American hedonism closes its eyes to death, and has been
incapable of exorcising the destructive power of the moment
with a wisdom like that of the Epicureans of antiquity.
- Octavio Paz
Death is un-American, and an affront to every citizen's inalienable
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
- Arnold Toynbee
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"As long as such self-serving hypocrisy
motivates America's response, Ukraine will
only sink further into needless bloodshed,
and that blood will be on America's head."
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In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors,
since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors,
for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal
applies only upwards, not downwards.
― Bertrand Russell
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Global Coke
"What those 'racists' are reflexively and rightly reacting
to is the soulless chill as the fire goes out beneath the
melting pot. Those who think America can thrive as a
'cultural mosaic' are worse than fools; they're Canadians."
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Global Coke
Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe.
It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster,
in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe
have grown to appalling dimensions.
― Frantz Fanon
What the United States does best is understand itself.
What it does worst is understand others.
- Carlos Fuentes
Poor Mexico, so far from God
and so close to the United States.
- Porfirio Diaz
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"Indeed, everything about the American southland was magical
and exotic to the young Canadian musicians, from the sights
and smells to the drawling manner of speech to, especially, the
central role that music played in people’s everyday lives."
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America is a mistake, a giant mistake.
- Sigmund Freud
America is an adorable woman chewing tobacco.
- Auguste Bartholdi
chimerica
chimerica
"This is the tone of the China Century, a subtle
mix of Nazi/Soviet bravado and 'oriental'
cunning -- easily misunderstood, and never
heard before, in a real enemy, by the West."
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chimerica
Coke and 'America the Beautiful'
Coke and 'America the Beautiful'
"And for the others who argued for English-only
patriotism, I note that there are more than
57 million Americans (about 20% of the nation)
whose first-language is not English...."
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Coke and 'America the Beautiful'
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"This is the behavior, and the fate, of paranoid
old-world tyrants like Hitler or Saddam, not liberal new-world democracies like America pretends to be."
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America is the only nation in history which
miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to
degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
- Georges Clemenceau
I found there a country with thirty-two religions and only one sauce.
- Charles–Maurice Talleyrand
A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle,
and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
- Edmund Burke
America is the only country ever founded on the printed word.
- Marshall McLuhan
"The removal of racist sports nicknames (and mascots) seems outrageously belated
-- why, exactly, has this civil rights cause
taken so long to gain momentum?"
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The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the
United States reactionaries use to scare people.
It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't.
- Mao Tse-tung
They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but
they kept only one; they promised to take our land, and they did.
- Red Cloud
In America sex is an obsession,
in other parts of the world it is a fact.
- Marlene Dietrich
I would rather have a nod from an American,
than a snuff-box from an emperor.
- Lord Byron
One day the United States discovered it was an empire.
But it didn’t know what an empire was.
It thought that an empire was merely the biggest of all corporations.
- Roberto Calasso
Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather
be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.
- Alexis de Tocqueville
newtown
newtown
"No one, I thought, could watch those scenes, of young children slaughtered en masse, and so many parents grieving, without thinking that this, finally, would tip some kind of balance in the country."
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newtown
If you are prepared to accept the consequences of your dreams
then you must still regard America today with the same naive
enthusiasm as the generations that discovered the New World.
- Jean Baudrillard
I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.
- Samuel Johnson
America, thou half brother of the world;
With something good and bad of every land.
- Philip Bailey
"What can be more powerful than disinformation in the Information Age?"
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England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
- Sir Walter Besant
Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by
posterity because he was the last to discover America.
- James Joyce
Now, from America, empty indifferent things
are pouring across, sham things, dummy life.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
If the United States is to recover fortitude and lucidity,
it must recover itself, and to recover itself it must
recover the "others"- the outcasts of the Western world.
- Octavio Paz
The youth of America is their oldest tradition.
It has been going on now for three hundred years.
- Oscar Wilde
"America really is, for most Americans, all things considered, a good place to be, and all they really want is for everyone to enjoy the same privilege and pleasure."
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When good Americans die they go to Paris;
when bad Americans die they go to America.
- Oscar Wilde
jobs drug dealer
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They're nothing more than traffickers; and as the smart traffickers'll tell you, you don't use the merchandise. They are just inoculating their kids with a tech-drug serum, to immunize them against the very merchandise that put the **** bowling alley in their basement.
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America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that
lie before us, the burden of the World's History shall reveal itself.
- Georg Friedrich Hegel
America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room.
Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.
- Arnold Toynbee
Americans always try to do the right thing after they've tried everything else.
- Winston Churchill
The thing that impresses me most about Americans
is the way parents obey their children.
- Edward, Duke of Windsor
Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering
what average opinion believes average opinion to be.
- John Maynard Keynes
Europe was created by history.
America was created by philosophy.
- Margaret Thatcher
America is God's crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of
Europe are melting and reforming!... The real American has not yet arrived.
He is only in the crucible, I tell you - he will be the fusion of all races.
- Israel Zangwill
American dreams are strongest in the hearts of those
who have seen America only in their dreams.
- Pico Iyer
America: It's like Britain, only with buttons.
- Ringo Starr
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.
It has never yet melted.
― D.H. Lawrence
I have two conflicting visions of America.
One is a kind of dream landscape and the other is a kind of black comedy.
― Bono
The American mirror, said the voice, the sad American mirror
of wealth and poverty and constant useless metamorphosis,
the mirror that sails and whose sails are pain.
― Roberto Bolaño

April 13, 2024

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Author Topic: "U.S. must establish new rules for intelligence gathering"


Geoff-
Hamilton
Administrator
Posts: 172
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"U.S. must establish new rules for intelligence gathering"
on: November 2, 2013, 02:40

"U.S. must establish new rules for intelligence gathering"
by Yomiuri Shimbun

If distrust toward the United States grows stronger among its allies, this could have an adverse effect on U.S. diplomacy. The administration of President Barack Obama should do its best to mend relations with Germany and other countries.
Still, it is unthinkable to expect the United States to scale back its eavesdropping activities.

http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0000765246

Is it indeed "unthinkable" that the U.S. would (or could) "scale back its eavesdropping activities"?



Alex Wang
Experienced Their American
Posts: 14
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Re: "U.S. must establish new rules for intelligence gathering"
on: November 15, 2013, 07:56

The article conclusion ("We live in a time when communication can be tracked at any time and place. It is essential that diplomacy be conducted based on this premise.") reminds me of something Wyatt Dick said in the NSA thread in General Discussion. Almost like, "Live with it. It helps people be safe, it's almost completely impossible to get rid of, and it's not going away." My guess is that the US will "scale back" just enough to calm things down now, and then continue doing all it can do to protect itself, and its people and allies, just like any country who has the power to do this. And every country would like this power.


Wyatt Dick
Veteran Their American
Posts: 42
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Re: "U.S. must establish new rules for intelligence gathering"
on: November 15, 2013, 21:01

It may be both possible and desirable to impose some limitations on surveillance (or at least make some changes to the rules of the game), though I agree it won't necessarily be easy. Governments do have a strong incentive to collect as much information as they have the power to do.
But if we want changes to take place, I believe that those arguing for limitations on electronic surveillance need to show that they understand the many legitimate reasons governments in general (and the US government in particular) have for widespread eavesdropping. There really are some dangerous threats out there, and electronic intercepts have proven to be quite effective at keeping them at least partially in check. I also believe that if we want changes in the system of electronic surveillance, we will need to think more deeply about the reasons we are uncomfortable with it, and then refine our objections. Do we really believe that this much surveillance is the first step towards a tyrannical police state? Or is that a cover for a more deeply-rooted, instinctive discomfort with the idea that what we thought was private was not quite so private? What is our conception of privacy in the electronic age? What 'invasions' can we work around? What is non-negotiable?


Alex Wang
Experienced Their American
Posts: 14
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Re: "U.S. must establish new rules for intelligence gathering"
on: November 16, 2013, 08:41

I was surprised and interested to see that instead of agree with Musawa in her "Big Brother" outrage (homepage Feature, at http://saharareporters.com/column/not-our-big-brother-hannatu-musawa), these African commentators (below) echo my own opinion, and even add to it.
Maybe the Big Brother scare is a luxury of the "haves", and just an acceptable nuisance for the have nots wanting to be haves?

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Nigeria Should Be Neck Deep In Economic Espionage.
Submitted by Ayo (not verified) on November 13, 2013 - 09:31.

Madam, there are no permanent friends in international real-politik, so no absolute trust either. Hence America’s implicit warning mantra that ‘In God we trust but other men we check out’! As leader of the Free-world and only Super-power, America is expected to play God and that means access to cutting edge technology and information. Surprised that Merkel is surprised at being kept under U.S.A’s surveillance given her background and evolution of unified Germany! Had Nigeria got leaders, we, like China, would be neck-deep in ECONOMIC ESPIONAGE i.e science and technology. Rather the dilettantes and demagogues masquerading as Nigeria’s leaders are only too happy to use ‘their oil money’ to fund Euro-American automobile and aeronautic industries by buying aeroplanes, bullet –proof cars, and stretched limos to dump in Nigeria. Thus creating millions of jobs for European and American youths, while our own young people in Nigeria go to waste on an industrial scale.

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SPYING - AN OLD GOOD GAME
Submitted by David (not verified) on November 12, 2013 - 15:28.

Without spying, Arabs evaders, in association with born-to rule slave-riders of Northern Nigeria, could've long overran the Sahara into the thicket of southern Nigeria. For them, slavery is still fashionable and burying the Koran in the Atlantic ocean, a lofty dream. Ask the Mauritanians!

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If that will make the world a peaceful place
Submitted by atinsola on November 11, 2013 - 18:18.

Every country do the same, even the terrorist ( the world enemy) and if monitoring our phones or any other communication will guarantee World peaceful coexistence.

sister, "too much" freedom is not good sometime. I will not against any country taking extral steps to pprotect and guarantee the safety of their citizens and the country economics.

please, leave mata for mataya, at least is better than what the bloated governors in Nigeria were using their own Internet monitoring to do.

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Everyone is doing it
Submitted by shakazulu (not verified) on November 10, 2013 - 20:09.

The Western countries are all doing it, not just the USA. In fact, everyone who can do it is doing it. And who can blame them? If Nigeria or Saudi Arabia or Iran could do it, they would. This is not about Western imperialism.
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