Data intelligence complex is the real story
ft.com
ft.com
Key bits:
"From the day he took office, President Obama has sought to defuse the war and decrease public concern about it....
"It is in many ways an excellent strategy, but it has one serious flaw: it leaves the President terribly vulnerable if a significant terror strike should succeed....
[ Details the intelligence effort required. ]
"More than that, he has to be able to act. If terror is to be nipped in the bud, drones must fire down from the skies. If the al-Qaeda leadership is to remain stunned, scattered and incapable of large scale actions against the United States, houses in Waziristan must mysteriously blow up. American citizens making war against their homeland must die, even if that means they don’t get to hear their Miranda rights first.
"President Obama’s core war strategy depends on massive intelligence capabilities that were undreamed of twenty years ago. It depends on the substitution of drones for troops. PRISM and similar programs aren’t a ghastly misstep or an avoidable accident. They are the essence of Obama’s grand strategy: public peace and secret war. To cool down the public face of the war, he must intensify the secret struggle."
"[...] he had no difficulty convincing his base ... that it could have free Obamaphones. He forgot to say there was one problem with those phones …."
I'm also curious what you think about American communism. American communists were instrumental in getting the Soviet Union the Bomb, thereby bring the world to the brink of destruction. They also leaked information from the top levels of government during WWII, helping to deliver millions to the rule of Soviet tyranny. The domestic communist threat was very real. Sorry to quote myself, but: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5843702
Therefore, why is our reaction to Islamic terrorism an out of line overreaction? I mean, any more than our vehicle safety one, or at least as that can be argued as an overreaction?
If, or more likely when, it gets to the point of nukes slagging our cities, I don't think the word "endure" will even vaguely apply. I would also hate to tell my friends who lost friends in 9/11 that that was something simply to be "endured", with obviously lots more to come.
Ask yourself if your desires are realistic. Would the American people allow such to pass? Would not a suppression of the reaction to attacks result in worse reactions when we finally do? It can be argued that our tolerance and "enduring" of al-Qaeda's attacks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#Attacks) that killed over 300 prior to 9/11 allowed the latter to occur, with our resulting "overreaction".
Look, I'm not saying don't act. Sometimes military action is the best option. Just keep your eyes open. Sometimes invading countries that want to be left alone, or increased authoritarianism at home isn't the best idea.
We disagree on whether these wars "made us safer", and I'll also note the effort to quarantine Saddam (the no-fly zone et. al.) prior to the 2nd war wasn't cheap, in lives or treasure.
If the Taliban controlling Afghanistan at the time "wanted to be left alone", they could have delivered Osama and company to us as we demanded. To the extent they weren't complicit and supporting al-Qaeda, they violated Niven's Law 1b: "Never stand next to someone who is throwing shit at an armed man."
And I think the peoples of Iran and Kuwait would find it extremely curious to describe Iraq under Saddam as a country "that wanted to be left alone".
As for WWII it wasn't Russian spies that allows the USSR's land grab, it was combination of rubbish negotiation and political wrangling within the allies.
They compete with The Wall Street Journal, which is famously about the only paper that made a success of on-line subscriptions a long time ago.
Any other sources on this story? The fact that the US spends $80 billion (overall?) on signals intelligence would not be particularly surprising.
There is a recurring argument that these sorts of paywalls are okay for submissions because you can run various circumvention techniques that remove them. Aside from the serious legal grey area there (it may fall under the realm of "hacking"), it is in effect stealing for those of us who abide by intellectual property rights.
Sites that implement paywalls understand that they eschew social news sites as a consequence. Abide by that understanding.
I do agree it's a good guideline, then again the above says if such an article is the original source, it should be directly linked to....
NSA = National Security Agency.
I mean, what's the alternative? Spend $0 on secret data intelligence gathering? Of course not! I for one am happy to know that there are people on my side, looking for people who are not.
Furthermore, I can't seem to understand why people are so up-in-arms over US data gathering. I for one, have nothing to hide. Every crime I've committed online is so small, the NSA simply doesn't care. Obama said in his latest press conference, "We collect the meta data, not the data. We can see who is calling who, and if we need to listen to that call, we need to go before a judge."
I, a person of the people, am fine with the government spending this kind of money on secret data intelligence, because it keeps me safer. Period.
The US is regularly on top of the OECD for spending per student in school. The idea that it doesn't spend much on education is one of those bad memes that never goes away.
[1] http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_education_spending_20...
Meanwhile enjoy this quote from Nicholas Negroponte - "Nationalism is the biggest disease on the planet. Nations have the wrong granularity. They’re too small to be global and too big to be local, and all they can think about is competing."
Your skin is brown? DROP A BOMB. You're a Muslim? DROP A BOMB, AND ONE MORE, TO BE SURE. You're a goddamn Ruski commie? BOMB, BOMB, BOMB.
They are not going to kill that many people in the end, what they want is to make people afraid and pervert all the freedom in a country. Because what they hate is our freedom, do not forget it.
EDIT: BTW, being wrong (if I am) is a cause for downvotes? Grow up, you people.
The terrorists do not hate our freedoms.
The terrorists -- and specifically I'm talking about al-Qaeda and related groups -- want "atrocities against Muslims" to end, they want support for Israel to end, they want U.S. presence in the Middle East to end.[1]
Terror sects aren't B-movie villains.
[1]: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/military/july-dec96/fatw...
What they want is to terrorize. Their success is measured in money.
Any economist will just point out that money is how most things are measured as regards human relations in a normal society.
You know why they're pissed off, right?
Knowing our enemy is rather essential if we want to stop this war one day.
Now, maybe if we started bombing Israel to demonstrate our sincerity...
They do[1], but I agree, not as often. I've felt for decades that we need to stop meddling in other country's affairs. Remember, we've been a target for decades, too. Hijackings and the first WTC bombing.
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/22/world/americas/canada-terror-p...
I live in Spain. I know something about terror, man. And what ETA despises is FREE people in the Basque Country, willing to say to them: get your shit out of my hands and my house.
Terrorist are cheap people, in that sense. B-series villains, really. They just hate people not complying with their wishes: i.e. 'free' people.
This is what each dictator hates most. And they are dictators: "I know what is right and shall put all means into play in order to obtain it".