those fucking terrorists

5/2/2007 6:09:42 PM

so a quick question about this police state that our country is apparently becoming

who's idea is it to implement this police state? is it a bipartisan effort or is it just bush and his republican friends?

5/2/2007 6:20:27 PM

It's the Zionist-Illuminati, duh

5/2/2007 6:25:34 PM

so you're saying its bipartisan

5/2/2007 6:29:07 PM

Rice's description is overly broad.

The authorities of this country do not have a good track record with strongly anti-capitalist "free speech," even in the era of the oh-so-important air conditioner. The violence at the 1999 WTO Conference in Seattle pitting ordinary citizens against armed police officers and National Guardsmen is a perfect example of this. That's as recent and relevant as Columbine.

To be fair, a 2007 court decision recently did decide that many protester's civil rights were violated, which makes a fair argument that the system works after all. That's no guarantee of safety on the streets, though.

5/2/2007 6:44:42 PM

From the link posted on the previous page:

Quote :

""A student at the Houston-area Clements High School was arrested, sent to an "Alternative Education Center" and banned from graduation after school officials found he created a video game map of his school. School district police arrested the teen and searched his home where they confiscated a hammer as a 'potential weapon'. ' "They decided he was a terroristic threat," said one source close to the district's investigation.' With an upcoming May 12 school board election, this issue has quickly become political, with school board members involved in the appeal accusing each other of pandering to the Chinese community in an attempt to gain votes.""

5/2/2007 6:46:57 PM

What in GODS NAME is wrong with a video game map?

Pray fucking tell?

5/2/2007 6:53:32 PM

The kid was asian.

Obviously it wasn't a matter of if, but WHEN he would take scary photos with that hammer and then shoot up his school.

5/2/2007 6:59:42 PM

Whoa, Trap is going nuts.

Quote :

"her criterion/standard is just too high. there is no country like that, never has been, and never will be."

I think it's a nice ideal.

5/2/2007 7:03:10 PM

Quote :

"Speakers at the FBISD Board’s April 23 meeting alluded to the Clements senior’s punishment, and drew a connection to the April 16 shootings at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, in which a Korean student shot and killed 32 people."

this (^^and the fact that the kid was asian) is their reasoning i guess...doesnt seem like a very good reason...i wish i knew what game it was for...and im not one who thinks video games cause violence...but at the same time, if it was some type of deathmatch game and the point of the mod was to go around their school and shoot people up, and he made the map just a week or two after the virginia tech shooting, the heightened school security would certainly give them more reason than "usual" to at least investigate...i mean you had people during the VT incident complaining about a lack of preemptive measures...not cancelling classes or not sending out the email until 2 hours after the first shootings...better safe than sorry? i doubt the kid wouldve been forced to change schools if this had happened before the VT shootings or if the VT shootings hadnt happened

5/2/2007 7:05:01 PM

^^ yes, it is a great ideal, and i think that all countries should aspire to it, but that's all it is, an ideal.

her statement is hypocritical. even the US doesn't fit that, and it is not even the country to come closest to that ideal, so how can she go around the world dropping names of countries which she thinks are outposts of tyranny?

damn, i need to sleep... gotta get up early, but can't fall asleep.

5/2/2007 7:07:51 PM

even the US doesnt fit that, true, but it certainly fits it more than most other countries...and the extreme opposite end of the spectrum countries seem to be the main problem countries that Rice is talking about...Iran, North Korea, etc

Let alone the fundamental flaw that no country can completely fit this mold as in ANY country if you were to go into the town square and state your opinion, and your opinion happened to be "I hate this country and I intend to go on a killing spree and blow up many buildings and kill millions of people", I don't care what country it is, you should face consequences...so the scale is clearly relative

5/2/2007 7:12:13 PM

On the downward spiral thing, out of curiosity, at what point in our county's history would those of you that feel we are on a downward spiral say that we were freer than we are now? Now I mean this on the whole because anyone can find a specific right where we are less free than before (I can come up with plenty myself) but has the country as a whole, ever been more free than it is now? I'm not saying our freedom is going up. Quite the contrary, I think freedom on the whole has stayed suprisingly the same, which I view as a bad thing, but I don't feel that we are any less free than we were before.

And yes, this is a serious question, I'm honestly curious.

5/2/2007 7:31:02 PM

Quote :

"at what point in our county's history would those of you that feel we are on a downward spiral say that we were freer than we are now?"

September 10th, 2001.

5/2/2007 7:39:35 PM

In the early 1900s it was a generally accepted cultural principle that whatever substance you wanted to put in your body was your business and no one else's.

5/2/2007 7:43:32 PM

^^^^ ok, i agree with that, but everybody knows that rice's second sentence is just bullshit:

Quote :

"We cannot rest until every person living in a "fear society" has finally won their freedom.""

yeah right

time and again, decades after decades, and even till today, it is painfully obvious to anyone that the US is more than happy to turn a blind eye to the human rights abuses of countries, including those of brutal dictatorships as long as those countries tow the line, and assist the US in anyway.

and on the flip side, the US attacks and overthrows even democractically elected leaders if the leaders oppose the US in anyway.

everybody knows that the US (gov) doesn't shed a tear for any of the oppressed people in the world, and that We cannot rest until every person living in a "fear society" has finally won their freedom is just a front for the international policy of the US. that's the reason the US gives the world when taking some military action (oh the poor oppressed iraqis, etc), but those are never the real reasons.

and this is how it has been for centuries.

i mean, darfur, hello? that's like 10x as bad as iraq ever was under saddam. but does the US care? of course not, because there would be no economic or geopolitical advantage gained from liberating the darfurians.

ivory coast?
zimbabwe?
ghana?

etc.

[Edited on May 2, 2007 at 7:45 PM. Reason : ]

5/2/2007 7:44:09 PM

Quote :

"everybody knows that the US (gov) doesn't shed a tear for any of the oppressed people in the world, and that We cannot rest until every person living in a "fear society" has finally won their freedom is just a front for the international policy of the US."

That's true, sadly. I wish we did actually (and peacefully) promote freedom across the global. Bush and company talk a good fight sometimes.

Quote :

"and this is how it has been for centuries."

There's not much sign of it changing, either.

[Edited on May 2, 2007 at 8:03 PM. Reason : d]

5/2/2007 8:02:57 PM

forgot to give examples of each kind:

countries which are some of the most brutal suppressors of human rights (at the state level), but they get a free pass bc they are with the US in the "war on terror":

kazakhstan
uzbekistan
turkmenistan
saudi arabia

there are lots more i am sure



countries that are harassed by the US (bc their leaders don't tow the line) even though they have democracy and relative freedom, at least definitely compared to the countries above:

see blood-stained history of US in latin/central/south america between the 60s and 80s.

5/2/2007 8:09:33 PM

I try not to think about American foreign policy. It makes me too angry.

US leaders still don't give a damn about the lives of foreigners. The American public doesn't seem to either. Our government murders countless people across the globe and gets a pass. (Assassinations conducted by drones are a perfect example of this.)

So it goes.

5/2/2007 8:17:06 PM

Quote :

"In the early 1900s it was a generally accepted cultural principle that whatever substance you wanted to put in your body was your business and no one else's."

In the early 1900's it was also generally accepted cultural principle that your skin color (and in some places ethnic background) determined what rights or priveleges you enjoyed. Also, the early 1900's did see prohibition (we just never learned). I'd say between then and now, it's a net wash.

5/2/2007 9:24:16 PM

Generally I agree with the principle, if not perhaps the vehemence, of what 0EPII1 is saying. Condi was being a hypocrite, absolutely, but unfortunately that's the type of hypocrisy that any of the free-er socieites on Earth will have to use in their efforts to pander -- perhaps that they must use.

I say "must" for the simple fact that we can't tackle all of the oppressive regimes in the world at once. All this talk about other asshole countries that we're currently aligned with has some merit, especially if you work with the underlying assumption that American governments are all assholes at heart.

But when Hitler and Stalin were racing to see who could kill the most civilians the fastest, we wouldn't have stopped either by facing both. Similarly now, we can't go into the many places where horrible oppression, tyranny, and abuse are occuring. Don't waste your time telling me we should be doing more -- much more -- because I agree. But I think that fundamentally it is the goal of most people, and at least of a fairly large portion of those in government, to eventually stop these regimes.

Many no doubt start out with that intent and then, as time passes, become jaded; the magnitude of the problem is vast, and after a while you start to settle for less and less. Still others truly are just bastards who want the resources and not the liberation. More yet still want to do greater things, but recognize -- rightfully so, at the moment -- that the American and global political environment will not allow it. Many, I think, simply know that it can't be done all at once, and so they're willing to work with a lesser devil to put paid to a greater one, and then work their way down the food chain. It's the system we've been following for the last century, and it seems to work. There are no more true fascists, our communists are less dangerous and brutal, and the various other dicatorships less numerous and potent. The fact that Iraq was even somewhat high on the asshole chain is, under a certain logic, a good sign.

But eventually, through various methods, there will be enough relatively free countries in the world, with enough resolve, that things will happen along these lines. That has been the inexorable course of human history.

And to get people motivated to do anything at all, you have to say shit like Condi said. It blows, and the way the current administration has handled it is certainly not even approaching the ideal, but I don't think it is the pure and unmitigated wrong that some take it to be.

5/2/2007 11:04:43 PM

The map was for CounterStrike

(a game where you can play counter-terrorist, or terrorist)

[Edited on May 3, 2007 at 10:09 AM. Reason : description for non-gamers]

5/3/2007 10:08:07 AM

Quote :

"It's the system we've been following for the last century, and it seems to work."

If so, it's worked at staggering human cost. That aspect remains with us today. If Iraq ever does become a free and prosperous country, she'll have paid for it with rivers of blood.

5/3/2007 4:23:42 PM

Quote :

"If Iraq ever does become a free and prosperous country, she'll have paid for it with rivers of blood. "

kinda like the USA

5/3/2007 4:27:27 PM

Indeed.

In fact, that means all the violence over there is actually a good sign.

5/3/2007 4:44:56 PM