To be "fair", it could end up in feudalism rather than fascism: some rich people letting you live in their company towns and sharecrop their farms, as long as you abide by their rules (agreed to via contracts, of course: you're "free" not to sign them if you don't want to eat!).
Peter King was a former fundraiser for the Irish Republican Army, which he says was different: they were freedom fighters, of course, not real terrorists
One reason Peter King sees terrorists everywhere is that he personally has a history of fundraising and offering political support for terrorist groups. A bit of projection, perhaps.
Yes, but in this case the useful "it" to try doing is "robotics". Attaching weapons to them is something that's useful to do once you have the basics down.
If you have well-developed robotics expertise already, you're in a much better position to develop more specialized robots, like robot soldiers. India doesn't really: both its robotics industry and its research are relatively small sectors at the moment, far behind the state of the art in countries like Japan, China, Germany, South Korea, or the USA. They're going to have to fix that before robot soldiers are going to emerge out of it.
Of course, this might just be a way of selling robotics funding, so maybe that's the goal.
Perhaps the Tea Party radicals might actually be worth something, or maybe they'll just provide an easy excuse to ignore the naysayers as conspiracy theorists.
I do think that could be one possible positive outcome of the Tea Party, if it could be channeled into an anti-surveillance political force. An engagement with techno-libertarian issues has historically been a weakness of American libertarianism, which is to a large extent based on imagining sparsely populated frontier localism: no taxes, let me keep my rifle, I'll fight off the government with my militia when they come, etc., etc.
Mostly it's ignored the information sphere and the need to keep any sort of pervasive surveillance state from being built, and has been relatively disconnected from considering what freedom might mean if you live in a modern city, rather than a sparely populated frontier. Not everyone has ignored it, of course, but it's gotten comparatively little focus, compared to guns & taxes.
Unfortunately, in my corner of the country (Texas), I see some signs that nativist worries are interfering with anti-surveillance instincts. It's not everyone, but a lot of tea-partiers around here have gotten the idea that some crazy pro-police-state ideas are not so bad, if they keep the Mexicans out. Everything from drone patrols of the border to regular ID-card checks to employment databases seems to be seen as a potential aid in the War Against Illegal Immigration, whereas to me all that is a lot scarier than the illegal immigration is.
Adding one more (self-reply): The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, also a defender of the program and someone who's called for Snowden to be prosecuted, is Mike Rogers (R-MI). As with all House members, he's up for reelection next year.
True, though when they want to they get around that by deporting people. They don't formally agree to an extradition request from the U.S., but if the person isn't a Chinese citizen, they decide they want to get rid of them, their visa gets cancelled or not renewed, and they get deported to their country of nationality, which is in practice pretty similar to extraditing them.
The Supreme Court even ruled that you can constitutionally be found guilty of aiding terrorism if you provide assistance to a group that is considered terrorist, even if it's assistance unrelated to terrorism. For example, in that case, the Humanitarian Law Project wanted to advise groups like the Kurdistan Worker's Party about how they should renounce terrorism and turn towards a peaceful path... but that would still be considered "assisting" them.
So both the main proponents in the Senate seem like they're unlikely to be running for reelection. That leads to an even scarier conclusion than if it were political grandstanding as "tough on terrorism". If it's not for votes, it might be because they genuinely believe this shit is a good idea.
In specific cases, a primary challenger might help. But it really depends on whether enough people care, and if a primary challenger who's clearly better appears.
The two parties' ranking members on the Senate Intelligence Committee, both strongly in favor of the program, are:
Dianne Feinstein: Democrat, California, up for reelection in 2018 (she would be 85, so may not run)
Saxby Chambliss: Republican, Georgia, up for reelection in 2014
Actually Chambliss's reelection is coming up soon enough that Georgia Republicans might want to start looking at primary challengers.
I don't doubt that China's security agencies collaborate behind-the-scenes with U.S. security agencies when convenient, but now that it's so open, I'm not sure China will want to look like they're openly collaborating with the NSA.
He doesn't seem to be planning to: "I do not expect to see home again".
One plus of outing himself in Hong Kong is that if he suddenly gets disappeared or extradited, it makes China look like U.S. puppets, which they bristle at. So they may opt to protect him, whether directly or by running U.S. extradition requests through endless bureaucracy. We'll see, I suppose.
What does any of that have to do with being far-left? Harassing Fox News is just political partisanship, not leftism. Abolishing capitalism and private property and promoting communism: now that would be a far-left organization. Media Matters are just Democratic partisans who don't appear to have any interest in actual leftism, just in attacking Republicans.
That's more about how fervent you are in approaching politics as team sports, than about position on the left/right spectrum. You can be a hardcore partisan and be anywhere on the spectrum; even some very centrist politicos in terms of their actual political ideology are hardcore partisans, in both parties.
The king also doesn't really have any political power, so whether lèse-majesté laws will be enforced or not isn't even his decision. He reportedly is not too keen on them, and even made a speech in 2005 indirectly criticizing them. The speech argued that saying the king couldn't be criticized would imply the king is infallible and not a human, which isn't the case.
But the king is just a symbol used as convenient by the people who actually do have power, so the lèse-majesté laws aren't really about him.
The social-security number is fairly close to a unique ID. It's already used as such in a number of contexts; e.g. banks, police departments, the IRS, and hospitals all use it as a unique identifying number.
However, it's not asked for in all contexts, sometimes for social reasons (people are rightfully wary about giving it out everywhere), and sometimes because of laws restricting its use.
Media Matters for America aren't leftists though, just partisan Democrats. They may be very fervent in their support for one of the America's two boring capitalist parties, but I can't find any evidence of them supporting actual leftist causes.
I, too, have zero faith in Steven Harper generally and would prefer him and his party out of office, but on this particular issue I'm worried the consensus is quite cross-party, at least between the Conservatives and Liberals. It's not like the practice of shoveling data to the US wholesale started only in 2004: the previous Liberal government under both Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin also maintained strong security & intelligence collaboration with the US.
Chrétien was more publicly skeptical of US foreign policy than Harper is (e.g. opposing the Iraq war), but I'm not sure his government was in practice different when it came to behind-the-scenes things like how the intelligence services were operated.
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To be "fair", it could end up in feudalism rather than fascism: some rich people letting you live in their company towns and sharecrop their farms, as long as you abide by their rules (agreed to via contracts, of course: you're "free" not to sign them if you don't want to eat!).
Taxation to support a social safety net is not a violation of liberty. For an argument why, you might consider reading F.A. Hayek.
Some other info on these two gentlemen:
One reason Peter King sees terrorists everywhere is that he personally has a history of fundraising and offering political support for terrorist groups. A bit of projection, perhaps.
Yes, but in this case the useful "it" to try doing is "robotics". Attaching weapons to them is something that's useful to do once you have the basics down.
If you have well-developed robotics expertise already, you're in a much better position to develop more specialized robots, like robot soldiers. India doesn't really: both its robotics industry and its research are relatively small sectors at the moment, far behind the state of the art in countries like Japan, China, Germany, South Korea, or the USA. They're going to have to fix that before robot soldiers are going to emerge out of it.
Of course, this might just be a way of selling robotics funding, so maybe that's the goal.
Perhaps the Tea Party radicals might actually be worth something, or maybe they'll just provide an easy excuse to ignore the naysayers as conspiracy theorists.
I do think that could be one possible positive outcome of the Tea Party, if it could be channeled into an anti-surveillance political force. An engagement with techno-libertarian issues has historically been a weakness of American libertarianism, which is to a large extent based on imagining sparsely populated frontier localism: no taxes, let me keep my rifle, I'll fight off the government with my militia when they come, etc., etc.
Mostly it's ignored the information sphere and the need to keep any sort of pervasive surveillance state from being built, and has been relatively disconnected from considering what freedom might mean if you live in a modern city, rather than a sparely populated frontier. Not everyone has ignored it, of course, but it's gotten comparatively little focus, compared to guns & taxes.
Unfortunately, in my corner of the country (Texas), I see some signs that nativist worries are interfering with anti-surveillance instincts. It's not everyone, but a lot of tea-partiers around here have gotten the idea that some crazy pro-police-state ideas are not so bad, if they keep the Mexicans out. Everything from drone patrols of the border to regular ID-card checks to employment databases seems to be seen as a potential aid in the War Against Illegal Immigration, whereas to me all that is a lot scarier than the illegal immigration is.
Adding one more (self-reply): The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, also a defender of the program and someone who's called for Snowden to be prosecuted, is Mike Rogers (R-MI). As with all House members, he's up for reelection next year.
Just in case you were on the fence about whether he's worth getting rid of, he also was the primary sponsor of CISPA.
True, though when they want to they get around that by deporting people. They don't formally agree to an extradition request from the U.S., but if the person isn't a Chinese citizen, they decide they want to get rid of them, their visa gets cancelled or not renewed, and they get deported to their country of nationality, which is in practice pretty similar to extraditing them.
The Supreme Court even ruled that you can constitutionally be found guilty of aiding terrorism if you provide assistance to a group that is considered terrorist, even if it's assistance unrelated to terrorism. For example, in that case, the Humanitarian Law Project wanted to advise groups like the Kurdistan Worker's Party about how they should renounce terrorism and turn towards a peaceful path... but that would still be considered "assisting" them.
You're right, I had missed that.
So both the main proponents in the Senate seem like they're unlikely to be running for reelection. That leads to an even scarier conclusion than if it were political grandstanding as "tough on terrorism". If it's not for votes, it might be because they genuinely believe this shit is a good idea.
Sometimes people do vote for third parties, but I haven't seen major changes caused by that, either. Did Ross Perot have any lasting effects?
In specific cases, a primary challenger might help. But it really depends on whether enough people care, and if a primary challenger who's clearly better appears.
The two parties' ranking members on the Senate Intelligence Committee, both strongly in favor of the program, are:
Actually Chambliss's reelection is coming up soon enough that Georgia Republicans might want to start looking at primary challengers.
I don't doubt that China's security agencies collaborate behind-the-scenes with U.S. security agencies when convenient, but now that it's so open, I'm not sure China will want to look like they're openly collaborating with the NSA.
He doesn't seem to be planning to: "I do not expect to see home again".
One plus of outing himself in Hong Kong is that if he suddenly gets disappeared or extradited, it makes China look like U.S. puppets, which they bristle at. So they may opt to protect him, whether directly or by running U.S. extradition requests through endless bureaucracy. We'll see, I suppose.
Design basis lifespan: 90 Mars days (~93 Earth days)
Actual operating lifespan: >9 years so far
What does any of that have to do with being far-left? Harassing Fox News is just political partisanship, not leftism. Abolishing capitalism and private property and promoting communism: now that would be a far-left organization. Media Matters are just Democratic partisans who don't appear to have any interest in actual leftism, just in attacking Republicans.
That's more about how fervent you are in approaching politics as team sports, than about position on the left/right spectrum. You can be a hardcore partisan and be anywhere on the spectrum; even some very centrist politicos in terms of their actual political ideology are hardcore partisans, in both parties.
The king also doesn't really have any political power, so whether lèse-majesté laws will be enforced or not isn't even his decision. He reportedly is not too keen on them, and even made a speech in 2005 indirectly criticizing them. The speech argued that saying the king couldn't be criticized would imply the king is infallible and not a human, which isn't the case.
But the king is just a symbol used as convenient by the people who actually do have power, so the lèse-majesté laws aren't really about him.
The social-security number is fairly close to a unique ID. It's already used as such in a number of contexts; e.g. banks, police departments, the IRS, and hospitals all use it as a unique identifying number.
However, it's not asked for in all contexts, sometimes for social reasons (people are rightfully wary about giving it out everywhere), and sometimes because of laws restricting its use.
This is more like donating to an Englishman and saying hey, close enough to a Scotsman.
Where in the Constitution is there a right to privacy for individuals?
Media Matters for America aren't leftists though, just partisan Democrats. They may be very fervent in their support for one of the America's two boring capitalist parties, but I can't find any evidence of them supporting actual leftist causes.
Where can I make a tax-deductible contribution to a leftist? Did the Anarchist Black Cross get 501(c)(3) status or something?
If you know who donates to which parties, politicians, and organizations, it can highlight what things you might want to give extra scrutiny to.
You don't have to use the information, but I would like it to be available for analysis.
I, too, have zero faith in Steven Harper generally and would prefer him and his party out of office, but on this particular issue I'm worried the consensus is quite cross-party, at least between the Conservatives and Liberals. It's not like the practice of shoveling data to the US wholesale started only in 2004: the previous Liberal government under both Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin also maintained strong security & intelligence collaboration with the US.
Chrétien was more publicly skeptical of US foreign policy than Harper is (e.g. opposing the Iraq war), but I'm not sure his government was in practice different when it came to behind-the-scenes things like how the intelligence services were operated.