Organizing workers at the grassroots level is the next step of evolution. Actually, here in America we need to DEVOLVE to the past, when Americans were more unionized, and real wages were higher, work weeks were shorter, and medical benefits were commonplace. I give you: Homo Sapiens Unionus Homo Sapiens Grassrootus ????
You are wrong, and the proof of what I say is all around you--internet writers (bloggers, if you will). Before the internet, if you wanted to read some deceent writing, you had to go to the library or pay for it--newspaper, magazine, book, etc. Now all you have to do is fire up the browser, and viola, informed and talented writers are freely available. As a longtime reader myself, and a published writer as well, I can assure you that I what I get on the Net is every bit as good (or better) as what I got back in the pre-Internet days. You just have to be able to navigate the Net moderately well.
So, I see no reason why music and radio talent should not be easily available on Internet radio. Remember the aggregating, filtering and disseminating powers of tte internet. All we need is maybe a hundred such unpaid talents, and then you have enough for the whole world. Realize that even just one unpaid radio talent can feed all the internet radio listeners in the world, given enough mirrors, bandwidth, etc. And also recall that there are about 500 million people in the english speaking world. I think we can manage to scrape up enough free internet radio talent.
what about our vaunted American freedom of speech? How is some farker saying that he hoped "the grenade had gone off" anything REMOTELY like a threat on the life of the president? You know it is not. Everyone knows that. But the Secret Police go and knock on these people's door and publicize it in the media. Intimidation of political speech, pure and simple. Taking a page right out of the Stasi book, the KGB book....
There are many posters on fark.com who tell of farkers getting intimidation visits from teh Secret Police (AKA the Secret Service) simply because they happened to make offhand comments about news stories involving assassination attempts on the President.
For example, the other day in Russia (Georgia, actually) someone supposedly threw a gernade in Bush's direction. THe grenade never went off, but some people posted saying stuff like they hoped it, or something like that. The Fark admins posted in the thread saying that they had personal knowledge of Secret Police requests for such posters' IP numbers.
Matloff==Hero; (Bush&Clinton&Congress)==tr
on
Johnny Can So Program
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
Matloff is an American hero who will no doubt be honored in the distant future. Whereas Bush, Clinton and 90% of Congress and the rest of the globalizers who sent our jobs overseas and who import cheap scab labor are traitors who ought to be tried for High Treason in a court of law.
Nothing about it escapes my grasp. In fact, I am almost certainly FAR more knowledgeable about the topic than you. Did you know that it is a felony?
Ask yourself why the mass media looks so favorably upon the mass commission of such felonies, and why the mass media never bats an eye at the large scale aiding and abetting of such felonies?
Surely, SURELY, you must see that the mass media, the corporation that own them, and the elite governmental entities, all actually APPROVE of illegal immigration. Surely you see that! Surely you realize that there is a schism between public opinion and elite opinion on illegal immigration?
If you agree, then surely you must realize that the illegal immigrants KNOW of this schism? They realize that the American elite are waving them in with both hands while giving lip service to American opinion.
So, now, after they have come here, with the tacit approval of the American govt, the American elite media, and the corporate lobbies, and lived here and done the shit work for shit wages, you think that they should be kicked out?
I say, let them stay here, BUT LET THEM VOTE! Believe me, once they start voting, they will be more liberal on economic issues than the Democratic white collar base.
But stop the tide by using a national ID and a computer system, and imprison employers who hire illegals.
I'll demonize you as an radical left-wing communist, since you obviously support highly centralized power.
You are obviously a rightwinger. And you are obviously ignorant of American history. Well, actually, I suppose that if you are a rightwinger, then you are obviously ignorant of American history (otherwise you would not be a rightwinger!).
Actually, like the vast majority of Americans in colonial days, I support a weak central government. And most Americans in those days were HARDCORE leftists, leftists completely different from the so called liberals we have today. I am that sort of leftist. I support "leveling" (distribution of wealth) just like the majority of colonial Americans did.
This isn't about immigration; it's about arrogance and presumption. Your congresscritter just declared that states are not fit to govern themselves, and that even trivial things like "who is allowed to operate a motor vehicle?" is something that should be micromanaged by the Politburo in Washington DC.
You are so ignorant of history and reality that it is not really worth talking to you. Here, read this book, and then MAYBE I will deign to explain some things to you:
when a state taxes you for any significant period of time, it should provide political representation for you. period. THat is what our nation was supposedly founded on.
I am glad that Real ID has passed. Although our government does not in general heed the will of the people, this Real ID could be used to help Americans, if we can gain some control back regarding the issue of illegal immigration.
Currently, illegal immigrants are being used much like scab labor was used to break labor strikes, back in the day when America had labor unions (and real pay was higher than it is now).
In order to stop the use of cheap immigrant l;abor to flood the labor supply, we need national ID and a computer system. The system has already been tested on SSNs and it worked, but business lobbies got it dismantled.
So this Real ID could be useful, if we can raise political consciousness.
Don't bother demonizing me as a racist. That just bounces off of me. You racist-demonizers are just responding to years of programming by the elites.
BTW, why is that illegal aliens who work here and pay sales taxes, etc., cannot vote? Ever heard of taxation without representation?
And why is it that legal immigrants have to pay thousands of dollars and wait several years, all while paying taxes, before they are able to vote? Sounds like the neo-poll tax is here, along with taxation without representation and neoslavery.
But if you make $25-45K, like the majority of earners, you pay much much less. I have collected statements from people who have worked in both the european welfare AND the USA, and they say that the income taxes were similar in both countries for them....
Man, they pumped your ass so full of propaganda that you squeak when you walk, and now the shit's coming out your ears and leaking onto your keyboard (and onto Slashdot!).
First, there have NEVER been "mob rule" (ooohhh!!!) in any western nation. THe rich make sure of that. But if we did have "mob rule", we might have horrors like we have in countries where the percent of citizen voting is really high, like say Denmark or Australia, where they have horrors like "Free College" (ewwww!) and "universal healthcare"! (please save us!)
THe Constitution that Madison and his fellow elites wrote did indeed have a system of checks and balances that so many brainwashed Americans are so proud to tell you about. But what they don't know is that this system of checks and balances (wherein you get a sort of gridlock between the different branches of gov't) was specifically designed to thwart the will of the people and maintain the status quo. Remember at the time that the status quo was that the VAST majority of wealth in the colonies was held by just a few people, who for the most part earned fabulous amounts of money by enslaving other human beings (both black and white) all the while drinking, feasting and partying their asses off.
So, the system of checks and balances worked very well to keep the rich rich and the poor poor, and dependent on whatever crumbs the rich might throw them. The middle class of colonial America did however expand, and the standard of living did improve, mostly thanks to the ever-growing accumulation of written scientific knowledge (which has little to do with maintaing the status quo).
So, I always find it sadly ironic that so many working class Americans are constantly prattling on about our vaunted system of checks and balances, when all along it was meant to keep down those same working class Americans. It's kinda like the cattle bragging about how swiftly the hammers are swung on the slaughterhouse killing floors.
And we now see some results of this vaunted system of Constitutional checks and balances: while western European nations have stronger welfare states, universal healthcare, longer life expectancy, taller children, work about 20% fewer hours per year, America is falling behind. All because our government was constructed via the Constitution to preserve the status quo of a slave nation ruled by cruel, predatory and parasitic elites....
...from the very start, Americans have been brainwashed/duped by fancy words. In the 1770s, most working-class Americans did not even WANT a revolution to get away from England. THey mistrusted and hated the American elite just as much as the Brits. And rightfully so.
But the American elite went on a propaganda spree in order to sell them on the Revolution. Of course for elites like jefferson, washington, Madison, Morris, et al., the Revolution was really all about making more money for themselves.
So Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. And they used that bit of flowery "freedom, brotherhood, and liberty" language the help sell the Revolution. Of course there were other things that helped sell the revolution, like the Brit soldiers coming in and taking up all the jobs, that and some other things. But Jefferson's propaganda set up the Bait and Switch.
So, then once the elites had some grassroots support, they got down to the dirty work of writing a Constitution that was designed to make sure that the lower classes really had little power. The American working classes fell for the Bait and Switch, all right. They bought into the whole freedon-liberty propaganda thing. THe Constitution, as James Madison, the principal writer of the Constitution wrote, was meant to establish a framework from within which the elite could hardly be reached by the masses. And Madison sure did do a good job of creating a government that was very hard to change. He sure did a good job "protecting the opulent minority from the majority," as he put it himself.
The working people had thought they were going to get a fair and representative govt, with just an assembly that mathematically represented the people and whose members could be easily voted out. But instead they got a Constitutional framework that had a president and a Senate elected for long periods of time, and no one was subject to recall.
Whoa, did that piss off the people. THey were a lot more politically aware back then then we are now. They knew that with a president and a senate, elected for such long periods of time, and not even directly elected, that the working people would have little chance of getting true representations. Once the workers got wind of how the actual constitution was goign to differ from what the Declaration of Independence promised, they tried to rush the buildings where the elite were gathering in order to set up the USA as a republic; they tried to kill them several times. But the elites had too many bodyguards.
So, as a result, the elites got what they wanted.
Americans just do not have any idea of a government that actually is on their side. THe American Constitution set up a government that is easily manipulable by the elite. Of course, almost every other western nation is now run much more for the people and less for the elite than is America. So this is one reason why American slashdotters moan and groan about this mikes in the UK. Of course, they don't even know why this thread is present in their culture. That history is not taught in the schools (surprise surprise!)
They DO get paid for doing the work. Part of the deal is that they do some work. RTFA.
And what this article is talking about is AFTER unemployment benefits run out. THis is longterm. We don't get that here in America. But most countries in W. Europe and in Australia, they do that for their citizens. See the difference between a country run for the benefit of investors and countries run for the benefit of citizens?
I do not see why any young American would want to stay in America....Why not invest your future in a country where the wealth is shared more equally? Anyone with a tech or science degree and who is younger than 45 can move there.
The politicians, the think tanks, and the corporate lobbies (i.e., the economic elite, CorpGovMedia) have us pretty much where they want us right now. The white working class are split prettu evenly: most of the educated, white office culture is in the Democratic party camp as so-called liberals. And the rest of the white working class--the blue collars and what is left of the white office workers are in the GOP camp. Two major vectors are being used to seperate the white working class: 1. racial guilt and redneck demonization by the educated white working class (part of the Democratic party faction).
2. Religious-death fear on the part of the religious white working class (part of the GOP faction).
These two attacks have split the largest segment of America into two camps and they have been effectively set against each other with these tactics on the behalf of CorpGovMedia. They are now at each's others throat. Thus they are paralyzed politically into opposing red state-bue state camps.
So now CorpGovMedia can do pretty whatever it wants. The Republican politicians are leading the way with abandon, but the Democratic politicians are right on their tails. Campaign funding is crucial to staying in power, and as long as the politicians vote with the corporations, the corporations will not target them by funding an opponent, which means they are virtually invincible.
And almost ALL politicians care for little beside power.
Slashdot Mirror
Organizing workers at the grassroots level is the next step of evolution. Actually, here in America we need to DEVOLVE to the past, when Americans were more unionized, and real wages were higher, work weeks were shorter, and medical benefits were commonplace.
I give you:
Homo Sapiens Unionus
Homo Sapiens Grassrootus
????
You are wrong, and the proof of what I say is all around you--internet writers (bloggers, if you will).
Before the internet, if you wanted to read some deceent writing, you had to go to the library or pay for it--newspaper, magazine, book, etc. Now all you have to do is fire up the browser, and viola, informed and talented writers are freely available. As a longtime reader myself, and a published writer as well, I can assure you that I what I get on the Net is every bit as good (or better) as what I got back in the pre-Internet days. You just have to be able to navigate the Net moderately well.
So, I see no reason why music and radio talent should not be easily available on Internet radio. Remember the aggregating, filtering and disseminating powers of tte internet. All we need is maybe a hundred such unpaid talents, and then you have enough for the whole world.
Realize that even just one unpaid radio talent can feed all the internet radio listeners in the world, given enough mirrors, bandwidth, etc. And also recall that there are about 500 million people in the english speaking world. I think we can manage to scrape up enough free internet radio talent.
CONSUME
NONSENSE!
MANY farkers have been subjected to secret police intimidation for offhand comments about how they had wished something bad had happened to bush.
Why not search fark yourself?
what about our vaunted American freedom of speech? How is some farker saying that he hoped "the grenade had gone off" anything REMOTELY like a threat on the life of the president? You know it is not. Everyone knows that. But the Secret Police go and knock on these people's door and publicize it in the media. Intimidation of political speech, pure and simple. Taking a page right out of the Stasi book, the KGB book....
There are many posters on fark.com who tell of farkers getting intimidation visits from teh Secret Police (AKA the Secret Service) simply because they happened to make offhand comments about news stories involving assassination attempts on the President.
For example, the other day in Russia (Georgia, actually) someone supposedly threw a gernade in Bush's direction. THe grenade never went off, but some people posted saying stuff like they hoped it, or something like that. The Fark admins posted in the thread saying that they had personal knowledge of Secret Police requests for such posters' IP numbers.
So the terrorists hate u for our freedoms, huh?
LOL!
reference to They Live
Matloff is an American hero who will no doubt be honored in the distant future. Whereas Bush, Clinton and 90% of Congress and the rest of the globalizers who sent our jobs overseas and who import cheap scab labor are traitors who ought to be tried for High Treason in a court of law.
What part of illegal aliens escapes your grasp?
Nothing about it escapes my grasp. In fact, I am almost certainly FAR more knowledgeable about the topic than you. Did you know that it is a felony?
Ask yourself why the mass media looks so favorably upon the mass commission of such felonies, and why the mass media never bats an eye at the large scale aiding and abetting of such felonies?
Surely, SURELY, you must see that the mass media, the corporation that own them, and the elite governmental entities, all actually APPROVE of illegal immigration. Surely you see that! Surely you realize that there is a schism between public opinion and elite opinion on illegal immigration?
If you agree, then surely you must realize that the illegal immigrants KNOW of this schism? They realize that the American elite are waving them in with both hands while giving lip service to American opinion.
So, now, after they have come here, with the tacit approval of the American govt, the American elite media, and the corporate lobbies, and lived here and done the shit work for shit wages, you think that they should be kicked out?
I say, let them stay here, BUT LET THEM VOTE! Believe me, once they start voting, they will be more liberal on economic issues than the Democratic white collar base.
But stop the tide by using a national ID and a computer system, and imprison employers who hire illegals.
I'll demonize you as an radical left-wing communist, since you obviously support highly centralized power.
You are obviously a rightwinger. And you are obviously ignorant of American history. Well, actually, I suppose that if you are a rightwinger, then you are obviously ignorant of American history (otherwise you would not be a rightwinger!).
Actually, like the vast majority of Americans in colonial days, I support a weak central government. And most Americans in those days were HARDCORE leftists, leftists completely different from the so called liberals we have today. I am that sort of leftist. I support "leveling" (distribution of wealth) just like the majority of colonial Americans did.
This isn't about immigration; it's about arrogance and presumption. Your congresscritter just declared that states are not fit to govern themselves, and that even trivial things like "who is allowed to operate a motor vehicle?" is something that should be micromanaged by the Politburo in Washington DC.
You are so ignorant of history and reality that it is not really worth talking to you. Here, read this book, and then MAYBE I will deign to explain some things to you:
when a state taxes you for any significant period of time, it should provide political representation for you. period. THat is what our nation was supposedly founded on.
if they are being taxed, and not being represented, then that is taxation without representation. See how that works?
I am glad that Real ID has passed. Although our government does not in general heed the will of the people, this Real ID could be used to help Americans, if we can gain some control back regarding the issue of illegal immigration.
Currently, illegal immigrants are being used much like scab labor was used to break labor strikes, back in the day when America had labor unions (and real pay was higher than it is now).
In order to stop the use of cheap immigrant l;abor to flood the labor supply, we need national ID and a computer system. The system has already been tested on SSNs and it worked, but business lobbies got it dismantled.
So this Real ID could be useful, if we can raise political consciousness.
Don't bother demonizing me as a racist. That just bounces off of me. You racist-demonizers are just responding to years of programming by the elites.
BTW, why is that illegal aliens who work here and pay sales taxes, etc., cannot vote? Ever heard of taxation without representation?
And why is it that legal immigrants have to pay thousands of dollars and wait several years, all while paying taxes, before they are able to vote? Sounds like the neo-poll tax is here, along with taxation without representation and neoslavery.
You have a talent, sire. I suggest a career in journalism
But if you make $25-45K, like the majority of earners, you pay much much less. I have collected statements from people who have worked in both the european welfare AND the USA, and they say that the income taxes were similar in both countries for them....
That is why they call it a PROGRESSIVE tax....
Man, they pumped your ass so full of propaganda that you squeak when you walk, and now the shit's coming out your ears and leaking onto your keyboard (and onto Slashdot!).
First, there have NEVER been "mob rule" (ooohhh!!!) in any western nation. THe rich make sure of that. But if we did have "mob rule", we might have horrors like we have in countries where the percent of citizen voting is really high, like say Denmark or Australia, where they have horrors like "Free College" (ewwww!) and "universal healthcare"! (please save us!)
You wanna dispute the facts? Dispute them.
I however refer interested readers to the following books:
Howard Zinn's _A People's History of the USA_ (probably available on p2p)
Jerry Fresia's _Toward An American Revolution_ available online here.
Both authors have PHDs (History and Political Science).
Now put up or shut up.....
And one more thing:
THe Constitution that Madison and his fellow elites wrote did indeed have a system of checks and balances that so many brainwashed Americans are so proud to tell you about. But what they don't know is that this system of checks and balances (wherein you get a sort of gridlock between the different branches of gov't) was specifically designed to thwart the will of the people and maintain the status quo. Remember at the time that the status quo was that the VAST majority of wealth in the colonies was held by just a few people, who for the most part earned fabulous amounts of money by enslaving other human beings (both black and white) all the while drinking, feasting and partying their asses off.
So, the system of checks and balances worked very well to keep the rich rich and the poor poor, and dependent on whatever crumbs the rich might throw them. The middle class of colonial America did however expand, and the standard of living did improve, mostly thanks to the ever-growing accumulation of written scientific knowledge (which has little to do with maintaing the status quo).
So, I always find it sadly ironic that so many working class Americans are constantly prattling on about our vaunted system of checks and balances, when all along it was meant to keep down those same working class Americans. It's kinda like the cattle bragging about how swiftly the hammers are swung on the slaughterhouse killing floors.
And we now see some results of this vaunted system of Constitutional checks and balances: while western European nations have stronger welfare states, universal healthcare, longer life expectancy, taller children, work about 20% fewer hours per year, America is falling behind. All because our government was constructed via the Constitution to preserve the status quo of a slave nation ruled by cruel, predatory and parasitic elites....
It ain't offtopic. Slashdot's moderation system is broken and is being abused by the rightwingers and so-called "libertarians".
...from the very start, Americans have been brainwashed/duped by fancy words. In the 1770s, most working-class Americans did not even WANT a revolution to get away from England. THey mistrusted and hated the American elite just as much as the Brits. And rightfully so.
But the American elite went on a propaganda spree in order to sell them on the Revolution. Of course for elites like jefferson, washington, Madison, Morris, et al., the Revolution was really all about making more money for themselves.
So Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. And they used that bit of flowery "freedom, brotherhood, and liberty" language the help sell the Revolution. Of course there were other things that helped sell the revolution, like the Brit soldiers coming in and taking up all the jobs, that and some other things. But Jefferson's propaganda set up the Bait and Switch.
So, then once the elites had some grassroots support, they got down to the dirty work of writing a Constitution that was designed to make sure that the lower classes really had little power. The American working classes fell for the Bait and Switch, all right. They bought into the whole freedon-liberty propaganda thing. THe Constitution, as James Madison, the principal writer of the Constitution wrote, was meant to establish a framework from within which the elite could hardly be reached by the masses. And Madison sure did do a good job of creating a government that was very hard to change. He sure did a good job "protecting the opulent minority from the majority," as he put it himself.
The working people had thought they were going to get a fair and representative govt, with just an assembly that mathematically represented the people and whose members could be easily voted out. But instead they got a Constitutional framework that had a president and a Senate elected for long periods of time, and no one was subject to recall.
Whoa, did that piss off the people. THey were a lot more politically aware back then then we are now. They knew that with a president and a senate, elected for such long periods of time, and not even directly elected, that the working people would have little chance of getting true representations. Once the workers got wind of how the actual constitution was goign to differ from what the Declaration of Independence promised, they tried to rush the buildings where the elite were gathering in order to set up the USA as a republic; they tried to kill them several times. But the elites had too many bodyguards.
So, as a result, the elites got what they wanted.
Americans just do not have any idea of a government that actually is on their side. THe American Constitution set up a government that is easily manipulable by the elite. Of course, almost every other western nation is now run much more for the people and less for the elite than is America. So this is one reason why American slashdotters moan and groan about this mikes in the UK. Of course, they don't even know why this thread is present in their culture. That history is not taught in the schools (surprise surprise!)
They DO get paid for doing the work. Part of the deal is that they do some work. RTFA.
And what this article is talking about is AFTER unemployment benefits run out. THis is longterm. We don't get that here in America. But most countries in W. Europe and in Australia, they do that for their citizens. See the difference between a country run for the benefit of investors and countries run for the benefit of citizens?
You don't see any difference between doing something and getting paid for it, and doing something and NOT getting paid for it.
You must be living with your parents....
I do not see why any young American would want to stay in America....Why not invest your future in a country where the wealth is shared more equally? Anyone with a tech or science degree and who is younger than 45 can move there.
The politicians, the think tanks, and the corporate lobbies (i.e., the economic elite, CorpGovMedia) have us pretty much where they want us right now. The white working class are split prettu evenly: most of the educated, white office culture is in the Democratic party camp as so-called liberals. And the rest of the white working class--the blue collars and what is left of the white office workers are in the GOP camp. Two major vectors are being used to seperate the white working class:
1. racial guilt and redneck demonization by the educated white working class (part of the Democratic party faction).
2. Religious-death fear on the part of the religious white working class (part of the GOP faction).
These two attacks have split the largest segment of America into two camps and they have been effectively set against each other with these tactics on the behalf of CorpGovMedia. They are now at each's others throat. Thus they are paralyzed politically into opposing red state-bue state camps.
So now CorpGovMedia can do pretty whatever it wants. The Republican politicians are leading the way with abandon, but the Democratic politicians are right on their tails. Campaign funding is crucial to staying in power, and as long as the politicians vote with the corporations, the corporations will not target them by funding an opponent, which means they are virtually invincible.
And almost ALL politicians care for little beside power.
As the populace gets ever more sophisticated in the ways of media propaganda, they are having to pull more and more tricks out of their hats.
The whole incest thing is right on, BTW....