Seems like the administration was running arms/missiles to Syria via Turkey from Benghazi, which US Ambassador. Stevens brokered. To tie up loose ends, they arranged to have Stevens sent to Benghazi with little security or protection on 9/11 when attacks were likely and left him to die.
Unfortunately for them, this has been picked up and is getting attention. Cue these other scandals (IRS/AP) which they calculated would distract attention from Benghazi. Unfortunately again, for them, instead of distracting from Benghazi, it has morphed in public perception into a "Trifecta of Corruption" in which these individual scandals are reinforcing the others and attracting magnitudes more attention to all the scandals.
People on both sides of the political spectrum are starting to agree, and that spells big trouble for them, and I include the "mainstream"/"old guard" core Republicans. Division is what keeps *both* parties in power...while taking ever more power and freedom from us.
...That having all these distributed and location-tracked radiation detectors monitored by authorities (I have serious doubts about the government/DHS allowing anything like full and complete public access to the hit-location data) makes this effectively a very powerful tool for tracking individuals/objects/papers/etc of interest to the authorities by simply "tagging", in any number of ways and methods, whatever they want to track with a radioactive substance...liquid, powder, spray, dart, added to food/drink, etc etc.
No wrapping one's head in a damp towel. Better get your ass to Mars!
No, the ACA does not allow the IRS to access your medical records.
It's also against the law for the IRS to selectively harass people & organizations based on politics/ideology, too.
That's why the people who wrote the US Constitution put strict limits on government power. They understood that any power government has which is possible to abuse as such *will* eventually be used to attack political/ideological opponents to the incumbent political/ideological powers regardless of any restrictions.
This administration in particular has already thoroughly demonstrated an almost complete disregard for the Rule of Law, innocent lives, and individual freedom in pursuit of their political & ideological agendas (Fast & Furious, Benghazi missile-running-to-Syrian-rebels/Muslim Brotherhood cover-up, AP/Congressional phone record seizures, IRS political/ideological-based targeting, etc etc etc).
What makes you think they'd suddenly change? Or is the (Stockholm) Force strong with you?
>> Even better, the IRS official that was in charge of the office targeting individuals and groups for IRS harassment that politically/ideologically oppose this administration has just been put in charge of the IRS's Obamacare office. Better hope your health remains good if you speak out against the government.
So in the U.S. it takes vastly more resources than everywhere else? Isn't the free market supposed to boost efficiency?
The US has not had anything even close to a "free market" for decades. Particularly regarding anything related to healthcare and pharmaceuticals.
The good news, however, is that there should be no worries about medical records being leaked and/or used against individuals or organizations since the IRS will keep those safe for all of us. They're so eager to begin, they simply walked in and seized without explanation approximately *sixty million* medical records in California that are reported to contain every California State Judge as well as many top Hollywood/media/news execs.
Even better, the IRS official that was in charge of the office targeting individuals and groups for IRS harassment that politically/ideologically oppose this administration has just been put in charge of the IRS's Obamacare office. Better hope your health remains good if you speak out against the government.
Maybe we can get the DoJ to seize the IRS's phone records to find out why, since the DoJ seems to be seizing phone records from everyone else these days, including the AP and phone records from the House of Representatives press gallery which journalists often use to call Congresspeople in their offices.
Remove the crime numbers from economically disadvantaged regions the crime numbers will also plummet. The problem is not progressive versus regressive politics, or gun ownership or not, but whether or not the neighborhood or regions are very poor with little hope of change. If you have no job and no way to get a job then crime becomes a more viable option. Economics is a bigger factor than fear that your victim might have a gun or not.
Progressives being in control of these cities for decades is WHY their economies have been devastated and gangs & drugs and the violence that follows them are out of control. All gun control does in these cities is assure the victims are defenseless. Most deadly assaults are over in less than a minute, and average police response time is about 8 minutes. They show up in time to draw the chalk outlines and fill out reports. Legislating away the *means* of self-defense is indistinguishable from outlawing self-defense.
If guns are the problem, why aren't there mass murders at NRA conventions and gun shows? I was on my school rifle team and nobody thought anything of a kid bringing his newly-acquired semi-automatic rifle in to school and showing it off to buddies by the student lockers in the main hallway between classes, with students and teachers crowding the hall. The only questions asked were what it cost and have they had a chance to shoot it yet. Nobody was shot. Nobody was panicking.
All the recent mass shootings that are being used as reasons for additional gun restrictions share a common type of location. They all occurred in "gun-free zones" where the criminal was assured of zero opposition.
The US War Against Drugs and the earlier alcohol Prohibition disaster has proven that prohibition does not work. Attempting the same foolishness with guns in the US would result in much worse violence, crime, and government corruption than both those failed policies combined.
The KKK and Southern Democrats tried for decades to keep blacks from owning firearms. Are you saying that you agree with the KKK and want to reverse decades of progress in civil rights for blacks...and everyone else as well? The KKK's hate seems rather limited compared with those who wish everyone suffer under Jim Crow laws making possessing the means for self-defense a crime.
I think having morons as elected officials is more harmful than having kids.
Agreed. While definitely something needs to be banned, I can't make my mind on what to ban. Suggestions? (grin)
"First, kill all the lawyers." - Ye olde English playwright dude.
Seeing as how the federal government bureaucracy including the Executive branch is chock-full of lawyers, as are most (I believe) in Congress, I should wonder if some of Nostradamus' DNA was possibly included in Shakespeare's family tree.
And the US with one of the highest crime rates in the world has one of the highest gun ownership rates.
If you remove the crime numbers from Progressive Democrat-controlled major cities with the strictest gun control laws like Chicago, NYC, etc, the US crime rate is one of the lowest.
Keeping crime and criminals in check requires cooperation and action from both police and citizens. Disarming half the crime-fighting force does not help reduce crime. It not only requires a much larger and more brutal law enforcement arm to maintain order, It turns that disarmed half into helpless victims and erodes trust, legitimacy, and respect for the government and for police, as well as reducing citizen cooperation with police. It promotes increasing hostility by citizens towards police and the government.
This is the reality for the US and it's society & culture. Maybe gun control works in Australia or the UK. If they're happy, that's great. Different solutions to fit different nations and cultures. It's not just gun control. What works in N. Korea wouldn't work in the UK. What works in France wouldn't work in China. Rinse and repeat for other nations/cultures and various laws/policies/etc. This is true for a large number of things including gun control.
Do you think gay marriage would work in Saudi Arabia? Do you think a death penalty for being LGBT would work in the US/UK? Same thing for gun laws seeking a national database/registration and outright bans in the US. It would take an extremely intrusive, controlling, brutal, and tyrannical police state to have any hope of even beginning to enforce such bans/restrictions in the US. Many millions would die.
I don't believe sovereign immunity applies to government that violates its own Constitution.
Sovereign Immunity applies any way they say it does if those in and employed by government are the only ones allowed to have firearms.
Same with every other law and Right.
You only have the rights and freedoms that you're willing and able to defend with deadly force against even (or in particular) your own government. More people have lost their individual freedoms and their lives to their own governments than they have to any foreign enemy.
These sort of blatant illegal and un-Constitutional behaviors should come as no surprise to anyone that's mildly conversant with history. History teaches us, with example after example, that a government that grows so big and powerful that it becomes capable of enslaving it's people, will, and government will always seek to grow it's size, power, and control towards that end. It's simply human nature and thus the nature of government. Government simply magnifies and concentrates the will of Men, including all the bad qualities.
Government has and always will be much like an essential but dangerously-unstable explosive and should be treated with the same extreme level of caution, tight controls on the amounts used, it's appropriateness as a solution, and the abundance of monitoring and protections employed.
The downside is that governments will only allow their power to be curbed in such ways if there is a significant amount of firepower in the hands of the citizens seeking to enforce those limits, and a belief on the part of the government that the citizens will use it if forced against the wall. People rebelling against the existing government with armed force is precisely how the US came to be.
The amount of skill and equipment you need to gather to put together a Sten has been a barrier for them being home made for criminal purposes in the UK since WW2.
Pretty much every developed nation outside the US is a testament to how gun control is possible and can make society better.
Depends on what one considers "better". The people featured in the video linked below might disagree with your premise. "Gun control" didn't work out very well for them.
You Brits were making them like gangbusters in WW2 precisely because they required almost nothing in the way of machining, special/expensive/high-quality/tight-tolerance parts or materials, skills to make, etc etc. Probably still plenty of old original manufacturing templates, jigs, etc scattered about that anyone interested could buy quite cheaply.
Those are all much greater real-world, practical threats than some geeks 3D-printing a plastic gun that's as likely to kill/maim the shoot-er as the shoot-ee.
Trying to hide money in bitcoin ought be seen as tax evasion
Why? If the government said that some things aren't taxed and you use those things to reduce your taxes, how is that *your* fault and not the government's fault?
Because you haven't the made the "right" political money contributions, or you might belong to a currently politically un-favored race/class/religion/ideology/private business sector, or believe that government should not trample the Constitution/BOR at it's whim, etc.
There is no rule of law anymore. The Federal government has grown far too large and powerful, and nobody but the occasional scapegoat is ever punished for blatantly-criminal and illegal acts, including murders. They hardly bother to hide it anymore.
There is only rule of & by political expedience in the US anymore. And, political expedience has no rules except to benefit politicians at your ultimate expense, which you might be forced to pay in your wealth,.your liberty, your hopes & dreams for yourself and your children, or your and/or your family's lives. Or in all of the above. But, you and everyone else will pay.
If a central government grows powerful enough to make it worth the risk to corrupt, it will become corrupt, and in rough proportion to the amount of power & control the government has, and will at some point become a positive-feedback loop.
Another thing history has proven again and again is that if a government achieves the power and ability to enslave it's people, it will.
That's why the Constitution was really a plan for a distributed network, only a network to distribute the exercise of government power instead of data, but still very similar in basic security principles to a simple computer network, like avoiding having a central point of commend/control that, if compromised, compromises the entire system. That is exactly what has happened to the US over the last 100 years as the Federal government has grown so massive and gained so many new powers while infringing ever-more on the BOR with every passing day.
The political/ideological versions of malware/botnet criminals have compromised and rooted the "central command & control server" that the US Federal Government has become. It needs to be re-imaged to the last verified and tested-clean version, and returned to it's former minor place in the power network.
[If you're out in public] Why would you think that you have some sort of right to privacy ?
So you'd be OK with a team of DHS agents following you and recording & archiving everything you do, everywhere you go, who you meet/talk to, and with timestamps, in a search-able government database from the moment you step outside your house until you return?
My neighbor sees me leave home. That fact does not get added to a DHS or other TLA database for analysis against all other available information. The fact that I may have gone to the gun range to target-shoot with friends the morning prior to boarding my airline flight isn't available to provide some TSA parasite an excuse to single me out for an anal-probe.
No they aren't. Even if they carry bombs, it's the bombs that are weapons.
Close, but not quite all the way there.
There is only _one_ weapon.
It is the concept residing in the gray-matter of humans.
Everything else is simply the various physical-world implementations of the concept.
A piece of pipe can be plumbing or can bash in a skull.
Unfortunately, history and human nature teaches that humans will always, and usually as the primary impetus for developing it in the first place, use any new technology as some form of weapon and/or means to enhance their power/control over others.
A similar phenomenon exists around new technology that can be used as another means for those in power to catalog, monitor, and control the general populace and what information the population can easily access and share about those in power.
This has the potential to be equally as important and sweeping an issue affecting individual liberty, freedom, and privacy as any other Bill Of Rights issues/arguments we've faced so far. Maybe even more important in some ways.
Eric Schmidt's comments establish that he's either dangerously short-sighted, narrow-minded, and ignorant of history and human nature, or that he's a card-carrying member of those in power who would use this tech to enhance their own power and wealth at the expense of individual liberty, freedom, and privacy for the general population (but not his own, of course).
I'll leave the decision as to which is more true as an exercise for the reader.
Jeez, hey, just when I thought it was only bad and getting worse with each new piece of horse puckey from Congress, you had to lay that wonderful analysis out there. Thanks heaps, Strat.
What's the color for "not dead yet, but it's looking like a better idea every day that I read more about how much worse it's getting"?
Sorry Kermidge.
But, that's what happens when people wear those rose-colored glasses too long, speaking of colors. US citizens have had their rose-colored glasses on for a century.
It's like that quote from "Morpheus" in the movie "The Matrix": "You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."
By your reckoning, Australia should have turned into a fascist state by now; let me assure you, it hasn't.
Better ask the aborigines, they may have a slightly different view from yours. How's that right to freedom of speech and the press? Oops. Fascist states (and almost every other authoritarian regime) don't allow people they want to oppress to own firearms. Can I legally buy and possess an AR-15 or Glock 23 in Sydney as a regular citizen?
I will, however, counter your argument as simply as it ever could be by pointing out that regardless of how many rifles, handguns, etc. you own, you will never be able to defeat a military that has the ability to wipe you off of the face of the earth with a few keystrokes.
A significant portion of the military will join the citizens. Besides, how long has that Afghanistan thing against those goat-herders with AKs been going on? Can't they find the right keys to push?
This is simply about personal empowerment -- the ability to shoot at those who 'threaten' you, the comfort that 'if you had to' you could take the life of another human being. It's thinly-veiled psychopathy that becomes blatant once you actually kill somebody.
No, it's about the history in this video I linked to in my OP which totally obliterates your statements, which you still have not addressed nor refuted with any facts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa-lNiIDsFM
If all you've got is more fact-free condescending & contemptuous remarks and emotional hand-waving, don't bother. "Bad guys" will always have guns, they don't obey laws. Police don't prevent crime, they write a report and try to catch those responsible *after the fact*. The only decision is whether or not you're willing to allow people the basic human right to self-defense, or if you'd prefer people be helpless victims.
Here's two more inescapable facts. 1.> It takes a "good guy" with a gun to stop a "bad guy" with a gun. 2.> There are more "good guys" than "bad guys", so more people in general with guns means more "good guys" with guns compared to "bad guys" with guns.
And, why do supposedly "progressive", forward-thinking people want to undo black civil rights in the US and give the KKK a retroactive victory in reinstating, after the huge civil-rights battle it took to abolish them, the infamous "Black Laws" from the early-1900s that forbid blacks from owning or possessing guns & ammo, only this time, it's everybody's civil rights being crushed under the heel of tyranny?
I guess the familiar and unchanging weight of slave chains are a comfort to some people who can't manage their own lives and behavior without being rendered helpless and defenseless, and told what to do and when by armed authority.
The only people gun control has ever actually worked for are criminals and governments which are often indistinguishable from each other, particularly after the general public has been disarmed.
At least patents only last about 20 years, which while an annoyingly long time that is short enough that the original physical media on which content is sold and the devices to read it will likely last that long.
Copyrights OTOH seem to keep receiving retroactive extensions and afaict the anti-cirumvention stuff has no expiry at all so they are much bigger threats to preservation of our cultural history.
With no common cultural history references, "culture" can be more easily manipulated by those in power to best suit their needs and ideology.
It's Big Brother making Winston's day-job for the regime rewriting history obsolete before he's born. Nothing to re -write. No history but their version. Unlock old information/data/cultural works and go to prison.
It doesn't get much more Orwellian/authoritarian than that, folks. Hell, it's even worse than Orwell imagined!
And, it has absolutely nothing to do with political parties. There are no innocents in government or either major party.
History makes a couple of things quite clear. If a people allow their government so much central power that it makes an attractive and profitable target for corruption, it will become corrupt. If a people allow their government sufficient power to enslave them, it will. Unless basic human nature is totally altered, it will always be so.
Anyone who DOESN'T believe in class warefare HAS lost their logic and intellectual honesty.
Oh, I believe in class warfare, as it has been used repeatedly in the later 19th and through the 20th century as a tool of Marxist/communist/socialist revolutionaries to incite violence and rebellion. Same with labor unions. Public sector (government worker) unions should never be allowed. It results in politicians and labor leaders deciding how much to fleece the taxpayers for. The public sector unions help keep the politicians in office and the politicians funnel them money and power at the taxpayer's expense.
Government had no business enacting Social Security. It's un-Constitutional. The only reason the SCOTUS allowed key un-Constitutional provisions (which they had threatened to rule against) was because FDR threatened to change the SCOTUS to a (IIRC) 14-seat panel, and load it with his handpicked justices. The SCOTUS caved. Social Security is another means of control. As is government-controlled and/or provided general healthcare and the Federal food stamp program. There are other ways to accomplish the goals they claim to exist to accomplish that don't involve government.
"To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fatherâ(TM)s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of associationâ"the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
- Thomas Jefferson
I think I'll listen to TJ over some fat, corrupt politicians and their equally corrupt political parties. TJ was instrumental in constructing the greatest, freest, richest, most powerful, most scientifically & technologically advanced nation ever in all of history. What have any of those corrupt, lying scumbag politicians in both parties, who almost all seem so eager to trample the Constitution and individual liberty, done that even comes close?
I know that "correlation does not equal causation" and all, but it seems that, looking back over US history, the farther the US Government has strayed beyond it's Constitutional limits and the larger it has grown, the worse things have gotten.
But alas, they failed to check for security holes in the design. Political parties and lobbyists have done an end-run around most of the checks built into the system.
We were warned about political parties, but alas have totally ignored the warnings.
"However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
"They [political parties] serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community." - GEORGE WASHINGTON, Farewell Address, Sep. 17, 1796
It's not the fault of the Constitution nor it's authors that people insist on ignoring their plainly-spoken warnings. That's one of the things that Ben Franklin meant when he answered that woman on what kind of nation the founders established; "A Republic Madame, if you can keep it!".
The correct solution is to forbid government this power to begin with. That, more than anything else, is the core teaching of the US Constitution.
It amazes me how many here buy into the propaganda that anyone who desires that the government obey the US Constitution's limits to the government's scope and powers is somehow an "extremist".
For those confused, let me put the basic idea of the Constitution into different terms.
The US Constitution is the design for a distributed network.
It's a network of power, no different in basic principles to a computer network. The Constitution lays out the basis for a distributed network, with self-checking and redundancy built into the design. The purpose of the design is to distribute political power and it's exercise rather than concentrate it centrally, as basic network security principles assert that a distributed network is much harder to globally (in a systems sense) corrupt than simply compromising a single point of control.
Too much power has been concentrated in one place (the Federal government) over the last 100 years or so and therefor various interests fight for control, as it gives them a way to change things across the entire nation. If power were more distributed, it would be orders of magnitude more difficult and expensive to enact nationwide corrupt laws/policies/etc. Why would some special interest try to bribe/corrupt a member or branch/agency/dept. of the federal government if they don't have the power to do what they want in the first place?
Seriously, I don't understand how so many Slashdotters who in other threads show the ability to understand and point out similar flaws in complex computer and network security systems totally fail to grasp, or dismiss out of hand, the above concepts when applied to networks/systems of political power and the exercise thereof.
This should not be rocket surgery for a bunch of card-carrying Slashdot nerds and geeks, unless they've sold their geek cards to emotional rather than logical identity politics and class warfare, and abandoned logic and intellectual honesty to join in succumbing to emotional mob-mentality political/ideological mass-manipulation.
The authors of the US Constitution were genius systems engineers who were far ahead of their time. From many comments I read almost daily, I suspect they remain far ahead of many in this "modern" age as well, including many if not most of the leaders of both political parties and our elected & unelected officials in the Federal Government.
We don't have reasonable expectation of privacy to our electronic communications, but apparently the govt does. On top of that we pay for it.
Government animals are more equal than others. Questioning Big Brother is double-plus ungood. You are on the list. Say 'hello' to Winston for us when you join him..
I think you meant Panther as panzer is the German word for tank.
"Panzer" sounds very much like the English word "panther" and many US soldiers in WW2 who didn't speak German (like my father in WW2) thought that's what it meant. I pointed this out to my father once long ago and his reply was; "Oh, really? Well, I just shot 'em, I didn't take German lessons from 'em. Cut your hair, ya look like a damned hippy!" LOL!
Because the only cool names in the military are on the unit patches the soldiers wear. Everything else is an acronym for something that sounds like a Terminator T-1000 accessory.
Not only subs and ships as others have mentioned. Aircraft, both fighters and bombers, got very cool names, as did tanks and other armored vehicles. WW2 saw the Flying Fortress, Thunderbolt, Mustang, and Lightning aircraft names for the Allies, with names like Wurger (the "Shrike" or "Butcher Bird" Focke-Wulf 190A series, and the name was very well-earned with FOUR MG-151 20mm cannons standard, along with two 13mm MG-131 machine guns, and the fastest roll-rate of any fighter of the time) for the Germans, and battle tanks like the British Crusader and German Panzer and Tiger. The US decided to name main battle tanks after US generals, so not so cool.
Slashdot Mirror
Seems like the administration was running arms/missiles to Syria via Turkey from Benghazi, which US Ambassador. Stevens brokered. To tie up loose ends, they arranged to have Stevens sent to Benghazi with little security or protection on 9/11 when attacks were likely and left him to die.
Unfortunately for them, this has been picked up and is getting attention. Cue these other scandals (IRS/AP) which they calculated would distract attention from Benghazi. Unfortunately again, for them, instead of distracting from Benghazi, it has morphed in public perception into a "Trifecta of Corruption" in which these individual scandals are reinforcing the others and attracting magnitudes more attention to all the scandals.
People on both sides of the political spectrum are starting to agree, and that spells big trouble for them, and I include the "mainstream"/"old guard" core Republicans. Division is what keeps *both* parties in power...while taking ever more power and freedom from us.
Strat
...That having all these distributed and location-tracked radiation detectors monitored by authorities (I have serious doubts about the government/DHS allowing anything like full and complete public access to the hit-location data) makes this effectively a very powerful tool for tracking individuals/objects/papers/etc of interest to the authorities by simply "tagging", in any number of ways and methods, whatever they want to track with a radioactive substance...liquid, powder, spray, dart, added to food/drink, etc etc.
No wrapping one's head in a damp towel. Better get your ass to Mars!
Strat
No, the ACA does not allow the IRS to access your medical records.
It's also against the law for the IRS to selectively harass people & organizations based on politics/ideology, too.
That's why the people who wrote the US Constitution put strict limits on government power. They understood that any power government has which is possible to abuse as such *will* eventually be used to attack political/ideological opponents to the incumbent political/ideological powers regardless of any restrictions.
This administration in particular has already thoroughly demonstrated an almost complete disregard for the Rule of Law, innocent lives, and individual freedom in pursuit of their political & ideological agendas (Fast & Furious, Benghazi missile-running-to-Syrian-rebels/Muslim Brotherhood cover-up, AP/Congressional phone record seizures, IRS political/ideological-based targeting, etc etc etc).
What makes you think they'd suddenly change? Or is the (Stockholm) Force strong with you?
Strat
Ask and you shall receive.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/05/irs-official-in-charge-during-tea-party-targeting-now-runs-health-care-office/
Strat
So in the U.S. it takes vastly more resources than everywhere else?
Isn't the free market supposed to boost efficiency?
The US has not had anything even close to a "free market" for decades. Particularly regarding anything related to healthcare and pharmaceuticals.
The good news, however, is that there should be no worries about medical records being leaked and/or used against individuals or organizations since the IRS will keep those safe for all of us. They're so eager to begin, they simply walked in and seized without explanation approximately *sixty million* medical records in California that are reported to contain every California State Judge as well as many top Hollywood/media/news execs.
Even better, the IRS official that was in charge of the office targeting individuals and groups for IRS harassment that politically/ideologically oppose this administration has just been put in charge of the IRS's Obamacare office. Better hope your health remains good if you speak out against the government.
Maybe we can get the DoJ to seize the IRS's phone records to find out why, since the DoJ seems to be seizing phone records from everyone else these days, including the AP and phone records from the House of Representatives press gallery which journalists often use to call Congresspeople in their offices.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Strat
Remove the crime numbers from economically disadvantaged regions the crime numbers will also plummet. The problem is not progressive versus regressive politics, or gun ownership or not, but whether or not the neighborhood or regions are very poor with little hope of change. If you have no job and no way to get a job then crime becomes a more viable option. Economics is a bigger factor than fear that your victim might have a gun or not.
Progressives being in control of these cities for decades is WHY their economies have been devastated and gangs & drugs and the violence that follows them are out of control. All gun control does in these cities is assure the victims are defenseless. Most deadly assaults are over in less than a minute, and average police response time is about 8 minutes. They show up in time to draw the chalk outlines and fill out reports. Legislating away the *means* of self-defense is indistinguishable from outlawing self-defense.
If guns are the problem, why aren't there mass murders at NRA conventions and gun shows? I was on my school rifle team and nobody thought anything of a kid bringing his newly-acquired semi-automatic rifle in to school and showing it off to buddies by the student lockers in the main hallway between classes, with students and teachers crowding the hall. The only questions asked were what it cost and have they had a chance to shoot it yet. Nobody was shot. Nobody was panicking.
All the recent mass shootings that are being used as reasons for additional gun restrictions share a common type of location. They all occurred in "gun-free zones" where the criminal was assured of zero opposition.
The US War Against Drugs and the earlier alcohol Prohibition disaster has proven that prohibition does not work. Attempting the same foolishness with guns in the US would result in much worse violence, crime, and government corruption than both those failed policies combined.
The KKK and Southern Democrats tried for decades to keep blacks from owning firearms. Are you saying that you agree with the KKK and want to reverse decades of progress in civil rights for blacks...and everyone else as well? The KKK's hate seems rather limited compared with those who wish everyone suffer under Jim Crow laws making possessing the means for self-defense a crime.
Strat
"First, kill all the lawyers." - Ye olde English playwright dude.
Seeing as how the federal government bureaucracy including the Executive branch is chock-full of lawyers, as are most (I believe) in Congress, I should wonder if some of Nostradamus' DNA was possibly included in Shakespeare's family tree.
Strat
And the US with one of the highest crime rates in the world has one of the highest gun ownership rates.
If you remove the crime numbers from Progressive Democrat-controlled major cities with the strictest gun control laws like Chicago, NYC, etc, the US crime rate is one of the lowest.
Keeping crime and criminals in check requires cooperation and action from both police and citizens. Disarming half the crime-fighting force does not help reduce crime. It not only requires a much larger and more brutal law enforcement arm to maintain order, It turns that disarmed half into helpless victims and erodes trust, legitimacy, and respect for the government and for police, as well as reducing citizen cooperation with police. It promotes increasing hostility by citizens towards police and the government.
This is the reality for the US and it's society & culture. Maybe gun control works in Australia or the UK. If they're happy, that's great. Different solutions to fit different nations and cultures. It's not just gun control. What works in N. Korea wouldn't work in the UK. What works in France wouldn't work in China. Rinse and repeat for other nations/cultures and various laws/policies/etc. This is true for a large number of things including gun control.
Do you think gay marriage would work in Saudi Arabia? Do you think a death penalty for being LGBT would work in the US/UK? Same thing for gun laws seeking a national database/registration and outright bans in the US. It would take an extremely intrusive, controlling, brutal, and tyrannical police state to have any hope of even beginning to enforce such bans/restrictions in the US. Many millions would die.
Strat
I don't believe sovereign immunity applies to government that violates its own Constitution.
Sovereign Immunity applies any way they say it does if those in and employed by government are the only ones allowed to have firearms.
Same with every other law and Right.
You only have the rights and freedoms that you're willing and able to defend with deadly force against even (or in particular) your own government. More people have lost their individual freedoms and their lives to their own governments than they have to any foreign enemy.
These sort of blatant illegal and un-Constitutional behaviors should come as no surprise to anyone that's mildly conversant with history. History teaches us, with example after example, that a government that grows so big and powerful that it becomes capable of enslaving it's people, will, and government will always seek to grow it's size, power, and control towards that end. It's simply human nature and thus the nature of government. Government simply magnifies and concentrates the will of Men, including all the bad qualities.
Government has and always will be much like an essential but dangerously-unstable explosive and should be treated with the same extreme level of caution, tight controls on the amounts used, it's appropriateness as a solution, and the abundance of monitoring and protections employed.
The downside is that governments will only allow their power to be curbed in such ways if there is a significant amount of firepower in the hands of the citizens seeking to enforce those limits, and a belief on the part of the government that the citizens will use it if forced against the wall. People rebelling against the existing government with armed force is precisely how the US came to be.
Strat
One article from a tabloid is the best evidence you can come up with? Fucking gun nut moron.
Fact/info-free ad hominems are apparently the best you can come up with.
Go massage your neurotic-bordering-on-psychotic fears elsewhere with someone that may care for humoring such.
Strat
The amount of skill and equipment you need to gather to put together a Sten has been a barrier for them being home made for criminal purposes in the UK since WW2.
Not too much of a barrier, it seems.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2165531/Its-wild-wild-West-Midlands-Homemade-gun-Uzis-Ak47s-make-huge-haul-firearms-seized-police-just-year.html
Pretty much every developed nation outside the US is a testament to how gun control is possible and can make society better.
Depends on what one considers "better". The people featured in the video linked below might disagree with your premise. "Gun control" didn't work out very well for them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUmKT43j4Tc
Strat
I live in Britain, where handguns are banned and to get a crippled rifle or shotgun you need to jump through a lot of hoops.
I can see this causing a lot of problems
Those frightened of 3D-printed guns in Britain should be much more worried about people making Sten sub-machine guns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sten
You Brits were making them like gangbusters in WW2 precisely because they required almost nothing in the way of machining, special/expensive/high-quality/tight-tolerance parts or materials, skills to make, etc etc. Probably still plenty of old original manufacturing templates, jigs, etc scattered about that anyone interested could buy quite cheaply.
Same minimal requirements are needed to produce something like the International Ordnance MP2: http://olegvolk.net/gallery/d/37779-2/international_ordnance_MP2_0068.jpg
Just check this site out: http://thehomegunsmith.com/
Those are all much greater real-world, practical threats than some geeks 3D-printing a plastic gun that's as likely to kill/maim the shoot-er as the shoot-ee.
Strat
Because you haven't the made the "right" political money contributions, or you might belong to a currently politically un-favored race/class/religion/ideology/private business sector, or believe that government should not trample the Constitution/BOR at it's whim, etc.
There is no rule of law anymore. The Federal government has grown far too large and powerful, and nobody but the occasional scapegoat is ever punished for blatantly-criminal and illegal acts, including murders. They hardly bother to hide it anymore.
There is only rule of & by political expedience in the US anymore. And, political expedience has no rules except to benefit politicians at your ultimate expense, which you might be forced to pay in your wealth,.your liberty, your hopes & dreams for yourself and your children, or your and/or your family's lives. Or in all of the above. But, you and everyone else will pay.
If a central government grows powerful enough to make it worth the risk to corrupt, it will become corrupt, and in rough proportion to the amount of power & control the government has, and will at some point become a positive-feedback loop.
Another thing history has proven again and again is that if a government achieves the power and ability to enslave it's people, it will.
That's why the Constitution was really a plan for a distributed network, only a network to distribute the exercise of government power instead of data, but still very similar in basic security principles to a simple computer network, like avoiding having a central point of commend/control that, if compromised, compromises the entire system. That is exactly what has happened to the US over the last 100 years as the Federal government has grown so massive and gained so many new powers while infringing ever-more on the BOR with every passing day.
The political/ideological versions of malware/botnet criminals have compromised and rooted the "central command & control server" that the US Federal Government has become. It needs to be re-imaged to the last verified and tested-clean version, and returned to it's former minor place in the power network.
Strat
[If you're out in public] Why would you think that you have some sort of right to privacy ?
So you'd be OK with a team of DHS agents following you and recording & archiving everything you do, everywhere you go, who you meet/talk to, and with timestamps, in a search-able government database from the moment you step outside your house until you return?
My neighbor sees me leave home. That fact does not get added to a DHS or other TLA database for analysis against all other available information. The fact that I may have gone to the gun range to target-shoot with friends the morning prior to boarding my airline flight isn't available to provide some TSA parasite an excuse to single me out for an anal-probe.
Strat
Close, but not quite all the way there.
There is only _one_ weapon.
It is the concept residing in the gray-matter of humans.
Everything else is simply the various physical-world implementations of the concept.
A piece of pipe can be plumbing or can bash in a skull.
Unfortunately, history and human nature teaches that humans will always, and usually as the primary impetus for developing it in the first place, use any new technology as some form of weapon and/or means to enhance their power/control over others.
A similar phenomenon exists around new technology that can be used as another means for those in power to catalog, monitor, and control the general populace and what information the population can easily access and share about those in power.
This has the potential to be equally as important and sweeping an issue affecting individual liberty, freedom, and privacy as any other Bill Of Rights issues/arguments we've faced so far. Maybe even more important in some ways.
Eric Schmidt's comments establish that he's either dangerously short-sighted, narrow-minded, and ignorant of history and human nature, or that he's a card-carrying member of those in power who would use this tech to enhance their own power and wealth at the expense of individual liberty, freedom, and privacy for the general population (but not his own, of course).
I'll leave the decision as to which is more true as an exercise for the reader.
Strat
Jeez, hey, just when I thought it was only bad and getting worse with each new piece of horse puckey from Congress, you had to lay that wonderful analysis out there. Thanks heaps, Strat.
What's the color for "not dead yet, but it's looking like a better idea every day that I read more about how much worse it's getting"?
Sorry Kermidge.
But, that's what happens when people wear those rose-colored glasses too long, speaking of colors. US citizens have had their rose-colored glasses on for a century.
It's like that quote from "Morpheus" in the movie "The Matrix": "You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."
Strat
By your reckoning, Australia should have turned into a fascist state by now; let me assure you, it hasn't.
Better ask the aborigines, they may have a slightly different view from yours. How's that right to freedom of speech and the press? Oops. Fascist states (and almost every other authoritarian regime) don't allow people they want to oppress to own firearms. Can I legally buy and possess an AR-15 or Glock 23 in Sydney as a regular citizen?
I will, however, counter your argument as simply as it ever could be by pointing out that regardless of how many rifles, handguns, etc. you own, you will never be able to defeat a military that has the ability to wipe you off of the face of the earth with a few keystrokes.
A significant portion of the military will join the citizens. Besides, how long has that Afghanistan thing against those goat-herders with AKs been going on? Can't they find the right keys to push?
This is simply about personal empowerment -- the ability to shoot at those who 'threaten' you, the comfort that 'if you had to' you could take the life of another human being. It's thinly-veiled psychopathy that becomes blatant once you actually kill somebody.
No, it's about the history in this video I linked to in my OP which totally obliterates your statements, which you still have not addressed nor refuted with any facts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa-lNiIDsFM
If all you've got is more fact-free condescending & contemptuous remarks and emotional hand-waving, don't bother. "Bad guys" will always have guns, they don't obey laws. Police don't prevent crime, they write a report and try to catch those responsible *after the fact*. The only decision is whether or not you're willing to allow people the basic human right to self-defense, or if you'd prefer people be helpless victims.
Here's two more inescapable facts. 1.> It takes a "good guy" with a gun to stop a "bad guy" with a gun. 2.> There are more "good guys" than "bad guys", so more people in general with guns means more "good guys" with guns compared to "bad guys" with guns.
Strat
FYI I'm Australian [youtube.com] and lucky enough to be in a country that has proven gun laws work.
Umm, no.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGq-VWQCEG4
Here's the history of what happens to innocent people when gun control is enacted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa-lNiIDsFM
You might also Google the US "Battle of Athens".
And, why do supposedly "progressive", forward-thinking people want to undo black civil rights in the US and give the KKK a retroactive victory in reinstating, after the huge civil-rights battle it took to abolish them, the infamous "Black Laws" from the early-1900s that forbid blacks from owning or possessing guns & ammo, only this time, it's everybody's civil rights being crushed under the heel of tyranny?
I guess the familiar and unchanging weight of slave chains are a comfort to some people who can't manage their own lives and behavior without being rendered helpless and defenseless, and told what to do and when by armed authority.
The only people gun control has ever actually worked for are criminals and governments which are often indistinguishable from each other, particularly after the general public has been disarmed.
Strat
At least patents only last about 20 years, which while an annoyingly long time that is short enough that the original physical media on which content is sold and the devices to read it will likely last that long.
Copyrights OTOH seem to keep receiving retroactive extensions and afaict the anti-cirumvention stuff has no expiry at all so they are much bigger threats to preservation of our cultural history.
With no common cultural history references, "culture" can be more easily manipulated by those in power to best suit their needs and ideology.
It's Big Brother making Winston's day-job for the regime rewriting history obsolete before he's born. Nothing to re -write. No history but their version. Unlock old information/data/cultural works and go to prison.
It doesn't get much more Orwellian/authoritarian than that, folks. Hell, it's even worse than Orwell imagined!
And, it has absolutely nothing to do with political parties. There are no innocents in government or either major party.
History makes a couple of things quite clear. If a people allow their government so much central power that it makes an attractive and profitable target for corruption, it will become corrupt. If a people allow their government sufficient power to enslave them, it will. Unless basic human nature is totally altered, it will always be so.
Strat
Anyone who DOESN'T believe in class warefare HAS lost their logic and intellectual honesty.
Oh, I believe in class warfare, as it has been used repeatedly in the later 19th and through the 20th century as a tool of Marxist/communist/socialist revolutionaries to incite violence and rebellion. Same with labor unions. Public sector (government worker) unions should never be allowed. It results in politicians and labor leaders deciding how much to fleece the taxpayers for. The public sector unions help keep the politicians in office and the politicians funnel them money and power at the taxpayer's expense.
Government had no business enacting Social Security. It's un-Constitutional. The only reason the SCOTUS allowed key un-Constitutional provisions (which they had threatened to rule against) was because FDR threatened to change the SCOTUS to a (IIRC) 14-seat panel, and load it with his handpicked justices. The SCOTUS caved. Social Security is another means of control. As is government-controlled and/or provided general healthcare and the Federal food stamp program. There are other ways to accomplish the goals they claim to exist to accomplish that don't involve government.
"To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fatherâ(TM)s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of associationâ"the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
- Thomas Jefferson
I think I'll listen to TJ over some fat, corrupt politicians and their equally corrupt political parties. TJ was instrumental in constructing the greatest, freest, richest, most powerful, most scientifically & technologically advanced nation ever in all of history. What have any of those corrupt, lying scumbag politicians in both parties, who almost all seem so eager to trample the Constitution and individual liberty, done that even comes close?
I know that "correlation does not equal causation" and all, but it seems that, looking back over US history, the farther the US Government has strayed beyond it's Constitutional limits and the larger it has grown, the worse things have gotten.
Strat
But alas, they failed to check for security holes in the design. Political parties and lobbyists have done an end-run around most of the checks built into the system.
We were warned about political parties, but alas have totally ignored the warnings.
"However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
"They [political parties] serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community." - GEORGE WASHINGTON, Farewell Address, Sep. 17, 1796
It's not the fault of the Constitution nor it's authors that people insist on ignoring their plainly-spoken warnings. That's one of the things that Ben Franklin meant when he answered that woman on what kind of nation the founders established; "A Republic Madame, if you can keep it!".
Strat
The correct solution is to forbid government this power to begin with. That, more than anything else, is the core teaching of the US Constitution.
It amazes me how many here buy into the propaganda that anyone who desires that the government obey the US Constitution's limits to the government's scope and powers is somehow an "extremist".
For those confused, let me put the basic idea of the Constitution into different terms.
The US Constitution is the design for a distributed network.
It's a network of power, no different in basic principles to a computer network. The Constitution lays out the basis for a distributed network, with self-checking and redundancy built into the design. The purpose of the design is to distribute political power and it's exercise rather than concentrate it centrally, as basic network security principles assert that a distributed network is much harder to globally (in a systems sense) corrupt than simply compromising a single point of control.
Too much power has been concentrated in one place (the Federal government) over the last 100 years or so and therefor various interests fight for control, as it gives them a way to change things across the entire nation. If power were more distributed, it would be orders of magnitude more difficult and expensive to enact nationwide corrupt laws/policies/etc. Why would some special interest try to bribe/corrupt a member or branch/agency/dept. of the federal government if they don't have the power to do what they want in the first place?
Seriously, I don't understand how so many Slashdotters who in other threads show the ability to understand and point out similar flaws in complex computer and network security systems totally fail to grasp, or dismiss out of hand, the above concepts when applied to networks/systems of political power and the exercise thereof.
This should not be rocket surgery for a bunch of card-carrying Slashdot nerds and geeks, unless they've sold their geek cards to emotional rather than logical identity politics and class warfare, and abandoned logic and intellectual honesty to join in succumbing to emotional mob-mentality political/ideological mass-manipulation.
The authors of the US Constitution were genius systems engineers who were far ahead of their time. From many comments I read almost daily, I suspect they remain far ahead of many in this "modern" age as well, including many if not most of the leaders of both political parties and our elected & unelected officials in the Federal Government.
Strat
We don't have reasonable expectation of privacy to our electronic communications, but apparently the govt does. On top of that we pay for it.
Government animals are more equal than others. Questioning Big Brother is double-plus ungood. You are on the list. Say 'hello' to Winston for us when you join him..
Strat
"Panzer" sounds very much like the English word "panther" and many US soldiers in WW2 who didn't speak German (like my father in WW2) thought that's what it meant. I pointed this out to my father once long ago and his reply was; "Oh, really? Well, I just shot 'em, I didn't take German lessons from 'em. Cut your hair, ya look like a damned hippy!" LOL!
Strat
Because the only cool names in the military are on the unit patches the soldiers wear. Everything else is an acronym for something that sounds like a Terminator T-1000 accessory.
Not only subs and ships as others have mentioned. Aircraft, both fighters and bombers, got very cool names, as did tanks and other armored vehicles. WW2 saw the Flying Fortress, Thunderbolt, Mustang, and Lightning aircraft names for the Allies, with names like Wurger (the "Shrike" or "Butcher Bird" Focke-Wulf 190A series, and the name was very well-earned with FOUR MG-151 20mm cannons standard, along with two 13mm MG-131 machine guns, and the fastest roll-rate of any fighter of the time) for the Germans, and battle tanks like the British Crusader and German Panzer and Tiger. The US decided to name main battle tanks after US generals, so not so cool.
Strat