madaxe

Also, today I saw a bunch of guys in suits next to a burning building spraying it with water. Idiots! They wouldn't have to spray it with water if they hadn't set it on fire! We should automate fire protection and get rid of all the firefighters, as you only ever see fires when they're about, so they must be the cause.

This is why the government is now entirely run by unquestioning idiots.

The h1b worker knows he's a slave.

They can be miniaturised, using the photoelectric effect, alphavoltaics or betavoltaics.

We do not use them because "Nuclear is bad, m'kay?", and the market just isn't there, so the R&D hasn't happened.

This is about the same kind of shitty thinking that results in surveillance states.

"We can't employ/feed you/let you travel/let you have a mortgage/let you open a bank account, you are Invalid."

"Invalid, what do you mean?"

"We are not allowed to tell invalids why they are invalid. Report for reprocessing."

Edit: Oh, and psych tests are bull. It's pretty obvious what the "right" answers are - so all you actually succeed in doing is filtering the psychopaths in.

Sadly, this was the vision promulgated by western propaganda, as the notion that a civilised group of people could end up where Germany ended up was unconscionable, and incomprehensible to most - and this visage is still stuck in the mind of most as "how NAZIsm happened", rather than the very slippery, very real slope they found themselves tumbling down.

There is no discussion to be had. International law is perfectly clear as to what actions should be taken.

The Chemical weapons angle just blows my mind. The US use the argument that Israel can have, and use, if they fancy it, nuclear weapons, because they have not signed the NPT. They then go on to say that Syria can't use chemical weapons, because they haven't signed the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction.

In a nutshell, the only legal actions available are the deployment of UN peacekeepers, or none. If you ignore the Rule of Law selectively, you have no law.

The 9/11 commission report wasn't factual, no, and is widely acknowledged as such. It's also not a binding legal decision based on evidence and facts, nor was there any trial by peers. Just summary justice in absentia, and indefinite detention without trial. I'm not just talking the THF crowd. It's a thousand pages of back-patting and rah-rah. I mean, if you want to understand just how good the gov't is at assessing its own actions, disasters, or anything else, really, look at Feynman's involvement in the Challenger investigation.

I do not see what other proof there is, and basing LAWS on "well, it was probably these guys" does not strike me as a wise course of action.

Military coups are the outcome of a disconnect. Whether that disconnect lies between the people and the government, or the government and the military, varies.

But fundamentally, no, the government should not trust the military, nor the military the government, as the two should be at odds, for otherwise the military have no distinction from the police - and the police no distinction from the military - and then you find yourselves in a scary place indeed.

Without a trial, there is NO VERDICT. The entire point of the judiciary is to adjudicate - and without their judgment, in legal standing (which is what, y'know, laws, such as those being proposed, are based upon), there is no fact, nor precedent.

There's no doubt in my mind that Mickey Mouse and the Legion of Doom carried out the 9/11 attacks. I mean, who needs a trial or a legal process to reach a conclusion about a legal matter?

Who said Helpmann was crazy? He's perfectly sane and rational, from his frame of reference. So are our governments. The issue arises when the subjective reality in which ones leaders reside and the subjective reality in which you reside are radically disconnected, which makes decisions and actions made by either side seem irrational and scary.

I'd argue that governmental secrecy is bad, in all its forms, as it always ends up being abused, from the perspective of the cit. I understand your point, but it's demonstrably the case that secrecy begets secrecy, which begets corruption.

I stand by my parallel of Brazil, for we do not exist under a brutal, evil, autocratic government, nor under a consciously designed society intended to be "better", but instead under a self-sustaining zombie bureaucracy that no longer connects to the world it governs, and in fact is attempting to reshape the subjective reality of others to suit its own ends - which are, in fact, none, other than perpetuation of the status quo and hegemonic systemisation of anything which conceivably can be - which was the crux of Brazil.

You see, the thing is, as soon as you say "well, clearly X needs to be secret", you open the avenue for all of the unintended, unforeseen uses of said secrecy.

The only solution, as far as the state is concerned, is to have no secrets. Undercover police/intelligence work would be obviated by not defining economic and social systems which engender the kind of behaviour that mandates such in the first place.

Such as? Why should the state have a higher expectation of privacy than its citizens, if it's representative of them?

"The Terrorists" are "The Reds" are "The Jews". It's not "us and them" because there is no "us" and "them". There's just "us".

                                     INTERVIEWER
                         Deputy minister, what do you believe 
                         is behind this recent increase in 
                         terrorist bombings?

                                     HELPMANN
                         Bad sportsmanship. A ruthless 
                         minority of people seems to have 
                         forgotten certain good old fashioned 
                         virtues. They just can't stand 
                         seeing the other fellow win. If 
                         these people would just play the 
                         game, instead of standing on the 
                         touch line heckling

                                     INTERVIEWER
                         In fact, killing people

                                     HELPMANN
                         In fact, killing people  they'd 
                         get a lot more out of life.

               We PULL AWAY from the shop to concentrate on the shoppers. 
               Helpmann's voice carries over the rest of the scene.

                                     INTERVIEWER
                         Mr. Helpmann, what would you say 
                         to those critics who maintain that 
                         the Ministry Of Information has 
                         become too large and unwieldy... ?

                                     HELPMANN
                         David... in a free society 
                         information is the name of the 
                         game. You can't win the game if 
                         you're a man short.

Anyway. Better to go now, than to wait for them to take your passports away.

The word you're after is defensive. If you've been ripped off, you are not the aggressor.

Bingo, you get it. Put a frog in a pan of cold water, bring it to the boil. It'll stay there, perfectly content, until it cooks.

There was never a mass consensus in the USSR that it was authoritarian, because it was not permitted.

When I say not permitted, I do not mean that they had people with guns going "THINK THIS!", but that social pressure and group-think were utilised to ensure that nobody broke ranks - just like media control in the US and UK ensures.

It's very easy to rule people by pitting them against one another, and putting them in a state of fear, envy or suspicion of their fellow cit.

We stopped and chatted for a few minutes on the border from Russia to Kaz, and they let us go on their way. No in-depth search, no bribes, no nothing. Oh, and they take their border security seriously - they just don't do security theatre.

Put it this way - at the border between Kaz and Uzbek, we...

Stole the border guard's hat.

Wore it.

In front of him.

Stole his gun.

Wore it.

In front of him.

Then all sat around together laughing and joking eating pot noodles.

Had we done the same in the US, I would not be writing this, as I would likely have been shot dead on the spot.