It could still be illegal for people to grow their own if the government wanted it that way.
you did see the point i was trying to make with that statement, right? i'm more inclined to go with the latter option myself; medicinal marijuana could have a huge impact on their bottom lines.
It doesn't seem to matter how many billions they pump into T.V ads and it's ironic that they think that the ads might encourage use. I think it all starts with the parents, without that guidance I doubt that other than a few cases that a T.V ad is going to stop a kid from doing drugs or alchohol.
"Nonspecific" threats with no indication that airliners would be used as suicide bombs?
Then what about the G-8 conference at Genoa, which took place July 20-22, 2001?
There were warnings from several sources, including close U.S. ally Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, that a hijacked airplane filled with explosives might be crashed into the conference building. So seriously did Italian authorities take this possibility that they positioned anti-aircraft guns and prohibited local flights.
During the summit, George Bush spent his nights on a U.S. warship in the harbor, for security considerations. Yet Condoleeza Rice maintains that two weeks later, when the President’s daily briefing featured a warning that al Qaida was targeting U.S. planes for hijacking, nobody considered the possibility those planes could be used as flying bombs?!
And then there's the eye-opening NBC News report that, two days before 9/11, Bush had on his desk a National Security Presidential Directive outlining an extensive, global, military, diplomatic and intelligence campaign targeting bin Laden and al Qaida -- including an ultimatum to Afghanistan's Taliban...backed by the threat of war.
That draft order, according to NBC, “outlined essentially the same war plan that the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon put into action after the September 11 attacks.” It was prepared through extensive consultation over several months involving the Pentagon, CIA, State Department and other key agencies. Thus, well before the terrorist hijackings, Dubya was set to launch the military action it later claimed was taken only in response to the September 11 atrocity!
It doesn't get any fishier than that...except below decks on a tuna trawler.
How about all of the people that came over from 1500 through the 1850's. They came mostly from the developed nations at the time, specifically Great Britain, France, Spain and Germany. Furthermore, an argument can be made that even from the 1850's until WWI that most of the immigrants were still coming from the developed world. It really was not until after WWI that the U.S. became the leading power. You need a better grasp of history, fold.
I'll meet you half way. I will admit that they didn't come from "Third world nations" and that they were'nt bottom of the barrel poor but, you must admit they were not the top level's of society.
It was the poor & downtrodden that first came to this nation.
You need some remedial history, too, JT. The fact is that the monarchies promised land to people to move herre. Also there were many "business men" that came here for trapping and develeopment of the resources that were here. There were those that came here for religious reasons but there is really no indication that they were the poor. The truly poor didn't have the resources to come here. It still remains a fact that people from the "third world" were not coming here for most of the history of this continent. They came mostly from the "developed" world.
This is what fold wrote that started this: Haven't immigrants Usually been from third-world nations or nations that offer them little to nothing in the way of economic success?
Europeans constituted more than 80 percent of all immigrants throughout the 19th century.
During this era, approximately 37 million immigrants arrived in the United States. Census figures indicate that about 6 million Germans, 4.5 million Irish, 4.75 million Italians, 4.2 million people from England, Scotland and Wales, approximately the same number from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 2.3 million Scandinavians, and 3.3 million people from Russia and the Baltic states entered the United States.
The point was that most people didn't come from the third world countries of the time. People came here for lots of reasons. A lot of it may have been the "grass is greener" philosophy.
"Nonspecific" threats with no indication that airliners would be used as suicide bombs?
Um notice you said nonspecific. We also had nonspecific indications that subways would be gassed ala in Japan, we also had indications that embassies would be bombed, we also had nonspecific indications that westerners and mostly Americans abroad were targets. we also had nonspecific indicators that numerous other targets could or would be hit as well.
Then what about the G-8 conference at Genoa, which took place July 20-22, 2001?
There were warnings from several sources, including close U.S. ally Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, that a hijacked airplane filled with explosives might be crashed into the conference building. So seriously did Italian authorities take this possibility that they positioned anti-aircraft guns and prohibited local flights.
Yes I'm sure you would be all for a military state and people would have been thrilled if on a NONSPECIFIC threat we closed every airport indefinately due to a threat that could be real or non, that turned out to sadly be real. There are and have been hundreds and thousands of other hunches or info that turned out to be false too.
What you forget is that we are a free open society. We could make it a police state to lessen the threats. We would never be able to completely stop them. We could lessen them if we went to a closed police state society. We can and should lessen them by implementing things that let us work within that free society.
I guess what really is truly sad is that none of this comes from any real information only blind flailing of the arms hoping to land a punch or do some damage. Had we done all these things to lessen the risk ie: turn us into a police state and attacking Afghanistan prior to 9-11 then you would have been the biggest whiner around about that.
You can't nor would you ever want to win with someone that hates their own country so much.
It's because of our free society that people were able to come here under the guise of wanting to learn and use that freedom to kill our own people. Instead you and Cindy decide to use it for political reasons. Quite telling. Yes someones lying no doubt.
This, is the part of my post that you have conveniently left OUT of your dissertations, Jethro. No it is part of it you wish to emphasize now that you are proven wrong. As is usually the case.
So it seems as if another attack is inevitable. So what do we do ? As I said to Dennis yesterday having a free and open society almost makes it impossible to stop everything. Even turning this into a police state wouldn't stop everything. Truth is that nobody could have imagined this on Sept 10th we've always had threats etc. but it was always an embassy here or there and not on our soil targeting civilians.
So do we throw our hands up and say well we can't do anything and wait ? I don't think so, we have stopped other attacks before but we MUST do more.
Personally I think we ought to first 1) build our intelligence community back up. We stripped it and watered it down so much in the name of being P.C that good intell is hard to find. The congressional Church commission a few years back said we could no longer have informants on the payroll with criminal or human rights violations. Great idea guys, the informants are the ones who can get into these organizations, it's a little tough to have a guy who looks like Richie Cunningham infiltrate al Quieda, Time to repeal that little roadblock. Also quit relying on technology. Who cares if your satelite can read a liscence plate ? Liscence plates don't attack people. We need people and informants on the ground.
2) Now I realize in our oversensative cultural touchy feely awareness syndrome that saying this is unpopular and so un p.c but that's part of the problem that got us here. Tighten borders and immigration. Give them the technology to communicate with eachoter on a central database. And yes take a hard look at people from known terrorist nations that are coming here or are here as non citizens. No, wouldn't want to "profile" nah, wouldn't want to do that. If China attacked us do you think it would be wise to look at people wanting to come here from China ? Of course it would, and this is NO different. They are trying to KILL us and if I inconvienece a non citizen from Saudi or Syria here on a business trip so be it, sorry it's a litle thing called war the minute your countrymen quit killing our people you can go right through the express line at the airport. If they are non citizens then they don't have the same rights as citizens. I don't care who it is that's doing it, it has zip to do with race.
Coincidentally the MN legislature failed miserebly to enact color coded drivers liscensce for temporary visitors or legal aliens or those here on work visa's. The only thing it would have done was made authorities aware that if they pulled somone over that they were a legal alien and it would have the same ex date as you guessed it, thier ex date on their visa. Gasp, wouldn't want to do that lest we offend a visitor. If they were here legally and their visa wasn't expired, so be it. But in the name of being culturally sensative someone can be here on a 90 day visa or work permit, get a liscence, have the visa expire but have a valid liscence for 4 years. Great.
3) Keep political pressure up, start caring less about who might be our friend depending on the day and care more about hte ones who really are. Tell nations like Saudi, Pakistan, Egypt, etc. to play one side of the fence or the other, get a control on your extremists and we'll be happy together, don't do it or turn a blind eye and see what happens.
4) For Petes sake arm the friggen pilots. We'll trust them with our lives to fly a complicated million dollar aircraft but not with a 357 ? get real. It's a last resort, the cockpit doors although improved will not stop someone that really wants to get in. It's a last defense and could save thousands of lives. Think how many could have been saved if the pilots had been armed on 9-11 ? Oh no wouldn't want a gun on board with the pilot.
No intell, no profiling and no guns. Yes all this P.C crap has really gotten us far hasn't it. What a success it has beeen. Let's keep it up and the attacks will probalby get worse and thousands more could die, but hey as long as we don't offend anyone. as long as we are sensative to everyone and try not to offend we can feel better about letting more die.
I guess I am tired of all the people that say they want to do what we can to prevent more terrorism within the confines of the constitution of course and then bitch about us profiling someone from Syria. If you'll note, there isn't one idea in there that takes one freedom or violates one right of anyone. Now there might be a few things in there about inconvienence but I don't recall seeing that in the bill of rights. I am tried and fed up with the p.c bullshit that contributed to some of these problems in the first palce enough is enough, perhaps when they detonate a nuke people will get it.
So, we should take murderers, theives, and terrorists, and effectively make them U.S. Law Enforcement agents? Don't you see the conflict there? It's not about being P.C....it's about whether our tax money, and the power of our government, goes to support people who are doing immoral things. If we prosecute murder as a crime, and then pay murderers to help us...don't you see the moral contradiction there? One cannot simultaneously oppose and support murder, and be morally correct. A cannot be not-A.
sorry it's a litle thing called war
We are not currently at war with any country, as far as I know.
the minute your countrymen quit killing our people you can go right through the express line at the airport
Our own countrymen kill our people way more than any other country's people do. Isn't that right? (I'm guessing)
If they are non citizens then they don't have the same rights as citizens.
Shouldn't all humans have a certain baseline amount of rights, no matter where they come from? And, assuming they should, shouldn't civilized countries do what they can to protect those baseline rights?
So, we should take murderers, theives, and terrorists, and effectively make them U.S. Law Enforcement agents? Don't you see the conflict there? It's not about being P.C....it's about whether our tax money, and the power of our government, goes to support people who are doing immoral things
Well Lance if that's the only way to get info and infiltrate these groups to prevent more murders and mass murders it's for a larger group, it's called catching the bigger fish. Who would you have rather caught a small time operator or message boy for Alquieda who was a bad dude or Bin Laden himslef ? Both are bad but one is alot more important to a larger group. Of course I don't like having them on the payrolls and it's not a moral contradiction. If doing so would have saved 3,000 lives hell no. That's the exact same kind of false moral purity that got us where we are today. That's what you don't get, these people aren't good guys, the people in alquieda etc would love to see our country cease to exist and are bad people. The only way to get in is to take people from these groups whom we can get info from, it's the only way and the only way to prevent massive death via their info. The other thing you forget is this. If we do get those on top etc. the small fish that we are paying will be caught or stopped as well if their organization crumbles etc. It happens all the time.
Let me put it this way, say your daughter or the person you love more than anything on earth was kidnapped. Someone or a group says we know where she is and we will guarantee you find her and get her back and get the guy who did it if you pay us 100,000. You know that the person/group are bad people, murder's , rapists etc. but they are your only chance of seeing that person ever again or to prevent something bad from happening. What do you do honestly ? Say well you're bad guys and I think it's wrong to support you ? Right sure Lance. it's easy to say now isn't it.
We are not currently at war with any country, as far as I know.
Really ? It's in all the papers. I'm not sure if that was an attempt at sarcasm or what but a war does not have to consist of country vs. country. If it makes you feel better we can call it combat. Or does it have to be country vs. country for you for it to be a just cause ?
the minute your countrymen quit killing our people you can go right through the express line at the airport
Our own countrymen kill our people way more than any other country's people do. Isn't that right? (I'm guessing)
And we do what we can do to stop that don't we, we aren't harboring murders and refusing to bring them to justice. So why allow more possible murders into the country ? The difference is Lance is that they are citizens. and if accused of murder have the protections of our constitution. Terrorists don't nor should they. Sorry I'm not going to hand wring over them.
Shouldn't all humans have a certain baseline amount of rights, no matter where they come from? And, assuming they should, shouldn't civilized countries do what they can to protect those baseline rights?
Yes to a point but do you think they should have the same rights as you a citizen do ? Fine if you do then I guess the entire world could claim social security and every other thing we as citizens do without having to be a contributor to society great idea. We aren't talking about human basic rights violations etc.
Is being strip-searched merely an inconvenience?
I don't know Lance is he strapped full of explosives about to board a plane your family is on ? Easy for you to say if not.
Shouldn't all humans have a certain baseline amount of rights, no matter where they come from? And, assuming they should, shouldn't civilized countries do what they can to protect those baseline rights?
They do in this country. But that doesn't mean they should have all the priviliges. Maybe that is where the dispute really is.
Fortunately, most skyscrapers are not designed like the twin towers, so another catastrophe like 9-11 would be difficult to copy.
I am not so sure that is true. One of the problems that has been cited as a cause of the collapse is that the sprayed on fire proofing was blown off by the impact. The engineers speculated that had the fire proofing not been blown off the internal structure it may have withstood the heat. My understanding is that many buildings have the same type of fire proofing.
Lance, why did you quit the debate so quickly? I was interested to hear your response
Because Rob's post was pretty much all about putting words and answers into my mouth, talking down to me, posing false dichotomies, erecting straw men and scoffing at them...stuff like that. Extra stuff that makes it unnecessarily more dificult for the discussion to arrive at any sort of clarity. Not only does it make it much harder than it should be to try and answer him (every question there is posed so as to intentionally make it harder to answer clearly...badgering the witness is what it would be called in court), but it leads me to believe that any answer I might give would be again subject to the same sort of thrashing. I just don't see what it would accomplish for anyone.
Because Rob's post was pretty much all about putting words and answers into my mouth, talking down to me, posing false dichotomies, erecting straw men and scoffing at them...stuff like that. Extra stuff that makes it unnecessarily more dificult for the discussion to arrive at any sort of clarity. Not only does it make it much harder than it should be to try and answer him (every question there is posed so as to intentionally make it harder to answer clearly...badgering the witness is what it would be called in court), but it leads me to believe that any answer I might give would be again subject to the same sort of thrashing. I just don't see what it would accomplish for anyone.
Sorry you took it that way and in retrospect perhaps it appeared or you took it that way. I can easily see how you would have the way i wrote it. I have been running on 3-4 hours of sleep per night so perhaps I'm just too tired and my body and mind is telling me that 3 pots of coffee is bad for anyone. My apologies to you.
So if you'd like we could try again , if not I understand.
My point was this. You said.......
So, we should take murderers, theives, and terrorists, and effectively make them U.S. Law Enforcement agents? Don't you see the conflict there?
They aren't agents, we are merely paying them for information. The church commission changed policy in that were essentially unable to do so with any "bad guys" the problem is that there arent too many nice guys in Alquieda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad etc. and those groups are almost impossible to infiltrate for an outsider. So how do we get info ? We didn't because of that ruling.
It's not about being P.C....it's about whether our tax money, and the power of our government, goes to support people who are doing immoral things
It happens all the time. My tax money goes to people on welfare etc that could be doing immoral things ( I'm not saying all or even implying that if you're on welfare that you are, I do NOT want to get into the welfare issue) but we don't stop paying someone simply because their behavior is immoral.
As distasteful as it might be, alot more people might be alive today and wars averted by better intelligence. And we can't get that kind of info from a sattelite. We need people on the inside and if they are going to take the risk of getting caugght they are going to want some cash. That and the other issue is that if those groups are taken down, guess what ? so is the small guy whose organization would be dismantled because of that info.
The other question I asked you was not meant to be condesending. It's a legitimate question to ask since you feel paying bad people for info is wrong. If it were the person you loved more than anything in the world who was kidnapped and a group of "bad guys" came to you and said, we know where she is and who did it and we'll tell you only if you pay. Knowing that they are immoral etc. but were the only if not best chance of seeing that loved one again Would you do it ?
I know what I would do but am wondering if you would. It's the larger good from my perspective Lance, I'd rather pay someone a few bucks even if they are bad and if it's info that averts another 9-11 I'm all for it. We have to do something before another one.
In 2008, when you are running a campaign, those questions will seem easy, compared to the ones you'll be asked then.
It wasn't that the questions were hard, they just weren't cost-effective to answer, in a time sense.
Rob,
Just the sound of 3 pots of coffee makes my stomach cringe. Of course, I'm a 6+ cans of Coke a day guy, so I shouldn't talk, prolly. Anyway, I accept your bough of peace, and I'll give your new post a shot.
They aren't agents, we are merely paying them for information.
I know they aren't technically agents, but effectively that's what it adds up to (and "effectively" is what I said before). We are paying them money to do stuff for us. The stuff they are doing is part of our law enforcement/"intellegence" efforts. They work for the USG, assisting our law enforcement officers. To me, that means they are agents for us, in practice, if not in title.
So how do we get info ? We didn't because of that ruling.
From what I've heard, we actually did get info. Quite a bit of it.
BTW, we paid the Taliban $49 million to stop growing poppies, just a few months before 9/11. Lot of good that did us. (Just an example of "paying the bad guys to work with us" gone wrong. There are plenty of such examples.)
The problem is with using immoral means to achieve supposedly moral ends. It would be nice if we could be sure that the intelligence and law enforcemnet communities could properly thread that needle, but evidence has shown that they cannot. Have you seen the new show The Shield ? It shows pretty well what happens when immoral means are decided to be o.k., in pursuit of a greater good. Basically, the people who are supposed to be achieving that greater good, people who are presumably moral, become involved in immoral acts and schemes and plans. Whatever scumbags you are suggesting we hire basically end up being partners of a sort to our real agents. The bosses in our agencies end up being bosses of scumbag killers. Our bureaucracies are not moral nor strong enough to withstand such corruptive influences, and you can look at law enforcement agencies all across the country for examples of that being true. The person who is paying an immoral person becomes immoral themself. So does the person paying that person, and so on. If our gov't hires (for example) 100 terrorist insiders...that's a sickness in our system, and I think it's naive to think we can keep the system clean in such a context. It's worse than naive, really-- it's willful blindness due to desperation, IMO.
Then of course there is the fact that ultimately, it's we who are paying the scumbags that money...you and I and everyone else who pays taxes. And to think we can come away clean is naive too. We share responsibility for all that is done on our behalf, I think.
It happens all the time. My tax money goes to people on welfare etc that could be doing immoral things but we don't stop paying someone simply because their behavior is immoral.
We should. It should not happen all the time. It's very, very sad that you (and I suspect many others) are resigned to this fact. If our government does nothing else, it should make sure it is not making immoral things happen.
alot more people might be alive today and wars averted by better intelligence.
Or less bureacracy, from what I've heard. The government knew about the attacks, and did nothing with that info. I wonder what more nothing it would have done with more info.
We need people on the inside and if they are going to take the risk of getting caugght they are going to want some cash. That and the other issue is that if those groups are taken down, guess what ? so is the small guy whose organization would be dismantled because of that info.
Here we again get into the moral quagmire. You're basically saying "It's not so bad to hire the little guy, because in the end, we'll end up destroying him right along with his higher-level comrades." So now we'd be hiring people with the goal of bringing those very people down...does that not seem twisted to you? "O.K., find out when the next attack is, and get us proof, and then we'll have what we need to arrest your boss, and...well, you!" Either we would have to deceive the informer and not tell him that part, or we would have to let him go free (even though he's part of a terrorist network), or he would simply not help us quite enough to endanger the organization, and thus himself. So, it's either immoral, immoral, or ineffective. Nice choices.
if it were the person you loved more than anything in the world who was kidnapped and a group of "bad guys" came to you and said, we know where she is and who did it and we'll tell you only if you pay. Knowing that they are immoral etc. but were the only if not best chance of seeing that loved one again Would you do it ?
Quagmire time. By the law, and U.S. policy, I would have to turn those bad guys in. But skipping that for now, yes I would probably pay the bad guys to help me find the other bad guys. The key distinction is that we're talking about me making a personal decision to subvert my moral values for my own personal gain. I would probably do so, and I would pay the price, personally (knowing that I had helped finance scumbags and probably caused other immoral acts to occur). If I did so, it would be out of desperation, and (this part is important) I would probably be wrong to do so. From this safe distance here, it seems pretty clear that it would be wrong to give in to the bad guys and pay them. It would also be illegal, and I could go to jail for it. But if a loved one was in danger, I would not be thinking as clearly, and I would probably be more interested in expediency than morality. But I would be wrong to do so, and I would pay the price, morally. What if the money I paid those bad guys went to support some act of terrorism they did, or led to them escaping the country and not getting caught for all their past crimes? What if my money bought the guns they used to go on a multi-state killing spree? It would be a sickness in me, just like it would be (is) in our government. The only difference is that an individual has the ability to repair their morality, and to do penance or whatever for their wrongs. Also, the individual is a lot easier to jail and punish, and I would most likely be made to pay the price for paying the bad guys. The USG does not have the moral self-cleaning tools that individuals have. Nor does it have any sort of moral judgment tools at all, for that matter. Your proposal is basically to eschew morality for expediency. My answer is that if we do so, we will pay the price. We have done so in the past, and we pay the price all the time. One of the main reasons our government is such a fucked-up piece of shit these days is because at various points along the line, we have chosen expediency over morality, time and time and time again.
As a side note, isn't it just somewhat possible that the terrorists are legitimately pissed at the US for doing things it shouldn't be doing? I'm not saying that they are right to do what they do, but there is definitely an element of cause and effect. Timothy McVeigh, for example, was not just randomly upset at the government. He was pissed about the government's immoral actions at Waco and Ruby Ridge, among others. If you take the Tim McVeigh life timeline, and take out the Fed's murders at Ruby Ridge and Waco, my guess is that you would have not had a blown up federal building. Al Qaida has said from the start that they are pissed at us for stomping all over the world with impunity. It may be too late now (I don't think it is, but "we can't give in to the terrorists demands"...even if they are right, apparently), but isn't it entirely possible that if we hadn't meddled in the affairs of umpteen nations around the world, that we wouldn't have alienated whole huge chunks of people around the world? There can be little doubt that it's not just plane-exploders who are pissed about the way the U.S. acts...plenty of non-violent people all around the world see the same thing Osama has been bitching about for almost ten years.
I just bring that up because you (and many others) often say that the only way to make us safe is to improve intelligence gathering, or whatever other "war on terror" measure is the order of the day. Perhaps if we acted like a peaceful nation, and we weren't morally conflicted up the yin-yang, we wouldn't be the enemy of so many. We didn't used to be.
Also, if the ones who wanted to help me were dedicated to ending their life of crime, and wanted to turn themselves around starting with bringing down the kidnappers, then maybe it would be a good thing to pay them.
However, it bears repeating that the moral clarity I have now would probably get all blurred up by my desperation and weakened state (having one that I love in extreme danger), and if I chose the immoral, it would be because of that weakened, desperate state, and because I was not clearly evaluating all the consequences of my choice. And I would probably be wrong to pay the one set of bad guys, if that's what I did. Seriously, what if they used that money to finance a killing spree? Then all those other deaths would be partially on my head. I would have ended up trading other innocent people's lives for the life I was trying to save. If presented with foreknowledge that my money would go toward the killing of innocents in the future, or other immoral stuff, I would certainly think twice about laying down that money. My guess is that the loved one who was being held would not want to be saved at the cost of even more people dying later because of it.
I'm glad we went through this hypothetical, because if it ever happens, I'll have this more-clear-headed ponderance to look back on, and hopefully desperation won't make me choose the immoral option.
The COINTELPRO revelations shockingly demonstrated that our government, through several agencies, routinely utilized informants and provocateurs against those either rightly or wrongly seen as "domestic threats".
During the pertinent period, a goodly percentage of the Black Panthers and the Communist Party, just to cite two prominent organizations, were on the federal payroll.
In addition, there have been numerous instances over the years where particular ethnic groups have been subjected to wholesale repression because of the suspected "anti-Americanism" of individuals or small factions within their ranks.
These range from the mass WWII internment of our Japanese citizens to many years of sustained harassment, including arbitrary deportations, against my own ethnic grouping, Finnish Americans.
Sadly, Arab Americans and people of Islamic faith are now being victimized by both government profiling excesses and a public venting of longstanding racism that came bubbling to the surface above the exigencies of the September attack. In concentrated locales of Arab/Islamic settlement -- like Patterson, New Jersey, and Dearborn, Michigan -- as well as on college campuses and in scattered places all across America...a veritable pogrom has been ongoing for many months. Police are engaging in extraordinarily intimidating "dragnet" style round-ups of especially Arab men (or those who resemble them), subjecting them to heavyhanded questioning that -- according to those who've undergone the experience -- takes the implicit attitude: "Prove to us that YOU'RE not a terrorist."
This in addition to countless bashings and related attacks by ordinary people caught up in vicious anti "raghead" and "camel jockey" overkill. And I use the word "kill" appropriately, since there have been several resulting murders of entirely innocent people.
The Palmer Raids after WWI, the Japanese internments, McCarthyism's assault on our Constitution, J. Edgar Hoover's paranoia and the COINTELPRO outrages, and now the pervasive, acted-upon assumption that an entire demographic within our populace is somehow complicit in terrorism...show just how destructively we act against our own principles, rooted in liberty and fundamental rights, when prejudices and fears overrule reason and propriety.
The foreign born, and the politically, religiously and philosophically "different" in our midst, are the miner's canaries of our democracy.
When we come down on them in unconscionable, across-the-board examples of intolerance and official heavyhandedness, we consume the oxygen that gives lifebreath to our own freedom.
This is just another example of how our careless, knee-jerk reaction to terrorism does more damage to us, and our society, than its perpetrators themselves could accomplish.
If we can't combat our outside enemies without ourselves grievously compromising our most hallowed, core values and assumptions and becoming a police state...Osama has already won.
second, pharmaceutical companies. why would someone want to get raped by drug companies when they can grow their own and be in less pain?
It could still be illegal for people to grow their own if the government wanted it that way.
It could still be illegal for people to grow their own if the government wanted it that way.
you did see the point i was trying to make with that statement, right? i'm more inclined to go with the latter option myself; medicinal marijuana could have a huge impact on their bottom lines.
Dave's not here, man.
Drug Control Office Ads Entice Kids to Try Drugs
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,52841,00.html
It doesn't seem to matter how many billions they pump into T.V ads and it's ironic that they think that the ads might encourage use. I think it all starts with the parents, without that guidance I doubt that other than a few cases that a T.V ad is going to stop a kid from doing drugs or alchohol.
Of course it's the parents but these idiots in charge would be out of jobs if they admitted such!
It's a waste of time & money to do those stupid anti-drug ads.
And a cotton mouth 1,000 JOE :)
You're supposed to say:
ATTENTION EVERYONE I HAVE A JOE!
Did I make a forepauh with JOE ettiquite ?
No, it's a joke regarding "Mr News".
Are you familiar with "Mr News".
His whole existence revolved around being an drunken obnoxious prick.
He would harass posters and claim non-existent Joe's by declaring "ATTENTION EVERYONE I HAVE A JOE".
Mr. News was before my time.
Well, as obnoxious as he was, it was fun watching him make an ass out of himself.
it was even more fun fighting back.
Is Los Angeles today America's tomorrow? How can it not be, when, yearly, 1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants arrive, 90 percent of them from Third World nations where poverty is pandemic?
SOMEBODY'S LYING, NO DOUBT ABOUT IT
"Nonspecific" threats with no indication that airliners would be used as suicide bombs?
Then what about the G-8 conference at Genoa, which took place July 20-22, 2001?
There were warnings from several sources, including close U.S. ally Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, that a hijacked airplane filled with explosives might be crashed into the conference building. So seriously did Italian authorities take this possibility that they positioned anti-aircraft guns and prohibited local flights.
During the summit, George Bush spent his nights on a U.S. warship in the harbor, for security considerations. Yet Condoleeza Rice maintains that two weeks later, when the President’s daily briefing featured a warning that al Qaida was targeting U.S. planes for hijacking, nobody considered the possibility those planes could be used as flying bombs?!
And then there's the eye-opening NBC News report that, two days before 9/11, Bush had on his desk a National Security Presidential Directive outlining an extensive, global, military, diplomatic and intelligence campaign targeting bin Laden and al Qaida -- including an ultimatum to Afghanistan's Taliban...backed by the threat of war.
That draft order, according to NBC, “outlined essentially the same war plan that the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon put into action after the September 11 attacks.” It was prepared through extensive consultation over several months involving the Pentagon, CIA, State Department and other key agencies. Thus, well before the terrorist hijackings, Dubya was set to launch the military action it later claimed was taken only in response to the September 11 atrocity!
It doesn't get any fishier than that...except below decks on a tuna trawler.
Haven't immigrants Usually been from third-world nations or nations that offer them little to nothing in the way of economic success?
No.
Come on Jethro. You can't be serious with your "NO!".
How about all of the people that came over from 1500 through the 1850's. They came mostly from the developed nations at the time, specifically Great Britain, France, Spain and Germany. Furthermore, an argument can be made that even from the 1850's until WWI that most of the immigrants were still coming from the developed world. It really was not until after WWI that the U.S. became the leading power. You need a better grasp of history, fold.
You're crazy, Benjamin.
It was the poor & downtrodden that first came to this nation. It wasn't the rich, it wasn't intellectuals, it wasn't business men.
Come on Benjamin.
I'll meet you half way. I will admit that they didn't come from "Third world nations" and that they were'nt bottom of the barrel poor but, you must admit they were not the top level's of society.
Why would anyone want to come here if they had it so good in their old country?
because there's a good possibility there's something better out there for them, perhaps.
It was the poor & downtrodden that first came to this nation.
You need some remedial history, too, JT. The fact is that the monarchies promised land to people to move herre. Also there were many "business men" that came here for trapping and develeopment of the resources that were here. There were those that came here for religious reasons but there is really no indication that they were the poor. The truly poor didn't have the resources to come here. It still remains a fact that people from the "third world" were not coming here for most of the history of this continent. They came mostly from the "developed" world.
This is what fold wrote that started this: Haven't immigrants Usually been from third-world nations or nations that offer them little to nothing in the way of economic success?
Europeans constituted more than 80 percent of all immigrants throughout the 19th century.
http://encarta.msn.com/find/concise.asp?mod=1&ti=761566973&page=2#5
During this era, approximately 37 million immigrants arrived in the United States. Census figures indicate that about 6 million Germans, 4.5 million Irish, 4.75 million Italians, 4.2 million people from England, Scotland and Wales, approximately the same number from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 2.3 million Scandinavians, and 3.3 million people from Russia and the Baltic states entered the United States.
http://encarta.msn.com/find/concise.asp?mod=1&ti=761566973&page=2
The point was that most people didn't come from the third world countries of the time. People came here for lots of reasons. A lot of it may have been the "grass is greener" philosophy.
Historical Immigrant Arrival Data--1821 to 1995
http://www.fairus.org/html/03002606.htm
Our children don't know much of anything about American history.
Dennis,
Um notice you said nonspecific. We also had nonspecific indications that subways would be gassed ala in Japan, we also had indications that
embassies would be bombed, we also had nonspecific indications that westerners and mostly Americans abroad were targets. we also had nonspecific indicators that numerous other targets could or would be hit as well.
Yes I'm sure you would be all for a military state and people would have been thrilled if on a NONSPECIFIC threat we closed every airport indefinately due to a threat that could be real or non, that turned out to sadly be real. There are and have been hundreds and thousands of other hunches or info that turned out to be false too.
What you forget is that we are a free open society. We could make it a police state to lessen the threats. We would never be able to completely stop them. We could lessen them if we went to a closed police state society. We can and should lessen them by implementing things that let us work within that free society.
I guess what really is truly sad is that none of this comes from any real information only blind flailing of the arms hoping to land a punch or do some damage. Had we done all these things to lessen the risk ie: turn us into a police state and attacking Afghanistan prior to 9-11 then you would have been the biggest whiner around about that.
You can't nor would you ever want to win with someone that hates their own country so much.
It's because of our free society that people were able to come here under the guise of wanting to learn and use that freedom to kill our own people. Instead you and Cindy decide to use it for political reasons. Quite telling. Yes someones lying no doubt.
This, is the part of my post that you have conveniently left OUT of your dissertations, Jethro. No it is part of it you wish to emphasize now that you are proven wrong. As is usually the case.
"Can you feel the love tonight"
Ooops, wrong thread.
:-)
No Either you are incappable of making your meaning clear or you can't admit you were wrong.
So it seems as if another attack is inevitable. So what do we do ? As I said to Dennis yesterday having a free and open society almost makes it impossible to stop everything. Even turning this into a police state wouldn't stop everything. Truth is that nobody could have imagined this on Sept 10th we've always had threats etc. but it was always an embassy here or there and not on our soil targeting civilians.
So do we throw our hands up and say well we can't do anything and wait ? I don't think so, we have stopped other attacks before but we MUST do more.
Personally I think we ought to first 1) build our intelligence community back up. We stripped it and watered it down so much in the name of being P.C that good intell is hard to find. The congressional Church commission a few years back said we could no longer have informants on the payroll with criminal or human rights violations. Great idea guys, the informants are the ones who can get into these organizations, it's a little tough to have a guy who looks like Richie Cunningham infiltrate al Quieda, Time to repeal that little roadblock. Also quit relying on technology. Who cares if your satelite can read a liscence plate ? Liscence plates don't attack people. We need people and informants on the ground.
2) Now I realize in our oversensative cultural touchy feely awareness syndrome that saying this is unpopular and so un p.c but that's part of the problem that got us here.
Tighten borders and immigration. Give them the technology to communicate with eachoter on a central database. And yes take a hard look at people from known terrorist nations that are coming here or are here as non citizens. No, wouldn't want to "profile" nah, wouldn't want to do that. If China attacked us do you think it would be wise to look at people wanting to come here from China ? Of course it would, and this is NO different. They are trying to KILL us and if I inconvienece a non citizen from Saudi or Syria here on a business trip so be it, sorry it's a litle thing called war the minute your countrymen quit killing our people you can go right through the express line at the airport. If they are non citizens then they don't have the same rights as citizens. I don't care who it is that's doing it, it has zip to do with race.
Coincidentally the MN legislature failed miserebly to enact color coded drivers liscensce for temporary visitors or legal aliens or those here on work visa's. The only thing it would have done was made authorities aware that if they pulled somone over that they were a legal alien and it would have the same ex date as you guessed it, thier ex date on their visa. Gasp, wouldn't want to do that lest we offend a visitor. If they were here legally and their visa wasn't expired, so be it. But in the name of being culturally sensative someone can be here on a 90 day visa or work permit, get a liscence, have the visa expire but have a valid liscence for 4 years. Great.
3) Keep political pressure up, start caring less about who might be our friend depending on the day and care more about hte ones who really are. Tell nations like Saudi, Pakistan, Egypt, etc. to play one side of the fence or the other, get a control on your extremists and we'll be happy together, don't do it or turn a blind eye and see what happens.
4) For Petes sake arm the friggen pilots. We'll trust them with our lives to fly a complicated million dollar aircraft but not with a 357 ? get real. It's a last resort, the cockpit doors although improved will not stop someone that really wants to get in. It's a last defense and could save thousands of lives. Think how many could have been saved if the pilots had been armed on 9-11 ? Oh no wouldn't want a gun on board with the pilot.
No intell, no profiling and no guns. Yes all this P.C crap has really gotten us far hasn't it.
What a success it has beeen.
Let's keep it up and the attacks will probalby get worse and thousands more could die, but hey as long as we don't offend anyone. as long as we are sensative to everyone and try not to offend we can feel better about letting more die.
Great post Luv2Fly. There's nothing in your post that I don't agree with.
Thanks THX I appreciate that,
I guess I am tired of all the people that say they want to do what we can to prevent more terrorism within the confines of the constitution of course and then bitch about us profiling someone from Syria. If you'll note, there isn't one idea in there that takes one freedom or violates one right of anyone. Now there might be a few things in there about inconvienence but I don't recall seeing that in the bill of rights. I am tried and fed up with the p.c bullshit that contributed to some of these problems in the first palce enough is enough, perhaps when they detonate a nuke people will get it.
LOL! Nope, I don't recall seeing anything about being inconvenienced in the Bill of Rights.
well stated, luv. on both posts.
So, we should take murderers, theives, and terrorists, and effectively make them U.S. Law Enforcement agents? Don't you see the conflict there? It's not about being P.C....it's about whether our tax money, and the power of our government, goes to support people who are doing immoral things. If we prosecute murder as a crime, and then pay murderers to help us...don't you see the moral contradiction there? One cannot simultaneously oppose and support murder, and be morally correct. A cannot be not-A.
We are not currently at war with any country, as far as I know.
Our own countrymen kill our people way more than any other country's people do. Isn't that right? (I'm guessing)
Shouldn't all humans have a certain baseline amount of rights, no matter where they come from? And, assuming they should, shouldn't civilized countries do what they can to protect those baseline rights?
Is being strip-searched merely an inconvenience?
Lance,
Well Lance if that's the only way to get info and infiltrate these groups to prevent more murders and mass murders it's for a larger group, it's called catching the bigger fish. Who would you have rather caught a small time operator or message boy for Alquieda who was a bad dude or Bin Laden himslef ? Both are bad but one is alot more important to a larger group. Of course I don't like having them on the payrolls and it's not a moral contradiction. If doing so would have saved 3,000 lives hell no. That's the exact same kind of false moral purity that got us where we are today. That's what you don't get, these people aren't good guys, the people in alquieda etc would love to see our country cease to exist and are bad people. The only way to get in is to take people from these groups whom we can get info from, it's the only way and the only way to prevent massive death via their info. The other thing you forget is this. If we do get those on top etc. the small fish that we are paying will be caught or stopped as well if their organization crumbles etc. It happens all the time.
Let me put it this way, say your daughter or the person you love more than anything on earth was kidnapped. Someone or a group says we know where she is and we will guarantee you find her and get her back and get the guy who did it if you pay us 100,000. You know that the person/group are bad people, murder's , rapists etc. but they are your only chance of seeing that person ever again or to prevent something bad from happening. What do you do honestly ? Say well you're bad guys and I think it's wrong to support you ? Right sure Lance. it's easy to say now isn't it.
Really ? It's in all the papers.
I'm not sure if that was an attempt at sarcasm or what but a war does not have to consist of country vs. country. If it makes you feel better we can call it combat. Or does it have to be country vs. country for you for it to be a just cause ?
the minute your countrymen quit killing our people you can go right through the express line at the airport
And we do what we can do to stop that don't we, we aren't harboring murders and refusing to bring them to justice. So why allow more possible murders into the country ?
The difference is Lance is that they are citizens.
and if accused of murder have the protections of our constitution. Terrorists don't nor should they. Sorry I'm not going to hand wring over them.
Yes to a point but do you think they should have the same rights as you a citizen do ? Fine if you do then I guess the entire world could claim social security and every other thing we as citizens do without having to be a contributor to society great idea. We aren't talking about human basic rights violations etc.
I don't know Lance is he strapped full of explosives about to board a plane your family is on ? Easy for you to say if not.
Never mind.
Lance, why did you quit the debate so quickly? I was interested to hear your response.
Shouldn't all humans have a certain baseline amount of rights, no matter where they come from? And, assuming they should, shouldn't civilized countries do what they can to protect those baseline rights?
They do in this country. But that doesn't mean they should have all the priviliges. Maybe that is where the dispute really is.
Fortunately, most skyscrapers are not designed like the twin towers, so another catastrophe like 9-11 would be difficult to copy.
I am not so sure that is true. One of the problems that has been cited as a cause of the collapse is that the sprayed on fire proofing was blown off by the impact. The engineers speculated that had the fire proofing not been blown off the internal structure it may have withstood the heat. My understanding is that many buildings have the same type of fire proofing.
What is going on in this city today has less to do with what President Bush was told last August than it does with the resentment and rage of the Left at how President Bush has converted himself from the butt of their jokes into a leader who has won the heart of the nation.
Reading ``Master of the Senate,'' the third volume of the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson by the incomparable Robert Caro, one is reminded of one of the reasons politics is interesting. The men who are really great at it so often are moral monsters.
Because Rob's post was pretty much all about putting words and answers into my mouth, talking down to me, posing false dichotomies, erecting straw men and scoffing at them...stuff like that. Extra stuff that makes it unnecessarily more dificult for the discussion to arrive at any sort of clarity. Not only does it make it much harder than it should be to try and answer him (every question there is posed so as to intentionally make it harder to answer clearly...badgering the witness is what it would be called in court), but it leads me to believe that any answer I might give would be again subject to the same sort of thrashing. I just don't see what it would accomplish for anyone.
Lance Brown 5/24/02 2:42am
Fair enough
Lance,
Sorry you took it that way and in retrospect perhaps it appeared or you took it that way. I can easily see how you would have the way i wrote it. I have been running on 3-4 hours of sleep per night so perhaps I'm just too tired and my body and mind is telling me that 3 pots of coffee is bad for anyone. My apologies to you.
So if you'd like we could try again , if not I understand.
My point was this. You said.......
They aren't agents, we are merely paying them for information. The church commission changed policy in that were essentially unable to do so with any "bad guys" the problem is that there arent too many nice guys in Alquieda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad etc. and those groups are almost impossible to infiltrate for an outsider. So how do we get info ? We didn't because of that ruling.
It happens all the time. My tax money goes to people on welfare etc that could be doing immoral things ( I'm not saying all or even implying that if you're on welfare that you are, I do NOT want to get into the welfare issue) but we don't stop paying someone simply because their behavior is immoral.
As distasteful as it might be, alot more people might be alive today and wars averted by better intelligence. And we can't get that kind of info from a sattelite. We need people on the inside and if they are going to take the risk of getting caugght they are going to want some cash. That and the other issue is that if those groups are taken down, guess what ? so is the small guy whose organization would be dismantled because of that info.
The other question I asked you was not meant to be condesending. It's a legitimate question to ask since you feel paying bad people for info is wrong. If it were the person you loved more than anything in the world who was kidnapped and a group of "bad guys" came to you and said, we know where she is and who did it and we'll tell you only if you pay. Knowing that they are immoral etc. but were the only if not best chance of seeing that loved one again Would you do it ?
I know what I would do but am wondering if you would. It's the larger good from my perspective Lance, I'd rather pay someone a few bucks even if they are bad and if it's info that averts another 9-11 I'm all for it. We have to do something before another one.
It wasn't that the questions were hard, they just weren't cost-effective to answer, in a time sense.
Rob,
Just the sound of 3 pots of coffee makes my stomach cringe. Of course, I'm a 6+ cans of Coke a day guy, so I shouldn't talk, prolly. Anyway, I accept your bough of peace, and I'll give your new post a shot.
I know they aren't technically agents, but effectively that's what it adds up to (and "effectively" is what I said before). We are paying them money to do stuff for us. The stuff they are doing is part of our law enforcement/"intellegence" efforts. They work for the USG, assisting our law enforcement officers. To me, that means they are agents for us, in practice, if not in title.
From what I've heard, we actually did get info. Quite a bit of it.
BTW, we paid the Taliban $49 million to stop growing poppies, just a few months before 9/11. Lot of good that did us. (Just an example of "paying the bad guys to work with us" gone wrong. There are plenty of such examples.)
The problem is with using immoral means to achieve supposedly moral ends. It would be nice if we could be sure that the intelligence and law enforcemnet communities could properly thread that needle, but evidence has shown that they cannot. Have you seen the new show The Shield ? It shows pretty well what happens when immoral means are decided to be o.k., in pursuit of a greater good. Basically, the people who are supposed to be achieving that greater good, people who are presumably moral, become involved in immoral acts and schemes and plans. Whatever scumbags you are suggesting we hire basically end up being partners of a sort to our real agents. The bosses in our agencies end up being bosses of scumbag killers. Our bureaucracies are not moral nor strong enough to withstand such corruptive influences, and you can look at law enforcement agencies all across the country for examples of that being true. The person who is paying an immoral person becomes immoral themself. So does the person paying that person, and so on. If our gov't hires (for example) 100 terrorist insiders...that's a sickness in our system, and I think it's naive to think we can keep the system clean in such a context. It's worse than naive, really-- it's willful blindness due to desperation, IMO.
Then of course there is the fact that ultimately, it's we who are paying the scumbags that money...you and I and everyone else who pays taxes. And to think we can come away clean is naive too. We share responsibility for all that is done on our behalf, I think.
We should. It should not happen all the time. It's very, very sad that you (and I suspect many others) are resigned to this fact. If our government does nothing else, it should make sure it is not making immoral things happen.
Or less bureacracy, from what I've heard. The government knew about the attacks, and did nothing with that info. I wonder what more nothing it would have done with more info.
Here we again get into the moral quagmire. You're basically saying "It's not so bad to hire the little guy, because in the end, we'll end up destroying him right along with his higher-level comrades." So now we'd be hiring people with the goal of bringing those very people down...does that not seem twisted to you? "O.K., find out when the next attack is, and get us proof, and then we'll have what we need to arrest your boss, and...well, you!" Either we would have to deceive the informer and not tell him that part, or we would have to let him go free (even though he's part of a terrorist network), or he would simply not help us quite enough to endanger the organization, and thus himself. So, it's either immoral, immoral, or ineffective. Nice choices.
Quagmire time. By the law, and U.S. policy, I would have to turn those bad guys in. But skipping that for now, yes I would probably pay the bad guys to help me find the other bad guys. The key distinction is that we're talking about me making a personal decision to subvert my moral values for my own personal gain. I would probably do so, and I would pay the price, personally (knowing that I had helped finance scumbags and probably caused other immoral acts to occur). If I did so, it would be out of desperation, and (this part is important) I would probably be wrong to do so. From this safe distance here, it seems pretty clear that it would be wrong to give in to the bad guys and pay them. It would also be illegal, and I could go to jail for it. But if a loved one was in danger, I would not be thinking as clearly, and I would probably be more interested in expediency than morality. But I would be wrong to do so, and I would pay the price, morally. What if the money I paid those bad guys went to support some act of terrorism they did, or led to them escaping the country and not getting caught for all their past crimes? What if my money bought the guns they used to go on a multi-state killing spree? It would be a sickness in me, just like it would be (is) in our government. The only difference is that an individual has the ability to repair their morality, and to do penance or whatever for their wrongs. Also, the individual is a lot easier to jail and punish, and I would most likely be made to pay the price for paying the bad guys. The USG does not have the moral self-cleaning tools that individuals have. Nor does it have any sort of moral judgment tools at all, for that matter. Your proposal is basically to eschew morality for expediency. My answer is that if we do so, we will pay the price. We have done so in the past, and we pay the price all the time. One of the main reasons our government is such a fucked-up piece of shit these days is because at various points along the line, we have chosen expediency over morality, time and time and time again.
As a side note, isn't it just somewhat possible that the terrorists are legitimately pissed at the US for doing things it shouldn't be doing? I'm not saying that they are right to do what they do, but there is definitely an element of cause and effect. Timothy McVeigh, for example, was not just randomly upset at the government. He was pissed about the government's immoral actions at Waco and Ruby Ridge, among others. If you take the Tim McVeigh life timeline, and take out the Fed's murders at Ruby Ridge and Waco, my guess is that you would have not had a blown up federal building. Al Qaida has said from the start that they are pissed at us for stomping all over the world with impunity. It may be too late now (I don't think it is, but "we can't give in to the terrorists demands"...even if they are right, apparently), but isn't it entirely possible that if we hadn't meddled in the affairs of umpteen nations around the world, that we wouldn't have alienated whole huge chunks of people around the world? There can be little doubt that it's not just plane-exploders who are pissed about the way the U.S. acts...plenty of non-violent people all around the world see the same thing Osama has been bitching about for almost ten years.
I just bring that up because you (and many others) often say that the only way to make us safe is to improve intelligence gathering, or whatever other "war on terror" measure is the order of the day. Perhaps if we acted like a peaceful nation, and we weren't morally conflicted up the yin-yang, we wouldn't be the enemy of so many. We didn't used to be.
Also, if the ones who wanted to help me were dedicated to ending their life of crime, and wanted to turn themselves around starting with bringing down the kidnappers, then maybe it would be a good thing to pay them.
However, it bears repeating that the moral clarity I have now would probably get all blurred up by my desperation and weakened state (having one that I love in extreme danger), and if I chose the immoral, it would be because of that weakened, desperate state, and because I was not clearly evaluating all the consequences of my choice. And I would probably be wrong to pay the one set of bad guys, if that's what I did. Seriously, what if they used that money to finance a killing spree? Then all those other deaths would be partially on my head. I would have ended up trading other innocent people's lives for the life I was trying to save. If presented with foreknowledge that my money would go toward the killing of innocents in the future, or other immoral stuff, I would certainly think twice about laying down that money. My guess is that the loved one who was being held would not want to be saved at the cost of even more people dying later because of it.
I'm glad we went through this hypothetical, because if it ever happens, I'll have this more-clear-headed ponderance to look back on, and hopefully desperation won't make me choose the immoral option.
The COINTELPRO revelations shockingly demonstrated that our government, through several agencies, routinely utilized informants and provocateurs against those either rightly or wrongly seen as "domestic threats".
During the pertinent period, a goodly percentage of the Black Panthers and the Communist Party, just to cite two prominent organizations, were on the federal payroll.
In addition, there have been numerous instances over the years where particular ethnic groups have been subjected to wholesale repression because of the suspected "anti-Americanism" of individuals or small factions within their ranks.
These range from the mass WWII internment of our Japanese citizens to many years of sustained harassment, including arbitrary deportations, against my own ethnic grouping, Finnish Americans.
Sadly, Arab Americans and people of Islamic faith are now being victimized by both government profiling excesses and a public venting of longstanding racism that came bubbling to the surface above the exigencies of the September attack. In concentrated locales of Arab/Islamic settlement -- like Patterson, New Jersey, and Dearborn, Michigan -- as well as on college campuses and in scattered places all across America...a veritable pogrom has been ongoing for many months. Police are engaging in extraordinarily intimidating "dragnet" style round-ups of especially Arab men (or those who resemble them), subjecting them to heavyhanded questioning that -- according to those who've undergone the experience -- takes the implicit attitude: "Prove to us that YOU'RE not a terrorist."
This in addition to countless bashings and related attacks by ordinary people caught up in vicious anti "raghead" and "camel jockey" overkill. And I use the word "kill" appropriately, since there have been several resulting murders of entirely innocent people.
The Palmer Raids after WWI, the Japanese internments, McCarthyism's assault on our Constitution, J. Edgar Hoover's paranoia and the COINTELPRO outrages, and now the pervasive, acted-upon assumption that an entire demographic within our populace is somehow complicit in terrorism...show just how destructively we act against our own principles, rooted in liberty and fundamental rights, when prejudices and fears overrule reason and propriety.
The foreign born, and the politically, religiously and philosophically "different" in our midst, are the miner's canaries of our democracy.
When we come down on them in unconscionable, across-the-board examples of intolerance and official heavyhandedness, we consume the oxygen that gives lifebreath to our own freedom.
This is just another example of how our careless, knee-jerk reaction to terrorism does more damage to us, and our society, than its perpetrators themselves could accomplish.
If we can't combat our outside enemies without ourselves grievously compromising our most hallowed, core values and assumptions and becoming a police state...Osama has already won.