NSA - The Day We Fight Back

[VamyreLord]

So who are the NSA again? And what are there purpose?

[EnigmaGrey]

So who are the NSA again? And what are there purpose?

National Secretarial Association.

They monitor and report all their boss's doings.

[silents429]

*cough*

So how about that weather

[plekpot]

 

But this is exactly an "I have nothing to be afraid of if I have nothing to hide" attitude… do you disagree with that article? If so, I find that rather… startling.

 

As for politicians- I'm not saying they aren't savvy, or aren't smart. I'm saying the system as it stands has a much higher probability of bringing in the wrong people- people who only want power and to retain that power, regardless of their intelligence. There are very few politicians that I honestly believe are actually trying to serve the people, and of those only a handful that I think actually have the intellect to back it up. The very few that are both, are so entrapped by the system that even should they try to reform and make changes, they'd just be kicked out of office and disowned by their own parties as has actually happened countless times in the U.S.

 

And as I stated pretty directly before- no, we can't really make any big difference. In a bipartisan system, both sides inevitably drift towards the center. In a bipartisan system set up like the U.S. or England, there is no possible way an outsider could step in and win. It's literally impossible in any major way. There's no possibility that an outside party could just step in some day and win because the government itself is set up to support the two parties it already has- they get grants for advertising and they already have their pockets lined massively by the donations of both individuals and corporations. They are already ingrained in the minds of the people and have a firm foothold in every community in the entire country. It's simply ridiculous to think that anyone could ever compete with that outside of revolution (or outside influence)- which is the only way I see any change happening.

 

Too many people are too complacent to ever change within the system. For every one person in America who has a brain and the motivation to try to change, there are a hundred thousand who will vote down the side of the ticket they support without ever looking at a name. As I said before, I'm a cynical bastard and I find it highly naive to think that change within the system is possible at this point- there's far too much infrastructure supporting the two already in power, and there's no option for rational thinking within the two parties (because it benefits both of them to always play towards inaction, nonconfrontational, and 'safe' options).

 

Yeah, I agree with you there on a two party state, nothing would ever change. That's my main beef with majority democracy, it is a more decisive system though. I'm from Belgium and we use a system of proportional representation, parties have to work hard to get votes and most aren't afraid to proclaim strong ideas. There'll be a party you can choose to vote for that fits with your opinion. The main problem with this form of government is that it's not very decisive and coalitions have to be formed (with is not always a bad thing though).

 

My main fear is that the Intelligence Organisations get so powerful that the directors hold the actual power in a government through blackmail of members of parliament or government. If you know every little thing there is to know about someone it's very easy to manipulate that person to do you bidding.

The government can easily (if the NSA get monitored well) use all the data it has gathered to prevent any change from happening.

[Keepbro]

^^

Directors of Intelligence have always had power. Its a given. What's worrying is when they are by structural institution unsackable. Look at Hoover in the USA or for a more extreme example Stalin during Lenin's years.

Thankfully though these days the position of Intelligence supremo is usually very constrained to prevent precisely the situation people are worried about. They will report to several boards of inquiry and panels designed just for the purpose of making sure they don't overstep their bounds. The sad truth is that all Snowden allegations had government approval. They had been signed off on so to speak. This is why Obama and Cameron don't really give a shit about the furore. Its how things are done and its going to get done regardless because to not do it is to give a huge advantage to, for instance , the Chinese who already have considerable tech capability and built a giant firewall around China just to prevent this thing from happening so kudos to them.

As for the drift of politics toward the centre well that's because most peoples politics are generally central. I find it increasingly rare to meet a die hard fascist or budding Che Guevara revolutionary. Most people are centrist with a mix of policies from either side. Take me in that I support Tory business ethics and their austerity plan (even though its nowhere near good enough) but then approve heartily of welfare systems and free healthcare (because without them I'd probably have starved to death or died of starvation due to the freaky throat I was born with and needed operating on)

As for effective change being impossible that's just down to gumption. Sorry to be so harsh but it is. Just because there are 300 million US people and 60 million cynical Brits whose minds need to be changed doesn't mean it can't be done. It has been done. In fact it is done every day. Its just that countries are big. You shouting or tweeting or blogging or talking to one person at time isn't going to change much. You have to really make a career out of it and devote yourself to it fully. It takes time, thank god because I don't want to live in a country where something like SOPA can be passed overnight. You do make a difference. I have influenced my local council into some sweet deals for new businesses by pushing for them - I helped to get the council to realise that by offering incentives to new businesses in run down areas they could both help entrepreneurs and fix empty shops at the same time. Now I flatter myself that without me it wouldn't have happened but I was influential in our small traders association and we collectively got it passed. It just takes organisation and passion to get things changed.

[Rathlord]

There's nothing wrong with being centrist with your policies; the problem comes when both parties are so centrist that there's very little realistic difference in the two. When this happens it fits both of the parties to be as mild and un-extraordinary as possible, and further to actually actively fight against people in their own parties whose view isn't centrist enough. That is unarguably wrong; in 100% of cases it leads to a stagnant government that will never change on its own.

 

As for making change- it's very nice that you made change in your community. But even if the five most influential politicians in America stood up, together, and addressed the American people and gave a perfectly rational argument for, say, just to pick a heavily contended topic, gun control, it still wouldn't happen. Pretending that in such an awkward and bloated system that we can truly effect it is the height of hubris. The point of a democratic republic like the U.S. (to be able to elect representatives that mirror our views) has already fallen apart in an absolutely ineffable way as described above.

[N.S.A]

Under the federal Documentation of legal Permissions of the National Security Agency 22.3B, section 45, Subsection 6;

 

"The National Security Agency of the United States Of America can perform any action to counter whatever it considers a national security issue. Not limited to spying on individuals or communities, hacking their electronic devices, or any other third thing its leadership chooses."

 

 

 

This thread will be deleted immediately by the website's administration, failure to comply will result in an automatic purge of all data and backups from the servers that this site is hosted on. We're not even joking.

 

 

Thank you

 

- National Security Agency of the USA

[Ewok]

FAO Mod - Fight the power, give the NSA a warning point! That'll show them!

Edit - They're clearly not being lovely!

[Kirrus]

Ahem. That's not the NSA

[Rathlord]

Isn't posing as a federal agent a felony?

[EnigmaGrey]

Yes, AirborneM4, isn't it a felony?

Edited February 15, 2014 by kirrus
The missing 'it' annoyed me too much. Sorry.

[silents429]

Can the forums make our own system of punishment where we burn felonist on the stakes?

[AirborneM4]

Yes, AirborneM4, isn't it a felony?

 

Yeah i suppose it is. It's also a felony to ignore the NSA.

[EnigmaGrey]

Can the forums make our own system of punishment where we burn felonist on the stakes?

Alas, no.

We simply discourage and re-educate. If all efforts fail, exile.

 

[Keepbro]

Strangely enough for years I used to think a felony was a sexual act (although conceivably it could be argued that it is as it usually means the justice system screwing someone).

 

America is a vast country. It should take more than 5 politicians no matter how influential banding together to change something. It should really take about 30 or 40 and preferably at least one from each state. Now I'm ignorant of the intricacies of American politics but I know it is possible for new parties to form and it is possible for parties to come out of nowhere and start running things. I'm fairly sure that the current republican party is only a century or so old so it is not an impossible task to make change happen. But what I find truly worrying is the inherent cynicism of people today and more the sort of feeling that something feels insurmountable so lets not bother which is fucking FATAL to any project or endeavor that anyone wants to embark upon. We live in an age of true wonder where the ability to create, innovate, communicate, fornicate, masturbate and recreate is truly staggering. And people seem to be stuck in a rut of not trying because other better people are already doing it or there's too many people not doing it or there seems to be money in it or people are stupid and wont change or a huge list of reasons for not doing stuff.

 

Democratic change is a snowball effect. It starts small and then rolls into a huge boulder smashing everything in its path.

[plekpot]

I'd like to give the example of the one party I can think of where this effect was most significant, the Nazi party. Now, I'm not equating any up-and-coming nor currently large parties to Nazis, by the way. Nor am I praising the Nazis.

 

The Nazis started small. When Hitler joined, in 1919, there were 7 members. Not many, eh? But they built up.

But by 1933 they were the the only ministers in the Reichstag.  That's a long sounding time, long enough for a lot of people to just give up. Adolf himself was imprisoned for standing up for his party (albeit, in the wrong way). He stayed true to keeping his party on top and he kept going hard even when things looked bleak.

Well, these days you can't sent your SA hooligans to make other parties look bad, and most other scare tactics, which weren't right in the first place. But if you sit there going "Woe is me! Nothing will ever change! We're fucked!" then it most probably is.

It can take a long time, but if you want to bring around massive change it's going to need massive dedication. People always go on about "Yeah, there'll be a revolution!" and "We'll riot and/or protest our freedoms!" but this apparently doesn't work, as shown. Politics are too big and close-knit to just give in to the little man's demands any more, the only way for him to be heard is to grow up, you know?

That was a completely different social and economic context. Germany never had a history of democracy and the Weimar republic was something new to them. Everywhere in Europe communism and facism became popular due to the inefficient and/or non-response to the Great Depression, this was a breeding ground for extremism. The NSDAP grew exponentially by trying to appeal to everyone (and not always delivering) and by forcing smaller nationalist parties to fuse with them. They pressed all the right buttons to get as many people as possible to vote for them like state provided jobs and using the Jews as a scapegoat for the loss of WWI. Many people didn't react to the agressive expansion because democracy had never done much for them and they longed for a return to power after the humilation of WWI.

PS: It is easier to change something if there is a system of proportional representation

[Rathlord]

America is a vast country. It should take more than 5 politicians no matter how influential banding together to change something. It should really take about 30 or 40 and preferably at least one from each state. Now I'm ignorant of the intricacies of American politics but I know it is possible for new parties to form and it is possible for parties to come out of nowhere and start running things. I'm fairly sure that the current republican party is only a century or so old so it is not an impossible task to make change happen

 

There have been a couple of name shifts along the way, but the current two parties have been in power since the formation of our country. In fact, it's the exact opposite of what you're suggesting- since the day our country was formed the number of parties has grown less and less, not more and more. There has never been a large scale successful party added to our political system (at least not in the last 200 years). As I mentioned above, the system inherently blocks new parties- it very intentionally prohibits them from being successful, because that benefits those in power already.

 

I get the whole mentality of 'we can do it, we can make change happen' but there is a very real possibility that I think shouldn't be ignored that a system is so prohibitive of change that it's impossible without working outside of the system. That possibility is inarguably there. Whether we're to that point is surely open for debate; however, the fact that it's possible isn't. And I'm of the opinion that given the size of America, the complacency of the public, and the intentionally status quo favoring system that we don't stand a chance of making meaningful change.

It doesn't make it unreasonable to try and start a new party. My point was things can happen if you keep trying over time, I was only using the Nazis for an analogy. 

 

It's a broken analogy, though, and broken analogies don't prove points. Germany's situation was completely incomparable to the U.S.'s. They were a desperate, broken people and were facing massive economic problems with effects that most U.S. citizens can't even comprehend. If the people of America were starving and freezing to death, sure we might well effect change then. But until that point...

[Rathlord]

I'm not going to pretend for a second that my attitude is helpful- I never once claimed that =D

[syfy]

you try giving it a go, see how that goes. others will continue to angrily blog about it, as they always have, always will.

 

 

 

at the end of the day, it won't matter. "They" will continue to do what they want, when they want, however they want.

we lost the war for relative privacy and anonymity long before 98% of the people knew it was even being fought.

[Keepbro]

^^

I love the phrase "they" as if the global Illuminati bilderberg banking lizard people control everything.

Please don't think that I am ridiculing YOU but just the notion that a global power group exists that can stop people from doing stuff. If you have EVER gone into a local council group or even stood in the public gallery of Westminster or Congress then you'll realize that the miracle of democracy is that we ever agreed to work by it in the first place.

But that opinion is linking back to what I said about people not bothering to vote or lobby for change because its too big for them to handle. Its not. If you can organize voices you can make change happen and there are organizations that make this happen.

I think a few of them might be run by lizard people but don't quote me on that.

[syfy]

I use the phrase "They" to simplify things, much easier and more Orwellian to do it that way than to list the various alphabet soup organizations that have been previously discussed in here.

 

BTW, it is not the Lizard people. it is the group whose name i forgot that have a floating pyramid in the sky above Mount Shasta in California. only the Enlightened Ones can see the pyramid.......and of course MIB

[Kajin]

You think the Lizard people control everything? HAH! While they remain in power, it is only a transitory situation... Just wait until the Mole men and the Mooninites finish signing the paperwork for an alliance... THEN the Lizard folk will be sorry! Oh, how they will rue the day...

 

Sorry, political discourse makes me silly.

[uberevan]

The bigger the fire gets, the harder it is to put out...If we keep letting them gain moar powr then they can eventually get to a point where we have to all out battle for freedom.

"If you have a government that is powerful enough to give you everything you want, you have a government that is powerful enough to take it all away" ~Thomas Jefferson

[Keepbro]

Sorry to throw water on the American God of politic theory but he has been dead for 200 years. And he was dealing with an authoritarian government that took months to get a message from point a to b in a country that already was independent of the mother country long before he came along so I always thought he had it easy.

 

More modern political theorists had a much harder time. Look at Stalin who was imprisoned in Siberia several times and ran a criminal network or Mao who at one point had 1.5 million soldiers actively trying to kill his small army of 15000 or Castro who had to invade an island guarded by an army (probably the hardest military operation to do). Looking at more democratic theorists look at Haclav who defied the Russians at their height or what Kyi is doing in Burma,

 

All of these people are far more authoritative on political theory IMO than Jefferson who in any case espoused the ideals of the French Revolution at the height of the Terror when Robespierre was being charming to lots of people.

[Rathlord]

If you're arguing that dictators are more authoritative on political theory I don't really know how to move forward from here. You're arguing from an entirely different platform than everyone else, and that's not really what this debate is about at all. That's… something for another thread, another time.

 

Also, the amount of "hardship" a person goes through in no way affects their intelligence or their correctness, that's a vastly flawed argument.