Global War on Terror Version 6 - Perpetual Motion Machine

[joecct]

No they didn't. The TP was only anti-surveillance as subservient to their whole anti-government (that is, anti-Democratic government) paranoid fantasy, and even then they still cross-matrixed it with all sorts of other stuff, the good (burn the banks), the bad (burn the Fed), and the ugly (burn the Mexicans).

Kepler

I was referring to the TP began as a peaceful protest movement on the size of government and taxes that got hijacked.

[Kepler]

Re: Global War on Terror Version 6 - Perpetual Motion Machine

Kepler

I was referring to the TP began as a peaceful protest movement on the size of government and taxes that got hijacked.

I don't think anybody really knows. My impression was it began specifically about TARP. The Glenn Beck got involved and it became the Professional Idiots' "grr--I-hates-thuh-gubmint-grrr" arglebargle, and once Fox' audience started coming out the nativism and racism were inevitable.

And before any righty gets his panties in a twist, I think the mirror progression happened with Occupy: anti-bailout specifics / global justice generics / all the usual screamers.

The chance for the TP and Occupy to actually get financial reform was lost the second people started expanding the scope and applying litmus tests to the membership. A single-issue protest can get something done; the moment it spreads the beam and starts purging the ranks, it's done.

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Global War on Terror Version 6 - Perpetual Motion Machine

We should test the theory. Create a huge, completely peaceful, polite, friendly protest movement that simply says, "Roll back the entire surveillance state. Restore September 10th." Pure peaceful resistance, across the entire political spectrum, no other linked issues.

We'll get called naive or crazy, and that's fine. Most people are more worried about terrorists than surveillance so we probably won't win politically. But if we get put on the watchlist or thrown in jail for that, then at least we'll know where we stand.

I'm in if you're in.

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: Global War on Terror Version 6 - Perpetual Motion Machine

We should test the theory. Create a huge, completely peaceful, polite, friendly protest movement that simply says, "Roll back the entire surveillance state. Restore September 10th." Pure peaceful resistance, across the entire political spectrum, no other linked issues.

We'll get called naive or crazy, and that's fine. Most people are more worried about terrorists than surveillance so we probably won't win politically. But if we get put on the watchlist or thrown in jail for that, then at least we'll know where we stand.

I'm in.

[joecct]

Re: Global War on Terror Version 6 - Perpetual Motion Machine

The decline of Western Civilization as we know it. More evidence, this time from Great Britain
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/m...id=HP_national

It's the Muslims I tell you! The Muslims!

[5mn_Major]

Re: Global War on Terror Version 6 - Perpetual Motion Machine

We should test the theory. Create a huge, completely peaceful, polite, friendly protest movement that simply says, "Roll back the entire surveillance state. Restore September 10th." Pure peaceful resistance, across the entire political spectrum, no other linked issues.

Dunno. You may think that I'm naïve, but there are in fact real threats out there and even inside our own country. I think individuals are a bit hung up on the thought that someone's watching them and processing all this data on them. Reality is that nobody has the resources or interest to look at the gobs of data out there (and frankly nobody really cares if I watch Oprah (which I don't)). Spend any time at a major corporation with the reams of data they have and you'll get the picture. Frankly, this coming from a guy who is probably more of a target for such stuff as I've spent quite a bit of time overseas. But there are quite a few bigger priorities that require fixing (special interests, foreign problems) than this one.

Perhaps surveillance is a bit overdone...but if it ends up saving a large number of our lives at any point, IMO its worth it.

[Kepler]

Re: Global War on Terror Version 6 - Perpetual Motion Machine

Perhaps surveillance is a bit overdone...but if it ends up saving a large number of our lives at any point, IMO its worth it.

There are real threats. The question is, has the erection of this massive, all-seeing, all-gathering surveillance state actually impeded our ability to mark the threats? Have we kicked up so much dust that we can't see what we're doing? That's been the real debate within the intelligence community, but by its nature that debate always ends the same way, because the people involved are self-selected for a certain psychology and, less obviously but still influentially, because there's money in expanding scope, not in contracting it. The result is the common bureaucratic "ratchet effect."

The other thing is even though budgets have ballooned resources are still, at the end of the day, finite, so all the overreach bleeds focus, energy, time, and money from the effective measures. So, we waste millions (if not billions) on airport measures which are largely Security Theater. Or, we gather every bit of every person's communication (and if you think this is in any way restricted, then that is naive), which increases the chaff the analysts have to sift through to find the real threats.

Threats are not, as a rule, a surprise. They correlate with other activity. When we cast an enormous net, it catches so many fish that we can't pull it in in time to find the few we are interested in.

And all of this is not to mention the "moral hazard" in eliminating privacy. Life in a Panopticon, however plush, is still imprisonment.

[joecct]

Re: Global War on Terror Version 6 - Perpetual Motion Machine

Kepler and I are in opposite sides of the political spectrum, but in this case we're in 100% agreement, even if i have to look up some of his big words.

[SJHovey]

Re: Global War on Terror Version 6 - Perpetual Motion Machine

There are real threats. The question is, has the erection of this massive, all-seeing, all-gathering surveillance state actually impeded our ability to mark the threats? Have we kicked up so much dust that we can't see what we're doing? That's been the real debate within the intelligence community, but by its nature that debate always ends the same way, because the people involved are self-selected for a certain psychology and, less obviously but still influentially, because there's money in expanding scope, not in contracting it. The result is the common bureaucratic "ratchet effect."

The other thing is even though budgets have ballooned resources are still, at the end of the day, finite, so all the overreach bleeds focus, energy, time, and money from the effective measures. So, we waste millions (if not billions) on airport measures which are largely Security Theater. Or, we gather every bit of every person's communication (and if you think this is in any way restricted, then that is naive), which increases the chaff the analysts have to sift through to find the real threats.

Threats are not, as a rule, a surprise. They correlate with other activity. When we cast an enormous net, it catches so many fish that we can't pull it in in time to find the few we are interested in.

And all of this is not to mention the "moral hazard" in eliminating privacy. Life in a Panopticon, however plush, is still imprisonment.

We can complain all we want, but until we as a country decide we aren't going to play politics with every single thing, that is the world we will live in.

Having both the legal authority in place, and the people and technology necessary to gather the data, isn't the problem. The problem is the decision to use it, and that's driven by politics. If you have the authority and infrastructure but don't use it, you will be roasted politically when the next event occurs. But what's funny is that we will still roast the party in power politically when the next attack occurs, whether we've used the apparatus or not.

It's like the instruction books you get with products now. My wife just bought a new microwave. I need to know approximately 3 things about a microwave. How to set the cook time, which button to push to start the cooking, and how do I change the clock. I ask her how to do it and she hands me a 75 page instruction manual. I read approximately two sentences, then throw it away.

At the end of the day the microwave company has failed to pass along the 2 or 3 valuable nuggets of information I really needed, or should have, by burying it in 75 pages of crap. But they have "political" cover, or in this case, legal cover.

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: Global War on Terror Version 6 - Perpetual Motion Machine

The Patriot Act seemed like a good idea at the time (so did the internment of West Coast Japanese in 1942). Lots of rights get trampled when somebody attacks your country. But has the Law of Unintended Consequences shown us that the Patriot Act is, in fact, a bad law?

Case in point: http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2...ofJ/story.html

Many laws have been created out of emotion. The scariest ones are ones such as these, or New York City-state's (un)SAFE act, or Julius Caesar's actions from Ancient Rome when he essentially became a dictator for life and overthrew the Republic to create an Empire, are so complex yet passed so quickly that it's almost like the legislators knew that this sort of thing would happen including when, and had freedom-trampling legislation ready to be sold as "counteracting".

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: Global War on Terror Version 6 - Perpetual Motion Machine

Kepler and I are in opposite sides of the political spectrum, but in this case we're in 100% agreement, even if i have to look up some of his big words.

Amen to this. Perhaps the paradigms of politics truly are changing from liberal/conservative to libertarian/authoritarian. Obviously there are those that want to cling to the old ways in order to provoke the second civil war they have been desiring, but trying to do it between the sides set in the late 50's and 60's, rather than the climate of today.

[Kepler]

Re: Global War on Terror Version 6 - Perpetual Motion Machine

Amen to this. Perhaps the paradigms of politics truly are changing from liberal/conservative to libertarian/authoritarian.

There was a lot of talk about this is in the late 1970s when the big 'L' Libertarian Party (from the right) and Barry Commoner's various environmental parties (from the left) started to attract people away from the R & D parties. The thinking was there was a new dimension of political participation opening up, and the four quadrants would eventually be represented: Libertarian (right-wing libertarian), Something or Other (left-wing libertarian), Republican (right-wing authoritarian), and Democratic (left-wing authoritarian).

It didn't happen, perhaps because the established parties closed authoritarian ranks and made it impossible for third parties to germinate via campaign finance and ballot laws.

But those quadrants are real, if simplistic, and personally I typically feel equidistant between big 'D' Democratic and small 'l' libertarian voters, with the polar opposite being the big 'R' Republican right-wing authoritarian army of darkness that started to consume the mainstream right beginning with Reagan, and then accelerating to near levels of fascism under Dubya.

[joecct]

Re: Global War on Terror Version 6 - Perpetual Motion Machine

It's the Ukraine worth American lives? Pat says no. Not unexpected as he's an isolationist.
http://m.townhall.com/columnists/pat...raine-n1951846

[5mn_Major]

Re: Global War on Terror Version 6 - Perpetual Motion Machine

It's the Ukraine worth American lives? Pat says no. Not unexpected as he's an isolationist.
http://m.townhall.com/columnists/pat...raine-n1951846

I am a big pacifist. But there are cases where isolationism is the wrong choice.

I was one of the few people that I knew that was vehemently against Iraq before the war (only 27% were against at start). On the other hand, Putin has to be managed. There's a big difference between Saddam (as someone leading a small country, who was at the time doing nothing to nobody, and was no threat to any other country) and a Putin who shows traits more similar to Hitler with only a half step less power.

I'm not saying that war is the right course...but unless we're talking nuclear war, blanket anything is usually a bad policy. Continued situation management is the correct action.

[5mn_Major]

Re: Global War on Terror Version 6 - Perpetual Motion Machine

The question is, has the erection of this massive, all-seeing, all-gathering surveillance state actually impeded our ability to mark the threats? Have we kicked up so much dust that we can't see what we're doing?

The other thing is even though budgets have ballooned resources are still, at the end of the day, finite, so all the overreach bleeds focus, energy, time, and money from the effective measures.

I don't have a strong opinion on this one. But I'm not arguing black or white...I'm suggesting nuance. I don't know that turning off this kind of information is the right course. And I'm not sure that in the end generating reports with red flags that are only used in the case of an emergency isn't a money/time drop in the bucket. It may not be about whether to use the information...but how. And I'm saying this in a complementary fashion...it appears you know far more than I do on the topic.