE PROPOSED A SINGLE AGENCY TO PROTECT THE HOMELAND.
25. HE APPOINTED ONE OF HIS TRUSTED ASSOCIATES TO LEAD THIS NEW AGENCY.
26. THE RADIO AND PRESS WERE AT HIS DISPOSAL.
27. PEOPLE WERE ENCOURAGED TO PHONE IN TIPS ABOUT SUSPICIOUS NEIGHBORS.
28. OPPOSITION LEADERS AND CELEBRITIES WHO SPOKE OUT WERE
DENOUNCED.
29. THE LEADER CONSOLIDATED HIS POWER AND BROUGHT CORPORATE
LEADERS INTO HIGH GOVERNMENT POSITIONS.
30. A FLOOD OF GOVERNMENT MONEY POURED INTO CORPORATE COFFERS.
31. THE LEADER ENCOURAGED LARGE CORPORATIONS TO ACQUIRE MEDIA OUTLETS AND OTHER INDUSTRIAL CONCERNS ACROSS THE NATION,
PARTICULARLY THOSE OWNED BY SUSPICIOUS PEOPLE OF MIDDLE EASTERN
ANCESTRY.
32. HE BUILT POWERFUL ALLIANCES WITH INDUSTRY.
33. DISSENT AROSE WITHIN AND OUTSIDE THE GOVT. LEADERS OF OTHER NATIONS SPOKE OUT AGAINST HIS BELLICOSE RHETORIC.
34. THE LEADER NEEDED A DIVERSION TO DIRECT PEOPLE AWAY FROM CORPORATE CRONYISM.
35. HE BEGAN A CAMPAIGN TO MANIPULATE THE MEDIA TO HYPE A LIMITED WAR.
36. A NATION WHICH HARBORED SUSPICIOUS PEOPLE AND HAD A TENUOUS RELATIONSHIP WITH THE TERRORIST WHO HAD SET AFIRE THE NATIONS MOST IMORTANT BUILDING, HAD THE RESOURCES HE NEEDED.
37. THE LEADER PUBLICLY DELIVERED AN ULTIMATUM.
38. HE CLAIMED THE RIGHT TO PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE IN SELF-DEFENSE.
39. AFTER MILITARY ACTION BEGAN, THE BRITISH PM DECLARED THAT IT WOULD BRING PEACE IN OUR TIME.
40. THE LEADER DECLARED THAT THOSE HE CONQUERED LOVED HIM.
41. THE PRESS BEGAN TO EQUATE HIS POLICIES WITH PATRIOTISM AND THE NATION ITSELF.
42. THE MEDIA SAID NATIONAL UNITY WAS ESSENTIAL.
43. THOSE QUESTIONING THE LEADER WERE CALLED TRAITORS.
44. DISSENT WAS STIFLED AS INTELLECTUALS AND LIBERALS WERE
THRASHED.
45. VOICES OF OPPOSITION WERE RAISED AFTER THE LIMITED WAR.
46. THE DAILY PROPAGANDA DID NOT TOTALLY SUPPRESS DISSENT.
47. A FULL WAR WAS NECESSARY TO DIVERT ATTENTION FROM GROWING OPPOSITION.
48. ONE YEAR LATER, WORLD WAR II BEGAN.
49. THE BLITZKRIEG OR LIGHTNING WAR "SHOCKED AND AWED" EUROPE.
50. "FASCISM SHOULD MORE PROPERLY BE CALLED CORPORATISM, SINCE
IT IS THE MERGER OF STATE AND CORPORATE POWER." - BENITO MUSSOLINE
FASCISM-
"A SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT THAT EXERCISES DICTATORSHIP BY THE EXTREME RIGHT TYPICALLY THROUGH THE MERGING OF STATE AND
CORPORATE POWER, TOGETHER WITH BELLIGERENT NATIONALISM"
Sound familiar?
"The United States has for many decades been fostering a culture of "fear and consumption." Its beautifully illustrated in Bowling for Columbine"
Bowling for Columbine only illustrates Michael Moore's skewed world view. It has nothing to do with how things actually are.
"I recommend this to everyone outside the US to understand a little bit about the US"
They would come away from it knowing less about the US than before, as they would think that Moore's creation is the reality.
"and I wish it was required middle school viewing, and maybe, just maybe, we'd turn things around."
There are better things for students to waste their time on than watch fictional movies like this. In fact, they'd be better served watching Yu-Gi-Oh. At least it does not claim to be truthful.
THE FIFTY STEPS TO WORLD WAR & FASCISM
( an adaptation of Author Thom Hartman"s "When Democracy Failed,
1. THE GOVERNMENT RECEIVED WARNINGS OF AN IMMINENT ATTACK.
2. THE WARNINGS WERE IGNORED.
3. THE NATION'S LEADER WAS ILLEGITIMATE, ELECTED BY A MINORITY.
4. HE WAS A SIMPLETON WHO SAW THINGS IN BLACK AND WHITE ONLY.
5. HIS LANGUAGE WAS COARSE AND OFFENSIVE.
6. AS A YOUNG MAN, HE JOINED A SECRET SOCIETY WHOSE RITUALS
INCLUDED SKULL AND BONES.
7. HE KNEW THE TERRORIST WHO WAS GOING TO STRIKE.
8. HE STOOD ON THE RUBBLE OF THE BUILDING ATTACKED.
9. HE DECLARED ALL-OUT WAR AGAINST EVIL.
10. A DETENTION CENTER FOR TERRORISTS WAS SOON BUILT.
11. LEGISLATION WAS ENACTED BANNING FREE SPEECH, PRIVACY AND HABEAS CORPUS.
12. SUSPECTED TERRORISTS COULD BE IMPRISONED WITHOUT ACCESS TO LAWYERS.
13. A PATRIOTIC "DECREE" WAS PASSED WITH A 4 YEAR SUNSET PROVISION.
14. LEGISLATORS DID NOT HAVE TIME TO READ IT.
15. SUSPICIOUS PERSONS WERE ARRESTED WITHOUT ACCESS TO LAWYERS OR THE COURTS.
16. THOSE OBJECTING WERE IGNORED BY A MAINSTREAM PRESS.
17. PROTESTING CITIZENS WERE FENCED OFF IN ZONES.
18. THE COUNTRY WAS REFERRED TO AS THE "HOMELAND".
19. IT WAS OUR HOMELAND VS. ALL OTHERS.
20. THE LEADER DECLARED THAT AN INTERNATIONAL BODY WHICH DID NOT ACT FIRST IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE NATION WAS IRRELEVANT.
21. HE WITHDREW FROM THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.
22. HE CLAIMED HIS MOTIVATIONS WERE ROOTED IN CHRISTIANITY.
23. HE FELT THAT THE VARIOUS AGENCIES WERE NOT COORDINATED TO DEAL WITH THE TERRORIST THREAT.
24. HE PROPOSED A SINGLE AGENCY TO PROTECT THE HOMELAND.
25. HE APPOINTED ONE OF HIS TRUSTED ASSOCIATES TO LEAD THIS NEW AGENCY.
26. THE RADIO AND PRESS WERE AT HIS DISPOSAL.
27. PEOPLE WERE ENCOURAGED TO PHONE IN TIPS ABOUT SUSPICIOUS NEIGHBORS.
28. OPPOSITION LEADERS AND CELEBRITIES WHO SPOKE OUT WERE
DENOUNCED.
29. THE LEADER CONSOLIDATED HIS POWER AND BROUGHT CORPORATE
LEADERS INTO HIGH GOVERNMENT POSITIONS.
30. A FLOOD OF GOVERNMENT MONEY POURED INTO CORPORATE COFFERS.
31. THE LEADER ENCOURAGED LARGE CORPORATIONS TO ACQUIRE MEDIA OUTLETS AND OTHER INDUSTRIAL CONCERNS ACROSS THE NATION,
PARTICULARLY THOSE OWNED BY SUSPICIOUS PEOPLE OF MIDDLE EASTERN
ANCESTRY.
32. HE BUILT POWERFUL ALLIANCES WITH INDUSTRY.
33. DISSENT AROSE WITHIN AND OUTSIDE THE GOVT. LEADERS OF OTHER NATIONS SPOKE OUT AGAINST HIS BELLICOSE RHETORIC.
34. THE LEADER NEEDED A DIVERSION TO DIRECT PEOPLE AWAY FROM CORPORATE CRONYISM.
35. HE BEGAN A CAMPAIGN TO MANIPULATE THE MEDIA TO HYPE A LIMITED WAR.
36. A NATION WHICH HARBORED SUSPICIOUS PEOPLE AND HAD A TENUOUS RELATIONSHIP WITH THE TERRORIST WHO HAD SET AFIRE THE NATIONS MOST IMORTANT BUILDING, HAD THE RESOURCES HE NEEDED.
37. THE LEADER PUBLICLY DELIVERED AN ULTIMATUM.
38. HE CLAIMED THE RIGHT TO PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE IN SELF-DEFENSE.
39. AFTER MILITARY ACTION BEGAN, THE BRITISH PM DECLARED THAT IT WOULD BRING PEACE IN OUR TIME.
40. THE LEADER DECLARED THAT THOSE HE CONQUERED LOVED HIM.
41. THE PRESS BEGAN TO EQUATE HIS POLICIES WITH PATRIOTISM AND THE NATION ITSELF.
42. THE MEDIA SAID NATIONAL UNITY WAS ESSENTIAL.
43. THOSE QUESTIONING THE LEADER WERE CALLED TRAITORS.
44. DISSENT WAS STIFLED AS INTELLECTUALS AND LIBERALS WERE
THRASHED.
45. VOICES OF OPPOSITION WERE RAISED AFTER THE LIMITED WAR.
46. THE DAILY PROPAGANDA DID NOT TOTALLY SUPPRESS DISSENT.
47. A FULL WAR WAS NECESSARY TO DIVERT ATTENTION FROM GROWING OPPOSITION.
48. ONE YEAR LATER, WORLD WAR II BEGAN.
49. THE BLITZKRIEG OR LIGHTNING WAR "SHOCKED AND AWED" EUROPE.
50. "FASCISM SHOULD MORE PROPERLY BE CALLED CORPORATISM, SINCE
IT IS THE MERGER OF STATE AND CORPORATE POWER." - BENITO MUSSOLINE
FASCISM-
"A SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT THAT EXERCISES DICTATORSHIP BY THE EXTREME RIGHT TYPICALLY THROUGH THE MERGING OF STATE AND
CORPORATE POWER, TOGETHER WITH BELLIGERENT NATIONALISM"
Sound familiar?
Why? So members of the NRA can be macho and hunt deer?
That's not what the Founders thought. A typical quote:
Noah Webster: "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe." (1787, Pamphlets on the Constitution of the US)
Constitutional proceedures, i.e. amendment of the Bill of Rights, have not been followed in creating the imbalance of power that now exists between the people and the standing army.
It is therefore the duty of every man and woman in the United States Armed forces to ensure that "the people" have access to every bit as much armament as does the standing army which now turns its vigilant gaze upon the people.
Seastead this.
We know that this will be used beyond it's original purpose of tracking terrorism. Once you get a database that does such 'cool' things, it's going to be used in increasingly creative ways. The advantage of the soft peddling is that when that happens it will be more clearly an offense. The question, "How does that involve Terrorism?" is easy. Stretching Total Information Awareness to help in other 'noble' causes, would be harder to question. That said, I find the whole ordeal somewhat comical. Sad, but comical.
Are universities and the U.S. government itself "extreme left-wing fringe"? See the links below:
"Anyone interested in the activities of secret U.S. agencies may have been interested in a segment of the CBS show "60 Minutes" about the secret involvement of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the killing of General Rene Schneider of Chile. The show aired on Sunday, September 9, 2001. General Schneider was a strong supporter of democracy. Here are links to information about U.S. interference with democracy in Chile:
"National Security Archive Chile Documentation Project
'PBS News Hour: "... evidence of a policy to undermine democracy in Chile and to support dictatorship there"
"Hinchey Report, CIA Activities in Chile This is a U.S. government document."
Finally he found a pretty little waitress with yellow hair that worked in a hotel. Kathleen Fent was her name.
Pretty? Fent looks like Bugs Bunny!
Not to worry. Our email, posts and other on-line transmissions will be monitored for key phrases like "kill the President" but this information won't be abused. I mean the government agencies that will use this information don't hire complete idiots now do they.
I mean if I mention blowing up a building, they will look at my message in context before... Oops, a knock at the door... I'll be right back...
END OF TRANSMISSION.................................
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
"3. THE NATION'S LEADER WAS ILLEGITIMATE, ELECTED BY A MINORITY."...Bush is a legitimate leader, elected the same way his predecessors were. By the way, Clinton was elected by a minority as well. What is your point?
"4. HE WAS A SIMPLETON WHO SAW THINGS IN BLACK AND WHITE ONLY."...Everyone who has worked with him on both sides says he is smart. He also tends to see things as they are without regard to "black and white".
"5. HIS LANGUAGE WAS COARSE AND OFFENSIVE."
The same is true of LBJ, JFK, Hillary, and Eminem. what is your point?
"7. HE KNEW THE TERRORIST WHO WAS GOING TO STRIKE."However, he had no idea when or how.
"10. A DETENTION CENTER FOR TERRORISTS WAS SOON BUILT."he "Gitmo" base already existed.
"11. LEGISLATION WAS ENACTED BANNING FREE SPEECH, PRIVACY AND HABEAS CORPUS."Not one of these has been banned.
"16. THOSE OBJECTING WERE IGNORED BY A MAINSTREAM PRESS."Not true. I've seen anti-Bush protesters all over many media outlets.
"17. PROTESTING CITIZENS WERE FENCED OFF IN ZONES."This has only occured where the protesters were interfering with other citizen's rights to assemble and move.
"19. IT WAS OUR HOMELAND VS. ALL OTHERS."The alliance against terror includes scores of nations.
"21. HE WITHDREW FROM THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS."Does not exist, he can't. Nor has he withdrawn from the UN or even tried.
"22. HE CLAIMED HIS MOTIVATIONS WERE ROOTED IN CHRISTIANITY."As did Martin Luther King. Does this make him Hitler-like?
"24. HE PROPOSED A SINGLE AGENCY TO PROTECT THE HOMELAND."
Congressional Democrats proposed this, not Bush. Bush eventually want along.
"25. HE APPOINTED ONE OF HIS TRUSTED ASSOCIATES TO LEAD THIS NEW AGENCY."
Shocking! Imagine an executive leader appointing a friend! Never happened before has it?
"26. THE RADIO AND PRESS WERE AT HIS DISPOSAL."Not true for Bush. He only controls the VOA, and we are not even supposed to hear it in the US.
"28. OPPOSITION LEADERS AND CELEBRITIES WHO SPOKE OUT WERE DENOUNCED."
Welcome to America. This is nothing new. Celebrities who speak out for Bush are denounced too. And people found reasons to laud them or hate them before this issue came up.
"29. THE LEADER CONSOLIDATED HIS POWER AND BROUGHT CORPORATE LEADERS INTO HIGH GOVERNMENT POSITIONS."
Who was the last American president who did not do this?
"30. A FLOOD OF GOVERNMENT MONEY POURED INTO CORPORATE COFFERS."
Ah. the airplane bailout. Thank Tom Daschle for this. It was his baby.
"31. THE LEADER ENCOURAGED LARGE CORPORATIONS TO ACQUIRE MEDIA OUTLETS AND OTHER INDUSTRIAL CONCERNS ACROSS THE NATION"
Bush has not done this.
"32. HE BUILT POWERFUL ALLIANCES WITH INDUSTRY."
No change under Bush.
"33. DISSENT AROSE WITHIN AND OUTSIDE THE GOVT. LEADERS OF OTHER NATIONS SPOKE OUT AGAINST HIS BELLICOSE RHETORIC."
For one, he is not bellicose. For another, every leader in every free country has people speaking out against the leader. How does having dissent in a free press make one Hitler-like?
"34. THE LEADER NEEDED A DIVERSION TO DIRECT PEOPLE AWAY FROM CORPORATE CRONYISM."
No cronyism, no diversion needed.
"35. HE BEGAN A CAMPAIGN TO MANIPULATE THE MEDIA TO HYPE A LIMITED WAR."
No campaign; he does not control it.
"38. HE CLAIMED THE RIGHT TO PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE IN SELF-DEFENSE."
So? What is wrong with this? If a country says it is going to attack us, why not act?
"39. AFTER MILITARY ACTION BEGAN, THE BRITISH PM DECLARED THAT IT WOULD BRING PEACE IN OUR TIME."Blair did not say this any more than Churchill did.
"40. THE LEADER DECLARED THAT THOSE HE CONQUERED LOVED HIM."Bush has made no such declaration.
"41. THE PRESS BEGAN TO EQUATE HIS POLICIES WITH PATRIOTISM AND THE NATION ITSELF."Some in the press h
...Did you hear that click?
Children? How are you going to have children, since you never had or ever will have sex?
Ari's been truthful...
If Ari's been truthful, then he has been fed nothing but lies by those above him
Ari Fleisher? Is that you?
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
So what it boils down to is that they hate freedom.
Why boil it down? It's a simple concept, really.
The U.S version of morality and religion does not match the Islamic Fundemntialist versions of morality and religion. Just because the Constitution gives you those freedoms doesn't mean anything. The Constitution is the cause, the secular morality is the effect. Al Queda dislike the effect; the cause is immaterial.
I'd also like to point out that Al Queda dislike the U.K too, yet the U.K does not have a written Constitution. It is a democratic monarchy. What particular part of that does Al Queda hate, in your opinion?
They favor a system of forced Islam called "Shariah": antithetical to a secular, free system.
Shariah law is part of the religious construct, not a seperate entity. The root problem is still religion.
Perhaps it is because your point was so weak, i tried to get the next obvious point. Your point is still very weak, even restated. The problem is only when bad guys have these things.
How is it a weak point? Are you claiming that the U.S, U.K and France have no knowledge of the Israeli weapons programs, or are you claiming that knowlege of the Isreali weapons program while doing nothing to stop it is not a direct contrivention of the non proliferation treaties of which the U.S, U.K and France are signaturies?
Or perhaps you'd rather ignore this rather obvious part of the argument against the U.S support of Israel?
"Well, of course, we could use it against anyone we like, but we promise to only use it against bad people....[mumbles something about definition of 'bad' people.]"
I believe that 2+2=5. And I don't want to hear any intolerant crap from you that I'm wrong, you bigot.
You forgot to mention that Palestine wasn't Arab land, it was Turkish land. The vast majority of land in Palestine was owned by wealthy Turkish landowners, from the good ol' Ottoman days. And, of course, Turks are not Arabs. Also, you should remember that Jordan could also be considered East Palestine, since they're all the same ethnic group.
It's also important to note that Israel never signed the NPT, while her neighbors did.
"It will only be used against evildoers." Whew ... what a relief ... now my worries are gone.
There was only one complete recount done, the NORC recount conducted by a consortium of newspapers. They found that in all scenarios where you count all the votes, Gore would have won. The only way Bush wins is if you don't count the votes. The media being what it is, the usually changed their headlines to not fit their own stories. Here's the full scoop:
-PREVAILING STANDARD: County election officials told Florida journalists how they would define votes
if required to do a recount and in this scenario the majority standard was imposed statewide. In
punch-card counties, ballots with at least one corner of a chad detached counted as votes. In optical
scan counties, where voters are required to fill in blanks on a paper ballot - like on a standardized
test - ballots with any affirmative marks counted. That means a vote counted even if the oval was not
completely filled in or a candidate's name was circled or underlined; so did ballots on which a voter
correctly filled in the oval and also wrote the same candidate's name in the space for write-ins.
Result: Gore ahead by 60 votes.
-TWO-CORNER STANDARD: At least two corners of a chad must be detached to count as a vote, a position
that had been argued, at times, by Bush supporters. Same as prevailing standard for optical scan
ballots.
Result: Gore ahead by 105 votes.
-MOST INCLUSIVE: Ballots with dimpled chads count as votes, an argument often made by Gore supporters.
Same as prevailing standard for optical scan ballots.
Result: Gore ahead by 107 votes.
-LEAST INCLUSIVE: Only cleanly punched chads count as valid votes. For optical scan, only fully filled
ovals and those ballots on which a voter filled in the oval and wrote in the candidate's name, too.
Result: Gore ahead by 115 votes.
-COUNTY-by-COUNTY: Drawn from the county election officials. It accepts results from Broward and
Volusia counties because those counties completed hand counts that were included in state-certified
election totals. For those counties that said they would not count overvotes, relies on prevailing
standard.
Result: Gore ahead by 171 votes.
-PALM BEACH STANDARD: Based on a standard Palm Beach election officials briefly used, this counts
dimpled chads as valid votes if a pattern of dimpled chads exists elsewhere on the same ballot. Same as
prevailing standard for optical scan ballots.
Result: Gore ahead by 42 votes.
P.S. Please note that these results do not include the illegal absentee ballots from Republican counties (they only threw out the late military ballots from Democratic counties), the thousands falsely disencranchised (most of whom were black) when the GOP hired a private company to "scrub" the voter's lists or anything at all from the infamous butterfly ballot, "Jews-for-Buchanan" incident.
P.S.S. The judge assigned to overview the recount if the Supreme Court hadn't stopped the recount has already gone on record saying he would have ordered a full recount, not a partial recount. The original poster had it right. What happened in 2000 was a coup, and it should outrage all Americans regardless of where they fit on the political spectrum.
Bowling for Americans.
Filmed from outside the USA of course
Thanks for the correction about Palestine previously being Turkish land. I may as well say s/Arab/Muslim right now, although my argument still stands.
While Israel never signed the NPT the U.K, U.S and France did, and therefore have a resonsibility not to help Israel to development nuclear weapons.
This is why, first chance I get I'm moving to Canada! I only need 20 more points! The ironic thing is that Canadian's have more freedoms, but live in socialistic society (UnAmerican), and don't have guaranteed freedoms written into their constitution.
cat sig >
I'm getting very irritated with people saying "you're paranoid, why do you think the government is out to get you?" Just take a look at the f*cking Constitution! A lot of the very basic premises, like the system of checks and balances, if founded on the idea that you cannot necessarily trust government officials. Moreover, you shouldn't *have* to trust them in order to guarentee your freedom. The system is designed to work even if a large section of the government becomes corrupt. All these protections that our founding fathers worked so hard on, have they suddenly become irrelevent? Has human nature really changed so much in 200 years that it's unthinkable that the US government will become corrupt? Nobody thinks it can happen to them, until it does...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I had almost believed the IT community were a little smarter until I found this one. DARPA did not discover the Internet. It was CERN. Maybe the name, but thats such a trivial thing.
Its a good things we're killing all these terrorists to protect our way of life. It would be a shame if our way of life was taken over by terorrists. They'd most certainly enslave us.
I love how we can so easily label people as being a threat to society today. Did you know that mobile terrorist labs could be driving through a countryside right now on semi trucks? Yeah, its true, the government said terorrists use these mobile labs to make their weapons of mass destruction. And they could be anywhere. Anyone could be a terrorist. Are you a terrorist?
The only weapons of mass destruction I know of are the weapons we sold those terrorists in the Talibon and Iraq a few years ago. I sure hope we made off like bandits to pay for all the human life.
So, you're in the UK, eh?
Make sure to smile for those cameras watching you everywhere you go.
> I hope I'm going to die young and without any kids (poor bastards), I wish my mum had.
But... but... then you wouldn't have a mother!
They can collect all the information on me they want, but they cannot predict my behavior, as irratic and non-counsumerish as I can be (this may not be the case for some). Eventually citizens in all parts of life will see effects of this and get pissed that some idiot company that sponsored the government is trying to con you into a product using personal things about you. That's going too far.
We love spending cash and being lavished and catered to, but not at the expense of our secrets. God knows I would not have anyone see where my cash (and I mean I operate on a cash-only basis, unless I'm buying milk and cereal) was spent on my last excursion to Vegas, or Vanuatu Islands (I wish!).
In my opinion, this is just another DB toget hacked, and when it does,te governmentwill be paying dearly for settingboobie-traps for 200 million pissed off Americans with screwed up credit reports and financial statements.
Bush won all the counts of votes, even the one Gore demanded.
But not the one the Florida Supreme Court demanded. Who cares what Gore wanted? He's just a candidate. He should no more get to decide how the votes are counted than Bush. The Florida Court is the one that has to interpret the law. Under Florida law, what matters is the will of the voter, not what a machine thinks is the will of the voter. Thus the complete recount was ordered, then stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court. Under that stopped count, Gore won. By stopping that count, the U.S. Court gave Bush the election. So he won by court order, not by winning the votes.
The only way to get Gore to win is to count ballots without Gore votes and imagine that Gore votes are on them (the so called "undercount")
Not ballots without Gore votes. Ballots that were not counted (by a machine) as having a Gore vote. There's a substantial difference. When the voter circles "Gore", or writes down "Gore", or puts a big check mark next to "Gore", it's pretty freeping obvious what the voter wanted, even if the machine didn't think so. But you seem to believe that if the machine didn't find a Gore vote, the voter did not want to vote for Gore. Is that just something you choose to believe because it fits with your other beliefs, or are you aware of some amazing advances in AI that were applied to these voting machines such that they could determine human intent better than humans?
The enemies of Democracy are
She wouldn't have a son either.
That's the wonderful thing about modern database technology. Your life doesn't have to be that interesting for the government to keep detailed watch on you; you get such an economy of scale maintaining a nationwide database that the cost of monitoring an individual electronically approaches zero.
You're absolutely right that the government isn't going to display much interest in 99% of the people it sureveils. But since it's watching everyone, it'll know the instant any individual does start being interesting, and it'll know their whole background.
Join a political party that's considered non-mainstream? You can be shunted to the front of a list automatically, and the government will know everything about you, down to your taste in pornography. If you believe that the gov't won't use its power against alternative political groups, think again; they've already prevented certain members of the Green party from flying on national airlines. And, of course, the FBI had no qualms about harrassing Martin Luther King, why should it be any different now? TIA just makes these abuses easier and more dangerous.
If you don't see the power of these systems, that's not a comment on their nature. It's merely a reflection of your lack of understanding. I assure you that the Pentagon realizes how powerful they can be.
Amazing. The Wall Street Journal reported, after a full hand recount done by a group of newspapers - the ONLY full hand count that was done, Gore would have won by 10,000 votes.
Under various "recount scenarios" Bush won a few, Gore won one.
The only recount scenario that should have mattered was a full hand recount done according to the laws existing on election day. That count would have shown that 10,000 more people in FL voted for Gore than Bush.
The constant outright lying byt Republicans on this point is astounding.
Even though it's been printed in black and white in all the major newspapers, and unconstested, they still lie on a daily basis.
It used to be called freedom of the press. The politicians have finally learned how to control what gets reported.
More interesting Panopticon stuff here and here
Quoting one article:
Oddly, this has received absolutely no coverage in the US press."dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
Quoting one:
Oddly, this has received absolutely no coverage in the US media."dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
Surf for pron and you're a minor in your state? Busted!
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
A "mass of unrefuted evidence" that the Democrats in general, and Gore in particular, have simply ignored?!?
I think not.
Well, think again.
Obviously Gore wasn't going to be given the White House no matter what happened. The Court decided it was more important to not damage Pres. Elect Bush's presidency than to determine if he actually won. The media grabbed that and ran, telling us that we were relieved that it was finally decided. Gore was already being called a sore loser for even speaking after the winner had been decided.
What exactly could he hope to gain by pressing the issue? He and his party would be lambasted as being sore losers, trying to undermine Bush's presidency with false claims, damaging the stability of the nation, or whatever else. The Dems would be seen as the party that wouldn't forget the election and get down to the business of running the country. Gore got more votes, but the race -was- incredibly close. There are plenty of fence-sitters who could be driven to the GOP by such unsportsman-like behavior. Turning away future votes to argue about past ones isn't a winning political strategy.
That was pre-9/11. Post-9/11, it is even more unlikely (fantastically improbable) that the Dems will bring this issue forward by themselves.
Besides, it's not like the Dems want to shake up the system too much either.
So the Dems not campaigning to get the issue back in the spotlight should not be construed to mean that the evidence isn't there.
The enemies of Democracy are
"Obviously Gore wasn't going to be given the White House no matter what happened."
He'd have been given it if had actually won the election, which he did not.
"The Court decided it was more important to not damage Pres. Elect Bush's presidency than to determine if he actually won."
No. The Court just decided that a national election would not be destroyed by the loser "rolling the dice" over and over again on a close margin until he finally won one (at which point he'd take victory and deny additional recounts).
" Gore was already being called a sore loser for even speaking after the winner had been decided."
Yes. He was indeed a sore loser for speaking after he had lost.
They can change the name from Total Information Awareness to Terrorist Information Awareness, and they can change the logo, but it is still "The Beast." It won't be long before they are tatooing us with our national ID numbers.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
The Basque Country situation is quite complicated and no comment in Slashdot would be enough to describe it accurately. Also, people who know and care the most about this situation are also the most likely to have an agenda, and finding a truly impartial source is almost impossible. The best you can do is reading sources that are biased in as many directions as possible, and taking your own shot at interpreting them.
Still, I'd say the parent is being deliberately misleading when it suggests that Aznar is trying to hinder political separatism by promoving the illegalization of AuB. In fact, "practically any political party that is pro-independance for the Basque country is now banned" is an outright lie. The truth is that the parties in the Basque government (PNV, EA and IU) are quite pro-independence -- especially EA. These parties are going to benefit immensely by the illegalization of AuB since they'll get a significant share of AuB's votes (against the wishes of AuB's direction, by the way). These parties are also leaning more towards separatism in order to increase their appeal to AuB's voters. If anything, Basque Country separatism is bound to be augmented by AuB's illegalization.
There are also good reasons to illegalize AuB. By participating in the Basque institutions, AuB had access to a lot of infrastructure that has been very useful for ETA in the past. The loss of this infrastructure is going to be hard blow for ETA, and I'm all for that.
"So let me get this straight, the white men came... stole some else's land. You either massacred or displaced those "natives", then they have to live in reservations"
You? Not me. Not anyone. There is not a single white man you will find anywhere who was involved in this or any remotely related act, except perhaps a handful of thugs at Wounded Knee 2.
"Then you label them as Indians, then as native americans, and then you bitch about how they dare to use the term "native"?"
Words mean things. Native means native. If you are from a place, you are native to it.
I prefer to use the names of the tribes, nations, or bands the individuals belong to. After all, these "Indians" are a diverse people, and their actual heritage should be honored without lumping them all into broad-reaching terms that always (Indian, native) are not very accurate.
"Trust but verify" - that's part of why all these security developments are frightening to so many of us. The transparency required for there to be public accountability is conspicuously absent from proposals like TIA. This fosters an enviroment prone to abuse.
I forget the order of importnace here, but significant characteristics that help you identify someone are:
There are others, but I can't remember them just now.
I heard once that the best way to avoid being found is to buy the book How to Find Missing Persons and don't do anyhting that they talk about in that book!
Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
"Though he did get the most votes. Weird, I thought that getting the most votes meant winning. Guess I didn't count on the Supreme Court Factor."
The only vote total that matters is electoral votes, and Gore came up short since he did not win enough states to get the right amount. It has always been that way. If you want to change it, fine, but ignorance of this basic Constitutional process is no excuse.
Other totals do not matter, never have. Total raw #, total counties won, total states won, total big cities won, it is all the same: only one count matters, and these are not it.
"And obviously I'm talking about bringing forth the evidence of the fraud and disenfranchisement in the election, after Bush had been declared winner. No way was Bush going to be removed from office and Gore put in his place."
You can't bring forth any evidence since there is none.
If there had been any evidence at all of this, the Gore campaign would have (rightly) made issue. But there wasn't.
"And it's funny you should call a full state-wide hand recount (what the Florida court ordered and was stopped by the U.S. court) "rolling the dice". "
That particular recount is worse than rolling the dice: it is an invalid total because it includes imaginary votes divined from "voter intent" instead of actual ballot usage.
"Yeah, and Carl Lewis was a sore loser for taking the gold from Ben Johnson. He lost fair and square, if you don't count the cheating!"
That would be a valid comparison, except that Bush got more actual votes in Florida.
Still, I'd say the parent is being deliberately misleading when it suggests that Aznar is trying to hinder political separatism by promoving the illegalization of AuB.
No, I'm not being deliberately misleading. I think there is a real cause for concern when a very significant number of politicians are "black listed" from politics without due process.
In fact, "practically any political party that is pro-independance for the Basque country is now banned" is an outright lie.
Not a lie, but having read a bit more about it I accept that the statement is factually incorrect. But I wasn't trying to mislead.
There are also good reasons to illegalize AuB.
I think illegalizing political parties is very dangerous. In a democracy with freedom of speech, there should be parties that represent the whole political spectrum, even extremes that you don't necessarily agree with. The acts that terrorists perform are illegal and they should be punished accordingly. But terrorism should not be used as an excuse to stifle political discourse, and there is little doubt in my mind that Aznar is doing exactly that. I think even you (who I guess supports Aznar) would find the example of Aznar's party trying to send a political lecturer to jail for having a web site critisicing the war in Iraq incomprehensible in a modern democracy.
We can sit in our cheap imitation leather chairs in our overly halogenicly lit cubes, or for those lucky bastards who have an office, an ergonimc leather 300 moving part captains chair in a dark dimly lit cave where non geeks fear to tread, drinking "Bawls" caffenieted drink and bad mouthing the government and the Penatgon from a /. forum, but unless YOU do something then you might as well be standing outside the Senate with a picket sign saying "Take my civil liberties, PLEASE!"
Have you written your politicians????
Yeah I know they all belong at the bottom of the ocean in the bus next to the lawyers, but they are (supposed to be) our voice in the governmental/big business arena.
Have your visited the EFF at least, to take some action?
I know your tired of Ben Franklin's take on this, but its worth repeating (especially if it gets you out of this forum to take some action):
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
BTW..."They" means you if you haven't done squat but sit in these forums and bitch. Especially if your the one who bitches about the screw-ups of the administration and never took the time to vote! Hey...you COULD have recompiled the kernel the next day!
Have a better idea to prevent our eroding civil liberties? GREAT! Get out there and do it!
For all of those with excuses I offer this:
[excusee] But I...
[DR. EVIL] ZIP IT!
[excusee] But...
[DR. EVIL] Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, EX-ZIP-IT A!
[excusee] You dont...
[DR. EVIL] When a problem comes along....you must ZIP IT, ZIP IT GOOD!
[excusee] I dont...
[DR. EVIL] ZING PHU HI BING DU WA ZING PU DO
(subtitle: ZIP IT).
-An American Revolutionary
"There are no such things as Native Americans, we all migrated here at one time or another from Eurasia."
The overwhelming majority of those in the U.S. are native Americans. They did not migrate from anywhere: they are real natives. Most of the remaining non-natives came from another part of the "American" continents or vicinity: Mexicans, Haitians, Canadians, Cubans, and others.
Much smaller than these groups are the ones who migrated from Eurasia and Africa.
"We could have used the help immediately after the Supreme Court annointed Bush as Dictator after the last illegitimate election"
No. He just got more electoral votes than his opponents. If he is illegitimate, than so was Jimmy Carter. The Supreme Court did not appoint him, but they did prevent the 4th or 5th redundant recount (Bush had already won the previous ones).
We don't need foreign invaders to get him out. Just use the method we've had for a couple hundred years, the one that got Bush into office and got a bunch of other guys in an out of office: make sure your guy wins enough states to get enough electoral votes. That is all you need.
His conviction was thrown out as invalid; a mistake. Legally, it did not occur (just like a trial thrown out as a mistrial).
If lying to Congress were really a convictable offense, the chambers would be empty and the District's jails would be full. This would make for a very boring C-Span, and one or two interesting episodes of "The District".
"True security is not found in the military. Look at Israel, do they live in a secure state?"
It is certainly a lot more secure than if they could not defend themselves.
"The best way to be secure is to be on good terms will ALL your neighbors, respect their ideas and their rights to express them"
You mean such as the ideas of Assad II of Syria, who hates Jews so much that he made their subhumanity and untrustworthiness an issue in his meeting with the Pope last year? The only way to really get on the good side of people like that would be for the Israelis to willingly march themselves into the ovens.
Dude,
I agree, to some extent. I am without child, by choice. I wouldn't want to bring someone into a world where they face a life tantamount to slavery.
The world will, must, undergo a substantial socio-economic change and likely do so in the current generation. Technology is outproducing "even our ability to print money", according to some knowledgeable in the matter. We simply don't need people to make Cheerios anymore.
No people needed, no jobe. No jobs, no ability to consume. The owner of the factory, and his robots, will have capacity to feed Cheerios to the world, but won't because he can't price them.
For those not eating, uproar and revolt eventually.
The controlling caste will NOT embrace the needed change, and the best option open to them is dis-informing and encapsulating the lesser. That is what's happening today. No more lines at the UC office, its "invisable".
Alas, technology will progress. TIA will exist, if not in the hands of the Feds then in the hands of any of a number of credit reporting, and marketing, agencies. Pedabytes are "hard" today, but in 15 years? The PC was only invented in 1985. The frog WILL boil.
Even if the ruling caste seeks to resolve the issue, humanity is facing a downturn. Take the neverending "drought" in America, far more a problem of oversubscription than under supply. The Colorodo river hasn't reached the sea for a very good many years now. Food "needs" to be genetically altered to produce enough. The pollution/energy balance is under the strictist of management now and many disagree that even that is enough.
Alas, most government budgets absolutely depend on population growth. They offer tax advantages (in the US every child's upkeep is fully paid by the tax base), they continue to bash/tax alternative (gay/single) lifestyles to death. Unto the end of the world every advantage will be given to those that overpopulate.
But, dude, those alive now, today, have a chance. At 45 I used to think I'd "make it" to that ripe old age where nobody bothers you. But, I was wrong and I don't envy the future of 20 somethings. But, even they will likely eat well and have some degree of movement. Yea, the life of a pet in a cage but at some point the corporatist system will collapse and kids of that era will face the cage and nobody to tend them.
Do your kids a favor, don't have them. If you are here, now, make the best of it while you can.
"The PC was only invented in 1985. The frog WILL boil."
The PC was introduced in 1981/1982.
"An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public."
-- Charles Maurice de Talleyrand
If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal -- Jello Biafra
Well god damn. Seems like we have a lot of experts here. Experts on things like civil liberties, civil policy, privacy rights, terrorism, policing a society, etc. I think all of you complainers should just quit your jobs and seek public office. Like assholes you all seem to have opinions about what SHOULDN'T be done but few solutions concerning what should be done. How typical. I suppose we should just go back to the way things were before September 11th. Weak airport security. No databases containing information about our credit, spending habits, etc. (if you believe these are new, you're an idiot.) I'd like to see some of your suggestions for protecting the 291,028,179 citizens of the United States. No, really , enlighten me.
After reading many of the posts on this page, I wrote something similar to the above, but then thought "Aww forget it, just wasting my breath." (Some of you will no doubt agree.) So I deleted what I had written. But after reading some more of the comments posted here, I just couldn't help myself. I had to get this off my chest.
How many of you voted in the last election? How many of you plan on going into politics to try to make a difference? How many of you just sit behind your computers on your asses all day long and don't do shit but complain on Slashdot? Certainly, I'm sitting on mine right now, but you don't see me complaining about shit I have NO idea whatsoever about.
So, once again, I challenge you. Instead of saying shit like, "The government is fucked." "Politicians are idiots." and comparing the government of the greatest nation on the planet to the fucking Nazis for fucks' sake. Just pose a few solutions to terrorism. I would ABSOLUTELY LOVE to hear the shit you idiots would come up with. Hell, I need a good laugh!!
Oh, but it's probably far easier to mod me down than to actually think constructively instead of so damn critically.
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
"Please provide a documentation. I don't remember the report this way. As a matter of fact I remember it the opposite way. I suspect you have fabricated the above report."
The "least inclusive" one is the only one that we should worry about. The other counts are polluted by counting ballots that did not have votes on them.
Your gait betrays your identitym
Watch your step! The Pentagon is developing a radar-based device that can identify people by the way they walk, for use in a new anti-terrorist surveillance system.
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/5901464.ht
There was an older article somewhere about the UK using cellular towers.
If the DARPA is even *considering* these issues, then it's not at all off-target to draw parallels to Orwell/Huxley/whatever else. Is it not true that America was supposed to have been "above and beyond" this type of activity? If TIA is very nearly a reality (and the PATRIOT Act is *already* a reality), then perhaps you should be a little less naive...
"Your gait betrays your identity
Watch your step! The Pentagon is developing a radar-based device that can identify people by the way they walk"
That does it for me. No more walking. I'm buying a Segway.
"I can't dance, I can't talk.
the only thing about me is the way I walk" - 'Genesis'
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It seems like the provisions from the Terrorist hysteria WERE actually abused by the Texas State Police here.
They contacted the Feds to track down one of the private planes owned by a legislator, claiming it was being done under concerns about terrorism.
It annoyed the Feds when they found out. Of course, no one will lose their job over it. And we can expect more of the same as time goes by.
No, I'm not being deliberately misleading. I think there is a real cause for concern when a very significant number of politicians are "black listed" from politics without due process.
I too think there's a real cause for concern. I'm concerned. But this measure wasn't taken lightly. It has been obvious to everybody for more than twenty years that AuB (and its predecessors) were an ETA front. I don't think there's so much as a 1% of the Basque population that denies this. The convenience of illegalizing this party has been discussed many times through the years, and yet it wasn't done until very recently.
You see, judiciary action against individual members of AuB wasn't working. Investigation, trials and appeals would take many years, giving more than enough time for ETA to reorganize and replace the missing members.
Not a lie, but having read a bit more about it I accept that the statement is factually incorrect.
It's not just factually incorrect, it's the opposite of truth. Separatists not only have political representation in the Basque Country, they are in the power and probably will continue there.
I think illegalizing political parties is very dangerous. In a democracy with freedom of speech, there should be parties that represent the whole political spectrum, even extremes that you don't necessarily agree with.
As I explained, they weren't illegalized because they weren't agreed with. The rest of separatist parties (i.e. EA in the Basque Country or ERC in Catalonia) haven't been illegalized and won't be.
But terrorism should not be used as an excuse to stifle political discourse, and there is little doubt in my mind that Aznar is doing exactly that.
Aznar does use fear of terrorism politically, and I think that's foolish and shortsighted of him. On the other hand, many of his opponents are accusing him and his party of being heirs to the Franco dictatorship, which is also foolish and shortsighted. I'm afraid Spanish politicians aren't much better than everywhere else.
I think even you (who I guess supports Aznar)
I don't support Aznar not have I ever liked him as a politician (or voted for him). But that doesn't mean I have to oppose every decision he makes if I think there are enough reasons for my support.
would find the example of Aznar's party trying to send a political lecturer to jail for having a web site critisicing the war in Iraq incomprehensible in a modern democracy.
I'm not sure I know what you're talking about. I've read Aznar's party has sued the authors of a web site (who are college students, not a political lecturer) for calling them murderers. Maybe you're talking about something else, or maybe you're misinformed again.
Gore got the most votes in florida and there is a scandal covering it up. See exhibit A.
:)
:)
>> The only vote total that matters is electoral votes, and Gore came up short since he did not win enough states to get the right amount. It has always been that way. If you want to change it, fine, but ignorance of this basic Constitutional process is no excuse. Other totals do not matter, never have. Total raw #, total counties won, total states won, total big cities won, it is all the same: only one count matters, and these are not it.
Gore didn't win on electoral votes because his daddy rigged the florida election and also rigged the court case concerning said election. If the rule of law had been respected, Gore would be president right now. Unfortunately, Daddy Bush did not feel the need to respect the law. There's no need to change it, and there's no ignorance involved. Your logic depends on the assertion that Bush won Florida's electoral votes, which he did not. Sorry, but he didn't. The totals of counties and big/little states don't come into this at all. Try to stay on topic.
You can't bring forth any evidence since there is none. If there had been any evidence at all of this, the Gore campaign would have (rightly) made issue. But there wasn't. 2 things wrong with that: The Gore campaign stopped with the because, as was *already stated*, he would have only made his party look bad. When you're fighting a corrupt court, you stop while you're ahead, because you can't win. As far as there not being any evidence, If there's no evidence then I guess Bush jr precluded any investigation into the election issue "just for fun", since he didn't do anything wrong, is that so? Or maybe he just wanted to throw his weight around? Face it, Bush is illegitimate and he is only in the white house because his daddy used to run the CIA.
That particular recount is worse than rolling the dice: it is an invalid total because it includes imaginary votes divined from "voter intent" instead of actual ballot usage.
yeah, especially for Bush, because he *didn't*get*more*votes*than*Gore*.
That would be a valid comparison, except that Bush got more actual votes in Florida.
Which would be a valid rebuttal, except that it is not true.
You'll eventually have to face up to the facts that 1) Gore won the florida election fair and square, and also won the recount as designated by the judge assigned the case, but was denied the electoral votes ILLEGALLY by a premature and predetermined, rigged judgement handed down by a judge whose impartiallity is nonexistant and who is caught in a conflict of interest. 2) the election fraud was Compounded by the prevention of an investigation, the completion of which is the only way to legitimately clear the issue, and the active thwarting of which requires even more scrutiny on the issue.
Bush cheated, he's not legitimately the president. If this happened in Argentina the newspapers would be calling it a coup. The fact that the mainstream media here in the US dropped the topic without exploring it, and that the investigation was prevented, leads any competent person to wonder, "why"? I ask you, Why did bush stomp the investigation if there is no wrongdoing on his part ? Did he do it just for giggles? Maybe all that coke he does was messing with his head? or maybe, just maybe, theres something dirty going on.. and to think, we were all so sure that our politicians are above fighting dirty.... tisk tisk tisk.
God Bless America.
I'm not sure I know what you're talking about. I've read Aznar's party has sued the authors of a web site (who are college students, not a political lecturer) for calling them murderers. Maybe you're talking about something else, or maybe you're misinformed again.
Hopefully not misinformed! They actually tried to sue the college lecturer who registered the domain name. In his defence, he said that it was the students that did it, not him. Anyway, I find it amazing that a political party sues citizens in this manner in Spain. In the UK such an action would be viewed as outrageous.
The only vote total that matters is electoral votes, and Gore came up short since he did not win enough states to get the right amount. It has always been that way. If you want to change it, fine, but ignorance of this basic Constitutional process is no excuse.
How about ignorance of cause and effect, like that the college is selected by the popular vote. Man, what a nothing argument.
That particular recount is worse than rolling the dice: it is an invalid total because it includes imaginary votes divined from "voter intent" instead of actual ballot usage.
Right. Because if the voter wrote down "Gore", circled "Gore", or half-filled the "Gore" oval and no others, then there's no way to determine what they possibly could have wanted! Only a machine or someone who is being deliberately stupid would think that the mostly-but-not-all-filled oval next to Gore on an otherwise blank sheet of paper wasn't a Gore vote.
Talk about imaginary. You're imagining that because a voting machine didn't count it as Gore, it couldn't have been a Gore vote, all so that you can say counting those votes is "imagining". Yeah, I guess three independent panelists studying the ballots all "imagined" the word "Gore" written on it.
That would be a valid comparison, except that Bush got more actual votes in Florida.
No, he got more counted votes. The re-count data clearly shows that more people intended to vote for Gore. But good thing the Supreme Court stopped the drug tes- I mean re-count.
The enemies of Democracy are
""We have a free press" and similar when they have no idea if it is true or not"
The US does have the most free press of any around. Compared to just about every other place, there is much less government interference in the media, and things are much less centralized (compare this to the United Kingdom, where the dominant electronic media voice is government-controlled). Therefore, you can utter this statement knowing it is true.
"Talk about imaginary. You're imagining that because a voting machine didn't count it as Gore, it couldn't have been a Gore vote, all so that you can say counting those votes is "imagining"."
Yes, of course. Look at the ballot instructions. You come up with example of example of ballots which are actually free of Gore votes, even if you want them to be....scenarios in which an enraged Republican writing "Gore sucks!" gets counted as a Gore vote.
Let the machines do their actual jobs, instead of some party hack with a magnifying glass guessing that that G in the margin means Gore and not George. Heaven forbid that someone wrote "Geor" followed by a squiggle. Count actual votes, don't use guesswork and imagination.
"The re-count data clearly shows that more people intended to vote for Gore".
If they had intended to, then they should have actually voted for him. Besides, if the re-count shows "intent", it is invalid. It should show actual voting.
The Japanese were on the right track when, many years ago, they referred to Americans as "lazy".
I firmly believe that the only way to get Americans to act on *anything* of importance to the society as a whole is to take away those things that prevent them from thinking (television, newspapers, monday-night football, and cheap, watered-down American beer). Take those things away and you'll have riots on every street.
"....take away those things that prevent them from thinking (television, newspapers"
If there ever was anything good to riot over, then this sort of censorship is one of them. I am one of those who believes strongly in the First Amendment, and that there is never anything to be gained this kind of censoring. If you don't like books and newspapers, don't buy them. If you don't like TV, turn it off.
I think you will be the one whose thinking atrophies.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"Right, because General Electric, Disney, and AOL/Time Warner are so liberal"
Exactly. This is shown in their liberal/left news departments. You forgot to mention Westinhouse, which has a Democratic Party fundraiser (Dan Rather) as its mouthpiece.
"Both parties are extremely beholden to corporate interests"
Nut true at all. If this were true, both parties would not be adding more and more regulations onto businesses, and all corporations would be tax-exempt.
Even if we make a big fuss about it and scream until our lungs, will it matter? Will they just ignore our screaming?
[...]
Can you imagine the terror those people in the club fires must have felt as they were literally HANGING out the door trying to get out, but the circumstances of the situation put everybody in a deadlock.
I'm not sure I would have done something different those people in the fires didn't to try to escape. I believe that a lot of those people really tried to cooporate to break the deadlock, but when thier attempts to not panic and cooporation didn't work, that must have been when the REAL TERROR set in...
It looks like we're being setup into a deadlock.
The real terror sets in when everybody ignores your screaming.
"No. MOST Americans voted against Bush. The electoral college is wrong-headed and no longer relevant or valid. It should go away."
I would tend to agree with you on getting rid of the electoral college. However, it was in place during the 2000 election. Al Gore himself campaigned with it in mind. However, you don't get rid of it retroactively just because you played by its rules and lost. Get rid of it for the next election.
"It is too late, the dictatorship arrived when the Supreme Court rendered itself illegitimate and partisan in the last "election"."
This did not happen. The Court let the election stand, and resisted an attempt to overthrow it.
"As for the old fashioned way...the way that has Republicans in states like Texas, Colorado, and a host of other Republican-dominated states either trying or succeeding in redistricting any and all opponents out of existence?"
This is exactly what Democrats do when in power as well (see California). The gerrymandering problem is not a problem with just one party. Also, California is the place where the Democrats would like GWB off the 2004 ballot on a technicality.
What game would that be?
Would it be the "Gore won florida's electoral votes and therefore bush is not the legitimate president" game?
Maybe you prefer the "I like the guy who stole the election better than the guy who actually earned it, so who cares what the law says" game... I personally detest it.
Actually, it's not a game. Our nation's highest elected office was illegally denied to it's legitimate officer and there's a trail of collusion and conflicts of interest a mile long that has been swept under the rug by the pretender, and his daddy.
God bless democracy indeed! If we are keen to uphold democracy, and worthy enough of it to demonstrate some of that "eternal vigilance" I've heard so much about, we might just keep our democracy.
The other alternative, the one Bush jr is hoping we will choose, is to roll over to reach those fritos and pretend that there's nothing eyebrow raising at all about massive collusion and shady dealing over the future of our nation. Sorry, not acceptable.
God Bless America.
"The 6 organizations which own almost all of the media outlets control what we see"
These 6 actually control a tiny fraction of the voices/outlets out there. In television, however, there are few voices, and they do control most of them. Outside of TV, you are entirely wrong....especially when it comes to the actual "press".
Give me an example of how the United States press is not free.
http://wire.ap.org/APpackages/ballots/cover.html
I misspoke though, I meant Gore received 100s of more votes under the full recount scenarios, which was blocked by the courts, and done by the media conglomerates ( see thread above this one)
I read about it personally in the WSJ. As usual, the Republicans are outright lying - the WSJ spun the story, but didn't lie.
Gore conceded the election because the Supreme Court WOULD NOT ALLOW A FULL RECOUNT.
I didn't vote for Gore, nor do I support him, but all the lying is getting to me.
I like the old Total Information Awareness better. It was less deceptive, and more directly hints to the capabilities and operating spheres of this concept.
"Maybe you prefer the "I like the guy who stole the election better than the guy who actually earned it, so who cares what the law says" game... I personally detest it."
I detest that game too. I prefer the "The guy who won the election is the President, and the guy who lost it is not. That is the law."
"Our nation's highest elected office was illegally denied to it's legitimate officer and there's a trail of collusion and conflicts of interest a mile long that has been swept under the rug by the pretender, and his daddy."
Ah yes, the wild conspiracy theories, which always include a guy who was only involved as a lukewarm-appeal campaigner (Bush the elder). The real history, what happened, remains: the guy who won the election is in the White House now.
These wild-eyed denials that amount to "my guy lost, so the winner is not the real president" unfortunately echo the kooks on the other fringe who denied Clinton was legitimate for other equally silly reasons (Chinese campaign money and making Perot "spoil" the election).
No, I think you're well informed this time :-). Anyway, I don't understand how Aznar's party suing the students could be seen as outrageous. In Spain, publicly calling someone a murderer is libel, and not something you can do lightly. Is this different in the UK? Could a British newspaper call Tony Blair a murderer without fear of being sued?
Peddle! Peddle! Peddle!
Dude, seriously, I've thought of petitioning the UN or some of our European allies to do exactly that. Trouble is, they're just as bought-and-paid-for as the rascals that got appointed to be in charge here in the US.
You think Fiji needs any IT help?
Oh and to the moderator who wasted a point modding down the parent as overrated... Dude, turn off Fox news and go outside for a while. Better yet, try to meet the seven out of ten who think Emperor Bush is doing a good job. Seriously, ask around. Ask everyone you meet and do your own poll. You'll be surprised, I guarantee it.
Ah yes, the wild conspiracy theories
reduced to name calling eh? If I'm wrong, why do I have facts galore, while you have only sentiment and cannot rebut me without attacking me personally? Son?
These wild-eyed denials that amount to "my guy lost, so the winner is not the real president" unfortunately echo the kooks on the other fringe who denied Clinton was legitimate for other equally silly reasons (Chinese campaign money and making Perot "spoil" the election).
Of course the difference between my argument and theirs being that Bush broke the law and squelched the investigation, while Perot's participation was legal. As for chinese campaign money, lets see your sources, cowboy. Was there an investigation? was there a need for one or was that itself just republican "sour grapes"? And EVEN IF Clinton DID recieve money, Illegaly from the chinese, does that mean we should wholesale throw away our entire legal and electoral process? Hey, I get pissed off sometimes, are you suggesting I just go vigilante whenever I feel like it? Sorry bub, that's not how it works in law abiding countries, and especially not democracies. Or are you suggesting that we sink to the level of the terrorists? Sorry, it (again) does not work that way. Now, write an incoherent conservative manifesto about how democrats are scum, and don't deserve the freedoms good christian republicans died for, and threaten me. It will surely prove your point.
Your need to boil the whole argument down to "Aww, those democrats are just sore losers" smacks of... being a sore loser! imagine that.
God Bless America.
Trusting a renamed TIA to protect our privacy is like trusting a repeat child molester to babysit your 6 year old daughter after he changes his name
to Alice the Babysitter.
I almost missed a paragraph :)
which always include a guy who was only involved as a lukewarm-appeal campaigner (Bush the elder).
So you say. If you're right, I ask again, why does bush squelch the investigation? Has the cocaine destroyed his ability to reason or is he just guilty as sin?
The real history, what happened, remains: the guy who won the election is in the White House now.
Geez, you can't face reality can you? Gore won the election. Bush and co cheated the judicial process and the red flags are STILL uninvestigated because bush squelched the investigation. Bush is in the white house but he is not legitimate.
How many times do you have to lose this argument? What do you have to gain by making discredited over and over and over? Do you think I'm just going to go, "Oh, who cares if the man in the oval office broke the law to get there and covered it up"? Do you think it's "ok" for people to usurp the mechanisms that have held this country together and made it great just so they can have their way, legal or not?
Dude, you're wrong. You don't have a leg to stand on. Next you'll be saying that Bush needs to be in the whitehouse whether he was elected or not because America has "lost its way". Get over it.
Gore won. Bush is illegitimate. What is your major malfunction?
God Bless America.
Emmm EIMiguel, Aznar and his Popular Party has been calling every EH/HB/AuB politician "murderer" without any trial... that would be same as punishable as calling him "murderer"
Even, they did the same thing as HB/EH/AuB, that is, they "regret but do not condemn" civil deaths: Popular Party did that in the Irak war, HB/EH/AuB do that on terrorism. In the end, it's exactly the same.
I think it's stuck....
It's not "Soft-Pedals", it's "soft peddles" as in sells.
I thought it was an allusion to the soft-pedal on a piano...
Population growth alone tells us that we are going to need new technology even to preserve our current lifestyles, let alone improve them.
Basically, as I see it, it isn't a matter of thousands of years, societies that misallocate their resources to provide the level of surveillance and social control implied in PATRIOT Act and TIA will probably go down the tubes in a generation.
Remember how the Soviet Union got bankrupted? Misallocation of resources trying to keep up with US military technology.
The societies that buy into Bush-style social control will go bankrupt trying to pay for the perfect Orwellian police state. The winners in this future will be the countries that declined to participate.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Yes but it did happen in the US, to the guy who registered gwbush.com. Bush also tried to get laws passed that would require anyone who registered a political website, created a political advertisement, or otherwise expressed a political viewpoint must be registered with an approved political party which sanctions everything they say.
The severe financial and bureaucratic overhead which would have resulted were highlights in the ensuing press backlash, as were the apologists for Bush who pointed out that very often people working for a given political party make severely misleading advertisements and hide as "people/concerned citizens for the election of so-and-so" so their candidate can disclaim liability, but the simple fact this would once again force people back into conforming with the "approved" system and the "approved" candidates was somewhat glossed over (most media outlets do not seem to like to entertain the idea of more than two candidates, total, in any election. They don't even report on Libertarian candidates in races where there is no Democrat, for instance.)
You know, even those in power have dirty secrets...
What a curious conundrum, to protect your privacy those in power need to have something to hide, and as long as they do TIA Big brother etc will be a bogy man to them too... elect the corrupt to protect your rights!!
... most welcome. One of the better points is that all the evidence is there, for those who choose to look and can apply any sort of reasonable scientific principle to it. Nothing of note that is important and happening now is really hidden, "they" have it proclaimed all over in their papers and discussions, even the most easily avaialable to research point out the step by step perversions of our real law, and how they seek to morph society, into the new technofeudalism. It's all there. If there was a little as 2-3% the enthusiasm shown for these topics as-say-the enthusiasm shown for entertainments, sports, movies, games, etc, we'd have a completely different and more free and more honest society. It wouldn't even need much effort at all, it just needs to reach a critical mass of people to accomplish it. As it stands now, a relatively miniscule number of people are carrying the ball. Why more people don't get hip and involved is a puzzler to me, because these global society technofeudalists plan on sparing no one. *Perhaps* anyone "you" might be the one in every 100,000 or so who is part of "them", and that's a pretty small number for everyone to think they will be part of it. The rest of the people will be servants of these "elite" or...dead. You would think some of these issues would garner a scosh more interest.
Like I said in my original post, even Ike didn't go all the way, he probably knew a lot more, but as far as he went was amazing.
Sidenote, pretty funny. I taught myself to read pretty much. The first word I remember is "Ike" from his picture next to a big headline in the paper&correlated to the TV, we were the first in our area/neighborhood to have one. that's how I learned, matching words that I heard from the TV to the newspaper, always been a news junky from that. I am amused whenever I remember that, why I don't know, it's just funny to me.
"Most TV most Radio and most Print are owned by very few conglomerates"
There are thousands of publishers (books, newspapers, zines, magazines). The conglomerates own very few of them.
"It was proven that the election in Florida was rigged"
Aside from the fact that this is not true at all, this fictional story was hashed all over in the media during the months right after the election.
"The FCC is working on removing the few remaining restrictions"
The alarmists use Clear Channel as an example of a company that controls radio and will control more under these restriction removals. In truth, Clear Channel controls around 10% of radio stations. These restrictions should be removed, as they cleary abridge "freedom of the press".
"Poindexter's conviction was overturned....
At least you admit he is not convicted. It is the law of the land. It is called due process.
Overturned... invalid.... gone. Legally, never happened.
"Geez, you can't face reality can you? Gore won the election"
You accuse me of not facing reality, and then just state something that did not happen.
Yes, sure. Gore won in 2002. Elvis went back to Mars. Jimmy Carter beat Reagan in 1980 (and he also beat Lincoln in 1860). The moon shots were done in Hollywood, too.
"Next you'll be saying that Bush needs to be in the whitehouse whether he was elected or not because America has "lost its way". Get over it.
"
No. Bush needs to be in the White House because he was elected to a 4 year term, and he is in the middle of it. If he was not elected, I would not want him there. Has America lost its way? Perhaps, might be a reason to re-elect him.
"So you say. If you're right, I ask again, why does bush squelch the investigation? Has the cocaine destroyed his ability to reason or is he just guilty as sin?"
Two made-up stories at once: squelching and cocaine. You remind me of the FreeRepublic guys who claim Clinton killed dozens of people all over Arkansas ("Arkancides"). The hardcore haters in the opposite 5% fringe rant and rave when the guy they don't like happens to win an election. (there are wild cocaine urban legends on Clinton as well, interestly enough)
"And EVEN IF Clinton DID recieve money, Illegaly from the chinese, does that mean we should wholesale throw away our entire legal and electoral process"
Of course not. Yet, you demand to throw away the entire legal and electoral process just because "your guy" Gore lost it.
"Now, write an incoherent conservative manifesto about how democrats are scum, and don't deserve the freedoms good christian republicans died for"
Hmmmm. Easy to detect some religious bigotry there. Wonder which party it is that has a Reverend running right now?
"[wild conspiracy theories]
reduced to name calling eh"
I called the fiction fiction. I did not call you anything; no name calling. If I had, you would have seen something like "wild eyed conspirator"
"Your need to boil the whole argument down to "Aww, those democrats are just sore losers"
That is all it is. You can't see it, you are so blinded by partisanship. I saw the exact same thing you were doing for 8 years from the extreme fringe Clinton haters. All of it is familiar, all of it before the same things were leveled by the Bush haters against Bush: deals made to steal elections, he's a traitor, unsubstantiated cocaine abuse claims, squelching of investigations, subverting the Constitution, you name it. The only thing that has changed is now Bush did it all instead of Clinton.
Some things never change. For the current and previous President, you had a fat buffoon from the Midwest (different for each President) who had populist pretentions, and could not accept that someone from the other side was in the White House. Both "preach to the choir" with undeniable and strong talent as entertainers.
Both of them fanned the flames of divisiveness by accusing the President of large numbers of crimes against America and its Constitution: accusations where only 1 in 100 is even worth looking past the first sentence.
Both represent a debasement of American political culture: they go as far as refusing to respect the office of the President due their hatred of the inhabitant. No "loyal opposition" they.
Both command strong followings, but their armies (be they dittoheads or Moore's Militia) remain but a small corner of society, made to seem larger because they are loud.
Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh, you are truly two of a kind.
[Now to sit back and wait for responses that tell me how evil Rush is and how great Moore is, and how great Limbaugh is and how terrible Moore is, and how they really are different, and how one tells the truth and how the other is a puppet for Them]
It is my firm belief never to hold firm beliefs.
The florida court didn't interpret the law. If they did, Bush would have won long before the hand recount fiasco. Instead the florida court started making up new law on the fly. They completely ignored the rules on the books.
Vote for Pedro
Tapping a phone in the DNC is only enough to take down the president. Tapping every phone in the country is enough to take down Democracy.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Raise your hand if you thought DARPA wouldn't try to pull this stunt.
Keep your hand up if you think the people who wrote the original PATRIOT Act and its draft successor are only concerned with your safety and security, and would never try to get around constitutional limits using a hot-button issue.
Keep your hand up if you believe in the Tooth Fairy.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Anyway, I don't understand how Aznar's party suing the students could be seen as outrageous. In Spain, publicly calling someone a murderer is libel, and not something you can do lightly. Is this different in the UK? Could a British newspaper call Tony Blair a murderer without fear of being sued?
There are libel laws in the UK, but it is the context of this case that make it outrageous. This was a political party suing citizens for making a political statement. In the UK, that kind of action would be unthinkable. Political speech is well protected by law, and it is unlikely any court in the UK would side with a politician in this type of case. As an example, a famous British journalist interviewing Henry Kissenger a while ago told him that he thought he was a war criminal. I guess that journalist would now be in jail if he was in Spain!
This was a political party suing citizens for making a political statement.
Well, I can't speak for Spanish society, but I wouldn't consider calling someone a murderer as political speech.
As an example, a famous British journalist interviewing Henry Kissenger a while ago told him that he thought he was a war criminal. I guess that journalist would now be in jail if he was in Spain!
I don't think libel is punished with jail time in Spain. If these students are convicted, they will likely get away with a small fine.
Disclaimer: IANA Spanish L.
" The People were NOT mistaken and not confused, they wanted Gore, not Bush."
Adding up the Bush votes, and the votes for the two spoilers, most voters voted against Gore.
"A lot of Republican hacks should go to jail for purposefully disenfranchising black voters as well."without regard to race.
I like your comment it,s spot on the money!!!
"The majority of it is devoted to starving government programs that they don't agree with out of existence."
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. This is excellent: a budget that cuts waste spending and reduces government blowing money on things the feds should not even be involved with.
"There's a lot of hype about tax cuts, but the idea that this budget will foster growth or create jobs is is just nuts."
Of course it will: taxes after all discourage economic activity. Reducing them is like reducing disinventives for investing and hiring. The main reason the Democrats oppose it is that it will make the economy and job picture a lot better, which will boost Bush's chances at the polls in 2004.
Since the beginning of 2001, the Democratic Party economic policy has been to damage the economy as much as possible (and prevent attempts to improve it) in the hopes that voters will blame Republicans for it at the polls.
"The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg"
One would hope that Bragg is singing about socialism. A slim hope; I've listened to his songs and he tends to sing in favor of oppressive government and against freedoms and liberties.
The TIA program apart from being appalling in and of itself intrigues me in conjunction with the U.S. Military's "Join Vision 2020" doctrine (parts 1 & 2). Especially interesting are the sections headed "Full Spectrum Dominance" and "Information Superiority".
As this is an incredibly complicated issue, from innumerable standpoints, on infinite fronts, so let me try to make a single snippet that will solve all the worlds' problems.
Have you ever read DOJ/DOS/ODCI/NSA/DHS/DOD/MI6 inquiries into the nature and prevention of terrorism? These compendia are perfect to paraphrase in a zinging one-liner.
How do you defeat a violent political movement?
Political movements are fought with politics. Compromising politics in a bid for appeasement is losing. So is compromising the values that create your politics. Objecting to TIA, infringments of civil liberties, an administration saying "Americans...need to watch what they say, watch what they do." is not only our right, it is our duty to ensure that the American values of freedom dictate American politics.
Its not about partisanship, its not about being bitchy. Its about ensuring "freedom" endures.
-Voting Republican, currently serving in support of Operation Enduring Freedom
Do we really want to be like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or Nazi Germany, or Stalinist Russia ,the USofA
Yes they not only think it they know it!!
News org,s only print what they want or been told to print in the usa.
"the government in the next civil war ... contingencies in place to deal with that problem; they have worked out plans with the UN to bring in foreign military...
How close do the black helicopters have to be to beam this into your tinfoil helmet?
"News org,s only print what they want
That is it, exactly! That is how it should be; that is "freedom of the press".