And the irony there was, the leader of Animal Farm was based on the most evil man who ever lived, a Mr. Joseph Stalin… :thud:
Dark Knight said:
until the military shows up at your door, and “detains” you indefinitely without trial or lawyer, or even charges. (like hundreds of americans have been for over a year now)
which is practically the hallmark of a totalitarian government. Democracy is the freedom to criticise your leaders. If someone doesn’t criticise Tony Blair over here, people wonder what’s wrong with them…
Personally, I think Hitler qualifies as the most evil man who has ever lived.
I told rountree this, but personally, I would have no qualms with being arrested for speaking my mind. If they want to arrest me because they dont like what Im saying, fine, let them, because as far as Im concerned, fighting for my rights is a no holds barred brawl, and I simply won’t go down alive. If they need to arrest me to shut me up, then let them.
Personally, the teacher may or may not have done the right thing, depending on WHAT those kids said and how damning it was. Yeah, you have the right to free speech, but you also have the responsibility to consider the consequences of your speech. If you go up to a black man and call him a n****r, that’s excercizing your right to free speech, but don’t expect him to be too kind to you in return.
That said, it sounds like those students should have had a family lawyer present during questioning.
Calling the Secret Service over something two high school kids idly say is absolutely idiotic and wastes their time and money that could easily be spent on more productive things. If what they said was really so goddamn out of line, disciplinary action on the part of the school might have been considered, but treating them like national criminals and depriving them of their rights is a gross abuse of power.
Which probably explains why the teacher called the secret service as opposed to the FBI, however the Secret Service does have its own investigative branch, because when you think about it, just as just about anything is a threat to our lives, just about anything, and everything, is a potential threat to the life of the president.
Originally posted by Sephiroth Katana Yeah, and it’s also their domain to distinguish real threats from obviously nonexistent ones.
Which makes me wonder why the Secret Service bothered to fly out to Oakland, California to check out a ‘threat’ made by two highschool kids.
Originally posted by Sorcerer Which makes me wonder why the Secret Service bothered to fly out to Oakland, California to check out a ‘threat’ made by two highschool kids.
Because the current political climate is one of greater intolerance and fear, and excessive punitiveness is a direct consequence of that.
I bet before Columnbine, the same thing would have been said about…well, Columnbine. Mass Paranoia, maybe, but in this day and age, it seems like there’s 5000 threats, and 1 actual attack, so you gotta take all 5001 seriously. Get what I’m saying?
No. This was a class discussion, judging from the article. I kind of doubt that they were making public threats against Bush in class and intended to make good on them. Yeah, it’s hard to distinguish idle threats from real ones (assuming that this was even a threat, which still has yet to be shown), but since that’s exactly what they’re paid to do, they should learn to do it. After Columbine, there was a huge scare in which kids were being detained or “disciplined” or whatever for absolutely no reason, based on utterly trivial non-evidence, like wearing black coats or whatever. This did not help the situation. It didn’t prevent other shootings and it did nothing but pump fear into people and just pit them against kids in general. It did much harm and no good whatsoever. You can’t deal with possible threats by becoming more repressive and lashing out at any little thing. That is not how a free society works.
Maybe not, but go the other way and simply ignore threats that sound empty (which apparently happened pre-Sept. 11th and other times in history) and then you’ve got another problem on your hands.
Originally posted by MegamanX2K Maybe not, but go the other way and simply ignore threats that sound empty (which apparently happened pre-Sept. 11th and other times in history) and then you’ve got another problem on your hands.
Obviously, and the pre-Sept.-11 intelligence failure still needs to be investigated thoroughly, but there’s a huge difference between possibly salient threats (when professional intelligence officials in the CIA repeatedly state that there will be an attack) and obviously idle ones (when some teacher with an itch in her ass decides that something one of her students said is a national threat). No one in their right mind could ever equate the two cases.
It would really have to have been catastrophically dire (i.e. they waved automatic weapons around and said they were enlisting in al-Qaeda in order to crash planes into the White House) to warrant the Secret Service being called in.
““When one of the students asked, ‘do we have to talk now? Can we be silent? Can we get legal council?’ they were told, ‘we own you, you don’t have any legal rights,’” Felson says.”
Guh, if that is an accurate quote this is a disgusting incident, not to mention grossly unconstitutional. This whole incident gives off a secret police vibe.
Originally posted by Sephiroth Katana It would really have to have been catastrophically dire (i.e. they waved automatic weapons around and said they were enlisting in al-Qaeda in order to crash planes into the White House) to warrant the Secret Service being called in.
not really.
