Heh.. That would be funny, they removed the GPS only to replace it on the mass transit and leave without being scene. Now their prank turns into a federal investigation and a bombsquad blowing it up because they aren't sure what the device they activated actually did.
It's one of the many things that came out in court. Of course you didn't hear of it becuase you know so little about the cases that you were saying laws were not broken - a pardon after a guilty verdict is very different to "not guilty" you know. Being a 1980s thing there isn't much on the net so it's a slog through books (with wild bias in both directions) and old newspapers if you were not old enough to hear about it the first time.
And you are sure that I don't know what happened? I mean you aren't citing anything, throw about accusations of pardons that never happened and want to sit there and claim I don't know anything about it? Well, if you would have in the least attempted to cite what you were speaking of, you would have in the least known that Both North and Poindexter's convictions were overturned on appeals. They were not pardoned, North was only charged with minor infractions, Poindexter was charged with some felonies, but neither of the offenses carried the death penalty. Give it up, just because someone else does something bad does not in any way make it ok for someone else. This is pointless if you think so.
Being a 1980s thing there isn't much on the net so it's a slog through books (with wild bias in both directions) and old newspapers if you were not old enough to hear about it the first time.
Actually, there is quite a bit on the net including a good bit of the trial(s) including the appeals. All you have to do is search for United States v. North and United States v. Poindexter.
They are famous/infamous in IT circles for spending days deleting the emails one by one (no block delete). The sysadmin in the place watched this going on and put the backup tape aside, and sure enough a year or two later it was required as evidence. As for the trials, if you think they were "pretty up front with everything" somebody has conned you very badly. They could have been replaced with a tape loop of "I can't recall".
Their senate testimony admitted to all their destruction of evidence and nothing found through backups or other sources recounted their stories. Their argument or line of defense was that they were following orders. The only con you have going on here is your insistence to interpret the facts to fit your fallacy world. I mean the I don't recall was Reagan's answer to everything. And most experts seem to agree that early signs of his Alzheimer was present before Reagan went before congress and his I don't recall answers were probably truthful because of his condition at the time. Of course it wasn't until after he was out of office that we knew he was losing his memory inside the office.
The whole bizzare operation is a good story of people getting way out of their depth to the point where their incompetance and greed provided material support to a declared enemy. It was partly justified as an attempt to only do it via "moderate elements" but snowballed out of control into dealing with the Iranian government and Hezbolla directly. Idiots blamed it all on Reagan which is probably why your backlash is to pretend that it didn't happen.
You seem to be over looking the fact that the administration controls foreign relations and has the constitutional power to declare someone an enemy or not, or even open negotiations with a known enemy to use them in an effort to advance other policy issues. If Reagan participated, then your outrage is completely misplaced and existing where it shouldn't. It doesn't amount to some great conspiracy to damage the US, it amounts to you not approving of policy decisions and the administration attempting to bypass congress's attempts to retard that policy which some argue is unconstitutional in the first place.
The initial naval deployment to protect tankers from the Iranians which was going on before the news broke and the arms sale
I would hazzard to guess that the transition is somewhere hidden in between having explosives sitting around that could be used to make bombs and making bombs from explosives sitting around.
The capability of one does not mean that one has happened. Most likely, they just can't prove that bombs were actually made yet.
Wow.. I got to stop drinking and posting on slashdot.
I thought you said shellfish gene and was expecting you to conclude we would all have crabs by the end of it. It took three reads to figure out what you really said.
Not even the embezzlement for North to take money from the sale of weapons to Iran to get his house airconditioned?
Are you sure you are talking about the right person? This is the first I have heard of that. The wikipage doesn't even get that careless with the facts and mention it. Perhaps you could provide a creditable citation for it?
How about the destruction of evidence that North and Poindexter were shown to have done later?
You mean that they admitted to right? North and Poindexter were pretty up front with everything. They did not hide any of the facts concerning it.
They are criminals with powerful friends and on the right policial team for the time but IMHO that didn't make them any less guilty.
Or perhaps they were more like Clinton and used legal outs to not be breaking the laws. It doesn't matter though, as what they did did not rise to any level of law that caused the death penalty to be used. I don't think any penalties were actually listed in the laws for the claimed violations. In fact, one of the arguments put forth on the appeals was that congress couldn't limit the administrations ability to conduct foreign relations to the point they did and that their dealings with the contras were technically legal according to the law.
Thirty-seven American lives were lost in that conflict while North was selling weapons to Iran.
What conflict? Are you talking about Operation Nimble Archer or Operation Praying Mantis? I hope not, because those happened after the Iran Contra arms deals.
The documents were released a few years ago (2005?) about the very large "donation" that Ford picked up in person in Jakarta on the day of the invasion. Since the money went to a political party and not an individual it can be argued that it was not treason but the released documents discussed how the timing was very unfortunate and how it could look as if it was.
It still wouldn't be treason. However, I'm not aware of the documents containing a unspecific large donation to the GOP charges. Maybe you can cite them too.
The USA did not consider the regime in East Timor to be Communists prior to the invasion - they went from supportive and singing the praises of a new democracy inspired by the USA to the opposite within the space of a single day. Anyway that was just an example of something I consider a hell of a lot more treasonous than releasing some documents with wide circulation a few years early.
That's not exactly how I remembered the situation. In fact, it was a couple of months when East Timor was converting to communism and the US basically walked away from it.
Anyway that was just an example of something I consider a hell of a lot more treasonous than releasing some documents with wide circulation a few years early.
You do understand that treason has a very specific legal definition in the US and can only be interpreted that way right? Now I know you are using your big boy words for effect, but "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."
When you claim something is treason that doesn't remotely approach that definition, you look like a disgruntled idiot that doesn't know what he is talking about but pissed off and blabbering.
So what has been the outcome so far? About the worst it's done is embarrass Hillary Clinton for issuing an order that slaps that "we are a nation of laws" in the face. Should Manning really die for that? Is Hillary really that infallible and important that this man should die as revenge for the embarrassment of being caught out not being able to do her job?
It's funny because you still do not get the concept. Maybe it can be illustrated better with a little story.
There were three guys who discovered how to create life out of elements within and on the earth. They convened a session of scientists who decided it was time to tell god he was no longer needed. So they went in front of God and said, I can create life from scratch too, you are no longer needed. God said, Ok, show me. So the scientists started scooping up some dirt, one was pulling out a flask of ammonia and God said "no, no, no. You have to start from scratch like I did".
You see, you are confusing your limited knowledge with other peoples tools with the design and intent of the tools. You are in essence able to fumble around and make something that might do more or less then you expected from other people's tools. These tools in programming would be processor instruction codes, low or high level languages, scripting and so on. Now imagine your level of understanding if you were a creator and created the processor, the components of the computer that goes with it, the codes and programming languages used to program it, the operating system and so on and so on and so on. You might not know more then some joe who picked up a book on "how to be like you" that you wrote, but there is nothing to indicate that you wouldn't have a good understanding of what you created.
And while it's probably impossible for you to be the creator of computers and everything associated with them as we know it today, we are also speaking about something that somewhat improbable too when speaking about the universe and all it's contents being created by a creator. And this should be distinguished from the creation of something using some else' tools and materials.
If you look at it that way, yes, lowering taxes is a good idea. Let's try that other extreme. Bare minimum public spending, absolute minimal taxes. Let's see who wins out.
Well, yea we should look at it that way. I mean seriously, I think we can all admit that there are some services and products the government provides that are essential. I see no reason to get rid of those, or to increase taxes forever so the government either gets rich or spends more then it needs to. there needs to be a ballance of what is agreed apon and needed and the rest can pretty much be tossed out unless some need can be shown.
That all led to a lot of small and medium businesses being the staple of the local economy instead of a few huge corporations. At least it did until about 10 years when "low tax" became the craze, which in turn meant that a lot of what I just listed had to be cut back or eliminated. The economic landscape changed and now we, too, have a few huge corporations holding our country ransom with the usual "we don't pay tax or we move away" spiel. Something a small business owner simply cannot do.
Frankly, I liked our high tax times more. But YMMV.
I'm betting your in Ireland and really don't know much about it. The low taxes- for businesses at least, started back in the 1980's. Businesses shouldn't be paying most taxes anyways as all it does is cost the consumer more money when purchasing the products. But lets take your high taxes for instance, what if they raise the taxes to 90%? Would you really be comfortable with 90% taxes? How about when I find excuse after excuse to not work and when I do, it's under the table so I'm essentially paying no taxes and living better off then you?
I'm willing to bet that there is a cut off point where taking money from you to provide services for others is just too much- especially when others are taking advantage of the system and therefor you too. While you might think more government services are necessary then what is in the US, I'm sure there if you paid enough money, you would probably start disliking some of them too. Like, would you mind giving Israel and several other countries in hot spots around the world billions of dollars a year in support? Would you mind your taxes being raised higher to do that? I mean sure, the person making more money is sponsoring your giving crap loads away to foreign countries. The problem is that you don't have the choice to give the money to foreigners or not, the government decided it had too much money and instead of giving it back to the people it took it from, it gave it to another country entirely.
My logic is that there is no reason to believe a creator wouldn't have a good understanding of what they intentionally created. I mean it's not like they are simply taking something already in existence and forging something new like a blacksmith would for a sword or something. A creator (at least in this sense) is creating everything involved with the process including how to use the sword.
Well, some paper will retain a shape and imprint of the ink printed on it when burned. You can actually see the words in the ashes of the paper unless they have been stirred and mixed around.
But even then, I do not think that burning paper is a security method for storage and use unless you are concerned about invasion of some sort. I mean seriously, if you have a file cabinet loaded with paper files, how are you going to burn it if you don't know that someone is taking/making copies of it.
burning has it's advantages when destroying the information is more valuable then keeping it around. Outside that, it's not really a security solution as the information typically needs to be around.
Yes, I would like that too. The politicians just create the laws as needed and we can vote for them on the internet. And you can believe that I have enough zombie PCs out there that I can account for most all of not more of the apathetic population that just doesn't vote. I can finally have my Utopia..
Last time I was at the Pentagon, all of their USB ports were physically disabled - either via breaking the socket with a pair of pliers, or by filling the socket with hot glue. What happened to that mandate?
Probably the insistence on the computer manufacturing industry and keyboard/mouse makers on not providing PS2 ports or equipment capable of using them. It's even getting hard to find printers that can be connected to a parallel port anymore.
Most likely what happened to that mandate has a lot to do with the government stopping the act of saying, this is what we need, who can provide it, and going with this is what is available, who can we buy from. Some of that saves money, some of it is payback for campaign contributions or slogans that got people elected. But I bet it all is somewhat unintended consequences.
Something I'm not sure you are giving enough credit for is that when they make it harder, it also makes it harder to not get caught.
Hopefully, they are not ignoring other avenues to get the information off the systems. If they are smart, they should be monitoring traffic more and attempts to bypass the restrictions put in place. The more complex it becomes to commit an act, the more complicated avoiding detection becomes. With this in place, it might make it easier to find people attempting to make the leaks.
I'll only bring up one point that I think really illustrates the problem very well. You are saying that it was completely OK to sell weapons to Iran (while the Navy was in the gulf getting ships damaged by Iranian mines) and to steal some of the money from that for personal use? And you are saying the reason it is OK is because the government of the time said it was so?
Well, no I'm not saying it was ok, I'm saying it was not illegal under the laws written at the time. Nothing prevented the government from doing what it did because they more or less used a loophole that wasn't accounted for in the laws at the time. This has nothing to do with whether you think it was right or wrong, it has to do with whether or not the administration violated the law- it didn't. Of course congress didn't want that to happen, but they didn't expressly forbid it in their attempts to stop it with the Boland Amendment. (I thought it was beal but it's boland)
An no, it was not selling weapons and using the money for personal use, it was using the money for official policy use in which congress passed a law disallowing the president to use existing money for that policy. Aiding the Nicaraguan Contras was an official policy of the US, congress just wanted us to remain neutral as far as providing further aid so it couldn't escalate into another Vietnam with us Half hardheartedly getting sucked into a war we had no desire to win or follow through with.
To top that off you said (way above, before you attempted to take it back) that someone who leaked what have turned out to be petty secrets should be executed.
Yes, I said that what the government has done may have been morally wrong but it was a legal right and no laws were broken in the process. Someone who leaked information- no matter how petty, without the right to do so, who had pretended to swear under oath the he wouldn't do so, has not only betrayed the trust he worked to establish with the country, but worked intentionally and or carelessly to damage the country and the men and women along side him who are in harms way when betraying that trust and defrauding the government. That is illegal, inexcusable and deserves the strongest penalty available under the law.
Presumably it was once again because a government spokesman said so.
No, it's because some self centered convict who wanted his name in the papers again said so after being interviewed about his part turning this asshat in.
You are being led by the nose into a vastly disproportionate response. Why should he die for a hell of a lot less than even the Valerie Plume leak? It's also nothing on the treason scale compared to Ford taking a bribe from Saharto to look the other way and then demand a UN vote veto on East Timor (we didn't find out about that one until both were dead).
Listen, we are a nation of laws. The laws were on the books when Manning leaked the information, they were on the books when he took the job. The laws have special mens rea applications which denote the state of mind at the time. The Valery Plame leak was an accidental statement made by Richard Armatage to Robert Novak while he was intoxicated as a response to a question pertaining to something completely different. This made the leak not illegal. Ford asking the UN to veto on East Timor is not illegal.
Ford taking a bribe is illegal but from your construction of events you speak of so far, I suspect this is more of your imagination then anything. Suharto was supposedly eliminating the communist threat in the area which is why we supported the invasion and actively worked to stop retaliation. IF that was the bribe you are talking of, it's not illegal as it wasn't a bribe in any way- it was the US government furthering its own policy against communism.
Unless your speaking of something else, you have stated examples that we
If that is the case, why do so few Americans have security clearance? If the US Government gave more Americans security clearance then more Americans would trust/have faith in the US Government.
You have to understand that there are different levels of security clearances for one. Also, the federal government does not have jurisdiction over the entire united states in every matter. It would not only be improbably but most likely jurisdictional impossible to require all Americans to apply for a security clearance.
The reason the Wikileaks scandal gains so much momentum is because the US Government treats the majority of Americans as "them" or as the terrorist, and if anyone asks why "Well It's classified, you don't have a security clearance"
Well, no. The problem wasn't really that the US citizens didn't know, it's that in informing them, they let the enemy know also. This means that our own sons and daughters may be in some sort of extra danger depending on how useful the information could be to the enemy. Notice how I said "may". We didn't know the contents of what was leaked until the contents were made public and wikileaks has publicly expressed that they don't really care if it causes someone to be hurt or puts US interest around the world at risk. So the wikileaks scandal isn't as important because of what the US citizens don't know, it's because of what non-US citizens and foreign governments now know. I'm sure to some, knowing what your government is doing is important, but most reasonable people understand that there are some things that shouldn't be public information while they can impact ongoing operations or negotiations.
So what are they going to do? Let the majority of Americans distrust and fear them? Or give out more clearances? I think it's exactly the opposite, I don't think 90% of Americans can keep a secret if their lives depended on it. 10% is more like it and even among the 10%, most of them are vulnerable to coercion of some sort. Isn't that what the government is most concerned about?
This really depends on the importance of the secrete. The more important it might be, the less likely it would be that it's kept a secret. This is why there are levels of clearances and why just because you have a classified clearance level, you are not entrusted with access to all the secrets.
So if you have Americans who are closet homosexuals due to DADT, wouldn't this make them more vulnerable to coercion?
Well, no not really. IF someone outed you as a homosexual, the military would still have to ask you or you would still have to tell. If they are bared from asking as long as you don't tell, it's just an inconvenience that someone told on you because even though it's against the rules, they still can't ask (unless it happened on base or during an official operation and they can pin it to the failure of it).
So yes, someone can threaten to tell the military that you are gay under the DADT policy. But under that policy, the government can't investigate or hold that against you unless it was something specifically done under it's immediate jurisdiction/supervision which would be treated as if you told. But if you went to a bar, hooked up with someone, even if they found out about it, it's off limits.
(please note, even though it's off limits, that doesn't mean someone in a position of authority doesn't construct other means to punish you. In the real world, this is often called constructive discharge in which employers afraid to fire you give you shit jobs and make your work unbearable in an attempt to force you to quit in order to escape legal obligations. There remedies to that in most states also.)
Well, we are getting into the splitting of hairs when talking about who died.
When you say dead, you generally mean not here any more. But when you die, then come back to life, it's generally where the law or common understand of medicine pronounced you dead and you recovered somehow (either on your own or through some intervention).
So while it might be true that more people have legally died then what has been born, it might not be true without the preface of legally or medically in front of it.
Your response makes no sense the dead don't care and in your example you are not fearing death but the loss of your ability to see your child grow up.
Actually, it makes more sense then you are willing to attribute to it. Stating there is a fear of death doesn't necessarily mean that the death is what you fear. Think of death as a trigger that causes other things to happen or not.
Maybe more aptly, this could be explained as an anecdotal analogy. I know people who fear getting a divorce because they know that they would lose the 20 years paid into their home as neither spouse could afford it independently. They know they would lose the majority of their lifestyle because without the benefit of the second income, things will be tight for them. For this reason, they are willing to stay together through more crap then others are and they fear taking actions that would cause the other to leave. In short, they are afraid of a divorce not because the divorce is so bad, but because of what they will lose in the divorce.
The same can be said with death. The fear of losing something like time with your kid, or not being able to provide for his welfare, the fear of what would happen if you were not around could make you completely afraid of your own death in the sense you would state you had a fear of death. The "will they remember me", or "how will they remember me" is a valid reasoning to account for your fear of death. This is because whether you are religious or not, once you are dead, you have little to no chance of influencing any of that.
I'm confused, there is no reason to believe a creator god would be particularly good at understanding something he created?
That's like saying there would be no reason to believe that Newton understood any of his principles in science. Here is the failure in that line of reasoning. If you accept the premise that there is a creator, and the premise that science is the attempt to understand the natural environment around us through observation and testing, then it's only logical that the creator of the created has a more sound depth of knowledge of the creation then someone on the outside trying to reverse engineer and understand it.
First of all, I agree with your sentiment but there are some points people appear to be confused with. IF you read the bible, it can be logically separated into differing covenants the lord has made with the different generations of people within. You can look at the covenants as contracts with god saying if X is done, Y will happen. If anything from a previous covenant is transferred to the new, it's directly referenced within the dialog of the new covenant.
This is sort of an out for the mixing of blends of fabric. It was within a covenant to a generation previous to Christianity and I think modern Judaism. Also, one of the key constructs of the bible is the covenant and struggle with keeping people honoring the covenant. This can be represented as a war between humans and God. When Jesus brought about the peace, the war was over but obviously, he was talking about the struggle between God and Man and not an end to all wars. This is where the peace comes into play- no longer is God trying to force you into obedience by consequences and he just accepts what he can get out of love and compassion.
Now please don't take that the wrong way, I was more or less condensing the situation into a paragraph or two and it by no means is complete nor is my knowledge of the bible and religion complete. But the peace and comfort comes largely from the concept that god is our father (the bring of life though his breath), and he is at peace with us. Think back to when you were a child and your parents comforted you when you were scared or hurt and think about how they made you feel better. Now think about how you felt when you did something wrong and knew you were going to get a thrashing or grounded or something. That's what theists largely see in interpretations of the bible.
This is why you see some who are happy to see death approaching and why you see a lot more who are afraid of their own death (or the death of others). If they were not worthy of their lords forgiveness, they will spend eternity with Dad pissed of at them or not being around to protect them from harm (hell). And there is no set action that you can do to get you into heaven on good terms with the lord (outside of giving your heart to Jesus and asking for forgiveness and that's only if your a christian or become one). I should note that various churches have attempted to allow the rich to more or less buy their way into heaven but I'm not sure that's still practiced as a hard rule.
There are many interpretations of religions, most all differ on some minor points and some differ greatly. Another problem seems to be buyers remorse in which people aren't quite sure if their path was the right religion to follow or if it made much of a different of not. But according to the Christian religion, there is only one unforgivable sin- and that is denying God after knowing he exists. According to the other versions of the Abrahamic religions, there are quite a bit more unforgivable sins. It's the uncertainty that exists within all of us that simply doesn't exist if you think it's completely over and there is nothing after death.
All you have to do is state some objective other then benefiting yourself and you can be a complete asshat and pretty much get away with it.
It's not about levels of harm or to whom the harm is directed, it's about token gestures to absolve your own guilt or complicity. It's why some politicians can just say "I'm sorry" and everything is all right while others have to quit public service altogether for relatively the same crap. It's kind of petty but it satisfies some people and allows them to reconcile their guilt pretty easily.
I would say that they knew the information was covered. The problem is the government's refusal to participate doesn't claim otherwise. The government often refuses to participate in what it thinks is a crime or to help people who it thinks might be committing a crime. If this was enough to claim the activity wasn't illegal, then it opens a lot of roads traveling elsewhere like the government not giving in to hostage demands and so on.
Also, with the NYT and other news organizations, it's not completely apparent that the information was originally obtained by illegal methods. It could have been information obtained legally, legally by screw-ups of various people and the reporters putting two and three together, or information the government specifically wanted out. The two situations are at best, remotely transferable. Especially as the NYT is a US based news organization and wikileaks is foreign born/based and the level of journalism is somewhat disputed/missing.
Also, an element that the link you provided deals with that this wikileaks doesn't is who the information was delivered to. Israel is an ally, there are more laws concerning giving information to our enemies as well as when there are times of war or national emergencies. So while the scope may still be under the espionage act, the range that covers it is quite a bit larger then just giving information to Israel.
Clearly Lieberman's office called them before they took it down. It is not cool at all in my book for government officials to be calling web providers and demanding "an explanation". It's unpatriotic. Downright un-American.
No, that's actually completely in line with the stance most of these leftist anti business types support.
You see, in a recent discussion about taxing corporations, it was explained to me that because the corporation is not a human being, it's not entitled to the rights of a human. It was also explained that the corporations only exist because government created an environment that they could operate in and thrive on. In other words, the corporations exist only because the government allows them to and should be taxed heavily due to it. Logically, if someone thought this way, then it would be perfectly sane for them to also think that not having the same rights as a citizen and an obligation to the government would allow the government to expect them to act in ways that didn't damage the government.
Clearly Lieberman thinks it is a good idea for communications service companies to be under the heel of random senators' offices. It would seem that in his and Amazon's view, cloud computing and data center hosting arrangements should be provisioned at the pleasure of His Royal Highness.
You shouldn't be so quick to jump to conclusions. All the reply from Amazon stated was that the release of illegally siezed materials was known and that Amazon would discontinue doing business with them.
Under US law, from well before the funding of terrorist organizations became illegal, it has been illegal to knowingly or recklessly, directly or indirectly fund, promote, encourage, participate, or direct any illegal activities. Senator Lieberman's communications showed Amazon that the government's views were that Wikileaks was acting illegally and Amazon had to separate themselves from this in order to avoid prosecution or liability of it's own. It's the prudent course of action to take. Not doing so could open the board of directors and management to some seriously fiduciary duty charges as well as legal action from the US.
Clearly Lieberman thinks it is a good idea for communications service companies to be under the heel of random senators' offices. It would seem that in his and Amazon's view, cloud computing and data center hosting arrangements should be provisioned at the pleasure of His Royal Highness.
I can agree with this. However, you should note that the NY times and wikileaks are quite dissimilar so do not expect an answer completely identical to the position taken with wikileaks.
Why would you even suggest that when there is a law outlawing that specifically?
Don't confuse these things. It's perfectly reasonable to refuse to do business with someone not wearing a shirt or shoes, to someone not wearing a tie and jacket, to not allow biker or gang apparel to be worn and so on. But the law (the civil rights act of 64 and it's affiliates) disallows you to to discriminate on account of race, creed, religion, sex, and I think Age now. However, being a black man not able to sit at a lunch counter because he isn't wearing a shirt is not the same as not being allowed because he is black.
In the US (and presumably most of the rest of the world), we are presumed to be free to do whatever we want no matter how moral or ethical it might be, until such time as government limits or restricts this freedom by laws. To date, there is no law saying we can't refuse to do business with someone, just laws stating we can't refuse for certain reasons. I hope this helps you understand the freedom thing a little better
Slashdot Mirror
Heh.. That would be funny, they removed the GPS only to replace it on the mass transit and leave without being scene. Now their prank turns into a federal investigation and a bombsquad blowing it up because they aren't sure what the device they activated actually did.
Yea, I can see that backfiring really bad.
And you are sure that I don't know what happened? I mean you aren't citing anything, throw about accusations of pardons that never happened and want to sit there and claim I don't know anything about it? Well, if you would have in the least attempted to cite what you were speaking of, you would have in the least known that Both North and Poindexter's convictions were overturned on appeals. They were not pardoned, North was only charged with minor infractions, Poindexter was charged with some felonies, but neither of the offenses carried the death penalty. Give it up, just because someone else does something bad does not in any way make it ok for someone else. This is pointless if you think so.
Actually, there is quite a bit on the net including a good bit of the trial(s) including the appeals. All you have to do is search for United States v. North and United States v. Poindexter.
Their senate testimony admitted to all their destruction of evidence and nothing found through backups or other sources recounted their stories. Their argument or line of defense was that they were following orders. The only con you have going on here is your insistence to interpret the facts to fit your fallacy world. I mean the I don't recall was Reagan's answer to everything. And most experts seem to agree that early signs of his Alzheimer was present before Reagan went before congress and his I don't recall answers were probably truthful because of his condition at the time. Of course it wasn't until after he was out of office that we knew he was losing his memory inside the office.
You seem to be over looking the fact that the administration controls foreign relations and has the constitutional power to declare someone an enemy or not, or even open negotiations with a known enemy to use them in an effort to advance other policy issues. If Reagan participated, then your outrage is completely misplaced and existing where it shouldn't. It doesn't amount to some great conspiracy to damage the US, it amounts to you not approving of policy decisions and the administration attempting to bypass congress's attempts to retard that policy which some argue is unconstitutional in the first place.
Lol..
Do you really think any god or creator of something is sort of like a stoner making mistakes that work out in the end?
Or were you injecting some much needed humor?
I would hazzard to guess that the transition is somewhere hidden in between having explosives sitting around that could be used to make bombs and making bombs from explosives sitting around.
The capability of one does not mean that one has happened. Most likely, they just can't prove that bombs were actually made yet.
Wow.. I got to stop drinking and posting on slashdot.
I thought you said shellfish gene and was expecting you to conclude we would all have crabs by the end of it. It took three reads to figure out what you really said.
Are you sure you are talking about the right person? This is the first I have heard of that. The wikipage doesn't even get that careless with the facts and mention it. Perhaps you could provide a creditable citation for it?
You mean that they admitted to right? North and Poindexter were pretty up front with everything. They did not hide any of the facts concerning it.
Or perhaps they were more like Clinton and used legal outs to not be breaking the laws. It doesn't matter though, as what they did did not rise to any level of law that caused the death penalty to be used. I don't think any penalties were actually listed in the laws for the claimed violations. In fact, one of the arguments put forth on the appeals was that congress couldn't limit the administrations ability to conduct foreign relations to the point they did and that their dealings with the contras were technically legal according to the law.
What conflict? Are you talking about Operation Nimble Archer or Operation Praying Mantis? I hope not, because those happened after the Iran Contra arms deals.
It still wouldn't be treason. However, I'm not aware of the documents containing a unspecific large donation to the GOP charges. Maybe you can cite them too.
That's not exactly how I remembered the situation. In fact, it was a couple of months when East Timor was converting to communism and the US basically walked away from it.
You do understand that treason has a very specific legal definition in the US and can only be interpreted that way right? Now I know you are using your big boy words for effect, but "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."
When you claim something is treason that doesn't remotely approach that definition, you look like a disgruntled idiot that doesn't know what he is talking about but pissed off and blabbering.
It's funny because you still do not get the concept. Maybe it can be illustrated better with a little story.
There were three guys who discovered how to create life out of elements within and on the earth. They convened a session of scientists who decided it was time to tell god he was no longer needed. So they went in front of God and said, I can create life from scratch too, you are no longer needed. God said, Ok, show me. So the scientists started scooping up some dirt, one was pulling out a flask of ammonia and God said "no, no, no. You have to start from scratch like I did".
You see, you are confusing your limited knowledge with other peoples tools with the design and intent of the tools. You are in essence able to fumble around and make something that might do more or less then you expected from other people's tools. These tools in programming would be processor instruction codes, low or high level languages, scripting and so on. Now imagine your level of understanding if you were a creator and created the processor, the components of the computer that goes with it, the codes and programming languages used to program it, the operating system and so on and so on and so on. You might not know more then some joe who picked up a book on "how to be like you" that you wrote, but there is nothing to indicate that you wouldn't have a good understanding of what you created.
And while it's probably impossible for you to be the creator of computers and everything associated with them as we know it today, we are also speaking about something that somewhat improbable too when speaking about the universe and all it's contents being created by a creator. And this should be distinguished from the creation of something using some else' tools and materials.
Well, yea we should look at it that way. I mean seriously, I think we can all admit that there are some services and products the government provides that are essential. I see no reason to get rid of those, or to increase taxes forever so the government either gets rich or spends more then it needs to. there needs to be a ballance of what is agreed apon and needed and the rest can pretty much be tossed out unless some need can be shown.
I'm betting your in Ireland and really don't know much about it. The low taxes- for businesses at least, started back in the 1980's. Businesses shouldn't be paying most taxes anyways as all it does is cost the consumer more money when purchasing the products. But lets take your high taxes for instance, what if they raise the taxes to 90%? Would you really be comfortable with 90% taxes? How about when I find excuse after excuse to not work and when I do, it's under the table so I'm essentially paying no taxes and living better off then you?
I'm willing to bet that there is a cut off point where taking money from you to provide services for others is just too much- especially when others are taking advantage of the system and therefor you too. While you might think more government services are necessary then what is in the US, I'm sure there if you paid enough money, you would probably start disliking some of them too. Like, would you mind giving Israel and several other countries in hot spots around the world billions of dollars a year in support? Would you mind your taxes being raised higher to do that? I mean sure, the person making more money is sponsoring your giving crap loads away to foreign countries. The problem is that you don't have the choice to give the money to foreigners or not, the government decided it had too much money and instead of giving it back to the people it took it from, it gave it to another country entirely.
My logic is that there is no reason to believe a creator wouldn't have a good understanding of what they intentionally created. I mean it's not like they are simply taking something already in existence and forging something new like a blacksmith would for a sword or something. A creator (at least in this sense) is creating everything involved with the process including how to use the sword.
Well, some paper will retain a shape and imprint of the ink printed on it when burned. You can actually see the words in the ashes of the paper unless they have been stirred and mixed around.
But even then, I do not think that burning paper is a security method for storage and use unless you are concerned about invasion of some sort. I mean seriously, if you have a file cabinet loaded with paper files, how are you going to burn it if you don't know that someone is taking/making copies of it.
burning has it's advantages when destroying the information is more valuable then keeping it around. Outside that, it's not really a security solution as the information typically needs to be around.
Yes, I would like that too. The politicians just create the laws as needed and we can vote for them on the internet. And you can believe that I have enough zombie PCs out there that I can account for most all of not more of the apathetic population that just doesn't vote. I can finally have my Utopia..
Probably the insistence on the computer manufacturing industry and keyboard/mouse makers on not providing PS2 ports or equipment capable of using them. It's even getting hard to find printers that can be connected to a parallel port anymore.
Most likely what happened to that mandate has a lot to do with the government stopping the act of saying, this is what we need, who can provide it, and going with this is what is available, who can we buy from. Some of that saves money, some of it is payback for campaign contributions or slogans that got people elected. But I bet it all is somewhat unintended consequences.
Something I'm not sure you are giving enough credit for is that when they make it harder, it also makes it harder to not get caught.
Hopefully, they are not ignoring other avenues to get the information off the systems. If they are smart, they should be monitoring traffic more and attempts to bypass the restrictions put in place. The more complex it becomes to commit an act, the more complicated avoiding detection becomes. With this in place, it might make it easier to find people attempting to make the leaks.
Well, no I'm not saying it was ok, I'm saying it was not illegal under the laws written at the time. Nothing prevented the government from doing what it did because they more or less used a loophole that wasn't accounted for in the laws at the time. This has nothing to do with whether you think it was right or wrong, it has to do with whether or not the administration violated the law- it didn't. Of course congress didn't want that to happen, but they didn't expressly forbid it in their attempts to stop it with the Boland Amendment. (I thought it was beal but it's boland)
An no, it was not selling weapons and using the money for personal use, it was using the money for official policy use in which congress passed a law disallowing the president to use existing money for that policy. Aiding the Nicaraguan Contras was an official policy of the US, congress just wanted us to remain neutral as far as providing further aid so it couldn't escalate into another Vietnam with us Half hardheartedly getting sucked into a war we had no desire to win or follow through with.
Yes, I said that what the government has done may have been morally wrong but it was a legal right and no laws were broken in the process. Someone who leaked information- no matter how petty, without the right to do so, who had pretended to swear under oath the he wouldn't do so, has not only betrayed the trust he worked to establish with the country, but worked intentionally and or carelessly to damage the country and the men and women along side him who are in harms way when betraying that trust and defrauding the government. That is illegal, inexcusable and deserves the strongest penalty available under the law.
No, it's because some self centered convict who wanted his name in the papers again said so after being interviewed about his part turning this asshat in.
Listen, we are a nation of laws. The laws were on the books when Manning leaked the information, they were on the books when he took the job. The laws have special mens rea applications which denote the state of mind at the time. The Valery Plame leak was an accidental statement made by Richard Armatage to Robert Novak while he was intoxicated as a response to a question pertaining to something completely different. This made the leak not illegal. Ford asking the UN to veto on East Timor is not illegal.
Ford taking a bribe is illegal but from your construction of events you speak of so far, I suspect this is more of your imagination then anything. Suharto was supposedly eliminating the communist threat in the area which is why we supported the invasion and actively worked to stop retaliation. IF that was the bribe you are talking of, it's not illegal as it wasn't a bribe in any way- it was the US government furthering its own policy against communism.
Unless your speaking of something else, you have stated examples that we
You have to understand that there are different levels of security clearances for one. Also, the federal government does not have jurisdiction over the entire united states in every matter. It would not only be improbably but most likely jurisdictional impossible to require all Americans to apply for a security clearance.
Well, no. The problem wasn't really that the US citizens didn't know, it's that in informing them, they let the enemy know also. This means that our own sons and daughters may be in some sort of extra danger depending on how useful the information could be to the enemy. Notice how I said "may". We didn't know the contents of what was leaked until the contents were made public and wikileaks has publicly expressed that they don't really care if it causes someone to be hurt or puts US interest around the world at risk. So the wikileaks scandal isn't as important because of what the US citizens don't know, it's because of what non-US citizens and foreign governments now know. I'm sure to some, knowing what your government is doing is important, but most reasonable people understand that there are some things that shouldn't be public information while they can impact ongoing operations or negotiations.
This really depends on the importance of the secrete. The more important it might be, the less likely it would be that it's kept a secret. This is why there are levels of clearances and why just because you have a classified clearance level, you are not entrusted with access to all the secrets.
Well, no not really. IF someone outed you as a homosexual, the military would still have to ask you or you would still have to tell. If they are bared from asking as long as you don't tell, it's just an inconvenience that someone told on you because even though it's against the rules, they still can't ask (unless it happened on base or during an official operation and they can pin it to the failure of it).
So yes, someone can threaten to tell the military that you are gay under the DADT policy. But under that policy, the government can't investigate or hold that against you unless it was something specifically done under it's immediate jurisdiction/supervision which would be treated as if you told. But if you went to a bar, hooked up with someone, even if they found out about it, it's off limits.
(please note, even though it's off limits, that doesn't mean someone in a position of authority doesn't construct other means to punish you. In the real world, this is often called constructive discharge in which employers afraid to fire you give you shit jobs and make your work unbearable in an attempt to force you to quit in order to escape legal obligations. There remedies to that in most states also.)
Well, we are getting into the splitting of hairs when talking about who died.
When you say dead, you generally mean not here any more. But when you die, then come back to life, it's generally where the law or common understand of medicine pronounced you dead and you recovered somehow (either on your own or through some intervention).
So while it might be true that more people have legally died then what has been born, it might not be true without the preface of legally or medically in front of it.
Actually, it makes more sense then you are willing to attribute to it. Stating there is a fear of death doesn't necessarily mean that the death is what you fear. Think of death as a trigger that causes other things to happen or not.
Maybe more aptly, this could be explained as an anecdotal analogy. I know people who fear getting a divorce because they know that they would lose the 20 years paid into their home as neither spouse could afford it independently. They know they would lose the majority of their lifestyle because without the benefit of the second income, things will be tight for them. For this reason, they are willing to stay together through more crap then others are and they fear taking actions that would cause the other to leave. In short, they are afraid of a divorce not because the divorce is so bad, but because of what they will lose in the divorce.
The same can be said with death. The fear of losing something like time with your kid, or not being able to provide for his welfare, the fear of what would happen if you were not around could make you completely afraid of your own death in the sense you would state you had a fear of death. The "will they remember me", or "how will they remember me" is a valid reasoning to account for your fear of death. This is because whether you are religious or not, once you are dead, you have little to no chance of influencing any of that.
Who are you calling educated?
I'm confused, there is no reason to believe a creator god would be particularly good at understanding something he created?
That's like saying there would be no reason to believe that Newton understood any of his principles in science. Here is the failure in that line of reasoning. If you accept the premise that there is a creator, and the premise that science is the attempt to understand the natural environment around us through observation and testing, then it's only logical that the creator of the created has a more sound depth of knowledge of the creation then someone on the outside trying to reverse engineer and understand it.
Wrong, you are supposed to eat there once a year to remember not to go back.
First of all, I agree with your sentiment but there are some points people appear to be confused with. IF you read the bible, it can be logically separated into differing covenants the lord has made with the different generations of people within. You can look at the covenants as contracts with god saying if X is done, Y will happen. If anything from a previous covenant is transferred to the new, it's directly referenced within the dialog of the new covenant.
This is sort of an out for the mixing of blends of fabric. It was within a covenant to a generation previous to Christianity and I think modern Judaism. Also, one of the key constructs of the bible is the covenant and struggle with keeping people honoring the covenant. This can be represented as a war between humans and God. When Jesus brought about the peace, the war was over but obviously, he was talking about the struggle between God and Man and not an end to all wars. This is where the peace comes into play- no longer is God trying to force you into obedience by consequences and he just accepts what he can get out of love and compassion.
Now please don't take that the wrong way, I was more or less condensing the situation into a paragraph or two and it by no means is complete nor is my knowledge of the bible and religion complete. But the peace and comfort comes largely from the concept that god is our father (the bring of life though his breath), and he is at peace with us. Think back to when you were a child and your parents comforted you when you were scared or hurt and think about how they made you feel better. Now think about how you felt when you did something wrong and knew you were going to get a thrashing or grounded or something. That's what theists largely see in interpretations of the bible.
This is why you see some who are happy to see death approaching and why you see a lot more who are afraid of their own death (or the death of others). If they were not worthy of their lords forgiveness, they will spend eternity with Dad pissed of at them or not being around to protect them from harm (hell). And there is no set action that you can do to get you into heaven on good terms with the lord (outside of giving your heart to Jesus and asking for forgiveness and that's only if your a christian or become one). I should note that various churches have attempted to allow the rich to more or less buy their way into heaven but I'm not sure that's still practiced as a hard rule.
There are many interpretations of religions, most all differ on some minor points and some differ greatly. Another problem seems to be buyers remorse in which people aren't quite sure if their path was the right religion to follow or if it made much of a different of not. But according to the Christian religion, there is only one unforgivable sin- and that is denying God after knowing he exists. According to the other versions of the Abrahamic religions, there are quite a bit more unforgivable sins. It's the uncertainty that exists within all of us that simply doesn't exist if you think it's completely over and there is nothing after death.
All you have to do is state some objective other then benefiting yourself and you can be a complete asshat and pretty much get away with it.
It's not about levels of harm or to whom the harm is directed, it's about token gestures to absolve your own guilt or complicity. It's why some politicians can just say "I'm sorry" and everything is all right while others have to quit public service altogether for relatively the same crap. It's kind of petty but it satisfies some people and allows them to reconcile their guilt pretty easily.
I would say that they knew the information was covered. The problem is the government's refusal to participate doesn't claim otherwise. The government often refuses to participate in what it thinks is a crime or to help people who it thinks might be committing a crime. If this was enough to claim the activity wasn't illegal, then it opens a lot of roads traveling elsewhere like the government not giving in to hostage demands and so on.
Also, with the NYT and other news organizations, it's not completely apparent that the information was originally obtained by illegal methods. It could have been information obtained legally, legally by screw-ups of various people and the reporters putting two and three together, or information the government specifically wanted out. The two situations are at best, remotely transferable. Especially as the NYT is a US based news organization and wikileaks is foreign born/based and the level of journalism is somewhat disputed/missing.
Also, an element that the link you provided deals with that this wikileaks doesn't is who the information was delivered to. Israel is an ally, there are more laws concerning giving information to our enemies as well as when there are times of war or national emergencies. So while the scope may still be under the espionage act, the range that covers it is quite a bit larger then just giving information to Israel.
No, that's actually completely in line with the stance most of these leftist anti business types support.
You see, in a recent discussion about taxing corporations, it was explained to me that because the corporation is not a human being, it's not entitled to the rights of a human. It was also explained that the corporations only exist because government created an environment that they could operate in and thrive on. In other words, the corporations exist only because the government allows them to and should be taxed heavily due to it. Logically, if someone thought this way, then it would be perfectly sane for them to also think that not having the same rights as a citizen and an obligation to the government would allow the government to expect them to act in ways that didn't damage the government.
You shouldn't be so quick to jump to conclusions. All the reply from Amazon stated was that the release of illegally siezed materials was known and that Amazon would discontinue doing business with them.
Under US law, from well before the funding of terrorist organizations became illegal, it has been illegal to knowingly or recklessly, directly or indirectly fund, promote, encourage, participate, or direct any illegal activities. Senator Lieberman's communications showed Amazon that the government's views were that Wikileaks was acting illegally and Amazon had to separate themselves from this in order to avoid prosecution or liability of it's own. It's the prudent course of action to take. Not doing so could open the board of directors and management to some seriously fiduciary duty charges as well as legal action from the US.
I can agree with this. However, you should note that the NY times and wikileaks are quite dissimilar so do not expect an answer completely identical to the position taken with wikileaks.
Why would you even suggest that when there is a law outlawing that specifically?
Don't confuse these things. It's perfectly reasonable to refuse to do business with someone not wearing a shirt or shoes, to someone not wearing a tie and jacket, to not allow biker or gang apparel to be worn and so on. But the law (the civil rights act of 64 and it's affiliates) disallows you to to discriminate on account of race, creed, religion, sex, and I think Age now. However, being a black man not able to sit at a lunch counter because he isn't wearing a shirt is not the same as not being allowed because he is black.
In the US (and presumably most of the rest of the world), we are presumed to be free to do whatever we want no matter how moral or ethical it might be, until such time as government limits or restricts this freedom by laws. To date, there is no law saying we can't refuse to do business with someone, just laws stating we can't refuse for certain reasons. I hope this helps you understand the freedom thing a little better