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AT&T Says Spying Is Too Secret For Courts
The Wired blog 26B Stroke 6 reports on the arguments AT&T and the US government made to an appeals court hearing motions in the case the EFF brought against the phone giant for their presumed part in the government's program(s) to spy on Americans. In essence AT&T seems to have argued that the case against the telecom for allegedly helping the government spy on Americans is too secret for any court, despite the Administration's admission it did spy on Americans without warrants.
Ssssh! This is to secret to report on! Ohhhh great! Now the terrorists have won! Thanks alot Slashdot!
So let me get this straight. AT&T says it can't defend itself because it would endanger national security (basically, AT&T is guilty), and because of this, the case should be throw out (a win for AT&T)?
But I guess logic like that is adequate for government work.
You either have the rule of law, or you have "national security." They are mutually exclusive. Anything too secret to be brought before the law is too secret to be judged by it. Therefore it is outside the law, making the government a law unto itself, unaccountable to the public.
Funny how that works. It's pretty much always the case that, paraphrasing parts of the Bible here, when men give up obedience to law and order, good rules and the ethic of accountability, that moral decline in the population begins. What? Bush's supporters didn't realize that the rule of law is just about the keystone of public morality?
It's mind boggling how just about anything that the Federal Government Agencies don't want the public to see, hide behind this excuse and usually get their way..
The ability to call upon such protection should be regulated and restricted, but when's the last time Congress did anything positive for us citizens?
"Spying is such a harsh word...
We like to call it passive call attendance.
The original generic sig.
.....Censored..Censored..Censored..?
"We are scared like hell for our butts"
Read radical news here
Get it right: the blog name is "27B Stroke 6" which is a beautiful reference to the out-of-control bureaucracy in Terry Gilliam's movie "Brazil".
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
There's no court in the land that has the authority to examine issues that happen to overlap with "national security"?
A matter of internal security: the age-old cry of the oppressor.
The judge should rule that AT&T is too secret to exist... and therefore should be dissolve
When are we going to hold the government accountable for its' actions? We, the American people need to stop voting for parties and start voting for the person, hold the government accountable,demand an accounting of the budget that is reviewable by nongovernment accountants, and basically do what the constitution says we can.
A government that is not accountable to its population is by default invalid and unjust, and needs to be delt with accordingly. Thank God we have the soap box and ballot box in this Great Country and have options to bring about change in a constructive manner. In other places, the ammo box is the only option available.
The most obvious suspicions is that full extent of mass invasion on privacy has not been revealed so far. Irony: Trust your telco to protect you from info harmful to feds ;-)
AT&T is between a rock and a hard place. If they continue to say the case should be thrown out, the public will ridicule them. If they actually present evidence in their defense, the government can prosecute them for divulging state secrets. (Anyone who has a security clearance can testify to the penalties for the unauthorized release of classified information.) There really are no good options for AT&T.
So if their doings are to secret for a court, then anything they "find" should also be to secret for a court.... right?
wasnt is some great leader in the past said there should be a revolution every 200 years to keep the government from doing bad things? we are over due.
We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully "designed" to have come into existence by chance.
All them murders I done are too secret for any court.
My money's too secret for AT&T, then.
*Real children by age and all those that can't deal with the 21st Century.
From Frank Zappa:
You say yer life's a bum deal
'N yer up against the wall . . .
Well, people, you ain't even got no kinda
Deal at all
'Cause what they do
In Washington
They just takes care of NUMBER ONE
An' NUMBER ONE ain't YOU
You ain't even NUMBER TWO
If what they were doing is both legal and a State Secret, they should be able to at least prove this to a Judge "in camera" (?). Otherwise is it not possible that what is it being allegged the government requested and what they carried out are illegal acts for which both AT&T and the government should be held accountable?
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
We need a good end-to-end hardware crypto solution for voice traffic, 100% open-source and published and buildable on cheap commodity hardware. (I'm thinking PIC processors and FPGA's). We basically need a hardware-based telephone equivilent to PGP that everyone could afford, that doesn't require me to use a PC as a telephone. Phil Zimmerman's PGPhone is pretty cool and a step in the right direction. It just needs to shrink ;-)
The government should fear its population, its creator.
that AT&T is on double super secret probation?
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
That the new AT&T is behaving like... well... the old AT&T.
If anyone gets prosecuted for any of this who the first person they call will be?
That strange looking person I killed, it was for the Government and I am a spy. I can't defend myself in court because that would endanger national security.
All you need to know is that you're safe.
007
http://downloads.wired.com/downloads/Audio15_03/Ca ll_NSA.mp3
Too bad my phone doesn't like MP3 or AMR ringtones.
I am not a crackpot.
A court should always, in any case, be able to get all information from any company. If a company is not willing to provide data to a court, they should be prosecuted for obstruction. Especially in cases concerning the common good, like in this case.
If this case is really too secret for a court, it proves that the government is commiting illegal activities, which puts them on the same line with terrorists regarding being a threat to the society.
In a democracy, people always have the right to know what their government is doing. It seems democarcy died in the US and has been replaced by a more totalitarian government, surrounded by some large allied corporations, which tries to rule everything and anyone under the false pretext of protecting democracy and freedom.
Which freedom? No privacy is no freedom!
The only way to restore democracy and freedom in the US is to prosecute and sentence the corporations, like AT&T, that are helping the current government remove democracy and the freedom from it's citizens.
If the court cannot sentence AT&T, the general public can. Just drop all your business with AT&T, cancel your contracts, let them feel they went too far this time.
I probably shouldn't even be telling you this, but... this is so secret that you shouldn't even scold Slashdot for posting about it!
I have always said that extreme examples provide some of the clearest examples, so here's one for you. Let's say that President Bush got away with raping and murdering a teenage girl in the oval office. Then President Hillary Clinton in 2008 did the same thing with a teenage male staffer. Should we not still try to prosecute President Clinton out of the principle that "a crime, is a crime, and all violent crime should be prosecuted?" By your standards, no we shouldn't. In fact by your standards all crime should go unprosecuted, all victims left to suffer, all because some jackass on the top of the totem pole got away with shenanigans. Dear God, do you realize what you are advocating by saying that you would automatically vote to acquit? You would allow a serial child molester go to make a statement against Bush. That is, pardon my French, fucking sick.
I think the west has gotten to lax, not enough people remember anymore what freedom and democracy are REALLY about. This will change, it has before and it will again. Dictatorship just don't work, it ain't the natural state of affairs.
BUT neither is freedom. The result is that you have a constant seesaw motion between the two extremes, the best you can hope for is that you happen to live during one of the quiet moments BUT you will only be able to do so thanks to the efforts of people who have come before.
The sad fact is the seventies generation has done shit for freedom, they shouted a lot but haven't actually acomplished a single thing. It was the WW2 generation that has formed what we like to think of as our free society. They had to, WW2 forced change. Equality of the sexes and races is a direct result of the allied efforts to turn the tide of war.
But whatever they achieved the natural state of affairs is to take back every hard won liberty for the practical day to day running of the world. Just as WW2 saw the injust internment of the japanese this war two has its miscarriages of justice.
but it ain't gone over the edge, the proof? We can still report on it, the story of this and other mistakes is getting out and is getting attention. If the dictators had won, you wouldn't even know about it until you were taken off the street and never heard from again.
As much as these stories may shock you they fact that they come out are proof that the system is still working.Not well, but then we get the system we voted for and Bush was re-elected.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
My favorite part is that AT&T's lawyers feel that the terms "harsh," "greater public good," and "ultimately the less harsh remedy" all need to be put in quotes, as though they are abstract concepts that need an "ad hoc" definition. I think I'll just turn my cynicism engine on full blast and crawl into a corner somewhere.
It makes me feel like I'm getting a patronizing lecture on law and freedom from Bill Lumbergh from Office Space. Or getting hand-parentheses from the finger quotes lady.
The article as it is written wants to say, "AT&T tapped people without judicial oversight". This is not the case. The case is that FISA, which is a court, asked AT&T to tap people.
Since FISA is a secret (a better word would probably be "confidential") court, but a court none-the-less, the real case is if the venues that the EFF seeks to sue AT&T in are higher powers than FISA.
Get Fycking Real, No Ficking Change, all is right with the world of US, EU, and ....
... it is horrible to have our beliefs destroyed by reality, but we all live in totalitarian nations. Fortunately for US, EU and some others it has allowed US and EU to maintain a delusional believe that we have enough cake and can eat cake forever. Let's not blame terrorist for US and EU citizens being fools.
... are the
....
... tells the terrorist ...." Well folks I can say if we had not been fooled to go there in the first place, then there would be allot less terrorist getting real hands on training killing our Warriors, brothers, sisters, moms and dads ... and the whole region would not be totally destabilized for further emergence of more terrorist [THANKS YOU VERY MUCH P&VP].
... citizens should laugh, because it is far to painful ... if you don't laugh at yourself!
... just reality as I perceive it.
FYI: US, EU
I refer you and all political/religious dogmatist to "http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/P._T._Barnum" for a few appropriate comments on the state of the supposed religion democracies.
You can fool some of the people all of the time;
you can fool all of the people some of the time,
but you can never fool all of the people all of the time.
However, most of the time most of US, EU
exploitable fools of flag-waving faux-patriots, bible-thumping
pseudo-prophets, history-revisionist plutocrats/corporatist marketeers.
A few more appropriate sayings about fools like US, EU
* A fool and his money are soon parted.
* Every crowd has a silver lining.
* No one went broke underestimating public taste.
* I don't care what they say about me, just make sure they spell my name right!
* You'll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
* There is a sucker born every minute
Just yesterday I heard the USA VP (the P prior too) say "stating a time table or schedule
All US, EU
An unsettling perspective/comment on beliefs is not troll/flame
"Reality is self-induced hallucination."
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words." Philip K. Dick (1928-82)
You'd also likely want to consider that the spending done by Congress (with the consent, and
usually at the behest of, the executive branch), has outstripped revenue generated by taxes
and other means.
If you're gonna spend that much money, it's only responsible to pay for it.
Tax cuts are fine, so long as you keep the overall fiscal responsibility in mind. We can argue
over the appropriateness of various programs funded by the federal government, but it's a
no-brainer that if you have a program, you should pay for it with real money, not with ever
expanding debt.
Thank God few people like you are ever elected to any positions of influence.
Sorry, the case of us spying on you is far too secret for us to defend against, because the secret is we now know your secrets. And it's no secret that your secrets should remain secret. So lets just keep this a secret OK? You know, pretend this never happened!
Isn't that kind of like kicking someone in the nuts, then saying: Just kidding!!
AT&T is evil, and is a willing participant with the government factions that want to throw us, head first, into an Orwellian nightmare.
Furthermore, if you continue to do business with them *you* are a willing participant, and should grow some balls.
Now, Comcast and their ilk are pretty evil, but they aren't nearly as bad as AT&T. Neither are the other major telecoms, and most certainly the RBOCs.
If you _really_ want to make a difference in whatever small way you can, get off Slashdot, research an alternative phone company, ISP, or wireless company, and *switch*.
Don't buy service from Cingular.
Don't buy service from SBC/Ameritech/AT&T/whatever else the monster has eaten up.
Turn off your DSL and switch to cable. Turn off your long-distance service and get VOIP or an RBOC's POTS unlimited plan.
RBOCs are still out there; there just hurting for business. But many of these companies will guarantee that none of their records will go to the government (and in my area, TDS Metrocom is advertising this). There's still some leak over to AT&Ts systems, as they use AT&Ts local loops, but the more people that switch away from paying into AT&Ts pockets, the better.
This is particularly relevant for Cingular. If you have Cingular, you should wise up. Sprint's SERO plans are cheaper, T-mobile is somewhat cheaper, and has vastly better customer service, and Verizon's footprint is larger and more reliable. Not to mention the regional carriers, which beat up Cingular market-by-market.
There is no reason to do business with this devil of a company. While the government empowers them to do evil, the $$ they use for their transactions come from consumers, and you all need to wise up.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Got some sources on those polls? Plural, like you stated, polls, more than one of them, showing that a disturbingly large percentage of Muslims desire the institutionalization of sharia. With links to the questions, so we can see what kind of bias they contain.
Did you know that polls on people named Christopher showed that a disturbingly large percent of them use unsourced statistics to spread a message of intolerance?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"The government, which says it has inherent constitutional powers to wiretap in the time of war..."
The government is saying that being in a war overrides the fourth amendment. But America is an empire now, and is always in a state of war. That is especially so when it's not a "War on Germany" or a "War on North Vietnam" but a "War on Terror". "Terror" is a tactic, and will never be defeated. So the government has given us notice that the fourth amendment is a dead letter.
Liberals never complained when the 9th and 10th amendments became dead letters. They eagerly seek the same fate for the 2nd. They see that as progress. Well now the amendments they like (the 1st, 4th, and 5th) are under attack. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
That's basically what was said back when the Roman Republic fell. The Roman Imperial rule lasted for about 400-500 years. Though there were brief thoughts and talk of returning to the Republic, it never happed.
Those who forget History are doomed to repeat it.
While you might argue that "We're different now", I would also point out that we're really not. We've been passing laws to strip away rights for decades, and the Supreme Court has been upholding them. Take, for example, the Japanese internment during WWII. Although there was lip service paid to how wrong it was much later, the Supreme Court upheld the decision. More importantly, Congress has never put in place new laws to prevent it from happening again.
You can expect this to take place in the future when we've had yet another panic attack. The laws are all set up for this. Only now it can be done in secret. Indeed, there are Prisons being built in the mid-west right now which have this as their optional charter.
I'd like to share your optimism. But I see nothing which supports it except some political lipservice.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
Or you can tell us how many women in Saudi Arabia have driver's licenses.
Maybe you can research what happens to non-Muslims who stray into the wrong areas of Mecca.
Perhaps you can find out the religion of those who practice female genital mutilation.
Got the balls to do any or all of that? Why do I suspect the answer is, "No"?
..unto the NSA.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -- Voltaire
I think what is really needed is a system for setting up secure conversations. Even if they are just text. So if you want to chat to your friends without fear of eavesdropping, you can just do it. Of course, you can do it right now if you and they are crypto geeks - but most people wouldn't know the difference between PGP and SSL.
I think the software requirements are:
1. Must be secure against both criminals and government officials,
2. Must be usable by any computer user - no understanding of crypto required,
3. No software installation required,
4. Key recovery must be impossible,
5. Must be free software (as in GNU).
Now, common VOIP and IM programs do use encryption, but they are not secure against official spying because backdoors are included. For example, MSN Messenger encrypts messages between your computer and the Messenger servers, but the messages are then decrypted on the server side. Clearly, Microsoft could record what you write. MSN Messenger fails requirement 1 (as well as 4 and 5).
There are specialist VOIP, IM and encryption programs that do not have this disadvantage. But few users already have them installed. So they fail requirements 2 and 3. Additionally, PGP software fails requirement 4, because the session keys are stored encrypted in the ciphertext. This means that your private key can be used to unlock the messages in the future. If the government wants to find out what you wrote, they lock you up until you give up your private key.
I do have an idea for a secure messenger that only requires installation on one of the two computers involved in the chat. I think it should be based on the SSH protocol, which meets requirements 1, 4, and 5. However, perhaps someone else can suggest suitable software that meets these requirements?
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
I'm spying on the RIAA and Piracy activity for the US Government.
This spying involves me downloading massive quantities of torrents from various torrent aggregator sites. This work is so super-secret, I'm under non-official cover, so the government must deny that I am working for them, so as not to compromise my identity.
This information is so super-secret, that it can not be used in a court of law.
Therefore.
The RIAA may not sue me.
Really. It's for your own protection.
I'm stopping evil terrorists and pirates.
We're having great success. Every day!
Don't interfere or compromise the integrity of this program.
Or the terrorists win.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I'm not ignorant, you ass. Why would you assume I don't already know these things?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
IMHO:
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
There's a brilliant essay by conservative history professor Garry Wills about the misuse of the phrase "Commander in Chief". His point is that in a free society the President is _not_ Commander in Chief of anything but the armed forces, the country as a whole is not under military discipline, and military concepts like secrecy and "need to know" don't contaminate politics.
He also points out that by historical standards the US hasn't looked like a peacetime government since 1941.
It's a good thing that Apple would never do business with AT&T!
Well then,
Back to the cans and string, eh?
The government uses them, they are called STEs, Secure Terminal Equipment. They are ISDN phones that can do on the fly voice encryption. While the crypto card that the government uses is probably classified, the phone isn't and you can buy one, and a crypto card based on publicly available crypto. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Terminal_Equip ment if you are interested.
However it isn't without problems for widespread adoption. They ARE expensive and there's not much that can be done about that. Making it "open source" changes nothing. Cost is based on volume for the most part. Until you start selling more, the cost isn't going to go down. Then there's the problem of needing a digital connection. There's really not a good way to make it work on analogue lines. It can be done, of course, but then you'll have something like the STU-IIIs that preceded the STEs. You'll have to make the call, say hi to the other person, then request to go secure, the phones cut you off as they synch up (basically similar to a modem synch) and then you get to talk secure. Well the inconvenience of it makes it much less likely that people will use it, and of course you add cost by adding the analogue conversion stage.
Really until VoIP is more widespread, it isn't that practical to do cheaply. Once the traffic is digital anyhow, then encrypting it becomes an easier task. This is especially true if the device has the processing power anyhow to do the encryption, then it may not be any added cost, just new software.
BUT the iPhone is only supported by Cingular!
> What is interesting is that, in fact, dictators are only kept in power by the will of the people (or at least the lack of the will to get rid of
> them). Under Hitler, for instance, the majority of the German population were quite well off and ignored the fact that their wealth came from
>the belongings stolen from those in concentration camps and alot of the work was done by slave labour (ie those in the concentration camps).
I would suspect that much of the time dictators are accepted because the current state, and thus the demonstrated alternative, is chaos. Witness the rise of the Islamic Courts in Somalia and the Taliban in Afghanistan. In both cases a repressive regime came in, but they delivered on the promise of stopping the chaos.
An inherent danger of a democracy is that it is rather chaos-prone. It takes a special kind of populace to make a democracy work, because they have to buy into the democracy and understand that they have to repress their own chaotic urges. One could call them sheep, because they submit to something other than raw strength and fear of death, but I'd prefer to call them enlightened, because they understand the benefits of buy-in and buy-in behavior. By the same token, it may not be possible to build a democracy without that buy-in behavior. How to get there is the question, but I suspect it may initially call for a repressive regime that at least maintains order. Then the repression needs to be released at a rate that allows buy-in to develop. Of course by that definition, how the heck did the US emerge?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
See subject. Enough said.
Way to go parent! We almost ended up losing our perfect "0-fer" record...
See the Guardian for the numbers in a poll done in the UK. Among 16 to 24 year old muslims living in the UK, 37% said they would prefer to live under Sharia law, as opposed to 60% who wanted to live under UK law. I would suggest 60/40 does not constitute a vast majority. "Nearly a third of 16 to 24-year-olds believed that those converting to another religion should be executed". WTF???? The numbers do go down quite a bit for the older people polled, but double digit percentages still would prefer Sharia law even at 55 years old.
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
By insinuating that there isn't a good percentage of Muslims who want to impose sharia, you're ignoring the truth. So, by definition, you're ignorant.
You don't think it's true? How about the Minneapolis taxi drivers who won't carry passengers that they think are violating sharia? How about the Toronto girl who tried to play soccer in a hijab and then her whole family went into full victim mode when told "No"? How about today's latest: Some Muslim workers at Target refuse to handle pork.
If you want to claim the deliberate ignorance label for yourself, you're off to a great start.
And I note that you didn't have the balls to post how many women in Saudi Arabia have driver's licenses.
So, who's the ass?
I think if you look there, you'll find your head.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Heres the facts, since you are wordy and at the same time asking for concise points:
1) The President of the US is not obligated to seek the permission of Congress for anything other than lawmaking. That office is allowed to do things like command the army, poop, and have a beer without congressional oversight. The President does not just sit around waiting for people to hand him papers to sign (unless his name is Clinton who obviously had far too much time on his hands).
2) FISA is a secret court. If they oversaw the program (or not), you and I are not going to know beyond what they choose to release. To claim knowledge of anything else is foolish. However, we do know that FISA did say it oversaw the program. If I told you Intel was going to release Pentium Penis Edition with more Penises than AMD's offering, would you believe my leak and start buying stock in silicon dong distributors or would you take it at the value that it might just be completely and utterly false? Now imagine if you confronted the President of Intel with such foolishness, do you think he might be angry?
3) What we do know is that the EFF doesn't have a clue when the program began (read the brief) and doesn't have a clue what was disclosed. They are working the (weak) angle that AT&T is a public company, which is about the same thing as saying that since a law firm is a public company, we can violate client-attorney privilege and peek into their dealings with whoever we want. It is accusing the administration of wrongdoing, but it's exactly that: Accusation. This is not a statement of fact -- there is no Intel Pentium Penis Edition. In fact, all of page 7 through god-knows-where is redacted from public examination in the brief and the EFF admits in the brief that it only "believes" that the administration overstepped it's bounds and about the actions it conducted.
4) Page 9 of the brief shows that FISA OK'd the program.
So what are you left with? A pile of speculation if you want to point fingers and at very least the idea that FISA said the program was OK and did not overstep the bounds of authority by any measure. Now, I challenge you to the same measure: Show me the facts which say that there was a clear violation of the law. In order to do so, I believe you will have to offer proof that FISA violated federal law in it's approval of the program. Just the facts, ma'am.
Some Muslim workers at Target refuse to handle pork
Let's deprive all women of any rights while we're at it.
To put it mildly, you're an ignorant twit with your head so far up your ass you need to unbutton your shirt to see where you're going if you don't think Islam is at its core a militant religion.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
To avoid criticism; Say nothing, Do nothing, Be nothing.
It was the allies who used "lesser" people to augment their war machine, people previously considered unfit to do anything meaningfull were allowed to play a more active role. I am talking about females working in the war industies and for instance blacks and later even japanese americans being used in the armed forces. Hell it even saw women in fighting roles to an unprecedented degree if you count intelligence operations and the soviet use of women.
After WW2 this was supposed to go away again, women back to the kitchen and blacks back to the end of busses, some people feel however that once being given the taste of this freedom these groups didn't want to go back.
In that sense WW2 was a boost for equal rights, in the allied nations.
Oh and I said, the darkest hour is just before the dawn. The problem of course is that when you are in the night is impossible to say just how dark it will still be. If you take the european view then WW2 was an extremely dark hour, just before the dawn of the EU and peace for the last 60 years and counting.
I am not saying things won't get worse, but that it will also get better, either by our own hands or by future generations. If you don't want to wait that long, then act now.
Oh but a ray of sunshine, the republicans didn't do so well in the last elections and the upcoming ones might just see an all democrate US goverment. Will they reverse the mistakes OR will they add to them? Will the night become darker OR are we at the crack of dawn?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The ancient empires have indeed been around a long time indeed. And they did NOTHING.
Those thousand year empires you speak about have indeed lasted for a long time, and that is all they did. They stopped their progress often getting locked into pointless and resource sapping religious or political crap that kept them from achieving in a thousand years what western democracy has done in a couple of hundred years.
Just think back to the dawn of western democracy, when first we started to replace kings with parlements and the level of technology available, often more primitive then that of ancient Rome or even China of that age. Yet somehow this new "democratic" system, with stops and starts has been moving at an amazing pace ever since.
Coincedence?
Just exactly WHY has science progressed the fastest in the west and not in one of those ancient empires that have been around for ages? By your logic we would all be ruled by the turks or the chinese (Imperial chinese, the communist takeover effectibly started them over again)
Oh and as far as extremes go, I use the term as in meaning the opposites. Not as in radical.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
And you're the first one who started the name calling - when I said you probably don't have the balls to answer how many women in Saudi Arabia have driver's licenses, you called me an ass.
But I sure was right about your lack of balls, wasn't I? You simply won't answer that question, now will you? You not only don't have the balls to tell us how many women are allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, you're squirming like a worm trying to wriggle out of the fact that Islam is inherently intolerant of such basics as women's rights.
Just read the Quran. Research the hadiths. Learn how Mohammad married a six-year-old but was such a great guy he waited until she was nine before consummating the marriage. Woo hoo. Such a great guy. But then again, under Islam all women are the property of some man, so who cares that she was only six.
But you won't even answer questions about a simple thing like driver's licenses for women. Care to go anywhere near female genital mutilation and the religion of the monsters who practice THAT? Why do I once again know that the answer to that is no?
No balls. No ability to think independently. That's you.
Let's see, you ask for evidence of an Islamic push to impose sharia, you get it, and now you say they're just anecdotes? What about the one quarter of all British Muslims who openly admit that they think suicide bombing is acceptable? And I love that Truther contingent among Brit Muslims:
Why are you being an apologist for a religion that chops off the hands of petty thieves?
I can keep tossing examples of Islamic barbarity at you all day. How long can you wriggle in your deliberate ignorance?
If this case is really too secret for a court, it proves that the government is commiting illegal activities, which puts them on the same line with terrorists regarding being a threat to the society.
The government committing illegal activities, is, indeed, a threat to our entire society. We are a society of laws, not men, and the idea that the government can do whatever it wants in violation of the law could trivially result in a total destruction of this society.
Terrorists, OTOH, can just threaten our lives, and not very efficiently. The idea they'd be able to threaten our society is an absurd joke. They could kill 3000 people a month and we'd just shrug it off. Maybe some group activities like ballgames would suffer, and more people would telecommute instead of sitting in office buildings, but those are not very important in the large scheme of things.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I don't even know where to start with this ignorant bullshit. You ignore the difference between Sunni and Shia, you ignore the fact that there are Muslim Republics and have been since the beginning. You ignore my question: how many women in Iran and Iraq have drivers licenses?
Women are not property in Islam, and can in fact own property themselves. And they can divorce their husbands.
Where in the Quaran or the Hadiths does it say anything about female genital mutilation? That was a (disgusting) cultural practice in the region before Islam was even invented.
From that very link you gave: "Of British Muslims taking part in the poll, 77% said the rise of Islamic extremism worried them." Hmmm, that doesn't support your thesis so of course you'd leave it out.
Dipshit. This is so like you. You want to come across as tolerant, so you never post your hate filled rants from your real account, always as AC. You are the one with no balls, a whiny little baby who has to hide in shadows and call people names.
Personally, I think all religions are fucked, and fucking us. I just don't choose to single out Islam.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
In other words, I'm done arguing. I've raised points you haven't answered and you know you cannot answer because you know you would be wrong. You're certainly not faraway from the tinfoil hat.
I want to see you call me ignorant after I quote the Quran to support my assertions.
I cite multiple examples of Islamic intolerance and poor treatment of women, such as but in no way limited to genital mutilation, passages in the Quran and hadiths, the inability of women to drive in Saudi Arabia.
You don't answer, but bring up utter irrelevancies like whether or not women can drive in Iran and some allusion to Sunni and Shia conflicts.
What the hell does any of that have to do with the fact that ISLAM treats women as second-class citizens? Do you really think by posting that the Quran doesn't mention genital mutilation that you can obfuscate the fact that, for just one example, that it does advocate that the way for a man to control his WIVES (note that men can have more than one wife...) is physical violence? To wit:
I really like this quote from the Quran, too:
Yeah, marry a female slave, just "to prevent you from doing injustice". Ain't Islam wonderful? Marry a slave! For great justice!
And even more evidence directly from the Quran about how in Islam women are worth less than men:
How many honor killings happen in the Christian world, where women are murdered because they've dishonored the men in their family? How about in the Hindu world? Or the Buddhist world?
It's also irrelevant that the Quran doesn't mention genital mutilation - a uniquely ISLAMIC practice. The Quran also doesn't mention that women have to be forced to wear a hijab or chador, but those are also tenets of ISLAM as currently practiced by quite probably a majority of Muslims in this world.
And I find it quite telling that your defense of Islam includes this statement:
What a wonderful defense of the rights of women under Islam. Woo hoo. Women are allowed to own property under Islam. Wow. We can welcome Islam to the early Roman Empire or thereabouts. How about the ancient Egyptians? Did they allow women to own property 5,000 years ago? How about the first civilizations in ancient Mesopotamia close to 10,000 years ago? Maybe they had a few women who owned property, too.
If that's the best you can do, that displays the rights of women under Islam better than all my examples of actual modern Islamic brutality towards woman. Your best defense of women's rights under Islam is that Islam allows women to own property. Ain't that mighty nice of the men who rule Islam? They'll allow women to do things other cultures have allowed women to do for MILLENIA.
That's kinda like saying Moh
I think, if you strolled into church and took a piss on the Crucifix, you could barely perform a greater act of defilement than a shitrag like Wired hosting a blog named after a recognizable reference from Terry Gilliam's Brazil. As if anybody working there has seen, let alone comprehended, that movie.
LOL. Thank you. Is it said that I say this *EVERY* time I see an AT&T commercial? LOL, well, here you go. It's particularly fun when I have friends over for Black Donnelly's or Jericho and we see them... They all go, WTF are you talkin' about??? Sometimes I think David Icke is right about everything. Global conspiracy theories are only theories until they are proven to be true. And far too many of them have been proven true in the last 400 years. :(
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
At first I thought that I was going to write a sort of general reply of why I thought that
AT&T was wrong but then I thought about it for a while and actually realized what a
precarious position AT&T (and perhaps the entire telecom industry) is in. While I still
think that AT&T can be blamed for not having enough backbone to stand up to the
government, I think the reality is that this is the government's mess and the government's
fault.
Instead of blaming AT&T, I think we should lay the blame at the feet of the United
States Government. Traditionally we have been a government that allowed a lot of
freedom and bestowed a great deal of rights on our citizens and even on non-citizen
residents (even to some degree on illegal aliens which I personally find a little difficult to
accept).
The current administration will tell us times have changed. They will say that happened
on September 11th 2001. They say that they need additional powers to protect us from
terrorists and other enemies. They say that they need the ability to spy domestically so
that they can ferret out terrorist cells operating within the United States.
On the surface all of this sounds reasonable. Even congress agreed and passed bills like
The Patriot Act and permitted the creation of the Department of Homeland Security
(which for those of you who may be critical, I understand is a cabinet position under the
control of the Executive branch but the money still needs to be appropriated by
congress). As a nation we have spent untold billions on defense most of which has been
spent on a war that many question in Iraq. The government will argue that we have had
success, that there has not been a successful terrorist attack since 2001 so they must be
doing something right.
Good government does sometimes need to have secrets. Nobody is saying that our
government should be so open that they could not plan military actions in secret. Still, in
general good government does need some transparency and does need to be held
accountable for the things it has done. We can not accept an opaque government where
everything is done in secret or where we are mislead into providing support (like the Iraq
WMD mess).
Our current administration may not be opaque but they are getting so dark that it is hard
to see behind the veil that they have set up. Even when they are told "no" they just try
another end-run and try to accomplish the same thing in a different way.
I have no special knowledge of what happened between AT&T and the FBI or Homeland
Security (or whoever it was) but I would imagine that they were squeezed very tightly
and were put in a terribly uncomfortable position before they agreed to provide
surveillance assistance. Considering the current climate in the telecom industry, I would
not be surprised if they were also promised a few favors too.
We are supposed to be a nation by the people, of the people, and for the people. I take
this to mean that the government is obliged to do the will of the people. I don't think that
this means spying on us, invading our privacy, and taking our freedoms a bit and a piece
at a time.
I am so disgusted that I just want to puke.
"Try and" instead of "Try to"...
"Could care less" instead of "Couldn't care less"...
"Should of" instead of "Should have"...
Call them what they really are: Lazy thinking and/or ignorance.
A headscarf that hampers vision and could become entangled with another player is dangerous. Being attached to the head, it's a strangulation hazard. Given the lack of strength in a child's neck, it presents a serious risk of breaking a neck.
Showing up and attempting to play with a hijab without providing advance notice to the ruling federation and referee is just, er, manufacturing dissent.
You're just climbing on a moral high horse to be an apologist for cultural jihad. Which is a bit ironic, in that the Canadian referee in the aforementioned case who ruled that a hijab is dangerous was Muslim himself.
I claim that Islam treats women as dirt.
8 77022-5001021,00.html
:-)
As evidence of that, I cite honor killings, genital mutilation, and multiple passages from the Quran that support my assertion. I could go and find multiple contemporary SUNNI, ELECTED imams (I wonder how many women get to vote for those imams...) that say the best way to treat a woman is to beat her.
I even offer as evidence of poor Islamic treatment of women the fact that Saudi Arabia will not issue driver's licenses to women? Your retort? Iran allows women to drive. As if that wipes out the entire body of evidence - including the Quran itself - that Islam treats women as second-class citizens at best. That's hardly a refutation. That's like saying the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is proof that there's no discrimination in the US. If anything, the fact that you have to enumerate Islamic countries that do allow women to drive is evidence of systematic discrimination, not tolerance and equal rights.
And you also claim Islam allows women to own property, and that since a lot of civilizations worldwide didn't allow that when Islam is founded, that's evidence that Islam doesn't treat women as second class citizens. I've already mocked the hell out of that - pointing out that what you think is "praise" of Islam's treatment of women is more than matched by millenia of rights in other cultures. Here's a clue to another flaw in that example: what happened or didn't happen in Europe or China 1300 or 1400 years ago is utterly irrelevant to the question of whether or not women have rights equal to men under Islam TODAY.
It's also funny how you claim the fact that Islamic countries have had female rulers proves Islam does not treat women as second-class citizens, when the fact is fundamental Islamic, elected Sunni imams have ruled that Westernized female leaders such as Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto are utterly illegitimate as leaders.
You say you know next to nothing about Islam - that's obvious. Go learn about dhimmis and kafirs. Learn what the difference is between dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb and what that means in the Israeli-Arab conflict. Learn why the hostages taken by Islamic terrorists that you see on television are always beheaded.
Learn about taqqiya and hudna.
But most of all, learn about the misogyny at the heart of Islam, about how the testimony of a man in a sharia court is worth the testimony of two women, about how a martyr in the cause of Islam gets 72 female sexual slaves for all eternity.
Don't think Islam is misogynistic?
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,,20
You claim my sources are "blogs" when all the sources I've cited are actual news articles or easily-checked quotes from the Quran.
And I haven't even started on Islamic treatment of homosexuality. Think stonings literally using dumptrucks of stones to bury gays alive...
Nevermind widespread Islamic Holocaust denial.
And I hope you don't really think Islamic theocracy puts any credence into such Western European ideals as God-given inalienable rights. Because that's just not true.
Another fun thing for you to figure out: why the number of Islamic scientists who've won a Nobel Prize is so laughably small given the billion or so Muslims on this planet. There's actually theological reasons for that. But I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader...
It is certainly the MOST common excuse in the world to say "But I had to do it!"
The positive thing is his faction is small and other factions are not in favour of as much executive power and believe in the rule of law - so your next leader of whichever party is unlikely to act the same way.
Substitute radical fundamentalist Christian, the ten commandments, certain cult leaders like Jim Jones and the Waco gang and values such as tolerance (of other races, sexualities or philosophies such as socialism or communism), free speech and freedom of and from religion (mandating Christian prayer in state legislatures like Delaware just did) and the above describes a significant percentage of the current American populace too.
To hear the gods laugh tell them your plans.
From TFA:
"A government brief filed simultaneously backed AT&T's claims and said a lower court judge had exceeded his authority by not dismissing the suit outright."
My Question:
Did that government official guy who filed the joint brief ever go to law school? Or study U.S. government? Or study the U.S. constitution?
Amendment IV, U.S. Bill of Rights
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Wouldn't the greatest danger to national security be our government spying on us in complete disregard to the laws of the United States, the legislation of its Congress, and the Bill of Rights? I mean, you want to talk about an ever-present threat, let's talk about a rogue Federal Government. Because that doesn't live in some desert far away, it lives here, and it has guns, and it is under the constant danger that it will become tyrannical. This is the natural state of a Government. It is always teetering on the apex of the chasms of ineffectiveness and totalitarianism. The government now is arguing in a court of Law that the right of the people to petition their government for redress of grievances is limited to those matters the Government wishes to talk about. We have provisions for cases like this to go forward; courts have the ability to hold closed sessions and issue gag orders. That is all the power the government and the courts have, and it is IMMORAL and repugnant to grant more. To do so is to give blanket permission for all manner of ills to be perpetrated against the American people by an increasingly insular and secretive government. It does not MATTER that we face a threat from outside. We have always faced this threat, from the first day of the establishment of our country until now. Never has there been a day that every person on this planet felt only benevolent thoughts about the USA. Why now, then, do we surrender to the government so easily? Is it the fat on our hips holding us from action? The seductive glow of our televisions placating us? If it is fear of our government which keeps us from speaking up, do we then believe that the environment for such grievances will be better later, when the government has had adequate time to become comfortable with the new arrangements? When will America riot? Now, when such a riot need only be sufficient to awaken the Government to the fact that their actions must be actions that someone, a man, an agency, or an administration, must take account for? Or perhaps later, when the government that is supposed to serve our interests has instead traded voting booths for bunkers? Do we NEED a Tienanmen Square? It doesn't need to be violent, but the suggestion that violence is still possible, that the Government may not be permitted to isolate itself from the First Amendment and our rights to due process. Ten Million in Washington, armed but calm, would probably let them know that this is NOT okay. It really doesn't have to be Congressional heads on pikes.
Like many people, I am aghast at the shredding of the constitution. The time I spend learning about our government in school may have been wasted. All of the due process I was taught to believe in has been summarily dismissed in the last few years. What amazes me the most is the speed with which it has occured. Within one human lifetime, the aspects of America that made me proud of our country has all but dissapeared. In half a decade, things have changed so much I can hardly recognize our government. About the time I started watching CSPAN, things started whorling out of control. The primary thing I remember from my studies in high school about the american system was the checks and balances that kept the executive, judicial, and legislative branches from running away with things. It appeaars to me that the excutive branch has gone way out of control, and TFA implies that the executive branch is now hopelessly above the judicial branch. This is of grave concern to me. And again what I find amazing is the speed with which things have changed.
Yes, there has come to be a fairly gaping chasm between "National Security" in the literal sense and "National Security" in the sense that it is now used, which is: "security for the Regime that has overthrown the United States Federal Government and is now committed to holding power by any means necessary".
Well, you're not the only one asking that question, that's for sure. I think the answer is what I've heard called "Boiling Frog Syndrome". While I see that the term is now being more popularly applied to "environmental issues", I think the concept applies equally well to the problem you're addressing when you say "When will America riot?"
In short,
Of course, I would argue that in the current situation, the frog was stunned [WTC, 2001/09/11] by a sap applied sharply and just behind the ear before being tossed in the pot... i don't know, maybe chloroform is a better analogy, but I think you get the idea, at least...
This is brilliant. Really. I think there may be some infrastructural problems, though - perhaps not insurmountable, but ...
"The Internet is made of cats."
Just working for them (elected) now and then could be quite enough?
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
You quote a number of examples of intolerance from the quran, but, if I had a bible on me at the moment, I could quote just as many examples from the old testament.
How many christian or jewish women stay in the house when it's their time of the month? Very few I imagine.
So, how many muslims follow the most extreme laws in the quran? Very few I imagine.
America, Home of the Brave.
Dude, you are in fantasy land. I don't know what you're smoking, but check this out:
0 70313_what_if_the_fbi_hire.htm
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_david_sw_
Note the quote about Congress being under an illegal gag order.
Trying to make things sound better than they really are puts you in the Bush Apologiests camp in my book.
Thank God...
Which one?
What?
...it is horrible to have our beliefs destroyed by reality...
Then we shall deny reality, and Hollywood came to be. Actually the hardest reality we have yet to accept is that we are not quite human. We have the arrogance to think we are in control when it's our surroundings that control us.
Let's not blame terrorist for US and EU citizens being fools.
The herding instinct is extremely powerful(and so are the bonds to the "leader"(?),can't think of the word), and nobody wants to be caught on the perimeter, face to face with an unknown "predator". We have not diverted from nature's path. Everything you describe is within normal parameters. Except for our apparently slow advancement, which under the present circumstances will proceed on an evolutionary time scale, and by all indications, seems to be right on schedule...I guess. How would I know?
What?
Your eloquence is almost poetic with understanding.
... to
... well if there were any such thing
The herd instinct, I think may be part of the homosapien-sapien (HSS) species.
If there is a homosapien-prescient (HSP) species evolved beyond primitive
fears and tribal mythologies; Well, keeping a low profile would be a survival
skill. The HSS/SS would burn any HSP at the stake as a blood-sacrifice
offerings to whichever mythic gods of the HSS evil dark doom mythological stories.
HSS do love to blame their pagan-gods/GOD for every problem and sociopathic/genocidal
war that HSS create on earth.
As a HSP once said; "It is far better to die a human, then live like a diseased sick
animal." Weapons of war have become our suicidal/homicidal species fangs and claws. If
there are truly any HSP, the comparison would be like the Neanderthal/Erectus,
HSS, not much difference, but maybe a survivor with a less-earthly and more-cosmic
destiny than which the HSS is functionally capable.
I guess we folks of the HSS species (as murderous war-lovers) will be looked upon
as the great extinct ancestor species of HSP
as an HSP species. I mean, "Reality is self-induced hallucination." or I can hope?
!HAVEFUN!
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
For us, it's follow the leader (while acceleratingly) through the red light :-) I like the accuracy of your analogy. From the street corner I am standing on it appears most are acceleratingly with no understanding of the red light, or they are asleep at the wheel (?acceleratingly?).
... as is anything I wright using oh21 or variations. As a matter of fact I know Anon(%~o)Ymous is the original author.
Thanks you are one of the few folks out of many...many that understand how I mean "Reality is self-induced hallucination." it is open-content
It is nice to have my simple subtlety appreciated, because it is my one-and-only favorite quote I attribute to my observation of humanity/self.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
You are right that there are as many fundamentalists in Christian societies as Muslim. They are both viewed as deranged nutjobs in the societies they inhabit. The media focus on these extremist lunatics is what is inexcusable, not their viewpoints which are as valid as anyones and should be respected.
I guess AT&T and their business operations are "too secret" for me to want to be a customer...