"wealth inequity in this country has never been this bad, not by a long shot"
This is not really accurate. Study the late 19th century and early 20th century where every major industry was a monopoly ruled by just a few people siphoning off the profits for themselves. At the time there was no such thing as workers rights or a mandatory minimum wage and certainly nothing about prohibiting monopolies. Banks operated without any form of oversight from the government. Protectionism and tariffs on imports combined with the Foreign Policy of the day helped usher in the Great Depression. All the outrage today about the governments surveillance programs and accusations of rights violations are nothing when compared against past actions. Two of the best Presidents in US history blatantly and knowingly ignored the constitution when they perceived the country was in danger and they could not trust the Legislators to make the right decisions. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and imprisoned journalists publishing any thing negative about how the Union and Lincoln was handling the civil war. He actually tried to argue that they were disclosing secret information that could potentially be used by the Confederates. Sound familiar? FDR blatantly ignored Congress as well as the majority of US citizens when he came up with ways to bypass the Neutrality Act with the lend lease program and the gradual expansion of the area the US claimed as territorial waters to try and protect shipping to Europe during WW2. Congress passed a law forbidding the government from using wire taps when FDR wanted to monitor suspected Nazi agents operating in the US. The day Congress voted to prohibit this FDR wrote a Presidential order and delivered to the Justice Department telling them to ignore the law passed in Congress and proceed with the taps. The only reason these two presidents were not impeached was because they were both successful in the end.
It's easier to get funding if you can come up with some possible military application when pitching your project. ICBM development provided the rock technology needed for the first moon landings and subsequent trips into orbit. Military R&D has resulted in advances in material science, satellite technology, medical, and nuclear technology which also have civilian applications.
They also "produced" the film "Collateral Damage" by editing out anything that did not support their non-objective analysis. The full version of the video was released later but by then the unquestioning masses had already firmed up their opinion on the whole matter and were not particularly interested in seeing anything that might not agree with their particular line of thought. The release of the edited video by Wikileaks was the first glaring sign that despite all the bullshit about just setting anonymously submitted information free to the masses it was no more than another political action group looking to use the data to drive a political agenda.
Lies of omission, lack of context, and sentence structure is how you construct biased propaganda and the creators can honestly claim there were no outright factual discrepancies in the published article. This type of news reporting is done by all sides on any issue. The truth is being lost and the Internet has turned into the ultimate tool for spreading misinformation in record time. As for the Guardian all you need to do is visit their reader comment talkbacks and you will see how their non-objective articles has turned 90% of it's readers into non-questioning drones patting each other on the back for having the same great insight to worldly issues. I believe the technical term is echo chamber.
"utter ignorance" is the default state of every legislative body in the world. Politicians tend to be the biggest blabbermouths in the world. Telling them about every covert national security program would guarantee that everyone, friend and foe, would have all the details in about 15 minutes. And believe it or not there are some things that do need to be kept secret when it comes to dealing with other countries. Every other country in the world does the exact same thing. If every government in the world closed down their foreign intelligence operations the US could do the same but that is not happening any time soon. Just like every country could destroy it's stockpiles of WMD but until that day comes the US should probably keep some around for the inevitable wars coming in the not to distant future. Snowden started out as someone who wanted to inform US citizens about the NSA programs. Unfortunately he now he truly meets all the requirements to be charged under the Espionage Act. By releasing information on foreign intelligence actions he has sealed his fate and demolished his idealistic and noble claim of being a whistleblower. And he should already know that over the last 50+ years the US and the USSR/Russian Federation have regularly exchanged people that each country wants. Usually it involves exchanging intelligence operatives but right now the are several high profile people that were convicted in Russia that the US is refusing to extradite.
Religion was only a part of the reason for decline. Not every single province or country experienced the same amount or type of decline but the majority did. The Roman empire administered a huge amount of territory that provided a measure of stability across the board. At it's high point one quarter of the world population fell under Roman control. A lot of people relied on that administrative and trading framework to prosper. During it's conquests the Romans helped spread a common language along with providing a measure of modern civilization for that time period. Corruption and civil wars also contributed to Rome's fall. After Rome fell feudalism, religion, and just plain survival for some became the driving factors of the day. Towards the very end the "Black Death" was the final straw because it hit populations already weakened by Rome's fall.
It would stop more than just the US economy. Why can't people understand how the largest economies in the world are intertwined and what effects one effects them all. The new natural gas production off the coast of Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey will give Europe another source of natural gas which nullifies any threat of shut down from Russia.
The US appears to be staying out of the Syria mess. When Obama asked for approval from Congress for military action and took public opinion into the decision making process he effectively handed the whole mess over to Russia and in some small part China as well. He could have ordered the attack using his presidential authority and was not required to get Congressional approval for a military strike. He also appears to be trying to improve the US-Iranian relations regardless of what the other countries in the region want. The US is notorious for turning a blind eye to the actions of a country defined as a "US friendly country". However if the country is defined as an "US enemy" the US will do anything to undermine everything the "US enemy" does.
The Roman empire lasted close to a thousand years not a few hundred. And after Rome fell the world rapidly descended into that period lovingly referred to as the "Dark Ages".
Humans have been fighting with each other since there were enough people to chose sides. Beating each other the head with clubs to win the bigger cave and prettier women. Today the fights are pretty much the same except for much better weapons.
"control of the Internet moving from the US to the UN"
You are delusional if you think the US would ever hand over any control to UN. There will be other countries creating their own internet to prevent their citizenry from interacting with the wider world.
And how long do you think it would take the US or any other country with a halfway decent submarine force to tap the cables? Any country is free to create their own internet but the ones trying to do it seem more focused on censoring the information their citizens can access.
While this could be a bad thing for aviators it is a good reuse of mothballed jets that cost millions of dollars. They have configured all types of jets as drones going back to the 60's. In WW2 the US tried to convert a B-29 to fly without any humans on board. They had some success but the war was near it's end and the project was dropped. One of the Kennedy's (not sure which one) was actually killed in an early test during this project.
The IT development industry is one of the few where you get what you pay for at the top end. It is quite easy to evaluate a persons work quality. Someone may bullshit their way past an interview but it's hard to hide incompetence when actually required to produce work.
His stated goal was to inform the US public about the governments data collection efforts and how they effected US citizens. The US constitution protects US citizens not foreign nationals. However, now he believes that he and a certain journalist are competent enough to determine whether any of the information collected on FOREIGN programs can harm the US if released. Who is he to make that decision? What is his definition of harm? His pet journalist hates the US with a vengeance and has no problem releasing anything, especially if it harms the US. He once had chance to negotiate with the US authorities and return to the US but he burned that bridge and has sealed his fate as an international fugitive for the remainder of his life. Every country in the world spies on both their enemies and allies and the US really doesn't have any allies so every one is fair game. If he was a Russian or Chinese he would have already been either imprisoned or killed. If he evaded them they would use his friends and families as hostages until he returned. Both countries have well documented instances of them using this tactic.
Even if they sold them to others they would still be able to safely manage thee mines and making the problem of finding mines after a conflict easier to do.
The only reason the US did not sign the UN Mine treaty is because they could not get an exemption for the border between NK and SK. The US mines can be disarmed or activated remotely and the mines can be easily detected and removed. The mines used as far back as WW2 to the present get armed as soon they are deployed and buried to make them hard to find. When a war was over the process of removal is not exactly precise or even attempted in some instances.
This kind a statement along with the idea that Americans only get their news from US media outlets only exposes the hubris of those making the claims. Do you think using the Internet for wide ranging news services is a secret that only a few people know about it? The non-US based news services just offer another view point of the topic and usually one slanted to serve their own editorial lines. The OWS protests where not broken up for a week. Most of the demonstrations were blocking traffic and inconveniencing businesses and residents in the area. Add to the fact that the OWS protests had people wondering what in the hell was being protested against since there did seem to be any coordination amongst the various protesters. People protesting anything ought to be able to suggest how to fix whatever it is the are up in arms about. Unless you can provide a viable steps to achieve the changes you are looking for. Look around the world at all the protests and you will see it is not really that hard to bring a government down with a little violence but most of them don't have a clue about how to build a viable government to replace the one they are bringing down and chaos takes over. The OSW protests were complaining about income equality but how do you go about accomplishing that lofty goal? Kill the rich and distribute their money to everyone? You could take all the money from the much ballyhooed 1% and distribute it equally amongst the 99% and each recipient may get about $10. I also heard a lot of complaining from people who went to college and could not find a job after they graduated. If you want to go to college and spend all that money you should probably look at the job market before you spend all that money and see exactly what jobs are in demand today. A political science or History degree will not offer up very many jobs.
" met with aggression & violence by police while politicians ignore it & the media discredits the protesters."
The aggression only started after over 2 weeks of protesting.
Is there any example of the FBI or NSA misusing any of the data they are supposed to collecting? Your rights are not diminished until you are charged with a crime and prosecuted. You can then put the issue in front of a judge who will issue a ruling on the legality of the methods used to collect data from you and trying to use it as evidence against you in court. The judicial branch has the power to nullify the controversial law. And if you are concerned about the low number of people protesting or not protesting maybe you should consider that your opinion is not widely shared with the majority.
Iraq was stable because Hussein killed anybody who dared to criticize him and he also killed the family and friends of the dissenter to make a point. Stability can be enforced if you just kill all of your opponents. North Korea is also stable because they imprisoned and killed any dissenters since the day the country was born.
The terrorists are not going away anytime soon. The US is lucky because the vast majority of terrorists are on another continent. The day after 9/11 the whole world denounced the terrorists world wide and promised to work with the US to accomplish it. A few days later that consensus was fractured as some world leaders found out they might actually have to backup their rhetoric by military action. The current situation in Syria could have been avoided if Russia, China, and Iran had condemned Syria for killing their own citizens to maintain their regime and announced they would stop supporting Syria with weapons and political cover. All it takes is for one country to support Syria to give a lifeline to Assad.
When Congress is creates new laws they use in-house lawyers review the proposed law and make sure there are no obvious legal mistakes. That doesn't mean the law is legal. The real test comes when someone is actually charged with violating the law and goes to court to challenge the law. The Judicial branch can invalidate the entire law or strike down just certain provisions of the law. The Judicial branch has the final word not the Legislative branch. This has already happened to the Patriot Act. A professor in Florida was charged with violating certain Patriot Act provisions and the court ruled the Patriot Act provisions invalid and the government had to drop their case because there was no evidence.
Hijackings were pretty rare in the US at the time of 9/11 and the security at the time did make it hard to smuggle in a gun or bomb. Before 9/11 I never heard of case where a gun was successfully smuggled onto a plane in the US. The hijackers on the planes on 9/11 bluffed everyone with threats of a bomb and box cutters for weapons. If this same scenario happened today the first people who stood up and announced they have a bomb and brandish a little knife would most likely get the ever living shit kicked out of them by the passengers. It was passengers who subdued the guy with underwear bomb. The guy who tried to light his shoes on fire to set off an explosion was also subdued by the passengers. Sure some passengers could get injured or even killed in the fight but that's still a whole lot better than killing everyone by crashing the plane.
Slashdot Mirror
"wealth inequity in this country has never been this bad, not by a long shot"
This is not really accurate. Study the late 19th century and early 20th century where every major industry was a monopoly ruled by just a few people siphoning off the profits for themselves. At the time there was no such thing as workers rights or a mandatory minimum wage and certainly nothing about prohibiting monopolies. Banks operated without any form of oversight from the government. Protectionism and tariffs on imports combined with the Foreign Policy of the day helped usher in the Great Depression. All the outrage today about the governments surveillance programs and accusations of rights violations are nothing when compared against past actions. Two of the best Presidents in US history blatantly and knowingly ignored the constitution when they perceived the country was in danger and they could not trust the Legislators to make the right decisions. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and imprisoned journalists publishing any thing negative about how the Union and Lincoln was handling the civil war. He actually tried to argue that they were disclosing secret information that could potentially be used by the Confederates. Sound familiar? FDR blatantly ignored Congress as well as the majority of US citizens when he came up with ways to bypass the Neutrality Act with the lend lease program and the gradual expansion of the area the US claimed as territorial waters to try and protect shipping to Europe during WW2. Congress passed a law forbidding the government from using wire taps when FDR wanted to monitor suspected Nazi agents operating in the US. The day Congress voted to prohibit this FDR wrote a Presidential order and delivered to the Justice Department telling them to ignore the law passed in Congress and proceed with the taps. The only reason these two presidents were not impeached was because they were both successful in the end.
It's easier to get funding if you can come up with some possible military application when pitching your project. ICBM development provided the rock technology needed for the first moon landings and subsequent trips into orbit. Military R&D has resulted in advances in material science, satellite technology, medical, and nuclear technology which also have civilian applications.
They also "produced" the film "Collateral Damage" by editing out anything that did not support their non-objective analysis. The full version of the video was released later but by then the unquestioning masses had already firmed up their opinion on the whole matter and were not particularly interested in seeing anything that might not agree with their particular line of thought. The release of the edited video by Wikileaks was the first glaring sign that despite all the bullshit about just setting anonymously submitted information free to the masses it was no more than another political action group looking to use the data to drive a political agenda.
Lies of omission, lack of context, and sentence structure is how you construct biased propaganda and the creators can honestly claim there were no outright factual discrepancies in the published article. This type of news reporting is done by all sides on any issue. The truth is being lost and the Internet has turned into the ultimate tool for spreading misinformation in record time. As for the Guardian all you need to do is visit their reader comment talkbacks and you will see how their non-objective articles has turned 90% of it's readers into non-questioning drones patting each other on the back for having the same great insight to worldly issues. I believe the technical term is echo chamber.
"utter ignorance" is the default state of every legislative body in the world. Politicians tend to be the biggest blabbermouths in the world. Telling them about every covert national security program would guarantee that everyone, friend and foe, would have all the details in about 15 minutes. And believe it or not there are some things that do need to be kept secret when it comes to dealing with other countries. Every other country in the world does the exact same thing. If every government in the world closed down their foreign intelligence operations the US could do the same but that is not happening any time soon. Just like every country could destroy it's stockpiles of WMD but until that day comes the US should probably keep some around for the inevitable wars coming in the not to distant future. Snowden started out as someone who wanted to inform US citizens about the NSA programs. Unfortunately he now he truly meets all the requirements to be charged under the Espionage Act. By releasing information on foreign intelligence actions he has sealed his fate and demolished his idealistic and noble claim of being a whistleblower. And he should already know that over the last 50+ years the US and the USSR/Russian Federation have regularly exchanged people that each country wants. Usually it involves exchanging intelligence operatives but right now the are several high profile people that were convicted in Russia that the US is refusing to extradite.
"Bread and Circuses" can often bring stability.
Religion was only a part of the reason for decline. Not every single province or country experienced the same amount or type of decline but the majority did. The Roman empire administered a huge amount of territory that provided a measure of stability across the board. At it's high point one quarter of the world population fell under Roman control. A lot of people relied on that administrative and trading framework to prosper. During it's conquests the Romans helped spread a common language along with providing a measure of modern civilization for that time period. Corruption and civil wars also contributed to Rome's fall. After Rome fell feudalism, religion, and just plain survival for some became the driving factors of the day. Towards the very end the "Black Death" was the final straw because it hit populations already weakened by Rome's fall.
It would stop more than just the US economy. Why can't people understand how the largest economies in the world are intertwined and what effects one effects them all. The new natural gas production off the coast of Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey will give Europe another source of natural gas which nullifies any threat of shut down from Russia.
The US appears to be staying out of the Syria mess. When Obama asked for approval from Congress for military action and took public opinion into the decision making process he effectively handed the whole mess over to Russia and in some small part China as well. He could have ordered the attack using his presidential authority and was not required to get Congressional approval for a military strike. He also appears to be trying to improve the US-Iranian relations regardless of what the other countries in the region want. The US is notorious for turning a blind eye to the actions of a country defined as a "US friendly country". However if the country is defined as an "US enemy" the US will do anything to undermine everything the "US enemy" does.
The Roman empire lasted close to a thousand years not a few hundred. And after Rome fell the world rapidly descended into that period lovingly referred to as the "Dark Ages".
I am not buying one of these until they add-on a swivel mounted 50 caliber SAW and some reactive armor.
Humans have been fighting with each other since there were enough people to chose sides. Beating each other the head with clubs to win the bigger cave and prettier women. Today the fights are pretty much the same except for much better weapons.
"control of the Internet moving from the US to the UN"
You are delusional if you think the US would ever hand over any control to UN. There will be other countries creating their own internet to prevent their citizenry from interacting with the wider world.
And how long do you think it would take the US or any other country with a halfway decent submarine force to tap the cables? Any country is free to create their own internet but the ones trying to do it seem more focused on censoring the information their citizens can access.
While this could be a bad thing for aviators it is a good reuse of mothballed jets that cost millions of dollars. They have configured all types of jets as drones going back to the 60's. In WW2 the US tried to convert a B-29 to fly without any humans on board. They had some success but the war was near it's end and the project was dropped. One of the Kennedy's (not sure which one) was actually killed in an early test during this project.
The IT development industry is one of the few where you get what you pay for at the top end. It is quite easy to evaluate a persons work quality. Someone may bullshit their way past an interview but it's hard to hide incompetence when actually required to produce work.
I would have thought every IT professional with a pulse would now know that outsourcing development or support always ends in a gigantic cluster fuck.
His stated goal was to inform the US public about the governments data collection efforts and how they effected US citizens. The US constitution protects US citizens not foreign nationals. However, now he believes that he and a certain journalist are competent enough to determine whether any of the information collected on FOREIGN programs can harm the US if released. Who is he to make that decision? What is his definition of harm? His pet journalist hates the US with a vengeance and has no problem releasing anything, especially if it harms the US. He once had chance to negotiate with the US authorities and return to the US but he burned that bridge and has sealed his fate as an international fugitive for the remainder of his life. Every country in the world spies on both their enemies and allies and the US really doesn't have any allies so every one is fair game. If he was a Russian or Chinese he would have already been either imprisoned or killed. If he evaded them they would use his friends and families as hostages until he returned. Both countries have well documented instances of them using this tactic.
Even if they sold them to others they would still be able to safely manage thee mines and making the problem of finding mines after a conflict easier to do.
The only reason the US did not sign the UN Mine treaty is because they could not get an exemption for the border between NK and SK. The US mines can be disarmed or activated remotely and the mines can be easily detected and removed. The mines used as far back as WW2 to the present get armed as soon they are deployed and buried to make them hard to find. When a war was over the process of removal is not exactly precise or even attempted in some instances.
"They rely on mainstream media outlets for news"
This kind a statement along with the idea that Americans only get their news from US media outlets only exposes the hubris of those making the claims. Do you think using the Internet for wide ranging news services is a secret that only a few people know about it? The non-US based news services just offer another view point of the topic and usually one slanted to serve their own editorial lines. The OWS protests where not broken up for a week. Most of the demonstrations were blocking traffic and inconveniencing businesses and residents in the area. Add to the fact that the OWS protests had people wondering what in the hell was being protested against since there did seem to be any coordination amongst the various protesters. People protesting anything ought to be able to suggest how to fix whatever it is the are up in arms about. Unless you can provide a viable steps to achieve the changes you are looking for. Look around the world at all the protests and you will see it is not really that hard to bring a government down with a little violence but most of them don't have a clue about how to build a viable government to replace the one they are bringing down and chaos takes over. The OSW protests were complaining about income equality but how do you go about accomplishing that lofty goal? Kill the rich and distribute their money to everyone? You could take all the money from the much ballyhooed 1% and distribute it equally amongst the 99% and each recipient may get about $10. I also heard a lot of complaining from people who went to college and could not find a job after they graduated. If you want to go to college and spend all that money you should probably look at the job market before you spend all that money and see exactly what jobs are in demand today. A political science or History degree will not offer up very many jobs.
" met with aggression & violence by police while politicians ignore it & the media discredits the protesters."
The aggression only started after over 2 weeks of protesting.
Is there any example of the FBI or NSA misusing any of the data they are supposed to collecting? Your rights are not diminished until you are charged with a crime and prosecuted. You can then put the issue in front of a judge who will issue a ruling on the legality of the methods used to collect data from you and trying to use it as evidence against you in court. The judicial branch has the power to nullify the controversial law. And if you are concerned about the low number of people protesting or not protesting maybe you should consider that your opinion is not widely shared with the majority.
Iraq was stable because Hussein killed anybody who dared to criticize him and he also killed the family and friends of the dissenter to make a point. Stability can be enforced if you just kill all of your opponents. North Korea is also stable because they imprisoned and killed any dissenters since the day the country was born.
The terrorists are not going away anytime soon. The US is lucky because the vast majority of terrorists are on another continent. The day after 9/11 the whole world denounced the terrorists world wide and promised to work with the US to accomplish it. A few days later that consensus was fractured as some world leaders found out they might actually have to backup their rhetoric by military action. The current situation in Syria could have been avoided if Russia, China, and Iran had condemned Syria for killing their own citizens to maintain their regime and announced they would stop supporting Syria with weapons and political cover. All it takes is for one country to support Syria to give a lifeline to Assad.
When Congress is creates new laws they use in-house lawyers review the proposed law and make sure there are no obvious legal mistakes. That doesn't mean the law is legal. The real test comes when someone is actually charged with violating the law and goes to court to challenge the law. The Judicial branch can invalidate the entire law or strike down just certain provisions of the law. The Judicial branch has the final word not the Legislative branch. This has already happened to the Patriot Act. A professor in Florida was charged with violating certain Patriot Act provisions and the court ruled the Patriot Act provisions invalid and the government had to drop their case because there was no evidence.
And if Snowden was the one who stole the data you would call him a hero.
Hijackings were pretty rare in the US at the time of 9/11 and the security at the time did make it hard to smuggle in a gun or bomb. Before 9/11 I never heard of case where a gun was successfully smuggled onto a plane in the US. The hijackers on the planes on 9/11 bluffed everyone with threats of a bomb and box cutters for weapons. If this same scenario happened today the first people who stood up and announced they have a bomb and brandish a little knife would most likely get the ever living shit kicked out of them by the passengers. It was passengers who subdued the guy with underwear bomb. The guy who tried to light his shoes on fire to set off an explosion was also subdued by the passengers. Sure some passengers could get injured or even killed in the fight but that's still a whole lot better than killing everyone by crashing the plane.