A method and system for placing an order to purchase an item via the Internet. The order is placed by a purchaser at a client system and received by a server system. The server system receives purchaser information including identification of the purchaser, payment information, and shipment information from the client system. The server system then assigns a client identifier to the client system and associates the assigned client identifier with the received purchaser information. The server system sends to the client system the assigned client identifier and an HTML document identifying the item and including an order button. The client system receives and stores the assigned client identifier and receives and displays the HTML document. In response to the selection of the order button, the client system sends to the server system a request to purchase the identified item. The server system receives the request and combines the purchaser information associated with the client identifier of the client system to generate an order to purchase the item in accordance with the billing and shipment information whereby the purchaser effects the ordering of the product by selection of the order button.
What we have here is a description of every single e-commerce transaction on the internet, with the novel method being that they click less times. It's not worthy of a patent, and barely worth discussion.
The real issue is that patenting has moved from protecting the method of solving a problem into solving a particular problem.
For instance, I cannot patent mowing a lawn. I can patent a lawn mowing machine, even one that exactly copies the pattern created by another lawn mower that also runs on gas and uses a rotary blade to do it. As long as my lawn mowing machine is different enough to merit the patent, I think it's fair so someone doesn't come along and copy my machine.
Now people are patenting ideas. So when Amazon patents "one click shopping" and I write open source software with different libraries to complete the same task, they claim patent infringement, which is nonsense. They should be able to patent a particular method, which is really just their code, not an end result. Even then it's redundant, as it's already protected by copyright.
Large corporations do not want patent law sane, because it's their multi-million dollar playground, and they can crush innovation and startups by simply filing a few law suits. The first nation with decent infrastructure to fix their system or abandon it will lead the way into the 21st century.
tl;dr: The ability to patent end results instead of particular methods is why the current patent system is a failure.
Moral accountability with the truth of your role in the world and acceptance of the consequences of your actions is the only path towards true freedom. You actively profit from killing foreign nationals who have never even laid eyes on an American unless they were in uniform and carrying a gun. The ashes of the dead may not be on your windshield, but the blood of innocent people is still on your hands, regardless of how much you like to rationalize your empty loyalty that you trade for something as paltry as a bunch of dollar bills.
You're an empty vessel, a worthless fuck, and I hope you one day experience the terror you help to impose upon others.
And no, just because someone pays taxes doesn't make them as accountable as you. You choose to help kill people for a living. I recommend you come to terms with that and see if your life still has meaning beyond the material possessions you like to pretend make you a better person.
Goldman Sachs has colocated at the NYSE, and is front running the stock market to the tune of 13.4 billion dollars in profit every year, simply because of their location. And they also sell self destructing financial instruments to their own clients while betting against them. Here, it's been in the news. But I doubt you watch the news.
So, they're fucking cheating shits who do nothing but game algorithms and lie to people to steal their money, and you're a stupid cunt for having such blind faith in an opaque market.
What happened when Assange started releasing diplomatic cables? Oh, that's right: he received public death threats from US officials. What happens when an individual starts complaining about a corporation, or about scientology? Oh, that's right: they get bullied by a team of lawyers that cost more per hour than the individual makes in a month.
I don't support making death threats or using baser harassment to get a point across, but the only thing newsworthy about the tactics of Anonymous is that now it's regular citizens making the threats and engaging in bullying tactics instead of governments and corporations. If governments and corporations only respect the law when they aren't the ones in power anymore, fuck'em.
But for everyone who is trying to give credit to the United States for giving tens of billions in military equipment to a regime that's been murdering it's own citizens for thirty years, fuck you. It's like giving kudos to the NRA for putting guns in the hands of idiots, and then congratulating them the one time someone uses it for good and simultaneously ignoring the tens of thousands of times it ended in tragedy.
And yes, in fact, there have been a few bloodless revolutions backed by military holding Soviet weapons who have received Soviet training, fucking Perestroika being the first one coming to mind. Not that anyone should be imposing their will on a sovereign nation, but Jesus H. Christ. Pick up a book once in a while.
There's a hell of a lot more important things to Egyptians than being under the foot of American interests for another 40 years. But Americans won't understand that until China has "interests everywhere."
So the United States never "stole" lands from the Iroquois Confederation. The Indian Removal Act pushed out some of the Oneida and Tuscarora in the 1830s, but the Iroquois Confederation didn't make reservation treaties with the US.
Under this logic, Hitler didn't do anything wrong with the Jews when he declared his final solution and started loading the trains up. As long as the person doing the murdering has some sort of legal pretext, it's all a-ok with you, huh? No, I got it: As long as the person doing the murdering is American and has legal pretext. It all makes sense now.
Enjoy your weird little reality there, friend. And if you ever want a check to the bizarre alternate history in your head, I can take you down to some of the reservations that you think we so graciously allowed those people to keep. Then I can let you explain to some of the local residents exactly how well you think they have been treated by the United States government. It would absolutely be my pleasure.
Alas, US interests are everywhere and not meddling will harm those interests. The reality is that Egypt is most likely a lose/lose/lose situation for the US.
Hey look, kids! It's a colonialist. Can you say colonialist? It's a fancy word for a person who believes that only privileged nations deserve democracy, and power for it's own sake is legitimate. Yes, I know, it's a weird, racist/jingoist belief system, but that doesn't stop the idiots from keeping faith in it.
Yes, Johnny, it's quite ironic that Americans have become colonialists. Quite.
Yeah. The Palestinians are as dumb as those stupid Iroquois. If only they had made a treaty with the people stealing their land.
I know if the Chinese invaded, you'd be johnny on the spot at the treaty table, right? "Yes, sir, we'd love to keep just a little bit of Los Angeles. Okay, how about Orange County? No, too close to LA for your security needs? Oh look, you blew up another innocent family on accident. Hey, no big deal... back to these peaceful negotiations..."
"Give me liberty, or perhaps just a few concessions in exchange for bribes if it looks like it reduces the chance of death due to war in the eyes of British Diplomats. They, after all, certainly have more of a right to my destiny than I do." --Patrick "Earp" Henry
Let's do less moral relativism, shall we? If you can't understand that we are only accountable for our own actions and their predictable consequences, you can't understand anything at all.
As for Camp David suppressing democracy, how exactly does Camp David suppress Israeli democracy?
Oh, it just suppresses Palestinian democracy. But it's not surprising that the thought didn't even occur to you.
The only difference is that the leaders now in charge of Iran call the US "The Great Satan", do everything they can to hurt America abroad, and are trying to develop nuclear weapons.... We were better off with the devil we knew. As for the Iranian people, at best it was a wash.
This is this most blatantly colonialist statement I have heard from a person who is not English and dead. Congratulations.
And before that the Soviets funded dictatorship and military adventures for two decades.
Hey, we're like the Soviet Union! Hooray for our... um... compromised values.
The US aid propping up Sadat and then Mubarak cost Egypt less lives than what Nasser and Sadat were burning through with military campaigns against Israel and in Yemen with Soviet money.
Ooh, I love this revisionist history. Tell me the part about how Ronald Reagan saved us from communism. And how Afghanistan has always been backwards and never had a secular government, and Iraq had WMDs, and Israel isn't colonizing Palestine...
So when the United States upholds it's end of a treaty that's bad?
Of course not! How could a treaty that enshrines into the law the bribery of two states for the suppression of democracy possibly be immoral? We're just like the Soviet Union. If they didn't keep killing Afghanis to hold up their end of the bargain with the PDPA, what kind of people would they be?
That country has been a jack-booted dictatorship for 5,000+ years now. If you think it was the fault of the U.S. that they aren't a democracy, you don't know anything about history.
Nice strawman herring.
Would you have considered it "meddling" when the United States forced France and Britain to give the Suez Canal back to the Egyptians after Nassar nationalized it back in 1956?
The operation, aimed at taking control of the Suez Canal, Gaza, and parts of Sinai, was highly successful for the invaders from a military point of view, but was a disaster from a political point of view, resulting in international criticism and diplomatic pressure. Along with the Suez crisis, the United States was also dealing with the near-simultaneous Hungarian revolution; as events unfolded, the U.S. decided it could not criticise outside Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolt and simultaneously avoid opposing outside aggression by its two principal European allies and Israel. Despite having no commercial or military interest in the area, many countries were concerned with what was a growing rift between Western allied nations.
Oh, back in the day when the United States wasn't an entirely hypocritical pile of shit. It's cool though. We have been holding it down for US business interests since we bribed Sadat with enough cash in the 70s to keep the Suez in operation, while aiding Israel with destroying Palestinian nationalism. Brilliant geopolitics with zero moral value, as usual.
So if the US is seen overthrowing Mubarak and a government we have aid and defense treaties with (Camp David isn't just about Egypt and Israeli relations) then what power or moral authority does the US have
If you think thirty years of funding murder and dictatorship in Egypt makes the United States some sort of moral authority, well, you're probably an American.
That worked so well with Iran and the overthrow of the Shah. Sometimes it's better to stick with the devil you know.
Don't conveniently begin that story with the Shah. The Shah was our jackbooted thug who replaced the democratically elected government of Mossadegh, whom we overthrew in a CIA/MI6 coup in 1953 in Operation AJAX. The Shah's SAVAK forces also regularly tortured and killed political dissidents for about thirty years before the revolution. The crime of that democratic government? It leaned left and wanted a fairer share of oil revenues.
So fuck your revisionist history, asshole. You can impress the rubes who ironically believe America is a defender of freedom and democracy, but the rest of the world knows the real story.
Throwing Mubarek under the bus and openly supporting a revolution would have been disastrous for US relations with the middle east. It would have been perceived as yet another example of the US overthrowing an uncooperative government because that government was no longer convenient for us.
What the fuck? Are you even reading the news?
We have given Mubarak and his jackbooted murderers 60 billion dollars over 30 years. We are one of the main reasons he's stayed in power. Helping to throw him out would have finally signaled that the United States gave a damn about democracy in the middle east, but it's the same old story that it's been for a hundred years: we don't want Arabs to be able to vote, because they might prefer using their resources for their own benefit instead of ours.
That's not meddling in the Middle East. It's stopping meddling in the Middle East.
Defacing a website and causing data loss is the same thing as torturing someone to death, or subverting democracy to keep an autocratic regime in power? That's news to anyone with an elementary understanding of ethics.
If this wasn't a democracy, you couldn't even discuss changing it. There are people in New Mexico fighting this bill, and it hasn't even become a law. If you're so ecstatic about not being in control of your government, keep being a piece of apathetic shit. Congratulations, you live in a totalitarian society of your own making, and the rest of the adults can continue participating in their government.
Maybe you read some fucking Ayn Rand and listened to ten minutes of talk radio and decided that Democracy was a joke. Well, here's a newsflash: Ayn Rand was on MediCare. She was a fucking fraud, and so are all the assholes who talk about the dangers of voting without understanding that the only alternative to majority rule is a slow, steady march to totalitarianism. Who is John Galt? He's a fucking water-hauling illiterate peasant, who thinks the earth is flat because he's never had the benefit of an education, who's never thought about inventing anything because he doesn't know what electricity is.
Less than 60 years ago, a group of people who had no political power overthrew centuries of oppression to gain the rights you got for free. They endured hangings, shootings, threats and violence against their family, terrorism, public humiliation, and much, much more. And now one of them is the Head of State. Oh, but Democracy doesn't work, because some idiot state senator proposed a bill! In New Mexico!
Either you support someone's right to vote, or you do not. As Lincoln said, "No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent." Frankly, the idea that any American would support the financial and political backing of a man who murders people who disagree with him is the furthest thing from the American ideal that I can even conceive of.
From the rest of the world, with all sincerity, stop being such a piece of shit. Stop supporting murderous dictatorships for your own cynical desires for power, money, and hegemony. Stop impoverishing people you don't know because you're afraid of their opinions. It's truly disgusting.
Why would I want to support the Muslim Brotherhood insurgency which is simply using internet tools for propaganda and organization, as they attempt to violently topple the internationally recognized legitimate government of Egypt? Are you insane?
You don't give a shit about democracy. Mubarak has been banning political parties for thirty years. He's been the dictator for thirty fucking years, murdering dissidents, suppressing popular movements, and impoverishing his nation with cronyism. If you think this is the result of free and fair elections, you really missed out on working for Pravda back in the day. Hell, you'd make a great Iraqi Information Minister too, holding up farcical elections as proof of Iraqi will.
Oh, but Egypt is different. Because it's fucking convenient for your bullshit worldview. I'm not buying it.
The Facebook page in question is here with about 450,000 supporters in a country that is well known for torturing dissidents to death on a regular basis. In a country where most people live on $2 a day, that's a lot of support, even if only half are Egyptian.
If you have better ideas on how people should organize for social movements, let's hear it. Otherwise you're just pissing in Cheerios, and pretending that it means something.
Yeah, heaven knows raising awareness does absolutely nothing for social movements. MLK didn't use any symbolic gestures or public demonstrations of civil disobedience to force the people denying his rights and the rights of millions of people to deal with him publicly instead of pretending that everything was just fine. Of course, that's total nonsense. The Civil Rights movement, the abolition movement, the suffrage movement, and all other successful social movements used symbols and acts of solidarity to raise awareness. It's one of the most essential components to true progress.
Crawl back into your cubicle, or back on to your couch, and let the adults handle improving their lives through democratic action. The genesis for protest in Egypt actually was circulated on Facebook, with the page dedicated to a young man beaten to death for expressing his opinion, called "We are all Khaled Saed." Here's a blog with a good summary, and the very graphic picture that helped spark the protests.
If you're not going to lend a hand, the least you can do is shut the fuck up. There's probably more meaning and emotion in this rough around the edges YouTube slideshow than you'll experience in the sum total of all your waking moments.
Any show of solidarity will help. Even retweeting your support, as impotent as it may sound, will embolden the populace to continue to take action.
This action is doubly important for Americans, since we have been propping up Mubarak for 30 years to achieve our policy goals in the region. If you give a damn about democracy, you can write your congressperson and senator and ask them to do the right thing and put Mubarak on notice that he will not have the support of the United States if he continues to suppress democratic will in Egypt.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the abstract:
A method and system for placing an order to purchase an item via the Internet. The order is placed by a purchaser at a client system and received by a server system. The server system receives purchaser information including identification of the purchaser, payment information, and shipment information from the client system. The server system then assigns a client identifier to the client system and associates the assigned client identifier with the received purchaser information. The server system sends to the client system the assigned client identifier and an HTML document identifying the item and including an order button. The client system receives and stores the assigned client identifier and receives and displays the HTML document. In response to the selection of the order button, the client system sends to the server system a request to purchase the identified item. The server system receives the request and combines the purchaser information associated with the client identifier of the client system to generate an order to purchase the item in accordance with the billing and shipment information whereby the purchaser effects the ordering of the product by selection of the order button.
What we have here is a description of every single e-commerce transaction on the internet, with the novel method being that they click less times. It's not worthy of a patent, and barely worth discussion.
The real issue is that patenting has moved from protecting the method of solving a problem into solving a particular problem.
For instance, I cannot patent mowing a lawn. I can patent a lawn mowing machine, even one that exactly copies the pattern created by another lawn mower that also runs on gas and uses a rotary blade to do it. As long as my lawn mowing machine is different enough to merit the patent, I think it's fair so someone doesn't come along and copy my machine.
Now people are patenting ideas. So when Amazon patents "one click shopping" and I write open source software with different libraries to complete the same task, they claim patent infringement, which is nonsense. They should be able to patent a particular method, which is really just their code, not an end result. Even then it's redundant, as it's already protected by copyright.
Large corporations do not want patent law sane, because it's their multi-million dollar playground, and they can crush innovation and startups by simply filing a few law suits. The first nation with decent infrastructure to fix their system or abandon it will lead the way into the 21st century.
tl;dr: The ability to patent end results instead of particular methods is why the current patent system is a failure.
How does it feel to lie to your children about what your job is?
Moral accountability with the truth of your role in the world and acceptance of the consequences of your actions is the only path towards true freedom. You actively profit from killing foreign nationals who have never even laid eyes on an American unless they were in uniform and carrying a gun. The ashes of the dead may not be on your windshield, but the blood of innocent people is still on your hands, regardless of how much you like to rationalize your empty loyalty that you trade for something as paltry as a bunch of dollar bills.
You're an empty vessel, a worthless fuck, and I hope you one day experience the terror you help to impose upon others.
And no, just because someone pays taxes doesn't make them as accountable as you. You choose to help kill people for a living. I recommend you come to terms with that and see if your life still has meaning beyond the material possessions you like to pretend make you a better person.
Goldman Sachs has colocated at the NYSE, and is front running the stock market to the tune of 13.4 billion dollars in profit every year, simply because of their location. And they also sell self destructing financial instruments to their own clients while betting against them. Here, it's been in the news. But I doubt you watch the news.
So, they're fucking cheating shits who do nothing but game algorithms and lie to people to steal their money, and you're a stupid cunt for having such blind faith in an opaque market.
What happened when Assange started releasing diplomatic cables? Oh, that's right: he received public death threats from US officials. What happens when an individual starts complaining about a corporation, or about scientology? Oh, that's right: they get bullied by a team of lawyers that cost more per hour than the individual makes in a month.
I don't support making death threats or using baser harassment to get a point across, but the only thing newsworthy about the tactics of Anonymous is that now it's regular citizens making the threats and engaging in bullying tactics instead of governments and corporations. If governments and corporations only respect the law when they aren't the ones in power anymore, fuck'em.
Don't take this personally.
But for everyone who is trying to give credit to the United States for giving tens of billions in military equipment to a regime that's been murdering it's own citizens for thirty years, fuck you. It's like giving kudos to the NRA for putting guns in the hands of idiots, and then congratulating them the one time someone uses it for good and simultaneously ignoring the tens of thousands of times it ended in tragedy.
And yes, in fact, there have been a few bloodless revolutions backed by military holding Soviet weapons who have received Soviet training, fucking Perestroika being the first one coming to mind. Not that anyone should be imposing their will on a sovereign nation, but Jesus H. Christ. Pick up a book once in a while.
There's a hell of a lot more important things to Egyptians than being under the foot of American interests for another 40 years. But Americans won't understand that until China has "interests everywhere."
So the United States never "stole" lands from the Iroquois Confederation. The Indian Removal Act pushed out some of the Oneida and Tuscarora in the 1830s, but the Iroquois Confederation didn't make reservation treaties with the US.
Under this logic, Hitler didn't do anything wrong with the Jews when he declared his final solution and started loading the trains up. As long as the person doing the murdering has some sort of legal pretext, it's all a-ok with you, huh? No, I got it: As long as the person doing the murdering is American and has legal pretext. It all makes sense now.
Enjoy your weird little reality there, friend. And if you ever want a check to the bizarre alternate history in your head, I can take you down to some of the reservations that you think we so graciously allowed those people to keep. Then I can let you explain to some of the local residents exactly how well you think they have been treated by the United States government. It would absolutely be my pleasure.
Alas, US interests are everywhere and not meddling will harm those interests. The reality is that Egypt is most likely a lose/lose/lose situation for the US.
Hey look, kids! It's a colonialist. Can you say colonialist? It's a fancy word for a person who believes that only privileged nations deserve democracy, and power for it's own sake is legitimate. Yes, I know, it's a weird, racist/jingoist belief system, but that doesn't stop the idiots from keeping faith in it.
Yes, Johnny, it's quite ironic that Americans have become colonialists. Quite.
Yeah. The Palestinians are as dumb as those stupid Iroquois. If only they had made a treaty with the people stealing their land.
I know if the Chinese invaded, you'd be johnny on the spot at the treaty table, right? "Yes, sir, we'd love to keep just a little bit of Los Angeles. Okay, how about Orange County? No, too close to LA for your security needs? Oh look, you blew up another innocent family on accident. Hey, no big deal... back to these peaceful negotiations..."
"Give me liberty, or perhaps just a few concessions in exchange for bribes if it looks like it reduces the chance of death due to war in the eyes of British Diplomats. They, after all, certainly have more of a right to my destiny than I do." --Patrick "Earp" Henry
Let's do less moral relativism, shall we? If you can't understand that we are only accountable for our own actions and their predictable consequences, you can't understand anything at all.
As for Camp David suppressing democracy, how exactly does Camp David suppress Israeli democracy?
Oh, it just suppresses Palestinian democracy. But it's not surprising that the thought didn't even occur to you.
The only difference is that the leaders now in charge of Iran call the US "The Great Satan", do everything they can to hurt America abroad, and are trying to develop nuclear weapons. ...
We were better off with the devil we knew. As for the Iranian people, at best it was a wash.
This is this most blatantly colonialist statement I have heard from a person who is not English and dead. Congratulations.
And before that the Soviets funded dictatorship and military adventures for two decades.
Hey, we're like the Soviet Union! Hooray for our... um... compromised values.
The US aid propping up Sadat and then Mubarak cost Egypt less lives than what Nasser and Sadat were burning through with military campaigns against Israel and in Yemen with Soviet money.
Ooh, I love this revisionist history. Tell me the part about how Ronald Reagan saved us from communism. And how Afghanistan has always been backwards and never had a secular government, and Iraq had WMDs, and Israel isn't colonizing Palestine...
So when the United States upholds it's end of a treaty that's bad?
Of course not! How could a treaty that enshrines into the law the bribery of two states for the suppression of democracy possibly be immoral? We're just like the Soviet Union. If they didn't keep killing Afghanis to hold up their end of the bargain with the PDPA, what kind of people would they be?
That country has been a jack-booted dictatorship for 5,000+ years now. If you think it was the fault of the U.S. that they aren't a democracy, you don't know anything about history.
Nice strawman herring.
Would you have considered it "meddling" when the United States forced France and Britain to give the Suez Canal back to the Egyptians after Nassar nationalized it back in 1956?
Oh, back in the day when the United States wasn't an entirely hypocritical pile of shit. It's cool though. We have been holding it down for US business interests since we bribed Sadat with enough cash in the 70s to keep the Suez in operation, while aiding Israel with destroying Palestinian nationalism. Brilliant geopolitics with zero moral value, as usual.
So if the US is seen overthrowing Mubarak and a government we have aid and defense treaties with (Camp David isn't just about Egypt and Israeli relations) then what power or moral authority does the US have
If you think thirty years of funding murder and dictatorship in Egypt makes the United States some sort of moral authority, well, you're probably an American.
That worked so well with Iran and the overthrow of the Shah. Sometimes it's better to stick with the devil you know.
Don't conveniently begin that story with the Shah. The Shah was our jackbooted thug who replaced the democratically elected government of Mossadegh, whom we overthrew in a CIA/MI6 coup in 1953 in Operation AJAX. The Shah's SAVAK forces also regularly tortured and killed political dissidents for about thirty years before the revolution. The crime of that democratic government? It leaned left and wanted a fairer share of oil revenues.
So fuck your revisionist history, asshole. You can impress the rubes who ironically believe America is a defender of freedom and democracy, but the rest of the world knows the real story.
Throwing Mubarek under the bus and openly supporting a revolution would have been disastrous for US relations with the middle east. It would have been perceived as yet another example of the US overthrowing an uncooperative government because that government was no longer convenient for us.
What the fuck? Are you even reading the news?
We have given Mubarak and his jackbooted murderers 60 billion dollars over 30 years. We are one of the main reasons he's stayed in power. Helping to throw him out would have finally signaled that the United States gave a damn about democracy in the middle east, but it's the same old story that it's been for a hundred years: we don't want Arabs to be able to vote, because they might prefer using their resources for their own benefit instead of ours.
That's not meddling in the Middle East. It's stopping meddling in the Middle East.
Defacing a website and causing data loss is the same thing as torturing someone to death, or subverting democracy to keep an autocratic regime in power? That's news to anyone with an elementary understanding of ethics.
If this wasn't a democracy, you couldn't even discuss changing it. There are people in New Mexico fighting this bill, and it hasn't even become a law. If you're so ecstatic about not being in control of your government, keep being a piece of apathetic shit. Congratulations, you live in a totalitarian society of your own making, and the rest of the adults can continue participating in their government.
Maybe you read some fucking Ayn Rand and listened to ten minutes of talk radio and decided that Democracy was a joke. Well, here's a newsflash: Ayn Rand was on MediCare. She was a fucking fraud, and so are all the assholes who talk about the dangers of voting without understanding that the only alternative to majority rule is a slow, steady march to totalitarianism. Who is John Galt? He's a fucking water-hauling illiterate peasant, who thinks the earth is flat because he's never had the benefit of an education, who's never thought about inventing anything because he doesn't know what electricity is.
Less than 60 years ago, a group of people who had no political power overthrew centuries of oppression to gain the rights you got for free. They endured hangings, shootings, threats and violence against their family, terrorism, public humiliation, and much, much more. And now one of them is the Head of State. Oh, but Democracy doesn't work, because some idiot state senator proposed a bill! In New Mexico!
Seriously. You are a fucking embarrassment.
Either you support someone's right to vote, or you do not. As Lincoln said, "No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent." Frankly, the idea that any American would support the financial and political backing of a man who murders people who disagree with him is the furthest thing from the American ideal that I can even conceive of.
From the rest of the world, with all sincerity, stop being such a piece of shit. Stop supporting murderous dictatorships for your own cynical desires for power, money, and hegemony. Stop impoverishing people you don't know because you're afraid of their opinions. It's truly disgusting.
You don't give a shit about democracy. Mubarak has been banning political parties for thirty years. He's been the dictator for thirty fucking years, murdering dissidents, suppressing popular movements, and impoverishing his nation with cronyism. If you think this is the result of free and fair elections, you really missed out on working for Pravda back in the day. Hell, you'd make a great Iraqi Information Minister too, holding up farcical elections as proof of Iraqi will.
Oh, but Egypt is different. Because it's fucking convenient for your bullshit worldview. I'm not buying it.
The Facebook page in question is here with about 450,000 supporters in a country that is well known for torturing dissidents to death on a regular basis. In a country where most people live on $2 a day, that's a lot of support, even if only half are Egyptian.
If you have better ideas on how people should organize for social movements, let's hear it. Otherwise you're just pissing in Cheerios, and pretending that it means something.
Yeah, heaven knows raising awareness does absolutely nothing for social movements. MLK didn't use any symbolic gestures or public demonstrations of civil disobedience to force the people denying his rights and the rights of millions of people to deal with him publicly instead of pretending that everything was just fine. Of course, that's total nonsense. The Civil Rights movement, the abolition movement, the suffrage movement, and all other successful social movements used symbols and acts of solidarity to raise awareness. It's one of the most essential components to true progress.
Crawl back into your cubicle, or back on to your couch, and let the adults handle improving their lives through democratic action. The genesis for protest in Egypt actually was circulated on Facebook, with the page dedicated to a young man beaten to death for expressing his opinion, called "We are all Khaled Saed." Here's a blog with a good summary, and the very graphic picture that helped spark the protests.
If you're not going to lend a hand, the least you can do is shut the fuck up. There's probably more meaning and emotion in this rough around the edges YouTube slideshow than you'll experience in the sum total of all your waking moments.
Any show of solidarity will help. Even retweeting your support, as impotent as it may sound, will embolden the populace to continue to take action.
This action is doubly important for Americans, since we have been propping up Mubarak for 30 years to achieve our policy goals in the region. If you give a damn about democracy, you can write your congressperson and senator and ask them to do the right thing and put Mubarak on notice that he will not have the support of the United States if he continues to suppress democratic will in Egypt.