Slashdot Mirror
FBI Widens Use of National Security Letters
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post reports that the FBI has drastically increased its use of National Security Letters (NSL), which permit it to collect information without judicial oversight. According to the article, the use of NSLs is up by a factor of 100, and the records are kept forever (in the past they were thrown away if the subject was cleared). Deep in the article, the author reports that NSLs were used to collect records '[...] of every hotel guest, everyone who rented a car or truck, every lease on a storage space, and every airplane passenger who landed in [Las Vegas]' for a two week period, in response to a terrorism threat in 2003. Those records, apparently, will be kept forever by the federal government. There's an ombudsman, and a procedure to resolve complaints, but the mere existence of an NSL is secret, so it's not clear how anyone can complain!
Man, I want THAT job.
Person: Are you the ombudsman for National Security Letters?
Me: Yes.
Person: I'd like to complain about the FBI's issuance of one against me. I was cleared and they're now storing all my personal information forever.
Me: Sir, you're not supposed to know about that.
Person: But I...
Me: I'm afraid you're now a threat to National Security.
Person: Wait, what the... No, I'm an innocent man! I'M INNOCENT DAMN-*gunshots* *silence*
Me: I love my job.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Just track everyone: Piggy back RFID/GPS chips on every sperm that swims
...clearly subjective.
Another reason not to visit America.
When I was a kid I wanted nothing more than to emigrate to the US of A. At the moment, I don't even want to visit it as a tourist.
How things can change in less than a decade...
One the one hand it's useful, but on the other it contradicts our constitutuion. Man I love polidicks[sic].
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
Did you guys really vote for all this, um, stuff? Take your country back.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
Well, I would imagine that just by posting to Slashdot you are registered 'for all eternity' in some federal register. So, what's your point?
When we have sensible Supreme Court justices installed, who understand we're at war with an ideology that will never die, national security rules by the president will never be subverted by the meddlesome Congress. Or the people, who don't know enough about security intelligence to keep ourselves safe by electing Congressmembers. We need more justices like Roberts who insist on the privilege of the president to keep us safe, and out of the danger of risky "due process". Too bad we can't get Miers back, who saw the towering intelligence of our current defender. But Alito's committment to the security power of the supreme executive should keep us perfectly safe.
--
make install -not war
Yea yea, it's the "gateway drug" and I'm sure they'll use it to pass similar, and worse, laws later on, but does anyone really care about this? I don't. If they want to keep on record that I rented a car and a hotel room for a week in Vegas 3 years ago, kudos to them. I have other things to worry about.
In unrelated news, the price of Aluminum today is up by a factor of 100.
.. can't even trust them to correct^h^h^h^h^h^h^hchange the spelling of Anonymous cowards even
Damn those slashdot editors
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Welcome to Amerika, please surrender your rights here!
Karma: a simple way of silencing those with unpopular views regardless how correct or just that view might be.
My credit card company!
Which I used to rent the car, purchase the plane tickets and secure my rental garages.
They also know where I live, my phone # and my mother's maiden name!
Only criminals will go to the trouble to avoid being caught in such a web of information collection, leaving innocent private citizens as the only victims in this process.
Like is said for gun control laws, if you outlaw it, only the criminals will have it. This sort of crap will ensure that only criminals are outside of the jurisdiction of legal daily surveilance, thus achieving nothing but ill will and a semi-police state.
If you think this is a troll, try again... When the government invents a reason to spy on you without your permission or that of the courts, they have found a way to be the big brother that we all despise and fear. Never mind tin-foil hats, when they know what you had for breakfast without having to lift a finger, the tin-foil hat does no good.
How long will it be before it is made illegal to thwart such efforts by use of misleading electronic activities, and botnets that spoil the information gathered with false information and misleading information. How long before identity theft is not the real problem, but being accused of anti-american activities is the problem because of clever botnets that have seeded the government databases with information about you and your activities?
Where is the oversight to stop the government from doing that, then arresting you on trumped up charges based on bad information... damn, the US started an entire war on bad information...
FSCK, this is bad!
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
There's an easy solution.
Everyone should complain.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
I recall posts from about 7 years ago where our American brethren would profusely claim such laws would (could) never exist in the U.S., and it was kind of comforting to know such a human-rights haven existed (contrast: we don't have a bill of rights in Australia).
But it's frightening how Uncle Sam has managed to sidestep such safeguards in the name of "national security".
I shake my head in disgust when I think of the governments trouncing basic rights to protect us against a threat that claims as many people per decade as cancer does in one day !!
Hey, where's the poster complaining that this FBI privacy invasion story isn't "News for Nerds"? Are nerds finally starting to find a consensus that they're just like everyone else, and "News for Police State Residents" is also news for them, too? Maybe those nerds who have always realized that security/privacy is nerdy will finally get recognition, if only from other nerds... nah, nerds are no good at that kind of social awareness.
--
make install -not war
I'm not sure how reassuring this is, but keep in mind that most reports indicate that the FBI is fabulously inept at analyzing the information that they have already, and this is merely going to further overwhelm them. To be sure, there are genuine civil liberties issues here, but I'd be far more concerned if they were investing the same resources doing things the old-fashioned way (infiltrating groups, hanging out taking notes, reading mail, tapping phones, etc)
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
Well, in today's present society the first step would be to automate voting, and get rid of the electorate delegates - that would ensure the majority actually does rule (assuming the techonology is implemented correctly).
Second step would be (this I'm sort of deriving from an article I read) - to send the senators and representatives home, and allow them to use video conferencing instead. I think this would allow more "real" people to eventually get elected - and be *willing* to get elected, since they wouldn't have to move out of their home towns - leaving friends, family, and a sense of what's going on locally in their state behind them.
On certain issues you could also institute country wide referendums. More technical issues would have to be decided by the senate/house - which is why electing competent people would still be important.
Last but not least, it might be a good idea to make being a senator/representative a part time job, and let them keep their day jobs. That would keep them in touch with daily life, and also effectively curb the amount of useless legislation that's passed each year. (Along with mitigating the effects of lobbyists - since they wouldn't fear losing their jobs, they would merely be doing a service for their country.)
Oh, and term limits might also fit into that plan quite well to enforce the idea that "this is not your permanent job".
Not that the scenario will ever happen in my lifetime without a nation-wide catastrophy or revolt, but it doesn't hurt to throw the ideas out there.
I think the submitter missed an important part of the article, which is this quote[ ...In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined. ...]
This lack of respect to privacy is troubling....
"Take your country back" Who should, the Native Americans?
Some scientists are talking of trying to restore the US to a pre-human state, BEFORE even they settled the Americas, they've found several large species that died out around 12k-14k years ago because of various pressures of humans that arrived in the Americas.
And I thought the FBI was wasting time on porn cases and such, but the waste of time and effort that must of gone into that vegas data mining with such a wide net was epic. What could they hope to have found, considering the FBI hasn't managed to handle their other low level basic database problems so well. And considering all these false alarms they get as they roust people all over the world. Our street-level intelligence is truly clueless and out of touch and adding the epic waste of mass data mining is surely going to have the FBI chasing ghosts as our freedoms erode.
Due to disclosures detrimental to the interests National Security, and generally ruining the suprise, the parent of this thread will be flogged. Oh yeah, insert vague refererences to war on terrorism, Bin Laden, Al Queda, and the Easter Bunny as precident and justification for said flogging.
Beware the fury of a patient man
- John Dryden
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
Aren't you christians the ones who invented that whole "it's a choice" argument?
Religion is a choice, not a matter of birth. People are born black (or gay) - no one is born a christian.
Why should a government collect information on the very citizens that it is supposed to be responsive to and then have the gall to keep the information secret in perpetuity? Law enforcement doesn't need to know everyone who went in and out of Las Vegas for two weeks to prevent a terrorist attack, and it certainly doesn't need to keep that information for years down the line. What ever happened to detective work, to actually figuring things out without spying on everyone? And even if we did a better job fighting terrorism than anyone else (which is hard to determine, and very likely untrue given Israel's existance), it still wouldn't mean that we're fighting effectively. We fought the Vietnamese better than anyone, but Ho Chi Minh ended up winning because out tactics still sucked. Oh, and France does have it's version of the Bill of Rights. It's called the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
was planning on surrendering to the secret gulag to begin my sentence, but alas I can't find it. Would someone please let the authorities know I'm at 48 e 26th street in baltimore. I haven't done anything wrong ... I just figured the sooner I put this part of my life behind me the better.
Vegas is probably the most surveilled city in the U.S. Keeping rental car records and hotel receipts pales in comparison to the information stored by the casinos. What's frightening is that the government collecting such information about ordinary Americans doesn't amount to much on its own in terms of fighting terrorism, but it would offer unscrupulous feds a convenient database of information for blackmail purposes (as well as for a variety of investigations, both legal and illegal). A call by the feds to your hotel/casino could probably garner fairly detailed information about your activities in the city, including video of most of your public activities on the strip and in many cases even your activities in your room. Again, if the suspect isn't holding a terrorist or mafia meeting in Vegas, such information is probably not worth much for investigative purposes, but imagine its utility for blackmail purposes.
When someone drops dead of cancer it's their family's problem. No one who dies of cancer does so in a fiery ball that destroys a Billion dollars worth of infrastructure.
It doesn't matter how many people die. What matters is how much money it costs us in the process. It's always about the money.
- that would ensure the majority actually does rule (assuming the techonology is implemented correctly)
I'm not sure we want the majority to rule. The purpose of a democratic republic is to seat a group of informed representaives.
make being a senator/representative a part time job, and let them keep their day jobs.
Nah. People pay attention to where their bowl of rice is coming from. We don't want them paying less attention to their senator/representative job than they already do. This would make them (if possible) even more susceptible to bribes and lobbying.
term limits might also fit into that plan quite well
I object to term limits because imagine you have really good representation, a really good, effective member. Couple years, bang! He's fired. Someone new comes in, probably not as good as what you had. I know it's hard to imagine now, but let's don't force good people out of office.
I think a better start would be to revoke the corporation's right to free speech, and forbid them from contributing to campaigns. Period. Corporations are not people and do not act like people, so we should not let them drive our elections. They are far too able to throw large volumes of cash at election campaigns. They have too much say over how we are governed.
I also think we should try really hard to break up the power structures in the two big parties. There is such a huge interlocking collection of debts and favors controlling who gets to be a nominee that it is (usually) impossible for anyone fresh and different to get on the ticket. Does anyone really believe that there is nobody in the Republican Party better qualified to lead the US than George W.? Neither party puts forward their best candidate anymore. They put forward the one who best manipulates the existing power structure.
Reminded me of an old (say 20 years ago) Steve Martin joke.
"I believe Ronald Reagan can make this country what it once was - a vast frozen wasteland covered in ice."
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
To quote one 'Madpride' from another board:
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
The FBI came calling in Windsor, Conn., this summer with a document marked for delivery by hand. On Matianuk Avenue, across from the tennis courts, two special agents found their man. They gave George Christian the letter, which warned him to tell no one, ever, what it said.
Under the shield and stars of the FBI crest, the letter directed Christian to surrender "all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person" who used a specific computer at a library branch some distance away. Christian, who manages digital records for three dozen Connecticut libraries, said in an affidavit that he configures his system for privacy. But the vendors of the software he operates said their databases can reveal the Web sites that visitors browse, the e-mail accounts they open and the books they borrow.
Christian refused to hand over those records, and his employer, Library Connection Inc., filed suit for the right to protest the FBI demand in public. The Washington Post established their identities -- still under seal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit -- by comparing unsealed portions of the file with public records and information gleaned from people who had no knowledge of the FBI demand.
The Connecticut case affords a rare glimpse of an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act, which marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 26. "National security letters," created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, originated as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents. The Patriot Act, and Bush administration guidelines for its use, transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.
The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters -- one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people -- are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.
Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.
The burgeoning use of national security letters coincides with an unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield into government data banks -- and to share those private records widely, in the federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined.
National security letters offer a case study of the impact of the Patriot Act outside the spotlight of political debate. Drafted in haste after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the law's 132 pages wrought scores of changes in the landscape of intelligence and law enforcement. Many received far more attention than the amendments to a seemingly pedestrian power to review "transactional records." But few if any other provisions touch as many ordinary Americans without their knowledge.
Senior FBI officials acknowledged in interviews that the proliferation of national security letters results primarily from the bureau's new authority to collect intimate facts about people who a
I eventually had to go down to the cellar. With a torch. The notice was on display at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "beware of the leopard".
Rubies and Pearls are not what you think.
... the majority is stupid. Plus 50% of the general populace didn't vote for the last election, and that's a once every 4 years occurance, what makes you think people will care about the little stuff?
The current system works, the problem is people don't pay enough atttention when they are electing their representattives.
-everphilski-
In the last ten years, traffic has killed about 400.000 Americans. Terrorism has killed less than 4.000. I'm still amazed how the American public is prepared the give up all kinds of civil liberties just to fight the risk that is 100 times smaller, not to mention that the success chances are doubtful. Accepting a small - tiny! - terrorism threat is a small price to pay for a free society.
If you receive one, you need to get legal advice before complying.
The proposed legislation to criminalize NSL noncompliance, S.1680, has no cosponsors and isn't going anywhere.
The FBI can still go before a judge and get a subpoena, but that requires judicial authorization, and you can fight a subpoena in court if it's overreaching.
This kind of thing is very clearly illegal under the fourth and fifth amendments. The lesson here, is that the constitution is no guarantee of our liberty. Freedon ultimately depends on the will of people to demand and enforce limits on government's continuous attempts to expand its power.
This will go on until someone who is presented with a "national security letter" says, "Fuck you, get a warrant", and is preparted to fight the case all the way to the supreme court.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Have you seen any terrorism here in the states since 9/11?
Yes.
Antrax (we still don't know what happened with that, right? Yeah, we're sure doing a bang-up job fighting terrorism), DC shooter, happy-face mailbox bomber (that was post-9/11, right? or was it right before? If it was the latter, then disregard it, obviously)
We had a major attack in '93, and another in '95 (IIRC), so that was a 2-year gap followed by a 6-year gap ('95-'01), and the second one was domestic terrorism, so it was 8 years between "Al Qaeda" attacks. Yes, there were the embassy bombings, but putting aside that whole "embassies are technically US territory" thing, those were in other countries, and we've certainly lost a lot of people in foreign countries to similar attacks since 9/11, in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's only been 4 years since 9/11. If we go another 4 or 5 without a foreign-origininating attack, we'll be doing OK I suppose, though with only 2 prior major foreign attacks to work with, it's not like we've got enough data points to say much about this anyway, so arguments either way using this information are rather pointless. It could be that the 8-year span was an unusually short one anyway, or maybe unusually long. There's no way to tell.
If they don't waste it on this, they'll waste it on something else. They're never going to spend our tax dollars wisely and only collect exactly what they need, refunding everything they don't. So as long as the roads I drive are paved and other things I immediately care about are, in fact, being taken care of, I honestly don't care what they do. Hey, people have jobs because of it, and are spending their pay checks, all helping the big economic wheel go round and round.
Besides, the one time this data can be used to stop something terrible from happening or find someone that commited said act, I think all the money spent would be more than worth it. If I have to give up some specific "freedom" or "privacy", that I could care less about actually giving up in the first place, then so be it.
Call me a sheeple or lazy if you want, but something like this just isn't worth fighting to me.
It's simple -- Americans like cars, and they hate other cultures. The 4000 deaths are just an excuse.
And, after all, that privacy represented the privacy of every american taxpayer who paid taxes to support Miers in doing this, so by keeping all that information secret, they were helping out each and every person's individual privacy.
or that all-time favorite,
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
I read this interesting bit of information in the Jan 2003 Reader's Digest. The Anthrax epidemic (or the handwritten letters thereof) was basically traced to a scientist that was employed by a contractor of the CIA. The CIA rather effectively railroaded the FBI's investigation of the case. The writter of this article was a Professor who moonlights as an FBI detective, and was rather irked about the handling of this investigation.
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
People just need to do it (tell) and fight it under this letter being a clear violation of the 1st Ammendment.
The reason people don't fight this is because people don't know how often this is happening because the people that get these letters are chicken shit to acknowledge their existance and fight them.
[quote]The writter of this article was a Professor who moonlights as an FBI detective, and was rather irked about the handling of this investigation.[/quote] That source doesn't sound shady or anything...I'm sure you just forgot the name...I mean, it was in RD, it must be true.
This too shall pass.
Huh?
While the National Rifle Association is always asking for donations to fight for our rights, last i heard you didnt have to declare anything to them...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
- Yellow road signs - Marriage fidelity - Nutrition information on the label - The 10 Commandments - Speed limits ...merely "suggestions"
>Did you guys really vote for all this, um, stuff? Take your country back.
Do you really think the average voter has any idea what a national security letter might be and if they did the proper checks and balances such a thing would need. Or if they are even aware of the big privacy debate going on? They don't. During the last election, from what I was told first hand, people voted on:
1. Terrorism: Usually "Bush will teach them 'Rabs" kind of attitude.
2. Gay marriage: This was surprisingly everywhere before the election and no where now. Funny how that works.
3. Abortion: The usual crap here.
4. Vietnam: Kerry's status as a vet opened up the old vietnam wounds.
Only political junkies cared about privacy, civil rights, economic stability, social security, judge appointments, etc.
I don't think most countries are too different, the LCD tend to vote on hot button issues and the educated and elitist classes take on everything else. Asking "Did you people really vote for this stuff" is kinda non-starter. People don't even vote on this stuff, they vote for what they know.
Essentially this is your classic "raise the discourse" argument, but one of the nice things of being at the top of the world as a superpower in about a dozen different ways is that there's little incentive to learn about foreign policy, civil issues, other countries, other systems, etc. As long as there is wealth and safety one can remain fairly ignorant of a lot of things. This eventually does bite one in the ass and will probably coincide with the loss of a superpower status as Europe and Asia keep rising.
Iraq has been expensive ...
And the states haven't even paid the price for that. A few hints: trillions, China, superpower and next.
Not to mention a military close to a breaking point. Every news report I see on that is the same: not enough volunteers, not enough equipment, national guard understaffed and also under equipped, Iraq not under control, military spending increase.
Oh, and voting irregularities etc.
Americans are perceived as arrogant. Will you please drop the attitude and open your eyes!
"I'd say we have been very effective fighting terrorism."
You would be very wrong. Let's list them out shall we...
Pre-9/11
World Trade Center attack of 1993
USS Cole attack
Oaklahoma City Bombing
US Embassy bombings from 1993-2000 6 in all IIRC
All the hostage takings from 1970 on including the Iranian Hostages
Pan Am flight 103 and other airline bombings
Post 9/11
World Trade Center attack 9/11
Pentagon attack 9/11
DC Anthrax attacks (never solved)
DC Sniper attacks (solved)
WV / OH Sniper attacks (never solved)
Bomb material stopped at Canadian border (culprits still not found)
Now, let's look at what has been done...
Trillions spent on airport security and border patrol the latest test of that security still found that you can get through with knives, guns, drugs, and explosives.
The most terror ridden place on the planet (Isreal) still has attacks of great magnatude yet still claims to be the most secure. It is fooling yourself if you actually think you can win a "war on terrorism" in the way this administration has been doing it. If Isreal can't stop it with the resources of the US behind it what makes you think it can be stopped here using the same tactics?
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
The traffic accidents of which you speak did not:
1) Cause billions of dollars of damage in less than an hour's time and shut down an entire industry for days.
2) Generally result from malicious intent from people who have declared they will not be happy until millions of Americans are dead
3) Paralyze an entire nation's ability to move people and goods
4) Happen as the result of an accident
Also, please provide a source for your 400,000 dead in past four years statistic. Statistics I've found from 1998 say around 49,000 died in North America from car accidents that year. Sounds like you're pulling your numbers out of thin air.
Er, did you read my post? The anthrax thing was AFTER 9/11. So were the DC shootings. Let me bold that for you: THEY WERE TERRORIST ATTACKS THAT HAPPENED AFTER 9/11.
And I just looked it up: the "smiley face bomber" was also after 9/11. 2002, in fact.
So there HAVE been terrorist attacks within the US borders since 9/11. Several, in fact.
Now, there HAVE NOT been any foreign-created attacks (well, the Anthrax may have been, who the hell knows, since the government seems to have stopped caring about that) since 9/11, but the gap between the last two attacks by Al Qaeda was 8 years. It has only been 4 years since the second one, so if they have the same gap this time, it won't be 'till after the next presidential election that we get hit again. So, without changing anything or taking any special action after 9/11, the president should have been able to get 8 years without attacks anyway.
AND AGAIN, this is all using the previous Al Qaeda attacks in the US as a model for predicting future ones, and since there have only been 2, it's hard to say anything based on that.
In other words, saying "the president's doing such a good job because there havn't been any attacks since 9/11!" is dumb by any standard, even based on the little bit of data that we do have; conversely, EVEN IF we had an attack tomorrow, it'd be only slightly less silly to say that that was evidence of him doing a bad job. It's a poor metric by which to measure performance, without other data sets to support it.
The "fighting them over there instead of over here" thing is one of the dumbest mantras to come out of the right in the past few years, and that's saying a lot. Odds are, we wouldn't be fighting them over here anyway, at least not any more so than we had been before 9/11. Putting the money from Iraq into investigations and law enforement would have taken a bigger bite out of real terrorist threats than the war has, by an order of magnitude, and probably resulted in a net gain in the "loss of US life" category, given how many US citizens (not just soldiers) have died in Iraq. Putting that money into research for treatments and cures for cancer and heart disease would likely have saved more lives than either of the other options.
The smiley-face bomber took place in May 2002 and was done by a mentally ill 21-year old named Lucas Helder.
"- Is not free
Ha! By what definition? You're not free to create anarchy, but I'd say you're a lot more free than most countries."
By the definition of our own Constitution. The Patriot Act does away with little things like due process and equal justice under law...
"- Is not democractic
Again, by what bizarro definition do you think this is true? We have elections which is more than some countries have, representative government, etc, etc. You might not like the pols that get elected, but that's tough. You don't always get who you want. Fortunately, the elections are regular enough that we have the chance to vote 'em out next time around if we don't like 'em."
Putting election fraud aside, only 12 % of the elegible voters actually voted. Contrast this with Germany who the US likes to try to kick around with a voter turnout of 79%. So you are telling me that 12% is representative? By what book?
"- Has a completly corrupt and criminal political system
Well, considering one of the parties has ex-KKK members (Robert Byrd), people that drive people have bridges and don't report it until much much later (Ted Kennedy), I'd have to say that there are corrupt and criminal Senators, that's for sure. Strangely, no one in that party seems to have a problem with racists in their part of the Senate."
Both parties have very bad apples. It is the lesser of 2 evils. Look at Strom Thurman or the current crop in the form of Trent Lott, Scooter Libby, et. al. Again, that is what you get when the voter turnout is so low.
"- Has more poverty than any other 1st world country
That's also complete crap. Again, check out France. Those rioters aren't pissed off because they have jobs, bub."
Hurricane Katrina.....Need I say more...
"- Has an increasingly horrible education system
That completely depends on where you are in States. There are a lot of places that have crappy school systems, but there are many many more that have good both public and private schools.
And the last time I checked, there sure were a helluva lot of students from other countries coming over here for school."
Rearrange your wording there and align it to the wealth of the community and you will see the correlation. Poorer communities don't have the resources that richer ones do. It goes to class.
"- Have their own world history which differs quite a bit from the history that the rest of the world knows.
"the rest of the world knows...."...Yeah, right.
Facts are facts. You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts."
Histroy is written by the victors. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. There is a huge skew in our history especially when dealing with our justifications for military actions. That skew is seen not only in schools but in our news media. Just look at how many people who watch Fox News think Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks when the reality is the majority of attackers were Saudi.
"- Indoctrinates it's people about the same as old Soviet Union did and about the same as todays North Korea and China.
Except, if that were true, you: (A) Wouldn't have been able to post that message and (B) probably would already be arrested just for stating it."
And the Patriot Act allows for just that. He still can be arrested for that post just like I can be for this one. Worst thing is they could keep us indefinately without access to attornies for as long as they like. Just ask anyone they rounded up after 9/11....Oh wait, you aren't allowed to ask them...
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
[i]Face it -- no one has flown a plane into a building, hijacked a plane, or strapped on a bomb belt in the US since 9/11. The Bush Administration has done its job on this account. You might have valid gripes elsewhere -- but it isn't here.[/i]
...0!
How frequent was that before 9/11? So you're saying that years after an attack there have been no others indicates success, when there was the same lack of attacks before 9/11? Wow, your security has increased from stopping 0 plane or suicide bombings to
No one's flown a plane into a building or stapped on a bomb belt since July in the UK, so the new Anti-terror stuff from 2001 and 2005 are great at stopping it! I'll be able to say the same thing in 5 years time too...
Before folks get all riled up just remember, there is a limit here. Heck, F.B.I uses three letters and NSL uses another three leaving a total of 20. At the rate they're going, they'll be out of letters in no time at all.
"American soil is safer than ever. And whenever a terrorist travels to Iraq and gets swiss cheesed by one of our boys, it is even safer."
Too much Fox News for your 2 neurons, eh...
Let's try this in simpler terms. Our invasion and continued occupation of Iraq is making us MORE at risk of attack not less.
Here is your assignment:
Assume another country, say China since they would have the resources, decided to invade the US on the grounds that we have WMD. Further say that they, not us, will be the ones to "rebuild" after the invasion sending our economy into the toilet (as if it wasn't already there). Would you fight with any means at your disposal including terrorist acts? Would you continue fighting even after they "won" the war?
That is exactly what is going on. The longer we stay there the more likely we are to have another 9/11. And while we are on the subject, why was it only AFTER 9/11 that the US decided to take terrorism seriously? You mean to tell me the other pre-9/11 attacks were unworthy of changing how we dealt with terrorism?
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
You can love your country and hate the current administration. There is no conflict between those positions.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
While the "internet" came out of a US DARPA research project in the 1960's, it was little more than an obscure research channel until the development of the web. This was done at the CERN Physics lab. If you don't know where the CERN lab is, I'll give you a hint. Start looking in Europe.
Actually, no, it was not "little more than an obscure research channel until the development of the web." I was on USENET for at least 8 years before I got access to the www.
But every sperm is sacred!
Massive deficit spending reduces our ability to respond to threats in the future. So, yes, the money matters, because spending too much of it threatens our national security and, by extension, the lives of our citizens.
It's one thing when the spending is absolutely necessary, but in this case we could probably have spent 1/4 or less of this money on traditional methods of fighting criminals (law enforcement and intelligence) and gotten better results (fewer dead americans, more terrorists [the kind that existed before the war, not the ones that just want us the hell out of Iraq] behind bars or dead, fewer people mad enough at the US to want to kill Americans just because they're Americans, etc.)
Actually, we have had rights stripped. There are now 4-5 Americans being held in Gitmo Bay without talking to Lawyers, no charges, and no trial. Likewise, your right to privacy is gone (USA PATRIOT act). Your right to know what the gov. is doing is also gone (USA PATRIOT act II allows the feds. to pass laws that are deemed necessary for security reasons, and without your knowing it; Don't believe it; Try boarding a commercial aircraft without a photo ID and when denied ask to see the law that prohibits it). Your right to free speech (ask Sibel Edmunds about that one).
When the feds. strip it from even a small group, they find a reason to keep it going to more groups.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Clinton was hit with the first attack on American soil and we had no more during his time (on true american soil). With GWB, the anthrax was an attack. More importantly, GWB was in office 9 months and allowed security to fall so badly that 911 happened. It should never have happened.
So no, he has not done a good job.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I wonder if our policital leaders can be sued out of office based on violation of contract to represent the people. I mean, isn't that what it is, a contract, especially considering we live in such a litigious and capitalistic society?
When the "World Wide Web" came out of CERN in 1990, it was little more than an obscure research channel until the development of Mosaic. This was done at the University of Illinois. If you don't know where the University of Illinois is, I'll give you a hint. Start looking in the United States.
Honestly, some people have no sense of history. Everything is built on everything else. HTML and HTTP are built on other similar protocols and formats. There was Gopher, there was SGML, there was Ted Nelson's Xanadu and hypertext and hyperlinks. There were already search engines (Archie and Veronica). What we ended up with is certainly not the best we could have had.
and guess how many people died of anthrax - 5
compare that to how many people starve each day, or get killed in Iraq for that matter...
Jose {adilla certainly did not get any justice. It took him, what, a full year to get a lawyer, and only because the lawyer appointed herself and petitioned the court. After two years, he got to the Supreme Court and the high court threw it out because the habeas corpus writ was served in the wrong jurisdiction-- because the government secretly moved him part way through the process. The high court replied that, of course, the gov't couldn't have done that on purpose. So, the clock started all over for him.
It took another year for him to get to the 4th Circuit Court who said it was just fine for him to be held indefinitely without charges and thus far, he is still in prison.
OK, if the government is protecting us, and Padilla is a terrorist, then why can't them come up with coherent charges and a trial in almost four years. What keeps them from doing this to anyone else, say, a person who resists an NSL? They do not have to say why they are holding you and no one can talk about the NSL. Even if you do get out after five years or so, so what? Will you refuse the next NSL you get?
It's sad, the newspapers mentioned very little about this case. Most people just buy that the FBI caught a terrorist and that's good enough.
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin
Because then we expected death to come in the form of bombs on ICBMs, or perhaps as armies marching across Europe. Nobody figured that an individual would do much damage.
Not that an individual couldn't do some damage, but it wouldn't particularly advance the USSR's goals to kill a few people at a time (or even a few thousand). And if they did piss us off by, say, flying planes into a few buildings, we knew right where the USSR was and could drop a few bombs of our own on it.
The war we're engaged in now is one of individuals doing a little bit of damage at a time. It can't bring down the US the way a full-on war with the Soviets could, but it is very demoralizing to be subject to terror attacks and it does lousy things to the economy. And when it happens, there's no place to bomb in retaliation (at least not without filling the media with pictures of civilians killed in the process.)
The old enemy wore uniforms, so you can't even tell which of those dead civilians really were planning to kill you.
So they check the individuals a lot more closely, both on entry and in the country. Illegally closely, perhaps, but that's not my point. You can, perhaps, feel safer knowing that the odds of you being wiped out along with the entire rest of the country in a nuclear holocaust are far, far lower than they were two decades ago. But it'll still kinda piss you off if you happen to be in the vicinity of a dirty bomb, suicide bomber, or whatever nasty trick they come up with next.
We know that given the information everyone is connected to any other specific person by at most, what 8 degrees or less? IIRC, the average connection is about 5. Therefore, what are your chances of getting caught up in this web of "multi-level surveillance"? Pretty high I'd suspect (no I haven't done the math feel free to do so and post it, anyone, anyone?). Hell I'm three degrees from the White House, and thus four degrees from any member of Congress through that route. On the other hand, I've met a couple congresscritters so I'm actually one-two degrees from there.
;) Do the same for email. Perhaps a nice email summing up the numbers periodically and routinely emailed to all congresscritters and a lot of reporters.
...
There you go, everyone start putting their congresscritters in their address books and periodically call them. If you get a live person and they ask why you are calling, explain to them that since the Senator/Representative has not managed to get NSLs revoked, you are ensuring they (including the person on the phone) get caught in the web too. Do the same for reporters.
I wonder how many people would have to do this before the odds of having all of congress caught in the NSL web of abuse approached near certainty.
Can you imagine what would happen if an alleged "suspect" was a telemarketer?
Or going off of that thought, I suppose the actual terrorists would want to start randomly calling a bunch of numbers, maybe even "targeting" a few specific people by calling them multiple times. Why? Make the job harder for the enemy. Standard practice to throw the other side off the trail. Remember "the solution to polution is dilution". What if they picked a few notable bankers and simply called them frequently, perhaps even regularly. Wonder how the managers of respond to getting NSLs for their employees?
And since under NSL the FBI/whatever will then get their records (the multi-level part), periodically call from a set of payphones. Make it even more suspicious.
Well gotta go, there's a knock at the door
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Jose {adilla certainly did not get any justice.
Neither did Korematsu, and neither did Dred Scott. This proves my point, which is that the document is not a guarantee, but simply a statement of wishful thinking unless we demand that our government comply with it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Holy shit, what did I say to get me accused of watching Fox? That's a first.
I'm giving the government the benefit of the doubt on the anthrax thing and just saying that they havn't done a good job of investigating it. I agree that that's a best-case scenario, and that a great deal of evidence now points toward something far more sinister, I just went with "incompetent" rather than "malicious" so as to avoid getting into that particular argument with the poster to whom I was replying.
And I was just pointing out that there have been terrorist attacks since 9/11. Probably not any from "Al Qaeda", but they were never all that active anyway. The GP was saying that Bush was doing a good job because there had been NO terror attacks since 9/11, which is among the dumbest of the Bush-ite/Ditto-Head lines, and I was refuting both the accuracy of that statement and its relevance by saying that there have been attacks (domestic in origin, though, as if it matters, it's all crime) and that it's not unusual at all for us to go this long without a major foreign attack. To which part of that do you object?
Hey, I agree. To quote another post I made somewhere around here:
Putting the money from Iraq into investigations and law enforement would have taken a bigger bite out of real terrorist threats than the war has, by an order of magnitude, and probably resulted in a net gain in the "loss of US life" category, given how many US citizens (not just soldiers) have died in Iraq. Putting that money into research for treatments and cures for cancer and heart disease would likely have saved more lives than either of the other options.
Bold added for this post, and is not in the other one.
Their failure to get to the bottom of the antrax thing is rather disturbing, though, given the administration's claim that it's doing so much to combat terrorism, and some of the things that came out about the origin of the anthrax were even more disturbing, in a totally different way.
Anthrax: Analysis showed that the source of weaponised anthrax spores was a lab in the USA. Almost certainly a DOD biological weapons facility.
DC shooter: A Citizen of the USA.
Both of these "Terrorist Attacks" were individuals acting without organizations. No finance, no supply, no coordination. Blanket surveillance is singularly ineffective against catching these kind of criminals.
All the surveillance monitoring in the world would never have caught the Unibomber. Only good old fashioned police investigation leg work.
As far as I can tell, citizens of the USA have most to fear from other citizens.
AND
New LEA powers have had no measurable effect on achieving their stated aims.
In the maelstrom of the chaos at the center of my mind, I taste the salt of sadness as I feel my soul unwind.
The lesson here, is that the constitution is no guarantee of our liberty.
The Constitution has never promised perfect preemptive protection of our liberties. It sets out what the government can and cannot do, but it's up to the citizens of the nation to apply that.
Freedom ultimately depends on the will of people to demand and enforce limits on government's continuous attempts to expand its power.
Exactly. The U.S. is the land of freedom and responsbility, not nanny protection. If we don't like something about our government, it's up to us to challenge it. The Constitution and the U.S. Code sets the structure and processes by which we do it. Think of it as codified revolution--you're changing the government but instead of guns the weapons are communication and lawyers.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Damn. You beat me to it. And don't forget...
"And I believe that they should allow all foreigners into this country, provided they can speak our native language... Apache."
This space unintentionally left blank.
Note that the purpose of the law allowing NSLs was to foil terroristic activities, not to deter crime per se. Use of NSLs for criminal prosecution is IMO illegal as the law is defined. That is the reason why the above numbers on criminal indictments versus foils should be collected - to determine if the law is being abused to make criminal prosecution easier rather than to pursue terroristic threats.
The above statistics could help in analysis of the effectiveness of NSLs vis-a-vis subpoenas, search warrants, and other legal instruments. Such statistics may indicate that a given legal instrument is ineffective and therefore, although it appears useful, is truly not so.
IOW I would like to see statistical proof that NSLs are a useful legal instrument for fighting terrorism and not merely legal instruments that will be abused by some later administration with consequent loss of our civil rights.
My personal belief is that NSLs are ineffectual and serve primarily as a distraction (and a huge waste of effort) from the FBI's proper role in law enforcement. Certainly there is an argument to be made for the use of legal instruments such as NSLs in a domestic counter-terrorism organization (such as MI-5 of England) but, since the USA has no such organizations (the FBI being relegated by law to pursuit of only criminal indictments, the CIA to purely foreign operations, and NSA et al restricted from domestic operations) I do not see a proper place for NSLs in the current legal structure. Consequently NSLs will eventually be defined as illegal by the courts. Unfortunately this is a very slow process.
-xeo_at_thermopylae
Fact is - Bush's approval rating is less than 40%. That's more than a few "jealous" partisan liberals.
Fact is, Bush appointees like Franklin, Safavian, and Libby are under indictment for crimes ranging from fraud, to espionage, to obstruction of justice.
Fact is, Bush's Coalition Provisional Authority "lost" $9+ Billion of our tax dollars through incompetence or fraud, and nobody's even looking into it.
Fact is, The speaker of the House is under investigation for taking money (bribes) from Turkish nationals with ties to terror.
Fact is, the House Majority leader was indicted for campaign finance fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Fact is, The Senate majority leader is under investigation, and will soon be indicted for insider trading of stocks he held for a company that directly benefitted from legislation he sponsored.
Fact is, if this administration and it's political allies were to dress up as a train-wreck for halloween, it would have been a totally lame costume, because they wouldn't have had to do a damn thing.
Why do I really care if someone in the government knows I was in Las Vegas on some date? The answer: I don't.
I am ashamed to call myself an American with countrymen like yourself. Pick up a book and enlighten yourself for god's sake.
Too bad the world doesn't recognize the sacrifice our sons and daughters have made for them.
Too bad you don't recognize that that sacrifice was for a few good quarters at Halliburton, and a fiscal disaster for our national debt.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
" Fact is, the current administration is doing great -- and that makes those abroad that don't like a unipolar world upset"
You are in a distinct minority in thinking so. The world by a wide margin thinks the Bush administration is a global disaster of epic proportions. Most American's have even woken up to the incompetence, cronyism, and corruption, something I didn't expect. The Republicans had the American people completely snowed in to 2005, but their incompetence achieved such epic proprotions that even the sedatives that are fear mongering and gay bashing wore off.
"Iraq has been expensive -- more than 2,000 American soldiers -- but that chaos and killing is over there -- not here"
That is pretty naive. All of the hundred's of thousands of Americans who are going to be run through the meat grinder in Iraq came from the U.S. and they are going to come back to it, many with stress disorders, many maimed for life, many disillusioned with American government for sending them in to such an ugly, misguided war based on deception and exaggeration. World War II vets coped a lot better with it because everyone understood the reason for the war and supported it. At this point NO ONE can tell you what the real reason is for the war in Iraq or what will qualify as victory.
A key component in toppling the Soviet Union was veterans coming back from the war in Afghanistan who dedicated themselves to overthrowing the government that stole their lives from them. The Bush administration is training hundreds of thousands of soldiers and their families to despise them.
"If they ever result in a true infringement of rights, they'll get repealed."
Uh, what basis do you have for the rosy assertion. If they had sunset clauses on them maybe their would be a chance for them to get repealed, but the Republican's are working hard to renew the Patriot act laws without any sunset clause. Fact is most politicians are going to expend them, not repeal them out of fear for being accused of being soft on terrorism, or of being blamed if another 9/11 were to occur.
@de_machina
The anthrax attack was aimed at liberals so I would not expect this govt to pursue that vigorously.
By the way there were also terrorists attacks against sikhs and muslims too. Minor ones but terrorist attacks nevertheless. Also there were the church burnings, those were definately designed to instill terror.
evil is as evil does
and they are rioting in France...
the United States are not any more
And the anthrax was identified as having come from a US military lab. Inside job? Aimed at Democrats who were objecting to "tougher standards" too. Not proof, but suggestive.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
""- Has more poverty than any other 1st world country That's also complete crap. Again, check out France. Those rioters aren't pissed off because they have jobs, bub."" they're rioting because the french government is one big ol' source of institutionalized racism, actually. can't argue the rest of what you said, but only because you didn't back up any of your claims with any evidence to attack. they still suck.
He wants his agenda back.
In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined.
Is it just me, or does this demonstrate nothing but the most vile contempt for the citizens of the U.S.?
You are "spot on-target"!
The regime currently in power is using the "war on terrorism" to strip Americans of their rights, especially that of privacy. They justify their unconstitutional methods with the claim that "no further acts of terrorism have been committed on US soil", while totally side-stepping the reality that Al-Queda seems to spend a lot of time (between terrorist attacks) to plan their next offensive.
The Dubya regime has been just as ineffective in their optional war in Iraq as in securing the USA's borders and seaports. The President, Vice President, Attorney General, Director of the CIA, Director of the FBI, and Director of Homeland Security have all come out at various times to state that "it is not a matter of if, but of when then next terrorist attack will come". By "predicting" such an event, they presume to "cover their collective backsides" when it comes to accepting responsibility/blame for their ineffectiveness.
I fear that when AL-Queda does eventually attack the USA again, it will be far more spectacular than 9/11/2001, just as that terrorist attack far exceeded the results of the first World Trade Center bombing. Considering the state of the world today, I have concluded that they will use WMDs that they either can steal or purchase on the black market.
Well, there is this bi-annual conference I'd like to attend.
:-(
It's in California next year, and I'd really like to attend and meet some of the people I only had
contact to by email within the last years.
I was really tempted to trade in my dignity for this, I have to decide on it till the end of next week.
And I'm not going because it's going to be in the US. I'd feel much better if it was in China - I personally haven't been there but people I work together with have been, lately.
Although chinese people - especially those with low education living outside the big boomtowns - are suppressed by the government badly, I'd feel way more safe than in Orwells North-America.
This is really sad - when I was younger I often dreamed of living in the US
k2r
President disbarred after man date blown.
AND AGAIN, this is all using the previous Al Qaeda attacks in the US as a model for predicting future ones, and since there have only been 2, it's hard to say anything based on that.
With the "Al Qaeda" identification comming from a rather unreliable source. Even if you discount that the term "Al Qaeda" appears to refer to all sorts of groups. From "ordinary terrorists", terrorists who behave strangely and at least one set of "state sponsored terrorists".
All of the hundred's of thousands of Americans who are going to be run through the meat grinder in Iraq came from the U.S. and they are going to come back to it, many with stress disorders, many maimed for life, many disillusioned with American government for sending them in to such an ugly, misguided war based on deception and exaggeration. World War II vets coped a lot better with it because everyone understood the reason for the war and supported it. At this point NO ONE can tell you what the real reason is for the war in Iraq or what will qualify as victory.
Thus they might have more in common with Vietnam veterans.
I see that as blaming the victim.
"Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights."
-- Albert Einstein
http://www.monthlyreview.org/598einst.htm
Ok, but the difference is that we DO have WMD.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
while working for a laboratory in Switzerland... which is funded by several European governments...
It's actually more like 1.5 parties. While there are some differences with respect to social programs, neither party has any desire to stand up to any corporate contributor, so our fair use rights to things we buy are being whittled away rather quickly. Then the corps. lobby to make treaties dependant on US-style rules being put in place.
Of course, I think Switzerland should sue; after all, their states (Cantons) united around 1515 or 1518, as I recall. That's definitely prior art, and here we parade around calling ourselves the (unqualified) "United States".
"A plan's just a list of things that don't happen" -- Mr. Parker, "The Way of the Gun"
This just goes to show that these two continents belong to each other, and neither could exist without the other. After all, the USA, as we know it today, was built by expat Europeans. The above doesn't mean that I would support today's administration of the US or that I would want to live there. I haven't been there since 2000. Until they change the current border entry systems, I won't be back either. Having lots of friends there, it's not an easy thing to do. - an European
I love what gets deemed as insightful here. This'll be a good one for the meta mods.
:) :) I would not presume to revoke your geek-card over the esthetic appreciation of some humorous item.
Slashdot is primarily populated with geeks/hackers. That geek population will mod geekish things geekily. Most meta-mods will be geeks and I doubt they will have a serious objection to the insightful mod.
One of the pecularities of geekish humor is the earnest application of intelligence to an absurdity. It tends to be both funny and insightful. The fact that intelligence was humorously applied to an absurdity does not (in the geek mindset) diminish the inherent value of the creative intellectual contribution. His post was indeed insightful, he provided at least a one billion fold increase in efficency to the suggested system.
Maybe you're a bit too normal to get the peculiarly geekish appreciation in that
And if you do consider yourself a geek, well no offence intended by that last comment
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Keeping records on citizens is something governments are supposed to do. With regards to keeping records on citizens, the government hates competition with the private sector and reserves the right to investigate and access those records. How many of us who own homes/cars/banking accounts are "off the radar"? We're not, nobody who owns anything in the United States is really invisible. For companies out there who farm consumer information much of what we do is either an aggregate or a drill down away from a report. By keeping a record of association and activity the FBI/USGOV just rounds out the picture.
There are moments when I think Ted Kazcynski (Unibomber) is/was spot on.
I think it's important that we remember there are only two kinds of citizens, the kind who are convicted and the kind who are guilty. Everyone else is in charge of them and thus excused from prosectuion unless they break ranks.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
There's humor in the contiued absurdity, but not insight.
"This is considered plagiarism."
Yeah, that's why I put it "in quotes" in several of my other posts around here.
They were wrong about everything else, so why not this? No WMDs (as was obvious to anyone paying attention before the war, I still think it's funny that so many people were like "wtf, you mean there weren't any! we were missled!" after it was over), no major "al qaeda" cells in the US--or at least not as many as they said there were, or else they'd surely have busted and procecuted one by now!
I don't know about any WV sniper, but the crazy dude from Ohio was spotted in Las Vegas and turned in by, I think, 2 different people.
He copped a plea (after dropping insanity defense) and was sentenced to 27 years.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
When I was laid off during the tech bust I went to Denver General and had fair-to-good care for a $5/visit $5/prescription charge. When I took a low-paying job my copays went up to $20. Now that I'm back at a high-paying job I don't qualify for anything but rack-rate, but I can afford health insurance.
Works pretty well, based solely on income. I know not everywhere has such things, but I'm consistently surprised by students & low-income friends who don't know about it.
I don't know what to make of your immigrant comment, I'm not aware of any programs that are only open to immigrants. Our hospital spends a lot of money on emergency-room care that is never paid for, and a lot of this is immigrants.
Man, you really need that seminar!
That's silly. As if humans are some kind of foreign extraterrestrial invasion that need to be counteracted.
I certainly did not intend to minimize such things, it's just that I was responding to someone who said that we'd had no terrorist attacks since 9/11, so he was obviously talking about domestic civilian deaths rather than overseas military ones. Of course, he was wrong anyway, as we have had attacks in the US (though probably not from foreign sources), and even discounting those he was still wrong to think that a 4 years span with no foreign attacks on US soil (by which I mean real US territory, no "technically" US territory like ships and embassies) was, taken by itself, an indicator that the president is doing a great job. Alone, that fact means next to nothing.
I was just addressing this within the terms and limits of the poster to whom I was responding. I narrowed the argument as much as possible in order to point out that even in the most narrow and most favorable (to his argument) terms he was still wrong and misguided. No sleight to victims of other attacks outside this narrow framework was intended.
No surprise that the average Jew - especially those outside of Israel - is as ignorant of their own religion as the average Christian. Very few people read religious archaeology journals or even the various popular treatises about the discoveries of the last century or even the known history of their own religion.
Most Jews have probably never read even any quotes from the Zionist literature, either, just as most Christians have never read any quotes from Catholic priests and Popes going back centuries concerning the Jews.
All of the Catholic priests charged with studying the Dead Sea Scrolls (at an institute in Israel, no less) were hardcore anti-Semites, for instance. One of them even absconded with a critical fragment of the documents and has never been found since. The Scrolls are considered the archaeological scandal of the Twentieth Century, since their import was concealed by the Catholics for forty years until photos of them were leaked by a Bechtel relative (Bechtel was financing the institute studying them, apparently), allowing other academics to access them. The one secular researcher was kicked off the team back in the Fifties when he realized their import.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
You might have valid gripes elsewhere -- but it isn't here.
Ok, look, I don't like Bush, let's air that here at the beginning.
But that's not what this is about. This is about poor reasoning on your part. You can say that Bush has done a great job defending the US--hell, I'm sure you could even find a bunch of data to back up such an assertion. The fact that we've had no further foreign attacks in the States for 4 years is not, however, a good point to make. It is very, very weak and the use of this to support your assertion makes your whole argument look weaker.
Think of it like building a battleship: you build this whole thing out of steel, put guns all over it, etc. But then, you decide to forgo adding the steel part of the aft of the hull and extend out some big freakin' wooden thing instead, painting it grey to make your ship look bigger. Unfortunately, it serves no real purpose, it slows you down, and it lets an enemy to your aft shoot directly into the heart of your ship (the engines, no less!) without having to deal with armor! It doesn't matter how strong the rest of the ship is, that wooden thing makes it weak. Better to drop the wooden piece of crap and just put up some armor back there, like the rest of the ship, and learn to live with it not looking so big. Your ship will be far stronger for it.
What I'm saying is that you shouldn't latch on to an argument just because it supports your position. You should only cling to it if it both a) supports your position and b) is strong in the face of scrutiny. Saying that we've had 4 years with no attacks, and that that proves that the president is doing a great job, is very weak, and the way you stick to it even when shown how weak it is leads one to question just how much thought you've actually put into this topic. Throw that out and keep looking.
I'd add "and don't be afraid to change your opinions when the preponderance of evidence is not on your side", but let's just take this one step at a time, shall we?
So what kind of Jew are you, who is privy to this secret lore? And if antisemitic Catholics are part of the conspiracy, what makes it "Jewish"? Especially since most Jews are "outside of Israel", who exactly are you talking about when you refer to "the Jews"?
I'd point out that I personally looked at the Dead Sea Scrolls, along with any other member of the public who visited their museum in Israel (coincidentally, in the country in which they were written, stored and discovered). But of course those scrolls were fakes, or redacted, right? And the international academic community of archaelogists and bible researchers, only a tiny percentage of whom are Jews, are all covering up the fact that they're fakes. I'd also ask what great secret is hidden in those scrolls, to which you happen to be privy, but you're probably just more disinformation distracting us from the real secret, which is known only to thousand-year-old antisemitic Jews running the Vatican. Did I get that all right?
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No, you got none of it right, mostly because you don't have the foggiest clue what you're talking about.
a cts.html/ is a link to The University of North Carolina at Charlotte which outlines the basic timeline of the Scrolls which includes the following remarks:
If you haven't read the history of the discovery of the Scrolls, nor read any of the translations, obviously you are clueless, right? Nowhere did I say any of these scrolls are fakes, in any event.
There's absolutely nothing secret about them NOW, since as I so carefully pointed out, they were fully exposed to the academic community as a result of photographs released by a member of the Bechtel family. BEFORE THAT, the scrolls were only examined by a select group of Catholic priests in Israel.
Here http://www.religiousstudies.uncc.edu/jdtabor/dssf
8) The bulk of the scrolls were in Jordanian control and were placed with a team of Christian (mostly Catholic--no Jewish) scholars who over the next four decades published eight volumes of material. The team was left intact by the Israelis after the Six Day War (1967). The publication schedule was constantly delayed and many outsiders found the official team to be arrogant and unyielding. The team was expanded in the 1980's and was much more broadly based, finally including Jewish scholars and a more open approach to sharing materials.
9) As much as 40% of the Scrolls, mostly fragments from Cave 4, remained unpublished and unreleased (photos), until pressure mounted in the 1980's. A breakthrough occurred in the Fall, 1991: the photos were published by the Biblical Archaeological Society in a non-official edition; a computer reconstruction, based on a concordance, was announced; the Huntington library pledged to open their microfilm files of all the scroll photographs.
Wikipedia also has a nice overview.
Read "The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception" by Baigent and Leigh for the full story - especially the direct anti-Semitic quotes from the Catholic priests involved in the study.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Well, I've got to admit I don't know what you are talking about. You're spinning some kind of pointlessly mysterious yarn with all kinds of Jewish/Catholic conspiracy trappings about scrolls you now say are published in full. Yet I don't see any upshot of anything you're saying. Certainly not anything to justify your dark mutterings about Jesus and Jews. How about cutting through the mystery for a mere homo sapiens, and come out and say what you're getting at? Someone's story that Jesus wasn't crucified proves that Jews control the US government? It couldn't possibly be Cheney, the VP, Secty Defense in the last Iraq war, head of Halliburton, Powell's boss, Rumsfeld's career enabler, old Nixon hound? Nah, it must be the Jews - they're always good for a laugh.
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I suggest you read my initial comment (I'll not say again so as to give you benefit of doubt...)
I'm saying that "I hope this kind of christian attitude gets you hell on earth, because that's what it deserves". My biggest beef with christians (and nearly all religious groups), is their insistence that they aren't judging people, while simultaneously insisting that they not only deserve to but WILL burn in hell.
Saying "I hope you burn in hell" doesn't make me a Christian any more than would saying "I hope Kortar sails you to Gre'thor" make me a Klingon. Is your geeked out mind better able to comprehend that analogy?
The thing is, it's not unusual to go this long with no attacks. Sure, he's maintaining the status quo, but I think (almost) anyone else would have been able to, as well. Was everyone ecstatic when Clinton managed to keep Al Qaeda from hitting us for 7 years or so? Were people like "wow, that must mean he's doing a great job of protecting us!"? Hell, he did it without invading anyone, too! Does that mean he was super-good at it? Of course not. It means he probably wasn't a huge screwup, but doesn't really tell us whether he was better at it than, say, H.W. Bush or Perot (hehe, that guy was funny!) would have been. Just like this doesn't tell us that Bush is doing any better a job than Gore or Kerry would have.
Number of terrorists arrested and convicted might be a better measure, but even that's a poor one on its own, as that number increasing or decreasing could mean a change in terrorist activity rather than increased success in catching terrorists.
Are we safer now than we were in, say, '97 or '98? We didn't get attacked in those years, did we? Or in 2000, or '99, or '94, etc, etc. It's going to be very difficult to get a real handle on whether this administrations policies helped or hurt our security until probably 5-10 years from now. Apparently we weren't very safe in '99 or 2000, as there were 19 men here planning to take out the World Trade Center, but we didn't know that at the time. Just like we don't know what'll happen in the next 3 or 4 years. 4 years with no attacks is no measure at all. We'd gone *8* with nothing, then had one. It was obviously not a good measure then, and it isn't now.
It's not natural. It's not why we have sexual organs. They're for procreation, not recreation.
What an incredible, steaming pile of horse shit. If you believe in a just and LOGICAL god then why the fuck did he bundle more NERVES in these places than anywhere else? What fucking sense does that make? We are not animals - we are humans capable (allegedly) of logical thought and therefore do not need "sensory pleasure' to motivvate us to reproduce - we are capable of understanding the need for procreation no matter if it feels good or not. giving birth stresses the female anatomy in heinous fashion - what sort of "kind, loving god" would then stuff this area with so many nerves as to make the act of birth as painful as possible?
Why did god give us tastebuds? So we could discern poisons? Then why do so many poisonous plants taste sweet? Why can we see in color when so many animals do just fine with black and white vision?
Get over yourselves. You're a bunch of brainwashed idiots being controlled by the MIB. You fuckers are destroying this country by undermining everything the patriots fought and died for, and that treasonous motherfucker (and his warmongering jewboy sidekick) you idiots put in the whitehouse should face down a firing squad.
But I do believe I understand the Bible, and I do believe it's the word of God...
So which is it? Either the bible is "the word of god" or it's just so many parables collected and bound and preached by a bunch of zealots. The bible clearly states man is not at all created of animals but was put above them and that whole "evolution" thing goes out the window - along with any need for those sexual dysfunctions you so quickly passed by in response.
What makes you think I am "far left?" Because I fucking hate Christians? But I hate Jews and especially feminists, too... so wouldn't that make me "far right?"
You blather on about namecalling while turning that hose upon me?
You fucking hypocrite...
You are right, these things are best taken with a grain of salt. Actually the RD article was reprinted from an article in Vanity Fair (The magazine that disclosed the identit of Deep Throat). The professor who wrote this article was Donald Foster, an english professor at (http://english.vassar.edu/faculty.html?bio=Donald _Foster) Vassar College.
His research specialty is analyzing anonymous next for linguistic patterns that match other known texts. He uses this method to successfully disclose the anonymous author of "Primary Colors" as Joe Klien, a Newsweek Columnist.
Using similar linguistic analysis, he traced the anthrax letters to Steven Hatfill, a US bioweapons expert.
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open