Unfortunately peaceful protesters can be completely ignored by the government and the following can be suppressed by police officers who already see the world through "us vs them" shaded glasses:
People "resisting arrest". People not sucking up to said authorities. People refusing to turn in their weapons when so commanded. People disobeying any law, however vague or unjust.
Those protesting nonviolently can be ignored and those protesting violently can be shot. Furthermore leaders of protesting groups can be harassed, imprisoned, and framed. and these things are happening right now in today's America. That only violent protesters will likely be attacked by military units is no a comfort to me in a place that has city, county, state, and federal police officers actively suppressing my rights, my voice, and my person.
Police usually have even closer ties to local communities and the people in them than the military. Even so, there will be a number that will follow whatever orders are given by government, even illegal ones. Keep in mind however that there already exist unofficial police "no-go" areas where they simply will not patrol due to the danger. I don't think many would be willing to drive through a hail of small arms fire (and some not-so-small arms...there are quite a number of underground arms collectors who have some serious, if unregistered/illegal, hardware out there plus I'm sure that under those conditions the people would raid their local NG Armories as well), Molotov cocktails, and IEDs to arrest Granny for "making illegal protest signs" or something.
Any attempt to become an occupying force in the US will be a much greater nightmare for those foolish enough to attempt it than even what the WW2 Nazi troops in Leningrad experienced or anything our troops have experienced in Baghdad, Fallujah, or Afghanistan.
You know your government has tanks, missiles, stealth bombers and is on its way to warships with laser cannons right?
Are these all robotic weapons, or are the vast majority of them wielded by citizens (whose families and friends would be the target of attack) who happened to volunteer for service?
Somehow I think "Gunny" would have a problem fragging Granny & the kids for holding a protest sign in the city park. He'd be far more likely find the worthless, grab-ass-tic, pieces of amphibian shit politicians who gave the order, poke out their fucking eyeballs, and skull-fuck them until they fucking die!. (Ahh, gotta love Full Metal Jacket!:D )
I've lived around those in the US military most of my life, known a fair number well, and all those I've met would almost certainly refuse to follow orders to fire on US citizens that were peacefully protesting un-Constitutional actions by the government. Of all the branches of the US government currently, I trust the US military far more than any other part to protect the People and our nation from politicians that would order civilians killed for domestic political reasons.
Citation, I don't believe that's presently the case. Not that it means anything given how much activism has been going on with the SCOTUS lately. Ever since W started packing it with underqualified loonies.
You'd better check your history. FDR was ready to increase the number of SC Justices (as he decided an attempt to dissolve/reform the SC might get him impeached) so he could pack the court in order to pass sections of the New Deal that the SC originally rejected which frustrated his plans. He eventually got the SC to go along. I think it was Social Security, maybe? Don't remember off the top of my head. Judicial activism has historically been a favorite tool of Progressives in implementing new policies, laws, and "positive rights" suddenly discovered in a document that's existed for over two centuries without anyone finding any such "rights" previously.
That's what the name "Progressive" means; to "progress" past the Constitution. Unfortunately, once it's deemed OK for the government to ignore any part of the Constitution for even a "good" reason, the areas ignored experience "creep" such that eventually the government operates further and further outside of the Constitution with impunity, becoming a de facto totalitarian government. Many are now of the opinion we are already experiencing a "soft tyranny" which is growing by leaps and bounds.
Quantum entanglement-based teleportation will enable us to create robots, teleport them to far away lands, and then said robot will teleport back the video, sensor data, etc instantly as if it were a computer sitting on the floor next to you.
Is that before or after we send John Travolta to teleport the giant poison-gas-carriers to depopulate all the "animals" from the "client" planet? Or do we fire AGMs at their home-trees? I guess it depends on if the natives are tall & blue, I suppose.
What, didn't you ever wonder where the next generation of record label, movie industry, and **IAA execs were going to come from? Quite the vocational education investment, even tailored to support local industry!
After all, you've really got to start such specialized industry training early to build up stamina and dosage-tolerance levels while lowering internal moral inhibitions against dishonesty before seeing professional levels of consumption & corruption after they move into the workforce.
Yeah, the government helping a 7 year old run a lemonade stand is really a good use of taxpayer dollars when our economy is on the brink of collapse.
Whatever gave anyone the impression the government (either/both parties) could even successfully run a lemonade stand, and particularly without their presence as a partner giving it advantages over non-government "assisted" lemonade stands, thus shrinking the number/size of the non-"assisted" competition and thus consumer market choice?
Larger governments mean more senseless bureaucratic/legal/regulatory/etc enforcement stupidities, mistakes, and plain incompetence because people tend to do what gets them the least for the most, including (especially?) career government bureaucrats. The actual ramifications of their decisions typically occur far away, often involving people and local conditions & facts they have no clue about or even be hostile towards, but it's in their better interest to fill in the "correct" check-boxes and provide the "expected" answers on the government-mandated forms and not rock the boat until retirement.
This is just one of the effects that have most often resulted when human nature and large bureaucracies with size & power mix, and would seem historically to correlate more closely with a government's size to an even greater degree than what ideological basis and/or type of government structure it operates from. It seems that the larger government of any type becomes, the more numerous and serious "system errors" become as each layer of complexity and reach adds more and more less-than-idealistic, human-nature "noise" into the system, until it "crashes" (economic/social/political collapse).
I wish they took the RISC approach. If the law has 15 parts, then pass 15 different laws.
Then the Republicans would have to filibuster fifteen times as many bills.
Yeah! Those dirty Republocrats! Just wait until the Demopublicans get elected!
Step back, put down the partisan kool-aid both parties use to distract you, and open your eyes. The only real differences these days are "wedge" issues designed to inflame and divide without bringing about any real change in the direction the country is heading (hint; look up the Weimar Republic. The US is doing almost exactly the same things that led to the Weimar Republic collapsing and the rise of Hitler and the NSDAP/Nazis).
I don't quite understand why a legislation on Net Neutrality would "lead to increased prices, decreased availability, and decreased access".
I don't understand it, either. When they actually have a bill that contains *only* network neutrality (rules on fair practices regarding routing, throttling, etc) then we may know if it would. However, the legislation proposed so far is huge, and the actual "network neutrality" portions are but a small part. Maybe it's the many hundreds of pages of proposed law that have very little, if any, bearing on actual network operation that they are concerned with?
What's even worse with so much legislation in the last few decades (and a trend that seems to be accelerating) is that Congress (no matter the party in power) often write laws that simply grant (or create) some government department populated with unelected bureaucrats broad powers to create rules & regulations with the force of law (basically doing the job of Congress without having elections as a check).
I actually agree here. Maybe not a full classic "invasion", if it could be avoided. What ended up being done is just about nothing since the Saudis have oil and money to funnel to generous "friends" of politicians of both parties. It's totally stupid for the US, in a purely military/security sense, to not take serious steps to neutralize a hotbed of fanatical religious indoctrination, recruitment, and finance for the attack(s).
The US is clearly not fighting to win, all because of US politicians who would waste US lives to win reelection, enrich themselves, and increase their own power.
But it is also true that Al Qaeda had the majority of their Middle East-based training/supply/weapons bases along with fighters & leadership inside Afghanistan with the permission and encouragement of the Taliban who were ruling Afghanistan at the time of the attacks and providing a safe haven. That was judged at the time the most likely source of follow-on attacks/attackers that were not already staging in the US, and the quickest way to disrupt the Al Qaeda command structure & network.
At first, I bought the "harm" line like anyone else.
Then I started to think. Who put these kids in harm's way? The guy who sent them into a war zone, or the guy who publishes the paper trail?
How about the Taliban that were in charge in Afghanistan that cooperated with and allowed terrorists to set up bases there who then sent people to attack the US, hijack civilian aircraft with innocent passengers, and crash them into the WTC towers killing ~3,000 innocent people?
The existing WikiLeaks documents contain 10-digit grid-squares, allowing people to know the location of various military resources down to the square meter. This is absolutely not required for any sort of public purpose -- the public would be just as informed if you would omit the grid-squares and replace them with a vague location/district.
This can be done without wasting any manpower, something like this regex pattern will redact all collections of more than 5 numerical digits:
sed -r s/'[0-9]{5,}'/'REDACTED'/g
If the grid-squares are broken into chunks with a delimiter, say '-', you can try:
sed -r s/'[0-9\\-]{5,}'/'REDACTED'/g
As usual with regex, grep out the first 1000 or so matches for casual perusal before you let them loose.
There is really no excuse, including lack of manpower, for removing these sorts of details that add nothing to public's knowledge but reveal very useful operational details.
Thank you! Finally!
Please mod this up.
This is probably the first really practical, pragmatic, realistic, and helpful contribution I've read/heard so far in this entire mess!
"W0b" is absolutely correct as well in his identification of the grid-reference markers as probably THE most damaging information with the greatest probability of causing people to die who otherwise might not. That level of detail and locational precision is considered hard theater-of-operations tactical battlefield intelligence, from which weapons can be targeted and attacks planned & coordinated. This is information that a commander would have nightmares about being in the hands of an enemy.
As a life-long atheist who's had many more "libertarians" try to cram religion down my throat than government agencies, I personally find this hard to swallow.
Just imagine another John Ashcroft with regulatory power over the internet.
Just like pretty much everything you proclaimed as "fact" in previous posts is easily disproved, because your statements are false.
[citation needed]
Or was that your attempt at Jedi mind-control?
[waves hand]"These aren't the facts & truths you're looking for."?
Sorry.
As they say, you're entitled to any opinion you like, but you're not entitled to your own facts, even though there's been quite a bit of attempted history-revision the last 100 years or so by Progressives to hide the historical evidence left by their failed ideology & policies from the current general population.
Get 535 of these ready for implant and equipped with a basic math & econ101 enhancement module and send them on your fastest aircraft along with a team of implant technicians to Washington DC.
History is also littered with good outcomes as a result of government taking power away from those private parties.
Yes, it worked out wonderfully for the people of the old USSR, Cuba, and even our friends in Venezuela, etc etc.
Why is it so popular these days to think that adding directly-conflicting elements & principles from governments of countries & people that are less free, prosperous, powerful, and do less for the needy worldwide to the one country and government whose people ARE the most free, prosperous, powerful, and do the most for the needy worldwide is, somehow, a *good* idea?
Seems like that would eventually qualify that one country for an international Darwin Award. Just sayin'.
When has the government ever not had the power to regulate the internet? Heck, it created the darn thing in the first place.
Oh, I dunno...maybe that silly old piece of paper crazy old people rant about that has some stupid "Article" or some such that goes something like; "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." (and I'm sure other parts might apply as well in limiting that power). But that's just the racist, homophobic, religious-fanatic ramblings of old, dead, slave-owning, Deist white men that hated the poor, right?
Although I'm guessing there will certainly be some economic impact, I'm also guessing it wouldn't be enough to drive any majors under.
How could it have any economic impact, when the status quo is basically net neutrality? It's not like anybody is currently making a profit from non-net-neutrality.
If nothing else, there will be costs to document ongoing compliance.
as it has been shown throughout history that once a government gains regulatory control over something, it always expands it's powers through the continual adding of new regulations
Always? Then how do you explain the periods of deregulation that happened during the 80s and 90s in many Western countries? Nice strawman, though.
"Deregulation" is typically minimal and temporary (a decade or two is "temporary" to immortal governments and corporations) if not completely illusory in nature, usually used as a payback to a political backer/ally. The game is not static in regards to increasing regulation/intrusion into other areas while temporary "deregulation" is occurring in the one area. When has a government ever decided to completely stop regulating something once it starts? Although it may be possible to find an example with enough searching, such occurrences are rare enough to validate the general principle.
Governments seek to expand their power, reach, and control. That's just a fact.
Except when they reduce their power, and hand it over to corporations, which is not uncommon. Nice strawman, though.
It is still the government, just a new form. In your example, that would make it a fascist government a la Mussolini. The US is currently heading to somewhere between Vichy France and the Vimar Republic.
History shows that sort of thing never ends well for the people that allow too much of it to happen.
Where by "that sort of thing" you mean another strawman, right?
I clearly meant handing over power to, or allowing power to be taken by, government. There's no strawman. The government gaining regulatory power over the internet is handing them/allowing them to take, power. History is littered with examples of bad outcomes when governments are allowed too much power. That's one of the reasons the US was founded, and although we seem to have forgotten this lesson, we're about due for an unpleasant reminder if we remain on this path.
So if there are few choices for many now, we fix this by eliminating what choices that do exist?
How would Net Neutrality eliminate choices of vendor? Are you claiming that ISPs would go out of business because of NN legislation?
Although I'm guessing there will certainly be some economic impact, I'm also guessing it wouldn't be enough to drive any majors under.
Maybe I could have been more clear by what I meant as being included in my use of the term "choices". I am actually more concerned in the limitations, restrictions, regulations, and laws that would continue to be heaped on every provider as time goes on, as it has been shown throughout history that once a government gains regulatory control over something, it always expands it's powers through the continual adding of new regulations, often by unelected government bureaucrats that don't answer to the people.
As a quick example, currently if some provider throttles/blocks bittorrent, one has at least the theoretical ability to move to an area serviced by a provider that doesn't throttle bittorrent. If the government adds a sop to their *IAA/Disney lobbyists to block bittorrent, your only choice is immigration. A provider also can't legally send large armed men to kick in your door and haul you off to a jail cell or shoot you if you resist (no matter how much we're all sure many providers would in a heartbeat if they could).
My take on the whole thing is that there needs to be a way to insure fair networking/protocol/routing/throttling practices without handing over regulatory control to the government. Governments seek to expand their power, reach, and control. That's just a fact. It seems the height of folly to hand over control of the most powerful communication tool ever created...particularly in it's ability to allow anyone to alert, organize, and push back against government abuses... to any government body. That's the fox guarding the hen-house. History shows that sort of thing never ends well for the people that allow too much of it to happen.
So if there are few choices for many now, we fix this by eliminating what choices that do exist?
My problem with NN isn't the traffic-equality and routing-priority regulation aspects. That only takes a few pages of legislation at most to accomplish. My problem is the huge, bloated, vaguely-worded legislation that Congress will pass that contains things most here would *not* be okay with, including things that have no bearing on NN at all, and/or remove individual freedoms we enjoy currently.
In order for government size and power to grow, citizens' wealth and freedoms must shrink proportionately.
Sad, sad, sad, that you think that was a proper response. Blame me for "regurgitating" (without evidence, naturally), and then go for a dictionary definition. Such lovely hypocrisy. That was also a wonderfully subjective- and completely off-topic point.
It's all nice and well to claim your interpretation of the constitution mandates your wishes but SCOTUS hasn't yet declared Bush's massive expansion of government unconstitutional, Republicans still dodge questions about supporting Bush's fiscal irresponsibility, and free markets have quite recently demonstrated their failure points.
Care to try again?
Nice strawman. I took no political position in my statement, nor offered any opinions on the constitutionality of any recent legislation. I simply pointed out that the Tea Party has a clearly-stated purpose right there for anyone to read that is interested in facts rather than partisan demagoguery. Those in the Tea Party say they are just as upset (if not more so) with Republican spending, cronyism, and expansions of government power as they are the Democrats.
IMHO, SCOTUS won't need to rule on the constitutionality of most of what has been recently passed one way or another, as the next two elections will almost certainly see a massive power-shift in Congress and the Presidency and they will simply repeal, refuse to fund, or otherwise nullify what has been done. That is, if they hope to be re-elected, they will.
That's just callin' 'em as I see 'em, looking at current trends. Personally, I think both major parties have forgotten who they work for, and need a good electoral smack-down. Part of the reason is people in elected office with partisan blinders on like yourself, that value victory for their political party over anything else.
The problem with all these stupid calls to read the Declaration and Constitution is teabaggers seem to equate unelected tyranny with LOSING THE ELECTION BECAUSE THEY WERE THE FUCKING MINORITY
Instead of regurgitating what you've read or heard somewhere else, why not go to the source? Or does that cramp your partisanship?
"The impetus for the Tea Party movement is excessive government spending and taxation. Our mission is to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets."
A lot of environmentalists are in favor of a direct carbon tax. Progressives, though, prefer cap-and-trade for two reasons. Number One, they favor practically all new taxes on principle. Number Two, cap-and-trade will require the trading of carbon credits which will be an effective tax on the whole already-shaky economy, so the prominent Progressives like Al Gore and Obama's Chicago cronies who will run the trading exchange(s) will make tons of money and gain a lot of power & influence if it happens.
Slashdot Mirror
Just don't write fiction about child molestation and you're fine, even the US has its limits on free speech.
Wait, what? As far as I'm aware, writing a fictional story is not illegal in the US regardless of subject.
Otherwise, the government has been ignoring blatant lawbreaking as seen here;
http://www.literotica.com/
http://www.asstr.org/
Strat
Unfortunately peaceful protesters can be completely ignored by the government and the following can be suppressed by police officers who already see the world through "us vs them" shaded glasses:
People "resisting arrest". People not sucking up to said authorities. People refusing to turn in their weapons when so commanded. People disobeying any law, however vague or unjust.
Those protesting nonviolently can be ignored and those protesting violently can be shot. Furthermore leaders of protesting groups can be harassed, imprisoned, and framed. and these things are happening right now in today's America. That only violent protesters will likely be attacked by military units is no a comfort to me in a place that has city, county, state, and federal police officers actively suppressing my rights, my voice, and my person.
Police usually have even closer ties to local communities and the people in them than the military. Even so, there will be a number that will follow whatever orders are given by government, even illegal ones. Keep in mind however that there already exist unofficial police "no-go" areas where they simply will not patrol due to the danger. I don't think many would be willing to drive through a hail of small arms fire (and some not-so-small arms...there are quite a number of underground arms collectors who have some serious, if unregistered/illegal, hardware out there plus I'm sure that under those conditions the people would raid their local NG Armories as well), Molotov cocktails, and IEDs to arrest Granny for "making illegal protest signs" or something.
Any attempt to become an occupying force in the US will be a much greater nightmare for those foolish enough to attempt it than even what the WW2 Nazi troops in Leningrad experienced or anything our troops have experienced in Baghdad, Fallujah, or Afghanistan.
Strat
peaceful protests don't have anything to do with the second amendment.
Better inform the NRA of this change in history.
Strat
You know your government has tanks, missiles, stealth bombers and is on its way to warships with laser cannons right?
Are these all robotic weapons, or are the vast majority of them wielded by citizens (whose families and friends would be the target of attack) who happened to volunteer for service?
Somehow I think "Gunny" would have a problem fragging Granny & the kids for holding a protest sign in the city park. He'd be far more likely find the worthless, grab-ass-tic, pieces of amphibian shit politicians who gave the order, poke out their fucking eyeballs, and skull-fuck them until they fucking die!. (Ahh, gotta love Full Metal Jacket! :D )
I've lived around those in the US military most of my life, known a fair number well, and all those I've met would almost certainly refuse to follow orders to fire on US citizens that were peacefully protesting un-Constitutional actions by the government. Of all the branches of the US government currently, I trust the US military far more than any other part to protect the People and our nation from politicians that would order civilians killed for domestic political reasons.
Strat
Citation, I don't believe that's presently the case. Not that it means anything given how much activism has been going on with the SCOTUS lately. Ever since W started packing it with underqualified loonies.
You'd better check your history. FDR was ready to increase the number of SC Justices (as he decided an attempt to dissolve/reform the SC might get him impeached) so he could pack the court in order to pass sections of the New Deal that the SC originally rejected which frustrated his plans. He eventually got the SC to go along. I think it was Social Security, maybe? Don't remember off the top of my head. Judicial activism has historically been a favorite tool of Progressives in implementing new policies, laws, and "positive rights" suddenly discovered in a document that's existed for over two centuries without anyone finding any such "rights" previously.
That's what the name "Progressive" means; to "progress" past the Constitution. Unfortunately, once it's deemed OK for the government to ignore any part of the Constitution for even a "good" reason, the areas ignored experience "creep" such that eventually the government operates further and further outside of the Constitution with impunity, becoming a de facto totalitarian government. Many are now of the opinion we are already experiencing a "soft tyranny" which is growing by leaps and bounds.
Strat
Quantum entanglement-based teleportation will enable us to create robots, teleport them to far away lands, and then said robot will teleport back the video, sensor data, etc instantly as if it were a computer sitting on the floor next to you.
Is that before or after we send John Travolta to teleport the giant poison-gas-carriers to depopulate all the "animals" from the "client" planet? Or do we fire AGMs at their home-trees? I guess it depends on if the natives are tall & blue, I suppose.
Interstellar travel is hard!
Strat
Evian.
Nah, think! This is *Cali*, man!
Hookers and blow, of course!
What, didn't you ever wonder where the next generation of record label, movie industry, and **IAA execs were going to come from? Quite the vocational education investment, even tailored to support local industry!
After all, you've really got to start such specialized industry training early to build up stamina and dosage-tolerance levels while lowering internal moral inhibitions against dishonesty before seeing professional levels of consumption & corruption after they move into the workforce.
Strat
...what gets them the most for the least
FTFMe! :P
Yeah, the government helping a 7 year old run a lemonade stand is really a good use of taxpayer dollars when our economy is on the brink of collapse.
Whatever gave anyone the impression the government (either/both parties) could even successfully run a lemonade stand, and particularly without their presence as a partner giving it advantages over non-government "assisted" lemonade stands, thus shrinking the number/size of the non-"assisted" competition and thus consumer market choice?
Larger governments mean more senseless bureaucratic/legal/regulatory/etc enforcement stupidities, mistakes, and plain incompetence because people tend to do what gets them the least for the most, including (especially?) career government bureaucrats. The actual ramifications of their decisions typically occur far away, often involving people and local conditions & facts they have no clue about or even be hostile towards, but it's in their better interest to fill in the "correct" check-boxes and provide the "expected" answers on the government-mandated forms and not rock the boat until retirement.
This is just one of the effects that have most often resulted when human nature and large bureaucracies with size & power mix, and would seem historically to correlate more closely with a government's size to an even greater degree than what ideological basis and/or type of government structure it operates from. It seems that the larger government of any type becomes, the more numerous and serious "system errors" become as each layer of complexity and reach adds more and more less-than-idealistic, human-nature "noise" into the system, until it "crashes" (economic/social/political collapse).
Strat
You mean the RFID's with huge batteries that need constant charging and aren't called "RFID"s anymore?
Whoever modded my post as troll should look up how RFID actually works then try to work out a practical way for the AC's suggestion to work.
No, sorry. You should have read the post you were replying to.
OP: Dozens of RFID detectors that do broadcast GPS coordinates into space will be responsible for that part.
Although I would have modded you "Offtopic" or "Overated", not "Troll" as you weren't trolling.
Strat
I wish they took the RISC approach. If the law has 15 parts, then pass 15 different laws.
Then the Republicans would have to filibuster fifteen times as many bills.
Yeah! Those dirty Republocrats! Just wait until the Demopublicans get elected!
Step back, put down the partisan kool-aid both parties use to distract you, and open your eyes. The only real differences these days are "wedge" issues designed to inflame and divide without bringing about any real change in the direction the country is heading (hint; look up the Weimar Republic. The US is doing almost exactly the same things that led to the Weimar Republic collapsing and the rise of Hitler and the NSDAP/Nazis).
Strat
I don't quite understand why a legislation on Net Neutrality would "lead to increased prices, decreased availability, and decreased access".
I don't understand it, either. When they actually have a bill that contains *only* network neutrality (rules on fair practices regarding routing, throttling, etc) then we may know if it would. However, the legislation proposed so far is huge, and the actual "network neutrality" portions are but a small part. Maybe it's the many hundreds of pages of proposed law that have very little, if any, bearing on actual network operation that they are concerned with?
What's even worse with so much legislation in the last few decades (and a trend that seems to be accelerating) is that Congress (no matter the party in power) often write laws that simply grant (or create) some government department populated with unelected bureaucrats broad powers to create rules & regulations with the force of law (basically doing the job of Congress without having elections as a check).
Strat
you would have invaded Saudi Arabia
I actually agree here. Maybe not a full classic "invasion", if it could be avoided. What ended up being done is just about nothing since the Saudis have oil and money to funnel to generous "friends" of politicians of both parties. It's totally stupid for the US, in a purely military/security sense, to not take serious steps to neutralize a hotbed of fanatical religious indoctrination, recruitment, and finance for the attack(s).
The US is clearly not fighting to win, all because of US politicians who would waste US lives to win reelection, enrich themselves, and increase their own power.
But it is also true that Al Qaeda had the majority of their Middle East-based training/supply/weapons bases along with fighters & leadership inside Afghanistan with the permission and encouragement of the Taliban who were ruling Afghanistan at the time of the attacks and providing a safe haven. That was judged at the time the most likely source of follow-on attacks/attackers that were not already staging in the US, and the quickest way to disrupt the Al Qaeda command structure & network.
Strat
At first, I bought the "harm" line like anyone else.
Then I started to think. Who put these kids in harm's way? The guy who sent them into a war zone, or the guy who publishes the paper trail?
How about the Taliban that were in charge in Afghanistan that cooperated with and allowed terrorists to set up bases there who then sent people to attack the US, hijack civilian aircraft with innocent passengers, and crash them into the WTC towers killing ~3,000 innocent people?
But that's probably too "black & white".
Strat
The existing WikiLeaks documents contain 10-digit grid-squares, allowing people to know the location of various military resources down to the square meter. This is absolutely not required for any sort of public purpose -- the public would be just as informed if you would omit the grid-squares and replace them with a vague location/district.
This can be done without wasting any manpower, something like this regex pattern will redact all collections of more than 5 numerical digits:
sed -r s/'[0-9]{5,}'/'REDACTED'/g
If the grid-squares are broken into chunks with a delimiter, say '-', you can try:
sed -r s/'[0-9\\-]{5,}'/'REDACTED'/g
As usual with regex, grep out the first 1000 or so matches for casual perusal before you let them loose.
There is really no excuse, including lack of manpower, for removing these sorts of details that add nothing to public's knowledge but reveal very useful operational details.
Thank you! Finally!
Please mod this up.
This is probably the first really practical, pragmatic, realistic, and helpful contribution I've read/heard so far in this entire mess!
"W0b" is absolutely correct as well in his identification of the grid-reference markers as probably THE most damaging information with the greatest probability of causing people to die who otherwise might not. That level of detail and locational precision is considered hard theater-of-operations tactical battlefield intelligence, from which weapons can be targeted and attacks planned & coordinated. This is information that a commander would have nightmares about being in the hands of an enemy.
Bravo, sir!
Strat
no packets that contain atheist sentiments, etc.
As a life-long atheist who's had many more "libertarians" try to cram religion down my throat than government agencies, I personally find this hard to swallow.
Just imagine another John Ashcroft with regulatory power over the internet.
Strat
Just like pretty much everything you proclaimed as "fact" in previous posts is easily disproved, because your statements are false.
[citation needed]
Or was that your attempt at Jedi mind-control?
[waves hand]"These aren't the facts & truths you're looking for."?
Sorry.
As they say, you're entitled to any opinion you like, but you're not entitled to your own facts, even though there's been quite a bit of attempted history-revision the last 100 years or so by Progressives to hide the historical evidence left by their failed ideology & policies from the current general population.
Strat
Get 535 of these ready for implant and equipped with a basic math & econ101 enhancement module and send them on your fastest aircraft along with a team of implant technicians to Washington DC.
Stat!!
History is also littered with good outcomes as a result of government taking power away from those private parties.
Yes, it worked out wonderfully for the people of the old USSR, Cuba, and even our friends in Venezuela, etc etc.
Why is it so popular these days to think that adding directly-conflicting elements & principles from governments of countries & people that are less free, prosperous, powerful, and do less for the needy worldwide to the one country and government whose people ARE the most free, prosperous, powerful, and do the most for the needy worldwide is, somehow, a *good* idea?
Seems like that would eventually qualify that one country for an international Darwin Award. Just sayin'.
When has the government ever not had the power to regulate the internet? Heck, it created the darn thing in the first place.
Oh, I dunno...maybe that silly old piece of paper crazy old people rant about that has some stupid "Article" or some such that goes something like; "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." (and I'm sure other parts might apply as well in limiting that power). But that's just the racist, homophobic, religious-fanatic ramblings of old, dead, slave-owning, Deist white men that hated the poor, right?
Strat
Although I'm guessing there will certainly be some economic impact, I'm also guessing it wouldn't be enough to drive any majors under.
How could it have any economic impact, when the status quo is basically net neutrality? It's not like anybody is currently making a profit from non-net-neutrality.
If nothing else, there will be costs to document ongoing compliance.
as it has been shown throughout history that once a government gains regulatory control over something, it always expands it's powers through the continual adding of new regulations
Always? Then how do you explain the periods of deregulation that happened during the 80s and 90s in many Western countries? Nice strawman, though.
"Deregulation" is typically minimal and temporary (a decade or two is "temporary" to immortal governments and corporations) if not completely illusory in nature, usually used as a payback to a political backer/ally. The game is not static in regards to increasing regulation/intrusion into other areas while temporary "deregulation" is occurring in the one area. When has a government ever decided to completely stop regulating something once it starts? Although it may be possible to find an example with enough searching, such occurrences are rare enough to validate the general principle.
Governments seek to expand their power, reach, and control. That's just a fact.
Except when they reduce their power, and hand it over to corporations, which is not uncommon. Nice strawman, though.
It is still the government, just a new form. In your example, that would make it a fascist government a la Mussolini. The US is currently heading to somewhere between Vichy France and the Vimar Republic.
History shows that sort of thing never ends well for the people that allow too much of it to happen.
Where by "that sort of thing" you mean another strawman, right?
I clearly meant handing over power to, or allowing power to be taken by, government. There's no strawman. The government gaining regulatory power over the internet is handing them/allowing them to take, power. History is littered with examples of bad outcomes when governments are allowed too much power. That's one of the reasons the US was founded, and although we seem to have forgotten this lesson, we're about due for an unpleasant reminder if we remain on this path.
Strat
So if there are few choices for many now, we fix this by eliminating what choices that do exist?
How would Net Neutrality eliminate choices of vendor? Are you claiming that ISPs would go out of business because of NN legislation?
Although I'm guessing there will certainly be some economic impact, I'm also guessing it wouldn't be enough to drive any majors under.
Maybe I could have been more clear by what I meant as being included in my use of the term "choices". I am actually more concerned in the limitations, restrictions, regulations, and laws that would continue to be heaped on every provider as time goes on, as it has been shown throughout history that once a government gains regulatory control over something, it always expands it's powers through the continual adding of new regulations, often by unelected government bureaucrats that don't answer to the people.
As a quick example, currently if some provider throttles/blocks bittorrent, one has at least the theoretical ability to move to an area serviced by a provider that doesn't throttle bittorrent. If the government adds a sop to their *IAA/Disney lobbyists to block bittorrent, your only choice is immigration. A provider also can't legally send large armed men to kick in your door and haul you off to a jail cell or shoot you if you resist (no matter how much we're all sure many providers would in a heartbeat if they could).
My take on the whole thing is that there needs to be a way to insure fair networking/protocol/routing/throttling practices without handing over regulatory control to the government. Governments seek to expand their power, reach, and control. That's just a fact. It seems the height of folly to hand over control of the most powerful communication tool ever created...particularly in it's ability to allow anyone to alert, organize, and push back against government abuses... to any government body. That's the fox guarding the hen-house. History shows that sort of thing never ends well for the people that allow too much of it to happen.
Strat
What other service provider?
So if there are few choices for many now, we fix this by eliminating what choices that do exist?
My problem with NN isn't the traffic-equality and routing-priority regulation aspects. That only takes a few pages of legislation at most to accomplish. My problem is the huge, bloated, vaguely-worded legislation that Congress will pass that contains things most here would *not* be okay with, including things that have no bearing on NN at all, and/or remove individual freedoms we enjoy currently.
In order for government size and power to grow, citizens' wealth and freedoms must shrink proportionately.
Strat
Sad, sad, sad, that you think that was a proper response. Blame me for "regurgitating" (without evidence, naturally), and then go for a dictionary definition. Such lovely hypocrisy. That was also a wonderfully subjective- and completely off-topic point.
It's all nice and well to claim your interpretation of the constitution mandates your wishes but SCOTUS hasn't yet declared Bush's massive expansion of government unconstitutional, Republicans still dodge questions about supporting Bush's fiscal irresponsibility, and free markets have quite recently demonstrated their failure points.
Care to try again?
Nice strawman. I took no political position in my statement, nor offered any opinions on the constitutionality of any recent legislation. I simply pointed out that the Tea Party has a clearly-stated purpose right there for anyone to read that is interested in facts rather than partisan demagoguery. Those in the Tea Party say they are just as upset (if not more so) with Republican spending, cronyism, and expansions of government power as they are the Democrats.
IMHO, SCOTUS won't need to rule on the constitutionality of most of what has been recently passed one way or another, as the next two elections will almost certainly see a massive power-shift in Congress and the Presidency and they will simply repeal, refuse to fund, or otherwise nullify what has been done. That is, if they hope to be re-elected, they will.
That's just callin' 'em as I see 'em, looking at current trends. Personally, I think both major parties have forgotten who they work for, and need a good electoral smack-down. Part of the reason is people in elected office with partisan blinders on like yourself, that value victory for their political party over anything else.
Strat
The problem with all these stupid calls to read the Declaration and Constitution is teabaggers seem to equate unelected tyranny with LOSING THE ELECTION BECAUSE THEY WERE THE FUCKING MINORITY
Instead of regurgitating what you've read or heard somewhere else, why not go to the source? Or does that cramp your partisanship?
Mission Statement
"The impetus for the Tea Party movement is excessive government spending and taxation. Our mission is to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets."
Strat
A lot of environmentalists are in favor of a direct carbon tax. Progressives, though, prefer cap-and-trade for two reasons. Number One, they favor practically all new taxes on principle. Number Two, cap-and-trade will require the trading of carbon credits which will be an effective tax on the whole already-shaky economy, so the prominent Progressives like Al Gore and Obama's Chicago cronies who will run the trading exchange(s) will make tons of money and gain a lot of power & influence if it happens.
FTFY
Strat