joogabah

apple ][ said:

I bet that the passcode was really simple.

The iPhone that the dead terrorist in the previous case used cost considerably more than a million dollars to get into. That's crazy, but it would be much cheaper for tax payers, basically free, if any terrorists are caught alive, and if they refuse to unlock their phones.

You can simply demand the unlock code, and if they don't comply, you confidently proceed by cutting off one of their finger tips. Then you ask them again for the unlock code, and you check their answer right away on the phone, to verify if it is legit. If it's not, then you simply continue to chop off various parts until you are able to get into their phone. I am pretty sure that the vast majority of people would instantly grant access reasonably quickly. And some crazy people claims that torture doesn't work? What bollocks. 

Remember when America used to stand for certain ideals? Guess we were just hypocrites all along. How does one keep a population from being dumbed down to the point that it accepts cruelty as a legitimate form of law enforcement? Why would anyone ever consider it in their interest to promote this kind of precedent? What are we fighting to defend if we end up living under a regime that terrorizes and tortures its own people? I remember universal opposition to these methods under any conditions as recently as the 90s. It was a central moral justification for opposition to other political systems. Now we can understand totalitarianism in socialist countries not as a natural and inevitable outcome of a planned economy, but as a reaction to an existential threat from external hostile forces. Because we do it too. Capitalism has in no way protected us from the loss of civil liberties. That was just a lie they used as propaganda and only until they rid themselves of the Soviet Union. Now that they think communism isn't so much of a threat, the mask comes off. But that's kind of stupid, don't you think? They're just setting in motion the same determinants that led to communist revolutions in the 20th century. And this time we have information technology that can exceed the usefulness of money in determining the allocation of goods and services. Their time is over, and they know it, which is why they are spying on their own populations and framing muslims to curtail civil liberties.

NemWan said:

roake said:

Personally, I don't want some hairy guy wearing a dress in the bathroom with my 6-year-old daughter.

North Carolina politicians seem oblivious to the high quality of modern gender reassignment procedures and what the implications are: North Carolina law now requires a person who was biologically female at birth, who now identifies as male, and looks convincingly male, following surgeries and hormone therapies, to use the same bathroom as your daughter. Your daughter won't see a guy wearing a dress in the bathroom, she'll just see a guy in there, dressed as a guy — a guy who lost the choice to use the men's room because he has XX chromosomes. Do you expect that trans people who had "unnoticeable" surgery should just secretly break the law and use the bathroom they look like they belong in, because they probably won't get caught? That's going against the law. Is the law just supposed to apply to trans people who don't look "normal"?

This commenter highlights what is central to the pro-trans argument.  Surgically transform gay people into heterosexuals.  It is not possible for a man to become a woman or vice versa.  That is just a refusal of reality.   And “woman” as a construct is not something to desire to emulate.  It is ritualized submission to men.  Dolling oneself up into a sexual object is not “liberating”.  Quite the opposite.  It is reducing oneself to an hors d’oeuvre for the consumption of men who feel entitled to a little bit of everybody.  All of the characteristically feminine artifacts are means and methods to attract dominating men.  That’s why lesbians appear unfeminine.  That’s why people think all gay men want to be f**d up the a** and have no self respect (since society didn’t assign them the subordinate gender, why would they perform it willingly?)

Gender is socially constructed but it is not individually chosen.  Masculinity is assigned to biological males and femininity is assigned to biological females with no consideration of what they want.  Choosing the submissive gender because one cannot adequately perform the dominating gender does nothing to dismantle the gender system.  It is a heterosexual cop out and a denial of the possibility of radical equality.  It also means the literal castration of gay people, which is blithely accepted without comment by the poster above.

Masculinity and Femininity are both equally problematic.  That was the original message of gay liberation.  It was ok to not conform.  It wasn't about switching teams and cutting off your d**k.

I'm gay, in the original sense of the word.  And I'm not afraid to make controversial statements to illiberal people who seem to want to silence opinions they don't like.  It doesn't occur to them that ideas don't exist in their fully developed state but are living and dynamic, always in motion and the dialog is what is important, so silencing any opinion just slows the progression of thought.

Paparazzo666 said:

When this goes to the Supreme Court the government will look a the clowns they all are. They hire idiots like Snowden and bark at their own people for not doing their F-Ing JOB! They should put all those efforts in helping companies protect us from Chine- Russia- Korea and all other cyber attacks on our companies and institutions! MORONS!!!

Snowden is an idiot?  You prefer to have the government spy on you and not be told?  In whose interest do you speak?  Are you so identified with the nation state that you support it no matter what it becomes?

retrogusto said:

I think it's worth noting that the point of terrorism is change the world by scaring people, so the more attention is drawn to this case, and the more people entertain the possibility of making big changes as a result of this attack, the more the terrorists will have achieved. The shoe bomber may have failed to ignite his bomb on the plane, but every time I fly now, I am forced to remove my shoes in memory of him, which I'm sure thrills him to no end if he's still alive. Every way we change our lives in response to a terrorist's actions, we are giving them what they want. We should be mourning the dead and quietly finding ways to prevent future attacks without giving up freedoms, privacy or our lifestyles. 

It's not the "terrorists" who enjoy this effect.  It's the government who manipulates, hires, or in some other nefarious way orchestrates the event in order to control its population.  I do not understand why people respond to "terrorist" arguments when they have been used by authoritarian governments repeatedly in the 20th century to justify government overreach that would otherwise be unpopular.