March 9, 2013

Flying Death Robots viewed with unwarranted concern by citizenry

From the NYT:
Visions of Drones Swarming U.S. Skies Hit Bipartisan Nerve 
By SCOTT SHANE and MICHAEL D. SHEAR 
WASHINGTON — The debate goes to the heart of a deeply rooted American suspicion about the government, the military and the surveillance state: the specter of drones streaking through the skies above American cities and towns, controlled by faceless bureaucrats and equipped to spy or kill. 
That Big Brother imagery — conjured up by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky during a more than 12-hour filibuster this week — has animated a surprisingly diverse swath of political interests that includes mainstream civil liberties groups, Republican and Democratic lawmakers, conservative research groups, liberal activists and right-wing conspiracy theorists. 
They agree on little else. But Mr. Paul’s soliloquy has tapped into a common anxiety on the left and the right about the dangers of unchecked government. And it has exposed fears about ultra-advanced technologies that are fueled by the increasingly fine line between science fiction and real life. 
Drones have become the subject of urgent policy debates in Washington as lawmakers from both parties wrangle with President Obama over their use to prosecute the fight against terrorism from the skies above countries like Pakistan and Yemen. ...
Benjamin Wittes, a national security scholar at the Brookings Institution who has written extensively about drones, said he thought Mr. Paul’s marathon was a “dumb publicity stunt.” But he said it had touched a national nerve because the technology, with its myriad implications, had already deeply penetrated the culture.

Maybe we can start to see how the Afghans and Pakistanis feel, too?

87 comments:

ivvenalis said...

Meh, it's probably only a brief window of overwhelming state technical superiority. There's about to be a revolution in the affordability/availability of precision-guided weapons--these things are going to have trouble staying airborne in fifteen years if people actually end up caring. Notice how your $100 digital camera can pick out faces against a noisy background? Yeah...the contrast between an aircraft and the sky is much, much greater.

Anonymous said...

I'm thinking about starting a civilian anti-drone-warfare project.

Rahm E. said...

"Maybe we can start to see how the Afghans and Pakistanis feel, too?"


Kinda; Really, for that view we'd have to be invaded by thousands of drones from another country for years, one we feel is our enemy and be powerless to rise against it- join the swelling ranks of the resistance and you might get a visit from a drone too.

One can say that they feel that their country is an enemy, but there is an extra element that makes it worse.

DYork said...

Go to YouTube and type in - anthony cumia drone.

You can see an interesting little drone with camera flying around a New York suburb.

Put some explosives on it and you could cause trouble. Or just use cameras and be a pest.

Anonymous said...

I have always been wary of Obama's willingness to deploy advanced Death from Above technology. It increases a hundred fold the monopoly on violence held by our culturally Marxist federal government. In even the most repressive backwater countries, dictators are reluctant to turn the army loose on the people for fear that rank and file soldiers will grow in sympathy with unarmed protestors. Drones negate this worry. Nothing like a few hellfire missiles launched into a crowd at the touch of a button by some progressive government apparatchik to end a nascent secessionist movement. And rebel leadership can easily be tracked and picked off, too.

Call me crazy, but this is the primary reason I loathe Asian immigration to the US. The so called emerging majority are simpletons who would be unable to maintain high tech terror to keep a racial socialist government in power, but Chinese and South Asians would be more than happy to man the drone and internet surveillance infrastructure.

Anonymous said...

Flying Death Robots make a great weapon in the War Against Freedom ... oops, I meant the War on Certain Drugs.

AMac said...

> Maybe we can start to see how the Afghans and Pakistanis feel, too?

IMO, the terms "Pakistan" and "Afghanistan" aren't really shorthand for "Pakistan (or Afghanistan), the country" in the way that, say, "India" or "France" is. Instead, they refer to failed states that house a fractious collection of factions.

For Pakistan, consider what many people do agree about. Support for armed incursions into Kashmir, border skirmishes with India, terror plots a la Mumbai, the Taliban, Islamist elements in the Pakistani military (ISI), madrassas, al Qaeda, and so forth.

We should definitely be more cognizant of the realities of failed states, whether clients, "allies," or avowed enemies. As Steve and a few others point out, there are lessons for us in these not-so-distant mirrors. Appeasing their sensibilites, not so important, or practical.

Anonymous said...

Written with the classic subtlety of a press release, which is all the MSM really is -- a big PR firm with one client, your friendly Uncle Sam.

You have "Visions of Drones Swarming Over U.S. Skies"? Why, you must be paranoid. We're only going to have a few drones, and they won't be swarming, they'll be chilling out. Only if you do something wrong with they swarm.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Paul’s soliloquy has tapped into a common anxiety on the left and the right about the dangers of unchecked government


I certainly isn't common among NYT staff or readers, people who as a group would love to see Obama assume dictatorial powers.

Anonymous said...

"sI am from Illinois, but Rand is now my senator. "Stand with Rand" makes a good bumper sticker.

SFG said...

It's war. If we're worried about how the Afghanis feel, let's not go to war with them, or pull out and bring our troops home.

Anonymous said...

Off topic.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323701904578276491630786614.html

Cut to the end where the opposition to the policy hinges on the idea that minorities are hurt the hardest.

Ron Cey

rightsaidfred said...

Hasn't the gov't always been killing those who don't go along with the narrative? Just now a little more overtly.

Anonymous said...

Coincidentally, I was in Lahore, Pakistan last week. They are not pleased about drones, that's for sure. The idea that people just SHOULDN'T CARE that drones are flying are snooping on them is stupefying ... and yet commonplace. I think this is a Myers-Briggs thing: SJs love order and control. They are about 38% of the population but are over-represented in government and law-enforcement. They are tone-deaf and unartistic. Their view is simply that no one should have anything to worry about if they're not doing anything wrong. The notion that right and wrong are debatable and change-able notions never crosses the SJs' minds.

anony-mouse said...

Its been a meme on this blog that the GOP should increasingly go after the White vote-they're the ones who vote GOP.

But the majority of Americans who design, assemble, and work with drones are... White. Indeed the MIC is full of Whites (didn't your Dad work in aerospace?)

You've been wondering why Ohio Whites didn't vote GOP in the last election. Well start talking about cutting DOD and its programs and you won't have to wonder anymore.

Chicago said...

The government doesn't appear to trust it's own citizens very much seeing as it keeps expanding it's ability to spy, incarcerate and snuff people out. They must be expecting something big happening further on down the line and intend to be in a position to squelch it. But what is it that they're worried about?
This 'constitutional professor' Obama seems to be a bigger and bigger fraud every passing day. For him and his friends the Constitution is probably viewed as an outdated document. All we need now are a couple Reichstag fires for them to assert yet greater control and power over the populace.

Anthony said...

Afghans and Pakistanis don't vote (here), so their views don't matter.

Someone on FB asked how is being killed by a drone any worse than being killed by a bomb dropped from an airplane, or a bullet. I think the main difference is the percieved impossibility of fighting back. A person can shoot back at an armed soldier, and even airplanes can be shot down. But drones are small, and much harder to take down. Even if you do, you haven't done anything to the man operating it, just broken some hardware.

Anonymous said...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-chicago-billionaires-2013-20130304,0,5322068.photogallery


Chicago ought to be called Pritzville.

Whitehall said...

OK, so American citizens can't be killed constitutionally on American soil.

What about people with green cards, or student visas? Illegal immigrants?

Pat Boyle said...

I recently read "Race Against the Machine".

This was a very depressing book. It is an economics book. The authors pointed out that corporations were doing OK but people weren't. After the big recession corporations invested in new equipment but would not hire people. We were experiencing a "job-free recovery". Their analysis was compelling - lots of evidence.

This was when I started saying Arnold was right - the machines are coming for us. Robots are the future. Human beings however have no future. We directly compete against our creations and our creations are winning.

I bought a robot myself so I guess I'm guilty too. I bought a floor sweeping robot for about $100. I'm happy with it and will probably buy a more capable robot soon.

My floor sweeping robot competes against illegal aliens. I don't need a human maid quite so often when I also use my robot. BTW I assume that all maids are illegals.

If you watch the Science Channel they have a series of shows about industrial processes in which various robots produce consumer goods without any humans. These robots compete against all unskilled workers especially blacks.

Robots are already on the battlefield and in the skies. The current F-22 Raptor is probably the last human flown air superiority fighter that will ever be built. The weak point in fighters is the human inside. Humans can't take the Gs and there is no way around this. Soon no human pilot will dare to go up into a sky filled with robot planes.

The drones of today will soon be joined by robot tanks on the ground. I know this is true because last night I caught the first episode of new reality show "Robot Combat League". These machines were obviously modeled after those that appeared in recent Hugh Jackman Sci-Fi movie "Real Steel". They are rather crude now but they will develop.

At the time I saw that movie just two years ago, I wondered if the people of the future would really be attracted to robots boxing. Well now we will know. There is a movie spin-off and a whole reality series. It looks like people like robot fighters.

Sci-Fi writers have long written about robot warriors - eg. Keith Laumer's Bolo series. It's all coming true right now before our eyes.

Human beings seem to be transitional beings. Robots look to be more permanent.

Albertosaurus

Svigor said...

I think this is a Myers-Briggs thing: SJs love order and control. They are about 38% of the population but are over-represented in government and law-enforcement. They are tone-deaf and unartistic. Their view is simply that no one should have anything to worry about if they're not doing anything wrong. The notion that right and wrong are debatable and change-able notions never crosses the SJs' minds.

I'd like to see the correlation between "S" and IQ. If T-dog's assessment of "S" is accurate, I think we're talking a correlation with low IQ, because they sound stupid.

Anonymous said...

The progs are so incredibly jealous that it wasn't one of their own who filibustered, did so w/out simply reading the names from a NYC phone book.

Paul, whatever you think of his policies, knows the Constitution, knows American history, and can talk w/out notes about it for...well, hours.

(OT, but sometimes the proving I'm not a robot is easy. Other times, I'm convinced I'm losing my sight.)

Whiskey said...

The Afghans and the Pakistanis brought it on themselves by outright protecting Osama bin Laden when we demanded he be handed over. How quickly we forget 9/11. Which was proof positive that even failed peoples can kill a lot of Americans if not deterred.

That's my problem with neocons. They assume human nature is moving towards some Steven Pinker utopia. The only thing keeping North Korea, or Iran (which likely already has a nuke or two) or Pakistan or heck Afghanistan from striking Westerners is deterrence.

Obama has gone as cheap as possible in that route, preferring drones and off-news strikes to any boots on the ground. But even the Lightworker has to bow to the reality that peace with the tumultous Muslim world racked by failure to achieve modernity/money (by reading stuff other than the Koran, pushing education, science, math and not Jihad) is only done through killing the worst and most in-reach jihadis.

It is Ike's Chrome Dome on the cheap.

And good for Rand Paul. There are limits on Obama's power. I don't mind the US zapping jihadis who are in a constant state of war with us and frankly deserve it prevent another 9/11. I don't want Obama or any President deciding who lives or dies, period. And I want accountablity and responsibility not media smooches.

Jim Bowery said...

I wish I could feel toward the US de facto government the way the Pakis and Afghans feel toward it.

They are merely being killed -- not race replaced. Moreover, the US de facto government hasn't succeeded in imposing a theocracy over those countries, as it has in the West, within which acknowledging what is going on -- unless to celebrate it -- is Satan Worship.

Anonymous said...

I wonder what happens when a drone accidentally takes down an airliner, which is bound to happen as drones become more common. Probable answer - TPTB ban drone ownership by private citizens.

Some terrorist could also use a drone to deliberately take down an airliner of course. I expect we'll see a ban on RC planes and choppers in the not so distant future.

Anonymous said...

Anybody else getting premonitions of the "Second Variety" sort?

Anonymous said...

Notice how your $100 digital camera can pick out faces against a noisy background?

Yeah, I noticed that with a 16MP Nikon camera purchased for about $99 [$129? $149? I can't remember] in the summer of 2011.

I was shocked that they could get so much processing power [in combination with such efficient software algorithms] at that price point.

And it was almost two years ago - I assume that the processing/algorithm combination is at least twice as powerful by now.

Maybe we should be rooting for dysgenic fertility, after all - it might be exactly what we need to prevent us from annihilating ourselves in the next several decades...

Compare Claire Danes and Nick Stahl in Rise of the Machines [which was a darned good movie, BTW].

Anonymous said...

OT, but I just noticed that Dennis Mangan is back in business. Welcome back, Dennis.

Anonymous said...

But the majority of Americans who design, assemble, and work with drones are... White. Indeed the MIC is full of Whites (didn't your Dad work in aerospace?)

You've been wondering why Ohio Whites didn't vote GOP in the last election. Well start talking about cutting DOD and its programs and you won't have to wonder anymore.


The key is to rally around space again. Get the MIC to work on terra-forming Mars or mining Venus or whatever. Pride in being a white American was never higher than during the space race.

Here's a good article about the leftist bents of those who wanted us out of space:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/moondoggle-the-forgotten-opposition-to-the-apollo-program/262254/

Mr. Anon said...

"Anthony said...

Afghans and Pakistanis don't vote (here), so their views don't matter."

And should a foreign military power someday occupy our country, they will happily blow up YOUR home, and kill YOU and YOUR family, and they would also think that YOUR views don't matter.

We shouldn't be sowing evil in the world. Pointless wars are evil.

Anonymous said...

"You've been wondering why Ohio Whites didn't vote GOP in the last election. Well start talking about cutting DOD and its programs and you won't have to wonder anymore.'

Ohio? You're way off the mark. Defense wasn't on their minds. You're complicating the issue--While Gingrich was selfishly banging Mitt on Bain Capital during the primaries, Obama's people were doing the same on Mitt's editorial about a structured bankruptcy for GM. The average Ohioan, hell the average American never realized the his plan would have saved, in the end, the same number of GM jobs as Obama's bailout, but with the "conservative" Gingrich attacking Mitt's pro-free market position and Obama's ads hitting him from the other direction, I think, in the end, it's actually remarkable Romney did as well as he did in Ohio. Don't forget, election law forbade Mitt to use funds to run ads in Ohio until he formally accepted the nomination much later. By then, Newt and Santorum has effectively handed the race in Ohio to Barry. Imagine what difference it would have made had both Newt and Santorum joined Romney in the debates and explained a structured bankruptcy and how it still would have saved the company--and jobs, and saved taxpayer dollars. Perhaps enough to make the difference in Ohio.

Did you see the Jimmy Kimmel "Question of the Day" video? If not, it'll make you laugh and cry. Don't forget--Obama's people actually made this sort of person turn out to vote, something not heard of in POTUS elections of the past.

http://www.ijreview.com/2013/03/40722-pure-gold-jimmy-kimmel-asks-people-about-obama-pardoning-the-sequester-sending-it-to-portugal/

Hunsdon said...

OT, but Unz is dropping hatefacts.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/meritocracy-almost-as-wrong-as-larry-summers/

Anonymous said...

"Stand with Rand" makes a good bumper sticker.

It does. Unfortunately, there are those who might think it refers to Ayn Rand.

Mr. Anon said...

"That Big Brother imagery — conjured up by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky during a more than 12-hour filibuster this week — has animated a surprisingly diverse swath of political interests that includes mainstream civil liberties groups, Republican and Democratic lawmakers, conservative research groups, liberal activists and right-wing conspiracy theorists."

Notice the implied dichotomy: "liberal activists and right-wing conspiracy theorists". WE are liberal - YOU are right-wing. WE are "activists" - YOU are "conspiracy theorists".

And it is not Rand Paul that is conjuring up "Big Brother" imagery - it is the government itself that is conjuring it up, by adopting the methods of totalitarian police-states.

Actually, even Big Brother imagery no longer suffices for the government - they are now trying to conjure up imagery from the "Terminator" movies: They would like their will to be enforced by remorseless machines. Unfortunately, their terminator-droids still involve a man in the loop. But they're trying to eliminate him as well. Fully autonomous kill-bots are what DARPA and the military are ultimately shooting for.

helene edwards said...

I wouldn't mind if they droned everybody who passes on the right -problem is the use wouldn't be so commensical.

Anonymous said...

You've been wondering why Ohio Whites didn't vote GOP in the last election. Well start talking about cutting DOD and its programs and you won't have to wonder anymore.

Except Ohio is not a center for the MIC or DOD contracting. What manufacturing they have is unrelated.

Anonymous said...

I like how the NY Times thinks people are blowing this issue out of proportion. I'll remember that the next time they seek out the KKK where it doesn't exist. Or the next time they run an article on an event that ended 68 years ago, such as this article on said event from March 2013.

Truth said...

Read and discuss amongst yourselves:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/insectdrone.asp

Dahinda said...

"Maybe we can start to see how the Afghans and Pakistanis feel, too?"

That will never come up in the debate because anybody that brings it up is "against the troops."

Anonymous said...

"Stand with Rand" makes a good bumper sticker.

"It does. Unfortunately, there are those who might think it refers to Ayn Rand."

They'll learn. I am thinking he can mobilize the libertarian wing of the Republican Party. McCain and the Bushians need to go away.


Anonymous said...

I worry more about the drones on the ground.

Soma Soma Soma Soma.

http://youtu.be/Wlb1bdU-G7o?t=2h35m20s

Harry Baldwin said...

Written with the classic subtlety of a press release, which is all the MSM really is -- a big PR firm with one client, your friendly Uncle Sam.

I heard (on NPR, ironically enough) Mao quoted as having said the media is the megaphone of the Party. Our media is pretty much in agreement.

All we need now are a couple Reichstag fires for them to assert yet greater control and power over the populace.

It's not necessary to start a Reichstag fire if you can use an actual event for the same purpose, as the federal and state governments are doing with the Newtown massacre. That was one of those crises that must not go to waste, but be used as an excuse to ram through as much restrictive legislation as possible before the hysteria abated. (I know people who believe that Newtown was a staged event, but I'm not quite there yet.)

Anonymous said...

I think this is a Myers-Briggs thing: SJs love order and control. They are about 38% of the population but are over-represented in government and law-enforcement. They are tone-deaf and unartistic

Then they should go back to Prussia where they belong.

Anonymous said...

How quickly we forget 9/11. Which was proof positive that even failed peoples can kill a lot of Americans if not deterred.

No, 9/11 is proof positive that a nation must maintain a sane immigration system and not hand out visas like candy. The 9/11 attackers trained in the USA, or have you forgotten? And it was, and continues to be, neocons that support letting more and more aliens into our nation.

And BTW, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but neocons like you pushed for an invasion, thus removing one of Iran's natural enemies from the region. Now you guys are complaining that Iran is some sort of regional threat, but won't acknowledge it was your policies which aided them.

Mr. Anon said...

"Whiskey said...

The Afghans and the Pakistanis brought it on themselves by outright protecting Osama bin Laden when we demanded he be handed over. How quickly we forget 9/11."

We didn't forget, dipshit - it was twelve years ago. How long does a punitive military campaign take? The war in Afghanistan has now lasted over three times longer than our US involvement in WWII - over twice as long as WWII in total, longer than both world wars combined - enough time to defeat The Central Powers, Nazi Germany, and the Empire of Japan combined.

What the fuck are we STILL doing there? Answer that, numnut.

"Which was proof positive that even failed peoples can kill a lot of Americans if not deterred."

Especially when we give them visas to come to our country, training in our flight-schools. even small business loans - which Mohammed Atta might well have gotten if he hadn't threatened to cut that SBA civil-servant's throat.

Twelve years is a long time to have your head up your ass, Whiskey. Try coming out for air some time.

starimomak said...

Brookings "scholars" make me sympathize just a bit with Pol Pot's 'rustication' of the intellectuals.

David Davenport said...

What about people with green cards, or student visas? Illegal immigrants?

Deport them. Many of the Chinese students are spies.

Except Ohio is not a center for the MIC or DOD contracting. What manufacturing they have is unrelated.

The M1 Abrams tank factory is located at Lima, Ohio. See The White House has been opposed to keeping the tank program running at Lima’s Joint Systems Manufacturing Center. Ohio has Wright Patterson Air Force Base, as well as NASA's Glenn research Center, which does a lot of Air Force-related stuff.

In addition, I expect that Ohio manufacturers supply parts to Oskosh Defense, maker of wheeled military trucks and Mine Resistant Armored Personnel vehicles.

You're in favor of Keynesian stimuli? The USA already has a lot of it -- military Keynesianism.

It was good for Los Angeles in the 1940's, '50's, and on through the 1980's! Ask Steve about that.

Let's see how union gentlemen up there in the Rust Belt like deep cuts in the DoD budget.

Anonymous said...

The M1 Abrams tank factory is located at Lima, Ohio.

Thank God it's not in Detroit!

Anonymous said...

Good Si-fi short: there are millions or tens of or thousands of millions of closed circuit cameras in the USA (closed circuit is now a misnomer but you understand what I mean).

Most of these cameras are networked and now trivial software can recognize faces. Picassa does an almost perfect job of picking out my face from all the pictures I have.

So existing technology would allow a government agent to feed a few pictures of any person into the appropriate computer, all the CC cameras in the country would watch out for that person, when found, the camera would report coordinates of location and the person could be tracked until fairly secluded, then a military computer could be given his coordinates and a gps guided munition could be dispatched from so high he never hears anything but the final explosion.

With the right authority and a picture, death guaranteed - its only a matter of time before the target gets in the lense of a camera.



David Davenport said...

The key is to rally around space again. Get the MIC to work on terra-forming Mars or mining Venus or whatever. Pride in being a white American was never higher than during the space race.

First clean out the Chinese spies:

Rise of the Machines

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) REVEALS MORE POTENTIAL SECURITY VIOLATIONS
AT NASA CENTERS AT PRESS CONFERENCE


...As a result of the press coverage of the work we have done concerning Ames, I was recently contacted by whistleblowers who provided me with a report alerting me to a very potential situation at NASA Langley Research Center involving a Chinese national who was allegedly provided access and information he should have otherwise been restricted from receiving.

It is my understanding that this Chinese national is affiliated with an institution in China that has been designated as an “entity of concern” by other U.S. government agencies. That is why I was deeply concerned to learn not only was he provided access and information he never should have received – working directly on technology that may have national security implications -- but he was also allegedly allowed by both NASA and his contractor to take his work and volumes of other NASA research back to China for a period of time, as documented in an investigative report I received. ...

Anonymous said...

I cold just picture the agent sending the picture in. "Well, he's dead."

The rookie asks: "What do you mean he's dead? You just sent the picture in."

"Some times it takes a few hours, sometimes a few days. He'll run across a CC camera soon enough, at the bank, in a store, on a public street; then BOOM."

Anonymous said...

First clean out the Chinese spies

Blow the dust off the internment camps for these bloody heathens!

But let the Russian spies run rampant....

Drunk Idiot said...

NYT quote:

"That Big Brother imagery — conjured up by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky during a more than 12-hour filibuster this week — has animated a surprisingly diverse swath of political interests that includes mainstream civil liberties groups, Republican and Democratic lawmakers, conservative research groups, liberal activists and right-wing onspiracy theorists..."

Mr. Anon (3/9/13, 11:55 AM) said...

"Notice the implied dichotomy: 'liberal activists and right-wing conspiracy theorists'. WE are liberal - YOU are right-wing. WE are 'activists' - YOU are 'conspiracy theorists'.

And it is not Rand Paul that is conjuring up 'Big Brother' imagery - it is the government itself that is conjuring it up, by adopting the methods of totalitarian police-states.
"

Yeah, that's commonplace for the media. The left is always referred to as "liberal" or "progressive", and the most ardent of them are "activists."

Conservatives of all stripes -- from establishment RINO Republicans to Tea Partiers and Libertarians -- are always referred to as "right wing." And the more ardent conservatives are called "extremists" (they used to be called "arch-conservatives").

Even worse, most conservatives seem to just accept it. Nobody ever challenges the left's control over nomenclature.

Also, the left traffics in conspiracy theories at least as much as the right does (probably more, in fact), but left wing conspiracy theories aren't even classified as conspiracy theories. And the extreme, but persistent ones (e.g., "9/11 Truth", Reagan created AIDS to kill blacks/gays, Republicans are establishing the 4th Reich, etc.) get ignored by the media entirely, despite their popularity and ubiquity on the left.

But if one yahoo conservative on some backwater city council in Alabama so much as mentions Barack Obama's middle name, every conservative is made to jump through hoops to prove that he's not a tinfoil hat-wearing, black helicopter-fearing conspiracy nut who spends his days smoking meth and posting on Storm Front in his mother's basement.

jody said...

"That Big Brother imagery — conjured up by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky during a more than 12-hour filibuster this week — has animated a surprisingly diverse swath of political interests that includes mainstream civil liberties groups, Republican and Democratic lawmakers, conservative research groups, liberal activists and right-wing conspiracy theorists."

what democrats? what liberal activists?

sorry, i must have missed the part where a single democrat stood up and said anything. john cusack rightly called them out for NOT standing up and saying anything. "Where are the Democrats?" dissention against obama is verboten.

this is like the small arms issue. about 75% of democrats are on-board with the plan to disarm american civilians, maybe 1% of republicans are. democrats write 99% of the proposed legislation. it is in no way a topic where there is some agreement between parties. it's completely one sided.

jody said...

"You've been wondering why Ohio Whites didn't vote GOP in the last election"

that was an auto industry issue. not defense.

"The key is to rally around space again"

which is...the exact opposite of what obama is doing. obama is turning the US away from space.

"Many of the Chinese students are spies."

probably 1 in 1000 chinese immigrants is a spy. that means there are a heck of a lot of chinese spies in the US. they're caught and arrested regularly.

this was, of course, the thinking behind detaining japanese, german, and italian people during world war 2. some of them could have been spies. a few of them were. today of course the situation is much worse. chinese spies are everywhere and have infiltrated lots of US companies.

americans have learned the opposite lesson, of course. probably almost to a man, the average american politician thinks that detaining people during world war 2 is exactly the reason we should never suspect any chinese person of being a spy, let alone even consider the issue. it's a "make up" issue. we feel like we made a mistake in the past, so we'll make up for that by allowing criminals and enemies to operate more freely today.

some politicians and law enforcement personel are comfortable watching muslims, but that's about it. islam is a religion. watching chinese people simply because they are chinese is racism, which is the worst crime you can commit. typically, only chinese spies who screw up are surveilled and caught.

jody said...

"Even worse, most conservatives seem to just accept it. Nobody ever challenges the left's control over nomenclature."

i've posted several times about the language war. i mostly stopped though. steve gets tired of me talking about it. especially for a while i had a crusade against the way the words "latino" and "hispanic" are used in modern american english. but i've discussed several other topics.

jody said...

"Robots are the future."

been working on them since 1997. i don't talk about it much here, because i can't. but yeah.

i stopped working on any defense related projects after obama was elected in 08. i will not help them use robots on us. my days doing any DARPA stuff are over.

the future is robot war though. and as one poster said

"Meh, it's probably only a brief window of overwhelming state technical superiority."

this is correct. other groups will be able to hit the US government back with robots. a few other first world nations could right now, if they had a reason. the secret service won't be enough to protect cabinet members from good robots.

speaking of the secret service, it's crazy how much they have stepped up their tactics, numbers, and coverage since the reagan assassination attempt. remember, it was only 30 years ago that a nutjob just walked up to him and emptied his revolver. a trained determined assassin would have easily killed the president.

not sure what the detail was on reagan at the time, looked like maybe only 6 guys, plus local police. this is probably why obama goes out to dinner with THIRTY secret service agents around him. basically, a small army. because he's a tyrant, there's a good chance he would have been killed a while ago, going by historical standards.

let's not forget that presidents were somewhat regularly killed in the past. people have killed presidents for less than what obama is doing to the US. stating that yes, i can kill you if i feel like it, is a pretty obvious declaration that obama should be considered a potential enemy.

the revolutionary war was fought over a much less tyrannical political leader than barack obama. 60,000 people were killed over mere tax rates.

Anonymous said...

"But drones are small, and much harder to take down. "

You aren't going to do anything against an F-16 dropping a JDAM from 20,000 ft.

The worrying thing about drones is their persistence. If they're overhead all the time, they're watching you all the time, and it gives the government new means to track you and generally butt their noses into your business. That backyard BBW doesn't meet the air quality board mandates, citizen. And why were you out at a bar on a work night? I'll send the social workers around.

Truth said...

" I think this is a Myers-Briggs thing: SJs love order and control."

Not only SJ, but also, SP's who would rather work on the house or go bowling. together, they make up, probably 70-80% of the American populace.

Faust said...

The Left attacks conservatives constantly for wanting to deport illegal aliens, but if a conservative attacks the use of flying killer robots against US citizens it is a “dumb publicity stunt.”

Anonymous said...

What the hell is an "SJ" or an "SP"?

Anonymous said...

What the hell is an "SJ" or an "SP"?

Myers-Briggs personality type pseudoscience

Truth said...

"What the hell is an "SJ" or an "SP"?"

Welcome to the church my son.*

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp

*BTW; you're an NT.

Anonymous said...

NT = neurotypical?

Artemisinin said...

"probably 1 in 1000 chinese immigrants is a spy. that means there are a heck of a lot of chinese spies in the US. they're caught and arrested regularly.

this was, of course, the thinking behind detaining japanese, german, and italian people during world war 2."


-That was part of it. There were also incidents of actually aiding the enemy as well which heavily contributed to the decision to detain, but they tend to get lost down the memory hole of things that disagree with the Narrative:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_Incident

Anonymous said...

"Even worse, most conservatives seem to just accept it. Nobody ever challenges the left's control over nomenclature."

i've posted several times about the language war.


I'd actually be interested in understanding what you mean by "language war" and what your views are on it. Some of us are new readers here.

TontoBubbaGoldstein said...

That backyard BBW doesn't meet the air quality board…

She's NOT fat. She's big boned, dammit!

PropagandistHacker said...

this would be your meat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2XAWcs7HbM

NOTA said...

Faust:

Anyone who opposes the ruling class consensus is described in some kind of insulting terms by the MSM. That's much of what defines the MSM, I think--it's the part of the press which is part of the ruling class consensus and helps uphold and defend it. That's why the NYT, allegedly a liberal newspaper, held back on the story about the Bush administration's illegal wiretapping program until after the 2004 election, why all sorts of allegedly liberal newspapers and TV networks call exactly the same behavior "torture" when anyone else does it, and "harsh questioning" when we do it, why that same liberal set of MSM outlets was and is dismissive of antiwar and anti-banker bailout protests. It's why they went out of their way to make the Tea Party look like illiterate racists living in trailer parks, and the Occupy movement look like unemployable pot-smoking wannabe hippies.

David Davenport said...

this was, of course, the thinking behind detaining japanese, german, and italian people during world war 2.

What German or Italian Americans were detained during WWII? Please name some. Were did you hear about Germans or Italians being detained? Is that from some college textbook of recent years?

Next, how effective NAZI spies operated in the USA during WWII?

Answer, none, nil, zero.

How many spies for Stalin's regime operated in the the U.S. State Dept. and in Project Manhattan during and after WWII?

Let's name a few ...

David Davenport said...

I'd actually be interested in understanding what you mean by "language war" and what your views are on it.

Example: calling conservative US states "red states" in an effort to associate conservatives with Red radicals.

Anonymous said...

What German or Italian Americans were detained during WWII?

IIRC Germans in Britain were detained.

Anonymous said...

If conservatives were serious about conservatism, they would give Islam a good second look.

The biggest Islam-haters are so-called "Christians" who happen to be gutless cowards, self-hating "moral" hypocrites, heartless plastic robots who ram so-called Western values down everyone's throats, usurers, tax-lovers, pimps, Israel-puppets, Big Pharma puppets, bleeding hearts towards criminals who DESERVE to be cut to pieces, gun-grabbers, alcoholics and tobacco addicts who use their anti-drug hysteria as a mask, prescription drug addicts, commies and other materialists (c'mon think - who utterly destroyed the Godless Soviet tyranny?), misandrists, closeted homosexuals and that includes metrosexuals too, pussywhipped perverts, darwinists and social darwinists, egalitarians, work-shy union thugs who call honest work "slavery"...

NOTA said...

The critical questiin isn't about drones. It's about the limits of presidential power.

Can the president have anyone in the US arrested, detained, or killed, on his say-so alone? Or is the president constrained to go through some formal legal process before locking people up or killing them?

Drones are a red herrring--nobody is going to use drone fires missiles inside the US. But they may very well use death squads, or simply snatch US citizens off US soil and disappear them for years at a time, as already happened with Jose Padilla. The NDAA seems to give the president the authority to have anyone he wants disappeared. The administration also claims the authority to kill anyone it wants, though Eric Holder wrote a letter saying that the president couldn't use a drone fired missile on a citizen in the US unless he was engaged in operatins against the US. (Yes, with all those qualifiers.)

It is insane that we are even debating this. Should we have a president who can order anyone killed or disappeared with no oversight or consequences? And yet answering "yes" to this question is bipartisan consensus policy, supported by our allegedly liberal MSM and our allegedly conservative MSM.

I would very much like to understand why this has become consensus. The visible threat doesn't remotely justify it--it's like amputating someone's leg because he has a broken toe. Did the whole ruling class spend too much time watching _Triumph of the Will_ at an impressionable age? Are the major powers all being blackmailed with evidence of their gay affairs, pedophilia, Swiss bank accounts full of bribes, or murdered annoying ex-rivals?

Anonymous said...

What German or Italian Americans were detained during WWII? Please name some. Were did you hear about Germans or Italians being detained? Is that from some college textbook of recent years?

http://www.gaic.info/

The German American Internee Coalition ("GAIC") was formed in 2005 by and for German American and Latin American citizens and legal residents who were interned by the United States during World War II. We are former internees, or their families and friends. We come from all walks of life and from countries around the world. We would like you to know our story

How many spies for Stalin's regime operated in the the U.S. State Dept. and in Project Manhattan during and after WWII?

FDR didn't care:

http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/archives_roll/2001_07-09/sempa_chambers/sempa_chambers.html
(...)
Chambers attempted to warn the Roosevelt Administration about communist infiltration of the government (the same information that he revealed to HUAC in 1948). Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle ’ brought Chambers’ information directly to Roosevelt, but the president refused to believe it. FDR’s response to Chambers’ information typified his administration’s lax attitude about the threat of communist subversion.
(...)

David said...

You have nothing to fear if you're doing nothing wrong.

Every discussion of security must include that stupid comment.

ben tillman said...

What German or Italian Americans were detained during WWII? Please name some.

My grandfather, for one, for a while. Then they cleared him and put him to work as a mechanic.

Steve Sailer said...

Joe DiMaggio's dad, a San Francisco shrimp fisherman, was kept ashore for much of the war to prevent him from rendezvousing with Mussolini's invasion fleet hiding in the fog beyond the Golden Gate. Or something.

During big wars, governments do stuff that seems kind of dumb afterwards.

Ex Submarine Officer said...

You have nothing to fear if you're doing nothing wrong.

Every discussion of security must include that stupid comment.


Right, because even those who aren't doing anything wrong have to fear miscarriages of justice.

David Davenport said...

The German American Internee Coalition ("GAIC") was formed in 2005 by and for German American and Latin American citizens

That's an obviously Lefty, phoney organization. A miniscule number of German- or Italian-Americans were detained or otherwise interfered with.

I thought you wee going to bring up the German American Bund, all 300-500 or so of them.

A lot of Japanese-Americans were interned, as they called it.

Let me repeat a point: given millions of Americans of German descent and a good many Britons of Deutsch heritage, how many Nazi spies were operating in Britain or USA during WWII?

I mean, all Christians of European descent, at least of Northern European descent, are closet Nazis, aren't they?

German American Bund
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


German American Bund parade on East 86th St., New York City, October 30, 1939


The German American Bund or German American Federation (German: Amerikadeutscher Bund, also Amerikadeutscher Volksbund) was an American Nazi organization established in the 1930s. Its main goal was to promote a favorable view of Nazi Germany.

...

Zenith

German American Bund Rally Poster at Madison Square Garden, February 20, 1939


Flag of the German American Bund

Arguably, the zenith of the Bund's history occurred on President's Day, February 20, 1939 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Some 20,000 people attended and heard Kuhn criticize President Roosevelt by repeatedly referring to him as “Frank D. Rosenfeld”, calling his New Deal the "Jew Deal", and stating his belief of Bolshevik-Jewish American leadership. Most shocking to American sensibilities was the outbreak of violence between protesters and Bund storm troopers.

The Bund was one of several German-American heritage groups; however, it was one of the few to express National Socialist ideals. As a result, many considered the group anti-American. In the last week of December 1942, led by journalist Dorothy Thompson, fifty leading German-Americans including Babe Ruth signed a "Christmas Declaration by men and women of German ancestry" condemning Nazism, which appeared in ten major American daily newspapers. In 1939, a New York tax investigation determined Kuhn had embezzled money from the Bund. The Bund operated on the theory that the leader's powers were absolute, and therefore did not seek prosecution. However, in an attempt to cripple the Bund, the New York district attorney prosecuted Kuhn. New Bund leaders would replace Kuhn, most notably Gerhard Kunze, but these were only brief stints. Martin Dies and the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) were very active in denying any Nazi-sympathetic organization the ability to operate freely during World War II.


Something you didn't know about the HUAC.

Anonymous said...

Martin Dies and the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) were very active in denying any Nazi-sympathetic organization the ability to operate freely during World War II.

The FBI was far more important in that role than HCUA:

http://www.amazon.com/Edgar-Hoover-Anti-interventionists-Political-Surveillance/dp/0814291406


The "Brown Scare" fell between the two Red Scares:

http://www.amconmag.com/articles/terror-begins-at-home/
(...)
Long before Sept. 11, 2001, America experienced repeated outbreaks of concern over terrorism. In terms of shaping liberal perceptions, the most important was that of the FDR years, when anti-government sentiment spawned a number of extremist organizations. Some were “shirt” groups, modeled on European fascists—America, too, had its Black Shirts and Silver Shirts—while the German-American Bund attracted Hitler devotees. Isolationism and anti-Semitism drew some urban Irish-Americans into the Christian Front, while the Klan experienced one of its sporadic revivals. Beyond doubt, far-Right extremism did exist, and these movements had their violent side, to the point of organizing paramilitary training. A few plotted real terrorist acts.


But the public response was utterly out of proportion to any danger these groups posed. From 1938 through 1941, the media regularly presented stories suggesting that the U.S. was about to be overwhelmed by ultra-Right fifth columnists, millions strong, intimately allied with the Axis powers. (Actual numbers of serious militants were in the low thousands at most.) Reportedly, the militant Right was armed to the teeth and plotting countless domestic terror attacks—bombings in New York and Washington, assassinations and pogroms, the wrecking of trains and munitions plants. Plotters were rumored to have high-placed allies in the military, raising the specter of a putsch. The ensuing panic was orchestrated by newspapers and radio and reinforced by films, newsreels, and comic books. Historians characterize these years as the Brown Scare.

If the more bizarre accusations sound like the common currency of the show trials in Stalin’s Russia in these very years, that is no coincidence. The main exposés of fascist conspiracy emanated from Communist Party journalists like Albert Kahn and John Spivak. (Spivak himself was an operative for the Soviet NKVD.) Charges circulated through Kahn’s newssheet The Hour before being picked up in the liberal press. The Red agenda was straightforward in that the Brown Scare allowed the Left to discredit any opponent of radical New Deal policies. Scratch the surface of any enemy of the Left, they claimed, and you would find a fascist spy, a lyncher, a storm trooper.

(...)

Anonymous said...

wsonnuaThat's an obviously Lefty, phoney organization.

Do you really think that lefties care about non-leftist white people being interned?

I mean, all Christians of European descent, at least of Northern European descent, are closet Nazis, aren't they?

That was pretty much the thesis of the Frankfurt School's highly influential "The Authoritarian Personality."

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

"Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle ’ brought Chambers’ information directly to Roosevelt, but the president refused to believe it. FDR’s response to Chambers’ information typified his administration’s lax attitude about the threat of communist subversion.""

Having a lot of communist subversives and sympathizers in his administration made that more likely.

Anonymous said...

That was pretty much the thesis of the Frankfurt School's highly influential "The Authoritarian Personality."

That thesis was half-right. It described the right-wing authoritarians very well - but didn't dare tackle their counterparts on the left.

Mary Whitehouse and Mildred Brady - two faces on the same coin, that of death and anti-life.

David Davenport said...

It's uncanny how close that sounds to the last few years, with Muslim terrorists taking the place of facists.

Muslims taking the place of fascists?

How about Muslims taking the place of Stalin's Red spies and infiltrators with friends in high places at the Royal Court of Washington?

NOTA said...

The point is, there is always a bogeyman available to scare and entertain the public, to justify whatever crap the people at the top already want to do and to help sell newspapers. Sometimes, it's a genuine threat (there really were Soviet agents in a lot of important places in the US, though a lot of the people screwed over in the witchhunts weren't guilty of anything but being easy targets). Other times, the threat is massively overblown, as with the threat from Muslim terrorists, rapidly inflated into a threat to our very existence as a nation after they managed to hijack some planes and crash them into stuff.

There's a famous quote about the Spanish Prisoners con--for this scam to work, it is not necessary for there to really be any prisoners, or even for there to be any such place as Spain. Something very similar is true here.

For awhile there, an important bogeyman in the US was people engaging in large scale ritual Satanic abuse of children, sometimes including human sacrifice. Now, the only problem with this was that the stories about it were absolutely and unfixably bugfuck nuts. Not only did they not happen, they could not possibly have happened. This did not prevent the panic from selling newspapers and books and building up political careers, nor did it prevent prosecutors sending people to prison forever for these imaginary crimes.

I assume every country is susceptible to this, but the only one I know well enough to comment on is the US. We love scary stories about supervillains more than we love super-sized Big Mac meals. The combination of cartoon villains and morality with very little actual danger is a huge win here.

David said...

H.L. Mencken:

"Politics under democracy consists almost wholly of the discovery, chase and scotching [now droning] of bugaboos. The statesman becomes, in the last analysis, a mere witch-hunter, a glorified smeller and snooper, eternally chanting 'Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum!' It has been so in the United States since the earliest days. The whole history of the country has been a history of melodramatic pursuits of horrendous monsters, most of them imaginary: the red-coats, the Hessians, the monocrats, again the red-coats, the Bank, the Catholics, Simon Legree, the Slave Power, Jeff Davis, Mormonism, Wall Street, the rum demon, John Bull, the hell hounds of plutocracy, the trusts, General Weyler, Pancho Villa, German spies, hyphenates, the Kaiser, Bolshevism." [And we might add: domestic terrorists and Muslems under every bed.

Quick, all loyal patriots! Shred the Constitution - this is serious!