What transpired in Turkey can easily happen in US. There are many dissatisfied people on either side of the political spectrum. Now more than ever, with higher unemployment and extensive communication channels, the risks are even higher.
But there are ways to keep the population at check:
1 - Utilize the fear of external entities (Iraq, terrorism, etc.) to channel away anxiety from domestic issues.
2 - pre-occupy the public, reality shows, sports, etc.
3 - Focus the problem on individuals to provide the election as a escape valve (Bush, Obama, etc.)
4 - Quickly stop or discredit any movement before it catches on like wild fire.
5 - Identify potential instigators and defuse them early if needed (shutdown bank account, credit card, ATM) terminate their phones and Internet-which is why you need this list.
, etc-which is why you need this list.
I've heard it said that what finally helped bring an end the prolonged violences of 'The Troubles', was not the political process put in place by Blair, but the fact that after 9/11, many Americans suddenly felt a bit bad about sending money back to the IRA (no that they had experienced terrorism on their doorstep). With their main source of funding removed, the IRA was unable to keep up their armed resistance. I'm sure the situation was far more complex, but it's a fact that bars and clubs that once publicly collected money to send over, now no longer do.
Sorry, the Syrian "freedom fighters" ARE terrorists. They are only "freedom fighters" for the US Media.
Assad is not that good himself, but the "freedom fighters" are just a bunch of muslim fundamendalists that have slaughtered innocent people and have little popular support.
"During his time in Syria throughout much of 2012, videographer Robert King followed Aleppo's Al-Tawhid Brigade as he dodged bullets and rocket fire to learn more about the largest brigade of the Free Syrian Army. Somehow Robert managed to track down Haji-Mara, the Al-Tawhid Brigade's commander, for a rare interview, during which the former-businessman-turned-freedom-fighter espouses the many difficulties the rebels face against the alleged brutality of President Bashar al-Assad's regime."
Yes, one sided propaganda. What about it? In Europe people have followed the story decades before Robert Kind even heard of Syria, and know both sides and their backgrounds and goals.
No, it's conditional in whether they have popular support and/or represent a change for the better, or are just thugs that want to enforce a Taliban style rule.
Of course they are. Hopefully next time the police and the FBI will do their job properly: after killing 20 or 30 terrorists the rest will get to know their place.
Watching common Americans being abused by their government and corporations for a decade now, with very little that came out of it, except a few protests / shows / petitions - I highly doubt a serious uprising is possible.
Americans seemed to have lost their free spirit. Back in the 60s - that was a real movement. Real actions. Real spirit. Right now, most people, especially young (what's saddening), are conformists and as long as they feel relatively safe and well fed, they won't go far than writing a comment on HN... like this one :)
I am of the opinion that any effective resistance against an oppressive takeover will not be military opposition, nor will it be violent. The problems of the future will not be solved by force of arms but by the radical actions of neighbors helping neighbors.
I think that one of the huge problems of the modernist approach is that it supposes that the only levels are the individuals and the state. Family and community are seen as things to liberate people from. In the end, though, self-employment, family, and community are the ties that if we take care of them, they create the best options for the survival of a free state.
> Watching common Americans being abused by their government and corporations for a decade now, with very little that came out of it, except a few protests / shows / petitions - I highly doubt a serious uprising is possible.
I think you're watching the wrong people.
> Right now, most people, especially young (what's saddening), are conformists and as long as they feel relatively safe and well fed, they won't go far than writing a comment on HN... like this one :)
This has always been the case - it's human nature. It was true in 1775, it was true in the 60's and it's true today. It's the minority who stand up that change the world.
In the 60's, many protestors were directly threatened by being drafted to go to Vietnam... so their motivations were much more vivid and literally life-threatening. What's going on today is arguably more threatening to our financial system and world ecology, but as you said, we're in general pretty comfortable and not as motivated as back then.
If our government threatened to limit sales of alcohol (as in Turkey), among other extremely conservative laws, that would probably create a big reaction and protesting.
>>>There are many dissatisfied people on either side of the political spectrum.
Which is the entire point of the American Constitution. It was created by political malcontents for political malcontents.
Having suffered under the brutality of the King, the Colonists drafted a document that would prevent such abuses in the future by enshrining it in law. That millions and millions of people who would "get along" under any regime (see North Korea today) benefited is strictly a collateral effect.
That no one seems to understand the original point of it all is why we're going down this greased slide to hell today. And hell it will be.
(6) engage the public in BS non-issues or peripheral issues, the two parties are putting a show of disagreeing about, from the debt ceiling to gay marriage to corporate taxes, etc, while they work hand in hand in all important aspects of fucking over the middle class.
No, I'm suggesting samstave is a conspiracy theorist. If Noam Chomsky has articulated the same view (and yes, I see what you did there), then I'd call him a conspiracy theorist too. On politics he's a complete bullshit artist - and I say that because he's a leader in his academic field. He would never accept a paper from a student or another linguist that was as fallacious as the sort of political essays he writes; he clearly understands the concept of academic rigor, but declines to practice it in his political activities. Total hypocrite.
Sorry, but that is nonsense. His political work is always quite academic, baring an incredible amount facts backed up by references. I think public records are the one source he cites most.
Can you point out as single mistruth in his works?
Can you point out where he has not been academic where he should have been?
He might very well produce the most academic political writings ever.
Just because someone sticks in a heap of footnotes doesn't validate their claims. Climate-change denialists do this as a matter of course, but that doesn't make their work academically rigorous. Facts and data points taken out of context can be enormously misleading.
He might very well produce the most academic political writings ever.
LOL no. I read legal opinions and law review articles for fun. I have an intense dislike of Chomsky because I am the sort of person who reads all the footnotes and consults the cited reference works, and doing so on Chomsky's writings has led me in every instance to conclude that he habitually misrepresents his source material by selective quotation and omission of equally important countervailing facts.
When I first encountered Chomsky's writings I was tremendously excited, thinking that this was a guy who Tells It Like It Is. But the more I read and analyzed, the more disappointed I became. Not being American, I wasn't bothered by his challenges to conventional wisdom or the fact that he held a radical viewpoint. What bothered me was his near-constant manipulation of his readers.
Amazing. Chomsky is a legend. Who are you exactly? Ignoring his entire career to simply dismiss him as a conspiracy theorist. Ignorance and apathy like yours is why the US has fallen into the hole it's in now.
I'm not ignoring his entire career. He's one of the towering intellectuals of the 20th Century, and his work in linguistics has positively influenced a range of fields.
But his views on politics and world affairs are extremely eccentric, and have remained on the fringe for a reason.
Yea, for the same reason people who claimed the US was spying on everyone remained on the fringe.... until we had a bunch of evidence of it dropped on us.
The American Civil War was largely centered around the issue of slavery, which the economies of the rebelling states relied on. The American Revolutionary War was a response to increased taxes that took a heavy economic burden on the colonists to pay for the Empire's wars.
While widespread starvation might not have existed, it was certainly the threat of economic issues that sparked both conflicts.
I cannot remember the reference either ... but I seem to remember reports that food prices went up precipitously just before the Arab Spring. Anybody got a call option on agricultural commodities right now?
I was at the coffee shop yesterday. One thing I like doing in between work sessions is to look around and observe people around me, and try to guess what their lives must be like. In this particular case though, I was looking at them within the context of the latest NSA scandal.
There was a mother nursing her baby while trying to get some work done on her laptop. Did she care if the NSA is watching her? Probably not. She just had too much shit to think about. She was worried that her baby seemed to be getting sick. She was worried about being able to finish the report that was due the next day at work. She was worried about what she was going to cook for dinner that night, and whether her husband was able to catch his connecting flight in Chicago earlier.
There was the overworked barrista, who was really busy trying to process the orders from a long line of customers. Did she care if the NSA was watching her? Probably not. She had been working non-stop for the past six hours, and half an hour before the end of her shift she suddenly had to deal with a large group of new customers, each of whom was cranky because they needed their fix of caffeine. She was thinking about whether the guy she gave her number to at the bar the previous night was going to text/call her soon, because he was really cute. She was thinking about whether she would be able to make it home in time to catch the latest episode of her favorite TV show.
There were two guys sharing the table next to mine. One of them was wearing a full suit, and the other was in business casual. Judging by the bits of conversation I overheard, it was an informal job interview. Did the interviewee care if the NSA was watching him? Probably not. He was worried about a ton of other things, like being under-dressed for the interview and his growing need to use the restroom really badly. He was worried about whether the interviewer would hire him, because his bills were at serious risk of running overdue. His wife had also been texting him for the past half hour complaining about the dishwasher that stopped working.
Now, these were just my guesses about these people, and they were most likely wrong. But in the grand scheme of things, I think my point stands: people are so fucking obsessed with their own little lives that they cannot raise their heads and look at - much less critically think about and analyze - what is going on around them. They don't have the type of mental bandwidth to even try to process the big picture. Their own piece of the puzzle and the immediate surrounding pieces are what demand their attention.
I was talking to my roommate this past weekend as the NSA scandal was unfolding, and I asked her if she had heard. She said no. I was appalled. I wanted to scream at her "ARE YOU LIVING UNDER A ROCK?!?" But I couldn't. She works 12+ hour days, plus a 2 hour commute, and the rest of her time is taken up by volunteer projects she's leading in our neighborhood. How can I blame her for not having heard of some invisible party listening in on all her emails and phone calls and social media conversations? How can I blame her for not being worried about the insane implications of this surveillance and what it means for her country?
people are so fucking obsessed with their own little lives that they cannot raise their heads and look at - much less critically think about and analyze - what is going on around them. They don't have the type of mental bandwidth to even try to process the big picture.
I know! Why doesn't everyone just drop everything and pay attention to the stuff that you are interested in? Seriously, do you know how ridiculously egotistical you sound? You have no idea what those people do with their lives when they leave the coffeeshop, or indeed everything that's going on in the coffeeshop. The lady with the baby might just as easily be writing a book. The barista might hate TV and be looking forward to her cello lesson or some other factor. You're judging, and dismissing, people based on your completely uninformed guesses about what their lives must be like. This is as foolish as me suggesting that you don't value the perspective of the young mom because you're incapable of forming a relationship and starting a family.
You are drowning in your own hubris, and haven't stopped to consider the possibility that that your conclusions are not well-founded. There are insane implications to lots of things, like having enough nuclear weapons to destroy all life on earth many times over. And yet we've managed to avoid doing so. Spy satellites gather up enough data to map our every move, but when we look at how much imagery there is that helps to re-establish a sense of perspective. I suggest you ask your roommate why devotes time to volunteer projects instead of posting paranoid screeds on HN; you might learn something useful.
> I suggest you ask your roommate why [she] devotes time to volunteer projects instead of posting paranoid screeds on HN; you might learn something useful.
I'm printing this out and framing it in my office.
For the record, she is leading the volunteer organization I founded three years ago. I myself have moved onto bigger and better things, such as posting "paranoid screeds" on HN.
I think you have a deep, fundamental misunderstanding of what I wrote.
>>I know! Why doesn't everyone just drop everything and pay attention to the stuff that you are interested in?
It is not stuff I am interested in. It is something everyone should be interested in. WE ARE TALKING ABOUT PEOPLE'S FREEDOM. Why is that not something everyone should drop everything and fight for?
Really? Who put you in charge of how people should order their priorities, or made you the arbiter of how people gauge their freedom? I understand that you find the NSA monitoring intolerable and consider it an imposition upon your freedom, but you seem baffled by the idea that anyone might have come to a different conclusion from you about this. You assume that it must be because their minds are taken up with other matters which you consider trivial, and that they simply don't have the 'mental bandwidth' to understand what's going on, unlike yourself.
Now, granted that this is true of some people, and there are a good many people out there that have simply never thought about these issues. But there are others (such as myself) that have thought about them and don't share your views. Historically it seems to me that the trend has been towards greater transparency, more responsive government, and a greater degree of individual autonomy. I hold this view in spite of the fact that I assumed the NSA was accumulating data on a vast scale before these revelations (both because it was obvious that the Patriot Act was designed to facilitate such information-gathering, and because of the existence of other systems that already existed for that purpose).
I have no expectation or especial desire to convert you to my point of view; you're perfectly free to disagree with it. What I object to is your assumption that there's no possible way that anyone could understand what's going on and not share your view. Posting in all caps doesn't make your argument any clearer, it just tells me that you're feeling frustrated by the discovery that there are people who don't share your perspective.
If you have time, I invite you to read this essay, 'The paranoid Style in American Politics,' which was written in 1965 but still remains entirely relevant today: http://archive.harpers.org/1964/11/pdf/HarpersMagazine-1964-... I offer it not to suggest that you are paranoid, but because it effectively sketches out the limiting nature of discourse based around Manichean assumptions and zero-sum representations of what are complex and multi-faceted issues.
I've reread his post 3 or so times, and I never came to the conclusion that he had this belief.
'People are so fucking obsessed with their little lives' is a dismissive statement, suggesting that the (imagined) concerns of others are too small to deserve the attention people give to them.
If you lead a busy life, you won't have time, motivation, or enough attention to consider outside affairs. Is that false?
Yes, I do think that's false. Being busy can crowd out all other considerations due to fatigue or necessity, but not necessarily so. To stick with the coffeeshop example, is it not just as possible that the busy barista spends her evening studying to be a civil rights lawyer or some other socially responsible task as she does mooning over a hypothetical boyfriend? People are quite adept at dividing their time, in my experience.
>>What I object to is your assumption that there's no possible way that anyone could understand what's going on and not share your view.
This is just one of the many misunderstandings you have about what I wrote earlier.
I did not say there is no possible way that anyone could understand what is going on. I said people seem to have no desire to understand it and make sense of it because they are, to put it bluntly, too self-absorbed. Some of this is due to choice, and some of it is due to circumstance.
Out of these two categories, I gladly and righteously pass value judgment on the former - I believe it is everyone's civic duty to care about what is going on in their country. If one makes the choice to not perform that duty, that means they are taking what they have (i.e. their freedoms) for granted, and that is the most disadvantageous thing they can do if the ultimate goal is for them to keep what they have. Thomas Jefferson said it himself: the price of freedom is constant vigilance. If you don't pay that price, you don't deserve your freedoms.
For the latter category, I cannot pass judgment because a lot of people do not have the means to determine their circumstance. If one has to work sixteen hours to pay the bills, then they won't have any energy to think about much else. I gave my own roommate as an example. Could she quit her well-paying job and become an activist? Sure. Is it reasonable to expect her to? Not really. But it would be reasonable to expect her to watch less TV, for example, to be able to pay attention to the important issues of our time.
I did not say there is no possible way that anyone could understand what is going on.
Nor did I attribute such a view to you. I said you assumed there's no possible way anyone could understand what's going on and not share your view. Omitting that last clause completely changes the meaning of the sentence.
Let me word it another way: I think you assume that anyone who does understand what's going on would, as a matter of course, share your opinion. I think a person could be just as well-informed as you are but hold an opinion that differs from yours. I hope that's clearer than my previous statement.
I don't want them to share my view, dude. I just want them to be aware of what's going on. To be informed. Disagreement is completely fine with me.
But, looking around, people are way, way more obsessed with the latest episode of Game of Thrones, for example, than the fact that they are being watched. And the reason is that they aren't even aware of the latter. They have shut it out.
I think anigbrowl's post is itself a perfect example of the myopic and trivial mindset you explained in your OP. Let me live my life of narcissistic hedonism, or else fuck you! The government is taking away my liberties? I don't care, and that's equally valid as caring, gosh darn it! I like playing the cello!
Or maybe, just maybe, people process the information they get about what the government is doing, and reasonably conclude that they're okay with it? Maybe it's possible for reasonable people to not believe that the NSA capturing information that even low-level IT people at AT&T have access to is not some grievous "taking away" of their liberties?
I have a lot of things on my plate (job, baby, etc), but I've though about the NSA spying, and guess what: I'm okay with it! After the Guardian walked back its initial claims and we saw what the NSA was actually up to, it amounted to:
1) FISC warrants to gather call detail records at Verizon;
2) A mechanism for Google, Facebook, etc, to easily transfer customer data to the government pursuant to valid legal processes.
It looks to me like the government took care to structure the scheme to stay within the bounds of the law, both statutory and Constitutional.
Would I prefer less data collection and stronger privacy protections? Sure. I'd also prefer universal healthcare and a reforms in federal educational funding. But I'm not going to rant and rave about the END OF DEMOCRACY if I don't get those things right now. And I didn't come to these conclusions because I don't have the "mental bandwidth" to juggle work and kids and also evaluate what I think about my government's actions.
>>Would I prefer less data collection and stronger privacy protections? Sure. I'd also prefer universal healthcare and a reforms in federal educational funding. But I'm not going to rant and rave about the END OF DEMOCRACY if I don't get those things right now.
The part where your analogy breaks down is that not having universal healthcare or reforms to federal educational funding are not things that infringe on people's freedoms.
Are you kidding me? Not having access to guaranteed-issue health care makes it impossible for many families to start companies and keeps them chained to full-time jobs just so they can be assured that they won't be bankrupted if they get appendicitis.
Sez you. Someone that's in ill-health for lack of affordable medical attention or unable to exploit their academic potential due to financial insecurity is facing considerable restrictions on their freedom. Equally, it can be argued that a Verizon customer whose call metadata ends up in an NSA database is not actually impacted by that data collection unless s/he had a burning urge to start calling 1-800-ALQAEDA.
All that call data could be misused for oppressive purposes. But you haven't offered any evidence that it is, other than your apparent conviction that all government ultimately ends up as tyrannical and oppressive, a conviction which I absolutely do not share.
I don't think keeping the government from seeing information that low-level IT people at AT&T or Facebok can see is, in Ben Franklin's terminology, "essential liberty." Indeed, I'm far more concerned about what kind of protections exist to keep my bank or my credit card company or my health insurance provider from seeing that information (i.e. none).
err, the point of the OP was that people are too concerned with their own lives to be involved in politics. He wasn't claiming that it was an inferior mindset (myopic, trivial, narcissistic, apathetic), so he wasn't describing people like anigbrowl.
> people are so fucking obsessed with their own little lives ... She works 12+ hour days, plus a 2 hour commute...
So very true.
Of course, graduating into a life of debt, being forced to go to work to get affordable healthcare, working 50+ hours a week and constantly being distracted by shiny new expensive things to buy will amplify this exponentially.
Seems legit. I'm totally sure that high level whistleblowers from across the government would have chosen a slightly-mentally-unstable freelance literary magazine contributor to reveal the truth about the most secret government program of all time.
I am not saying its a lie, I'm just saying its a weakly referenced article for wikipedia and/or a wikipedia article that makes it to HN. Please add the other links to the wikipedia page.
Respectfully†, you were not adding another data point, you added another anecdote.
† I am not trying to be a dick I really do mean respectfully. At a time like this I think it is important to not get carried away with wild speculation. Privacy has not gotten this much attention in a long time. I think we should strive to make the best use of this opportunity as possible.
- that the U.S. government has been developing Main Core and martial law plans since at least the 1980s, and
- that they might use a major terrorist attack, involving the death of thousands of people, as an excuse to implement those plans.
Of course we already did have such a terrorist attack, and martial law was not declared, and 8 million Americans were not rounded up into FEMA detention camps.
The government does something bad, you see the evidence and speak out. Those who support the government have no defence so they trash you. One way to to that is to use another one of those weasel words "conspiracy".
One of the usual arguments against "conspiracy" theories is that apparently it over estimates how clever and organised a government can be.
"Oh, don't be so silly, a government could never keep all that quiet, you silly little conspiracy theorist." Then as an aside, often talking tot the interviewer or audience, in a getting you on side tone, " Such poor weak people need to know that governments control everything. There is comfort in that for them".
Heard that kind of patronising put down before, used against people trying to be heard? Note how with the statements from both US and UK governments, they also avoid the direct answers? Same as google, FB, etc? "Trust us, we are only after the bad guys, and if you have nothing to fear..."
Hmmm, well, until a whistle blower spoke out, all that surveillance was conspiracy theory. Any one who spoke out or claimed it was happening was put down, patronised or accused of being a foil hatted nutter.
Except, it turned out to be true.
Or think back to how the illegal extraordinary rendition story broke. Rumours of secret night flights carrying kidnapped people and delivering them to off limits secret torture prisons in places out of jurisdiction. A very evil setup, denied left right and centre by the US government. Accusers were openly mocked. All until some UK plane spotters started taking down plane numbers and looking them up, connecting the dots.
So, yes, if you criticise the government or the power that be you are almost programmed to feel like a "wing nut", etc, etc. Just like you are made to feel "unpatriotic" or worse still, "traitorous".
Trust us, the are nukes in Iraq, we must invade......
Only if you apply the loose criteria conspiracy theory wingnuts apply. Like with anything else, you should ask yourself 'what's the evidence? how reliable/well-sourced is this story?'. In this particular case, the answer to the latter is 'very poorly'.
A reasonable common-sense question is also - what use is a database with 8 million records in a situation dire enough to necessitate invoking continuity-of-government procedures/martial law/etc. Who exactly is going to go out and check up on 8 million 'potential threats' in case of, say, a nuclear attack?
What does the raft of evidence, that was once conspiracy theory, coming true tell you/us? No wonder the internet being throttled is top of the agenda - information spreads exponentially until critical mass occurs and those that suppress freedom are removed from power - unfortunately, the powers that be use force and not so good things happen to some. Fear as a control mechanism works well for most people.
History and psychology prove power in the hands of the few corrupts. The only difference this time is the technology being used - the goal is the same as it was in every other case, control of dissenters of the imposed status quo.
It makes sense to wonder. After all, when you find out someone lied to you once, you tend to doubt everything else they've ever said. That seems natural. And while the scandal is in the air and our elected officials are doing their initial "what scandal?" dance, our conspiracy theorists are in rare form, re-iterating their practiced denouncements.
I would take care to stay focused on the actual issue and not get distracted by conspiracy theory bullshit. PRISM is bad enough. When our wingnuts start babbling about how this is just like <insert conspiracy theorist bullshit here> and trying to "demand answers" there, they weaken our position. The feeling you have now thanks to PRISM is, apparently, addictive. But the last thing you want to do is align your position with a bunch of easily dismissed nonsense. Attack the problem you know about first. Discover more problems later.
Very sensibly put. In fact, after the initial mob-mentality reaction has worn off, after the glee at seeing the high-and-mighty taken down a peg or two has subsided, I am starting to feel ... well, a bit conflicted about the whole thing.
One thing that I am pretty certain about: blame is not the appropriate response; particularly as far as the security services are concerned. Assuming there were no procedural abuses (a big assumption), one has a great deal of sympathy for the difficult position the security services were in: asked to solve an (almost if not actually) impossible problem, they reached for exactly the same tools and techniques that I would have done, were I in the same situation. Given the same task, and the same constraints, I cannot see how I would have reacted differently.
For me, the real question is whether they should have been given that task in the first place. Intuitively, the answer seems to be an obvious and resounding "No"; although I do acknowledge that the problem is a difficult and nuanced one. The temptation to blame Bush for the whole thing is quite strong, although as I mentioned; I am sure that the debate is difficult and nuanced, and we do not have all the facts (although the trust that we might use in place of the facts is in precious thin supply).
"Figuring things out for yourself is the only freedom anyone really has. Use that freedom. Make up your own mind." -- Captain Ratchak, Starship Troopers.
>Main Core contains personal and financial data of millions of U.S. citizens believed to be threats to national security
Millions of US citizens believed to be threats to national security? Paranoid much, US government? I don't see much of a reason tot trust that government; it seems they don't trust you, anyway.
Just to put this level of paranoia in some perspective, Stalin's purges hit a massive 1% of the population. 8 million is 2.5%.
This is so paranoid that it is hard to comprehend. If you think that 2.5% of the population is out to get you, then you should probably be very carefully considering the possibility that the problem is actually you.
His purges, yes. But that is far more extreme than keeping a file on someone, so I don't think it's a good comparison.
But consider the political monitoring - certainly a vastly higher number were likely considered potential risks to be registered "just in case" under Stalins regime as wel.
I don't know if there are any estimates of the number of people under active surveillance and "on lists" in the Soviet Union, but consider the East German Stasi, which at one point at least had 2.5% of the population of DDR acting as informants (this is a reasonably conservative estimate), and had files on about 1/3 of the total population of the DDR.
And? Rioting is not the sole source of "threats to national security".
Indeed older people often form the intellectual leadership for all sorts of movements/organisations, good and bad. Especially in cultures that have maintained their respect for elders.
It's not just the US government - many national governments have been known to keep lists like that over the year.
In Norway it turned into a major scandal in the 90's when it was revealed the security services had lists of people to be considered detained in the case of war (implicitly the assumption was a war with the Soviet Union, since the list only had left wing activists though it indiscriminately included left wing activists who where aggressively anti-Soviet, which tells you something of the mindset), and plans for using sports arenas or other suitably large enclosed spaces to lock in such high risk people as Berge Furre, a lecturer in theology, historian and MP for the Socialist Left party ("left wing" reformists/social democrats rather than revolutionaries) - not exactly a hardened revolutionary.
When the government started investigating this along with widespread illegal surveillance, he was a member of the commission in charge of the investigation (the Lund commission), and it was soon uncovered that the security services again started illegally investigating him while he was investigating them. Shows just how little respect you can expect organisations like this to have for law and democracy.
There were some mixed opinions on it, though; the U.S. founders also didn't necessarily oppose measures to put down civil unrest. For example, they explicitly wrote into the Constitution a provision that the federal government may suspend habeas corpus "when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it".
Of course, not everyone agreed: Jefferson opposed that clause in the Constitution. But Samuel Adams would've gone further and prescribed the death penalty for anyone rebelling against the United States, drawing a distinction between rebellion against monarchical governments, which he felt was justified, and rebellion against republics, which he felt was not.
I sometimes fret that a nation formed by a revolution, who's founding document even seems to imply that revolutions are periodically necessary, would so thoroughly protect itself from revolution. This database is a revolution-buzz-kill.
Then I get bummed that after the Newtown shooting all the politicians who wanted to enact tighter gun restrictions kept saying that you don't need an assault rifle to hunt. I don't see anything about hunting in the 2nd amendment. I always thought the second amendment was about preventing tyranny, in which case a fully automatic weapon would be very useful.
But, the second amendment is probably more about state organized militias in a time when the feds didn't maintain a standing army. I guess I'm going to have to give up this idle revolution fantasy. It would probably suck anyhow -- there's no way more people will be fed than are now, wealth would be distributed more equally, or due process would be better respected, after an armed revolution.
Assault rifles have basically never been allowed. You are thinking of assault-style weapons, a recently made up term that basically refers to a costume a semi automatic rifle is wearing, along with high-capacity magazines.
Let me tell you how useful an automatic weapon is against a swarm of drones: not useful at all. Those drones are very similar to the laptops and tablets we use everyday and can be mass produced in millions on the Pentagon/Occupation/etc. 1+ trillion budgets. PRISM and company will just supply the targets - leaders, current and potential, of an opposition.
With the huge R&D investments of DAPRA&Co they need fewer and fewer people to operate. It's not a problem to find a few dozens of loyal people ready to kill kids and whoever else tries to disobey the orders.
I don't see this (if it really exists) as being a product of government, per-se, but of bureaucracy. If you come across someone who is vaguely dissatisfied, and a list of malcontents exists, then you're going to shrug your shoulders and add them to the list. Because leaving them off the list would be risky, and no one ever got fired for doing the safe thing.
Yes, but really I don't care anymore, and heck if we all end up in internment camps at least we will have great company (well not me, as an non-us citizen I will likely go to gitmo).
Anyway the reason I can't get rilled up is that I was during the Bush years. In the first few years after 9/11 I was seriously concerned that he would round all the muslims up and intern them (ala the US citizens of Japanese orgion during WWII), but even back then when there might have been sufficient political will to do that it wasn't going to happen, why should it happen now?
There are no reasonable steps that I can take to maintain anonymity. The most I can do is to counter my inbuilt bias to self-censor; to be as outspoken and uncaring-of-the-consequences as possible. Punk is the only and correct response to surveillance.
(Hence my previous straw-man reactionary paranoid collaboration).
There used to be anonymity, but it's too late to start now. I've met a few people, (outside of the homeless community or the third world), that are truly anonymous in the practical sense of the word. It's not something that 99.99% percent of people would consider or desire.
I tend to (mostly) agree with this. I think that actually being as outspoken and public as possible are a better shield against being bothered by the NSA and their kind, than trying to hide in the shadows. After all, the shadowy fringe is where agencies like the NSA live, it's what they specialize in, and what they know. Why give them "home field advantage" by trying to play their game? F%!# that, make them play your game instead. Be public, be loud, be visible and be transparent. They hate that shit.
So, we have people claiming that FEMA(?) have all these dormant prison camps all over the US waiting to lock millions of Americans up in the even of..... well, who knows?
Well, if Main Core is correct, these people have to go somewhere. If the prison camps are only in the imagination of loon conspiracy theorists, where would these 8 million go?
Strikes me the US, probably my lot in the UK too, needs a truth and reconciliation commission.
Or hn needs to get over its sudden decision to become a mashup of /r/politics and /r/conspiracy.
Really, this is first rate nutty stuff. Did you know the U.S. government has a database containing records on hundreds of millions of its citizens (and even some non-citizens!)? It contains records of where you live, which causes you support and how much money you make. Some people in this database are flagged for "special attention" by government agents who conduct an even more thorough trawl through personal lives.
Of course, that's the IRS. Maybe some of us would prefer a taxation scheme that didn't require all this infrastructure, but there's nothing deeply nefarious about it.
It's one thing to be unhappy or disturbed by the alleged degree of NSA data collection on U.S. citizens, but when you start speculating about FEMA prison camps you've gone over the edge.
I think alan_cx greatly exaggerates the extent to which anyone claiming that the NSA might be intercepting communications (which is, of couse, their job) was described as a "conspiracy theorist" prior to revelations about how the program actually worked. What exactly did people think the NSA did?
By alan_cx's logic, we can't call people who think there are frozen aliens at Area 51 "conspiracy theorists" either.
Not everyone has to "go" somewhere. Prison release programs have people wear ankle bracelets. For some, house arrest will suffice with a GPS shackle. It will likely depend on your Threat Score. For instance, do you have a cache of weapons or is your "threat" mainly about ideas? People who can actively engage in force will likely have a higher score than someone whose "threat" is persuasion. (Although to a regime like China, the Dalai Lama is perhaps a higher threat than someone with a cache of guns. So your "threat mileage" might vary.)
Yes, Obama is rounding up our guns to put them into FEMA camps so that the Illumanati can give them polio vaccines to cause our firearms to have the autism.
This is the most reasonable comment I've read on HN in the last couple weeks. But you forgot to mention how the NSA's weather machines caused Hurricane Sandy and the housing crisis circa 2007.
The bit that seems to me more poorly sourced is the purpose of the list - the idea that it is there for the investigation, detention or as someone has made the leap to Stalin level purges.
If you're planning for Continuity of Government you aren't looking to handle detaining whole swathes of your surviving population. However you may want a database to be able to check people coming forwards to be involved in civil society after such an event.
Surely there are enough people on here who have watched Jericho and Revolution to understand that civil society is really vulnerable in the aftermath of a catastrophic event.
Keep in mind that detained may be for a long time, indefinitely in solitary confinement and without charges, in one of the many prisons the US government has been building in recent years: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-unit...
The Wikipedia article is correct and covers most of it. Technically it is correct the current list is from 1982. But really the list surfaced in 1950.
Another Wikipedia article to check out is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran_Internal_Security_Act#... . The provisions of that act are more-or-less the same thing - a reversal of the idea of habeas corpus. It grants the executive branch power to indefinitely detain masses of political dissenters without trial. The provision that allows this was proposed by the champion of US liberalism at the time, Hubert Humphrey.
That 1950 list is the 1982 list and is also the current list. Of course the names change as times go by, but the purpose is the same. For the government it is a good idea - it worked pretty well for Germany and Italy - you get rid of troublesome nationalities and political dissenters. It works well and makes a lot of sense for them. Of course I myself don't condone it.
1 - Utilize the fear of external entities (Iraq, terrorism, etc.) to channel away anxiety from domestic issues.
2 - pre-occupy the public, reality shows, sports, etc.
3 - Focus the problem on individuals to provide the election as a escape valve (Bush, Obama, etc.)
4 - Quickly stop or discredit any movement before it catches on like wild fire.
5 - Identify potential instigators and defuse them early if needed (shutdown bank account, credit card, ATM) terminate their phones and Internet-which is why you need this list. , etc-which is why you need this list.
Edit:fixed formatting