I can't relate to classical music at all — Jack Cummins
I know that some people think Leonard Cohen is music to commit suicide to. — Jack Cummins
It either is enjoyable or it is not. — Tom Storm
And yet their hitch their wagon to a star like Trump. They keep talking Jesus and then they slap Jesus and then they get to say that's okay, because they are forgiven. Okay. :roll: — James Riley
It is hard to know what is going to happen long term, but I think that all the events of the last year are going to be very far from a 'blip', and, potentially the pandemic could go on for a very long time with many waves and countless new variants. — Jack Cummins
I think many did care. This isn't a thing that is new as globalization, which outsourcing is part of, and technological advancement are phenomena that are quite old. Have started in earnest in the 19th Century.Tens of millions of people had their jobs outsourced over the past decades and nobody cared...until Trump came along. — synthesis
Globalization creates winners and also losers. — ssu
Globalization creates winners and also losers. The majority of people have been winners and that's why globalization has endured. — ssu
I think that is a critical point. I'm not sure Trump cared either but he said he did. No one had heard that before. — Tom Storm
I will stipulate to globalization being good when the losers get to take their boat out now and again. — James Riley
I think it all went to shit when Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and shut down the press, arrested editors and banned journalists during the Civil War. — Tom Storm
As the Cold War deepened, the intelligence sharing arrangement became formalised under the ECHELON surveillance system in the 1960s.[7] This was initially developed by the FVEY to monitor the communications of the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, although it is now used to monitor communications worldwide.[8][9]
In the late 1990s, the existence of ECHELON was disclosed to the public, triggering a major debate in the European Parliament and, to a lesser extent, the United States Congress. The FVEY further expanded their surveillance capabilities during the course of the "war on terror", with much emphasis placed on monitoring the World Wide Web. The former NSA contractor Edward Snowden described the Five Eyes as a "supra-national intelligence organisation that does not answer to the known laws of its own countries".[10] Documents leaked by Snowden in 2013 revealed that the FVEY has been spying on one another's citizens and sharing the collected information with each other in order to circumvent restrictive domestic regulations on surveillance of citizens.[11][12][13][14]
In spite of continued controversy over its methods, the Five Eyes relationship remains one of the most comprehensive known espionage alliances in history.
This is not the first time politicians have touted the no-fly list as a solution to the crisis du jour. A common refrain during the Obama administration, echoed by both major-party presidential nominees in 2016, was that people in the FBI's Terrorist Screening Database, which includes the no-fly list, should not be allowed to buy guns.
Using the list to abridge civil liberties was a bad idea then, and it's a bad idea now. The no-fly list is a civil liberties nightmare: secretive and nearly impossible to challenge.
Although it existed prior to 9/11, the list ballooned afterward, from a total of 16 people to about 4,600 U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents as of 2017. A 2014 investigation by The Intercept found that 40 percent of the nearly 700,000 names in the broader Terrorist Screening Database were not linked to any specific terrorist group.
Because of government secrecy, false positives and other mistakes were absurdly hard to fix. Such was the case with Rahinah Ibrahim, a doctoral candidate attending Stanford University on a student visa. She ended up on the no-fly list in 2004 after an FBI agent checked the wrong box on some paperwork. At the time, the government had a policy of refusing to confirm or deny a person's watch-list status, putting Ibrahim in the position of trying to challenge a program that she could not prove affected her.
It took Ibrahim a decade to get off the no-fly list. In 2014, she became the first person to mount a successful challenge. Around the same time, the American Civil Liberties Union won a lawsuit challenging the list, which resulted in several concessions. The government now informs people of their status and gives them a summary of why they were added.
The legal challenges keep coming. In December 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that three Muslim men could sue several FBI agents for putting them on the no-fly list in retaliation for refusing to become informants. As Ramzi Kassem, the lawyer representing the three men, told NPR, the problem with the no-fly list is that it combines "tremendous power with a near-total lack of transparency."
The fact that he took the time and went through the Hell that he did to do the whole presidency thing is telling. — synthesis
Who would bring such a thing on themselves if they didn't care? — synthesis
Globalization is about two things and two things only, access to cheap(er) labor and new markets. If your neighbor across is having to eat cockroach stew for dinner because if it, so be it. — synthesis
One thing that I fear may happen is a gradual spread into widespread poverty, in the aftermath of the pandemic, alongside a general move towards totalitarianism. The two could almost exist alongside one another. But, it is hard to know what is going to happen, because life is so unpredictable and we don't want what other events are going to take place in the world. We can fear one thing, and something else entirely happens. — Jack Cummins
The guy is a billionaire. The fact that he took the time and went through the Hell that he did to do the whole presidency thing is telling. Who would bring such a thing on themselves if they didn't care? — synthesis
Yeah, that's right, Fishfry. I am deluded and don't understand the issues like you do. — Tom Storm
The winners were the (corporate) elite and the politicians, the losers, regular folks. — synthesis
They have been far more better export oriented countries than many. And here we get onto thin ice, if we really want to look at why some countries have been more successful than others. Some can argue about a worse starting point, poverty or war or having been colonies, but sometimes, as in the case of Argentina, the real reason why they have been failures is quite puzzling, when they have had all the cards stacked for them.Seems pretty interesting that Germany and Japan still kept robust high quality manufacturing in their countries. — synthesis
Look, tyranny is always a possibility: one of the slogans of the American Revolution: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. One has to keep an eye on what the government and corporations are up to, and resist if they are brewing tyranny. — Bitter Crank
Vigilance is good. But vigilance without education is paranoia (Q). — James Riley
They thought they were resisting tyranny. Somehow I think they were over-reacting. — James Riley
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