Comment Re:USA! USA USA! (Score 1) 192
Oh, and I should have mentioned that I'm already a fan of John Taylor Gatto. My political and social views are, let's say outside the mainstream.
And, unlike most of us, Snowden actually did something about it. As a result of his revelations, political pressure is being applied to the government from many different directions to get the situation resolved.
Of course, it cost Snowden his job, and his ability to live in his own country, and might still land him in jail or worse.
You could swallow some of that cynicism and at least try to improve things. Maybe ask the government to grant snowden clemency?
Nah. Why exert the effort to click an online petition when it is so much easier to just bitch about how hopeless things are?
I'm going to go with "because an online petition won't do a damn thing" for $1000, Alex.
Under what possible interpretation of the law can this be considered the actions of lawful government?
Oh, do you have standing to bring a suit? No? Know anyone who does? No? Well, that's that, then.
It's like we're all in a coffee shop, and a man armed with a 12 gauge just barged in to rob the place...
Yeah, in really slow motion, over a four year time period.
The polls are bullshit. Count the votes. only there will you find what people really think. Everything else is just bad theater.
Considering the voter participation rate, I'd say the votes tell us most people think it isn't worth the effort to vote. Though I do vote, I can't really blame them. I vote because I'm acting on principle (I almost always vote third party), not because I think it will make a damn bit of difference. The Us "republic" is unresponsive to the will of the people. The people know this and act accordingly.
I agree. It is becoming increasingly difficult to consider the NSA as anything other than an extremely well-funded criminal organization.
Psssh! They need to get in line behind the CIA.
I considered moderating this down, but I will reply instead. This is such a warped, confused view of history it's hard to know where to start. However; there is such a thing as a just war, international security is hard, and Russia had and has no right to Crimea or the Ukraine. Iraq WMDs: I remind you that Saddam believed he had WMDs. As for the Lusitania, I would remind you Churchill had his hands full with a minor issue called Gallipoli. And in Syria and Libya, there were no good options, and the situation was not of the West's making; it's difficult to know when a market trader's messy suicide will start a regional revolution.
We are lied into every war; every single one. The actual reasons we go to war often have to do with economic or strategic interests. But people don't get ready to fight and die for economic interests. They fight and die for survival. So you make it about survival, and tell the people how the enemy is coming to kill their children in their beds. Or you appeal to their sense of righteousness and tell them how we must save this other poor downtrodden people from the dictator we installed (oops, did I say that last part out loud?). After all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy. The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. The United States isn't the only place this is done, of course. It works the same way in any country.
On the global scene the USA is too busy putting its nose into places where it doesn't belong. Maybe if they focused more on the mother land and made a dent in idiotic wars like "War on Drugs"...
Excuse me, I believe the propaganda word that has been chosen to pull at our emotions and get us to rally around the State is "homeland". Boy, did my ears perk up when I first heard that word used to describe the United States.
Are you one of those people who would have ridiculed anyone claiming the Government can "listen to all of our phone calls any time they want" as a conspiracy theorist?
No. That's not surprising since the NSA has had some pretty serious computing power fro quite some time. The challenge is picking out the conversations of interest since there simply is too much data to sift through and get timely actionable information.
I think it has been demonstrated that these activities are as much about having a dossier to comb through after the fact as having timely, actionable intelligence. If a person of interest catches their attention, they can go back through the records to find something to charge that person with. Although stopping terrorism is the stated goal, maintaining the status quo is also a goal and this can be a useful tool.
Courts apply the law - justice is a bit more nebulous.
This is why I say we have a legal system, not a justice system.
The concept of Standing has to be the most abused notions in the legal system, especially with regards to the government.
You should not have to prove you have been specifically injured in order to make the government follow the law.
It's even worse nowadays, because the government does so much in secret the evidence you have been injured is classified.
So when is this second amendment right going to be put to use? Honestly Americans just keep slavishly knuckling under to their government whenever their civil liberties are infringed. Whether it's the NSA's illegal surveillance programs or the stingray use by the police or the FBI's privacy-invading drone program the public still does nothing. All the harping on about freedom, liberty and the need for guns in case the government needs to be replaced is all just bullshit, how much more downtrodden can you even get?!
The Second Amendment right will be put to use when people have more to gain than to lose. That is not the case today, and really we should hope it does not become the case. How would it work anyway, this Second Amendment option? Just start shooting at FBI agents? See how far that gets you.
As for how much more downtrodden we can get, it's a lot. A lot more downtrodden. We are not even close to being downtrodden enough to violently revolt against the government. As I said earlier, we should hope we do not get to that point.
I looked into how this can possibly work. Apparently they go to the post office and send their drug shipment with priority mail. WHAT THE HELL?! So spend like $50,000 on one drug sniffing dog at each major USPS hub. Problem solved. Then when those idiots resort to in-person trades, arrest them in sting operations. How has the FBI not figured this out yet?!
So, what do you do? Rip open every package the dog alerts to? What about the false positives? Would you like to risk having your package destroyed every time you mailed one? Do you realize how much mail goes through the USPS every day? How much do you think inspecting every package would slow things down? Do you know the Constitution only allows searches with a warrant describing the place to be searched and the object of the search? Have I asked enough questions for one reply? How about one more?
Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky
