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Revisiting DIY HERF Guns
An anonymous reader writes "HERF guns have previously been regarded as nothing more than an interesting project with uses ranging from at-home experiments to malicious pranks. But the deployment of 'morally gray' forms of high-tech crowd control, such as the recent use of a sound cannon against domestic protesters, along with the likely future unleashing of the pain gun on more than just 'foreign terrorists,' creates a new purpose for these relatively easily assembled devices. Could HERF guns become a new method to counter the silencing of protesters via these sophisticated attacks, or is there any other way to prevent such efficient, convenient crowd dispersal?"
a HERF gun is "(a device like EMP but directional) ... capable of stalling cars at a distance and crashing computers as well."
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
... the sort of thing that can work both ways.
I can't claim to know what HERF is without a visit to wikipedia, but compared to protesters, authorities will always outperform them when it comes to weaponry.
Yes, there is. Too bad most of the people in countries where it is available think little of it. It is called voting, and it works - although not very often. The idea is, basically, that you vote your friends into your parliament and they pass laws that forbid hi-tech crowd control.
A serious coordination effort is needed for that to happen, which would have been facilitated by some electronic medium that allows easy and cheap communication over large distances, by wire or otherwise. Maybe someone can build a prototype of such a medium as well?
That company has been making those soft foam toys for years, and I don't think anyone has ever been hurt. I've seen the guns and they are harmless.
But the deployment of 'morally gray' forms of high-tech crowd control [...] creates a new purpose for these relatively easily assembled devices.
No, it creates a new purpose for the second amendment to the US constitution.
Until a few people die to demonstrate that we won't put up with casual torture via tasers, sound cannons, pain rays, and what-have-you, the police will continue to use such technologies on the populace for increasingly trivial reasons. We've already seen them go from "nonlethal defense" to promoting "compliance" to merely enforcing obsequious levels of civility... And now, merely to clear the streets in blatant violation of another of our rights (the first).
Can't say I have the balls to put myself in the firing line, but I predict another "Kent State" within the next few years.
The US and UK have two parties each, and the two parties are basically not very different. Barring a few specific situations, votes for other parties or independents have no effect. If you don't agree with the way things are, you can't stand for the major parties, and I'm not too familiar with the US system, but the UK's "first past the post" system makes it nearly impossible for new parties to go anywhere, as the only way for one to become effective would be for large numbers of people to throw their votes away for several elections in a row.
Sometimes, voting is not going to change anything.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
So who should I vote for?
What about dressing up in silver foil to force the electromagnetic waves around your body?
You might think that would work, until you realize the majority of the average electorate is more concerned with frivolity than rights violations.Certainly not rights violations against those wacko protesters. Look at the outrage at the various bailouts (not frivolous at all, mind you) or the various personal Clinton scandals (certainly frivolous) the Nixon scandal (frivolous compared to his warmongering) and compare that to the outrage over the PATRIOT act, the Iraq war, the various torture scandals, etc. etc.
Who do those protester guys think they are, anyways? Ah well, it's time for the football game.
SSC
The idea is, basically, that you vote your friends into your parliament and they pass laws that forbid hi-tech crowd control.
This will work only in a parliamentary democracy, with fair elections and multiple parties. This will not work in today's USA because of the one-party (some say two-party) rule. Your voting choices would be limited to two evils, and it's hard to tell which is a lesser one. A third party, even if allowed onto the ballot, will not be elected.
It is also hard to get enough support for small issues. If Alice proposes to stop the war and Bob promises to permit demonstrations who do you think will win? Once elected, US politicians have only one concern - how to get reelected. Usually that requires working with important people and companies, often against interests of their constituents.
if only a 3rd party large would stand for voting reforms...oh wait!
I'm all for promoting homegrown electronic countermeasures, as I've long fantasized about building a directional, subsonic-targeting HERF weapon to discourage noise pollution on my residential street.
However, I think promoting Counter-countermeasures is equally important: Faraday cages, attenuators, reflectors, and EMP-hard electronics. If you're gonna play with fireworks, then learn how to make a fire extinguisher, too.
I can see the fnords!
Shit I forgot about you Young'ins> That song by Buffalo Springfield (Neil Young was in it - the crazy looking old guy who sang "Rockin in the Free World" ) was a song about the Kent State Massacre. A bunch of national guardsmen shot some college kids for protesting against the Viet Nam War.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
This is so much BS. There is nothing stopping voters from voting from candidates they like (or from joining a party and actually becoming a candidate).
If local politics actually worked better than state and national politics, I might believe it, but (in my experience) they are often worse, with even more blatant favoritism and abuses of power.
The problem you have is that voters are apathetic and easily bought off with things you don't like, not some two party hegemony holding power from everyone else.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Yes, there is. Too bad most of the people in countries where it is available think little of it. It is called voting, and it works - although not very often. The idea is, basically, that you vote your friends into your parliament and they pass laws that forbid hi-tech crowd control.
My kingdom for a mod point. Human societies often suffer from the Little Red Hen syndrome, wherein everyone wants the bread, but nobody can be bothered to actually help prepare it.
Democracy is a messy, tiresome, boring, downright infuriating system where one is constantly tormented by the most aggravating invention known to man: other people's opinions. It is, however, the one system that actually incorporates social/political change into its very structure. And that is something that countless people suffering under authoritarian or absolutist rulers find remarkably appealing.
A serious coordination effort is needed for that to happen, which would have been facilitated by some electronic medium that allows easy and cheap communication over large distances, by wire or otherwise. Maybe someone can build a prototype of such a medium as well?
The technical means exist. That's never been the problem. The issue here is creating and sustaining a culture of participation. While social networks and other means go a long way to facilitating that process, people still need to actually listen to one another. And that, as I've said, is one of the most exquisite tortures known to man. Except of course for all the other ones.
By the way - and not coincidentally - the Beck-ification of political discourse is neither accidental nor unplanned. Politicians have known for decades that the best way to subvert democracy was simply to shout it down. It's far, far easier to manipulate a population that's splintered, resentful and incapable of conducting an actual dialogue to resolve its differences or find manageable compromise. The knee-jerk name-calling on either side of every issue, when it's echoed, magnified and given focus by mass media, is specifically designed to subvert the kind of processes that sustain democracy.
In short: Yes, there are anti-democratic forces at play, and yet we are still our own worst enemies.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
I think the gist of people's interest is the overwhelming concern about the police having access to such technology, without any policy in place guaranteeing that it won't and/or can't be misused. It scares the heck out of me that I could be in a perfectly legal protest, and some officer in charge arbitrarily decides we're "not in compliance", and all they have to do is press a button to force people into submission. And your contention that it should be alright to arrest people for interest in this subject is absurd. Plain and simple.
I'd rather get shot with an armor piercing bullet (generally something with a hard metal jacket) than with something designed to mushroom and spall. Of course, I'd rather not get shot at all, but there you go.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I'm all in favour of making DIY HERF devices to safeguard against tyranny. But we only need such things because the government is no longer afraid of the people who vote it into power. When ordinary people can no longer acquire the tools to depose despots, then it is a sure sign that those tools are now needed.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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I don't know Stephen, that depends. Are they using those AP bullets against drug lords wearing body armor or are they spraying windshields on the highway after having an unmarked police car pull an illegal maneuver to give them an excuse?
This isn't using molotov's in a riot "against the man", its a bigass radio antenna that breaks high tech equipment that's used to torture people sometimes to death in the streets after a few undercover cops threw rocks out of a crowd.
The police and military are supposed to have an advantage, they're not supposed to use that advantage butcher american citizens just because its more convenient. Go read up on "Excited Delirium".
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Must be nice to be a rich white man. And I say this with all due respect... you are a tool. HERV weapons don't blow things up, they aren't designed to do so, and they aren't generally capable of doing so. They do disable sophisticated electronics in an area.
The police are not "supposed" to have an unfair advantage, WTF ever gave you that idea? The same armor police wear is available to anyone that wants to buy it. The same weapons the police use are available to anyone that wants to buy them (with some exceptions). However, the systems and weapons to defeat the police are also available to anyone that wants them. (or can build them).
Ultimately the people will take the power back. The only question is how much and whoes blood will be spilt in the process.
This will not work in today's USA because of the one-party (some say two-party) rule.
No. It will work in any country that elects its officials and has an active, informed and participating civil society. Which begins not on elections day, but at home. People who complain about a two-party system, impossibility of change, etc. etc. are just uninformed or lazy.
It is also hard to get enough support for small issues. I
No, it isn't. If it were hard, there would be no lobbying industry in Washington. Most lobbyists are working on small to smaller to microscopic issues. That is how they tend to get an article in an unrelated law that benefits a single company.
Scientology Protest.
Surely just putting in a pair of earplugs and lining your clothes with tin foil would do the trick?
You say the system is broken because the voters are apathetic, the GP said voters are apathetic because the system is broken.
As evidence you point to local elections, which are incestuous and dishonest in SoCal, but very sincere and productive in NorCal (the two areas I've experienced). So local politics reflects local values. But what values do national elections reflect?
I say, as long as federal tax dollars are spent to promote the democratic and republican parties exclusively, we don't actually live in a democracy. Voters don't matter when the government itself will outspend your party.
Changa hates change.
That's freakin' ILLEGAL! It's mass-assault! Don't act as if it were something normal or even OK.
Some plainclothes cops in that crowd starting a riot, does not change that.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
voting hasn't changed a single thing in the US in the last 200 years
Cops are supposed to have an unfair advantage. What do you think about armor piercing bullets?
Cops are supposed to uphold the legitimate rule of law, as well; not to act as the brute force support system of global fascism. There is a vast difference.
the HERF and EMP devices I've looked at are a little impractical.
You can't assemble and carry explosive devices about. A compressed coil EMP device looks and works like a bomb. This means serious jail time if you are caught with one. I can't find any other kind of device that is small enough to transport and has even a small chance of producing a large enough pulse to be effective.
A HERF device effective against the sound cannon would need a lot of power and a waveguide. This makes them heavy to move about and obvious to their location. The military have put a lot of research into these, from as far back as the 1960's, and they still tend to be large truck mounted devices. A two man solution was once tried, with one person carrying the batteries and voltage multiplier and the other with the capacitors and magnetron. Insulation problems and insufficient power ended the project.
The problem always seems to be getting a powerful enough power source that is portable.
All it would take is some unlucky person with a pacemaker getting near your device and you're in for negligent homicide.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
You can vote for anyone you like to your hearts content, but unless that person has the blessing of a major party they will not be permitted to take office.
Because only voting for winning candidates has effect, voting for anyone but the majors has exactly the same effect as not voting at all.
In the US, the "two party system" is a sham designed to keep the real power(s) (in power) and no one could ever have a successful third party.
In fact, the most successful "third party" presidential candidates (Libertarian & Green) are forbidden entry into the presidential debates (even as audience attendees).
In many states new laws have been passed which effectively prevent any participation by third party groups by making it impossible to get a candidate on the ballot.
In the US (IMHO) the government is just a tool of the vast financial interests that are the real masters of the US of A.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
With my luck, I would go through the trouble of building it and the idiot behind me would be driving an older car.... you know, with points, a condenser, and a coil providing the spark. All this high-tech effort for not.
I can't be the only one who read this as "DIY NERF Guns" and imagined an arena of people duking it out with homebrewed foam weapons, right?
"Could HERF guns become a new method to counter the silencing of protesters via these sophisticated attacks, or is there any other way to prevent such efficient, convenient crowd dispersal?"
Only if they are cyborg protesters.
I don't think the system is broken. I have low expectations and figure it is about what we are going to get.
Mostly, I wish more people had a healthy distaste for rules (this doesn't mean having zero rules, it just means not having rules about every goddamn inane thing some tiresome biddy thinks about once).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Epic fail. Being interested in building a HERF device - or even doing so - doesn't make anyone a criminal, let alone a terrorist. I direct your attention to the concept of "intent".
The process you're referring to is called "buying" and is done by lobbies. Voting is just a facade, because it does not matter who you vote for. Nearly everyone on the list is already bought.
The rest is pushed out by not having tons of financed marketing.
I say: Build your own community. Your own state. And make yourself as independent as possible. Especially from the cattle that still vote those strawmen.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
What do you think about SWAT teams and the national guard?
Voting works in certain situations but not in others. The right to peaceably assemble is indeed often called into question when large crowds are concerned, especially if the authorities don't like what the crowds are assembling against. However such crowds do indeed often pose a real public safety risk.
I see the real defence against these new anti-crowd techniques to be sousveillance. The crowd recording and quickly posting their experiances online. Showing police provocation if any, (and being peaceful themselves).
Peaceful also means not provoking the police and putting forth one's message in a calm manner. Screaming at the top of one's lungs or through a bullhorn is not necessarily a right as it often infringes upon the rights of others by crossing over into private spaces. Gahndi and Dr. King are prime examples to follow.
"Sometimes, voting is not going to change anything." Whoa there sparky! No offense but this is EXACTLY the sentiment that keeps the corrupt in power. Especially in a country like the United States, the ability of congress, or elected officials in general, to infringe on your rights is proportional to your willingness to accept it. I am from a small town in North Carolina, our local government was using federal authority to condemn property along a projected water works project. It was supported by 80% of our local elected officials. Our High School took it upon ourselves to put an end to this because two of our teachers were losing their family homes because of it. We found candidates who were qualified and AGAINST the use of eminent domain and campaigned for and with them. We managed to replace 75% of our incumbents in a single election, in my town all officials are elected for two year terms, including our mayor. We held public rallies and carnival like events explaining how the government was stealing "Your land" and caused the mass replacement of elected officials. The waterworks project was canceled, and my ex-teachers are still in their homes. The point of this rant is this, the day we stop exercising our right to a democracy is the day we lose it. Sitting on your couch complaining about what is going on achieves nothing! As long as a large section of the population is uninterested corruption becomes ever more common. Democracy works but it requires you to care. Anyone that does not get involved with politics but complains about the outcome is simply asking for others to make decisions for them and do all the leg work, if you want a country where you don't have to worry about being involved with politics try Iran. It seriously sickens me to hear "Vote? What's the point?" Your FREEDOM is at stake fool! Governments rarely destroy liberty overnight, they do it peicemeal, as in "The came for the eggs, they came for the tobacco, they came for the money, they came for the land..." eventually you wake up under a dictatorship. Don't believe me? Look at world history, dictators don't come to power overnight they build a strong political base of loyalists first and THEN take over. Wake up, get off your couch, and make a difference before you have no say at all.
"Ok, the question for our next candidate goes to Mr. Handsome Dashing. Please explain your stance on HERF guns. You have two minutes, starting now."
It is, however, the one system that actually incorporates social/political change into its very structure. And that is something that countless people suffering under authoritarian or absolutist rulers find remarkably appealing.
a) Genuine democracy does not scale with current population levels. As someone else here said, the American Constitution was originally written for a population of 3 million, which is 1/100th of the population's current size.
b) Government now has sufficient control of the media that they don't need to play by the rules. They can kill whoever they want, whenever they want, and then call it terrorism, and the majority of the population will not challenge it.
c) Any attempt to displace the current government would result in unspeakably massive civilian casualties, and you can bet that the government knows that. They would be relying on the domestic population's reluctance to engage in large scale conflict, more than anything else.
It's also a very safe thing for them to rely on. The contemporary population of the entire Western world has been domesticated more chronically than at any other time in human history. Only very small percentages of that population have actually seen active combat. The rest of them would have less than no chance, and that includes you and me. Training and physical fitness aside, the single biggest problem is probably simply the extent to which we would not have the stomach for it.
I'm all in favour of making DIY HERF devices to safeguard against tyranny. But we only need such things because the government is no longer afraid of the people who vote it into power. When ordinary people can no longer acquire the tools to depose despots, then it is a sure sign that those tools are now needed.
If you're a conservative wanting weapons to depose a despot, you're a patriot.
If you're a liberal peacefully protesting a despot, you're a traitor.
---
DIY Electronics Feed @ Feed Distiller
Crowded highway, guy. Even in the hypothetical, you have to think further back, and to the left and right.
If the tailgater's engine just stalls and the tailgater knows how to safely get to the side of the road, fine.
I suppose you're going to blame the people behind the tailgater for not following at a safe distance? Are you always far enough back to safely stop if the car ahead of you suddenly rolls or spins out?
But what about the oncoming traffic? What about beyond the sides of the road?
If his brake system or steering has electronics (pneumatics?) go wonky, or if even if he doesn't know how to get over safely without power, maybe he strays into oncoming traffic the opposite direction. Maybe he spins or rolls. Maybe he shoots off the road into the pedestrian zone. What if the road is elevated over a residential district?
If you're going to think about disabling the tailgater, you've got to think a bit further -- machines that can take over the entire control of the car. And then think that about the implications of that.
By the way, this may seem to be out of the blue, but are you in favor of stricter laws about intellectual property, or stricter enforcement?
Video 1 VS a PC
Video 2
If you truly believe that the two parties are roughly equivalent and that both candidates are equally bad for the job, then, at least in Britain, you aren't throwing your vote away by choosing a third party candidate. No, you're not going to win the entire government, but you will end up with at least some representation. In the U.S., if a national third party were to get 25% of the vote in a years worth of Senate races, spread out roughly equally all across the country, absolutely nothing would come of it. If that happened in England, the third party would have a decent representation in parliament. So while it is very difficult in England for a third party to gain significant power, it is absolutely impossible in America (unless winning the presidency but having no support in congress counts as significant power, which would require a well funded, well connected, and charasmatic candidate, in addition to miraculous circumstances).
The problem is that democracy is so incredibly easy to subvert.
People are, by and large, easily manipulated.
The media corporations in democratic nations mostly control the democratic process in those nations.
Very few people who vote do so for genuine reasons; they vote the way that they do based on 'advertising', in much the same way that they decide what brand of coffee to buy.
I have zero faith in democracy because I have zero faith in (the majority of) peoples ability to resist being manipulated by the sorts of techniques employed in marketing.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
They already have *guns*.
Seriously...would you rather they use those instead?
which were in response to a police curfew and crackdown on the nascent "hippie" counterculture. This was in 1966, 4 years before Kent State.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_Strip_curfew_riots
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/aug/05/local/me-then5
As far as a song about Kent State, you are surely thinking about "Ohio", by CSN+Y.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
The UK is a pathalogical case, where we even have a viable (theoretically) third party but every time there's a general election its support collapses and we're back to the 'pick one of the following: labour, conservative, throw away your vote'.
Worse - every single general election is basically a foregone conclusion. We *already* know that the conservatives will win the next election. Hardly worth bothering with the whole democratic bit to be honest.. just give cameron the key to number 10 and see how popular he is in 5 years.
No, you're not going to win the entire government, but you will end up with at least some representation.
Not true. Under the UK system the losing candidate in each seat gets nothing. A party could theoretically get 49% of the vote and zero seats (that would be insane, though).
If we had proportional representation that statement might be true... as we do for the EU elections - but then everyone bitched that the BNP got a seat because a certain percentage voted for them.. so it proves we don't *want* minority parties to get representation.
Ultimately the people will take the power back. The only question is how much and whoes blood will be spilt in the process.
You do realize we have the power, right? You don't need to spill anyone's blood in the process. If 'the people' you are referring to have enough power to win a violent revolution, they have enough power to take it by voting. Unless your 'people' is some minority group trying to impose their will on the majority. Not a good idea.
Qxe4
, capable of putting out 500-1000 Watts. And much more powerful devices are pretty widely available from surplus dealers and even ham radio fleamarkets.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Did anyone else notice that the domain of Voltage Labs, from the old article, is gone, and replaced by a domain squatter? The "find something interesting" type.
Wow. I guess they were very successful. ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
My country (Italy) switched back and forth between proportional and first-past-the-post systems over the past 20 years, and still has a varied mix of electoral laws at different levels: French system for municipalities, English system for regions, German system for nation-wide elections, and I'll be damned if I remember what provinces are using. Result? We have different assholes, but always the same shit.
I think what we learnt is that corrupt politicians will be corrupt politicians, no matter the system. You lament the problems with two-party rule, but let me assure you that 5-party rule is no better, if they are all corrupt. Proportional representation causes fragmentation, volatile alliances, and lots of backstabbing. Small parties end up wielding inordinate amounts of power because they have that 0.5% needed to get over 50%. Guess how the other blocks try to convince them?
If I may suggest, I think the problem is completely orthogonal to what you think: the problem is advertisement. Political advertisement (as TV spots, bill boards, flyers) should be completely forbidden, and all electoral communication should run through regulated channels. Every candidate should have the same amount of bandwidth to communicate with voters, the exact amount not being particularly important, and each candidate should be forced to participate to debates and answer question from opponents and public, lest they are disqualified.
Political advertisement is very restricted e.g. in Norway: they had a long discussion about allowing political TV ads, and the general opinion is that they should stay forbidden; and Norway is a well functioning democracy if I ever saw one. I think it is a good idea because politics is about reasoning, not catchy slogans; also, when a campaign gets expensive, only the established parties can campaign. That puts any new movement to a disadvantage.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Guns, as used by the police, have actual restrictions and policy in place to direct their use. These new nonlethal technologies are, well, new. Any policies in place aren't going to be as clearly defined, or as restrictive.
The fact that the police have guns, doesn't make push-button control of crowds any less scary.
The idea is, basically, that you vote your friends into your parliament and they pass laws that forbid hi-tech crowd control.
This will work only in a parliamentary democracy, with fair elections and multiple parties. This will not work in today's USA because of the one-party (some say two-party) rule.
No government will willingly surrender its right to effective crowd control.
That is typically the sign of its imminent collapse and the emergence of something far more dangerous -
all you will accomplish is a return to low-tech methods.
The shield and the bludgeon. The fire hose. The firearm.
The American third "party" tends to be more nativist and reactionary than progressive. I suspect that the anti-geek coalition would emerge far stronger than any American incarnation of the Pirate Party.
The founding fathers did not believe in democracy. If you read your history you find that people like John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson believed that democracy = Anarchy. democracy DOES = anarchy. For a democracy to be good you have to have everyone be vary smart. One hour a day would not be anoth.
We are not, nor have we ever been a democracy. We are a republic. republic = "public affairs" or for the people. People are picked to rule for the peoples good. (just in case the government fails a large number of people, we have the 2nd amendment right to protect our self from them)
If they use those, you'll likely end up with some dead/maimed protesters, which is a great way to give publicity to the protesters' cause. Not to mention the lawsuits against the police force.
Most 'non-lethal' weapons leave no identifiable marks or immediate, lasting effects. Opening fire with actual guns is a very restricted action, and civilian getting hurt or killed by police guns causes horrible publicity and higher officials into early retirement. But with 'non-lethal' weapons, you can open fire indiscriminately. Going about your daily business? Protesting peacefully? Sorry, but you were deemed trouble makers, and will be hit with short-term torture, which may have long-term effects. Good luck proving that, though.
When someone DOES die from these weapons (it is not at all uncommon; look up "taser deaths" for just one group of such), the police get off, the officials get off; it was just a "fluke" which they "had no control over". Technically difficulty. The death was an unfortunate accident, nothing more.
So yes, I would rather they have only guns. There is accountability with guns, and it is a hell of a lot harder to justify firing a machine gun into a crowd than using 'non-lethal crowd control technology'.
Great Intellect...
This is so much BS. There is nothing stopping voters from voting from candidates they like (or from joining a party and actually becoming a candidate).
Well, yes, but the present balloting system effectively marginalizes third parties. I've commented on this on slashdot before-- there are other balloting systems, such as approval voting, in which third parties are not marginalized.
If local politics actually worked better than state and national politics, I might believe it, but (in my experience) they are often worse, with even more blatant favoritism and abuses of power.
And that's a major problem, because local elections are the step for candidates to enter state and national elections.
OK, [! soapbox-mode off]
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
And yet it is getting better, for lots of reasons:
* I read a survey that shows 70% of the country believes that the news is biased and inaccurate. This is compared to 30% only a year ago. Realizing that your news source is inaccurate is the first step towards a realistic perception of the world.
* The internet is giving people more information, and forums where they have to defend their ideas. I know it may be hard to believe, but the sophistication of the average argument on the internet is improving. Sure, we always have people going through the clueless adolescent troll stage, but compare the arguments of someone who actively posts on the internet with someone who only reads the newspaper and talks to his friends, and you will see a huge difference. You just can't get the same breadth of ideas in meatspace.
* People actually care. In the 90s, when everything was going well, no one cared too much what the government was doing. We kind of ignored it. Now after 9/11 and Bush, people are taking a lot greater interest in their government, and are really unhappy with it. If there's one thing I can thank Bush for, it's motivating people to be more interested in government.
* The two parties have never been weaker than now. Centrist, independent voters have become a major force to reckon with, and there is even talk that in the next few years independents might start winning elections. Really, there isn't much to like about either party, but politics move slowly, and it will take time for things to change.
Qxe4
In the US, the "two party system" is a sham designed to keep the real power(s) (in power) and no one could ever have a successful third party.
Again-- continuing to beat the same horse-- this is an artifact of the balloting system. There are other balloting systems, some of which do not marginalize third parties.
In fact, the most successful "third party" presidential candidates (Libertarian & Green) are forbidden entry into the presidential debates
They're not allowed into the debate because they're marginal, not vice versa. You call them "most successful", but in that context, "most successful" means "they get a percent or two of the vote". Not "they win elections."
The answer would be a different system that does not marginalize third parties (and, as a side effect, would mean that third parties would pick candidates that might have a real shot at winning.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
You need to tell this story more often (with proper paragraph breaks put in, of course), because this is exactly the kind of thing that will change this country. Only when people start getting involved in politics will things change.
Qxe4
People don't seem to care that a HERF gun fires microwaves, and that microwaves will do physical damage to people. If they will interfere with electronics then they will interfere with the people standing near the target. Personally I hope that the Darwin effect will kick in and the people who think that playing with HERF in their garage is fun, will be sterile after a few HERF test runs.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I wanted to find out about a HERF device, so I went to the 2003 slashdot story and followed the link there . Its gone. The domain has been bought out by some sleazy company. Following the HERF link on the page takes you to a place advertising penny stocks.
So what happened to this Slava dude?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Democracy is a messy, tiresome, boring, downright infuriating system where one is constantly tormented by the most aggravating invention known to man: other people's opinions.
The knee-jerk name-calling on either side of every issue, when it's echoed, magnified and given focus by mass media, is specifically designed to subvert the kind of processes that sustain democracy.
LOL and too true. What are you channelling Churchill here? This is great stuff.
My kingdom for a mod point.
Indeed, if I had a kingdom to trade, or a mod point...
Life's a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
That's not true, a party can win the popular vote and get 0 seats because the big too have much more regional bias.
e.g they could get 30% everywhere, but conservatives get 50% in the counties and labour get 50% up north!
ofc last i checked lib dems said they would have a referendum to move to prop rep, imo prop rep would mean always being lead by a coalition not a party and parties like the BNP would get representation so i don't know if people would buy it but at least it would have a chance!
I think you'll have a hard time proving that 'government', or even some specific component of government, has enough control of the media in order to perpetrate something serious. They can frame a small number of people, brand them with 'pedo' or 'terrorist' or 'drug dealer' and everybody just nods... but this doesn't scale.
A much more relevant government power is this: more than 50% of Americans now receive significantly direct payments from some level of government. At that point it is impossible for a democracy to scale back its own taxing or spending. The only way out of it is to switch over to a monarchy for a while, and hope we get a philosopher king who can resist the corrupting force of that power.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
I know I could easily make a small and portable device that would technically fall under the banned non-leathal weapons category of some U.N. charter. All it needs is the laser LED from a broken CD or DVD player, an old flashlight body, some batteries, and a few minutes of soldering. And this requires nowhere near the technical electronics skill needed to make the HERF, just enough care not to burn up the LED and to get the polarity right.
I also believe there is very little counter to it's use, in other words "Teh goggles, they do nothing..."
But have I made one? No. Should I be considered a terrorist for knowing how? I don't think so.
Of course those who think otherwise shouldn't bother reading this post with remaining eye.
You do realize we have the power, right? You don't need to spill anyone's blood in the process. If 'the people' you are referring to have enough power to win a violent revolution, they have enough power to take it by voting. Unless your 'people' is some minority group trying to impose their will on the majority. Not a good idea.
Glad to see someone else saying this. I don't know why it's so hard for some people to understand.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
Uh, no. You could have 25% of the entire voting population support you - you would still get zero representation. That's what first past the post means.
Several other European countries have a proportional representation system. In that you can still get seats/representation without actually outright winning a district or constituency.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
So you used lies to defeat a project to benefit the community in order to protect the houses of two of your friends from being bought? That's democracy in action!
Let's see. Protestors turn violent. The police use the sound cannon to disperse them. The protestors use a HERF to disable the sound cannon. How do you think the police will respond?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
In short: Yes, there are anti-democratic forces at play, and yet we are still our own worst enemies.
Yes. And the worst offender is Rupert Murdoch.
Look at the lengths this man will go to in order to have control of the media, he took American citizenship so he could buy a TV station in the country. Now, you have Fox News.
To Mr Murdoch it is about power. His control over media - on a near-global scale - makes politicians his playthings. If you are suspicious of government, then perhaps you should not be ignoring the man behind the curtain. Nobody fucking elected him.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
In other words, it's rather trivial to design cases and electrical grounding structures that will not cease operation merely due to a large voltage spike. In fact, I'd expect lots of devices to be immune to this right now. It depends on the capacitors used. I'd expect even some cell phones to be able to take this kind of punishment.
Perhaps I'm wrong about this, but it seems to me that merely placing a capacitor between the voltage line and ground would make this sort of attack impossible. Historically this was not done due to cost reasons, but these days in the spirit of "chip space is cheap and power grids have quirks you wouldn't believe" it is done on virtually every line that could be affected by this weapon. The EMP guns I've heard described, even those that require physical contact with the target do not work on more recent BMW's, so it seems to me they'll lose all effectiveness in a few years anyway, as cars are replaced with newer ones (a HERF really disables the injectors of the motor's cylinders. If they're isolated from the exterior of the car, you're out of luck with your HERF even with ancient cars. Newer cars simply take precautions against voltage spikes).
The real issue is what happens when everyone and his goat can construct stuff like this and carry it around. Weapons that target the human body cannot be effectively countered, as we cannot redesign the human body. And directional sound ... not hard (especially focusing it on a single guy ... not hard, and the effects *will* be quite lethal, or at the very least cause brain damage, if turned up a notch). And if properly done it's absurdly hard to hear, or otherwise determine, where the sound is coming from, and the speaker array does not have to be turned toward the target, it doesn't have to move. You could just have what appears to be a black plate hanging in a window frame even hundreds of meters away from the target, and aim with a webcam (since aiming would be based on calculations you would presumably need a computer to aim anyway).
Most newer weapons design have this flaw : a bit of study and anyone can make them. They do not require exotic materials, large labs or difficult to acquire electronics. Instead, they're using very well understood principles, and off-the-shelf items.
It is, however, the one system that actually incorporates social/political change into its very structure. And that is something that countless people suffering under authoritarian or absolutist rulers find remarkably appealing.
b) Government now has sufficient control of the media that they don't need to play by the rules. They can kill whoever they want, whenever they want, and then call it terrorism, and the majority of the population will not challenge it.
You have that rather backwards. In all too many cases, it is the media who control the politicians.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
Lizard People
I completely agree. What I see as a problem, though, is that to wake up a 330 million strong country is much different than waking up a small town in North Carolina. Waking up a town requires a leader, while waking up a country requires many leaders. Leaders are almost hard to find in a country that's asleep, and even if you did find them, you'd need some awesome leader to convince them that this is the way to go.
Nice, now try to use your "power" to do something important, you self-important provincial idiot.
Wake me up when someone puts a cheap and easy to assemble orgasmatron or tasp. That would be the ultimate weapon to control masses.
It's also a very safe thing for them to rely on. The contemporary population of the entire Western world has been domesticated more chronically than at any other time in human history. Only very small percentages of that population have actually seen active combat. The rest of them would have less than no chance, and that includes you and me. Training and physical fitness aside, the single biggest problem is probably simply the extent to which we would not have the stomach for it.
In other words : you have it too easy and cannot effectively defend yourself. You should consider how lucky you are to live in 21st century in the west, in most other periods, and most other cultures, you'd be dead. Or at least beaten. Your problem would not be theoretical and academic with situations on far-off battlefields that you really don't have sufficient information to judge. Your problem would most likely be with the treatment of your sister (or yourself) by the local police officer, and the body parts it involves.
You refuse to be troubled by defending freedom, but demand the result of it. Why should anyone choose to die for you ? For your freedom ? If you can't answer that question ... heh ... guess what will happen when too much of the population cannot answer that question anymore. The old answer was simple : "Christ". Of course that answer had shortcomings, like it's dogmatic nature and it's obvious intolerance of different cultures (but the cultures that support individual freedom are few and far between, and certainly "western culture" is the only ideology that tolerates individual freedom today)
Most of the mass-media, imho, actually attack anyone who defends freedom, because hard choices and mistakes are made when violence is used against those who curtail freedom of others. Instead they offer the "neutrality" option as a supposedly morally good option. In reality, however, neutrality favors the stronger, and is the opposite of the ethic of defending the weak against the strong. Anyone claiming any neutral position really favors the short-term stronger party. Neutrality really favors the taliban, and not afghan journalists. Neutrality favors the murderer, not the victim. And that unfortunately includes "not judging a culture" when it's about something like honor-killing. In reality neutrality (or "tolerance") is, in this case, supporting the murderers. Everything except supporting violence against the culture is in practice equivalent to supporting the murders that are part of it.
Your argument assumes that party positions are fixed, which is not the case: look at the US Republican party over the last decade or two to see how much political parties can change. Thus, it isn't always necessary to vote out the incumbent to change the government's policy; sometimes all you need to do is to threaten to vote out the incumbent. Politicians want to be re-elected, and if you can convince them that their current positions will result in their losing election, most of them will modify their positions. True, it's easier if a party already exists which represents your interests, because they come with a certain amount of power built in, but similar effects can be obtained via non-profit organizations. It's not easy, but it's not impossible.
"The same weapons the police use are available to anyone that wants to buy them (with some exceptions)."
Since the police have new full auto firearms, new AP ammunition, destructive devices (grenades, etc), which are all things civilians aren't allowed to have without going through insane hoops, I believe your statement is incorrect.
And that's just the federal limitations. Individual states prevent their citizens from owning weapons that even LOOK like the ones police can use, and limit ammunition carrying capacity to a fraction of what the police are allowed.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Who the major parties are will vary from place to place, but a first past the post is necessarily polarizing, and puts all the power in the hands of those parties.
A cheap set of earplugs would seem like a simpler answer, and less likely to blow up in your face. You could even buy them in bulk and hand them out to your fellow protesters. Ones made for shooting are rated from 25-35db in noise reduction and can be had for under $1 each. Sure, it's not as cool as beaming microwaves, but I think it's a bit more practical.
The Sound weapons vibrate your skull. Short of whole head diving bell contraptions for 3000 people, what do you propose?
I would never vote fro Labour or the Tories and indeed any other vote does seem wasted. In my opinion this is the main issue that spoils politics here - if there was proportional representation, politics would no longer be simply a slanging/lieing match between the two main parties. But it has been these two main parties that have prevented proportional representation in the past, and now, thanks to the likes of the BNP, there is an argument against it with actual validity (though personally I would rather see the BNP with a few seats in government and proportional representation than the current system). I think the other issue (both in the US and the UK) is that there are too many people who know NOTHING about politics but vote for one of the main parties because it's "who they are", they were "brought up that way" - even if Labour/the Democrats had a fascist agenda and the Tories/Republicans a socialist one they would still vote for the same party, just because their "father voted for them every four years until the day he died". Note I am not saying that Labour is the UK equivalent of the Democrats.
But it doesn't actually work like that. LRAD emits a high frequency sound at 146db, which is loud and painful, but can easily be countered with standard hearing protection.
armor piercing bullets? i have a sub $200 rifle that can shoot through just about anything short of interceptor armor with plates, and thats with standard copper jacketed lead ammo.
Oh! you meant AP pistol rounds to imply that anyone who opposes anti-crowd weapons wants to kill cops. GFY
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Media? Politicians? Is there a difference anymore?
In short: Yes, there are anti-democratic forces at play, and yet we are still our own worst enemies.
Yes. And the worst offender is Rupert Murdoch....
To Mr Murdoch it is about power. His control over media - on a near-global scale - makes politicians his playthings. If you are suspicious of government, then perhaps you should not be ignoring the man behind the curtain. Nobody fucking elected him.
What I find most curious about this man is that Keith Murdoch, his father, was a legend of early journalism.
Murdoch senior faced arrest and possible trial on sedition/treason charges for breaking the story of the disaster that befell ANZAC and British forces at Gallipoli in WWI.
It's hard to keep perspective now, but journalism has always been prey to government propaganda and the best interests of the moneyed class. Evelyn Waugh's classic 1938 novel Scoop was actually not so much farce as a straight-ahead narrative of the author's own experience covering the Italian conquest of Abyssinia. He released it in a thin layer of fiction in order to avoid Britain's notorious libel laws.
Keith Murdoch's courageous decision to put his countrymen's lives before duty was ground-breaking. It influenced countless others in the years that followed, and led to an entire generation of world-class Aussie/Kiwi reporters. Perhaps the best known of the bunch is Peter Arnett, a Pulitzer Prize winner who had the guts to broadcast from Baghdad during the first Gulf War in spite of accusations, threats and widespread establishment opprobrium.
And yet... And yet, here we have the scion of one of the most influential media figures of all time doing everything in his power to debase the very thing his father so loved.
There's a Shakespearian play in there somewhere. Personally, though, I wish it were a Greek tragedy - the old school kind with eyes gouged out and no survivors. 8^)
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
I disagree with this. What doesn't scale is federalism. A more republican system would work much better. Local governments should tax at the level the Federal government currently does, and vice versa.
It only takes a 4C temperature rise to permanently damage the cornea. FWIW, that is the #1 concern for RF exposure. The blood flow in the rest of the body will do a nice job of conducting heat away.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
The idea is, basically, that you vote your friends into your parliament and they pass laws that forbid hi-tech crowd control.
But then the opposition gathers more support and re-authorizes hi-tech crowd control. Specifically against your political party.
Sorry. Democracy isn't always the answer. Its a constitution with a strong bill of rights and a tradition of a strong judicial branch.
Have gnu, will travel.
Your problem would not be theoretical and academic with situations on far-off battlefields that you really don't have sufficient information to judge.
Ah. A soldier, sounds like. I'm actually very glad one of you has answered this. You're one of the groups of people (the other being cops) who I really want to talk to about this.
You're possibly right, though. I probably don't have sufficient information to judge. I hope, however, that you get given sufficient information before they send you over there, because from what I can see at least, they seem to be primarily interested in screwing both demographics of the population; yours *and* mine.
I'm actually also curious as to what additional information you might be given, because the information I'm able to get from here, tells me that both Afghanistan and Iraq are a scam.
Some of the information I've been able to get here has implied that at one point, bin Laden was very close to being captured in Tora Bora at one point, but was deliberately let go, because Bush wanted to be able to continue to use his Emmanuel Goldstein to scare the public.
Some of the other information I've been able to get here has very strongly implied that if bin Laden or Al Quaeda *did* have anything to do with 9/11, it was purely that they were outsourced; that the towers were actually brought down by controlled demolition, and the whole thing was done in order to give Bush and his underlings justification in front of the public, to then begin treating the Constitution like toilet paper, which he of course then did.
Might sound a bit outlandish to you, but think about it. Bush got a blank check after 9/11. He could basically do whatever he wanted, and to a large extent he did. You don't think a government isn't going to want that, if they could get it?
Bush was tight with the petroleum industry, too. Some of his friends were invested in Halliburton, even if he himself wasn't; you probably know about that though.
Another minor point; it turns out there's natural gas under Afghanistan. Not long after the invasion started, I heard a while back that they actually started putting in a pipeline for it. Afghanistan has one of the biggest opium poppy trades in the world, as well; lot of money there. There's history of the government using drug money as revenue, as well.
See, one of the advantages of living with only theoretical security concerns, like you mentioned, is that it gives me lots of time to read about what's going on in the world. So while it might be true that, only having access to the civilian Internet means that you've got a lot more info than I do, I'm still able to dig up certain bits and pieces; and believe me, some of them can be very interesting.
Why should anyone choose to die for you ? For your freedom ? If you can't answer that question ... heh ... guess what will happen when too much of the population cannot answer that question anymore.
They don't die for me, or for my freedom, though. That's entirely the point. They die so that the fuel cartels can make an extra few billion dollars next financial year. Not only that, but while said plutocrats are using you as cannon fodder overseas, depending on who you believe, they're also actually whacking inventors who try to come up with alternate fuel sources, so that the foreign wars might not even have to happen at all. Heard of Stanley Meyer, by any chance?
Of course, that will get shouted down by the atheists around here as schizophrenia on my part, but that's ok.
The point is, as ignorant as I may or may not be, I know one thing. When those protests happen, and there are a group of cops on one side, and civilian protesters on the other, when that scenario happens, both of those groups are actually getting screwed over by the guys in charge.
They play both of them off against each other. They also train you to take the very attitude you did w
Really? Well, I guess my English friends inadequately explained to me how the system worked when I lived over there. They had told me that a proportional representation scheme was how someone from the racist, nationalist party (whose name escapes me) had won a seat in parliament. The fact that he actually won a plurality of the votes somewhere scares me.
From what I'm gathering, I see a debate on these non-lethal weapons (like the HERF gun) in the hands of law enforcement, and a debate on whether it's okay for civilians to be using these guns. On the first topic, I feel that it's a good alternative for police if they can be using these non-lethal weapons. Putting yourself in their shoes, do you really want to arm up in riot gear and be attacked by a large mass of people? I personally wouldn't want to, so I'd totally be fine with them using these things, if they are using them to keep me safe. Bear in mind, I said keeping me safe and not abusing power. That's a whole other can of worms; if a cop uses it to pull my car over when I'm already pulling it over, then yea it could become ridiculous (too literal example I know, I feel it helps drive my point). Besides, if these weapons become an issue that's why we have a judicial system. Under certain safe guards I feel it definitely has good potential. As for whether civilians can be using, eh I'm gonna probably say no. I would hate to have to reload all my files on my computer thanks to some idiot, and I sure wouldn't want some smarty-pants kid to kill my car while going home from my commute. I agree with Improv on this one, I'd hate for my grandpa's pacemaker to go because of some seemingly innocent mischief. It scares me that people can make these things in their own home.
As subject says. Brakes are still manually connected in case catastrophic failure occurs to the computer systems, you can still hit the brakes and the car will stop (maybe not as fast as when you had the computer still working, but the brake lines are hydrolic pistons which engage as you pressurize the line with the physical movement of the brake. There are only a handful of cars which do not have this manual system in place, basically, drive-by-wire cars, which are only in a select high-end vehicles, particularly the Mercedes-Benz E-class and SL models and Toyota Estima. If you happen to be in one of those vehicles, well, all you have left is to use engine braking (and hope the computer froze with the transmission clutch disengaged so that the drive chain is still engaged to the engine and let the force used in moving the engine pistons slow the car down. This is one of the reasons why I won't buy a car with brake-by-wire, yes it has redundant paths and other safety mechanisms like voting to determine if there might be a fault, but that does not help when there is a fault on all the electronic systems since all of them would be fried in this case.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
You make a fine point--but...will you please define legitimate for me?
I've been maintaining that the legitimate rule of law in this country ended in 2004 with all of the clearcut election fraud, when the courts decided the outcome of an election instead of what most people would have expected. Sorry--I want my president appointed by common vote--not a panel of judges elected along partisan lines.
Of course, I think it also ended prior to that in Andrew Jackson's Presidency, and again with Lincoln...
Now--we may disagree on those--details. But--what is your definition of *legitimate*? Who decides? And if it isn't the law that decides--what...does other than some rebellious lethal force?
I mean, I quite reasonably interpret many actions these days as clearcut violations of the constitution--but I'm not permitted by law to act upon them. If a judge rules the rule of law legal, is it still necessarily the rule of law? If the supreme court mandated raping of infants in schools--would it be less legitimate? Why?
Ran up a tesla coil at a rave... even tho the amps were powered down, the very large speaker stacks made crazy big pops from the discharge arcs. I think a HERF on one of those acoustic weapons would blow the speakers and everyone's eardrums.
The entire community of a high school (students, teachers, other professional staff, paraprofessionals, auxillary staff, family, friends, volunteers, business adopters) worked together to throw carnivals, rallies, etc, and you were NOT able to replace all of the targeted corrupt politicians in a small, local area....and you think this is evidence that our government works?
You're definitely an extremist optimist. I'm not saying you need to be a pessimist, but you should at least have a little dribble of reality in your thought process.
You need a DVD recorder. Players have too weak lasers. CD recorder also operates in infrared, which may damage eyes but as a dazzler is fairly useless, and also is difficult to aim, at least without either a scope or a pilot beam of a visible laser. If you want infrared, fairly powerful lasers are also in laser printers. Goggles will help you, if they are designed for the wavelength you use. Standard protective laser goggles will do a perfect job. Also, while driving the laser is fairly easy, driving it in an optimal way that gives you decent, stable power without lowering the lifetime of the laser too much is a little (though not THAT much) more difficult.
You misused your semicolon there.... "not to act as the brute force support system of global fascism" is not a stand-alone but related sentence.
I think you've misapprehended the nature of modern, "professional" police forces. They were invented over a hundred years ago because the previous policing solution -- community hired police selected by town-hall vote or volunteer militia from townsfolk, as in posse comitatus -- were insufficiently willing to bash the heads of their friends and neighbors who got all union-y and disobedient. Hell, when the (often mining) companies sent in Pinkerton goons with orders to shoot anyone on strike, these police would actually side with the people and fire back against the hired thugs! (Why, the nerve of them!)
A standing, professional force controlled by a bureacracy that's distanced from the populace is much easier to order in against the civilians they're supposedly there to protect. That's why that kind of police force was invented in the first place!
To implement difficult your proposal is, as Yoda would say. Everything is dual-use. A DVD writer can be turned into a laser dazzler. A RC toy or a cellphone can become a remotely activated switch. Regarding EMP, the most difficult part of the design is getting enough energy in short enough time. Luckily, technological development marches on. Supercapacitors are being investigated as possible replacement for batteries; they are able to charge much faster and provide extremely high currents on discharge; a 1500 farad capacitor available just now on eBay for $50 can provide you with peak power of over 5 kilowatts. And the available power will go up, and the price will go down. In few years, such capacitor banks will be in most cordless power tools, and in many electric cars. It's difficult to stop technology based on car spare parts, don't you think? The knowledge is out there. Even for explosion pumped flux compression generators there is a detailed book on Amazon that describes the construction and the necessary calculations. Many other related weapons are lower-tech than that, and are within the development capabilities of even a moderately smart electronics geek. Sometimes even a lower power is enough; jamming enemy's communication takes just a few watts at the right frequency, causes great tactical discomfort, and in combination with other measures may tip the balance of power. The cops are not supposed to abuse their advantage. If they become doing so, they aren't cops anymore, just above-the-law thugs in uniforms. And then (and only then) they should be dealt with accordingly. Armor piercing bullets? A commercially available bulldozer can be armored with a homemade composite armor from alternating steel sheets and concrete layers, and become virtually impervious against everything below an antitank rocket. (With all the disadvantages of a heavy, slow, poorly maneuverable vehicle.) People should know how to arm themselves. The Man should then behave so they will not have reasons to actually do so. It's not that difficult; just be fair and restrained in wielding the power, and actually punish its abuse. The Man is here FOR the people, not AGAINST them.
China over the last twenty years is a good example of why that is not the case. As access to alternative sources of information increase the amount the government can control the people decreases. Iran is looking like another good example if the increasing loss of control doesn't end in a lot of bloodshed.
I can also find dozens of well trained veterans of horribly brutal conflicts that have emigrated to get away from such things - but we don't need them when there is anything resembling a democracy. When it gets to the point of such hellholes like Algeria when democracy fails that is a different story. In the USA there's a bit of suspected electoral fraud but you have many people in both major parties that are committed to democracy and free and fair elections
Needless emotivity aside, because we will pay them to do so. That's what having a professional military means.
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
Rupert himself is about a mile to the left of Fox News if you listen to his contribution to the Boyer Lectures (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/boyerlectures/)
I suspect the real reason is that he is a cynical and manipulative old bastard that is giving Americans exactly what they will pay for in Fox News. A country where nearly half the population think scientists are evil cultists pushing the new religeon of evolution is bound to lap such rubbish up and make Rupert another fortune.
The US and UK have two parties each, and the two parties are basically not very different. Barring a few specific situations, votes for other parties or independents have no effect. If you don't agree with the way things are, you can't stand for the major parties, and I'm not too familiar with the US system, but the UK's "first past the post" system makes it nearly impossible for new parties to go anywhere, as the only way for one to become effective would be for large numbers of people to throw their votes away for several elections in a row.
Sometimes, voting is not going to change anything.
I often hear the term "throw your vote away" in reference to voting for a third party. If voting was the same as betting on a horse race or football, then yes voting for the loser is throwing your vote away; however voting is not like sports. You see, even though you may vote for a winner, if the winner doesn't represent your views you are actually losing.
Do you really think most soldiers do the work for the pay even today ? America does not have a professional military in the sense that you have mercenaries, it's got a volunteer military that enables volunteers to support their family.
Would you die for the pay of a normal soldier ? No. Would anyone in the American military ? No.
I don't think your answer is good enough. Do tell : would it be good enough for you. Would you take the risk of dying, and face armed opponents for the pay of a normal soldier ? Note that is only slightly more than you'd get at McDonalds.
Sorry but I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories. Perhaps you need to visit a muslim country. If the worst is true, and it indeed wasn't muslims that brought down the towers in jihad, it wasn't for lack of trying, or lack of want.
Which unfortunately makes it a moot point whether one specific incident, no matter how large, was comitted as an act of war by muslims against everyone else (they really see the world like this).
EVERY non-secular muslim is against us, and "against us" in the sense that they'd like to massacre Americans. Fortunately there's a lot of secular muslims, but they will never react against the jihadi's, for that will make them targets of the terrorists.
Terrorism has such a long, long history in the middle east. So very long that people have absolutely internalized it. If anyone were to start blowing up kids to make them convert to whatever, they would do so en masse, and they won't react against the agressors.
You really should visit some muslim country and walk around and talk to people.
I suspect that you're confusing elections to the Westminster parliament (first past the post) with elections to the European Parliament (PR). The BNP won two seats in the European Parliament this year, but has no seats in the House of Commons. However, they do have some local council seats won by first past the post.
Before you ever start thinking voting can change anything, you'd well better be in control of the candidate lists.
In many cases you have a gallery of puppets to choose from, to pick the public face of the person in power. In many other cases you can choose between two or three warmongering parties who are equally bad. Unless you can beat them at their game of keeping any 3rd party competition out of the game, you can vote to your heart's content and nothing will change.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The British National Party got a candidate elected to the European Parliament, where proportional representation is used.
The UK Parliament is first past the post, and the devolved assemblies and governments of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have, IIRC, some form of PR.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
I'm old enough to have lived through Race Riots in my high school. People making stuff like this to use "against the man" - people have no business doing that. I have no problem criminalizing normal stuff and arresting people "interested" in making them - because it's just plain old simple terrorism.
Those of you supporting this have taken one little step from being just anti-Bush to pro Blow Stuff Up. Slippery slope.
Cops are supposed to have an unfair advantage. What do you think about armor piercing bullets?
You, despite the claim to an exalted position within Christianity, are a fucking idiot.
The police generally have my sympathies when required to work street protests. However, many of the arrogant bastards seem to think you do not have the right to protest. This is where you see use of agent-provocateurs within a protesting crowd to give the police the excuse to deploy whatever today's definition of "reasonable force" is. Yes, that just might end up being armour piercing bullets, because there will be a protester/police arms race, and when the protesters start using homemade body armour in response to rubber bullets it will go that way.
I personally don't have a huge amount of sympathy for a lot of the anti-globalisation or environmental causes - there has been little to no effort to think through the consequences were their demands met; we would have to give up most of the modern conveniences we are so used to. That, however, does not give those in authority the right to adopt some of the aggressive techniques for crowd control and dispersal we see discussed here recently.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
The Lib Dems are, sadly, unlikely to win an election anytime soon, unless the leaders of the other two parties get caught doing something dreadful in the month before an election. It's a shame, because whatever other policies the Lib Dems have (some good, some bad), having them win and fix the system would produce a much better democracy in the UK. Of course, if they win, then proportional representation is likely no longer going to be in their interests (it benefits the smaller parties), so, being politicians, I wouldn't be surprised if they try and concentrate on every other campaign promise first.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
As other replies have already explained, the candidate with the majority in each consituency gets to be that constituency's MP. The other person gets nothing. This has the effect of biasing seats in favour of the large parties, since winning 30% of the votes in each of 50 seats gets you exactly 0 seats, whereas 60% would get you 50 seats.
For a nice demonstration of the effect this has on a democracy, have a look at this chart, and compare "Seats %" with "Votes %" (the small parties with more representation than votes are mostly confined to small areas, allowing them a majority in that area without much support outside it). Observe how Labour has about 1.5x the number of votes that the Lib Dems have, and over 5x as many seats.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
The problem I always see is that there are ten hens, each planting their own crop, and you don't know which, if any, will actually yield something useful. Which one do you spend your time helping? How do you ensure that others in a similar position as yourself help the same one if they have the same desires as you?
"Genuine democracy does not scale with current population levels. As someone else here said, the American Constitution was originally written for a population of 3 million..."
This is a very important point, and very often overlooked. In Switzerland, with a population of less than 8 million, democracy still works very well indeed. Other European countries, with sizes of 40, 50 or 80 million, begin to suffer from domination by a political elite (For the most egregious example, look at Italy). Scale up to the size of the USA, and the politicians no longer have any real connection to their districts or the people they represent. Candidates and election outcomes are largely scripted - through the media and by who gets the campaign money - or else two "competing" candidates are put up, both of whom are acceptable to the political machine.
Government becomes too remote for the average person to feel like they can change anything. An earlier post here gave a wonderful example of local democracy in action. But it was local democracy in a town whose population probably numbered in the thousands. That sort of grassroots effort on a national scale is very, very difficult.
The simple-but-dramatic solution: there should be a recognized right of secession. Communities should have the right to decide whether or not they wish to belong to a larger political entity. If they feel poorly served, they can go it alone, or agree to join some other political entity (Canada? Germany? Swaziland?).
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I would suggest that you to vote for the Lib Dems then (in general elections), almost regardless of what their other policies are at the time, so long as they still promise to put in a PR system. I like a lot of their policies, but I'd vote for proportional representation even if it was for a party I didn't otherwise agree with, because one term of bad government beats the eternity of bad and mediocre government we're looking forward to now.
I think that the election of that BNP MEP was more due to dissatisfaction with real politics (thinking that voting for those bastards was a good way to make a really noisy protest-vote) than actual widespread support for fascism, and that dissatisfaction with real politics would decrease in a less fucked-up system.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Were the amps truely switched off/unplugged or was the volume/gain control just turned down all the way? I have heard powered speakers put out noise because of RF at significant distances but never heard of tesla coils causing something along these lines (wrong frequency). Unless of course there were arcs/significant amounts of energy hitting either the speakers themselves or the wires running to them.
It has a volunteer, professional military. They are paid to do a job, which, by and large, they do well, and do by choice.
If the military is the only employer available to those who choose to join it, then the "support the family" argument is relevant. Otherwise, we're into needlessly emotive rambling again.
Get over yourself, then.
No. I can make better money (and thus pay more taxes) doing things I enjoy elsewhere. That has absolutely no bearing on what I expect of the military. I expect the government, with my taxes, to institute a competent military congruent with defending and advancing my political beliefs. How they convince people to enter that military (and what wages they choose to pay those employees) are largely irrelevant outside my existing relationship with government. If the soldiers they can get for their money come at a reduced price because of their personal beliefs, that's great.
It really does all boil down to economics at the end of the day. If you believe that doing something will give you a worthwhile return given the risk, go and do it. If not, don't.
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
Not EVERY accident of the kind you describe is as previentable as you describe. I was the person behind in a rear end accident, and although I would still classify the accident as "my fault", even without the legal definintion which says that it was, I am not sure what else I could have done.
I had just entered the freeway, which was fairly busy, and therefore had to be going the same speed as traffic in order to merge. Noting that the right lane was overly-full (due to the merging traffic) and that the left lane was nearly empty, I checked my left-hand mirror to make sure the lane was really clear, but unfortunatly at that moment there was one of those freak traffic waves where everybody comes to a near stop. As a result, when I looked back forward, the van in front of me was panic stopping and I wasn't, or rather I had to as well but was a fraction of a second delayed. While braking I tried to steer into the clear left lane (I had just checked it remember) but, *Bang*, I didn't quite make it.
So, yes, it was my fault, but I am not conviced that there was much different that I could have done. I wasn't tailgating (the traffic was heavy but not that heavy). I couldn't have gone much slower, or I would have been a danger merging. Yes I was closer than I normally drive, but that was due to the merging situation, and I was attempting to rectify that in the least disruptive way I could. I couldn't predict the brake wave, and given that the minivan effectivly blocked my view, I couldn't see the 3 cars ahead that I normally try to observe.
As it turned out, because we *both* were braking *hard* my bumper submarined the minivans bumper. So while my car was totalled, his got a few scratches on the bumper but that was about all. Fortunatly, that was all that happened; nobody was hurt (other than I sprained my thumb a little).
The police officer didn't even give me a ticket, noting that I was honest in admitting that ultimatly it was my fault, even if it was an unfortunate series of events.
Simple.
Current technology allows the common citizen to counter the device used to inflict pain from a distance upon a crowd. It's called a rifle.
One shooter with a sufficient sized weapon who is optically equipped can either destroy the device with a well placed shot, or the operators responsible for running it. Either way, the device gets shut down.
a) Genuine democracy does not scale with current population levels. As someone else here said, the American Constitution was originally written for a population of 3 million, which is 1/100th of the population's current size.
"democracy" is not a machine that has been designed with tolerences and load ratings. It is not a machine with a sticker on it "MAX population: 30 million".
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
- When driving the 2-door coupe, I downshift a gear or two, accelerate away suddenly and then resume my normal, reasonable cruising speed. The sudden abundance of space in front of the tailgater reminds them that they are being an asshole and makes them drive normally again. The ability to seemingly reform tailgaters, at least temporarily, makes this my favorite tactic.
- When driving the 4x4, I let the exposed steel bars on the back and the threat of your hood and/or windshield ending up under a pair of big toothy offroad tires do the talking. Speak soft, big stick. Nobody tailgates.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Exactly - I'm just imagining what happens when this joker ends up disabling someone's anti-lock braking system or a traction control system (or worse, half-disables it) on a crowded freeway.
Amps were definitely off, I was on the tech crew. They were drawing arcs from the coil with a ball on a pole.. now I'm certain they were sharing power & ground from our power distro that was tied into the forearm size mains conductors in the breaker room. I thought spark gaps made wideband noise.?.
"Sorry but I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories."
LOL. That's right. If the mainstream media doesn't say it, then it can't POSSIBLY be true, right? Anytime someone asks questions that run counter to the official propaganda, they're labeled a "kook" or "conspiracy theorist". I wonder if the people who questioned the gulf of Tonkin incident were branded "conspiracy theorists" in their day. Is it still a "conspiracy theory" if it turns out to be true?
"EVERY non-secular muslim is against us, and "against us" in the sense that they'd like to massacre Americans."
What a crock of absolute $#!T. Even if it was remotely true, it's U.S. foreign policy and not religious fanaticism that fuels the underlying anger. I think U.S. citizens could turn into a rather nasty bunch if a muslim country invaded the U.S. and proclaimed that religious theocracy was the absolute best form of government
http://www.mirror.co.uk/carcrashfraud/
http://living.morethan.com/2008/03/25/car-insurance-fraud-dont-be-a-victim/
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=staged+accident+car+insurance+fraud
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That's a heart-warming story, but surely you understand that the situation with your local government simply doesn't scale to larger localities, let alone state or federal level.
What works in a small town in North Carolina is completely impotent against big-city machine politics, for instance.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
Yer both morons.
There are strict rules and regs regarding the use of force, regardless of weapon, that apply to *every* police officer. Training on new weapons and techniques is constant, thorough, and detailed.
What, you think they're just handing these things to them from the back of a 4x4 pickup and saying, "Go get 'em, boys."?
You've been watching too much redneck TV...or have spent *way* too much time in hick-towns (where these tools are not available to begin with).
Get some perspective, ffs...
Sound Cannon: Earplugs
Microwave Pain-Beam: Full body clothing soaked in water.
Part of the problem you are seeing with third party candidates is that our system does not work as a three party system. Essentially, a third party just divides the votes, strengthening the chances of whomever is most dissimilar to the third party candidate, and ultimately, undoing the Democratic process. (Meaning that it leads to a situation in which the majority of the people may favor an ideology, or set of policies, but the minority view gets elected, because they all rallied behind one candidate.
I personally would love to see a system that accounts for third party candidates, but the US system isn't it.
Hackers are so passe, the real art of applying technology to crime has yet to be developed. Things that were impossible in years past are becoming simple, and the parts and pieces are now filling landfills and so are becoming untraceable.
Each new development in technology is a tool that criminals can use to trick unsuspecting marks in new ways - ways that really haven't been tried before, and ways they were never warned about.
Web newbies are often taken in by the thousands of scams from sites that look like their bank but really are run by criminals, to sites that say your computer is infected and ask you to install a virus eradicator which is really a trojan horse, to a hundred other tricks. Some people avoid the internet entirely thinking it's just not for them, and if they just don't go on the internet then they never have to deal with it.
Now, with devices everywhere in everyone's lives the world itself is becoming hackable. And the unsuspecting marks are everywhere, waiting to be relieved of their wallets.
There are only a handful of cars which do not have this manual system in place, basically, drive-by-wire cars, which are only in a select high-end vehicles, particularly the Mercedes-Benz E-class and SL models and Toyota Estima.
Critical systems like steering and braking should always be mechanically linked to the controls in the cabin on such small vehicles where the driver can exert enough force to operate the controls. I can't imagine there are any advantages to drive-by-wire braking - nothing that can't be achieved with conventional braking systems anyhow - and it's a HUGE safety risk. If someone gets moisture in their battery terminals, does that mean they could lose braking power at any time? If some wires short and the braking system fuse blows? That's scary as hell, I don't even want to be on the road with such vehicles!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Saying you are 'Fair and Balanced' is neurolinguistic programming for 'Completely biased'. If it was 'Fair and Balanced', then there would be no need to state this at every commercial break, as that would be apparent.
...
Oh yea.
My boss likes to tell a story about his job flight testing an airborne X-band synthetic aperture radar system in Nevada, and one occasion when they were attempting to troubleshoot intermittent noise that saturated the receiver. It was like a perfect ECM system messing with their radar.
After confirming that it was from an external source, they sent black suburbans to survey the countryside for foreign or domestic agents testing out a new countermeasure. Turns out it was a country farmer with a diesel-powered arc-welder from 1908 or something, working on his trailers. When operating, the thing radiated from DC to UV.
Long story short: His firm bought the farmer a new welding rig.
I can see the fnords!
Bubble sorts don't have tolerances and load ratings either, and they also don't scale well. A search algorithm built to search contacts on a cell phone wouldn't work well in a web search engine.
And like the search, I would recommend retaining the basic functionality but completely reimplementing it, and this time allowing for extreme scalability.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
In the US, the primaries are where the real democracy happens, and most people only vote in the final election if at all. It's easier to complain and buy guns I guess.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
>What it's about is people who are in the wrong damned lane. If, under
>normal circumstances, you are not going noticeably faster than the lane to your right,
>you are in the wrong lane. Period. I don't mind people driving slow, but I *do* mind
>them doing it in the wrong lane.
Sorry, you are just wrong.
The speed limit is the speed limit. By law, no one is allowed to drive faster than the posted speed limit, regardless of whether or not they are passing someone.
If I am passing someone driving 69 MPH in a 70 MPH zone, you are just going to have to wait however long it takes for me to pass them at 70 MPH.
BY LAW, I am not allowed to go faster than 70 MPH to pass someone, no matter how long you have to wait for for me to finish passing.
I will be happy to accelerate up to whatever speed you like, provided you set up an escrow fund to pay any fines and insurance fees should I get caught doing it.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
In the US (IMHO) the government is just a tool of the vast financial interests that are the real masters of the U$ of A.
There. Fixed that for ya.
"...or is there any other way to prevent such efficient, convenient crowd dispersal?"
I developed an apathy gas once. I thought if you just fog this into a crowd, they'd get bored and just go away. Thing is, my storage container developed a leak and I couldn't be bothered to patch it. I was partway through filling out the patent paperwork, and I figured "Meh, what's the point?". I think I have the formula somewhere, or at least part of it. I never did get around to writing it all down, and frankly, I can't be bothered to find it.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
"Sometimes, voting is not going to change anything." Whoa there sparky! No offense but this is EXACTLY the sentiment that keeps the corrupt in power. Especially in a country like the United States, the ability of congress, or elected officials in general, to infringe on your rights is proportional to your willingness to accept it.
The problem is not really the lack of voting but how its done. As the GP mentioned the first past the post system is actually a very bad way to handle voting since it only gives you two options and that is only one more than the Soviets got to vote for.
There are plenty of alternative systems out there they help get rid of corrupt old guards and bring in fresh third parties which can get get majorities.
States like Israel, Ireland, and Germany run with something called Proportional Representation and they have some big change overs in party politics all the time.
Heck... Germany has a very big Green party movement and the only way they were able to get into power was because of the current system.
So in order to fix the UK and the US system we need a constitutional convention and re-haul the entire system.
Now how likely is that going to happen when no one in power admits that the system is broke?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Yes. Fire back.
US constitution creates a republic not a democracy. In a republic there are guaranteed freedoms. A democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner.
The simple-but-dramatic solution: there should be a recognized right of secession. Communities should have the right to decide whether or not they wish to belong to a larger political entity. If they feel poorly served, they can go it alone, or agree to join some other political entity (Canada? Germany? Swaziland?).
This is true. I think it's been extremely thoroughly demonstrated at this point, that increasing population is almost the sole cause of virtually every human social and environmental problem. Even if it can't be argued as the direct cause, it can certainly be said that it doesn't help.
"According to Jefferson and Madison in 1825, the Declaration of Independence constituted an "act of Union of the States."
-- Mackubin Thomas Owens, The Case Against Secession, The Claremont Institute.
The above link essentially makes the case that, although of course revolution from England was desired, apparently the immediate establishment of a perpetual and insoluble federalism of their own was desired also.
Thomas Jefferson in particular, without attempting to attack him too harshly, was quite clearly an elitist. This can be shown by noting the creation of the electoral college, of which he was an advocate, and also that it was he who voiced the idea that limited republic rather than outright democracy was a necessary form of government.
The glowing summary of American foundational history generally consists almost exclusively, of the concept that the founders created a system allowing for an unprecedented degree of human freedom, while seeking virtually nothing for the government itself.
This, of course, sounds wonderful, and works particularly well as justification for foreign interventionism. Unfortunately however, when more thorough research is conducted, the situation becomes decidedly more murky.
To me there is more evidence to suggest that although, of course, there were considerably more legal restraints initially put in place, ultimately, a competing system with England was actually the real desire. We've seen the degree of imperialism which has become the contemporary result, as well.
I also just came across something else that is very interesting, relative to this discussion. Apparently there was the first of twelve amendments that were originally intended to be added to the Constitution, at the first Congress in 1789.
This amendment, apparently specifically sought to deal with the very issue of scaling population currently being discussed, and the Wikipedia article has a quote from James Madison to that effect.
It was never ratified; but as explained by Wikipedia, rather than creating an effect where the amount of representation within government actually scaled *up* with the population, with the proposed Amendment, it would actually be scaled further *down.* Current calculation of representative numbers, although not exactly using the Amendment system, is roughly the same.
There is some very interesting information about this issue here:-
http://www.thirty-thousand.org./
I might have read your posting, had you a clue about paragraphs.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Sorry but I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories.
So you only believe what you are officially told? I guess that makes sense; it's probably what you've been trained to do. It can be a dangerous tendency in certain contexts, however.
If the above is true, your faith in your superiors is admirable, but have you never wondered in the last few years...even once...if they truly deserve that level of faith?
EVERY non-secular muslim is against us, and "against us" in the sense that they'd like to massacre Americans.
This is a generalisation which the governments of three different countries (America, Britain, and Australia) currently rely on. I can understand why you'd believe it if you've fought Muslims directly, but Islam is a very large religion, in terms of population size.
As you've tried to say to me, the only way you could know that *every* Muslim on the planet wanted to kill you would be if you could ask every single one of them; which you can't do, because even if you lived for 70-80 years and started at around the age of 10, you still probably wouldn't be able to get to all of them.
Terrorism has such a long, long history in the middle east. So very long that people have absolutely internalized it.
Violent conflict has a history there going back around 4,000 years, yes.
Terrorism, though? Terrorism these days has become an entirely nebulous word; it is arbitrarily used by Western governments to mean whatever they want it to mean.
This article, of course, is in reference to protestors at the G20 conferences. The contemporary government could, if it wanted to, detain these protestors by claiming that they were "terrorists," and can do so without challenge. From what I've read, you going to a supermarket could get you detained as a "terrorist," if on the way there, a policeman saw you and decided that he didn't like your hairstyle.
But again, that's a conspiracy theory...right?
E. B. White -
"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time."
I heard that in former Yugoslavia during the NATO air raids there, they would spread microwave ovens on long extension cords all over. Then it would look like a bajillion radar tracking sites all over, and these garage sale microwave ovens would get blown up with million dollar radar homing missiles..
rinse, repeat.
"The rest is pushed out by not having tons of financed marketing."
I don't have TV, just internet. I wasn't hounded by any political attack ads in 2008. I may be young, but a growing portion of our population is giving up TV, newspapers, etc in favor of the interwebs. Massive advertising campaigns don't work so well when the ads don't reach the audience...
What a crock of absolute $#!T. Even if it was remotely true, it's U.S. foreign policy and not religious fanaticism that fuels the underlying anger. I think U.S. citizens could turn into a rather nasty bunch if a muslim country invaded the U.S. and proclaimed that religious theocracy was the absolute best form of government
Really ? Because if you consider the history of those American citizens, that's exactly what happened to a lot of countries.
Why don't you google "constantinople" for a basic introduction.
There is not a square millimeter of "the muslim world" that joined said world voluntary. Conquest followed by massive terror campaigns is what expanded that religion. Islam may not be unique in that (although even the worst haters have to admit Christianity was peaceful for at least 3 centuries), but it is a lot worse than with other religions. Only communism has caused more death than the paedophile prophet's religion.
So why aren't all those people turned into terrorists ? There is no shortage of fugitives from that specific religion. None of them are terrorists. One would almost say it's got something to do with the ideology.
Every last region where the terror campaign ended or was met with superior force has dropped islam like a stone. From Spain, to Austria, and the Balkans to Iran (several times) ... some of the areas (most notably Iran) were reconquered and the terror campaigns restarted, but that doesn't change the religion's modus operandi.
"You love life and we love death, and therefore we will win" - the central figure of a "certain religion"
Of course talk like this matters not. The fact that it's backed by a never ending list of massive atrocities - both historical (just check the history of the "multicultural" Andalusia, note the extensive list of massacres) and contempory (not just 9/11) - of course doesn't mean a thing.
Stop with the conspiracy theories and face reality. Please.
Massacre all muslims ! (think this statement is a problem ? Then why do you allow the quran to say the same thing ? Hypocrite)
This only works locally. It doesn't scale very well. When you reach the level of national politics, individual votes are heavily diluted and it's much more difficult to get enough people educated, concerned and passionate enough about an issue to get anywhere near the 75% turnover you achieved locally. Even during some of the biggest turn-overs in the history of the U.S. Congress over 80% of incumbents running win.
It's much easier to motivate people when they directly know people being impacted by bad policy.
These non lethal devices are perfect for bringing back slavery. You can prevent people from leaving your property, or trying to harm you. Since these devices do not kill the people, you can force them to do what you want with out having to worry about accidentally killing your precious property.