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Comment by barlescabbage | Hacker News Reader

Is it a coincidence that this story appears the same week the senate renews the patriot act?

I can't think of a better example of how the Patriot Act and all of our knee jerk reactions after 9/11 have been ineffective and need to be reexamined. Unfortunately I think the response is going to be even more of the same. Sort of like the saying "the beatings will continue until morale improves."

Not, knee jerk, carefully planned years ahead, just like 9/11.

Communism has a tendency to require greater levels of force in order to maintain state control.

And the the numbers financially are just getting too lopsided to maintain the uneven consumption for much longer. China will start to get a much larger share, and the bankers will have to go along with it, because of basic realities of math.

So the global military and economic control will shift to China, but before/during/after the primary economic model in places like the US will have to shift.

This means some people will have violent disagreements with the new control structure. So they are trying to lay the groundwork for a carefully monitored and controlled population now. Part of that is conditioning to not expect privacy, which is one main function of the TSA.

This is not a new situation or process really.

Your article seems like warmed-over John Birch Society material from the 60s. That is, you posit some world wide hidden planning or conspiracy that is set on degrading some Pure American state we've got now (or in the 60s, according to the Birch material), and substituting some centralized control system led by non-Americans.

OT: a guy here says "the meetings will continue until productivity improves."

I would say yes, as the TSA's failures doesn't really have anything whatsoever to do with the patriot act. This is a failure of the government, not an excuse for or reason for more powers.

> the TSA's failures doesn't really have anything whatsoever to do with the patriot act

Not directly, but they both are connected to the overarching theme in American politics of "OMG TURRURRUSTS" (and the overarching subtheme of "our various means of removing the privacy of Americans are not actually doing anything they were marketed to do"; with this article, it seems that neither the TSA's security checks nor the NSA's surveillance are actually doing anything to stop terrorists).

that only shows you that the (un)patriot act was useless?

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