Slashdot Mirror
Carly Fiorina: I Supplied HP Servers For NSA Snooping
MFingS writes: According to an article at Motherboard, shortly after 9/11, NSA director Michael Hayden requested extra computing power and Carly Fiorina, then CEO of HP, responded by re-routing truckloads of servers to the agency. Fiorina acknowledged providing the servers to the NSA during an interview with Michael Isikoff in which she defended warrantless surveillance (as well as waterboarding) and framed her collaboration with the NSA in patriotic terms. Fiorina's compliance with Hayden's request for HP servers is but one episode in a long-running and close relationship between the GOP presidential hopeful and U.S. intelligence agencies.
Trump says her face is a form of waterboarding.
I thought she was all about keeping the government small & outta your business.
That stuff about small government is for the chumps. The NSA and the rest of the police agencies are there to protect US capitalism. HP is a big US corporation. There's no reason in the world why she wouldn't cooperate with the NSA. Nor is there any reason why any other big corporation won't, whatever they may say publicly.
Being that the program was classified, they would have just ordered are large number of assets without telling her the reason for them. If I were HP and the NSA wanted to buy a large numbers of servers, I would sell the servers to them as well.
From the article
Fiorina said. “They were ramping up a whole set of programs and needed a lot of data crunching capability to try and monitor a whole set of threats... What I knew at the time was our nation had been attacked.”
The summary makes it sound like she purposely did it to screw over Americans. There's nothing to indicate that. The waterboarding issue is added on even though it is not related. This is a flame bait summary, and a misleading article. We really don't need articles on Slashdot that demonize people like this.
I would care so much more about Carly here if I believed that any of the candidates won't cooperate fully with the NSA. Heck, one of the very few things Obama actually promised as a candidate was to cut back on this sort of thing, and he reversed as soon as he was in office. Either the NSA has some good shit on everyone in power, and/or everyone in power values convenience over the interests of the people. Sorry, I wouldn't even believe Bernie or Rand Paul here. We've created a monster.
"Do not summon that you cannot dismiss" - H. P. Lovecraft
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I don't fault her for selling the servers to the NSA. That's the job of a CEO at a hardware company. I do not like her defense of warrantless wiretapping. It's obviously a violation of the Constitution and her attempts to justify it is a disrespect to that fine document and a free society. It bodes ill for a government with her as guardian of the Constitutional rights of US citizens.
Well there's a ringing endorsement for our new dictator, err, I mean "president".
I'm sure she's keen to do all she can to protect my privacy and limit the data collection powers of all these 3-letter agencies that are scooping up our info wholesale.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Either the NSA has some good shit on everyone in power, and/or everyone in power values convenience over the interests of the people.
No, they have some good shit on everyone. They have said as much, without really coming out and saying it outright, if you see what I mean.
Read all about it here and here.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
It's like she's bragging that she supplied the gas chambers at Auschwitz, and for a very reasonable fee.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I would care so much more about Carly here if I believed that any of the candidates won't cooperate fully with the NSA.
Sanders is the only one that I think would give them any pushback.
He voted against both the Patriot Act and the Iraq war, and in my book that counts for something.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
It's the "involuntary" part that is wrong.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
I suspect that sometime between election day and inauguration day a small committee sits down with the president elect and explains to them that they will be allowed use the turn signal and the horn, but not the steering wheel or the pedals.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's like she's bragging that she supplied the gas chambers at Auschwitz, and for a very reasonable fee.
Or IBM providing the computers for the Nazis to run the death camps (which did happen)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
One hypothesis is that a lot of the candidates are just running to drive up their speaker fees and the demand for them to speak.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Maybe it's the country I grew up in, but anything "framed... in patriotic terms" is usually only ever a disguise for some of the worst atrocities and general scummy behaviour possible.
Be wary of people who are doing things "for their country" rather than, say, "for humanity", "for peace", etc.
My country is a geographic statistic of my birth. How that justifies criminal and/or amoral behaviour against those with a slightly different statistic, I've never quite fathomed.
Fuck, even "I did it because it looked like the right thing to do" holds a billion times more weight than any patriotic shit.
Patriotism is racism without mention of colour. "Not born here" syndrome.
disclaimer: I have a household member who's worked as an engineer at HP under Carly.
The unending wellspring of universal hatred for Carly as a leader from those who worked under her (especially at HP) is impressive, and remains constant even from people whose politics are somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan. She did what she was told, she laid waste to that not-so-micro economy, and she shows no regrets whatsoever -- for either the human or financial disaster in her wake. There's no surprise, then, to find she was unquestioningly supportive of what she perceives to be rungs above her on the ladder of power. Godwin's Law is entirely appropriate for examples of where this leads; don't mistake "comfortable sociopath" for "hawkish."
Carly is precisely the sort of person who should never be allowed to have power over others, or even a sharp knife at dinner: Total obedience and no discernible ethics at all.
I think not...(*poof*)
There's certainly very little downside to it, these days, for most candidates. Even if you gain no traction/little notice, and you drop out early, the net resultis likely that nobody really remembers so it doesn't matter.
On the other hand, if you make a splash, but you lose out after a while, you can write/sell a book, get hired as a contributor on Fox, go give speeches, etc, and do a lot more than you could have before.
The really sad/funny thing is that Fiorina ran in 2010 as a moderate for California Senate. Now she's trying to sell herself as a hard-right ultraconservative republican. It's a bunch of flimflam, and you shouldn't buy it, any more than you should hire her to run your company.
There are people in this country who want her to be president, and that scares me.
Skepticism is certainly warranted - however, far better to go with someone whose track record indicates that they could oppose mass surveillance, or take actions to roll it back. I would choose someone who might go back on their word later over someone who PROMISES to do the very thing I don't want them to.
That, and the fact that it's TORTURE, the sort of thing we prosecuted people for in the past as a war crime.
It's also completely useless for gathering information, because all you get is garbage - someone will tell you whatever they think you want to hear to make it stop, even making shit up. Jesse Ventura put it rather well when he said something on the lines of "Give me Dick Cheney strapped to a folding table and a pitcher of water, and in 5 minutes I'll get him to confess to the Manson Family murders."
I think people on this site have plenty of reasons to hate Fiorina that it hardly matters if she's the right-wing candidate or simply putting her face in the news.
Dammit I don't care that I'm Godwinning but enough of my family are dead because IBM took that same bullshit, "Hey I'm just making profit lol it's not my problem!" line when selling to Germany in the '30s.
An ethical code is more fundamental than an economic practice. Whether I'm telling Bob how to get past the guards or selling him the equipment needed to get into the safe, if I have a good idea what he's up to then you better fucking believe I'm morally responsible when the bank is robbed.
The duty of every human being is to act ethically. Their "job" is constrained by their ethics. A position which requires the holder to ignore ethics is unethical to fill, and nobody should be doing it. Nobody is ever just following orders - especially not the guys at the top of the food chain who have all of the knowledge and all of the power to say no and all of the alternatives without causing them significant hardship.
That's really amazing especially when considering that ENIAC, which is regarded as the first digital computer, wasn't introduced until after VE day.
IBM did, however, manufacture M1 Carbine rifles for the US during WWII.
Your problem is you know nothing about computing. The first computers were literally punch cards with counter accumulators. We emulated those on chips and circuits later, as "registers". You probably don't even know why Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper are why those electrons flicker on your screen.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The government calls up your company for a big order of you product, and you make it happen and get the product delivered, and now you're going to crucified for it?
Carly was a horrible CEO and I want to see her ripped to pieces by rabid monkeys and dance about on the incinerated remains of her entrails. But I'm having a hard time seeing how - as a businesswoman - delivering a product for money makes her somehow worse because she happened to sell to the NSA. I'll still hate/mistrust her for the moral support of the questionable practices of the spook community in the 00s, but not for selling stuff.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"(stares at moron who fails to understand what a computer is)"
They do make displays with matte instead of glossy screens.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Maybe put cameras in everyone's bedrooms - but please gawd, not hers!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Kind of like the difference between voluntary and involuntary sex?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
What business success?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I would care so much more about Carly here if I believed that any of the candidates won't cooperate fully with the NSA. Heck, one of the very few things Obama actually promised as a candidate was to cut back on this sort of thing, and he reversed as soon as he was in office. Either the NSA has some good shit on everyone in power, and/or everyone in power values convenience over the interests of the people. Sorry, I wouldn't even believe Bernie or Rand Paul here. We've created a monster.
"Do not summon that you cannot dismiss" - H. P. Lovecraft
You don't even need a conspiracy to explain it:
NSA: I need to look at anyone's email I want without a warrant.
Obama: What? Absolutely not, that's a huge invasion of privacy I was elected to stop!!
NSA: Ok, if there's a significant attack on US soil we'll investigate afterwards and find an email that plausibly could have warned us. Someone will then leak this email to the media and everyone will know that if you didn't take away this power we begged you for there was a non-trivial chance we could have saved the tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people who died in that attack.
Obama: Snoop away!
I stole this Sig
Note that Carly's undergraduate degree is in medieval history. This (of course) has prepared her for her previous position as CEO of Hewlett-Packard and will surely come in handy should she ever become elected to office.
I worked for HP under Carly's reign. Frankly, she'd sell her mother to get what she wants.
I find it interesting that she didn't mention any of this or the "flopping fetus" video crap when running for California Senate.
What's really scary is that some people actually believe she'd be a good President.
I guess we're scraping the bottom, given our choices.
This would assume that the outcome is not predetermined, and in the big (President, Governor, US Senate//Congress) I have come to believe it's fully controlled.
As much as you may disagree with him, look at the press coverage of Ron Paul. My kid in 7th grade noticed how any time they showed a clip on TV it portrayed him as crazy, and the commentary was always about him being crazy. Now look at Hillary who has not dropped out and the Democrats only other candidate is "Socialist Bernie Sanders". Listen to the messages, and the brainwashing becomes pretty obvious. Subtle, but obvious.
There is a whole lot of psychology involved in these campaigns, and even though people claim politicians are stupid that's not really true.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
A number of companies manufactured M1 carbiines for WW II. IBM, Saginaw Steering Gear division of GM, Rock-Ola (jukebox manufacturer), Underwood, National Postal Meter, etc.
"Out of ten primary contractors that manufactured .30 Caliber Carbines, Winchester was the only one with prior experience manufacturing weapons."
The main requirement for beating plowshare factories into sword factories was having the right equipment. Being able to drill a straight hole through a long steel rod to make a barrel was one way to get drafted into the effort. (Thus Saginaw Steering Gear, which had machines to drill a hole down the steering wheel shaft for the horn wire.) Another was having equipment able to accurately mill a high-accuracy complex machine part (for receivers and other parts with cam or shaft bushing surfaces) out of hard steel alloys that would survive thousands of beatings and keep working.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
my dream is trump carries the nomination
and sanders beats hillary (not impossible, she's weak, bland, uninspiring... i'm not sure why republicans get so upset about her, it's not possible to feel great hate nor love for someone so boring)
sanders can't beat a rubio (i don't know why, but people have a thing for plastic liars in suits, the man is a lizard)
but sanders can beat a trump
can you imagine a president sanders? i would weep for joy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That's really amazing especially when considering that ENIAC, which is regarded as the first digital computer, wasn't introduced until after VE day.
The ENIAC has a claim to be (one of the) first stored-program ELECTRONIC computers.
But digital computing had been done for a very long time, using mechanical devices, electro-mechanical devices (including both motor-driven mechanical calculators and relay-based, often plugboard-programmed, card counters, sorters, collators, printers, ...)
Hollerith invented the digital tabulation punched card and sorting/counting machinery for it for the 1900 census, after the 1890 census was taking nearly 10 years to process the data and the 1900 looked like it wouldn't be finished until after 1910. (Tab cards, AKA "IBM cards", were the size they were because, after the papermakers gave him an unreasonably high bid, he obtained the recently-retired bill making machinery from the US mint, which had redesigned the money shortly before. The cards are the same size as the previous generation of dollar bills.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
That would be completely believable if IBM made computers when the Nazi's were exterminating Jews and said death camps actually required computers to run them. Congratulations on posting one of the most stupid posts on Slashdot ... ever (which really did happen!).
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Sanders is the only one that I think would give them any pushback./i>
Then you haven't been paying attention. Rand Paul ALREADY gave them a BUNCH of pushback.
Just one example: He one-man filibustered the renewal of the Patriot Act for 10 1/2 hours, making it actually time out and creating a gap (to invalidate any claims to legality for information collected before the expiration and not destroyed after it.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Doesn't matter where he was born. His mother was a citizen.
Note that Carly's undergraduate degree is in medieval history. This (of course) has prepared her for her previous position as CEO of Hewlett-Packard and will surely come in handy should she ever become elected to office.
I worked for HP under Carly's reign. Frankly, she'd sell her mother to get what she wants.
I find it interesting that she didn't mention any of this or the "flopping fetus" video crap when running for California Senate.
What's really scary is that some people actually believe she'd be a good President.
I guess we're scraping the bottom, given our choices.
And she used that 'knowledge' of hers to include this priceless quote in her speech just weeks after 9/11:
I’ll end by telling a story.
There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world.
It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts. Within its dominion lived hundreds of millions of people, of different creeds and ethnic origins.
One of its languages became the universal language of much of the world, the bridge between the peoples of a hundred lands. Its armies were made up of people of many nationalities, and its military protection allowed a degree of peace and prosperity that had never been known. The reach of this civilization’s commerce extended from Latin America to China, and everywhere in between.
And this civilization was driven more than anything, by invention. Its architects designed buildings that defied gravity. Its mathematicians created the algebra and algorithms that would enable the building of computers, and the creation of encryption. Its doctors examined the human body, and found new cures for disease. Its astronomers looked into the heavens, named the stars, and paved the way for space travel and exploration.
Its writers created thousands of stories. Stories of courage, romance and magic. Its poets wrote of love, when others before them were too steeped in fear to think of such things.
When other nations were afraid of ideas, this civilization thrived on them, and kept them alive. When censors threatened to wipe out knowledge from past civilizations, this civilization kept the knowledge alive, and passed it on to others.
While modern Western civilization shares many of these traits, the civilization I’m talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600, which included the Ottoman Empire and the courts of Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, and enlightened rulers like Suleiman the Magnificent.
Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage. The technology industry would not exist without the contributions of Arab mathematicians. Sufi poet-philosophers like Rumi challenged our notions of self and truth. Leaders like Suleiman contributed to our notions of tolerance and civic leadership.
And perhaps we can learn a lesson from his example: It was leadership based on meritocracy, not inheritance. It was leadership that harnessed the full capabilities of a very diverse population–that included Christianity, Islamic, and Jewish traditions.
This kind of enlightened leadership — leadership that nurtured culture, sustainability, diversity and courage — led to 800 years of invention and prosperity.
This disgraceful polemic was taken to shreds by an Assyrian who took her speech apart
Dear Madame Fiorina:
It is with great interest that I read your speech delivered on September 26, 2001, titled "Technology, Business and Our way of Life: What's Next" [sic]. I was particularly interested in the story you told at the end of your speech, about the Arab/Muslim civilization. As an Assyrian, a non-Arab, Christian native of the Middle East, whose ancestors reach back to 5000 B.C., I wish to clarify some points you made i
My experience is that the left mocks those rightwing candidates who have said incredibly stupid things recently. For over a decade it has been a rather target-rich environment, and this past six months you can't turn around without hearing some R candidate make a obvious provable lie.
The right, on the other hand, tries to pile on only whoever they see as the biggest threat at the time. Which is why the birther lies have started to die down, but the Select Committee To Prove That Something Anything Was Hillary's Fault At Benghazi has been trying to find something to pin on her for a very long time and spending many millions of taxpayer money to do so, and is now becoming the Select Committee On Hey We're Sure She Broke Some Email Law Somehow Let's Keep Talking About It.
Republicans aren't upset about Hillary, they love her. Which is to say they think she's a much easier mark.
However, that "easy" label is one that they are secretly sweating about because she's still likely to beat any of them in a general election just because of how bad the Republican field is and how incapable they are of nominating a real moderate. Even with the email situation and Benghazi she's still the winner at this point.
Unless they indict her or something, of course.
Trump is a clown. He won't get the nomination, but he is having an effect. Mostly a bad one for the R's because he's making them all roll around in the mud with the Tea Partiers and the anti-immigration folks instead of being able to safely ignore them like the Democrats can with the Black and wacky-left vote.
Sanders has even less of a chance than Trump because of the way the DNC and the convention is stacked against him. Most of the Democrats can be Sanders-lite and still win, and everyone knows that. The Democrats have their voting blocs so well lined up that you have Unions voting for the same candidates that want to let more low paid immigrants into the country, thus driving down wages even more. Think about that for a second.
This is the sideshow. I'm waiting to see who actually emerges as the real Republican candidate, but you can be pretty sure that Hillary will be on that ballot unless Biden decides to run. Biden's really the only person who can take away the nomination from Hillary.
Of course, Biden running could split the Obama Democrats from the Clinton Democrats. And here you thought that the Republicans were the only ones who might fall apart.
because benghazi and the emails are fucking jokes. she didn't do a damn thing wrong in benghazi. she did do something wrong with the emails. but it's a minor fucking thing, and the republicans treat it like she handed top of the line drones to north korea. it's such a pile of trumped up bullshit. just like with planned parenthood: lies, edited footage to suggest different meaning, pictures of unrelated miscarriages. they even tried to plead the fifth when the original footage was asked for! all to try to get rid of an organization focused on women's health, and isn't even legally able to use federal money for abortions. the republicans are pretty pathetic in how they substitute deranged outrage for reality. do they think they fool anyone besides some low iq hysterical grandma?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
that's communism. that's not what sanders stands for.
here is actually a range of economic systems in the world, thousands of them, of varying complexity. it's not just social darwinistic capitalism versus gulag and toilet paper lines communism. the problem is you're uneducated and you can only think in these ignorant simpleton cartoons. try looking at how the government of denmark, sweden, or norway works. or just canada. that's modern socialism. and they are richer, healthier, safer, freer, better educated, and happier than americans
american exceptionalism seems to be about thinking how you're better when everyone pities you. we do many things wrong, like our pathetic education funding and healthcare debacles, and we need to look to other countries who clearly do it better than us. but no: "america #1! drool, snort". american delusional derangement
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's part of the executive. He just needed to tell them "stop snooping on Americans inside America" and done. No congress or courts involved. He can fire anyone he needs to fire until he gets an NSA boss who complies. The buck stops with Obama right now.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'm not a big fan of the Democrats, but honestly you're absolutely right. I think the conservative wing of the Republican party has lost the culture wars and they are now just squawking on their way down. It's embarrassing.
And some of that BS is good riddance, although I am very concerned that the complete failure of the Republicans will mean that the tendency towards all encompassing government is now unstoppable. Entitlements and the NSA are just two different faces stamped on the same coin.
I'm not really comforted by the Democratic options either. Hillary is a corporate stooge, and Sanders is... well a stereotypical white liberal who would do a fine job running Sweden where everyone is also white and thinks the same, but I don't think his ideas scale. As for Biden, it says a lot about how bad the Democratic field is that he, of all people, could be a front runner if he stepped in.
Nevertheless, the fact is, the Democratic party has won the war until the Republicans either break up or there is an internal revolution that completely overthrows the existing status quo. The Democrats own the needed voting blocs, and as in a lopsided game of Monopoly, the Republicans don't really have many places to land that aren't already owned.
To be a factor in elections again, the R's are going to need to take a hunk off the Democrats, just like Reagan did. Not impossible, of course, if you look at the wide variety of groups the Democrats take for granted. Unions, Hispanics, Blacks, even gays could see that a Republican party that drops some dead ideas that have lost the war for them are now a party that can advocate for them more strongly than the Big Tent might.
Once the parties have figured out that Republican or Democrat ain't nothing but a name, a shift could easily happen. Probably not this election though. This one is going to the Democrats.
I wonder how you know people could appropriately judge the effectiveness of torture centuries ago. People did, indeed, believe that torturing a witch to get a confession of witchcraft was effective, but hat doesn't mean there was actually a witch. Your argument fails because there's no way to show torture's continued use has anything to do with effectiveness over perceived effectiveness. Kind of like how it still is now.
So many ppl miss the fact that you being sarcastic.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I worked at Bell labs when she broke us apart and then later when she was in charge at HP. What a fucking nightmare she was. In both companies, she was only interested in making the stocks rise so she was happy to part out the companies. She and Romney share so much in common.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
putin is schooling O? Are you fucking serious? When Putin invaded Georgia, W/neo-cons did NOTHING. When Putin invaded Ukraine, O pushed for sanctions on Russia, which is seriously killing their economy. That is why Putin was willing to talk to O on the side. Right now, he would LOVE to have these sanctions removed. Russia will not tolerate these for another 2 years.
Schooling by Putin, or the thought that Fiona who is only destructive to America will hurt Putin? Zero chance. She would remove the sanctions and push our businesses over there.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
When did ratting out the American public become patriotic ? Does she have no morals ? She should be ashamed of her actions.
A tier-1 vendor supplied servers to the NSA! OMG! We need to boycott that vendor!
Wait, what? Other Tier-1 vendors ALSO wanted to win the NSA procurement contract? We must boycott them also!
And you know what? I hear they have Coca-Cola machines at the NSA! I bet their employees drank countless caffeinated sodas from Coca-Cola as they were violating the civil rights of countless millions of Americsns - we need to boycott Coca-Cola as well!
You know what? I bet all the government cars in the NSA fleet come from GM - we need to boycott all GM cars for their support of warrantless wiretaps!
Wow, it's amazing how many corporations secretly support the NSA's warrantless wiretapping! /sarcasm
Ken
And it just happens to be among the most evil acts that human beings can commit, as it is not merely about killing somebody, it is about complete destruction of a person.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Jesse Ventura put it rather well when he said something on the lines of "Give me Dick Cheney strapped to a folding table and a pitcher of water, and in 5 minutes I'll get him to confess to the Manson Family murders."
I think Mr. Ventura would be better served by waterboarding Cheney until Cheney agrees that waterboarding is torture.
Once that's been accomplished, there are only two interpretations: either Cheney has finally admitted the truth, in which case we have established that waterboarding is torture and therefore illegal; or Cheney was lying in order to make the waterboarding stop, in which case we have established that waterboarding is ineffective as means of extracting truthful information.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Don't hold your breathe on blacks ever leaving the Democratic Party.
As a Slashdotter, I am statistically virtually certain to be right in my racist assumption that you are white. So I will play the odds and say:
As a white person what American history has taught you is that a) the current political and economic system protects freedom, b) the main threat to freedom is centralization of power, and c) if the system causes you problems it will be fairly simple for you to get it changed.
Constrast this with blacks. For them the system the Founders set up was quite literally slavery. The way that slavery was defeated was by a highly centralized network of US Military units, literal jack-booted thugs from the point of view of most white southerners, engaged ion behavior (war upon the states) that the previous President had decreed was so unconstitutional that it should not even be considered. This was followed up by a series of centralized Federal initiatives (the 15th Amendment, the Freedman's bureau, the use of said Union troops as law enforcement) that allowed blacks to have equal political power to their white neighbors. Then some white people got their complaints about excessive centralization heard at the highest level, the Feds passed the Posse comitatus act to ban the Army from stopping lynch mobs, and the lower the level you got the less pro-freedom the government was. This was ultimately solved by renewed centralization in the Roosevelt to Johnson era.
Why does this happen? Because the Tyranny of the Majority sucks in the US Constitutional system. The Courts are designed to discourage activism, we elect every official, so a state whose population is steadfastly determined to fuck over some arbitrary minoritywill rapidly have a) a State House that wants to pick on them, b) a State Senate that wnats to pick on them, c) Judges retained solely because they support picking on said minority; and d) Frederal offficals who can gum up the works when the minority protection act comes up for a vote.
Economically the same thing happens. You have learned that hard work yields rewards, and distrust any attempt to take money from the successful to aid the unsuccessful. In 1860 the second largest source of wealth in the country was slaves (land was first, factories didn't really exist in any sizable scale in 1860, we industrialized to equip the aforementioned armies of jack-booted thugs), the poorest class of Americans (and in most eyes, they weren't even really Americans) was slaves; and thus from their point of view taking from the rich to give to the poor is freedom. Then Roosevelt appears, starts some history-changing economic redistribution policies, and is followed by desegregationists and redistributionists until Nixon gets elected on a Civil Rights Skeptic, and government-spending-phobic platform.
Which means that a small-government, low-trax, pro-states rights party is not gonna break the teens in the black community. You have your logic, based on assumptions your ancestors have learned over a century or two in this country. They have theirs, based on assumptions their ancestors learned since the 1630s. Dubya got into the teens (high teens, IIRC) because he was pro-Federal Spending. He doesn't pass that Medicare Drug Expansion he doesn't do that.
Or IBM providing the computers for the Nazis to run the death camps (which did happen)
Exactly...it's not something that one should be bragging about.
She should be ashamed of it, and it should disqualify her from any serious consideration for the presidency.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Tabulating machines were not computers. Nor were comptometers.
And those M1 rifles weren't guns, they were merely "lead pellet acceleration devices".
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
We can argue the semantics of torture later**, but your second point is significantly more important: it doesn't fucking work. Literally NONE of the intel gained during "enhanced interrogation" was actionable. They told us about old plots, wild fantasy targets, and long abandoned bases.
Meanwhile, whether or not it's technically torture is moot, because it pissed everyone off. Enemies, allies, the world at large marked it down as just another reason that America is a dick.
**I've been water boarded. Yeah it's certainly unpleasant, but it's pretty tame compared to literally anything else we call torture. When we bring back the rack, the hobbling wheel or the iron maiden, give me a buzz. You bust out the blowtorch and a pair of pliers for torture, not a wet blanky.
This signature is false.
"Give me Dick Cheney strapped to a folding table and a pitcher of water, and in 5 minutes I'll get him to confess to the Manson Family murders."
It would also make for an excellent reality tv show. I'm in favour.
One server is an embarrassment. A truckload of servers is a statistic.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Not for the sake of finding the truth but It does when you want the victim to admit to whatever is in your script so that you can make a North Korean style show trial look more convincing. The spooks knew this, which is 90% of the reason why it's a problem that it came to be in use. It's a sign that any idea of investigation, justice and all the rest had gone out the window. They wanted people to pin crimes on for the sake of their own advancement instead of doing the job of actually solving the crimes. Some time in the 1980s these spooks acting against the Soviets effectively became them, and the poison has crept through the system. Under Bush+Cheney they no longer had to hide in the shadows since nobody was going to attempt to bring them to account, and they still pollute the place.
The thing that did it for me is when Oliver North wrapped himself in a flag to get his photo taken, then had "Patriot" written over it after selling weapons to Iran and Hezbolla while embezzling a bit on the side for a convertible and airconditioning for his house. For a while that was the definition of "Patriot" for one wing of the Republican party despite it looking a hell of a lot like treason and theft to me.
So when it's laid on really thick it can mean an utterly evil prick wrapped up in a flag to hide how disgusting he is.
Thus, she is a Republican.
"clearly because its effective"
Even if its effective, that doesn't make it right. Slavery is an effective way to get work done cheap and has been for thousands of years.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
And it just happens to be among the most evil acts that human beings can commit, as it is not merely about killing somebody, it is about complete destruction of a person.
Unfortunately in 2015, despite all of our experience, there are many people who think the ends justify the means. They still do not understand that the means determine the ends.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Then you just keep warterboading him until he drowns. It isn't that complicated folks!
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.