There is an obvious problem with trying to legally define the difference between any of the Super PAC groups which are run and have "Corporate" membership and a group like the Tea Party which has individuals on both sides. This problem did not exist until corporations were made people by our fucked up supreme court. The tax exempt status for political groups was originally geared toward the latter, the former was illegal until very recent times. Yeah, the justices should booted with the rest of the corrupt politicians.
If you think that the Government does not have backups, you are sorely mistaken. Federal regulation requires backups and maintenance of backups of all mail data. Durations may vary slightly between certain divisions, but in almost all cases this is required and not optional.
That said, the issue is what regulations have they broken if in fact they are claiming correctly that a persons computer was configured and managed illegally? Followed immediately by "Who is going to lose their job in addition to Lois Lerner?" I have a feeling that if jail time is threatened for management and employees responsible for mismanagement, backups may magically appear.
Then again, they could be telling the truth which should not prevent the termination of employees failing to follow regulation and law. Simple solutions to these types of problems have huge impact on future cases.
I think some providers were getting around that by providing arial photography in some areas instead...the 50cm limitations are for satellites. Photography from airplanes doesn't have that limitation.
Airspace restrictions are a limitation on aircraft photography, but no such limit can be enforced on Satellites. You could not go get a high-resolution photos of Area 51 or Aberdeen proving grounds from your airplane. Well, you could, but you would not have them for long. Either your gear would be confiscated and you would be in jail, or you would become a debris field.
I don't see much in this article that provides what restrictions are still in place, but I would guess that there are some restrictions still for areas the Government considers sensitive.
A bit more I should have covered:I don't know FrankPoole any more than I know CmdrTaco, nor would I know if he is connected with the source article. It's impossible to make that distinction, so save the condescending "we know who submitted the article". Since I don't know the person or connection I gave a few potential reasons for the spin.
If an article was written about "Bob's Reseller" (fictitious company) selling Redhat Licenses to Debian in a questionable way, and I wrote a Slashdot summary and submitted the article claiming "Debian caught secretly purchasing XXX dollars of Redhat Software for Reverse Engineering!" I would expect to be called out, because it's wrong.
Yes, that is a direct analogy. Yes, I seriously doubt you would condone the behavior.
Pointed out? No, the summary and title claims that Cisco is the problem. TFA mentions Cisco but the actual topic is a different company dealing with Cisco.
That someone does not know the company therefor a fake title and summary should be written is absolute bullshit, and you know it.
You are providing a symptom, not the problem. Deregulation and a lack of enforcement for existing regulations has resulted in the monopolization of media. The same people that have been monopolizing media for the last 2 (at least) decades are not just paying off politicians, but actually controlling who gets on a ballot with celebrity hype and hysteria. The same media will not allow discussion or countering positions on our Government. The same media will repeat propaganda handed out by the establishment, and anyone speaking out against the establishment is either ignored or slandered by that same media. This includes not just TV media like *NBC, FOX, ABC, CNN, etc.. but a whole slew of nationally syndicated radio programs like Limbaugh.
Like it or not, this again points to corrupt politicians and corrupt government as the root cause of the problem. We could have similar dialogue regarding Federal regulations for our public education system, but that would be a much longer conversation. That said, it would also point to corruption in Government as the problem.
I fully agree that some people will always be uneducated, some people will always be looking for a handout or trying to take advantage of social safety nets. The majority are not that type of people, it never has been and never will be. The majority have been intentionally lead down the wrong path. Complacency is also largely due to the media creating a false reality for people, but complacency can not fix anything. The severity of the issue is at a point where more and more people are waking up and demanding change. I am sure it is correctable, but we have to start fixing the real problems instead of passing blame.
Remember that the people running things in the background want you and I bickering over blame, or bickering over things that do not matter (race, sexual orientation, religion) because they will continue to have free reign as long as we fall for the gag and argue with each other. Instead of passing blame, try educating some of the people you are claiming are to blame. You would be amazed at how easy it is to wake people up if you try.
Thanks for the comments, but I believe you misunderstood my post.
The Title of the Slashdot post is "Cisco Spending Millions of Dollars Secretly Purchasing New Juniper Products". The primary topic of your article is Torrey Point, but here it's changed to Cisco. Your article was spun to make Cisco look bad on Slashdot, and a paragraph was plucked out of the article to extend that point.
In other words, the primary purpose of my post was not your article but the Slashdot post and title. Whoever posted the article here wrote a title to ensure maximum exposure while posting the link.
That said, your article is not free of bias. The title "In the Shadows" indicates the negative connotation, but I believe it's directed more at Torrey Point. It's hard to write objectively, especially considering Torrey Points actions.
Where the article has some spin (just a bit, nothing like the Slashdot summary) is that Cisco is painted as doing things abnormal in the industry. I'd bet dollars to donuts that Juniper buys millions of dollars worth of Cisco products every few years, just like Ericsson buys competitive products, and Alkatel buys competitive products, and Microsoft buys competitive products, etc...
Most of the time these purchases are not for reverse engineering. These purchases are either for benchmarking or compatibility testing.
A few qualifiers would have made it more objective, but hell I'm not your editor and don't get paid to write.
If everyone starts to vote for Libertarian the problem will just be extended. Look at how the "insiders" have taken over groups like the "Tea Party" and moved them from grass roots "People" back to "Career Politicians with new branding.
I certainly appreciate the motivation, but if you are not addressing the right problem then the solution will also be incorrect. The real problem is that corrupt politicians have become entrenched in every possible political office. In order to fix things, the entrenched political power needs to be removed from every political office.
That is not to say 100% of the people in politics are bad, any more than to say 100% of the NSA's employees are bad. Consider it a farm where enough plants are diseased and festering that we have to remove the crop and burn it all, or risk immediate contamination to new plants sown. The farm is fine, the founders did a great job building it where we could do exactly what needs to be done and still be a farm.
Nope, it's not the only problem to deal with but it's at the root. In order to get rid of the people bribing and coercing politicians, new people with hopefully better morals need to expose them after a swap. It took a long time to break the system and it will take a while to clean it up and heal.
And what I don't understand is the part about reverse engineering. Yes, that may take place. But there is a very good other reason why every large vendor of routing equipment has competitive products in their engineering lab: interoperability.
I did not write TFA so don't know the true purpose for the spin, but as a hunch it's due to the Snowden leaks. Cisco did quite a bit wrong and lost people's trust. Even though you are correct that there are many reasons to purchase someone else' gear, software, etc.. people are going to assume the worst possible motive.
Secondarily, if you want page hits you don't write fair articles. You focus all of your attention on the worst aspects possible to draw attention.
I don't agree with any type of "spin", a company portraying Cisco as innocent is just as wrong as someone depicting the worse possible motives for everything is wrong. *shrug*, I'm not trying to make money off of page hits either.
My point was that we can argue about anecdotal evidence all day and not make headway. As a personal perspective, also working with various law enforcement agencies for over 30 years, I don't see this as "business as usual" in terms of violence by Police.
Yup, it would take a study to prove, but "Newspapers" seem to indicate my "feeling" is not that incorrect.
I believe you should check with much more than 1 source, as a person with friends and family in Detroit working in Police forces since the 1950s, your source is bad. The rest, I have commented on already to others, if something is not covered or you wish to debate those points feel free.
Do you expect me to track down the works of Molyneaux and read some of them before making a/. comment?
Is it fair to expect me to summarize a couple novels worth of material or a dozen lecture hours any differently than I did? I provided examples as well as a source for the thought process to get there.
Further, if you are going to claim something is "wrong", "incorrect", "impossible" you bet I expect you to understand at least a portion of the material. I don't argue that Marx is incorrect from ignorance, I study the work and maintain the reference material. I don't argue Adam Smith's position on economics from ignorance, I read and maintain that reference material as well. I often run into material here I am ignorant to, and I read the material before forming an opinion and posting comment. I often read countering material as well, because the only way I know of to hold an informed opinion is to do the work.
I need incentive, such as somebody making sense.
How can you possibly claim something makes sense to you or not, with ever touching the material. Do you believe it's rational to claim "sense" with no knowledge of the material?
And, upthread, you did talk about buying tap water from one of several competing companies. This is, very simply, not going to happen, because of the difficulty of running each company's water through the pipes, keeping it going to the right people and uncontaminated by anybody else's water. That isn't incentive
I gave several examples, not just one. Perhaps if you considered that pipes don't have to be owned by a water company you could consider how competition would work in this regard. The benefits and power of the free market is well documented by both philosophers and economists, and often our implementation does not match what "could" be.
Yes, it is a fact that ignorant, illiterate hill people could never stand against the might of the US military for more than a week or two. Rag tag pickup trucks, improvised explosive, and outdated, ancient rifles could never hold off a US army division, nor even pose a minor threat.
The start is why I have difficulty with a complete sarcasm, I guess if I read this after the 2nd paragraph I would see the sarcasm easier. Seems like a mixed mode as written, because the above is commonly stated by people discussing why not to consider armed revolt in the US.
Many of your early points of blame are questionable, just read the declassified material from COINTELPRO and Mockingbird.
When you put this together that the largest recent surge in gun ownership was not driven by a reasonable fear of crime, but the unreasoned fear by the election of a Black President,
Are you trying to imply that the only reason people are purchasing guns is fear of crime? Are you further implying that the only reason people distrust those in Government today including Obama is because they are racists?
I will state that many people of many races and religions have concerns with the attacks on the 2nd amendment, and demand letters 1-3 leaked from Operation Fast & Furious are clear that this is on the government agenda. Despite the insinuation of racism, the reality is that people don't trust Obama because even though he promised "Hope and Change" he continued the same exact policies Bush was pushing and has proven himself to be untrustworthy. The increase in Institutional (Political/Law enforcement) crime and the lack of punishment and accountability has much more to do than street crime with an increase in gun ownership.
they are a recognition that the Tea Party DOES draw in a lot of the extreme whacko type among it's members
Citation required. I have seen no measurable studies demonstrating that the amount of "whacko" people involved in the Tea Party or the Libertarian political party is any different than any other political activist group. I have heard this piece of propaganda repeated by numerous media outlets. I know it's being placed in "Training" manuals leaked from the DOJ, DHS, and DOD. Neither of those things make it true.
Gun ownership and crime are harder things to track, but what we are seeing in a new wave of shootings is a rise of impulse shootings, which have no real clear end to them.
Crime and Gun ownership are not hard to track. The overwhelming majority of crimes using guns are not being committed with rifles (even assault rifles) which anti-gun laws are targeting, but with pistols. Many of those pistols are stolen or acquired on the black market. The later case will never be completely prevented by anti-gun laws (See the UK and Australia before making false claims).
To the second half, false flag events are nothing new, they are well documented and proven parts of history. I'm not claiming any or all terrorist acts and mass shootings in the US are those type of events, but there are ample questions and problems with certain events reported in the media that it should at least be considered (some events much more than others). In other words, once it is proven that media and politicians both flat out lied about the NSA, Benghazi, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Fast & Furious, etc.. (this could be an extremely long list), you should not be asking what else they have been lying about. You should be asking what they actually tell the truth about.
I'm inclined to think that the police have always been brutal, the only difference now is increased reporting (and video recording).
Five years ago, I believed this was the case but today I can no longer make the excuse. I agree that it would take scientific study to prove and measure, and would further agree that much of the perception is likely due to both my observation and an increase in reports. Hence why I stated Sure, some of this happened in the past but not to the extremes we are seeing today. I can't find, for example, any reports of gangs of cops beating homeless persons to death (which we have had several cases of in CA alone) or cops shooting into cars where there is no evidence of an armed suspect being inside (Cleveland is just 1 of 3 incidents in the last 8 months off the top of my head, add in DC and NM).
I'm not sure where you get your news from, but the War in Afghanistan was not over in a week, and after more than a decade of occupation is still anything but "pacified". Your last paragraph is rubbish as well, but then again maybe you don't know how the Governments of both India and the USA were started (and those are just 2 easy examples). Oh wait, Ghandi and the founders of the US just said "please" and the British military left them alone right?
Oh, my most sincere apologies. I happened to go back to the page after your post and did see that it's cross sited over half a dozen times. Less than CNN or other "mass" media sites, but enough that I did a "hmm" and figured it was an issue with one or more tracking cookies... Dang browser terminology messing with snacks again...:)
Cheap how? When you have to pay 1000 times more money for a replacement part because they are only manufactured by DOD contractors? The fuel spent on these old rigs is going to be cheaper? Insurance is cheaper for these behemoths?
Me thinks your point about "cheap" is a very narrow and unrealistic. If they were buying lawn ornaments I'd agree with you completely, but these are not lawn ornaments.
Anyone on Slashdot that complains about cookies surely lacks Adblock and NoScript knowledge, which your fault not theirs. The most relevant link on Youtube can be found here which still has tracking cookies.
DHS does not give this gear to local police departments, so your claim of "cheap" is absolutely false. Sure, they are not paying "New" gear prices but they are not getting "New" gear.
Well, I certainly agree with most of your points (I normally do) but have to debate one particular omission from yours and GPs comments. Violence by Police departments has escalated drastically in the same time as criminal violence has gone down. Police brutality is close to a daily occurrence today, and not just the cops manhandling a suspected felon but outright killing people.
Sure, some of this happened in the past but not to the extremes we are seeing today.
This has a potentially rubber banding effect on society. Oppressed people surely don't take the same chances as a "Free" public, bottled up it becomes rather explosive.
When police are increasingly violent I have more concerns about them receiving this type of equipment. They surely don't need an MRAP for stopping people speeding on the freeway, so why have this type of gear?
Since this is not a new phenomenon (militarizing police that is) I have done a bit of homework. The first reason for them to gear up this way is that DHS is selling us back equipment that the military purchased for Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a boost to the MIC, and a nice way to double tax us for the same equipment. Yes, DHS sells them for less money but still are selling them to local police. The next reason is obviously a Rambo effect, where cops think they are "cool" in this type of gear. Lastly, and more of a concern than the two previous is that a majority of police training today is geared toward attacking the public. There have been ample leaks from DHS training materials showing this to be true. Military and Law Enforcement agencies are using material claiming that "Patriots" and "Tea Party" type groups are potential terrorists.
There are many good links to find in this page here, pay special attention to the retired Marine Colonel in the 2nd video. Enjoy.
Are you confusing USA cops with Canadian cops, or are they behaving the same in the "Great White North"? I have not seen any stories of "Mounties shoot 137 rounds into unarmed suspects vehicle killing both the driver and passenger" like was just saw in Cleveland, but that could just be how good the US Propaganda agencies are at hiding "news".
Oh, wait, you mean that the association between young girls and pink and young boys and blue is actually a century or two old? Umm, never mind...)
I will point out that the same association is relevant to fist fighting. Meaning that it is a relatively new method for humans to resolve conflict. Fighting as a "Sport" dates back to Ancient Greece, but it was "Wresting" and not "Fist Fighting" that was the competition. Competitions we have deciphered from other civilizations predating Ancient Greece are much more brutal (in fact civilizations outside of Greece/Rome as well, even centuries after the founding of Rome.).
I'm not claiming it's impossible, but stating that there is no historical significance to theorizing that "fist to face" was cause for evolution.
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There is an obvious problem with trying to legally define the difference between any of the Super PAC groups which are run and have "Corporate" membership and a group like the Tea Party which has individuals on both sides. This problem did not exist until corporations were made people by our fucked up supreme court. The tax exempt status for political groups was originally geared toward the latter, the former was illegal until very recent times. Yeah, the justices should booted with the rest of the corrupt politicians.
If you think that the Government does not have backups, you are sorely mistaken. Federal regulation requires backups and maintenance of backups of all mail data. Durations may vary slightly between certain divisions, but in almost all cases this is required and not optional.
That said, the issue is what regulations have they broken if in fact they are claiming correctly that a persons computer was configured and managed illegally? Followed immediately by "Who is going to lose their job in addition to Lois Lerner?" I have a feeling that if jail time is threatened for management and employees responsible for mismanagement, backups may magically appear.
Then again, they could be telling the truth which should not prevent the termination of employees failing to follow regulation and law. Simple solutions to these types of problems have huge impact on future cases.
I think some providers were getting around that by providing arial photography in some areas instead...the 50cm limitations are for satellites. Photography from airplanes doesn't have that limitation.
Airspace restrictions are a limitation on aircraft photography, but no such limit can be enforced on Satellites. You could not go get a high-resolution photos of Area 51 or Aberdeen proving grounds from your airplane. Well, you could, but you would not have them for long. Either your gear would be confiscated and you would be in jail, or you would become a debris field.
I don't see much in this article that provides what restrictions are still in place, but I would guess that there are some restrictions still for areas the Government considers sensitive.
A bit more I should have covered:I don't know FrankPoole any more than I know CmdrTaco, nor would I know if he is connected with the source article. It's impossible to make that distinction, so save the condescending "we know who submitted the article". Since I don't know the person or connection I gave a few potential reasons for the spin.
If an article was written about "Bob's Reseller" (fictitious company) selling Redhat Licenses to Debian in a questionable way, and I wrote a Slashdot summary and submitted the article claiming "Debian caught secretly purchasing XXX dollars of Redhat Software for Reverse Engineering!" I would expect to be called out, because it's wrong.
Yes, that is a direct analogy. Yes, I seriously doubt you would condone the behavior.
Pointed out? No, the summary and title claims that Cisco is the problem. TFA mentions Cisco but the actual topic is a different company dealing with Cisco.
That someone does not know the company therefor a fake title and summary should be written is absolute bullshit, and you know it.
You are providing a symptom, not the problem. Deregulation and a lack of enforcement for existing regulations has resulted in the monopolization of media. The same people that have been monopolizing media for the last 2 (at least) decades are not just paying off politicians, but actually controlling who gets on a ballot with celebrity hype and hysteria. The same media will not allow discussion or countering positions on our Government. The same media will repeat propaganda handed out by the establishment, and anyone speaking out against the establishment is either ignored or slandered by that same media. This includes not just TV media like *NBC, FOX, ABC, CNN, etc.. but a whole slew of nationally syndicated radio programs like Limbaugh.
Like it or not, this again points to corrupt politicians and corrupt government as the root cause of the problem. We could have similar dialogue regarding Federal regulations for our public education system, but that would be a much longer conversation. That said, it would also point to corruption in Government as the problem.
I fully agree that some people will always be uneducated, some people will always be looking for a handout or trying to take advantage of social safety nets. The majority are not that type of people, it never has been and never will be. The majority have been intentionally lead down the wrong path. Complacency is also largely due to the media creating a false reality for people, but complacency can not fix anything. The severity of the issue is at a point where more and more people are waking up and demanding change. I am sure it is correctable, but we have to start fixing the real problems instead of passing blame.
Remember that the people running things in the background want you and I bickering over blame, or bickering over things that do not matter (race, sexual orientation, religion) because they will continue to have free reign as long as we fall for the gag and argue with each other. Instead of passing blame, try educating some of the people you are claiming are to blame. You would be amazed at how easy it is to wake people up if you try.
Thanks for the comments, but I believe you misunderstood my post.
The Title of the Slashdot post is "Cisco Spending Millions of Dollars Secretly Purchasing New Juniper Products". The primary topic of your article is Torrey Point, but here it's changed to Cisco. Your article was spun to make Cisco look bad on Slashdot, and a paragraph was plucked out of the article to extend that point.
In other words, the primary purpose of my post was not your article but the Slashdot post and title. Whoever posted the article here wrote a title to ensure maximum exposure while posting the link.
That said, your article is not free of bias. The title "In the Shadows" indicates the negative connotation, but I believe it's directed more at Torrey Point. It's hard to write objectively, especially considering Torrey Points actions.
Where the article has some spin (just a bit, nothing like the Slashdot summary) is that Cisco is painted as doing things abnormal in the industry. I'd bet dollars to donuts that Juniper buys millions of dollars worth of Cisco products every few years, just like Ericsson buys competitive products, and Alkatel buys competitive products, and Microsoft buys competitive products, etc...
Most of the time these purchases are not for reverse engineering. These purchases are either for benchmarking or compatibility testing.
A few qualifiers would have made it more objective, but hell I'm not your editor and don't get paid to write.
If everyone starts to vote for Libertarian the problem will just be extended. Look at how the "insiders" have taken over groups like the "Tea Party" and moved them from grass roots "People" back to "Career Politicians with new branding.
I certainly appreciate the motivation, but if you are not addressing the right problem then the solution will also be incorrect. The real problem is that corrupt politicians have become entrenched in every possible political office. In order to fix things, the entrenched political power needs to be removed from every political office.
That is not to say 100% of the people in politics are bad, any more than to say 100% of the NSA's employees are bad. Consider it a farm where enough plants are diseased and festering that we have to remove the crop and burn it all, or risk immediate contamination to new plants sown. The farm is fine, the founders did a great job building it where we could do exactly what needs to be done and still be a farm.
Nope, it's not the only problem to deal with but it's at the root. In order to get rid of the people bribing and coercing politicians, new people with hopefully better morals need to expose them after a swap. It took a long time to break the system and it will take a while to clean it up and heal.
And what I don't understand is the part about reverse engineering. Yes, that may take place. But there is a very good other reason why every large vendor of routing equipment has competitive products in their engineering lab: interoperability.
I did not write TFA so don't know the true purpose for the spin, but as a hunch it's due to the Snowden leaks. Cisco did quite a bit wrong and lost people's trust. Even though you are correct that there are many reasons to purchase someone else' gear, software, etc.. people are going to assume the worst possible motive.
Secondarily, if you want page hits you don't write fair articles. You focus all of your attention on the worst aspects possible to draw attention.
I don't agree with any type of "spin", a company portraying Cisco as innocent is just as wrong as someone depicting the worse possible motives for everything is wrong. *shrug*, I'm not trying to make money off of page hits either.
My point was that we can argue about anecdotal evidence all day and not make headway. As a personal perspective, also working with various law enforcement agencies for over 30 years, I don't see this as "business as usual" in terms of violence by Police.
Yup, it would take a study to prove, but "Newspapers" seem to indicate my "feeling" is not that incorrect.
I believe you should check with much more than 1 source, as a person with friends and family in Detroit working in Police forces since the 1950s, your source is bad. The rest, I have commented on already to others, if something is not covered or you wish to debate those points feel free.
Do you expect me to track down the works of Molyneaux and read some of them before making a /. comment?
Is it fair to expect me to summarize a couple novels worth of material or a dozen lecture hours any differently than I did? I provided examples as well as a source for the thought process to get there.
Further, if you are going to claim something is "wrong", "incorrect", "impossible" you bet I expect you to understand at least a portion of the material. I don't argue that Marx is incorrect from ignorance, I study the work and maintain the reference material. I don't argue Adam Smith's position on economics from ignorance, I read and maintain that reference material as well. I often run into material here I am ignorant to, and I read the material before forming an opinion and posting comment. I often read countering material as well, because the only way I know of to hold an informed opinion is to do the work.
I need incentive, such as somebody making sense.
How can you possibly claim something makes sense to you or not, with ever touching the material. Do you believe it's rational to claim "sense" with no knowledge of the material?
And, upthread, you did talk about buying tap water from one of several competing companies. This is, very simply, not going to happen, because of the difficulty of running each company's water through the pipes, keeping it going to the right people and uncontaminated by anybody else's water. That isn't incentive
I gave several examples, not just one. Perhaps if you considered that pipes don't have to be owned by a water company you could consider how competition would work in this regard. The benefits and power of the free market is well documented by both philosophers and economists, and often our implementation does not match what "could" be.
Yes, it is a fact that ignorant, illiterate hill people could never stand against the might of the US military for more than a week or two. Rag tag pickup trucks, improvised explosive, and outdated, ancient rifles could never hold off a US army division, nor even pose a minor threat.
The start is why I have difficulty with a complete sarcasm, I guess if I read this after the 2nd paragraph I would see the sarcasm easier. Seems like a mixed mode as written, because the above is commonly stated by people discussing why not to consider armed revolt in the US.
Many of your early points of blame are questionable, just read the declassified material from COINTELPRO and Mockingbird.
When you put this together that the largest recent surge in gun ownership was not driven by a reasonable fear of crime, but the unreasoned fear by the election of a Black President,
Are you trying to imply that the only reason people are purchasing guns is fear of crime? Are you further implying that the only reason people distrust those in Government today including Obama is because they are racists?
I will state that many people of many races and religions have concerns with the attacks on the 2nd amendment, and demand letters 1-3 leaked from Operation Fast & Furious are clear that this is on the government agenda. Despite the insinuation of racism, the reality is that people don't trust Obama because even though he promised "Hope and Change" he continued the same exact policies Bush was pushing and has proven himself to be untrustworthy. The increase in Institutional (Political/Law enforcement) crime and the lack of punishment and accountability has much more to do than street crime with an increase in gun ownership.
they are a recognition that the Tea Party DOES draw in a lot of the extreme whacko type among it's members
Citation required. I have seen no measurable studies demonstrating that the amount of "whacko" people involved in the Tea Party or the Libertarian political party is any different than any other political activist group. I have heard this piece of propaganda repeated by numerous media outlets. I know it's being placed in "Training" manuals leaked from the DOJ, DHS, and DOD. Neither of those things make it true.
Gun ownership and crime are harder things to track, but what we are seeing in a new wave of shootings is a rise of impulse shootings, which have no real clear end to them.
Crime and Gun ownership are not hard to track. The overwhelming majority of crimes using guns are not being committed with rifles (even assault rifles) which anti-gun laws are targeting, but with pistols. Many of those pistols are stolen or acquired on the black market. The later case will never be completely prevented by anti-gun laws (See the UK and Australia before making false claims).
To the second half, false flag events are nothing new, they are well documented and proven parts of history. I'm not claiming any or all terrorist acts and mass shootings in the US are those type of events, but there are ample questions and problems with certain events reported in the media that it should at least be considered (some events much more than others). In other words, once it is proven that media and politicians both flat out lied about the NSA, Benghazi, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Fast & Furious, etc.. (this could be an extremely long list), you should not be asking what else they have been lying about. You should be asking what they actually tell the truth about.
I'm inclined to think that the police have always been brutal, the only difference now is increased reporting (and video recording).
Five years ago, I believed this was the case but today I can no longer make the excuse. I agree that it would take scientific study to prove and measure, and would further agree that much of the perception is likely due to both my observation and an increase in reports. Hence why I stated Sure, some of this happened in the past but not to the extremes we are seeing today. I can't find, for example, any reports of gangs of cops beating homeless persons to death (which we have had several cases of in CA alone) or cops shooting into cars where there is no evidence of an armed suspect being inside (Cleveland is just 1 of 3 incidents in the last 8 months off the top of my head, add in DC and NM).
If one or two of those statements were given I could see the possibility for sarcasm, with the 4 paragraphs given not a chance.
I'm not sure where you get your news from, but the War in Afghanistan was not over in a week, and after more than a decade of occupation is still anything but "pacified". Your last paragraph is rubbish as well, but then again maybe you don't know how the Governments of both India and the USA were started (and those are just 2 easy examples). Oh wait, Ghandi and the founders of the US just said "please" and the British military left them alone right?
Oh, my most sincere apologies. I happened to go back to the page after your post and did see that it's cross sited over half a dozen times. Less than CNN or other "mass" media sites, but enough that I did a "hmm" and figured it was an issue with one or more tracking cookies... Dang browser terminology messing with snacks again... :)
Cheap how? When you have to pay 1000 times more money for a replacement part because they are only manufactured by DOD contractors? The fuel spent on these old rigs is going to be cheaper? Insurance is cheaper for these behemoths?
Me thinks your point about "cheap" is a very narrow and unrealistic. If they were buying lawn ornaments I'd agree with you completely, but these are not lawn ornaments.
Hard to tell where the sock puppets end and the retard starts...
Anyone on Slashdot that complains about cookies surely lacks Adblock and NoScript knowledge, which your fault not theirs. The most relevant link on Youtube can be found here which still has tracking cookies.
DHS does not give this gear to local police departments, so your claim of "cheap" is absolutely false. Sure, they are not paying "New" gear prices but they are not getting "New" gear.
Well, I certainly agree with most of your points (I normally do) but have to debate one particular omission from yours and GPs comments. Violence by Police departments has escalated drastically in the same time as criminal violence has gone down. Police brutality is close to a daily occurrence today, and not just the cops manhandling a suspected felon but outright killing people.
Sure, some of this happened in the past but not to the extremes we are seeing today.
This has a potentially rubber banding effect on society. Oppressed people surely don't take the same chances as a "Free" public, bottled up it becomes rather explosive.
When police are increasingly violent I have more concerns about them receiving this type of equipment. They surely don't need an MRAP for stopping people speeding on the freeway, so why have this type of gear?
Since this is not a new phenomenon (militarizing police that is) I have done a bit of homework. The first reason for them to gear up this way is that DHS is selling us back equipment that the military purchased for Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a boost to the MIC, and a nice way to double tax us for the same equipment. Yes, DHS sells them for less money but still are selling them to local police. The next reason is obviously a Rambo effect, where cops think they are "cool" in this type of gear. Lastly, and more of a concern than the two previous is that a majority of police training today is geared toward attacking the public. There have been ample leaks from DHS training materials showing this to be true. Military and Law Enforcement agencies are using material claiming that "Patriots" and "Tea Party" type groups are potential terrorists.
There are many good links to find in this page here, pay special attention to the retired Marine Colonel in the 2nd video. Enjoy.
Are you confusing USA cops with Canadian cops, or are they behaving the same in the "Great White North"? I have not seen any stories of "Mounties shoot 137 rounds into unarmed suspects vehicle killing both the driver and passenger" like was just saw in Cleveland, but that could just be how good the US Propaganda agencies are at hiding "news".
Oh, wait, you mean that the association between young girls and pink and young boys and blue is actually a century or two old? Umm, never mind...)
I will point out that the same association is relevant to fist fighting. Meaning that it is a relatively new method for humans to resolve conflict. Fighting as a "Sport" dates back to Ancient Greece, but it was "Wresting" and not "Fist Fighting" that was the competition. Competitions we have deciphered from other civilizations predating Ancient Greece are much more brutal (in fact civilizations outside of Greece/Rome as well, even centuries after the founding of Rome.).
I'm not claiming it's impossible, but stating that there is no historical significance to theorizing that "fist to face" was cause for evolution.