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.
In other news (Score:5, Interesting)
The point of current law and regulation for government powers to get information and investigate is to ensure that the interests of civilians are preserved and balanced against the needs of the government in doing its job. What they are saying is that they can't do their jobs without even more easy and invasive permissions.
Maybe I'll be modded down for this, but I think I'd rather see another 9-11 than to see what is happening to the way of life we have enjoyed until now. But frankly, if we just stay out of their business and stop backing Israel, I think we'd have little to no threat since this is ultimately what this boils down to in the first place... that and oil which could be, I'm sure, managed in other ways. We're capitalists after all.
And while I'm on the subject, how about we punish the president for his flagrant violation of law before we move to change it. If we make murder legal today, that doesn't mean we need to free yesterday's murderers from prison does it? If we make speeding on our streets legal, does that mean speeders should get a refund?
I'm still somewhat baffled as to why there is so little focus on the violations that have occurred and the blocking of investigations.
Re: Please vote this time (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder how all those people feel now, who argued against voting for the Democrats as the lesser of two evils in 2000 and 2004?
Even my redneck fundamentalist mother (female parent, not the Jerry Jeff Walker "redneck mother") has expressed regret for voting for GWB. And that was last year.
Until you are unelected or retire (Score:5, Interesting)
The real nightmare for people like the current President and some of his friends must be that to be safe, they must find a way to hold onto power for a long time. This has been the problem that has led to gerontocracies in places like fascist Spain, China and parts of the Middle East. But the US is not a dictatorship, it is a pluralist federation, and the possibility exists that in the revolution of the political cycle the time will come when a US government will indict a member of the present Administration for war crimes. Of course it could never happen...but the British and the French both once executed a monarch and the British allowed the deposition of another in what they called the Glorious Revolution. Perhaps, just as Putin has clawed back Russian oil from the kleptarchs, one day a US Government strapped for cash will start to go after the plutarchs.
A British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson,once famously said that three weeks was a long time in politics. I'm not sure that the present generation of politicians are thinking as far ahead as that.
Re:C'mon, Zonk and Taco... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It wouldn't be so bad **iff** (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean, "religionists" like, say Christians? I give you Rwanda, Northern Ireland, the USA (anti-abortion campaigners) and Serbia. All lovely folks who I'm sure you want inside your borders... Or Israel, which at the last count has managed to kill 600 "non-believers" in 2 weeks? Please get the reality, that religion really doesn't matter a damn.
The simple fact is that "the only way to fight Islamic terrorism" is to stop doing things that piss off the citizens of those countries, such as bombing civilians. Currently the US and the UK have royally fucked up Iraq to the extent of allowing a civil war to take place, Afghanistan is still in the shitter, and they're providing military and financial support for Israel while it bombs civilians and other non-military targets in Lebanon and Palestine. Meantime, George Bush is busy pointing the finger at Syria and Iran as the next targets, because they sponsor terrorism.
Hmm, a state which sponsors terrorism? How's about the USA? For US-supported countries whose governments actively terrorised their citizens, or where the US supported terrorist activities against the government, or where the US actively attacked/invaded to try and establish a government favourable to them, I give you: Cuba, Grenada, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Haiti, Congo, Vietnam, Cambodia, Argentina, Guatemala, Panama, Chile, Guyana, Angola... And that's just the ones I can remember easily.
Given how successful all this intervention has been (every single one of the examples above has been an unmitigated failure), an awful lot of people wish that the US would keep well out of international affairs, because the US government and the CIA clearly couldn't find their ass with both hands. And if they stopped fucking up other people's countries, maybe the citizens of those countries (and others) would feel more kindly towards the US.
I'm almost amused when I hear Americans saying how big a deal 9/11 was. In Iraq alone, that's about 2 weeks worth of civilian casualties (according to the most *optimistic* casualty figures). If you can imagine 9/11 happening every fortnight, maybe you will then understand why the US is not exactly appreciated abroad.
Grab.
Re:Please vote this time (Score:4, Interesting)
While currently voting for a third party at the federal level is about the same as throwing your vote away (Though it can still make a statement) you can vote for other parties at local and state levels and they frequently have more success. And if they can gain enough traction and do a good enough job at a state level then they should start having better chances at a federal level, too.
Re:It wouldn't be so bad **iff** (Score:1, Interesting)
"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."
Well, that's good to know. You're not a racist, you're just a religious bigot. Good thing the earliest immigrants to the United States weren't fleeing religious persecution, or that freedom of religion isn't in the constitution.
Get your head out of your ass: the problem isn't Islam, it's radical, violent, religiously-motivated terrorism that happens to include some people claiming to be Muslim.
Your solution: to blockade immigration from Muslim countries, and have those people get "checked" on a special visa if they do visit.
I've got news for you. What about people who are already Muslim and citizens? What about people who immigrate and then convert to Islam? How will you solve that problem, assuming Islam really is the root of the problem, as you imply? Have them wear a little crescent on their sleeve, so that they can be easily identified in a crowd?
You're right to look at this situation in the broad scope of history. The situation in the Islamic world has some parallels to medieval religiously-framed conflicts in Europe and many other parts of the world. But you don't understand the implications.
The way forward is to help the Muslims who do understand the modern world overpower the ones who wish to turn back the clock to medieval times. Historical Islamic regimes have sometimes been very enlightened for their day, and some are today too, demonstrating that it does not have to be the way that the medievalists claim. But every time the western world provokes people in Islamic countries, props up oppressive dictatorial regimes, or isolates its own Muslim citizens, it gives those lunatic, hyper-conservative elements a boogeyman to rant on about. They use it as an excuse to claim we can never get along, and that the only option is to fight violently. You have fallen into the same "we'll never get along"/"they are ALL the enemy" trap.
It doesn't take a genius to realize that this is actually a war *within* Islam for the control of the minds of the faithful. The western world is just a convenient "enemy" for the radicals. Treating Muslims in our own countries poorly will feed into that mentality, helping the radicals, and demoralizing our best allies -- the vast majority of modern, moderate Muslims that exist in our countries, and the many more that exist elsewhere in the world, but that aren't necessarily in control in their home countries. These people need our help and support, not our persecution and bigotry.
Join the 21st century, instead of duplicating the mistakes of the past.
Re:I hate the Republicans as much as the next guy. (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't buy it.... (Score:3, Interesting)
> us alone if we stopped screwing around in world affairs. We stick our nose
> where it doesn't belong, and THAT is what breeds terrorism.
I'm not about to mindlessly repeat the tired old "they hate us because of our freedom" mantra. But there's got to be a whole lot more to it than just our fucked up foreign policy.
Look at Latin America. The United States has been royally screwing pretty much all of Latin America for pretty much all of our history, To put it crudely; we were fucking them over harder than we ever fucked anyone in the middle east for a good CENTURY before anyone in this country, other than bible scholars, took notice that the middle east was even there! If foreign policy that amounts to detrimental screwing around in other peoples' affairs were what causes terrorism, than by all rights, we ought to see a hundred terrorists pouring up from Mexico for every ONE middle easterner who gets a stick up his ass about "American Imperialism" and other such claptrap. (Hell, something like a third of the continental US used to BE Mexico!!! That's more land, by several orders of magnitude, than the Israelis "stole" from the "palestinians". But Mexicans aren't crossing our border with dynamite belts to murder us. They're crossing our border with tool belts to WORK for us and to make a better life for themselves and their families!)
The fact that we DON'T see Latin Americans in general, and Mexicans, Cubans, and Colombians in particular, swarming north, en masse, to blow up our buildings, suicide bomb our nightclubs and pizza parlors, launch rockets at our cities, nerve gas our subways, and kidnap and murder our citizens; when they have FAR more reason to do so than any middle easterner does or ever did; say to me that terrorism is NOT a reaction to out influence in foreign affairs. It's a war between cultures, west vs. middle east. Maybe they don't hate us because of our "freedom", but they definitely hate us because of our culture and our values and the fact that we don't worship allah.
cya,
john