Spy on Your Neighbors for Homeland Security

[grannywils]

Just an aside folks, I would consider the Japanese attack on a U.S. military base to be an invasion. I recognize that Hawaii was not yet a State of our Union. But nonetheless, it comes pretty close.

[RZ1029]

@marharth

Thanks for pointing that out, I didn't think to actually click their names for whatever reason.

 

Implications now associated with the word in modern English, indeed. Are you sure that is what they meant back then?

 

al-Qaeda was formed in the last 1980s in Pakistan as a 'religious organization' essentially for the purpose for forming a religious army to fight what most people know as 'jihad', though that's technically in some ways a misnomer, from the little Arabic I understand. We did give them money, and weapons, though, to enable them to fight Soviet expansion. It was a CIA pet project that came back to bite us, in the end, under the name Operation Cyclone, I believe.

 

Then the Saudis pissed them off when Saddam invaded Kuwait. Bin Laden offered his mujahideen to assist the Saudi king (his name escapes me), but the king instead opted for US protection/deployment/assistance/whatever you want to call it. Now, you have to understand, that area is fairly sacred to Muslims (Medina and Mecca), and Bin Laden didn't appreciate foreign involvement, where he thought his mujahideen could have gotten the job done.

 

/time travel, there was a Sudanese overthrow by Muslims, backed by Bin Laden and led by Col. al-Bashir. Then the Saudis backed the Oslo accords, for peace between Israel and Palestinians.

 

/more time travel, we'll just cut to 1992, first attacks. There was some more tension building in here, but I don't have the time to tell the entire history of the Middle-East.

 

December of '92- bombings in Yemen hotel

 

'93- Ramzi Yusef detonated a truck bomb in the WTCs. Six dead, a thousand injured, and many millions in damages. He escaped, but was later apprehended after planning several other things, from an attempted assassination on the Pope to a suicide-plane into the CIA HQ.

 

'96- Failed attempt to detonate a bridge as an assassination attempt of Clinton.

 

'98- US Embassy bombings, about 300 dead.

 

October 2000- USS Cole attacked, killing 20 or so servicemen.

 

September 11th, 2001

 

EDIT: Minor detail I failed to mention, just to clarify a point.

 

RE-EDIT: I forgot to use my color, and guys, go easy on Marharth, he's victim to misconceptions many share, I prefer education over ridicule.

Edited April 16, 2011 by RZ1029

[WizardOfAtlantis]

RZ1029, you're just playing word games. http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/wink.gif Like many other hard-liners, I might add, when they want to prove their point--and tha'ts okay, just realize that it's not *really* The Truth, just one facet of the technicality.

 

I personally feel more secure in the issue. For me, it takes more than 10 people to invade a country of 300 plus million inhabitants.

Edited April 16, 2011 by WizardOfAtlantis

[marharth]

By "attacks" I didn't just mean 9/11

 

I only brought that up to show how the country partly helped 9/11 happen in the long run.

 

Of course the USA didn't directly create Al Qeuda, I was saying the money and weapons we gave them greatly strengthened them.

 

 

Now the term "invasion" may be up to debate, but I am pretty sure it is meant as a enemy army that occupies a territory.

[ginnyfizz]

RZ1029, you're just playing word games. http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/wink.gif Like many other hard-liners, I might add, when they want to prove their point--and tha'ts okay, just realize that it's not *really* The Truth, just one facet of the technicality.

 

Such jibes as that are precisely why I dropped out of the debates threads. Anyone who is a "hard-liner", particularly ones who can speak up very well for themselves and very often get the better of the prevailing left-leaning liberal majority on here (who of course must be right), get poked at and accused of being either nasty, playing games (whether with words or whatever) or ill educated rednecks who are led by the nose by the right wing media. As someone once said, round about this time of year quite a number of years ago "What is truth?"

 

As far as the original topic goes, I think spying on your neighbours stinks , but then so does the level of surveillance we have over here in the UK. Surveillance cameras everywhere and people think they are there to protect them. Ye gods. Even with all the surveillance we have, the police still manage to gun down the wrong man from time to time.

 

However, as we have shared with the USA the dubious honour of being long time terrorist targets, it certainly does feel like an invasion. At least you can send the suspects to Gitmo. We can't get rid of the beggars because deporting them to where they came from might put them in danger. Aw, diddums.

[WizardOfAtlantis]

RZ1029, you're just playing word games. http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/wink.gif Like many other hard-liners, I might add, when they want to prove their point--and tha'ts okay, just realize that it's not *really* The Truth, just one facet of the technicality.

 

Such jibes as that are precisely why I dropped out of the debates threads. Anyone who is a "hard-liner", particularly ones who can speak up very well for themselves and very often get the better of the prevailing left-leaning liberal majority on here (who of course must be right), get poked at and accused of being either nasty, playing games (whether with words or whatever) or ill educated rednecks who are led by the nose by the right wing media. As someone once said, round about this time of year quite a number of years ago "What is truth?"

 

As far as the original topic goes, I think spying on your neighbours stinks , but then so does the level of surveillance we have over here in the UK. Surveillance cameras everywhere and people think they are there to protect them. Ye gods. Even with all the surveillance we have, the police still manage to gun down the wrong man from time to time.

 

However, as we have shared with the USA the dubious honour of being long time terrorist targets, it certainly does feel like an invasion. At least you can send the suspects to Gitmo. We can't get rid of the beggars because deporting them to where they came from might put them in danger. Aw, diddums.

Ginnyfizz, I was just thinking of you! I'm so glad you chimed in.

 

The "jibes" are to point out the duality of the impression of a word as it is "used" in a modern, legal sense, and that you can easily switch meanings by its intention, from one to the other, which i thought I had illustrated with my last comment.

 

Don't forget that I'm pretty much a hard-liner myself, though I might not always seem like it as I'm willing to forgive more up front, though our ending impressions very often coincide because I happen to agree with him on many things.

 

I simply do not think we've been "invaded" since 1812, nor would I count millions of immigrants, either...though they point to a better case of invasion than any handful of terrorists, in any real, pragmatic sense.

 

[RZ1029]

If the 'debate' continues to derail down these paths, I'll have to withdraw as well. I'm here to debate the topic of national security and various aspects thereof.

 

As for my qualification of words, I don't think you have quite the authority to argue with Mr. Merriam Webster. The phrase I used was direct-from-dictionary and then I placed it into the context of the document in question. So either you're saying I'm actually right and it might not be entirely correct because of changing meanings or you're saying I'm right because the dictionary definition is the definition. I'll let you decide and get back to me.

[WizardOfAtlantis]

If the 'debate' continues to derail down these paths, I'll have to withdraw as well. I'm here to debate the topic of national security and various aspects thereof.

 

As for my qualification of words, I don't think you have quite the authority to argue with Mr. Merriam Webster. The phrase I used was direct-from-dictionary and then I placed it into the context of the document in question. So either you're saying I'm actually right and it might not be entirely correct because of changing meanings or you're saying I'm right because the dictionary definition is the definition. I'll let you decide and get back to me.

This is long, so please bear with me or accept my apologies, folks, whichever way you want to take it.http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/smile.gif

Who isn't debating? I'm not arguing the definition. I'm using the definition, but I will explain better. I've mentioned points that no one's even taken up for illustrating the case in point if we want to talk of derailing but I don't. http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/rolleyes.gif However, it seems I must explain myself better, so I will try. http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/smile.gif You people are getting really touchy. I thought I was using enough smiley faces as I was trying to get my point across as I know this was a touchy issue but obviously I was mistaken so I apologize for not explaining myself better to begin with. Do you want a debate o do you want everybody to just agree with you automatically?

I happen to agree with you but I'm still debating.http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/biggrin.gif Or better, I am trying to widen the vista as that is part of my Work in life.

 

As for the definition, and not that it was necessary, but just to be sure, I already looked up several to find definitions of the word and they all come down to the same thing, of course. The nuance that I was speaking of, then, is within the definition of the words used to define the word itself. See my point? Am I the only one that has at one time in life found it strange and a bit mind-boggling that we use words to define words? A self-referencing set of definitions? Maybe, I guess, but that's important. You/anyone can't just bring up a definition and think that your/anyone's particular perceptions of the words used to describe another word are the same perceptions that other people use when a definition has multiple parts. It's just not that simple.

 

 

I'm not playing around here, people. This is serious stuff even if I was joking about it earlier. It's not my fault that the actual seriousness isn't perceived and some of you think it's just "games" and "derailing". Maybe my illustration was too vague, at first, but I'll get to that below. It's not derailing, because it's the shadings of a definition of a single word that say if people can legally go to war or not these days. The lives of millions of people rest on just this kind of thing.

The whole spiel, and the power of words is this: in order to get away with some action, a governing body has to have some claim at legitimacy and correctness in order to maintain a public figure, right? Right, so we then establish various conditions that have to be met in order to satisfy the overall condition of legitimacy. So then, it all comes down to drawing lines for what equals what. We all agree on this, I'm sure, proving we know this power.

 

Invasion: invading/entering, enemy, especially army. Those are the 3 fundamental pieces. The emphasis ("especially") is placed on the "army" part, and ten or however many handfuls of people do not in everyone's mind constitute an army. They may be members OF an army but they are not AN army. The emphasis of "especially" is used because that's the part that's the real clincher especially in a lot of people's minds. "Especially by an army" not "especially by members of an army" because it is literally the whole/the quantity that constitutes "an army".

 

Now, no one is arguing that they "entered" or that they were the "enemy" on September 11, or previously in the terrible attacks that they perpetrated. But to some people, and I do not limit myself to people observed on this forum, it's the army part that is important in their minds. They see a large group (an army) physically invading/entering their homeland. That is why it is called Homeland Security, to invoke those ideals of the safeness of one's home. Very appropriate. It's the other part that not everyone agrees on. I've seen other people mention this online in saying that September 11 was "technically" an invasion, and they put it that way, with technically in quotes. That shows that they admit to the extension of the definition to that case but don't completely agree with it on all levels. Just like I said before.

My personal opinion is that it was technically and legally an invasion, but even more correctly, it was a coordinated attack, a tactic, and not an "invasion" as it exists in the common Imaginarium, such as the likes of 1066 Britain (which I cited), D-Day, Hannibal crossing the Alps into Italy, etc. They are not mutually exclusive.

 

And regardless, I don't see anyone coming back to any of the points that I personally pointed out about the illegitimacy of the actions of the CIA in kidnapping people. That's not opinion, that's fact. I could easily say myself that someone is derailing the debate because they're not answering what I've put forward illustrating this very principle.

 

Why did I mention what I mentioned? Because illegal actions are simply an extension of the "grey" that I was talking about that was is used for the word "invasion" as well. They go together. There is legitimacy in Guantanamo Bay, don't get me wrong . But there is also consciously-manipulated grey, and I realize this is a difficult thing at times to perceive, but it's that of which I am speaking, it is to the point, and I have given illustrated examples as to when the very process of manipulating the grey includes the black which is added to the white to get that very color proving that the manipulation exists (in my mind at least).

[grannywils]

I, for one, get that you are debating, and am sorry for those whose sensitivities prevent them from partaking of some of the Wizardly wisdom you have continued to provide. You are one of those who make the give and take interesting and worthwhile.

 

The following quotation from your post was supurb, in my opinion:

 

"The whole spiel, and the power of words is this: in order to get away with some action, a governing body has to have some claim at legitimacy and correctness in order to maintain a public figure, right? Right, so we then establish various conditions that have to be met in order to satisfy the overall condition of legitimacy. So then, it all comes down to drawing lines for what equals what. We all agree on this, I'm sure, proving we know this power".

 

Also liked this one, although it got a bit tangled in its own "words":

 

As for the definition, and not that it was necessary, but just to be sure, I already looked up several to find definitions of the word and they all come down to the same thing, of course. The nuance that I was speaking of, then, is within the definition of the words used to define the word itself. See my point? Am I the only one that has at one time in life found it strange and a bit mind-boggling that we use words to define words? A self-referencing set of definitions? Maybe, I guess, but that's important. You/anyone can't just bring up a definition and think that your/anyone's particular perceptions of the words used to describe another word are the same perceptions that other people use when a definition has multiple parts. It's just not that simple.

 

Next point:

 

"And regardless, I don't see anyone coming back to any of the points that I personally pointed out about the illegitimacy of the actions of the CIA in kidnapping people. That's not opinion, that's fact. I could easily say myself that someone is derailing the debate because they're not answering what I've put forward illustrating this very principle".

 

I will try and cease to derail the debate (your words) and tell you that although I agree one hundred percent with what you say regarding the behaviour of the CIA, I'm not entirely certain that it is germane to this particular subject of Homeland Security and spying on your neighbors. In theory anyway, their job is to spy on other people's neighbors. However, we all know that they and the NSA seem to have their hands in all the pies, don't they.

 

Anyway, I could go on, but basically just wanted you to know that I did read and absorb your post. Thought it was great, and whether or not I always agree with everything you say, I will continue to read your posts as well as those of the many other thoughtful posters I've met on Nexus, such as Aurielius, Harbringe, Ginnyfizz, SilverDNA, Stardusk, Lisnpuppy, Vagrant0, and so many others, including many who have posted on this one. It is in fact how we all communicate with one another.

 

 

 

[Aurielius]

Wizard Excerpt-

"And regardless, I don't see anyone coming back to any of the points that I personally pointed out about the illegitimacy of the actions of the CIA in kidnapping people. That's not opinion, that's fact. I could easily say myself that someone is derailing the debate because they're not answering what I've put forward illustrating this very principle."

 

I have somewhat mixed feeling as to CIA / NSA activities overseas. I see them as our proactive defense which means stopping our terror opponents before they get up enough steam to carry out another attack, this game is definitely being fought without the Marquis of Queensbury rules of conduct. I do not think that we can apply a totally civilian perspective to what is after all a very dirty war. Though I should say that once we have them in custody and have neutralized their current operations we should bring them to trial, I have no conflict with the concept of a Military Court being just. However detention without ANY trial is antithetical to our American values. There is such a thing as a Senate Oversight Committee to reign in excesses of our intelligence services and am reasonably sure that given the composition of the committee it will not gloss over violations of the CIA / NSA charters.

Edited April 19, 2011 by Aurielius