Okay guys, this isn’t funny any more. Video screens with “homeland security” messages littered about Wal-Marts and shopping malls? What the fuck.
Most of the comments on the video are pretty asinine, but this one’s good:
Ms. Napolitano, I’d like to report suspicious activity. I’m being spied on by the U.S. Government. How can I stop it?
We live in a day and age where the TSA will strip search three year olds and we’re going to have “security” messages on screens where we shop, meanwhile a guy who dared release secret information just got arrested. We’re entering scary times, folks.
Hanlon\'s Razor 
Uhhhh easy fix….start a grassroots movement of people who purposely go to wal-mart and act suspicious but upon investigation are doing nothing illegal or harmful. The strain on resources will start to become such a pain in the ass that this shit will go away. Unfortunatley this lends itself to “crying wolf” problem. But seriously, what’s worse… a loss in personal freedom or incredible unlikelyhood of a terrorist attack on middle of nowhere-villes wal-mart? I mean cows kill more Americans then terrorist in the last 20 years…and yes that stat includes 9/11.
P.S. – I’m not even including the amount of heart attacks attributed to burgers and steaks, i mean kick in the head, i tipped them onto myself, stampede cow related deaths
Do you read at all? No one is talking about terrorists blowing up Wal-Marts, effective though it’d be; what the grown-ups are actually discussing is the impending presence of Department of Fatherland Security “terror” alerts on the TV-based public address system that exists in every Wal-Mart store — which, aside from the virtue of being what’s actually going to happen rather than your overwrought fantasy of trenchcoated SS agents in every Wal-Mart, is quite ominous enough, thank you very much.
Hey, here’s a thought! Why don’t you join Cheeto Baggins up there on his next trip to the place? You need a clue every bit as much as he does, and hey, who knows? Maybe they’ll be doing a two-for-one sale.
Oh, and by the way: Ever hear the word ‘loitering’? No, huh? How ’bout ‘trespassing’? How about ‘failure to comply with a lawful order’? ‘Obstructing an officer in the course of his duties’? ‘Resisting arrest’? ‘Justified use of force’? ‘Well, maybe not everything they do makes sense to us, but they keep us safe, and that matters more’? ‘To hell with that guy, he had it coming anyway’? — not that it’d get to that point; getting arrested for trespassing once or maybe twice would likely be enough to take the starch out of just about anybody dumb enough to participate in something like this, especially once the cops decide they’re tired of this game and start trying to convince people not to play it any more. (Which, if I know anything about cops, would happen about five minutes before the first guy got arrested.)
The police state has an entire spectrum of ways to deal with piddling little problems like the one you’re talking about; even assuming you had the right idea about what Wal-Mart and DHS plan to do, which you don’t, it’d still make as much sense as ramming your forehead into a brick wall over and over on the theory that it’ll crack before your skull does. Well done!
(And just for your information and because I’m sure you couldn’t spot it on your own, no, I’m not defending DHS and I’m not defending Wal-Mart — I might have to shop at the fucking place, but that doesn’t make me like it, not one little bit, just like almost everybody else who ever goes there except maybe people coming from situations so incredibly bad that Wal-Mart really is a big step up for them. I’m just saying, if you’re going to talk about taking action, don’t be a /b/tard — try to talk about doing things that make sense and might possibly have an actual effect on something somehow.)
I do an urgent in-and-out at WM about once every five years. The last time I was there I felt terrorized – by all the Nascar jackets, Little Rascal out-of-control scooters, and plumber’s nether cleavages. We can see it coming, can’t we? “DHS agent, DHS agent, please report to the revolving blue light!”
Hey, you should go back to Wal-Mart some time and see if they’ll sell you a clue.
I’m sure if they have any clues on stock they’ll be low-priced and made by slave labor in Saipan. So there’s always that.
Yeah, ain’t it great? Use indentured slaves to make things in one country to ship to another country and sell to wage slaves, so as to artificially inflate their quality of life from what it would be if they weren’t getting the benefit of slave labor, and thus prevent them recognizing just how badly they’re being screwed — all under the auspices of what may be the largest privately owned company in the world, which was started by an evil Calvinist sonofabitch solely for the benefit of his own family, which family still owns the company and is leaping into bed with our increasingly authoritarian-corporatist government just as fast as it possibly can.
And yet, somehow, it’s the people who shop at Wal-Mart who are the problem, those evil bastards that they are, with their desire to live a life as comfortable as they can manage to afford, and their disinterest in being insulted and condescended to. Yep! Makes perfect sense to me.
Sorry, I didn’t read the rules here — is there something that says I’m required to suffer fools gladly?
Sigh, Oh Aaron Em. Why must you force my hand?
(Oh, and by the way: Ever hear the word ‘loitering’? No, huh? How ’bout ‘trespassing’? How about ‘failure to comply with a lawful order’? ‘Obstructing an officer in the course of his duties’? ‘Resisting arrest’? ‘Justified use of force’?)
– If you learned how to read actively when you were in 5th grade you would have seen my first sentence “…who purposely go to wal-mart and act suspicious but upon investigation are doing nothing illegal or harmful.” Hard to be arrested when you’re only being suspicious but are not obstructing, trespassing, or loitering. Therefore when people don’t get arrested they wouldn’t be deterred…but I’m sure you’re able to put all the circle blocks in the circle holes by now, at least I hope.
(‘Well, maybe not everything they do makes sense to us, but they keep us safe, and that matters more’?)
– This is probably what the Germans said about the Nazis. From your hinting at the idea; “I would rather trade my freedom for personal safety” this I can only gauge that you are most likely a coward afraid of the boogieman, or just a pretentious, self righteous idiot.
I’ll end on this gem of a quote from you… “I might have to shop at the fucking place, but that doesn’t make me like it, not one little bit”
-You don’t have to do anything. You could choose to shop somewhere else. But your love of convenience and Hanna Montana Mock-T’s FORCES you back. Yes you are part of the problem; in fact you are the problem. Don’t blame a company for making as much money as it can as our system encourages it. Blame the people who support/allow it to happen. Going back to the Nazi’s, no one HAD to follow Hitler. Sure they might have been killed if they didn’t, but that doesn’t make the people who did follow him any less accountable for what happened. To argue against this would suggest you would rather live on your knees then die on your feet.
You really don’t know a hell of a lot, do you?
“Trespassing” is not some narrowly defined crime that has to do with signs on trees and that sort of thing; if you walk into my privately owned establishment — privately owned but open to the public, such as Wal-Mart, counts too — I tell you to leave and give you reasonable time in which to do so, and you refuse, you’re trespassing and subject to arrest. If you argue with the cops after they’ve told you you are under arrest, you’re “resisting arrest” and likely to get shot with a Taser, which will be called “justified use of force”; if that Taser shot stops your heart and kills you dead, “Well, maybe not everything they do makes sense to us, but they keep us safe, and that matters more” — is going to be what people say when they see the news stories about how your dumb ass died of trying to break a brick wall with his forehead. That’s if they’re kind, of course; if not, “to hell with that guy, he asked for it”.
I’m not endorsing any of this, you understand; I’m just telling you that this is how it could very well go — assuming you had the right idea about what Wal-Mart is doing in the first place, which, I repeat, you don’t — and while I’m not at all fond of the police state which makes that outcome probable enough to talk about, I also have a hard time ginning up much sympathy for the kind of idiot who’ll walk up to a meat grinder and shove his dick straight into it without first bothering to make sure that doing so will help him prove his point.
And no, I suppose you’re right — I could choose to buy the things I get at Wal-Mart somewhere else instead, and I’d also get to see my $30,000 a year go rather less far than it currently manages to do. Sure, I could go to Target instead, and spend twice as much money on products of the same quality, produced by the same slave labor — hell, likely enough made in the same factories! — as what I’d get at Wal-Mart. But I don’t see what good that would actually do, and I’m frankly not interested in justifying what I do with my paycheck to some jackass on the Internet who’s given no sign of understanding a damn thing about how anything works, and who appears to be about fifteen years old besides. Assuming you’re not looking forward to a half decade or more of college-prolonged adolescence on Mommy and Daddy’s dime, come back when you’re earning a paycheck of your own and maybe we can talk about that some more.
As for your ideas about the Nazis, why don’t you just stop talking about them until you’ve at least read ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’ and ‘They Thought They Were Free’? Yeah, I know, they’re long books with complicated sentences, and they don’t make terribly pleasant reading — but at least once you’ve got through them you’ll maybe know what the hell you’re talking about.
(If you argue with the cops after they’ve told you you are under arrest)
-besides your double use of the word “you”, the problem again with your argument is that you assume that people will be doing something illegal. If you are told to leave, then you leave. Hence my “do not do anything illegal” stance would suggest. Why is the concept of annoyance versus criminality so far beyond your mental capacities? This is the second time I have had to walk you through this, and I hope it is the last.
Also this is the second time you mentioned the idea that my argument is like me trying to break a wall with my forehead. Honestly, I don’t know who you are trying to convince seeing as your justifying argument of me being in the wrong (as seen above) is….wrong.
Btw…the “idiot” who walks up to the meat grinder is the only idiot worth associating (in my humble opinion).
Your main argument, which is viable, is about your money and how you spend it. I do agree that your money is none of my business. I only wanted to point out that even though wal-mart is more bang for your buck, the long term effects of supporting a corporation that subverts the working class is negative. I think that you will agree with this as you do not seem to be unintelligent.
That being said; I am not a 15 year old kid talking out of my ass. I am very well read and think that if this conversation is to continue, then you and I need to agree to stop trying and attack each other’s intellect. It subverts the arguments context and is a step backward in logical debate. It is obvious that we are both passionate. However, I will not engage in debate with someone who resorts to criticizing someone who they do not know.
Btw…. I have read “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” as well as Speer’s “Inside the Third Reich.” Along with numerous other books, reports, and articles…if you don’t believe me, try me. Otherwise, let’s try and keep it civil.
Kudoes to you Stetz. You have more tolerance for sanctimony than do I.