General Discussion > Real World Topics
PRISM, spying and the US attitude to foreigners
ranmabushiko:
--- Quote from: Cherry Lover on July 14, 2013, 02:21:07 PM ---
--- Quote from: ranmabushiko on July 14, 2013, 09:39:30 AM ---What's worse about this entire thing... is that by doing this, they're actively ignoring the Constitution.
--- End quote ---
Only for US people, I think. The rest of the world doesn't count.
--- Quote ---Considering most laws, by law, are ILLEGAL if they counter the Constitution in any way, shape or form (Yes, including Obama's Gun Laws that he wants to put in), it means that they're knowingly breaking the law.
--- End quote ---
Well, yeah, but to determine that it is unconstitutional, someone has to complain about it, and since no-one knew it was happening....
Plus, the court is horribly politicised anyway, so what decision you get mainly depends on who managed to appoint the most judges (plus, of course, all judges are appointed by some president or another, which hardly seems to me to be the best way of limiting the government's power...).
--- Quote ---And flaunting that fact, too. This, honestly... scares me a lot. A LOT of things that people do are illegal, even if we don't realize we're acting illegally, with how screwed up the law has become.
--- End quote ---
Yeah.
Although, at least you guys have a constitution to protect you somewhat, even if the government is getting good at ignoring it.
--- Quote ---And realistically, it's not a democratic republic, it's a CONSTITUTIONAL one. NONE of this crap should have happened in the first place, if they had followed the Constitution first, and the bullshit laws second.
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Well, that is true, but in this case it's not even democratic. For it to be democratic in a meaningful sense there needs to be a public debate about what the government is doing, and secret actions deny us that.
--- Quote ---Thankfully though, they've not managed to gut the Second Amendment as well as they wish they could, which was put into place to ensure would be tyrants and corrupt politicians all have something to fear. The people uprising against them and shooting them for making stupid laws.
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Well, except that people never focus on that aspect. They always focus on the aspect of wanting to be able to defend theirselves from criminals. Which, frankly, is not a good reason to have a gun. The government is here to protect people from criminals, what people need is a way to protect theirselves from the government.
And, honestly, I think it has been gutted somewhat, because by the point that it becomes necessary to rise up against the government, the government will have taken weapons from anyone who is even remotely likely of doing so. All they have to do is call them a "traitor" or a criminal and that's it.
I'm always a bit torn on gun control laws. On the one hand, they make massive amounts of sense, because there really is no reason to possess a gun 99.9% of the time (aside from for hunting or the like), and most of the time it seems to me that guns do more harm than good. However, if you allow the government to disarm the population then it becomes very difficult or impossible for an unpopular government to be overthrown (look at Syria, for example), and that possibility does really need to be there.
Although, honestly, what I really do not like is stuff like this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23304198
It seems pretty clear to me that these "stand your ground" laws are far too lenient and broad. What appears to have happened is that some idiot vigilante decided that, because some guy was black and wearing a hood, he obviously must be a criminal, and decided to chase after him. The kid then defended himself quite reasonably, but because the other guy was carrying a gun, he got shot and killed. I do accept the concept of "self-defence", but I don't see how that should apply to a fight you started, against someone who was clearly unarmed. At very least he should have been convicted of Manslaughter, but because Florida's law is ludicrously biased towards people fighting back even when they really shouldn't, he got away with it.
--- Quote ---I know ALL too well about how they've screwed things up, Mike. I've read books and history on the fact, myself, as has my father. Osama Bin Laden became an enemy of America because we withdrew all funding to support the hospitals there after we helped them kick Russia out... when they needed medicine and food the most.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, exactly.
Frankly, if you look at history, basically every problem in the world today can be traced back to either something the US did during the Cold War or something that European Colonialists did to maintain control. Most of the sectarian tensions you get now are there because the British spent most of the 19th and early 20th centuries getting them to hate each other so they wouldn't ally and attack us.
--- Quote ---And don't even get me started on the bullshit involved with 9-11.
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Eh, what?
--- End quote ---
Guns, I can see your point on, all too well. My mother's a pacifist, so I can understand why most people don't need them. At the same time, Syria, Nazi Germany and more are all good examples of how the government can go out of control if you don't have firearms anymore.
Stand your ground laws are ok, most of the time, but the ones involving your home being your safe castle laws are most important, I think. If someone breaks into your house, you're legally allowed to kill them. Something like that, I can agree with. It's why I live in Washington state, where that law is at.
There were a lot of hints that 9-11 was a false flag operation. Such as a third building going down that was far off (Debris wouldn't magically take that building down in the exact same manner as the other two buildings, while no other buildings went down. Initial reports of thermite in the structure of the building, all over, and explosives in the basement. Also, both those buildings having multiple supports, unlike Popular Science's bullshit of them having only one single support, and both buildings meant to survive airplane strikes and fires of the nature reported. The fact that the person that bought the rights to the place took out a multi million dollar insurance policy a few months beforehand doesn't help the government's case. So does the fact that people positively IDed the plane that had an "unnatural bulge" as being a prototype plane for refueling jets in mid-air, stolen from Boeing a year before.
And last year, preppers took note of the fact that the government here now states that any person that questions the government's story about 9-11 is a possible terrorist, on a pamphlet circulated by the FBI... well, I think you get the picture.
Kat:
--- Quote ---Frankly, I think it's disgusting. It is one thing to argue that the US government needs to get information like this, but that argument should be one to be had in public, not behind closed doors. People have the right to know what is being done in their name, as far as possible. For example, our government is considering making laws to allow this sort of thing, but at least they're doing it in the open, and having a debate over it (which resulted in the law being shelved). The US just does it in private and circumvents constitutional protections and public opinion.
--- End quote ---
Publishing such information defeats any value the government of the United States of America gains from it. Secret operations are secret after all, and it is understandable US government has reasons to prevent any act of terrorism on American soil from happening.
Cherry Lover:
--- Quote from: Kat the Satan on June 13, 2014, 09:26:04 AM ---
--- Quote ---Frankly, I think it's disgusting. It is one thing to argue that the US government needs to get information like this, but that argument should be one to be had in public, not behind closed doors. People have the right to know what is being done in their name, as far as possible. For example, our government is considering making laws to allow this sort of thing, but at least they're doing it in the open, and having a debate over it (which resulted in the law being shelved). The US just does it in private and circumvents constitutional protections and public opinion.
--- End quote ---
Publishing such information defeats any value the government of the United States of America gains from it. Secret operations are secret after all, and it is understandable US government has reasons to prevent any act of terrorism on American soil from happening.
--- End quote ---
And not publishing it defeats the whole point of democracy. How can we have a democratic discussion of what the government is doing if we don't know what the government is doing?
I am aware that there is a trade-off between the value of the intelligence and the secrecy, but I also know that "terrorism" and similar excuses are used to justify oppression in almost every authoritarian regime on Earth. If we give the government the power to act secretly without proper oversight (and, without some indication of what is going on, we have no oversight, aside from politicians saying "trust me") then we are opening the path to arbitrary abuses of power. And, no, this is not a theoretical concept, the US government has time and time again shown the willingness to act to oppress and discredit peaceful groups which disagree with their actions or motives (communists and anti-Vietnam-War groups, notably).
Arch-Magos Winter:
OK
Remember, secrets are what makes intelligence, intelligence. Giving away your secrets is stupid when NOBODY ELSE DOES THAT. As such, for the survival of a nation, keeping classified documents and the like, well, classified, is very important.
Cherry Lover:
--- Quote from: Arch-Magos Winter on June 13, 2014, 04:25:34 PM ---OK
Remember, secrets are what makes intelligence, intelligence. Giving away your secrets is stupid when NOBODY ELSE DOES THAT. As such, for the survival of a nation, keeping classified documents and the like, well, classified, is very important.
--- End quote ---
That is true to some extent, yes, but there has to be public oversight of what the NSA and similar are allowed to do, otherwise we do not have a democracy, or freedom worth anything. And, as far as I am concerned, freedom and democracy are more important than "the nation".
And, frankly, as a citizen of a foreign country who the US government provides zero protection for, I really couldn't give two shits about the survival of the US "as a nation". I care about my ability to not be treated as a potential enemy and spied on at will by the US. US companies operating outside the US have to abide by the rules set outside the US, not ignore them for the benefit of the US government.
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