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The Web Won't Topple Tyranny
An anonymous reader writes "Joshua Kurlantzick of the New Republic online writes that the internet--once heralded as a revolutionary force in politics--has turned out to be surprisingly nonthreatening to dictators and tyrannies. Reminds me of Howard Dean, and the trend to see technological change as a politically progressive force. Maybe this is not such a good idea?"
After all, the people don't control it. Revolution isn't profitable to those who do control it.
And cross-referenced with the list of subversive sites you have recently visited.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
no longer can recognize censorship as damage and route around it. Blame the router manufacturers.
It is doing the same thing that television did in the 60's, when it brought the Vietnam "conflict" into the living room in all of its horrendous glory. Now we get to read the BBC and get a different take on why the world hates us.
It seems like brute force is the only thing that works for breaking down tyrranies...
Any why do you want to topple him/her?
The internet will not topple tyranny when they the evil forces that are supposed to be toppled control it (China). A completely free internet would topple tyranny but they know that obviously and thus do everything they can to control it.
From the article (on an Internet Cafe in Laos):
Yet, despite its trendiness and high-tech appearance, the Internet joint conspicuously lacked one element usually associated with cafe life: any discussion of current events. Virtually no one in the cafe spoke with anyone else.
Geez - geeks not socializing! What is this world coming to ?!
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
Howard Dean was a success story for the internet. He gathered a huge amount of money and marshalled a decent amount of supporters.
He lost because he stupid campaign manager blew all that money in the insignificant first two states of the primary, mostly fighting against Dick Gephardt-- who turned out to basically be a hopeless kamakaze attack steered into the Dean campaign anyway.
If it hadn't been for incompetence on the part of said campaign manager, Dean would have won or at least made enough fo an impact you would not now be chiding the internet-oriented aspects of his campaign strategy.
"surprisingly nonthreatening to dictators and tyrannies. " Since they generally don't have internet access is those countries, where's the surprise?
But a wireless mesh network? Hrm, the next few years might be interesting with wireless hard drives and heavily wirelessly connected individuals.
People like to say "The Internet treats any form of censorship as damage and tries to route around it." and in most cases that's true. If a router is refusing to allow access to another address, the router before it will attempt to find another way to get the packets to where they're supposed to go.
However, if the only ways out of the house/building/campus/country on the network are all controled by the same sensoring authority, there's no way to get there from here. So, Tyranical goverments just need to maintain control of all wires leaving their country, and prevent people from owning satellite dishes and then they'll be all set at blocking sites that they don't like.
The main reason that the internet has not been a threat to dictators is that the dictators don't need to control the internet. They only need to control the computers that access the internet.
This is no different than controlling any other type of media. (Control of presses/television stations/etc.)
Guess what - neither did the printing press, the telephone, radio or television.
Well, and with a little help from the French. ;)
There's quite a difference between a person who puts up a blog and a person who, for example, leads an armed insurrection against a bastard dictator. I submit that the ability to type and the ability to forcefully overthrow a government have little in common...
Don't you think, though, that there is not one single factor that can bring dictators down but it's a set of smaller reasons.
I think the Internet is a rather strong eroding factor. It isn't an instant fix, but it works to undermind the foundation of these regimes. Someone above said that "radio, TV, telephone" didn't do it either.. right, but the contributed. Nothing works all at once... all the communication together eventually brings it all down at once upon itself, like it did in the USSR.
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
Quote: How long does this guy think these countries have had the web, and what percentage of these people does he think use it there? And finally how long does he think it takes for something like this to change culture? Holy Shit Dude! Its like saying: "we started publishing an underground newspaper three years ago, and it has yet to topple Dictator so and so.." Real soulutions take time. Cultural change takes time. And it is WAY to early to be making judgements about the way the web is affecting these places
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
at some point in the future when we can truly measure the effect the internet has had on history, to see how it comapared to the printing press.
I don't get this guy.. He's pointing out that he visited an internet cafe in Laos, and despite its existence, their oppressive regime still stands!
How strange. Or?
Most people in Laos can't afford to go to an internet cafe and read the censored news - or possibly gain access to the uncensored ones. How could it possibly make a difference?
The internet is a medium, not a means. You need to have an organized opposition to effect change. You need support. You need a lot of things other than just the means of communication.
Instead, he should be looking at the places were these kinds of things are in place. Such as Iran. And you will also see the use of the internet. And these places are progressing*.
(*Although I'll be the first to admit to the recent setbacks in Iran. But on the other hand, the Ayatollahs wouldn't be acting if they weren't threated, would they?)
So you mean that the awe-inspiring, mighty-and-shall-prevail, Power Of the Internet (TM) doesn't bring about the Defeat Of Evil, World Peace, and the Solution To World Hunger?
Who would've thunk it that it might require, you know, *people* to do these things -- except that people are sitting around reading email, sending IM, browsing the web, and talking about how any day now the Power of the Internet(TM) was going to magically make all the bad things go away. After all, the Power of the Internet(TM) could never be controlled by those of Nefarious Purposes because... er, because... just because! Oh, quick -- listen to these new MP3s you can download!
The plan:
1. Build der Intar-net
2. ???
3. Topple dictators! Make World Peace! Solve World Hunger!
Most of the millitias I know of agree with GWB.
But world leaders, journalists, and political scientists who tout the Internet as a powerful force for political change are just as wrong as the dot-com enthusiasts who not so long ago believed the Web would completely transform business.
This is a classic example of a writer who had an agenda first, and then sought to write a story to back it up. The whole article is bogus.
The Internet HAS completely transformed business. It has become a major source of a variety of political discussion and activism. Anyone who has been paying attention can see that.
The mainstream political/business publications are resistant to anything which upsets the existing delicate balance, so they often hold new technology (i.e. things they don't understand, or can't control, or can't profit from based on the way they've been leveraging their power and control) to ridiculous, unrealistic standards.
So if we put Internet kiosks in a communist country and the regime doesn't topple in six months, that's a failure of the Internet? Get real!
I know this is nothing new, but am I the only one who doesn't see this new mingling of promotion and editorial which seems to now be totally dominant? An entity "proclaims" something IS the way it IS. Never mind coming up with a realistic explanation. Most people have such short attention spans they don't check the facts or read between the lines.
Did someone expect that tyrants could just be voted out with a web poll?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The kind of change the article is talking about can take years, even generations. Widespread access to the web hasn't really existed in most areas of the world but for a few years. Just as radio and television broadcasts didn't topple governments overnight, neither can we expect the web to be able to. But the web will play an important role in change. Those young people surfing pop-culture sites are really the bigger threat to totalatarianism - as they grow older, they'll start to look around and see what people in more liberal, western countries have versus what they have and realize the truth.
The internet, and the free flow of information it facilitates, aren't going to topple tyrannies, only make them irrelevant.
All war in the future is going to be information war. What's more important? Resources; or the information making the exploitation of those resources possible?
It is to be expected that where power is derived form force, the existence of the internet will have little political effect. On the other hand, where power is derived from propaganda the internet will have significant effect. This thesis is borne out if you look at recent political movements in the west, e.g. the anti-globalisation and anti-war movements.
The number of people involved in the anti-war movement in particular was unprecedented, and depended largely for its success on the internet - both as an alternative news source and as a organisational tool.
if the net were such a "liberating", "informing" Force, then milions of people with presumably normal mental capacity wouldn't have been duped into thinking that a dollar for a song off I-Tunes is an acceptable deal. Yee-haw!
the first amendment was first because it is those rights which are most often exercised in a free and civil society. The 2nd Amendment is 2nd because it is that right which keeps a society free and civil -- only the threat of arms keeps governments honest. If you really believe we'd still have free elections in the USA without a substantial number of armed citizens, then I hope you're very happy in Cuba, China, Nazi Germany, the USSR, et cetera.
Internet is not only the web, and not all the web is about big webs. Its also small forums, maillist, irc, and instant messagind. If people mix with other, will know about how cool is to live at a democracy country, and be jealous... ..the article is simplistic at first. The Internet is a powerfull tool, with unknom hidden effects long range. I suspect.
-Woof woof woof!
Freedom of speech undermines revolution. If you don't have the freedom to speak your mind, you build up anger that you can't release. Eventually enough people build up enough anger that they do speak out and with critical mass they form a revolution. After all, if free speech is outlawed, you better arm yourself if you want to speak out.
Free speech generates a culture of back seat driver, couch potato swear-at-the-images-on-your television citizens. It's better to let out anger than leave it in. I think I like it that way. It's better than revolution.
We just have to figure out away to build political movements around downloading porn.
It's true that the internet is not the cornucopia of freedom it was hyped up to be.
But the underlying premise, that information is essential to liberty, remains true, and the internet as a technology (perhaps not as a product) is the best way of getting accurate and timely information.
The very fact that the author was unable to access websites belonging to dissident groups proves the point. If the internet was irrelevant, these sites would not be blocked.
In the past, a dictatorial regime would progressively close off the flow of free information to its populace, the better to feed them the diet of lies that sustain such regimes. These days, that is harder than it has ever been, and this is largely thanks to the internet, including humble email.
I believe the internet has brought liberty to many people, it's just that the process is incomplete.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Iraq had the highest gun ownership anywhere in the world and yet the people there where completely terrorized by their government...
And those weren't just little pistols, everybody in Iraq has an AK-47...
Hmmm, well, then again all those AKs and RPGs are certainly helpful in fighting imperialist invaders though...
And had he been nominated, he would've probably toppled ONE tyranny.
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The article is actually rather detailed and well-thought. The author makes some interesting arguments about why the Internet has not been as great a vessel for democratic progress as some hoped it would be.
One argument is that yes, geeks do not socialize. More specifically, the author argues that the Internet is inherently detrimental to social debate:
Another shortcoming of the Internet is that it lends itself to individual rather than communal activities. It "is about people sitting in front of a terminal, barely interacting," says one Laotian researcher. The Web is less well-suited to fostering political discussion and debate because, unlike radio or even television, it does not generally bring people together in one house or one room.
Another argument is that many governments have simply stifled the Internet completely, reducing its utility altogether:
But the Internet's inherent flaws as a political medium are only part of the reason for its failure to spread liberty. More significant has been the ease with which authoritarian regimes have controlled and, in some cases, subverted it. The most straightforward way governments have responded to opposition websites has been simply to shut them down.
It goes on to mention a great number of examples of such activities; including government policies in Singapore, China and Saudi Arabia, among other countries. I could not fail to be outraged at reading descriptions of such vile cencorship, which is unfortunately a fact of life for a great number of the world's Internet users.
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
Actually, speaking as someone who follows this stuff, you're completly wrong.
The Dean supporters don't see it as a "swindle". They see it as Dean took all the media heat for that amount of time..the first person to hit the beach, and hard. And set the tone for the entire debate in a very positive fasion.
What did they get? A very good chance of not only getting Bush out of office, but starting a conversation to make real change.
'benevolent dictatorship' control of technology doesnt seem so cute now, does it?
if the technology were developed and maintained democratically, then the medium would be democratic.
until geeks figure out the value of democracy, nothing will change.
For those of you who don't know the story, Glass was busted for making up dozens of stories out of whole cloth. The story that finally broke the camel's back was one he made up about a (ficitonal) teenage hacker who held a large (fictional) technology corporation hostage. He invented hacker conventions and fictional US infosec laws to back all of this up. Nobody at TNR figured any of this out-- it took an investigation by another magazine to bring the ridiculousness of this to anyone's attention.
As Glass got more desperate, he manufactured fake web pages (in the AOL members section) for the corporation. Still, nobody at TNR realized this was bullshit, because they apparently didn't know a whole lot about how this Internet thing worked.
Unfair of me to hold this against them? Maybe. But TNR is going to have to do a lot to demonstrate that they're "with it" on technology issues before that kind of ineptitude is forgotten.
Since those who would be harmed by allowing thier citizens to speak out in a public forum also control access to the forum.
Just once, I'd like it if someone called me "Sir".
Without adding, "You're creating a scene."
Toppling tyranny turns out too tough for TCP/IP, thus trifling trends towards tempering totalitarianism through technological tricks. Terrorist throughout Terra are thrilled, thinking their thorny troubles will tidily thin, though they tremble tiresomely, tipped toward technology themselves.
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
"Reminds me of Howard Dean, and the trend to see technological change as a politically progressive force. Maybe this is not such a good idea?"
What? You attribute the collapse of Democratic support for Howard Dean as a way of advancing the argument that the internet is not revolutionary? Dean collapsed because of his crazy man scream and other gaffes, not to mention that his "I'm against Bush's war" wasn't enough of a campaign platform to rally behind.
Its actually ironic that you brought this up regarding the lack of power the internet has in toppling dictators. *The Coalition* toppled a well-known one this past year, with military might. The Military (through DARPA) created the internet, and it is integral to military operations. Therefore, the internet IS a revolutionary force that does topple dictatorships. Perhaps after the election, we'll see another regime be toppled through the same means in 2005; a regime that does have WMD beyond the shadow of a doubt - North Korea...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Look farther than the internet cafe. These are where the McDonalds eaters hang out. Not anyone with a brain.
Orwell saw that back when he wrote 1984! Ever considered how that whole editing process worked? Or the telescreens? That's technology for you!
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net
What he got in Laos was not the Internet. It was a Potemkin internet (small "i"), where the government controls the access to controversial people. The Internet is not the threat to tyranny, people are, when using the Internet. The people of Laos are uniquely tyrannized, after their 1970s holocaust which killed millions of people, on the basis of their education and independence. And Laos is just now getting any kind of internet at all, or even foreigners. In a few years, after the inevitable noise in their tyranny signal buzzes the people with any alternatives to the official truth, confirming the crazy ideas of the bearded backpackers scrambling through their mountains, their government will have a lot more trouble monopolizing the minds of their people, leading to the dissolution of their _1984_ style dystopia. From which they will likely move to our own _Brave New World_ style dystopia.
--
make install -not war
Let's use Iran as an example. The postings that I have read from Iranian activists who are fightin against the Mullahs say that if it were not for the support of the British, French and Russians that the Islamic Republic would be long gone by now. It comes as a shock to many that the U.S. isn't the only country in the world that props up evil governments for its own benefit.
There is evidence coming out of both the Rwandan government and the U.N. to show that the French government all but carried out the Rwandan massacre. Its officers gave the orders and set up the scenario that made it possible. With a country like France knowingly carrying out those kinds of actions, no wonder many countries are having problems.
The Internet only works as well as the ability of the citizenry to defend it against government control. Most countries are ruled by a governing elite that make America's look like statesmen. At least in America, the elite has to give a pretense of caring about the common man's rights. In countries ranging from the U.K. to Iran to China, the elite not only doesn't care, but often openly shows its contempt.
It's a cultural conflict and that's why most geeks and nerds are so poorly equipped to understand it. The average geek/nerd's understanding of politics is basically like CmdrTaco's: "democrats good because they're not religious right, republicans bad because they are." It was sickly ironic that people like CmdrTaco supported Gore, since 2/3 of the things that were wrong with tech policy at the time could be blamed on the Clinton administration. That again illustrates why most geeks just "don't get it."
Honest political analysis and insight takes a lot of time and effort. The geek mind can deal with it on an intellectual level quite well. The problem though is that society isn't ready for many of the changes. And by society I am speaking more in a liberal cosmopolitan sense.
Most of the human race is nowhere near as liberal as the average American. That is why most geeks and self-proclaimed intellectuals fail when they try to apply American standards to developing countries. It's not that our cultures are completely equal because no culture is better than another, it's that the spread of liberalism takes time.
If you want to protect the Internet, work on spreading liberalism around the world. Give money to the Reason foundation, to the Minaret Foundation if you're a Muslim. Buy copies of Reason magazine, Liberty and other liberal (ie neither conservative nor socialist) publications.
The Internet represents the liberal "end of history" for communication systems. It cannot in the long run work in a world that is largely conservative or socialist.
Disclaimer: I have for a long time been a harsh critic of the foreign policy establishment in America because of their tendency to betray our founders. Our founders would be horrified to see how illiberal America's foreign policy is today, so do not take me to be some wild-eyed zealot. I may be an American patriot, but i'm also a southern nationalist. For those from South America, remember that we Southerners too are at least semi-victims of "Yanqui Imperialism."
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
"Another shortcoming of the Internet is that it lends itself to individual rather than communal activities. It "is about people sitting in front of a terminal, barely interacting," says one Laotian researcher. The Web is less well-suited to fostering political discussion and debate because, unlike radio or even television, it does not generally bring people together in one house or one room."
That's a big Whisky Tango Foxtrot. A huge one.
Where has this guy been? The reason why the internet is so useful is EXACTLY that reason. It doesn't need people in one house, or one room. People can be comparing ideas and improving them from across the street, across the state or across the world.
The world is run by ideas, and only by improving and refining those ideas can any progress be made.
It's open source politics, that's really what it is. And to think that it's not changing things, well..you might as well think that linux isn't changing things.
Check out Eschatron or Daily Kos to get some of the best examples of this principle at work.
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
It is funny to see Howard Dean and "progressive" in the same sentence. Howard Dean is quite regressive. He ran his campaign by having his speeches be filled with nothing but hatred and lies, and he proposed to increase the power of the government over the governed.
Here Here... When will people figure out that the west is not the only way to live.. Bobdamn Ethnocentrists. You put it well.
Techno-utopianism predates the Internet; it goes back to the Macintosh:
"HyperCard is uniquely suited for activist causes. It goes without saying that its great ease of use and flexibility favors the underdog. Activist groups have often relied on people power and maneuverability to counteract the brute economic and political force of various Powers-That-Be; HyperCard can enhance both of these advantages."
-- "Signal: Communication Tools for the Information Age (A Whole Earth Catalog)," Kevin Kelly, ed. Foreward by Stewart Brand. Point Foundation, 1988, p. 164.
Today the same religious zeal can be found among Google cultists.
The principle is that if people can communicate with each other, rather than rely on the mediation of the dictator, they are harder to tyrannize. In Iraq, Saddam stayed in the center of the "public". We'll never know whether the Iraqis would have gotten rid of Saddam once they got freer communicaion, because the US cheated them of their chance at an American style revolution, in favor of a murderous nanny "rescue" that disempowers the people yet again.
--
make install -not war
Sometimes the effect isn't immediately visible, but it's kind of like termites eating through a wooden support -- if only the veneer is left, any stress will make it collapse. Once people find out that people in other places are freer in some way without the catastrophe promised by their leader, they will find a way to import that freedom into their lives.
The internet also provides an outlet through which the average somewhat Internet-savvy person can do their own pissing and moaning about the state of things.
Those who live under tyrannical governments do not be an outlet through which they can express their opinion without their being repercussions, therefore the internet as a political tool is largely irrelevant in said countries.
But the internet has been a tremendous tool in turning the tides against political apathy. That, or those who were already politically aware and active are just using a new tool to get their views out. Regardless, it can only be viewed as a good thing in terms of it leading to more political awareness.
...I think for the average person, the web is nothing more than an improvement over TeeVee. At least they have to work a little (click, point) to use it.
It is a fantasic encyclopedia, for those into such a thing. As much as I love libararies, I can find more varied opinions, faster, using the web.
Porn/Human Sexuality is now available much easier. It was only 30 years ago that porno movies were (in effect) legalized in America. Now, you can download movies of pretty blond girls doing the nasty with black men...or horses...etc. This was completely unthinkable/illegal in America just a few decades ago (and people wonder what the sixties radicals were so upset about!)
The upcoming struggle between digital rights and privacy will be interesting. Ultimately, I think private, fairly secure, encrypted connections will be the norm, and people will be sharing movies, music, poitical opinions, undesirable content (terror comm and kiddie porn)...whatever...and there will be little or nothing the government or industry will be able to do about it.
Humanity is just that way. Pretty much everything has a ying/yang, two sides--freedom fighters, terrorists, republicans, democrats, capitalists, socialists, a home on an island, a homeless person on main street, cats, dogs, swamps and desert.
TeeVee and the Internet have one thing in common...it's just like handguns. It's how the thing is used that differentiates between good and evil.
but rather develop better democracies?
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
I'm a geek that went to Thailand to get laid, but was too shy to make it with any of the bar girls so I came to Laos with some other bored geeks from my hostel to kill some time and then I saw a net cafe and thought I'd write something that sounded important.
Well, there are several issues to be considered here before Mr. Kurlantzick gets ahead of himself.
The internet is a relatively new phenomenon. In many areas of the world--especially Laos--it has not undergone mainstream proliferation. Many Laotians do not have access to the internet, and contrary to this article's claims, many of them are still illiterate. Those who can read can only read the Lao language. Until the Internet has mainstream acceptance among the mainstream of Laotians, there will be little revolutionary activity. This will take time, of course, because revolutions aren't born overnight. As says the historian Howard Zinn, "so far, human history has consisted only of short runs."
This, of course, assumes that people want to revolutionize. Erich Fromm's _Fear of Freedom_ suggests that "individuals, and therefore societies, have an innate tendency to revert to systems of political and cultural restraint rather than to take advantage of opportunities for freedom or emancipation--and that they may actually seek out governments to control them rather than face the prospect of individual freedom." That Laotians do not revolutionize is not an inherent limitation of the internet but rather an inherent aspect of human nature.
What do they expect? Massive incursions of angry libertarian geeks? Dissidents armed with plotters and inkjet cartridges? All change takes time, but the fact you can now get employment in a tin shack in Africa making custom goods being sold in the US - and getting a percentage of profit from every item you make WHILE tracking those items yourself - just screams "empowerment thanks to the internet."
What happens when the old guard in china dies? Or in Cuba? Does anyone really think the internet won't play a huge role in helping new political groups organize? What about the reporters in China who got news out on Tianninmin using cellphones, fax machines, email and other tools of the (then) infant internet?
It's all very well to talk theoretically about information setting people free, but the bottom line is that if you live in one of these countries and you make "dissident information" available online the authorities will very likely track you down. Similarly, if you are seen to be accessing the IPs associated with "dissident information" you will, at the very least, end up on some kind of watchlist. Sure, the availability of Internet cafes helps some - you obtain a veneer of anonymity by hiding in the crowd - but probably not enough to really let people speak out. What would really help is something like the old (and apparently now defunct) Freedom system that Zero Knowledge Systems put together, which used strong crypto to dissociate sender and receiver from each other. Of course, then the authorities will just pick up anyone producing encrypted traffic. But if all traffic ran through a Freedom-like system...
Ok, ok, I know that's wishful thinking on my part. But I can hope, can't I? And maybe if enough of us living in countries that still retain some (political) freedom started to make use of Freedom, and encouraging businesses and news orgs to do the same, then it would begin to permeate the 'net as a whole. Sigh, there goes that wishful thinking again...
It is "Hear hear" rather than "here here"
Am i the only one who lost the first Y in the headline and thought, whoa.. slashdot got raunchy?
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
It's wrong to say that the Internet is not democratizing politics, and the author of the article gives evidence of this, in this paragraph quoted from the article:
"The Internet has had more impact on politics in Malaysia than in Singapore," says Cherian George, who is writing a book on Internet usage in Southeast Asia. There are several nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Malaysia committed to investigating the government;... As a consequence, when activists in Malaysia want to use the Web to highlight human rights abuses, George says, they can draw upon the information amassed by the NGOs from their networks of sources.
Social change is often largely hidden for years before it shows obvious external characteristics. That's what happened in the former Soviet Union. The people did not have access to much information about the outside world, but the leaders had complete access. The breakup of the Soviet Union was largely due to Soviet leaders not believing in their own mental constructs, after years of experiencing the outside world.
The internet hastens these hidden social processes. For example, all of China's leaders have completely uncensored access to the entire internet. This makes them more aware of their own mental rigidity.
Democracy is based on a logical fallacy "Appeal to the masses." It promotes the worst self-aggrandizing liars (politicians) and punishes anyone who speaks the truth (because the truth is always "politically incorrect" and thus unappealing to the masses).
This is the same process that toppled apartheid and the USSR. Back then it was FAX machines TV and radio. Once people have access to many sources of information, good and bad, they will begin to make up their own minds. Information is subversive. Information acts below the surface. How it will impact society and when, cannot be predicted. Who would have predicted the fall of the USSR even 2 years before the actual event? The same with apartheid.
The Internet is only part of the process. It is also the hundreds of TV channels. It is the Palestinians getting better are presenting their cause to the world at large. All of these things are conspiring to destroy Israel. There is nothing that they can do. It is simply the power of truth to defeat lies. The Israeli's think that increased opression will save them. The Israelis have mountains of guns, fighter jets, money and even nukes. None of those things will save them. They are the world's last racist state and the world sees them for what they are.
They think that high tech weapons will save them. Instead, it is the high tech Internet that is destroying them.
is a great example, there were more people using thw web to help keep him in power than the other way around. Heck his ministers went on al-jazeera TV after the war saying the reason he held out was that he was hoping the anti-war groups would be effective in stopping the US.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
It's my understanding that a lot of the organization for the coup that took down the Soviet Union was done by email. Of course, at the time, the internet was under the radar. More recently, massive demonstrations that brought down a government were organized by text messaging. The lesson here is that communication technology may indeed be a threat in places that actually allow the people to use it. The Chinese government is right to be afraid, because internet usage is quite widespread there. North Korea probably has nothing to fear.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
The problem with the internet is that it supplies an overwhelming set of viewpoints - generally cancelling each other out.
People do not have the time to digest this mass, and thus fall back to other channels.
While I have no doubt that the pen is mightier than the sword, a billion pens all scribbling at once aren't going to result in anything usable.
"Bush knew!"
"Bush is Hitler!"
Thank God we have Howard Dean and Moveon.org to raise the level of political debate!
In the early days of radio some people actually believed that putting radios in police cars would end crime and that radio was a force for world peace. When television was new it was assumed that it would be educational and raise the level of literacy.
I don't see much difference between these earlier beliefs and current superstitious ramblings on by baby boomer journalists about the power of the internet.
The internet eventually will make a difference in politics because it's how people communicate. It just won't be as magical or quick as some of these writers assume
the internet--once heralded as a revolutionary force in politics--has turned out to be surprisingly nonthreatening to dictators and tyrannies.
I can think of a few dictators and tyrants whose kingdoms are threatened by the power of the internet. The internet is scary to some, exciting to others, because it's people working together.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
...who explained to me that in a dictatorship, it doesn't matter what people think, because you have a gun to their head. If you can control what they do, then what they think doesn't matter.
Only in a democratic system, where direct extortion is prohibited, does thought control become necessary. When people are relatively free to do as they please does it become necessary to control what they think - and that's what the media cartels have learned how to do.
The Internet allows for the relatively free flow of subversive thought and criticism, which certianly sparks change in societies where force is not king. But in a dictatorship, That's not enough. Until the Internet traffics in guns, dictatorship won't care about it.
On a large screen on one wall, music videos featured Madonna gyrating half-naked.
Was she sreaming, "Fuck you! Fuck you all for stealing!!!!"?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Has Internet improved democracy in the USA, or anywhere else in the civilized world?
-- The best way to accelerate a computer running Windows is at 9.8 m/s^2.
"In fact, in some repressive countries the spread of the Internet actually may be helping dictatorships remain in power."
Where's the evidence?
"Except for the tourists, no one seemed to venture onto news Web pages"
Perhaps there is a fear with the people to see other news? They might feel the government is watching everything they do and somehow they will have to face consequences for looking at the "wrong" sites. It makes you wonder, why won't they discuss current events?
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't dictatorial countries such as Laos, China, and Cuba generally centralize Internet access thru government-owned gateways so they can filter any content they don't like? I admit that keeping out "subversive" materials would be easier said than done, but such governments could (for example) firewall access to the Washington Post web site or whatever and make it harder (though obviously not impossible) to read their content. They'd also be able to keep an eye on Internet traffic, perhaps sniffing for certain keywords and phrases, to see whether anyone in the country is accessing "subversive" material.
*ahaem*
The Web site you quoted is about Cambodia, not Laos (as one easily can see by just looking at the home page).
The telescreens weren't interactive - they were really just TV (did they have surveillance aspect too?). You couldn't even turn them off IIRC.
;-)
The internet is totally different - it's so "interactive" (which pointless blog do you want to read today?) you don't WANT to turn it off
Freedom: "I won't!"
When Dean's winning, we have a group of pundits saying "this changes everything." Now that he's out, we have pundit saying, "this changes nothing." It's interesting how truth enters the noosphere. Ppl are like bits, believing one simplistic statement or another. When enough ppl believe a certain statement, poof, that becomes reality. For example, the Earth is round. I have no evidence to believe that, but it has such a saturation, 99.999999% that it IS truth. religion only has 75% saturation, perhaps, so this is still to be determined, but a "probably" to most people. just interesting to see this kind of memetics. Most ppl chiming in on this here too are participating in pundtry and picking a simplistic argument.
Philosophistry
SMS may be the real revolutionary technology. They have recently been a huge factor in the upset in the Spanish election. Flash mobs have also demonstrated their power in producing spontantenous actions that are utterly unpredictable by the people in power.
It may not serve to get foreign ideas into a populace, but it can greatly accelerate the spread of ideas in a way that is uncontrollable.
I'm optimistic for the future.
been made for political reasons
back in the day we didnt have no old school
Thanks to the internet,
;-)
people discovered that things are relative.
Communism is making big progress in USA
since the internet
First of all, "the Web" and "the Internet" are not interchangeable terms. I'm tired of hearing from writers who undertake to write about the social implications of technology which they don't seem to understand in depth, who seem to think the network is entirely contained within their web browser.
To find things on the web, you have to look for them. Revolutionary ideas don't jump out of the web and slap you in the face. You have to go looking for them. Which means 1) you are somewhat inquisitive 2) you know at least enough about what you're looking for to have enough search terms to plug into Google or some other index.
Which means you are already to some degree indoctrinated into the movement you want to read about. This is why political activism on the web today is something of a global circle jerk. The point of any real change is to bring new people into the fold and spread the idea that they don't need to put up with the tyranny they are living under. Once that idea reaches critical mass, people will get bolder about challenging the establishment, and take appropriate action.
As a few people have pointed out, people aren't going to embrace that idea unless they are really being oppressed in a way that has affected them personally and perhaps traumatically. Tyranny is an acceptable way of life for a lot of people if they have their basic human needs met. They don't really know how much better their life could be because they've never experienced anything better and they don't miss what they never had. Or they are beat down by their oppressors to such a degree that they no longer believe they have the power to change things.
So of course the web is not going to be a great vehicle for spreading new ideas. It's just the simplest and most accessible layer of the internet for armchair revolutionaries to utilize and bitch about. It CAN be a great medium for people who are already motivated and are actively seeking what's out there.
So, the author is half right about the web, especially when he notes that it's an especially easy medium for the despotic governments to monitor and crack down on.
What really will spread the cause of liberty and bring down the most oppressive and iron fisted dictators and oppressive governments in this world is japanese teenage girls with cellphones.
You heard me right. Look there if you want to see the prototype for your revolution. That's right... Rural chinese people and disgruntled Saudi youth are not "gettin' a Dell", dude.
Net connected consumer communications devices will become ubiquitous, and they will support new protocols which are designed from the ground up for social networking. They will support encryption and VPN, and will be all but impossible to suppress. Wireless and satellite have the potential to bypass a lot of the censorship going on at the network routing layer.
I could give this writer a break for not having the vision to see where things are going, but there is simply no excuse for not seeing how they are today. The people who are living under bad government are lucky to be able to read, have water to drink, and electricity... let alone a computer, internet access, doughnut friday, and a copy of the New Republic.
reply to sysarcathushcom
Not the Web topples tyranny, it's the people who do.
Internet access is a scarce and expensive commodity in most countries ruled by tyranny. Therefore, only the upper class has access to the web (if at all), and upper class normally won't have serious problems with their governments. So expecting the web to topple tyranny is naive, to say the least.
However, the web is a great medium to propagate ideas; ideas which will also influence the few people out there with internet access. Some of these ideas will still sink in, and may eventually lead to gradual regime changes all over the world.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Are these local teenagers the sons and daughters of local shopkeepers and farmers, or are they the children of the ruling class? Hmmmm.
----
"Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so."-Lawrence Lessig
Exactly. It is this dismissiveness that has so soured me from the traditional news sources.
Here's one thing the internet did, it transformed local news sources into international sources, whether they were deserving or not. I live in southern Pennsylvania, so a subscription to the New York Times wasn't high on my list; once the internet arrived, I could browse their content for free. And what I realized is that their liberal opinion might work for that little pocket of new england, but it doesn't work for the rest of the USA, no matter what they would lead you to believe.
The big traditional media were very good at delivering opinionated propaganda to their few constituants, and they are totally mystified when their beliefs aren't welcomed with open arms. No, I don't want to be taxed, we should drill for oil in Alaska, that drug benefits shouldn't be the government's responsibility, and that taking out Saddam Hussein was a great thing. Yet, do I hear these arguments being made from the traditional sources? Quite the opposite. I don't even hear arguments made, I hear their opinion being flouted as "facts" as if any other dissenting opinion shouldn't even be considered...
I'm not up on all the latest crypto/privacy issues, but it seems to me the relative anonymity afforded by the internet would also be a major boon to anyone trying to spread subversive ideas.
The Dalai Llama
well, I know, but nobody else mentioned it...
My sig could be your sig!
Such as recently (and possibly inadvertantly) declassified material which many of those in power would rather had remain classified - or better-yet "disappeared"...
n tc hiefs_010501.html
s .p df
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/joi
http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/northwood
Without the Internet I might have missed this wonderful little piece of forward thinking on the part of the US Military.
To quote the ABCNews article:
"In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba."
Sound familiar? Yeah. Change the era and the patsy and you get 9-11.
The Internet can improve the average life of everyone by aiding technological progress. In the long run people everywhere will gain access to the basic necessities of life and have economic opportunities for improving their own lives.
An important thing is to communicate about abusive leaders, problems, and solutions.
People all over the world feel more unified with instant communications, but it is still hard to express in words what is happening. Bandwidth and recording limitations permit some grainy videos to be seen. We're just overwhelmed by the number of issues. It's like arriving at the scene of a fire. 99% of the time there are legions of firemen already there and you don't want to interfere. Similarly, people who are reporting about problems in detail on the Internet are on top of the situation and the rest of the world waits mostly to see if the people handing the situation are doing a good job. The sentiments of the commissioner of the National Hockey League - he doesn't take sides in the Stanley Cup finals; he just wants good refereeing.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
You need people together out in the streets.
The U.S. is a schizoid suburbia with shopping malls conveniently placed within an SUV drive. But there are no truly public spaces. We are each alone.
While studying CS in school, our graphics teacher said the holy grail of computer graphics was to produce an image that was indistinguishable from a real photo. I asked him if he considered the social implications of such technology...he said "no"...that chilled me then, and still does.
you think it's easy, but you're wrong...
Lets face it, when the government controls the ins and outs of any given form of communication, it effectively becomes useless as a method to insite change or revolution. Honestly, you're better off with lower tech methods, such as leaflets or "freedom radio" to communicate your intentions.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
There was enthusiasm, new blood, a vision, anger and energy. It was all harnessed by Dean, who shrewdly played along and built on it. So where did it end? Nowhere. There aren't the raw numbers necessary to make a big difference.
I'm sure everyone on all sides of the issues were watching closely. All Dean proved is that one can safely ignore the tech politics and still win.
Kerry is remarkably similar to Bush in policy on the issues that galvanized the Dean supporters. War in Iraq? I'll just do a better job.
Just because you can tell jokes in Hex doesn't mean you deserve two or more votes.
Derek
If political subversion becomes so mainstream that kids in Internet cafes are reading political articles, then this tyrannical government is probably already dead.
Come on, be realistic! How many kids in the US go to political sites? Maybe 1 out of 1,000,000? How many kids in the US even know anything about politics? You might as well do like Howard Stern and go ask a stripper.
The Web is not a panacea. People still need to care. In China right now, most people don't care, they will just live however they can and try to stay out of the way of the government. Some people where I work even want to go back to China because the living is so good now in their eyes. They don't give a shit about human rights, about the right to criticize the government, etc.
The fact is that the Web is another facility for those who care to communicate. For example, e-mail was one of the things that kept the world informed about the attempted coup in Russia in 1996. During the Tiananmen Square in 1990, if activists had e-mail, I'm sure they could have been much more organized, and the people of China could have heard about it and the truth of how the army fired on their own people. The fact is that all other means of communication were completely shut down. I have friends from China who at the time knew nothing of the truth of Tiannamen square until they came to the US to study.
In South Korea, there was a massacre at Kwang-Ju where the army killed dozens if not hundreds of protesters. Again, my friends of Korea at the time said they knew nothing of it.
If more people had been connected to the web, and e-mails were forwarded like crazy between activists and then finally to the regular masses, maybe something could have been done?
This is the power of the web, and it is available to many people... it's the activists job to sell to these people that change needs to occur.
Dude you also get a lot of things. Waco for instance as well as OKC bombing. But if you bring that stuff up you are imediately labeled a 'Conspiracy theorist' which is just another name for a nutjob. Peole are sheep and don't want to be disturbed while they mindlessly spend there days out in the fields chomping on grass.
He was the rare politican who spoke from the heart
Based on his mean-spirited proposals and his constant hate speech, his heart was very small and black. But he did speak from it, yes he did.
The political machine of BOTH parties got him.
No, the only man who got Howard Dean was Howard Dean.
The Democrats were as afraid of him as the Republicans.
True. The rank-and-file rejected the hotheaded boob.
... until they are.
Revolution is often like a kind of boiling point. Under the right conditions everything is a weapon against the dictator.
The web won't cause revolutions, but I suspect it might lower the boiling point and the energy needed to create a population inversion.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
In most 3rd world countries, it takes money to afford the Internet. Or it takes money to afford to go to an Internet Cafe.
If they have enough disposable income to afford the Web, then they must be rich.
Why would the rich want a regime change when it means that it could potentially destabilize them and maybe even mean that they won't be rich anymore?
In the US, the Internet is a commodity, but not to most 3rd world countries, and the author completely loses sight of that.
You can't have a technological solution to a social problem.
"they please does it become necessary to control what they think - and that's what the media cartels have learned how to do."
However, nothing is like what Chomsky says it is. The media (without the fascist controls of a socialist government that he so loves) is getting more and more diverse all the time. There is no "thought control": the term is always used by the paranoid pinheads who cannot deal with the fact that informed people reject their lunatic ravings.
Chomsky is similar to his fellow anti-semites who have similar theories about "jews controlling the media and brainwashing everyone". Unless you think exactly as they do, you are brainwashed.
Yep, the perfect mark, doesn't even know they have been had.
They see it as Dean took all the media heat for that amount of time..the first person to hit the beach, and hard. And set the tone for the entire debate in a very positive fasion.
Are you joking? Set the debate in a very positive fashion? Accusing the President of the United States of having prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks is completely the opposite of a positive debate.
YYYYEEEEEAAARRRGGGGHHHHH!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
The net has potential to satisfy all communicative needs, being a generic format, a "template" for the actual protocol in question. It's just a matter of what forms we see today. I think there are two important ones.
/. is still highly popular because it caters well to the geeky, MS-hating crowd. It gives us the information we like to hear, rather than the information we may or may not like forced upon us by the controlling classes as in traditional media. /. discussions can also(admittedly irregularly) give us a deeper understanding of the articles, whether by pointing out flaws or by contributing conflicting viewpoints. This does in some respects contradict 1, because you can close yourself off in your own little world, but at the same time it accelerates 1, too. Why? Because if we all become more specialized in our knowledge and opinions, we'll encounter people in the real world with similarly specialized ideas. They'll rub off each other and the final result is highly unlikely to be dominated by any one "school of thought."
;)
1. Discussion. In some ways you could say the Internet's like the "biggest city in the world" because you can, eventually, meet people of all types, often only by accident. There's a lot of prejudice around, whether political or ethnic or sexual or cultural, but it's only bound to diminish with time as people, one by one and topic by topic, come to accept the wild and crazy world they live in for what it is. This is a relatively slow process, though. It might take generations for anything close to a true equality to come about.
2. Broadcasts on targeted subjects.
So while at first, change will seem to come slowly because people stay within the bounds of what they already know, it'll really start to pick up as we each find new passions, build communities or bases of knowledge around them and then present them to the world.
Yes, I've already thought about this some. I wrote a paper for school about it
... it used to religion (hell, in Texas it STILL IS), then a house and a car for everyone, then MTV and CNN, well, and now it's the Internet that serves only one purpose: keep us entertained and drugged up on a worldwide scale, so that every country grows an army of ./ geeks that thinks the latest gadgets are more important than politics.
wtf is a sig?
"On issues of health, education, environment, and so on, your quality of life should be far above any other nation on the planet. Yet the US lags behind other Western countries in many of the indicators. Why do you think that is?"
The US is way ahead of most of these countries in these respects, for the most part. This is why people come to the US for the very best health care, and there is a flow of people moving to the US from these countries (not the other way around). This has largely to do with the fact that socialism as such is an invalid concept.
"The rise of Fox News..."
The reason for the rise of Fox News is that it provided a centrist alternative to the other TV news organizations, of which every one was left-wing. This has shaken up the establishment, which believes that only left-wing news should be allowed. They even falsely call Fox "right-wing", out of a false belief that nothing can be centrist.
Most people don't want/can't tolerate freedom. They seek out totalitarian systems and leaders in order to escape the responsibilities and pressures freedom creates. This axiom is as true today as it ever was. Oh well and so it goes...
The printing press, the telegraph, the telephone, earth-orbiting satellites, and now, the internet. Each new technical form of communication was heralded as the downfall of tyranny and a course to world peace and understanding! When it did not work, everybody blamed each other. The truth was always simple: Optimism is not realistic. Cynicism is not pessimistic.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
And you have the nerve to complain about other countries? I note that very little mention in the article was made of attempts by western countries to censor the net.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Besides when the organizations Black Panthers and MOVE tried to use guns to defend themselves from racist war government what happened
The real racists were the Panthers and MOVE
Most NRA gun toters actually hate the ACLU, the ones who actually try to defend liberties in the US
The ACLU defending liberties? What a joke. They have entire departments devoted to denying rights based on race, and to censoring expression.
...it's unfortunate that it's this far down in the discussion before someone said it.
However--
Handle your Fromm with care. His wife was Henny Gurland, an agent for Stalin who took part in the, er, "suicide" of Walter Benjamin. Tyrants' hired killers seldom marry outside the family.
Know yer spooks.
It sorta makes sense.
But saying this is better makes you the ultimate couch potatoe. So you would happily live in a police state as long as you are allowed to complain in a forum about it?
Nothing that a lot of cynical people haven't expected for a long time but still sad. Oh well most westerners comfort themselves that they live in a democracy despite the fact they are ruled by a minority (the people who actually vote). Maybe human kind is just another herd animal. Today the lion ate someone else so for now I am safe.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The Spartans found the pen to be rather useless at Thermopylae
Uhhhh. Do you actually know this historic event? The Spartans might as well have been armed with pens. You probably forget that the Spartans LOST this battle. Changing what they were armed with would only alter the time of their defeat by hours.
Beating up Arabs sitting on rich oil fields who have been living on nothing but grass for two weeks is more to our taste these days. Asians like living on grass. And they fight back
While you are at it, get an atlas. The Arabs of Iraq are Asians, as Iraq is entirely an Asian nation.
also, companies don't execute people. The question isn't whether or not companies are allowed to provide material support to tyrants, but whether they should, and whether we should patron those companies.
(sarcasm on) Those are the people who get things done, like in Haiti (sarcasm off). The Internet distributes information. If the Chinese people had access to such a thing during Tiennamen Square, the government wouldn't have been able to cover it up and just let it drift away into the memory hole. Why do you think censorship is such a favored tool of dictatorships like Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia? It is absolutely necessary to prevent those you wish to control from communicating. And, you must not let them find out about other groups who revolt or rise up. Revolution will become an "emergent phenomenon" in the future. Can you imagine what Ghandi could have done if Indians had access to the Internet? How quickly it could have happened and on such a massive scale? Twenty people with guns might get things done in a village, but 200 million pissed off, interconnected people can do a whole lot more on a global level. The entire goal of a controlling power is to prevent the masses from communicating. Just convince them to play by your rules. "Get your guys and meet my guys on the hilltop and we'll have a shoot out." Except, his guys have bombs, tanks and body armor while your guys have pitch forks. Only the idiot plays by the state's rules when it comes to revolution. Rocket propelled grenades aren't going to cut it. And if all it takes is guns to solve things, how come the USA didn't stomp the living shit out of Vietnam?
Even if it's a cliche, it's true. Information is power. It's much more desireable for oppressed people to begin to recognize the seeds of discontent in those around them and begin to resist as a large group. Very little good will come of whatever violent revolt happened in Haiti. Very little good would come from some band of revolutionaries getting guns and taking over China. It just starts over. Someone else is in control of a bunch of ignorant people. Some other guys with guns will come along.
Without television, do you think the Civil Rights Act would have been passed as soon as it was? Do you believe that as many people would have joined the protests around the country?
p
also, companies don't execute people.
Yet.
Under the same argument Cars, phones and rifles are not democrotizing technologies yet from the times of their invention democrocay has grown from a few pissed off colonialists to dominate the world. Technologies do not overtly overthrow tyrants but are the underpinnings that drive social change.
Oh yeah last time I checked two dictatorships are no longer in existance...namely the Taliban in Afganistan and the Bathists in Iraq.
you've been Hannitized, haven't you?
Yeah, because changing the course of politics as we know it is trivially easy. Heck, if the Interweb can't do it a couple decades, clearly, it's just a failure.
It's a little early to proclaim that net capability won't assist revolutions. This report sounds like sour grapes about the author's political views not spreading as they want, and that's unfortunate for the author, perhaps. The reality is that while the web itself will not be accessible to those behind the Red Firewall, it's irrelevant -- those inside will have more effective communication, should they choose to have it, because they'll be able to use the technology.
-----------------------
You are what you think.
Several people have pointed out above why this article is bogus and why it is off base. It's no surprise that a right-wing magazine like NRO either doesn't understand the nature of the Internet, or tries to distort things so people can't utilize the Internet to do radical things.
Of course, the Internet will not topple a dictator. Neither will a phone or a printing press. But the Internet is a powerful tool for fighting tyranny. The influence of the Internet in promoting democracy and freedom (which aren't equivalnet to capitalism) is still developing. The Internet has played an important role in the success of the anti-globalization movement. The Internet HAS been used by activists in several countries to effect regime change (Philippines). And there has been some recent news about the explosion of blogs in Persian, which could, in the long run, democratize that country.
Many of us hope that the Internet will play a role in democratizing the United States, which is currently being run by a bloodthirsty family of crazy capitalists.
The Internet is a tool. Tools don't do anything until people use them.
We hear lots about armed resistance against the Nazis, but few people write about things like the time 6000 women picketed the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin in 1943 and got the Nazis to release their Jewish husbands, or the fact that nonviolent confrontation of the Nazis by the Danes saved the lives of almost all the Danish Jews. This was far more effective than violent resistance, such as the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
And unarmed suasion by Martin Luther King and others did more than the violent tactics of Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver to obtain civil rights for black Americans.
Perhaps most impressively, we look at the fall of the Shah of Iran. In 1978, the Shah had the largest military force in the middle east (715,000 men, 2500 tanks, 450 major fixed-wing combat aircraft) but was unable to hold power in the face of unarmed fundamentalist revolutionaries.
I believe that Quacker really felt it's important to tell the FBI that this is a joke. Are you really free in the USA?
The Soviet Union fell apart in part because its subjects caught enough images of the West as a rich and happy place from movies, magazines, video tapes of TV ... and then they tried to instantly become America (with big advice from Harvard) and ended up being gangster heaven. Now countries under dictatorship have a much more mixed view of the Wonders of the West available to them and, guess what, the West isn't such a shining example when seen in wider scope, so it leaves the locals more likely to base their utopian dreams on the silly fantasies in old "religious" books - much like many of the more desparate (Republican) Americans today down in the Old South (apologies to the excellent poster who's a Southern Patriot - I'm proud my relatives shot at his and won - although ashamed that we returned the vote to white Southerners too soon by a couple centuries).
Anyhow, the point is we need to remake some of the West so that it can again - under the increased scrutiny the Net allows - be a shining, almost irrestible example. The way to topple tyrants is to offer a believable vision of Utopia - as Lenin and Mao both knew, but as the American Founders also took advantage of in the idealization of ancient "Saxon liberties" that was prevalent in the history books that they all were avid readers of at the time. See Trevor Colbourn's The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution to learn how this worked. Our liberties are partly from our ancestors (those of us who are of English blood especially) but more fundamentally the product of the particular Utopian dream they mistook for the real, proven prospects of the best way to live - and in large part lucked out on (although there was also a current philosophical basis - particularly in the works of Francis Hutcheson). Hey, it worked. Oh, also note that the "Saxon liberties" that were taken by the American Revolutionaries to be the inherent rights of Englishmen were pre-Christian - and so those current idiots who claim that the Bible is behind it all are being even more wishful in their history than Jefferson and crew were.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I can understand modding me -1 Flaimbait, -1 Troll, or -1 Overrated (if you don't think Bush is a tyrant). But -1 Offtopic when the topic is about tyranny and this forum is online? Hell, the post is a prime example of tyranny talk plus the web. At least bump me down for a good reason.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
So what you're saying is that you don't think voting can change anything, but asking the politicians on Slashdot to leave you alone can??
99% of people in the world aren't interested in rising up and overthrowing their oppressors.
Think about it. You may be being oppressed, and life may be shit, but it's *life*. You're still alive. Now, given the choice at your local newly-opened cybercafe, are you going to head for a pro-democracy website full of anti-government rhetoric, or are you going to check out mtv.com for a look at what Madonna's up to? Remember, one of these choices could lead to you being arrested. Pick wisely now.
It's much easier to get on with your life without worrying about such things. Unless somebody's actually coming to kill you *right now* for your ethnic group/religious beliefs/sexuality/whatever, in most countries you can at least have a life - friends, family, marriage, kids and so on - without the concern that you might be dragged off at any moment and thrown into a cell or shot in the back of the head. So why stir things up?
(NB: I'm not suggesting for a moment that I think people *should* just knuckle under and accept whatever tyranny happens to be exploting them. The sad fact is, people *do* accept them, because it's much easier than the alternative - running around in the countryside trying not to get shot dead.)
Governments - of any nation - are more powerful now than at any time in history. And the people who enforce the actions of those governments have guns. And tanks. And helicopter gunships. And a whole bunch of other weapons ostensibly for the 'protection' of the nation that can just as easily be turned against people within its borders.
Hell, if there's one thing the internet's done, it's shown that democracy ain't a magic wand, at least not the way it's done in the US and the UK. Here are two candidates. They're both rich white guys, and apart from trivial differences over specifics, their policies are practically identical. They also both want government to have greater control over the daily lives of the citizens. Don't even bother thinking about a third alternative, because the media has already turned them into a laughing stock. Now choose!
I've come to the sad realisation that not one single political party in the UK even vaguely represents my beliefs. So how do I get my voice heard? (Don't suggest 'start your own party' - I'm on Slashdot, I have zero charisma! ;) And if it's like that even in a stable western democracy, what chance do the 'internet dissidents' have?
You must think in Russian.
The original question was different, originally the question was whether they should be held liable. If the government says that its okay then they are not liable. If the U.S. government actually punished China or other countries for human rights violations then the story would be different. Right now there are no laws that say Cisco is doing anything wrong. Since this is the case they are not liable for anything China does with their equipment.
How can something run increasingly by big business topple any kind of tyranny
That's a rather poor analogy. It would be a lot closer to plans for how to gain support for the US involvement in WWII.
How does that work? This plan called for launching attacks against the US population WITHIN the US itself and then blaming Castro and his boys in order to found a pretext for invading Cuba. How does that NOT sound like 9-11 to you?
This is the most disquieting thing I've read in a long time. Maybe ever. To discover that the US military and sections of the US government thought that killing US citizens and servicemen and blaming it on somebody else was an acceptable means to an end just shatters every last illusion I once held.
Now I can't laugh at my "looney" friends anymore when they suggest such things are possible because THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY CORRECT! And I've been the head-up-my-ass one.
Companies do not "execute" people, but they do have them killed, or at least allow them to be killed. Here is but one example.
Expecting voting to change anything is like expecting the jail guards to be significantly affected by popular decsions among the
prisoners.
Think of the internet more as a tool of escape.
My knowledge structure and learning has never moved along so quickly as it has in the last few years with instant access to information. Libraries and the telephone are still useful, but the net moves much closer to the speed of thought.
As for uprisings against political tyrany. . ?
I wouldn't rule that one out. One of the best ways to lock down a nation under military rule is to invoke an uprising which 'validates' the use of military force.
-FL
Dude you also get a lot of things. Waco for instance as well as OKC bombing. But if you bring that stuff up you are imediately labeled a 'Conspiracy theorist'
Yes. This is just like bringing up the flat earth and Pelucidar. It shows you are a sheep who has blindly read the lies made up by Waco wackos and others. In other words, it is an outright lie, and you believe it.
As it is, only the people who perpetuate the Waco and OKC lies are labelled wackos, and properly. If you don't want to be labelled a wacko, learn something called "critical thinking" and learn to ignore that moron in the white sheet and hood who raves about Bildeburgers and contrails.
By the way, tinfoil helmets don't protect you against wolves. Baa!
Companies do not "execute" people, but they do have them killed, or at least allow them to be killed. Here is but one example [colombiaso...ity.org.uk].
That is no example at all. It is just a loony Stalinist web site by an antiworker organization that has engaged in violence against Colombian workers. Coca-Cola should sue the thugs for libel.
"President Caligula"
President Caligula left office early in 2001. Stop beating a dead horse.
"When one starts characterizing the media cartels as state propaganda machines"
Thankfully, in the US, the state propaganda machines (NPR and PBS and VOA) are quite small and have little influence. Compared to most other countries, the US has popular media with great diversity and little government involvement.
This is not the case in Britain, for example, in which the main media outlet (BBC) is a branch of the government.
"]While you are at it, get an atlas. The Arabs of Iraq are Asians.] . .Yes. I know. In fact, I've made"
I've had a similar problem with idiots who rant about Reagan-era intervention in South American countries. I see this all the time. They forget that Nicaragua and El Salvador are in fact North American countries.
Israel fights terrorism every day, and apprehending or killing terrorist leaders is part of that fight.
The Israeli's think that increased opression will save them. (sic)
Israel fights implacable foes who hate it for its very existance, and calling them a "racist state" is so utterly wrong that I'm shocked someone modded your post up. An examanination of your posting history shows a number of -1, Flamebait comments relation to Israel. This is not the first article you've trolled.
"You might find this hard to believe, but the British in India were not a repressive regime, as these things go. Gandhiji spent some time in prison."
Britain had some sort of sense of restraint in responding to such protests. A relative lack of brutality. The same is true of the United States overall during the civil rights struggle of the 1960s (even if it was not true of the regional white leaders in the South). Nonviolent, King/Gandhi struggle only works against halfway reasonable regimes.
Against those such as Serbia, the USSR*, Mao's China, and Saddam's Iraq, it does not work at all.
(asterisk: nonviolent protest did work against the USSR in its very last years, only because Gorbachev had started to make it halfway reasonable).
I used to be the tyrant king of my own planet. It was a very advanced place, with all kinds of technologies that we don't even have here on Earth. Unfortunately, we got the Internet over there, too, and not six months later, the FUD spread and there was a revolt and I was kicked out of my palaces. Now, the place is in anarchy, and the anarchists had to dissolve their own government on a matter of principle. At least they are consistent in their beliefs. Ok, this post is garbage, and lucky for you, it's over now. Move along, folks, move along.
"Buring prisoners seems to be a Christian European practice, historically."
Just about every religion has its really bad practicioners and its really bad times. Christianity seems to be mainly past this (and has produced the likes of Rev Dr Martin Luther King); Islam still has an endemic genocidal hatred of Jews. The pagans of ancient Europe were fond of human sacrifice and torture.
The only one of the great "religions" that seems to be exempt from this is Buddhism. You really have to look hard to find specifically "Buddhist" oppression and atrocity.
I've also pointed out, which turned out to be even more controversial, that Europe itself is Asian, moreso even than India.
.an atlas. A good one. In relief. You can walk from France to Kamchatka without experiencing any undue hardship. The early Russian settlers of Siberia carried boats across the Urals. Walking to and from India to anyplace else in the world presents certain difficulties. Hence all the brouhaha around the Kyhber Pass over the centuries.
I discovered this fact while my age was still in the single digits by the simple expediant of looking at. .
I like maps. I can read them for hours. Reading a proper relief atlas can teach you more about most historical events than all the prose in the world. I fully concur with the wag who noted the "old men" of Versaille needed to be given a text on elementary geography.
Look at an atlas. You'll find out why Iraq invaded Kuwait. Indeed virtually had to give it at least a try sooner or later. The "old men" fucked up.
Or, more than likely, really didn't give a shit about causing a future tribal war in Arabia.
KFG
Yeah, nice uncensored news - they censor themselves.
New Republic is a neoconservative pro-government magazine. They claim to be liberals but have nothing to do with liberalism. They are heavily influenced by the modern neoconservative movement.
I can't believe that anyone, let alone the Slashdot editors, take their opinions on "tyranny and dictatorship" seriously. New Republic wouldn't even know what democracy was even if it hit them on their head...
If anyone wants to know the true impact of internet on dictatorship, they should go and ask someone who knows what's going on. This certainly doesn't include New Republic...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
The SAn liberation struggle against the apartheid government was not non-violent. In the beginning it was, but by the 1970s or so, even Nelson Mandela had realised that apartheid would never fall by peaceful means alone, and thus he OK'd the beginning of the "armed struggle" (part of which was the creation of an 'armed wing' of the ANC, Mkhonto we'Sizwe (MK = spear of the nation), as well as APLA (Azanian People's Liberation Army) under the PAC). These organizations, who mostly had to operate outside of SA borders, carried out a number of operations, e.g. terrorist bombings, St James Church massacre, etc. The armed struggle definitely played a part in ending apartheid, and I think if it weren't for the armed struggle, apartheid would still be around now.
The pen is mightier than the sword, but not at any given moment.
Or to use modern examples, the computer is mightier than the gun, but not at any given moment. I own both, with the computer I can write great well reasoned[1] essays that will convince others to help my cause. As soon as I pick up my gun I'm limited the help of those already on my side who know what I'm doing. Sure I can kill 10 people (I happen to have 10 bullets in my house[2]), but once those are gone, I can't kill anyone. Worse, if I haven't made use of my pen beforehand correctly I now have police after me. National television will show the police breaking down my door, and people will cheer. However if I used my pen before hand I could get the people on my side, the police might break down my door, but it will just turn me into a martyr and help the cause!
The pen and sword (computer/gun) combined are much stronger together, but the strength comes from the pen.
[1]Pretend I'm a good writer, I know I'm not.
[2]Left over from my last hunting trip. I hope that I never have need to use my gun for any other purpose. I would if I had to, but I don't want to.
If you're a tyrant, you have the spread of ridiculous lies on the Internet for its diminution of informative force.
It's like being a perpetual child: the grown-ups are good and kind and strong and will protect you from bad things. Don't question the grown ups, as they are always right. That person with the information or data which calls the grown-ups conclusions or statement or ideas into question is obviously a charlatan or fool. So what if all the evidence points towards wrongdoing by the grown-ups? Be quiet. Behave. Conform. Do as you're told. It's the safe way.
Y O U H A L F W I T !
The armed struggle definitely played a part in ending apartheid, and I think if it weren't for the armed struggle, apartheid would still be around now.
You forget that as part of the armed struggle, the ANC sold itself to the USSR, and became a branch of the Soviet military.
If it weren't for the armed struggle, apartheid would have ended a lot earlier. Having to fight Soviet-controlled terrorists made it easier to justify apartheid and to ignore even those who were not Soviet agents (Desmond Tutu).
It was pretty easy to justify destroying all apartheid opposition, when the most visible aspect of it was the ANC, which at that time was a Soviet proxy army (which it remained until the USSR fell).
The violence never brought any victory; never gained the anti-apartheid cause anything.
New Republic is a neoconservative pro-government magazine
The New Republic has always been a liberal/left magazine. It isn't as far left as "The Nation", of course.
You have it confused with "The National Review" (William F. Buckley). In any case, conservative magazines tend to favor the people having power instead of government having power.
"They are heavily influenced by the modern neoconservative movement. "
Conservatism is conservatism. The "neo" label is used by few, and is pretty much meaningless.
"If anyone wants to know the true impact of internet on dictatorship, they should go and ask someone who knows what's going on. This certainly doesn't include New Republic... "
Yes. As a left-wing magazine, they know nothing of what is going on. Even worse are the ones like Progressive and Nation, whose main problem is that the Internet is not completely government-controlled and censored.
...since the web was largely used as a grass-roots effort in the United States to OPPOSE the toppling of Saddam's regime, this is not surprising at all.
In that case, if anything, the dictator got a leg up on freedom.
...since the web was largely used as a grass-roots effort in the United States to OPPOSE the toppling of Saddam's regime, this is not surprising at all.
This brings us full-circle to discussion of Howard Dean, who was one of Saddam's best friends in US politics. He strongly opposed liberating Iraq, and pretty much wanted Saddam put back on his throne after he had been deposed.
I'd hardly call it "grass roots", however. Moveon.org was created by fatcats who thought that if a Democrat committed crime in office, he should stay in office just because he is a Democrat. The massive pro-Saddam rallies were organized by shadowy neo-Soviet organizations like ANSWER.
once heralded as a revolutionary force in politics--has turned out to be surprisingly nonthreatening
I assume this is the part that reminds you of Howard Dean?
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
The point that you're missing is that all the militias in the world are worthless without intelligent leaders who can fill their heads with new ideas and get the ball rolling for violent action.
Look at the US's own militia organizations. Honestly, they're a bunch of hicks with no leadership and no ideology. They sit around while congress passes laws like the PATRIOT ACT. They sit around doing nothing while national elections are in serious question. They just talk and shoot targets. That is the sword by itself.
Obviously, you need well-read "pens" to get the "swords" going. Both elements are needed for change but the "sword" is the most useless alone. At least a lowly poet or a political writer can pass on memes and information that one could not get elsewhere and make them question authority. No "sword" can do that, that's why unarmed dissidents are rotting away in jail while militia boys are playing Rambo in the woods.
"Another shortcoming of the Internet is that it lends itself to individual rather than communal activities."
Obviously the author has never visited dailykos.com or atrios.blogspot.com which have developed their own communities nad are motivating people to act locally, vote locally, and gather funds in the range of tens of thousands a week to democractic politicians.
They also criticize media and bring to light stories buried or neglected by the corporate press. And these are just two examples of thousands of political sites making a real difference everyday.
Also, the internet is not just for geeks anymore. That argument might have made sense in 1995.
The people who lived through the depression and got their MBAs before the fall, and scrounged for food like the rest of us, after, had intelligent, visionary MBA professors. They taught these students that "The moment a product is created, there's a demand for it, however small. The trick is to find it."
Obviously this was a few years before someone tried to sell a piece of moldy toast on eBay. :>
I don't know who posited the idea that the internet would help in any way to overthrow governments...was this the guy who dreamed up WebVan? Pets.com? :>
Sure, it informs....sometimes MIS-informs...but people still have to DO it. And just about everyone who's spent a little time there learns that not everything posted on the net is 'gospel'...so I ask you: if you learned something awful on the net, would YOU put your family on the line and overthrow a dictator?
Just checking.
In memory of the dot-coms: circa 1994-2002
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
If /everybody/ didn't give a fuck, like they were supposed to then when the gov't told some ppl to go oppress you they would just say," yeah, eat me."
It's *followers* like you that ruin everything and give some stupid blowhard a bunch of power.
Biotch.
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?I D=12651
How to Destroy America
By Frosty Wooldridge
MediaByPass.com | March 22, 2004
In late October 2003, I attended an immigration-overpopulation conference in Washington, D.C., filled to capacity by many of America's finest minds and leaders. Writers, speakers, CEOs and representatives from Congress such as Tom Tancredo as well as former governors graced the podium. Bonnie Eggle - mother of the national parks ranger Chris Eggle slain by Mexican drug runners last year on our unguarded southern border -- gave a compelling speech that left not one dry eye in the place. Peter Gadiel, father of Jamie Gadiel, spoke powerfully on how the World Trade Center took his son and how nothing has been done since to stop the flow of illegal immigration into the United States. Even with the facade of Tom Ridge's Homeland Security, 800,000 illegal aliens continue walking, crawling or tunneling across the Mexican border annually. Their accelerating numbers are undermining America's ability to function.
During the conference, speaker after speaker astounded the audience with facts on how fast the present administration and Congress continue dismantling the American Dream for average citizens. Mr. Rob Sanchez of Arizona showed how H1-B and L-1 visas have ripped one million high tech jobs out of American worker's hands. Another speaker told a packed audience how "offshoring" and "outsourcing," fully supported by the president and Congress have cost over three million American jobs in the past six years. His prediction was even more depressing: "In excess of three million more jobs will be 'outsourced' within four years. Those American jobs are headed to Mexico, India, China, Pakistan and Brazil."
Later, a brilliant college professor named Victor Davis Hansen talked about his latest book, Mexifornia, explaining how immigration, both legal and illegal, was destroying the entire State of California. He said it would march across the country until it destroyed all vestiges of the American Dream.
Moments later, former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm stood up and gave a stunning speech on how to destroy America. This writer sat in the audience spellbound by the eight methods for destruction of the United States.
He said, "If you believe that America is too smug, too self-satisfied, too rich, then let's destroy America. It is not that hard to do. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall, and that, 'An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.'
"Here is how they do it," Lamm said. "Turn America into a bilingual or multi-lingual and bicultural country. History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however; it is a curse for a society to be bilingual. The historical scholar Seymour Lipset put it this way: 'The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension and tragedy. Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon - all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with Basques, Bretons and Corsicans.'"
Lamm went on, "Invent 'multiculturalism' and encourage immigrants to maintain their own culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal. That there are no cultural differences. I would make it an article of faith that the Black and Hispanic dropout rates are due to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out of bounds."
"We could make the United States an 'Hispanic Quebec' without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity. As Benjamin Schwarz said in the Atlantic Monthly recently: 'The app
-- $SIGNATURE
Disclaimer: I'm a part of this significant subset of the democratization industry that Kurlantzick mentioned. Kurlantzick is sadden by the inability of the Internet to topple regimes. Note that by Internet he means the World Wide Web and that he seriously anticipated the Internet to empower the meek and downtrodden with the weapons and ammunition needed to stage revolutions that will remove tyrants.
The Internet is a powerful force for democracy because the Internet is an enabler of open communication. It is just like a radio, a television, or a newspaper - all three of which have ignited flames of revolt all throughout history. The ability to voice one's opinion as well as one's oppression is a prerequisite to the democrazation of any social or political system. Now obviously a government can hinder the effectiveness of the Internet. China did this with Google. We did it with Early Bird. Cultures can also handicap the effectiveness of the Internet.
True story. A North African Muslim couple come to the US to study Information Systems. They catch the entrepreneurial spirit and decide to open an ISP in their home country upon returning home. A couple of years later they return to the US, having not started that ISP. Their reason was that their society was very fundamentalist Islamic despite a few liberal pockets. By starting an ISP, they would expose their customers to culturally and religiously offensive material such as WalMart.com women's casualware listings or Saks Fifth Avenue's pantyhose and shoe catalog. The couple feared a death sentence for bringing in what was considered locally, smut and porn.
This is one specific example of how the effectiveness of the Internet can be limited. However, the Internet has had more success in other places such as the former Yugoslavia. IIT's Project Kosovo and Project Bosnia have successfully used the Internet as a way of documenting war crimes and atrocities and getting the word out to the international community. Democratization efforts depend on getting information flowing. We need to get people talking. We need to start hearing more stories first-hand. The Internet hasn't been used seriously as an instrument for social change until the late 1990s, so results will take time. The ultimate goal is for the Internet to serve as conduit that permits a free exchange of ideas, and that through that exchange help can be given and lives can be improved.
The Internet has an even more important role today than envisioned years ago. Many people are frightened of sharing their political and social opinions in public out of fear of retribution by the authorities. The Internet a vital means for learning the issues from multiple perspectives and for engaging in healthy political debate. At this very moment, tech savvy groups like eToy are engaging in electronic hacktivsm, making people aware of issues that they won't hear about on corporate-controlled news channels. Even now in the US, the safest place to protest is not the free speech zones approved by the government but private chatrooms and blogs.
This is opinion. I've spoken with many forei
People only attempt to topple dictator for only one reason. Not because they want democracy or freedom of speech, but because the live they live is more miserable than the propect of fighting their own governement. That is, most people will find themselves ok as long as they are in minimum warmth (coverage), have minimum food, and a minimum of entertainement. Those minimum can be pretty low depending on your standard of life. But freedom of expression ? It does not enter in anybody's minimu standard BUT for a few hard core political activist. Look back at all revolution. they started because an event made a pressure too high on the population. True, most were afterward "overtaken" by the political activist. But they certainly not were the reason the revolution started (or the revolts in case of failed revolution).
This is why I never paid any attention about this "topple dictatore thru democratic free expression" Stuff.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
All singapore goverment structure is equally transparent. It's just an open state, wich is strikingly better to live in than in any of the neighbouring country. The goverment there really cares about citisens, not in horrible 'Big Brother' way you discribed, but by creating opportunites for industry development and doing there best to attract external investments. Just imagine that a contry smaller than NYC in the middle of unfrendly muslim contries.. without any resources, even without water. And in the large part due to the government this contry is still independent, has much better life level. I belive you have never been to Singapore and it's neighbours or wearing your tin foil hat right now..
The original question was different, originally the question was whether they should be held liable
While not liable in the legal sense is one thing. Even if they were legally liable, the is a very real question about who would be able to bring suit against them, since those being directly affected are not allowed to.
The central thesis of the arguments against the router manufacturers who give material aid to tyrannical regimes are morally liable.
Let's not make any bones about it, China is a tyranical regime. The only real question is whether are they are still (and if so for how much longer) a communist regime or just another run the mill despotic regime.)
If the U.S. government actually punished China or other countries for human rights violations then the story would be different.
You mean like the Cuban embargo?
"No, I am not missing that point at all. I may be one of the few extant Americans who has actually read Thomas Paine"
Is Thomas Paine really a corrupt statist? There is a site www.tompaine.com that is basically a left-wing partisan site, and advocates greatly increasing the power of the ruling class. You've read Paine. Is he really a Ted Kennedy Democrat?
I'm not saying that the allegations are true, but I do think it is kind of interesting that they haven't sued.
Coca Cola actually has sued the Stalinists for libel.
"That was the version of the story as told to the SAn media by apartheid propaganda"
Mandela even admitted it. Soviet agents (Communist Party members) had major leadership roles in the ANC. It was nothing other than a fact that for a while the ANC had sold itself to the USSR. The ANC was indeed a Soviet proxy army for a while. There is nothing silly; it is all factual. The only thing silly is denying Soviet control. At the time the ANC was controlled by the USSR, it was not a "liberation" struggle: it was an attempt at conquest by a European colonial power.
"where they gained experience from soldiers in other countries who had fought (or were fighting) their own liberation wars. "
Like the ones who "liberated" Ethiopia, turned it into a Soviet colony, and then engineered a famine to kill hundreds of thousands? To deny the presence of the last European colonial power to ravage Africa is ludicrous.
"To believe that the armed struggle played no part in ending apartheid is just ridiculous. "
It played absolutely no part. The rebels gained 0 territory. All they did was cause further repression and retaliation.
"At best, there was some soviet funding and soviet training"
Of course. The Soviet empire was helping its soldiers. It was indeed unfortunate. The anti-apartheid struggle had justice on its side. When the ANC becamse a branch of Soviet imperialism, it turned things into a choice between apartheid, and the bloodbath that typically resulted from Soviet takeover of a country.
The ANC is still part of the major Soviet involvement. Their web site has on the front page, enen now, a link to the SACP, which (until the USSR fell) was the group of 100% Soviet agents working for a Soviet conquest in South Africa. They were/are part of the Triparate Alliance. The ANC admitted being allies with Soviet imperialists. This is not a "white power" lie: it is on the ANC's own web site.
With these numeric answers, you are referring to a parent post that has apparently vanished. Now, it refers to nothing. Your 1) denuked/ etc is like a Johnny Carson "Karnak" joke without the punchline.
"Oh, and dump the Moron In Chief, whose whole life depends on fucking up big time."
We did. Clinton left office in 2001. Now we have someone smart in there for once, trying to do good things for a change.
Yet the Shah was deposed not by a violent uprising, but by nonviolent opposition
The Iranian revolution was indeed an armed one.
"If not, how do you explain the success of Ghandian tactics in those countries?"
Do the math 8,000 Jews out of 6,000,000. The effect of nonviolent protest against Nazis was negligible.
As for the USSR, what really did it in was Gorbachev's top-down reforms. He started to turn it into a halfway reasonable country. The USSR that wavered under the nonviolent protesting was a different place than the mass-executing hell run by Stalin, Lenin, Brezhnev, etc.
Iran? As we know, the Shah was overthrown by a violent revolution.
You also have it wrong about India vs the British. The British repression (guns, cracking skulls) was really quite small compared to the whole effort. As a civilized country by that time, Britain did not have the stomach for slaughtering the hundreds of thousands of protesters (something the USSR and Nazis did without thought)
You rightwingers have become so self-referential that you can't even count. A simple enumeration becomes some strawman for your hissy fit. Think for yourself, and your atrophied brain will cough back images of Iran with nukes, and the rest of the current events that people who read (ie, not your President) that threaten us every day while your boys are running the show.
Even those partisans who don't like Clinton admit the obvious: he's the smartest President we've probably ever had, certainly in our lifetimes. Far from being dumped, he was involuntarily retired, with the highest approval ratings of any lame-duck President ever. It's Bush Jr who's getting dumped, like his nasty father before him, as his lie machine runs out of gas on every front: job destruction, terrorism complicity, obnoxious fratboy attitude, and LIES LIES LIES. You'd better cash your BushCo check fast, denial queen, while their money lasts.
--
make install -not war
"Far from being dumped, he was involuntarily retired, with the highest approval ratings of any lame-duck President ever"
Have you ever been to the country? Probably not. If you had, you would know that there was "Clinton fatigue": the country was fed up with his constant scandal and crimes. Gore's association with him was one of the factors that cost Gore the election (that, and the Zelig-like lies Gore made, including when he took credit for inventing the Internet).
Gore did not even win his home state. He lost by a huge margin. Nothing the sore losers with their unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the actual result of the election with phony "undervotes" would have done a thing here.
You seem like one of those people who knows nothing about a country except for a bunch of false impressions, and does nothing but flame a bunch of rage that is based on lies.
"Everyone knows Bush was lying about WMD in Iraq"
No one knows this. You don't, for sure. Because, in fact, he never lied.
Aside from such character witnesses as Bill Clinton and the French government (both of which new that Iraq had WMD's and said so), there is this:
1) Iraq DID have WMD's. They used them against the Kurds.
2) Iraq refused to account for the remaining WMD stockpile that Iraq admitted it had. Do you think that if they had destroyed them, they would be anxious to prove it? Of course they would. Yet, they did not.
Do the math. They had them before. They didn't get rid of them. Therefore, they still had them.
"Do yourself a favor and watch Rice's lying on _60 Minutes_ tonight"
Impossible, since she will likely not lie. She never has before.
"Anonymous "black is white" Coward"
No, I am an anonymous "reality is reality" coward.
"Coward, who's signing your checks for backing these liars who are destroying America?"
I oppose those who would destroy America. Therefore, I support the President's progressive foreign and domestic policy. Since you do not even know the President's name (hint: Gore is Jr. Bush is not), how can you know about anything.
"Your reply is the typical machine logic of the rightwinger"
Nah. I'm just a moderate, and prefer to deal with the facts.
"Are you working over at the Saudi Embassy, or it's satellite office, the RNC?"
Hahaha. I have not seen one of thse racist "Arabs control everything" kooks in a while. Usually, your ilk is "Jews control everything". Nice to have some variety in the racist conspiracy theories.
Anyone else notice the swarm of Anonymous Cowards backing these tired lies about Bush, Clinton and Gore? The absence of anyone with a brain, or willing to attach even a Slashdot handle to their nonsense, for at least consistency?
You might have had this "Clinton fatigue" - that's your right as a self-destructive, brainwashed American. What scandal, the endless perverted voyeurism of bottomdwellers like Ken Starr, whose investigations turned up no illegal activity, nothing that even hinted at any mismanagement of the country, while Clinton managed the greatest growth in world history? The manufactured scandals that rightwing losers like you ate up, barking so loudly that it was difficult for Clinton to successfully protect America from al Qaeda? You morons waved a blue dress for the cameras to protest the attacks on bin Laden that kept him on the run in the 1990s.
In my country, in which New York City is my home, not some pantywaist slogan for attacking countries like Iraq that don't threaten us, we're pretty mad at Bush for stealing the election, destroying the credibility of the Supreme Court and the White House, coddling his Saudi sponsors when they back bin Laden in attacking us, robbing the treasury to stuff his rich corporate patrons while the rest of the country stagnates, LIES LIES LIES about education, compassion, christianity ("Thou shalt not kill", anyone?), and anything else fools like you will believe.
I won't dignify your rightwing pressrelease lies about Gore except to note that Tennessee is populated by biblethumping faith-based fools like you (Elvis, anyone?), and that Al Gore never said he invented the Internet, but he certainly did more than Bush or Cheney, who never even use the Internet, or read a newspaper, let alone define a National Information Infrastructure that successfully transitioned the Net from government to private ownership, while keeping it open and affordable for the public. Get a clue before you start spurting rehashed lies that no one but the infirm and the choir have believed since they were invented by your Republican kleptocrats.
--
make install -not war
"Anyone else notice the swarm of Anonymous Cowards backing these tired lies about Bush, Clinton and Gore?"
The only lies being told right now are by you, perhaps based on the old theory that if you repeat a lie enough, everyone will eventually believe it.
" that's your right as a self-destructive, brainwashed American"
Talk about arrogance. Anyone who does not share your opinion is "brainwashed".
"What scandal"
You were probably born after the Clinton years.
"perverted voyeurism of bottomdwellers like Ken Starr"
Ken Starr did not commit the felony. Clinton did. If you have claims of "perversion" (perhaps you are a sexual prude), blame Clinton. All Starr did was document Clinton's conduct in a public office.
"The manufactured scandals that rightwing "
More lying. Clinton manufactured the scandals. The time for the rightwing manufacturing them was during the Nixon years.
"while Clinton managed the greatest growth in world history?"
While this is a lie (growth only happened because of Congress from 1994 on), you seem to be saying "as long as the economy is good, crime in office is fine!"
"barking so loudly that it was difficult for Clinton to successfully protect America from al Qaeda?"
Again, it was Clinton who dragged out the investigations. Also, you have absolutely no knowledge of how administrations work. Ever hear of a cabinet. There are people there who ensure that the Administration can do more than one thing at one time. Just because Clinton had time to go before the press and lie about his crimes on occasion did not mean he didn't have time to do other things (including successfully prosecuting the war in the Balkans).
"You morons waved a blue dress for the cameras to protest the attacks on bin Laden that kept him on the run in the 1990s."
Glad I wasn't one of them. They should have waved the dress on the day that Clinton was offered bin Ladin (by the Sudan) and refused him.
"attacking countries like Iraq that don't threaten us"
Is it possible for you to say something that was not a lie? Saddam Hussein ordered 2,500 attacks against US and British peacekeepers in the no fly zones. The retaliation was entirely justified.
"we're pretty mad at Bush for stealing the election"
Translation: you are angry that he actually won the election, and the attempt to steal it by cooking vote counts failed. You think democracy only works when a left-winger is elected.
"destroying the credibility of the Supreme Court and the White House"
All the Court did was let the actual vote count stand.
"LIES LIES LIES about education, compassion, christianity ("Thou shalt not kill", anyone?)"
He's been pretty truthful.
"I won't dignify your rightwing pressrelease lies about Gore except to note that Tennessee is populated by biblethumping faith-based fools like you (Elvis, anyone?)"
No rightwing lies: just facts. I guess Tennesseeans are fools because they do not have the religion you have. I get it.
"and that Al Gore never said he invented the Internet"
Another lie on your part. He did claim this. Read the CNN transcript.
"Get a clue before you start spurting rehashed lies that no one but the infirm and the choir have believed since they were invented by your Republican kleptocrats."
Actually, this is from a CNN interview Gore did. I don't think Wolf Blitzer is a Republican.
You ignore the Saudi family funding of bin Laden and other terrorists who attack the US and others across the world, to say nothing of their madrassas which brainwash muslim children into a downtrodden mass of ignorant haters. You can hide behind your strawman Jews lies, and your excluded middle of "control everything". The Saudis controlled the only private planes out of the US after 9/11/2004, carrying the bin Laden family out of the reach of the FBI; we should be finding out what other control they exert over our demented Mideast policies, but we'll have to wait for Bush to get dumped before anyone asks the tough questions. Junior's following in Senior's footsteps, down the chute to the dustbin of history.
As for WMD, you can't fool anyone by twisting the WMD claims. We invaded Iraq because Bush said Iraq had WMD in 2003, you sick rightwing liar. Not the WMD that Rumsfeld sold Iraq in the 1980s, on Reagan's watch, while your boys cheered his attack on the Kurds - who have been sold out by BushCo at every turn, thwarting any chance of a homegrown Iraqi revolution against Saddam. Every WMD inspector admits they're not there, from the Pentagon for the past year, to all the UN inspectors, like Blix, who show that Clinton's agressive attacks on any Iraqi false move defanged the tyrant. That's why Bush forced them out - the truth conflicted with his lies and his agenda. No, you lie about WMD, you lie about WMD lies, you lie about being "moderate" to force your rightwing insanity center stage, and swing the entire spectrum rightward. You are such an ambitious fraud that you call Bush's policies "progressive"! HA!. Take a deep breath and read some of Rice's lies, a short list because they're just about the past week.
The truth is that BushCo wanted to invade Iraq, ignored al Qaeda until they got their desired "Pearl Harbor Event", then took over Kabul in a token gesture while they attacked Iraq. Now sellouts like you parrot their spin, while the Taliban retake Afghanistan, al Qaeda's recruitment skyrockets, Iraqi shi'ites roll out sharia in Iraq, and the rest of civilization fears the US more than muslim terrorists. Drop the lies and do something sane to protect America from the BushCo predators: Dump Bush in 2004.
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Oops. missed some of your lies. Bush's patrons are the American people. Very few of his voters were rich (in fact, Bush got more working-class votes than Gore did).
Bush has given very little to the rich. Perhaps you have bought into the lie that the tax cuts are a giveaway to the rich.
This lie overlooks some huge facts:
A tax cut is never a giveaway. Why would it be a gift to swipe a smaller amount of someone's property? (Consider it my gift to you that I am not stealing your bicycle tonight!)
The majority of those who get to keep more of their own money under the Bush plan are middle class. The rich are a small minority.
After the Bush tax cut, which is supposedly "for the rich", the rich pay a higher percentage of their income than the non-rich, a much higher amount in actual dollars, and pay a huge slice of the tax pie.
"You can hide behind your strawman Jews lies"
Now I am some sort of wicker man uttering damn Jew lies.
" The Saudis controlled the only private planes out of the US after 9/11/2004, carrying the bin Laden family out of the reach of the FBI"
Sounds shocking, until you look at the facts. The bin Laden family is quite LARGE. Bin Laden is just one member. If you think that this is a problem, do you advocate locking up all the Kennedy clan because Ted murdered a woman, or that Smith guy raped a woman? Or that married-in relative in California groped some women?
"we should be finding out what other control they exert over our demented Mideast policies"
There is nothing demented about them.
"Junior's following in Senior's footsteps, down the chute to the dustbin of history."
Neither man is Jr or Sr. However, you like to repeat lies over and over.
"As for WMD, you can't fool anyone by twisting the WMD claims"
I agree, you can't fool anyone. So I told the truth about them.
"We invaded Iraq because Bush said Iraq had WMD in 2003"
You obviously ignored the facts: Saddam had them, admitted having them, and almost certainly still had them (never got rid of them).
"Not the WMD that Rumsfeld sold Iraq in the 1980s"
To twist this, you are saying that these WMD's "don't count".
"Every WMD inspector admits they're not there"
So? It took months to find Saddam. Like the WMD's, the existed before a year ago. Unlike Saddam, you can hide them anywhere without having to have a ventilated spiderhole.
"who show that Clinton's agressive attacks on any Iraqi false move defanged the tyrant"
I will defend Clinton when he does something right. His actions were anything but "aggressive". However, he did not defang the tyrant: Saddam still killed tens of thousands a year, and Clinton's strikes had a very slim chance of hitting WMD's or facilities.
"That's why Bush forced them out - the truth conflicted with his lies and his agenda"
You have yet to show evidence of one Bush lie. Blix, however, was acting on behalf of the German government, which was behaving in a Nazi-like fashion of Axis brotherhood with Saddam.
" You are such an ambitious fraud that you call Bush's policies "progressive"!
Progressive is as progressive does.
"Take a deep breath and read some of Rice's lies"
Of course a site run by the Democrat Party attack machine would have false claims. Next (try an objective source). Next...
"The truth is that BushCo wanted to invade Iraq"
The truth is they did not. They gave Saddam months to comply. Ample time.
"ignored al Qaeda until they got their desired "Pearl Harbor Event""
Ignoring Al Quada was done by others as well: they were blindided. However, the "desired pearl harbor" effect is one of the nastiest lies you have put forward so far.
"Now sellouts like you parrot their spin"
I reject all spin: only the facts matter.
"and the rest of civilization fears the US more than muslim terrorists"
This is nothing but a PR problem. The fear is based on nothing but ignorance.
"Drop the lies and do something sane to protect America from the BushCo predators: Dump Bush in 2004."
I've dropped all lies. We can dump him in 2008: Bush is far better than his competitors.
Dubya? Sounds almost like the name of an Arab country "Dubai".
However, you make yourself look like a left-wing Rush Limbaugh when you seem incabable of calling the President by his real name, and can only speak (think?) in terms of 3rd grade level playground insults.
The man who actually lost the 2000 election is a Jr since he has the same exact name as his father.
How nauseating it is to see American companies clamoring to sell censorship and anti-freespeech devices and software to authoritarian governments.
The hypocrite Ralph Nader (a man now helpbent to personally hand Bush the election a 2nd time) is a major investor in Cisco, a company involved in this.
Nader whines about Microsoft's "monopoly". While Microsoft is dominant, it is not a monopoly. However, Microsoft is less dominanet on the desktop than Cisco is in the internet hardware field.
"Capital doesn't care about your rights nor your country.
Nor does the wind. What is your point?
Edgar Cayce is a fraud. He's dead, so he isn't making money off his scams (let him rest in peace), but others are.
He's not worth studying, unless you are studying the history of fraud/scams and how the phony psychics fool their victims.
I read his Atlantis book. Nothing but fiction, like the rest of his work. Many have studied his fictions from front to back and concluded that they are fiction. Only the gullible are taken in.
It appears we have another chance to see if you are right. I plan on evaluating this myself, but if this is true, would you not be interested?
http://ascension2000.com/cayce.htm
I give up. It is a faith. You are a True Believer. Edgar Cayce has everything to do with a religiouslike faith, and nothing to do with science.
The guy was prolific. He was not particularly imaginative. He continued the Atlantis hoax which was started by misinterpreting Plato's fable about an island near Greece that blew up. H.P. Blavatsky made up a lot of Atlantis hoax material, Cayce was rather inspired by her.
The Atlantis stuff alone shows that he is a hoaxer. The tales of the great continent of the mid-Atlantic are about as true as the "Star Wars" tales. Likely, someone 2500 years from now will believe that "Star Wars" was real, just like those who twisted Plato's fable.
Read "Lost Continents" by L. Sprague De Campe. He deflates these false claims that the gullible buy into.
Political-economy primer (mostly) for "my fellow Americans": The dominent mass media, both in the USA and in Venezuela, is owned by a relatively few large corporations and rich families. These owners & influential corporate stockholders are members of a tiny class of extremely wealthy people with all kinds of other financial interests spread across the world. These altruistic folks are sometimes referred to as the bourgeoisie. In the bourgeois press itself, of course, even to identify the existence of this class is widely considered subversive or conspiratorial, but recognition of this ruling class and its vast power is really mostly a matter of institutional analysis. Strangely enough, the media owners select editors who will pursue journalistic policies that will reinforce the power and wealth of the capital-owning class. As a result, the point of view of most of the corporate media is remarkably uniform, even without some secret cabal meeting in a smoke-filled room, plotting to dominate the world (though I don't doubt that some of that also takes place). However advocacy journalism (more honestly called propaganda 'in Soviet Russia') is much more effective if you can convince people that that you are honest & objective (or 'fair & balanced(R)' as Faux News describes itself). Your credibility can be further enhanced if you can convince the sheeple that your point of view is the exact opposite of what it actually is, hence the myth of a "liberal" media.
So when a Venezuelan populist former officer named Hugo Chavez won elections in 1998 & 2000 & promised to improve the lot of the poor majority (which might mean diverting power and resources away from the extremely rich bourgeoisie) the bourgeois press promptly labeled him "authoritarian" (and the "liberal" Washington Post characterized Venezuela as a "Disguised Dictatorship"). The five commercial Venezuelan TV chains transformed themselves into basically a network of 24 hour infomercials targeted against the "democratically" elected government. Eventually the time came for members of the bourgeoisie & armed forces to overthrow the government (with the direct financial & military support of the Bush regime). The Venezuelan TV stations ran free ads every 10 minutes urging people to demonstrate against the government. On April 11th 50-150,000 complied and marched towards the government Miraflores Place to "remove Chavez from office." Shots were fired, killing between 10 & 30 people. Despite the fact that it later turned out that the vast majority of these victims were actually government supporters, the Western bourgeois press (the corporate AP, CNN & NY Times, as well as the supposedly independent government owned BBC & NPR) immediately reported that the shots were from the Chavez government (without sourcing these claims) and that Chavez had "resigned" from office in the subsequent wave of righteous indignation. In actuality a military junta had captured Chavez at gunpoint & anointed Pedro Carmona, the leader of the Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce, as president. Carmona promptly disbanded the country's legislature and Supreme Court, suspended the constitution and initiated a country-wide roundup of Chavez supporters. The 13th U.S. ambassador met with Carmona at Miraflores and referred to him as "president." The bulk of the bourgeois press adopted the tone that, while the coup was troubling, it was the inevitable result of Chavez' authoritarian shennanigans and probably a step forward for democracy. In the meantime, the Venezuelan oligarch-controlled TV networks and newspapers essentially blacked out all news about the coup and ongoing political developments, instead running non-stop Hollywood movie reruns and sporting events. Members of the National Assembly and government ministers tried to communicate with the country,
I am not looking for a religion. I am looking for truth. I guess that is always what we perceive. I choose to not follow the masses that look to science and basic religion for answers. Tom Bearden and others clearly state that our science is incomplete and not fit for giving us all the answers. I would have to agree with that statement. Therefore, I cannot measure his works by science. I do not see how we humans could keep an accurate account of the ancient past (including religion) without seriously distorting it or losing it along the way, so I cannot validate his history with our history. Since the future is constantly changing due to free will given to every human, all psychic predictions will have a greater amount of error. That is why I do not validate predictions. You and others have tried to invalidate him using measurements that I do not see fit for validating. I can validate if he borrowed ideas from other documents (and hopefully the authors of those documents state that they are fiction, or I will have to validate them or find another source for validation). I can validate if his readings had some immediate affect (such as a healing). This has been confirmed, but as you said, they could be simple lesser-known healing techniques known for quite some time, but I have not found evidence of that yet. I also have not found a reliable source to prove that he was a bookworm type to read all of this. I investigate with an open mind and do not stop if I find something is strange. I wish more people did the same instead of saying "that is not what I learned in high school / college / on TV / etc."
:-')
You have given me more stuff to research and validate. That will be helpful, as I want to investigate this fully. I did not appreciate short responses without any backup for me to verify. You have given me something to verify. It may not be enough to convince me, but it is a good start.
You see, I have experienced for myself several things that tell me that science is very incomplete and that we should give psychics a chance. Personally, I have experienced a deja vu where I had a short 3-second vision of something happening (when I was about 7), and two weeks later it would happen. My roommate has recently experienced the same thing. I know first hand that there are greater forces at work and that we have access to them.
Thank you. I wish this had been a more constructive conversation, but I suppose we can always blame the medium
No, you can't see beyond your own projected racism to understand that your strawman lies are about Jews, when you hide behind the lie about their somehow "controlling everything". Nor do the Saudis, among the greatest opressors of Arabs, unless you're talking about their control of BushCo. You don't really understand racism, so you jump at the chance to libel someone with the charge, even when it's totally inappropriate.
Don't give me that weasel crap about the bin Laden's family being so large - Osama's immediate family was on those flights out, while thousands of Americans, Arab and otherwise, were stranded without a direct line to their "public servants".
We'll just have to disagree that propping up the Saudis at every turn, propping up Saddam while convenient, creating bin Laden's Afghani mujahideen and turning them loose, backing the murder twins Sharon and Arafat with politics, money and weapons, the Iran part of the Contras and their Hezbollah front, ignoring Syria's Hamas war on Israel and subjugation of Lebanon - the snakepit is bottomless - is demented.
The WMD Rumsfeld sold to Iraq during the Reagan/Bush 1980s were 1st used up on Kurds, then destroyed during the ongoing Clinton war putting teeth into the UN inspection regime. They count against your specious argument that your BushCo boys somehow protects us from them, while peddling them, but they don't count towards invading Iraq, because by then they didn't exist. It is only you who's both sucking and blowing on WMDs (and Cheney - nice company you keep there, AC). They hid the WMDs, and my foot tapping is keeping you safe from tigers. Send me a check when you get a chance, true believer.
As I mentioned elsewhere, even people who like Dubya call him "Junior". You're lagging behind your own old-boy network.
If you don't call countless missiles fired at Iraqi forces in the 1990s agressive, enforcing actual UN resolutions, with actual results in containing and disarming Iraq, then you should march right to the front lines in Iraq, where the passive "nation building" is chewing up hundreds of Americans, thousands of Iraqis, all while Junior's war is "over". You'll be just as safe as the Iraqis were under Clinton.
WHERE ARE THE WMDS? Your lies ring so hollow, you should be embarrassed by now. Except of course you don't really care about WMDs, you're just a shameless warmonger whose fix is threatened.
Your Blix/German/Nazi comment is beneath contempt. Take off the tinfoil hat and try catching up with civilization, which abhors war, especially now that we've all had a taste of it.
You can only deny that BushCo was fixed on invading Iraq if you're totally out of touch, or just lying to convince yourself. Al Qaeda attacked us, Bush used it as a pretext to attack Iraq, and now everybody is screwed. When the Spanish tried that crap with their ETA enemies last week, they got what Bush has coming to him, minus the treason charges. The PNAC thirst for a Pearl Harbor event to justify the invasion of Iraq is documented in their own published blueprints, and they brutally followed their own scripts when their own ignorance of their own intelligence bore al Qaeda fruit. All this is documented by the evildoers themselves - nobody buys your childish cries of denial. And your impugning the bias of the documentation of Rice's lies about Clarke is the same useless character assassination Rice herself is fumbling. The self-contradictory quotes and disproving evidence speaks for themselves. Now relax your grip on that flag you're wrapped in, and get with the program, as we flush the parasites from the White House, and get a regime that protects America from our enemies. Or keep saluting the scoundrels and contributing to your own selfdestruction.
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How about this: George Walker Bush is an asshole who should be fired immediately, who never should have been appointed President. You, Anonymous Coward, are too childish to notice the facts and logic when someone calls an asshole an asshole, while documenting his atrocious behavior. Don't ask me to be nice when he's killing people every day, while robbing the survivors of liberty, economy and dignity. Oh, and you get one too: Even people who like Dubya call him "Junior". Only a twit would get hung up on the nickname his own father called him, Dubya, in a debate about life, death, and American National Security.
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Allowing free trade with China was the wrong way to go, stick with tariffs, limit the benefit they can have by selling to us and help out the U.S. economy at the same time. China has made no attempts at friendly relationships with the rest of the world so why should they be rewarded?
I don't mistake what China is, but I believe router manufacturers should not be held morally or otherwise legally responsible for what is done with their products. They offer the same advice to anyone willing to pay, and they charge the same price based on quantity. So if Qwest wants to setup a DSL network that filters qwestsucks.com then so be it, its not Cisco's fault the people buying their products have shitty intentions.My Linux distro has man pages that tell me how to do the same things with netfilter so I hardly see anybody responsible.
I do agree intent matters, if the Cisco reps said, this is how you suppress your population then they would have a moral liability. However, I highly doubt anything like that happened since it is routine practice in the business world.What the heck is Hannitized? Sanitized you mean? And how does that relate to Dean?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
No, not like the Cuban embargo, all that has done was ruin a tiny country and make the problem worse.
The embargo against Castro has been very helpful. The country is ruined by Castro's Stalinist economic policies, not the embargo. It is basically illegal for anyone to work their way out of poverty there: without an embargo, trade would increase.... everyone would still be pour, and Castro would be millions richer. He would then use the millions to attack other countries (like the 80s when his wars on the Central American mainland cost tens of thousands of lives).
"How about this: George Walker Bush is an asshole who should be fired immediately, who never should have been appointed President"
He never was appointed President. He was elected the same way almost all of his predecessors were: he won enough states' popular votes to get an electoral college lock. This is, of course, the same way Clinton won.
Get over the stupid "he did not win the election just because we don't like his policies". It makes you look bad.
"while documenting his atrocious behavior."
You haven't documented one example. I can come up with a few: like caving in to the Democrats when he tried to improve education, and the steel tariffs. These are relatively minor. However, you attack him for things he never did, or things that he did the correct thing on.
"Your Blix/German/Nazi comment is beneath contempt"
It is nothing but factual. Blix even went around saying that his hero Saddam was in full compliance, when his own team's documents showed many instances when he was not.
Germany, when it sided with Saddam, was in lockstep (goose-step) with a genocidal antisemitic leader. Nazi is as Nazi does. Germany's siding with evil instead of good was beneath contempt.
"The WMD Rumsfeld sold to Iraq during the Reagan/Bush 1980s were 1st used up on Kurds, then destroyed during the ongoing Clinton war putting teeth into the UN inspection regime"
You forget the FACT that late during the Clinton administration, Clinton bombed Iraq when Saddam basically kicked the inspectors out.
"You can only deny that BushCo was fixed on invading Iraq if you're totally out of touch"
No, I deny it because, unlike you, I know the facts. I know about the ample time given by Clinton and Bush after him for Saddam to do the reasonable thing, and how Saddam refused, forcing retaliation against his aggression.
"Bush used it as a pretext to attack Iraq, and now everybody is screwed"
No one is screwed except for Saddam, and those like you who think he was a great guy. Bush needed no "pretext". He was forced to retaliate.
"as we flush the parasites from the White House, and get a regime that protects America from our enemies"
We did that in 2000.
"Take off the tinfoil hat and try catching up with civilization, which abhors war, especially now that we've all had a taste of it."
I did. You are the warmonger, with your strong support of Saddam Hussein and his war. During his reign, Saddam often killed tens of thousands a year. This war is pretty much over, no thanks to you and your lies.
What do I care how I look to an Anonymous sniping Coward in denial? I stick to the facts:
Among other skulduggery, Bush's Iran-Contra coke flying buddies at ChoicePoint and DataBase Technologies kicked 57,000 Florida voters, mostly Gore voters, off the voting rolls in 2000, to secure a 500 vote margin, "validated" by the same Supreme Court "justices" who line up behind the Chief Crony, Antonin Scalia.
How about that ongoing Iraq war, instead of getting some al Qaeda closure, as atrocious behavior? Steel tarriffs in a shameless ploy to buy industrial votes, unfunding No Child Left Behind, lying about Medicare costs by 50% and silencing the auditor? If you don't hate this guy already, you must hate America, or just have checks coming from the Committe to Reappoint the President - better get that payoff while there's still Treasury to cover it. The rest of us are getting on with kicking the incompetent failure out, and letting America do its thing free of leeches at the top.
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No WMD. Hundreds of Americans, thousands of Iraqis dead since Bush's Orwellian declaration of war's end, with the pile growing higher every day. Stop your senseless lying, your addiction to butchery.
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Bush's Iran-Contra coke flying buddies
The coke-flying, just another made up story. There are fringes on the right, as well: the coke-flying stories are just as credible (that is, not at all) as the stories of Clinton ordering a massacre at Waco and killing all those Arkansas "arkancides".
ChoicePoint and DataBase Technologies
The process to remove felons was put in place by Democrats, and run by Democrats. It removed felon's names from the list without any regard to race or party.
How about that ongoing Iraq war, instead of getting some al Qaeda closure, as atrocious behavior?
An administration is more than one man. It is capable of retaliating against two terrorist leaders at one time. I suppose you are amazed that FDR waged war on both the Pacific and European fronts.
unfunding No Child Left Behind
There is plenty of money thrown at the schools; more than enough for this.
If you don't hate this guy already, you must hate America
No, but it is clear that you hate this guy because you hate America.
or just have checks coming from the Committe to Reappoint the President
Hehe. I might as well start thinking like you do. I don't like Clinton. Therefore, he stole the election!
I will end this on a note we might both agree on. You might say that Bush won because of the decision of a mere 5 people. I blame it on just 1 guy: Nader. Without Nader's ill-conceived glory ride, Gore would have won handily (and we would not know the term "hanging chad"). The guy is a dirty rotten spoiler with grand delusions. A powerful guy: he threw the last election. Must have been thrilling for ol' Captain Cadaverous: he wants to do it again.
Does not matter to me who wins from this: it is still a rotten thing for Nader to do. Any agreement there?
Nader's running is a threat only due to a at a serious flaw - the winner-take-all system. Nader's 2000 take of a few percent in Florida was still smaller than those erased by Katherine Harris' machinations, so I'd rank voter disenfranchisement as a greater threat than a legal run by a competitive candidate. If the erroneously counted "Buchanan" votes were properly counted for Gore, the Florida electoral ballots would have been properly allocated, the national popular and electoral votes would have been synchronized, and the Constitutional crisis would never have arrived.
As for the Iran-Contra resumes of Bush's current public/private partnership for hegemony: you really should look more closely at that cancer on your party. It has taken over the brain. Poindexter, North, their druglord buddies, even Lee Hamilton the Democrat whitewasher... do they really represent you?
Hank Asher provided the unprecedentedly expensive Democrat scrubbing campaign in Florida 2000, and flew cocaine for Iran-Contra, now profiteering from domestic spying. These criminals kept the Iranians propped up, and defend them even now, as they get played by the Ayatollahs in Iran and Shi'ite Iraq building a nuclear superstate which will threaten us for generations, if we even all survive that long.
FDR, united with his party, the opposition, the American people, and substantial global allies, could wage war in both Europe and the Pacific - mainly by merely supporting Europe (primarily Russia) while leading in the Pacific. The US fought a well defined enemy, in a war novel in scale, not so much complexity. While the Bush administration seems to be unable not only to fight in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but unable to run a reelection campaign and even one successful war. And they're taking us down with them. Neither you nor I depends on the "one man" at the top of this administration, or all hope of any survival would be lost at the hands of George the Squanderer, who has never won any fair competition in his life, certainly not without help from a family fixer. 2004 won't be fixable, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, Wall Street, the jobs market, or anywhere else except possibly the voting booths in November. Let's hope he screws that up as well.
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"was still smaller than those erased by Katherine Harris' machinations"
Nothing is smaller than this total, which is 0. She erased nothing.
"If the erroneously counted "Buchanan" votes were properly counted for Gore"
The Buchanan votes were made as Buchanan votes on the ballot, and they were thus properly counted. If you don't like Buchanan, don't vote for him. There is no "well I changed my mind" after the election. No do-over.
"the Florida electoral ballots would have been properly allocated"
They were properly allocated in accordance with the actual popular vote in Florida.
"the national popular and electoral votes would have been synchronized"
There is no need for this, certainly no need to toss out actual election results just to get this synchronization.
Actually, I oppose the Electoral College. However, you don't retroactively undo an election just because you played by the electoral rules and lost.
"As for the Iran-Contra resumes of Bush's current public/private partnership for hegemony"
There is none. You are referring to something that does not exist.
"you really should look more closely at that cancer on your party."
I have no "party". The last time I joined one, the twerp lidded out. I joined the "giant sucking sound" that left his party.
"It has taken over the brain. Poindexter, North, their druglord buddies"
They have no druglord buddies. There is absolutely no evidence of drug involvement.
"FDR, united with his party, the opposition, the American people, and substantial global allies"
So did our President. Except that certain countries and individuals decided that they loved Saddam Hussein and terrorism so much that they could not let Bush succeed.
"While the Bush administration seems to be unable not only to fight in both Afghanistan and Iraq"
It is quite able to in both.
"hands of George the Squanderer, who has never won any fair competition in his life"
He won a fair election in 2000, despite the sore losers trying to overthrow it. He also won two governor races in a large state: a margin so large that even Anne Silverfoot Richards could not whine.
"Let's hope he screws that up as well."
He hasn't screwed up anything yet. Kerry certainly will, with his plans to raise taxes (in order to kill job creation), spend more money than Bush (to greatly increase the defecit)and submit our national security to the approval of foreign enemies like Nazi Germany and Vichy France.
This assessment says more about your own reactionary ideology
If one measures from the center, one can easily point out the real left-wing AND right-wing media. Those like you in the extreme fringes make the mistake of saying "Everything to the right of me is right-wing" or the reverse.
Any media that doesn't constantly slam Democrats and extol Repugnicans is by definition liberal.
That is your definition. The real definition of liberal media is that which favors liberal policies and liberal candidates (and conservative media favors conservatism. Quite obvious).
But the right has repeated the canard of liberal bias so much that some of its dimmer bulbs may have actually begun to believe it.
The left-wing media is not a creation of the right-wing. It is a creation of left-wing movers and shakers in the media organizations. The brighter bulbs know it: it is quite apparent in the left-wing outlets (just as it is apparent that the right-wing ones are right-wing)
The constant waves of mergers between Time & Warner & Turner & AOL & Viacom & 20th Century
Not one of which you named involved one electronic media company swallowing another. This is because this has only happened once: when CNN ate a rival satellite news network back when no-one knew what CNN was. Since TV news began, in fact, there has been a steady increase of different TV news voices. The diversity is increasing; I have watched many Indymedia-related far-left shows (and a few far-right ones) on public access cable, which is another example of the growing number of voices.
As is right wing Clear Channel gobbling up 1,240 radio stations
Clear Channel controls less than 8% of radio stations.
They are now telling entertainers at "their" events that if they criticize the war or Bush they will be banned from Clear Channel stations
That is their free speech. Don't like it, don't listen to Clear Channel. However, there is a rather intolerant movement on the Left that wants the government to censor Clear Channel for being "right-wing".
Cat Stevens' Peace Train
They should play this, followed by someone reading one of "Yusef Islam's" Jew-bashing rants. Quite a contrast. Since Cat Stevens jumped off the train and became a genocidal nut, it is "Tea for the Killerman".
Do you think a Stalinist would tolerate the existence of Venevision & the rest of the anti-Bolivarian commercial media
He does not. He has announced that he would like it taken over by government (part of the general far-left view of totalitarian control). Now, do you think anyone but a Stalinist would be such a great friend of Fidel Castro, and admire his old-style Soviet fascist policies, and actually plan to model Venezuela on Castro's hellhole prison island?
"Uncle Joe would have stood them all up against the wall long ago"
Uncle Hugo plans on it. He has already tried to ban independent (non-dictator controlled) labor unions and has harassed the popular media, and has proposed Constitutional changes to give him great personal power and to amass more and more property for himself.
If the major media in the U.S. acted the way the Globovision does in Venezuela, daily calling for the government to be overthrown.....
The US media savage the President all the time. You can expect much Kerry-bashing for him when he wins in November.
Chavez' role model Castro actually put someone into a torture camp for making fun of his beard.
But never mind. He is amassing power and seizing personal wealth for the "good of the poor".
Asher flew drugs through the Bahamas for Iran-Contra before continuing his central role promoting BushCo through ChoicePoint, DBT and the MATRIX. These evildoers are still active, unlike the ghosts of long-gone foreign regimes that haunt you, Anonymous scaredy Coward, but whose own descendants have rejected after learning the hard lessons firsthand.
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"Anonymous fascist Coward"
I myself oppose fascism in all its forms.
"so much that you prefer BushCo lies to counting votes"
I prefer counting votes, actually. The votes in the 2000 election were counted several times. The difference is that I prefer counting votes. When someone says "I don't like that these voters chose Buchanan, so let's count them as Gore" they are not counting votes. They are making up votes out of thin air. When someone interprets a bump or a stray mark as a vote, that is not counting votes either (on those ballots, you punch a hole. Simple enough. It is on the instructions). When all the actual votes were counted, Gore lost.
"Email, however, didn't help much back in 1993, when the Yeltsin actually used military force to get done with the parliament"
This might seem outrageous, until you realize that the Parliament was the Parliament of the Soviet Union, which Russia had previously seceeded from. It had absolutely no legitimacy, or authority over Russia.
"It was Soviet Union and 1991"
This was a Russian matter, as well, as Russia had seceded from the USSR by this time as well.
It is my belief that the Internet is surpassingly threatening to the various dictators and tyrants of the world. While we can not associate the Internet directly, since it's conception, the world's dictators and tyrants have been changing their tunes.
Syria stopped being a putz -
Cuba is inviting open market reforms -
China can't seem to block things fast enough and seems to be on the fast track to an open market society with elections around the corner -
South America is making leaps and bounds in creating fair government -
Again, while we can't hail the internet for all of this, I would find all this change hard to believe if we were without it.
David
Syria stopped being a putz
It has? It is still engaging in a punative military occupation of all of Lebanon (despite the fact that Lebanon never attacked or threatened Syria), and it still has a foreign policy goal of exterminating/subjugating Jews.
"Most anarchists are leftists so you are not accurate"
Few of them are. I've had many discussions with them, and the so-called "anarchists" on the left are quick to bring into the conversation how it is necessary for government to have power power over people.
A prime example of this is Emma Goldman. She is considered falsely by many to be an "anarchist leftist". However, she devoted much effort to sometimes successful efforts to increase the power of government (the regulations she fought for).
There is fundamentally no difference between the old and the new government in Georgia. There is less difference between the current leader and the deposed leader than there is between the current President of the United States and his democrat rival.
- but people believe what they see, and the people who now have the power were good enough friends with the press to make it look otherwise.
You can't hide among the decent humans anymore, with your rightwing extremes of "everyone this" and "never that". The human world is nuanced, and your robotic denial, with idealized "with us / against us" rhetoric convinces only the terrorized, upon whom you prey. At least you're well represented by clones in the White House, but your mutual ideology of "victory for me, by any means neccesary, regardless of the common cost" sets you at odds even with one another.
Let's cut the spin, already, Anonymous dittohead Coward. Where are some of the ringing successes of your boys in DC? Where has Wolf Blitzer, whose kids are going through college on the lucre from his selective Iraq warmongering(Sr & Jr), displayed journalistic integrity outbalancing his BushCo scripts? Right down to his name, he's a charicature of a warmongering attack reporter, running with the pack, baying at the moon.
Will you now attack me for defending myself against your lies? Will you claim that I now threaten your family? You surely must, though I obviously do not, under your convenient logic which makes the vile Saddam's defense of his regime from a decade of American warplanes into a threat to the rest of America. No credible threat has ever been supported, despite you President's lies about WMD, Niger uranium, poisoning venues as vital to public democracy as the State of the Union. You're falling in line with the lies of nanny Rice, Napoleon Rumsfeld, the vacillating Powell, the amen chorus of deniers and ends/means justifiers who have destroyed the credibility of our entire country, the price we'll pay for the rest of our lives in securing the feudal allegience of true believers like you. Wake up and smell the reality, AC, like the rest of the credulous country is, so rapidly these days. The nightmare is almost over: shrug off the delusions, or get left in them.
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Even discounting the illegally purged 57,000 FL 2000 voters, mostly for Gore, Gore won Florida. Where are your cited facts to the contrary? When will you get off this treadmill of pure denial, and get with the facts? Why do you hate America?
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