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Thomas Drake: You're Automatically Suspicious Until Proven Otherwise
colinneagle writes "RT had a very interesting interview with former NSA official turned whistleblower Thomas A. Drake, who said, 'Security has effectively become the State religion; you don't question it. And if you question it, then your loyalty is questioned.' 'Speaking truth of power is very dangerous in today's world,' he added. The interviewer pointed out that investigative journalists are labeled as 'terrorist helpers' for trying to reveal the truth, to which Drake said the government's take is 'you go after the messenger because the last thing you want to do is deal with the message.'"
Network World also has a pretty good article on William Binney's keynote at HOPE 9, wherein he revealed some technical details and a bit more background on the NSA's domestic surveillance program. Unfortunately, neither audio or video of the talk are available yet.
But Americans have been hugely keen on giving more and more power to their federal government, so this is in inevitable byproduct. Of course there must be some government, but not one that grows without bound and attracts power hungry, corrupt authoritarians.
But hey, keep on voting for those Republican and Democrats, because that's been working out so well thus far, amirite?
Many of us already know exactly what is being stated. You really only needed to investigate the Tea Party, OWS, and the Ron Paul followers to know this was happening. Many leaders of those groups have been jailed, detained, and publicly discredited by corporate owned media.
Without the common statements regarding famous books, what people should be fearing is tyranny. Tyranny is a very short step away from where we are now. I would be a fool to state that it's everyone in Government. I would be a bigger fool to deny that there are people in Government pushing for a Tyrannical State and Oppressive Government.
Guard that 2nd amendment right people, since you are dealing with people that are armed to the teeth and have no issues killing civilians. Simply look at the body counts in the Middle East, Africa. Do so with unbiased corporate owned media, or check numerous sources.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
'Security has effectively become the State religion; you don't question it. And if you question it, then your loyalty is questioned.'
Sounds exactly like the conditions that people lived in under the rule of the Nazis and Communists. The "the land of the free and the home of the brave" have become what they fought so hard against - "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Heil Amerika!
for all of the NSA bots compiling all of the text associated with my username.
It was a good talk. I found it interesting.
I think the big take away from his insights was that the root of this evil was the corruption that consumed the NSA, and the pressure to send money out to the military industrial complex that surrounds government agencies.
It seems to me, in the context of this article, that the security religion is used as a veil to hide that corruption. By now, they may be using doublethink to believe their own lies, but that is the root cause. To fix it, we have to remove the dirty ties between the NSA and the MIC.
He repeatedly said in his talk that no matter what he did to solve a problem, he was never allowed to call it solved. There was always more at stake, more danger around the corner that would be used to scare Congress into spending more money. As he said... keep the problem going so the money keeps flowing.
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
... the Tea Party is pushing the governor to implement Nazi/Soviet/Insert Dictator Here, etc., style purges.
Because gays, democrats, and non-christians are evil, or something.
Fascism will come wrapped in the flag, and the ones purportedly against it like the Tea Party, are helping the security state and fascism along with gusto. They crave it.
Brown shirts for everyone.
--
BMO
Yet, somehow anytime any candidate makes a peep about reeling back the military or intelligence industry in an election, they get crushed.
That would have been nice to include, since it's an "RT interview"
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
The summary phrases it as though the person making the statement is stating his own position. In fact, he's attributing this position to the opposition.
It's like having a summary which says "(name): Muslims should take over the world" without mentioning that the quote is from someone who doesn't like Muslims and is attributing that idea to them, and is not a quote from a Muslim at all.
William Binney's keynote at HOPE 9,... Unfortunately, neither audio or video of the talk are available yet.
Officially or unofficially? Historically HOPE conference torrents are usually up by now. Whats up with that? I haven't bothered searching yet, but...
I always used to like listening to the mp3 audio version as if they're audiobooks, and I'm looking forward to my next batch.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I'm so glad I was born into the land of the [REDACTED] and the home of the [REDACTED]
RT is Kremlin-controlled Russian state media. They love to do stories like this lately.
Second, Binney hasn't been at NSA since shortly after 9/11. And a LOT of stuff was happening immediately after 9/11. His statements to the effect that NSA is "building a dossier on every American" are not based in any sort of proof.
Also keep in mind that for NSA to perform its foreign signals intelligence mission — which INCLUDES discerning and targeting foreign communications within the US and on US equipment and networks, and does not require a warrant — mechanisms to identify that traffic are a necessity.
Furthermore, it is unlawful to collect, store, analyze, or disseminate the CONTENT of the communications of US Persons without a warrant. Period. This is not some kind of a joke.
("But they did it before!" Yes. To numbers of people in the hundreds, thought to have direct ties to terrorism, under a program asserted under the President's Article II authority under the AUMF, and briefed to Congress every 45 days. So to now say that NSA is wholesale building "dossiers" on EVERY American is a bit ludicrous. "But what about the data center in Utah? Did you see that article?" Yes. Yes I did. I have seen them all.)
That said, there are many things that may indeed be collected and analyzed without a warrant, including certain kinds of communications metadata. This is a simple fact, and is not a new construct. Doing this for phone records was affirmed by the Supreme Court in Smith v Maryland (1979).
So yeah, excuse me if I am suspect of something that is literally Russian propaganda pushing this story. That's completely separate from whether Drake had legitimate whistleblowing concerns. Whistleblowers being punished is, sadly, also not anything new.
Isn't the correct saying "speaking truth to power"?
#DeleteChrome
This is just a sad testament to what GW Bush helped to destroy -- a land of the free and home of the brave. Now it's the land of the slaves and home of the caged. Don't piss off your masters or you *will* be dealt with.
I'm just doing my part, as should you ... any monitoring system will fail when the "signal" is not perceivable above the background.
The correct thing to do is to "flood the system" with false-positives.
Otherwise they wouldn't be suspect.
-
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Proving something like this is extremely difficult, however something to investigate is how the Tea Party was changed after it's initial founding and the public response to the movement. Check the "leaders" that were appointed, public messages, etc... and see how they changed shortly after the movement gained momentum. Much of this work is already being done, but you have to find the information.
Historically we see very similar actions by other Governments and people (Nazi, Communism, Fascism, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc..). These take overs were not known to the public until after the fact. Call it sabotage or hijacking, the result is the same which ends with the movements being used counter to their initial purpose.
Another thing to consider is why we are all up in arms about issues that divert from the main topic of corruption. Instead of having people focus on the corruption we have people focusing on Liberals, Gay Rights, Race, and Religion. In my opinion, all of those things are an illusion to keep people from looking at the root problem.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Who fought? And who supported. While volunteers American soldiers flew bombers at great personal costs to disrupt the Nazi war machine, American made ball bearings came in via Sweden in large enough quantities to offset the damage to production. While Americans born in the US with Asian ancestors were rounded up and killed if they disobeyed, the open Nazi Ford was never even questioned and his heritage continues to this day.
Yes, America fought in WW2 against the nazi's but it was not exactly undivided in this and those who think those who wished the US to not aid the Allied forces were pacifists is gravely mistaking. It always amazes me when people come up with alternate histories were the US does not enter WW2, the far more likely alternate outcome would have been the US getting in on the Axis side. What after all is the difference between "keine juden" and "whites only" in spirit? Hell, IBM supplied the lists, Americans supplied the gas, the idea of going "east/west" for "lebensraum", of concentration camps (don't make the mistake of confusing concentration with extermination) (indian reservations). America was far from a natural ally for the Allied forces. Not that most of the allied nations were much better.
Don't forget how hated Roosevelts New Deal was and still is in certain quarters, quarters that have only gained in power.
Right wingers are like the Mafia, they are still fucking there! Want some proof? South Korea's whaling plans. WHY? They had given it up for decades, their economy doesn't need it and they have no depressed areas where people need any type of job. So why? Because some people who never let go of the past saw an opening. They were stopped, this time... but they will not go away, will try again and again and again.
The fight for freedom never ends, because evil never stops. Not the evil that rapes and pillages but the evil that excuses it as being cultural or just the way things are or ignores it as being a fundemental part of the good old days the evil wants to bring back.
See Romney's entire election campaign. They are not back, they have never gone away.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
In another recent development: The country of the USA is officially changing it's name to "East Germany". If geographically misleading, it seemed fitting in a number of other essential details.
The name was cheap, through recent disuse. The US was able to obtain it through a swap for their equally abandoned Constitutiuon.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Anyone else notice the very unfortunate freeze-frame placeholder before you start playing the video?
Because of where the crawl across the bottom just happens to be, the text on the frame appears at first glance to read as follows:
"WHISTLEBLOWER: GOVT FEARS MESSAGE
BUT INSTEAD PROSECUTES MESSENGER
IT'S BEHIND BOMBING THAT KILLED 6 U.S. TROOPS"
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
Politics aside, the Patriot Act opened a pandora's box and I sense that we will hear much more about Thomas Blake and his comments as time goes on, just as we dealt with the "Red Scare" when Mr. Hoover was in office, and various other Constitutional violations over time. Reading over what Mr. Blake did, he did try to follow the rules when whistle blowing and he let a LOT of people know who SHOULD have fixed the problem before he went public. And instead, he was prosecuted. But did the problems get fixed?
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
RT is a Kremlin propaganda tool, extension of RIA-Novosti, part of ITAR-TAAS, specifically created by the Soviet government authorities back in 1930s (TAAS news agency) for discimination of the propaganda across the globe. It has always been vicously anti-American, even when reporting on a real problems in American society.
There is practically no criticism against Kremlin or any politicians that are currently "in favor", however it and the rest of the TAAS news outlets (Pravda is the most known newspaper example), including the major TV stations are used as tools of punishment domestically in Russia and rallying forces hostile to the western governments internationally.
It is known specifically for coverage of conspiracy theories and interviews with extremists.
go listen to Rush Limbaugh. You're not wanted here.
But Americans have been hugely keen on giving more and more power to their federal government
Sigh. No. The ignorance of history by the average American is appalling. No, this is nothing new. It goes back to the 1798 Alien and Sedition acts, at least. There's nothing "more and more' about it-- you do remember the domestic spying of the 1960s and 1970s, right? Or the Kent State incident where National Guardsmen shot a bunch of students on the quad (who, as it turned out, didn't even have anything to do with the protests over which that the Guards had been called out?) Well, no, probably you don't. What is new is the large amount of push-back against giving power to the federal goverment.
There's been for the last two centuries a give and take between cries for security and the desire for non-interference; or, if you like, the battle between fear and freedom.
, so this is in inevitable byproduct. Of course there must be some government, but not one that grows without bound and attracts power hungry, corrupt authoritarians. But hey, keep on voting for those Republican and Democrats, because that's been working out so well thus far, amirite?
You're ignoring large amounts of debate and back-and-forth in order to phrase things as simple freedom-versus-evil. Even in the two-party system, the parties are not monoliths; opinions are not uniform nor black-and-white. However, if you don't like the two-party system, you might try to see if you can advocate changing the ballotting system that we currently have, which drives the politics to two parties. Try advocating approval voting, for example, which is a system that is not biased toward two parties: http://www.electology.org/approval-voting http://bcn.boulder.co.us/government/approvalvote/center.html (or any of several other methods that don't fail badly with multiple candidates).
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I agree with much of what this guy said. However his assertions that speaking truth to power draws wrath have been true forever... and more so in the past. If this guy would have blown the whistle on NSA wrongdoing in the 1950's he probably just would have disappeared. In my opinion, in the United States at least, it is less dangerous and easier today to "speak truth to power" than it has ever been.
That being said, we really need to put the breaks on the US spy machine and the US global empire in general. It costs too much and I'm just not interested in participating any more.
I can't help wondering if RT could get such a candid interview (assuming they ever wanted to) from some ex-KGB. I guess it's up to each country's media to show the other side's dirt.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Your world view is to simple, just because someone has a brown skin, doesn't mean they can't be a Nazi. Holland was one of the most liberal nations on earth with its capital Amsterdam, gay capital of the world... attacks against gays have however changed that. Attacks committed by? No, not just Muslims. But a very high percentage of them. Right wing extremist have been working together with Muslim extremists. Oh, they are rare but they do happen.
And there is no rule the next Hitler can't be a Jew, gay, member of a trade union, female, brown or black or yellow. The biggest threat against freedom is that in promoting it, you give freedom to those who use it to enslave you. Ask the American Indians, if you can still find one, what happens if you welcome people with open arms without question. Ask why Christians still send out missionaries around the world but object when Muslims come into their churches to preach their fate.
The real world does not separate into black and white. You can't just guard against the white fat guy with a burning cross. Tyranny will come wrapped in a flag, carrying a bible and talking about freedom. Their freedom, not yours but good look you spotting that in time.
Your right "they" will keep coming until you are on their target list. But "they" are not restricted by race, color, religion or political system. Real freedom comes from fighting for the freedom of all while also fighting the freedom of all to restrict others. No, that doesn't make "sense", life generally doesn't. People who believe in absolute freedom often plain out refuse to discuss cases where this is clearly demonstrated to be unworkable. You want to support absolute freedom? Very well, I choose as my freedom to kill you, slowly. Stop me and you are denying me my freedom.
Bull? No, it fundementally shows complete and total freedom for all, does not work. The best we can hope for is some freedom, as long as it isn't to restrictive of the fredoom of others. After all, when I claim my freedom to kill you, I deny you your freedom to live. Why should my freedom overrule yours? Why should yours overrule mine? Because my freedom affects you to much but my non-freedom doesn't affect many others.
Complex eh? Yeah.
Do you know the real reason Amsterdam used to be gay friendly? Not because Holland loved gays, just not enough people could be bothered restricting them. The overal feeling among the working class was "I don't like gays anymore then you do, but touch one of your gays and I will punch your lights out". Not very enlightened but a LOT better then modern bleeding hearts who excuse Muslim violence and the fear of teachers in school to teach about homosexuality or WW2 for fear of Muslim reactions because they are unable to realize that just because someone is a minority doesn't mean they can't be a nasty little shit.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
if you're suspicious until proven otherwise, then by definition only people who have no proof of wrongdoing can be "suspicious" ; and, therefore, being proven otherwise puts you firmly into the "no proof of wrongdoing" category! Like any pessimistic categorization, the only categories are "suspicious" and "proven guilty" - though I suppose someone who has been investigated deeply with no wrongdoing found would fall into the "hard case to crack" category.
This type of article pukes out flamebait if you ask me !
Well, duh. The whole point of a National Security State is that everyone is a suspect.
I'll again mention my little experience with the TSA, where I chuckled at the agent going through my credit cards one by one and he asked, "Is something funny?" in that 'I"m going to fuck you in the ass' tone of voice. I just saw V for Vendetta again recently and, frankly, we're just about there. It's scary. There's an interesting movie called "Compliance" coming out. People are simply too compliant. We need to question authority. I think a big problem is that most folks (including me) simply don't know where the line is between the government can do and what they can't (with respect to cops, TSA, other perceived authority). What we need is an advertising campaign that details illegal and inappropriate behavior of various government civil servants. Imagine ads that showed what cops, TSA, etc. can't do.
the idea is to cure our government of it's corporate disease, not condemn the whole thing. and replace it with what? no one controls a revolution. everyone suffers and what comes out on the other end can very well be worse
so, as much as i despise the corporate influence on our government, i would equally warn against the parent poster who seems a little too eager to grab his gun
think too much like the parent poster, with vicious enemies out to kill him around every corner, and this turns you not into the instigator of righteous revolution, this makes you a deluded paranoid schizophrenic shooting up a mall
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I have a copy of William Binney's Keynote at HOPE 9. It is currently in iso form but I can easily encode it to the filetype of everyone's choice. Where would you like me to upload it? Securitytube? Youtube? The Pirate Bay? I'll make my decision based on comments made in reply to this post.
The kind of slippery slope towards more and more blind zeal and further-reaching powers from agents of every kind of administration (private or public, it makes little difference) was at the center of Ludwig von Mises' 1944 short book Bureaucracy. He tried to explain why and how this happens in terms of systemic incentives and asymetry of information:
- promotion works mainly on seniority inside a bureaucracy, thus the top bureaucrats are restricted in their long-term planning by having their own retirement as an event horizon, and having grown a bias towards the statu quo ; while the newly appointed officials are being selected only on their then characteristics (good grades and diplomas mostly), and then all innovation and vigor they might have is sucked out by the subordinate positions they are forced to go through and the fact that none of it will matter much, if at all, to their advancement.
- having no market appraisal of the value of their action (which is not the same as there being no value to it, please mind), they they get no valuations of their own initiatives or actions from the rest of society, and they have no guidance for allocating their efforts and resources across many tasks and priorities, they cannot know how good or bad a job they're doing, except through conforming blindly to the rules and laws they enforce, and enforcing them as closely to the letter as they can - 'doing a good bureaucrat's job' often equates 'not doing anything that triggers the ire of your hierarchical superiors'
- being on the side that enforces the law often makes them forget that they, too, are subject to it, especially when things like due process hampers their enforcement of the law ; this creates a double standard in their mind where the law is never applied strictly and widely enough to the general population, and always too tightly and too often to themselves
- serving in an administration often has the perverse effect of turning the means at the disposal of the agents, into ends of their own:
Maybe we deserve this world ?
In essence some people protest, complain or report as they hope to make progress against a specific problem. They have noble motives. But we also have people who intend to crash government and society simply by complaining, reporting and protesting. We can easily say that they frequently have very bad motives and in some cases are agents of covert powers. The catch is that one can not so easily tell one from the other. And that tiny crack is what allows some authorities to start digging into protests, news and complainers. It is a very dangerous problem. I strongly suspect that the "Occupy" movement is now mostly covert and not because they had any bad intentions at all. I think they are a bit in fear or perhaps have been leaned on to the degree that whatever they do now will largely be on the silent or unidentifiable side of the coin. That is huge. We do need the Occupy Wall ST. people actively investigating, reporting and protesting. I do think we all need to be a bit in fear when we have members off Congress screaming that communists are trying to steal our government. McCarthy and Nixon are the type who caused this type of problem and their evil legacy remains with us today.
How do you prove you aren't suspicious? Paranoia is in the mind of the beholder. You could be the most loyal person on earth and someone could think "Hmmm, he is the one we'd least suspect. Just the person who'd do something."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946) I'll just leave this here.
I guess at some point in future Americans will have to check The Dictators Handbook to find out how to defeat NSA and NSA friendly politicians and media.
See subj
Suspicion of ordinary citizens as official policy is an alignment technique.
I'm sure I'll soon be trampled on by fine folks with the best of intentions (or maybe by paid shills), but it seems to me we are in an era where political and economic alignment is strong (politically via polarization, economically via [virtually] government sanctioned massive control fraud), and adaptive capacity is weak (thanks to the wrecked economy, strangulating regulation and serious problems at the patent office), thus we're simply following the "Lock Step" scenario as predicted and outlined in the now two year old Rockefeller Foundation publication Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development. (See page 16.)
Whether NWO, Globalist, CFR, Bilderberger or otherwise simply Rockefeller aligned agents (like them nice gents partying over at the Grove) helped shepherd this into being is left for you to decide.
By the way, the "Clever Together" and "Smart Scramble" scenarios representing proper ways out of this mess are the least likely to occur. The idealistically utopian "Clever Together" ignores the fact that governments are heavily invested in the status quo. "Smart Scramble" is a bit more likely, though government (pushed by behind the scenes corporate and personal power) will continue to disempower the "little guy" through legislation (and automatic suspicion).
Everything and its opposite is true. Get used to it.
It is a fact that Fox News has more reputable content than RT.
And any group who rises up will be labeled a "terrorist organization" so that when they are exterminated by the Feds in front of the media cameras, the general public, who are under the impression that the "government is always right and tells the truth", will just think, "They had it come'in." And the media will just fall in line and report about the "terrorist cell" and bring up clips of Timothy McVeigh or any other home grown group who had something against the government and committed violence.
The trouble is most Americans have no clue what freedom is. They think that as long as they can drive their cars where ever they want within the US, eat all they can, have their TV and bitch about the government to their buddies and online then they are "free". All this monitoring - like the Stasi - and the searches - electronic strip searches - are all necessary for our security and freedom.
Oh and the biggest thing that cracks me up is gun ownership. Yeah it's our right but what we're legally able to own is nothing to compared to the military. Even if we were legally able to own a rocket launcher, a F-18, a howitzer and a nuclear weapon, very very very few of us could afford it.
To quote Pris from Blade Runner, "We're stupid." We let it happen. We let the media - ALL the media - act incompetently, stupidly, and forced them via ad dollars to report the fluff and bullshit that they do now.
non-violent campaigns
Yes, MLK's campaign was non-violent, but the opposition (led by government) was certainly not.
Do NOT attempt to bolster Limbaugh's' already narcissistic ego by telling him how awesome he is. His head is already at a critical stage now. Any heavier and it may overload his already frail body. The good news is, as big as he is the fat should absorb some of the shock mitigating the worst of the damage. Which will probably include tsunami, earthquake, tornados etc.
Remember, war is peace!
Since when is dislike of Romney an automatic endorsement of Obama? What if I don't like either of these assclowns?
Since always. This is a nation drowning in a sea illiterate imbeciles (some less closeted than others), to the right or to the left, bestial Luddites who cannot contemplate anything outside their identity politics POVS without recoiling in fear or disgust (or experience a mental alt+ctrl+del.) Their entire core belief system is a cesspool of black-n-white zero-sum moronisms.
Fortunately they are not a majority (they really aren't as most people are too busy dealing with the peculiarities of life, jobs and family.). Unfortunately, they are everywhere, painting anything anywhere with their black-n-white brushes.
When they come for you, if they come for you, there is nothing you will be able to do with the guns you have stockpiled. If you are lucky they will just blackbag you and you will be taken to jail somewhere for processing, otherwise drone strike to the house in the middle of the night, problem solved, no survivors, no casualties other than the terrorists. Do you not remember waco? That was before we had planes that could fire missiles into peoples houses, that are relatively cheap to build and mostly dont rely on a seriously qualified and trained pilot. Hell I could probably plug my kid into one, tell him it is a game to protect America and you would still be dead. This is not the 17th century, your puny weapons are meaningless unless civil society breaks down and chaos breaks out, but against a well equipped modern military you have nothing.
This fantasy about guns and blazing glory needs to end, otherwise the tactics and strategies that do work, that have worked in the past and will work again in the future, will be denied to you. You pick up a gun you are the terrorist, and the sheeple will beg to bathe in your blood and the blood of your family, and that is if you are lucky. Have you learnt nothing from what your country has done in the middle east? Do you honestly think that what they will do on home soil when someone picks up a gun and directly threatens their wife and children instead of just some existential ginned up fear of terrorists, and more when nukes will be in play because someone will be stupid enough to take advantage of the chaos, will not make that look like a dry training run?
Nyder you sadden me, it is as if your understanding of war and politics stem from poorly scripted movies that come from hollywood, and nothing else. If a civil war ever happened in the west, the first action would be to control and direct the narrative so that the government would have the publics/armed forces support to do whatever they felt was necessary to "protect the nation" from the terrorists, or barbarians, the extremists or whatever the current du jour descriptor is of the day. Once they have that, it is game over, and it is impossible to errode that support with a gun, or did you learn nothing from 9/11? Did Americans suddenly start loving Osama because he killed a bunch of you guys to show he meant buisness? Did we not all invade afghanistan even though it is chock full of weapons? How about Iraq? Hell they are killing themselves in the streets without us even needing to shoot them down to prove how "serious" they were about it all, and it only made us go harder and further undermined their position.
If you honestly believe that you are headed towards tyranny, to achieve anything positive you need to get elected, or at the very least you need to be educated, you need to be articulate, and preferably you need to be a peace loving man of god and/or a community figure. Some crazy guy waving his guns in the air is a target, a threat to society and the community, not a banner that people will rally to.
>Or, I'm sorry, did you think that posting messages on Slashdot was actually going to lead to some meaningful outcome?
Skipp while I applaud your understanding of reality, and people like yourself give me hope, without public discussion people like Nyder exist in an echo chamber, especially online. They gain confidence and strength of conviction because they generally take silence to mean agreement. They are a cancer in modern society and this revolutionary meme can only be dealt with through positive engagement in the same manner as you pointed out that MLK tackled the issue of racism and segregation in America. This is a cultural malaise that has been building for many years and is in many ways a more malignant expression of the same disease that turned Alonso Quijano into Don Quixote except fueled by stories far darker and more divisive than the fanciful tales of chivalry that left him tilting at windmills.
Peace.
Your time is short indeed.
Afghanistan completely destroys your argument.
They are mostly armed with small and home-made arms, and our military is utterly unable to defeat those people.
Add to that the fact that military action here is destroying your own supply line, and putting your own families at risk by your own actions, and then you begin to see why citizens do indeed hold significant potential power.
As for the 62 ton tank and fighter jet examples, those devices require expert operators; and those people are flesh and blood and have families just like everyone else. Not to mention they have to be refueled, etc.
Civil war / revolution would be awful, and it should be the very last resort; but thinking it would be ineffective just shows you have no grasp of strategy or tactics. There are plenty of civilians who do, though.
take a look at death rates in the USA compared to countries with stricter gun control some time
thanks, moron
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
if the tool is weak, some other tool is used. you seem to believe malice can only come form the government
"Any group that can get enough people buying into what they say gets to wield it."
yeah. they are called the american people
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's nothing of the sort. It doesn't tell the people what to do. It tells the GOVERNMENT what to do. It is the authorization of strictly limited powers to the federal government, from the people, a non-exlusive list of rights that government is REQUIRED to obey, with some very important additional points laid out that define the mechanism of state government as well. It's a firm contract, not a flexible document that is subject to the "interpretation" of the latest flower-smalling idiot who comes along.
It does provide for change -- that's article five. Not "the interpretation of the moment" and not the whim of judges, who, by the way, are not awarded article five powers anywhere in article three.
Not that I expect you've actually read the document, considering your idiot summary of it.
that's a nice code word for not actually doing it right: a lot tighter restrictions on guns
no matter how you or the propaganda you swallow without thought phrases it, we have a country with too much senseless gun death, and the solution is a lot more strict controls
now open your mind, open your eyes, and look at other countries and what happens to senseless deaths when guns are seriously and effectively curtailed
go ahead! do a google, look at wikipedia, report back
it is on your conscience, and people like you, death after senseless death in this country, people at a party when a hot head erupts, little kids playing when a gangbanger erupts... this is the america of not enough gun control
oh i know: your solution is to arm everyone. right! less death there! do you know how many armed law-abiding people were around giffords in gun-happy tucson?
a gun is not a magic totem. you don't have time to react, you aren't awake 24 hours a day, you don't have lightning reflexes and eyes at the back of your head: you arm more people, you get more senseless deaths. it's that simple
wake the fuck up
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Really? King Puta's own state-sponsered mouth-piece. Please, these guys have less credibility then Al-Jehzeera and less morals.
Try advocating approval voting, for example, which is a system that is not biased toward two parties
approval voting is not a condorcet method and does not provide proportional representation
Yes, so?
What I stated was that it doesn't bias the system toward a two party solution. Personally, I don't give a damn whether the voting method finds a condorcet winner or not. That's one nice way to settle a multi-candidate election, but not the only one, and it's not necessarily clear that the approval winner is a worse choice than the condorcet winner, even if they are different (in many, possibly most, reasonable preference matrices, they'd select the same winner.)
Still, though, I agree with you in that a method that finds the condorcet winner is vastly superior to what we have now, and I'd throw in my support for it. If we can change the system to some workable version of condorcet voting, that works for me.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Ron Paul does not "believe in elevating rights of corporations", this is pure pro-government propaganda (pro Democratic government propaganda).
Ron Paul only promotes individual rights and there are no 'corporate rights' at all, there are no group rights of any kind.
A 'right' is only a concept that is meaningful within the context of the relationship between an individual and the collective, because there has to be a limit as to what the collective can do to an individual. This limit must be set and the collective must not be able to step over it unless there are specific circumstances that are authorised for by the Constitution.
Nobody specific can be punished when the collective steps over your individual rights, and thus the rights are the limits that must be observed by the collective without any compromise.
There can be no compromise on the individual right and that is what Ron Paul stands for. There can be no compromise when it comes to protecting individual rights from the collective - the Federal government. (Of-course this also does not mean that the government of a State can automatically be granted authority that the feds are not given, it only means that the feds do not have that authority, the next step is to ensure that the State gov't also cannot abuse an individual).
Corporations are a fiction of government, created to limit liability to individuals but by doing it, the government creates moral hazards, the consequences that happen because of these moral hazards are later blamed on this so called 'free market', which hasn't been free since the Fed and all the other agencies have been set up.
Behind every corporation there is a person or a number of people, so while corporations are a fiction, they are also people by proxy. The corporations shouldn't exist to limit personal liability, the patent and copyright laws shouldn't exist, no business should be able to influence gov't, but no gov't should t be able to influence a business (as long as no criminal offence is committed against an individual by the business), because limiting rights of businesses is exactly the same thing as limiting rights of individuals who run them.
You can't handle the truth.
The problem with cultivating and promoting gullible extremist people that the state can manipulate is that they are just as vulnerable to being manipulated by enemies of the state. They can't be trusted to act appropriately when communications are compromised. You get people like Kim Philby in charge.
This effect is well documented. Fanatics are more likely to flip to other fanatical positions. Addicts are more likely to switch to other addictions.
By contrast moderates are the least likely to flip and people who have honestly considered the other positions and rejected them are the most reliable under pressure, blackmail and even torture.
A state like Switzerland or Finland is very robust even under incredible pressure. Removing the entire government would not stop resistance by the population. By contrast a state like Franco's Spain or Mussolini's Italy is very brittle. Removing a single figurehead or at most a handful of people brings the entire thing tumbling down or even causes the population to turn against the government.
Every crypto-fascist element in the government needs to be educated that they are actually weakening society and increasing the chances of violence and anarchy.
"Domestically, they're pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country and assembling that information, building communities that you have relationships with, and knowledge about you; what your activities are; what you're doing. "
So how do you fight that? You need a way to pollute their dataset, like an app that calls random people during each other's free-minutes period.
Hiding won't help. Not having a facebook page won't help. Pollute their data.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
Poster didn't look thouroughly. Have a look here: http://radio.hope.net/archive.html
my point goes beyond that. Under normal conditions, the range of criminal culpability is "Innocent -> Proven guilty". Under the article, the range is "Suspicious->Proven guilty." There logically cannot be a "Suspicious->Proven innocent" route, since no one is trying to prove innocence; there is no defense here. Just your data and government suspicion.