US Intelligence Chiefs Urge Easing Of Spy Rules 153
The US admninistration is not looking for this law change to enable them to "Better fight the War On Terror". The truth is that the US Administration need the law relaxed because they think that it will then make it easier for them to get a retrospective law change that may further help them to crawl out of a rather deep set of legal and constitutional holes that they currently find themselves in. You see, the Dubya administration has trampled all over the laws of the US and the Constitution itself and they have, as seen in the video, admitted it along the way. The problems they now face are coming from all directions such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation's successful application to sue AT&T for handing over phone records without a warrant. The President has already blocked one investigation into his conduct regarding this issue and now they are looking to srike down all others before they even get started.
Why is this not surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please vote this time (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you like to Bush bash (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
I hate the Republicans as much as the next guy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It wouldn't be so bad **iff** (Score:2, Insightful)
I say that works both ways
Re:It wouldn't be so bad **iff** (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm calling a big ole Bullshit on this one. While there are some Muslims who are sympathetic to the movement, and there are some (and this number is far fewer) that are actively involved, most Muslims are like most Christians, are like most Jews, are like most Pagans, are like most Buddhists, are like most Hindus... they couldn't care less about Terrorism except how it might affect their lives. They are no more terrorists than John or Jane Doe -- they are people! Not the bloody enemy!
Re:It wouldn't be so bad **iff** (Score:3, Insightful)
No, maybe not an ethnic thing, but certainly a religious thing. The moment you've banned a religious group from immigrating to this country you've just announced and made clear your objections to that religion. Islam is not the problem, it's the way the world politic has been handling the issues. How you got modded insightful with that bullshit is beyond me, unless even the slashdot crowd is now caving in to political propaganda...
Re:Please vote this time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It wouldn't be so bad **iff** (Score:5, Insightful)
All things considered, nothing that Bush is doing will end Islamic terrorism.
If USA stops bombing civilians, respect human rights and does not commit war crimes, I'm sure far fewer will be inclined to act out of desparation as terrorists.
The harsh truth is that yes, there are millions of good people who are Muslims and do no support terrorism.
Most Muslims, like most Christians, does not support terrorism. Bombing civilians from the air is, of course, not terrorism [/sarcasm].
Look, the only way to fight Islamic terrorism without falling prey to more of it at home, and not violating the rights of our citizens, non-Muslim and Muslim alike, is to keep new Islamic immigrants out of our country.
Respect human rights, don't invade other countries, stop toppling democratic governments and install/support dictatorships, and don't exploit poor people. See? I'm sure many more people on the planet will much less hostile to USA if the above was followed.
This is not an ethnic thing as I'd have just as much problem allowing a white Australian who admitted to being a Muslim come here as I would a Saudi.
Agreed, not an ething thing, just a racist one.
All religions have violent pasts because for a long period of time, the world was a truly brutal and uncivilized place.
The world is still a truly brutal and uncivilized place. Just look at airial bombings done in Lebanon and Iraq.
Re:I hate the Republicans as much as the next guy. (Score:5, Insightful)
The modern Republican party is based on opposing Liberalism (though it opposes it with another kind of liberalism). It is a reactionary party, despite recent efforts to call it something else -- and the Democratic party has better do its damndest to not fall into the same reactionary mold. The entire basis of conservatism is fighting against liberalism.
As to electing intelligent people, that's not the solution. There are plenty of very intelligent people in office who do terrible things, or allow terrible things to happen. What's needed are people who are motivated by the public interest, and not by games, self-promotion, and party-promotion. They need to be sufficiently versed in history, economics, and political theory. The ability to treat subjects rationally is a must.
When every candidate meets those criteria, we can have meaningful elections based upon the views held by the candidates. Then again, this will NEVER happen, so we have to play the hand we're dealt... and frankly, I can't see a clear way of cleaning house while the corporate world is married to the political one.
Re:Please vote this time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It wouldn't be so bad **iff** (Score:1, Insightful)
Where was this happening before September 11th? Before the Kobar Towers bombing? Before the Cole? Before the Kenya attack? WTC '93?
If we look at the biggest Muslim countries: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Syria, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Somalia, Pakistan and Indonesia, I would say less than half are sponsors of terrorism.
However, the only real active terrorism going on globablly now is from Islam. Not the IRA or the Basque rebels.
FWIW, in Iraq we're trying the same thing we tried in Germany and Japan, two very hostile countries who had proven incapable of peaceful coexistence in the modern world. We brought economic and political self determination. We're not installling dictators. Far from it. In fact, the US has never installed dictators, although we have supported regimes that were dictatorial, mainly because they were anti-U.S.S.R..
Once that threat was eliminated, guys who played both sides against the middle like Saddam Hussein and Moammer Gaddafy were S.O.L.. Now we're expanding trade with Libya and trying to get Iraq some prosperity and freedom and security. Admittedly the last bit is not easy considering the Islamic fundamentalists desire for Sharia and self destruction.
It turns out historically the one way to end fanaticism is to kill enough fanatics. Again, cf Germany or Japan circa 1940's.
The U.S. government has been helping oil companies (Score:4, Insightful)
The U.S. government is in dire circumstances. Money is being taken from the people and given to the rich in enormous quantities. See the old article, U.S. Federal Deficit by Political Party [futurepower.org]. See how much things have gotten worse since then: National Debt [brillig.com]. Oil and weapons investors profit: Cost of Iraq War [nationalpriorities.org].
See a short review of books and movies about conflict of interest: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government [futurepower.org].
It's far worse than these short references say.
Not flamebait (Score:2, Insightful)
Poor moderation of the parent comment. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It wouldn't be so bad **iff** (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. I've never agreed so strongly with someone's first five sentences and disagreed so violently with the entire rest of their post before.
Please provide the merest hint of evidence that this is anything other than baseless, pulling-facts-out-of-my-arse racist bullshit, or be modded into oblivion.
Remember in your answer to differentiate between the truly violent religions and those which are merely prevalent in extremely deprived, politically-unstable parts of the world.
Also remember to excuse the (nominally-Christian) West's identical behaviour during periods of similar social strife and deprivation, and the fact that the entire Middle East region is so unstable pretty much entirely because of the machinations of european countries and the US over the course of the last hundred years or so.
Great idea - lose all the terrorist sympathisers... along with most of the middle- and far-eastern grad students who are the only ones counteracting the US's massive brain-drain to countries with less restrictive (and less religiously-inspired) research laws.
Also remember turnabout is fair play, and remove all your expatriots from the region. Specifically all the ones with guns, bombs and missiles who are doing such a bang-up job of convincing the terrorist sympathisers to invade your hallowed shores.
Or, y'know, stay out of theirs. Again, specifically the tooled-up tourists in uniforms.
Nope. Nor is there a fundamental human right allowing you to invade other countries who pose no threat to you, extort them to change their laws to ones you'd like purely for your own benefit, topple democratically-elected leaders, invade countries on false premises and then let the guy who did it off scot-free, etc, etc, etc.
Your point?
Well, personally the only "Christians" I hear about in the mass-media are the fundamentalist fuckwits intent on ousting evolution from schools, banning medical research and calling for the assassination of democratically-elected South American leaders. Can we ban all the Christians too while we're at it?
Was? Was? Dude, where are you living? Under a rock?
I kno wthe US is famous
Re:I hate the Republicans as much as the next guy. (Score:3, Insightful)
I style myself as largely independant - although I have voted Republican since Reagan - mainly since I haven't seen a Democratic leader with a real, strongly articulated vision that didn't involve turning the country so sharply left it scared me as much as the Republican right does now.
As I mentioned in my post above, what this country needs is a strong moderate leader that is capable of bringing this country together, based upon a strongly articulated vision that doesn't call half the country stupid names. Nobody has a problem with strengthening this country's values - but the one thing that has escaped the Republican right is that we don't all want those values to be labeled with a religious name.
Personally, I don't really care which party this leader comes from, as long as he focuses on bringing us together, by emphasizing commonly held values that don't have labels attached to them. There are enough values we can call American that we all can agree on; the more devisive ones can be put on the back burner until we can settle the major international problems we have today.
If the majority of Americans in the middle had a leader that truly attracted moderate voters, he would walk away with the next election, regardless of his party. I think most of us are getting very tired of the far right and the far left both!
Take a moment... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It wouldn't be so bad **iff** (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Until you are unelected or retire (Score:3, Insightful)
As you have rightly mentioned, that WILL NEVER happen.
The previous, present and future administrations are all equally corrupt for it to happen.
No WAY will Bush or Dick or Rumsfeld be strip searched.
Reagan did far worse, and lied, etc., but he was creamated with honors.
Re:It wouldn't be so bad **iff** (Score:2, Insightful)
As I have been trying to explain to people for several years, the terrorists, while claiming to be fundamentalist Muslim, are really using the religion to shield their actual intent from exposure. The vast majority of Muslim people around the world live in countries that do not believe in universal literacy, so many of them depend upon the word of clerics to tell them what their holy book, the Koran, says. Since Islam has no central authority, like the Vatican in Catholicism, there is nobody that can definitively settle a dispute about what a passage means. This makes it easy for their friendly clerics to sway large numbers of Muslims to their support with relative ease.
The Koran, like the Bible, has entire sections that have been nullified by the passage of time, and the affect of different teachings and traditions over the centuries. Like the Bible has passages that condone slavery, the Koran has passages that require Muslims to attack and kill infidels. We don't condone slavery, and have finessed those passages so that we don't take them seriously anymore. So have most of the clerics in Islam glossed over and don't teach the anti-infidel passages, either.
But these newly-minted fundamentalists have taken these passages, which are still there in black and white, and are making them relavent again, using friendly clerics. Remember, within certain bounds, one cleric's fatwa is as good as another's, certainly to the unwashed, illiterate masses of Muslim people.
Combine that with the terrorists' use of US policies that are msotly unpopular in the Arab world anyway, and they have a ready-made platform for general mayhem.
The majority of moderate Muslim clerics around the world that do not condone the terrorists' actions have not yet recognized the terrorists threat to their way of life, and those that do are slow to react. It'll be a long, hard road, and it's a fight that will happen whether the US is involved or not.
Re:Seems like a moveon.org rant (Score:5, Insightful)