DHS Announcement

The Dept of Homeland Security or the US Socialist Gestapo as I call them have issued a report saying that the consider any American "suspicious of centralized federal authority" and or "reverent of individual liberty" a right wing terrorist.
Those of you who ignore or adjust to warning signs of this nature should invest more tim in studying history. LOL!

As usual, L.T. tells us only part of the story, or in this case just plain gets it wrong. DHS apparently funded a university study that had that language in it, but it was not a DHS "report" and it is not federal policy. The government funds many studies whose recommendations are not necessarily followed. This is just more right wing paranoia from the Paranoia Peddler of Puerto. Those of you who believe L. T. should invest more time in simple google searches to get the real facts. LOL!



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 07/07/2012 09:19AM by paul falduto.

l.t. does your handle stand for LOONEY TUNES, sure seems like it

Oh excuse me it was just a 12 million dollar study by the University of Maryland that the DHS DID publish. Being extremely reverant to my personal liberty and anything or anyone who may put that in danger I consider this report funded and stamped by the DHS very worrying.





Homeland Security-Funded Study Lists People

Do you have a reading problem? The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the Univ. of Maryland was created with a $12 million grant from DHS, the study itself did not cost $12 million. The study also talked about potential left-wing terrorists as well, it was not confined to right-wingers. "Reverence to personal liberty" was mentioned as one POSSIBLE criterion, there were quite a few others. And, once again, there is nothing I can find that says DHS adopted these definitions as their policy. The reason you find this "very worrying" is that you are extremely paranoid.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/07/2012 06:16PM by paul falduto.

Well youre wrong again. The part thats worrying is there are too many people like you that doesnt pay any attention to encroachment upon the liberty our forefathers so graciously bestowed upon us. Mentioning THE "REVERENCE OF PERSONAL LIBERTY" ONE SINGLE INSTANCE IS one single INSTANCE TOO MANY and definitely setoff alarm bells. Coupling an American citizen to terrorism because they strongly believe in liberty should be punishable by law and certainly not overlooked or in your case ignored completely. The problem with people like yourself is you have been bombarded by predictive programming techniques to the extent you are happy to hand over your rights as long as you think the government will protect you and make you feel safer. The end result in trading liberty for security is you end up with neither! LOL!

For the record I agree with LT on this one. Not necessarily this particular example but with the issue of government taking away of civil liberties. In the last 10 years it is horrifying what they have done. When I was young, at school we were constantly told how the Russians were spying on their people and other people turning in their neighbors and people being thrown in jail for just speaking out and on and on. Everything that we were told was bad about Russia is what is happening to us now.

While I too am concerned about personal liberty, it is not because of a report like this. Academic reports are often full of alarmist language, in this case the writers of the report did appear to go overboard in their profile of potential terrorists. But once again, where is the evidence that the DHS is using these profiles to target ANYONE, much less ol' L.T. down in Puerto Escondido. If this was the case, leaders of both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movement would be under arrest. But that said, I am certainly concerned, for example, about the degradation of Fourth Amendment rights that has been going on for 30 or so years now, the still growing power of the military-industrial complex about which Ike warned us 50 years ago, the targeting of American citizens overseas for assassination just because the President says they are an enemy combatant, the buying of elections with millions of dollars in special interest money and a number of other things. But I am not concerned because some college professor went overboard with his definitions in a report. And I certainly don't think "they are coming for me" and I exercise my First Amendment rights pretty freely in my community. I might also point out to L.T. that the Supreme Court recently affirmed for the first time that his favorite Amendment, the Second, applied to individuals and that led to the invalidation of a number of local gun control laws. So, while there is cause for concern, the rampant paranoia of L.T. is completely unjustified.

Another point that brought up a flag about this DHS paid for report is that when speaking of terrorism there was not a word about radical Islamic terrorists. Of course the USA has its fair share of nutcases but beyond any shadow of a doubt the vast majority of terroristic acts stem from radical Islamic jihadist. I take this opportunity to call attention to this obvious problem. Anyone denying that there is a problem the way the US Govt is encroaching upon the liberties of it citizens are just plain blind or too stupid to recognize the threat!
Just to mention again the DHS recently ordered 400 MILLION rounds of 40 cal hollow point ammunition. Yet this report also lists any citizens that order ammunition as domestic terrorists. To ignore this situation is not only foolish but dangerous. No paranoia just simple facts! LOL!

I would also like to add that "personal liberty" is not absolute, it has to be balanced out against the needs of the community, state, nation and world. For example, I don't have the personal liberty of dumping used motor oil on my property since it could get into the groundwater and contaminate the wells of my neighbors. This balancing act is very difficult, which is why all of us in our local communities have to be concerned that a proper balance is struck. So, in that sense, someone who believes that his or her personal liberty is absolute might very well be a danger to their community and need to have their actions restrained by the government. Whether someone who carries this idea to the extreme could become a terrorist is problematic, I agree, but once again, this was identified in the report as just one possible example of what the profile of a potential terrorist might look like in combination with others. And, like it or not, there are potential terrorists in our nation and world and they are not just radical Muslims, although they do present the most risk today. Remember Timothy McVeigh? And he is hardly alone.

Its hard to believe ANYBODY could be in a serious conversation about citizens rights to liberty and someone would start talking about dumping burnt motor oil. No need to try to assist anyone in that position. LOL!

I used that example because someone here in my area who has a garage claimed he had the freedom to do just that because it was his right on his property. Those are the kind of things that may not be world altering, but can cause problems in a local community and those problems hit home the hardest, in my opinion. But if you don't like my example, please give me an example of how your "personal liberty" has been or is being taken away. Not a theoretical, maybe someday if my paranoid fantasies come true example, but a right now, real concrete example of how the government is stepping on your head for absolutely no good reason.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/08/2012 01:32PM by paul falduto.

Here is a link to a speech given by Glenn Greenwald, a writer for Salon who has written extensively about real dangers to our liberty, in contrast to LT's cartoonish paranoid view of those threats. I don't agree with all of it, but he makes some good points.

[www.salon.com]

I urge everyone to take the time to watch Glenn Greenwald's speech. He makes clear that the problem is a systematic erosion of privacy for persons of all political stripes over a long period of time through administrations of both parties. L.T. on the other hand, thinks the problem is the targeting of conservatives like himself by the Liberal Socialist Obama Administration. He goes ballistic over the statements of low-level bureaucrats and academics he thinks are targeting "patriots" like himself. But I never see him posting about the dangers of the Patriot Act or detention of Americans at Guantanamo or any of the other real dangers Greenwald outlines in his speech. L.T. simply gives us paranoid rants which, while perhaps entertaining, do nothing to highlight the real dangers facing our country in the name of the "War on Terror." And no, I don't mean having to take off your shoes in the airport.

There is absolutely no need to debate this issue when the other party speaks of freedom and liberty as though they were one and the same. Pauli you keep ranting and posting to to yourself. good luck!

paul falduto Wrote

"Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grand-children are once more slaves."
D. H. Lawrence

"Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again."
Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President of the United States


Speaking of freedom and liberty! LOL!