But in the real world one or more decoys would probably be used. Just plan it so that several nervous, sketchy looking muslims with long beards enter security before the lily white, clean-cut guy wearing a suit and tie and carrying a laptop and acting just like the vast majority of business travelers.
No symbolic value? The meaning is quite clear. There is nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Nothing that can be done. If they implement pre-security security then they will just bomb the new crowds created by that. If the purpose really is to instill fear blowing up security lines is even better than blowing up planes because it shows the utter uselessness of the security theatre from which so many sheeple seem to derive comfort. And the more that the TSA slow down security with multiple devices and strip searches and more clothing removal even their own intense fear of death the bigger the crowd that can be bombed. I'm not sure what symbolic value an aircraft has anyway. Blowing up security lines, especially many of them at exactly the same time would be pure genius. Can you imagine if every major airport in the US had security lines being blown up at the same time? That would certainly instill fear.
That only 9000 were actual citizens does not change the fact that we apparently have nearly a million terrorist suspects in this country. Why so many? What is it about America that makes it such a home for terrorists? Perhaps it is something about our culture that encourages people to want to blow things up. Land of Terrorists seems absolutely fair to me. We really should change our motto. Freedom is clearly of no interest to us. Only safety has any appeal these days.
Not many people are dreaming that there is currently life on mars. But there may be evidence of that life once existed there and if that is true then it has huge implications. Perhaps the most important implication would be for SETI. If life developed on Mars independently from Earth that makes it much more likely that life is actually pretty common in the galaxy. Not intelligent life, but life nevertheless. It could even be concluded that when the conditions are right life will nearly always develop. There is a theory that life here actually started from life on Mars. It doesn't seem very likely, but it would be nice to find that Mars life was not DNA based or was in some other way obviously not from here. Back in the 70s Viking did seem to detect life in one of its soil tests.
I believe evolution will have the same effect on them, ie they won't be any better adapted to long-term survival in space than we are.
Our bodies are not adapted for speed like a cheetah. So we will never travel faster than a human can run. We don't have big teeth. So we can never be predator. Only prey. We don't have wings. So we will never fly. We don't have gills. So we will never swim underwater longer than we can hold our breath. And obviously we will never ever be able to walk on the moon because there is no air there and we need air to survive.
That's an assumption, not a statement of fact. If it were strictly true, then every government, everywhere, would simply slowly decline until the next revolution.
Well that nearly always seems to be the case. The law of entropy applied to governments. And even a revolution is no guarantee of stopping the decline. See Egypt. Maybe the USSR was a rare exception since IIRC there was no actual civil war before the change. Even if it is not impossible the odds are not good.
If what you wanted was to make as many people as possible as miserable as possible, to maximize the per capita poverty, and to have arbitrary control over nearly every aspect of their lives then the Soviet Union was very successful. For the leaders. To Stalin I'm sure it seemed to work quite well. It's all a matter of perspective.
Irreparable? Let's say the government seizes my right leg, amputating it a few inches above the knee because they suspect it may contain a bomb or maybe heroin, but it turns out that they cannot find any sign of contraband. If they offer me a wooden leg to replace my old one does that mean I would not have standing because the damage was "repaired"? What if the leg is a highly sophisticated bionic one and is stronger and more capable than my old one? Most forms of physical harm heal eventually. Some notable exceptions being brain damage or removal of body parts that don't grow back. Irreparable is a very high standard indeed.
Every person's right is another person's responsibility.
This is precisely true, but probably not in the way you mean. The responsibility on the part of the other entity is simply not to interfere. It's based on the idea of the basic equality of all human beings. That no human being has the right to prevent others from essentially living their lives unmolested as long as they aren't harming anyone else. The idea behind Natural Rights is that if we assign such rights it allows people to live together in society in a way that is most fair and most consistent with the principle of equality.
Another way to look at it is that this basic equality of all human beings is more about a lack of rights. That no one has the right to prevent you from living or to prevent you from satisfying your basic needs in order to live. That no one has the right to really prevent you from doing anything at all as long as you haven't already interfered with someone else's life. Once you have crossed that particular line then all bets are off and a just and free society can choose to seek justice in an attempt to right the wrong of your unwarranted interference in someone else's life. Hopefully with a punishment that is proportional to the crime.
This crossing of personal boundaries is also a good way to distinguish between rights and privileges. Whenever what you want to do involves someone else the act is a privilege. One that can be revoked at any time for any reason. When it involves only yourself it is usually a right. For instance having consensual sex with someone else would be a privilege. Having sex with yourself, a right.
Nevertheless it couldn't hurt to have the word "unreasonable" deleted from the 4th amendment. That weasel word essentially kills the whole thing. It's up to some pro-government, pro-establishment judge to define "reasonable".
Yup. If the ninth amendment were not ignored by pretty much everyone but Libertarians, it would require the government to amend the constitution every time it wanted to violate human rights in a new way. Ultimately we'd just end up with a lot more amendments though because Republicrats mostly support the status quo. With the possible exception of PRISM of course. I suspect a national referendum to stop PRISM would pass, although maybe not by as much of a landslide as we'd like to believe. There are a lot of 'my government right or wrong' people around.
Does anyone actually believe them though? That's the problem with lying. It tends to make people trust you less. The NSA has about as much credibility as the TSA. Professional liars.
You need a system where checks and balances are set up, so they work, inherently, even when the system breaks.
Heinlein had some ideas for this in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Things like an anti-congress that exists solely to repeal the laws that congress makes. But I'm not convinced that there is really any effective way to limit the growth of government. Governments consist of people. People who want more power. It would help if the constitution could not be amended though. That just makes it too easy to defeat whatever limitations are in place.
You could put in an auto-reset clause where the government must reset itself back to the beginning every 50-100 years. Everything that the government "accomplished" during that time would automatically be null and void after a reset. Then the government would have another century or whatever to build up its power again. But the government would probably just ignore it the same way it ignores the ninth amendment.
Are you seriously trying to argue that the USSR and China were not socialist? Or WW2 Germany for that matter? NAZI = National Socialism (nationalsozialist). USSR = United Soviet Socialist Republics. China considers itself communist for the most part, but communism itself is really just a slight variation on the Socialist ideals. They are all forms of totalitarianism or collectivism because they are completely anti-individualist and egalitarian.
You may also want to note that least corrupt countries in the world are socialist, while most corrupt are capitalist.
Which socialist countries did you have in mind? There aren't many. It depends on the type of corruption you are talking about. You can't bribe cops in the US to get out of a traffic ticket. In fact they will probably beat the crap out of you if you try and then arrest you on contempt of cop charges in addition to attempted bribery or whatever. In Cuba you can get out of nearly anything with bribes and bribery is routine and expected.
That's funny-- the anti-capitalists keep telling us that doesn't work for private companies, and criticize companies for their high-paid CEOs.
You don't have to be anti-capitalist to think that most CEOs are absurdly overpaid and that you could get someone just as good at their job for a fraction of the cost.
Those seem to be allegations of targeted surveillance without a warrant. Blanket surveillance is in a whole different league IMO. Not the same thing at all. Blanket surveillance crosses the line from routine unwarranted privacy invasions and fishing expeditions by individual LEOs and 1984.
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But in the real world one or more decoys would probably be used. Just plan it so that several nervous, sketchy looking muslims with long beards enter security before the lily white, clean-cut guy wearing a suit and tie and carrying a laptop and acting just like the vast majority of business travelers.
No symbolic value? The meaning is quite clear. There is nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Nothing that can be done. If they implement pre-security security then they will just bomb the new crowds created by that. If the purpose really is to instill fear blowing up security lines is even better than blowing up planes because it shows the utter uselessness of the security theatre from which so many sheeple seem to derive comfort. And the more that the TSA slow down security with multiple devices and strip searches and more clothing removal even their own intense fear of death the bigger the crowd that can be bombed. I'm not sure what symbolic value an aircraft has anyway. Blowing up security lines, especially many of them at exactly the same time would be pure genius. Can you imagine if every major airport in the US had security lines being blown up at the same time? That would certainly instill fear.
That only 9000 were actual citizens does not change the fact that we apparently have nearly a million terrorist suspects in this country. Why so many? What is it about America that makes it such a home for terrorists? Perhaps it is something about our culture that encourages people to want to blow things up. Land of Terrorists seems absolutely fair to me. We really should change our motto. Freedom is clearly of no interest to us. Only safety has any appeal these days.
I better concept would be to pay a monthly $100 to who ever can get a drone to photograph them doing the most outlandish stunt.
You mean like shooting it out of the sky?
Not many people are dreaming that there is currently life on mars. But there may be evidence of that life once existed there and if that is true then it has huge implications. Perhaps the most important implication would be for SETI. If life developed on Mars independently from Earth that makes it much more likely that life is actually pretty common in the galaxy. Not intelligent life, but life nevertheless. It could even be concluded that when the conditions are right life will nearly always develop. There is a theory that life here actually started from life on Mars. It doesn't seem very likely, but it would be nice to find that Mars life was not DNA based or was in some other way obviously not from here. Back in the 70s Viking did seem to detect life in one of its soil tests.
I believe evolution will have the same effect on them, ie they won't be any better adapted to long-term survival in space than we are.
Our bodies are not adapted for speed like a cheetah. So we will never travel faster than a human can run. We don't have big teeth. So we can never be predator. Only prey. We don't have wings. So we will never fly. We don't have gills. So we will never swim underwater longer than we can hold our breath. And obviously we will never ever be able to walk on the moon because there is no air there and we need air to survive.
Terror watch list grows to 875,000
The United States of America: Land of a Million Terrorists
Or more likely the land of the fearful and cowardly who see threats in every shadow.
That's an assumption, not a statement of fact. If it were strictly true, then every government, everywhere, would simply slowly decline until the next revolution.
Well that nearly always seems to be the case. The law of entropy applied to governments. And even a revolution is no guarantee of stopping the decline. See Egypt. Maybe the USSR was a rare exception since IIRC there was no actual civil war before the change. Even if it is not impossible the odds are not good.
If what you wanted was to make as many people as possible as miserable as possible, to maximize the per capita poverty, and to have arbitrary control over nearly every aspect of their lives then the Soviet Union was very successful. For the leaders. To Stalin I'm sure it seemed to work quite well. It's all a matter of perspective.
Irreparable? Let's say the government seizes my right leg, amputating it a few inches above the knee because they suspect it may contain a bomb or maybe heroin, but it turns out that they cannot find any sign of contraband. If they offer me a wooden leg to replace my old one does that mean I would not have standing because the damage was "repaired"? What if the leg is a highly sophisticated bionic one and is stronger and more capable than my old one? Most forms of physical harm heal eventually. Some notable exceptions being brain damage or removal of body parts that don't grow back. Irreparable is a very high standard indeed.
Every person's right is another person's responsibility.
This is precisely true, but probably not in the way you mean. The responsibility on the part of the other entity is simply not to interfere. It's based on the idea of the basic equality of all human beings. That no human being has the right to prevent others from essentially living their lives unmolested as long as they aren't harming anyone else. The idea behind Natural Rights is that if we assign such rights it allows people to live together in society in a way that is most fair and most consistent with the principle of equality.
Another way to look at it is that this basic equality of all human beings is more about a lack of rights. That no one has the right to prevent you from living or to prevent you from satisfying your basic needs in order to live. That no one has the right to really prevent you from doing anything at all as long as you haven't already interfered with someone else's life. Once you have crossed that particular line then all bets are off and a just and free society can choose to seek justice in an attempt to right the wrong of your unwarranted interference in someone else's life. Hopefully with a punishment that is proportional to the crime.
This crossing of personal boundaries is also a good way to distinguish between rights and privileges. Whenever what you want to do involves someone else the act is a privilege. One that can be revoked at any time for any reason. When it involves only yourself it is usually a right. For instance having consensual sex with someone else would be a privilege. Having sex with yourself, a right.
Nevertheless it couldn't hurt to have the word "unreasonable" deleted from the 4th amendment. That weasel word essentially kills the whole thing. It's up to some pro-government, pro-establishment judge to define "reasonable".
Yup. If the ninth amendment were not ignored by pretty much everyone but Libertarians, it would require the government to amend the constitution every time it wanted to violate human rights in a new way. Ultimately we'd just end up with a lot more amendments though because Republicrats mostly support the status quo. With the possible exception of PRISM of course. I suspect a national referendum to stop PRISM would pass, although maybe not by as much of a landslide as we'd like to believe. There are a lot of 'my government right or wrong' people around.
In that case I think our definitions of Socialism are quite different.
Does anyone actually believe them though? That's the problem with lying. It tends to make people trust you less. The NSA has about as much credibility as the TSA. Professional liars.
You need a system where checks and balances are set up, so they work, inherently, even when the system breaks.
Heinlein had some ideas for this in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Things like an anti-congress that exists solely to repeal the laws that congress makes. But I'm not convinced that there is really any effective way to limit the growth of government. Governments consist of people. People who want more power. It would help if the constitution could not be amended though. That just makes it too easy to defeat whatever limitations are in place.
You could put in an auto-reset clause where the government must reset itself back to the beginning every 50-100 years. Everything that the government "accomplished" during that time would automatically be null and void after a reset. Then the government would have another century or whatever to build up its power again. But the government would probably just ignore it the same way it ignores the ninth amendment.
How can an international treaty mandate freedom? The mandate itself is tyrrany.
Freedom is Slavery.
And it's defense, not defence.
Either spelling is acceptable. The people who invented the language spell it with a 'c'.
And what Socialist country would this be exactly?
Are you seriously trying to argue that the USSR and China were not socialist? Or WW2 Germany for that matter? NAZI = National Socialism (nationalsozialist). USSR = United Soviet Socialist Republics. China considers itself communist for the most part, but communism itself is really just a slight variation on the Socialist ideals. They are all forms of totalitarianism or collectivism because they are completely anti-individualist and egalitarian.
You may also want to note that least corrupt countries in the world are socialist, while most corrupt are capitalist.
Which socialist countries did you have in mind? There aren't many. It depends on the type of corruption you are talking about. You can't bribe cops in the US to get out of a traffic ticket. In fact they will probably beat the crap out of you if you try and then arrest you on contempt of cop charges in addition to attempted bribery or whatever. In Cuba you can get out of nearly anything with bribes and bribery is routine and expected.
That's funny-- the anti-capitalists keep telling us that doesn't work for private companies, and criticize companies for their high-paid CEOs.
You don't have to be anti-capitalist to think that most CEOs are absurdly overpaid and that you could get someone just as good at their job for a fraction of the cost.
Those seem to be allegations of targeted surveillance without a warrant. Blanket surveillance is in a whole different league IMO. Not the same thing at all. Blanket surveillance crosses the line from routine unwarranted privacy invasions and fishing expeditions by individual LEOs and 1984.
There was proof even before.
What proof?
otherwise they wouldn't bother going to the courts, and ignore the FISA courts orders.
What evidence do we have that they do? How would we know if they didn't?