Vrede wrote:Do you deny that his mission, as he defines it and has defined it all along, has been accomplished?
I deny that his "mission" is or was ever as he defines it. Further, I taunt him for saying "...I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA," he said. "I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don't realize it."..." and I fart in his general direction. I also fart in the general direction of NSA who hired and didn't manage this all-knowing, all-wise "gift".
BTW, sorry you're having to work the holiday, Vrede, thank you for being there.
Vrede wrote:It's cool, thanks, I get bonus pay even though I would have volunteered on behalf of those with young kids without it. Plus, holiday shifts are usually easier than normal . . . unless Santa slips off a roof in WNC. Bye now.
Snowden said from the start that he wanted to spark a US conversation that was largely being unheard. He did that in spades and it is looking like some things will change, which is more than he ever called for directly. Any other supposed mission is just speculation so far.
If Shrub's mission had been to destabilize the region, kill hundreds of thousands, waste trillions of dollars, and get thousands of GIs and mercenaries killed while creating an al Qaeda where there was none before and not finding nonexistent WMDs, his banner would have been correct.
Ah, but you reference what Shrub did, not what his mission was. Everybody knows he just wanted to spark a conversation about negotiating a golden parachute and exit with dignity for Saddam Hussein.
...U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon found that the program appears to violate the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. He also said the Justice Department had failed to demonstrate that collecting the information had helped to head off terrorist attacks...
The links were a little bit of a challenge to follow - and the "civil liberties" link seems to be permanently 404'd. A quote from the "press" section seems not to be trashing ol' #23 all that much..
"The United States remains one of the stronger performers in the index, but it faces several challenges, including a threat to media diversity stemming from poor economic conditions for the news industry, and a lack of protection-of-sources legislation at the federal level. During 2012, the limited willingness of high-level government officials to provide access and information to members of the press was noted as a concern."
If there was an actual ranking list for the press, I couldn't find it, but I am reminded that if you set your selection criteria right, you can arrive at Minneapolis as the USA's "Most Livable City" (fer real). Not that I think the USA is a freedom utopia, but dinging the "freedom of the press" because "high level government officials" don't want to give information to the press? Seriously?
Yes, different sources on different topics to support the hypothesis. Nothing wrong with that. I just couldn't find anything in one place that was simple enough for my limited attention span. F'rinstance, what was determined to be the "freest country"? But "effectiveness" of the press is not the same as "freedom" of the press, which as you know simply defines the limits if any to which a government can restrict what the "press" can print (or say, or upload).
Vrede wrote:Wouldn't that kind of freedom be meaningless if, say, there was no access at all to information from high level government officials? It shouldn't be the only determinant but I'm okay with adding where we are on the access continuum to other measures.
I think a better argument could be made that "freedom" to publish information readily given by the high level government officials is thinly veiled propaganda. Freedom to publish what they didn't want to tell you, and do so without getting shot or banished to Mississippi is a bit more valuable. So who were the top 22?
I found the list from the first press reference, after digging through the long form original article. In context, 23 isn't particularly bad, especially since the top 60-something are all officially designated as "free." Of the top group, it's minor differences that could make a difference in 5th or 20th.
Vrede wrote:The point is that we're not close to being the “freest country on earth”, not that we're East Germany.
I'm not one who has ever claimed the US is the "freest country on earth", nor would I particularly argue it isn't. I don't put much weight on "best of...worst of..." except as light entertainment. Is Asheville "beer city" or is it Portland? Or really somewhere else that wasn't on the nomination list? Is North Dakota really one of the top 3 best run states, and if so, who cares? Is it really healthier to live in Seattle than Miami? Maybe, maybe not - depends on the criteria you measure. And whether the criteria you select actually matters.
I think the US has way too many people in prisons and jails. I think for the most part that punishment ought to be used only for violent criminals. I think there are a lot of people incarcerated for things that shouldn't be crimes in the first place. I think some prison terms are too long for the crime. But without some explanation or comparison offered other than the simple per capita incarceration rate, that list is no less silly than the Asheville-Portland beer issue. So, looking elsewhere, we find (no surprise) that tough sentencing laws, record numbers of drug offenders and high crime rates seem to be the most significant contributors to having the highest incarceration rate. About half of federal prisoners are in for drug-related crimes. Change one thing - drug laws or drug enforcement/sentencing - and the rate would plummet. Canada has similar laws, but is #133 on the list. Different enforcement or different sentencing? Egypt is #166, right behind Libya - shall we really use incarceration rate as a measure of "freedom?" This incarceration list, with a little backup data, makes a good case for re-working drug laws. It doesn't make much of a case for the US being among the less free.
Well, you could argue that de-criminalization of drug use/sales would make US citizens MORE free - and more free than most anywhere else in the world insofar as drug use goes. But when most everybody has laws against drug use/sales (whether or not aggressively enforced) I don't think you can say it's that much a black mark against US freedom that we've got the same or similar ones. My issue is in the use of incarceration rates as a measure of overall freedom. Chad and Somalia have better rates. Are they more "free"? Seriously?
What's the deal with "freest country"? Somebody might have said so - I didn't. Any estimation of that would in any case be somewhat subjective even if using some objective criteria. I looked for the other parts of the lists - civil liberties was a dead link, freedom of the press is kinky, so I moved on to the incarceration rate. My point on incarceration is that if countries like Chad and Somalia are way better than the US, it seems that incarceration rate is pretty irrevelant in making a "freest" guess. Now if you want to show that a large percentage of those incarcerated are there without due process or are there for trumped-up kangaroo courted Boss Hogg charges, and that those abuses are what's causing the high rate...then you've got a point. Ummm, I said "high percentage" not a few instances, which of course are easy to find.
Vrede wrote: The country that imprisons the most can't be the freest, regardless of whether it's more free for other reasons than select absurd comparisons.
Of course it could. Not that I'm necessarily arguing that it is. But if the US, for example, had the highest murder rate in the world, the highest violent crime rate in the world, then having the highest incarceration rate wouldn't be a bad thing, would it? But it is neither silly nor irrevelant to bring up Chad and Somalia. Either the incarceration rate is relevant to freedom or it's not. If it is, then we have to agree that Chad and Somalia are more free than the US. If we say that they are not more free than the US, then the incarceration rate is not a reliable measure of freedom, be it high or low.
Vrede wrote:...
I get that we both enjoy these rhetorical exchanges but your carrying it to the extreme of "Of course" the country that imprisons the most can be the freest is too far out there for me to bother with. More subtlety next time.
Sorry - I'm not usually much of an absolutist. But "Of course it could" is no more extreme than "the country with the most incarcerations can't be the freest regardless..." I simply offered a plausible way that that situation could occur. I think the term "freest country" is overly broad, and the criteria selected in the articles are limited in their scope. I picked on incarcerations because it was presented by the article as one of the most significant indicators of low freeness. I did not address military spending because even if I agree that it's outrageous, I don't see the relevance to the level of freedom in the society -unless of course you're going to correlate spending to military oppression or threat of running a coup.
• The US has the highest gun ownership rate in the world - an average of 88 per 100 people. That puts it first in the world for gun ownership - and even the number two country, Yemen, has significantly fewer - 54.8 per 100 people
• But the US does not have the worst firearm murder rate - that prize belongs to Honduras, El Salvador and Jamaica. In fact, the US is number 28, with a rate of 2.97 per 100,000 people
• Puerto Rico tops the world's table for firearms murders as a percentage of all homicides - 94.8%. It's followed by Sierra Leone in Africa and Saint Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean
So does being number one in gun ownership make the US less or more free?
How about the number 28 in firearm murder rate...more free or less free?
Some would define freedom as "just another word for nothing left to lose," and while I don't necessarily agree with that sentiment set forth by Kris and Janis, it's pretty reasonable to think that the concept has numerous and varied definitions. That's why I think the idea of "freest country" is overly broad and won't be proven or disproven by limited sets of data. You're right - to some, the Second Amendment is the epitome of freedom, to others, it might be the First or the Fourth. Certainly there's an argument for the Thirteenth. Overall, though, I think you'd be hard pressed to find many places with a better list of freedom-supporting rights than the US Bill of Rights. Conversely, I'd not argue that US citizens are particularly "more free" than Canadians, UK subjects (although I guess they get a downgrade for not being "citizens") or any of the Nordic countries. I'd say that no matter where they stand on the incarceration list, that Russians are less free, but more so than when they were Soviets.
Yes, that ruling was making a former, temporary ruling permanent. That was another one of Scott's idiot ideas that most expected to be cut down from the start. Did you notice that during the time it was in effect, only 3% of those tested were found positive? To put that in perspective, it is about half the expected percentage of positives for blue collar job applicants, about a third of the expected percentage for roofers. And even with those numbers, and including the Florida workers' comp "discount", those programs are not cost effective for employers and never have been.
He was deputy director and acting director of the CIA from 2000 to 2004.
So somebody with actual credentials in the intelligence community isn't credible? If the topic was global warming, I'd be the one with the scientists, you'd be the one with the journalism guys.
Ah, the common conundrum - those with experience in intelligence work aren't credible because they have a personal interest, and those who have all the answers never had responsibility for the work.
O Really wrote:Ah, the common conundrum - those with experience in intelligence work aren't credible because they have a personal interest, and those who have all the answers never had responsibility for the work.
Not at all. Those with experience in intelligence work aren't credible because they are ass-covering power-mongers who seldom, if ever, have the simple balls to say, "Yeah, we fucked up. We shouldn't be doing this stuff." They aren't credible because they are self-justified in virtually everything they do. The ends always justify the means with these people. Ditto for generals and admirals; it's the privates and seamen and lowly NCOs who get burned and the Nathan Jessups who get to retire with full benefits.
People are crazy and times are strange. I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range.
I used to care, but, things have changed.
