171–180 of 366 posts
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This is not true. Even US citizens capptured in Afghanistan fighting for the Taliban were transferred out of gitmo.
Except for Yasser Hamdi, it took them a few months before they realized he was a u.s. citizen.
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Gun ownership amongst individuals did not lead to the Arab Spring.
But it did lead to an insanely long battle that continued well after the official war was over in not one but two countries. The governments had given up fighting, but the civilians with guns kept US forces under constant attack for ten years.
A lot of the guns in circulation in Iraq were liberated from the army and police, or acquired through corrupt channels, originally provided by the coalition forces themselves.
You credit a well armed populace as being the key here, but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. They could've started with zero guns and simply acquired them as necessary.
Remember, a hostile government might shoot an unarmed individual in a conflict, but they will always shoot an armed one.
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So is the 4th amendment, and look how much that one is abused. In the end the Constitution really is "just a piece of paper", if not the government , not the judges , not the media , and ultimately not even the people respect it, live by it, and try to protect it as soon as it's endangered by people trying to accumulate too much power. Where are all the street protests?! I also fail to understand people who so viciou…
Threatening to take up arms is a way to pressure for political concessions as an end-run around representative democracy, when you aren't getting what you want (for example, when the populace elects the 'wrong' President).
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But that's not how societies work. America doesn't have a school shooting problem because all human societies develop shooting problems, it has them because America specifically squeezes its youth in ways that makes them more violent.
> America doesn't have a school shooting problem because all human societies develop shooting problems, it has them because America specifically squeezes its youth in ways that makes them more violent. That's actually a good point you're making against yourself, because I went to a public school from grades 4-12, and spent 5 years in state college. Not once was a gun fired. And most people will say the same. What you…
Wow, you are either not informed, not human (got like 100 fingers per hand?) or using some very narrow definition of school shooting (like children below 6 in Michigan).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the...
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Interesting. But, how does owning a gun provide protection against the US military?
It's somewhat fortunate that the actual military is, if anything, the least likely threat. Almost all of the veterans I've known would take the people's side. So if it came down to it, I could see large amounts of the military refusing orders or defecting. The main risk is probably paramilitaries like the ATF or your local SWAT team. One of the neat ways the Second Amendment is self-enforcing is that, if you sent tho…
Firstly, they are not bound by Posse Comitatus, but even moreso than that, they've been gearing up for awhile to have extremely tactical response capacity, including live-fire drills in and over major cities, purchase of armored urban vehicles, and massive ammunition purchases. At last count, DHS has approximately five bullets for every single American in the US borders. Only slightly scarier is that they've been purchasing 'hesitate no more' targets to train on designed to desensitize them to the killing of 'normal people', including pregnant women, children, etc. Also, the ammo they've been buying are illegal to use extra-nationally due to the Geneva convention.
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Any country that requires identity cards (such as France) has already lost its claim to be more free.
Right. Much worse to have identity cards (e.g. SS card) than to actually, you know, massively spy on all your citizens and anyone else you can.
Americans might not realise this but we see the USA in the same light as China and Russia when it comes to freedoms. We might be wrong, but thats the perception myself and many other people from outside the USA see the current state of the situation. To think anyone would feel safe in the USA is ridiculous, the USA is one of the last places anyone should seek refuge in modern times. What scares me most is the United…
I agree, as a New Zealander living in Spain. I've been staggered over the last decade or so to hear of the USA performing: * "extraordinary renditions" (kidnapping), sometimes of the wrong person who after months gets dumped in Albania. * "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding (torture) * holding people indefinitely without charge or trial in Guantanamo Bay * killing people remotely in foreign coun…
First of all, if you really didn't know the U.S. government and military had some creepy capabilities, you're not living on planet earth. Anyone with a brainstem and a basic interest in security and crypto can decipher this basic truth. Many even believe they can crack RSA and similar encryption schemes.
Second of all, I don't begrudge any country their right to choose their principles and their form of government - that includes the Iranians and the rest of the Islamic world. In the U.S., we have a much stronger defense backbone than most countries. That's because we're a bigger target than most countries. You may have heard the U.S. is a major world superpower. New Zealand isn't. Neither is Spain. For a "New Zealander living in Spain" to cast this judgment on us is, as I see it, unfair. Our elected officials, elected according to our chosen system of government, voted for these measures. What more can you ask of a democratic system?
These "whistleblowers" everyone sympathizes so much with -- they broke the laws of our country. They released classified information to the public. Why not just release the nuke launch codes on Twitter while you're at it? Free speech has limitations. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
As an American, I have no problem with the NSA using large-scale statistical methods to filter my private communications out as "not related to terrorism." After all, it's not like Carrie from Homeland is chillin' at the CIA reading my texts with my girlfriend. They have neither time nor inclination for that. On the other hand, I very much do mind New York City being used for another terrorist attack. If these measures can keep me and my loved ones safe, I applaud them.
If you don't like the way we do business in this country, fine. Stay in Spain and use your own social networks and search engines and mail platforms. The beauty of the world is there's something for everyone, from Sharia law to Scandinavia.
And if you don't like the way we treat combattants in our wars -- which included, by the way, the right to appeal to the Supreme Court, and many judicial and legislative battles over the rights of non-military combattants -- don't fight the U.S. military. It's a pretty simple equation. It seems to me, the people with the most to fear here also have the most to hide.
Let the flamefest begin.
Americans might not realise this but we see the USA in the same light as China and Russia when it comes to freedoms. We might be wrong, but thats the perception myself and many other people from outside the USA see the current state of the situation. To think anyone would feel safe in the USA is ridiculous, the USA is one of the last places anyone should seek refuge in modern times. What scares me most is the United…
> To think anyone would feel safe in the USA is ridiculous I feel perfectly safe. This whole entire issue about the government collecting meta-data is overblown IMO. And comparing it to tyranny and demanding rioting on the streets is literally self-destructive and utmost retarded. Maybe you need to compare it to a country like the Republic of Congo to get an idea of what's safe and what's not. But instead the majorit…
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I don't think the idea was to color the US government as "evil" - but rather that the criticism that these are "exceptions" is off base. In all but one of the examples cited, this was acknowledged, deliberate policy of the government at many levels. Extraordinary rendition, imprisonment without charge, torture, drone strikes, all were known, approved of, and carried out with the assistance of many levels of the centr…
US doesn't have the resources to give every one of the hundreds of thousands of individuals interested in blowing up a chunk of Americans a full blown 8 month trial, 3 hots and a cot, and loving handjobs twice per week. As in all things in life there's a tradeoff between "justice" and "security". Luckily for you and most of the people in this thread, you get to benefit from the actions of people who have to make that…
But actually, even (very generously) at 100,000 brand-new prisoners for the USG to deal with it would certainly cope just fine (an increase of 4% on the current prison population). And imagine all the money which would be saved from surveillance programs if all the terrorists were dealt with!
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You're haggling over the definition of "reasonable", probably based on your views of the drug laws. Do you think that in 1800, the framers would have considered it an unreasonable search to enter a home they could hear being burglarized? No. That's why the 4th uses the wiggle word "unreasonable." I'd bet the reason you think Kentucky is different is that you think drugs are a non crime. I do too, but lots of people d…
I hate to use the slippery slope argument but once you allow police to enter a residence with evidence as simple as something they might have heard through the door then there's no need to ever worry over warrants at all. How do you even prove what they heard or if they heard something in the first place? If the officer witnesses someone break into the residence then sure, but just hearing something? That doesn't pas…
Slippery slope reasoning is completely incompatible with 4th amendment interpretation, because the 4th amendment is all about what is "reasonable" (or rather, what is "unreasonable.") It's about compromising the legitimate needs of the police with the legitimate privacy interests of the people. You can't make compromises when your retort to everything becomes: "but if we keep going in this direction..."