RC
RC's JournalWhat is the real difference between Bradly Manning and Edward Snowden?
Both exposed illegal actions, policies that our government should not be doing in the first place and want to keep secret.
Bradly Manning blew the whistle and went through channels as was supposed to be done. Look what happened and is still happening to him.
Edward Snowden, learned from the treatment of Bradly Manning and so did not go through the "proper channels". The real reason he is now a fugitive is not so much because he did not go through those proper channels, but because he exposed illegal actions and policies of our government, as Bradly Manning did. That is why Bradly Manning is being made an example of and why our government wants to make an example of Edward Manning. To stop others from exposing their corruption.
Our government cannot control us, if people keep exposing their wrong, unconstitutional, unlawful and illegal activities and policies and other excesses. If too many people thought they can get away with exposing the corruption of our government, "We the people..." would then be an informed populous and therefore be in a position to fix that corruption and get control of our government back to the people, where it belongs.
To denigrate either Bradly Manning or Edward Snowden or any other person that exposes the wrong doing of our government, is in itself helping the enemy gain and maintain control of all of us, for that enemy is people within our own government.
You are assuming those judges are needed in the first place.
If we were not such a war mongering, paranoid country, meddling in everyone else's business in the first place, none of these secret courts would be needed. Neither would we have all this wholesale invasion of privacy, 4th Amendment violations and unconstitutional sweeps of e-mail and web surfing on everyone.
The paths are mislabeled.
The signs should read, Right and Farther Right. The really sad part is that this cartoon is depiction of our National elections.
Between the candidates chosen for us to vote for, or against as the case may be, their lying themselves into office, and the dodgy, paperless Touch Screen voting machines, gerrymandering, hanging chads, ballot stuffing, missing ballots, and other shenanigans, we have little say and no control over our government. "We the people..." are little more than window dressing, stage props, to maintain the illusion of Democracy, till it is no longer needed.
A good reading of the Constitution should make anyone question the difference between the words and their meaning, "on that piece of paper" and the actions of our federal government.
The differences keep getting greater and greater.
We are less and less a nation of laws and more and more a nation of policies, where agency administrates reinterpret the laws for their benefit. Even to the point of making up their own rules, which they then use with the force of law, to cover their unconstitutional and illegal actions.
Secret courts, rubber stamps, Star Chambers, wholesale spying... Hundreds of billions of dollars spent to steal and store all of our private communications, using "splitter rooms", for later combing, to silence and/or control people.
Are these the actions of a representative democracy? While some here would tell you they are, they most definitely are not. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
And I will continue to to maintain they are in violation of the 4th, among other Amendments
of the US Constitution.Complicity in allowing the NSA to do what they are doing, is also in violation of the Constitution. NSA is still a rogue agency, legal or otherwise, by the very nature of what they are doing. It doesn't matter whether the Administration, the Congress or the Supreme Court approves or not. Approval makes them complicit in the unconstitutional law breaking.
To make what the NSA is doing actually legal, the Constitution would need to be changed.
Obama is the Head of State of the United States of America
And as such, he should be in the loop somewhere as to what is going on with the NSA.
If he is not, why not? That would make the NSA a rogue agency. In that case, why isn't Obama taking steps to rein it in?
The Secret War
INFILTRATION. SABOTAGE. MAYHEM. FOR YEARS, FOUR-STAR GENERAL KEITH ALEXANDER HAS BEEN BUILDING A SECRET ARMY CAPABLE OF LAUNCHING DEVASTATING CYBERATTACKS. NOW IT’S READY TO UNLEASH HELL.
Inside Fort Meade, Maryland, a top-secret city bustles. Tens of thousands of people move through more than 50 buildings—the city has its own post office, fire department, and police force. But as if designed by Kafka, it sits among a forest of trees, surrounded by electrified fences and heavily armed guards, protected by antitank barriers, monitored by sensitive motion detectors, and watched by rotating cameras. To block any telltale electromagnetic signals from escaping, the inner walls of the buildings are wrapped in protective copper shielding and the one-way windows are embedded with a fine copper mesh.
>SNIP<
Alexander runs the nation’s cyberwar efforts, an empire he has built over the past eight years by insisting that the US’s inherent vulnerability to digital attacks requires him to amass more and more authority over the data zipping around the globe. In his telling, the threat is so mind-bogglingly huge that the nation has little option but to eventually put the entire civilian Internet under his protection, requiring tweets and emails to pass through his filters, and putting the kill switch under the government’s forefinger. “What we see is an increasing level of activity on the networks,” he said at a recent security conference in Canada. “I am concerned that this is going to break a threshold where the private sector can no longer handle it and the government is going to have to step in.”
In its tightly controlled public relations, the NSA has focused attention on the threat of cyberattack against the US—the vulnerability of critical infrastructure like power plants and water systems, the susceptibility of the military’s command and control structure, the dependence of the economy on the Internet’s smooth functioning. Defense against these threats was the paramount mission trumpeted by NSA brass at congressional hearings and hashed over at security conferences.
But there is a flip side to this equation that is rarely mentioned: The military has for years been developing offensive capabilities, giving it the power not just to defend the US but to assail its foes. Using so-called cyber-kinetic attacks, Alexander and his forces now have the capability to physically destroy an adversary’s equipment and infrastructure, and potentially even to kill. Alexander—who declined to be interviewed for this article—has concluded that such cyberweapons are as crucial to 21st-century warfare as nuclear arms were in the 20th.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/?p=58188
The pathalogicial paranoia of our country is unparalleled in the history of the world. We give our technology to other countries, so that later we can turn them into the "Enemy" we, in our psychos, need to function. We topple governments for short term gains, then later when they fail to do our bidding for whatever reason, we go to war with them. Blaming THEM for for the results of OUR actions, as the excuse for military action. Talk about your Sting Operations. We do it on a world scale. How long till the rest of the world gets tired of our meddling and pushes back?
Would it not make more sense to not be making enemies of the rest of the world in the first place? Trust has to be earned. Once gone, is very hard to regain. Where is the trust the rest of the world once had in us, US, The United States of America? For who do we trust? Like the pathologically paranoid, we trust no one, not even those we need to help us in our delusions.
Oh, I understand the difference all right. Do you?
Our government uses the difference between the two systems as a weapon.
We invaded their (Afghanistan) country. They were/are civilians, fighting invaders (US) in their country. What is so hard to get here? We invaded them!
If we were not in their country, they could do us no harm. Besides, what did they have to do with our reason for we being in their country in the first place? Nothing, absolutely nothing.
bin Laden was a Saudi Arabian, not an Iraqi, nor an Afghanistan. Was he military? Not hardly. Why didn't we lay waste to Saudi Arabia, instead of invading the paper tiger, Iraq and after that, a country so stone aged they barely had a government? And then, once we had bin Laden trapped in Tora Bora, we let him escape! Our military on the scene, were told to stand down. They watched the helicopters come in, pick up bin Laden and his lieutenants and and fly back out, unimpeded. If we had caught him, we would have lost our excuse for war there. Couldn't be having any of that, now could we?
Picture this: This country, The U.S., gets invaded. You, as a civilian fight back, defending your country against this foreign invader. You get captured and transported to their country. Should you be tried in their military courts, because they said you broke their laws? You wore no uniform. All you did was try to defend your own neighborhood from this outsider. So now you are an enemy combatant, for daring to fight an invader that was killing your follow country men?
Or do you think we should just let them come in and take over?
To truly understand a situation, you must see and understand it from the other perspective. You don't have to agree, just understand where they are coming from.
You do realize that Obamacare is a slightly reworked version of Romneycare?
And that Romneycare was birthed in the Republican think tank, Heritage Foundation?Where is the public Option? Why do we not even have that available?
Why are we the only industrialized nation not to have some from of Single Payer, Universal Health Care?
What does the rest of the world know that we do not know? Apparently, quite a lot.
That is Obamacare on the left. Not much really changed from before, except more people are "covered".
On the right, what most of the rest of the world enjoys.
Yeah, it is pathetic, but who the attackers and the attackees are, are not who you seem to think they are.
That depends.
Do you think the 4th Amendment only applies insides your home? And sometimes only if you own it?
What do you think of the Local, State and Federal governments, tear gassing and using rubber bullets on peaceful demonstrations against the actions of a government acting counter to the US Constitution, or normal laws in effect? (Article I)
What do you think of Bradly Manning being tortured and held prisoner, in isolation, without access to an attorney, for over a year? (Article V & VI)
It seems to me, most people of average of better intelligence should be able to figure that out for themselves. Even though the national news is heavily based to the Right, there is still enough information getting through from other sources, we should be able to figure out the real facts and determine the truth after a while. We just have to take the time look.
Think of the news as a puzzle, you have to put together to see the complete picture.
With enough pieces, with the picture beginning to emerge, any pieces in the wrong place or that do not belong soon become obvious.
The trick is to question, do not blindly accept what you were first told, especially later, when too may pieces to not fit the picture.
Sorry, but I don't have any voices in my head.
I see problems as puzzles. I see life as a puzzle. Information are the pieces needed to see the whole picture. With enough pieces, problems, and life makes sense. That is how I solve problems. If a piece seems to fit at the time, but later I notice the pieces around it look different, then that piece is either in the wrong place or doesn't even belong in the puzzle in the first place. I take that piece out. I do not make excuses as to why it should remain in place, when it obviously does not belong there. That is my reality. That is my world. Also, I have a fairly strong sense of right and wrong. If any of the puzzle pieces look funny according to its surroundings, I check out why.
Being on the Left politically, I'm like Will Rogers says,
He said this back when being a Democrat meant something, because Democrats back when said it, [u[were were Left of Center, unlike now.
Now we have many Democrats with Right of Center mind sets, as witness by their supporting of paranoid Republican values, such as excusing the wholesale spying on the citizenry. Trying to pass off the illegal and morally reprehensible as legal and proper because somebody's talking point said so.
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Gender: MaleHometown: North Dakota
Home country: US of A
Current location: Kansas City MO
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 25,592
