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Colleges Being Remade Into "Repress U"?
The Nation has up a sobering article from its upcoming issue about how colleges and universities are being turned into homeland security campuses, in the name of preventing homegrown radicalization. Quoting: "From Harvard to UCLA, the ivory tower is fast becoming the latest watchtower in Fortress America. The terror warriors, having turned their attention to "violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism prevention' — as it was recently dubbed in a House of Representatives bill of the same name — have set out to reconquer that traditional hotbed of radicalization, the university."
I think I'm more troubled by the "designated free speech areas" that are springing up on campuses everywhere.
Not because people can (sort of) speak freely there, but colleges are banning free speech everywhere else.
Queue the "Loose Change" music while you read that.
Can't say I'm a great fan of TWAT, but even so:
Target dissidents. As the warfare state has triggered dissent, the campus has attracted increasing scrutiny--with student protesters in the cross hairs. The government's number-one target? Peace and justice organizations.
The Weathermen were a "peace and justice organization".
Many campus police departments are morphing into heavily armed garrisons, equipped with a wide array of weaponry, from Taser stun guns and pepper guns to shotguns and semiautomatic rifles.
Dear me, police armed with non lethal weapons? They have guns in a gun owning society? We're all doomed, I say, doomed.
Track foreign-born students; keep the undocumented out
Enforce the law against illegal immigrants? A horrific sign of incipient totalitarianism.
Take over the curriculum, the classroom and the laboratory
I'm shocked by this one, frankly (even more so than I was by the tasers). A government department wants to sponsor research within it's remit?
Privatize, privatize, privatize.
a) this has fuck all to do with repression of academia, just a left wing fear of the private sector
b) giving contracts to private sector companies is not privatisation.
The new homeland security campus has proven itself unable to shut out public scrutiny or stamp out resistance to its latest Orwellian advances
Protip: Orwell wasn't warning about the right in 1984. If the average reader of the Nation got their way, only the targets would change. Any kulaks here?
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
Fearmongering is considered a traditional tool of the Right, but the Left appears to have become its new master. Frankly, I'm tired of it from both sides.
... after we survived the radical 60s and proved to the world that free speech and tolerance of dissent works, the very generation that watched freedom of dissent work to fizzle out radicalism has come into the positions of power and are now acting as if it didn't work. Fear is truly the mind killer.
Patriot - A fan of expanding government power and spending while not wanting to pay higher taxes.
"From Harvard to UCLA, the ivory tower is fast becoming the latest watchtower in Fortress America. The terror warriors, having turned their attention to "violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism prevention' -- as it was recently dubbed in a House of Representatives bill of the same name -- have set out to reconquer that traditional hotbed of radicalization, the university."
Tonight... on 24! Jack Bauer delivers the glorious CTU smackdown to some girly man professors with their sights set on terrorizing the Heartland! Watch the Godless professors soil their undies as Bauer delivers a peer reviewed parcel of whoopass!
Presented in high definition Tyranovision!
I was teaching at Wichita State before the Free Speech Zones. They had to implement them because Women's Studies majors were interrupting class by blowing an air horn to announce "Take Back the Night"-type events. So, the left-wing administrators had to find a way to kept the far-left-wing advocates from interrupting class and came up with the zoning scheme as the solution.
If the right is truly repressing speech on campus via federal reg's, it's double-plus bad ungood; however, I contend there's far more internal repression of speech, and hence of thought, from the left on campus and has been for decades. (Why? Because they believe that true diversity will be achieved once everyone agrees with them.) So, if we want free speech on campus, let's make sure all of the sources of repression are dealt with.
A lot of colleges have agendas when it comes to allowing conservative students hold events and speak out, Which is ironic considering who is pushing this down our throats. Of course new-liberal types want to shut up consrvative speakers because they "know they are right". I say let both groups speak and if you don't like who is speaking you don't have to listen.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
I work on a University campus, so I know what's really going on. It's simple: too many people abused their "right" to free speech by making it impossible to hold classes, being rowdy and loud in the halls, preventing people from passing into buildings, etc. In essence, depriving the students of the very thing they paid for. End result? The university isn't about having "free speech all the time", it's where people pay for an education. So the Universities had to strike a balance, and they had to do something so that those who wanted to protest can do so, but WITHOUT DISRUPTING CLASSES.
You don't have the "right" to stand up and have a bitch-fest in a class you're signed up for, either - if you disrupt class, the professor has the right to order you out and call security if you don't leave. You don't have the "right" to prevent people from reaching classes either, and we had fuckwits from Code Pinko blockading the classrooms of engineering profs who had military service records and have some military research grants.
And that even includes the fuckwad professors who hold chemistry class bitching about Bush and why everyone should be antiwar, too. You want to protest them? Take it up w/ the Dean, in the student newspaper, in the courts, or on your own time - not in the class.
students at Hampton and Pace universities faced expulsion for handing out antiwar fliers, aka "unauthorized materials."
I don't care what you're doing - whether it's an anti-abortion flyer, a pro-abortion flyer, an antiwar flyer, a pro-war flyer, or an advertising for your frat/sorostitute group's drinking party. If you're trying to force it into people's hands, or putting it on their cars (which is what WE get all the time where I work)... no. If someone actively takes it from you? Fine. But you don't have the right to force crap into my hands and you don't have the right to fuck with my vehicle. And I'm 100% sure that's the bullcrap they are really referring to.
I also love this little gem:
1. Target dissidents. As the warfare state has triggered dissent, the campus has attracted increasing scrutiny--with student protesters in the cross hairs. The government's number-one target? Peace and justice organizations.
I'd trust the guys writing this so-called "report" more if those so-called "peace and justice organizations" weren't fronts for communist groups (ANSWER, International Socialist Workers Party, etc), anarchist groups, blatant racial supremacist organizations (MEChA and La Raza, motto "For the race, everything, for other races, nothing"), or international terrorist/genocide groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
I mean, really. We had a table of morons set up who were boldly collecting money that they admitted they'd be sending to Hezbollah. They should all have been deported for violating their visas - half of them had already dropped this semester's classes anyways, like they do every semester.
This is the beginning of the end. First, they own your money. Then they monitor your correspondence. Then they call you crazy if you call them on what they are doing. Then ignorance is called strength. And then universal surveillance is called freedom. So how's is Britney Spears doing today? Anyone caught the game?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
3. Keep an eye (or hundreds of them) focused on campus. Surveillance has become a boom industry nationally--one that now reaches deep into the heart of campuses. In fact, universities have witnessed explosive growth since 2001 in the electronic surveillance of students, faculty and campus workers. On ever more campuses, closed-circuit security cameras can track people's every move, often from hidden or undisclosed locations, sometimes even into classrooms.
I helped get this established on our campus. Why did we do it? It has nothing to do with "tracking everyone" and everything to do with crime. We have cameras on the parking lots because we kept having "neighbors" from the black-dominated slums nearby breaking into cars and carjacking people, and so they now have someone watching to dispatch a cop to a problem spot 24/7. We have cameras on buildings leading to classrooms, and even a few IN classrooms, because of people committing rapes and getting into fights.
5. Track foreign-born students; keep the undocumented out.
Yeah. Because enforcing the law is a problem... how?
The American Immigration Law Foundation estimates that only one in twenty undocumented immigrants who graduate high school goes on to enroll in a college--many don't go because they cannot afford the tuition but also because they have good reason to be afraid: ICE has deported a number of those who did make it to college, some before they could graduate.
When every one that gets in displaces a legal citizen, legal resident, legal visa-holder who had the RIGHT to apply... yeah. I applaud such efforts.
The main watchdog for campus rights abuses is FIRE.
Speech codes and anti-harassment "respect" policies are the most common culprits when it comes to violating individual rights at colleges.
Two issues out of the article -
1. Police departments on campus getting more firearms, including semiautomatic rifles and pistols.
This is just dumb, for several reasons.
A. Students may not see it that way, but the reason that campus police have guns is to protect the students. Criminals love to target students. Better armed criminals argues for better armed campus police. Happy peaceful unarmed campus police equals soft target. And there are always some nuts out there. Campus police may seem intimidating to students, and part of their job is to keep students from rioting and burning campuses down during periodic fits of dissention, but their primary job is to go get the people who come from outside to prey on students.
B. 99% of police in the US now use semi-automatic pistols - they're just a better choice for officers than revolvers.
C. Semi-automatic rifles are, in many situations, less likely to hurt bystanders than shotguns, the more common shoulder arm police use. Police also have had some long-range issues (snipers, mass murders, etc) which rifles are needed to counter.
2. Blackwater as an example in the privatization
Blackwater has for a long long time been a police and security training company. They also got into private security in Iraq, yes, but what they do in the US is nearly entirely provide tactical and skills training to police officers. Do you want more professional, better trained police? Most people do... Doctors and Paramedics need continuing training, so should Police. Some departments are big enough to do most of their own training, but most aren't. Training is good.
Yes, it's a little known fact that all the suicide bombers in the world have all had Philosophy degrees. Grow up man, terrorists come from anywhere, the world isn't as black and white as you seem to think.
Today's lucky number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Finally we have proof that (all) Government(s) fear the education of the populace. As if there was any doubt before.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
I don't know, but I smell one now.
Students beat each other up regularly. A bit. Rarely with any serious injury. With regularity, they date rape each other, unfortunately.
Forcible stranger rapes, murders, muggings, knifings, etc? Almost entirely off campus individuals.
I paid attention to statistics when I was in college, and my campus PD made them available.
In some situations, a shotgun is safer. That doesn't include any attacker over about 60 meters away, anyone holding a hostage in front of them, etc.
Most rifle bullets don't go through walls. 5.56mm is notorious for being stopped by 2 sheets of drywall. Any professional knows this.
Yes, if fired upwards at high angles, some rifle bullets can travel a few miles. It's part of the risk and safety issues.
I smell armchair.
Which is -
A. Completely immaterial to their police training operations in the US.
B. Completely false - the US government laws do cover Blackwater staff in Iraq, under any but the most paranoid interpretations of the law. The FBI are investigating the late 2007 big shootout and expect to be able to file charges if they find someone at fault. A defense attorney might wriggle out the legal ambiguity, but probably not. Judges aren't dumb. And Blackwater's head, and the head of the Diplomatic Security Service, asked for the law to be rewritten to clearly cover contractors for DSS.
I've worked for several colleges, and most had Free-Speech Zones where student organizations, community members where allowed to setup tables, pass out leaflets, etc. The other instututions that didn't have these, had a general understanding of "where" was appropriate to have peaceful protest, or speakers.
In all cases, these areas were central to the campus and often in areas where students tended to gather normally. I never observed police try to interfere with the students or speakers and only interfered outside these areas when they were breaking the law (e.g. using chalk on unviersity buildings walls where the rain wouldn't wash it off), harassing bystanders going to class, or were being loud as to interupt others right to peace. (e.g. interupting classes.)
Unfortunately in my experience, the only situations I observed censorship in higher ed were in the classrooms, where students were penalized in their academic work for arguing alternative theories (e.g. in the social sciences) that were not the prefered theories or ideologies of the professors. I found it was a lot easier to grit my teeth and agree in class and on paper with the professors than argue any alternative viewpoint.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
It seems they are battening down all the hatches, going totally overboard as far as "Homeland Security" is concerned.
They think they can get away with it.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
There were moderately credible going around the campus that I'm on (26K+ students) that all student phone calls were monitored by a single FBI agent. What a horrible job, he must have done something to get placed there, we could just that Simpsons scene of homeland security agents intently listening to students calling there parents complaining about how horrible college was :)
We also found a new prank: using the phones in random rooms to yell "terrorist buzz words" into.
Um, do you have any experience with shotguns other than Doom/Quake? A shotgun fires a number of pellets that spread rapidly into a cone shape. After about 30 ft, the spread will be about 12 inches. With 00 buck shot, that is 8 pellets somewhere in a one foot circle. Think about a shoulder shot with 4 pellets missing the target entirely. They will be heading down range and can easily hit a bystander. Shotguns are great weapons for close in fighting, especially indoors and in heavy brush, due to limited range. At anything more than 60 ft, they loose effectiveness and are a danger to anything down range.
Oh, and shotgun pellets can go through walls just fine. Especially 0 or 00 buck shot at close range. The big difference is that the shotgun will put a 2-3 inch hole in the wall and create more shrapnel.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
1. Purchase Critical Thinking textbook
2. Memorize Critical Thinking textbook
3. Reproduce responses from Critical Thinking textbook's sample exam in closed-book text
4. Receive Critical Thinking credits.
Universities are there to teach you to produce an obedient workforce and keep you from questioning authority--the exact antithesis to their ostensible goals. Universities today exist for the students no more than newspapers do for the readers.
This "Repress U" DHS stuff is just another bit of evidence that supports this argument.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
If they're undocumented, how do you know they are foreign-born?
Racial profiling? Always popular - ask any American of Asian heritage how many times strangers have asked where they are from, and still don't clue-in when the answer is "Chicago" or "Oakland". There's a reason some people get real touchy about racial profiling -- they get this shit constantly even when they are fourth-generation Americans. Racial profiling always turns out to be white racism - there is no USA race.
Accents? Okay, say you do "your papers please" on everyone with a foreign-sounding accent. Why do you want to track these people now? You just report undocumented students to Immigration, job done.
Sorry, but I don't get this one. Maybe someone could fill in? Right now it sounds like an outfit without the authority to actually check papers wants some sort of rubber stamp to make them into official vigilante finger-pointers? I don't get it.
A friend of mine who disagrees with a lot of my opinions described this situation very simply. He said, "If either of us were less intelligent we wouldn't be friends but enemies".
I always point out that organizing is the antithesis of anarchy [...]
No it's not. Anarchy is not chaos; it's a lack of rule. Chaos is just a natural result.
There's nothing about being an anarchist that prevents you from listening to someone else's advice. The key difference between an anarchist and, say, someone who believes in electing a leader is the expectation that once a leader is chosen that everyone *must* listen to them. An anarchist is free to nod his head at the advice and then go off and do his own thing.
Sure, people might complain at him and he may or may not be made to feel guilty, but there's no binding law making him do what he's told or providing for remedies for him not doing so. That's anarchy -- the lack of legal / community-imposed consequences for your actions; it's not some boneheaded, punk-rock poser obsession with telling everyone, "F--- off," who might tell you what would be a good idea to do.
Apparently, when you were a kid, you had a very juvenile view of the concept, and adulthood doesn't seem to have cured you of it.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The existence of the Bill of Rights created the impression in people that if the government isn't explicitly banned from doing something, the government can do it.
Both ideas have merits. If there were no Bill of Rights, people would run totally roughshod over rights. At the same time, people lost sight of the need for explicit permission in Constitution for government activity.
I believe the final blow was FDR's court packing scheme. The Supreme Court kept ruling New Deal initiatives unconstitutional but backed down some after FDR's threat.
So, according to the explicit permission view, everything from Social Security to the Department of Education would go away. Unless a bunch of amendments were passed. That isn't going to happen anytime soon.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
You left out that the Democratic party was formed around a group of conservatives who did not want a change to the status quo...ie, slavery and states rights. The Republican Party of the 1860s was very liberal, fighting for the rights of all people, poor, colored, etc. They were in favor of federal control and felt that the government should help the common man.
What you left out was that the two parties essentially switched place in the 40s and 50s. The Democrats began sliding toward the left, becoming more liberal. This caused a groundswell of conservatives to bolt from the party, forming the Dixiecrats. These people began to fill the ranks of the Republicans as that party drifted to the right. The result was that by the 1980s, the Republican Party was the party of limited federal government (states rights) and business before the common man (slavery?). Democrats took up the torch of liberalism (change...being liberal is about introducing change into the system!!!!!!) and pushed for more social reforms which increased the government.
Something strange is happening now...its the switch all over again, except that people aren't really seeing it. The Neo-Cons are essentially the extreme right heading out on their own again. The Republican party had attracted a large number of middle to lower class people based on the platform of religion and guns (two areas that hold great sway for them) while the Democrats have begun to attract more "conservative" types who want less government and a balanced budget!!! This is a switch happening before our eyes. The real question then become which party will become which. I think that this is why the candidates that are running are so diverse. There is no one overriding issue like there was last time (civil rights) to really divide the parties.
The point is that the current administration is the Dixiecrats, they will support big business is that business treats them with the honor befitting the ruling class, the plantation owners if you will, and they will gladly tell the masses that they are really looking out for them.
Case in point: In the 8 years in office, has Bush done anything to lessen gun control? All they have done is let a bill sunset...no successful attempts to allow more lax laws. How about religion? They talk about it all the time, but when congress and the president were of the same party, they didn't radically change everything and require prayer in schools, 10 commandments everywhere etc.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not with everybody else. I'm just trying to figure out where my vote will go and it doesn't look pretty right now.
Pro-gun, socially conscience, and against intrusive governments....Huh?
Which ones? The ones who voted for the Iraq war, the new bankruptcy bill or the DMCA?
Your assumption is that all of these particular topics are somehow indicators of leftist policy. They aren't necessarily. The leftists are the ones that want higher taxes, bigger government, and more government entitlements. You do have a choice. You simply have to exercise it. Most voters simply look at party lines rather than the substance of a candidate.