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What's Your Terrorism Quotient?
unassimilatible writes "From the Department of Pre-Crime, the AP reports: before helping to launch the criminal information project known as Matrix (Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange), a database contractor gave U.S. and Florida authorities the names of 120,000 people who showed a statistical likelihood of being terrorists - sparking some investigations and arrests. The 'high terrorism factor' scoring system also became a key selling point for the involvement of the database company, Seisint Inc., in the Matrix project. According to Seisint's presentation, dated January 2003 and marked confidential, the 120,000 names with the highest scores were given to the INS, FBI, Secret Service and Florida state police. Seisint and the law enforcement officials who oversee Matrix insist that the terrorism scoring system ultimately was kept out of the project, largely because of privacy concerns."
I'm 24 years old. I don't want to go through the next 50 years of my life living in an international air of worry and uncertainty. I don't want to live in a permanent state of fear, generated by a megalomaniacal American government taking advantage of the majority low IQ populous' capacity for being brainwashed.
I don't want to live like Israel, fighting militant Muslims round every corner. The problem of Muslim extremists exists and needs to be dealt with, not encouraged by invading innocent countries and waging war on people who have done nothing to deserve it. I want my children to grow up in a world free from military oppression and I want a government that understands that the wars of the future are guerrilla ones which can never be won, even if they are waged for noble purposes (which theirs never are).
The world is fu*cked up enough as it is. The food chain has been poisoned so badly the average human is full of chemicals normally found in plastics and toxic waste. I'm sick of global warning and environmental damage to the planet and the fact the all this time the greenies were right. I'm sick of America being the biggest wilful contributor to the pollution of the planet.
I'm sick of an American school system that produces children who are brought up to believe that America IS the world and anything that goes on outside is irrelevant. Children so stupid they think America invented the Internet, computer, motor car, light bulb, telephone etc ad infinitum....
The Internet or it's successor is the future of entertainment and I'm sick of stupid low IQ, ignorant Americans infecting every corner of it with their insular, jingoistic mindsets, their whiny voices and manifestations of their low self esteem driven by the fact that despite it being their turn as the world's super power, no one actually takes them seriously or gives them the respect that the British or the Ancient Greeks got because a superpower best known for producing mass produced crap is never going to get the respect that one who gave the world Shakespeare, culture, philosophy or mathematics will get.
I'm sick of hypocrisy and two facedness. I'm sick of Gangsta Rap and hamburgers, Political Correctness and TV programmes that begin with 'When' and end in 'go bad and attack people'. I'm sick of reality TV and I'm sick of news programmes that are more censored than accurate. I'm sick of tokens, token minorities, token universities, token degrees, token attempts at the truth, tokens. I'm sick of fat people, ugly people, stupid people, gay people, coloured people, female people, whiny people all complaining they don't have the opportunities in life they would like and it must be someone else's fault. I'm sick of women that act like men and femininity being a crime, unless you're a man in which case you're a new man which nobody ever wanted because there was nothing wrong with the old one. I'm sick of people falling over and suing the ground and people watching nipples and suing the TV and I'm sick of coffee cups with 'don't pour over yourself, you may get burnt' on the side to try and counter this.
I'm sick of stupid Americans who don't know the difference between patriotism and jingoism and who think flag waving should be an Olympic event. I'm sick of Americans who cry that people hate them or are jealous of them or who are anti them because someone dares to point out that the America they've been programmed to believe in from birth bears no relation to the one that exists in real life.
If your name is "Ben Louden", I'd be cautious about ordering a pizza! If you do, ask for LOTS of ham and other pork items on the pizza. That might help.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I for one welcome our new Matrix overlords.
Wait a moment...
I'm sorry, that's so scary it's not even funny.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
I wonder what they prefer when they make a system like this, false positives or false negatives. It's like a spam filter, only it tries to separate the bad guys from the good ones.
I prefer false negatives (spam messages that end up in my inbox) over false positives (real mail that end up in the bin) from my spam filter, but when you're dealing with humans it's a lot more serious.
Martin
Minority Report meets the Matrix.
>>Seisint Inc., is a Boca Raton, Fla., company founded by a millionaire, Hank Asher, who stepped down from its board of directors last year after revelations of past ties to drug smugglers.
Anyone care to guess one of the main sources of terrorist income?
Judging by the title, I thought the article was going to tell us how to find out our score.
"There is a 20% likelyhood of you blowing up a building this year. Have a nice day."
I'd be more interested to know how many people were entered into the system... isn't that pertinent here? I mean, if they only put in 120,000 and they all came back as terrorists, something's probably wrong. Is Osama in that list? Did it pick up anyone we already knew was a terrorist? Just hearing a number as high as 120,000 isn't surprising without more information about the number. Yes, I could RTFA, but with a summary that long, I would have expected at least the number polled to be in there.
stuff |
who can refer to the USA as "The Land of the Free" while keeping a straight face.
OSDN announced today that the Slashdot Karma system will be integrated with the Terrorist Quotient database.
Unknown host pong.
Arresting terrorists is not the gripe, it's the potential terrorists and the process of lableing thereof.
sweet f'ing christ. do people not see similarities to the Red Scare or McCarthyism? Are people really so dense?
save me jeebus.
Let the mass hand-wringing begin!!
Ooo Rah!
Bomb, gas, crash, Afghanistan, airplane, fire, biowarfare, sarin, nuclear, Muqtada Al-Sadr, barbarism, CIA, Al-Qaida, terrorist, seize, drugs, fertilizer, kill, plot, chemical, RPG, bin Laden, canister, Iraq, plague, sniper, sleeper cell, C4, guerilla, Barbara Streisand
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
What if the software is accurate?
What if 120,000 Americans are latent (or blatent) terrorists?
What then?
It's just like my karma level... "Excellent"
You forgot the air guitar.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
yes, because there are 120,000 terrorists. And they've been identified by software. we should arrest them.
I think that the ACLU is not worried about arresting terrorists... i think that they're generally for it. I think they're more worried about the ratio of actual terrorists to non-terrorists in our investigations being way, way, way to low.
~dijjnn
"But the ACLU is still, predictably, concerned."
As they should be.
120,000 people could be arrested this week-simply for being in a database. I think that 9/11 has simply turned our government against anyone who might come within a hundred miles of overthrowing it-even it's own citizens. Listen to Fear Factory's "Obsolete" and look for the not-too far off future.
Think: this kind of thing, if your "quotient" was too high, could conceiveably prevent you from getting a job, or maybe a loan. I don't think this helps everyone. It's all a product of feelings of racism and vengeance.
--
This sig is inoffensive.
I'm sure all the tin-foil hats will come out of the woodworks about this. Seriously though, do you not expect the agency reponsible for anti-terrorism efforts to actually do its job well? If this could have stopped those planes from killing thousands of civilians, people would be screaming in outrage about how we didn't use it when we should have. The problem is this country (this world, really) is that everybody wants to be reactive and not proactive. This is especially true in the computer security field, as we all know.
Everyone bitches and moans about systems like this that can prevent terrorist attacks, but then they make a huge stink about some memo from Richard Clarke that had next to nothing useful in it. Go figure.
Officials in Washington DC revealed plans to start a brand-new 'Precrime' program to arrest perpetrators before they even commit a crime, using sophisticated 'Comatose Psychic' technology.
Said one official: 'Yeah, we reckon this will beat everything we've seen so far. I mean, why profile people when you can have 'em psychics see the stuff happening, right? Much more reliable all in all.'
More details here
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
There was a soccer-mom/admin in our work who had the first name Marsha and the surname started with an 'H'.
She would get all these weird Middle-Eastern newsletters spammed to her work account. I bet she's probably made to the dodgy persons list.
Interestingly enough Osama and his men were paid and trained by the CIA for just what the parent poster said.
I hope there's a curve.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Agnostic : ---------------
Democrat : +
Male : ++
Moderate : -------
Young : ++
Yuppie : ---------
White : --------------------
<i>I'll</i> be fine, but thanks for asking.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Precursor of database project gave feds 120,000 terrorist suspects
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
How do they prevent politicians from ending up on the list? There must be some special flags to exclude politicians because they're always doing stuff that would be considered a crime if a civilian was doing exactly the same thing.
Google this: /. ever met a "terrorist"?
1) This company was started by a drug running felon with ties to the Bush's
2) Read the Contract between Seisint and the Florida Goverment with the MATRIX
3) This company is very, very late with their software project - using terrorism as means to drag it out.
4) 120,000 terrorists in the US? C'mon! Has ANYONE on
5) 3.2 billion dollars a year goes toward "cyber security".
After reading all this, I get soooo disgusted.. I mean, this is SICK!!! How much money is wasted? How the hell do I get a piece of terrorist pie?! Millions of dollars have been lost and never gone to me.
How can the open source community get some of this cash cow? How about a sourceforge project Ivory Tower (the irony of the name would be great)?
-Foo
Wake up Neo. The MATRIX has you.
Really, can these guys pick a name with worse symbolism? Skynet, maybe?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
As someone raised muslim, with a muslim name ( and one that happens to correspond to that of an at-large chechen terrorist ) I'll wager it's time to get out of this country.
You know, that makes me sad. I'm American, I was born here, so were my parents. My father's been in trouble with the law, long ago, and happens to have the #1 most common Muslim name. Regardless, he, like me, loves this country.
I'm no longer practicing ( read: vehement Atheist ) but if all it takes is having a troublesome name, well, it seems then the tide has finally turned. Perhaps this will be America's crystal night?
I'm at a loss for words.
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
This is ridiculous. They don't have a 'likely to commit a murder' database.. or a 'likely to rape young women' database.. unless those people have already committed crimes. Now, we can be likely to commit a crime yet still be someone that has never commited a crime.
I'm sick of what the government has done in the spirit of 'fighting terrorism.' Terror is the least of my worries. Ya, 9/11 was horrible.. but it isn't worth giving up our way of life to prevent. I'm more likely to be struck by lighting while being bitten by a shark than to die from an act of terror.
These 'preventative' databases are stupid. American Citizens should not be subject to a 'likely to commit terror' database without ever having done something wrong. Some of the most patriotic people are also the most criticizing of the US.. Should they be on the database?
If there are 120,000 people on the list, shouldn't there have been more acts of terrorism in the US?
IMO, there's bigger problems on which to focus. Why fix the windshield wipers when the brakes aren't working?
--- We need more Ron Paul!
I don't want to live like Israel, fighting militant Muslims round every corner. The problem of Muslim extremists exists and needs to be dealt with, not encouraged by invading innocent countries and waging war on people who have done nothing to deserve it. I want my children to grow up in a world free from military oppression and I want a government that understands that the wars of the future are guerrilla ones which can never be won, even if they are waged for noble purposes (which theirs never are). You just completely contradicted yourself in the same paragraph. You don't want the threat, but you don't want to do anything about it, and you want your children to grow up in a militarized world, and you want your government to default to surrender because it can't allow itself to fight guerrilla tactics because somehow they are impossible to employ in the persuit of victory? After such blatant and simple to unravel contradiction, where you are speaking crosswise to yourself without pausing to take a breath, why should we listen to anything else you have to say? The world is fu*cked up enough as it is. The food chain has been poisoned so badly the average human is full of chemicals normally found in plastics and toxic waste. I'm sick of global warning and environmental damage to the planet and the fact the all this time the greenies were right. I'm sick of America being the biggest wilful contributor to the pollution of the planet. America is not the biggest polluter, intentional or otherwise: China and Russia are, followed by many of their previous holdings in Africa and South America. I'm 24 years old. I don't want to go through the next 50 years of my life living in an international air of worry and uncertainty. Whether you worry or not is your choice. Grow up. We all have to be adults here and face the real world. A world where like it or not, be at peace or not, people are just going to come out of the woodwork and try and kill you. This is NOT a "live and let live" world. You think it is? Talk to Neville Chamberlain. The threat is not dumb Americans you pompous arrogant condescending coward, it's terrorists who want to fecking kill us. You know how we fix this problem? We MUST destroy BOTH their ability and desire to wage war with us, and we don't stop until those have been absolutely achieved. The Japanese were a far more brave and zealous enemy than the fascist militant Islamics are, and we won. Our current enemy is far more dangerous because of their tactics and capability. Wishing for the threat of new attacks to go away will not take them away. Myself and hundreds of millions of other American citizens are not going to let snide "armchair quarterback" academics try and reason-away responsibilities. We're not going to let them establish moral equivilance between the U.S. and it's current aggressors, brutal murderous terrorists. Other than those things, you did have some decent rants about the sillyness of modern living. But TRUST ME! Those silly "cultural behavioral patterns" are not at all limited to the U.S.A.
I don't want to live like Israel, fighting militant Muslims round every corner. The problem of Muslim extremists exists and needs to be dealt with, not encouraged by invading innocent countries and waging war on people who have done nothing to deserve it. I want my children to grow up in a world free from military oppression and I want a government that understands that the wars of the future are guerrilla ones which can never be won, even if they are waged for noble purposes (which theirs never are).
You just completely contradicted yourself in the same paragraph. You don't want the threat, but you don't want to do anything about it, and you want your children to grow up in a militarized world, and you want your government to default to surrender because it can't allow itself to fight guerrilla tactics because somehow they are impossible to employ in the persuit of victory? After such blatant and simple to unravel contradiction, where you are speaking crosswise to yourself without pausing to take a breath, why should we listen to anything else you have to say?
The world is fu*cked up enough as it is. The food chain has been poisoned so badly the average human is full of chemicals normally found in plastics and toxic waste. I'm sick of global warning and environmental damage to the planet and the fact the all this time the greenies were right. I'm sick of America being the biggest wilful contributor to the pollution of the planet.
America is not the biggest polluter, intentional or otherwise: China and Russia are, followed by many of their previous holdings in Africa and South America. People just go after America though. It's uncanny.
I'm 24 years old. I don't want to go through the next 50 years of my life living in an international air of worry and uncertainty.
Whether you worry or not is your choice. Grow up. We all have to be adults here and face the real world. A world where like it or not, be at peace or not, people are just going to come out of the woodwork and try and kill you. This is NOT a "live and let live" world. You think it is? Talk to Neville Chamberlain.
The threat is not dumb Americans you pompous arrogant condescending coward, it's terrorists who want to fecking kill us. You know how we fix this problem? We MUST destroy BOTH their ability and desire to wage war with us, and we don't stop until those have been absolutely achieved. The Japanese were a far more brave and zealous enemy than the fascist militant Islamics are, and we won. Our current enemy is far more dangerous because of their tactics and capability. Wishing for the threat of new attacks to go away will not take them away. Myself and hundreds of millions of other American citizens are not going to let snide "armchair quarterback" academics try and reason-away responsibilities. We're not going to let them establish moral equivilance between the U.S. and it's current aggressors, brutal murderous terrorists.
Other than those things, you did have some decent rants about the sillyness of modern living. But TRUST ME! Those silly "cultural behavioral patterns" are not at all limited to the U.S.A.
The ACLU is the only organization that ever has the balls to look at what the Federal Government is doing and make a stand against the overarching, draconian measures that many government officials would *love* to see happen. Guess what? The Federal Government wants to control your actions as much as possible, not only so that you are not a threat against Americans, but more so that you are not a threat against them.
Protecting us from random acts of terror is about as possible as landing a 747 on the Brooklyn Bridge. We're too open, too easy, too soft. Guess what? I LIKE IT THAT WAY.
"Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither".
Did you see the latest FBI Suidice Bomber Warnings sent out today? Here's a pointer from the alert: Be on the lookout for people with clenched fists!!
Living in the United States used to be about living out a free existence with minimal government intervention. In the last few years we have become an Orwellian society where you are stamped with a number and contstantly tracked by the government for 'threat status'. Your primary purpose is to receive advertising, consume products, and pay the government a share of it all.
I have bad news for some: the War on Terror is not a war anyone could win, and even fighting it for a thousand years would not end the cycle of violence that perpetuates it. I wonder how many young Iraqi children are thinking about their bombed out homes and dead parents and swearing vengeance on the United States someday. Those will be the next generation of people who fly planes into our skyscrapers.
They understand that they're going to sometimes be defending unpopular positions and people. They defend the rights of white supremacists to march in public, for example. They've also defended Rush Limbaugh against what they view as intrusive attempts by the police to get at his medical records and show that he was "doctor shopping" to feed his addiction. They're making those choices consciously, according to principles which they state conspicuously.
You, meanwhile, don't seem to be doing anything more than bitch for reasons you haven't thought through.
First off: when, exactly, has the ACLU complained that not enough is being done to fight terrorism? Hello? Anyone home? Or were you just confusing "liberals" or "Democrats" with the ACLU?
And more to the point: "Potential terrorists"? When you start using a term like that, perhaps you'd like to devote some thought to it. Because the FBI has, in the past, regarded people like Martin Luther King, Jr. as a "potential terrorist." Because, you know, that let them bug his hotel rooms and accumulate evidence that he wasn't faithful to his wife, which put some nice blackmail material in the hands of J. Edgar Hoover.
The ACLU tries to protect American citizens from the abusive use of power. You, meanwhile, resent them for 'getting in the way.' What does that say about you, exactly? Maybe you want to think that through rather than sleepwalking through your life vaguely angry at those pesky liberals.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I wonder how many of those 120,000 were also on the list of people removed from voter rolls in 2000.
I'm sorry, I'm not cleared to know that. If I could tell you, I'd have to kill me.
Wish I had mod points.
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
Judge: State your business.
Prosecutor: Your honor, we seek a warrant to search the home of J.Q. Public for terrorist related materials.
Judge: Grounds?
Prosecutor: Your honor, Mr. Public scored an 87 on the Matrix.
Judge: And why did he score an 87?
Prosecutor: Um..., national security interests prevent me from divulging the complete basis for his score. I can say that he got a speeding ticket in '03 and has a mustache.
Judge: Well, I'm sure we can assume the underlying data is correct, was duly entered and processed by an impeccably accurate algorithm, yes?
Prosecutor: (purses lips and nods).
Judge: This court finding probable cause to issue said warrant, it is hereby done and ordered.
My sig says it all.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
here
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
>> people who showed a statistical likelihood of being terrorists
Come again? How does one define an activity that makes you statistically a terrorist?
Is it by the car they drive?
Is it by the job they have?
Is it by their nationality?
Is it by their age?
Is it by their house?
Is it by anything bar the obvious ones, such as actively supporting terrorist activities?
Probably not. They probably picked at almost random 120,000 people and defined them as a 'likelihood of being terrorists'.
The question is who gets to make that choice? To me, it seems that the person(s) who make the choice could be as much of a terrorist as your average next door Jones, yet because they make the choices, they call the shots; they will never be featured in that list.
I would love to know how many of the 120,000 people were -NOT- charged with terrorist activities; i doubt that even 1% of them were arrested with enough evidence to prove it. However, given the current state of the laws, that doesn't matter now, does it?
Why seed the data? Why not let the information be collected the way it's intended, and then compile a list from it? Ok, this system might be rather like the 'big brother' we are all fearing, but currently, most major supermarkets track what you buy almost without you noticing, so its not like this information will be collected obtrusively.
Maybe its time someone out there took a step back and looked at the system they have just partaken in creating, and they just might, possibly, see it as something that shouldn't be.
Someone needs to look at this before the next 'red-ball' has your name on it, because by then, it's too late.
NeoThermic
P.S, is it me, or have they forgotten how to make an acronym? How does one get from Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange to Matrix? To me that makes 'MATIE'...
Use my link above, or to view my server, NeoThermic.com
Karma be damned....
Seisint's Proposed Questionnaire for next stage of study:
Are you or have you ever been a member of any of the following
(check all that apply):
- Amnesty International
- ACLU
- Nature Conservancy
- National Academy of Sciences
- Any non-GOP political party
- Any GOP group that has ever disagreed with the White House
- Any non-Christian religion
- Any Christian sect that fails to see that creating all-out war in
the Middle East that melts down Jerusalem will invoke the
Second Coming.
Do you associate with anyone to whom the above may apply? (Yes/No)
Do you get your news from any media sources other than the White
House Press Office, Fox News, or conservative talk radio? (Yes/No)
Do you associate with anyone to whom the above may apply? (Yes/No)
I think systems like these are perfectly legitimate. For one thing, the terrorist quotient (TQ from here on) isn't evidence of terrorism; it is an indication of possible terrorism.
The police or FBI should investigate people who have patterns of behavior that are similar to known terrorists. They should gather real data to either confirm or deny the possibility. Then what they find should be fed back into the system.
Having a high TQ is only enough to make someone suspect. Having a low TQ is not enough to clear someone. As long as police and FBI realize this, the system will work fine and do exactly what it is intended to do.
If you're wondering how they calculate TQ, they examine country of origin (terrorists tend to come from a few countries), age, length of stay (terrorists will return occasionally to known terrorist locations), location of residence (terrorists may live close together), income source (terrorists will get large sums of money suddenly), and behavior.
For instance, a guy from Saudi Arabia who is 35 and visited Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Iran, and who inexplicably received several hundred thousand dollars, and who ordered several tons of fertilizer when they live near downtown New York where they work as a taxi driver, and who rented a large truck would score high.
A geek who was born in Canada and only visited the Far East and/or Europe, who has a steady income from his job as a (insert IT job here) and who bought a large supply of fertilizer (along with farming supplies and tools) and lives in a rural location in Montana would not have a high TQ.
The system won't be perfect as it won't detect every single terrorist and may render a few obvious false positives. But it will identify a large enough number that it will give the police and FBI a start.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
C'mon. What do you expect the government to do? Why is it that no one ever offers better solutions? Just gripe and complain.
Even with the 9/11 commisions, we are so focused on "intelligence" - who had it, who didn't, who ignored it, etc. How do you expect agencies to gather accurate intelligence wihtout stepping on some civil liberty toes? I know *in theory* this is wrong (save your Ben Franklin quotes), but what other *practical*, effective means do they have?
Some people always offer up the the "carebear" alternatives - e.g. fostering peace and goodwill to these countries that butcher innocents (READ: sending even more welfare to them). Or isolationism, just ignore them and spend our money at home. (The "la la la, I don't see you...Go away bad man" solution). These stratgies just don't work against these cultures that are based on thousands of years of bloodthirsty tribal agggresion, and later rationalized and justified by a maniacal perversion of religion.
So before you bemoan your supposed injustices, please dazzle us with your alternative practical, effective measures to gather intelligence.
AC's keep reposting the same thing.
Shouldn't we start attacking Florida?
"I am not a number, I am a free man"
Oops.
Turns out that in the US the opposite is true.
Internet -- Tim Berners Lee, an Englishman, who invented the device while he was at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland Light bulb -- Thomas Edison didn't invent the light bulb, but improved it. The inventor was a Sir Humphrey Davy of England, who created the first carbon arc lamp. Edison and Sir Joseph Swann DID, however, create the first incandescant lamp. Telephone -- Credit is normally given to Alexander Graham Bell (a Scot, but living as an American), and it's largely deserved, since he was the first person able to get the device to work somewhat reliably and at reasonable cost. However, the first implementation of the technology was by a fellow named Innocenzo Manzetti, an Italian national. Some will give credit to a guy named Meucci, but as far as I know, he was never able to get the thing working, but he did have the idea.
The problem of Muslim extremists exists and needs to be dealt with, not encouraged by invading innocent countries and waging war on people who have done nothing to deserve it.
What does 'dealt with' mean? Muslim extremists want to run your country under strict (their interpretation) Islamic law, or they want you dead. You deal with them by killing them. I say lets fight for the next 100 years if necessary.
an ill wind that blows no good
Yes, but D6s or D20s?
...watch as McCarthy...I mean Rumsfeld, rounds up all the commies...I mean terrorists.
First of all, pork is tasty
Second it tastes good.
The ancient jews and muslims didnt' eat it because of health concerns.
Those health concerns have been taken care of, but today jews and muslims don't eat it simply to show that they're special to god.
They're all crazy. Nuts.
Anybody who listens to a Rabbi, or Priest or holy man about important things in your life has a self-image problem.
Brilliant!
I prefer false negatives (spam messages that end up in my inbox) over false positives (real mail that end up in the bin)
Sooo... you're saying you'd prefer to have a bin laden with spam messages?!
Allright FREEZE!!!! Get down on the ground!
Politicus
If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, and you cut off it's head and there's a fully functional biological cranium, maybe it's not a clockwork toy resembling a duck and is in fact a duck.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
I don't want to go through the next 50 years of my life living in an international air of worry and uncertainty.
That is, alas, the usual state of affairs. Nobody wanted the Cold War, either. It was merely the least-worst option. It wasn't pleasant. It wasn't nice. It certainly wasn't cheap, in any way you care to consider - save one. It was better than the alternative.
What's going on now is a response. It is not a response to a single event, but to an accumulation of events. Sitting back and just taking it is no longer happening. It was treid. It didn't work. So something else is being tried.
It isn't pleasant. It isn't nice. It isn't cheap - save that it's better than alternative, which doesn't work at all.
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
If we don't want the USA to become like Israel, then perhaps we shouldn't be trying so hard to turn Iraq (et al) into giant versions of Palestine?
I guess we should be thankful they're 10000km away.
You forgot a couple:
- who's likely to live a fearfull, pathetic life, always thinking that Big Brother is around every corner and out to get him
- who's likely to use any opportunity to criticise their Government and spout hate for America, but at the same time take no active role in civic duties or the political process
Thoughtcrime in the comments?
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
So are they implying that if you get a high score you are going to be arrested and/or have your home raided?
JUST because of some abstract number in a database?.. NOT because you actually have done something..
So this 'suspicion rating' = probable cause?
I would think the ACLU would be all over this..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
the underground railroad ran from the USA to Canada and it is still going strong, just different reasons - Vietnam was a big one that gained Canada thousands of US immigrants. If the USA was such a free place, then Canada would have been empty long ago. Makes you think, doesn't it?
I wonder just how encompassing this list is. I'm 21/m, white, kinda tall, and have nothing on my record save a pair of speeding tickets. Yet without fail, I am searched EVERY single time I pass airport security, 8 or 10 times a year. No matter what I'm wearing, no matter who I'm with, no matter where I'm going, I'm given the full search. I'm sure profiling is responsible to an extent, but doesn't it seem unusual that I'm flagged every single time?
-
Are these registered democrat voters in Florida?
I think I've got a deja-vu....!
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
actually it was his fault, but we will excuse your typo.
the end
Of course we all want them to do their job well. But how can you say this is doing their job well? This sounds to me like a lazy, half-assed attempt at doing their job.
Identification means exactly jack. We knew EXACTLY who Bin Laden was, and what he was capable of. We didn't care. Where were the efforts in the YEARS leading up to 9/11 to track his ass down? What about all the ones we don't know about? Instead, we go after high profile targets like Saddam, who while still a ruthless prick deserving of being overthrown, was no direct threat to the United States. It is a smoke job that backfired.
How about rooting out the reasons behind terrorism, like intolerance and stomping on other countries necks? All of your suppositions mean nothing. How can you base an argument on "Hey, this might work, let's try it!"? Profiling does NOT WORK. Instead of attacking the known sources of terrorism, they are attacking the unknown sources. They are breeding fear by doing this, and by breeding fear they can keep us under control.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Anyone care to explain?
Are we censoring the threads now? Will I get booted for making this post??Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
All respondents to this article have been noted.
:-(
From Seisint Inc. system logs:
Querying site...processing HTML...correlating post data with ISP logs...submitting data to database...updating/creating user entries...updating users' Seisint Inc. "terrorist quotient"(tm)...submitting relevant users and data to federal authorities so that they can protect our freedom[sic]!
On a serious note: In a police state where the gov't can snatch anyone they want off the streets and hold them incommuncado, without charges and without access to a lawyer, we have no civil liberties.
To me, articles about such things are no surprise today. The only surprise is that the American people surrendered to fascism so easily.
TBL invented the World Wide Web
... and of course, like almost every invention ever, it only happened because of progress made by others before him.
WWW != Internet.
I don't think any honest inventor can, without hubris, claim they are wholly responsible for their innovation.
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
Without public acceptance this can only be a tool of a "gestapo" secret police. I'm not saying the FBI shouldn't exist. I'm saying that guardianship requires honest and competent debate in good faith, or else there WILL be problems and some might be drop-dead killer problems. After all, who wants to go to sleep each night wondering how much their "terrorist quotient" changed today, and in what way?
BTW, America is still free and will remain so as long as we the People remain certain in our right to be protected from unwarranted search and seizure. If we ever trade democratic freedom for the safety of an Autocratic police state, we're f*kt. (And as a democrat, I feel that Bush is angling for a police state every time I hear him ask me to "trust" him. He seems to gloss over the fact that he was not elected by a unanimous landslide. I don't trust Bush. And I won't until his spinmeisters stop telling me that it's "OK" because black is white... because black is not white.)
I never said I was a centrist.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
South Florida Sun-Sentinel (www.sun-sentinel.com)
By Nicole Sterghos Brochu
Staff Writer
Posted January 11 2004
The counter-terrorism database is so efficient at analyzing billions of records, so comprehensive in finding links between people and events that some investigators believe it could prevent another attack like 9-11.
Although some intelligence experts are awed by the potential of the so-called Matrix network, others are uncomfortable with the man who built it.
Hank Asher -- a Boca Raton multi-millionaire called a patriot by a former Watergate prosecutor, consulted and admired by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani -- once smuggled millions of dollars worth of cocaine.
Asher avoided detection and was never charged with a crime during what he calls "the hazy period" of his life. The statute of limitations has long since elapsed on drug-running activities he admits spanned eight months in 1981 and 1982. Those reckless days, he told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, drove him to depression and drug and alcohol abuse.
He didn't pay for his crimes in a jail cell, but a price was exacted by years of negative publicity and intense public suspicion. The climax came in August, when Asher walked away from the Matrix so it could proceed unencumbered by its designer's infamy.
Asher, now 52, made peace with himself.
"I go to sleep every night knowing that I've done much more good than harm," he said.
Indeed, Asher's notoriety has done little to deflate his clout among some influential crime-fighters.
Giuliani, now an international crime consultant, uses Asher in the hunt for terrorists. Brian Stafford, the former head of the U.S. Secret Service, is one of a handful of top law enforcement officers who work for Asher's database company. John Walsh, host of the TV show America's Most Wanted, sings Asher's praises.
To understand the contradiction of the public pariah with quiet influence is to understand his road to redemption. It is a path lined with powerful innovations and financial benevolence that have aided the hunt for criminals and the safe return of missing children.
"I have a great admiration for what he's doing, both in finding missing children and in coming up with creative solutions to terrorism, as well as owning up to his mistakes," Giuliani said. "People do a lot of things in life. It's a question of what you can do to make up for it, and Hank has done a lot."
why he smuggled
In his first interview on the drug allegations, Asher said he got into smuggling for the adrenaline rush.
"It seemed like an adventure," he said, chain-smoking Marlboro Lights between bites of nicotine gum at his mansion next to the Royal Palm Polo fields. "I had no idea of the hideousness of drugs."
He got mixed up in the business after "retiring" at age 30 to the Bahamas. Asher moved there after selling the paint contracting business he started at 18 and built into what a 1975 Sun-Sentinel article described as "apparently unmatched anywhere" in the South Florida high-rise market.
In Great Harbour Cay, Asher said, he attracted attention with his plane and his speedboat. Drugs were rampant, he said, and so were offers for easy money flying the contraband into the United States. Asher said he resisted the offers -- until one came from a group of older men with expensive tastes who "ran in social circles that appealed to me."
He said he agreed to do them a favor after, having recklessly spent his paint company proceeds, he borrowed money from them.
An FDLE investigation details how far that favor went. The probe, launched in August and completed in September, was meant to resolve the longstanding rumors of Asher's past, particularly at a time when several states interested in the Matrix were threatening to pull out over the smuggling questions.
The report concluded that Asher piloted up to seven planeloads of cocaine from Colombia into the United States in 1981 and 1982,
The journey is better then the end.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Don't worry, if you're not a terrorist, you probably don't have anything to worry about!
Just another reason why I'm re-voting against Ed Rendell, the most nearsighted governor of all time, when his turn comes around.
~Ben
/* Revision date 10/11/2001 */
if (strcmp (FirstName, "mohammad" == 0 && strcmp (LastName, "Atta") == 0)
Score += 50;
Internet -- Tim Berners Lee, an Englishman, who invented the device while he was at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland
Repeat after me. "The Web is NOT the Internet."
The Internet developed from the ARPANet, which was a US production.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
This database looks like it could be one valid tool among many, but not conclusive evidence all by itself. So, it alone won't prove anybody guilty, but if some other independent reasons cast attention on someone and they showed up high on this list, then it would be prudent to take a deeper look at them. Doing otherwise would be negligent and could cost the lives of thousands of innocents, versus a fairly non-obtrusive background check or questioning of somebody with a suspicious history.
Bin Laden's Scared Armour of Terror
False beard
Defense: 255
Durability: Invulnerable
Required Strength: 56
Required Level: 99
[Only usable by Terrorist]
+150 TQ
+3 to RPG
+150% Enhanced defence in caves
+500% Enhanced evasion against US
75% Better chance of finding magic WMDs
+1 mana after each kill
Requirements -100%
Socketed (6)
time to make a database of politicians likely to sell you're future to the highest bidder? i thought i recall something along these lines, but a web search isn't turing up anything. i'm possibly putting the wrongs words into google.
granted, most people don't know their representatives names. a search by zip code would be great. gives your representatives names on local, state, and federal level and where they are getting their money, what their criminal history is, where they own property, where they went on their last vacation, what bills they are for and against. that's a lot of hard work. if they can do it about us, why can't we do it about them? there are vastly more of us than them.
"they've got the guns but, we've got the numbers..."
-Morrison.
And while we're at it, when do we start cashing those big checks from the Terrorist Dividend?
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
and that 'about 100 or so' soldiers have died in Iraq.
:)
Yeah, well, if even the DEFENSE DEPARTMENT'S DEPUTY SECRETARY doesn't know the figure (he was off by at least 40%), then what expectations can we possibly have of an average Joe? I mean, it's like like it's Joe's *job* or anything to know this, but Wolfowitz... it goes beyond incompetence, it's just insulting to our soldiers. He may as well have walked over to the Arlington cemetary and started pissing on the graves for that matter...
Speaking of dense, (but completely unrelated), this is a great stat: 19% of Americans think they're in the top 1% of the income range.
Chew on that one for a little while
"If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes..." - Roy Batty
/dev/trash wrote: "What if they are still waiting for the signal?"
(Cut to mysterious Evil Island HQ of bin Laden, patrolled by sharks with freakin' lasers on their heads)
"Evil One! We have sent the signal, but they do not hear!
"Gaaaaaar! The hats! Those damn tinfoil hats are blocking the signals! (Throws VHS copy of Telefon into trash.) Drat! Foiled again! (Doh!)"
(Cut back to a smiling Tinfoil Safety Hat Man giving the thumbs-up, who mouths out of sync:)
"For great justice!"
Wait until the new Michael Moore movie arrives to the States... you might be shocked to learn who was really helping the Bin Ladens after 9/11. I doubt any of them are among the 120,000.
Have a nice day.
there's no place like ~
Ah, for the days when a good fraction of Usenet postings had NSA Food signatures... Though I don't think they're looking for references to Kremvax anymore.
I wonder how long before businesses start doing terrorist background checks in addition to criminal checks....
just cut to the chase as I've seen the movie
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Depends on the terrorists. In the middle east it's oil, diamonds and some heroin. In South America for at least the FARC it's the greatly over inflated value of drugs caused by prohibition.
If we end the WoD (war on drugs) by legalizing marijuana and making all other drugs available for prescription for maintance (with the execption of antibiotics) the price of drugs would bottom out. Heroin could be purchased from CVS for $5.00 a dose instead $100 off the street. Lower prices means the end of drugs partly funding bad things. The bonus would be a dramatic drop in property crimes. A few years ago in Bern, Switzerland they tried selling heroin directly to addicts for ~$4.50 per dose. Property crimes dropped by 60%.
Without prohibition illegal drugs would cost 100th of their current price and would save the US over 15 billion dollars every year in law enforcement and prison costs. At least an extra 1 billion dollars a year would be made from the taxation of marijuana. BTW, studies in the Netherlands showed that drug use did not increase with an easing supply.
The economic forces of prohibition fund a lot of bad things including terrorism.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
A list of 120,000 names does not really narrow it down much. Perhaps there are a few hundred foriegn terrorists operating in the United States. 1% of 120,000 is 1200 and I would venture a guess that there are no more than 1200 foriegn terrorists in the US even by the widest stretch of the term terrorist. If my assumption is accurate then that mean MATRIX has a 99% false positive rate and sorting through 120,000 names to find 1200 or less is not a very useful tool. If there were really 120000 terrorists or even 12000 don't you think they would have gone to the store bought some guns and started shooting people by now. 12000 is a small army and could easily cause a lot of damage before our military could respond. Even 1200 could all get together and really do a lot of damage. That leads me to believe that they are a few hundred at most in a number of different groups espousing vastly different ideological and political goals. This system is just one more tool to turn America into a police state. Who are the real terrorists here?
Selling Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange databases?
can be found on there site: Matrix
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
...with prisoners housed in 'cell' blocks as human batteries.
They say the USA wages a 'culture war' on them...with our pop music and Coca-Cola. They want that done away with. They say we meddle in their business...they want that done away with. Yet their whole religion centers arround converting or killing the heathens. What about THEIR culture war? What about their tactics which include hiding their soldiers and military supplies in mosques and schools and hospitols...so they can point the finger and call the US Military hypocrits when they destroy those places to prevent their own injury? There is no reasoning with this kind of thinking...simple minded relgious zealots only respect one thing...force. And the USA has got force. Lots of it. Momentum as well.
Guerrilla wars can be won by over-whelming firepower and disregard for all civilians. This is what it will come to, I believe. Geneva Convention be dammed...times have changed and so must tactics. We cannot afford to be 'better' than our enemy as it is a huge weakness. We must eliminate those who would do us harm...collateral damage or not.
Blar.
120,000 terrorists in the US? C'mon! Has ANYONE on /. ever met a "terrorist"?
.04% of the population. That number doesn't sound too off-the-wall to me.
Well, honestly, how do you know? That's like asking if you've ever met a child molester, or a murderer, or a rapist. Without full background checks on everyone you know, you have no idea.
As for 120,000 terrorists, if that's out of the population of the US, that's only
silly analogy, but to continue with your logic, it's a shame Bush/Rumsfeld etc sprayed the wrong 'fuckers' huh?
Pre-invasion links with Al-Qaida?
uh, no...
Post-invasion links with Al-Qaida?
YEP
Weapons of Mass Destruction?
uhm...
Guerilla war you can't win?
YEP
Welcome to the real world, oh, and in case you forgot, they already fucked up one country after invading, perhaps it's time we made an attempt to guide that one to democracy, or was that not really the intention?
Oh yeah, it was the Paranoia RPG.
anata sekai o kakumei surush ga nai deshou? Anata no susumu michi wa yoi shite arimasu.
If you haven't noticed, more and more conservatives are getting fed up with the Bush regime, not just for bungling the war, but for things like presiding over a huge increase in the size of the federal government. Some are even talking about voting for Ralph Nader (as they can't bring themselves to vote for Kerry). Criticizing BushCo does not disqualify you from being a conservative.
-- $SIGNATURE
On the one hand, this seems to be a gross invasion of privacy, but on the other hand, I want those other thirty people put under the microscope.
It doesn't sound like the FBI immediately ran out and packed the people on the list off to Guantanamo. The database was used to look for patterns of suspicious behavior, and then the feds sat down and looked at the evidence that caused their scores to be ratcheted up.
I'm not a believer in strong privacy protections. Instead, I believe in transparency. It's getting impossible to stop the flow of information, and much of that information is about us: our lives, our tastes and proclivities, our goals. This data is going to be warehoused, mined, and used by people who don't have our interests at heart. I believe that the only choice we really have is whether to demand it to be done in an open, transparent way, or simply outlaw the whole shebang and watch as it continues under a cloak of secrecy.
If we are all to be watched, then those who wield power should be watched closest of anyone. Applied to the MATRIX system, it might be allowed to continue, but with every search being logged and opened to public scrutiny after some reasonable length of time. Any person arrested due to a tip from the MATRIX system would have to be notified of the fact, and the nature of the evidence against him. Obviously, there are other needed safeguards I haven't considered, but the point is that they would make it harder for the government officials to use the tool to conduct secret vendettas, and give us all the opportunity to determine just how effective the system really is.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Wake up Neo. The MATRIX has you.
Really, can these guys pick a name with worse symbolism? Skynet, maybe?
And am I the only one who noticed that it should really be abbreviated as MATIE?
To get "Matrix" from Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, they had to grab a random 'r' from the middle of Terrorism and the second letter of Exchange.
You want a sig? I can get you a sig... Hell, I can get you a sig by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.
Oh, heck! We could even start an informal game to see who can score the highest without ever getting performing any real crimes or getting arrested!
But aww... no such luck.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"Ah yes, the old myth about Fox News being conservative. The same Fox News that has as its main figurehead the angry moderate Bill O'Reilly, who bashes Cheney for secrecy and bashes the Bush administration for bungling things."
So you're claiming that conservatives never bash conservatives? That's one funky world you live in. O'Reilly is bashing Dubya because he was forced to apologize (or as close as he'll ever get). George Will is bashing this administration. Plenty of conservatives are beginning to so. Do you know why?
Because this unimaginably inept administration is causing the conservative movement irreparable damage. Conservative Republicans are supposed to be "small government, fiscally responsible, personal freedom". That's the EXACT opposite of what this administration has done. What a tragic joke. And it will haunt the GOP with a taint for many years to come.
Even Robert Novak is now finding himself criticizing Dubya and crew. Because Dubya and crew are doing THAT MUCH damage to the conservative movement.
Fox News is extremely conservative, to the point of farce. How bad must if be if even THEY are beginning to raise questions?
Ah yes, 2 out of 24 hours does not a 'fair and balanced' channel make. (one hour first airing, one hour repeat-- and probably only 10 minutes of those are non-conservative oriented opinion)
Seriously though, how can you defend Fox News as being non-conservative (politically oriented) when they do such things as:
Moreover, who's not conservative on Fox News?
I'll give you Alan Combs-- the mostly harmless liberal? They cut his nuts off long ago...
See, Fox 'news' figured out the secret. People don't want the news-- people want to be told stuff that they already agree with and fits in their pre-conceived worldview. News is news: the story is the same-- but now ratings are driven by how you spin the news story to get an audience.
And audiences are going to tune into news channels that make the feel 'good' or 'comfortable' and reaffirm what they already hold to be true.
It's thus that news stops being news and becomes propaganda.
Same goes for CNN, NPR, ABC, NBC, etc.
No, they do not. They want to expand their rule into regions of Central Asia. They want to invade Israel and exterminate its people. They want to expand Muslim "law" into traditionally non-Muslim places like the southern Sudan. In already-Muslim places like Turkey, they want to replace secularism with a system where everyone is forced to obey one brand of Islam. These are just a few examples. Extremist Islam is aggressive and expansionist.
"America has done more to cause terrorism than any other country has in recent years, possibly ever"
"Muslim extremists just want to be normal muslims. Normal muslims just want to get on with their lives, like normal everyone-else-on-this-planet."
If they did, they would put down their guns and take up a "live and let live" attitude.
"You don't win friends by beating them up."
If they are already beating you up for the sole reason that you do not worship the Muslim god, then it is part hope for winning them as friends.
"It frustrates me so much when I hear people saying the terrorists want to "destroy america" because they "envy our freedoms" or "hate democracy". "
It may frustrate you, but it is quite true. The terrorist's own speech and documents list as prime reasons for "hating America" such things as America's tolerance of religious freedom. Think about it.... long and hard.
No, America has done much to reduce and minimize terrorism.
oh please, are you talking about the invasion of Iraq, or some vague catch-all 'War on Evil' which will change definition every time someone asks who you're attacking?
Hate to break it to you, but Saddam ran quite a secular (though evil) government, and actually persecuted a lot of people for their muslim beliefs. The war in Iraq has nothing to do with Muslim extremism and everything to do with the crazy obsession of right wing cranks like Cheney and Rumsfeld with having a puppet regime in the gulf. Unfortunately they didn't learn from previous mistakes (remember the Iranian revolution? Remember that photo of Rumsfeld visiting Saddam in the eighties under Reagan to discuss cooperation?).
Do you really believe the roughly 10,000 people killed in Saddam's army during the invasion were actually interested in your country or in imposing Islamic law there? They didn't even have it in Iraq. Who exactly do you mean by 'them', and what exactly do you think the war in Iraq has to do with that?
The war in Afghanistan had some direct justification, and the country is still a mess, arguably in worse shape than when we invaded. No one even bothers to talk about it in the US media (or in Europe for that matter) anymore. Will that war stop a terrorist sponsoring government from taking over there? It won't if we leave the country to slide into chaos again afterward.
I guess that depends on how you define the term "terrorist." In the past few years that definition has loosened considerably, and refocused a bit at the same time. It seems, for example, that being of Anglo-Saxon descent automatically excludes someone from "terrorist" status. Kind of a racist McCarthyism.
I think it's more like you testifying you ate all the leftover birthday cake. however the cross examination reveals that when a police forensic team scoured your house they found a tiny crumb. Obviously you're a liar and none of your testimony should be considered.
pending committee review
There are some of us, like myself, that value freedom and individuality. But many of my fellow Americans are terrified sheep who still see the Twin Towers falling and have let the government blind them with fear that this impending doom will be heading their way any second now. They honestly do not care about losing their freedoms as long as they think they'll be safer for it. They refuse to observe the historical evidence that disproves thier ideas.
But why are they so stupid and short-sighted? A combination of a school system designed to create an unthinking and docile workforce for 19th century factories and a media owned by large corporations intent on keeping people afraid and under control.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Parent is a troll, and the "karma be damned" line doesn't change that fact. Why is it that inserting a karma disclaimer is guaranteed to get you modded up?
Let me guess, one of the criteria for being labelled a potential terrorist is wearing a black trench coat and playing video games...
oh wait, wrong incident.
-Z
I wonder how I scored. They never told me when they confiscated my property. They still have not given my guns back.
Apparently applying for a FFL (Federal Firearms License), being a Computer Scientist, and wanting any kind of civil rights drives up the score.
Yea I was acquitted, but they didn't need a conviction to destroy my life and career.
I hate Fascism. I feel like I am in a bad Starship Troopers film.
An anonymous coward wrote: "No, just that O'Reilly is a moderate on a centrist network falsely proclaimed as being right-wing just because it isn't left-wing like CNN is."
Fascinating. Perhaps you can share with us some examples of what you consider to be conservative news outlets, as well as another example or two of "centrist" outlets?
"So much for any intelligent discussion. You are a liberal loon who can't talk about Bush without insulting him."
No, actually I'm a conservative (small government, fiscal responsibiltiy, personal freedom, personal responsibility and accountability) who simply cannot ignore the facts. Bush Sr. I was all for, until he hosed up the domestic agenda. Lack of "the vision thing" as you may recall. You, on the other hand, appear to be one of those individuals who can't grasp the nuances of a shades-of-grey world.
So tell us, are you a conservative? Do you believe in small government, fiscal responsibiltiy, personal freedom, personal responsibility and accountability? If so, who are you voting for this year and why?
"They always have been."
Please cite examples where Fox News presented views critical of the Bush administration prior to the painfully obvious discovery that there was no imminent threat "smoking gun" of WMD in Iraq.
relax! i was quoting a t-shirt which was making fun of those drug commercials.
on the topic of saudi arabia, that government doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. nor does that of kuwait, who may or may not have tried to frame some iraqis as trying to assassinate the first bush.
I'm a UK citizen, living (with a Green Card, happily married) in the USA. Prior to 9/11, I could travel easily within the country - rarely stopped, security were somewhat courteous, and life was easy. Since 9/11, I can't make it through a single airport without being taken aside for a full search! Last time, I asked why - and was told that I'm in a database of likely travel threats. The only connection I have to terrorism is that I authored my Master's thesis (back in '98) on Terrorism and Democracy (the basic thesis was that terrorism is extra-effective against Western-style Democracies because panic reactions to acts of terror tend to remove the freedoms on which the society is based; terrorism therefore 'wins' against the Democracy because the rights of the citizens are increasingly compromised until the society is so locked down as to not be free at all. I really didn't think it would be that prophetic!). I can't find any way to have myself removed from this database, so now I travel Greyhound!
Lead developer, http://wisptools.net
Freaks & Geeks was a show that seemed popular with a lot of us nerds and yet it was struck down before it's time. I think we need our own tv network.. not just showing PBS type stuff.. but something like TLC, Cartoon Network, Spike TV, Comedy Central, etc all mixed together to have the shows that most appeal to nerds. Anime, Junkyard Wars, Freaks and Geeks, Red Dwarf, and Southpark. Maybe throw in Dead Like Me and MXC for good measure. To be fun we should make some opensourced shows just to see how things work out.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
The only terrorist attacks that come to my mind that happened in America somewhat recently are the 9/11 attacks and the Oklahoma City bombing. For a grand total of 19 terrorists. And this list brings up a 120,000 potential terrorists.
I would fucking hate to be on that list. These are going to be the people that can't fly because they're blacklisted, that can't get government jobs because they're blacklisted, or who knows, can't take out a mortgage because they're blacklisted. Even though the odds are overwhelmingly in their favor that they aren't a terrorist.
And what exactly do you have to do to get on this list? I mean you could say that Mr. McVeagh (sp?), the only American out of the aforementioned 19 terrorists, was an extremist libertarian...Do we suspect all of the libertarians? Its a sad time for a once free country when you seriosly have to consider what you register [to vote] as because you might end up on some list because even if you're peaceful they're not going to know that.
--HC
So I'm jump'n up and down screaming show me the money.
The previous thread about CAPPS and the Carnival Booth: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/13/19 51210&mode=thread&tid=103&tid=158&tid= 99
Since sarin and other gasseous nerve agents are worthless as single-instance munitions, they'd have to be stockpiled by the thousands to be considered an effective military weapon. Given Hussein's well-known paranoia and lack of trust of even his own military leadership, he likely moved the stockpiles around, deliberately mislabeled them and, this, coupled with his military's incompetance and corruption likely led a few of them to be overlooked or retained by local commanders, either deliberately or out of fear that they would be punished for destroying them.
Arguing that he "had" weapons of mass destruction simply because a few random shells have turned up is entirely pedantic given the circumstances of Hussein's regime and the nature of the weapons.
Well you always have the option to move out of this country if you do not like it. The mere fact that you have the option to even post such comments on this site shows what America and its way of life has done for you. My guess is you (Anonymous Coward) are either a totally mystified liberal that is so entrenched in liberal propaganda that you have the inability to see more than one side, or you are some pussified Euro-trash succumbing to the "French" point of view by posting your disallusioned opinions on an AMERICAN WEBSITE. So STFU pu$$y.
I thought the invisible tinfoil hat was working great. That is, until I woke up one morning and found an invisible communist under the bed. Not only that, a pair of invisible FBI agents was found hiding in the closet. I only was able to discern them after I drank my liquid Jim Beam breakfast.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...with unsavory people, and worse, how they're so entrusted with a key source of influence and/or control? First there was Poindexter with the TIA nonsense, and now Asher with the MATRIX project. I decided to do a little browsing on topics related to Seisint - turns out, this project is very much tied to the Department of Homeland Security:
4 &c =130
http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/Privacy.cfm?ID=1583
This could easily be a drop-in replacement for TIA.
Why should any regular individual be worried about these systems? From the best essay on privacy and 9/11 laws I've seen (from the former privacy czar of Canada- warning Canadians not to lose rights Americans have already lost):
"...But there also will be tangible, specific harm. The more information government compiles about us, the more of it will be wrong. That's simply a fact of life.
"But if our privacy becomes ever more systematically invaded by the state for purposes of assessing our behavior and making judgments about us, wrong information and misinterpretations will have potential consequences.
"If information that is actually about someone else is wrongly applied to us, if wrong facts make it appear that we've done things we haven't, if perfectly innocent behavior is misinterpreted as suspicious because authorities don't know our reasons or our circumstances, we will be at risk of finding ourselves in trouble in a society where everyone is regarded as a suspect. By the time we clear our names and establish our innocence, we may have suffered irreparable financial or social harm...
"Decisions detrimental to us may be made on the basis of wrong facts, incomplete or out-of-context information or incorrect assumptions, without our ever having the chance to find out about it, let alone to set the record straight...
"The bottom line is this: If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free. That sort of life is characteristic of totalitarian countries, not a free and open society like Canada...
" Compiling dossiers on the private activities of all law-abiding citizens is the sort of thing the Stasi secret police used to do in the former East Germany. It has no place in a free and democratic society."
"...When people are worried about their safety, when we have seen the horrors of which today's breed of terrorists are capable - and there may be more - it's easy to lose perspective. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that security is all that matters and that human rights such as privacy are a luxury. But such extremes can only reward and encourage terrorism, not diminish it. They can only devastate our lives, without commensurately safeguarding them. Of course we all want to be safe. But we could be safer from terrorism - perhaps - if we permanently evacuated all the high-rise office towers, if we closed down the subways, if we forever grounded all airplanes. Yet no reasonable person would be likely to argue for adopting such measures. We'd say, "We want to be safe, yes - but not at the price of sacrificing our whole way of life." The same reasoning should apply, in my view, to arguments that privacy should indiscriminately be sacrificed on the altar of enhanced security..."
A tiny minority of Muslims might actually believe anything remotely near to what you say.
...To further extend the wasp analogy, the "RAID" is causing honey bees to mutate into angry wasps.
The Israel situation has got absolutely nothing to to with "resisting conversion"... that is fundamentalist christian bullshit. It is to do with occupation, repression and desparation.
On a seperate topic, The U.S. can tax marijuana right now if they want to, the 1 Oct 1937 Marihuana Tax Act allows the treasury department to tax maryjane and apply an official stamp I imagine you're right about property crimes & tax revenue, but drugs are a Bad Thing(TM) and the relegious conservatives would never let it happen. There are also some business interests involved (hemp vs nylon/etc) that helped make it llegal in the first place.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Quick q, would you accept something like that about somebody else? Probably not, regardless of being an impressionable gung-ho adolescent or whatever? Then your bro gets nicked by the US saviours and then you see pics of the whole Abu Ghuraib stuff. Hmm, perhaps bin laden suddenly doesnt seem so wrong to you? Oh yeah, add in a dash of history about Saddam being damn evil and being loved by Americans till like a decade ago when the med's all went away after his fallout with America? Multiple that with Afghanistan, Iran n whoever else has been fucked with even the slightest. And i'm not saying you or I would go down that road but consider the amount of people , its statistically impossible that the amount of people seeing America as evil now versus 2-3 years ago hasnt gone up by a significant amount. My point being people are fucked up everywhere and the more reason you give em to vent at you, well bully for you / be prepped for flying shit ;)
Bastards.
Speak truth to power.
If they were so concerned about privacy, how did they compile the database and develop the profiling method in the first place?
Algorithm for determining terrorist tendencies revealed:
... The sad thing is, this is nothing. I could go on for days about various things like these that are in the works, or already in place that can be used to create an evironment that would make the old U.S.S.R. blush (Soviet Russia jokes not withstanding ;-) )
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." --Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court justice, 1928
---
In some countries it is probably enough to have a different colour of skin..
.... (-yes I do not want to give any example)
... have you ever said something too radical, maybe racist because at a certain age you were influenced by an adult or just a stupid friend ? (a radical music group, or someone in a movie that made you think for a split second that his cause was the right one? )
...
... (of course for that statement alone I might be considered something bad and dangerous to society)
In some countries you demonstrate against globalisation, or as a student you join the greens and make a stand in front of the train carrying nuclear waste.....
Then again... you log-in to a chatroom being angry because of a recent event (just watching everyday CNN, or local news) and say something stupid - eg whoever deserved whatever because they did that other thing the first place
Think of kids (teens)
Seriously what are the steps (what is the method) that puts you on that list ?
What if these lists get public and even the cashier in the supermarket gets the blinking red sign when she slides your creditcard ?
And what's more scary: do you ever get off that list if you get on it ? Or your FSCK'd for life ?
Being stared at, stripped at checkpoints and occasionally dragged into interrogation and have your door kicked in in the middle of the night ?
I'm not a politician, that's for sure, but it is reaching a point when I do not want to travel anywhere, I do not want to say anything to anyone online....
I am scared that what I might say can and will be used against me, my family, my kids
What's in my head? Honestly I would grab a bunch of good souls and move to an other planet and retry with a new model of society
http://www.tivo.com/5.3.1.1.asp?article=200
AND THEY JUST SIGNED A DEAL WITH.......NIELSEN !!
I have a negative terrorism quotient - I own guns and will shoot you if you are a terrorist, so the more of me there are, the fewer terrorist points we have.
B!=W (what I said)
and
(black person) != (white person) [what you implied I said].
Grow up, get a better sense of humor, or deal with your demons. I am not a racist. You sir, are a philistine.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Osama was never paid or trained by CIA. It is true that the CIA funded muslim extremists in Afghanistan, the "Afghan Arabs" as they were called, and that Osama was an Afghan Arab fighter, but there is no evidence that he ever was offered money by CIA and in fact there is some evidence he would not have taken it had it been offered. That is not to downplay CIA involvement in and responsibility for the growth of al Qaeda -- US arms and money flooded the region during the 80s, the CIA built bases (many of which were later used by terrorists) and made deals with Afghan warlords (including Hekmatyr, now one of our biggest enemies in the region), and surely Osama's men benefited from this -- but suggesting that bin Laden was on the CIA payroll just makes the argument seem looney. There is no evidence of any direct contact between CIA and bin Laden during the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
I mentioned this story on ep5 my show if anyone cares.
http://hackermedia.net/uberleeto/
Hacker Media
Now that's some damn good trolling, AC. Gotta hand it to you. You tipped your hand with the Buchanan reference though. Other than that, not bad.
Cognitive dissonance is more than just a buzzword.
If only American lives count, the current tally is three shy of 800;
If one were to argue that ally deaths count too, as I'm sure those allies would contend, 907;
and if the lives of Iraqi civilians are graciously given any worth, on the low side, the body count is currently over 10,000.
Islam according to the extremeists compels the believer to attack the non-believer. They wouldn't be called extremeist if their opinions where common, but while they are a small minority they are large enough and well funded enough one to be taken seriosly.
The Israel situation has got absolutely nothing to to with "resisting conversion"... that is fundamentalist christian bullshit. It is to do with occupation, repression and desparation.
I agree it's all about occupation, repression and desperation. But the hard liners on both sides are trying to occupy and repress each other. Neither side's extremeists are willing to compromise.
Labeling me as a "fundamentalist christian" is a pathetic argument. Why do you have to try to label and demonize me to attack my point of veiw? The directive to convert by violence is in the Quran:
It is far better to argue with facts than by labels.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
What happens to you if someone else has a similar name? From this article on the ACLU's No Fly List lawsuit:
Or from this article from 2003:"This week 18 men named David Nelson, all residents of Oregon, confirmed they have been repeatedly delayed at airport counters and security checkpoints in the last year or so."
"Remember Ozzie and Harriet's son, David Nelson? "I got stopped at the John Wayne Airport" in Orange County, Calif., he said by phone from Los Angeles this week. "Two police officers knew who I was and tried to explain to the guy behind the security desk. It didn't faze him at all." Even as another officer was saying he had once met David's mother, Harriet, David was being instructed to remove his shoes, he says. "I asked, 'Does the guy on the list have a middle name of Ozzie?' He said, 'It just says David Nelson.' "
Of course they hate the US more now. That's beyond queastion. My point is that they believe they have an obligation to kill americans regardless of how they act.
I definitely agree that the american government and milatary have been cheerfully makeing a bad situation worse though.
But for either side, both bin laden and the american government, two wrongs don't make a right. I don't support either side murdering, kidnapping, and tortureing civilians.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
Yeah, but the bitch of it is that the "tiny minority" you refer to are the ones who like to fly airplanes into buildings.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
I might ramble a bit in making this point - so here's where I'm trying to go: I don't see how the government, or anyone else, knowing more about me and my life affects my freedom. I'd like to see much more emphasis on rights to fair trial, rights to do what I want when it doesn't hurt anyone else, rights to unionize, rights to know what my government is doing, and so forth and a lot less worrying about my privacy.
I've decided to launch a tirade on this subject, because they eventually dropped this because of "privacy" concerns. I frankly don't care at all how much or how little the government knows about me. I care how they use it.
For example: I attended an extremely liberal college in a foreign country. I've attended numerous protests. Out of curiosity I've visited a few countries not on the US's list of nice guys. I don't care if the US government knows this. I do care about how they act on it. I want to be able to act peaceable on my politics and pursue my business interests without arbitrary interference. The no-fly lists were abhorrent not because the government had lists of people that deserved watching, but because the effectively enforced punishment in the form of limiting travel without good cause.
So, I'm happy if they keep these matrix generate lists and such provided:
1) I can easily access and correct my own status in these lists. For example I should be able to walk into my local police precinct, have them establish my identity and provide my file in a few minutes. At the same time, I can petition for corrections.
2) They do not use weak evidence to restrict my rights to travel (such as the no-fly lists). If they want to hang out outside my condo and watch me - what do I care? As soon as they start inconveniencing me, they are abusing this information. But this is not about privacy, this is about other rights.
What is worrying, is at the same time the government is collecting more information about its citizens, it is providing less information about itself. This administration has classified documents at a much greater rate than previous administrations. (E.G. Why were human rights abuse reports classified?). This creates a discrepancy in the information that the government has about me, and the information that I have about the government.
So:
Let the government collect all the info it wants, but make it very difficult for the government to classify and conceal information, and put in place much stronger safe-guards to ensure fair treatment and due process.
My motto: "A cat is no trade for integrity."
should NOW suddenly be different than ALL OF RECORDED HUMAN HISTORY ??? We have been plagued by wars, persecution, violence done upon ourselves in the name of Justice, Revenge, Country, Honor, and every other abstract concept up to and in my opinion including religion, not to mention the 'real' reasons for a war: food, and living space. Do you think that Americans today are any different than the Greeks or Romans, the Mongols, or the Spanish Inquisition ? So circus is now on TV. The Middle east has been at for 2500 years now ? Asia has seen millions put down in one so-called 'wave' of barbarians or another, and we have not even touched on the sweeping plagues...or the more 'recent' humanitarian causes taken up by humans, for humans, or is it TO humans. Stalin, Hitler, Franco...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
According to the terrorist's interpretation of islamic law it is their duty to attack the US and all other non islamic states. They believe they are instructed to convert or kill all non islamic people. Those are your choices, join islam or die. This is not an rare interpretation of islamic law.
There have been many "terrorists" throughout the ages. These Islamic fundamentalists aren't the first ones. So are you saying that USA should just carry out imperialism and attempt to take over huge chunks of the world just because of this problem?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Oh but they do have such a database, it's called racial profiling...i wont even get into classism...but it's along the same lines
we also have longer sentencing for lower class/black drugs (crack rock vs powder) (in calif) in north carolina pot was a major offense (i believe a felony) until it became a 'white' drug.
they also DENY COLLEGE LOANS to people that got busted due to classist/racist methods
they also DENY FOOD STAMPS to federally convicted drug users. Sucks to be a poor recovering addict and not have food eh? Guess you have to steal? fall off the wagon? and go back in the slammer.
i guess what im saying is that we DO have some very very fucked up law enforcement systems that focus on pulling in a set group of people or observing a set group of people all the time. And guess what, those people lose the right to vote...oops. And noone had stood up for them, quite a shame really.
All your preview button are belong to hello kitty.
- One terrorist per 10 airplane flights
- several terrorists per large sporting event or rock concert
- 400 in Silicon Valley (although 30 were laid off and are moving back in w/ the parents)
So if there are that many terrorists floating about, they've got to be terribly incompetent ones. We should be swarming with terrorist events, shouldn't we? Even if they are all zombie terrorists, pinging the master to see when to go off, shouldn't at least 0.1% of them have gone off early? Leading to 1 terror event every three days? (assuming they are industrious and want to do one event per year)"It is to do with occupation, repression and desparation. " Bullshit. It is to do with hatred, extremism and fanatism indoctrinated in children from the age 0 troughout the entire Islamic world. And please spell it despEration.
If you think this is only symptomatic of Nilsen-US, well wake up. We have the same "rating" evaluation around here and the same result. Big Brother, Star Search and other inane shows.
I can't even count all those bad stats made on small sample (vore prediction and so on). The smalles the sample, however you do your sample, the highiest the error, up until the point your error is greater than your sample size [total uncertainty]. And frankly the argument forwarded by Nilsen and co about how good their sample are (blahblahblah we take a % of every soci-class and cook the number until we get something which please us) will NOT change that.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I just love how everybody wants to cry havoc when the government starts removing their 'liberties.' I'd just like to take this moment to point out how many people were outraged when the Clinton era 'crime bill' (AKA 'assault weapons ban of 1994) was passed. This was a direct violation of the Second Ammendment (as were previous FEDERAL laws governing firearm ownership/posession), and yet the American Public (you know who you are) did nothing. It's sad that less than 10 years after that putrid 'law' went into effect we have a supreme court that passes a law DIRECTLY abridging the First Ammendment (I'm referring to the law governing the airing of 'negative' political ads for the 90 days preceeding a public election), and the American Public (once again, you know who you are) remains curiously silent.
Oh, and for those of you (contempt warning) "Americans" who actually BELIEVE that the Second Ammendment applies only to the National Guard- I'd just like to point out that the Bill of Rights was signed 112 years before the National Guard existed.
I have not voted to elect a SINGLE in office politician EVER. None of the canidates I vote for ever get even CLOSE to winning, because I vote based on my convictions. If you really want to have our government do something to deterr(sp?) terrorist acts in this country- write your 'elected' representative and tell them in NO uncertain terms that you will not vote for them again if they allow the 1994 'assault' weapons ban to be resurrected. Put some REAL 'antiterrorism' tools out there, where they will do the most good; in the hands of law abiding citizens.
Flame away, but there will come a time that you will remember these words, and wonder if I may have been right.
-Joe Glessner
I only stated what the problem is, as I see it. Any ideas that provokes as to solutions are your own, not mine; I sugest nothing.
Quite frankly, outright imperialism might work better than the half assed imperialism the americans are practicing now. But I don't think the american people have the will to be as brutal as that would require them to be (not that that's a bad thing). I mean real brutality, burning down cities and killing every last man, woman, and child or assasinating the entire extended family of terrorists or something. If you're not willing to be a heartless villan, don't try to be an imperialist. The thing with evil strategies is, they can work if you're commited enough.
Anyway, I didn't sugest any solutions because I'm not entirely satisfied with any of the ones I've thought of so far. It's not an easy problem to solve. Do you have any ideas for a moral and effective plan?
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
I'm not calling you a troll or a liar--I just think that people need to be confronted with actual proof of these statements or they're never going to believe them. I know a little of the shit the CIA has pulled in the past (bay of pigs, anyone?), but I don't have the specifics in regards to "overthrowing democracies" or "funding terrorists." My guess is, the guys who mod you "troll" and "overrated" don't know the specifics, either. So show us. Every time you make the claim, post the links. Hell, put it in your sig.
If enough people do this, maybe the American public will stop viewing our government through rose-colored glasses.
If you buy and use illegal drugs you support terrorism.
Creative Demolition
You'd have to inhale 100mg?!? That's quite a bit!
A lethal dose of nicotine is 50mg.
A Pall Mall King cigarette has 0.2mg nicotine in it, and about 25mg of 'other' stuff.
So this would be like inhaling four cigarette's worth of gas? That's a lot.
FYI. I know some of the metrics are useless, but it's just an idea.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
You allways forget this. America is USA, Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, Argentina, and dozens of other countries. You could start some change by not thinking "America=USA"...
You are basically suggesting genocide.. I don't know if you realize that or not... Anyway...
My solution would be as follows. I could write pages upon pages on this but I'll keep in short and succint (hopefully). HEre is what USA needs to do:
1. Stop imperialism: USA has been messing in other countries since WWII. It has basically inherited imperial Britain's role. Invading other countries, overthrowing goverments, propping up tyrants, etc, is no the way to go. It might work in the long term but ultimately it will fail. With respect to terrorism, this basically means end support of the Middle Eastern countries like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc.
2. Picking the lesser of the two evils leads to allying with the devil. I don't need to comment much because everyone knows about it. Usama bin Laden would not be where he is without the CIA. Stick to a clear moral path, which is actually much easier than people think. If you support democracy for example, you stick with that. Don't go propping up and supplying weapons to dictatorships. And so forth.
3. Practice non-intervention. Do not get involved in other countries' affairs. What another country does is their problem (assuming that it doesn't directly impact USA). If the Middle Eastern countries want to practice theocracy that's their problem. Don't sell weapons to one side or another. Just stay out of it.
4. Protect the borders and mainland USA. If USA needs to post more border guards, or improve the immigration system, or clean up smuggling, or whatever, do it. Instead of spending billions on the military, USA should be protecting itself. You should be able to do this without switching to a police state (although this would be hte most difficult of my recommendations IMO).
5. Use the tools of capitalism. I'm not a capitalist but even I have to admit that USA is better at capitalism than imperliasm, fascism, or anything else. This essentially means that you use capitalism to acheive your goals. For instance, instead of propping up tyrannies in Kuwait for oil, just buy the oil on the open market. The middle Eastern countries have to sell the oil to someone and USA can still get in on the action using capitalistic elements. USA has some of the biggest corporations and huge amount of capital so buying stuff, investing in companies, etc will be much better in the long term, than sending the military or the CIA to reinforce the tyrants.
Anyway, that provides a rough view of vision. I might be missing a few things but that's the general idea. Basically, go with non-intervention and dump the imperialism favoured by the modern elite.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
How many people here think they are on this list? How about other blacklists held by agents?
:) ... It wouldn't surprise me if the CIA or some other domestic agency scans slashdot on a regular basis. People who are technically inclinded, even though unemployed :( and without money, are always a greater danger to the government than anyone else...
I have a feeling that I'm on some blacklist cuz... well... I post openly on slashdot with my real name
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
SEISINT has a spam connection.....as well as one to the NCIC.....lookup their corp docs, look where they came from, do some googleing and you will see all the neat stuff.
I agree that Muslim terrorists only understand force. Radical Muslims in general don't like the concept of tolerance and much that the Western civilization stands for. But where do you get
No, America has done much to reduce and minimize terrorism.
from? What did America do to reduce terrorism?
Firstly, as you say, yes; the problem of Muslim extremists does exist, and does have to be dealt with. However, you earlier claimed that the atmosphere of fear (I won't say terror) is being created by the US government. I would make the case to you that the atmosphere of fear was created on September 11th, that it sent very large and very real ripples through the very social fabric of the country, and even with no government prompting and no further attacks, will take decades to get back to 2000 normal.
This is simply wrong. The TradeCenter was the target of terrorists earlier with a bomb explosion going of in the basement area. Luckily back then, the structure remained intact. The US 'created' Osama, and both FBI, CIA and government were more 'aware' of the problem than they would like to admit publicly, so stating that 9/11 came out of the blue, or 'started' on it's own, is not accurate. Investigations are under way to see if the republicans 'used' the attacks to gain support for their 10 year old war plans.
What DID change was the fact that the world woke up with the acute knowledge that their civilians were no longer safe from harm, and that terrorism was getting more apt and proliferated every day.
Then you claim that the greenies were right all along. Well, not precisely. They've been right on some things, wrong on others, just like every other group out there. Global cooling, anyone?
Well, melting the icecaps is still going on. The sealevel is still rising. The ocean currents may be slowing down, wales are beginning to migrate to other locations and still reduce in numbers.
Do me and the world a favour, and vote for anything BUT republican or democrat, so that your country can, for once, truely experience the merrits of a multi-party democracy.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Edison invented the first practical lightbulb. Previous "lightbulbs" were useless. That gives the nod to Edison.
Um... No. They were ALL Moderates until colonial period. Then extreamism became a political rallying point to over throw their oppressors. (sometimes sponsored and encouraged by the US when the ruling group was on the wrong side of the iron curtain).
Takeing a big chunk of Holy land, kicking out everyone who lived there, and dropping a bunch of shell shocked and justifiably parinoid/defensive refugees there didn't help much either. (Did you know that the Koran groups Muslims, Christians and Jews all togoether as "people of the Book" and demands that Muslims PROTECT other people of the Book ?)
Anyway, all your reasoning would do is get rid of moderates and liberal muslims, justify the claims of the hardliners, and convert all the moderates that were left.
I'm sorry but that was just stupid.
What is wrong with this picture? Someone says the most intelligent thing I've seen on slashdot in weeks and they have to post anonymously?
It was sort of my point that imperialisim is pretty hard to practice sucessfully with atrocities. It's not an easy or good thing to enslave another nation.
I was not sugesting genocide though. Just leveling cities as an example to other cites, and killing those closely related to rebels so they can't rebel without risking the lives of their whole family. Basicly a submit or die campain, similar to the roman policy for conquering cities.
I was also trying to say that I think that the US and others should act justly in all things. I personally think that good works best when you are good in all your actions, but evil and unjust actions also work best when you go for it full power. Lukewarm goodness is inefectual and you're still not acting justly. I think the US needs to choose what it wants to stand for, and then act on those beliefs.
Anyway, that provides a rough view of vision. I might be missing a few things but that's the general idea. Basically, go with non-intervention and dump the imperialism favoured by the modern elite.
One problem with a system of non-intervention is not all states will follow your plan, and you can't make them as that goes against your plan in itself. Annother is that most of the benifits come from long term use of non-intervention, and you may not be able to wait. And a third is that non-intervention does not help against expantionist regimes.
Many of the US's worst blunders happeded durring the cold war, when they had the clear and present danger of the USSR. They supplied and trained Bin Laden because they could not afford to let the USSR gain military inroads into the middle east. The middle eastern contries can't sell oil to anyone if they're siezed by the USSR.
If you look at WW2, Britain would have fallen to Germany without US aid, and then africa and probably both the middle east and russia. After Hitler consolidated his hold on europe, asia, and africa then who'd be next?
I pesonally think that what the US realy needs to do is to pick it's battles a little better, and follow through when they have to fight. They should have removed Saddam in the first war, and they shouldn't have ever started the second one. Also, if some guy that you trined as a terrorist says that he declares war on you, kill him.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
Arc lights are not "light bulbs" and are completely impractical for most lighting applications.
Edison and Sir Joseph Swann DID, however, create the first incandescant lamp.
Swann's light bulb was not practical. Edison's was.
Evidently, the government's 'terrorists' will never be as much of a threat as the government itself. Soon enough they'll just brand barcodes into our ass-cheeks indicating what-percent terrorist we are.
How do I know this? Because my terrorist-level just went up ten points.
I'm gonna go to my window and moon the cameras.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
"two wrongs don't make a right"
Indeed so. Alas this is the curse of mankind throughout history.
Religion - single biggest force for evil
Ignorance - single biggest excuse for perpetual stupidity
Instead of sending probes in search of life in outer space, perhaps we should have probes looking for common sense.
Left and right are relative positional terms neither of which imply the presence of intelligence , common sense or relative correctness.
I've never seen rocking horse shit either.
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
Copy unreasoning rant against the U.S. into an Anonymous Coward first post: (Score: 5, Insightful).
"You'll probably be modded down, but I agree.": (Score: 5, Insightful).
Insulting and spitting on Americans on an American computer forum over American internet connections in order to piss off Americans and getting applauded for it (probably by Americans): Priceless. Er, I mean: (Score: 5, Troll).
YHABT. YHAL. HAND.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Yeah, and the assistant director of the FBI testified before Congress that Carnivore was only used to monitor suspected criminals. That was three months after Special Agent Irwin K. Summerville showed up at my door with a copy of an email I'd sent to my father, in which I called Janet Reno "the domestic enemy I swore an oath to defend the Constitution against."
Maybe they changed their policy. You know, because the FBI cares about privacy. Honestly.
I was not sugesting genocide though. Just leveling cities as an example to other cites, and killing those closely related to rebels so they can't rebel without risking the lives of their whole family. Basicly a submit or die campain, similar to the roman policy for conquering cities.
What you are advocating IS genocide and crimes against humanity. What the Romans did would be considered crimes against humanity. Of course, when the Romans were around it was tolerated just like slavery was but not now...
One problem with a system of non-intervention is not all states will follow your plan, and you can't make them as that goes against your plan in itself.
Non-intervention is based on home country only. It doesn't matter what other countries do unless they directly threaten...
Many of the US's worst blunders happeded durring the cold war, when they had the clear and present danger of the USSR. They supplied and trained Bin Laden because they could not afford to let the USSR gain military inroads into the middle east. The middle eastern contries can't sell oil to anyone if they're siezed by the USSR.
USSR did influence some of the Middle Eastern countries. Who was supplying weapons to the Middle East?
In any case, it doesn't matter who controls the resources because of capitalism. The Middle Eastern countries need to sell their oil. They can't just sit on it...
If you look at WW2, Britain would have fallen to Germany without US aid, and then africa and probably both the middle east and russia.
I don't want to get into WWII because there wouldn't even have been one if USA, France and Britain didn't slap massive reparations on Germany.... Also, Germany basically lost the war even before USA actually sent troops. Contrary to US propaganda, Nazi Germany wouldn't have taken over anything signficant. It couldn't even defeat USSR (couldn't even control Moscow) so I don't know how you expect them to control the Middle East, Africa, and Asia...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
I don't do this often, but this statement is right on:
... My point is, few people are absolutely correct these days about either side of the issue."
"You both are hitting the mark, but you aren't dead-on and it's that wild swing left and right that is the real trouble these days.
Thanks... way to transcend the rhetoric. We need more of this.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yeah, we are that dense. I'm a senior in an American high school, my English class just finished Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Not a single person in the class grasped the connection between the story and the McCarthy Hearings. Our teacher tried to stimulate discussion about the relationship between the Red Scare and the current terrorist hunts, this was met with glazed over looks. The future generation isn't going to be much better educated than the current bunch of dopes aiming the American war machine, sorry folks. The irony here is if we took the over bloated "defense" budget and spent it on education we might be smart enough not to go around stirring up wars, or at the very least smart enough not to elect warmongering idiots to office.
A Free Market requires informed intelligent consumers, such people are rare, we're in trouble.
Sounds like this may be arguable. The grandparent's argument really applies much more to Vietnam. The kill ratios were similar, and it definitely wasn't anything remotely like a victory.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
What you are advocating IS genocide and crimes against humanity. What the Romans did would be considered crimes against humanity. Of course, when the Romans were around it was tolerated just like slavery was but not now...
You miss my point. I am stating that I think that one cannot efectively empire build without being evil. So, one should not try to empire build, because the methods that work are evil.
Non-intervention is based on home country only. It doesn't matter what other countries do unless they directly threaten...
US domestic oil production has been going down because of lack of new deposits since 1970. It was apperent that was happening sooner than then. The US is dependent on oil, and anything that treatens their supply is a significant threat. Without oil the american economy would nose dive.
USSR did influence some of the Middle Eastern countries. Who was supplying weapons to the Middle East?
Everyone who manufactured weapons was selling them weapons. The US and Russia where probably the biggest supliers by far though, the US to the states they favored, and the russians likewise.
In any case, it doesn't matter who controls the resources because of capitalism. The Middle Eastern countries need to sell their oil. They can't just sit on it...
Why not? Are you going to force them to sell it? They can just leave it in the ground. What if they put an embargo on oil shipments to the US?
Capatalisim doesn't help you if the country isn't capatalist, if the USSR had taken over the middle east they would have taken the oil and kept it for themselves.
I don't want to get into WWII because there wouldn't even have been one if USA, France and Britain didn't slap massive reparations on Germany....
The US never supported the reperations, in fact they where the only one against them.
Also, Germany basically lost the war even before USA actually sent troops.
Long before the US ever sent troops it was sending immense amounts of supplies to England on credit (technicly an act of war by international law) and guarding the convoys with american naval vessels with orders to sink submarines. Even before the americans sent troops they where bankrolling the british war effort.
Britain would have run out of food and war materials long before the americans sent troops if not for this.
Contrary to US propaganda, Nazi Germany wouldn't have taken over anything signficant.
So, what do you call almost all of mainland europe?
It couldn't even defeat USSR (couldn't even control Moscow) so I don't know how you expect them to control the Middle East, Africa, and Asia...
They got stoped within sight of Moscow before the winter stopped them. Moscow was the centre of the russian rail network, it's capture would have cut their inferstructure and supply lines apart. If it hadn't been for a rebelion in yugoslavia delaying the attack they'd have had 6 more weeks to use. They lost more men to the winter than to the russians.
Russia was the only industrial power in asia, and there where no industrial powers in africa. With russia gone the germans could have taken whatever they wanted, but they'd not need anything further than russia as russia had all the oil and farmland that germany needed.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
Your argument could equally well be applied to any sort of criminal, particularly murderers. Under the US legal system, criminals are still supposed to have rights. That's one thing which supposedly makes this a free country.
One problem with this whole war on terror trip is that it creates a special class of criminal, the "terrorist", which is a very losely defined term, who has no rights. The only real difference between a "terrorist" and any other kind of murderer is that the terrorist is politically motivated. This makes the whole thing even more problematic. If you start denying rights to politically motivated criminals, you can't help getting ever closer to criminalizing any form of dissent. That is what this sort of blacklisting represents: the criminalization of dissent. That is one of the classic characteristics of a totalitarian regime.
Terrorists who commit murder are murderers and should be treated as such. But if you take away their rights, you erode the very foundations of our society. This does violate the bill of rights, and it is a serious problem, not to be dismissed lightly.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
As you see, all your bases are belong to Europeans !
My comment "BTW, studies in the Netherlands showed that drug use did not increase with an easing supply." referred only to marijuana. I apologize for the confusion.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
certainly you must understand irony. Well, if you didn't before, you do now.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
If you're labeled as a potential terrorist in the new america, you'll be "secured" somewhere and won't have to worry about any cashiers in supermarkets.
Heh.
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
I'll keep this brief...since it is a few days old...hope you don't mind...
You never indicated that you were against imperialism so it was my impression that you were an imperialist who supported the actions you mentioned. Most of what you say still makes me think you are an imperialist.
As far as the oil situation is concerned, we can talk about this for ages--it REALLY is that complicated. For starters, USA does not rely on the Middle East for oil consumption. Less than 20% of USA's oil consumption comes from the Middle East. The vast majority of US oil comes from Mexico, Canada, and Venezuela.
So the whole oil situation has nothing to do with consumption. Rather, it is all about profits! That is, even if USA's oil consumption drops 90% tomorrow, the plutocrats controlling USA will still want to control the Middle East. What matters is the profits made by a few oil and services companies (eg. ExonnMobil, Halliburton/KBR, etc). The whole war and hegemony is for these companies. Whoever controls oil controls profits. It's all about profits. The rest (like democracy, need, end of the world, etc) are just bogus reasons.
I'm not a capitalist but hardcore capitalists, like the CATO institute (for example), call for free markets as opposed to imperialistic hegemony. The reason is pretty much for the reason above. My impression is still that you are an imperialist who is calling for taking over the Middle East. Nothing you have said is to the contrary.
As far as WWII is concerned, I'm not going to go there because: (i) I'm not too knowledgeable in that area, (ii) I'm not interested in it, (iii) it is way off-topic and we can talk for ages about that, and (iv) it is too complicated to discuss right now. Anyway, I will say the following:
My impression is that USA WAS part of the deal which slapped massive reparations on Germany. Nothing I have read has indicated that USA was against it. If you can find some references to the contrary, that would be helpful.
You say Germany was close to Moscow and only weather prevented them from winning. Well, I say that's part of war. The terrain and weather are all part of it. You cannot excuse the weather...
As far as Germany having the ability to take over Asia, Africa, etc, I still stick with what I said. Germany couldn't have taken over the world. Germany "easily" took over Europe because of two reasons. Firstly, Europe is a relatively small area with easy terrain (mostly plains and forests). Taking over other parts of the world is far more difficult. Not only do you have to cover greater distances, you also have to battle through terrain (mountains, deserts, jungles, etc), weather (snow--like in Russia, heavy rain, etc), and so on. USA "lost" Vietnam (or at least had difficulties controlling the country) and that was with far superior technology and forces (since USA was just fighting on one front). I really cannot imagine Germany trying to take over Vietnam, let alone Iran or India or Kenya or whatever, during WWII with worse technology.
Second, fascists controlled key areas of Europe--contrary to popular opinion. Fascism was even popular in USA and Britain (you can easily find people praising Hitler in major newspapers at that time--before the breakout of the war). Since fascists basically "controlled" Europe, it was easy for them to win. In contrast, fascism had little support in other parts of the world. It is very difficult to take over a country where you have no ideological support. For example, there were actually quite a few fascists in France, Spain, and others, who basically facilitated and helped the Nazis take over. I am pretty sure the Nazis would not have had locals help them or fight alongside them if they invaded many other parts of the world.
So in summary, I don't think Nazis would have taken over the world. I personally think that only one tribe/race/civilization/country/whatever had the potential to take over all of known earth. And that happens to be the Mong
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Okay, well please accept my apology, and also, please don't call me a racist. :)
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
As to the middle east situation, my opinion is that we should never have got involved in the first place. It's a huge mess and we're better off without becomming part of it, at least not as combatants or arms dealers.
As to the Germany Vs the World, I said that germany could take asia and africa, not the US. There's no land bridge across to american soil, and the atlantic is wide enough to make an invasion very tricky.
Also, I said they could probably take over asia and africa, not that they could hold that much territory for any significant period. Also, they'd have all the raw materials a growwing empire needs from capturing russian territory, so I dought they'd try too hard. Isn't a violent facist german state ruling europe bad enough to want to stop?
As to Vietnam, the USSR was funding the north. It was russian guns and planes the north where fighting with. The US was also worried about pushing to hard and bringing china or russia all the way into the war.
The problems the US has in the middle east are the result of 50 years of forein policy, not recent actions. But it doesn't cheer me much to see them still gleefully making it worse now. The american military doesn't even follow the geneva conventions anymore and ignores the UN. I can't see any good reason for them to have started a war with Iraq.
The main gyst of my stance against non-interference practiced to an extreme is that it's not always the best tactic. Why I brought up Hitler is because if the league of nations had stomped on him as soon as he first invaded another country then the damage from WW2 could have been reduced. And if the US had not interfered then the germans would have captured and kept most of europe, and possibly more.
How can one have propper democratic discourse on an issue if people are too busy calling each other names to debate? "Agree with me or the terrorists win" type argumets are pathetic. You should stop calling people imperialist just because they don't believe in a system of absolute non interference.
"Once you label me you negate me."
Soren Kierkegaard
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
As to the Germany Vs the World, I said that germany could take asia and africa, not the US. There's no land bridge across to american soil, and the atlantic is wide enough to make an invasion very tricky.
Germany was much better on land than sea so you have a point. However, they COULD have attacked USA because the technology was there. It will all come down to how strong the US Navy would be. If Germany can control the seas, invasion of USA is no different than trying to march across Russia. Just like how the allies invaded Germany from sea (France to be more accurate), Germany would invade USA via sea. Land is obviously easier but sea isn't that bad if you can control the seas.
The US was also worried about pushing to hard and bringing china or russia all the way into the war.
USSR and China were supplying Vietnam but I completely disagree that USA actually wasn't trying to "push too hard". USA WAS trying to take over completely, but they just couldn't. Otherwise, why would they be involved in Cambodia and Laos?
The problems the US has in the middle east are the result of 50 years of forein policy, not recent actions. But it doesn't cheer me much to see them still gleefully making it worse now. The american military doesn't even follow the geneva conventions anymore and ignores the UN. I can't see any good reason for them to have started a war with Iraq.
Yeah... the problem IMO is that USA likes allying with the lesser evil. This basically leads to allying with the devil IMO. Classic example obviously is Usama bin Laden, who wouldn't have any of the expertise if CIA didn't train him and his warriors in the 80's. Even more relevant perhaps is Saddam Hussein, who would have been kicked out by the mid 80's at best (due to his loss in Iran-Iraq war) if USA didn't back him.
Unless USA changes its path, it is going to self-destruct, a la Rome--or even worse. Yes, that's kind of a pessimistic view but let's face it, there are so many looming "crises" on the horizon that USA is simply a mess. Examples include the massive debt, which even the capitalists in power admit has the potential to blow up, likely collapse of social programs (pretty much everyone admits that old age programs will collapse within 20 years), ever expanding and totally out of control military (USA has invaded/overthrown/attacked one country every 6 years or so), and so forth. Let's also not forget that if my pessimistic views become true and USA institutes a draft next year then it's going to misallocate resources to war.
The main gyst of my stance against non-interference practiced to an extreme is that it's not always the best tactic.
Agreed. I'm not a pacifist by any means. If a tank is crushing your people, it's time to do something. BUT I AM primarily a non-interventionist. The vast majority of interventions do not lead you anywhere. In the short term it may seem good (because one side is defeated). But this just causes problems in the long term. Even interventions with best intentions lead you nowhere.
You should stop calling people imperialist just because they don't believe in a system of absolute non interference.
Your views weren't clear to me. It seemed to me that you were calling for invasion of Iraq. Obviously I was mistaken. The confusion probably arose from the fact that you were saying stuff like "if X then Y is necessary" without actually saying you were against Y. Believe it or not, there ARE actually people calling for mass invasions and reckless slaughter of people (you might find these people calling for levelling of Fallujah or the invasion of Syria). These people clearly are imperialists. I guess you are not! So I was wrong... sorry about calling you an imperialist when in fact you weren't. Take that as my apology.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Yeah, I see where you're coming from now. No hard feelings. My main grudge against US forein policy is that when they do interfere it's only for their own benifit, and they have "flexible" morals. Nobody can realy respect a person or country that doesn't stand behind their beliefs, whether or not you agree with them.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato