Skyjack:
The incidents that Cikomyr was refering to were the following:
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First:
For several years the US government has been receiving detailed information about money transfers worldwide from the company SWIFT, a company which performes several million money transfers a day. Now this is nothing illigal, governments are permitted to request information if there is substantial suspicion of criminal money transfers. In that case you get the permission to oversee money transfers of a certain country/region/Bank for a limited amount of time.
Over many years the US gathered Information from SWIFT, there was no specific target to spy on, no specific suspicion. It was simply an action of gathering a tremendious amount of information from everybody, from the little plumber somewhere in Greece to the mightiest people on this planet. Until now SWIFT hasn't given an explanation/excuse of how this could happen. The only thing that is known is that the US government has made an mandatory request to SWIFT for getting acces to this information.
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Second:
I'm sure you heard of the spy programm executed by the NSA that became public recently. Here again, US-citizens were spied on collectivly without any suspicion at all. Telephone calls and emails were recorded secretly, without permission. Eavesdroping on citizens is only allowed if a special court( I forgot the name) gives permission to do so. No permission has been requested though.
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Ok, now you might find that all very cool skyjack. But why are people fighting such developments? Because it easily leads to an police state government which controls everythings. A government that Knows everything. The whole country becomes a puppet with the government as the string pullers. A state that possesses absolute control, contradicts the very basics of democracy, free elections become a farce, the previous democracy developes into a "managed" democracy. It even becomes worse when this absolute control is distributed among only a few men, that is the path to despotism, and it seems that's the path Bush has already started to walk on a bit.
The favorite citizen of a government is a citizen that doesn't ask any questions, a citizen that believes everything what comes out of the mouth of his president, for that allows the government to do what ever it desires. Ask yourself skyjack, if your not a liitle bit to uncritical with your government, maybe
you should ask yourself more questions....
By the way: Deaths caused by terrorism is a minor factor if you compare it to the numbers of deaths caused by Aids, car accidents, consequences of smoking, crime etc etc.. Invest that tremendious amount of money that the US spent on counterterrorism/Iraq war into the latter issues and we'd nearly have heaven on earth.
Still a sentence to this weapon stuff:
Now these oppinions of some people about why weapons should be purchasable legally by everyone (of course with the exceptions stated above) make me...wonder:
Argument No.1: There must be balance of power between government and its citizens.
What?? Now sorry, in the USA you will achieve just nothing with a barrel. As long as you don't elect Osama as your next president the US remains a democracy, in wich you only achieve power by convincing poeple of your Ideas, participating in political parties, by campaigning, all these things you usually do in a democracy. For heaven's sakes, you're not living in Afganistan man!
Do you expect the government to suddenly beat down the citicens? Or do you want to force the president to resign by pointing a gun at his head? The correct way to fight despotism is by the good old seperation of powers. C'mon, you certainly don't need a gun to maintain ballance, I know that and you know that.
Argument No.2:The police doesn't have the capacity to defend everyone, so the individual is responsible for his own safty.
If you had 50% less guns in the US, you maybe could get rid of the other half of the guns because you wouldn't need them anymore to defend yourself. Some people make the equation: More weapons=more security for the individual. Th number of muders in the US doesn't reflect that equation at all, in fact the us has one of the very highest murder rate in the world, by total amount and relative amount.
think about it
North Korea has more artillery than the US.
They also have near the same number of tanks and heavy armor as us.
Their equipment is old from WWII, but still can pack quite a punch.
North Korea is Mountainous, making it hard for the US to form effective airstrikes as there are many hiding places for their armies.
Results: North Korea's initial strikes against South Korea would be a veritable blood bath |
North Korea is an incredibly poor country, they have nearly nothing, all they have is their army. Just about every cent that country generates is invested into the military, and so I can imagine that NK's army isn't as weak as some people depicted it on this forum. fact is: NK has has the 5th largest army in the world and they have modern equippent for long range weapon technology.
