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Paulos23
Skeptic Friend
USA
446 Posts |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
 Posted - 08/30/2006 : 14:16:25 [Permalink]
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| I sent my name and message to Congress. I've given up worrying what is in the NSA data base about me. The situation seems to worsen every day. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/31/2006 : 00:10:25 [Permalink]
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It just never stops.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Starman
SFN Regular
Sweden
1613 Posts |
Posted - 08/31/2006 : 00:33:04 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Paulos23
Why the heck would he do that?
Learning from experience.
If you can control the information, you can control a democracy. |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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Starman
SFN Regular
Sweden
1613 Posts |
Posted - 08/31/2006 : 04:38:43 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Ricky
Back to what HalfMooner was saying a while ago with his Secret dictatorship thread:
If you can control information, you probably aren't in a democracy.
Missed that thread, thanks!
I don't know of any democracy where, if you have access to large funds and maybe even ready to break the law, you can't at least achieve some level of information control.
At what point does the system stop being democratic? I'll guess that depends on your definition of democracy. |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 08/31/2006 : 12:27:34 [Permalink]
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| I'd say that at least temporarily we are NOT currently in a Democracy. However, we aren't so oppressed that we can't turn things around. |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 08/31/2006 : 15:40:52 [Permalink]
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On considered balance, I find it more frightening than flattering that some people here have come around to my "secret dictatorship" hypothesis. When I'd made that post, the idea had been running around in my head for days. I'd hoped for that by soliciting a "reality check" by certified (though sometimes merely certifiable) skeptics, someone would point out my errors and allay my fears. Never happened.
But even assuming we do live in a secret dictatorship, I agree with Beskeptigal that we're not so far gone into it that we have no voice. This isn't Nazi Germany. Yet.
We can turn things around. Unless our current masters (glory be to them!) want to take the velvet gloves off their iron fists, a huge electoral victory by the opposition will overwhelm the kind of electoral fraud that has worked for our esteemed masters in the past, because that fraud was dependent upon throwing close votes in key states, not making up for huge tides of opposition voting across the board. Also, it's clear that even with corporate dominance of media and government control of information, the approval rating for Bush continues to plummet. Word of mouth is trumping media control.
It would require massive, obvious, and probably violent intervention in the 2006 and 2008 elections for the Neocons to win again.
But in case they do win, I'm going on record right now by welcoming their thousand-year reign!
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 08/31/2006 16:21:58 |
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Luke T.
Skeptic Friend
140 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2006 : 12:15:48 [Permalink]
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I find the title interesting. It conjures up an image of Bush standing on the EPA library steps, blocking access to the public. When in fact it is a budget cut that is forcing the libraries to close. That's bad enough without making it another BushHitler plot.
As for information not being available to the public as a result:
quote:
But Ackerman said that some of the off-site reports are not kept in the EPA regional reading rooms, but in state libraries around the country. She said the law requires public access to those reports, so arrangements would be made to provide public access to the reports if a library was forced to close or curtail operations.
Similarly, Ackerman said the agency's Freedom of Information Act functions would not be affected.
"This has nothing to do with FOIA, nothing. And we have gone to an electronic docket system anyway, which all of the agencies are moving to," she said. "This has nothing to do with posting rules and regulations and making them available to the public and making them available for comment by the public."
http://www.wacotrib.com/nation/content/shared/news/nation/stories/2006/SUNSHINE_EPA_ADV12_CO_W6130.html
Mm-kay?
The OP link doesn't exactly strike me as an unbiased source, you know?
ETA: And those libraries that close will probably send their documents to those libraries which will not be closing. You think?
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| Edited by - Luke T. on 09/12/2006 12:20:28 |
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Luke T.
Skeptic Friend
140 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2006 : 12:27:07 [Permalink]
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Interesting.
From the link in the OP:
quote:
"Public access to EPA libraries and collections will end as soon as possible", according to a report found online at PEER, an acronym for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. All total, nearly 80,000 documents, not in digital format, are being boxed up and placed in infinite limbo status by the Bush Administration. The scene from the Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the Ark of the Covenant was wheeled into a massive sea of identical box crates, inside an enormous warehouse, comes vividly to mind.
The suppression of information to the public and efforts to control the flow of information of the sciences has reached critical mass. Shades of the once science fictional book, Fahrenheit 451, are dangerously close to reality and the banning and burning of books looms all to surreal, but are more fact than science fiction now. Who could have ever envisioned that Ray Bradbury's vicious, futuristic, dystopian society would ever come to fruition; but it may indeed have done just that!
How...colorful. How dramatic. Swoon! I hear goosesteps!
From PEER:
quote:
As many as 80,000 original documents which are not electronically available will be boxed up (“put their collections into stasis,” in the words of the EPA memo) and shipped for eventual “digitizing.”
Oh. They are going to digitize them. Why, that could result in them being MORE READILY available! On the internet and stuff, instead of having to maintain a library or travel to the library in Kansas City to see them. I mean, you could, like, email them to one another, causing more and more and MORE copies to circulate!
Those bastages! They must be stopped!
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| Edited by - Luke T. on 09/12/2006 12:31:24 |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2006 : 13:14:55 [Permalink]
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Luke, the key is the weasel-word, "eventual," which you chose to ignore. The Bush bunch can take all the time they like before even beginning the digitization process, then cherry-pick which documents they want to start with, and finally they can do the digitization as slowly as they like, citing, as you mentioned, budget-cutting as the excuse.
Meanwhile, all those documents are suddenly unavailable to researchers. This is indeed a very Orwellian action. And nobody can even guess what crimes are being covered up in the meantime.
And, yes, I can indeed hear the faint sound of goosesteps in the near distance.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 09/12/2006 13:19:45 |
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2006 : 13:38:22 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Luke T.
Interesting.
From the link in the OP:
quote:
"Public access to EPA libraries and collections will end as soon as possible", according to a report found online at PEER, an acronym for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. All total, nearly 80,000 documents, not in digital format, are being boxed up and placed in infinite limbo status by the Bush Administration. The scene from the Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the Ark of the Covenant was wheeled into a massive sea of identical box crates, inside an enormous warehouse, comes vividly to mind.
The suppression of information to the public and efforts to control the flow of information of the sciences has reached critical mass. Shades of the once science fictional book, Fahrenheit 451, are dangerously close to reality and the banning and burning of books looms all to surreal, but are more fact than science fiction now. Who could have ever envisioned that Ray Bradbury's vicious, futuristic, dystopian society would ever come to fruition; but it may indeed have done just that!
How...colorful. How dramatic. Swoon! I hear goosesteps!
From PEER:
quote:
As many as 80,000 original documents which are not electronically available will be boxed up (“put their collections into stasis,” in the words of the EPA memo) and shipped for eventual “digitizing.”
Oh. They are going to digitize them. Why, that could result in them being MORE READILY available! On the internet and stuff, instead of having to maintain a library or travel to the library in Kansas City to see them. I mean, you could, like, email them to one another, causing more and more and MORE copies to circulate!
Those bastages! They must be stopped!
Well, without wanting to sound paranoid, why do it this way? Why not digitize section per section, only removing those documents that are already digitized and online? The above seems a very strange way of handling the digitalization process. |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
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Luke T.
Skeptic Friend
140 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2006 : 13:44:38 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by HalfMooner
Luke, the key is the weasel-word, "eventual," which you chose to ignore. The Bush bunch can take all the time they like before even beginning the digitization process, then cherry-pick which documents they want to start with, and finally they can do the digitization as slowly as they like, citing, as you mentioned, budget-cutting as the excuse.
Meanwhile, all those documents are suddenly unavailable to researchers. This is indeed a very Orwellian action. And nobody can even guess what crimes are being covered up in the meantime.
And, yes, I can indeed hear the faint sound of goosesteps in the near distance.
"What crimes are being covered up in the meantime."
Paranoid much?
Yes, I can see it now. Some flunky down in a basement opens a crate and prepares to digitize the contents.
Suddenly...SMASH! The door is kicked in and jackbooted thugs burst through and begin clubbing him with baseball bats, pausing just long enough to shatter all the computers and stomping on blank CDs on the way out.
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2006 : 13:46:36 [Permalink]
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Half wrote: quote:
I'd hoped for that by soliciting a "reality check" by certified (though sometimes merely certifiable) skeptics, someone would point out my errors and allay my fears. Never happened.
Hey, I did my best on that thread!
If it makes you feel any better on two fronts, part of the reason your theory didn't get much harsh criticism might be because people here like and respect you so well. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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Luke T.
Skeptic Friend
140 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2006 : 13:50:28 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by tomk80
Well, without wanting to sound paranoid, why do it this way? Why not digitize section per section, only removing those documents that are already digitized and online? The above seems a very strange way of handling the digitalization process.
Those documents that are already digitized may have already been removed or crated up. The articles don't say.
And think about the cost of maintaining a library. Also, think of the cost involved for every researcher who has to physically travel to that library to see a document that has yet to be digitized.
Extremely inefficient.
Now think of the cost of a few servers, not to mention the savings for a researcher to retrieve a document from the computer on his desk instead of having to spend days traveling, paying for an airline ticket, rental car, and lodging.
Who knows how long the libraries would have put off digitizing their documents if they hadn't been forced into doing so.
I am going to bet that this results in informaton being more freely available than before. And at a much, much lower cost to everyone.
(edited to correct spelling)
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| Edited by - Luke T. on 09/12/2006 13:51:32 |
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Luke T.
Skeptic Friend
140 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2006 : 13:54:38 [Permalink]
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Also, it is unclear that these "80,000 documents" are the only existing copies of those documents. It could be that duplicates exist at the other libraries and in the libraries of researchers all over the country.
What documents that are the only existing copies should be the first on the list to be digitized.
ETA: Some of the libraries of researchers that have copies were no doubt the source of some of those 80,000 documents, with the EPA being the end user.
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| Edited by - Luke T. on 09/12/2006 14:00:02 |
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