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Are you willing to give your life for privacy


Raptor Witness

Would you be willing to give your life for the privacy of others?  

29 members have voted

  1. 1. In terms of what we now know the NSA is doing, would you be willing to give your life for the privacy of others?

    • Yes
      22
    • No
      2
    • I'm afraid to answer this question for fear of becoming a target of the Justice Department
      5


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It's a question that doesn't require an explanation. In fact, I would prefer if people simply voted and left without an explanation.

I've made it vague enough that you can safely answer, but if you feel you must explain yourself, please be careful with what you say so as not to violate the rules of the road or the law.

This question is more about feelings, than opinion. No explanation necessary, no opinion is required.

Edited by Raptor Witness
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Until faced with that situation, I guess you really wouldnt know. Id strongly like to believe I would.

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A right to privacy as a fundamental human right, there with freedom of speech and so on.

Yes, of course.

But freedom of speech does not include the right to incite rebellion or riot, the right to slander others, even the right to disturb the peace (such as generating noise at night). No right is absolute.

What similar constraints on a right to privacy may be needed? For one, there is no right to engage in criminal conspiracy.

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In terms of what the NSA is doing? No.

Also if one is willing to give their life for this they have nothing to fear from the Justice Department but they are not heros either. Hope to god you are not willing to take a life over what the NSA is doing. If so let us know.

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please be careful with what you say so as not to violate the rules of the road or the law.

Who`s rules and who laws? If someone is whistle blowing, it generally means someone is violating he rules and the laws. People in power can not just decide to have their own laws, but we know they feel they can.

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Edward Snowden is a conscientious objector of the highest order, and a very brave man.

The Guardian wrote a very good editorial about him.

Government is out of control, and so many people condone it. :cry:

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Edward Snowden is a conscientious objector of the highest order, and a very brave man.

The Guardian wrote a very good editorial about him.

Government is out of control, and so many people condone it. :cry:

All that it takes for tyranny to flourish, is for good men to do nothing....

The same people that condone these actions, are the same type of people, who didn't speak out when the Nazis started to round up all the conscientious objectors....the same type of people who watched Germany turn into a police state, and still said nothing, because it didn't affect them....

First they came for the
,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the
,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the
,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the
,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the
,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Catholic.

Then they came for me,

and there was no one left to speak for me.

--- Martin Niemoller

Take a look at this too:

Arrested on 1 July 1937, Niemöller was brought to a "Special Court" on 2 March 1938 to be tried for activities against the State. He was fined 2,000 Reichmarks and received a prison term of seven months. As his detention period exceeded the jail term, he was released by the Court after the trial. However, immediately after leaving the Court, he was rearrested by Himmler's Gestapo—presumably because Rudolf Hess found the sentence too lenient and decided to take "merciless action" against him.[16] He was interned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945.

After his former cell-mate Leo Stein was released from Sachsenhausen to go to America, he wrote an article about Niemöller for The National Jewish Monthly in 1941.[2] Stein reports that having asked Niemöller why he ever supported the Nazi Party, Niemöller replied:

I find myself wondering about that too. I wonder about it as much as I regret it. Still, it is true that Hitler betrayed me. I had an audience with him, as a representative of the Protestant Church, shortly before he became Chancellor, in 1932. Hitler promised me on his word of honor, to protect the Church, and not to issue any anti-Church laws. He also agreed not to allow
against the Jews, assuring me as follows: "There will be restrictions against the Jews, but there will be no ghettos, no pogroms, in Germany."

I really believed, given the widespread anti-Semitism in Germany, at that time—that Jews should avoid aspiring to Government positions or seats in the Reichstag. There were many Jews, especially among the Zionists, who took a similar stand. Hitler's assurance satisfied me at the time. On the other hand, I hated the growing atheistic movement, which was fostered and promoted by the Social Democrats and the Communists. Their hostility toward the Church made me pin my hopes on Hitler for a while.

I am paying for that mistake now; and not me alone, but

In late April 1945 Niemöller was transferred to Tyrol together with about 140 other prominent inmates, where the SS left the prisoners behind. He was liberated by the Fifth U.S. Army on May 5, 1945.[17] According to Lammersdorf, there had been some attempts to whitewash his past, which were, however, soon followed by harsh criticism because of his role as a NSDAP supporter and his attitude toward the Jews.[14] Niemöller himself never denied his own guilt in the time of the Nazi regime. In 1959, he was asked about his former attitude toward the Jews by Alfred Wiener, a Jewish researcher into racism and war crimes committed by the Nazi regime. In a letter to Wiener, Niemöller stated that his eight-year imprisonment by the Nazis became the turning point in his life, after which he viewed things differently.

NOT MY BUSINESS

They picked Akanni up one morning

Beat him soft like clay

And stuffed him down the belly

Of a waiting jeep.

What business of mine is it

So long they don’t take the yam

From my savouring mouth?

They came one night

Booted the whole house awake

And dragged Danladi out,

Then off to a lengthy absence.

What business of mine is it

So long they don’t take the yam

From my savouring mouth?

Chinwe went to work one day

Only to find her job was gone:

No query, no warning, no probe -

Just one neat sack for a stainless record.

What business of mine is it

So long they don’t take the yam

From my savouring mouth?

And then one evening

As I sat down to eat my yam

A knock on the door froze my hungry hand.

The jeep was waiting on my bewildered lawn

Waiting, waiting in its usual silence.

thousands of other persons like me.

---- Niyi Osundare
Edited by Kowalski
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It seems to me comparing the United States situation today with that of NAZI Germany is just too much and completely out of line.

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It seems to me comparing the United States situation today with that of NAZI Germany is just too much and completely out of line.

True enough for now. The point is that Nazi Germany DID exist and that is all the difference today. We have seen what can happen and if we sit idly by and allow a creeping kind of drain on our freedoms then someday, maybe in our children's future, a realization will come that we are no longer who we thought we were and it will be too late to change at a ballot box.
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It seems to me comparing the United States situation today with that of NAZI Germany is just too much and completely out of line.

I don't think it's out of line at all.

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It seems to me comparing the United States situation today with that of NAZI Germany is just too much and completely out of line.

How so? It isnt even close to out of line. You'd have to ignore every single thing that lead up to that nightmare to not see any relevence. They are now openly calling every single one of us terrorist, to which they have power to do what ever it is they wish.

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Obama is certainly not a Hitler, and this sort of fanatical accusation goes beyond, way beyond, dirty politics.

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True enough for now. The point is that Nazi Germany DID exist and that is all the difference today. We have seen what can happen and if we sit idly by and allow a creeping kind of drain on our freedoms then someday, maybe in our children's future, a realization will come that we are no longer who we thought we were and it will be too late to change at a ballot box.

But that is exactly what is going to happen. Conspiracy theorists are going to sit by idly and do nothing. What whine and talk about it? That is not something...

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It seems to me comparing the United States situation today with that of NAZI Germany is just too much and completely out of line.

Your perspective of living in Indochina makes your opinion on this matter not so accurate or informed. You're an expat Frank, which is fine by me, but you are about as good a judge of life in the US today as I am a judge of life in Saigon. I'm not a good judge of life in Saigon. :whistle:

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Obama is certainly not a Hitler, and this sort of fanatical accusation goes beyond, way beyond, dirty politics.

That's true, but we need to make sure that we don't put totalitarians in high places. We need to learn from the past to prevent it, and Hitler and Nazis provide many lessons to us. A Holocaust survivor said that the USA is like Germany in 1935 (IIRC). That was a few years ago.

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Your perspective of living in Indochina makes your opinion on this matter not so accurate or informed. You're an expat Frank, which is fine by me, but you are about as good a judge of life in the US today as I am a judge of life in Saigon. I'm not a good judge of life in Saigon. :whistle:

Utter garbage. Who I am and where I am is ad hominem, and says nothing about the truth of what I say.

I am not an expat. I'm Vietnamese, but I dare say I know more about the States that you guys -- or at least my understanding of it is not so warped by paranoia and conspiracy and all that other extreme stuff.

One thing I have learned about the States is that accusing political enemies of either Fascism or Communism seems to be one of the stocks in trade of dirty politics, and needs to be spoken against in the strongest terms whenever it rears its head.

Edited by Frank Merton
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Utter garbage. Who I am and where I am is ad hominem, and says nothing about the truth of what I say.

I am not an expat. I'm Vietnamese, but I dare say I know more about the States that you guys -- or at least my understanding of it is not so warped by paranoia and conspiracy and all that other extreme stuff.

One thing I have learned about the States is that accusing political enemies of either Fascism or Communism seems to be one of the stocks in trade of dirty politics, and needs to be spoken against in the strongest terms whenever it rears its head.

lol

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That's true, but we need to make sure that we don't put totalitarians in high places. We need to learn from the past to prevent it, and Hitler and Nazis provide many lessons to us. A Holocaust survivor said that the USA is like Germany in 1935 (IIRC). That was a few years ago.

I doubt the Fascist experience will ever be repeated, but other things as bad can happen. Worst cases must always be in our thinking, but not allowed to dominate, as most of the time there is regression to the mean. That the US is like Germany prior to Hitler is absurd. US institutions are relatively healthy and stable, and the US did not just lose a World War.

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Utter garbage. Who I am and where I am is ad hominem, and says nothing about the truth of what I say.

I am not an expat. I'm Vietnamese, but I dare say I know more about the States that you guys -- or at least my understanding of it is not so warped by paranoia and conspiracy and all that other extreme stuff.

One thing I have learned about the States is that accusing political enemies of either Fascism or Communism seems to be one of the stocks in trade of dirty politics, and needs to be spoken against in the strongest terms whenever it rears its head.

Thanks for making it clear Frank, and no ad hom intended by me.

My point was that for any person living in a foreign country, that person's perspective regarding events in any other country, including the US, is limited.

The same rule applies to me. Though I may read the British newspapers daily, my knowledge of British life is necessarily limited if I don't live there. My perspective on British life and affairs is not particularly valid or relevant.

That was my only point.

In fact, the federal government has not governed in accordance with constitutional principles for quite a few years now, and there is no way you can fully appreciate that fact, as so many of us do, unless you live here.

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Utter garbage.

I'm Vietnamese, but I dare say I know more about the States that you guys --

yes you are correct, it is utter garbage. and best joke of the day too. keep them comming. lol

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Nothing disturbs me more than when a person says "Go ahead and listen in on my phone calls, i have nothing to hide"

That shows me right away i am dealing with a person who doesnt understand nor cares about the freedom this nation was founded upon.

And while i agree Obama is not Hitler i am left to ponder... Did Germans back then know they were following "Hitler'?

Did they feel something wasnt quite right when they were blindly giving up everything to the Government?

Its easy to see why people talk the way they do because some of the parallels are there.

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And while i agree Obama is not Hitler i am left to ponder... Did Germans back then know they were following "Hitler'?

In my sig.

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