The Europian Union, an Orwellian society in the making.
- Thread starter Boothbabe
- Start date
Rey C.
Racing is life... anything else is just waiting.
Does anyone else see the beautiful irony in this?
I'd say he also feels that it's easy to take the power of a firearm for granted if you've never been shot in the face. :rofl:
I thought it was very ironic too, but then again, Cheney never tried to deceitfully enslave me or control the way I live through some "health care" legislation that is supposedly "for my own good".
Rey C.
Racing is life... anything else is just waiting.
Oh no, unless you don't pay taxes, you're paying for his deceitful adventure in Iraq just like I am. Course, he and his pals claimed that was for our own good too, right?
And of course, we have the Patriot Act. That sort of exists on the same premise as what B/B is talking about: if you have nothing to hide and you haven't done anything wrong, you shouldn't mind being secretly spied on.
Wainkerr99
Closed Account
I don't see how that's possible, Gordar. The money is already spent on policing. The budget is already in place in most countries.
A lot of people left South Africa due to crime.
'The primary driver for emigration among all groups, but especially whites, who still retain the majority of South Africa’s wealth, is fear of crime. With more than 50 killings a day, South Africa has one of the highest per capita murder rates in the world. The same goes for rape—ranking the country alongside conflict zones such as Sierra Leone, Colombia and Afghanistan. Future Fact polling indicates that more than 95 percent of those eager to leave South Africa rate violent crime as the single most important factor affecting their thinking.'
That's from here:
http://mysasucks.com/?p=66
Come on, South Africa is the size of Texas. How hard can it be to watch and arrest in well known places? Once inroads are made into crime families in each country, the back of their criminal intent should be broken surely? It shouldn't be a long term expense then, I am thinking.
In any case my statement was rather sweeping. It implies that all governments everywhere knowingly permit crime as part of a plot engendered by some mysterious group. This is possible, but seems audacious. Still, that said, as far as terrorism is concerned one can't help but wonder why the groups have been allowed to continue for so long, why a few terrorist groups or extremists can influence decision makers in Europe to such an extent that every citizen now has to be under surveillance and scrutiny as well as catalogued.
Just as an aside, I was on my way to a gig once with the band. We had to stop the minibus along the side of the road and duck out of the way while an armed guard shootout went on. An armoured security vehicle, that was carrying money, lay on its side, while the robbers fought it out in public against armed security guards.
But ya, you are right. It is easier to point the finger.
Since crime prevention & repression is a matter of the municipality in the Netherlands & since I'm still a city council member, I can tell you that the money spent on policing is a mere fraction of the money needed for decent prevention (policing isn't prevention, it's repression).
Crime starts with kids. Kids, especially kids that have just hit puberty (the most vulnerable group) generally ignore and/or resent authority and generally oppose order since they think they know everything better, life should be easier than it is, etc.
You say that the money is already spent on policing. You're right, but besides policing, it's also spent on many other things that might not be as important (prestige projects). Still there might not be enough money (depending on how much money the country & thus the municipality/city has to spend). To get more money, you'd have to do something no political party likes to do, raise taxes.
The poor simply don't have the money & the rich immediately start shouting that the state has no right to tax them and that they've rightfully earned their money, etc.. A political party that proposes something like this will never gets chosen & because they never get chosen nothing ever changes.
With freedom comes a certain type of responsibility & humans have proven over & over again that they're not capable of handling this responsibility. The result is that their freedom and privacy becomes limited, but instead of looking at themselves they immediately point the finger.
About the other part of your post...
It's too bad I'm not able to make a java game where you have to click the green dots. ever second a few dots appear, faster than you can click them, and as soon as you've reached a certain amount of dots, instead of clicking them away, you create new dots every time you click a green dot. Clicking represents police action either normal or, eventually, corrupt. Unless you can prolong the time the green dots need to appear (prevention), you're fighting a lost cause.
I made the most important part of this piece of text bold, because that's what I'm essentially going to reply to.
This doesn't work. Let's say you're in a closed environment with a few emergency exits. Everyone knows where they are (or at least, they should, which isn't always the case, simply because people are too lazy to look for the information even if it's almost smacking them in the face), yet, as soon a a fire starts, without decent leadership from someone, chaos & panic will break out & many will unnecessarily die.
Another example.
Let's say there's 50 families & 100 parcels of food in the area & there's a drought. You don't know how long the drought will last & you can't expect any help form an organised government. The first 20 families will each take 3 parcels of food, just to be on the safe side. This leaves 40 parcels of food for the remaining 60 families. 10 of those families decide to take that which is rightfully theirs to take, 2 parcels of food. This leaves 20 parcels of food for the remaining 50 families.
You're right when you say you cannot trust human nature take for granted individual choice and freedom, since people will only abuse that freedom. I disagree with you on the central or semi-central systems though, because without them we'd be living in abdominable circumstances.
Without a representative from either the local or national government to give each family 2 parcels of food (assuming ever family consists of the same amount of people) the people would, even if they had all the available information, still abuse their freedom.
About terrorism.
National identification numbers have existed in Europe long before terrorism became a 'threat'. The dutch version, the Sofinummer (social-fiscal number) has existed since 1988 & we probably weren't the first to implement it & 'catalogue' our people. As far as I know, terrorism wasn't an hot item until september 2001 (except maybe in Spain (the ETA) & the UK (the IRA)). I honestly don't know what you mean with under surveillance and scrutiny, so maybe you could give some examples.
Terrorism exists & is condoned by countries/people not strong enough to take military action against that which offends them. Hamas exists because the Palestinians aren't strong enough to face Israël in a fair battle. The IRA existed simply because the Catholic Northern Irish didn't even have an organised army & since they were heavily offended by the presence of the English. It's not always clear what it is that offends a terrorist organisation, but there's always something they're offended with & which affects them on a daily, or at least regular basis.
It's not easy to stop a terrorist from entering your country. I myself have been to the US twice and have had to enter some details on a green card. One of the questions asked was whether I was planning to take actions against the US while staying there. Only a fool (or someone who thinks he's being funny, but he generally finds out that the US customs/border check usually don't share the joker's sense of humor fast enough) would say yes. So unless you've already been convicted, you can enter a country very easily. Once inside the country, such a person can become a sleeper agent. From that point on, it's easy to gather new recruits, which are generally impossible to track down, unless they act too obvious.
You could try to locate these people by checking everyone's snailmail, by tracking people's IP-addresses (impossible on an old fashion dial-up modem, btw), by tapping everyone's phone, by placing microphones on every street corner and by doing random raids in people's homes, but I don't think those are things anyone wants. Besides, they'd just move to the countryside to plan their next move (although I admit that'd be rather suspicious).
There are 2 ways to stop terrorists. Kill every possible terrorist and future terrorist (which would mean everyone, since killing person A will anger person B to such an extent that he'll become suspectible to the words of the terrorist organisation) or by appeasing them (which is what eventually happened in Northern Ireland).
And what makes you think the boys and girls in Brussels can handle the responsibility? They are just as flawed as we are with one big difference, they have power and those who have power want only one thing, more power and as we all know power, and especially absolute power corrupts. The idea behind the EU is very nice and idealistic but the European government is slowly but surely turning into a big money waisting, privacy inhibiting burocratic beast that's completely out of touch with the people it's supposed to serve.
And to quote Benjamin Franklin; Those who would sacrifice freedom for temporary security deserve neither freedom nor security.
jasonk282
Banned
Now you understand what is going on in the USA and why people from the right are getting pissed off.
& that's where a constitution enters the picture, along with multiple political parties, all of which have different agendas (unlike the 2 major PPs in the US, but that's something we've already discussed in another thread) and a strong parliament (even though I admit that last one is missing in the EU, one of the reasons I'm against it).
This is also where human stupidity shows it's face once again. People will vote & continue voting for a political party even though it no longer represents them (for instance, what has the CDA (a dutch political party which has always been one of the biggest in the Netherlands) done for us the last 25 years?)... But if people are too stupid to see even that, I most certainly wouldn't want to give them the freedom to make their own choices, because they'd simply become the victims of those who do see. Religions have known this for a very long time (just think of the word flock).
A very nice example of the stupidity of people is Roosendaal. 'We' want to build a new city hall.
This new city hall is supposed to be built above a vmbo (a sort of high school) in an area that's currently still an industrial area (but we want to make a residential area out of it) . Without the new city hall, the new high school cannot be built there because it's too expensive.
The SP (which is the political party I belong to & for which I currently sit in the city council) (& D66 as well, btw) is opposed to this idea and went to the streets to gain popular support recently.
We did gain popular support and an annonymous organisation that also opposes the new city hall suddenly showed up out of nowhere.
The total plan costs about €40 million and the school is supposed to open it's doors in september 2013. We said that it's a waste of money, that renovating the current city hall, which is actually located in the center of town, is a lot cheaper.
As I already said, we gained a lot of supporters, until the coalition mentioned that the school wouldn't be able to open it's doors in 2013 if we chose against the city hall. Right now people are divided.
the pros of a new city hall are
1.) it looks nicer than the current one
2.) it's a new idea (to build it above a vmbo)
3.) people will be able to be served faster (if they change the way of doing things as well, but they never mention that)
4.) enough parking spaces
5.) a new school (actually an old school that wants to move, but that is never mentioned either, although it should be rather common knowledge) is able to open it's doors in 2013
5.) symbiosis between the school and city hall will be possible (sharing the cantina, copy rooms, etc)
6.) Roosendaal will make the news (at least, that's what a majority of the politicians believe)
7.) The school & city hall are supposed to serve as a sound barrier for the new residential area
8.) with the city hall, it could eventually become a new 'town center' (although not centrally located)
the cons are
1.) points 1 & 3 of the pros are also possible if you renovate the old city hall & reorganise the civil servant department
2.) it's not in the center of town, which means that people who don't have a car will have more trouble getting there, since there's currently no bus that stops there & there are no plans to change the bus route once again (at least, not yet)
3.) It's too expensive, especially since we're hitting hard times thanks to the economic recession
4.) It's not even sure if the new residential area will be built within a forseeable time period. Another project was put on hold & is currently a very large sandbox, simply because nobody dares to build right now. If the new residential area isn't developed, the school and city hall will essentially be built in the middle of an industrial area.
5.) the vmbo used to be the LTS (technical high school, our system was reorganized a few years ago). You and I both know that many (mostly elderly) people are afraid of kids hanging around. This will most certainly be the case around a high school & especially if it's the former LTS. I already feel sorry for those elderly people.
6.) the civil servants will have to share their space with kids who've just hit puberty... A very 'pleasant' working environment
7.) The current school, even though it's not located on the perfect spot right now, could still keep it's doors open for a few more years & look for a better spot (I'm aware that they've already spent money, but the Roosendalers shouldn't have to pay ofr that mistake IMHO)
8. if, and only if it becomes a new town center, the current town center will probably be neglected & eventually turn into a slum (this has already happened before, but apparently even politicians don't learn from their mistakes...), especially since there's no decent connection with the current town center
People only focus on point 5 of the pros and point 3 of the cons, even though the rest of the information is available for everyone or is simply logical deduction & sadly, they base their opinion on those points only.
Those same people will still vote for a certain political party, even though they are no longer represented by said political party. If they finally found out that a political party no longer represents them, they suddenyl stat voting for the other end of the political scale (which was the SP a few years ago (you don't honestly believe all of the people that voted for us are true SPers, do you?(I sometimes hate my honesty
) & is Wilders' PVV right now), instead of looking at the available political parties and choosing the one that fits them best and hasn't betrayed them too often.
Wainkerr99
Closed Account
Want to hear something funny? The rich, condemning government for not looking after their safety, employ private armed security.
It then costs them more.
Mr. Daystar
In a bell tower, watching you through cross hairs.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots, and tyrants.
I think most people know what that means.
I think most people know what that means.
BioDefenseGrad
Banned
After studying the EU's governing structure, I'm glad I live in the US. It seems the U.S. is more democratic than what is being put together in Europe. Obama seems to want to move us in that direction as well. He's an internationalist at heart, not a Muslim.
Want to hear something funny? The rich, condemning government for not looking after their safety, employ private armed security.
All I can say about that is that it's another sign of human stupidity, but I'm afraid there's little I can do about it.
If you want to read more about human stupidity (in a fantasy setting, but still), I urge you to read the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. The first book is called Wizard's first rule (which is: People are stupid). Even though I generally don't agree with the other things he tries to convey through his writings, I do agree with this. If you want to know what he means with 'people are stupid', read the books (it's also a recurring theme in his books, at least until the 6th book).
Similar threads
