US planning to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies

[drake]

Big difference between someone snitching about who pushed billy off the monkey bars and who is plotting to murder thousands of people.

Someone in a neighborhood watch program does not take on the role of the police officer, they simply keep an eye out for people who look out of place or suspicious. How that can be detrimental I'm not sure.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by drake
concentration camps, give us all a break please.

See what I mean.

Drake you do know that the government has plans to establish such camps dating back to the '50s. One of the tidbits that came out during Iran-Contra was that North had updated the plans. During a planned invasion of Nicaragua, the Constitution was to be suspended, and half a million leftists (real and suspected) were to be rounded up and "concentrated."



You know you can boil a live frog right? If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, the frog jumps out. But if you drop the frog in a pot of cool water, and slowly turn up the heat, a little bit at a time, the frog's nerves can't tell that it's getting too hot. So the frog sits there, and eventually dies.

We are frogs, and the heat was just turned up a little.


edit: fixing typos.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Oooooh, cool frog analogy!

That deserves a

[Jon Miller]

I will agree we are heading that way, but I do not think we are their yet

Jon Miller

[drake]

This isn't the 50s che. Though you might not want to acknowledge it, a lot has changed since then.

What you never heard that one Immy?

[chequita guevara]

True, but Iran-Contra was less than 20 years ago, and a lotta folks from Reagan's administration are holding the reigns of power again.

You know Cheney and Rumsfeld were the two people in charge of trying to keep Congress from hearing Nixon's tapes back during the Nixon Admiistration. These fookers in our government have a long and deep history of anti-democracy in the US. Do not trust them. They will betray you and every other American.

[drake]

Government aside....how is it fundamentally a bad idea to want to keep an eye on suspicious characters and keep your neighborhood and city safe?

This may not be the best solution to anything but I can guarantee that playing the see no evil, hear no evil game is certainly not any better.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Che, I always wondered about this 'Reagan Administration in power again' claptrap.

Cheney and Rumsfeld weren't in Reagan's inner circle. All the people who were don't work for Bush.

[Lemmy]

This may not be the best solution to anything but I can guarantee that playing the see no evil, hear no evil game is certainly not any better.

But who's advocating that idea?
Just that someone is opposed to this idea means he wants to ignore the evil?

[DanS]

Living in the city, I see a whole lotta evil.

[mactbone]

"I swear officer, she was the one doing all the work."

[Victor Galis]

Government aside....how is it fundamentally a bad idea to want to keep an eye on suspicious characters and keep your neighborhood and city safe?

-Depends on your definition of suspicious. I for one, don't want to suddenly wake up in an Alaskan gulag.

This may not be the best solution to anything but I can guarantee that playing the see no evil, hear no evil game is certainly not any better.

-Wanton throwing away of civil liberties is a lot worse than doing nothing.

[Lemmy]

ok, another thing that bugs me:
The US government is prepared to "recruit" millions of people to stop a possible terrorist act which is likely to happen, to only question would be how long would it take before it happens, and how bad would it be.
9-11 costed ~3000 lives? And that was a one time event.

Now there were 15517 murders in 2000 alone, what is being done about that?
Link: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/guns.htm

[Victor Galis]

My point exactly. The terrorists killed less people than tobacco does in one week, yet now we're all paranoid.

[drake]

Whos paranoid? You?