Do you think that the defense industry should support those that oppose them?
I think the decision makers at these corporations should be prosecuted for bribery. I think they should have their limited liability revoked.
I mean, okay if you disagree with people, but the whole correlation / causation thing I think is backwards. I think there is a causation, but the lawmakers thought a certain way -> therefore they were paid money.
Do you have any evidence for that belief? The problem with it is that the money came first. Then the vote. And the pattern is too clear cut to be random.
Unless you loved Pravda and want to see more of the same, this is not a good thing.
I see no difference between the US corporate media and (the old) Pravda. Both are merely instruments of pro-government propaganda. Why these corporations are acting as publicity arms for our government I don't know, but that they are is undeniable.
Or rather, does it matter if the company that sells the news is incorporated?
It does matter. It relieves them of any responsibility for their actions. And there is no owner who can be punished for behaving badly. Corporations are sociopaths who care for nothing except money. They do not deserve citizenship or the status of a single entity. Regular companies with an owner that is an individual human being are quite enough of a concentration of power. If society could find a way to reduce even that concentration without completely removing the right of individuals to cooperate with each other, it would be good.
Police brutality shows us what happens when you combine obscene power with an almost complete lack of responsibility for their actions. The same dynamic is at work with corporations. You combine a concentration of power to influence things with money and a complete lack of conscience and very little or diluted responsibility for their actions. This is a recipe for disaster.
Please enlighten us as to how the US is responsible for the existence of corporations in other countries. All it would take is one law to make corporations illegal. Any country could do it. Remember that these scumbag corporations are just acting in their own self-interest as everyone expects them to. Without the corrupt congressmen willing to accept bribes they would not be able to influence politics at all. And without a government which was abusing its power that vote wouldn't have been necessary. So don't let the government off the hook here. They are the ones who are actually doing the spying and the killing. The corporations are just getting rich off it. Which isn't a crime, but probably should be.
This article is so affordable. Only 22 pounds. We are so privileged to have the opportunity to read this study. Just imagine a world where such study results were just given away for free. Communism!
It really is a much better world where only paying customers have access to scientific research. It is destructive and dangerous to allow poor people access to knowledge. In that way lies anarchy! The horror. Next we'll be arguing not only that information wants to be free, but that it should be free. Cats and dogs living together and all that.
Very interesting. I've always believed Facebook was evil and I've never had an account with them. I also don't have any friends who actively use the site. From the article it seems that the way they get information on people without Facebook accounts is by using information their friends post about them. So it does seem avoidable. So if you value your privacy:
1) Don't use Facebook. 2) Tell your friends that you would prefer if they didn't write about you on Facebook. If someone does then stop being friends with them.
That article didn't seem to mention how Facebook can connect an IP address to a real name without contacting your ISP with a warrant or at least being a law enforcement agency.
Okay. I'll bite. Why is there no reason to avoid using gmail or other google products now that it has been revealed that they are intimately partnered with the NSA?
It seems to me that switching to hushmail or some other encrypted email provider based outside of the US would be prudent if you value your privacy. I don't write anything in Gmail that I am not comfortable with the NSA reading.
It is certainly true that monitoring everyone 24/7 as in 1984 increases security. It is also true that it leads to a lot of very unhappy people who are forced to live in an Orwellian dystopia. Human beings simply are not meant to live like that. So your cure is far, far worse than the actual diseasae.
If the price for freedom from being watched all the time by hostile government agents on fishing expeditions to find illegal or suspicious (to them) behavior is losing 3000 lives every 10-20 years then it's a price that I and probably most freedom loving people are willing to pay.
Nuking every country other than the US would also make us very safe. A bit lonely but a lot safer from the occassional terrorist. The fewer people on the planet the fewer terrorists. Unfortunately for you safe at any price people there are ethical considerations.
Just because it is not apparent who you are shilling for does not mean you are not shilling.
The only group involved in this controversy that has the resources to employ a small army of shills is the government. And I don't think they would hesitate to put their damage control team to work. Especially after the recent close vote in congress. A lot is at stake. They are probably right now in the process of hiring thousands more shills to join their cyber-army.
So to you being served target ads which you won't even see if you use noscript and an ad blocker is just as bad as being thrown in jail and/or put on a terrorist watch list for something you wrote to a friend in an email or instant message or text message?
There is no need to spy on close allies. That is a sign that the whole system is out of control and exists only for its own sake. Also, ultimately laws are supposed to derive from ethics. If it is wrong to spy on your own citizens it is also wrong to spy on anyone else who is not currently or very soon to be an enemy.
How does facebook know who I am? From my IP address? Only my ISP can connect my name to an IP address. Are you suggesting that Google routinely contacts someone like Comcast or Verizon and just asks to connect the two because, you know, they are curious?
If the FBI wants to connect my identity to an IP address they can call my ISP, but I haven't seen any evidence that ISPs are routinely giving out that information to people without law enforcement credentials.
I'm not happy about Google either but Google has neither the power nor the inclination to throw me in prison because I wrote that I'd like to kill person X in an email that was never intended for any eyes but the recipient. Or put me on a no fly list when I criticise the TSA and say I want to go on a killing rampage and take out a bunch of them.
We are used to having genuine 100% freedom of speech with no exceptions when communicating privately with a friend. Due to PRISM and probably other NSA programs this is no longer the case. You have to assume that everything you write could be read by an NSA agent.
Privacy from a repressive government is completely different from privacy from a private company that merely wants to make as much money as possible. On the one hand you get targeted ads. On the other you might spend years in prison getting raped by your cellmate and then dying from HIV. That's why we should be more concerned about the NSA than Google. Google doesn't even have a reason to personally read our emails. The NSA does.
I'm a Libertarian, but I've never liked Ron Paul and never voted for him and after he became a Republican I see that I was justified. Ron Paul wasn't on the 2012 ballot, but Gary Johnson was. He received 1.29 million votes. You could have added one more. I'd vote for him too if I could do it electronically.
All that is required is certainty that the person won't be tortured.
That's not what Putin actually said. Many extradition treaties have exceptions for crimes for which there is any possibility of execution. Of course there is no extradition treaty between the US and Russia, but if there were you can be sure capital crimes would be some kind of special case. I think Holder actually made a tactical error by alluding to the fact that he will probably be charging Snowden with treason eventually. If he can ever get him to the US.
IMHO it'd be worse, the right is usually far more belligerent in international politics
And I would usually agree with you. I don't know if Obama is merely an anomaly or the start of a new trend. I suspect the latter. That may be part of why I find Obama so scary. It seems to indicate a new trend for Democratic presidents to be just as warmongering and police state loving as the Republicans.
I'm a lifelong Libertarian and I can remember back when we used to see Democrats as allies when it came to 'personal' freedoms. When Democrats could be relied on to fight with us for human rights. It was mainly economic issues that we disagreed on. I mean the ACLU was seen as an organization of Democrats. As laughable as that may be now.
Obama seems like a new breed of politician to me. A true Republicrat. He throws Democrats a few bones when it comes to economics and health care and throws Republicans a few when it comes to The Police State and warmongering and torture etc. I don't think the man personally has any principles. Everything he says is a calculated lie.
I don't think the Old Democrats have literally disappeared off the face of the earth. They must still be around. But you'd never know it. If they would either take back the Democratic party from the current warmongering fascist torturers who seem to be in charge I think they could blow the Republicans completely away.
We Libertarians genuinely stand for freedom and we basically represent the same politics as the Founding Fathers, but we are far too radical and extreme to ever have a real voice in modern mainstream American politics. What the US needs is a more mainstream party that stands for at least some freedom in the personal realm. A party that would take a firm stand on police state issues. If the price of avoiding an Orwellian police state were much higher income taxes or even true egalitarianism with ration cards for everyone. I'd prefer that to the sort of dystopia we seem headed for now.
I'm already afraid to drive my car more than a few miles from my house on Friday or Saturday nights due the suspicionless roadblocks in my state manned by the ultra-militarized cops who rain down violence and pain and even death upon anyone who stands up for their so called "rights". It's not the so called foreign terrorists that I am afraid of. It is my own government that I feel like I need protection from.
The US officially supports torture as an interrogation method. Doesn't even hide it, but admits to it openly, much to the chagin of Amnesty International. Gitmo is currently tube feeding prisoners who are treated like dogs. Abu Ghraib. That can't possibly have anything to do with the need for this letter. We gave up the high road years ago. Your attempt to deny it is laughable. There are very real reasons for us to have to deny that we will use torture. It isn't merely a technicality.
Do you have any evidence that your one vote makes any difference to the outcome of the election anyway? Your vote isn't even counted directly All these arguments about the practicality of voting for a major party candidate are lost on me because of the math. You and people like you are destroying the democratic system. The intent was for citizens to vote for the candidate who most closely represented their beliefs. Instead we have people voting for strategic reasons as if their single vote matters among 314 million people. Just vote for who you believe in. If you find out that your one vote would have changed the outcome of an election then you can switch back to voting strategically for the lesser evil. But even if you lived to be a thousand I don't think that would happen.
Or at least be in a country without an extradition treaty and that won't cooperate with the US and extradite you even without a treaty. I might choose Cuba, Myanmar or maybe Laos or Indonesia. Possibly Venezuela except that they are vulnerable to oil sales extortion. Neither Russia nor China would have occured to me.
I don't think the people who are calling him an attention whore and all that really believe it. It's just what the government shills and apologists say about every whistle blower or leaker. Even staying anonymous might not prevent it. Besides was that really an option in this case? He was already under investigation for disappearing by the time he was in Hong Kong. It was only a matter of time before they guessed that it was him.
I'm not sure about torture, but Holden is in no position to promise not to execute Snowden. That simply isn't his decision to make. He will be charged with "aiding the enemy". Al Qaeda probably because it may be difficult to argue that China and Russia are currently our enemies.
Notice how Holder did not promise not to charge Snowden with treason. A promise that he actually could have kept. It's almost inconceivable that they would not charge him with treason and Holden's statements imply as much. I think the fact that Manning was charged with something similar and still could face the death penalty for it (although it is unlikely) is all the evidence that Russia would need. Whether Snowden is charged with treason or some other version of "aiding the enemy" is up to Holder. Whether he actually gets the death penalty is up to a federal judge. And of course a jury that is willing to find him guilty of aiding the enemy in the first place.
One thing that did impress me about Holder's statement is that he didn't pretend that the espionage charges that Snowden currently faces are the only charges he will be facing if he is extradited back. A lot of the government shills on forums like this one have been implying exactly that. After this they may have to adjust those tactics.
In 2001, the same year as 9/11, there were 42,196 deaths from car accidents. 2996 people died from terrorist attacks. That's 14 times more people.
Between 2001 and 2012, 460,536 people died in car accidents in the US. About 3000 people died in terrorist attacks in the US during the same period. That means 153 times more people died in car accidents than in terrorist attacks.
If we really cared about saving lives we would be spending all those billions that Homeland Security and the 3 letter agencies spend fighting a non-existent threat and put it toward making safer roads. Or on large public transportation projects like maglev trains or those vacuum tube trains that were recently in the news.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you think that the defense industry should support those that oppose them?
I think the decision makers at these corporations should be prosecuted for bribery. I think they should have their limited liability revoked.
I mean, okay if you disagree with people, but the whole correlation / causation thing I think is backwards. I think there is a causation, but the lawmakers thought a certain way -> therefore they were paid money.
Do you have any evidence for that belief? The problem with it is that the money came first. Then the vote. And the pattern is too clear cut to be random.
Unless you loved Pravda and want to see more of the same, this is not a good thing.
I see no difference between the US corporate media and (the old) Pravda. Both are merely instruments of pro-government propaganda. Why these corporations are acting as publicity arms for our government I don't know, but that they are is undeniable.
Or rather, does it matter if the company that sells the news is incorporated?
It does matter. It relieves them of any responsibility for their actions. And there is no owner who can be punished for behaving badly. Corporations are sociopaths who care for nothing except money. They do not deserve citizenship or the status of a single entity. Regular companies with an owner that is an individual human being are quite enough of a concentration of power. If society could find a way to reduce even that concentration without completely removing the right of individuals to cooperate with each other, it would be good.
Police brutality shows us what happens when you combine obscene power with an almost complete lack of responsibility for their actions. The same dynamic is at work with corporations. You combine a concentration of power to influence things with money and a complete lack of conscience and very little or diluted responsibility for their actions. This is a recipe for disaster.
Please enlighten us as to how the US is responsible for the existence of corporations in other countries. All it would take is one law to make corporations illegal. Any country could do it. Remember that these scumbag corporations are just acting in their own self-interest as everyone expects them to. Without the corrupt congressmen willing to accept bribes they would not be able to influence politics at all. And without a government which was abusing its power that vote wouldn't have been necessary. So don't let the government off the hook here. They are the ones who are actually doing the spying and the killing. The corporations are just getting rich off it. Which isn't a crime, but probably should be.
This article is so affordable. Only 22 pounds. We are so privileged to have the opportunity to read this study. Just imagine a world where such study results were just given away for free. Communism!
It really is a much better world where only paying customers have access to scientific research. It is destructive and dangerous to allow poor people access to knowledge. In that way lies anarchy! The horror. Next we'll be arguing not only that information wants to be free, but that it should be free. Cats and dogs living together and all that.
Very interesting. I've always believed Facebook was evil and I've never had an account with them. I also don't have any friends who actively use the site. From the article it seems that the way they get information on people without Facebook accounts is by using information their friends post about them. So it does seem avoidable. So if you value your privacy:
1) Don't use Facebook.
2) Tell your friends that you would prefer if they didn't write about you on Facebook. If someone does then stop being friends with them.
That article didn't seem to mention how Facebook can connect an IP address to a real name without contacting your ISP with a warrant or at least being a law enforcement agency.
Okay. I'll bite. Why is there no reason to avoid using gmail or other google products now that it has been revealed that they are intimately partnered with the NSA?
It seems to me that switching to hushmail or some other encrypted email provider based outside of the US would be prudent if you value your privacy. I don't write anything in Gmail that I am not comfortable with the NSA reading.
He does say it. Have you actually read his statement?
It is certainly true that monitoring everyone 24/7 as in 1984 increases security. It is also true that it leads to a lot of very unhappy people who are forced to live in an Orwellian dystopia. Human beings simply are not meant to live like that. So your cure is far, far worse than the actual diseasae.
If the price for freedom from being watched all the time by hostile government agents on fishing expeditions to find illegal or suspicious (to them) behavior is losing 3000 lives every 10-20 years then it's a price that I and probably most freedom loving people are willing to pay.
Nuking every country other than the US would also make us very safe. A bit lonely but a lot safer from the occassional terrorist. The fewer people on the planet the fewer terrorists. Unfortunately for you safe at any price people there are ethical considerations.
Just because it is not apparent who you are shilling for does not mean you are not shilling.
The only group involved in this controversy that has the resources to employ a small army of shills is the government. And I don't think they would hesitate to put their damage control team to work. Especially after the recent close vote in congress. A lot is at stake. They are probably right now in the process of hiring thousands more shills to join their cyber-army.
So to you being served target ads which you won't even see if you use noscript and an ad blocker is just as bad as being thrown in jail and/or put on a terrorist watch list for something you wrote to a friend in an email or instant message or text message?
There is no need to spy on close allies. That is a sign that the whole system is out of control and exists only for its own sake. Also, ultimately laws are supposed to derive from ethics. If it is wrong to spy on your own citizens it is also wrong to spy on anyone else who is not currently or very soon to be an enemy.
Does google analytics need javascript to work? I never whitelist it in noscript.
How does facebook know who I am? From my IP address? Only my ISP can connect my name to an IP address. Are you suggesting that Google routinely contacts someone like Comcast or Verizon and just asks to connect the two because, you know, they are curious?
If the FBI wants to connect my identity to an IP address they can call my ISP, but I haven't seen any evidence that ISPs are routinely giving out that information to people without law enforcement credentials.
I'm not happy about Google either but Google has neither the power nor the inclination to throw me in prison because I wrote that I'd like to kill person X in an email that was never intended for any eyes but the recipient. Or put me on a no fly list when I criticise the TSA and say I want to go on a killing rampage and take out a bunch of them.
We are used to having genuine 100% freedom of speech with no exceptions when communicating privately with a friend. Due to PRISM and probably other NSA programs this is no longer the case. You have to assume that everything you write could be read by an NSA agent.
Privacy from a repressive government is completely different from privacy from a private company that merely wants to make as much money as possible. On the one hand you get targeted ads. On the other you might spend years in prison getting raped by your cellmate and then dying from HIV. That's why we should be more concerned about the NSA than Google. Google doesn't even have a reason to personally read our emails. The NSA does.
I'm a Libertarian, but I've never liked Ron Paul and never voted for him and after he became a Republican I see that I was justified. Ron Paul wasn't on the 2012 ballot, but Gary Johnson was. He received 1.29 million votes. You could have added one more. I'd vote for him too if I could do it electronically.
All that is required is certainty that the person won't be tortured.
That's not what Putin actually said. Many extradition treaties have exceptions for crimes for which there is any possibility of execution. Of course there is no extradition treaty between the US and Russia, but if there were you can be sure capital crimes would be some kind of special case. I think Holder actually made a tactical error by alluding to the fact that he will probably be charging Snowden with treason eventually. If he can ever get him to the US.
IMHO it'd be worse, the right is usually far more belligerent in international politics
And I would usually agree with you. I don't know if Obama is merely an anomaly or the start of a new trend. I suspect the latter. That may be part of why I find Obama so scary. It seems to indicate a new trend for Democratic presidents to be just as warmongering and police state loving as the Republicans.
I'm a lifelong Libertarian and I can remember back when we used to see Democrats as allies when it came to 'personal' freedoms. When Democrats could be relied on to fight with us for human rights. It was mainly economic issues that we disagreed on. I mean the ACLU was seen as an organization of Democrats. As laughable as that may be now.
Obama seems like a new breed of politician to me. A true Republicrat. He throws Democrats a few bones when it comes to economics and health care and throws Republicans a few when it comes to The Police State and warmongering and torture etc. I don't think the man personally has any principles. Everything he says is a calculated lie.
I don't think the Old Democrats have literally disappeared off the face of the earth. They must still be around. But you'd never know it. If they would either take back the Democratic party from the current warmongering fascist torturers who seem to be in charge I think they could blow the Republicans completely away.
We Libertarians genuinely stand for freedom and we basically represent the same politics as the Founding Fathers, but we are far too radical and extreme to ever have a real voice in modern mainstream American politics. What the US needs is a more mainstream party that stands for at least some freedom in the personal realm. A party that would take a firm stand on police state issues. If the price of avoiding an Orwellian police state were much higher income taxes or even true egalitarianism with ration cards for everyone. I'd prefer that to the sort of dystopia we seem headed for now.
I'm already afraid to drive my car more than a few miles from my house on Friday or Saturday nights due the suspicionless roadblocks in my state manned by the ultra-militarized cops who rain down violence and pain and even death upon anyone who stands up for their so called "rights". It's not the so called foreign terrorists that I am afraid of. It is my own government that I feel like I need protection from.
The US officially supports torture as an interrogation method. Doesn't even hide it, but admits to it openly, much to the chagin of Amnesty International. Gitmo is currently tube feeding prisoners who are treated like dogs. Abu Ghraib. That can't possibly have anything to do with the need for this letter. We gave up the high road years ago. Your attempt to deny it is laughable. There are very real reasons for us to have to deny that we will use torture. It isn't merely a technicality.
I think by "Class A Shithead" you mean government shill. Nice summary of their standard attack vectos.
Do you have any evidence that your one vote makes any difference to the outcome of the election anyway? Your vote isn't even counted directly All these arguments about the practicality of voting for a major party candidate are lost on me because of the math. You and people like you are destroying the democratic system. The intent was for citizens to vote for the candidate who most closely represented their beliefs. Instead we have people voting for strategic reasons as if their single vote matters among 314 million people. Just vote for who you believe in. If you find out that your one vote would have changed the outcome of an election then you can switch back to voting strategically for the lesser evil. But even if you lived to be a thousand I don't think that would happen.
æéåçOE
shÄ jÄ xià hÃu
Killing the chicken to scare the monkey.
Or at least be in a country without an extradition treaty and that won't cooperate with the US and extradite you even without a treaty. I might choose Cuba, Myanmar or maybe Laos or Indonesia. Possibly Venezuela except that they are vulnerable to oil sales extortion. Neither Russia nor China would have occured to me.
I don't think the people who are calling him an attention whore and all that really believe it. It's just what the government shills and apologists say about every whistle blower or leaker. Even staying anonymous might not prevent it. Besides was that really an option in this case? He was already under investigation for disappearing by the time he was in Hong Kong. It was only a matter of time before they guessed that it was him.
I'm not sure about torture, but Holden is in no position to promise not to execute Snowden. That simply isn't his decision to make. He will be charged with "aiding the enemy". Al Qaeda probably because it may be difficult to argue that China and Russia are currently our enemies.
Notice how Holder did not promise not to charge Snowden with treason. A promise that he actually could have kept. It's almost inconceivable that they would not charge him with treason and Holden's statements imply as much. I think the fact that Manning was charged with something similar and still could face the death penalty for it (although it is unlikely) is all the evidence that Russia would need. Whether Snowden is charged with treason or some other version of "aiding the enemy" is up to Holder. Whether he actually gets the death penalty is up to a federal judge. And of course a jury that is willing to find him guilty of aiding the enemy in the first place.
One thing that did impress me about Holder's statement is that he didn't pretend that the espionage charges that Snowden currently faces are the only charges he will be facing if he is extradited back. A lot of the government shills on forums like this one have been implying exactly that. After this they may have to adjust those tactics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year
In 2001, the same year as 9/11, there were 42,196 deaths from car accidents. 2996 people died from terrorist attacks. That's 14 times more people.
Between 2001 and 2012, 460,536 people died in car accidents in the US. About 3000 people died in terrorist attacks in the US during the same period. That means 153 times more people died in car accidents than in terrorist attacks.
If we really cared about saving lives we would be spending all those billions that Homeland Security and the 3 letter agencies spend fighting a non-existent threat and put it toward making safer roads. Or on large public transportation projects like maglev trains or those vacuum tube trains that were recently in the news.