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NSA Intercepted French Telephone Calls "On a Massive Scale"
rtoz writes "The US National Security Agency (NSA) has been intercepting French telephone calls 'on a massive scale,' according to a report published in Le Monde. According to Le Monde, the NSA recorded millions of telephone calls placed by French citizens over a 30-day period last year, including some placed by people with no connections to terrorist organizations. France called in the U.S. ambassador to protest the alleged large-scale spying on French citizens by NSA."
In b4 cold fjord and benjfowler make shill posts defending any and all actions of the NSa.
"Foreign intelligence" speaks for itself. Any country complaining about it is playing a shell game. The reality is, they'd do the same if they had the capabilities to do so.
America is 75% christian, and given how feral and out-of-countrol some of the groups are, I'd say they're fair game.
Ah, spoken like a true American who feels entitled to be a douchebag.
When the rest of the world decides they're tired of your shit, you can likely expect to see a backlash against the US.
I can see governments basically saying "we're not buying your stuff, we're not hosting your bases, we're sure as hell not working with you and we don't give a fuck".
America likes to think their interests trump everyone else's. But I see a time coming where other governments start saying "fuck you".
Saying your $FOO doesn't mean you're really a $FOO as described by $FOO.SACRED_WRITINGS.
including some placed by people with no connections to terrorist organizations
Some, as in a few. Out of millions? Are we to understand that during those particular 30 days there was heavy terrorist chatter on French phones, to the tune of some millions of calls? Would this be justification enough for another D day? /sarcasm
It's impossible to keep an operation that big under wraps. I can't say I have a problem with the US spying on other countries. I do have a major problem with a wasteful, counterproductive grab bag approach that relies on 20ish high school dropouts.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
America is 75% christian, and given how feral and out-of-countrol some of the groups are, I'd say they're fair game.
Apparently the NSA agreed with you.
with no terrorist connections?
SOME?
When you intercept millions of phone calls, I'd rather expect that the majority of them are not placed by terrorists, else terrorists have the phone habits of the average western teenager.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
With "allies" like your country no one needs enemies.
Millions of conversations & "some" are not related to terrorists ! ... shudder .... ... ....
Millions is at least 2 millions or 66 666/day...
"Some" is at most "half" so there where apparently 33 333 conversations related to terrorist every day
So assuming that all these bad guys where plotting like crazy, every day, and always the same, that still means that with 50 conversations per day the NSA should have found out at least 600 "new" terrorist
nb: there are about 60 000 people in jail in France, so at the very least 1% is something like "large"
So Where are they ??? are they hiding under my table ... or in some bush on my way home .... shudder shudder ....
Or should it read, some conversations where related to terrorism ...
In practice, when the official communication says: we looked at all these people and some where innocent... I find it much more scary than
we unfortunately looked at a lot of innocent people but we did find "some" very bad people...
The fact that the communication days "some where innocent" really gives the impression that they are again trying to bamboozle us ...
Let's get real. The worst christians is Westboro Baptist Church and what do they do? Protest funerals and tell everyone how gay lovers will burn in hell. Let's try an experiment: Paint Jesus in Feces in a Christian country and see what the worst thing that will happen to you as a result? Next, pain Mohammed in feces and see what will happen to you in a Muslim country. Or even a European one (death threats anyone)?
Oh wait, you were trying to make a lame attempt at equating the two.
Saying your $FOO [...]
*You're
Two words combined that don't make sense.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Welcome to the new normal.
Keeping control over people have been the function of government from its creation back in the times of small hunting bands One group controls the other by controlling the information and what they know. From best hunting grounds to modern connections of people. The only difference now is it is easer to gather the data on everyone rather then set groups. Now that most everyone know's they have most of what they do watched and recorded for later use, your habits and norms can be controlled. People that know they are being watched act differently and it is not always good for society. Or it may bring forth a more secure internet by people using and demanding secure communication beyond the viewing of government. Sadly history has shown that this requires pain and suffering, wars and blood.
()-()
Perhaps people who live in France care? Not everyone is as self-centered as thou.
Freedom telephone calls
This article articulates many points on France's recent espionage history.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
"When the rest of the world decides they're tired of your shit, you can likely expect to see a backlash against the US.
I can see governments basically saying 'we're not buying your stuff, we're not hosting your bases, we're sure as hell not working with you and we don't give a fuck' ".
Sure... right up to the point their sad little country gets overrun by extremists, then all come running back to the US asking for aid. Sure... waiting for you to be right... *rolls eyes*
La merde vient de frapper le ventilateur.
Westboro Baptist is worse than Christian terrorist Timothy McVeigh? Or the people who bomb abortion clinics and shoot doctors? And if you want I can continue listing other domestic terrorism by Christians.
And don't even try the "they aren't true Christians" nonsense.
Every-US-based cloud service (Azure, Amazon, Google etc) has become unreliable and unusable for non-US citizens. Just wait and see us run away from those services.
I suppose the US government will not compensate those companies for their loss.
Not to mention the fact that the Westboro Baptists are obviously a troll group and not a sincere church. Fred Phelps used to be a civil rights lawyer for God's sake.
But gold...
Go ahead, keep on voting for Republicans and Democrats. Because that isn't causing any problems at all.
Better go tell the Foo Fighters.
I suspect many Americans would be demanding that Versailles get nuked or we name french fries to freedom fries.
Let's get real. The worst christians is Westboro Baptist Church and what do they do? Protest funerals and tell everyone how gay lovers will burn in hell. Let's try an experiment: Paint Jesus in Feces in a Christian country and see what the worst thing that will happen to you as a result? Next, pain Mohammed in feces and see what will happen to you in a Muslim country. Or even a European one (death threats anyone)?
Oh wait, you were trying to make a lame attempt at equating the two.
Are you seriously trying to say that there would not be one death threat, and no possibility of it being carried out, from a Christian over such an experiment? Have you lived on this planet long?
Are you telling me that WBC is worse than those "christians" bombing clinics, killing doctors, spread hate and starts war like bush just because "god told me"?
Have you even seen some of those christians? Muslims are no worse than christians, just watch africa, and see what the christian militias such as sudanese christian militias roaming around and raping , LRA (congo, heard of kony?) and other places, or do you really think that every fucking militia in africa is muslim or animist? There is one major religion in Africa and it's christianity, look at south africa, not only were they christian but they also used bible verses to support their apartheid.
There are far more Muslims in the US than there is in France. So you might mind all your calls being tapped by foreign intelligence agencies, right?
Yes, Snowden and Greenwald have a clear agenda. And it is the libertarian view that government is bad and should be defunded.
But, does EVERY damned day have to have a new Snowden-release, with the latest "outrage"?? Come ON people.
God knows, if there's anyone I want protecting from it's the French. Sir Humphrey Appleby had it right. They may be our allies now, but for most of the last 1,000 years they've been our enemies. I'd vote for an increase of surveillance on the French.
And once that's happened, let's start on the Welsh.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
http://prochoice.org/about_abortion/violence/history_extreme.asp
"The NSA recorded millions of telephone calls placed by French citizens over a 30-day period last year, including some placed by people with no connections to terrorist organizations"
Not really.
"The NSA recorded millions of telephone calls placed by French citizens over a 30-day period last year, including a miniscule few by people with supected connections to terrorist organizations"
Let's get real. The worst Christians are Westboro Baptist Church, and what do they do?
First, FTFY.
Second, you're living in a fantasy land if you think the WBC is the be-all-end-all for asshole "Christians" in the USA.
Try telling that to the family of Dr. George Tiller, you ignorant prick.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
which is not a valid argument for any NSA actions against a friendly country.
There is no such thing as a friendly foreign country as far as intelligence services are concerned. While I (and probably you) do not and should not approve of the NSA's actions, we also should not be even a tiny bit surprised by them and you can be quite sure France is not surprised despite what their government might claim. Allies can become enemies and even countries on good terms can harbor dangerous individuals - sometimes unknowingly. The US and Canada have the longest undefended border in the world but I guarantee you that they do spy on each other and that each has developed invasion/defense plans against the other just in case. Intelligence services like the CIA and NSA look for information wherever it can be found. If that happens to be a "friendly" nation or even their own citizens then so be it. This is why it is SO important to have meaningful oversight by civilian authorities. Something which we are sorely lacking at the present time.
Countries that complain about NSA spying are really just putting on a show for their voting public. They have their own intelligence services and you can be 100% certain they are spying on the US and you can also be 100% sure that they knew or at least suspected the NSA spying already. Frankly the ONLY thing that would surprise me is if they were not trying to replicate to some degree what the US is doing.
Yet another revelation from Snowden that reveals Top Secret American foreign intelligence activities that have no relation to the rights of Americans.
Yet more irrelevant nonsense and FUD from bootlicking cold fjord. Why do you artificially limit wha he can disclose to only those things that affect Americans? Actions are wrong based on the deed not at who they are directed at.
So you have no problems with China and Russia tapping your phones and stealing data from your computers?
When the rest of the world decides they're tired of your shit, you can likely expect to see a backlash against the US.
I was under the impression that this is exactly what's happening. And that the US feels it must "work, though, sort of the dark side" as a result.
Yet another revelation from Snowden that reveals Top Secret American foreign intelligence activities that have no relation to the rights of Americans.
Given the underwhelming response by those who think the Constitution is just a piece of paper, a little foreign heat could only help.
When will people come to understand that his goal was not simply protecting the rights of Americans? Isn't it clear from who his Russian spokesman was?
Given the vicious response of his native country's government to his whistle blowing on 4th Amendment violations, he'd be a fool not to make allies of convenience. Worked for us in WWII.
Maybe they just wanted to know how many French cars would burn this year [nytimes.com], set ablaze by.....guess who?
According to the article you linked to, the "guess who" is the French.
Israel is 16.5% Muslim, if you don't count the untermenschens in the West Bank that Israel is trying to cleanse away.
Might = won't.
I'm not as much angry at this specific revelation as I am bewildered. What is going on in France that is relevant to us and our national security? Is it worth the expenditure? That's really what I want to know.
Not to mention the fact that the Westboro Baptists are obviously a troll group and not a sincere church. Fred Phelps used to be a civil rights lawyer for God's sake.
I get what you mean. They are a US domestic CIA PsyOp. It's always been evident.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Screw all your friends over until you don't have any friends?
Not so much as retribution, simply because it doesn't apply, any more.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
It's their job to a) not blanket-grab millions of phone users of data in a random bug hunt but to apply "intelligence" and b) not to get caught doing so. They are spies. This is just terribly amateur. If you don't see that, then you're really missing the biggest thing - that's the problem more than ANYTHING else. So fucking amateur that it makes you look like a bunch of incompetents.
However, on a similar note, if you found out that the French authorities had a complete copy of your phone records which got publicly leaked (WikiLeaks-style, say), would you not be pissed? It could easily destroy your career, your life, your relationships, etc. (think: This might include the phone numbers of sex chat lines, and you might be a politician / teacher - nothing ILLEGAL in doing that, but would you want that being public knowledge after illegal collection of that data by a foreign entity not being held subject to the laws of YOUR country?).
Now think that that might include, say, phone calls made by the US ambassador to France while he was in the US. Now we're into REALLY serious shit that you can't even get in a court of law in the country.
What's more shocking is NOT that this data exists, or has been abused for purposes far beyond their remit, nor that they are that incompetent that it gets found out so easily (but that's pretty damning), but that - in order to "protect" the US, they have now incurred the wrath of quite a number of other countries allied to them and - should it come out into the public media that certain things were captured "accidentally" into that data - could well be the trigger to an international incident (read: War).
What if you found that a US ally like, say, the UK had complete records of every US citizen that the US did not give them (because a law prevents the US from doing so, and they thought it was just a blind hunt without purpose, and couldn't see why the UK would need that so they blocked it) but they stole in other ways and then managed to publish/leak to a newspaper in the UK?
And what if that info contained things like the phone records of major political figures? Or the phone calls made from Guantanamo Bay? Or what numbers were dialled in the Washington DC area when the UK queried why it join in fighting in the Middle East (or whatever?). It's not WHAT specifically was collected - it was why it was collected and what COULD be inside that that could easily trigger an international incident. And it has. And will continue to do so while things like this come out.
Fact is, there's being a spy - and that means NOT GETTING CAUGHT - and there's just going on a blind hunt through data "because you can" against the laws of a country you are allied to (who would have given you what you wanted if you'd asked).
Just how much co-operation do you think you will see next time you're trying to track a terrorist cell through France? It's counter-productive, and BAD SPYING. TERRIBLE SPYING. CRAP SPYING. And it's pissing off your allies.
Boo freekin hoo. This is what the NSA is supposed to do.
Um, no. They are supposed to focus on the activities of groups who are directly threatening American interests.
They are not supposed to waste billions of dollars worth of resources building haystacks through which to search for needles.
Face it, if the US governments interest was truly limited to fighting actual terrorism, the whole dragnet approach would be considered nothing but an expensive waste of time.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
set ablaze by.....guess who?
Insurance fraudsters? You sir, are a trollers troll - apparently upset at the news Snowden never took any files to Russia so you have stooped to insinuating that the FSB commenting on the case way back when he was still in the airport means they speak for him. This is despite the fact that Snowden gave a freakin press conference from the airport at this same time, and that Wikileaks has released several statements and letters from Snowden since.
What a sad life it must be to live as a propagandist for an increasingly fascist state, may the mods slap your tripe down.
I find it funny that this is such a revelation to people. NATO countries have been spying on each other for decades. Agencies are often not allowed to spy on their own citizens, but if you could get another country to do it it would be perfectly legal. Basically the French politicians are pretending to be alarmed to get elected again. All the while they know the information is already being shared with them. All alphabet agencies share copious amounts of data between countries and have been for decades. You were under the impression INTERPOL, BND, DGSE, SIS, etc are all running around not sharing data?
People have "known" (ie suspected) for years that the federal government was doing something like this. With all the revelations that have been released recently, why are people so surprised when another comes out? And this may have been started by the previous administration (or the one before that) but the current administration knew about it. I am kinda surprised there has not been a Congressional hearing about this yet.
Yeah, Atheists definitely win the "Brutal, senseless, overwhelming genocide" game.
Their High Scores are almost untouchable.
Oh wait, you were trying to make a lame attempt at equating the two.
He's actually doing a reductio ad absurdum, to underline how silly the premise is. That doesn't mean the christian majority of US is as aggressive as the Muslim minority of Europe. They are much, much more dangerous because they, aside from a few extremists, are the only ones acting out their delusions of world control.
To have an affair is a very French thing to do. To get caught is an American thing.
Terr1: "What'ya do'ing, dog?!"
terr2: "Hang'in build'in bombs. And you?"
"Same ole, same ole. Did ya catch that bombing by Sucmadiq? Damn Dog! That was rad!"
"Nah. My Mom kept me in because I played Call of Duty too long. Play it?"
"Hell yeah! I get to kill all those infidels! And many times I pose as one and start shoot'm in the back!"
"Dog!"
"Word!"
Plus i hear Christians have their huge number of followers by offering the best overall package, not by killing anyone with different beliefs.
They're still needed more than the French. Their place on the Security Council is a pity-vote because "They used to be a big deal guys!"
I'm wondering how this is possible. As long as it's communications going through Google, Skype, or some other americal corp, it's pretty easy to just intercept whatever goes through their servers. Intercepting real landlines is a wholly different game. It needs on site infrastracture, cause I doubt they get routed through the US. This means there is someone inside France that should get their ass handed to them for this, before one even starts thinking of the guys at NSA.
"The US National Security Agency (NSA) has been intercepting FREEDOM telephone calls 'on a massive scale,' according to a report published in Le Monde.
...that the NSA managed to intercept more calls of French citizens.... ...than the French government.
-Styopa
you are funny. Hitler was a Christian.
To say nothing of the Christian support in this country for waging wars of choice against "godless heathen" in middle east
Hitler was not an atheist. He was a Roman Catholic, and had agreements and treaties with the Vatican
But every time someone tries to read the writings, they get a different interpretation.
I think he's saying that while you may get death threats in the States, in a Muslim country you wouldn't live long enough to get death threats. In the US, such a painting is would be protected speech. In Muslim countries, this would be a government mandated death penalty.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
You are not making any sense here.
Illegal actions taken by our government against foreigners, causing damage to our countries reputation, its relations, and indeed sparking violent blowback as well, is one of the major dangers that Americans face in todays world. Ignoring or avoiding those problems is pointless.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
WBC are mostly harmless. Much as I hate to defend them, they have always been non-violent protesters - and to keep their cool is quite an achievement given the type of (well-earned) abuse that has been directed at them. I think it helps that they have a real persecution complex going, so the more hated they are the more they feel justified in their beliefs.
That's debatable, but even taking Hitler out of the mix, the Atheists still have the High Score.
pro-Western? Operator on the Cold Fjord/benjfowler accounts are pro fascist corporate police state, and that is just going by a pages of your past propagandist drivel. You are a sad individual indeed.
The US only holds its power because oil is traded in US dollars. Once we shift that to bitcoins, the US will be toast.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The summary makes no mention of how much all these phone calls weighed.
75% of Americans think they are Christians, and given how feral and out-of-countrol some of the groups are, I'd say they're fair game.
FTFY
Yes, I wept bitter tears after seeing that I'd posted that typo.
Hmmmm .
http://i.imgur.com/ZNEidk7.jpg
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I never realized CF/BJF could be the same person but it makes sense now. However, isn't it just as likely that they are not the same person but just cut from the same piece of shit?
And if the French did the same to the US you would feel the same way right?
I mean the French spy agency is suppose to spy after all.
Yeah, like serbia did before '99 ... oh wait.. you've bombed Christian serbia (gas rafineries, tobacco/cigarette plants, etc), to "protect" the muslims in kosovo.
for many conservative, trading, countries usa is the extreme and has been for several decades - dictating who we can trade and with what tech(in the past limiting our trade with russia/ussr, for example, because our tech was too good for them).
if we're overrun by extremists then that probably would be the extremists that don't want aid(or rules) who would be in charge. heck, we'd probably go as refugees to another european country since going as refugees to usa doesn't seem to be working for anyone lately.
but it doesn't really work to be doing trade with someone who is cheating all the fucking time and breaking all the fucking rules all the fucking time with the defense that "it's ok since you're not our citizens". something has to give - most logical thing to go is the assumption that we would investigate hacking originating from our nations if usa asks since you're giving free cards to your operatives to break our communications laws.
because that's less extreme than kidnapping those operatives by force and we're not that extreme even if usa is when it doesn't bother with pesky extradition requests. those operatives are endangering OUR national security so according to the ground rules of engagement put into place by USA it would be well within our rights to go and snipe those guys and then say in the UN "well it was legal! we have a paper that we wrote that says it was legal!"
I mean how much more extreme could you get? smuggling kidnapped non-pow non-prisoner-status prisoners through our airports? ordering collateral damage ok killings on people based on hearsay, in areas technically not in war, without warning? using agreedly torturing techniques to interrogate people you have no idea if they know anything? spying on your allies, enemies and own people on massive scale? smuggling drugs to finance a conflict? selling guns to known gun-runners? how much more extreme can you really get without an open civil war?
Add isolationist to the list too since compared to the size it's fucking hard to legally move in to pay taxes(compared to just about any other picky country like Norway, Russia or even China).
So yeah probably the last country to go ask for help. last time we did you sent us shitty airplanes and then became allies with the guys who attacked us - making even fucking bona fide original nazis a better companion in the situation!
and marshall aid? not a cent for us! we paid reparations!
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Westboro Baptist is worse than Christian terrorist Timothy McVeigh?
Timothy McVeigh was raised as a Roman Catholic, but later claimed to be agnostic. There is no evidence that there was any religious motivation for his actions.
And don't even try the "they aren't true Christians" nonsense.
You are equating far less than 1% of Christians with 80% or more of Muslims. 90% of Pakistani Muslims think people should be executed for blasphemy. 40% of Pakistani Muslims feel that the 10% who are willing to tolerate blasphemy should also be executed. This is not theoretical. Salmaan Taseer, a Pakistani politician was murdered, not for blasphemy, but merely for advocating the abolition of the death penalty for blasphemy. There was widespread approval of his murder. How many Christians support abortion clinic bombers?
And as usual fashionably late to the party :)
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
The worst christians is Westboro Baptist Church
I think the child-raping priests of the Catholic church are considerably worse.
WBC are mostly harmless. Much as I hate to defend them, they have always been non-violent protesters - and to keep their cool is quite an achievement given the type of (well-earned) abuse that has been directed at them. I think it helps that they have a real persecution complex going, so the more hated they are the more they feel justified in their beliefs.
They do have some more subtle (but quite illegal) tactics up their sleeves. A friend of mine got investigated by the cops after an encounter with the Phelpsies. His sister was riding shotgun and shouted some of that well-earned abuse at them. They took down his (partial) license number and (mostly correct) paint color and reported him for a hit-and-run. The cops paid a visit and examined his car. Luckily, he didn't have any body damage, so that was the extent of the investigation . . .
I am not a crackpot.
It seems to me you are not so much pro-Western as you are anti-everything else. Your first post in this thread is entirely typical, judging from your post history. Xenophobe is the word that comes to my mind. You are welcome to your opinion but you might reconsider just how narrowminded it makes you seem.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
They probably do. The addition of the NSA stealing their personal and business data doesn't make the Chinese and Russians leave them alone, it just makes it worse. If by allowing the NSA to steal they could force the Chinese and Russians to stop, they probably would.
Of course, as the parties providing oversight and budget are getting kickbacks it's instead considered a most lucrative waste of time.
Yes, Snowden and Greenwald have a clear agenda. And it is the libertarian view that government is bad and should be defunded.
Please cite where either of them has said that, as opposed to abiding by the Constitution. If you think that libertarians are the only ones who respect that document, you couldn't be more wrong. If you think that defunding the government would help, I'll remind you that the NSA is but a tiny part of the federal budget. Eliminate the federal income tax and they'd still have plenty of money for it.
Let's get real. The worst christians is Westboro Baptist Church and what do they do? Protest funerals and tell everyone how gay lovers will burn in hell. .
I call Eric Rudolph rather worse than the Phelps gang, just to name one example.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Association_fallacy
Followed by
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_True_Scotsman
The fact that Stalin and Mao were atheists is not why they did what they did; as atheism lacks any doctrine or credo to execute, it is incidental to the fact. The fact that you don't think Kony isn't a Christian because he isn't what you want a Christian to be doesn't mean that he isn't one; it means you don't like him very much.
Well, at least now the French have a good reason to call us arrogant.
Sigh.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Really, when you take into account the witch trials, the crusades, the conquistadors, the slavers and every other Christian atrocity out there the Atheists are still the worst?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
But every time someone tries to read the writings, they get a different interpretation.
Good point...hey! That gives me an idea!
LET'S BUILD A PRNG BASED ON THE SACRED WRITINGS!
(oh, wait...no, that won't work. A lot of what people say based on their interpretations of the sacred writings is actually quite predictable...damn!)
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
I think this video sums up the whole Muslim vs. Christian debate pretty well. Gives a real behind-the-scenes view of what's going on.
Oh yeah, "just in case"
Yes, just in case for both sides. Doesn't mean the plans are expected to be used but you can be certain that the US military has at some point developed plans for attacking and defending against every country in the world. Just in case.
Oh, is that the reason you are eavesdropping on my conversations?
Let's get real. The worst christians is Westboro Baptist Church and what do they do? Protest funerals and tell everyone how gay lovers will burn in hell. Let's try an experiment: Paint Jesus in Feces in a Christian country and see what the worst thing that will happen to you as a result? Next, pain Mohammed in feces and see what will happen to you in a Muslim country. Or even a European one (death threats anyone)?
Oh wait, you were trying to make a lame attempt at equating the two.
WBC is the most vocally odious, but there are many groups that have been much, much worse. Let's start with pretty much the entire white supremacist movement. Aryan Nations considered themselves a (quote) "White Christian Separatist" organization. That's right, these are literally Nazis we're talking about. (How often can someone play the Nazi Card on the Internet while actually stating an objective fact, eh?) Then there are splinter groups like the Louisiana-based "Church of the Sons of Yahweh" (that's "Church," not "delicatessen" or "mosque" or "nearby diner"), and other competing organizations like The Order. Oh, let's keep in mind why the KKK burns crosses...they too identify themselves as a Christian organization.
Now, all of these are fringe groups; I don't mean to infer that this is how most Christians, or even a significant percentage of them, think or act. But they all make the WBC look like internet trolls playing Xbox by comparison. WBC is NOT the worst there is.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Apparently you are so clever that you think they might be the same person, typing with both hands to post at the same time? What?
And yet despite how you describe them, you and other people keep coming back for a nice, big, helping! Enjoy! (Try it with spicy mayo!)
It is easier to find who NSA doesn't spy... so far that list is []
I can continue listing other domestic terrorism by Christians.
And don't even try the "they aren't true Christians" nonsense.
A random dictionary's definition of christian:a person who believes in the teachings of Jesus Christ
I would *add* that "believing" is not enough, and practicing is where the true follower is...
But Jesus gave his own litmus test, so why must you and I try to define "true" christian and waste time with the "no true scottsman fallacy": "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:35)
There is no "love" in blowing people up and doing what some of these churches are individually doing to blemish the name of who they claim to follow. Jesus knew this about the wolves entering the flock. See Acts 20:29. The net result? false doctrine and interpretation create a rift between people and God.
Thanks for making up some stats so we can all know the truth.
You might want to get a clue before before making silly declarations. It takes about one minute on Wikipedia to settle the fact.
France: 4.7 million, 7.5%
USA: 2.6 million, 0.8%
I think every country on Earth can safely assume that the NSA spied on and recorded some large proportion of their telephone calls. It's almost naive to be outraged every time it gets confirmed.
It is a blatant general accusation without evidence.
Worst? Depends on definition.
Ahead in the numbers? Yes.
http://www.examiner.com/article/atheist-vs-christian-whose-killed-more-and-who-will-survive
this signature has been removed due to a DMCA takedown notice
Go and boil your bottoms, son of a silly person! You empty-headed animal food-trough wiper! Ah fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!
Actually, NSA's mandate is Signals Intelligence. Which pretty much means grabbing everything they can, then sorting it for utility.
Also, "intelligence" in the context of an intelligence agency (NSA, GCHQ, etc) has NOTHING to do with common usage of the word - it means the information they are gathering, or trying to.
Surely would. However, absent me being a French citizen, it would never occur to me to scream "The French did something illegal!!!!", since FOREIGN intelligence gathering isn't illegal for any country.
Unless, of course, the actual intelligence gatherers are caught in the act of foreign soil. No, finding out they did it a year or two after the fact, with no names of the people doing the actual work, doesn't leave you much room for even a show trial, though "Viewing with Alarm" might be something you'd do to pacify your population when it is revealed that you can't protect your own people from foreign spying.
Which last seems to be what the French are trying for.
I would never expect ANY cooperation from the French in regards to terrorism. The only interest they have is that it not be done against French citizens or businesses. They don't give a rat's ass about any other terrorism....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Peter Allen had it right ..
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/how_they_do_it/2006/02/wiretapping_europeanstyle.html
Reported and discussed several years ago:
There are no true Scotsmen either.
In any case the original writings contradict each other, so no-one could be said to be described by them all, only some selected subset.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That article makes no sense what so ever. Atheists do not believe in a god, but the article claims that communists believe their leader is a god, and there for they are atheists.
Actually the more I read the article the more ridiculous it gets. They claim that atheists and communist have no moral code, which is a blatantly false logical fallacy.
When you have an article that backs up your claim that is not almost entirely over generalizations come talk to me.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
This article once again makes false equivalences. The deaths from the Crusades were made directly because of religious reasons; the Crusades themselves were inherently religious. On the other hand, many, many deaths at the hands of Stalin or Mao had absolutely nothing to do with their atheism. If you want to play that game, then you'd have to tally up all the murders and wars of each and every single country outside of possibly the last fifty years under "religious" because their leaders or perpetrators were religious.
Hopefully the cops went back and charged the individual who call in the hit and run with making a false police report.
Time to offend someone
With "allies" like your country no one needs enemies.
If your country is in Europe and is a US ally today, chances are that it had been occupied by its enemy (either state or political party) and the US helped remove that enemy and return government to the people. That covers the West, and in some cases was a redo from 25 years before. As to the East, the US allied with newly free Western Europe against the Soviet empire in the East, supported freedom movements and dissidents there, and continued to defend Western Europe until Soviet rule collapsed and most of Eastern Europe was free as well.
The US paid a price in both blood and treasure to free Europe and keep it free, and contributed to its rebuilding.
The few people remaining that remember what it was like to be under the boot of a real enemy are probably more clear on this question than you are. Maybe you should find out what it was like before you do something stupid. And I think it is likely that Europe is going to be in big trouble in 30-50 years, so hold that thought.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Boo freekin hoo. This is what the NSA is supposed to do.
Um, no. They are supposed to focus on the activities of groups who are directly threatening American interests.
Ummm, no, please read. They are supposed to be building and looking through haystacks. That *IS* their job by mandate. Their mandate did not extend to U.S. soil until the (Un-)Patriot Act. That's when everyone's panties got in a bunch. The NSA is supposed to support intelligence and counterintelligence information gathering to support national and departmental interests. That includes spying on our allies. Always has. And they have always spied on us too, so welcome to the real world!
It's all about the rights of the corporations and their need for edge both in negotiations and in keeping the american people subservient and buying.
The companies think anything is ethical as long as the money changed hands "legally" or "discretely".
Those fine people who dropped nukes on Japan were certainly not Muslim, and probably good ole God fearin US guys.
Um, no. They are supposed to focus on the activities of groups who are directly threatening American interests.
What you thought the French people were working to forward US interests in the francosphere? There was the famous you are either with us or against us speech as well. What I don't get is why hasn't the bombing started yet since the French are obviously planning to subvert our authority.
/dev/random with dates a couple years out or latitude / longitude coordinates for subject headers.
All kidding aside it seems like they are basically wasting massive amounts of resources creating the impression that they are doing something. Look at all of the stuff we are looking at type of thing. I think it is time to poison the well and just create some throwaway e-mail accounts and haven them e-mail around multi meg attachments that are dumps from
Time to offend someone
France has 65 million people. The number of terrorists is well under one per cent; now unless the baddies phone even more than the average teenaged girl, millions of eavesdrops is at best described as waste of brains, time and money in addition to unethical.
Monitoring millions of calls, including the admitted 'politicians' and 'high profile businessmen' means espionage and industrial espionage. Now, I expect that nation states indulge in a certain amount of espionage against their allies. It's natural. One hopes less than against their actual enemies but given France's dependance upon areas upon which America wishes to also have exports -- aviation and armaments -- I'd anticipate that this may be a can of worms that keeps on giving.
No-one holds a grudge like the French government.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Religious wars? Up to 10 million. The inquisition? tens of thousands. Aztec human sacrifices? Up to 3 million.
Atheists, Christians and Muslims have nothing on social reformers and empire builders. Checkmate, economists
I know some fine Christian people who were all for causing hundred of thousands of deaths in Iraq, and a politician in a Jewish Theocracy was told by their President "God told me I should attack Iraq".
They were all in French.
Well that does not actually counter my point, which was between the 2 which is worse.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
France being one of the countires that weren't swayed by Bush's "They tried to kill my daddy" plea,
weren't part of the Iran invasion. We got Freedom Fries, and tards dumped wine in the gutter.
Yep, the French asked for this one.
this country was born a couple of centuries ago. My own family manor house is much older. ... and his mama cries.
It's just like are arrogant teenager who knows nothing but is conviced that his lifestyle is the best on earth and in times.
Lack of culture, lack of will, the poor little undereducated teen will soon have to face that many kids on the block are much more skilled than he even ever dreamed to be.
So he grabs a gun
In the gettho.
a.) their job is to collect foreign intelligence ("information" for those ignorant of the correct definition to use for the word)
b.) they didn't get caught they got exposed by Snowden
c.) Other countries (France and England included) spy on the U.S. all the time...since, well, as long as the U.S. has existed. Just because their an ally doesn't mean we don't gather intelligence on them clandestinely. It's part of the way the world works. It's the spying internally that is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad! That's what Snowden was trying to point out and (rightfully) get stopped. He unfortunately caused a lot of collateral damage in the process. Trust me, it's going to take more than a "hey-you're-spying-on-us" incident to sour collaboration against terrorism. We might lose some trade deals or something like that, but France and other allies don't want their citizens injured in an attack either and will cooperate to thwart a plot. To not act on U.S. intelligence and have French citizens killed would be much worse for those in charge than some spying.
Two words combined that don't make sense.
(see title) FTFY
You can come up with statistics to prove anything, AC. Forty percent of all people know that.
Er... then why did 'ol Tim McV hang out with that wacked out christian identity group? To convert them to agnostism? I think not.
In America, if you are Muslim and spew rhetoric against the State, you are arrested, "tried", and sent to jail. In the self-same America, if you are a Christian and spew rhetoric against the State, you are allowed to continue based on your 1st amendment rights. So much for equal application of the American ideal...
Westboro Baptist is worse than Christian terrorist Timothy McVeigh?
Timothy McVeigh was raised as a Roman Catholic, but later claimed to be agnostic. There is no evidence that there was any religious motivation for his actions.
Yeah, and how many Asians were killed by "bringing Christian Civilization to Asia" ? The British even ran official Drug Pushing Companies in China. Japan was "opened" at gunpoint from frigates.
The Abrahamics are first-rate whack-jobs because they simply declare to be in posession of the truth and being driven by a single god etc etc.
America got their spanking from Chinese and Vietnamese nationalists and rightfully so. They first destroyed harmony in Asia and now they bitch, bitch, bitch. Maybe have your head and your jealous religion examined. That could go great lengths.
Plus the blueprint for exterminating the jews was the extermination of Huguenots in France, much earlier.
You should really get an education before you repeat the Official Imperium Propaganda Line.
then why did 'ol Tim McV hang out with that wacked out christian identity group?
What group? Do you have a citation? He joined a militia, but I don't believe they had any religious orientation. The other militia members have said that McVeigh was not a popular member, because he wanted to talk about politics, and everyone else wanted to go out in the woods and play with paintball guns.
Tim McVeigh self-identified as an agnostic. He claimed to have no religious affiliation, and no religious group has claimed him as a member. He has stated repeatedly that his motivations were political, not religious. There is no reason to label him a "Christian terrorist".
Um, no. They are supposed to focus on the activities of groups who are directly threatening American interests.
What you thought the French people were working to forward US interests in the francosphere? There was the famous you are either with us or against us speech as well. What I don't get is why hasn't the bombing started yet since the French are obviously planning to subvert our authority.
Just seems like a colossal waste to spent time and resources spying on a group of people we all know will wave the white flag the second shit comes to blows.
Ha ha, just yankin' yer chains, surrender monkeys*!
All kidding aside it seems like they are basically wasting massive amounts of resources creating the impression that they are doing something. Look at all of the stuff we are looking at type of thing.
Huh, sounds like Congress - lots of action that never really accomplishes anything useful, just a reason for them to tell their constituents, "we're doing something."
I think it is time to poison the well and just create some throwaway e-mail accounts and haven them e-mail around multi meg attachments that are dumps from /dev/random with dates a couple years out or latitude / longitude coordinates for subject headers.
Have seen that suggested repeatedly, but to date have yet to see anything useful come from the suggestion: I dunno, a bit of software or script that I can run in the background SETI@home style would probably garner a fair amount of popularity, since it would be essentially fire-and-forget. People don't mind willfully running stuff they agree with if it takes little effort on their part
* My favorite racial slur ever.
Of all time.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Totalitarian surveillance states are the anti-thesis of Western ideals, bootlicker.
But they are "just doing their job", too, so there should be zero complaints on the part of the governmental shills. Though it's delightfully amusing to hear this excuse used when the US specifically decried this as not a defense during the Nuremberg Trials.
The crusades were two cultures fighting for control.
If that was inherently religious then the 20th century culture war was inherently about Atheism.
Population growth still puts the total for atheists at the top.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You've got your numbers all wrong. The largest known genocide in the history of mankind so far was the genocide on the native indian americans with an estimated death toll of 40 to 90 million people, and it was (mostly) commited by Christians. (That does not even include the parallel mass killings committed by slave traders, all of which were Christians, too.)
and lets not forget 20+ million dead in holy wars sanctioned by the infallible pope.
Your key lever for wiggle room is 'of US law' and the key pivot is 'in foreign countries.'
US law includes any international accord properly ratified by the Senate. And foreign countries includes many with whom we have friendly relations and various formal ties. And there are many cases where it is indeed forbidden by US and/or binding international law to do a lot of the things they have been doing. For instance bugging the phone of an accredited embassy or ambassador. Whether inside or outside of the US, that violates binding law.
Of course we all know that it was common practice in the cold war for cold combatants to bug each other anyway, and just try very hard not to get caught. All that plausible deniability stuff has worn thin over the years, these days they dont seem to care whether or not it's plausible anymore. But even back then no one was going around bugging tens of thousands of phones on either side. That scale of operation they had to have understood was way too big to stay secret for long.
The nations we are spying on now are supposedly friends, in several cases close allies.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
They do and we do.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Off your meds??
However, absent me being a French citizen, it would never occur to me to scream "The French did something illegal!!!!", since FOREIGN intelligence gathering isn't illegal for any country.
Spying on French citizens is illegal in France, which means some Americans have broken French law.
Which is where the whole thing gets a bit interesting. If a Cold War US agency got caught illegally spying in the USSR, then it wouldn't matter; after all, not many Americans travel legitimately to the USSR, and there were no extradition treaties- they were the enemy. But it's different when it's an ally. Many European countries have extradition treaties with the US (not sure about France, mind)- what if one of these US allies requests extradition of a US spy? And the US then needs to say "no" (which of course they would), despite it being in contravention of an international treaty? And then the ally puts in an arrest warrant, so that the US spy can't ever visit the allied country ever again, or for that matter any country which has extradition treaties with said ally?
I'm sure the normal rules all get put aside where espionage is concerned, but it's not as legally clear cut as "they're foreign so it's OK"...
AC for modding.
~Patch86
Ah, spoken like a true American who feels entitled to be a douchebag.
When the rest of the world decides they're tired of your shit, you can likely expect to see a backlash against the US.
I can see governments basically saying "we're not buying your stuff, we're not hosting your bases, we're sure as hell not working with you and we don't give a fuck".
America likes to think their interests trump everyone else's. But I see a time coming where other governments start saying "fuck you".
Take it easy mate..being a douchebag is the only right we have left...
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Good luck, the last world leader who tried to trade oil in something other than US dollars was soon hiding in a hole in the ground while his country burned down around him...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Fact is, there's being a spy - and that means NOT GETTING CAUGHT - and there's just going on a blind hunt through data "because you can" against the laws of a country you are allied to (who would have given you what you wanted if you'd asked).
You don't need to go looking for allied countries' laws. The NSA is crapping left and right on U.S. law as well, probably more so than on that of any ally. The difference is just that U.S. congress is filled with clowns, and U.S. citizens are apathetic. So one mostly needs to worry about the allies' reactions.
Let's get real. The worst christians is Westboro Baptist Church and what do they do? Protest funerals and tell everyone how gay lovers will burn in hell. Let's try an experiment: Paint Jesus in Feces in a Christian country and see what the worst thing that will happen to you as a result? Next, pain Mohammed in feces and see what will happen to you in a Muslim country. Or even a European one (death threats anyone)?
Oh wait, you were trying to make a lame attempt at equating the two.
George W. Bush: 'God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq'
From http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa:
> One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did."
> Mr Bush went on: "And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East'. And, by God, I'm gonna do it."
Invading nations for religious beliefs seems serious. I don't think Bush was talking about Allah. Westboro Baptist Church isn't in his league.
Do you disagree with his statistics? Have some that you can find of your own?
I beg to differ:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mit_brennender_Sorge
WBC is a church in name (and tax exempt status) only. What they do makes baby Jesus cry.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
There's a city called Srebrenica. Have you ever heard of it?
Gotta be in on the transition call. You know these temp-agency agents monitoring corporate phone lines are just looking for insider information.
NSA recorded millions of telephone calls placed by French citizens over a 30-day period last year, including some placed by people with no connections to terrorist organizations.
Wow, just fancy that. Out of millions of telephone calls, some were placed by people with no connections to terrorist organisations.
I bet they did if you look up to 6 handshakes away....
With "allies" like your country no one needs enemies.
If your country is in Europe and is a US ally today, chances are that it had been occupied by its enemy (either state or political party) and the US helped remove that enemy and return government to the people. That covers the West, and in some cases was a redo from 25 years before. As to the East, the US allied with newly free Western Europe against the Soviet empire in the East, supported freedom movements and dissidents there, and continued to defend Western Europe until Soviet rule collapsed and most of Eastern Europe was free as well.
USA sold whole east of Europe to Stalin ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference ), so don't expect much gratitude there.
Sold? Not so much. Stalin claimed Eastern Europe for his sphere of influence, and had the Soviet Red Army in place to occupy it. How do you think a different outcome would have occurred? The Poles certainly were grateful for assistance against the Soviets in the 1980s when the Solidarity movement was challenging Communist oppression.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
let's keep in mind why the KKK burns crosses...they too identify themselves as a Christian organization.
Is that why all those Arab dudes burn the stars and stripes, they just want to be Americans too?
You are absolutely right. It's funny that the same country that overturned my government and gave us democracy nowadays has fewer democracy and freedom than we do.
As a German who is absolutely thankful that wearing black and skulls does mean I am a Goth instead of a SS murderer, this is a shame. Shame on your country for spitting on the graves of everyone that died for freedom in the second world war to stop my ancestors from destroying the earth.
In every thread you are defending the techniques Mr. Snowden revealed. You did not read or did not understand George Orwells dystopia. Shame on you. You are a traitor to everything the USA stood for in former times. Your country encouraged German newspapers to criticize both our Government and yours alike. Now you are relentlessly trying to shut down the freedom of the press in the USA and europe alike.
You have repeatedly defended every action the NSA was taking without any hint of criticism, I followed your comments for quite a while. Shame on you.
"including some placed by people with no connections to terrorist"
Lets hope there is not over a million calls between terrorists in the whole France. I would say that the majority is not from or to terrorists.
right up to the point their sad little country gets overrun by extremists
You mean, like the US has been?
Do you always taste test your tears?
The satute of libery is nothing more than a symbol of queen semiramis wrapped in freemasonry. It never applied to actual freedom.
That's the funny thing about retarded Americans. They don't even realize what the symbols that guide their lives stand for. Such as the dollar bill, and many many many other symbols that hide under the guise of "freedom and liberty"
The French freemasons and Merovingians at the top could give 2 shits about their 'country' being wiretapped - as they are the ones running the tapping with the NSA.
People in France that care are no less self centered.
People in other countries that care we're bugging the frogs can make the claim.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I think he's saying that while you may get death threats in the States, in a Muslim country you wouldn't live long enough to get death threats. In the US, such a painting is would be protected speech. In Muslim countries, this would be a government mandated death penalty.
**All** muslim countries? It's never a good idea to generalize it makes you look like ignorant bigot. Unless that's what you are going for in, which case you have succeeded.
America is 75% christian, and given how feral and out-of-countrol some of the groups are, I'd say they're fair game.
Domestic terrorism is a thing, and attacks have occurred in the past. Just because you have problem with one group doesn't mean we're ignoring all the other groups either.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Neither was Stalin, by the way. He was a Georgian Orthodox and even went to a seminary to become a priest.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Right in your link other sources say it is 7 millions in the USA. When numbers vary that much, they are worthless.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Even if it were actually the NSA's job (which you seem to be saying it might be, provided simply that they don't get caught), you're answering the wrong question. Here's a close analogy - in countries that have armed forces, the military's most basic job is to fight and kill other people (whether to advance an invasion of other countries, repel an invasion by another country, or for some other purpose). Does that mean that we have no right to be surprised or outraged if politicians or military commanders tell their troops to kill everyone in a certain category "just in case" they might be troublemakers (even if they made it legal by changing/secretly reinterpreting the law/constitution/regulations)? Of course not. Does it make any difference if "the enemy" is doing the same? No. Neither does it make any difference if they do it in secret and never get found out. The law (of any country or even international law) doesn't even enter into the question. It's simply a moral (and ethical) imperative.
Just because you can do something, does not mean you should do something, and it is especially not a valid excuse when you get caught later. Likewise, just because someone else is doing something, or other people have "always" done something, or someone in authority has told you to do something, doesn't mean you should. I mean, come on, these are basic morals and ethics that small children the world over are taught by their parents.
If something similar had happened in any other agency of government, it would be a scandal and people would be fired (although sadly often not the actual people responsible). In fact, that seems to happen with reassuring regularity, even if the scandal is far less wide-reaching than this one. What is puzzling me is why the normal rules of politics seem not to apply to the UK/USA signals intelligence agencies.
The non-US governments whom didn't participate in this dragnet surveillance need to stand up, and the people of these governments (UK, US, New Zealand, etc), and violently overthrow them. Short of this nothing will change.
The fun fact is how the NSA and French based telcos would have to work together on this. How is this been done internally? Thats a lot of sites in France that would need US splitting. Optical loops out to a safe US/UK sites in Spain, UK, Italy or Germany? Are French telcos looping all their domestic calls via other EU countries to save domestic interconnect fees? :)
The "shocking" question for France is how
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Amen to that. I am German and most of the time pro-western.
But having the NSA weaken my encryption, storing and analyzing my whole online-coomunication and doing that to every other european country makes me think otherwise. What good is an allie that takes away all the freedoms it once gave us and helps to turn our countries in a police state?
Yes, our governments collaborate with yours to accomplish the task of a full scale police state. But the pressure to those extreme measures comes from the US and the UK. And to bring that to my attention and to let me rethink my onlineactivity, my buying choices and my picture of america, Mr. Snowden is my hero.
Western society once stood for democracy, civil rights and privacy. The fact that all of these values are at stake are important news. Both the europeans and the american people need to cut the surveillance state back. To be informed about the scale of the scheme was an important step that serves to restore western values America and Europe once stood for.
Mr. Snowden was not a traitor. People trying to tirn europinto eurasia and america and the UK into oceania - those are traitors. Traitors to the constitution of every. country. involved.
Ah. So fascist police state are the new western moral? Pray tell me more.
now they are not trying to spy on the whole US population. and as a side note, my country explicitly does not spy on the american government, the american people or even american embassys. Yes itcnscGermany and yes, this is true for all that we know.
even your "everybody else is doing it" claim is a lie
I dunno why France is complaining, the NSA only has a single french translator.
They have him on part-time loan, when he's not busy translating Quebec intercepts for Canadian Intelligence.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
But Jesus gave his own litmus test, so why must you and I try to define "true" christian and waste time with the "no true scottsman fallacy [wikipedia.org]": "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another [biblehub.com]" (John 13:35)
Does this mean we can remove all those people who claim to be christian? Or do we just revoke their tax-exempt status?
America - most christian country - most imprisoned, most excecuted, most wars.
Any atheist country - much better than being America.
Atheists are the best, also christians are the worst (yes worse than muslims).
I can see christianity and the inquisition on the list, where is atheism?
If Obama was an Atheist, does that then mean all Americans are fighting for Atheism when they bomb middle east countries?
Are they fighting for their religion or their country (, or their paycheck even)?
Just wait until the French start abducting Americans in third countries and torturing them just in case they know something. Or send in a few drone strikes on the USA based on flimsy evidence, its only a little collateral damage. Anyway its what those agencies do. Its why they exist. Stop complaining, you guys would do it too if you could.
Cant wait until the shoe is on the other foot.
Hopefully the cops went back and charged the individual who call in the hit and run with making a false police report.
I hope so too, but I doubt it. My friend didn't put two and two together for several days after the visit from the constabulary. And it was his local police department, acting on behalf of the police in the city where the drive-by shaming occurred, who investigated. Since he never reported his suspicions, and the Phelpsies were vague enough in their description of the car to provide plausible deniability -- but accurate enough to narrow it down to just one guy -- they probably got away with it.
I am not a crackpot.
Christian serbia was slaughtering civilians. And if the christian croats had continued they would've been bombed too. But maybe you don't care if christians slaughter a couple of thousand muslims at a time, if they create camps where they hunger to death and if they make "muslim soap" as long as they are christians doing it?
I guess then the french troops can withdraw their cooperation from the U.S. War on Terror. Why should french legionaries die when you can't appreciate.
I can't believe you got +5 insightful for making up some really stupid statistics about entire swaths of people in an incredibly racist manner. You have no idea what 90% of Pakistani muslims think about blasphemy. But using your method, I think 90% of Christians support abortion clinic bombers....... (which is obviously a stupid thing to say).
I know several muslims. They're all very nice, and they don't deserve your drivel.
>
Sure... right up to the point their sad little country gets overrun by extremists
lol. You live in a cartoon world. Grow up.
And I think it is likely that Europe is going to be in big trouble in 30-50 years, so hold that thought.
Terrifying. I presume your crystal ball is predicting rivers of chocolate and rainbow farting unicorns as far as the eye can see for the good ol' USA.
The arrogance in 'hold that thought' stuns me.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
"they"... "them". Not you, right? Right.
They hired him, they enabled him to work without appropriate oversight (imagine that lol) and made it facile for him to access data that he shouldn't have been able to access. In other words, they're incompetent dickheads with delusions of grandeur. You ought to be able to find better masters more befitting your quest for serfdom.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Presumably what you want to know is whether people motivated by religion or by atheism have killed the most people. It is a difficult question to answer for several reasons. Some believe being motivated by communism implies being motivated by atheism, while others do not. We do not really know how many people died during the colonisation of the americas, nor how many of those deaths to attribute to religiously inspired action. As for what there is to count, we should really focus on wars and 20th century atrocities. It turns out we weren't really killing each other on a mass scale before the age of empire; every once in a while somebody would destroy a city and kill tens of thousands, but aside from Genghis Khan, who may have caused the world's population to drop by about 15%, that is nothing compared to modern tyrants. Similarly, the historic murder rate in Europe is thought to be around 20 per 100000, which would total no more than 10000 people per year, paling in comparison to the death caused by wars. The Inquisition, witch trials, even pogroms (violence in pogroms was usually turned against property, rather than people) did not kill enough people to register in this scale. So here are a few options:
* Stalin and Mao, etc. do not play for atheism - Religious have killed more by a large margin, like tens of millions of dead against dozens.
* Stalin and Mao are atheists, we take their total death estimates in the low end, and we take the pre-colombian population of the americas at ~100m, and we attribute all those deaths to religion (which is quite dubious) - Religious have killed more by a moderate margin.
* Stalin and Mao are atheists, we use a reasonable estimate for the number of religious dead in the colonisation of America - Atheists have killed more, depending on how we toll up deaths, by up to an order of magnitude.
Conclusion: you're not going to convince anyone one way or the other. I stand by my previous point - neither religion nor atheism has killed that many people, really. It's been war and the desire for power that has been killing us.
Maybe they just wanted to know how many French cars would burn this year, set ablaze by.....guess who?
If they wanted to know how many cars would be burned they could ask the French ministry of the Interior.
If they wanted to know who burns them they definitely shouldn't ask a racist arsehole like you.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Most of the Indians were killed by diseases unintentionally spread by Europeans. That's tragic, but not exactly genocide. If the Indians had happened to suffer from equally lethal diseases, there would have been a much higher death toll in the Old World.
And Spanish priests and bishops were among the strongest opponents of human rights abuses in the colonies, so it's a little strange to attribute those abuses to Christianity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom%C3%A9_de_las_Casas
Hahahah..
So It's the nasty French muslims who are buring between 42000 and 60000 cars a year.
So who burns between 40000 and 70000 cars a year in the UK?
See page 50:
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120919132719/http://www.communities.gov.uk/pub/894/FireStatisticsUnitedKingdom2003PDF1724Kb_id1124894.pdf
Watch this Heartland Institute video
France isn't part of the "West" now?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Mod parent up for asking the big question noone is asking.
How did they do it.
Who helped them.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Because no one kills in the name of atheism. The name itself did not even use to mean those that do not believe in a deity, but those that do not believe in my deity.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
The only aspect I can think of is France runs a huge "domestic" digital network that spans the globe due to many Francophone interests. They would get their 'local calls' as been part of France. The US has designed its way in to become part of that wider more complex French network? Or France for the sake of cheap connectivity bought massive amounts of "US" back door telco kit and is now paying the real price. The problem for me is still the massive areas of regional France. How is the US getting into the internal domestic networks 24/7. For that you would need a Vichy "tech" Milice to actively help and collaborate to hide foreign telco tech within France. ... France is not a total client state or a defeated nation.
Australia, the UK, Italy, Japan, Germany, NZ one can understand the how of the telco deal
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Or France for the sake of cheap connectivity bought massive amounts of "US" back door telco kit
More or less the other way round - Bell became Lucent and got bought by Alcatel.
I.E. Most Americal telco stuff is made by a French company.
Maybe a French company riddled with American moles?
Anyway, I can't see how this was done from outside France. Heads must roll.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
So "getting a clue" is cherry picking the low number out of the two that your source cites to win the argument? Why should I trust that the lower number is the accurate one when I've seen more estimates that are closer to the higher number.
Tim McVeigh self-identified as an agnostic.
Nope that's total bullshit.
TIME: Are you religious?
MCVEIGH: I was raised Catholic. I was confirmed Catholic (received the sacrament of confirmation). Through my military years, I sort of lost touch with the religion. I never really picked it up, however I do maintain core beliefs.
TIME: Do you believe in God?
MCVEIGH: I do believe in a God, yes. But that's as far as I want to discuss. If I get too detailed on some things that are personal like that, it gives people an easier way alienate themselves from me and that's all they are looking for now.
So he's an agnostic but clearly says he believes in God?
Obviously those should be "said" and "believed" since he is dead. But the point stands, he was not an agnostic. That's post hoc bullshit made up by right-wingers to distance McVeigh from Christianity by lying about his beliefs.
False dichotomy! Nice try though.
I think Hitler was raised christian, but wasn't christian at all, neither by actions nor beliefs. It looks like you are spreading false informations.
in the future, we can just assume the NSA has spied on everybody. It's a waste of energy to type out every group they've watched--let's start a list of people they haven't been spying on. It would be a much smaller list, apparently.
Do you really believe that France, Russia, China, etc., etc., aren't doing the same thing? Wake up folks! The whole world is spying on each and everyone of us. The solution is simple, just make sure anything you say or do online, on the phone, or whatever else that's public, is something you wouldn't mind your grandmother seeing. If you must do or say something that is not, do it in private, face to face, in a room that has not/can not be bugged.
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
Israel is 16.5% Muslim
No! That's impossible! Israel is a Jewish State! All counter evidence will be removed from existence into camps, or shot by our snipers!
Everything that is East from the Big Apple is not part of the West.