STOP THE WAR on PRIVACY!

From Pamela Jones' reasons for shutting down Groklaw, rather than succum to NSA pressure:

One way of beginning to understand privacy is by looking at what happens to people in extreme situations where it is absent. Recalling his time in Auschwitz, Primo Levi observed that "solitude in a Camp is more precious and rare than bread." Solitude is one state of privacy, and even amidst the overwhelming death, starvation, and horror of the camps, Levi knew he missed it....

Levi spent much of his life finding words for his camp experience. How, he wonders aloud in Survival in Auschwitz, do you describe "the demolition of a man," an offense for which "our language lacks words."...

One function of privacy is to provide a safe space away from terror or other assaultive experiences. When you remove a person's ability to sequester herself, or intimate information about herself, you make her extremely vulnerable....

The totalitarian state watches everyone, but keeps its own plans secret. Privacy is seen as dangerous because it enhances resistance. Constantly spying and then confronting people with what are often petty transgressions is a way of maintaining social control and unnerving and disempowering opposition.... And even when one shakes real pursuers, it is often hard to rid oneself of the feeling of being watched -- which is why surveillance is an extremely powerful way to control people. The mind's tendency to still feel observed when alone... can be inhibiting. ...

Feeling watched, but not knowing for sure, nor knowing if, when, or how the hostile surveyor may strike, people often become fearful, constricted, and distracted.

On The old Eastern Liberal GOP:

"We don't intend to turn the Republican Party over to the traitors in the battle just ended. We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support. Turning the Party over to the so-called moderates wouldn’t make any sense at all." -- President Ronald Reagan

"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." - Samuel Adams

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams

"A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice." - Thomas Paine 1792

Above quotes borrowed from freeper SoConPubbie

On the Invasion of Afghanistan:

"'Don't overreact,' some say. We aren't," Blair said steadily. "We haven't lashed out. No missiles on the fight night just for effect." -- Tony Blair in a not so thinly veiled slap at bill clintoon

"When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the ass. It's going to be decisive." -- President George W. Bush

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and forever!)

from: LoanPalm (Le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican))

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour." -- Winston Churchill

Asked about his attitude towards bin Laden as an opponent, Mr Blair told Arabian TV: “We have faced, in my country before, people who have tried to conquer or to subdue or suppress by violence and terror.
“I do not respect them. What they get from me is our total determination to defeat them.”

In contrast To: "Bin laden is a worthy opponent" --bill clinton