It's worse to put the Federal government in charge. What happens when the Federally approved (and mandated) curriculum starts to include the very things you mentioned? Keep things under local and state control and worry about the education system in your own back yard. If people in other states want to teach their kids a science curriculum that conforms to a literal interpretation of the bible, so be it. I'll trust the science/engineering schools to weed out the unqualified applicants.
"In the last 20 years, a Republican has been President for 10 years (2 years H.W. Bush 1, 8 years G.W. Bush), Republicans controlled the Senate for 10 years and controlled the House for 12 years."
The more significant point is that starting in 1993, the Democrats had control of the House, Senate and Presidency for two years. Beginning in 2003, the Republicans had their turn for four years. For the first two years of Obama, the Dems had yet another chance.
All I've seen in that time is continuously bigger government, steady erosion of civil liberties, a declining middle class and worldwide U.S. militarism... In fact, I'm having a damned hard time thinking of any piece of Federal legislation which I deemed to be good policy...
Both of these parties suck, and anyone that supports them is wasting their vote.
"I'm sure you realize that your "real choice" is just racist bullshit..."
"American Third Position Party... defines its principal mission as representing the political interests of White Americans."
OMG! RACISM!!!!!!:-0
We have the NAACP which represents the interests of African Americans. The National Council of La Raza (The Race) represents the interests of Hispanic Americans. You can find a thousand other organizations large and small specifically representing other races and ethnicities. We call all of those groups "Civil Rights Organizations" however.
Why is it only "racism" when someone thinks that White people should have equal rights and an equal opportunity to organize for their collective best interests?
"The reason people hated it was because people who like physics based sci-fi are not comfortable with meta-physics and fantasy sci-fi..."
The idea of an ultra-sophisticated system able to enslave the human race that can only be defeated by virtual-reality karate fighting was what did it for me.
"...as the law of the land sits now, these leaks are illegal. Doesn't the government have a responsibility to investigate?"
They have the power to investigate the person or people who leaked the documents. e.g. Mr. Manning.
What are they investigating by going after the Twitter accounts of wikileaks supporters? AFAIK, Neither Julian Assange nor anyone invovled with Wikileaks has been charged with a crime related to publication of these documents. IANAL, but from what I've read, it will be difficult or impossible for the U.S. government to go forward with a criminal prosecution against Assange or Wikileaks. Pesky First Amendment, and legal precedents set in the Pentagon papers incident.
At least the government is attempting to do this legally, through the court system. What I find disturbing however is this whole tactic of demanding information about individuals, and then attempting to enforce a gag order against the person/business from whence the information is being sought. I think that's one of the first things Twitter was challenging.
Was it magic or simply advanced technology? Today's common electronic gadgets would have seemed like magic only a few hundred years ago.
Also, the monolith didn't tamper with DNA, it just taught the apes how to use the tools already at their disposal.
There's deliberate ambiguity with the Bowman transformation, but I think the only conceptual leap necessary to accept it is to conceive of consciousness transcending flesh and blood. I don't find that idea completely "magical". For the film, it was obviously necessary to use some sort of visual device for conveying the idea to the audience. I think the space embryo was just a metaphor signifying that Bowman died as a human being and had been "re-born".
I guess it depends on your definition of "realism".
I think the film is awesome for a number of reasons. What I like best is the fact that it touches on several enormous philosophical concepts in a very subtle manner which leaves judgment and interpretation largely up to the observer.
The government at all levels is working to establish a massive database of people engaged in activities deemed "suspicious" by local law enforcement or even their fellow citizens. People who are not criminals, not engaging in any ILLEGAL activities, and aren't even suspected of any criminal wrongdoing.
Seems like the government has developed this idea that "protecting the United States" translates into "protecting the GOVERNMENT of the United States"(i.e. from the people). With the people now seen as an enemy from which the government needs to protect itself, any recording of government operations, employees or facilities is interpreted as a threat. Investigative journalism is now seen as "espionage". Likewise, anyone that criticizes government policy or advocates smaller, less powerful government instantly becomes a "terrorist", regardless of whether they are engaged in any sort of criminal activities. After all, if you want to shrink the government or scale back its powers in any way, you are, in a very warped way, an "enemy of the state".
"I don't get it. If congress can't set a federal drinking age how can they outlaw drugs?"
I'd argue that federal drug laws are blatantly un-Constitutional, but if you ask the feds what gives them the power to do something blatantly un-Constitutional, the answer will always be one of:
> Interstate Commerce > The General Welfare > National Security
The Supreme Court struck down the California medical marijuana law in the case of "Raich v. Gonzales" on the ridiculous grounds of "Interstate Commerce". They make this argument even if the marijuana is GROWN, SOLD and USED within state boundaries. Unfortunately, there's a precedent in "Wickard v. Filburn" (another travesty of justice). This is WEAK, but the government's claim in the Raich case was that marijuana grown in CA was indistinguishable from that grown elsewhere, so interstate commerce came into play.
The states are pushing back however. Check out the "Montana Firearms Freedom Act" and the similar law in TN. Those state laws assert that firearms manufactured, sold and used within the state are not subject to federal firearms laws. To get around the Raich argument, the weapons are going to have "Made in Montana" engraved in the receiver. It will be interesting to see how the feds handle that one.
These are great because a senior BofA executive testified under oath that BofA routinely never trasnferred mortgage notes to the mortgage trusts when they were sold as "Mortgage Backed Securities" i.e. they were really "Nothing Backed Securities"
Now, the funny part is that BofA is Disavowing the testimony of its own executive.
If you need any further evidence of fradu and corruption, "4closurefraud.com" also has a mountain of dirt and evidence of fraud, forgery and corruption bu BofA and the other the big banks.
Anyone still doing business with these scumbags is either completely apathetic to the idea of "voting with your dollars" as a form of social activism, or just a fool.
Thanks for the "suggestion" but I'll pass. Your hostility bespeaks an anger born of helplessness and frustration. I know how easy it is to get depressed with the goings-on of the world, but things are not yet hopeless.
To what "buzz words" are you referring? Serf? Slave? Please enlighten me as to the appropriate terminology for someone who cowers in fear and tells their fellow CITIZENS to behave themselves lest they incur punishment from their Lords and Masters?
"You can hallucinate some world where...an imaginary line drawn by words on a piece of paper is permanent and impenetrable"
You can burn the paper and the words, but the ideas live on, and as of now, those ideas are still the law.
"... then reality[TV] comes knocking to remind you... don't have the support of The People(tm)... all you're doing is harming everyone who would rather get on with their lives"
How are we supposed to "get over it" when the "it" isn't just a static situation, but rather a sinister ongoing process? How are you going to blindly "get on with your life" when everything that's happening around you is making your life more difficult by the day? I don't give a shit if my "rhetoric" is interrupting your television/junkfood induced state of semi-consciousness and you would rather get back to your gaming console.
We'll see how things play out, but in my observations, the corporate-government oligarchy doesn't have as much control as they might think they do. Their backlash seems rather reactionary and thus far relatively ineffectual. I don't think this was exactly part of the plan.
P.S. "Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our country[man]."
"You poke a dog with a stick often enough and eventually it'll go for you. "
I agree with that, but are you suggesting that the U.S. government is analogous to the dog and Wikileaks and its supporters are poking said dog with a stick? That's how I'M reading your words. It is with a mixture of sadness and frustration that I listen to the argument: "We better behave ourselves, or the government will crack down on the Internet!" I'm not saying that Wikileaks and Anonymous won't be used as an EXCUSE for government attempts to implement greater control of the Internet. That's a certainty. Actually ADVOCATING that we change our behavior to appease the government is the mentality of a serf or a slave. Better not do anything to make the Lord/Master angry because he'll punish us? Not only does that indicate a belief that the government has assumed the role of RULER of the people as opposed to "Representative" of the people, it indicates that the servitude is something that we must accept.
Wow! That thought just blows my mind. It just seems like we've very abruptly crossed a threshold into a whole new paradigm.
"... if it can't beat some random shmuck on the Internet, I don't see how this will be an interesting event."
If you can't see the obvious differences between the little game on that web site and how this is going to work during a real Jeopardy match, then your self-description is entirely apropos. I think this is going to be awesome! I'd like to see every arrogant ass on this comment board with their "Yawns" and other dismissals of this achievement go up against the machine in real time. You're all in dire need of a good intellectual smackdown.
"As an American citizen^Wsubject, I would like to preemptively thank these kids for the spasming congressional knees which will give us many restrictive new laws."
The argument that anonymous or whomever should not be doing this because it might arouse a legislative backlash from the Feds is absurd. Do you actually believe that the government is NOT pursuing a single minded agenda to further restrict the Internet and increase government control over every aspect of our "online" existence? Wikileaks alone is probably the only excuse they would need, and recent polls indicate that a strong majority of the sheep would go along. If it isn't this excuse, it will just be something else down the road. Let's get a look at the whole camel sooner rather than later. I'm sick of this frog soup crap.
Nice work on the propaganda techniques! In one short post, you managed to work in a strawman: "divest Israel crowd... The only reason why the Muslims hate us is Israel".
along with a false dichotomy:
i.e. your opinion that "Israel has NOTHING to do with it." (emphasis added)
btw, go sell your Neocon bullshit to the F&^%$*& tourists.
"... of course we all know how > 99% of terror attacks could be prevented easily, however that would violate "freedom of 'religion'"
Violate freedom of religion or be decried as . . . OMG!!... "Racial Profiling"!
Or maybe just enforcing the F&^%$#@ immigration laws that we already have, like arresting and deporting people who are here on expired Visas (e.g. several of the 9-11 hijackers).
Tracking down a lead about people taking flying lessons but opting out of the "how to land" course might be a good idea as well, but the Federales are too busy reading our library cards and groping our genitals to be bothered with such trivial nonsense.
The fact that you can TALK to one of your elected officials or one of their staffers doesn't mean they're listening. I've written hundreds of letters and e-mails and made dozens of phone calls to mine. I often get a response thanking me for my support of the position I was writing to them to oppose, or a polite "Thanks for sharing your opinion, I'll take it into consideration" response. Only ONCE in 20+ years of voting has a candidate of my choice been elected to national office, and that was a major case of "lesser of two evils".
"Are you suggesting that Democracy is then broken and pointless?"
The current "corporatocracy" is broken and pointless from the standpoint of an average citizen who isn't part of the well-connected elite. The rule of law has been utterly subverted, an obvious double standard exists in the justice system, The Constitution has been undermined or blatantly disregarded for as far back as I can remember, and the government continues to relentlessly accumulate power. I think fighting to restore our Constitutional Republic is well worth it, but the status quo is indeed pointless.
This is uncharted territory. None of these "analogies" I'm hearing make any real sense in the current environment. The Founding Fathers were geniuses, but they couldn't have imagined a system where the government and the mainstream media could exert such a strangle-hold on the flow of information. They couldn't have imagined a system where a few large corporations (under coercion) could cut off a media outlet from its funding sources, or limit its access to publishing equipment.
The most fundamental problem is that the central government is too powerful. There's no way that Amazon, Visa, PayPal and Mastercard all almost simultaneously decided to end their relationship with Wikileaks without extra-judicial government coercion. That's the scary part. When the government can "lean on" people or organizations to get them to toe the line when no law has been broken, and no court order has been issued, we're in dangerous territory. When people merely ACCUSED of "terrorism" can be imprisoned or killed without trial AND those terms are used by leaders in high office to describe Assange and Wikileaks, we're in trouble.
I won't classify this "operation payback" as universally good or bad. Hard to blame the big companies for making a business decision when they're being strong-armed by Big Brother, but I'm glad to know there are people in the society who are righteously angry, and have more tools than "write to your elected officials" at their disposal.
"Wikileaks doesn't own any of the information they leak.."
Who "owns" information? More specifically, who "owns" U.S. government information? I'm providing funding for the activities which generate this information, and I hereby permit Wikileaks to publish any and all information related to Federal Government.
"What wikileaks does is by nature chaotic, and disregards the consequences of their actions."
Totally untrue. Wikileaks worked dilligently with several major newspapers to edit and redact the information regarding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They made sure to publish material that was at least several months old to avoid release of any information that could be valuable in a tactical sense. Furthermore, they even solicited the help of the U.S. government to help scrub the documents in order to further minimize the risk of danger to specific individuals.
This is hardly "chaotic" and "irresponsible" and your assertion that "there is no wisdom involved" is obviously false.
Contrary to MSM and government propaganda, of the 250,000 diplomatic cables Wikileaks claims to have in their possession, only around 1000 have actually been released. Wikileaks has again collaborated with several major newspapers in multiple countries to edit and redact the documents, and has NOT published anything but the redacted versions which have been concurrently published in major newspapers.
"...the consequence is increased paranoia, while the information released hasn't merited it."
You sound like a U.S. government spokesperson. On one hand, they claim that the documents are meaningless and contain little which is newsworthy, and on the other hand claim that releasing them is a terrorist act that endangers the country. I don't need to be told what response a particular piece of information "merits". How about we let the people reading the information decide what's relevant and how they should personally react?
Glad you enjoy your privacy. The biggest threat to YOUR privacy isn't Wikileaks, it's the government. If you're involved in any sort of peaceful political activity (e.g. antiwar movement) you'd be wise to take a few precautions to safeguard your privacy. Political dissidence is quickly becoming the new "terrorism".
"... FCC's idea for "net neutrality". It involves creating a blacklist of sites you can't visit, having ISPs monitor the addresses customers visit to pass-along to the USG, and requiring a license to create a website/blog. And so on."
I saw this coming YEARS ago, and I've been debating the point with the net neutrality apostles ever since. Net neutrality is a good idea "in principle", but you absolutely CANNOT TRUST Washington D.C. with the implementation. Just as I predicted, there will be a nice cover page with the title "Net Neutrality and Internet Freedom Act" which covers up 2000 pages of insidious provisions empowering the government to micro-manage our online experience.
If I understand your argument correctly, you're saying that a law enforcement officer can, with NO search warrant, and with no intervention whatsoever by a court:
- Track every credit card purchase that I've ever made up to the present moment - Search through the history of transactions I've made at my local library - See records of all of my telephone calls - view my accountant's copy of all of my tax records - review any and all personal correspondences that I've sent to friends - see my complete transaction history at my bank - review all of the stock/bond transactions that I've made with my broker....
I certainly hope that no court would subscribe to your bizarre interpretation of the Fourth Amendement.
"to knowingly accept... classified government documents, and then purposefully spread those around the world [is a] crime in every nation, and in many (most?) it would get you executed."
Oh? So where are the criminal indictments? What U.S. criminal statutes are they violating by making these documents available? Why aren't the mainstream media outlets (like the New York Times) being charged with a crime for publishing the exact same content? There was probably some sort of violation of law when the documents were originally released, but I think you forgot that the First Amendment not only protects the rights of the individual, but also the freedom of the press.
This is just the federal government having a temper tantrum because someone decided to air their dirty laundry. Also interesting to note that we saw the previous release of the Iraq/Afghan war documents with SOME fanfare, but things went ballistic as soon as Assange announced that they had dirt on a big bank.
Free speech has ramifications? Hopefully the ramifications here will be a complete dismantling of our saber-rattling, imperialistic foreign policy!
Alex Jones and infowars.com are definitely no worse than Fox News, CNN or any of the other MSM outlets when it comes to credibility or bias.
When interviewed by one of the major cable TV news outlets regarding his "conspiracy theories", Jones correctly pointed out that it wasn't "Infowars" that promoted the "conspiracy theory" about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. If the MSM outlets were in the business of real investigative journalism instead of swallowing and spreading government propaganda, we might have been able to avert a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.
While we're on the subject, are there any decent news aggregators dedicated to alternative/independent media? i.e. sites where you don't need to login and set preferences
I stopped going to Google news because the stories are almost entirely from MSM sources. I don't want to read anything from NYT, CNN, Fox, AP, Retuers, NBC, ABC, CBS or any of the other mainstream propagandists.
I applaud what Wikileaks is doing, but from a strategic sense, I think they might be making an error in leaking information that reflects poorly on Russia. Almost impossible to keep up with this stuff, but e.g. in The Guardian:
"Russia armed Georgian separatists, Alexander Litvinenko murder 'probably had Putin's OK', Cables claim Putin has secret wealth hidden abroad." etc. etc.
Aren't Russia and other Eastern European countries prime territory for setting up web servers free of interference from Western censorship efforts? The Wikileaks operators obviously know more than I do about circumventing censorship and finding ways to keep their site up and running after being booted from various hosts. Maybe there are plenty of opportunities elsewhere?
Slashdot Mirror
It's worse to put the Federal government in charge. What happens when the Federally approved (and mandated) curriculum starts to include the very things you mentioned? Keep things under local and state control and worry about the education system in your own back yard. If people in other states want to teach their kids a science curriculum that conforms to a literal interpretation of the bible, so be it. I'll trust the science/engineering schools to weed out the unqualified applicants.
"In the last 20 years, a Republican has been President for 10 years (2 years H.W. Bush 1, 8 years G.W. Bush), Republicans controlled the Senate for 10 years and controlled the House for 12 years."
The more significant point is that starting in 1993, the Democrats had control of the House, Senate and Presidency for two years. Beginning in 2003, the Republicans had their turn for four years. For the first two years of Obama, the Dems had yet another chance.
All I've seen in that time is continuously bigger government, steady erosion of civil liberties, a declining middle class and worldwide U.S. militarism ... In fact, I'm having a damned hard time thinking of any piece of Federal legislation which I deemed to be good policy ...
Both of these parties suck, and anyone that supports them is wasting their vote.
"I'm sure you realize that your "real choice" is just racist bullshit ..."
"American Third Position Party ... defines its principal mission as representing the political interests of White Americans."
OMG! RACISM!!!!!! :-0
We have the NAACP which represents the interests of African Americans. The National Council of La Raza (The Race) represents the interests of Hispanic Americans. You can find a thousand other organizations large and small specifically representing other races and ethnicities. We call all of those groups "Civil Rights Organizations" however.
Why is it only "racism" when someone thinks that White people should have equal rights and an equal opportunity to organize for their collective best interests?
"The reason people hated it was because people who like physics based sci-fi are not comfortable with meta-physics and fantasy sci-fi..."
The idea of an ultra-sophisticated system able to enslave the human race that can only be defeated by virtual-reality karate fighting was what did it for me.
"...as the law of the land sits now, these leaks are illegal. Doesn't the government have a responsibility to investigate?"
They have the power to investigate the person or people who leaked the documents. e.g. Mr. Manning.
What are they investigating by going after the Twitter accounts of wikileaks supporters? AFAIK, Neither Julian Assange nor anyone invovled with Wikileaks has been charged with a crime related to publication of these documents. IANAL, but from what I've read, it will be difficult or impossible for the U.S. government to go forward with a criminal prosecution against Assange or Wikileaks. Pesky First Amendment, and legal precedents set in the Pentagon papers incident.
At least the government is attempting to do this legally, through the court system. What I find disturbing however is this whole tactic of demanding information about individuals, and then attempting to enforce a gag order against the person/business from whence the information is being sought. I think that's one of the first things Twitter was challenging.
"magical monolith"?
Was it magic or simply advanced technology? Today's common electronic gadgets would have seemed like magic only a few hundred years ago.
Also, the monolith didn't tamper with DNA, it just taught the apes how to use the tools already at their disposal.
There's deliberate ambiguity with the Bowman transformation, but I think the only conceptual leap necessary to accept it is to conceive of consciousness transcending flesh and blood. I don't find that idea completely "magical". For the film, it was obviously necessary to use some sort of visual device for conveying the idea to the audience. I think the space embryo was just a metaphor signifying that Bowman died as a human being and had been "re-born".
I guess it depends on your definition of "realism".
I think the film is awesome for a number of reasons. What I like best is the fact that it touches on several enormous philosophical concepts in a very subtle manner which leaves judgment and interpretation largely up to the observer.
-2001 fanboy
The government at all levels is working to establish a massive database of people engaged in activities deemed "suspicious" by local law enforcement or even their fellow citizens. People who are not criminals, not engaging in any ILLEGAL activities, and aren't even suspected of any criminal wrongdoing.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/20/surveillance/index.html
(contains link to: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/monitoring-america)
Seems like the government has developed this idea that "protecting the United States" translates into "protecting the GOVERNMENT of the United States"(i.e. from the people). With the people now seen as an enemy from which the government needs to protect itself, any recording of government operations, employees or facilities is interpreted as a threat. Investigative journalism is now seen as "espionage". Likewise, anyone that criticizes government policy or advocates smaller, less powerful government instantly becomes a "terrorist", regardless of whether they are engaged in any sort of criminal activities. After all, if you want to shrink the government or scale back its powers in any way, you are, in a very warped way, an "enemy of the state".
offtopic
"I don't get it. If congress can't set a federal drinking age how can they outlaw drugs?"
I'd argue that federal drug laws are blatantly un-Constitutional, but if you ask the feds what gives them the power to do something blatantly un-Constitutional, the answer will always be one of:
> Interstate Commerce
> The General Welfare
> National Security
The Supreme Court struck down the California medical marijuana law in the case of "Raich v. Gonzales" on the ridiculous grounds of "Interstate Commerce". They make this argument even if the marijuana is GROWN, SOLD and USED within state boundaries. Unfortunately, there's a precedent in "Wickard v. Filburn" (another travesty of justice). This is WEAK, but the government's claim in the Raich case was that marijuana grown in CA was indistinguishable from that grown elsewhere, so interstate commerce came into play.
The states are pushing back however. Check out the "Montana Firearms Freedom Act" and the similar law in TN. Those state laws assert that firearms manufactured, sold and used within the state are not subject to federal firearms laws. To get around the Raich argument, the weapons are going to have "Made in Montana" engraved in the receiver. It will be interesting to see how the feds handle that one.
You don't need Wikileaks or /. comments to see obvious evidence of fraud, corruption and criminal activity by BofA and all of the other big banks.
Municipal bond bid-rigging
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-24/bankers-rigging-municipal-contract-bids-admit-to-lying-to-cover-up-tracks.html
Failing to transfer mortgage notes into MBS trusts . . . but not keeping them on the balance sheets either? Hmmmmm.
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2010/11/countrywide-routinely-failed-to-send-key-docs-to-mbs-trustees.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EconomistsView+(Economist's+View+(EconomistsView))
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-02/bofa-drags-balance-sheet-confidence-backward-commentary-by-jonathan-weil.html
These are great because a senior BofA executive testified under oath that BofA routinely never trasnferred mortgage notes to the mortgage trusts when they were sold as "Mortgage Backed Securities" i.e. they were really "Nothing Backed Securities"
Now, the funny part is that BofA is Disavowing the testimony of its own executive.
http://www.bankinvestmentconsultant.com/news/bofa-mortgage-2670073-1.html?zkPrintable=1&nopagination=1
If you need any further evidence of fradu and corruption, "4closurefraud.com" also has a mountain of dirt and evidence of fraud, forgery and corruption bu BofA and the other the big banks.
Anyone still doing business with these scumbags is either completely apathetic to the idea of "voting with your dollars" as a form of social activism, or just a fool.
Guilty as charged. *&^$#%!!!
sed "s/threshold/line"/g
sed "s/paradigm/reality"/g
Better?
"buzzword bingo"? LOL
Thanks for the "suggestion" but I'll pass. Your hostility bespeaks an anger born of helplessness and frustration. I know how easy it is to get depressed with the goings-on of the world, but things are not yet hopeless.
To what "buzz words" are you referring? Serf? Slave? Please enlighten me as to the appropriate terminology for someone who cowers in fear and tells their fellow CITIZENS to behave themselves lest they incur punishment from their Lords and Masters?
"You can hallucinate some world where ...an imaginary line drawn by words on a piece of paper is permanent and impenetrable"
You can burn the paper and the words, but the ideas live on, and as of now, those ideas are still the law.
"... then reality[TV] comes knocking to remind you ... don't have the support of The People(tm) ... all you're doing is harming everyone who would rather get on with their lives"
How are we supposed to "get over it" when the "it" isn't just a static situation, but rather a sinister ongoing process? How are you going to blindly "get on with your life" when everything that's happening around you is making your life more difficult by the day? I don't give a shit if my "rhetoric" is interrupting your television/junkfood induced state of semi-consciousness and you would rather get back to your gaming console.
We'll see how things play out, but in my observations, the corporate-government oligarchy doesn't have as much control as they might think they do. Their backlash seems rather reactionary and thus far relatively ineffectual. I don't think this was exactly part of the plan.
P.S.
"Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our country[man]."
"You poke a dog with a stick often enough and eventually it'll go for you. "
I agree with that, but are you suggesting that the U.S. government is analogous to the dog and Wikileaks and its supporters are poking said dog with a stick? That's how I'M reading your words. It is with a mixture of sadness and frustration that I listen to the argument: "We better behave ourselves, or the government will crack down on the Internet!" I'm not saying that Wikileaks and Anonymous won't be used as an EXCUSE for government attempts to implement greater control of the Internet. That's a certainty. Actually ADVOCATING that we change our behavior to appease the government is the mentality of a serf or a slave. Better not do anything to make the Lord/Master angry because he'll punish us? Not only does that indicate a belief that the government has assumed the role of RULER of the people as opposed to "Representative" of the people, it indicates that the servitude is something that we must accept.
Wow! That thought just blows my mind. It just seems like we've very abruptly crossed a threshold into a whole new paradigm.
"... if it can't beat some random shmuck on the Internet, I don't see how this will be an interesting event."
If you can't see the obvious differences between the little game on that web site and how this is going to work during a real Jeopardy match, then your self-description is entirely apropos. I think this is going to be awesome! I'd like to see every arrogant ass on this comment board with their "Yawns" and other dismissals of this achievement go up against the machine in real time. You're all in dire need of a good intellectual smackdown.
"As an American citizen^Wsubject, I would like to preemptively thank these kids for the spasming congressional knees which will give us many restrictive new laws."
The argument that anonymous or whomever should not be doing this because it might arouse a legislative backlash from the Feds is absurd. Do you actually believe that the government is NOT pursuing a single minded agenda to further restrict the Internet and increase government control over every aspect of our "online" existence? Wikileaks alone is probably the only excuse they would need, and recent polls indicate that a strong majority of the sheep would go along. If it isn't this excuse, it will just be something else down the road. Let's get a look at the whole camel sooner rather than later. I'm sick of this frog soup crap.
Nice work on the propaganda techniques! In one short post, you managed to work in a strawman: "divest Israel crowd ... The only reason why the Muslims hate us is Israel".
along with a false dichotomy:
i.e. your opinion that "Israel has NOTHING to do with it." (emphasis added)
btw, go sell your Neocon bullshit to the F&^%$*& tourists.
"... of course we all know how > 99% of terror attacks could be prevented easily, however that would violate "freedom of 'religion'"
Violate freedom of religion or be decried as . . . OMG!! ... "Racial Profiling"!
Or maybe just enforcing the F&^%$#@ immigration laws that we already have, like arresting and deporting people who are here on expired Visas (e.g. several of the 9-11 hijackers).
Tracking down a lead about people taking flying lessons but opting out of the "how to land" course might be a good idea as well, but the Federales are too busy reading our library cards and groping our genitals to be bothered with such trivial nonsense.
The fact that you can TALK to one of your elected officials or one of their staffers doesn't mean they're listening. I've written hundreds of letters and e-mails and made dozens of phone calls to mine. I often get a response thanking me for my support of the position I was writing to them to oppose, or a polite "Thanks for sharing your opinion, I'll take it into consideration" response. Only ONCE in 20+ years of voting has a candidate of my choice been elected to national office, and that was a major case of "lesser of two evils".
"Are you suggesting that Democracy is then broken and pointless?"
The current "corporatocracy" is broken and pointless from the standpoint of an average citizen who isn't part of the well-connected elite. The rule of law has been utterly subverted, an obvious double standard exists in the justice system, The Constitution has been undermined or blatantly disregarded for as far back as I can remember, and the government continues to relentlessly accumulate power. I think fighting to restore our Constitutional Republic is well worth it, but the status quo is indeed pointless.
This is uncharted territory. None of these "analogies" I'm hearing make any real sense in the current environment. The Founding Fathers were geniuses, but they couldn't have imagined a system where the government and the mainstream media could exert such a strangle-hold on the flow of information. They couldn't have imagined a system where a few large corporations (under coercion) could cut off a media outlet from its funding sources, or limit its access to publishing equipment.
The most fundamental problem is that the central government is too powerful. There's no way that Amazon, Visa, PayPal and Mastercard all almost simultaneously decided to end their relationship with Wikileaks without extra-judicial government coercion. That's the scary part. When the government can "lean on" people or organizations to get them to toe the line when no law has been broken, and no court order has been issued, we're in dangerous territory. When people merely ACCUSED of "terrorism" can be imprisoned or killed without trial AND those terms are used by leaders in high office to describe Assange and Wikileaks, we're in trouble.
I won't classify this "operation payback" as universally good or bad. Hard to blame the big companies for making a business decision when they're being strong-armed by Big Brother, but I'm glad to know there are people in the society who are righteously angry, and have more tools than "write to your elected officials" at their disposal.
"Wikileaks doesn't own any of the information they leak.."
Who "owns" information? More specifically, who "owns" U.S. government information? I'm providing funding for the activities which generate this information, and I hereby permit Wikileaks to publish any and all information related to Federal Government.
"What wikileaks does is by nature chaotic, and disregards the consequences of their actions."
Totally untrue. Wikileaks worked dilligently with several major newspapers to edit and redact the information regarding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They made sure to publish material that was at least several months old to avoid release of any information that could be valuable in a tactical sense. Furthermore, they even solicited the help of the U.S. government to help scrub the documents in order to further minimize the risk of danger to specific individuals.
This is hardly "chaotic" and "irresponsible" and your assertion that "there is no wisdom involved" is obviously false.
Contrary to MSM and government propaganda, of the 250,000 diplomatic cables Wikileaks claims to have in their possession, only around 1000 have actually been released. Wikileaks has again collaborated with several major newspapers in multiple countries to edit and redact the documents, and has NOT published anything but the redacted versions which have been concurrently published in major newspapers.
"...the consequence is increased paranoia, while the information released hasn't merited it."
You sound like a U.S. government spokesperson. On one hand, they claim that the documents are meaningless and contain little which is newsworthy, and on the other hand claim that releasing them is a terrorist act that endangers the country. I don't need to be told what response a particular piece of information "merits". How about we let the people reading the information decide what's relevant and how they should personally react?
Glad you enjoy your privacy. The biggest threat to YOUR privacy isn't Wikileaks, it's the government. If you're involved in any sort of peaceful political activity (e.g. antiwar movement) you'd be wise to take a few precautions to safeguard your privacy. Political dissidence is quickly becoming the new "terrorism".
"... FCC's idea for "net neutrality". It involves creating a blacklist of sites you can't visit, having ISPs monitor the addresses customers visit to pass-along to the USG, and requiring a license to create a website/blog. And so on."
I saw this coming YEARS ago, and I've been debating the point with the net neutrality apostles ever since. Net neutrality is a good idea "in principle", but you absolutely CANNOT TRUST Washington D.C. with the implementation. Just as I predicted, there will be a nice cover page with the title "Net Neutrality and Internet Freedom Act" which covers up 2000 pages of insidious provisions empowering the government to micro-manage our online experience.
If I understand your argument correctly, you're saying that a law enforcement officer can, with NO search warrant, and with no intervention whatsoever by a court:
- Track every credit card purchase that I've ever made up to the present moment ...
- Search through the history of transactions I've made at my local library
- See records of all of my telephone calls
- view my accountant's copy of all of my tax records
- review any and all personal correspondences that I've sent to friends
- see my complete transaction history at my bank
- review all of the stock/bond transactions that I've made with my broker.
I certainly hope that no court would subscribe to your bizarre interpretation of the Fourth Amendement.
"to knowingly accept ... classified government documents, and then purposefully spread those around the world [is a] crime in every nation, and in many (most?) it would get you executed."
Oh? So where are the criminal indictments? What U.S. criminal statutes are they violating by making these documents available? Why aren't the mainstream media outlets (like the New York Times) being charged with a crime for publishing the exact same content? There was probably some sort of violation of law when the documents were originally released, but I think you forgot that the First Amendment not only protects the rights of the individual, but also the freedom of the press.
This is just the federal government having a temper tantrum because someone decided to air their dirty laundry. Also interesting to note that we saw the previous release of the Iraq/Afghan war documents with SOME fanfare, but things went ballistic as soon as Assange announced that they had dirt on a big bank.
Free speech has ramifications? Hopefully the ramifications here will be a complete dismantling of our saber-rattling, imperialistic foreign policy!
"And yet you listen to Alex Jones."
Alex Jones and infowars.com are definitely no worse than Fox News, CNN or any of the other MSM outlets when it comes to credibility or bias.
When interviewed by one of the major cable TV news outlets regarding his "conspiracy theories", Jones correctly pointed out that it wasn't "Infowars" that promoted the "conspiracy theory" about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. If the MSM outlets were in the business of real investigative journalism instead of swallowing and spreading government propaganda, we might have been able to avert a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.
While we're on the subject, are there any decent news aggregators dedicated to alternative/independent media? i.e. sites where you don't need to login and set preferences
I stopped going to Google news because the stories are almost entirely from MSM sources. I don't want to read anything from NYT, CNN, Fox, AP, Retuers, NBC, ABC, CBS or any of the other mainstream propagandists.
" . . . revealing names and locations of people who have given us confidential information . . ."
"us" == You and who else??
I applaud what Wikileaks is doing, but from a strategic sense, I think they might be making an error in leaking information that reflects poorly on Russia. Almost impossible to keep up with this stuff, but e.g. in The Guardian:
"Russia armed Georgian separatists, Alexander Litvinenko murder 'probably had Putin's OK', Cables claim Putin has secret wealth hidden abroad." etc. etc.
Aren't Russia and other Eastern European countries prime territory for setting up web servers free of interference from Western censorship efforts? The Wikileaks operators obviously know more than I do about circumventing censorship and finding ways to keep their site up and running after being booted from various hosts. Maybe there are plenty of opportunities elsewhere?