Slashdot Mirror
Pentagon Creating A Database Of Students
needacoolnickname writes "The Washington Post is reporting that the Pentagon is working with a marketing firm to create a database of students ages 16 through college to help them identify recruits. A little chuckle from the Pentagon in the article: '...anyone can opt out of the system by providing detailed personal information that will be kept in a separate suppression file. That file will be matched with the full database regularly to ensure that those who do not wish to be contacted are not, according to the Pentagon.'"
For military or other purposes, it is QUITE REAL since stereotypically poor equates ignorance and not a whole lot of self governing thought of intelligence.
Dead on. And the poorer people eat it up. They see it as an avenue, perhaps the only one, from poverty. The government doesn't give two shits about them. They aren't likely to contribute much in taxes in their lifetime and they aren't likey to start a business which can help the economy. In short: they are a nuisance. The governments tell them how great they are and what a good thing it is to fight for your country. It's just glorified welfare with a bloody cost.
Trolling is a art,
It must have been lost in the mail. Have any of you recieved your draft notices yet? When do you ship out?
You'd be funnier if these people weren't dying.
But oopsie, point out that the Bush administration is full of liars who have a pathological fear of the truth, and suddenly you're a seditious liberal hippie communist. Point out that modern religions don't like it when you bear false witnesses, and neocons scream "Why do you hate America so?!"
Besides, Bush can't even keep his story straight on Iraq. What would the kids be going to fight? The war on 911terroristWMDfascistbrutaldictatoroil?
What nonsense. Rich kids *used* to join during the Vietnam era, mostly in nice safe officer slots when the alternative was risk being drafted.
How many "rising star" US politicians under age 50 have military backgrounds? None come to mind immediately. Out of the likely 2008 contenders, only McCain served.
Heh. I guess grandparent was not concerned about winning wars in Iraq, but more about undesirable characters removing themselves from the gene pool through stupid wars.
Considering the 'devoutly and unquestioningly religous' aka religious crackpots, I actually agree with him.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Am I the only one who is chilled by these kinds of stories? At what point will the average american say 'this is the thing which has made it clear to me: they have gone too far!'?
Seriously: your president has lied to you (often, and on a larger, more important scale than lying about a blowjob), the administration is demonstrably corrupt (Enron and Halliburton) and it's hypocritical (allows pornstars at their functions). Your governments policies have created poverty, debt and terrorists as if it where actively pursuing that purpose; it has screwed up education to the point that illiteracy and innumeracy are reaching third world levels; and now it has created a recruitment agency which literaly leaves no stone unturned. There is now literally no way of getting away from the recruiters...
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Apparently the readers here cannot separate service to the Constitution from support for the current administration.
And you seem to be unable to separate service to your country from serving the whims of whichever of 2 scumbags won a popularity contest funded by people who make a lot of money by sending US soldiers to die for their own personal profit.
Dude, you make some good points, but then you just piss it all away with this idiotic jingoistic crap:
oh yeah, there is also that little added benefit of a trained military force being the only thing between you being able to post self-righteous crap like this and you being forced to obey the whims of some dictator.
Hot tip. We are under no threat as a nation. There is no dictator plotting to conquer America.
All of our worst threats are internal.
They consist of the following:
1. Politicians who are loyal to their parties over their country.
2. Corporate executives who care more about profit than they do about their country or even their species.
3. These 2 groups getting together and joining their power structures.
Sorry, but Iraq is no threat and never was. The military there is not defending us from shit. Among other things they are just being used as a diversionary tactic while our enemies at home consolidate their power.
You don't seriously believe that ignorant jingoistic Captain America bullshit that you're spouting do you?
If you do, try actually constructing some possible way that it could be true. When you see how far from rationality that you have to go to do that, hopefully that will wake you up.
Do you think Bush honestly wants people to die, or do you think he is honestly trying to save lives? Occam's razor tells me he is trying to save lives, even if history may show he went about it the wrong way.
A. That's a false dichotomy. There are more than the 2 choices you supplied.
B. Therefore, Occam's razor certainly doesn't apply.
Personally, I think all the available evidence points to Bush being a sociopath. Therefore he certainly doesn't give a shit about saving lives because he does not even posess the ability to feel.
Now, find some actual evidence to refute that. Obviously anything that he has said is worthless, sociopaths are great at gaming people.
Can you name even one action he has taken that would support your belief?
Who is to say the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq didn't avert a similar future tragedy? Who is to say what will happen in the future if we didn't start applying similar pressure to Iran and North Korea?
And who is to say the opposite is true? Who is to say that the truth couldn't be anything?
That's right. It's pure speculation any way you look at it.
We do know that Afghanistan is somewhat safe in one major city and basically run by warlords over the rest of the country.
We do know that the blatant lies that were our sole justification for the invasion of Iraq have given legitimacy to our critics. We also know that most of the admiration and respect we had built up in the world was pissed away in the rush to invade a country that we knew full well had nothing to do with the attack on us. That action, quite rightly, demonstrated to the world that integrity, honor, truth and justice are *not* qualities that America respects.
Of course, those 'valuable' skills are generally worthless in the real world. Unless you're a rich kid who gets to be an officer, you're more likely to be stood at a guardpoint in Baghdad doing nothing all day and night (except being bombed). And once you get out, you'll find that you can't get a job because no corporations need people to stand about with machine guns dressed like storm troopers. Although the servitude aspect of military life is quite useful for corporate life. Not much difference between being an officer's bitch or being a manager's bitch.
As for the salary, note the families with people in the army who are on welfare. Or the people who get out of the army and still can't afford to go to college. Or the people who get into the army then find out their benefits aren't what they thought they were. Or the people who are crippled or injured and the army drops them like a stone.
Your speech reads like an army recruitment propaganda campaign.
You seem to think it's acceptable that people from poor backgrounds should be shepherded into military service because they have no prospects. How about instead we put all the rich kids into the military and let the poor people get the expensive educations instead? Of course that won't happen, because the rich rule the world, and they won't allow their kids to come near harm. Instead they get Ivy League degrees and positions of power because of their family backgrounds, whilst people with more intelligence and abilities get stuck doing manual labour because their schools were glorified drug dens and they came from a single-parent family who lived in a tiny apartment that's falling to pieces, living from paycheck to paycheck, no money for even basic healthcare. But that's OK, because they can go to the army, be someone's bitch, and get killed to support Haliburton's stock prices so some rich man can give his kid a Ferrari after he passes his driving test.