Recently, Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas took to the floor of the House to talk about Wikileaks, transparency in government, and the case of Daniel Ellsberg, the 
Pentagon Papers, and the New York Times. He spoke about how the Iraq War was based on lies. He asked how the U. S. government should prosecute a citizen of Australia for publishing classified U. S. documents that he did not steal. Paul also said the following: “Revealing the real nature and goal of our presence in so many Muslim countries is a threat to our empire, and any revelation of this truth is highly resented by those in charge.”
Paul posed a number of questions at the end of his talk:
Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?
Number 3: Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?
Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?
Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?
Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?
Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?
Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised ‘Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.’ I yield back the balance of my time.
Source: Huffington Post
– Elaine Magliaro
FFLEO:
Blocking access to sites containing information deemed objectionable by the blocker for any reason strikes me as the electronic equivalent of blocking publication of the information, a form of prior restraint. This sort of stuff could make for some interesting First Amendment litigation.
“ACCESS DENIED” even for the New York Times…
Quote:
“The U.S. Air Force is blocking sites in possession of the WikiLeaks cables, Reuters is reporting. At least 25 sites have been blocked so far in what some are calling an “unheard of” move.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/14/air-force-wikileaks_n_796799.html
@ekeyra: On inflation: Yes, and if you try to drink a few gallons of water very quickly it will KILL you. So by your extremist logic, you should stop drinking water altogether, if it can kill you in large quantities then it must be proportionately bad for you in small quantities, right?
Wrong. Arguing that inflation must be bad because it has killed countries is not logical; wildly extreme inflation has done that, no country ever died as a result of 6% inflation. Heck I’m pretty sure under Carter we went through double digit inflation and survived it just fine.
Ekerya,
In case you missed it, I believe that the goals of government programs and businesses should be different.
Would I invest a dollar in a business that was running at a loss? Maybe, depends on the business and the reason it was running at a loss, if I was looking for a short or long term investment, etc, but probably not.
However, the goal of “investing” in a government program isn’t to MAKE MONEY. In this case it’s to deliver mail cheaply and to everyone. If that means running at a loss for 10 years, well then that’s what it means.
@ekeyra: Bezos (the guy that started Amazon) started out telling investors that Amazon would be losing millions of dollars for the first five years; and he was right. The investors that stuck with him got many, many times their money back.
@ekeyra: How is allowing people to spend their money how they see fit to spend it totalitarian?
It isn’t, if a student borrows money for tuition, it is THEIR money and telling them they ***cannot*** spend it getting a degree in art history is what would be totalitarian.
Secondly, you do not understand how the government works with money. They don’t have to have money on hand. It doesn’t happen *literally* this way but esentially the government can print the money to give to the school, and as the money gets repaid by the student, just destroy those payments, so no new net money is created and the student got to school. Theoretically at least this will work fine.
Tony,
“He is still being illogical, now he is complaining the government has a limited amount of money to lend. No, they do not.”
An increased pool of currency chasing a pool of goods and services that are not increasing at the same rate is inflation. Google it. It has destroyed nations. You cannot repeal the law of scarcity.
Gyges if someone wanted you to invest in a business and then told you, oh yeah we’ll be losing billions of dollars for the better half of a decade, would you really want to put your money there?
@Tootie: No, only when they mischaracterize what I wrote, or seem incapable of answering a logical post with their own logical post, or insist upon repeating and repeating and repeating some fantasy bullshit that just isn’t true.
I called him a fool because he was responding to my post without *reading* my post; I specifically and repeatedly included the caveat “as long as it is paid back,” and he was complaining about his money being used to guarantee a loan. How does that make a difference if it gets paid back? The guarantee is never invoked, and it isn’t like the government is putting that money aside and not using it for the duration of the loan.
He is still being illogical, now he is complaining the government has a limited amount of money to lend. No, they do not. They can print money (or bonds they sell to the Fed that printed the money) and when the money is paid back buy back the bonds from the Fed and destroy them. Theoretically zero cost to the government, and zero opportunity cost, with the result the individual is educated and paid for their own education and society is better off with a new art history major. And before he dismisses the value of that, I will point out that at least half the classes the art history major takes are fundamentals of English, mathematics, history, civics, critical thinking and other such courses that are generally useful knowledge for citizens.
Certainly on this topic neither Puzzling or Ekeyra are “good posters,” they are both blinded by their ideology to the point of religiosity, so much so that no matter what logic we try to use to talk to them they are going to claim it is wrong.
It is not that ***I*** disagree with them, it is that ***THEY*** disagree with simple valid logic, to the point of absurdity.
That said, I may have a childish axe to grind; I blame this unconscionably selfish, greedy, elitist attitude of Republicans and Libertarians for a whole host of ills in this country and countless unnecessary deaths and destroyed lives, including several in my own family and among the people I grew up with. As a child. So yeah, screw ’em, I’ve watched their smug armchair philosophy in action and seen the death and desperation and destroyed lives it produces.
As far as insults go: When rational argument fails, the reason is always an emotional block. The only way to tackle an emotional block is emotionally. So I figure insults are worth a shot to try and jar somebody into a rational mode, before I give up on a lost cause, plus they make me feel better for having wasted rationality on an ideological worshipper. Plus, I think I usually wait until somebody has insulted me before I insult them. I believe I did that here, too, look at their characterizations of my arguments before I ever insulted them at all.
I imagine most people are troubled by one thing or another. Me, I am troubled by glaring inconsistency, like people that claim to be libertarians but want to control other people’s lives in minute detail for their own economic gain or moral certitude.
Ekerya,
You’ll have to forgive me for assuming you’d like to know the whole story. It’s a bad habit of mine, bringing up facts when discussing a topic.
Nurse, if you dont agree with a company’s political decision, simply stop using that company’s products. Last time I checked noone could force you to use any of those services?
Also being responsible for company property through management is what gives them the right to decide what will and wont be posted on their sites. Why should this even be a concern? Facebook took your speech down? Move it somewhere else that is willing to let you use their services to voice your opinion. Simply because facebook is extremely popular, by no means conveys monopoly status on its operations.
“If you start from MY premise that they have to pay it back, it becomes none of your damn business what they do with it.”
Thats a hell of a gamble to take with other people’s money tony. Especially considering that they take on all risk of non payment, receive no incentive to forego having those invested funds on hand and no return on their investment even if it does get paid back. How is allowing people to spend their money how they see fit to spend it totalitarian? Whoever pays you for your brain power should demand a refund.
Gyges, oh ok billions down the drain for just 7-8 more years then we start getting out of the red ink. What a bargain.
Tony C:
is everyone with whom you disagree a fool or insane or something else?
Seem to me you are the one with some sort of childish ax to grind.
Puzzling is a good poster and so is ekeyra. You may not agree with them but so what.
You must be a very troubled individual.
Puzzling,
Hmmmm, Top Ideas? Maybe I’m missing something, but how are those ranked as the top ideas?
Table of Contents has “Antiquarian Book Trade Antiques Dealer Architectural Conservation” as the first three categories listed. The body has “Teaching, museum work, and publishing” as the top three categories.
Sounds like you’re cherry picking to me. Just because you don’t approve a career choice doesn’t mean it’s inferior. It just means you don’t approve.
By the way “it has an opportunity cost” is a terrible argument against something, because EVERYTHING has an opportunity cost. The question is does the opportunity cost make the economic cost greater than the economic benefit.
Study upon study has shown that, more people having higher education levels of all sorts benefits everyone in that society.
http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/press/cost04/EducationPays2004.pdf
An admittedly biased source, but it cites other sources.
A Wiki Hornet’s Nest
Posted on Dec 14, 2010
By Eugene Robinson
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_wiki_hornets_nest_20101213/
“… the wildly popular social networking sites Facebook and Twitter took down the pages that Anonymous members had been using to coordinate their electronic warfare. This brings me, finally, to those unsettling questions about censorship and free speech.
When Iranian protesters were challenging the thuggish regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs last year, censors managed to shut down television coverage. But the world learned what was happening via Facebook and Twitter. Likewise, those Internet sites—Facebook has more than 500 million users worldwide, and Twitter an estimated 200 million—are important conduits for pro-democracy advocates in places such as China and Cuba.
So who gives executives of private companies the right to decide that some unapproved speech will be encouraged and some will be suppressed? Do we want the people who run Amazon, PayPal, Facebook, Twitter or perhaps even—shudder—Microsoft, Apple or Google making political decisions on our behalf?
For my part, I don’t think I do. It seems to me that especially as Internet firms reach near-monopoly status, we should be increasingly uncomfortable with them making political decisions of any kind—even those with which we might agree.
I don’t particularly enjoy defending Assange, WikiLeaks or a bunch of irresponsible hackers. But I don’t want the companies that regulate interaction and commerce on the Internet deciding whose views are acceptable and whose are not.
he “terms of service” agreement that should take precedence is the First Amendment.” end excerpt
Tony,
Money borrowed by art history students can’t be borrowed for other purposes. That means that funds going to art history tuition are often being misallocated, since these funds might otherwise be put to some kind of productive use beyond deferring adulthood and employing art history academics.
Even if the student pays all of the government money back with interest, this still created an opportunity cost elsewhere in society and we have subsidized the loan with an artificially low lending rate the entire time funds are borrowed.
Both the allocation of the funds and the interest rate subsidy cost taxpayers. And that’s money we often borrow ourselves, since the government now spends nearly a trillion dollars more per year than it takes in. Wars more than art history, to be sure, but regardless.
While it is not my intention to single out art history degrees as a marginal use of government lending, I did run across this reference for art history majors considering careers. Top ideas? Teaching. Administration. Government.
@Puzzling: READ THE POST, FOOL. I said, “as long as they pay back the debt.” How many times do I have to say it?
Borrowing money and never paying it back is theft. As for funding small business loans, sure. AS LONG AS THEY PAY BACK THE DEBT.
If you start from MY premise that they have to pay it back, it becomes none of your damn business what they do with it. We can even include in the debt some cheap insurance to make sure it gets paid back in the event of their death or disability.
Tony wrote:
You’re right, it shouldn’t be my business, but I am taxed by the government to subsidize and guarantee these loans! Stop government lending to consumers and you might have a point. Freedom does not mean that you are free to use the power of the government to tax in order to fund your life’s passion.
Should government create boundless business loans for individuals who want to build out the next new record store, start their own perfume line, or create a photo lab? They may love it, but that doesn’t mean the taxpayers should be subsidizing these ventures.
Should government create “access” to home ownership through guaranteed mortgages, regardless of any ability to pay? How is that working out?
Tony C.
Html fail?
Puzzling,
By the way, I know a few art history majors. They’re employed, and make a good living. Just because YOU don’t know what a degree is good for doesn’t mean that the degree isn’t good for anything.