DHS Sends Tourists Home Over Twitter Jokes

itwbennett writes "In a classic case of 'we say destroy, you say party hard,' the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security detained a pair of British twenty-somethings for 12 hours and then sent them packing back to the land of the cheeky retort. At issue is a Tweet sent by Leigh Van Bryan about plans to 'destroy America,' starting with LA, which, really, isn't that bad an idea."

Comments

Zeig Heil

[MitchDev]

herr DHS. DHS and the Patriot Act, destroying a once great nation one bit at a time.

Re:Zeig Heil

[betterunixthanunix]

We have been going down this road for a long time now, long before the patriot act. Remember CALEA, the act that required phone companies to give the police easy wiretapping access? How about the War on Drugs? The United States has been taking baby steps toward tyranny for decades.

Re:Zeig Heil

[siddesu]

You are obviously forgetting McCarthy, who was doing his best to protect America from subversive elements long before CALEA and the WoD, the incarceration of American Japanese, and who knows what else before these.

All people seem to just be born as scared-to-death xenophobes, and most just don't learn any better as they age.

Re:Zeig Heil

[Anonymous Coward]

"Requiring a warrant" is a joke. The FISA courts approve about 99.5 percent of requests: http://epic.org/privacy/wiretap/stats/fisa_stats.html

Re:Zeig Heil

[element-o.p.]

Be that as it may, a warrant still provides some kind of tracking. I strongly suspect that implies that a cop isn't going to request a warrant on a lark even if 99.5% of them are approved, because someday, someone could look at his requests and find out how many of them panned out to be legitimate investigations and how many were snooping/harassment/other abuse.

Re:Zeig Heil

[jamstar7]

From what I understand, the few FISA warrants that were kicked were because the agents requesting them fucked up on the paperwork. The court told them redo the paperwork. They did, and got their warrants.

Re:Zeig Heil

[TwilightXaos]

'Emporer' is the american spelling.

Re:Zeig Heil

[Culture20]

despots usually get assinated

That sounds unpleasant.

Re:Zeig Heil

[Moryath]

We haven't believed in the right of gun ownership since George Washington sent in the troops to quell the Whiskey Rebellion.

Really, the only way you're ever going to have a revolution is if you have the military on your side. Otherwise, those in power will think nothing of sending in tanks and helicopters for strafing runs as a start.

Just wait. One of these days, the National Mall or some other location in the US will make Tiananmen Square look like nothing. Fuck if the Oakland PD haven't done a good job of doing shit like it already - or did you think that the asshole using a whole bottle of pepper spray on a group of people sitting nonviolently on the ground was unplanned?

Re:Zeig Heil

[Sponge Bath]

All people seem to just be born as scared-to-death xenophobes, and most just don't learn any better as they age.

Native Americans probably would be better off if they had been *more* xenophobic. Beware Europeans bearing blankets.

Re:Zeig Heil

[mug funky]

TSA agent with passport in hand, google in the other. it's not hard to social-network stalk somebody.

Re:Zeig Heil

[PopeRatzo]

DHS and the Patriot Act, destroying a once great nation one bit at a time.

Yeah, but they're really small little bits. So small that if you squint, you don't see them.

Today, I saw kids smoking weed about a block from a high school, watched a downloaded film, did tai chi in the park, read a pretty radical book while sitting on a big cement block in front of the Dirksen Federal Building (it was almost 50 outside here in Chicago today).

I read articles about hundreds of people protesting in one town and a bunch getting arrested and hundreds protesting in another town and nobody got arrested, so there still seems to be a fair amount of localization of the phenomena.

I drove back from a week in Memphis this past weekend, and I didn't really notice the gulags and FEMA prison camps. In fact, I saw a whole bunch of bumper stickers which were about as disrespectful to the president as it gets and the people driving didn't seem all that worried about getting arrested and tortured.

I think it's absolutely appropriate to talk about certain laws as being fucked up, wrongheaded and a big mistake. In fact, so many people did that about a particularly bad law a few weeks ago (SOPA) that there were congressmen who decided it was better not to vote for it.

Yes, there are forces trying to make things worse, and there are forces who are trying to make things better. The "worse" side is better funded, but the "better" side is more talented, more technologically skilled and has better-looking chicks.

It doesn't help when you talk about "destroying a great nation" because sane people say, "What the fuck is he talking about?" Better to talk about, "This is a shitty fucking law, and if we all go down and get in some congresspeople's faces, there's a good chance we can scare them into not voting for it." A bunch of idiots and paid shills known as the "tea party" did that in 2009 and '10 and made all the politicians shit themselves. Imagine what a bunch of motivated, reasonably intelligent people with good communications and technical skill could do. When the Patriot Act passed, everybody was too scared and/or lazy to do anything about it. 9/11 was still a fresh memory and nobody knew what the fuck to do. Most important, nobody went to get all up in their congress-critter's face and made him shit his pants. There's actually a pretty good tradition of making politicians shit their pants in this country and it's a tradition that people have forgotten, thinking that if they tweet enough, and put enough comments on the Internet, that's just as good as having 100 people show up at a congressman's event and getting all up in his face.

If you're an American citizen, or a resident of the US, stop whining and go make a politician shit himself. If you're from anywhere else, take a look at the sequoia in your own country's eye (UK and Europe, I'm looking at you) before you start pissing and moaning about the douglas fir in our eye and the "fall of the once-great America".

Hell, I'm still trying to figure out when the golden era of the "once great America" actually happened. When I was born, you couldn't drink out of the same water fountain as me if you were sufficiently dark-skinned and there has been some kind of ugly shit or another every decade since. Everybody's responsible for their own golden fucking age, OK? If you want some, you have got to make it happen.

Re:Zeig Heil

[Aryden]

That's assuming the military goes along with it. Having been in the military myself, and having family still in, I can tell you know that there are no orders issued by any commanding officer that would cause them to open fire on U.S. citizens unless their own lives were in imminent danger.

Re:Zeig Heil

[PCM2]

What, btw, is an emporer?

In the hierarchy of the American oligarchs, the emporer is a most exalted merchant; traditionally, he is also allowed to bear the title of First Citizen of the Emporium.

Re:Zeig Heil

[NotSanguine]

All people seem to just be born as scared-to-death xenophobes, and most just don't learn any better as they age.

I once thought of taking advantage of that and becoming emporer of the US. Then I remembered history and that despots usually get assinated or at least have to live in fear for their lives.

Then I tought, well I could be a multimillionaire radio talke show host and do spots on Fox News. Then I thought better of that too. I'd be rich but I'd be considered an ass clown by folks who matter and being considered a "hero" by the fans, well, it's like being thought of as a god by your dog.

Almost all of the things you mention would probably require a reasonable level of literacy, which you don't appear to have. So I guess it's a good thing you decided not to become "Emporer." Goodness knows, we wouldn't want you to get "assinated." (is that another word for becoming an ass clown?). Lucky you.

Re:Zeig Heil

[grcumb]

That's assuming the military goes along with it. Having been in the military myself, and having family still in, I can tell you know that there are no orders issued by any commanding officer that would cause them to open fire on U.S. citizens unless their own lives were in imminent danger.

I know you believe this, but the Ohio National Guard beg to differ.

Re:Zeig Heil

[NotSanguine]

'Emporer' is the american spelling.

Actually, it's not the American spelling. It's the illiterate jackass spelling.

Re:Zeig Heil

[magarity]

You are obviously forgetting McCarthy, who was doing his best to protect America from subversive elements.

McCarthy was obsessed about Soviet spies in the State Department and the Venona files pretty much showed he was right. Like most people you've probably confused Senator McCarthy, who was mainly just guilty of being a jerk, with the truly noxious House Un-American Activities Committee.

Re:Zeig Heil

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the illiterate jackass spelling.

Kinda like "Zieg [sic] Heil," hey?

Re:Zeig Heil

[circletimessquare]

Best comment on slashdot so far this year

Re:Zeig Heil

[cold fjord]

"Requiring a warrant" is a joke. The FISA courts approve about 99.5 percent of requests: http://epic.org/privacy/wiretap/stats/fisa_stats.html

Because Intelligence agencies and prosecutors self-select on what cases they take to court. No sense going through the trouble unless you are fairly certain you will get the warrant.

Re:Zeig Heil

[gaspar ilom]

It IS that bad -- your comment seriously downplays what's been going on. Part of the problem is that not all Americans are affected to the same degree. (which is perhaps why you haven't noticed.) Look at the differential rates of incarceration, depending on what race you are. (holding constant particular crimes & crime rates, eg: white vs. black drug use rates are nearly identical for various drugs -- but the incarceration rate for blacks can be more than X10.) Or, just look at this guy, who just spent TWO YEARS in solitary confinement, after having had NO TRIAL.

Meanwhile, if you were the decision-maker at a bank that issued "liar's loans" en masse -- or led one of the credit agencies that fraudulently rated these bundled mortgages as "AAA" -- I guarantee that you got off scott-free! No one has gone to jail, or even been arrested for these crimes. (described & documented by many people, e.g.: William Black, here.) ...even though the ENTIRE ECONOMY NEARLY COLLAPSED -- putting the both the Constitution and American lives in peril.

That's just a few small examples of how law & order have broken down in this country.

Re:Zeig Heil

[Aryden]

The National Guard and the U.S. Army live under very different rules my friend. The NG is controlled by the Governor and CAN be used without invoking martial law. The U.S. Army is controlled by the President and cannot be used with out martial law being invoked. Redneck weekend warriors is most of what I've met as far as NG's go, with very few being former active duty personnel wishing to continue service while living a civilian life.

Re:Zeig Heil

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering how little priority the USA gives to education, isn't that pretty much one in the same?

Re:Zeig Heil

[grcumb]

The National Guard and the U.S. Army live under very different rules my friend.

No argument from me on that count. But I believe the reference was to 'the military', of which the National Guard is most definitely a part.

And while this didn't involve exchange of fire (but did involve tanks and cavalry, whose movements can be deadly in close quarters), the Army has indeed been used against innocent American civilians.

Re:Zeig Heil

[PopeRatzo]

Look at the differential rates of incarceration, depending on what race you are.

That predates the Internet age by more than a century.

Or, just look at this guy, who just spent TWO YEARS in solitary confinement, after having had NO TRIAL.

Again, nothing that hasn't been happening for almost as long as the US has been around.

My point was that this notion that, "OMG! Everything is turning to shit overnight!" is wrong and a distraction. The panic in that notion actually does more to prevent people from improving things than it does to induce people to improve them. The US has not turned into some slave-state in the past decade, it was born as a slave state. Which by the way, does not make me pessimistic about the future. You can only work with what you've got.

That's just a few small examples of how law & order have broken down in this country.

See, that's the problem. You believe we have crossed some threshold and things have "broken down" and I see that things have been broken from the start. If you start looking around for something that happened recently to make everything break down, you're going to miss the fundamental mistakes that we've been making all along as a society (and maybe as individuals).

You're panicking. Don't panic. It doesn't help to panic. Think about what you can do to make things better. This is not some crisis situation that has just arisen, it's part of an age-old battle. Panic will most likely get you to do nothing.

The most effective way to stop things going in a direction you don't like is to get in the way. It's always been like this. People with power don't let go without a good reason, and it's up to people who want things to go differently to give them a good reason. There are people who have lost all fellow-feeling and who have decided to get what they can while the getting's good. Again, this is not new. We have to get in their way. Make them think that maybe it's less trouble to do the right thing. And even if you think you don't have any resources and you have no power, you can always do something to get in the way. But you can't be a pussy about it, running around in a circle and screaming "Oh shit oh shit oh shit nazis are coming" and clutching your pearls and saying "what ever shall we do?!?"

In the absence of a plan, at least get pissed off. It's not a solution, but it might be enough to get you off your ass. Because one thing we know for absolutely sure, if we all just stay on our asses, the chances of things going the way we want approaches zero.

Start by cultivating some fellow-feeling. Realize the people around you are scared too. If you're part of a community, even if it's just being a good neighbor, you're less vulnerable. If you worry about getting carted off to the gulag by the Belgian military, first make sure there are people around you who would notice if you disappeared. It's a start.

Re:Zeig Heil

[PopeRatzo]

.A collapse big enough to put both the Constitution and countless American lives in jeopardy.

Welcome to America. We've been here and done that before. Got the t-shirt. And judging European history, it's not really unique to us.

And then people did some stuff and things got better.

Every so often, people have to do some stuff to keep away the darkness. So far, all I hear from you is darkness-cursing. Go light a fucking candle for christ's sake.

Re:Zeig Heil

[korean.ian]

There is much controversy over the Venona Files, and if you were merely a member of the Communist Party of America, and not spying for the Soviets, with that level of hysteria, you would certainly lie your ass off too lest you get hauled off to the 50's equivalent of Guantanamo Bay.
McCarthy might have been right some of the time, but he was certainly not innocent of creating a poisoned atmosphere.

Re:Zeig Heil

[GauteL]

Look I'm not saying this as a "flag burning" hater of America, but what is this Once Great Nation you're talking about? Was there ever a single time in American history where a great atrocity wasn't occurring?

The country was created from genocide of native Americans, built upon the rock of slavery and may perhaps have started becoming "free" for a large part of the population in the 1960s. You had your own concentration camps for the Japanese and McCarthyism showed that even as a white middle class male, your freedoms were severely limited.

Don't get me wrong, many great things have been achieved in America, but this "once great nation" stuff requires an awful lot of white washing of history. This is no different from most countries that have played a big role in history, but you are probably the best in the western world at ignoring large parts of your history so you can call yourselves great.

Re:Zeig Heil

[eggstasy]

Obviously I can't know if you're gay or simply poking fun at them, but for the benefit of the general population:

1) Not all gay men enjoy anal sex.
2) All my gay friends would resent being stereotyped as mere sodomites! :)
3) A gay man is a man who FALLS IN LOVE with men, not some pervert with a fetish for having anal sex with other men.

That sentence alone was the tipping point that made me truly accept gay men as being a normal part of the population.

Thanks for listening :)

Re:Zeig Heil

[semiotec]

I beg to differ!

Perhaps to your untrained eyes, the poster appears to have poor grasp of the English language and suffers from frequent lack of accuracy in spelling, but I am entirely convinced that this Anonymous Coward in fact wields English with such Mastery as to dethrone the Bard at his finest!

Let's examine the two examples that you have brought up:

"Emporer" appears to be an incorrect spelling of the word "Emperor". However, I believe the word in fact derives from "emporium", i.e. the "emporer" would in fact mean the "shopkeeper"! It is obvious that he or she is alluding to the rise of USA through capitalism, and making the claim that the ones of stand highest in the land are corporate CEOs!

"Assinated" also appears to be a poor rendition of the word "assassinated". But the correct interpretation is that it comes from the word "asinine", i.e. to be "assinated" means to be made "extremely foolish or stupid", indeed the fate most feared by despots! And ironically, through your ignorance, you were correct in your guess and that the word "assinated" does in fact mean "to be made an ass clown".

I pray that you will careful study this particularly fine piece of writing again and try to divine the finer meanings!

Re:Zeig Heil

[PopeRatzo]

What i read that as is .. "we the Members of the AmerAryan Race are just fine thanks, it's just everyone else we want to treat like second class and bomb and put in concentration camps" (anyone remember Gitmo, it's still there you know!)

You've got me wrong. If I were the rest of the world, I'd vote the US off the island. I can understand the concern the rest of the world has about us.

But please don't pretend that this is all a sudden occurrence. We've been cause for concern since before July 4, 1776 and for good reason.

But we've also been the source of a fair amount of good. It comes with being, as we were for a while, the biggest swinging dick on the block.

Oh, and I am not anything like "aryan" you piece of shit. That nazi shit was not an American innovation. That was home-grown Central European "feature not a bug" stuff. Again, I only know it from reading history, but not all of the countries of Europe (or of the World) thought Third Reich was all that bad. And I've got a late father with a bronze star to prove that the US was at least a little helpful in regard to getting rid of those concentration camps.

Death, Strife, Destruction! Film at 11:

[Hartree]

"starting with LA, which, really, isn't that bad an idea"

Certainly has worked for a lot of movies.

But somehow, it doesn't quite rate up with Godzilla's thing for stomping Tokyo.

Re:Death, Strife, Destruction! Film at 11:

[schlachter]

No really, no need to destroy America, we'll do it for you.
-DHS

In other news...

[Scott Swezey]

itwbennett, the author of this story, is now on the DHS no fly list.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

itwbennett, the author of this story, is now on the DHS no fly list.

They also ticked the: 'Aways subject to full cavity search.' option.

Isn't that the default?

This proves that

[sofar]

The terrorists have won.

Re:This proves that

[synapse7]

Wait.. which ones are the terrorists again?

Re:This proves that

[KiloByte]

Let's check the dictionary:
1. terrorist -- a radical who employs terror as a political weapon
1..3. (other meanings) 4. terror -- the use of extreme fear in order to coerce people (especially for political reasons)

So yes, your fine government matches the definition fully. Although probably telling them what this word means would make YOU labelled terrorist.

Re:This proves that

[yurtinus]

You are, duh! Oh shit, so am I...

Re:This proves that

[Zero__Kelvin]

He already said that.

Re:This proves that

[tick-tock-atona]

The spin on the story in some areas of the media is also a nice illustration of the way cowardly people will back the police state by blaming the victim.

For example, see the Gizmodo article "US Detains and Deports Two Morons Over Dumb "Destroy America" Tweets":

I'm totally okay with refusing entry to the US based on idiotic Twitter parlance.

Re:This proves that

[amiga3D]

We've a long history of terrorists. If George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry were alive today they'd all be on the no-fly lists. Their views would certainly be considered anti-government. Heck, what about the original tea-partiers at Boston Harbor. Those guys would probably be consigned to gitmo.

Re:This proves that

[cold fjord]

The difference is that George Washington wanted to restore and build upon a classic liberal democracy which the King had infringed upon, and for which reconciliation didn't seem possible*. Bin Laden wanted to destroy a classic liberal democracy with constitutional guarantees of personal liberty and turn it into a severe Islamic state through coerced religious conversion and imposition of the harsh Taliban style of Islamic law as favored by Al Qaeda.

Another difference is that George Washington engaged British armies on the field of battle to achieve his aims. Bin Laden repeatedly sent his minions on missions to engage in mass slaughter of civilians in office buildings, hotels, and markets to achieve his aims.

Osama Bin Laden was a terrorist. George Washington was an American patriot, a rebel against the British Crown, and not a terrorist.

If it makes you feel better, Bin Laden would have ultimately wanted the British Crown to fall, something the Americans didn't want. The fate for Britain, as well as the rest of the world, would be the same as for the United States.

I would have thought all this was clear. Are you still baffled?

* I seem to recall the Parliament took some stern actions against more than one British monarch over the years as well.

Re:This proves that

[drinkypoo]

I would have thought all this was clear. Are you still baffled?

What I'm baffled by is how people can think that the stated goals of an organization change their tactics from terrorism to not terrorism. There is no such mechanism. The USA is a terrorist organization which is made up of terrorist organizations. The CIA and our military spread terror to other nations with bombings and assassinations; half of our first ten naval engagements were bombardment of latin american towns to force them to sell to United Fruit, later Chiquita, now known as Bonita. The FBI and DHS spread terror within our own nation by treating citizens like criminals and by murdering any group of people with whom the powers that be do not agree (see: Waco, where they parked a tank on top of the escape hatch whose location they knew ahead of time, and set the buildings on fire with tank-mounted flamethrowers; or Jonestown, where Jim Jones and all his followers were forced to drink the Kool-Aid by men with guns (a fact recorded on video) whose bodies were not among the dead.

America is a terrorist entity and always has been since its inception. I would have thought all this was clear. Are you still baffled?

Next up:

[Bieeanda]

People who say 'Foo_City, I am in you!' will be charged with sexual harassment of a municipality.

Context is important

[vmxeo]

'They asked why we wanted to destroy America and we tried to explain it meant to get trashed and party.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093796/British-tourists-arrested-America-terror-charges-Twitter-jokes.html

Context is very important. Especially when dealing with a different culture, even though they may share a common language

Of course, as these young Brits discovered, this works both ways.

Re:Context is important

[vmxeo]

So, you're saying, "It's OK because they're white and thus obviously not a threat?"

No, I'm saying absent any contextual information, 140 characters can be widely interpreted as different things by a global audience. An audience who subconsciously fill in the context based upon their own individual culture, background, beliefs, ideas, worldview, etc.

Happens both in Tweets and in Slashdot posts.

Re:Context is important

[DigitalSorceress]

Indeed - one of my best friends is a Brit - when her brother came over here, the first thing he said after giving her a big hug was "God, I could murder a fag right now".*.. he got some strange looks.

*- A colloquialism for "I really need a cigarette" seeing as he'd been on a plane for 7 hours... needless to say, she had to quickly explain to him that this means "kill a gay person" in America.

Re:Context is important

[liquidsin]

indeed. but this doesn't explain why, after detaining them for twelve hours, they were denied entry to the country. are we to believe that they were unable to convey that context successfully to their interrogators, or that those same interrogators couldn't get on some internets to investigate the whole "destroy" idiom? i can't help but think of the rob corddry character from the second 'harold and kumar' movie when i try to picture the clowns that thought these brits were an honest-to-god threat to america.

Re:Context is important

[1u3hr]

indeed. but this doesn't explain why, after detaining them for twelve hours, they were denied entry to the country. are we to believe that they were unable to convey that context successfully to their interrogators, or that those same interrogators couldn't get on some internets to investigate the whole "destroy" idiom? i can't help but think of the rob corddry character from the second 'harold and kumar' movie when i try to picture the clowns that thought these brits were an honest-to-god threat to america.

It doesn't explain why, if the DHS thought they actually intended to "destroy LA" that they put them on a plane back to the UK without any charges.

Terrorists, bent on destruction, and THEY PUT THEM ON A JUMBO JET.

Nothing could demonstrate more clearly that the DHS knew full well it was a joke and was simply punishing the tourists.

Re:Context is important

[Anonymous Coward]

more likely, what they said actually meant was: I would kill for a gay person.

Re:Context is important

[Deep Esophagus]

When I was in high school in 1980, I had a friend who went to college while I finished my last year of high school in a remote rural town in East Texas. We stayed in touch by writing letters, and as soon as I learned his mail was left at the front desk in the dorm and lots of people got to see the envelopes before he picked them up (he really should never have told me that) I made it my life's work to embarrass him. I would address the envelopes to FirstName "Embarrassing Nickname" Lastname, or follow his name with "c/o some embarrassing fictitious organization"; I would put even more bizarre things on the return address. We also were trying to learn Russian for kicks, and each of us had a dictionary we used to translate a few words or phrases. And to further confuse one another we would often the rearrange words random at.

I told you that story so I could tell you this one: Once I got it into my head to address a letter to him care of the C.R.A.P. I had been reading about Nixon and his Committee to RE-Elect the President (CREEP), so I thought the Committee to Re-Assassinate the President, spelling out the acronym CRAP, was a hilarious parody. Now, this was back in 1980 when domestic terrorism was the farthest thing on anybody's mind, and remember I was in a backwoods rural town. STILL, despite all that and the obviously childish scrawl on the envelope, the local postmaster notified the Secret Service. Only then did my friend's previous letter make sense -- he had said something about "I suppose you have heard from the SS no I don't mean the German kind but the American kind" and I had no idea what he was talking about. Out of the blue I got a call from a guy in the "big" city a few counties over (population 50K to our 10K) identifying himself as an agent with the Secret Service and he had to come out and interview me about a letter I had sent threatening President Carter's life. He came out and grilled me on the subject thoroughly; my mother had me show him other letters we had exchanged. To make it more exciting, I had drawn a big hammer-and-sickle emblem on the top of the page... I have no idea why... AND written the first paragraph in as much Russian as my little dictionary could provide... AND transposed a bunch of the words, making it look to your average antiterrorism unit like some secret code. I had to get out my dictionary to look up the words and translate it for him; it said something like "You idiot, I got a headache trying to understand all the gibberish in your last letter so this is my revenge on you". Oh, and there was also a joke filling half the last page, where I had drawn an imitation of a memo paper-clipped to the letter giving instructions from the FBI to keep an eye on these troublemakers and don't forget to throw this memo away before you re-seal the envelope.

And did I mention I'm a Canadian citizen, complete with green card? Let me tell you, "shitting bricks" doesn't even begin to describe how I felt. He took samples of my handwriting to put on file for comparison against anything else I might ever write; he took all ten fingerprints; he had my entire letter preserved in plastic folders around each page. His job was to put the fear of God and Jimmy Carter into me, and he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. My mother told me afterwards that as he walked back to his car he literally had to stop, he was doubled over laughing so hard. Of course since they had already talked to my friend they knew it was just kids being funny, but he wanted to make sure it never went beyond that point.

Now: think about how thoroughly they pursued that incident in the peaceful 80s, and think about what would happen to kids today who did exactly the same thing. Never mind that my mother was born in the US or that I had been here since I was six years old... I'd be on the train back to Toronto faster than you could say "Fuddle duddle!"

I, for one, am happy they took it seriously

[Trepidity]

Given rampant celebrity corpse theft, you can't really be too cautious when investigating a tweet about a plot to steal Marilyn Monroe's remains. Kudos for defending our dead actors, DHS!

Re:The next time...

[betterunixthanunix]

Yeah, it is not like the Clinton administration contributed anything to this situation:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALEA
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Zimmerman#Criminal_investigation_by_US_Customs
4. http://www.cybercrime.gov/cryptfaq.htm
5. http://cryptome.org/echelon-nh.htm
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_McCaffrey#Paying_for_embedded_anti-drug_messages_in_television_shows

I'm not convinced we have the whole story

[PCM2]

According to the New York Times report on this subject:

Information gathered during this interview revealed that both individuals were inadmissible to the United States and were returned to their country of residence.

That's the government talking. But they don't say that it was the Twitter posts themselves that rendered the two "inadmissible." They say it was "information gathered during this interview." Presumably the people interviewed repeated many times that it was all a joke, they didn't mean it, etc., so it seems unlikely that the "information gathered" was anything that was said. It seems totally possible, though, that there was something else that flagged them to be blocked at the border during the interview (for example, they had prior drug convictions).

Re:I'm not convinced we have the whole story

[BasilBrush]

Bryan's charge sheet read: "During secondary examination Mr Bryan was placed under oath and his sworn statement was taken by CBP Officer Wahmann. Mr Bryan confirmed that he had posted on his Tweeter website account that he was coming to the United States to dig up the grave of Marilyn Monroe.

"Also on his tweeter account Mr Bryan posted that he was coming to destroy America."

No sign of any other reasons.

Re:I'm not convinced we have the whole story

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems totally possible, though, that there was something else that flagged them to be blocked at the border...

Right, and what bothers me about the incident is not that they were sent home, per se, but that we don't know why.

The essence of the Rule of Law is that you don't just have someone in a position of power making gutdecisions (e.g. the King shouting "Off with his head!"). Instead, you have a system of laws and the people in power have power (only) to apply these laws and procedures. And, you havetransparency to be sure that the people in power are not abusing the power based on personal opinions and feelings.

But in this case, we have only a deliberately vague and useless official statement - the kind of statement one would expect from a corrupt third world dictatorship. And it's not just this case either, I have, myself, had close friends denied entry to the USA totally inappropriately with no meaningful explanation of the reason.

Now I know there are plenty of people here on Slashdot who blindly trust the federal government on these kinds of issues. But there is a serious problem here. Things were bad under Bush and I had hoped they would get better under Obama. But they have actually gotten much worse. In the last election, I voted for Obama, dontated money and even got the "hope and change" t-shirt but, needless to say, I won't be supporting Obamaor any other democrat in the coming election.

Re:I'm not convinced we have the whole story

[ConfusedVorlon]

yup - they laughed at him.

right there, they sealed their fate.

Re:The next time...

[countertrolling]

That's why you should vote for Newt... to finish the job.

Alarming

[Darkness404]

The US is fast on track to be earth's most totalitarian society.

Re:Alarming

[bky1701]

It already is. Most people just don't realize that private corporations can also remove freedom. It seems this only registers on the radar of most Americans when those corporations start to influence the government in the open.

Weeks before trip

[michaelmalak]

A critical detail absent from the summary is that these tweets took place weeks before their trip -- they weren't done at the airport. So whereas previously one could not make a joke at the airport, now one may not make a joke anywhere, anytime.

Re:Weeks before trip

[shutdown -p now]

An even more interesting thing is that they actually look up Twitter posts for random travelers entering U.S. I wonder if I'm gonna have troubles next time I cross the border, given that I've had a bunch of anti-TSA posts in my G+ stream.

Re:Weeks before trip

[jamstar7]

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to get hauled off to Gitmo the next time I try to fly home, based on my /. posting history. They'll probably set me up for double waterboarding, no starch.

Re:Weeks before trip

[pnot]

A critical detail absent from the summary is that these tweets took place weeks before their trip -- they weren't done at the airport. So whereas previously one could not make a joke at the airport, now one may not make a joke anywhere, anytime.

Thank you; this point seems to be getting missed in this discussion. It's even worse than that, though: as has been repeatedly pointed out, this wasn't a joke; it was simply a figure of speech. So, in fact, not only can you not make a joke, you can't say anything which may be construed by the DHS to have a meaning related to terrorism.

In fact, few sensible Brits would knowingly make a Twitter joke about terrorism, after what happened to Paul Chambers.

Re:Weeks before trip

[Oloryn]

A critical detail absent from the summary is that these tweets took place weeks before their trip -- they weren't done at the airport.

This itself I find interesting. This isn't just the TSA involved here, you have to have some of the U.S.'s intelligence apparatus involved, possibly including the NSA(for capture of communications). This essentially exposes the fact that U.S. intelligence has the capability of taking minor tweets (and no doubt other forms of internet communications), correlating them with the real-life identities of their authors, and matching them to people entering the U.S. These statements weren't made where TSA statements could hear them. That the TSA agents knew about them at all implies some sort of ECHELONish mechanism for collecting even minor tweets such as this and matching them to people entering the U.S.

To some degree, this isn't surprising. Give a government organization the task of keeping terrorists out, and this is the type of capability you would expect them to develop. But why 'spend' this kind of capability on such a minor, harmless target? This implies to me a couple of things:

1. Over reliance on technology vs use of actual human analysis or review. An actual human analyst might well have spotted the cultural references and noted that they were harmless. The implication seems to be that intelligence collected via technical means are presented directly to minor TSA agents who don't have the training or analysis skills to correctly understand them. This is likely done to speed up 'getting the information to where it needs to be used', but increases the risk of failure due to poor quality of information or interpretation..
2. Is it possible to go from a tweet to the real-life identity of the sender in this kind of time-frame (hooking up a tweet to the identity of a person entering the country within a week or two) without the cooperation of Twitter? Note that there's no questioning if they got it right - the couple in question acknowledge they actually sent the tweets.

Finally, does anyone else get the feel of something out of Person of Interest, except that the computer isn't actually capable of spotting malicious intent?

Re:Joking about this is the height of stupidity.

[Zelucifer]

The jokes in question were not made in the airport. They were made much earlier, while still in Britain. DHS just ran around like a chicken with its head cut off. The inability to confirm whether "destroy" is British slang, or that the other tweet in question was a Family Guy quote is absurd.

Re:Everyone in the USA feel safer?

[betterunixthanunix]

We cannot be too careful, I hear that those Brits are planning something for the War of 1812 bicentennial. This time, not only will they burn down the white house, but they will also steal our celebrities' remains!

Re:Hrmm

[yurtinus]

"Arrogant xenophobia" is a way of life too, you insensitive clod.

Re:Joking about this is the height of stupidity.

[zAPPzAPP]

They were not joking about it.
It is slang.
They were clearly stating something and were very serious about it (the intent to party hard).
Just the other guys don't understand the language.

Re:Joking about this is the height of stupidity.

[betterunixthanunix]

Yes, we cannot be too careful when it comes to watching what we say -- the Stasi are always listening! Someone might report you, and then you'll be in for a world of hurt, because you said something they did not like.

Hrm? Oh, right, there is no Stasi anymore. Therefore, it is perfectly acceptable to demand that everyone watch their mouths because the government might be watching.

Re:Joking about this is the height of stupidity.

[gweihir]

Forbidding jokes is one of the hallmarks of a repressive regime. Actually a pretty good indicator. Seems this time the US is ignoring history. In the past the price to pay for that was always extreme.

Les face it, there is no need for terrorists anymore, the US is right on the path to hell. A pity.

Re:The next time...

[Genda]

Because voting for Obama has so clearly prevented the continued erosion of freedom... yeah right.

So you get to choose between the guy that drag races towards a fascist state vs. the guy who just ambles towards one.

Re:Joking about this is the height of stupidity.

[yurtinus]

Really?

First: It was a tweet.
Second: It was a joke. When did we get such a stick up our ass that making a joke is cause for arrest and deportation?
Third: Airports are not dangerous. Flying is not dangerous. Taking our national security too seriously though - that to me as a freedom loving American - is downright terrifying. Once the tools are in place, they will be used. They will be abused, and it is *damned* hard to get rid of them.

Re:Joking about this is the height of stupidity.

[DigitalSorceress]

In British English, "I'm going to destroy LA" can be taken to mean "I'm going to party my ass off and see/do everything possible"...

If I said "I'm dying for a cigarette" would you immediately put me on suicide watch or would you recognize the cultural meaning of "I really need a cigarette"? In British parlance, they'd say "I could murder a fag" (fag means cigarette there, and the usage of "destroy" or "murder" can mean "ravenously consume"

It's cultural context here...

They weren't doing the equivalent of saying "I'm going to bring a bomb on this plane, ha ha ha" they were saying they were ready to go party and have a great time "painting the town red".

Re:The next time...

[nomadic]

So might as well go with the ambler.

Re:Joking about this is the height of stupidity.

[Anonymous Coward]

... the other tweet in question was a Family Guy quote ...

Ah, copyright infringement. No wonder they were kicked out.

Slow and steady wins the race.

[mosb1000]

I don't think I'd say that. It's been in the works for almost 100 years now. The fast track has been tried in other countries, and it hasn't turned out to be sustainable in the long run. I think they're hoping that if they do it more slowly it will work better.

Re:Hrmm

[PCM2]

Why doesn't the average American see that the freedoms they hold so dearly and supposedly separates them from the "terrorists!" have been eroded and continue to be?

Here's what I don't get: Why don't more American servicemen and women, past and present, speak out about how cowardly and weak this kind of action makes America look?

Let's just assume for the moment that the "War on Terror" is totally legitimate. If we assume that's true, and these people were really kicked out of the country because of two Tweets, then... seriously? These two spooked us? This is what we're worried about? That's like a big, musclebound guy strutting around all day, sticking out his chest, then leaping onto a tabletop and shrieking as soon as some passing kid pulls a squirt gun.

It's deep in the American psyche to think of this country as the most ass-kickin' badass on the planet. The DHS is making us look like a bunch of scared pussies.

Re:The next time...

[QuantumLeaper]

Clinton didn't start two Wars and he did leave office with more money in the bank than any other President. How may of those laws or activities were started by him?

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[element-o.p.]

With all due respect, and with every sincere attempt to be sensitive to the loss of your relatives, I have to disagree that the GPP is vile, lewd, disgusting or hate speech. It's someone pointing out (accurately, IMHO) that we are on the fast-track to fascism and a police state. We may not yet be engaging in the type of infamy that WWII Germany was known for, but the comparison serves as a warning about what could happen if we don't reverse the trend. The worst horrors of the Third Reich did not begin as soon as Hitler took office. Likewise, we have not yet reached a comparable level of evil in our government, but I have to admit, I no longer recognize the country in which I am living.

Incidentally, for whatever it's worth, my father-in-law was a PoW in Nazi Germany. IMHO, I would be dishonoring the sacrifices he made if I didn't warn others that what happened in the past can happen again if we allow it.

Re:Joking about this is the height of stupidity.

[hawguy]

If I said "I'm dying for a cigarette" would you immediately put me on suicide watch or would you recognize the cultural meaning of "I really need a cigarette"? In British parlance, they'd say "I could murder a fag" (fag means cigarette there, and the usage of "destroy" or "murder" can mean "ravenously consume"

Maybe they should say "I could suck a fag" which clarifies the intent?

Apocryphal Australian customs/immigration story

[swb]

Someone swore to me that their brother saw this happen in Sydney in the customs/immigration line.

The story was: "I was with a group of people from my flight from Hong Kong to Sydney at the immigration/customs station. The guy in front of me was a British businessman. He was annoyed because of the late flight and the long customs line and was obviously in a hurry.

He showed his passport to the customs officer, who looked it over, paging through all the visa stamps. He sensed the businessman was in a hurry and asked the businessman a lot of questions, superficial and obvious -- do you travel a lot, where have you been, why are you in Sydney, and finally, if he had a criminal record.

The businessman was totally fed up. The late flight, the busy schedule, the long line at customs, and now finally this petty bureaucrat -- he'd had it.

So he answered, "I didn't think that was a prerequisite anymore."

The customs person looked straight at him, and stamped REFUSED ENTRY on his passport and told him he'd have to go back to Hong Kong."

----

There's lots of reasons to not believe it's true -- I'd imagine that the customs process for Commonwealth citizens isn't that onerous, especially for British citizens visiting Australia, especially if they were traveling from another Commonwealth country, and I can't imagine that you could just arbitrarily deny someone entry (well, at least in civilized countries like Australia).

But it's a fun story.

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[AngryDeuce]

Nazi Germany didn't start out like the evil machine it's portrayed as in movies. A lot of the German people had no idea the atrocities that were being carried out in their own country.

While we may not be anywhere near like Nazi Germany as it existed in 1943, how different are we compared to Germany of the 20's and early 30's? We're certainly tottering down the path to a full blown police state with this bullshit; that's undeniable to anyone that's really followed how things have gone in post 9/11 America. Hell, we even have our own ethnic group to demonize in place of the Jews, Middle-Easterners and Muslims. We may not be throwing them in camps and forced to work, but we have no problem shipping them off to Gitmo and holding them as long as we want without trial...

All this shit is supposed to keep us safer, but we just end up with our rights curtailed more and more. We may not be driving through police checkpoints every time we leave the house yet, but I doubt it's going to be long before people are getting thrown on the ground on the side of the road for not producing their "papers" fast enough.

Re:The next time...

[betterunixthanunix]

Clinton didn't start two Wars

No, he only bombed countries without declaring war:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_NATO_bombing_campaign_in_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Iraq_%28December_1998%29

Using war crimes and crimes against humanity as a pretext for doing so, while simultaneously ignoring the far worse situation in central Africa:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide#UNAMIR_and_the_international_community

Lest we forget, Bill Clinton also supported various increases in "defense" spending:

http://articles.cnn.com/2000-01-24/politics/pentagon.budget_1_defense-spending-defense-budget-military-spending?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS

As for the surplus, it was projected, and had not yet been realized.

How may of those laws or activities were started by him?

All of them were carried out with his approval, and his administration was directly involved with the hijacking of TV scripts, the attacks on cryptography, and the use of ECHELON for industrial surveillance. Anyone who thinks that Clinton was some kind of left-wing hero needs to have their head checked; he was on the right wing of politics, and was only differentiated from Bush II in how aggressively he pushed right wing policies.

Re:And vote Democrat to accelerate the process?

[MacGyver2210]

I, too, hate Obama for allowing Twitter to exist.

I suppose that's what you mean, since he has no control over or anything to do with the daily operation of Twitter...

You, sir, are an excellent troll.

So vote Democrat only if you want things even worse than voting for Republicans - because in the end the only people really into fascism are liberals.

I bet you can't name one thing that these dastardly Democrats do that is worse than an equivalent measure by the Republicans (ok, maybe with healthcare).

Also, by definition a liberal cannot be 'into fascism'. Liberal implies a breaking free from constraints, while Fascist implies the opposite with absolute and strict monitoring and control. They are diametrically opposed and cannot be likened to each other in even the slightest way.

Re:Hrmm

[MacGyver2210]

The terrorists, who are in this case the US Government, have clearly won. They have taken the freedoms which we have been granted and been too glued to American Idol and MTV to defend. The ironic part is that they have used the 'fear of losing our freedom' to take it from us.

The general population are more concerned with celebrity housewives than who is running the country. They have won. We are now a slave population, and those that speak out against it will be detained and perpetually monitored until the powers-that-be determine they have reached their quota of 'unlawful speech' and have them imprisoned, deported, or executed.

Welcome to the future. Welcome to 1984.

Re:Someone needs to destroy Homeland Security

[JustNiz]

...so are you going to vote Ron Paul? He's the only politician thats said he'd do exactly this.

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[jc42]

It's called a "slippery slope". One "right" at a time and we may find ourselves in Nazi land again.

Except that this is America. It's not and never has been "Nazi land". The appropriate phrase would be "McCarthy Land", as in Joe McCarthy. Not quite as horrific as the Nazis, since he and his ilk didn't kill people by the millions. But still awful enough to serve as a warning to us all.

Those of us who were kids in the 1950s or earlier know that it's nothing new in the US of A. There has long been pressure to go back to that time, including returning women to the kitchen, retracting the Negro^WColored^WBlack^African-American vote, etc., etc., etc.

The appropriate slogan here is probably that old one about the price of liberty ...

Re:Hrmm

[sgtrock]

Oh, we vets have been speaking out pretty much nonstop since 9/11. We have gotten drowned out, unfortunately, by the likes of Karl Rove, Rupert Murdoch, Rumsfeld, Obama, Bachmann, and all the others who claim to be on our side. :(

Re:The next time...

[godrik]

"That's right, despite the fact the republicans haven't had control over the government for nearly 10 years"

I do not follow American politics that much, but I was under the impression that Bush was republican and still in office in 2008. Did I miss something?

Re:Joking about this is the height of stupidity.

[Frosty Piss]

Just the other guys don't understand the language.

Nonsense. DHS got the joke, they just didn't appreciate it.

There is a significant segment of the population that simply does not appreciate jokes about terrorism or jokes that put the United States of America as the butt of the joke.

Right or wrong, that's what was going on here: Brits making fun about God, Glory, Apple Pie... Send 'em home to good old England where people have much more freedom than here in the United Fascist States of America.

Oh, that's right, the Brits live under constant surveillance that would never be tolerated here...

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[FrankSchwab]

I live in Arizona with our lovely Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and I assure you that (brown) people are "getting thrown on the ground on the side of the road for not producing "papers" fast enough". And with the anti-illegal alien sentiment that seems to pervade the country (for no obvious reason), I don't think the rest of you are far away from it.

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[AngryDeuce]

We had our own camps, too. We didn't kill the Japanese like the Nazis killed the Jews, but they certainly were imprisoned, they certainly lost almost all of their material possessions, they certainly died in the camps due to lack of adequate medical care and suicide, and, in some cases, yeah, they were killed by sentries "trying to escape".

There's plenty of horrific things in our own history that are on par with the Nazi's. How many fucking Native Americans did we put in the ground over the 250 years our nation has existed? How many Chinese immigrants died building the railroads? And of course, the millions of African-American slaves...

I'm not saying that we should allow these things to cast a pall over our entire society, but it's important that we remember these atrocities lest we repeat them. Sugar-coating history, and especially our culpability in these foul acts, does a great disservice to those that fought and lived and died through those times.

While we may not have condensed our atrocities down to a 30 year period like Nazi Germany, we've definitely had more than our share spread out over the 250 years our nation has existed...

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[mug funky]

so much Godwin...

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[mug funky]

say you're a scientist, minding your own business, and the rather right-wing government that you're not a big fan of makes you an offer you can't refuse?

Germany went down a slippery slope too. avoid at all costs people who tell you what you want to hear.

at that time, only the lucky, or those with more than the usual foresight left when they could. if your life is in Germany, you're not going to leave until it's too late and there's war. and then you're held to ransom, especially if you have family.

things aren't so black and white.

Whos keeping score?

[Anonymous Coward]

Terrorists: 1
Land of the free and home of the brave: 0

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[AngryDeuce]

I said "we even have our own ethnic group to demonize in place of the Jews"; the Nazi's didn't immediately start throwing them in camps, either. At first it was just anti-immigrant propaganda, you know, kinda like how people are blaming all of America's ills on illegal immigrants lately?

As for your Muslim co-workers, they may not be worried about getting shipped off the Gitmo, but ask them if they have been mistreated by racists and bigots over the last 10 years. Ask them if people don't look at them suspiciously in the airport or any other mass transit. I have friends from all over the Middle-East and North Africa that came here to go to school and they deal with shit like that all the time out of ignorant assholes right here in the good ol' U.S. of A.

I think maybe you should go back to school and read up on your history. I think you'll find there are a lot more similarities between Nazi Germany and the path we're currently on in this country than you'd be comfortable to admit. We may not be burning books yet (although some bigots are happily burning Qurans) but we're not against banning them, and restricting the freedoms of the people of this country day by day.

I hope you're just a troll, I really do, because if not, you're one of the sad people that are unable to see past the propaganda and bullshit, and frankly, we have far too many of them in this country as it is...

Cardinal Richelieu would have been proud.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like the DHS have improved on the lower bound of Richelieu's requirement.

"If you give me six lines written
by the most honest man, I will find
something in them to hang him."

                                                                - Cardinal Richelieu

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[SecurityGuy]

All depends on which part people are upset about. I'm pro immigration, so aliens (spare me the martian jokes, please) are quite welcome. I have tremendous respect for people who will give up their home, extended family and friends to make a new life in a new land. Now the illegal part, there I have a problem. If part of making your new life is disregarding the laws of the land, that's not good. Should we really welcome with open arms those who come here saying the hell with your laws, I'll do what I want?

The sentiment is just a consequence of the fact that we're not resolving the issue either way. We don't make it legal for them to be here, and we don't send them home. Pick one.

Re:The next time...

[jmcvetta]

Dude, it wasn't even a bad joke - that's just how the Brits talk. When a young Englishman says "I'm going to destroy X", he is colorfully indicating his intention to "party hard at X". It doesn't have the slightest connection to terrorism, it's just slang for getting wasted & having a good time. It took me about 30 seconds of being around drunk, excited British tourists to figure this out - it tends to be pretty obvious from context.

Re:Joking about this is the height of stupidity.

[Aryden]

Oh, that's right, the Brits live under constant surveillance that would never be tolerated here...

Never tolerated here? I'm looking out my window at cameras recording the movement of vehicles. I have the patriot act in one of the tabs open while reading this article. I drove passed an AT&T facility everyday to my father's house, a facility that was utilized for the tapping and storage of private phone conversations. You have got to be joking...

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[hey!]

Well, McCarthyism and Naziism have a lot in common. They both were heavy on fear-mongering and scapegoating.

But history never quite repeats itself. There's always a different wrinkle. In some ways contemporary America resembles the environment in which far right and fascist parties rose to power in post-Depression Europe. There's economic dislocation and uncertainty, albeit milder, the same longing for a simple explanation to our problems that assigns responsibility for solving them to anyone but us.

On the other hand, the experiences of WW2, McCarthyism and the Civil Rights Movement have left us less inclined to scapegoat our neighbors; maybe even the least inclined anyone has ever been in the history of civilization. I think it's remarkable that there hasn't been a major resurgence of anti-semitism after the banking crisis of 2008. That's almost unprecedented.

There's the anti-immigrant movement, but I don't think most people who are in the anti-immigrant camp actually think that Mexican braseros picking crops is the source of our economic or international problems. Sure there's bound to be a few, but the sense I get is that what drives the thing is a feeling the world has got out of control, and this issue is one that ought to have a straightforward solution. The immigration issue is like a canvas on which you can paint simple sounding solutions to exerting control (like building a wall -- excuse me, *fence -- along the border).

But then we'll always have race. Racism is alive in this country, yet it's hobbled, forced to take bizarre forms like birtherism because nearly *everybody* agrees racism is wrong. If you don't think that's remarkable, go back and look at papers, magazines and books of the 1930s. Racism was actually seen as respectable, * scientific* even. If that seems inconceivable to us, that represents real progress We still have racism, but it has to pretend to be something else. Politicians who want to exploit have to dance around it. Racism today is a puny, petty thing, still able to damage, but deprived of most of its terrifying weapons. Nobody in the mainstream dares to call for concentration camps, lynchings, or overt racial discrimination in public or economic life. Today it is the norm for even *racists* to reject racism.

It's like Dicken's said. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. That has always been and always will be true.

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[slimjim8094]

You can unite a lot of different peoples with hate. Hate the Jews (Hitler), hate the Commies (McCarthy), hate the Rich (currently Obama), hate the Muslims (911 and the Patriot Act), etc.

One of these things is not like the others...

This is a message.

[forkfail]

And that message is, "We are watching everything now. Everything."

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[Anonymous Coward]

All depends on which part people are upset about. I'm pro immigration, so aliens (spare me the martian jokes, please) are quite welcome. I have tremendous respect for people who will give up their home, extended family and friends to make a new life in a new land. Now the illegal part, there I have a problem. If part of making your new life is disregarding the laws of the land, that's not good. Should we really welcome with open arms those who come here saying the hell with your laws, I'll do what I want?

The sentiment is just a consequence of the fact that we're not resolving the issue either way. We don't make it legal for them to be here, and we don't send them home. Pick one.

Well that's how the country was founded, so what's good for the goose?

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[mikael_j]

Fascism is not "rooted in socialism". Fascism is at its core a nationalist authoritarian ideology. One of the core concepts of every fascist ideology is that the people must rally around the leaders and follow them without question. Now, there have certainly been regimes that have called themselves socialist but in practice behaved more like fascists (come, you know you were going to drag that one out there) but that does not mean fascism is rooted in socialism.

Fascism is also a very conservative ideology (socially).

How far to the right a fascist party has been has varied, the Nazis were pretty staunchly to the right as were Mussolini's Italian fascists (although they did have some fringe "national syndicalists". Other fascist parties have outright denied being on the classic left-right scale instead basically positioning themselves as an "alternative" to democracy. Also, keep in mind that many of these parties are at their core dependent on popular support from the masses and thus are likely to remain fairly vague on these issues (to get support from as large a portion of the population as possible).

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[slimjim8094]

You had a good point, but you lost your credibility by claiming that Obama hates the rich. I find it unlikely that he would particularly hate himself for his own wealth (he is a millionaire).

Despite what the Republicans have been saying, the Democrats, Obama, and the OWS folks (most of them, anyway) actually have a relatively nuanced argument. The basic principle is that the wealthy have received the benefit of society in excess of the middle class or the poor, so they should pay a higher percent in taxes. It's the same philosophy behind donating to your university - it helped you get where you are, so you want to give back. It's the same principle that explains why the poor pay fewer taxes than the middle class. The government, if you believe one ought to exist, should be a joint effort. (If you don't believe that a government has a role, I have nothing to say). What "class warfare" exists is in the wealthy attempting to wiggle out of their moral, ethical, and legal obligations to pay a proportion of their income as taxes to the entity that secured their ability to make that income.

A more specific issue is the capital gains tax. "Normal" people work; they get paid, and that income is taxed. But "the 1%" don't need to work (if they don't want to) since the earnings on their investments aren't the same, and they're taxed at a much lower rate. But they haven't produced anything, they're leveraging their wealth to produce more wealth. It's not bad in and of itself, but if you subscribe to the economic principle that people act according to incentives, you can see that we, as a society are incentivizing the wealthy to avoid doing anything productive with that money, since then they might be taxed at a higher percentage than if they'd just let it sit. People also have problems with the "soft power" that the wealth brings, like accountants that can figure out how to pay even less in taxes.

The problem people have isn't with success. They work hard, they make a good living, support their family, pay their bills and taxes and things - but then they see that there's this other class, where if they could possibly get into it, they wouldn't need to worry about pesky things like work and money, because it'd all take care of itself. The objection isn't to the wealthy, or even the disparity, but to the feeling that there's an institutional clique that's keeping them out. And they hear the wealthy still complaining about taxes and trying (successfully!) to get them lowered. And they get angry.

Remember all those old movies or TV shows, where the good man who's being harassed always tries to defend himself with "I pay my taxes"? When did that stop being a matter of pride?

they pretty much showed he was an opportunist

[decora]

the film J Edgar got it right. the Venona files would make incredibly poor evidence in a courtroom. many of them are partial and/or missing huge bits. if you just go and read them, and read the FBI papers on the surveillance done of some of the suspected agents, a large amount of it is a waste of our police time. "sep 1943. ms x went to get groceries. she went to visit mr y. she came home. dec 1943. ms x went to a book store. jan 1944. ms x had a baby. surveillance stopped."

of course, one of the major problems was that Wild Bill Donovan, the head of the OSS (prototype of the CIA) believed that the soviets were great allies, and wanted to invite the NKVD to come collaborate with the FBI. of course the congress would never go after the CIA - that would be unpatriotic or something. but they would go after some third string hollywood writer who had attended a meeting 10 years ago during the great depression, when people were dying in the street from malnutrition in Los Angeles county.

there were actual Soviet agents in the government and many were caught. they weren't caught because of mccarthy, they were caught because of ordinary police men doing their job, which is to gather evidence and present it to a court, not play hero in front of the media.

the other problem is the people like William Shirer, a journalist and historian of the Nazis, and Carl Foreman, the man who wrote High Noon, were kicked out of the US for basically no reason. they had nothing to do with actual soviet infiltration.

Re:US does it to UK, UK does it to US (Chris Brown

[Patch86]

1) Man gets criminal conviction for severely beating a woman, gets travel restrictions when applying for visas.
2) Holidaying teenagers get detained and deported for tweeting that they were going to party hard.

If you can't see a difference, you're beyond help.

Muslims are not a fucking ethnic group

[YA_Python_dev]

Look, I love equality for everyone and I think prejudice is stupid. But can we please stop pretending that Muslims are a "race" or an ethnic group? They are the followers of a religion, Islam.

Some religious extremists love spreading this lie because it allows them to stop any criticism (legitimate or not) of their actions by labeling it as "discrimination" or even "racism".

Please don't fall for it: there's a very important difference between attributes like ethnicity, skin color, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, place of birth and other characteristics like religion or political ideas.

Everything in the first group is something that people get assigned at birth and cannot change, so discrimination based on them must be strongly opposed. But the stuff in the second group is something that people can change at any time if they want to, so criticizing people for their religion or political ideas should always be fair game.

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they were invented by the British in the Boer War.

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[dave420]

So the same goes for Christians, whose favourite book calls for genocide for pretty much any reason... Hint: Most Muslims, like most Christians, don't believe their favourite book is actually 100% true.

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[Phrogman]

It seems very common on /. to find people who associate both "Fascism" and "Communism" with the political left - leaving I suppose the political right as the only "good" form of government in their eyes. I cannot understand this level of ignorance and I assume its either willful, or the result of constant repetition by other political conservatives who want to distance themselves from any fascist associations.

Once more though:
* Extreme Left Political position: Communism
* Moderate Left Political position: Socialism
* Middle of the road - the term to use varies considerably (Up here in Canada we use "Liberal" but down in the USA "Liberal" usually is associated with "Socialist" which in turn means "Communist" to most people apparently). I suppose you can use "Democrat" in the US, but since the Democrats (from a Canadian perspective at any rate) seem to be rather rightwing generally, perhaps that is incorrect.
* Moderate Right Political position: Republicanism
* Extreme Right Political position: Fascism

Personally I think the Democrats in the US are by and large Moderate Right, and the Republicans are somewhere between Moderate Right and further Right but not quite Fascists.

 

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[tbannist]

If I understand correctly, that extra revenue from 'taxing the Rich' won't even make a tiny dent in our deficit.

You don't understand correctly. The extra revenue would cut the deficit to less than half of what it is. If you look at the graphs on that page, you should be able to see that the Bush tax cuts are more than half of the structural deficit and will increase over time.

If that is true then it really illustrates what an empty "class warfare" argument this is.

It's not true, and it really illustrates how empty the "class warfare" argument is.

It's just a smoke screen to hide the failings of congress and the president to cut expenses and balance the budget.

Yes and no. Cancelling the tax cuts would help balance the budget, however, the Republican controlled congress refused to accept a budget that included a mixture of cuts and reversing the Bush tax cut on people earning over $250,000. So there is an impasse here because the Republicans refuse to seriously consider any budget that includes new tax revenue. The Democrats, on the other hand, are willing to negotiate and actually had worked out a deal that included both with the Republican leadership, however, the "Tea Party" Republicans revolted against the deal and sunk it.

BTW, I think it would be better to cut out the loopholes and simplify the tax code.

The Repbulicans can't do that either, again because of Grover Norquist. He considers "closing loopholes" to be "raising taxes". Republicans aren't allowed to do that unless they lower taxes by more than the closed loophole would raise in revenues.

Re:Joking about this is the height of stupidity.

[Stormthirst]

It's funny. When the Irish where bombing London, I don't remember the Americans taking that particularly seriously. In fact, as far as I know, a lot of Irish Americans were financially supporting the IRA. Certainly doesn't help when one of your own Congressmen actively supports the IRA, you have to wonder which side he's on. Especially when Peter King is the chairman for the United States House Committee on Homeland Security.

Does he support terrorism or not? Oh that's right - he supports it when it's not in the USA.

Re:What Disgusting Moderation

[LordLimecat]

If I recall, a good part of the founding of our country was because it was believed that the laws werent actually being followed by the British government, our rights were being violated, and that that was a just provocation for us to sever ties.

These might be good for brushing up on the details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intolerable_Acts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_taxation_without_representation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_of_the_governed