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Revolution, Flashmobs and Brain Implants in 2035
siddesu writes "Marxist revolution, WMDs, flashmobs and other sci-fi items are coming soon in a country near you, according to the UK Ministry of Defence. 'Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role of Marx's proletariat. The population of countries in the Middle East increasing by 132%, while Europe's drops as fertility falls. "Flashmobs" — groups rapidly mobilised by criminal gangs or terrorists groups.
This is the world in 30 years' time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence team responsible for painting a picture of the "future strategic context" likely to face Britain's armed forces.'"
The media, regardless of whereabouts, cannot be allowed to distort the term "flash mob" like it has so many other terms, i.e. "hacker" and the like. A flash mob is a group of people that rapidly assembles with a minimum amount of preparation which generally is done via the Internet and with the intent of a peaceable prank or bragging rights. I did some research on this term while working on my college graduation project.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
If you want a revolution, you're a dumbass. Forget communism, with the implications of violent overthrow of the ruling class. We've already had that, and it didn't work. Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, we HAVE thrown off the ruling class, and we're letting them back into their old jobs by small measures, through tax cuts and corporate welfare.
This is how socialism and eventually communism will happen - by default, naturally, no revolution. The cost of capitalizing a new activity will eventually drop to near zero for everything. I don't know if this is going to happen through a universal nanotech assembler, or through ubiquitous robotic slaves building shit for us in exchange for duracells, but it's going to happen. Everything is going to eventually be so cheap that it won't be worth selling. When you can get your robot to build you a car of your own design, and all you have to do is plug it in, you won't be going to Ford to buy a piece of shit Tempo-like ugly box. No, you'll design your own, or you'll download a GNU car schematic of something cool like the Linux-go-cart and tell your robot slave to build it for you. Richard Stallman will finally become relevant to everyone when his ideas move up a level of implementation from computers to the real world. It'll be just like Second Life where you use a computer editor to change your house - and your REAL house changes into a castle. Plus you can edit the length of your own cock to keep up with the Jones's. Hell, your wife could edit the length of her cock too!
That's my fantasy. Now, who's written a nice sci-fi novel about that?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
It talks about the declining European population, but NOT the rising population of muslims in Europe (particularly France). Plenty of kowtowing is going to Muslims in Europe as well, with little pressure to become "westernized," and therefore allowing more extremist sides of Islam to enter Europe. We're already seeing pockets where Sharia law is allowed in England, France, and Germany, and we're probably not to far from seeing an "Islamicization" of Europe, which will be an interesting mix. Australia is taking a different approach - it seems like they're making sure that Sharia law is not going to be imposed, but Australian law. America is going to be an interesting bag - most muslims here are VERY westernized and stay within urban areas or college towns; however, it is very difficult for them to use Sharia law unless it is done somewhat "off the books." I think that we're going to see some try and impose Sharia law within a community here in the states, but at some point there is going to be a backlash.
Let's prove Bakunin right, in other words.
deus does not exist but if he does
Nothing to see here folks. They kidnapped a bunch of our soldiers and our response was an embarrassment to the once proud history of the British navy, but real danger we have to look out for is communists...
My blog
"Flashmobs" -- groups rapidly mobilised by criminal gangs or terrorists groups.
Oh, man; talk about clueless. What "flashmob" really means is that the PR guy at a local commercial outlet has hired a viral ad guy, who spread the rumor that Britney or Paris or a member of the latest hot local indie band has been spotted at said outlet.
Of course, one could classify the ad agencies as criminal gangs or terrorist groups, and then maybe you'd have a point.
(I live in the Boston area, which recently had a fun example of advertising being mistaken for terrorism. So I'm not surprised to read nonsense like this. And I'm looking forward to further entertaining mistakes along this line. Anything to make the Homeland Security people look even more foolish.)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Um, laypeople are stupid. This is why direct democracy is not feasible.
It also means that large-scale is impossible. I hope you don't need a road that extends beyond your own block.
I suspect that most if not all Open-Source projects are either authoritarian regimes or highly-centralized pseudo-democracies.
Anarchy only means the lack of a special "right" to employ coercion. In other words, a voluntary society, where coercion has no place except for self-defense. A society where the only mandate (so to speak) is voluntary association, and the only prohibition (so to speak) is coercion. Nothing more, nothing less.
;)
Anarchy does not mean "chaos" as government teaches you. It does not mean lack of morals, lack of rules, or lack of compassion. They have to tell you that. If the majority of the subject class believed that life without government was possible, let alone preferable, that wouldn't be very good for the people who built their fortunes on centralized power, would it?
The Amish are an example of anarchy (however small) which happens to lean towards socialism. Coercion has no place in their society: they are there because they choose to be there. They help each other because they choose to help each other, not because of a centralized power telling them what to do under the threat of force. The Amish are allowed to exist by the superpower government surrounding them, only because they pose no economic threat to organized coercion. You can bet that if the Amish started to practice anarcho-capitalism instead of anarcho-socaialism -- building actual economic presence -- they would be immediately destroyed by the US government. For now, organized coercion simply points and chuckles, "how cute".
In fact, if we pretend that government wasn't there for a minute, you practice anarchy every day of your life. Your relationship with just about everybody but government is anarchist in nature: your friends, your family, your employer, your mechanic, your waiter at the restaurant. You do operate on the principle of voluntary association, rather than coercion, don't you?
Sounds rather like the original democracies of ancient Greece.
While most wage slaves are watching TV, porn, or praying to Jesus, the powers-that-be are deathly afraid people will one day "shape transnational processes in their own class interest". Actually, Marx's Capital has a pretty good history of the English working class - it slowly lost its feudal rights over several centuries with the onset of industrialization, but began organizing and began expanding its rights again.
In your comment, both sides tend to view the "problem" through their political / economic / religious filters.
Then they discard any examples that doesn't match their model while over emphasizing the ones that match.
A rich guy can turn extremists because he sees how poor people he identifies with are.
The models you describe do not account for empathy or other forms of social awareness. They are purely mercenary.
Terrorism is linked to extremism. You cannot eliminate extremism so you cannot eliminate terrorism. But you can can reduce the appeal of extremism by increasing the accessibility of political and economic power.
One nut case is just one nut case. If there isn't a ready pool of converts, that nut case will eventually take care of himself. The problem is when that nut case finds a pool of potential converts and those converts usually do result from political / economic / family / religious inequalities.
While I'd never waste mod points on an AC post, I'll reply...
My kids are in public school, and (sigh) this pretty much sums it up. Add to this the fundie teachers who use the classroom to echo superstition, e.g., they have Time For Kids (a Time Magazine joint) handouts, meant to provide talking points in a Letter to the President--but instead, give their own twisted narratives, e.g., "The Iraqis want to blow themselves up so they can be with their false gods," and "It would be a sin not to finish God's War." Add to this the attendant anxiety that my nerdy kids are already experiencing in elementary school, and...
My approach is to get the entire curriculum up front, and to review it with the teachers every six weeks. I teach my kids most evenings, and every weekend. I teach them what I believe, and I explain where and why it differs from what is said at school. We play a game whose object is to master the proffered subject matter and regurgitate appropriately at school on tests and in class--while realizing that it's only one of many possible views.
So I'm essentially home schooling inside of the state's educational structure. It's actually way more fun that I thought it would be. I have an extraordinary relationship with my kids, and I get to see what they're being sold as The Truth. The major benefit is that the one child who has the high IQ with low performance has blossomed beyond anyone's expectations. He gets the game better than I do, and he spontaneously extrapolated how children-oriented TV is the same con game. He's the oldest, and has taken to finding more perspectives.
The trade-off is that I don't get enough sleep. I'm hoping that their summer vacation will make this easier, but they seem to expect the game to continue. I also notice a smugness about them, but I think this would have been inevitable in, say, middle school or high school when they realize or at least see evidence that they're more intelligent than some of their teachers, and all of their administrative staff. Maybe the summertime is for non-school subjects, like building and testing PCs.
To the AC's point: I want for them to understand that there are those who believe that my children should know their place, and I want for them to know what that is--in order for them to know the workarounds.
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
War is about Can I hurt you more than you are willing to tolerate before you could hurt me more than I am willing tolerate? Till about WW-II all nations have similar high level of tolerance to death/destruction/loss. Russia lost 20 million people including civilians. Germany about 8 mill, and USA about 0.5 mill. Presently the level of tolerance for loss in America is very low. The threshold the Islamic militants have to reach to "hurt" America is as low as killing one single solitary soldier. The level of tolerance to loss by Al Quaida is very very high. It is impossible for America to hurt al-Quaida enough before it kills one soldier. On the other hand, the level of tolerance to loss is very high for China. Islamists will lose badly to China.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact