Slashdot Mirror

• Assassination Politics by Jim Bell
• The American Holocaust
• Anarchist's Cookbook
• Icky, unpatriotic, morbid beheading videos and such
• Bias to balance U.S. news bias
• Map of the White House
• Location of NYC water resevoirs
• Alex Jones loves progress!
• Economic terrorism #1 - buy nothing day
• Economic terrorism #2 - evil ad-skipping Tivo
• Economic terrorism #3 - running out of oil isn't a conspiracy theory.
• Economic terrorism #4 - the top 10 most fuel efficient cars of 2005 :)
• The widening wealth gap
• Paper trails make it much harder to steal elections
• Hamster dance!

If jackboot thug out there wants to arrest me for "implicitly supporting" the content of any of these links, feel free to abuse the PATRIOT ACT in order to force slashdot.org to reveal the IP address associated with this post, and in turn my ISP will reveal my name and home address associated with the DHCP lease (because I didn't bother to post through an anonymous proxy(s)). tinfoil_hat_mode off.

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Sure. I don't think that "end of the world" should be taken literally here. I just think that this election is a beginning of a very difficult and perhaps sad period in world history. Just like in 1944, we are perhaps on the eve of major events (war on terrorism, erosion of civil liberties, Middle East issues, etc) that would change the world. Or maybe not, I'm not pretending to be a prophet here ;-)

Thank you for posting this!

Take a look at this - Adbusters magazine. That's where I came across this poem.

Because it's what we want?

Oh, wait, sorry. I forgot corporations seek only profit.

Maybe it's time for cooperative companies. They would not seek profit, but simply to make the best product they can and distribute it to as many people as they can. Everyone who buys a product gets a share in the company. Grassroots capitalism.

And, yes, I know about Black Spot.

Here's what economics students in three countries are doing to put their professors on the defensive.

PAE

often advertisers don't necessarily lie but rather manipulate through sub-conscious phrases, incomplete truths, and meaningless words. think of many famous advertising campaigns (soda comes to mind) and it's just kind of empty propaganda.

there's a website called adbusters which is very interesting.

Fucking Rocks!

Been reading Adbusters for years. You want an anti-coporatist, Fight Club periodical, you've got it here. (Out of Vancouver, for the Canadian connection.)

For what my wife calls raw, "urban literature", try SubTerrain out of Vancouver. If you happened to pick it up by chance you might be offended by the topics, or just wonder what the hell was going on, but this is well written and explores topics and issues you just won't find in the mainstream press.

Finally, Geist, probably the most overtly Canadian of the bunch. Started reading this one before Maisonneuve and SubTerrain, but now the self-deprecating humor and somewhat provincial view-point is starting to sour a bit.

Videogames: Edge
Science/Tech: New Scientist
The real news: adbusters

Why should they refuse ads from Microsoft? Aren't the readers smart enough to make up their own minds about the benefits of Linux? This reminds me of a recent "outrage" when The Nation ran some full-page ads for Faux News. Most of their readers just laughed at Fox for throwing their money away.

I'd rather that organizations who sell ad space have less editorial control. For instance, Adbusters and the MoveOn PAC have repeatedly been denied airtime on network TV, even though they are able to pay for it, simply because the network execs don't like their message. This is a far greater injustice.

I'm sorry, I thought this was Slashdot, not alt.religion.kibo.

Don't most people here understand what religions really are? They are memes, that infect human culture. The more successful memes (such as Islam) reproduce themselves through reinforcement of cultural paradigms (although are themselves changed by the cultural meme), and by encouraging begetting. (Think of a computer virus -- now imagine the computer is a human mind. Voila! You have a meme.)

It's actually quite difficult to live without some form of meme infection -- only a few people have achieved this (J.Krishnamurti for example.) My own meme of choice is Buddhism, with a strong flavour of Secular Humanism.

At least one SF write has speculated that memes could be used as weapons by advanced ET races.
Perhaps the true evidence of the existence of ETs may be inferred by looking for their memes, which might serve to render a populace docile and compliant when the alien overlords arrive. :-)

For those television addicted visual freaks adbusters have a much better designed turn off your tv week web site. you have to hand it to the adbusters mob, when it comes to the anti-commericalism crowd they take the cake in design and creativity.

If you like initiatives like the TV turnoff week, make sure to check out adbusters

Hacking digital billboards sounds like a job for the readers of adbusters.

It's estimated the average child sees more than 20,000 commercials every year - that works out to at least 55 commercials per day. (American Academy of Pediatrics, "Television and the Family" fact sheet. www.aap.org/family/tv1.htm

In 2001 US advertising expenditures topped $230 billion, more than doubling the $105.97 billion spent in 1980.

When Nike pays schools so that kids do projects designing nike shoes - advertising has gone too far...

When we look at the history of our states, we learn that citizens intentionally defined corporations through charters -- the certificates of incorporation.

In exchange for the charter, a corporation was obligated to obey all laws, to serve the common good, and to cause no harm. Early state legislators wrote charter laws and actual charters to limit corporate authority, and to ensure that when a corporation caused harm, they could revoke its charter.(link)

>Seems like it's become a custom around here to destroy small hobbyist sites.

In this case 'small hobbyist' turns out to be guerrilla/deceptive marketers and the /. effect is great weapon to use on these assholes.

I think Pepsi and Pizza Hut may may already have done this. (Could one say a spaceship 'pops up'?)

Here are some great sources for news online:

Financial Times - FT a good example of actual "news reporting" (as opposed to "news creating" exhibited by most companies). As a result of the commercial influence in all aspects of society nowadays, it makes perfect sense that some of the financial news sources may now be the most objective source of information. Check out this wonderful site and newspaper.

PR Watch - This site is run by the Center for Media & Democracy is a nonprofit, public interest organization funded by individuals and nonprofit foundations and dedicated to investigative reporting on the public relations industry. The Center serves citizens, journalists and researchers seeking to recognize and combat manipulative and misleading PR practices. There is an excellent weekly newsletter you can subscribe to from this site which summarizes news stories and special issues where media coverage was manipulated.

Disinfopedia - a collaborative project to produce a directory of public relations firms, think tanks, industry-funded organizations and industry-friendly experts that work to influence public opinion and public policy on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests. More than 2500 articles outlining information and credentials on key individuals and entities involved with public policy and other areas. This is a great resource to look up the history of people in the news.

Link TV - The first national network offering a global perspective on news, current events and culture, presenting viewpoints seldom covered in the U.S. media. We present first-run documentaries on global issues, current affairs series, international news, classic foreign feature films, and the best of world music. Link TV's programming, combined with innovative use of two-way digital link-ups and our participatory web site, deepens audience engagement and encourages active participation. If you have DirecTV, this network is channel 375 - ask your cable provider if they do not make this network available - it's worth it!

Democratic Underground - What has turned out to be a polarized web site has become a watchdog for the mainstream media, the Democratic Underground exposes the hypocrisy and sleaziness in the media. Check this site out folks -- with references (something you do not find on conservative sites)

CorpWatch - A great site for information on the nefarious activities of multinational corporations. Want to find out who's paid off whom? Which governments are under the influence of which corporations? Little-known corporate relationships that explain unusual social or political events? This is the site to check.

Adbusters - In our society it has become increasingly difficult to separate editorial from advertising and many argue there is no longer a distinction. This site addresses the social changes in how people are educated by addressing the impact of news and the advertising media and exposes the propaganda campaigns. Very good reading, and in many cases, shockingly thought-provoking!

Common Dreams News Center - Billed as "Breaking news & views for the Progressive community",
this site endeavors to carry stories that the mainstream media may either not be reporting, or not telling all sides.

Canadian Broadcast Corporation - Canada's state-owned news service is widely regarded as one of the most objective sources of information.

Independent Media Center - A good source for news stories that the mainstream doesn't pick up. This site is particularly sensitive to the influence corporate America has over what is and is

Does this mean I can assert copyrights over /etc/X11/rgb.txt?

The problem is a lack of highly educated workers willing to work for the minimum wage or lower

However there is no lack of CEOs willing to work for hundreds of times the entry level wage at their own companies.

An educated worker can barely live off of minimum wage, much less pay back the student loans required to get such an education. Asking them to work for minimum wage is not just insulting, it's morally reprehensible. These corporations should be boycotted, if a boycott large enough to affect them could be organized.

These companies are also eliminating the chance of a technical worker to climb the corporate ladder. They aren't going to promote an Indian worker to any job outside of India. So even more of the company's decisions will be made by people with commerce educations and not technical ones.

I hope that in the long run this kills these companies off. Of course, I also hope this doesn't continue for long enough for there to even be a long run.

I fully agree. See adbusters for example.

That's one way of trying to alert people to the possibility of living in a world not based on deceit.

More power to them.


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Our inbox mirrors our daily life.(even the penis enlarger ads[enzyte]).
3000 commercial messages a day are rammed into the average persons head wether they like it or not.
Adbusters argues that our mental environment is becoming polluted. "information pollution" has been a focus of their "mental environmentalism" since '89.

Our inbox mirrors our daily life.(even the penis enlarger ads[enzyte]).
3000 commercial messages a day are rammed into the average persons head wether they like it or not.
Adbusters argues that our mental environment is becoming polluted. "information pollution" has been a focus of their "mental environmentalism" since '89.

Our inbox mirrors our daily life.(even the penis enlarger ads[enzyte]).
3000 commercial messages a day are rammed into the average persons head wether they like it or not.
Adbusters argues that our mental environment is becoming polluted. "information pollution" has been a focus of their "mental environmentalism" since '89.

Mooches. ;-)

Oh! I mean fight the power!!

Although in the article, they mainly focus on Texas, it's pretty clear that the whole system is being gamed and gamed hardest by the Republicans.

Buy Nothing Day is an attempt to further spread the understanding you already have. You might like to check out the site and may be use their help/ideas to promote consumption abstinence.

I would dearly love it if *just for one day*, the entire nation could say "screw it" to capitalism and spend time with their families

Ask, and ye shall receive. AdBusters has been sponsoring "Buy Nothing Day" for years now.

It is considered such a threat to the American Way of Life(tm) that the local (Portland, OR) police turn out by the score to prevent people from celebrating it anywhere near the downtown business district. I'm serious. Riot gear, dozens of arrests, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the whole thing. Just to keep people from saying "Ditch the consumerism for twenty four hours just one day a year."

Buy Nothing Day is the day after Thanksgiving (the 28th).

Also, you might consider printing out a few of these Gift Exemption Vouchers to hand out (or mail) at xmas time so that other people might better understand how you feel about the exchange of needless consumer shit.

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Buy Nothing Day is the day after Thanksgiving (the 28th).

Also, you might consider printing out a few of these Gift Exemption Vouchers to hand out (or mail) at xmas time so that other people might better understand how you feel about the exchange of needless consumer shit.

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Why not instead participate in Buy Nothing Day, instead of buying more useless stuff that nobody needs?

One step ahead of you. Wave the flag proudly!

This trade agreement will allow the Mexican president to finally push for his plan to unite south and central america for the purpose of creating a center of technology and manufacturing in Yucatan.

His desire to bring in money to Mexico will allow him to garner the investments of the southern nations to build a technological area in Yucatan for American corporations to be able to compete against China, and Asian countries.

The destitute south americans will come far and wide, to work for the pennies of large american corporations, as jobs are so scarce. Currently the meager population in the area will see this as a god send, but as soon as the corporations set up shop and dilute the economy with lower wages, like our own fast food economy we have up here in the US. they will start to realize that the new jobs that the corporations offer, will have folks working so much for so little pay that they will end up as slaves to corporations.

Americans may not have a problem with people in south america becaoming hourly slaves, but the pennies that they earn will allow the American corporations to further cut legitamate American jobs for the hugh influx of south american cheap workers that can easily compete with Asian countries.

American workers and Labor, will likely break apart durring a depression that will be created by this. We have no more strong Labor representatives in the U.S. and will likely suffer for it in a few years.

The issue with moving work out of the US more and more, will likely have a detremental impact on our democracy. As more and more people fall by the way side into socail programs, we may end up with a country run by corporations, who have moved so much of the wealth away from the middle class, that only the large lower class will remain, subsidized by social programs.

This will be the new impoverished economy of socialism, and I can easily see people want to leave the country in 10-20 years if this keeps happening, for a better life elsewhere. A country where the cost of living fairs better with the wages recieved.

We might of won the cold war over Russia, but the more I see the radical changes that this white house is creating, the more I feel we are moving to a Fascist state were we wan't to conrol other countries through the idea of possible prosperity, but not it's certainty.

We may just becaome a combination of socialism and fascist united states. Socialism for the impoverished poor, fascist... for the elite corporate. Who know's but this definitly makes me wonder, and afraid.

Mabidex

You'll probably never know, since economists don't practice whole-cost accounting, don't recognize the triple bottom line, and governments don't consider ecological footprints when doing environmental assessments.

As those grating wacky culture jammers at adbusters say, economists need to learn to subract!

Adbusters has a new article about Leo Strauss, one of the intellectual fathers of neo-conservativism.

If you want to understand the neocons, you have to understand Strauss and his opponents (such as the mentioned Hannah Arendt).

This concept is being pushed for development by Adbusters and the Culture Jammers Network as well. If you're interested in their projects check this link out: http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/opensource/gree nscan/

Adbusters is working on a design for an opensource version of this. It appeared in the previous issue & they've gotten some feedback.

Adbusters is working on a design for an opensource version of this. It appeared in the previous issue & they've gotten some feedback.

Adbusters has been trying for years to run ads telling people not to buy crap... guess how much success they've had finding a network to carry the ads? Yes, they're willing to pay full rate card prices, but so far every major network has refused to air the ads. Good luck getting ant-MPAA ads on the air! (Hint: Unless you're willing to spend more on advertising the the movie studios, which spend at least $30 million promoting every new movie, media is going to follow the money and avoid pissing off bigger customers to makes a small group of "nuts" happy.)

AOL, one of the largest (and arguably hoariest) national internet service providers around, is losing business because of some questionable business practices and needs to generate more revenue.

In order to do this, they've severed ties with a prominent internet business (Amazon) and are going to attempt to run their own physical media music store...

... bearing in mind that the music industry is also taking a royal screwing due in one way or another to their own questionable business practices. People are avoiding buying CDs for whatever reason. (Either because they can get their music online through P2P, because they think the current catalog selections are tepid crap, or because they are trying to boycott the industry. More likely a combination of the three.)

Excuse me? Where's the sense in this?? If you have a business model that's doing poorly, you are not supposed to tack on another business model that's also doing poorly! If the problem is too much fat, the solution is not to tack more on.

As someone at Adbusters said, "Economists must learn to subtract." While the specific application is different in this case, the basic principle holds true for most businessmen, accountants, and marketers who can only think of "bigger" and "more profitable" and not "streamlined" and "more responsible."

What if the court stated some metric? Like "must be at least 50% less than the original"... how about cutting the image in halves. Then posting both halves on your site such that they appear as one? Neither half violates individually?

Just to be safe, I cut the picture up into individual pixels and then reassemble them into a single new image. And you can't own a single pixel ... why, that would be tantamount to owning a color. And what kind of twisted company would try to trademark a color?

Cheers,
IT

oops, good luck getting these ads on a TV channel owned by Time warner, sony, or disney. I think that covers all of them. In fact theyll have a hard time getting it into print media even, but that isnt quite as conglomerated (yet, thank you FCC) For an example of Ads that TV just wont run, check out Buy nothing day They have two ads on the right, and theyve had minimal success getting them to run anywhere, even though they are willing to pay, simply because of the message in those ads (dont buy anything the day after thanksgiving)

Very well put. More concise and to the point than I was able to get across.


I'd like to also add re: competition. Much of this competition today is competing for the approval of external agents such as one's peers, and ironically, one's customers.


Hence the major fault of most marketing (and in essence the capitalist infrastructure). The best marketing is the one that wins the most customers. Period. Almost without regard to ethics.

Witness for example, a Communication Arts article indicating the amount of creative effort that goes into a "successful" ad campaign.

What I'd like to know is if the people responsible for fulfilling their individual, essential, niche roles in that juggernaut of slick promotion ever ask themselves whether their valuable time and amazing creative energies couldn't be better spent actually helping needy people live better lives.

Yeah, I read Adbusters (among other things :-).

And yeah, I used to work for an ad agency.

I'm going to go outside soon, I'm losing focus.

Conclusion. I look forward to a period of personal accountability in human affairs. A period where decisions are made honestly and individually.

Sure it'll take more time and effort, but then again...





What's the rush?





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enjoy your fascism kids, while you pay off your trillion dollar debts, hahaha

A Dose of Reality

and also one about the massive increase in depression and other pyschological problems:

Toxic Culture USA

The second link is definately worth reading, and is quite disturbing. IMHO, there is something very very wrong, and it's not just a case of "a few people needing a few drugs".

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Simon

A Dose of Reality

and also one about the massive increase in depression and other pyschological problems:

Toxic Culture USA

The second link is definately worth reading, and is quite disturbing. IMHO, there is something very very wrong, and it's not just a case of "a few people needing a few drugs".

--
Simon

The U.S. doesn't really give a damn about the rest of the world, just that part of it which crashes airplanes into our skyscrapers.

Not to be too flippant, but since when?

Also, I don't see us invading (or even threatening to invade) Saudi Arabia. Maybe our leaders just have a very poor grasp of geography.

Sorry to tell you, but when you watch that doc about Razamatooten, you are sipping from the same GE spigot that also spews into NBC.

The FCC is arguing that there is less need for control over media consolidation because of the greater number of choices offered by cable. What that argument ignores is that cable is basically populated by different variations of the same corporate line. The same big media companies provide all those 'diverse' channels.

So they lost you with their NBC advertising-delivery-method, that's fine. They still got you with their History Channel advertising-delivery-method. No matter to them, you're still consuming from mother GE.

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Yay! Adbusters :-)

~ remember that some countries really *do* have brutal regimes.