Italy, Finland, Sweden, Luxembourg, Poland and the Netherlands voted no. This law needs to be written into the laws of each EU country. What if those six countries simply didn't write laws implementing that, or did write laws implementing those two sections but half-assed it by making the burden of proof high and/or the punishment low?
EU member states pushing back against idiocy out of Brussels is exactly why the EU wants their own standing military. The EU is rapidly becoming a Western version of the old USSR.
If they remain on this path, it's not out of the realm of possibility that at some point the EU and the rest of the West may end up in a 'cold war'-esque standoff, possibly even resulting in non-EU Western thermonuclear-tipped ICBMs being additionally targeted at the EU as well as Russia, N. Korea, and China.
White pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, money laundering, as well as making indecent images of children,
I'm sure he used a website to do that, but that's not the same thing as saying someone was convicted of "Running a web site" any more than murdering someone is the same thing as "using cash" because the murderer bought a gun with cash.
Yes, and we all know that a suspect facing trial for a laundry list of charges never pleads guilty to anything he has not actually done in exchange for a chance at a reduced sentence.
Nope, never happens. Not in the good ol' USA! Why, that would empower prosecutors to simply point a legal shotgun of spurious charges at anyone, guilty or not, and tell them they can get off easy if they just plead guilty to X charge(s)! The USA does not treat their everyday citizens like they were proles in some godforsaken authoritarian hellhole!
What about floating on the ocean makes it possible to "use 100 percent renewable energy, eat only plant-based food, produce zero waste, and provide housing affordable to all" more easily than on land?
It sounds like they're saying building floats is cheaper than building high rises. They should be honest about what they are proposing
I can see places like San Francisco, Seattle, etc going full-in on such a project. They can put all the drug addicts out there where they can take shits and toss their used injection syringes *directly* into the ocean, instead of paying city sanitation and waste management services to end up doing essentially the same thing.
It'll save the politicians a lot of Lamborghinis...err...hookers and blow...err..."taxpayer's money"...yeah, that's the ticket!..."taxpayer's money"...[snicker].
Bullshit. A total, Wild West anarchy is NOT good for society. Take a look at the fucking antivaxxers as a prime example.
There is no principled argument for censorship, only arguments from power.
What you do is bring such things out under the stark light of day and show how wrong and ridiculous they are. That serves to 'inoculate' others with information, logic, and reason. Censoring just makes certain the ones they do connect with won't be hearing any counter arguments.
For an example, look at how Mel Brooks took on serious issues like Nazis, bigots, and racists/KKK in his movies and wrecked them all with humor. If I see some guy in a Nazi get-up somewhere, and I start to laugh at him because all I can think of are Mel Brooks scenes and the Blues Brothers forcing marching Illinois Nazis off a (low) bridge.
Given a void in governance or a weakness, a corrupt, unjust and authoritarian group without any rule of law, will arise to fill the void
Now I understand that some prefer the East Indian type companies, or the type of company that ruled the Congo in the 19th century and would also prefer warlords but personally, that is not my preference.
Totally agree. Sadly, governments are a necessary evil.
The government structures that have seemed to work best in practice overall from a populations' perspective are of the distributed-power sort that operate with some form of democratic representation alongside a relatively free market, which together tend to leverage human nature to benefit all as opposed to the centrally planned and controlled sort which attempt to overcome human nature to ultimately benefit a select few.
Are you going to ban alcohol, tobacco, sugar, caffeine, pornography, BBC, sex, and many other potentially addictive things, Harry?
Well, if he just bans the BBC, then the public's use of the others in that list as a palliative self-medicating response to the BBC must surely decline.
I'd suggest this law is an excellent idea except it needs one small change.
Instead of CEOs and damage done from their negligence, lawlessness, and greed, substitute in State and Federal congressional/legislative members.
I know it'll never happen (wut!? vote to hold *ourselves* accountable!? LOLNO!) but that would solve metric shit-tons of problems including this one with a government that was not so corrupt and that actually represented the people occasionally and not the richest criminals so much.
The First Law Of Human Governance
"The larger, more costly, and more powerful a government is, human nature assures us that the more corrupt, unjust, and authoritarian it will be."
The solution is to move towards a border free world
In a border-free world you will be ruled over from half a world away by those who are the most ruthless, authoritarian, and driven to attain ever more power & control.
Sounds lovely. Don't worry, everybody gets a Harkonnen-style heart-plug./s
To the ballot boxes and to the streets outside the seats of power in your nation/state/province.
Loudly and persistently.
If there is still no resolution, then all bets are off and violence is likely.
That's the problem of always running away from such problems; they never go away and will eventually get you anyway, and the delay typically makes it even worse with the added power and control advantage the authoritarians gain from having little resistance to corruption's growth and spread for so long because people chose to run.
Like many problems, the earlier it gets dealt with and resolved the better and less painful it will be all around.
You mean that you don't consider the fact that they control the vast majority of online communications sufficient? Wow.
Well for one, the POTUS uses Twitter and the courts have already said that he can't block anyone as the court ruled that it was a citizen's right to publicly petition the government and those in it with grievances and legally treated Twitter as a public space in that regard.
Things like Twitter shadow-bans and outright bans for purely political and non-illegal speech infringes on citizens' 1st-A rights to petition those in government, particularly when a small handful of Silicon Valley companies control ~90% of online human communication.
If Trump can't block anyone on Twitter because it's their right to voice their concerns to government, the reverse should also be true and citizens should not have that right removed by a third party private entity for politically-incorrect speech when they have committed no crime under US law.
Just because the censorship is being performed by a private entity does not make it not-censorship.
There's a good argument to be made that companies like Twitter/FB/YT are public spaces and should be prohibited from censoring anything that is not illegal in the US.
During "Occupy Wallstreet" Zuccotti Park was prohibited from kicking the protesters out even though Zuccotti Park is privately owned because it was considered a public space. Seeing as a small handful of Silicon Valley megacorps control upwards of 90% of human online communications, there's an even stronger case for declaring them public spaces and therefor prohibited from infringing on 1st Amendment rights.
Oh no! Your right to say whatever you want on somebody else's network and transfer money on somebody else's system is being trampled! Somebody call the Supreme Court!
For US drivers who've never driven elsewhere, most of the rest of the world has a phase on the lights after red and before green. The lights will display both red and yellow/amber as a "Prepare to go" signal for a few seconds, usually as crossing traffic gets a red light to give time for the junction to clear. That way you can be in gear, have your stop/start system going again ready to move as soon as the light turns green. In busy traffic, that can mean you get one or two more cars through per cycle on the lights.
That's all true and precisely why the US does not have a similar system.
Such a system would massively reduce traffic accidents at intersections which means a lot of lawyers, cops, judges, insurance companies, doctors/medical workers, medical equipment makers, and many more would become unemployed or see a reduction in income.
Sane lawmaking and enforcement with effective oversight that respects the civil rights of the citizens is an existential threat to public sector job security and growth.
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them...you create a nation of lawbreakers - and then you cash in on guilt. " -- Dr. Floyd Ferris in "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand
there seems to be some evidence that the Founders weren't even against war!
Indeed, such as the fact that they waged a war to avoid paying tax on their tea.
I believe there was just a bit more to it than that, like the fact that the colonists had no voice in the creation of such taxes nor in setting the rates, and they were likewise told how much tea they *must* buy from the heavily-royally-invested companies that comprised the British tea industry.
Not that the tea thing was the main or even in the top-3 reasons the colonists rebelled, but that's a topic for some other article and thread. For those interested, a more comprehensive list of American colonial complaints against England and the King can be found here.
Obviously this solar storm was the result of anthropomorphic global warming.
Extra-Solar Alien #1 "We hit them precisely! Why isn't the high-frequency radiation-pulse death ray wiping them out!?"
Extra-Solar Alien #2 "It's some sort of a time-dilation effect from passing through the wormhole. The pulses are now extremely long in duration and thus thinned out and weakened to ineffectiveness, plus on top of that, the frequency of the pulses have gone from being at the upper limits of our detection range to being separated by over a thousand local planetary years at the target! The only positive is that they may mistake our failed attack as a natural phenomenon and not mount a defense or a counterattack."
Extra-Solar Alien #1 "Many of the Leader's heads will roll over this!"
Microsoft knows that an enormous amount of their userbase refuse to ever use Spyware 10 and they are terrified that those users and game developers are going to use Vulkan instead.
Also, it could push some to switch OS entirely to Mac or linux.
Maybe it's nothing, but I wouldn't be shocked to hear MS announce they'll extend Win7 support further, given all the negatives and potential damage to MS at stake, particularly when MS hasn't exactly been doing stellar in relation to past performance pretty much across the board in recent years.
A lot of people use Win7 so they're not going to be thrilled when MS pulls the plug with only Win10 as an option from MS. Many will be looking to leave the MS plantation if they can find a viable replacement.
When corporations get too large they lose the ability to innovate or move swiftly to seize opportunities and also become more risk-averse, so they instead turn to protectionist practices and damage control. I daresay we've definitely seen those behaviors over the years from MS. Seeing them extend Win7 as damage control would not be a shock.
The Ivory Tower may be far from perfect, but truth and reality is, at least superficially, the overriding concern. It usually win out, often in battles fought long ago.
Rudyard Kipling foresaw and addressed the current political/societal/ideological problems in a famous poem.
The Gods Of The Copybook Headings
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
Both major Parties have been the ones who oversaw the creation and expansion of these domestic spying programs.
Prove it.
Lolwut!?
Both Parties have been in power, back and forth, for the entire time these agencies were created, expanded endlessly, and then allowed to create and operate the spy programs for years and years until people like Snowden exposed them.
And guess what? They're *still* doing the same unconstitutional shit as we speak.
Neither Party has stopped them. Both Parties are responsible for their creation and enabling them to create these programs and give them budgets every year to carry on doing so.
The only one in Congress that's fought it has been Rand Paul.
Which is why you report it to Congresspeople of the party that isn't in charge.
Both major Parties have been the ones who oversaw the creation and expansion of these domestic spying programs. They're both equally part of the problem. They may use the issue to garner support and votes, but nothing will actually change. What we have currently is the political elite of both Parties versus the citizens.
There are at least 3 paths of reporting that are independent of chain-of-command.
Only in theory. They ultimately report to the same government run by the same corrupt elites responsible for the corruption in the first place.
What they actually are, are tools that those in power use to find those who might be or might potentially become whistle-blowers, and to provide a propaganda stage-prop to help fool the gullible into believing there are actually effective checks on their powers.
Just like the recent story about the NSA halting some of their spying. I guarantee you that whatever functionality and collection that was being done is continuing under a different program. Why would anyone believe anything the NSA says when they've been caught over and over blatantly lying to the public?
So far Snowden, Assange, and Manning all have a much better track record of being truthful and honest than anyone in the upper levels of the US federal government. Hell, in Assange's case, the US government is attempting to prosecute a citizen of a foreign nation living outside the US under US domestic laws who has never been on US soil and who has committed no crime even under US law (Pentagon Papers/NYT). If you don't think it's right for somebody like a Putin to kill or snatch & imprison someone in the West, how in the hell do you justify the US doing the same shit? Because "we're the 'Good Guys(TM)'? That's the sort of reasoning behind every atrocity and genocide in modern history.
Oh ye big brother knows how much I use where at what time, big deal,
It's fine and dandy until the outrage mob finds something you posted on the 'net a decade ago that was perfectly acceptable then, that is now (or in the near future) non-PC enough to get you de-platformed off the major banking/CC/debit/payment systems (and almost certainly most major social media platforms as well...but no collusion there, kids! just a co-inky-dink!) as has already happened to many who engage in discussing/expressing ideas, opinions, events, and/or concepts considered to be "wrong-think".
They can block your access to your own money with a keystroke. Sorry, I'll never trust any government, never mind some gigantic corporation, with that sort of total power over my ability to engage in commerce. Of course I use a card and have bank accounts, but I never put *all* my money into the system and would never vote for anyone that favors something like a national cashless system.
Anything that can be abused, will be. The potential for abuse of a cashless system for political/ideological oppression of the population by TPTB is staggering in scope and depth, beyond anything dreamed possible even in the most authoritarian 20th century regimes.
This de-platforming of people and groups off of social media and the financial banking/transaction/payment systems is the privatized, Western version of China's social credit system. Such systems only grow more restrictive, invasive, debasing, coercive, and authoritarian, never less.
Don'r worry too much, as iy's not really a problem.
They're talking about specific species of fish being less numerous, byr they don't tell you that the fish are still there, they're evolving abd changing majing them a new species and also new species are evolving to replace others.
This is nothing new. There have been many "staple" fish species that existed over the past 1,000 years that no longer exist. Nature is not a static system and also hates a vacuum...when a species evolves into another species or dies out, there will be a new species to fill that niche. Life always finds a way.
Battle disinformation = conduct censorship. No difference.
Exactly.
Much like the long list of other parallels that exist between the EU and the former USSR.
The EU is well on the path to becoming a "kinder, gentler" USSR-style super-State. No surprise the EU is resorting to similar authoritarian measures against "wrong-think" and for suppressing dissenting voices.
News reporters these days are barely legit, and infomercial presenter has always been suspect. Next!
Heh, every day more MSM news readers are finding themselves unemployed precisely because Youtubers and other alt media has shown people that the MSM is simply propaganda, and that Youtubers and other alt-media are far more trustworthy on the whole.
Those in the MSM did this to themselves. Learn to code, bitches!
Slashdot Mirror
Italy, Finland, Sweden, Luxembourg, Poland and the Netherlands voted no. This law needs to be written into the laws of each EU country. What if those six countries simply didn't write laws implementing that, or did write laws implementing those two sections but half-assed it by making the burden of proof high and/or the punishment low?
EU member states pushing back against idiocy out of Brussels is exactly why the EU wants their own standing military. The EU is rapidly becoming a Western version of the old USSR.
If they remain on this path, it's not out of the realm of possibility that at some point the EU and the rest of the West may end up in a 'cold war'-esque standoff, possibly even resulting in non-EU Western thermonuclear-tipped ICBMs being additionally targeted at the EU as well as Russia, N. Korea, and China.
Strat
Yes, and we all know that a suspect facing trial for a laundry list of charges never pleads guilty to anything he has not actually done in exchange for a chance at a reduced sentence.
Nope, never happens. Not in the good ol' USA! Why, that would empower prosecutors to simply point a legal shotgun of spurious charges at anyone, guilty or not, and tell them they can get off easy if they just plead guilty to X charge(s)! The USA does not treat their everyday citizens like they were proles in some godforsaken authoritarian hellhole!
Oh, wait ...
Strat
+1 this is an overflow capacity plan.
What about floating on the ocean makes it possible to "use 100 percent renewable energy, eat only plant-based food, produce zero waste, and provide housing affordable to all" more easily than on land?
It sounds like they're saying building floats is cheaper than building high rises. They should be honest about what they are proposing
I can see places like San Francisco, Seattle, etc going full-in on such a project. They can put all the drug addicts out there where they can take shits and toss their used injection syringes *directly* into the ocean, instead of paying city sanitation and waste management services to end up doing essentially the same thing.
It'll save the politicians a lot of Lamborghinis...err...hookers and blow...err..."taxpayer's money"...yeah, that's the ticket!..."taxpayer's money"...[snicker].
Strat
Bullshit. A total, Wild West anarchy is NOT good for society. Take a look at the fucking antivaxxers as a prime example.
There is no principled argument for censorship, only arguments from power.
What you do is bring such things out under the stark light of day and show how wrong and ridiculous they are. That serves to 'inoculate' others with information, logic, and reason. Censoring just makes certain the ones they do connect with won't be hearing any counter arguments.
For an example, look at how Mel Brooks took on serious issues like Nazis, bigots, and racists/KKK in his movies and wrecked them all with humor. If I see some guy in a Nazi get-up somewhere, and I start to laugh at him because all I can think of are Mel Brooks scenes and the Blues Brothers forcing marching Illinois Nazis off a (low) bridge.
Strat
Don't forget
The Second Law of Human Governance
Given a void in governance or a weakness, a corrupt, unjust and authoritarian group without any rule of law, will arise to fill the void
Now I understand that some prefer the East Indian type companies, or the type of company that ruled the Congo in the 19th century and would also prefer warlords but personally, that is not my preference.
Totally agree. Sadly, governments are a necessary evil.
The government structures that have seemed to work best in practice overall from a populations' perspective are of the distributed-power sort that operate with some form of democratic representation alongside a relatively free market, which together tend to leverage human nature to benefit all as opposed to the centrally planned and controlled sort which attempt to overcome human nature to ultimately benefit a select few.
Strat
Are you going to ban alcohol, tobacco, sugar, caffeine, pornography, BBC, sex, and many other potentially addictive things, Harry?
Well, if he just bans the BBC, then the public's use of the others in that list as a palliative self-medicating response to the BBC must surely decline.
Strat
Awesome. Somebody needs to be held responsible.
I'd suggest this law is an excellent idea except it needs one small change.
Instead of CEOs and damage done from their negligence, lawlessness, and greed, substitute in State and Federal congressional/legislative members.
I know it'll never happen (wut!? vote to hold *ourselves* accountable!? LOLNO!) but that would solve metric shit-tons of problems including this one with a government that was not so corrupt and that actually represented the people occasionally and not the richest criminals so much.
The First Law Of Human Governance
"The larger, more costly, and more powerful a government is, human nature assures us that the more corrupt, unjust, and authoritarian it will be."
Strat
The solution is to move towards a border free world
In a border-free world you will be ruled over from half a world away by those who are the most ruthless, authoritarian, and driven to attain ever more power & control.
Sounds lovely. Don't worry, everybody gets a Harkonnen-style heart-plug. /s
Strat
When everybody is corrupt, where do you run to?
To the ballot boxes and to the streets outside the seats of power in your nation/state/province.
Loudly and persistently.
If there is still no resolution, then all bets are off and violence is likely.
That's the problem of always running away from such problems; they never go away and will eventually get you anyway, and the delay typically makes it even worse with the added power and control advantage the authoritarians gain from having little resistance to corruption's growth and spread for so long because people chose to run.
Like many problems, the earlier it gets dealt with and resolved the better and less painful it will be all around.
Strat
Taking home over 50TB of classified information is not careless. That's criminal.
He was extremely careless but there was no ill intent, no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.
Oh wait, he's not a corrupt and wealthy dynastic politician?
Throw him under the toughest PMITA prison!
After all, some animals are more equal than others.
Strat
What's that argument?
You mean that you don't consider the fact that they control the vast majority of online communications sufficient? Wow.
Well for one, the POTUS uses Twitter and the courts have already said that he can't block anyone as the court ruled that it was a citizen's right to publicly petition the government and those in it with grievances and legally treated Twitter as a public space in that regard.
Things like Twitter shadow-bans and outright bans for purely political and non-illegal speech infringes on citizens' 1st-A rights to petition those in government, particularly when a small handful of Silicon Valley companies control ~90% of online human communication.
If Trump can't block anyone on Twitter because it's their right to voice their concerns to government, the reverse should also be true and citizens should not have that right removed by a third party private entity for politically-incorrect speech when they have committed no crime under US law.
Strat
None of what is being described is censorship.
Just because the censorship is being performed by a private entity does not make it not-censorship.
There's a good argument to be made that companies like Twitter/FB/YT are public spaces and should be prohibited from censoring anything that is not illegal in the US.
During "Occupy Wallstreet" Zuccotti Park was prohibited from kicking the protesters out even though Zuccotti Park is privately owned because it was considered a public space. Seeing as a small handful of Silicon Valley megacorps control upwards of 90% of human online communications, there's an even stronger case for declaring them public spaces and therefor prohibited from infringing on 1st Amendment rights.
Strat
Oh no! Your right to say whatever you want on somebody else's network and transfer money on somebody else's system is being trampled! Somebody call the Supreme Court!
There is no principled argument for censorship.
Only arguments from power.
Strat
For US drivers who've never driven elsewhere, most of the rest of the world has a phase on the lights after red and before green. The lights will display both red and yellow/amber as a "Prepare to go" signal for a few seconds, usually as crossing traffic gets a red light to give time for the junction to clear.
That way you can be in gear, have your stop/start system going again ready to move as soon as the light turns green. In busy traffic, that can mean you get one or two more cars through per cycle on the lights.
That's all true and precisely why the US does not have a similar system.
Such a system would massively reduce traffic accidents at intersections which means a lot of lawyers, cops, judges, insurance companies, doctors/medical workers, medical equipment makers, and many more would become unemployed or see a reduction in income.
Sane lawmaking and enforcement with effective oversight that respects the civil rights of the citizens is an existential threat to public sector job security and growth.
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them...you create a nation of lawbreakers - and then you cash in on guilt. " -- Dr. Floyd Ferris in "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand
Strat
I believe there was just a bit more to it than that, like the fact that the colonists had no voice in the creation of such taxes nor in setting the rates, and they were likewise told how much tea they *must* buy from the heavily-royally-invested companies that comprised the British tea industry.
Not that the tea thing was the main or even in the top-3 reasons the colonists rebelled, but that's a topic for some other article and thread. For those interested, a more comprehensive list of American colonial complaints against England and the King can be found here.
https://www.archives.gov/found...
Strat
Now, don't confound things with logic.
Obviously this solar storm was the result of anthropomorphic global warming.
Extra-Solar Alien #1 "We hit them precisely! Why isn't the high-frequency radiation-pulse death ray wiping them out!?"
Extra-Solar Alien #2 "It's some sort of a time-dilation effect from passing through the wormhole. The pulses are now extremely long in duration and thus thinned out and weakened to ineffectiveness, plus on top of that, the frequency of the pulses have gone from being at the upper limits of our detection range to being separated by over a thousand local planetary years at the target! The only positive is that they may mistake our failed attack as a natural phenomenon and not mount a defense or a counterattack."
Extra-Solar Alien #1 "Many of the Leader's heads will roll over this!"
Strat :)
Microsoft knows that an enormous amount of their userbase refuse to ever use Spyware 10 and they are terrified that those users and game developers are going to use Vulkan instead.
Also, it could push some to switch OS entirely to Mac or linux.
Maybe it's nothing, but I wouldn't be shocked to hear MS announce they'll extend Win7 support further, given all the negatives and potential damage to MS at stake, particularly when MS hasn't exactly been doing stellar in relation to past performance pretty much across the board in recent years.
A lot of people use Win7 so they're not going to be thrilled when MS pulls the plug with only Win10 as an option from MS. Many will be looking to leave the MS plantation if they can find a viable replacement.
When corporations get too large they lose the ability to innovate or move swiftly to seize opportunities and also become more risk-averse, so they instead turn to protectionist practices and damage control. I daresay we've definitely seen those behaviors over the years from MS. Seeing them extend Win7 as damage control would not be a shock.
Strat
The Ivory Tower may be far from perfect, but truth and reality is, at least superficially, the overriding concern. It usually win out, often in battles fought long ago.
Rudyard Kipling foresaw and addressed the current political/societal/ideological problems in a famous poem.
The Gods Of The Copybook Headings
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
Lolwut!?
Both Parties have been in power, back and forth, for the entire time these agencies were created, expanded endlessly, and then allowed to create and operate the spy programs for years and years until people like Snowden exposed them.
And guess what? They're *still* doing the same unconstitutional shit as we speak.
Neither Party has stopped them. Both Parties are responsible for their creation and enabling them to create these programs and give them budgets every year to carry on doing so.
The only one in Congress that's fought it has been Rand Paul.
Strat
Which is why you report it to Congresspeople of the party that isn't in charge.
Both major Parties have been the ones who oversaw the creation and expansion of these domestic spying programs. They're both equally part of the problem. They may use the issue to garner support and votes, but nothing will actually change. What we have currently is the political elite of both Parties versus the citizens.
Strat
There are at least 3 paths of reporting that are independent of chain-of-command.
Only in theory. They ultimately report to the same government run by the same corrupt elites responsible for the corruption in the first place.
What they actually are, are tools that those in power use to find those who might be or might potentially become whistle-blowers, and to provide a propaganda stage-prop to help fool the gullible into believing there are actually effective checks on their powers.
Just like the recent story about the NSA halting some of their spying. I guarantee you that whatever functionality and collection that was being done is continuing under a different program. Why would anyone believe anything the NSA says when they've been caught over and over blatantly lying to the public?
So far Snowden, Assange, and Manning all have a much better track record of being truthful and honest than anyone in the upper levels of the US federal government. Hell, in Assange's case, the US government is attempting to prosecute a citizen of a foreign nation living outside the US under US domestic laws who has never been on US soil and who has committed no crime even under US law (Pentagon Papers/NYT). If you don't think it's right for somebody like a Putin to kill or snatch & imprison someone in the West, how in the hell do you justify the US doing the same shit? Because "we're the 'Good Guys(TM)'? That's the sort of reasoning behind every atrocity and genocide in modern history.
Strat
Oh ye big brother knows how much I use where at what time, big deal,
It's fine and dandy until the outrage mob finds something you posted on the 'net a decade ago that was perfectly acceptable then, that is now (or in the near future) non-PC enough to get you de-platformed off the major banking/CC/debit/payment systems (and almost certainly most major social media platforms as well...but no collusion there, kids! just a co-inky-dink!) as has already happened to many who engage in discussing/expressing ideas, opinions, events, and/or concepts considered to be "wrong-think".
They can block your access to your own money with a keystroke. Sorry, I'll never trust any government, never mind some gigantic corporation, with that sort of total power over my ability to engage in commerce. Of course I use a card and have bank accounts, but I never put *all* my money into the system and would never vote for anyone that favors something like a national cashless system.
Anything that can be abused, will be. The potential for abuse of a cashless system for political/ideological oppression of the population by TPTB is staggering in scope and depth, beyond anything dreamed possible even in the most authoritarian 20th century regimes.
This de-platforming of people and groups off of social media and the financial banking/transaction/payment systems is the privatized, Western version of China's social credit system. Such systems only grow more restrictive, invasive, debasing, coercive, and authoritarian, never less.
Strat
I'll be dead before it gets prohibitively bad
Don'r worry too much, as iy's not really a problem.
They're talking about specific species of fish being less numerous, byr they don't tell you that the fish are still there, they're evolving abd changing majing them a new species and also new species are evolving to replace others.
This is nothing new. There have been many "staple" fish species that existed over the past 1,000 years that no longer exist. Nature is not a static system and also hates a vacuum...when a species evolves into another species or dies out, there will be a new species to fill that niche. Life always finds a way.
Strat
Battle disinformation = conduct censorship. No difference.
Exactly.
Much like the long list of other parallels that exist between the EU and the former USSR.
The EU is well on the path to becoming a "kinder, gentler" USSR-style super-State. No surprise the EU is resorting to similar authoritarian measures against "wrong-think" and for suppressing dissenting voices.
Strat
News reporters these days are barely legit, and infomercial presenter has always been suspect. Next!
Heh, every day more MSM news readers are finding themselves unemployed precisely because Youtubers and other alt media has shown people that the MSM is simply propaganda, and that Youtubers and other alt-media are far more trustworthy on the whole.
Those in the MSM did this to themselves. Learn to code, bitches!
Strat