And of course for all of this I got brought down to the school psychologist because they were concerned about the report I gave...even though I had gotten approval on the topic before I had even started on it, had said nothing but positive things etc. Yeah, I hit the roof when that happened....
Yep, the common reactionary instinct. I recall a story in Richard Feynman's autobiography Surely You Must Be Joking, Mr. Feynman where he talks about cracking the safes at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. He refers specifically to a time when he had to visit some Colonel or something at another site and he shows him how easy it is to open the safes by opening the Colonel's safe cold. He then goes on to show the Colonel how he did it and explains the flaws in the design of the safe (he can pick the last numbers off the safe if the door is left open). The Colonel thanks him and promises to do something about the problem.
So anyway, later on, maybe a month later, Feynman goes back to the place (Oak Ridge or something), and he's walking around like usual. He goes into an office of people to say "hi" and they are all shifty, "Oh Mr. Feynman, don't come in HERE." So he walks out, puzzled. Goes into another office and as soon as they see him, they all bustle around and they shut all their safes; "What's going on" he asks. "Oh, the Colonel told us that you may be a security risk and to make sure to close our safes if you are around!"
Everything he said to the Colonel about the security risks, etc. went in one ear and out the other. HE was the security risk.
Likewise, the school system was really what was at fault in the Columbine thing. The school system is a militarized assembly line designed to press out new little workers for the economy. I'm sure it feels like jail for the majority of students. Those that rise to some kind of leadership within the ranks of the students want to stay there and they use taunts and social attacks to stay on top (just like in politics). Those on the bottom of the social hierarchy tend to stay on the bottom. This is because high school emphasizes popularity and conformity rather than free-thought and personality.
Just like in the Feynman story above, in the weeks after the incident schools nationwide banned black t-shirts, drawing in notebooks, "subversive" music, black hair, piercings, etc. Because that was "obviously" the problem. Drawing in notebooks was a huge danger signal that these kinds might not be conforming to the rules, they might be different. Yet the system failed to see that "different" people were not the cause of this massacre--the SYSTEM ITSELF, the REQUIRED CONFORMITY in a WORLD MADE OF DIFFERENT PEOPLE was too much for these weak minded individuals and they snapped.
Take a look at Google's image search for plane crashes. Here you will see images of MANY plane crashes. Notice, please, there is always a tail, a big piece of the body of the plane, etc.
Not that it matters, of course. No one in their right mind would crash a whatever into their own building. I mean, they might get an insurance check, which would suck. Please take my rights away! Praise Jesus!
terrorist ( P ) Pronunciation Key (trr-st) n. One that engages in acts or an act of terrorism.
adj. Of or relating to terrorism.
The calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimindation or coercion or instilling fear.
I wonder what definition they will use to describe the people who are going to remove this administration from power through WORDS. Maybe they will make their own dictionary up, just like they publish their own medical papers, their own research reports, their own "findings" about the attacks. They will tap those poor souls phones, those poor people who just want to be free to live their lives without feeling like someone or something is looking over their shoulder and making sure they are doing the "Right Thing (tm)". They will plant evidence, and they will whisk these people who merely SPOKE away to a prison camp without a trial. Why? Because the president says so.
Jesus, since he can talk directly with you, can you please tell George he's WRONG.
It amazes me that people aren't yelling and screaming about this and marching in front of the White House.
I'll be right behind you. Go, march, at LEAST yell and scream. Donate to the EFF. CALL your representatives, city, state, and federal. If you already have, choose one and do it again. Once is not always enough.
However, with social network diagram that included every phone call ever made, cell networks would stick out like a sore thumb.
Assuming they USE the phone. What about tradecraft: a little chalk mark on the side of this mailbox, a taped X in a window on a certain day, etc. Everyone knows to assume the phone is tapped, no matter what. And if you're a terrorist, hey, there's still a few payphones out there, if you really need to make a call. It's like Bush read a Tom Clancy novel and got all uppity.
And of course, all of these actions simply plant the seeds for more terrorism, revolt, and protest. So if anyone tries to do anything in the future, they can say "see, told you so". Shit, they could even engineer a "terrorist attack" themselves, if everyone stood to benefit. Not that any sane, normal, good, law abiding person would do something like that.
What it really comes down to is that people still expect the government to protect them from everything. They can't. They aren't some infallable force that forms a force shield around every citizen. It is up to you to protect yourself. They formed the TSA to protect the airline industry, not the people flying on planes... if you don't want to face the slightest possibility of dying, don't fly on planes, don't drive, don't eat, don't move, shit, don't THINK. At what point are you not really alive anyway??
Anyway, it's obvious that all of this stuff was put into place as a kneejerk reaction after the WTC thing because it hurt us, it made everyone feel vulerable at a time when we were already feeling vulerable. I don't think they have a serious evil purpose, I think they are just stupid and made bad decisions, and now they are embarrassed and are trying damage control. To have a massive conspiracy set up, these people would need to be not only genius level intelligences but also be able to keep enough of it secret because it could NEVER get out. This isn't like building a plane in secret, something fairly easy to do. This would have to run down through the vestiges of power all the way to the local government. Even if it was some secret organization, like *snicker* Skull and Bones (more likely a homoerotic fraternity kind of secret rather than a world domination kind of secret), there's always underpaid assistants, couriers, PC Techs, etc. who would leak it if it got really bad. Of the people and by the people, remember.
Granted, a poster above did mention something about setting a precedent for future evil men. Hopefully the next president is an extraordinary man who can see these implications and LEAD the country, LEAD the LEADERS of the country into examining and fixing it for the future. Lessons learned. George W Bush is not inspiring to me; he is a frat boy trapped in a man's body. They might throw a good party but you don't want him making your important life decisions. I'm not the only one who thinks this; in fact, the majority of people think this. They have less than 2 years left and then we can hopefully clean up this country. Vote this year and there might be a chance we can put a roadblock in if you vote for the right senators and congressmen. It's sad that more people vote for the next American Idol than president (saw in a sig)
From TFA: A total of 502 randomly selected adults were interviewed Thursday night for this survey. Margin of sampling error is five percentage points for the overall results. The practical difficulties of doing a survey in a single night represents another potential source of error.
Wow, 502 people. What a large sample. How much you want to bet they're all from Washington.........
This is irrelevant and proves nothing about what Americans feel.
LEXAN huh. Apparently if you expose it to heat or sunlight, it decomposes into free BPA (bisphenol A) which causes your to grow breasts. Oh, and it can cause chromosomal loss in your sperm thus causing your children to be born with down's syndrome. That's what they say, anyway. I use a glass mug.
Google search tells more, although it could be those enviropsychos at it again. But they did get Transfats out of chips.......
One thing I've noticed about Diet soda is that it creates gas and bloated feelings, especially when I have it with lunch. From what I understand, it's made from aspartic acid, an amino acid and excitatory neurotoxin. It also causes havoc with my GI and I crap like a racehorse.
Interestingly, Nutrasweet was originally owned by GD Searle and then got approved by the FDA under the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld (he had a private career for a while in between Nixon and Bush..) Later Monsanto bought them. Then the brand went to
According to many people, Nutrasweet is not a good thing to be drinking in quantity. If you drink 8 cans of diet soda per day, you are risking your self. According to Dr. Joseph Mercola, aspartame causes: Birth defects, Diabetes, Emotional disorders, Epilepsy/seizures, Migraines, Lowered sperm count, etc.
They are also lobbying to change the food labels in order to better hide additives: Truth in Labling. Of course, to be two sided, Nutrasweet denies that there is anything wrong with it. Sort of like tobacco used to be good for you.
One last article mentions the entire history. Very interesting to see the revolving door in the FDA and the pharma industry. Notice how they just now stopped putting "trans-fats" in chips and everyone knows they are bad, cause heart disease, etc.. 5 years ago, everyone thought they were fine. Nutrasweet is NOT good for you.
still, if they spent half of what they've spent on this war building a few hydro dams, that cost would go down.
I mean, we are up to almost $315,000,000,000.00 in cost so far. That's in addition to the normal defense spending. The population of the US is about 299 million. So, that's about $1050 per person in the U.S. so far for just war activities. over 3 years, that's about $300 per year or $25 per month. If you took that and put it into your pocket, to offset your excessively high $400.00 monthly power bill, that's a savings of around 7 percent per month. That's for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. Of course, that $400 is probably spread across 4 people (avg) so you're looking at more like a 25% savings. Just on tax dollars spent on the war (waste). Now, if they actually used the money to develop renewable power sources, hydro, solar, etc. that savings would be reflected PERMANENTLY because of the lower cost of producing power vs coal (requires workers, mines, transport of the coal, etc. [and pollutes].)
Of course, this is all obvious. Too bad we can do anything about it because the oil companies control energy right now and they want to rape all the oil first before they move on to other stuff.. "God gave us this oil, and by-god we're going to BURN IT!"
This shows tradeoffs (not sure how accurate it is, but whatever) between defense spending and possible state benefits. Shocking. No, not realy.
You could use a torque converter and set a stall speed that way you can coast without spinning the motor. Of course, you might want to do that to get regenerative braking...
Well, if enough people say "Bush will Kill Preteen Shit Assassins and Fuck Bombs. Nuclear Terror Methamphetamines will be delivered at 4:20." and the like, ala spam, it might overload the system with too many false positives.
Of course, then they'll pass a law that it's illegal to say stuff that might be construed as a false positive.
Let's all remember that Bush, Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld are ALL citizens. We should sue them.
People want something that cannot be guaranteed: Safety. And they are asking for it from the wrong people: Government. The Government cannot guarantee your saftey. The Government can not prevent you from dying. NO Government CAN.
Why would you ask them for something they cannot provide? Why would you let them TRY when you know they will FAIL? That's the problem. Of course people care about their bank accounts. But the problem isn't caring about bank accounts, it's expecting the wrong things from government. And that leads the government to get too much power, because "you want it to".
Anyway, the Universties would do best to play every card they have to just delay the case until we censure or remove this administration and prevent further abuses. If this equipment gets installed, we know from experience that it will be used for illegal wiretapping.
President Lincoln -- who history has treated quite favorably -- declared and imposed martial law, suspended habeas corpus, and arrested people that today would probably be termed "political dissidents," including a few members of Congress.
Of course, there was gruesome live combat occuring on American soil between Americans. It's a little different when the main thing propelling the whole argument is just a spun up fear of "terrorism".
So by drawing a historical parallel between 9/11 and any other "war period" in our history, you can quite easily play into the hands of a pro-oppression argument, because there is ample historical evidence for periods of relative oppression (or at least, of substantially reduced civil liberties) during conflicts, followed by a return to normalcy afterwards.
I think one of the major problems with the system is that people don't use it. More people vote for American Idol than in presidential elections, and even fewer vote in the mid-terms (like this year). Of course the problem is the system, but the system is symptomatic of our society. The American political/legal system is still very young and it was/is a great experiment. I believe in the system, I believe in the general good intentions of all men, but there are problems with the human nature that the current system does not solve and possibly cannot be solved by any system. Greed, lust, anger, etc. are all the essences of humans failing to exert control over themselves in a way that puts the betterment of society first over their own good. Not support of the status quo, not bowing down the concerns of security, not support of a government, but SOCIETY. The problems are easy to describe, easy to see, but what is not offered by most people are SOLUTIONS.
Most people are content to let someone else come up with the solutions. Most people in America are taught not to think any differently than that in the public school system, or through their structure of church, family tradition, etc. The problem is that then, over time, the people who are in the position to make solutions are an increasingly small group. I think another problem is that people expect too much of the goverment instead of doing it themselves. The government is not there to feed you, provide you with shelter, etc. It's too provide a public protocol for the debate of crucial issues, creating laws where necessary, encouraging growth and learning, helping to make the world a better place. Increasingly, those ideals have fallen to the wayside as people instead look to the government for "security", "safety", and "defense".
People, wake up. You have a responsibility. You are responsible for your own safety, just as you are responsible for your getting your own food, transportation, etc. You are responsible for your own solutions.
The whole idea of national defense was pioneered by people like Rumsfeld and Cheney after WWII, when the spectre of atomic weapons made any new war seem likely to destroy all order and society very very quickly. I'm sure it was a very scary time, as people who were alive then will confirm. I think they did a good job of not using atomic weapons and I think they did a good job of keeping the American public in fear of the Soviets. When you think about it, though, the system is set up (globally) so that only a very few people have ultimate control over the atomic weapons, with fewer weapons under a person's immediate control as you go down the chain of command.
This means that even if some crazy who wants to bring on the apocalypse or just murder a lot of people they might be able to get a few missles off but they can't really destroy the entire world. Sure, a big bomb in the middle of LA or Manhattan would kill a LOT of people, but it wouldn't be the end of the world, or even society as we know it. It's scary, but it's not blowing-up-the-whole-earth-and-exterminating-the-h uman-race scary.
But our leaders and the media MADE IT SEEM like that was going to happen, even though the only two guys who could do it could not possibly do it.
TODAY, it's a different world than it was 50 years ago. Most Americans didn't even have a phone then, let alone instant free access to other contries and continents. We know now that Russians are really quite a bit like us; they go to school, they go to clubs, they go to work, etc. We know that Iranians are really quite a bit like us also. All of us commoners are pretty much all facing the same problems world wide. There's a power-elite who is in charge. It has always been that way. It has to be that way though. If all of society is pulling in random directions, the only result is statis. Who makes the decisions? Well, we vote for people to make the decisions for us. Unfortunately, the majority of those have been granted me
I think it's pretty obvious that everyone needs get excited.
A. Vote in the upcoming election B. Send a letter to their congressperson/senator C. Donate $10-100 to the EFF or OTHER reputable HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION (don't have starbucks for 2 days and SEND MONEY.)
DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! If you don't, you're a piece of shit.
Slashdot Mirror
And of course for all of this I got brought down to the school psychologist because they were concerned about the report I gave...even though I had gotten approval on the topic before I had even started on it, had said nothing but positive things etc. Yeah, I hit the roof when that happened....
Yep, the common reactionary instinct. I recall a story in Richard Feynman's autobiography Surely You Must Be Joking, Mr. Feynman where he talks about cracking the safes at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. He refers specifically to a time when he had to visit some Colonel or something at another site and he shows him how easy it is to open the safes by opening the Colonel's safe cold. He then goes on to show the Colonel how he did it and explains the flaws in the design of the safe (he can pick the last numbers off the safe if the door is left open). The Colonel thanks him and promises to do something about the problem.
So anyway, later on, maybe a month later, Feynman goes back to the place (Oak Ridge or something), and he's walking around like usual. He goes into an office of people to say "hi" and they are all shifty, "Oh Mr. Feynman, don't come in HERE." So he walks out, puzzled. Goes into another office and as soon as they see him, they all bustle around and they shut all their safes; "What's going on" he asks. "Oh, the Colonel told us that you may be a security risk and to make sure to close our safes if you are around!"
Everything he said to the Colonel about the security risks, etc. went in one ear and out the other. HE was the security risk.
Likewise, the school system was really what was at fault in the Columbine thing. The school system is a militarized assembly line designed to press out new little workers for the economy. I'm sure it feels like jail for the majority of students. Those that rise to some kind of leadership within the ranks of the students want to stay there and they use taunts and social attacks to stay on top (just like in politics). Those on the bottom of the social hierarchy tend to stay on the bottom. This is because high school emphasizes popularity and conformity rather than free-thought and personality.
Just like in the Feynman story above, in the weeks after the incident schools nationwide banned black t-shirts, drawing in notebooks, "subversive" music, black hair, piercings, etc. Because that was "obviously" the problem. Drawing in notebooks was a huge danger signal that these kinds might not be conforming to the rules, they might be different. Yet the system failed to see that "different" people were not the cause of this massacre--the SYSTEM ITSELF, the REQUIRED CONFORMITY in a WORLD MADE OF DIFFERENT PEOPLE was too much for these weak minded individuals and they snapped.
Nope, everyone is right. That was a plane that hit the Pentagon.
Where is the plane?
Take a look at Google's image search for plane crashes. Here you will see images of MANY plane crashes. Notice, please, there is always a tail, a big piece of the body of the plane, etc.
Not that it matters, of course. No one in their right mind would crash a whatever into their own building. I mean, they might get an insurance check, which would suck. Please take my rights away! Praise Jesus!
Where is the plane?
Yeah, I was going to say.. this is an expensive way to get a sex tape of the wife made.
Are they going to search our call records to determine the source of the leak?! *knock knock* "Oh Hi Bill." *ziiiiiing* (BSOD)
EFF
terrorist ( P ) Pronunciation Key (trr-st)
n. One that engages in acts or an act of terrorism.
adj. Of or relating to terrorism.
The calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimindation or coercion or instilling fear.
I wonder what definition they will use to describe the people who are going to remove this administration from power through WORDS. Maybe they will make their own dictionary up, just like they publish their own medical papers, their own research reports, their own "findings" about the attacks. They will tap those poor souls phones, those poor people who just want to be free to live their lives without feeling like someone or something is looking over their shoulder and making sure they are doing the "Right Thing (tm)". They will plant evidence, and they will whisk these people who merely SPOKE away to a prison camp without a trial. Why? Because the president says so.
Jesus, since he can talk directly with you, can you please tell George he's WRONG.
It amazes me that people aren't yelling and screaming about this and marching in front of the White House.
I'll be right behind you. Go, march, at LEAST yell and scream. Donate to the EFF. CALL your representatives, city, state, and federal. If you already have, choose one and do it again. Once is not always enough.
Uh, what about Palm's 700p Page? Or is you looking for a review?
However, with social network diagram that included every phone call ever made, cell networks would stick out like a sore thumb.
Assuming they USE the phone. What about tradecraft: a little chalk mark on the side of this mailbox, a taped X in a window on a certain day, etc. Everyone knows to assume the phone is tapped, no matter what. And if you're a terrorist, hey, there's still a few payphones out there, if you really need to make a call. It's like Bush read a Tom Clancy novel and got all uppity.
And of course, all of these actions simply plant the seeds for more terrorism, revolt, and protest. So if anyone tries to do anything in the future, they can say "see, told you so". Shit, they could even engineer a "terrorist attack" themselves, if everyone stood to benefit. Not that any sane, normal, good, law abiding person would do something like that.
What it really comes down to is that people still expect the government to protect them from everything. They can't. They aren't some infallable force that forms a force shield around every citizen. It is up to you to protect yourself. They formed the TSA to protect the airline industry, not the people flying on planes... if you don't want to face the slightest possibility of dying, don't fly on planes, don't drive, don't eat, don't move, shit, don't THINK. At what point are you not really alive anyway??
Anyway, it's obvious that all of this stuff was put into place as a kneejerk reaction after the WTC thing because it hurt us, it made everyone feel vulerable at a time when we were already feeling vulerable. I don't think they have a serious evil purpose, I think they are just stupid and made bad decisions, and now they are embarrassed and are trying damage control. To have a massive conspiracy set up, these people would need to be not only genius level intelligences but also be able to keep enough of it secret because it could NEVER get out. This isn't like building a plane in secret, something fairly easy to do. This would have to run down through the vestiges of power all the way to the local government. Even if it was some secret organization, like *snicker* Skull and Bones (more likely a homoerotic fraternity kind of secret rather than a world domination kind of secret), there's always underpaid assistants, couriers, PC Techs, etc. who would leak it if it got really bad. Of the people and by the people, remember.
Granted, a poster above did mention something about setting a precedent for future evil men. Hopefully the next president is an extraordinary man who can see these implications and LEAD the country, LEAD the LEADERS of the country into examining and fixing it for the future. Lessons learned. George W Bush is not inspiring to me; he is a frat boy trapped in a man's body. They might throw a good party but you don't want him making your important life decisions. I'm not the only one who thinks this; in fact, the majority of people think this. They have less than 2 years left and then we can hopefully clean up this country. Vote this year and there might be a chance we can put a roadblock in if you vote for the right senators and congressmen. It's sad that more people vote for the next American Idol than president (saw in a sig)
From TFA:
A total of 502 randomly selected adults were interviewed Thursday night for this survey. Margin of sampling error is five percentage points for the overall results. The practical difficulties of doing a survey in a single night represents another potential source of error.
Wow, 502 people. What a large sample. How much you want to bet they're all from Washington.........
This is irrelevant and proves nothing about what Americans feel.
LEXAN huh. Apparently if you expose it to heat or sunlight, it decomposes into free BPA (bisphenol A) which causes your to grow breasts. Oh, and it can cause chromosomal loss in your sperm thus causing your children to be born with down's syndrome. That's what they say, anyway. I use a glass mug.
Google search tells more, although it could be those enviropsychos at it again. But they did get Transfats out of chips.......
One thing I've noticed about Diet soda is that it creates gas and bloated feelings, especially when I have it with lunch. From what I understand, it's made from aspartic acid, an amino acid and excitatory neurotoxin. It also causes havoc with my GI and I crap like a racehorse.
Interestingly, Nutrasweet was originally owned by GD Searle and then got approved by the FDA under the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld (he had a private career for a while in between Nixon and Bush..) Later Monsanto bought them. Then the brand went to
According to many people, Nutrasweet is not a good thing to be drinking in quantity. If you drink 8 cans of diet soda per day, you are risking your self. According to Dr. Joseph Mercola, aspartame causes: Birth defects, Diabetes, Emotional disorders, Epilepsy/seizures, Migraines, Lowered sperm count, etc.
They are also lobbying to change the food labels in order to better hide additives: Truth in Labling. Of course, to be two sided, Nutrasweet denies that there is anything wrong with it. Sort of like tobacco used to be good for you.
One last article mentions the entire history. Very interesting to see the revolving door in the FDA and the pharma industry. Notice how they just now stopped putting "trans-fats" in chips and everyone knows they are bad, cause heart disease, etc.. 5 years ago, everyone thought they were fine. Nutrasweet is NOT good for you.
still, if they spent half of what they've spent on this war building a few hydro dams, that cost would go down.
I mean, we are up to almost $315,000,000,000.00 in cost so far. That's in addition to the normal defense spending. The population of the US is about 299 million. So, that's about $1050 per person in the U.S. so far for just war activities. over 3 years, that's about $300 per year or $25 per month. If you took that and put it into your pocket, to offset your excessively high $400.00 monthly power bill, that's a savings of around 7 percent per month. That's for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. Of course, that $400 is probably spread across 4 people (avg) so you're looking at more like a 25% savings. Just on tax dollars spent on the war (waste). Now, if they actually used the money to develop renewable power sources, hydro, solar, etc. that savings would be reflected PERMANENTLY because of the lower cost of producing power vs coal (requires workers, mines, transport of the coal, etc. [and pollutes].)
Of course, this is all obvious. Too bad we can do anything about it because the oil companies control energy right now and they want to rape all the oil first before they move on to other stuff.. "God gave us this oil, and by-god we're going to BURN IT!"
This shows tradeoffs (not sure how accurate it is, but whatever) between defense spending and possible state benefits. Shocking. No, not realy.
You could use a torque converter and set a stall speed that way you can coast without spinning the motor. Of course, you might want to do that to get regenerative braking...
A car getting towed often gets noticed, but a guy with a laptop parked in the next space doesn't...
Wait a second: There's a laptop you can DRIVE? Must be the new iBook or something.
Eh-sprESS!-oh as they say in italy.
Well, if enough people say "Bush will Kill Preteen Shit Assassins and Fuck Bombs. Nuclear Terror Methamphetamines will be delivered at 4:20." and the like, ala spam, it might overload the system with too many false positives.
Of course, then they'll pass a law that it's illegal to say stuff that might be construed as a false positive.
Let's all remember that Bush, Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld are ALL citizens. We should sue them.
People want something that cannot be guaranteed: Safety. And they are asking for it from the wrong people: Government. The Government cannot guarantee your saftey. The Government can not prevent you from dying. NO Government CAN.
Why would you ask them for something they cannot provide? Why would you let them TRY when you know they will FAIL? That's the problem. Of course people care about their bank accounts. But the problem isn't caring about bank accounts, it's expecting the wrong things from government. And that leads the government to get too much power, because "you want it to".
Anyway, the Universties would do best to play every card they have to just delay the case until we censure or remove this administration and prevent further abuses. If this equipment gets installed, we know from experience that it will be used for illegal wiretapping.
We're becoming the thing we're attacking, therefore we're attacking ourselves.
If you haven't already, read the review of Bush by Sean Wilentz in Rolling Stone. THEN, watch Stephen Colbert at the White House correspondents dinner last night.
The tides are turning. It's too much. Too much bad for one group of people for us to put up with. Too many lies. Too much secrecy.
President Lincoln -- who history has treated quite favorably -- declared and imposed martial law, suspended habeas corpus, and arrested people that today would probably be termed "political dissidents," including a few members of Congress.
Of course, there was gruesome live combat occuring on American soil between Americans. It's a little different when the main thing propelling the whole argument is just a spun up fear of "terrorism".
So by drawing a historical parallel between 9/11 and any other "war period" in our history, you can quite easily play into the hands of a pro-oppression argument, because there is ample historical evidence for periods of relative oppression (or at least, of substantially reduced civil liberties) during conflicts, followed by a return to normalcy afterwards.
Exactly. That's why I say THERE IS NO WAR.
So... Just ask all those aging WW II vets to quit dying then? Good idea!
Or end fucking war.
I think one of the major problems with the system is that people don't use it. More people vote for American Idol than in presidential elections, and even fewer vote in the mid-terms (like this year). Of course the problem is the system, but the system is symptomatic of our society. The American political/legal system is still very young and it was/is a great experiment. I believe in the system, I believe in the general good intentions of all men, but there are problems with the human nature that the current system does not solve and possibly cannot be solved by any system. Greed, lust, anger, etc. are all the essences of humans failing to exert control over themselves in a way that puts the betterment of society first over their own good. Not support of the status quo, not bowing down the concerns of security, not support of a government, but SOCIETY. The problems are easy to describe, easy to see, but what is not offered by most people are SOLUTIONS.
Most people are content to let someone else come up with the solutions. Most people in America are taught not to think any differently than that in the public school system, or through their structure of church, family tradition, etc. The problem is that then, over time, the people who are in the position to make solutions are an increasingly small group. I think another problem is that people expect too much of the goverment instead of doing it themselves. The government is not there to feed you, provide you with shelter, etc. It's too provide a public protocol for the debate of crucial issues, creating laws where necessary, encouraging growth and learning, helping to make the world a better place. Increasingly, those ideals have fallen to the wayside as people instead look to the government for "security", "safety", and "defense".
People, wake up. You have a responsibility. You are responsible for your own safety, just as you are responsible for your getting your own food, transportation, etc. You are responsible for your own solutions.
The whole idea of national defense was pioneered by people like Rumsfeld and Cheney after WWII, when the spectre of atomic weapons made any new war seem likely to destroy all order and society very very quickly. I'm sure it was a very scary time, as people who were alive then will confirm. I think they did a good job of not using atomic weapons and I think they did a good job of keeping the American public in fear of the Soviets. When you think about it, though, the system is set up (globally) so that only a very few people have ultimate control over the atomic weapons, with fewer weapons under a person's immediate control as you go down the chain of command.
This means that even if some crazy who wants to bring on the apocalypse or just murder a lot of people they might be able to get a few missles off but they can't really destroy the entire world. Sure, a big bomb in the middle of LA or Manhattan would kill a LOT of people, but it wouldn't be the end of the world, or even society as we know it. It's scary, but it's not blowing-up-the-whole-earth-and-exterminating-the-h uman-race scary.
But our leaders and the media MADE IT SEEM like that was going to happen, even though the only two guys who could do it could not possibly do it.
TODAY, it's a different world than it was 50 years ago. Most Americans didn't even have a phone then, let alone instant free access to other contries and continents. We know now that Russians are really quite a bit like us; they go to school, they go to clubs, they go to work, etc. We know that Iranians are really quite a bit like us also. All of us commoners are pretty much all facing the same problems world wide. There's a power-elite who is in charge. It has always been that way. It has to be that way though. If all of society is pulling in random directions, the only result is statis. Who makes the decisions? Well, we vote for people to make the decisions for us. Unfortunately, the majority of those have been granted me
I think it's pretty obvious that everyone needs get excited.
A. Vote in the upcoming election
B. Send a letter to their congressperson/senator
C. Donate $10-100 to the EFF or OTHER reputable HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION (don't have starbucks for 2 days and SEND MONEY.)
DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! If you don't, you're a piece of shit.
Maybe this judge has encoded stuff in OTHER judgements as well?
Cheers