That's right everyone! The United States are falling to the nazi party http://www.citizencorps.gov/tips The idea: Get public servants to keep an eye out for possible terrorist acts The reality: It will get 25% of the US population to oogle and call the FBI about every middle-eastern person they see. This is really not a good thing. They're saying everyone from librarians to the local cable guy will be "keeping an eye out for possible terrorists." So how many calls do you think the FBI is going to be getting from librarians at the city library about middle-eastern men who come into the library and pick up a history book that happens to include some use of a weapon, or something equally moronic? The only public servants who refused to help with this indecent invasion of privacy were those working in the post office. I can only express my feelings for those people with "w00t!" Telling people to be aware, ok. Getting 1/4 of the nation to "be aware," you're going overboard. I feel really sad for immigrants who have nothing to do with terrorism or terrorists, yet will be practically stalked by public servants in their town. A sad, sad day for America, in my eyes.
Its just like the Neighboorhood Crime watch. Instead of watching for Middle aged balding fat men that in the end are pedophiles, we now watch for Terroists. An equal trade off if I may say. Iamgoodyy
But what will people be looking for? They'll be looking who look like what they think of when they hear the word terrorist. And that, to most people in the country, means someone who looks arabic. And this is a different practice all together. What we used to have was a neighborhood watch. "Go ahead and just be aware, and if you see anyone do anything suspicious, report it." This is appointing people to watch out. Do you really believe that the FBI isn't going to start getting an insane amount of phone calls from Joe or Jane Schmoe about someone with dark hair, brown eyes, and brown skin walking into a federal building? And with all these calls, how is the FBI going to respond? Are they just going to randomly decide which ones are useless and which ones might be something important? Before, Joe and Jane Schmoe got to choose whether or not they cared, but now they're being told to report anything "out of the ordinary." Can you not see this getting out of hand quickly?
Given that the average USAnian can't distinguish a Muslim from a Sikh, I think this hold a vanishingly small possibility of actual effectiveness. But there's nothing wrong with getting to know your neighbors either. It reminds me more of McCarthyism than the Gestapo, but your point is taken, Uber.
I think the whole point is to scare the terrorists, not to be an actual service. The logic behind it is this: If terrorists think there are 250,000,000 people looking for them, theyre not going to do bad things. It will, however, prove to be inneffective as most of the terrorists that we are looking for want to commit suicide anyway. Or maybe it's just to give the people some false sense of security or usefullnes. I don't think the FBI will follow any of these ohone cslls. I could be wrong about this whole thing though.
I think you nailed it with the last part. But a false sense of security by having your cable guy think he's a leet spy all of the sudden? They should've called this JBOWS (Just a Bunch of Weird ****) instead of Tips. I really worry for my small town filled with people who have nothing to do.
Most of you guys are gamers right? Played Deus Ex? In an early part of the game you can read a post at a 'public access' computer terminal that reads exactly the same as this. I thought it was just a stupid thing they've put in the game without considering it too much. Good ol' American government do it for real though!! Surely Dubya could never be taken seriously as a dictator though? I mean nobody takes him serious as president do they... PS: Linear, lol @ USAnian Nice terminology! also Love the av, sure beats that scary ass clown u had a while back!!
missing the whole point See we are fighting this whole "War on Terror" wrong. We should just leave the Israelis to die to the palestinians. The whole Muslim community would probably be happy. Personally I don't give a **** if Israel falls. Simply because it was the wrong thing to do anyways. If the land was won in a war by the Israelis it would be understandable. However it wasn't. The terrorist keep screwing with us because we support a mistake. We stole land from the Palestinians and gave it to the Jews. Now we gave the Israelis too much power and they abuse it. They are no different than Muslims terrorist. They just have a government to back their attacks. This whole war is to make it seem like we are fighting an enemy but we aren't. If you consider the common man an enemy then maybe you can say there is one. Just look at the tactis that the terrorist use. They are not smart by any means. They are desperate to get us out of their land. They just want to do their thing and really what we need to do is step in and settle the Indian/Pakastan problem. Split Israel up and give the Palestinians their own country again. Then assassinate Hussain(spelling) and all of the top leaders in his political party. Tell all the Middle East countries that we will stay out as long as the oil doesn't stop pumping. However if it does they better be prepared to pay the price because we are tried of their bs. - Repress
Hmm I think you'll find much of the land WAS won in a war, and that Israel won the war and kept the land, originally as a 'buffer zone'. However this occupation made the Palestinians homeless, and they have wanted the land back ever since. The land Israel now occupies was won in war though I think (6 day war in '67? Or something earlier, i cant remember for sure)......
If you call soldiers walking into palestinian homes, taking anything they might use as a weapong, then telling them to leave, a war... Then yes, it was won by a war. The middle east issue isn't a pretty one. All the better reason for us to not mess with it. We gave billions of dollars and 50 years to achieve some sort of peace over there, and all that went to waste. I think we should quit.
I think some country should "accidently" drop a few H-bombs on the city and be done with it. I'm betting not too many people would fight over a blackend radation filled crator, but I'm probably wrong about that too. In case you guys didn't read your history books, this has been going on for a thousand years. Remember the crusades? Well, the last one the UK won, in 1911, they were declared over and everyone in europe accepted that. The muslims, however, are carrying on the crusades. The reason they attaced the USA is because we, by helping the jewish people, unwittingly joined in on the milena long battle over a land that everyone wants.
*sigh* so often these days the governments of a lot of countries just fail to make sensible decisions... they are too involved in trying to keep their power that they loose sight of what is actually good for the country and for the rest of the world. They start passing laws without thinking of the consequences. Take for instance this topic, the DMCA and countless other examples. Here in the UK there was a lucky escape when the government u-turned on allowing council workers and other 'minor' staff to read your private emails and logs of your phone use etc. That wouldn't only be total invasion of your privacy it'd also allow unwarranted abuse of power. For example the LEA (Local Education Authority) hate our family because we keep trying to get them to give us what we're entitled to by law and they won't... but thats another story... had that law been passed they'd be able to read our private communications without any real trouble. That wouldn't be right. Anyway back on topic, the problem with getting all these ppl to look for terrorists is that they don't know hat they are looking for, and would likely a) over react b) only look for stereotypes. Then the FBI would have a large overhead in sorting out the egyptian business men where a black suit and posting a package from the terrorist. This is obviously an exercise in making the public feel safer and that they can do something to stop it... when neither of these are true. Whe another terrorist strike happens the governement is obviously trying to shift the blame... what they actually need to look at is the inefficencies in their own intelligence organisations and how to reorganise them and make them collate and analyse evidence more than they currently do rather than demote the FBI into a gloryfied police force... why not just have an FBI agent in every town walking the streets beating anyone who looks vaguley not from america??? It'd probably cost less . The problem with this is that this is a very slippery slope, the public should NOT be entrusted with such a role because before long you'll be seeing lynchings, 'mob justice', beating etc because the public cannot differentiate what their roles are and will inevitably take it the wrong way. The public should be slightly aware... just like you're slightly aware about suspicious bags in say london railway stations... that doesn't mean u attack the person who leaves them even if they look irish it means you keep half an eye on what is happening not what might happen... if you look for irish people who could be in the real ira or whatever and report them for drinking a guinness before boarding a flight or something then that is wrong. The public should not know the wider picture... the agencies should know the bigger picture and they should be doing the premptive work, the only thing the public should do is watch out for what is happening. Damnit when governments start doing things like this you start to question their judgement on a whole host of things, it isn't so far to go back to an era of segregation like earlier this century in the USA or in the last decade in south africa. Since 11/9 the states has tried to take the moral high ground, emulating israel in their 'war on terrorism', whilst i don't think they are or should be justified in doing so...for a start America is too inwardly looking and a lot of americans (present company hopefully exempted) either don't care about the reasons for the 11/9 attacks or are to dim to notice them. Without looking at the cause of the problem it's difficult to solve it. That doesn't mean refusing to do business with an ellected leader such as Yasser Arafat though. The problem with Israel's 'war on terrorism' and it seems the US's unconditional support for whatever israel feels like doing is that they are the occupier. Further to what they were given at the forming of Israel as a state they invade surrounding countries. This makes them the occupiers of the land and under international law legitamises palestinian resistance against the state of israel and its military infrastructure... killing of civilians is a seperate issue though. Would the french resistance during the second world war be counted as terrorism and abhorrant as such... somehow i think not. To be quite honest i think the US (and the UK for that matter) should drop Israel and stop paying a disproportionate amount of interest to the jewish lobby in America and try and solve problems and there should be a Palestinian state which includes the lands occupied during conflict. That way the US has done the morally correct thing and has stopped the oppression of civilians... it isn't a large step and it isn't even that much of a loss for israel. Personally i think then the rest of the world will think of america in a better light and i'd expect the terrorist activities to cease. Ok i'm ranting now and would like to apologise to anyone i may have annoyed or offended. I'd also like to point out i'm not antisemetic or anything either i just don't see why when Jews were persecuted in such an abhorrent fashion during the second world war that they should go and persecute others... one would think they'd have some compassion ffs ahhh well i really am ranting now apologies
we dont really get suspicious packages up here, it jsut kicks off 1 day, take the bradford riots when that kicked off i was in the main bus station the bradford interchange where it did actually kcik off & i was really in deep do do, a white lad, sat kissing & cuddling an asian lass, we couldent even phone her fater to pick us up as he was white, we had to have him send her mother down in her car to get us away the us governemt giving this to the afverage american, quite a few are sensable enough to make choices but then we get the red-necks that you see on jerry springer, there the ones that will cause trouble, i can just see the whole thing getting worse & worse, ok we have terrorists but surely the secret services should be sorting this not giving it to people who dont ahve the training to diferentiaote i think tommy lee jones said it right in mib (yes i know it is a movie but this sentence makes a lot of sense) a person is smart, people are dumb paniky animals & that is true the us governemtn should not ask its citizens to do this
Sam, you're a pretty sensible guy! (Too sensible for bit-tech?) <thread hijack> Anyway, just wanna ask "Novacaine for the soul", reference to Eels? They kick ass!! Listen to any more of their stuff? Beautiful freak is a great album </thread hijack>
