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Patriot Act Game Pokes Fun at Government
The Miami Herald is reporting that a new game based on Monopoly is taking a crack at Patriot Act and what creator Michael Kabbash describes as the curtailed freedom that has resulted. From the article: "The object of the game is not to amass the most money or real estate, but to be the last player to retain civil liberties. 'I've had people complain to me that when they play, nobody wins. They say "We're all in Guantanamo and nobody has any civil liberties left," he said. 'I'm like "Yeah, that's the point."'"
Nothing to see here, move alone.
(or something to the effect) But a quick reload showed that "The Man" did not in fact supress the story.
The game can be downloaded here.
One of the most troubling things about the current situation is that your average Joe Sixpack has no idea how far the current administration has gone in their efforts to decieve them and strip away their inalienable rights. Once they're properly appraised of the situation, they're usually pretty damned mad about it.
Getting the word out is one of the most important ways we can fight this assault on our liberty. The people in power thrive on ignorance. Anything that deprives them of that is positive.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
And if more people become aware that there is a brewing problem with attrition of their rights, how is that a waste?
What's more beneficial to the bottom line of a popular movement -- one individual sending a letter, or one individual getting two people to send a letter? Or how about one individual making 1,000 people 0.2% more likely to write a letter?
Few people want to talk about civil liberties at the water cooler during their afternoon break. This game is interesting enough to be water-cooler fodder, which is a good thing -- raise awareness of the issue.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Looks like a diverting way to spend an evening. My question though: I've heard some talk of there being a MMRT/LA* version and I was wondering if anyone had any information on how to opt out?
--MarkusQ
* Massively Multi -Player Real Time / Live Action
It's the "sound bite" media that's really doing us in. And "they", the media, are doing it because that's where the money is. There's no profit in being rational, careful, insightful, and just using common sense. Sensationalism has overtaken the media. Trying to get the issues past that, well, is impossible. Let's face it, folks want the sensationlized version. They want to feel superior to the "stupid" people who have a different opinion from theirs.
Saturday is April 1. Slashdot will be shut down. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Yeah, we're losing all our civil liberties but some guy is still free to openly criticize the government without fear of the FBI showing up on his doorstep.
Your line of reasoning rang a bell. Where did I hear it before? Oh yeah, I remember:
You are confusing "going away" with "gone"; just because at sunset there is still more than enough light to read by, you can not conclude that daylight is not going away, and should not draw comfort from the fact that it isn't as dark as it is somewhere else on the planet.--MarkusQ
I'd like to see a card with: "You break your leg falling from the top of a Abu Ghraib-style ass pyramid. Pay $200 in doctor fees."
..."the only winning move is not to play" gets smacked.
I rememeber hearing Mel Brooks interviewed after his film The Producers was made into a broadway play. The interviewer asked him how it was that he, a Jew, felt it was appropriate to make jokes about Nazis.
Brooks responded that you can't fight a dictator by getting up on a soap box. Dictators are, by nature, natural spell-binders, and you'll never outdebate them. But what you can do and what works is to make them look ridiculous.
So, in this case you paint the administration as a bunch of goose stepping blockheads who are besotted with fascism. It's not the way our system is supposed to work, but it's the way politics works.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This game sounds eerily similair to Police State, a game that was developed in the 1960's and inspired by life in the Soviet Union. The goal was a little different - you were trying to become the Soviet Premier (basically, the only person with any rights) while avoiding being denounced by others and sent to Siberia. The game board was even vaguely Monopoly-ish (in appearance, not in play).
If you're curious, you can see the game here.
Must... think up... something... clever!
Yes! Look that way! At China! Now THEY have it bad! Don't look here! No! You can still criticize us! Look over there!
Oh! Got a law passed. Haha, no you can't criticize us! Good job paying attention to China.
An old idiom goes, you don't have to be better than someone else to make it, you have to be the best. So no, what's going on in China is important, but you have to ALWAYS look and see what is going on here.
And there are far more civil liberties than "The right to free speech"
The president has claimed that he has the power to declare any living being, American citizen or not, an "enemy combatant". He has further claimed that enemy combatants are neither covered by United States civil law, nor the Geneva conventions, and he has exercised his power to secretly detain them, without charge, indefinitely. Once detained, he has denied these people rights to an attorney, the right to a trial, and even the right to see the evidence against them.
It wasn't until the court stepped in and slapped him down that some of this changed.
At which point it was quickly made clear that the judiciary is the tool of evil leftist terrorists. This has resulted in people ranging from terrorist right wingers to elected lawmakers calling for the judiciary to be either outright collapsed, or made a pawn subject to the whims of the Congress (in fact, right wing terrorists even publicly called for the Supreme Court justices to be assassinated). This call has been furthered in relation to preventing them from exercising the power to rule on cases involving discrimination against gays, and in relation to cases such as Terri Schiavo's where it was determined that there was no grounds for the government to interfere in the legal rights of Mr. Schiavo.
Furthermore, please note that George W. Bush is yet another individual "elected" to the presidency against the will of the people.
On top of all that, Mr. Bush has authorized the NSA to go ahead and secretly wiretap, with no public access to information, anybody he deems requires wiretapping. Mr. Bush requires no justification, as there's nobody to stop him.
But, don't worry. I'm sure that's not really that bad, and that it's just a matter of things being "blown out of proportion".
From now on, I buy only Intel.
You know, more games should (no, not kidding) have political leaning and teach people about the political situation of today, and the history of American meddlins in the middle east. Maybe, just maybe, people will become aware of what their tax dollars have done to their fellow man in impoverished countries, and just maybe, with enough people, a few small but key changes could come about.
I always give a great deal of respect and support and love to people who try to keep an eye on the government, and even more when they have a sense of humour about it. The reality of the situation, for all citizens, is kinda like a parent trying to keep an eye on a really mischevious kid who likes to steal your stuff and money and beat up other kids, but instead of an unruly pubescent child, you have an army of secret agents and powermongers to try and keep from running amok.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Well, for instance, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments are pretty soundly trashed by the PATRIOT Act.
The surveillance powers granted are in direct circumvention of the Fourth Amendment, whereby a judge must be asked for a warrant for law enforcement to conduct any action against a citizen. The argument against is that informing the "Terrorists" of what is going to be searched/siezed in advance (which is what the Constitution requires) is inexpedient. The problem being that, if you're not a terrorist, you're pretty much screwed and have no recourse because any warrants issued (if they were issued at all -- see the National Wiretapping problem) were issued in secrecy and to talk about them is a crime according to other sections of the PATRIOT Act.
The Fifth Amendment is violated because the actions law enforcement takes deprive you of due process. You're not allowed to see the "evidence" against you until you've been exported to Egypt for "questioning" and returned.
Basically: the whole reason the Fourth and Fifth Amendments exist -- to protect citizens against overreaching Executive law enforcement powers -- is trampled by the PATRIOT Act.
Please see: The Bill of Rights
The Sun is proof that we can't even do fire properly.
Moderate, or respond? RESPOND!
You do know that american idol was taken directly from a EUROPEAN TV SHOW called pop idol?
Trying to call the american public 'stupid', along with saying that somehow the abuse of power commited by certain individuals in the US governemnt is to be blamed on the general public shows me all I need to know about your line of reasoning. Otherwise, can you support your argument with something other than straw? Using the phrase 'some people say', or 'some believe', and then countering with your own statement, is a horribly wrongly overused style of debate. You may have heard of it, its called setting up a 'straw man'. The only purpose of which is to knock down, making you look like you are actually debating something.
You believe leaders to be god like figures who are destined to rule over the 'unwashed masses' who dont know any better.
Blowing things out of proportion? warrantless wiretaps, detainment wihtout legal representation, arrest without being informed of your crimes, media used for propaganda, and now PHYSICAL warantless searches as well. Exactly at what point do you think it would be appropriate to stand up for yourself? When the boot is already on your neck?
I hate to tell you, but you ARE necessarily defending what the government is doing. Saying you are 'not necessarily' defending it is to soften your language to fool yourself into believing your own words. Unfortunately, subjective thought matters little to objective reality. Looks like you fooled someone else beside yourself though, as you were marked as 'insightful'. I wonder if it was one of those guilty, stupid, uncaring americans who modded you as such? Maybe it was one of those 'enlightened' Europeans who are smarter because they made 'pop idol' a smash hit in europe first?
Believe it or not, you are advocating fascism. Stop trying to put makeup on a pig and telling me it is beautiful.
Ahem.
Or did you just mean not recently?
Forgive me all for responding to a Troll but:
They haven't come for the Jews.
No. But they've come for the Muslims
They haven't come for the Communists.
No. Because it's profitable to ignore them.
They haven't come for the trade unionists.
No. Because they no longer matter.
And they haven't come for you.
They won't bother because we don't matter.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
When did Civil Rights become Civil Liberties?
When they become Civil Priviledges, I'm running for the hills.
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
But honestly, how many people griping about Bush/Ashcroft today thought that Clinton/Reno were A-OK?
I for one, dislike them both (see here and here for just a few recent posts predating this thread, to substantiate my claim...google should turn up more, back to the Clinton years, when Marc Rich and the Gubernatorial pardons of attractive women roused my ire). But whenever you attempt to level a rational criticism of a politician you discover that you will be instantly labeled a partisan, and the substance of your point dismissed.
Which leads me to a conclusion: attacks on politicians are frequently non-partisan (especially during primaries, when the parties eat their own to impress the masses) but defenses of them are almost always partisan. This includes the sort of "why don't you criticize this guy instead" defense going on here. It's my firm belief that reasonable people of both parties (for what it's worth, I happen to be a Republican) are appalled at the sort of shenanigans that get pulled by the leaders of both parties, but that the highly partisan yahoos always jump to the defense when their side's in power.
What Bush is doing is wrong, and frankly he should be in jail. The fact that Clinton may well deserve the next cell over is not an excuse, it's an example of how bad the problem realy is.
--MarkusQ
But honestly, how many people griping about Bush/Ashcroft today thought that Clinton/Reno were A-OK?
Hell, I thought Clinton bad enough that I wanted Bush to win in 2000. Horrible mistake. I ever bought his lies about the war enough tat I tepidly supported it.
But by 2004, I was volunterring for Kerry.
Why? Mostly because of Ashcroft and Gauntanamo and Abu Ghraib.
Let me state that again: in 2000 I was disgusted with Clinton and happy to see a Republican President. Never again.
In the five years Bush has been in office, I've seen our Constitution shredded, Madison's checks-and-balances blown away, a disastrous war and obscene war profiteering, growth of the Police State eclipsed only by massive deficits and new entitlement programs and corporate welfare and corruption, the destruction of an American city while Bush literally strummed a guitar, and the dismantling of government-funded science in favor of corporations and religious nuts.
Maybe you still don't get it: I shared most of your so-called conservative values: I was for small government, against nation-building, for lower taxes (during the Clinton years I had a good job, you see), against Washington corruption. I saw Dubya as a breath of fresh air.
It's not me who has changed. It's the Republican Party. They control all three branches of government, and yes taxes are lower, but the deficit is now nine billion dollars, government's gotten bigger and more corrupt, and it's listening into phone calls without getting warrants.
Now I see Dubya and most of the rest of the Republican Party as a threat to the future of this country.
Damned right I thought Clinton and Reno were wrong. But your Dubya's a total and unmitigated disaster on all fronts. Now I'd welcome Clinton back in a heartbeat, and so would half of my conservative friends.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Actually, the building you are referring to was WTC 7, and Larry Silverstein, the owner of the WTC complex, admitted in a PBS interview shortly after 9/11 that he ordered the building to be 'pulled'. More details can be found here.
Wow, what an insightful, well-researched, and thought-provoking website. I went to the main page to see what other conspiracies had been covered up by the US government, and once I scrolled past the obviously legitimate banner ads for Ephedra, Viagra, and penny stocks, I found all sorts of op-ed diatribes based on shaky and unverifiable claims.
WTC 7 was not slated for demolition. It was not wired with explosives. It caught on fire, burned from the inside out, and collapsed. TLC (a reputable media outlet, unlike the whacko nutjob websites that come up with you search for "WTC 7 collapse") mentioned the collapse of WTC 7 in their documentary about why the towers collapsed. Officials were surprised and disturbed that buildling 7 collapsed, seemingly on its own, and learned a lot from the experience. The events revealed that conventional construction wisdom wasn't as reliable as builders had assumed, and they learned principles which they used to improve the safety of other buildings.
If, as you and all these other Area-51 crazies assert, WTC 7 was deliberately razed, you haven't answered "why?" I also love some of the other peer links that come up when "researching" your claims, like this gem: "Come on folks, no planes hit the World Trade Center on 9/11/01."
Demolition experts immediately went on record as saying that such a collapse as a result of an airliner strike was flatly impossible,
If they're "on record," then link to it. Who are these "experts," and how exactly did they acquire their "expert" knowledge on the dynamics of airliner strikes on large skyscrapers, given that it's never happened before?
With respect to your crazytalk regarding the attack on the Pentagon, you demonstrate the classic flaws of a conspiracy theorist. That is, you ask the wrong questions, make the wrong assumptions, and ignore obvious counter evidence.
For example, evidence supporting the truth is overwhelming, undeniable, and readily available. If there really was no "Flight 77", then what do you make of this list of victims? The passengers and crew of American Airlines Flight 77? Are these fake names? Why not call up some of the family members and see if these people actually existed? Google them. Locate addresses and co-workers. Where did all these people go, if Flight 77 didn't hit the Pentagon? Are all their family members in on the conspiracy, and perpetuating a lie?
Also, simply research the flight plans for that day. FAA flight plans are public record. See if Flight 77 actually existed. Or dig up the tax records for American Airlines and see if they actually owned a 757 with the registration number matching the one that "allegedly" hit the Pentagon. Where did that massive airplane go, if not the Pentagon?
As for your ridiculous claims that there was no fire, there most certainly and obviously was. It penetrated several layers deep into the rings of the Pentagon. Media and photographers could only photograph the outside. Or are you surprised that large amounts of media members were denied access to the flaming, chaotic top-secret inner rings of the Pentagon in the middle of a massive terrorist attack on the US?
Finally, let me also address this assumption that many people make regarding impact holes. People seem to think that an airplane should punch right through walls. The truth is, airplanes are actually light, fragile tubes of thin metal. Take a piece of paper and roll it up like a paper towel tube. Now smash it down onto the top of your desk. Did it go through? Did it even lea
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This is way too long, and you've not credibly refuted anything I've said, so I'll post without Karma bonus to try and avoid the wrath of the mods.
Because in the documentary [...], [Larry Silverstein] made the following statement: "'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse."
I'm not disputing that he said that (although I suspect he said "pull out," not "pull it"). But it is YOU and the website that are making the completely unsupported assumption that "pull it" means "demolish." In fact, when you read it in context, such an assumption doesn't even make sense. Why would he justify proactively demolishing it by saying "we've had such a terrible loss of life" already? Why not just evacuate to save lives, and wait and see if the building can be salvaged when the fire burns itself out? How would evacuating and then deliberately blowing it up save any lives? Don't you see? It makes no sense.
If that in fact is true, than it's the third steel-framed building to ever collapse from fire, the first two being WTC 1 and 2. The simple fact is: steel-framed buildings don't collapse from fire. Period.
You're illustrating my point for me exactly. This is exactly why the building architects were so surprised by the fact that they did collapse from fire. Everybody thought that was impossible. The steel frames of the buildings were coated with insulating foam to prevent exactly this scenario from playing out. But what they hadn't counted on was the fact that the buildings' ages and poor maintenance would effectively erase the safety built into the design. Again, I cite the documentary Why The Towers Fell for a very thorough and insightful explanation of how things transpired on that fateful day.
And the reason that those 3 buildings were the first 3 steel-framed buildings ever to collapse from fire is because they were all designed the same flawed way (as have been many more since then that thankfully haven't had massive fires to test them).
The towers were designed to constantly withstand wind pressures equal to 30 times the energy of the airliner impacts.
Quit with the red herring. The "energy of the airliner impacts" had nothing to do with it. It was the heat from the fire that brought down the buildings. The buildings did withstand the impact of the airliners, just as they should have.
In July of 1945 a B-52 bomber, lost in heavy fog, crashed into the Empire State Building.
First of all, it was a B-25, not a B-52. The B-52 hadn't even been invented yet, and is a MUCH bigger airplane. The B-25 that crashed into the Empire State Building was 53 feet long with a wingspan of 67 feet. The airliners that crashed into the twin towers were roughly 3 times as long with double the wingspan. Plus, the airliners were fully loaded with fuel for a cross-continent journey, whereas the little B-25 bomber was on its way home, and thus had relatively little fuel on board.
Oops. Guess you forgot about that part, eh? But let's not get bogged down in facts. Please, continue on.
[Where are all the people who were supposedly on the non-existent AA flight 77?]
I just love it when people throw this up as an 'argument'. Their bodies have not been found, and they never will be.
That's your answer? They existed, but they've simply vanished? All at the same time? Without anybody noticing? They were secretly diverted somewhere else and killed off in the name of freedom? I'm going to need a little more explanation than that, please. Who ordered this? Who were the people who carried it out? Why would American Airlines pilots and US military service men and women kidnap and murder innocent American citizens? A conspiracy this big would requi
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