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'Electrohippies' Protest WTO
creativemeans writes "Yahoo! is running a story on electro hippies plotting to sabotage the WTO.
Actually I'm just curious if anybody has a link to the electrohippie site. The idea is pretty revolutionary I guess, but I've considered the Internet the battle ground for freedom for a long time already. Maybe the next century will be like the 60s, but nobody will replace Jimi." Update by RM: Slur was the first to send in the electrohippies URL. Thanks!
Of course, the ultimate goal of public protests -- whether like this or with more traditional methods -- is to raise awareness of opposing views ... which this has already done.
Sure it has a lot to do with intellectual property, but the WTO protests are more about keeping the environmental and labor legislative power out of the hands of the 500 or so global corporations that dominate the international trade scene. Insurrection is the only way to go.
The WTO has been making some amazing claims as to what constitutes a "trade barrier". Often environmental and health laws fit into this territory - did you know that the WTO considered the whole "doplhin-safe tuna" thing in the US to be a trade barrier? Last I knew, companies weren't even allowed to advertise their tuna as dolphin-safe (though I haven't looked at a can of tuna to double check).
There's nothing wrong with globalization. There are, however, numerous things wrong with the "backroom deal" method that the WTO is using.
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"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Unless you're really really rich, and want to get richer. They scare me more than the US government, be cause they have the power to overrule laws of any member country that get in the way of "competition". This includes labar and environmental laws. The web page below has a number of articles on the WTO as well as photos of some of the demonstrations going on. Seattle doesn't look like a happy place at the moment.
b alEcon.htm
http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Globalism/Glo
Of course. As opposed to the delegates at the WTO, who are there to meet on strengthening intellecual property rights (that is, blocking the free flow of information) and removing such barriers to free trade as environmental and labor laws, on behalf of major corporations (read as a few special interests).
What's even better is, if you don't like what the WTO is doing, you can't even elect a different WTO. They're beholden to corporations and a few government officials, not to the people.
The Kulturwehrmacht
Finding God in a Dog
Amen.
Civil disobedience does not give you the right to break laws in the advocacy of your cause and not expect repercussions. The point of civil disobedience is that while you're breaking the law, you're also willing to face up to your responsibilities as a citizen -- and you're therefore willing to suffer the consequences.
If you're DOSsing WTO servers in the name of some hippie cause, you should be prepared to lose your internet connectivity at a minimum, and face criminal charges (with associated seizure of your computer equipment) at a maximum. When the dust settles, I'll still disagree with what you're doing, I'll still disagree with your politics, but at least I'll respect that you're willing to take the heat for your views. You're a whackjob, but you've got integrity.
If, however, you're DOSsing WTO servers but not prepared to suffer these consequences, you're lame, just like a relay-raping spammer or a random script kiddie, and I look forward to laughing at your whining when your ISP cuts you off and (if you're in the US) the Feds show up at your door to haul your ass to jail.
Sadly, I suspect that most of these "e-hippies" couldn't define civil disobedience with both hands and a flashlight, and fall in the latter category rather than the former. They choose to DOS attack WTO servers rather than express their views effectively because anything more complicated than spending 2 minutes setting up an infinite-reload script might actually require work on their part. Feh.
From The Unbearable Lightness of Being:
(I posted this as a reply above but, oops, I think it should be a toplevel comment.)This is an eloquent passage. It's clear that you sympathize with the discomfort and unpleasantness this girl feels. Like Kundera, however, she is incapable of using her will to conquer this difficulty. What is the difficulty? I think for many, including myself, protest marches are difficult because you must subjugate yourself to the crowd. The words and slogans sound ridiculous coming from your own mouth.
But why then, do hockey games and basketball games not elicit the same visceral shudder? After all, these events are basically "people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison." Are sports a "basic, pervasive evil"? I suppose it could be argued, but from a pretty cynically abstract point of view.
Kundera seizes on the *form* of the protest march as oppressive, being the consummate aesthete that he is. I would suggest that protest and dissent makes you uncomfortable not because of the form per se, but because of the political necessity in these situations of subjugating your own desires (the desire to be liked, to be cool, to be 'successful', etc.) to a more anonymous and collective desire. Such a subjugation takes a great effort of will, my friend. Identifying how you can be a unique vessel for a truthful message is far more difficult than using weakly nostalgic old lech writers as the cover for your fears.
People are mobilizing in hundreds of cities this week to protest the WTO. Granted, many of the demonstrations will be simplistic and over-earnest bore-fests. I agree that this is a problem. Shit should be exciting. But the political necessity is very real. The WTO can veto legislation retroactively if they find that it "hampers trade," and they can do it secretly. This is simply unprecedented, unless one thinks of the Dutch East India Company and its ability to declare war on nations. The WTO is actually far more effective I think. It is not one company, but a consortium of many companies from many nations.
Lessee, Canada has nationalized health care? Why, that's a barrier to U.S. insurance companies who want to do business there! Hmm, France subsidizes its own filmmakers? Those protectionist jerks! Not giving Big Daddy and End of Days a fair chance in the market place, who do they think they are?
You think these scenarios sound far-fetched? Think again. If your way of life depended on decisions made by the WTO (and it inevitably does, even if the consequences aren't clear yet), you might find it easier to develop the will necessary to get over your embarrassment at shouting as loud as you can in the streets. You think that's the road to totalitarianism? Well, you're entitled to your opinion. But I think you've got it backwards.
+++ Chromalon.
I don't see how this even comes near the definition of a 'sit-in.' All they're doing is trying their best to crash the WTO web server. Which isn't at all like demanding to be served as much as it is a lot like silencing your opponents.
Lets say the WTO wanted to post something important or *gasp* something critical about eHippies on their page. Too bad, because all these well-meaning brain-donors are busy clogging up the works. This effectivly turns into a free speech issue. The only speech allowed now is eHippies speech.
You'd think hippie liberalism would include such comforts as free speech, but then again the word hippie is synonymous with hypocrisy, now add the 90's marketing catch-letter 'e' and you've got the makings of a brand new 21st century stupidity.
Imagine if this caught on, fundies organizing on-line and jamming talk-origins.org. Anyone seriously thinking of joining this should consider what happens when others try to silence you.
Its also censorship. These people are explicitly attempting to prevent others from reading the WTO's point of view because they happen to disagree with it.
When colored folks sat down in a diner and refused the leave, the diner was the only business that was affected.
Also unaffected was the ability of the owner to argue his own case. Here, however, the aim is to deny the WTO its ability to speak.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Remember the Mothers of Invention? Frank Zappa noticed- and produced a lot of music to try (and fail) to shake up a lot of people who, quote, "mindlessly accepted everything they were given, without questioning it". That was the hippies, to Zappa.
Woodstock was paid for entirely by John Roberts. Remember that name, or Joel Rosenman's? John Roberts financed the whole festival, having been conned to believe it was a moneymaking venture, originally put forth as a 'press party' for a recording studio to be built. Roberts pretty well had a breakdown while the festival was happening- left totally responsible, far in debt, being asked to sign checks for which there was no money anymore, Roberts and a few other people took the whole load of the Woodstock Festival upon themselves, a festival that was declared free after it had already eaten through Roberts' entire inheritance.
The whole hippie concept is a story of rip-off, stealing, lying, and destruction, painted to appear as virtue and freedom. Virtually nothing was accomplished- the end of the war in Vietnam, for instance, owes much more to the fact that eventually Middle America was sick of it and wanted it stopped, and to Nixon's bid for re-election.
Having hippie idealism on the Net is a bad thing. It's spelled out quite obviously: "Let's march on Website X and stomp it with DOS attacks!". No thought is given to other services that may be hosted on that computer, no interest is taken in the additional load produced by X many lusers running a Javascript program and monopolizing all the network links to the target. The idea of responsibility is seriously lacking here.
It's like a riot in cyberspace: riots were seen as civil disobedience in the 60s. My generation saw them more clearly: "Tomorrow you're homeless- tonight it's a gas" -The Dead Kennedys
Rioting is not freedom. Rioting is collectively throwing a fit. If you want civil disobedience, "smash the right windows" (Lee Felsenstein)- get smart, intrude, change their web page, don't just riot in the cyberstreet smashing everything. Stupidity is not insulation, it will not protect you.
If you want FREEDOM, then write fscking software! This is the most annoying aspect of all this. DOSing a site that happens to contain something you don't like is freedom? Write software, GPL it (or BSD license it depending on if you don't want to _enforce_ the availability of the code), put it out there. That does more for freedom than any twelve hippie web pages. If you are a blackhat at heart, learn how to pull off intrusions into whatever's out there, get good at the surgical strike, be smart enough to spare the environment you're in while punishing your enemies. That's harder, of course: a lot harder, in fact. But there's no excuse for the hippie approach. It's a disaster, a mess! Fight smart or go do bong hits, if you can't get a clue then get out of the way.
Otherwise you might well find that the GenXers (_my_ generation, thank you) have very much their own opinions on what activism is. You might find that they take a dim view of mindless destroying to prove some vague point. You might find some GenXer who's done his or her homework sneaking onto your precious target site and setting up some sort of viral attack from Javascript on the site itself- which itself attacks the site, but also whacks all the idiot DoSers in the bargain.
Hippies are the Commodore 64s of making change happen. It's time to move on. It's time to get _serious_. For example, the GNU GPL uses the law and copyright to attack what copyright is _normally_ used for, and Linux takes the GPL and proliferates it wildly- now there is a huge amount of Linux out there, and it's got the legal backing to fight attempts to subvert what it stands for. Now that's change. That's _significant_ and it matters and it's constructive but uncompromising.
Forget the hippie approach. Go with the Linux approach. Build something good and be ready to protect it.