You probably remember the online outrage over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) copyright enforcement proposal. Last week, the Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force released a report on digital copyright policy that endorsed one piece of the controversial proposal: making the streaming of copyrighted works a felony.
This man has been such a deception.
The content industry has to get something back for all of the money they spent on him.
Politics in the US has gotten so toxic that I’m willing to admit defeat. The bad guys won.
Three letter agencies don’t even bother to pay lip service to due process but that’s last week’s news.
“Look! An incredibly vague international terror alert! You’re welcome, America. You’re safe now. Go back to sleep.”
“You’re right. Snowden is a traitorous asshole. Thanks, guys.”
It feels like Republicans and Democrats are working off the same playbook, but they both keep the hate machine pumping at full volume because it’s easier to do what they want if people are fighting amongst themselves instead of realizing how hard they’re being f–ked by both parties and the incredibly rich people they work for. It’s like that Bill Hicks quote:
“I agree with the puppet on the left!”
“I agree with the puppet on the right!”
“Hey wait a minute! There’s one guy holding both f–king puppets!”
Look. I don’t have a lot of money, but a lot of people seem to want it. Whether it’s the taxman coming from the left, or the guy on the right who wants to cut wages, raise the cost of living, and charge me out the ass for the privilege of being alive – I know they’re coming and I’ve resigned myself to the fact that they’ll get what they want. As long as they can keep people scared (and most reasonable people are easily scared; the world is a scary place after all), they’ll be able to get it all.
So I’m waving the white flag. I give up. I’m too comfortable to fight and I’ve got just enough to lose that I’m unwilling to risk losing it today on the chance I might lose it tomorrow. You win.
A bit of advice though for whoever the TLA reading this reports to: Don’t screw it up by taking too much too quickly. You don’t want to create truly desperate people. Desperate people are dangerous, and a lot of them blame you.
Edited 2013-08-06 14:16 UTC
It feels like that, but it isn’t. Otherwise, how far up the political ladder would you have to travel before you got that secret email that said: ‘How to f–k over the American people’, and then the powers that be would hope you don’t tell anyone else. But as we found out recently, there’s always an Edward Snowden in the mix …
That email does exist but that’s not how it’s worded at all. It talks extensively about protecting “American interests”, both at home and abroad, and securing the cooperation of our international partners to ensure a fair and enforceable system for global businesses to thrive in the emerging world market.
You don’t need Edward Snowden to uncover press releases.
The thing is that I simply don’t believe it exists.
While this is shitty …
I don’t think it is possible for a Government of the size of the USA to be rotten to the core. It is simply impossible. The recent Snowden leaks are proof of this. There is always someone with enough backbone to actually do this. The economical affect could be profound (10% of cloud computing customers have moved their business from the USA already due to the leaks).
The reality is and this would be apparent to anyone that has ever watched the wire or worked in a large organisation.
There are so many conflicting interests in large organisations by higher up individuals, that an overall big brother is impossible (it was even impossible in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia).
Everyone envisages a one man with a vision of everything … it simply isn’t possible for one (very) busy man to keep and make a decision about everything and he delegates decisions to those below him.
Edited 2013-08-06 19:34 UTC
You rightfully reason “rotten to the core” doesn’t/can’t really exist. You wrongly ascribe the reason for it to the size of the US or other large organizations due to competing interests.
Consider now instead, the difference between your
“rotten to the core” and “rotten at the core”.
An apple that is “rotten to the core” is overtly rotten from the outer peel all the way through to its core. There is no mistaking it being rotten even at first glance.
An apple that is only “rotten at the core” still has a clean and shinny outward appearance. Only after close inspection is the rot revealed.
All evil intention is necessarily disguised behind the cleanest facade the perpetrators can muster. This is true in all, evil, agenda driven human endeavors, be they a pedophile lurking near a playground with a box of puppies and a bag of candy intent on rape , torture and murder, or a company’s claim that their walled garden is there purely to protect its users and not being about vendor lock-in, vertical integration and ultimate monopoly, or governments removing civil liberties “for the children” or necessary to prevent terrorism and having nothing to do with moving incrementally towards effective, total ownership and control of its population and ultimately the world. That if terrorism wasn’t real they would create it if need be to further their ultimate aims.
There is no need for one puppet-master to call all the shots. All that is needed is a pyramidal hierarchical structure with a few well positioned like minded individuals(fellow travelers) at each level of the structure.
In world events, the American president is but a task-master for the real powers that be and a long way from the apex of world power.
It would still be just as implausible though. Of course, there are some corrupt people in positions of power, but if there were a group of them hellbent on world domination, AND across multiple administrations and party lines, it would be damn hard to keep that a secret. And even assuming they could keep it a secret (which in itself is highly unlikely) any group of individuals that hungry for power would probably never cooperate with each other. Instead, they would most likely destroy each other, like the Sith did in Star Wars.
I think it’s the system that corrupts people – likely without them even realising it. In the same way that a group of individually decent people is capable of pretty heinous and shocking acts. It’s only when they get detached from that group and face their actions that they realise what they’ve done.
The problem is that the current system encourages people not to question their actions because you get less punishment if you get caught and can shift the blame elsewhere than if you blow the whistle. And if compliance is the expected behaviour in your group/society, then it will eventually turn you into a compliant person as well in that position.
Excuses are usually like:
“It’s an order from above.”
“I had received wrong information.”
“My job is to represent my shareholders/clients.”
Often all of this is true. Obama is mainly getting his information from established groups/people such as lobbyists who simply represent their client and do not care about the public because that is not their job. Surely these established groups have more experience in this field and have more authority than the general public and hence should be taken more seriously? I think it’s pretty similar to the Milgram experiment.
Then throw in some actually evil people and you get a very rotten system.
So if you want to fix the system, then start by making it more attractive to blow the whistle than to cover your ass by shifting the blame. That way you encourage people to think for themselves again. Unfortunately it’s a self-sustaining system as most people aren’t interested (anymore) in more responsibility.
Edited 2013-08-07 09:28 UTC
I say we need the equivalent of dog shaming for these people:
http://www.dogshaming.com
You get caught lying/stealing/cheating/etc, and we put a sign around your neck and post it all over the internet
Emergent behaviour might be even worse – harder to root out.
Don’t give up. That’s what they want you to do. Demoralizing the enemy is one tactic to win a war.
Grains of sand. One grain here, another there, repeat, and after a while, you have a desert. Just do what you can to make it better.
+1 for quoting Bill Hicks.
Thanks. And equal kudos go for the Sunny Day handle. Great band.
Oh, wow. Someone actually got it.
Is that a Venture Brothers reference in your handle? I just re-watched season 1 last week.
I’ve been a Sunny Day fan since Diary. I actually have an extra autographed copy of The Rising Tide somewhere if you want it. Got it for an ex, but didn’t really think that purchase through. Happens. If you want, I can dig it up and mail it to you (seriously). My email addy is yourloose.ass[at]gmail. It’s my junk catch all account so don’t read too much into the crudeness. It’s more meant for spammy web masters to read and ponder.
I once mailed a stranger I met in a bar a burger wrapper from Sonic (the burger joint) because he didn’t believe they existed. Sometimes, you gotta encourage people to chase their dreams using unorthodox methods.
And yeah, my handle is a Venture Bros reference, but if I had my druthers I’d change it. I’d probably use a Ween reference now, or maybe Melvins. I’m sometimes tempted to create a new account for just that reason but I have such a low UID here and what I think is the highest moving average comment score on the site that changing IDs seems crazy. Can’t give those things up on a whim. You’d lose internet points.
On an unrelated note, I’d kick the shit out of Dean Venture if I ever met him again. C’est la vie.
Also, a coworker pointed out I should’ve attributed that Hicks quote to Jeff Dunham just to mess with people. A missed opportunity I guess but something that made me smile, so I thought I’d share.
Edited 2013-08-09 03:19 UTC
I’ve mentioned it a couple of days ago on OSNews, the US government can’t fix itself.
To be honest, I don’t think the people will do it either.
They face both the government, corporations, justice and military.
Where are those people that care so much about their gun-laws ?
Wasn’t it something like:
“We need these guns to keep us safe from our own government and foreign governments”.
Right, …
Great post. (because it’s one I agree with – obviously)
..and for the full ‘obama deception’ film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw
I’d not seen before until Thom mentioned Obama – such a deception.. and I googled it wondering was it a bit of a zeitgeist phrase out there in the public consciousness – and low and behold.
I like the way, the above movie is referenced as a ‘conspiracy’ theory yet a lot of the content is blatantly true – very little reading between the lines really needed: e.g the ‘scaremongering’ at the time of widespread/blanket wireless wiretapping….well that’s now a gimme for starters isn’t it.
I also love KRS One’s little burger franchise summary of the current reality of our ‘democracies’ – comes in about 0:02:50 .
—
It seems abundantly clear across most of the western world really now (let alone any of the so-called developing nations) that our representative democracy’s a real sham, and that if we want REAL democracies – or something approaching them, we either need Direct Democracy (which let’s be honest, in our digital, computing, age ..is Entirely f&cking possible from a nuts and bolts or infrastructure point of view ; –OR we need a system that DOES NOT rely on TRUSTING any of our representatives – it needs to work (a la the BitCoin currency network’s philosopy of NOT TRUSTING any one party on the network – but VERIFYING all the encrypted transactions) via transparency, open communication and verifiability and accountability – swift accountability.
I’m not a ‘commie’ or a ‘hippy’ – I’m just looking for ‘fairness’ in my world, my society (and it’s as much mine as anyone elses, including anyone thinks they’re ‘in charge’)
Those that are De Facto ‘in charge’ aren’t going to concede control. It needs to be taken back from them are shared out again – as ideologically it should have been all along.
Good luck to us all 😉
Sorry for all the stress quotes and capitals. Not that sorry.
Edited 2013-08-07 12:14 UTC
haha, ‘The Obama Deception’ I linked to above certainly starts interestingly, albeit a little provocatively.. with a lot of well known truths behind the banking collapse, the string pullers of economic and political power; covering really a bunch of the same ground as Inside Job.. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/
but then goes a bit silly.. i.e. proper fictional conspiracy theory stuff -sorry I can be gullible at first- : the Carbon Tax powered new Obama-fiend architectured ‘Bank of the World’ and personal Presidential conscript Army.. hehe, funny.
But I’ll own up, I didn’t realise it was a mockumentary at first ..or is it(?!) there’s still so much truth within the silliness.
🙂
“This man has been such a deception.”
I’ve been saying that for years. No one wanted to listen.
In the end, he’ll probably get his way because he’ll throw a fit, stomp his feet, cry, blame republicans, white people, rich people, working people, promote more class warfare, get everyone that doesn’t fall into above mentioned classes riled up to the point where they can’t see beyond his words and then attempt to sign it into law via executive order.
They were listening, but they were ignoring you because they don’t have a simplistic idea.
Even for international observers like me who preferred Obama (and not just because of the alternative) weren’t thinking he can do nothing bad. Only a naive person with a poor understanding of politics thinks the head of a non-dictatorial government can actually do everything they claim.
If I didn’t know better, Americans actually want a dictator, but they think the dictator would align with their own beliefs because their own beliefs are obviously the best, otherwise they wouldn’t hold them.
It’s not like Romney would have been any better. We need more political parties on equal footing with the other two minus the bribes by corporations.
Many people have observed that the really weird thing is, that Obama continues on the same path as George Bush. Even though Obama differed from Bush early, the same politics are now done.
No matter what president, USA continues with the same course of actions. Republican or democrat does not matter. Why is that?
Government should be reducing the copyright laws not expanding it. There is too much copyright even without SOPA, now that the major ISPS have implemented their six-strike policy.
They could shorten copyright law to 20 years, abolish the DMCA, legalize piracy, anything to make the copyright laws less bureaucratic. The US should get rid of their IP policies with other countries since it violates their state sovereignty (the US actually dictates policy in other countries when it comes to IP law).
His supporters deceived themselves.
We had Bush who got us into a war for nothing, got our people killed for nothing, and cost us billions of dollars for it. He also brought us draconian measures to make up for failing to prevent 9/11. Then we had Obama who said he would clean up the mess, but didn’t. We need more options. And a religious nazi like Paul Ryan is not the answer either.
We need scholars in government who won’t be corrupted because the means of corrupting them won’t exist any longer having been finally removed.
You’ve never been to any university faculty parties, have you?
Sorry losers. If you’re going to stream something that doesn’t belong to you and actually try to charge people money to acess it in any form, doing so damn well *SHOULD* be a felony.