Arms race: In the times before...

[Kaitzilla]

There are only two types of governments: failed ones, and ones that haven't failed quite yet.

We have a winner!

 

[Birdjaguar]

Do I detect a faint whiff of approval for George W. Bush ending the Hussein regime decades earlier than it would have naturally occured?


There is always hope, at least until immortality is discovered.

I offer no approval whatsoever. It was a bad war for the US.

 

[Core Imposter]

No, really yes. My evidence is that people have always overthrown the worst dictators and most oppressive regimes. What is yours?

Let me quote a great American:

I can only surmise that sometime in the next few years those of us here in America will lose contact with the outside world. I doubt I'll live through this but we have the news that we have a grandchild coming. Perhaps some of us will survive to see freedom endure. I want to say to those of you who live far away, the core of this country are good people who only want to live in peace and prosperity with all. Don't believe all the stereotypes you hear about the American people.

Tell your children and grandchildren that when the time comes that if they are willing to extend an unclenched fist to our remnants there will no doubt be survivors here eager to grasp it in friendship.

MisterCooper
February 2013

I stated that I have hope the effort to enslave the American people will fail. But thats not the point. The point is that we are headed into another dark period of human history.

Over a trillion Chinese are enslaved by the Communists right now. We have an open Civil War in Syria right now. We see the Middle East writhing like a snake in a search for freedom. I could go on and on. The point I am making is that the darkness is coming to America. You might not agree. Fine.

But we have three major developments you shouldn't deny. First, as a result of 9/11, both political parties have thrown liberty under the bus in pursuit of security. DHS is a nightmare. And we are become desensitized and routinely submit to invasive searches and other invasions of our privacy. Meanwhile we trained a generation of military police essentially (thru war in Iraq and Afgan), specialized in counterinsurgency which is pretty much exactly the role of the police in a police state.

Second, we have technology that has never existed in the world before that allows government the ability to track and surveil individuals as well as technologies such as those used by Google to track macrotrends. Cloud technology. GPS. Drone. Remote audio capture and thermal imaging. Etcetera ad nauseum. You know the capabilities. And no, these are not all mature nor are the resources available for total control at this point. But the mere existence of these capabilities is part of the problem. The elites always overestimate the reach of government but that never stops the overreach from occuring.

Finally, and this is the most disturbing and telling is the process that leads us to dystopia is little different from the stages of genocide:

Classification Symbolization Dehumanization Organization Polarization Preparation Extermination Denial

In the course of my lifetime we have seen these stages unfold. We are well into polarization and preparation right now. Look at the way conservatives are recieved here by the liberals. We are classified like insects, considered symbols, dehumanized, often as DLs/sock puppets, attacked by waves of posters who reinforce each other in an organized fashion.

Its coming. I hope it doesn't result in genocide but I know its coming.

And I will fight. You're not going to line me up and march me into an oven. You liberals would do well to consider that those who supported the Nazis did not know they were the bad guys until they looked down and saw the blood on their hands.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Congratulations on the grandchild, another Tarheel is definitely a good thing. If it is a boy, Dean Smith Cooper would be a great name.

I see the same trends you do, but don't see them coming together like you do. Many Christians see the rapture. Environmentalists see melted icecaps and flooded cities. Other see some version of 1984. As a pantheist (Hindu, Sufi, Buddhist), I see the world unfolding as it should and my role is to prepare those I care about, as best I can, for their future whatever that is. You will do what you can for babyCooper's safety and security. You can do no more.

 

[Core Imposter]

Congratulations on the grandchild, another Tarheel is definitely a good thing. If it is a boy, Dean Smith Cooper would be a great name.

I see the same trends you do, but don't see them coming together like you do. Many Christians see the rapture. Environmentalists see melted icecaps and flooded cities. Other see some version of 1984. As a pantheist (Hindu, Sufi, Buddhist), I see the world unfolding as it should and my role is to prepare those I care about, as best I can, for their future whatever that is. You will do what you can for babyCooper's safety and security. You can do no more.

I like Dean Bubba Cooper (DB Cooper) as I like the idea that he (or she) might escape after all.

 

[peter grimes]

The technology to enslave people has always exited, it just changes with the times. What keeps it at bay is that people really don't want to be enslaved and will at some point strenuously resist. There are many examples. People may act like stupid idiots much of the time, but when moved by their passions, the world will change.

Really no.

No, really yes. My evidence is that people have always overthrown the worst dictators and most oppressive regimes. What is yours?

North Korea.

This is a very good example of why I think BirdJaguar is correct. DPRK, more than any other state that I can think of, exemplifies the slave state. Personal freedoms are few, travel is heavily restricted, speech is anything but unregulated, the State controls nearly every aspect of peoples' lives. At least, it has until the last 10 years or so - it's getting much much more relaxed, comparatively, but it remains a de facto slave state.

And I think it kind of proves MisterCoopers wrong. The US is ligthyears from DPRK, and in order to get from Here & Now USA to Here & Now DPRK you'd have to go through mountains of revolutionary change - at nearly every step that change would necessitate the will of the people to submit to greater and greater personal restrictions, reductions in standard of living, and - above all - elimination of corporate power. That's simply not even imaginable today.

In order for a dictator Obama to enslave the USA, he'd have to turn it into something approximating DPRK.

So now the challenge rests on the shoulders of the people claiming he's doing just that to show the rest of us exactly what is happening to move us along the slider from H&N USA to H&N DPRK. Even the worst aspects of NDAA, Executive Assassinations, Patriot Act, and their ilk don't approach the level of control required.

Ball's in your court gent

 

[Core Imposter]

N. Korea is the way it is now due to the war that never ended.

We will have an event too. Global financial crash with some sort of destruction of the currency prompting widespread shortages of food and power. Probably a nuclear detonation or two. Blamed on domestic terror. Loss of communications. Then the curtain goes down.

We can't transition without the events. Thats why the Feds are preparing. But it might be a series of events.

Strong chance of an event late this year or in early 2014.

 

[Borachio]

Is S. Korea the way it is now due to the war that never ended?

 

[Kaitzilla]

This is a very good example of why I think BirdJaguar is correct. DPRK, more than any other state that I can think of, exemplifies the slave state. Personal freedoms are few, travel is heavily restricted, speech is anything but unregulated, the State controls nearly every aspect of peoples' lives. At least, it has until the last 10 years or so - it's getting much much more relaxed, comparatively, but it remains a de facto slave state.

And I think it kind of proves MisterCoopers wrong. The US is ligthyears from DPRK, and in order to get from Here & Now USA to Here & Now DPRK you'd have to go through mountains of revolutionary change - at nearly every step that change would necessitate the will of the people to submit to greater and greater personal restrictions, reductions in standard of living, and - above all - elimination of corporate power. That's simply not even imaginable today.

In order for a dictator Obama to enslave the USA, he'd have to turn it into something approximating DPRK.

So now the challenge rests on the shoulders of the people claiming he's doing just that to show the rest of us exactly what is happening to move us along the slider from H&N USA to H&N DPRK. Even the worst aspects of NDAA, Executive Assassinations, Patriot Act, and their ilk don't approach the level of control required.

Ball's in your court gent

Sure I'll go first. To fly on a plane, you are now required to submit to sexual assault.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...strating-treatment-received-article-1.1098521

Price claims an agent grabbed her breasts and crotch during a screening at Southwest Florida International Airport, and that she was just demonstrating the aggressive treatment, when she was caught on camera.

"She did not touch the supervisor as intrusively as she was touched," Price's lawyer John Mills said, according to Florida ABC affiliate

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...ple-sexual-assault-charges-new-searches.shtml

http://tsaabuse.blogspot.com/


Seriously though, google "TSA Sexual Assault" and you can watch dozens of videos or click on hundreds of thousands of results.

 

[Flying Pig]

You are not required to submit to that at all; that's illegal, if it is as reported, and you have the right to the protection of the law against it. Of course people in positions of trust sometimes abuse that trust, that's inevitable: what matters is that the system allows such breaches to be identified and punished.

 

[peter grimes]

Sure I'll go first. To fly on a plane, you are now required to submit to sexual assault.

WHOOOSH*



*not that I'm defending stupid and misplaced TSA bullcrap, but seriously this is so NOT evidence of anything like the USA becoming a slave state. Know why? BECAUSE YOU'RE GETTING ON A PLANE!

 

[Dachs]

No, really yes. My evidence is that people have always overthrown the worst dictators and most oppressive regimes. What is yours?

Napoleon was not overthrown by internal revolt; it took the greatest alliance in the history of mankind to do the same. By and large, The People of the European countries Napoleon enslaved did not arise in rebellion until the Allied armies had already defeated the French troops in an area.

The Confederacy, a backwards, slaveholding society that endorsed racial violence and actions that, had the Confederacy been an actual country, would have been violations of the laws of war - and this in a rebellion that only lasted four bloody years - was not overthrown from within by either whites or blacks, it was beaten into military submission and occupied.

Hitler's empire, too, was never overthrown from within, and provides the starkest example of a country populated almost entirely by people who refused to turn against the regime despite its obvious moribund state, vicious foundation, and abhorrent moral purpose. The armed forces of the Allied powers were what overthrew the Nazis, not the German people. Even the people that were massacred in the Holocaust put up marginal resistance at best, and that in rare cases.

It was the Turkish military that unseated the Committee for Union and Progress and tried those deemed responsible/scapegoated for the Armenian genocide, not the peoples of the Ottoman Empire. The Khmer Rouge were only defeated by a Vietnamese invasion. Tanzania's army was what unseated Idi Amin. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union's leaders voluntarily gave up power (although the decision was not unanimous and had to be enforced in the face of resistance), and this after a long period of "liberalization" in that state.

Really, it's much harder to find an instance of people rising up against an extremely repressive and violent regime than it is to find the opposite. Probably the best example is the RPF's military campaign against the Rwandan government that ended the genocide in that country, but even that is a borderline case; Paul Kagame's forces were actually based in Uganda and to a lesser extent in what was at that point known as Zaire, and mounted an invasion to assist their fellow Tutsis, who themselves seem to have been largely helpless to stem the violence.

Most revolutions that come off successfully tend to be against weak and/or not particularly repressive regimes. The most famous successful revolutions of modern times, the 1789 French Revolution, the 1911 Chinese Revolution, the 1917 Russian Revolutions, and the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe - all were initiated after periods of political concessions and general liberalizations had made the governments that fell victim to them look - and act - weak. What brought on revolution in France? A timid, vacillating king unable to make up his mind as to what kind of constitutional monarchy France would be. The Empire of the Great Qing had practically relinquished its efforts to do much of anything at all, and in many ways the revolution against them, insofar as it had a popular base, was directed against Qing foreign policy failures more than Qing oppressiveness. Russia's revolutions occurred due to shockingly poor management and a failure to meet the high expectations of the populace for an offensive war. And so on, and so forth. This is not to say that any of these regimes were all sunshine and roses; obviously not. But they were not particularly repressive even by the standards of their times, and when the end came for them, it was not repression that brought it on.

 

[Kaitzilla]

You are not required to submit to that at all; that's illegal, if it is as reported, and you have the right to the protection of the law against it. Of course people in positions of trust sometimes abuse that trust, that's inevitable: what matters is that the system allows such breaches to be identified and punished.

Oh really? Let's check the definition of sexual assault.

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

Sexual assault refers to forcing an unwilling person to engage in or suggest behavior involving the genitals or breasts, typically ranging from grabbing or touching over clothes to forced penetration of the vagina, mouth, or anus. Specific legal jurisdictions and research often use highly technical or detailed definitions of the term.

The term sexual assault is used, in public discourse, as a generic term that is defined as any involuntary sexual act in which a person is threatened, coerced, or forced to engage against their will, or any sexual touching of a person who has not consented.

Now let's see if the TSA does just that as a policy.
http://pncminnesota.com/2010/11/08/rape-survivor-devasted-by-tsa-enhanced-pat-down/

Coming back from Chicago, Celeste, like increasing numbers of travelers, was forced to make a difficult choice – either allow strangers to see her naked or allow strangers to touch and squeeze her breasts and groin in full view of other travels and TSA agents. “This was a nightmare come to life,” Celeste says, “I said I didn’t want them to see me naked and the agent started yelling Opt out- we have an opt here. Another agent took me aside and said they would have to pat me down. He told me he was going to touch my genitals and asked if I wouldn’t rather just go through the scanner, that it would be less humiliating for me. I was in shock. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I kept saying I don’t want any of this to happen. I was whispering please don’t do this, please, please.”

http://kittywampus.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/tsa-enhanced-patdown-a-form-of-sexual-assault/


A demonstration for the public.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/laura...n_demo_They_shot_themselves_in_the_foot_.html
“The dumbest part: They did two pat-down demonstrations — male on male, and female on female,” the House staffer said. And they used a young female TSA volunteer “and in front of a room of 200 people, they touched her breasts and her buttocks. People were averting their eyes. The TSA was trying to demonstrate ‘this is not so bad,’ but it made people so uncomfortable to watch that people were averting their eyes.”[/QUOTE]





And finally, what happens when you won't submit to ionizing radiation (because you fear cancer) and don't wan't the enhanced pat down?

You try to leave the airport because you changed your mind. Then what happens? You get arrested.

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/20...0101121_1_tsa-airport-checkpoint-sari-koshetz

If you don't want to pass through an airport scanner that allows security agents to see an image of your naked body or to undergo the alternative, a thorough manual search, you may have to find another way to travel this holiday season.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is warning that any would-be commercial airline passenger who enters an airport checkpoint and then refuses to undergo the method of inspection designated by TSA will not be allowed to fly and also will not be permitted to simply leave the airport.

That person will have to remain on the premises to be questioned by the TSA and possibly by local law enforcement. Anyone refusing faces fines up to $11,000 and possible arrest.

"Once a person submits to the screening process, they can not just decide to leave that process," says Sari Koshetz, regional TSA spokesperson, based in Miami.

 

[peter grimes]

This is a very good example of why I think BirdJaguar is correct.
[snip]

Napoleon was not overthrown by internal revolt; it took the greatest alliance in the history of mankind to do the same. By and large, The People of the European countries Napoleon enslaved did not arise in rebellion until the Allied armies had already defeated the French troops in an area.

The Confederacy, a backwards, slaveholding society that endorsed racial violence and actions that, had the Confederacy been an actual country, would have been violations of the laws of war - and this in a rebellion that only lasted four bloody years - was not overthrown from within by either whites or blacks, it was beaten into military submission and occupied.

Hitler's empire, too, was never overthrown from within, and provides the starkest example of a country populated almost entirely by people who refused to turn against the regime despite its obvious moribund state, vicious foundation, and abhorrent moral purpose. The armed forces of the Allied powers were what overthrew the Nazis, not the German people. Even the people that were massacred in the Holocaust put up marginal resistance at best, and that in rare cases.

It was the Turkish military that unseated the Committee for Union and Progress and tried those deemed responsible/scapegoated for the Armenian genocide, not the peoples of the Ottoman Empire. The Khmer Rouge were only defeated by a Vietnamese invasion. Tanzania's army was what unseated Idi Amin. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union's leaders voluntarily gave up power (although the decision was not unanimous and had to be enforced in the face of resistance), and this after a long period of "liberalization" in that state.

Really, it's much harder to find an instance of people rising up against an extremely repressive and violent regime than it is to find the opposite. Probably the best example is the RPF's military campaign against the Rwandan government that ended the genocide in that country, but even that is a borderline case; Paul Kagame's forces were actually based in Uganda and to a lesser extent in what was at that point known as Zaire, and mounted an invasion to assist their fellow Tutsis, who themselves seem to have been largely helpless to stem the violence.

Most revolutions that come off successfully tend to be against weak and/or not particularly repressive regimes. The most famous successful revolutions of modern times, the 1789 French Revolution, the 1911 Chinese Revolution, the 1917 Russian Revolutions, and the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe - all were initiated after periods of political concessions and general liberalizations had made the governments that fell victim to them look - and act - weak. What brought on revolution in France? A timid, vacillating king unable to make up his mind as to what kind of constitutional monarchy France would be. The Empire of the Great Qing had practically relinquished its efforts to do much of anything at all, and in many ways the revolution against them, insofar as it had a popular base, was directed against Qing foreign policy failures more than Qing oppressiveness. Russia's revolutions occurred due to shockingly poor management and a failure to meet the high expectations of the populace for an offensive war. And so on, and so forth. This is not to say that any of these regimes were all sunshine and roses; obviously not. But they were not particularly repressive even by the standards of their times, and when the end came for them, it was not repression that brought it on.

And now I see that I was wrong in a way. Counterfactuals are powerful.

 

[Kaitzilla]

WHOOOSH*



*not that I'm defending stupid and misplaced TSA bullcrap, but seriously this is so NOT evidence of anything like the USA becoming a slave state. Know why? BECAUSE YOU'RE GETTING ON A PLANE!

I'm sorry, haven't you heard about the TSA's VIPr program?

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/20/nation/la-na-terror-checkpoints-20111220

The Transportation Security Administration isn't just in airports anymore. TSA teams are increasingly conducting searches and screenings at train stations, subways, ferry terminals and other mass transit locations around the country.

"We are not the Airport Security Administration," said Ray Dineen, the air marshal in charge of the TSA office in Charlotte. "We take that transportation part seriously."

The TSA's 25 "viper" teams — for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response — have run more than 9,300 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations in the last year. Department of Homeland Security officials have asked Congress for funding to add 12 more teams next year.

The ACLU's opinion:
http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty/tsa-seeks-expand-airport-experience-everyday-life


People should admit that Mr. Cooper has a point. The American people are very gradually being enslaved.

 

[Mad Man]

But yeah, people like some of you here will be the new Commissars and maybe one of you will rise to be the commander of a camp.

Maybe one of you will be the one to put the bullet behind my ear? Not if I can help it.

I can safely assume that no one here is going to exterminate you, tie you to a flagpole and tickle you with a feather maybe but no ethnic cleansings for today

 

[GoodGame]

This is interesting with Biden telling us to only buy shotguns.

 

[Mad Man]

This is interesting with Biden telling us to only buy shotguns.

No more food, no more clothing, no more televisions?

 

[Birdjaguar]

No, really yes. My evidence is that people have always overthrown the worst dictators and most oppressive regimes. What is yours?

Yes, give it time. World efforts are already underway to end that regime. "Patience grasshopper."

Do I detect a faint whiff of approval for George W. Bush ending the Hussein regime decades earlier than it would have naturally occured?

I offer no approval whatsoever. It was a bad war for the US.

Napoleon was not overthrown by internal revolt; it took the greatest alliance in the history of mankind to do the same. By and large, The People of the European countries Napoleon enslaved did not arise in rebellion until the Allied armies had already defeated the French troops in an area.

The Confederacy, a backwards, slaveholding society that endorsed racial violence and actions that, had the Confederacy been an actual country, would have been violations of the laws of war - and this in a rebellion that only lasted four bloody years - was not overthrown from within by either whites or blacks, it was beaten into military submission and occupied.

Hitler's empire, too, was never overthrown from within, and provides the starkest example of a country populated almost entirely by people who refused to turn against the regime despite its obvious moribund state, vicious foundation, and abhorrent moral purpose. The armed forces of the Allied powers were what overthrew the Nazis, not the German people. Even the people that were massacred in the Holocaust put up marginal resistance at best, and that in rare cases.

It was the Turkish military that unseated the Committee for Union and Progress and tried those deemed responsible/scapegoated for the Armenian genocide, not the peoples of the Ottoman Empire. The Khmer Rouge were only defeated by a Vietnamese invasion. Tanzania's army was what unseated Idi Amin. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union's leaders voluntarily gave up power (although the decision was not unanimous and had to be enforced in the face of resistance), and this after a long period of "liberalization" in that state.

Thanks Dachs for demonstrating exactly my point. When the people of a nation cannot overthrow the ruthless, outside nations will often do so on the grounds that the leaders are bad people doing bad things and expected to more bad things. I do agree that my use of over throw was vague, but I tried to make up for it in a following post. Humanity does not like oppression and the proliferation of arms, communications and money has made it easier for those "feeling" oppressed to try and do something about it. Does it always turn out perfect? No.

BTW, the Napoleonic Wars were not just about freeing oppressed peoples. The motivations were more complicated and changed over time, as I'm sure you know.

Really, it's much harder to find an instance of people rising up against an extremely repressive and violent regime than it is to find the opposite. Probably the best example is the RPF's military campaign against the Rwandan government that ended the genocide in that country, but even that is a borderline case; Paul Kagame's forces were actually based in Uganda and to a lesser extent in what was at that point known as Zaire, and mounted an invasion to assist their fellow Tutsis, who themselves seem to have been largely helpless to stem the violence.

Most revolutions that come off successfully tend to be against weak and/or not particularly repressive regimes. The most famous successful revolutions of modern times, the 1789 French Revolution, the 1911 Chinese Revolution, the 1917 Russian Revolutions, and the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe - all were initiated after periods of political concessions and general liberalizations had made the governments that fell victim to them look - and act - weak. What brought on revolution in France? A timid, vacillating king unable to make up his mind as to what kind of constitutional monarchy France would be. The Empire of the Great Qing had practically relinquished its efforts to do much of anything at all, and in many ways the revolution against them, insofar as it had a popular base, was directed against Qing foreign policy failures more than Qing oppressiveness. Russia's revolutions occurred due to shockingly poor management and a failure to meet the high expectations of the populace for an offensive war. And so on, and so forth. This is not to say that any of these regimes were all sunshine and roses; obviously not. But they were not particularly repressive even by the standards of their times, and when the end came for them, it was not repression that brought it on.

All that may be true, but I am not claiming that all revolutions have pure motives or are even supported by oppressed peoples. My point is that history tells us that when regimes get very repressive, somebody usually steps up to the plate and brings it down. Those could be citizens or other nations. The larger the scale of the oppression, the more interest in setting things right. And that being said, when folks talk about the Obama dictatorship enslaving America, I see it as not only unlikely, but if it were to happen, unlikely to last.

 

[Nick Carpathia]

You forgot that everyone else outside America are Jackbooted UN Thugs. Duh.