We're not just afraid to be anti-authoritative, we're institutionalized since our birth in schools and the concept of control is in embedded in every aspect of life (such as in language found in politics, school work, or newspapers).
Mass-surveillance is just a more direct implementation of "panopticon" [2] applied to everyday life, existing at all times. Having committed a crime is no longer the requirement to be imprisoned, whether physically or mentally.
http://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Punish-Birth-Prison-Vintage...
Foucault's style is (possibly deliberately) obtuse, and his knowledge of history dubious at best, per Keith Windschuttle's book The Killing of History: http://www.amazon.com/The-Killing-History-Theorists-Murderin... .
It's the question of why we all let this happen without any resistance
Because it's easy, because most of the time it doesn't affect us, and because it's hard for one voter to fix the problem. Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter is very good on this subject. Most people (and voters) don't even know how many Senators their state has, or their terms, let alone why complex subjects like privacy are important. Based on Caplan's book, I think ignorance is a more reasonable explanation than a fear of being anti-authoritarian or an institutionalized mindset.
To me, one of the major takeaways from Foucault is his renouncement of the "repression hypothesis". In a nutshell, he proposes to understand power not as a binary relation between oppressors and the oppressed, but as a much more molecular system that spans all sectors of society, and whose modus operandi is not primarily repression, but rather motivation (making someone speak, articulate desires, etc).
Deleuze's "Postscript on the Societies of Control", (https://files.nyu.edu/dnm232/public/deleuze_postcript.pdf, also linked a bit further down), written in the late 1980s, can serve as a very lucid short introduction to (and escalation of) that idea. Worth the read, it's really just five pages.
a) that fully rational voters instating representative politicians into power will result in good policies (that benefit voters)?
b) that it's possible for voters to become less ignorant and more rational on average, within the current system, in order to reach the outcome of a)?
That critique is not even worthy of an answer -- it's basically a conservative "oh, all these new fangled lefty theorists have ruined our field" cry.
It's sad/funny because this is the same answer for every state.
Trick question. Every state has the same number of Senators - 2.
I'd rather draw parallel to Ancient Rome and its citizens. As long as there were "Games" in town and bread for free nobody cared. Once the Rome was on fire they woke up. For some time.
The situation is hopeless. The only solution is when US runs out of money. Goes bankrupt. Which is quite possible. Once USD isn't the world currency, the country defaults. And then there is no money for wars, no money for swat teams in every little town, no money for surveillance. Those things will still be there but on much lesser scale.
The US has currently the biggest debt of any empire in the history of the world. Impossible to repay. Once the world currency status moves from USD to Yuan, the Government will try to use all that military/police power to "maintain order", the thing is the policemen and soldiers won't have money, there will be no gas even for military, etc. Exactly like USSR when it collapsed -- bankrupted by all the wars and stupid policies.
The American right represented something totally different in the 1990s. So much so that when September 11th occurred, for a brief moment some speculated it could be right-wing terrorists.
The George W Bush administration through propaganda was able to transform those that had just years earlier been strongly anti-interventionist in to supporting interventionism. The same group that rallied for years on shrinking the government was suddenly applauding the addition of new federal agencies. The final term was capped off by a massive government redistribution of $1 trillion of wealth.
The exact same thing happened when Barack Obama was elected President. The left was so neutralized it appeared to have never existed.
Where to start? Target astro-turfing. Fake political organizations such as the elusive tea party and Barack Obama's Organizing For Action. These groups hijack causes for the purpose of gaining and holding political power. Voter mind share and physical effort are utilized as an engine that supports a fire hose of new laws and a highly profitable revolving door capitalism.
The reasons acquiescence seems an acceptable behavior are:
1. Most people are rarely inconvenienced by arbitrary overkill. It is persons deemed "undesirable" (appearance or manner) that are subjected to disportionate punishment on a routine basis that makes the overkill seem acceptable to them. It is often shocking to learn what people have been forced to endure.
2. There is a modern concept that the government is the only legitimate holder of the absolute monopoly of violence, which necessitates compliant "good" people, which should be helpless and defenseless. This also requires justifying one's business and unlimited access to search physical person, property and digital life, so as to have "nothing to hide." But it's only the fool that hands over the keys to their own destruction by persecution by a voluminous and arbitrary legal bureaucracy.
3. The majority and privileged agree by consent through silence to the ends that the police are "correctly flushing society" of those they deem "undesirable." In their view: "If that's you, too bad (overkill is legitimized, and you're not important so it doesn't matter what we do to you anyhow).
Why, and how did we let this happen? Look no further : http://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Holl...
'War-nography', islamophobia, narco-phobia... and the script goes on. When the masses believe that they are in danger, they will stand behind those in power for protection.
There's surprisingly little difference between Joseph Goebbels and Hollywood.
Even the most mainstream of Islamic voices tend to espouse positions on women's rights, sexual identity and tolerance which would be pilloried and decried if they came from our typical WASPy overlords.
Why is it that those movies attract capital?
This question has been posed long before Foucault. For instance in "Discourse on Voluntary Servitude" written in 1552 and surprisingly contemporary.
This is a false equivalence that keeps being brought up on HN. Yes, authoritarian government have mass surveillance, but the converse isn't necessarily true.
The only very clear example of the government getting more authoritarian is in the TSA. (where they now are fondling our balls for our "safety") and to a smaller extent the DHS, prison authorities, and NSLs - smaller in the sense that it has a smaller impact on society.
We're still a nation of laws, and just because the government knows more, doesn't mean it can actually do more.
Imagine for a minute that the president himself personally hated your guts and wanted to make your life miserable. Now imagine he also knows everything about you. What advantage does that really give him? Okay, if you didn't pay your taxes or something, then he could screw you over. But assuming you're law abiding, other than making your traveling an absolutely nightmare there isn't a whole lot he can do.
You can go into fantasy land and say he'll send the CIA to go blackmail you with information about all the tranny midget porn you watch - but lets stay within the framework of what is legal for the government to do.
People aren't afraid of surveillance because it has no impact on our lives. The government isn't actually misusing the data on a large scale. That's why we didn't know about all this NSA stuff for so long.
Ironically, now that the surveillance is out in the open "they" can try to become authoritarian. And my bet is that if they start trying people will go ape-shit. They'll all get voted out and everything would get rolled back.
Perhaps (which is still arguable). But that's not the case here, because we have both.
From the Patriot Act to the SWAT-ization of everyday police operations, and from the TSA to the massively increased legal overload (compared to 1960's laws and practices) and down to the rise of the huge (private) prison business and the constant wars, what more proof exactly do you need?
>People aren't afraid of surveillance because it has no impact on our lives. The government isn't actually misusing the data on a large scale.
They don't have to. It's enough for them to misuse those in a tiny scale to affect everybody's life. When the next Martin Luther King/Mother Jones/Rosa Parks/Harvey Milk/Aaron Swartz (and thousands of other, less known figures that fought for change) etc appears, they can crush him at will, and everybody will be poorer for it.
What's bothersome is that a police department is allowed to do this. That DoD rules don't prohibit selling/giving military equipment to police departments. That state legislatures don't prohibit it. A police department, like any organization, is always going to amass all the power/capability it can. Where are the people who are supposed to be limiting and regulating it?
My little city has one of those tanks and used it down the street from my home a couple years ago. Couple broke up, guy goes out, gets drunk, comes home, mostly but not entirely passed out on couch, refuses to leave. There exists a deer hunting rifle in the closet, which never left the closet so far as I know, but she wanted him punished for his marriage transgression, so report goes out he's in the house, and there's a gun in the house. Next thing you know there's a swat team with a tank in the front lawn. Never turn down a good safe PR opportunity. Needless to say he's not leaving the house, he's not too happy about getting dumped and he's way too drunk to stand up anyway. They wait a couple hours until he passes out, then smash open the doors and windows and taze him repeatedly, pretty much just for fun, to be the bullies they are. Not the most inhumane thing imaginable but still pretty stomach churning to listen to his screams on the scanner. Those brave warriors sure had their "fun" with a semi-conscious unarmed drunk guy that day. Plenty of speeches later about defending the public and being tough on crime. This is not Detroit by the way... this is the second wealthiest suburb of what used to be the tenth largest city in the country (well, tenth largest a long time ago).
In the old days, the drunk driving would have been washed over, maybe, maybe not, and he'd cool off in the drunk tank overnight at jail. Probably a disturbing the peace ticket, unsure if the soon to be ex-wifey had a restraining order or not at that time. The modern way involves militaristic force and judge jury executioner style punishment. In all fairness the wifey got some punishment too as the cops smashed in "her" houses windows, and those aren't cheap.
I've also seen the tank used around town when serving warrants. It costs a lot to maintain, you need to use it as much as possible for budget justification. So here's your summons for skipping jury duty, delivered by APC. And I'm not kidding.
Its mostly an intimidation tool.
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2004-08-05/news/dog-day-after...
Well, that's not too surprising. Every party along the chain that has the power to say Yes or No, from the weapon manufacturers, to the US legislature awarding funding, to the DoD, to the state legislatures, to the local police departments, have an obvious incentive to say Yes. The party that has the incentive to say No is the civilian population, but you're fooling yourself if you think they actually have political power. Maybe they should vote harder next time.
There's a hit to their public image too. When your home or car is burgled you don't want to see a tank.
And, as toomuchtodo hints at, heavily arming a police force leads to those guns being used. Ignoring "bad guys" for a moment, shooting innocent dogs of innocent people is probably a bad thing. Shooting innocent bystanders is probably a bad thing.
http://www.popehat.com/2013/12/05/nypd-baby-you-know-we-love...
Obvious Popehat bias, but still, it's pretty alarming.
First, it's not all about the money. Second, the tools you use, shape your practice ("If you have a hammer", etc).
Those tanks only reinforce the idea of the militarization of the police forces. Next time, they'll be tempted to use it to crack down some student shit-down or such. Or go bust some small time drug dealer. Perhaps killing a few innoncents in the process.
See, for example: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/08/swat-t...
If you have a tank, you don't need to negotiate a peaceful surrender.
Think about how Icelandic cops are wringing their hands over killing their very first person ever, in their entire history. Now think about American cops driving tanks over someone's family dog on the way to punching a hole in a house and using flashbangs and tasers indiscriminately on the people inside.
It was a mistake to give Barney Fife even the one bullet.
The military spends a massive amount of money for maintenance - now the police can do that, too! Very cool, except you pay for it and they'll need more money.
APCs use a lot more fuel, have more expensive parts and need special training to operate = more money from the local budget (= more taxes).
Next thing, they'll be buying jets and drones for $10 each and spending millions on their maintenance.
Suppose someone rises to power with little regard for legislative oversight and activates the sleeping military at home. It might start with a real (or faked) terror event coordinated across several major cities. It wouldn't take much at all, 5-10 cities, and suddenly: 1. Internet & cell communications are shut down 2. a national state of emergency is declared 3. A curfew is issued 4. Dissidents are squashed via a military police force with little recourse themselves. 5. Everyone is required to have location-aware implants "for safety."
With a little fear, a government could take full, permanent control of their citizens via aggressive laws and more aggressive enforcers. Would it even take two weeks?
At least that is what is happening today...
My thought would be that you just need the presidency and maybe six high ranking military officers. You then declare a presidential address where you announce that you're declaring yourself dictator for life. If anyone objects, you'll nuke Moscow. Of course, Russia will respond by annihilating the entire US, so objecting to the take over is essentially a death sentence.
Let the citizens have their guns. They can't shoot an ICBM.
Or do you really think that the police in the U.S. are equivalent to a disciplined, no-questions-asked unit of the Federal government?
(I don't think a majority of the military could be encouraged to act directly against the citizens of the U.S., never mind the police (preempting snide replies, against the people in a nationally organized manner))
It's an interesting hypothetical scenario which exploits the good intentions of the police and military to do evil.
(Some other commenters suggest the police is more loyal to the local citizenry, in which case weaponizing the police could be seen as providing a counterbalancing armed force that could defend against a military assault on the populace)
Personally, I'm not concerned about either scenario.
Mysteriously, this didn't stop Saddam Hussein ruling for decades.
It should also be noted that most discriminatory and tyrannical regimes selectively arm or disarm segments of their populations, so as to effect greater control and stability. If one quickly examines the "Jim Crow" laws of the southern US states, it is easy to find many which were targeted at disarming the black population and others (, making the minorities vulnerable to lynching).
What's depressing is that it's starting to look like they were right.
Edit: from the downvotes, I can only assume that I've offended the Bigfoot fans.
Ok then so how many "tinfoil-hat type rantings" have not come true?
It's easy to say "I had a feeling I should have bought that stock" without acknowledging all the stocks that you didn't buy that didn't go up in price. Or the ones you did that didn't go up in price.
A safe bet would be: many, many more.
But does that make the ones that have any less troubling?
I think, "wow, this person is literally dupable without limit."
Secret courts, secret prisons, bit of wiretapping, all part of everyday life.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112104/
Sure, X-Files had boogie men, big baddies, conspiracies. In Nowhere Man the evil was ubiquitous, bureaucratic, banal, and terrifying.
People have been well conditioned to believe that their governments are benevolent, do good deeds and that misconduct can be alleviated by stricter law enforcement and electing better leaders.
Anyone who doubts this is a "conspiracy theorist".
Does this kind of thinking still place me firmly with the tinfoil contingent?
To me, current US policing looks much like how the Brits patrolled Northern Ireland back in the day, with the army. Only thing the US is missing is check points and road blocks. Don't kid yourselves, the US does not have a police force, it has a domestic army.
Only hope Americans have is in the individuals who wear the uniform. Would American uniformed son and daughters, mothers and fathers turn on non uniformed Americans?
On the other hand.... If the main government got all evil and what not, couldn't this local police force defend the people with all this hardware? Aren't they all sort of independent, under local state or what ever control? I mean, it we are talking revolution and all that, its not a given who side the police would be on, is it?
From 1969 to 1977 the Army in NI basically operated independently of the constabulary, with only informal liaison and co-ordination, whilst pursuing their primary mission.
But from then onwards the Army was seconded to Security Co-ordinating Commission and was re-orientated towards support of the policeman on the beat.
The UK Government had realised that soldiers having unregulated police-like powers over people was counter-productive, and the response was to re-establish the 'primacy of the constabulary' to give some faith in the justice system. If you were arrested, it was by a police officer with his number visible on his lapel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_checkpoint#Sobriety_chec...
Cops shoot dogs, taze people for fun, pretend to be badasses, and then go home to their families every night. It's the perfect profession for a bully. But serving in the military sucks, they do a better job screening out the psychopaths, and once you've been in combat once or twice you tend to take the whole organized violence thing a little more seriously.
There are many examples of covert malevolent acts in the halls of power throughout history, there was a list of confessed false flag operations on here just the other day. Look into any book about the history of military intelligence and you will find all sorts of nasty adventures. Then there's COINTELPRO, MKULTRA, the FBIs attempt to undermine the civil rights movement, it goes on and on. What would be truly irrational would be to believe that this stuff doesn't happen in the present.
So now I try to evaluate each "conspiracy theory" on its own terms, lest I blind myself to the one that turns out to be real.
(Note: I still don't actually believe in any specific tinfoilery. I just try to evaluate it honestly. Almost all of it, I still dismiss immediately. Most of the really juicy stuff is right there in the history books anyway.)
Was OWS not your style? Do you think anti-capitalist critics that use technology are hypocrites? Are you waiting for someone to craft the perfect movement before you jump in? If any of these or those in their vein apply, it's time to change your MO, your way of looking at the problem.
The main problem is that Ukraine is not sure what kind of change it wants. And it doesn't understand the steps to take to get change. And too many Ukrainians want a magical solution that will sweep the problems away.
Point 1 - Signing that Euro agreement will not change anything. It only puts Ukraine on a path to make thousands of changes in their laws and their society that may or may not hurt the people. Then, after 10 or 15 years of this, they might be allowed to join the EU. Ask Turkey about how long you need to wait. And after joining the EU, Ukraine would be a substandard partner, for instance there would be visa restrictions for years to come that would prevent many Ukrainians from working in the EU. Quotas in fact.
Point 2 - Ukraine is already in an informal union with Russia. Given that Ukraine's largest trading partner is Russia and that Russia's largest trading partner is Ukraine, they can't help but be in a union. If Ukraine would only sign an agreement as a CIS member and formalize this relationship, the people of Ukraine would gain immediate benefits. For instance there would be a legal way for Ukrainians to go work in Russia, and since they are already fluent in Russian, they could get reasonable jobs and not dishwashing or hotel cleaning jobs like they get in the EU.
So what would be best for Ukraine?
Also, consider this. Russians are GREAT chess players. What if Russia is orchestrating this because it knows that if Ukraine joins the EU, then it will weaken the EU and open the door for Russia to also join, and then to dominate?
You shouldn't compare your corruption with Ukraine's or other Soviet Bloc countries'. Those people have a place to run to, as hard as getting there is. You have nowhere to run.
People go bouncing off the wall around this issue as if it were one having solely to do with owning guns, but the real purpose is arranging the real power in the government. The people reserve and are ultimately responsible for the use of lethal force in the United States. They can delegate that power to the government for certain things, like a defense department or law enforcement, but at the end of the day, it's everybody carrying guns that are responsible for social order. At least that's the way it was set up.
As we've drifted away from that principle, by assigning more and more powers to the defense department and police agencies, (gun control is part of this but not the only part), those folks have quite naturally started viewing themselves as the privileged few to hold the power to make things go boom. Then we got rid of the volunteer military, further separating the mass of the population from the things carrying lethal force.
So nowadays, if you want to become a specialist in the application of power tools to destroy people and things, you pick one of a few different career paths and become one of the chosen few. This is a VERY recent development. Not 50 years ago it was commonplace to know people who could operate machine guns, explosives, and drive tanks around. To those folks, cops were just another working Joe like them except they wore a badge. On the other side, cops viewed the population as a trained asset to have and use in time of crisis. It was not unusual to consider gathering up as many armed men as necessary from an area to conduct police operations.
But the professionals got involved, and having that kind of power was viewed as a terribly complicated responsibility that the average guy couldn't handle. This created a wall in society. On both sides now, it's us against them. We need MRAPS because, hell, anything can happen, and there's just a few of us cops in this county. We are no longer all in it together. It's not like if AQ comes knocking we can knock on doors and ask for help.
This is a self-fulfilling feedback loop: as the police arm themselves more and more with special gear, the average person really can't operate it. So even more specialized training is required. Same goes for military gear, where this divide originated.
I would suggest that what we need is some sort of ready reserve system where everybody is trained at reaching 18 on how to safely use most all common forms of police and military gear. I'd further suggest that local police departments be required to have a certain percentage of their patrols as civilian ride-alongs.
There are a lot of things that can be done here, and we don't have to argue gun control to make progress. But I think we do need an understanding of how we got here in the first place. This is a trend that has been a long time coming. The War On Terror just exacerbated it.
People will probably despise me for this, but why don't we have compulsory military duty in the U.S. like other countries?
It would give people some discipline. It would discourage us from acting arrogant, "lol! we should bomb them!" It would give people some skills. If it was equally applied, no one would have any disadvantage. It would make people feel much more secure, without delegating their security to others.
The real scourge is that in order to be economically competitive, we must all hyper-specialize and become experts in a single, narrow area. We can no longer lucidly judge others b/c we have less in common with one another.
A work buddy said in the 1950s in the U.S., teenagers would hang out with the police. He distinctly remembers hanging out in a police car, smoking marijuana, while the cops chided him because he said he couldn't afford real tobacco to smoke. I want to get back to that world. I want to provoke other nations less, so we're no longer a target of terrorism. I want us to get back to the business of making our lives leisurely through technology, rather than more awesome. "More awesome" means were doing more with the same energy as we exerted in the industrial revolution. I'd much rather see us getting less done with less energy.
It would lead to the US military becoming way too large, and given the prowess in media propaganda, you'll get tens of millions of people with a highly militaristic mindset with nothing to do - think current soldier worshipping x10.
The military reserves are certainly an option, but having a mandatory training+service aspect certainly seems ... interesting. Frightening, in a way, but it seems to work for Switzerland.
Yes, because when the entire male populace is effectively your military it's a lot harder for the military to do shady things. Also, as the original commenter points out there's a lot less division between your average joe and someone who is a professional police officer/soldier.
What is a police dept to do, when the crimes are escalating? Its simple to chide Warren County (or whoever); but who are you to say the next bombing or public rage will not occur there? The others were in similar places; no place is safe.
I mean, there was that one bank robbery in LA where the perps had serious body armor and heavy rifles in the 90s. Other than that I'm really drawing a blank for how often this would be appropriate tactically.
edit the DA dismissed the charges but the police chief thinks the arrest was justified.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/04/charges...
Interview with the coach (he seems like a really nice guy):
http://www.infowars.com/kids-arrested-waiting-for-school-bus...
Obey the cop and get suspended... or obey the teacher and go to jail.
Just leaving these kids in no-win situations. SOMEONE has to be willing to listen and hear the kids out.
Either the cop has to hear them out, and then say "OK, well I'll just keep an eye on you until your teacher comes."
Or the teacher has to hear them out, and then say "Well, OK, it was my fault for telling you guys to stand there so I'm not going to suspend anyone this time."
But you can't put kids in a situation like that and then say... "It's YOUR fault!"
That's insanity. This wasn't ANY of these kids' fault.
They were going to a basketball game not school so they probably wouldn't get suspended but they were expected to be there. Plus they wanted to be there. It was according to the coach the normal place they caught the bus for games.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/first-grade-boy-suspend...
"A 6-year-old was suspended from school in Canon City, Colo., after kissing a girl on her hand. School officials said the smooch was sexual harassment"
Articles like this (which I'm glad are being written) point out the flaws and injustice in the system, but don't discuss the presumed results "those in control" are looking to achieve by manipulating it.
From what I understand, the desired result is to minimize the autonomy of the general public and funnel the bulk of money, control, and power into the hands of a national elite. What happens next (an honest question, as I have some semi-paranoid theories but am curious to hear from someone who is a bit more educated on the topic)?
It's not a conspiracy. People who know things - and when you have wealth you have the ability to know things - tend to see that we have a period of incredibly instability coming involving a lot of dying and misery. In such a situation having a tight control of the masses and a control of resources in the hands of a tiny elite benefits that elite in ways that times of abundance make seem unnecessary.
I don't want to be "that guy" but I also don't want to be caught in the headlights if shit hits the fan (which it seems is inevitable). Anything to study to guide my thinking without going full-on bomb shelter?
(From Atlas Shrugged -- Damn, it's bad when I of all people am quoting Ayn Rand).
Fact is, if all this military equipment were sold on open market, no harm would come of it. Used to be available and wasn't a problem then, and the rather large paramilitary equipment market isn't a problem now. Question is: why is the government so afraid of its own citizens possessing such gear?
Is that the right question, considering that the tactical gear market is allowed to exist? I'm apparently too lazy to do it, but it would probably be instructive to look at the history of that ban on military-to-citizen sales.
In 1934, machineguns & "destructive devices" were hit with a $200 "transfer tax" and subject to tight paperwork regulations and severe penalties for violations. Given the products in question cost around $50, and the tax equaled some $3000 in today's US$, it was practically a ban. Inflation brought the tax down to affordable (cough) levels today.
In 1986, possession/manufacture of new machineguns was banned outright. Old ones could still be owned & transferred, but between the severely limited supply and accumulated $200 taxes, prices have increased about 25x over what they would cost unrestricted, making them desirable for investment and undesirable for mundane use.
When the US Army transitioned to "Humvees" replacing Jeeps, the contract included a clause prohibiting resale to civilians. Likewise other equipment cannot be resold, not so much by law but by contract.
As it is, the tactical gear market is "allowed" to exist mainly because there isn't much way to legally prohibit it. Most such gear is objectively indistinguishable from other common products (clothing, camping equipment, radios, hunting gear); the differences are significant in specialized use but nowhere near enough to be codified in law. As demonstrated during the now-expired 10-year "assault weapons ban", the marketplace will come up with all kinds of creative solutions to bridge any gaps caused by prohibition (10 round limit? get subcompact pistols or .50-caliber semi-auto rifles. Weight limits? superlight plastic/carbon-fiber guns.)
All those crimes?! Jeeze, its sounds like they'd friggin' crucify him...
Meanwhile, in Russia, the place where the Soviet system used to be, they have moved in the opposite direction and dismantled most of the police state. In Russia people have more personal freedoms with respect to the state than they do in the USA. Of course one unfortunate side effect of so much freedom is that there was a great increase in corruption and the growth of the oligarchs after the fall of the Soviet Union. But Russia is dealing with this step by step, reducing corruption and reigning in the oligarchs. Their ideal seems to be the USA of the 1960s or 70s, but not the USA of today.
How it is possible for someone to reach such a stupendous level of confusion boggles the mind. Even if the Russian propaganda minister were to make such a declaration he surely isn't deluded enough to believe it to be true.
I can't wait to stroll down the streets of Chiba like Case.
I can't wait to hack around in the Metaverse like Hiro.
I can't wait to explore the underbelly of prison-islands like Snake.
We just need a bit more authoritarianism, some advanced cybernetic implants, and just enough unrest for a Modern Wild West to be born.
Does anyone else plan on coming along for the ride?
HACK THE GIBSON! HACK THE PLANET!
"And the mood is spreading. Take the asset bubble collapse of 2008 and the rising cries of progressives for the criminal prosecution of Wall Street perpetrators, as if a fundamentally sound financial system had been abused by a small number of criminals who were running free after the debacle. Instead of pushing a debate about how to restructure our predatory financial system, liberals in their focus on individual prosecution are aping the punitive zeal of the authoritarians. A few high-profile prosecutions for insider trading (which had nothing to do with the last crash) have, of course, not changed Wall Street one bit."
I think that the self-serving, damaging actions of those with a lot of power that affected the entire world's economy is worth looking into at least some prosecution, it's hardly in the same league as what happened to three innocent teenagers waiting for a bus. And if insider trading isn't related to the last crash, then of course prosecuting it isn't going to change anything.
To ethically prosecute people you have to competently and in good faith believe they have broken specific laws. And you need to know the actions, and how specifically they violated the law. An unfortunate outcome is not sufficient.
There are, however, Goldman Sachs people that lied to their own customers in order to make money, for example. That is the kind of behaviour that can be persecuted, mostly along the conflict of interest or fraud lines. Those are specific laws.
Oh, by the way, heard of the Libor scandal? Not specifically related to the crash, but interesting reading:
It's pathetic, but it seems to work.
This page should make any U.S. taxpayer sick and any non-U.S. citizen worried:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e...
http://waterford.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/waterfor...
And in reality, they're just preparing for social unrest that seem more likely by the day.
There has always been terrorism in the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States
As well as mass shootings. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-m...
This current "era" isn't defined by the number or scale of these tragedies but by institutions' and the public's reaction to them. If we want to protect the lives and welfare of the average U.S. citizen our money and efforts would be better spent tackling some of the less newsworthy health issues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_preventable_causes_of_d...
Also the time frame of the Sandy Hook Shooting was extremely brief. The shooter was believed to enter the school around 9:30 the first 911 call was made at 9:35 and the last shot heard was at 9:40 and the police enter at 9:44. The MRAP and other military artillery obviously wouldn't have made a difference due to time frame of the tragedy.
This article is about the prison/police system becoming the fundamental axis of civil society. Schools are run like prisons, and increasingly with police presence. Minority groups are, as always, increasingly targeted for harassment and neutralization. If you get on the radar of the police state, you and your family will be hounded forever. If you are imprisoned, it's more likely than not that you'll be held in solitary confinement.
The article doesn't seem to answer the question I wish I knew the answer to -- how did we get here? What happened that made the United States this way? Was it always like this, behind the curtains, just a nest of HUAACs and J Edgar Hoovers?
Well, now the J Edgar Hoover of 2013 knows everything about everyone, he can arrest anyone for any reason at any time, and he can't be opposed by any means I'm aware of. That iconic picture of a hippy putting a flower in the barrel of a riot cop's gun could never happen today -- as soon as the hippy reached for the gun I'm sure his head would be blown off.
From a right libertarian point of view, it is the government's responsibility to protect your rights, not to protect you.
From a left libertarian point of view, it is the government's responsibility to demonstrate that the good of enforcing a law outweighs the loss of individual freedom and other harm of enforcing it.
Drugs, immigration, fail those tests. Many sex crimes fail those tests. Seatbelt laws probably fail.
The police have to be so aggressive about these things because they never lent themselves to enforcement in the first place.
I do have an issue with the article though. My middle school did have quite a few young criminals in it, and a zero-tolerance policy would have been beneficial for everyone. Instead, quite a lot of physical violence and theft was dismissed as 'bullying' which resulted in escalation. I know for a fact that many of the students who misbehaved in less extreme criminal ways (and were allowed to get away with it) did enter into a life of crime before they were halfway through high school.
So there is a difference between militarization and despotic control and disciplining students enough to prevent them from becoming criminals.
I think that rather than worrying about harsh penalties for vandalism etc., take issue with the propaganda being fed to students and the lack of focus on problem solving outside of narrow domains.
I guarantee none. Spend less time online and more complaining to your representatives. You will achieve a lot more in turning things around, ie if you really want to, cowards.
Do any of you American citizens out there have the same opinion of your government?
Turns out that any laws that have loop holes will be abused and everyone is guilty. This is the definition of tyranny.
Why the hell does Ohio State need an MRAP. Are they going to actually tell us that the terrorists might roll in with tanks or APCs. Or maybe the terrorists will be running around with APCs in full combat? No.
Geez, is anybody even questioning these clowns about these acquisitions.
