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EFF: the Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared (eff.org)
An anonymous reader writes: Wikileaks has released the finalized Intellectual Property text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which international negotiators agreed upon a few days ago. Unfortunately, it contains many of the consumer-hostile provisions that so many organizations spoke out against beforehand. This includes the extension of the copyright term to life plus 70 years, and a ban on the circumvention of DRM. The EFF says, "If you dig deeper, you'll notice that all of the provisions that recognize the rights of the public are non-binding, whereas almost everything that benefits rightsholders is binding. That paragraph on the public domain, for example, used to be much stronger in the first leaked draft, with specific obligations to identify, preserve and promote access to public domain material. All of that has now been lost in favor of a feeble, feel-good platitude that imposes no concrete obligations on the TPP parties whatsoever." The EFF walks us through all the other awful provisions as well — it's quite a lengthy analysis.
Before it lays eggs!
The most ignorant thing about pushing all this in the current global climate with the contortionists US twisting with regard to Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorist/Rebels, everyone will blame America and Americans, everything bad in the TPP and it's ugly sibling TTIP will be blamed on American corporations and sales will suffer accordingly. Want your citizens and country to maintain any semblance of freedom boycott Large US Corporations (small ones run by real Americans apparently are fine, so oddly enough help America rebuild Main Street and protect you own country by working together globally to gut Wall Street).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I consider it well inside my rights to ignore your laws.
In less martial words, issuing laws that contravene the consensus of the population is dangerous. Laws are upheld mostly because people consider them good, not because they are being enforce. Look around you and ponder which laws are upheld (in general) and which one are flauntingly broken. Do you see people go on murdering sprees, bank robberies or even do some minor shit like pushing grannies out of the way? No. Why? Not because they're forbidden, but because they go against the "general moral consensus", for a lack of a better term. People in general consider this "wrong". Yes, they are also illegal, but that doesn't matter too much.
On the other hand, people of all times have broken laws without remorse if those laws were considered unjust. From speeding to copyright to drugs, all covered by laws with fines and punishment that are in no remotely sensibly proportion to the crime involved, laws being ignored and broken routinely by people you would otherwise consider upstanding, moral and law abiding.
The actual danger here is in the view people get on laws in general.
If you need an example for this, look no further than the former Communist Bloc. People in there quickly noticed that the laws are not there to protect them from "bad people", but to protect the state against them. Which in turn led to a corruption without parallel, because the average citizen's attitude was "why bother giving a shit about the state if it doesn't give one about me?".
And we can have that too. If we insist in installing more and more laws that work against our population. People already don't ask what "they can do for their country" anymore. Oppression and trying to enforce even more ridiculously anti-population laws will only increase resistance to them, to the point where people will actually resent and oppose the state as much as people in the former East Bloc did resent and oppose their state.
Ok, we cannot flee to a west. There is none.
But there's always necks to be severed.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I really got to wonder who these people are who wield the power to write these laws. Not the congressmen, the head of these mega corporations that own the congressmen who pass laws on their behalf, while blatantly shitting down the throats of the rest of us. I mean, I got to know if they honestly have an argument for why they think this is a good thing, even in the face of overwhelming unpopularity. Or, do they just not give a fuck? Are they delusional or nihilist? [whynotboth.jpg]
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
What got passed is what the deep pockets paid for. It's called extortion.
I don't know about you, but 90% of the things I buy to live (Food, Toiletries, shelter) are owned and made by 13 companies. Unless you can afford really expensive boutique goods how the hell do you boycott? And if you can afford that TPP is good for you...
Better yet, tell me how to get the churches and their blue collar workers back on track with socialism? How do I remove abortion as a wedge issue? I'm singling that one out since the left dropped guns and the right seems to be losing homosexuality and racism (and the welfare queens) as their wedge issues. It's the last major one I know of that divides our working class. Tell me how the hell to fix our politics...
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This is why Jury Nullification is so important. Of course that's why many of these laws will be enforced without a trial.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Obama and his people in the Commerce and State departments (which he, as President, appointed and controls) are the ones who have (A) Negotiated this deal, (B) classified it to prevent the public from reading it, and (C) demanded the TPA bill earlier this year to put it on a fast-track to fly through congress without proper Constitutional scrutiny.
Sadly, "establishment" Republicans in congress (bribed by the same firms that funded Obama's rise to power) ignored their base voters and let him have TPA, and will do everything they can to pass TPP...... but There would BE no TPA or TPP without team Obama writing them and demanding them!
This is broadly about multinational corporations (and their billionaire owners and investors) freeing themselves of national boundaries and rules - but at the core of it are the multinational entertainment companies and their lobbying groups like the MPAA which are every bit as much of the core of the modern Democrat party as trial lawyers, government employee unions, and gay marriage advocates - separating this from Obama would be like separating George W Bush from the NRA, social conservatives, or defense contractors, etc.
If you're mad at Obama, you must try to open your eyes. I'm 100% opposed to Republican views (1) and yet I don't think Obama acts too far from what a Republican would do.
That's because both parties are full of power-crazed psychopaths. The only difference is which lies they tell.
It has been continuous since JFK; it also existed in a press (and newsreel) agreement during FDR's term to keep his medical condition secret from the American people; an agreement to support the war against our enemies during WWII and, during Eisenhower's administration, to be anti-Communist.
Johnson lost the press and Hollywood, Nixon did not strengthen ties with them, Ford and Carter were cyphers with regard to the larger culture, and, you are right that Reagan reestablished ties which went back to Mankiewicz. The Bushes tried to ignore Hollywood; Clinton reeastablished ties; the younger Bush courted them without success, but Obama seems to have been made for Hollywood's surface glitz, leading to TIPP. Trump, of course, would be a master of neo-Kennedyism.
but I'm not a single-issue voter like a lot of people.
But the country's problems ARE single issue, namely that the government at high levels place the desires of corporations above the rights of the people. In fact the government places pretty much everything above the rights of the people. The problem is that this is not a partisan issue, it's not even an isolated American issue.
And your solution to that is to vote for someone who wants to give the government even more power to screw over the people?
Except that all the other candidates ON BOTH SIDES want this exact same thing.
Anyone who thinks they don't simply hasn't been paying attention.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Finally, "vote for Sanders, he is no worse than the other guys" is hardly a good proposition.
That's not what I said, and not what I meant.
Frankly I like Sanders' policies (not all of them) and see him as a hell of a lot better than the other candidates on both sides.
There are over a million people who've donated to Bernie Sanders, and he isn't taking money from any SuperPACs. Like it or not, you have to respect that so many people like what he's saying enough to send him money.
Hillary Clinton is a fascist and a war monger. She voted for the war AND for the PATRIOT act. Sanders voted against both of them. That counts for something with me.
Clinton is a serial liar and a crook, and if she didn't brand herself a "Democrat", you'd swear she was a Republican.
As for the Republicans, the entire Republican field is nothing but an disorganized array of theocratic, right-wing whackos who are begging to suck the dick of every corporate entity from Boston to Barstow, and they aren't even shy about it.
They all want to impose their version of Christian sharia on the country, and many of them talk endlessly about how god "guides their decisions", etc etc etc. Santorum would turn this country back 1,000 years. Huckabee would put every non-believer to the sword of he could, and the rest aren't that much better. Is that what you want?
Don't like Sanders? Then don't vote for him. Spend your vote on whoever you like. I'll be voting for Bernie if I get the chance.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...