(Pssst! Ixnay on the ruthtray, buzbyray!)

Corporate malfeasance, of course, will continue if people start voting Libertarian.

Actually, Libertarians are very big on punishing fraud. And are very much against any government restrictions on a persons right to get satisfaction via the court system. Things like liability limits and forced arbitration are a big no-no, especially when someone defrauds you.

Well, at least he didn't go to the re-education camp.

Oh yeah, they open up next month.

Thank you, RBuzby, for taking us back to the real issue. This isn't about some stupid bipartisan political debate (a system that clearly isn't working anymore, anyway). This is about the safety of Americans in a post 9/11 America. The current administration, regardless of political affiliation, should spend as much energy of fixing these visa problems as they are spending on defending their lack of solutions. At what point, exactly, did we stop taking the people in charge into account for the things we feel are not in our best interest? If they're not doing a good enough job, they should be removed and replaced by someone else. It is lazy and irresponsible to back an administration because of it's party affiliations.

Where's the beer?

Absolute freedom would include freedom from being alive/dead, freedom from time, and you would have to exist outside of the universe, outside of matter. Not to mention the ability to do anything you want.

My point? I dunno, ask the others, they'll explain it for me. I can't.

Sir Chevron Food Mart
"Corporate malfeasance, of course, will continue if people start voting Libertarian."

This is the problem with the liberal socialist left...every last freedom-based or individual decision has to be weighed against some imaginary Utopian State. Because ONE person misuses a gun, all guns have to be banned. Because ONE or even a THOUSAND companies do naughty things, the whole world must be regulated by moral, honest, not-for-profit (WINK WINK) bureaucrats who will plan and manage the economy out of the goodness of their hearts.

I'm not a liberal socialist or whatever it is you call people that you don't agree with. I'm all for individual freedoms, including those granted by the Second Amendment. I actually agree with the Libertarian Party on many issues, but I don't want them anywhere near anthing that has to do with money. The free market they worship will put this country back where it was at the beginning of the century. Read up on the issues that lead to the early labor movement in the US, cross that with the mega-conglomerate corporations we have now and tell me if you want businesses to be left to their own devices.

Bush and Cheney are on the SAUDI PAYROLL
get the oilmen out of office
anybody but these guys
McCain, Gore, anyone

I'm all for individual freedoms, including those granted by the Second Amendment. I actually agree with the Libertarian Party on many issues, but I don't want them anywhere near anthing that has to do with money.

Then the "freedom" you seek is just an illusion. If people cannot be free to determine for themselves how to live -- and this includes what to do with money and property that they own -- then they are not free. They are slaves. Freedom means not having the wills of others forced upon individuals. This includes social freedoms, all the way up to and including the right to own property and the right to do with it as we please, so long as we aren't harming others.

Demosthenes If people cannot be free to determine for themselves how to live -- and this includes what to do with money and property that they own -- then they are not free. They are slaves. Freedom means not having the wills of others forced upon individuals. This includes social freedoms, all the way up to and including the right to own property and the right to do with it as we please, so long as we aren't harming others.

Are you an anarchist? Living in a society or nation almost by definition limits freedom. I wan't individuals to have as much freedom as possible, not corporate entities.

Anarchy is the only true free society. Unfortunatly most humans are not mature enough to handle it.

"I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, i tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxius, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone an morally reponsible for everything I do."
Robert A Hienlien "The moon is a harsh mistress"

Fook

Are you an anarchist? Living in a society or nation almost by definition limits freedom.

Taking this even further off topic... you can be a member of a society that operates by anarchist ideals (ie; direct democracy, horizontal organization, cooperative with neighbours, open, viciously resists imposition of authority). However, being a member of a "nation" immediately implies some form of restriction, the idea that only people born or accepted within a certain set of borders, or a certain language, or skin color, can be a part of the group. Anarchists tends to be strongly anti-nationalist; an alternative interpretation of the black flag, aside from symbolizing "hunger, misery, and death", involves the negation of all borders and submission to no one, solidarity with all.

Fook's partly right about the maturity part, though on a macroscopic scale; many individual humans are quite ready to live in a society built upon libertarian socialist ideals (no, those two aren't entirely contradictory, don't ask at the moment, I'm almost burned out).

Back to the topic... funny how an EZ-Visa program is still available for the country that produced 15 of the 19 knobs who flew planes into buildings last September. I would start asking why, personally, and demanding some solid answers. It certainly seems strange to me, with all the harping over the "Axis of Evil" and "war on terra", why such an obvious hole is being left open. Diplomacy? The Bushes and the House of Saud being attached at the hip? Something more sinister? Someone with connections; start asking now. I suspect the answers will be illuminating, especially in context with many other strange stories and inexplicable slipups...

Tin foil futures? Aluminum futures?
Can supply meet demand?
No.
w00t! w00t!

Thanks Nookanano and your welcome MrBeefy.


Its worth saying again:

We are still letting the Saudis decide who gets visas! Even after 9/11!
Coming up on one year and the holes in homeland defense are still as wide open as ever.



Good thing we captured most of their computers in Afghanistan. That does seem to have bummed them out.

The guy who was detained had a good point: The State Department in order to kiss Saudi ass (because they are the only Arab "friends" we have) essentially allowed them to bypass security procedures in order to facilitate providing them with visas. All of the 19 9-11 hijackers were in this country legally and three of them were in on an express visa process unique to Saudi Arabia. The State Department sucks butt when it comes to security and should not be allowed to issue visas (that function should be turned over to Homeland Security). When he busted the State department spokeman with a classified memo backing his points, he was detained--no surprise there, since State is predictably interested in persons who get their hands on their secrets, especially embarrassing ones.
Incidentally, for those of you fond of anarchy, may you experience a prison riot. Anarchy at its finest.
Laws and order exist not only to benefit those in power but also the weak and powerless who would be consumed without the protection of the Law. Without government and law, there would be only violence, degradation and depravity. Then again, only a government would be capable of the Holocaust, The Great Leap Forward and the Five Year Plan. Hmm...maybe anarchy wouldn't be so bad afterall, especially if I had plenty of ammo and a tank...

Fook _ Nice use of Hienlien

All drama aside, I am frightened to return to the US at this point, if only slightly or only at 3 a.m. when tinfoil seems like a reasonable choice in headgear. Truth is, the thing that scares me the most is that only a few of us are still arguing about it. There should be more of us. Sh*t, it should be all of us. Still, I have lived 9 months with the PSB, labor department, education department and even the Huizhou city taxi drivers knowing just about every move I make (there is probably a Chinese police officer now lurking on Fark. You're welcome), and it is, most of all, scary to know how easy it is to adjust to having them all around. Don't you guys get used to it.

Incidentally, for those of you fond of anarchy, may you experience a prison riot. Anarchy at its finest.

Spoken by someone who has no concept the difference between the political philosophy of anarchism and the chaotic state of affairs often called "anarchy". I think someone posted a comic strip a while back that perfectly encapsulated this mistaken impression.

Laws and order exist not only to benefit those in power but also the weak and powerless who would be consumed without the protection of the Law.

Laws only mean something if people take them to heart. Ultimately, what's in your heart and your head is more important than a million words on a page. The Heinlein quote posted by Fook says this in better fashion.

Without government and law, there would be only violence, degradation and depravity.

Funny, that seems to happen now with government and law.

Ah, PlatinumDragon ya caught me! I did a strawman on anarchy, deliberately twisting the political definition with the social one in a vain attempt to prove my moral self-righteousness! Drat, foiled again!
But in all seriousness, my faith in the common man's ability to respect the interests of both the majority and minority is not sufficiently high enough to entrust society completely in their hands. Often times the elite of a society (especially a capitialist and republican one) have earned their position through intelligence, hard work and adherence to ideals that help define the very best goals of civilized existence. A willingness to die in defense of your society's ideals is a good example. Heinlein in Starship Troopers expressed this value by creating a world in which only those who risked their lives in service to their country were allowed to vote, a profound idea if their ever was one. Veterans are often those least in favor of war since they experienced its horrors first hand.
Would America be a better place if that was law? Maybe, but too often entrusting power in those who have done nothing to earn it has resulted in worst expression of government. Political anarchy is communism without the idealism, power without social responsibility and mass will substituting for political process. I'll pass, thank you.

Political anarchy is communism without the idealism

Funny, you'll often hear Marxists and other hardline authoritarian communists calling anarchists "idealistic kiddies". It's quite idealistic, the idea that individuals have power and agency, that any concentration of power exerted over the unaware and/or unwilling is illegitimate, and that people can enjoy both individual freedom and social responsibility to their fellows without some artificial higher authority exerting force to keep everyone playing nicely. Indeed, it is often those power concentrations and authorities that drive people to fight...

power without social responsibility

Much anarchist theory revolves around balancing individual freedom with one's responsibility to treat others with respect. "Do unto others..." is generally the starting point for these discussions.

Indeed, to make anarchist societies and groups work, each individual must realize his/her responsibility to the people affected by one's actions, and groups must understand the effects of their decisions on surrounding communities. Really, in an anarchist system, there is no passing the buck, as responsibility for a mistake or error can't be passed off to a higher body or lower functionary; it falls to the person/community that chose to take an action. This kinda leads into the next point...

mass will substituting for political process.

Way off; several processes for non-hierarchical decision-making exist, often with consensus as the goal. The point is to give all people who wish to have some influence on a group decision a say and a vote, and any individual with a strong opposition to an action can block approval, until convinced the action is a good one, or an alternative is developed. This is obviously a generalization.

This probably explains things better than I ever could. Suffice it to say, anarchism is not everyone just "doing as they feel."

Ayn Rand is was a farked up cult leader. The primary flaw in her thought was her seeming need to reduce everything to irrefutable logical arguments, when many things are no so reducible (e.g. she was unable to provide a basis for her system of morality that anyone who wasn't a member of the cult would give a moments credence to).

Freedom is the only non-hypocritical system. If you don't think people have the right to form corporations and act as groups, then you think that other people have the right to prevent them from doing so. If you think that people do not have the right to do whatever they damn well please with their money, then you think that someone else has the right to do as they please with those people's money. How can someone have the right to decide what to do with someone elses money, but not with their own?

"Democracy" is not an answer to any of these. Saying "decided democratically" just means "a lot of people are forcing a smaller number of people to do this".

Anarchy is not chaos. Do not confuse the two. Internet standards are anarchic, that is, ungoverned, but they are not chaotic. The stock exchange is quite heavily regulated, but it is still chaotic.

Optikeye
"I'll give you tax. you give me roads, army, education, etc"
A contract--free from the 'big man in the sky' and free from force. Opt out if you don't like.

Doesn't this run into basic 'free rider' problems? If people can opt out of paying for roads & army (and other public goods), then nobody will pay, and they won't be provided.

you know, all kinds of government work out fine, really, it's just that the government has to have an interest in working FOR the people as it is meant to. not many governments do that, especially the american governemnt, think about it they're only interested in pleasing voters, when a policy of theirs fvcks up non voters like say black single mothers, they don't give a crap unless it bcomes a scandal because then it might upset their own voter base watching the scandal on the teevee.

very few countries have governments that work for the people williningly and effectively, sweden, norway, holland, switzerland and monaco are probably the only countries that have the maturity to run such governments. of course you don't hear much about scandals going on in these countries because frankly there aren't that many. people's essential needs AND dignity are well taken care of by their government and there is no secret police knocking on people's door, no freedoms given up in exchange.

utopia is out there, you just have to go find it and see if you can handle it.

Vesuvius:

You're trying to shoehorn anarchist systems into the existing system of nation-states encompassing millions of people under single national governments. Note what I said above, agreeing with someone that most people aren't ready to live anarchistically, but many are.

If it ever happens in North America, it won't be an entire country at once. I think it will be communities and groups slowly just rejecting outside authority, and directly dealing with their neighbouring communities and individuals.

HEY BUDDY! YOU'RE A CIVIL SERVANT! YOU WORK FOR ME!

hey, why are you pointing that gun at me? quit it, hey!
don't you know this is a government FOR the people and BY the people?

*BANG*

I posted this to another site today as part of a story. For some reason, I feel like repeating it here.

"When a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" restricts the freedom and opposes the interests of the very people it claims to serve, there is little left to do but for people to stand up for themselves and oppose unwanted authority. The only question is what form that opposition will take, and when - not if - that opposition will succeed."