WikiLeaks Starts Mass Mirroring Effort

A beautiful mind writes "WikiLeaks is asking for hosting space on Unix-based servers. The replication is implemented by a rsync+ssh based push that copies static files to a known path, authenticated via the private half of this public key. The complete website is a few GB in size, making it feasible to replicate on a large scale. The mirror list will be published when the number of independent mirrors reaches 50." Note: wikileaks.ch seems to be down for the moment, but eventually the above links may require that instead of 213.251.145.96. See also this WikiLeaks address finder. And for even more news, try this Twitter search.

Comments

Make it static.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Lower the barrier of entry even further, and just throw up a torrent or ten of static files which can be hosted anywhere, without fear of compromising your own server.

Re:Make it static.

[Dan East]

Exactly. I do not like what Wikileaks has done, but even so I can be the devil's advocate, and say that EVERYONE should be pissed at Assange. Those that want the information to be free should be very concerned that Assange wants to release it piece meal, ramp up the drama and attention to him and his site as much as possible, and provide commentary (aka judgment) regarding the information. All this is doing is giving time for him and his site to be taken down. The US may move rather slowly and clumsily over these sorts of affairs, having to check the legality of this and that and get allies involved, etc, but given enough time, there's a good chance they will be able to get Assange on something.

The files should ALL be placed online, in a distributed manner, and be done with. Not be Assange's little plaything to manipulate and play around with. Really, this guy has a major ego / power complex, and it will cost him eventually.

Re:Make it static.

[icebraining]

Next, I'd spam the torrent sites with dozens of "Wikileaks" torrents, all containing my disinformation. When you download one of these torrents, how do you know it's real?

Sign the files and tell the key publicly?

Re:Make it static.

[RAMMS EIN]

Another point of view is that WikiLeaks had best inspect what they release, and do their best to prevent putting lives at risk, especially those of innocent bystanders and those who are working for the greater good. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't: if they take their time to filter and redact, they are delaying and possibly twisting the truth, but if they don't do that, they are irresponsible.

Re:Make it static.

[copponex]

Assange has done more for Democracy, as in the right of people to direct the actions of their government, than the entire Western world has done since WWII. That's why the United States government is so pissed off: it despises the right of people to know what their government is up to with their tax dollars. It didn't want Pakistanis to know of their government's complicity in the drone strikes. It didn't want to admit that the puppet government in Afghanistan was riddled with corruption, even though the State Department has been aware of this fact since the beginning. Just like it didn't want it getting out that we have been systematically destroying democratic institutions, from Iran to Vietnam to Argentina to Palestine, because reality might upset some of it's electorate.

Sure, Assange is kind of a douchebag. You don't think Patrick Henry was? Churchill? However, the marketing ploy of providing this narrative and stringing along the releases has kept this in the news far longer than the previous leaks. It's unfortunate that the mass media, which is owned by corporations, has no self-interest in the truth anymore. But the last hole that can be exploited is the desire to keep their ratings up, and he has done well to exploit this weakness in the system.

If COINTEL PRO had been leaked in the same dramatic fashion, perhaps more people would remember it. The fourth estate is broken. It's going to take soap opera narratives with entertainment value targeted at the masses in order to fix it, which is a hell of a lot better than another war.

The stage is now set to hopefully expose Bank of America or some other major institution for fraud and corruption. Personally, Assange is the only douchebag I would trust with that information. Everyone else in the media are compromised. They are fools, cowards, and intellectual prostitutes.

Re:Make it static.

[Sir_Lewk]

Correction: By releasing them in small batches, they are ensuring that each story gets the attention it deserves .

Any shitstorm that results from this isn't at the hands of wikileaks, but at the hands of those who actually caused the shitstorm. The people the cables are about.

Re:Make it static.

[leehwtsohg]

Just to remind you - these latest cables are just the last and probably most significant of a huge list of things that wikileaks released. Look at the "all leaks archived" link on the wikileaks site for an incredible list of torrents of all the leaks that wikileaks already did, some of which already had great influence in some countries/companies (iceland, peru, australia...). It is not all about the US.

I think that they are releasing the data so slowly, because there are many parts in it that have to be digested slowly - see for example the media flare up going on in spain because of the released documents, the clusterbombs issues in the UK, the anger in germany over the 15% overhead taken by the US army, etc. If it was all released in a day, such issues would be buried among hundreds of others of similar importance.

Re:Make it static.

[Skal Tura]

Thank god i live and was born in Finland. Freedom of speech seems to still be somewhat appreciated around here - and people know that i host Wikileaks mirrors. If i disappear mysticiously, several hundred people will know really fast, and they will tell their friends and so on - a full blown media frenzy fast, if anything happens. Operating a rather large hosting company for our niche has it's benefits too ;)

So i'm not afraid, and i trust that if there was life endangering information Assange and his team have censored that bit. In the earlier leaks there was huge concern of such, but i saw articles that there was nothing which endangered lives directly.

But i do know this: What the US banks are doing *NEEDS* and *HAS TO* be released publicly. It seems so likely they are doing quite a fraud, apart from what's already visible (tax payers bailing them out).

Yes, i am quite a bit feeling like checking the "Post Anonymously" box, but that only goes to show that governments are not serving citizens anymore! Governments should be afraid of citizens, not vice-versa. and drawing to the comfort that i do happen to live in Finland, a neutral country, and for the most part our government wants to do the right thing. Let alone that our president isn't afraid to be aggressive to voice her and our governments opinion if she sees wrong doing, even if it hasn't anything to do directly with us. Yes, Finland is a weird tiny big country.

Re:Make it static.

[copponex]

You really think we didn't know there is complicity with Pakistan on the drones

The United States and Pakistan denied that. Specifically, they denied earlier reports that a private military force from Blackwater/Xe was operating in that country without the knowledge of many people in the American and Pakistani governments, and certainly their citizens. This proves that they were both lying to their constituents. At what point on the road to fascism would you like to stop?

How about this? Did Assange provide leaks...

I'm not chasing any red herrings today, thanks.

Everyone has their own agenda, and diplomacy is the art of navigating those agendas without the consent of your citizenry, and often in direct opposition to their interests.

Fixed that for you.

Without privacy there is no diplomacy and without diplomacy there are wars.

The only thing preventing me from believing that is the entirety of modern history. If diplomacy wasn't built on lies, it wouldn't break down and cause war all of the time. If everyone knew that that Saddam Hussein was a US henchman, there would be no public support for the Iraq War in 2003. (Support had to be manufactured from forged documents obtained diplomatically from Britain.) If everyone knew that Saudi Arabia was the leading funder of Al Qaeda, we wouldn't be in Afghanistan. We wouldn't have just sold Saudi Arabia sixty billion dollars in advanced weaponry.

Lets tape all your private conversations...

Let's establish first that my private conversations and intimate relationships are responsible for death, destruction, and the soiling of Constitutional principles. They are called public servants for a fucking reason.

I have no problem with Assange and what he is trying to do in the name of openness. His approach seems to be lets shoot for idealism no matter who it fucks. I am not saying the approach is bad, but it is naive to blindly believe it will have positive results.

Right now the world is shooting for greed no matter who it fucks. I'd rather be committed to ideals.

This fucking realpolitik is astounding from the mouths of Americans. You have no reason to plead fealty to power, but you choose to do it out of sheer cowardice and apathy. Apparently your civil liberties will have to be entirely destroyed before you value them again.

Re:Make it static.

[the eric conspiracy]

Assange has done more for Democracy, as in the right of people to direct the actions of their government, than the entire Western world has done since WWII.

So you think this is more important than say the Berlin Airlift, the Korean Police Action, the US involvement in the Greek Civil War, the Brussels Pact, the establishment of NATO, SEATO and the UN, the strategic arms limitation treaties, the opening of China/US diplomatic relations, the founding of the Solidarity Union, and the fall of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany. Combined.

Poppycock.

Re:Make it static.

[PopeRatzo]

I was going to make a post saying it's rather poor planning to only just now realize the necessity of a de-centralized distribution model.

I think the most important part of wikileaks is not so much the content of the leaks, but the reaction of people in power to them.

We have learned more about the connection between corporation and the power in the past week than we have in the past several years.

While the content of the Citibank leaks will be most interesting, the all-out scramble to stop Wikileaks and jail Assange that started the day after it was announced that the next document dump would be from Citibank tells us a whole lot about where the power really lies in this world, and who's really in charge. It also shows just how much of what passes for "government" and "sovereign nation" is nothing but theater to keep us entertained while those that really rule the world execute their agenda. The way they took down wikileaks, severed their connection to donations and continue to play whack-a-mole with a website shows just how meaningless our "rule of law" really is when they really want to get rid of something and cover up some information about their activities.

How fitting that Interpol should issue arrest warrants for Julian Assange and former Vice President Dick Cheney within 24 hours of each other. As I've said before, one of those two men was guilty of leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent and only one of those men has the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians on his hands. I wonder if Interpol will spend the same resources executing the arrest warrant on Cheney as they will on Assange. So an admitted traitor and war criminal can act with impunity but someone who simply publishes a web site of documents that other people provide is considered Public Enemy No 1.

The Wikileaks Saga is an amazing story, and its just starting. There is the possibility, however remote, that the world can be a changed place because of Wikileaks.

As Assange quoted Theodore Roosevelt: "“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people...To destroy this invisible government, to befoul this unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of statesmanship.”

Re:Make it static.

[PopeRatzo]

he's doing the release in a way to cause the most damage.

Whatever Assange's motivation, it seems to me that the way he's releasing them is doing the most good.

Our only hope at this point is to disrupt the race by corporatists to create a world feudal state. If you don't believe that the goal is to create a feudal state, just look at the change in US society since Ronald Reagan. Our corporatist puppet government is actually in the process of letting millions of American families fall into poverty so that people making more than $250,000.00 per year won't have to go back to paying the same taxes they paid during the 1990's, a decade that was so kind to the rich. We have a political party that has promised that nothing will be done, and the government may shut down unless the most prosperous get to keep the reduced tax rate that George W Bush gave them a decade ago, a reduction that increased the deficit by nearly a trillion dollars.

In 1979, the top 2 percent of the population owned 10% of the nation's wealth. Today, it's over 50%. Even more shocking is the fact that the bottom 40% (FORTY PERCENT) own exactly 0% of the nation's wealth. That's a feudal society. So maybe the US middle class won't have as much money to spend on consumer goods, so they just move on to China where they're just now starting to give out the credit cards. And the Chinese leaders are just pushing their population down the chute to the economic killing floor. The cycle of "middle class growth, middle class collapse, feudalism" that took the better part of a century in the US will take just a few decades in China.

Just think of the amazing story that got lost in the shuffle last week about the audit of the Fed and the huge sums that were given to companies like Verizon. Bailouts for companies that didn't need bailouts, just because. And they're going to pay for it with cuts in Social Security and health care for elderly.

It can't be disrupted fast enough.

Re:Make it static.

[tycoex]

Since when were we supposed to consider the government and/or giant corporations our friend(s)?

Re:Make it static.

[Anonymous Coward]

If diplomacy wasn't built on lies, it wouldn't break down and cause war all of the time.

People lie.

It sucks, but it happens. Husbands lie to wives. Parents lie to children. Friends lie to friends. Strangers lie to people they've never met. And groups lie to other groups all the time.

That's part of how society works.

Open, complete honesty doesn't make everyone get along. If I tell someone right to their face that I think they are a complete scumbag, their reaction is not going to be peaceful. If I tell my boss that the project is delayed because I have to completely redo his sloppy work and everyone thinks he's a joke, I'm not getting a bonus next month. And if I tell the missus that yes, that dress does make her posterior seem enlarged, I'm not getting any. Sometimes lies are wicked, and sometimes they are just being polite. Yes, I'm lying when I tell the lady in question that she looks beautiful in that terrible dress, but the ends rather justify the means of that minor distortion of the truth.

Now, that's not exactly a fair comparison to national diplomacy in life or death circumstances, but consider this: if your option is to be completely and utterly honest, which will result in your embassy being thrown out of the country almost immediately, or to lie a little bit and retain your position and perhaps exert a little influence, which choice are you going to make? If you have the option to deceive the masses to stop a war, is that truth worth more than the hundreds or thousands of lives that would be lost in the conflict? If protecting your nation means covering something up, are you willing to throw the country you serve under a bus for token idealism?

It's far from perfect, but life is far from perfect. Sometimes, people simply can't afford to be honest. Diplomats fall right into that category, because all they have are words and influence. That means getting along with people, and they can't do that if they are brutally honest and shout every private conversation to the world.

Re:Make it static.

[DragonWriter]

"We owe it to the people who entrusted us with the documents"

So they're concerned about the people who leaked the documents, but not about the people who could be killed because of them?

Read in the full context from which you excerpted that quote, that is very clearly a part of an expression that is saying that the information itself is important enough that they don't want most of it getting ignored by the media because its all in one big dump, so in the short period in which the "dump" is news, no one actually gets to most of the material.

You may, of course, disagree with WikiLeaks evaluation of whether the information being released is that important for the public to know (so far, most of what has gotten covered in the media hasn't seemed that important to me, but I haven't gotten reviewed the raw data myself and I certainly wouldn't be surprised if the media was not focussing on the most important bits) but deliberately distorting the argument being made doesn't advance your case well, especially in a forum where the context is readily available.

Re:Make it static.

[benjamindees]

I think the most important part of wikileaks is not so much the content of the leaks, but the reaction of people in power to them.

Exactly. If you didn't know 90% of the stuff in those leaks already, then you aren't going to learn anything from it being placed on some distributed servers somewhere and emanated via a thousand blogs and newspaper back-pages. You're going to learn it when there's a name and a face going around giving television interviews and provoking a backlash both from the established powers and from the ignorant public that maintains them. From what I have seen, Assange has done a deliberate and masterful job of attention-whoring for his cause.

Re:Make it static.

[Xelios]

WikiLeaks also promises its sources that it will work to get "maximum impact" for whatever they provide. If you're risking life imprisonment for "treason" by giving WikiLeaks internal documents then this actually means a lot. Nobody wants to take that risk only to have their work forgotten by the media after a couple of days. WikiLeaks knows that by staggering the release like this and keeping the media interested they'll encourage others to take that risk too.

"The promise that we make to our sources is not only will we defend them through every means that we have available, technological and legally and politically," said Assange calmly, "but we will try and get the maximum possible political impact for the material that they give to us, and..." There, Colbert interrupted. "So 'collateral murder' is to get political impact?" Assange responded by saying, "Yes, Absolutely." Source

Why not just release everything?

[js3]

Ok from what I understand some intelligence person released this information to wikileaks, so why is wikileaks sitting on this info releasing it piecemeal? Why not just release everything at once to all of us. problem solved.

Re:give keys?

[Sir_Lewk]

You don't give them your keys, you simply allow them to authenticate with their private key by adding their pubic key to your authorized keys list.

You control your server, so if you're paranoid take some precautions. Set up an account (or better yet, an accout on a new VM) specifically for this with limited permissions and access. If you're really paranoid, you obviously won't be doing this at all.

Meaningless Gesture

[Alcoholic Synonymous]

The current leaks are out. You cannot put the genie back in the bottle. Syncing around the world will do no good if the centralized source synced against keeps vanishing and eventually stays vanished.

My point is, that the current damage is done. Yanking WikiLeaks offline is about preventing further damage, and when it finally does go for good, people will be left with a stagnant, yesterday's news version. A million mirrors of previously disclosed documents wont help future leaks get distributed, while the people mirroring the current ones are literally just stepping into harms way.

TMI

[mathimus1863]

Wikileaks behavior here is ridiculous, and I don't think we should be supporting them at this point. Trust me, I am all for exposing corruption and illegal behavior, but that's not what Wikileaks released. Every partnership, company, country, etc, must have the ability to have frank internal conversations about various relationship with others, that must be private. Examples:

Clinton instructing diplomats to spy on UN officials : RELEASE
Afghan corruption throughout military operations: RELEASE
Candid assessments about Karzai's leadership : DO NOT RELEASE
Name calling of the Prince of England : DO NOT RELEASE


These extra releases have done nothing but put many countries into very awkward diplomatic relationships, which does nothing to benefit "fighting corruption." Those kinds of releases are stupid and unecessary.

In this case, I think wikileaks went waaay too far. Assange just wanted to make history by releasing all of them, because nothing like this has ever become public before. On that note, despite my bitter disagreement with him, it is intensely interesting to see a complete cross-section of classified US diplomatic discussions and assessments, and related communications with otehr governments. Probably not worth the damage done to global "social" health, but I will read every word of it...

Re:TMI

[Doc Ruby]

That's your list. Other people have their lists, perhaps overlapping. You have no more standing than anyone else to claim yours is the correct list.

As for the value of the Karzai assessments and English prince quips, they are what has focused public attention on these leaks, including the ones you agree are worth releasing. Without the gossipy ones, the corporate mass media of the world would ignore all of it, except as headlines about Assange himself, which would be largely attacking him, and counterproductive to getting the public to look at the leaks.

Which is in fact the main problem, that's now exposed. The NY Times wasn't directly given copies of these leaks, because they spun the last leaks to make it harder to get leaks to the public, the opposite of their role as supposed journalists. Most US media was exposed as at least subservient to government messages, however false and even inane, attacking the releases, and in many cases actively collaborating with the government to protect it from public perception. That's the government's job, to protect itself, and mixing the two is the most seriously bad fact exposed by this leak. It should now be perfectly clear to a lot more people that in the normal course of events our journalists collaborate with government on propaganda, rather than inform the public about what's done supposedly in the service of the people. Probably the greatest defect in our society, directly protecting the two others: bribery and reckless debt at every level.

The other big problem is just the ridiculously broad sweep of secrecy in the US government. Secret "security letters" prohibiting people telling even their wives they've been indicted, let alone the public that is named as the complainant in the secret court cases. Secret wiretaps on everyone, web email and phone. "National security" excuses that kill lawsuits by people imprisoned and tortured for years without any evidence there's even a reason they were captured. All "secret", so immune to any due process, yet in reality available to something like three million people with "security clearance". At least one of whom wasn't reliable enough not to leak this stuff to Wikileaks. Securing so much info among so many authorized people is probably impossible, yet the government pretends that it's necessary and practical - a huge waste, as well as a severe security risk in the much smaller amount of info that really should remain secret, at least for a while.

Then there's the big problem in international diplomacy itself. That applecart is letting the Iraq War go into its 9th year, the Afghanistan War go into its 10th, military action spreading to many countries, Iran continuing towards a bomb, N Korea actually bombing S Korea, genocide continuing in Sudan, drug wars consuming Mexico without releasing Columbia or any other country already in it... That applecart needs to be upset. The amount of damage done by these mostly petty revelations mostly damages the counterproductive complacency that US diplomacy cruises under. Indeed, despite the government's various whiners about how damaging these leaks are, the State Department totally refused to help Wikileaks redact the leaks - proving they value whining about it more than whatever's damaged by it. More truth reported to the public along the way would make diplomacy better, more effective, more trustworthy instead of just an ocean of lies no one believes.

This leak was a purge. The actual damage was small and localized. The actual damage done by the systems it upset is much worse. There is no end in sight for that business as usual unless it's upset. This leak is a chance for that to be upset. And as we now enter the phase of actual recriminations against someone not in the club of domesticated "journalists", including arresting Assange for "rape" and terminating Wikileaks access to the Internet without any due process, and perhaps even assassinating him or someone close to him as people including the Canadian prime minister have called for in public, there will be more backlash. And a hell of a lot of backlash against this incompetent yet tyrannical security state is both earned and long overdue.

Re:TMI

[Sprouticus]

I used to think this. Upon further consideration I changed my mind. Just because this is how thing have been done in the past, why does it have to be done this way now? Why can't we have diplomacy without back room deals? Why cant peoples REAL opinions be exposed and known.

I think if there was more honesty in the world things would be better. Maybe not easier, but better.

Re:TMI

[giorgist]

Candid assessments about Karzai's leadership : DO NOT RELEASE

Why the heck not ... We are getting a different story o the truth, and that will blow into our face very quickly.
In fact I recon the US goverment has had enough and they sent these files to wikileaks them selves.

Name calling of the Prince of England : DO NOT RELEASE

Big deal, what does it mean that diplomats are embarased ?

let me tell you

[unity100]

they are important. very important.

If Assange is a douchebag,

[unity100]

He is MY douchebag. He is the way i would want any douchebag to be like. I would share a flat with such a douchebag, at any given point.

As far as douchebags go, there were a lot of douchebags among the people who have pioneered this age of democracy that the power elite has made null and void.

Benjamin franklin used to strip naked and sit on a chair in the middle of a long corridor in his mansion, after opening the windows from both sides and ensuring that the corridor had good breeze.

Thomas paine was SO aggressive in his crusade against religion that, he set up a church of reason, and started a new religion.

i can go on and on.

in the list that can be made out of quirkiness, oddness, douchebagness of those people who now we see as pioneers of freedom or fighters of democracy, assanges alleged 'douchebagness' wouldnt even qualify in the top 100.

and it is as another poster had just commented: assange has done more than any western government did for freedom and democracy, since world war II.

our governments do not want us to know things they have done. this was supposed to be a democracy, in which people were in power, as 'we the people'. we have become 'them the people', who are herded.

wake up. wikileaks is what we have. assange and his team, are the ones doing it. support them. for your future and your children's.

Bravo

[Slutticus]

Never have mod points when I really need them. I've never seen people so terrified of the truth since.....well....hmmm.... I'd REALLY like to get a look at those Cheney Energy Task Force documents that they've been hiding from us for 10 years. I can hope that these will be leaked eventually.

This is why the need to use ssh/push

[ugen]

I think it is fairly obvious why wikileaks wants to use ssh/push method to mirror their data. They can't use polling because, frankly, with the way they are being pushed around and shut down all the time there is just no way to guarantee that any host, domain name or IP address they provide would be available for an extended period of time.

Push method with a specific public/private key would allow them to push content from anywhere, as they are being chased and forced to change servers and providers.

I thought it was obvious but may be worth clarifying.

Btw, the main site seems to be down again.

Re:Everyone else in the media are compromised.

[misexistentialist]

The only way he could be compromised would be if he released fabricated documents. He is being accused of a lot of things, but no one has dared question his honesty.

Unix doesn't have Nth-power malware going after it

[Burz]

Unix (the free variants) can be fully audited down to the last bit if necessary (unusual/bar behavior can be much more easily explained and fixed with some investigative effort).

Windows is simply NOT up to dealing with high security needs.

Also, Microsoft is an American corporation

[Burz]

And the actions of Amazon and many other corps play dirty with their customers when the State Dept or Pentagon tell them to. I don't think MS is any exception to that corporatist dynamic.

Re:I donated dec 3rd via paypal, now pay pal has i

[Anonymous Coward]

Sue them in small claims court. They either need to make good on your deal with them to give money to who you asked to give it to, or give it back to you.

I'd add 500 bucks in for your time and frustration in dealing with their deliberate breach of contract.

Re:Journalists, WikiLeaks run by cowards

[shutdown -p now]

Let me tell you this, as someone hailing from a not-so-free country: these kinds of leaks would have much less effect in non-free societies than they do now in the free West. For a very simple reason: in the West, the freedom of press may be imperfect, but by and large it still exists. You can disseminate that information far and wide. Just look at the list of newspapers which published the stories based on the leaks!

From there we come to another important point: in democratic countries, the people care, and that translates into votes. Since elections are (again, by and large) free and fair, the politicians have to mind that. Even aside from elections, there are some expectations of courteous behavior from politicians - and we already saw some resignations stemming from all those leaks.

In a country like China or Russia? Puh-lease. For starters, no major newspaper would even publish it, so most people wouldn't know. The Net? If you publish within the country, it would be classified as "extremist material" and servers taken down quickly. Even outside the country, they can simply block you - yeah, you can use proxies etc, but vast majority of people simply won't know it's out there.

And even if they do, then what? Elections are rigged anyway. Candidates are hand-picked by those in power, so there is no real choice.

There is already heaps and heaps of information on various people in positions of power and importance in Russia, up to and including the president, that are enough to earn them several life sentences each if they were properly pursued by police and courts. That information is out there today, and has been out there for a while. And it's much more direct than what's in those leaked cables - we aren't talking about lying to electorate. We're talking about stuff such as important politicians running over someone with their car - a manslaughter! - and getting away with it unscathed. We're talking about massive financial fraud, which reflects on every single citizen. We're talking about direct connections to organized crime, and in some cases directly to violent crimes such as murders.

And yet no-one has done anything about it so far.

So, no. If you want to further democracy via transparency, you got to have democracy to begin with. Wikileaks works great in the West, and I'm glad that they are focusing their efforts where they can actually be useful. For other places, you need something else.

Re: Feudalism, etc

[Klinky]

Nice prose full of fluff that let's you try to blame the lower classes for their circumstances. The people who built the Pyramids were not paid, build them or die. Conscripted soldiers were not paid, fight or die. Infrastructure and paying the people cost us more money than that infrastructure produced? Even though citizens and businesses rely on this infrastructure every single day? How about all the "make-workers" in middle or upper management? How about whole companies setup just to stifle competition and leech(patent trolls). How about people in corporations/government to lobby & be buddy buddy with each other to lock out competition? How about an entire industry that was setup to make imaginary financial derivatives that had absolutely no value to them and plummeting the economy into the worst recession/depression since The Great Depression? There is a lot of spinning tires going on at all levels. Usually the people on the bottom are the ones who are actually physically doing the labor and "being productive", those above are usually whipping boys making sure the cattle is getting more productive each year. Rarely are the people at the bottom there because they have tenancies to want to blow people up overseas or stealing from people, more likely it's to survive and they do not have many resources around them to succeed.

Those who go to war & those who do crime usually have something in common: they're poor. The military & crime may offer them the quickest way out of their circumstances. Usually going to war means doing the bidding of rich men. Also I am not sure when was that last time we released our prisoners to go to war? I am not aware of us emptying any of our prisons to send inmates over to Iraq...

Usually middle-class workers "paradise" goes away because "the elite"/Corporatocracy sees that people are getting a bigger piece of the pie and devises ways to extract that piece to make their own piece bigger. This is partially a folly of "growth based" economies where nothing is ever enough. Find, exploit, consume, move on. Or what's been more popular as of late "Fraud, exploit, consume, move on". Most companies in positions are power are not there because they got there honestly. Exploitation, fraud, bribes, wars..etc... It's dirty power and nothing worth looking up to.

Please do define, what resources the middle-class exploited & depleted in the US that caused the downfall of the US middle class? I would suggest the move towards globalism has done more to harm the middle-class, but then again Globalism has brought us cheap plastic stuff from china, that was cheap because it's exploiting the Chinese people. Thought it's been bigger for corporations who can legally pay people slave wages.

How would you suggest we change our modes of production to be more efficient? Can you give some examples? Is that a euphemism for something else? Pointless fluff? Can you give some hard examples where the US can reinvent itself with "modern more efficient modes of production", yeesh sounds like I read that off a PowerPoint presentation.