The ORIGINAL gathering place for a merry band of Three Percenters. (As denounced by Bill Clinton on CNN!)
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Uncle Snowden calls.
22 comments:
Anonymous
said...
I really don't see how you have it in your mind that this guy is a hero of some kind. I just don't get it. I guess your idea of a III movement and mind differ. Goodbye.
you don't get how someone who literally risked his life to expose the massive surveillance state that 99% of Americans were ignorant about? The same one that completely violates the constitution? The same one obama and thr nsa director lied about repeatedly as not doing the things we now know they do?
You don't see how the secret police state will and has already been used against gun rights? I would eager the NSA has already created a pretty accurate gun registration list. You don't find that relevant? What do you think Thomas Jefferson or Patrick Henry would say about the NSA recording all phone calls and emails?
Btw, the first interview of the exciting new Ron Paul channel is a long and exclusive interview between Ron and Glenn greenwald about snowden and this topic. Ronpaulchannel.com
quote:"I really don't see how you have it in your mind that this guy is a hero of some kind."unquote
Can't speak for Mike, but unless you are an NSA Surveillance State sychophant..how can you not? After all, he just showed the entire fucking planet the extent to which this crew of Orwellian psychopaths are sucking up every phone call, email, comment CONTENT..and now the truth comes out...LIED to Congress...AGAIN.
In reality, IF you don't give a flying fuck about your 4th Amendment rights, that doesn't mean I don't, and frankly, the NSA/USG has repeatedly usurped this Amendment. To me..the NSA committed TREASON. Snowden simply provided the living proof.
But let me ask you something. What are you going to do when the NSA, in the future, can look at every thing you have done online, and decides by the current definition you are a "terrorist"...where you gonna hide then?
Typical "conservative" Anon at 2:47....can't see the constitutional violation of the 4A in the fact that the NSA is tracking all domestic phone and email traffic.
You probably think it makes you "safer" so you're okay with it....after all....YOU aren't doing anything wrong or illegal...at least yet.
Too bad you never learned the Franklin quote that "those who would give up essential liberty for temporal security deserve neither" or as JFK said, "The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it"
I disagree with "anonymous" above. Snowden is at least a beginning- Manning and Asange too.
None of them are perfect human beings or superheroes. I might not care to have a beer with any of them, and I'd certainly agree to disagree on aspects of their personal politics. But shining a light into dark slimy places is a service we need badly, and they all have done it, at some personal cost.
Perhaps I can help. The 3 percent of individuals actively fighting involved in repelling the British were fighting TYRANNY. The "III movement" (your words) seeks to fight modern tyranny. Edward Snowden, by exposing the tyrannical actions of the NSA (as well as the revelation re various other warrantless domestic spying and intelligence gathering) is fighting tyranny. Others may be along to shed more/better light on the subject.
@ Anon 2:47 -- Is that you John McCain? Or perhaps his walking buttplug, Lindsey Graham?
The only people upset with Snowden's actions are progressives and neoconservatives; both traitors to America and the freedom and liberty she used to stand for.
It's laughable how everyone attacks Anon 2:47. He doesn't agree with you Mike. It's just that simple. So out come your salivating readers and followers to prove that you are correct once again. Even though I agree with you most of the time, there are times I think your rabid supporters who have no room for others ideas should just take a little blue pill and chill. And with that--it's MY turn! LMAO in Denver
David Forward, Please don't attempt to speak for everyone that you really don't know. That, indeed, is a Progressive tool. You know what's best. Nor am I a traitor and for you to speak such words to me in person could result in injury to you for being so stupid. The same goes for the rest of you damn keyboard commanders. You want change? Join the military. I don't want to hear about how you were in the military 30 years ago.
Active and tired of III% and Oath Keepers. No one is going to commit treason for you. Wake up to the reality. Enough said. Active duty 18B (Look it up)
From January 1971 thru late October 1973 I was in the US Army Security Agency (Part of NSA). While at Fort Bragg, NC we had a problem while monitoring signals from a Soviet Navigational Satellite and a local Fayetteville, NC taxi-cab company operating on the same radio frequencies. We were not allowed to report to the FCC that the local taxi company was operating on the Soviet Satellite radio frequency since we were not allowed to monitor the USA usage of radio frequencies. We were sent a parabolic satellite dish from NSA to be able to screen out the taxi company's radio signals. I managed to ship out before the results of the Soviet Navigation quest was determined, but for some strange reason the Soviets were sending down high-speed burst transmissions to Soviet Naval Vessels while the satellite was OVER THE CONTINENTAL USA. Always wondered what sort of surface (or sub-surface) Soviet vessel was receiving those high-speed burst transmissions. Flash forward to current times when the NSA is now ACTIVELY monitoring American Citizen's Communications. BIG BROTHER IS LISTENING is not just a catch-phrase, it is TRUE. I LOVE MY COUNTRY, but I FEAR MY GOVERNMENT for what it has become.
What find terribly funny about this, in a very schadenfreude kind of way, is how eager everyone is to jump on the "fuck the gov" train with this.
It's like everyone has magically crossed into libtard land where feelings, not facts, determine who is right. Suggesting this has happened generally ends poorly, nobosy enjoys having their objectivity questioned.
The sad thing is that many are succumbing to their emotions, succumbing to one of the greatest human failings: the need to simplify. In doing so, they eliminate important context and inconvenient facts and principles.
First, I will ask the hardest of all of you: set aside your predispositions, your biases, your eagerness, for a few minutes.
Is the government a monolithic entity? Is it populated entirely by people little better than mindless drones? We all laugh (even if that laugh is an inward cringe) at the perceived stupidity and rigidity of the government, but the simple truth is that it employs people, not robots. People with the same failings we have, people who have the same propensity for sticking their heads in the sand.
It would be far easier to assume they're all drones, that none of them are thinking people, that none of them value what we value. However, were that truly the case, the government we have would be an order of magnitude worse by our standards. We do not hear about how those who cherish liberty confound the efforts of those who do not. We don't, and we don't by design: stories like that do not sell newspapers.
That said, everyone here, regardless of their take on the III% movement and/or the Oathkeepers, can at least agree that the upper levels of the government have been overrun by those holding ideals antithetical to Liberty and a properly functioning Republic. Similarly, we will all disagree to various levels as to what threat level this infestation represents and what the best way to combat it is right now, much less when the gloves come off. That is the difficulty with this style movement, it is herding cats.
That said, it is important to remember that the government is not a monolithic entity, that levels of corruption vary amongst its constituent parts, as failing to do so will lead to suboptimal results. We need to be more aware of potential allies and sympathizers, not less. Treating someone on your side as a pariah without good reason does nothing but drive friendlies from your camp into neutral ground or worse, the other side. It also discourages folks otherwise predisposed to neutrality, either through their ignorance or lack of observational skills, from joining your side. Save the bullets, real or verbal, for the enemy.
To continue, having dealt with the first oversimplification, I highlight the next: the enemy of your enemy is *not* your friend.
One need look no further than WW2 to see the case in point. We went to great lengths to make the Russians appear to the public as great allies when they were anything but, only to have to face the unfortunate fact that there was little difference between the communists and the fascists.
Similarly, jumping to embrace Snowden suffers from the same style myopia. Did he uncover something? Possibly. However, every person here who has been paying attention knows the words Carnivore and Omnivore and what they mean in regards to Snowden's revelations. Folks who have truly been paying attention would know that going back to the 1800s, Western Union handed a copy of every cable to law enforcement.
The fact that this is nothing new does not excuse the activity and make it permissible. It does, on the other hand, mean that those taking such grave offense at it now are either extremely unobservant, that they have crossed into "feelings land, that they have some ulterior motive served by being loud and obtrusive, or some combination of the above. Loud and obtrusive makes a great distraction, I'm just saying.
To some length, we can argue over how helpful Snowden's revelations are; there is little doubt that he did touch on something many of us hold near and dear.
Unfortunately, there are inconvenient facts shuffled away by many because their existence interferes with us hearing what we want:
1. Snowden released information unrelated to what we are concerned about. Information that cost us and our allies severely in both money, man hours, and capability. Were he the pure hero many hold him to be, he wouldn't be disclosing legitimate intel operations by us and our allies to our enemies. Yet he, like Manning, did. That inescapable fact should be far more troubling than it is to those who have chosen to fall in love with his ilk... Yet it is not, as many have oversimplified their viewpoint.
2. "My ignorance is just as useful/valid as your experience."
Not everyone posting on boards like this are keyboard commandos. It would not surprise me in the least to find members of the intel community legitimately posting because they are our brothers not because they are running an intel op. Similarly, I would not be surprised if many of us knew people who worked in such a capacity. Talk to them, leave your assumptions at the door and learn. If they seem reluctant to buy into something, there is probably good reason.
That said, if you speak from a position of ignorance, be aware of what you don't know. Be aware of the details you're talking about. Know what is supposition, what you can only suspect, and what you can prove. Know what proof is. Know what it isn't.
3. Bias. I can't begin to fathom how we can go on and on for years (or decades for some of us) as to the existence of media bias, media ignorance, and then when something happens that we agree with, suddenly all that concern disappears.
The media, in the US and abroad still uses phrases like cop killer bullets, can't tell the difference between a sniper rifle and a hunting rifle, and every gun is "high capacity" and/or high powered. If you don't chuckle over some chowderhead calling the M-16/AR platform high powered, I got nothing.
And yet, so far as we all acknowledge that level of idiocy in the press, why is it we assume that bias and ignorance isn't present on the Snowden case?
Why is it we assume that the reporters got it right in the first place? Why is it most people can't stop and realize that you have a systems admin who violated security to copy data he never worked with, who fled the country claiming his life was in danger and then dumped his data at several reporters and foreign governments?
Nobody seems to question that the reporters don't know any real detail about their subject... Nor does the matter that they are likely adding their bias to the story, both unintentionally from ignorance and intentionally to blow it bigger for the sake of sales.
That is not even dealing with the more excusable fact that most people don't know what a systems administrator does and how that ties in. Nobody questions Snowden's interpretation of things despite the fact that he is not an intel person and doesn't actually work the data.
That point is important. It's one thing for a lawyer to tell you your rights are being violated, it's another when his janitor or file clerk tells you the same thing.
It is important to know and operate with the understanding you don't have the full picture. Pretending you do leads to grave mistakes.
Yes, we will likely never have the full picture, but behaving like rabid leftists and ignorant children cannot lead to a proper solution.
If you love Liberty as much as our forefathers did, you owe it to yourself and your posterity to emulate them. We all need to remain objective, to be aware of our limitations, to know our blindspots and vices and limit their interference, to construct our big picture accurately and correctly.
To fail to do so leads only to destruction and misery. After all, the leaders of the French Revolution claimed to love Liberty first above all else just as we do.
22 comments:
I really don't see how you have it in your mind that this guy is a hero of some kind. I just don't get it.
I guess your idea of a III movement and mind differ.
Goodbye.
Mike, the above "anon" thinks your III movement and your mind differ, how do you feel about that? obviously a left liberal plant if you ask me...
Cederq
The Not-Original Idaho Bob
Anonymous,
you don't get how someone who literally risked his life to expose the massive surveillance state that 99% of Americans were ignorant about? The same one that completely violates the constitution? The same one obama and thr nsa director lied about repeatedly as not doing the things we now know they do?
You don't see how the secret police state will and has already been used against gun rights? I would eager the NSA has already created a pretty accurate gun registration list. You don't find that relevant? What do you think Thomas Jefferson or Patrick Henry would say about the NSA recording all phone calls and emails?
Btw, the first interview of the exciting new Ron Paul channel is a long and exclusive interview between Ron and Glenn greenwald about snowden and this topic. Ronpaulchannel.com
quote:"I really don't see how you have it in your mind that this guy is a hero of some kind."unquote
Can't speak for Mike, but unless you are an NSA Surveillance State sychophant..how can you not? After all, he just showed the entire fucking planet the extent to which this crew of Orwellian psychopaths are sucking up every phone call, email, comment CONTENT..and now the truth comes out...LIED to Congress...AGAIN.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/12/intelligence-committee-nsa-vote-justin-amash
In reality, IF you don't give a flying fuck about your 4th Amendment rights, that doesn't mean I don't, and frankly, the NSA/USG has repeatedly usurped this Amendment. To me..the NSA committed TREASON. Snowden simply provided the living proof.
But let me ask you something. What are you going to do when the NSA, in the future, can look at every thing you have done online, and decides by the current definition you are a "terrorist"...where you gonna hide then?
Anon:
Your idea of a III movement is to lay back, spread your legs and think of the Fatherland while the NSA rapes you?
Typical "conservative" Anon at 2:47....can't see the constitutional violation of the 4A in the fact that the NSA is tracking all domestic phone and email traffic.
You probably think it makes you "safer" so you're okay with it....after all....YOU aren't doing anything wrong or illegal...at least yet.
Too bad you never learned the Franklin quote that "those who would give up essential liberty for temporal security deserve neither" or as JFK said, "The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it"
I disagree with "anonymous" above. Snowden is at least a beginning- Manning and Asange too.
None of them are perfect human beings or superheroes. I might not care to have a beer with any of them, and I'd certainly agree to disagree on aspects of their personal politics. But shining a light into dark slimy places is a service we need badly, and they all have done it, at some personal cost.
https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/half-baked-revolution/
Perhaps I can help. The 3 percent of individuals actively fighting involved in repelling the British were fighting TYRANNY. The "III movement" (your words) seeks to fight modern tyranny. Edward Snowden, by exposing the tyrannical actions of the NSA (as well as the revelation re various other warrantless domestic spying and intelligence gathering) is fighting tyranny. Others may be along to shed more/better light on the subject.
D.O.M.
@ Anon 2:47 -- Is that you John McCain? Or perhaps his walking buttplug, Lindsey Graham?
The only people upset with Snowden's actions are progressives and neoconservatives; both traitors to America and the freedom and liberty she used to stand for.
It's laughable how everyone attacks Anon 2:47. He doesn't agree with you Mike. It's just that simple. So out come your salivating readers and followers to prove that you are correct once again.
Even though I agree with you most of the time, there are times I think your rabid supporters who have no room for others ideas should just take a little blue pill and chill.
And with that--it's MY turn!
LMAO in Denver
quote:" Is that you John McCain? Or perhaps his walking buttplug, Lindsey Graham?"unquote
Graham. Buttplug.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
perfect. Now..someone help me off the floor.
David Forward,
Please don't attempt to speak for everyone that you really don't know. That, indeed, is a Progressive tool. You know what's best. Nor am I a traitor and for you to speak such words to me in person could result in injury to you for being so stupid. The same goes for the rest of you damn keyboard commanders. You want change? Join the military. I don't want to hear about how you were in the military 30 years ago.
Active and tired of III% and Oath Keepers. No one is going to commit treason for you. Wake up to the reality. Enough said.
Active duty 18B
(Look it up)
Check this out. Stop arguing, please.
http://thelizardfarmer.wordpress.com/2012/04/20/the-fantasy-of-modern-militia-and-the-iii/
Denver,
I don't agree with Mike all the time either...but on this one, most of the responses are correct.
How, pray tell, do you consider what's been going on at NSA to be congruent with the 4A?
If it's not in harmony with the 4A, it's unconstitutional....which means that Snowden was correct to out the flaunting of the Supreme Law of the land.
@18B: Weapons sgt for US or UN Army? The devil is in the details...just askin'.
From January 1971 thru late October 1973 I was in the US Army Security Agency (Part of NSA). While at Fort Bragg, NC we had a problem while monitoring signals from a Soviet Navigational Satellite and a local Fayetteville, NC taxi-cab company operating on the same radio frequencies. We were not allowed to report to the FCC that the local taxi company was operating on the Soviet Satellite radio frequency since we were not allowed to monitor the USA usage of radio frequencies. We were sent a parabolic satellite dish from NSA to be able to screen out the taxi company's radio signals. I managed to ship out before the results of the Soviet Navigation quest was determined, but for some strange reason the Soviets were sending down high-speed burst transmissions to Soviet Naval Vessels while the satellite was OVER THE CONTINENTAL USA. Always wondered what sort of surface (or sub-surface) Soviet vessel was receiving those high-speed burst transmissions.
Flash forward to current times when the NSA is now ACTIVELY monitoring American Citizen's Communications. BIG BROTHER IS LISTENING is not just a catch-phrase, it is TRUE. I LOVE MY COUNTRY, but I FEAR MY GOVERNMENT for what it has become.
What find terribly funny about this, in a very schadenfreude kind of way, is how eager everyone is to jump on the "fuck the gov" train with this.
It's like everyone has magically crossed into libtard land where feelings, not facts, determine who is right. Suggesting this has happened generally ends poorly, nobosy enjoys having their objectivity questioned.
The sad thing is that many are succumbing to their emotions, succumbing to one of the greatest human failings: the need to simplify. In doing so, they eliminate important context and inconvenient facts and principles.
First, I will ask the hardest of all of you: set aside your predispositions, your biases, your eagerness, for a few minutes.
Is the government a monolithic entity? Is it populated entirely by people little better than mindless drones? We all laugh (even if that laugh is an inward cringe) at the perceived stupidity and rigidity of the government, but the simple truth is that it employs people, not robots. People with the same failings we have, people who have the same propensity for sticking their heads in the sand.
It would be far easier to assume they're all drones, that none of them are thinking people, that none of them value what we value. However, were that truly the case, the government we have would be an order of magnitude worse by our standards. We do not hear about how those who cherish liberty confound the efforts of those who do not. We don't, and we don't by design: stories like that do not sell newspapers.
That said, everyone here, regardless of their take on the III% movement and/or the Oathkeepers, can at least agree that the upper levels of the government have been overrun by those holding ideals antithetical to Liberty and a properly functioning Republic. Similarly, we will all disagree to various levels as to what threat level this infestation represents and what the best way to combat it is right now, much less when the gloves come off. That is the difficulty with this style movement, it is herding cats.
That said, it is important to remember that the government is not a monolithic entity, that levels of corruption vary amongst its constituent parts, as failing to do so will lead to suboptimal results. We need to be more aware of potential allies and sympathizers, not less. Treating someone on your side as a pariah without good reason does nothing but drive friendlies from your camp into neutral ground or worse, the other side. It also discourages folks otherwise predisposed to neutrality, either through their ignorance or lack of observational skills, from joining your side. Save the bullets, real or verbal, for the enemy.
To continue, having dealt with the first oversimplification, I highlight the next: the enemy of your enemy is *not* your friend.
One need look no further than WW2 to see the case in point. We went to great lengths to make the Russians appear to the public as great allies when they were anything but, only to have to face the unfortunate fact that there was little difference between the communists and the fascists.
Similarly, jumping to embrace Snowden suffers from the same style myopia. Did he uncover something? Possibly. However, every person here who has been paying attention knows the words Carnivore and Omnivore and what they mean in regards to Snowden's revelations. Folks who have truly been paying attention would know that going back to the 1800s, Western Union handed a copy of every cable to law enforcement.
The fact that this is nothing new does not excuse the activity and make it permissible. It does, on the other hand, mean that those taking such grave offense at it now are either extremely unobservant, that they have crossed into "feelings land, that they have some ulterior motive served by being loud and obtrusive, or some combination of the above. Loud and obtrusive makes a great distraction, I'm just saying.
To some length, we can argue over how helpful Snowden's revelations are; there is little doubt that he did touch on something many of us hold near and dear.
Unfortunately, there are inconvenient facts shuffled away by many because their existence interferes with us hearing what we want:
1. Snowden released information unrelated to what we are concerned about. Information that cost us and our allies severely in both money, man hours, and capability. Were he the pure hero many hold him to be, he wouldn't be disclosing legitimate intel operations by us and our allies to our enemies. Yet he, like Manning, did. That inescapable fact should be far more troubling than it is to those who have chosen to fall in love with his ilk... Yet it is not, as many have oversimplified their viewpoint.
2. "My ignorance is just as useful/valid as your experience."
Not everyone posting on boards like this are keyboard commandos. It would not surprise me in the least to find members of the intel community legitimately posting because they are our brothers not because they are running an intel op. Similarly, I would not be surprised if many of us knew people who worked in such a capacity. Talk to them, leave your assumptions at the door and learn. If they seem reluctant to buy into something, there is probably good reason.
That said, if you speak from a position of ignorance, be aware of what you don't know. Be aware of the details you're talking about. Know what is supposition, what you can only suspect, and what you can prove. Know what proof is. Know what it isn't.
#2 sounds tangential, but it ties to #3 cleanly.
3. Bias. I can't begin to fathom how we can go on and on for years (or decades for some of us) as to the existence of media bias, media ignorance, and then when something happens that we agree with, suddenly all that concern disappears.
The media, in the US and abroad still uses phrases like cop killer bullets, can't tell the difference between a sniper rifle and a hunting rifle, and every gun is "high capacity" and/or high powered. If you don't chuckle over some chowderhead calling the M-16/AR platform high powered, I got nothing.
And yet, so far as we all acknowledge that level of idiocy in the press, why is it we assume that bias and ignorance isn't present on the Snowden case?
Why is it we assume that the reporters got it right in the first place? Why is it most people can't stop and realize that you have a systems admin who violated security to copy data he never worked with, who fled the country claiming his life was in danger and then dumped his data at several reporters and foreign governments?
Nobody seems to question that the reporters don't know any real detail about their subject... Nor does the matter that they are likely adding their bias to the story, both unintentionally from ignorance and intentionally to blow it bigger for the sake of sales.
That is not even dealing with the more excusable fact that most people don't know what a systems administrator does and how that ties in. Nobody questions Snowden's interpretation of things despite the fact that he is not an intel person and doesn't actually work the data.
That point is important. It's one thing for a lawyer to tell you your rights are being violated, it's another when his janitor or file clerk tells you the same thing.
It is important to know and operate with the understanding you don't have the full picture. Pretending you do leads to grave mistakes.
Yes, we will likely never have the full picture, but behaving like rabid leftists and ignorant children cannot lead to a proper solution.
If you love Liberty as much as our forefathers did, you owe it to yourself and your posterity to emulate them. We all need to remain objective, to be aware of our limitations, to know our blindspots and vices and limit their interference, to construct our big picture accurately and correctly.
To fail to do so leads only to destruction and misery. After all, the leaders of the French Revolution claimed to love Liberty first above all else just as we do.
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