The amount of energy currently used, if more properly distributed, may lift many people out of misery. Without any new, additional sources of energy. The US is of course a prime example of excessive energy use - 5% of the world's population using about 25% of the world's energy.
You're completely missing the forest for the trees.
When energy is cheap and plentiful, history shows that much wealth across society is created. With that abundance of wealth comes the ability to spend money on things like space programs and social safety-nets. If enough wealth and cheap energy is continued to be allowed to be created within sane and reasonable limits, then that allows space exploration/exploitation to continue to advance to the point that off-planet energy and resources can be efficiently-enough exploited to become practical, while simultaneously providing ever more wealth to help those who need it.
All this plentiful and cheap energy will also hugely reduce international tensions arising over access to oil and other resources as well as raise living standards for all.
Those continued advances in space exploration/exploitation then brings in orders of magnitude more wealth to society and provides even more and cheaper energy from off-planet sources. This eventually and naturally encourages polluting/energy-intensive activities and others nearer to their energy and material resources off-planet.
It ultimately results in a technologically advanced, space-faring and at least partially-space-residing (possibly multiple-planet and even star system,eventually) society so wealthy it can provide for all while creating a much cleaner and lower-pollution Earth.
A technological/industrial civilization runs on wealth-creation fueled by plentiful and cheap energy. Artificially and arbitrarily increasing energy costs by definition slows the advance of civilization in almost every way, and thus the ability to expend wealth, knowledge, and resources to create a better, cleaner world for all.
Again, that does not mean no sane and reasonable limits and regulations for reasons of health & safety. However. Having entire industries that each do nothing but deal with particular areas of government regulation and taxation for both businesses and individuals, is a *huge* clue it's far, far, past the 'having jumped the shark' point and is doing massive damage to the entire economy and nation, and doing the most damage to the poorest.
there are five and a half billion people who need more cheap energy.
Need? Or want?
Nobody "needs" a longer and healthier life, adequate food, or any of the thousands and thousands of other benefits of affordable energy that makes modern civilization possible.
We didn't even "need" to pick up that jawbone as the black monolith "suggested".
Just a thought, though; Higher energy costs affect the poorest first and to the greatest degree in a negative way. The reverse is also true.
Want to see more people existing above poverty/starvation levels?
That FEMA camp meme is really persistent. Somebody is doing a really really god job of demonizing a government organization that actually helps people.
Gee, wonder who that could be...
Yeah, it's not like the US government has on more than one occasion seized the personal property of and rounded up large groups of innocent, law-abiding people, including US citizens, based on questionable logic/reasons and forced them into internment camps or anything without being convicted of any crimes.
Let's think about what groups might talk about "states' rights": neo-Confederates [wikipedia.org] and other white supremacists. In the context of an Air Force equal opportunity adviser's work, recognizing dog whistles like that is part of the job.
How about groups wanting to decriminalize marijuana in their state, for just one of many alternative reasons for talking about "states' rights", of which a good number, possibly a majority, being causes of the Left, not the Right?
All those empty FEMA camps and the US military's (Army/NG) recruitment push for "Internment Specialists" are sounding more and more ominous.
Precisely. Good example. Because you see, this document is solely to help folks uniformed servicemembers recognize extremist behavior.
Yeah, like those dangerous radical-extremist founding fathers believing in individual liberty, rights coming from God alone, and a very limited central government with few powers being the only sure way to minimize government abuse of power & corruption. Or those extremists that have a problem with secret blanket surveillance of the general population.
The US federal government has, over the last 100 years, come to more closely resemble the principals, politics, policies, and rule of King George III than that of George Washington.
Tell me, what is it that you find so compelling in the taste of jackboot leather? Or are you under the delusion that because you cheer on the Statists, you'll be left relatively alone if they take power? Those "useful idiots" that backed Stalin and who were "purged" after he assumed power thought the same thing.
Flying your jet into a building: Terrorism Blowing up yourself in a marketplace: Terrorism Leaking information about government crimes: Terrorism Google "where to buy a pressure cooker": Terrorism Picking your nose: Terrorism
You can now add to that list thanks to DoD training materials obtained through an FOIA request from Judicial Watch.
"The Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute training guide was obtained by Judicial Watch under a Freedom of Information Act Request. It was acquired from the Air Force but originated from the Pentagon.
"This document deserves a careful examination by military leadership," Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told Fox News. "Congress needs to conduct better oversight and figure out what the heck is going on in our military."
Included in the 133-pages of lesson plans is a student guide entitled "Extremism".
The DOD warns students to be aware that "Nowadays, instead of dressing in sheets or publically espousing hate messages, many extremists will talk of individual liberties, states' rights and how to make the world a better place."
Under a section titled "Extremist Ideologies," the document states, "In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements. The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule and the Confederate states who sought to secede from the Northern states are just two examples." (Bold added)
Makes it rather clear who the US government considers extremists/terrorists, doesn't it? All those empty FEMA camps and the US military's (Army/NG) recruitment push for "Internment Specialists" are sounding more and more ominous.
This isn't a (R) vs (D), Liberal/Conservative, or race issue, as just about all groups fight for their member's civil rights and individual liberties in one form or another. This would include the Southern Poverty Law Center and the NAACP just as much as True the Vote or the TEA Parties.
Stop allowing the power-elites to pit us against each other. Sure, there are differences among us, but I contend that most people agree on like 90-plus percent of the core individual freedom and privacy related issues that affect everyone.
Whether or not you think "the rich" should be taxed more or less, like or hate the ACA (Obamacare), you probably aren't in favor of secret courts making secret rulings about what private communications and data can be hoovered-up secretly with blanket warrants from the general population, and what the government can do to you secretly.
Is this water getting hot? Wait, Trayvon! Big Gulps! Rifles! Chik-Fil-A! Immigration/amnesty! Sleep! Sleeeeep!
Without regulation there will be no level playing field. Wealth attracts wealth. In the absence of counter forces, it will inevitably leave the less wealthy and accumulate in the most wealthy.
Do away with the lot of it is just as destructive as piling it on.
Nice strawman. You crushed it very well. Where did I say anything about removing all regulation and/or legal oversight? No sane system would or could exist without any framework. It's not a binary issue. Right now too much in the wrong places and doing the wrong things is a problem, along with plain non-enforcement of existing laws & regulations against political/financial "cronies", and you're trying to conflate a suggested reduction and re-evaluation/correction with complete elimination.
No one forced him to use an international communication system.
So two governments cooperate to spy on each others' citizens with no judicial oversight and you are ok with it because... wait. Why are you OK with it? Because the communication was international? So you believe that no international communications should enjoy privacy protections? Why?
Tyranny & corruption have graduated from the individual-nation level, to being a global/international level game. National leaders/power-brokers have realized the advantages to cooperation, at least on limited terms, with the leaders/power-brokers of other nations toward the goal of controlling ever more of people's lives, liberty, and wealth.
It's corruption and betrayal/treason/tyranny on a global, international scale. This is the non-tinfoil/black-helo, real-world "NWO". It isn't some wild super-secret conspiracy theory. It's just your everyday human corruption and lust for wealth and power that has evolved over time and with the opportunities that technology advances and mass media propaganda over time provide to operate across borders, political systems, and even sovereign interests.
It's things like TFA describes, and things like the US and UK or NZ each spying on the other's citizens and exchanging the data to avoid legal/constitutional proscriptions against domestic spying. Things like treaties that "force" a (or a set of) national laws to be changed/abolished to comply with treaty terms, when the whole aim was to get said changes made against popular wishes and/or to avoid/bypass legal/constitutional restrictions.
The fact that Snowden's and other's whistle-blower domestic surveillance revelations happened at all indicates that either the surveillance apparatus and infrastructure has grown so enormous and all-encompassing that it was bound to happen, or that things are so much under their control that it really doesn't matter that much any longer to those in power if the public finds out.
Or both.
None of which bodes any good for regular people anywhere, not just in the US, as TFA illustrates so well.
Your request for a sense of humor, humanity, and irony has been noted and is refused. Please file a 27b/6 form with the proper authority if you wish to appeal this decision. Just scratch out where the form lists "Domestic Assassination - Journalist" and write in "sense of humor, humanity, and irony".
FTFY, courtesy of the TV show MASH and the government's Michael Hastings "Death by OnStar" assassination.
Bitcoin is decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency. It's a protocol, not something controlled by someone. There's no bank that can say you've reached your transaction limit or surprise you with a new fee out of nowhere. There's no Paypal who can decide your account looks suspicious and freeze it. There's no game company that limits its trade and creates more on its whim. There's no group who have to trust to keep running vital servers out of the goodness of their hearts.
And that is the real problem goverments are having with bitcoin.
The FED doesn't have their say about it or get their cut. The IMF. Whatever the central agency of EU is..
Every country has that one group who is above the law because they control the money.
Bitcoin doesn't have that. Has no place for that. Thats why it'll end up being banned outright eventually. Unless they can figure out how to implant themselves into the bitchains and get their cut. keep control. monitor everything they want. and have their say about it's 'value'.
You gotta give the devil his due.
Exactly this. Governments, particularly the US, will demand a means to control, regulate, and trace Bitcoin the same way they control, regulate, and trace existing national currencies.
Since Bitcoin was designed from the start to prevent exactly this type of government regulation, control, and monitoring, I cannot see any way that the US government, for one, would ever tolerate anything like Bitcoin operating legally in any significant way anywhere they can exert influence and power. Not in Bitcoin's present form, at least.
Heck, just a week ago or so I read a news report that a current IRS agent stated the he is *still*, after months of IRS scandals, being directed to unlawfully/illegally target certain political groups that the IRS is already in hot water for unlawfully/illegally targeting. You think people like that, with that little regard for the rule of law, would allow something with the anonymity and privacy features of Bitcoin as it currently exists, that would frustrate their control & monitoring, to exist?
Not likely!
Heck, the US government is at the point that they need to effectively rob everyone by "printing" money and thereby devalue the worth of all USD, as they cannot now borrow enough to keep their fiat-currency Ponzi scheme afloat, and even running the money presses full speed won't hold off the crash of the USD much longer.
Those converting their USD wealth into Bitcoins then cannot be further robbed of that wealth in the same way because the US government cannot "print" Bitcoins like USD. They cannot allow that to occur in any significant way.
You can't "make" people richer, only hand them what someone else worked for. You have to make it so that it is possible to earn their own wealth by starting a business or working for some else who has with as little regulation and taxation and as few barriers to entry to the market for the individual and small business as practicable and reasonable.
History shows that the best way known so far to have the most poor people gain the most wealth the quickest is to ease the pressure of the boot of government regulation and taxation born by small S-Corp/LLC businesses and individual proprietors. It's an extremely expensive, complicated, and legally-dangerous nightmare to start and operate a small business in the US, particularly now in places where business and industry once thrived.
Capitalism, when allowed to operate within sane and reasonable rules with the aim to allow as much freedom as possible while maintaining a non-criminal, equitable, and level playing field for all, has raised more people out of poverty and raised their standards of living higher and faster than any other system ever tried on a national scale, while at the same time empowered them to be more independent of government and enjoy more individual freedom than any other system that has ever been tried. It has also allowed for the greatest leaps in scientific and technological advancements across the board and benefited more people worldwide as a result.
Basically, you have to look toward empowering and freeing the individual over the collective in order to benefit the individual (the poor).
Hell, how about we start by not having cops and city/county regulation-zealots threatening kids and their parents with a lemonade stand on a cardboard box the kids set up in their driveway for a couple days in the summer with infractions and fines, even arrest and jail? Think those kids will ever want to start a business? Will they listen more or less to these same people tell them to stay out of gangs and away from hard drugs? If they do recover from the lemonade-stand trauma and later start a business, how likely is it that they'll try to game the laws and rules of the system they experienced as "the man" growing up?
It's more a wonder to me these days that as many small businesses still survive, even start (though most won't survive), as there are currently, and that unemployment isn't twice as bad at minimum.
The US' major cities will come to resemble Detroit and Chicago if things don't change in major ways. Probably sooner than later. It may already be too late.
I've always wondered how something can be racist if it is true.
Because complaints of "racism" is now how you stop people from telling the truth.
13% of the U.S. population is black but they commit 50% of all murders and 55% of all robberies. But that's just the national average. In some areas it's much worse. In Chicago for example, blacks and hispanics combined are responsible for 96% of all murders. In St. Paul, Minnesota the population is 13% black but they are responsible for 70% of all crimes.
And so on, and so on . . . . . . .
When minorities stop committing a disproportionate amount of crime the police will leave them alone.
1. Blacks commit violent crimes four to eight times the white rate. Hispanic commit violent crimes at approximately three times the white rate, and Asians at one half to three quarters the white rate.
2. Blacks are as much more violent than whites (four to eight times) as men are more violent than women.
3. Of the approximately 1,700,000 interracial crimes of violence involving blacks and whites, 90 percent are committed by blacks against whites. Blacks are 50 times more likely than whites to commit individual acts of interracial violence. They are up to 250 times more likely than whites to engage in multiple-offender or group interracial violence.
4. There is more black-on-white than black-on-black violent crime. Fifty-six percent of violent crimes committed by blacks have white victims. Only two to three percent of violent crimes committed by whites have black victims.
5. Blacks are twice as likely to commit hate crimes.
*Sources
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States
Bureau of Justice Statistics, Criminal Victimization
Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hate Crime Statistics ----
The primary concern of the US government seems to be that NSA employees will defect to the American public. Snowden has been charged with espionage for spying on our behalf, so I think we're officially the enemy.
Of course US citizens are considered the enemy by the US government. That's been true since at least the 1930s, if not earlier.
The nice thing about this MS/Fed deal is that the need for people like Snowden will be greatly reduced. If their shiny new system is made by MS, any script-kiddie with Wireshark, Backtrack, etc will be able to pwn it.
I'm just not looking forward to all the additional v14gr4 and stock spam that will come from places like the FBI, NSA, DoJ, CIA, etc.
How does searching work for this kind of tranport/storage?
If you have a bevy of beautiful, friendly, young scantily-clad Polynesian girls that you can sit and watch go through the envelopes searching, who cares how long a search takes?
Now *that's* what I call an upgraded mail service!
What I am saying is that if you or others intend to do as you advise then they should be prepared for the probable consequences of being thrown into a gitmo hole with no rights and quite probably not heard from again for a very long time, to say the least.
That is a real possibility. That type of government oppression has always occurred when citizens demand their too-large and too-corrupt governments give up power & ingrained criminal behaviors. Look at the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. This is another civil rights battle. Maybe the last one in the US for many, many generations, if this one is lost through fear and apathy.
Where would we be now if those 1960s civil rights activists had stayed home instead of risking everything including their lives? This is simply another set of civil rights issues that happens to include everyone of all ethnicities and political parties that value civil rights.
The way things are going, "internment camps" of one sort or another are a near-certainty if people do nothing and don't make waves. Anyone with even a very modest general knowledge of history could tell you that is what is coming. Heck, it's not even new for the US. Two past US Presidents have ordered large masses of people held in camps and their property seized based on racial ethnicity and/or a families' national origins generations back. Wilson was infamous for imprisoning anyone who spoke out against his policies.
It's always easier to halt a national nose-dive into insanity by an out-of-control government before the dissident-camps, neighborhood checkpoints, and mass grave sites are operational than after.
"Track them to where they live. Note who they associate with and who their family members are and gather intelligence on them as well."
You are talking about spying. The government is spying on the citizens yes - but if you do it to them you will be charged with espionage and will be tossed into a dark place with what's left of your rights taken away.
If it was just I and one or two friends, that might be a real possibility.
Thousands or tens of thousands all across the country?
Might present a problem. Narrows their choice of reactions down to just a few, all of them bad from their POV.
Besides, lots of people were jailed and even killed during the civil rights marches and protests in the 1960s. Why would this civil rights movement be any different?
How much does one actually value freedom if one is unwilling to take any risks to gain or preserve it?
You know, that whole "Freedom is not free" thing.
I'm not about to throw my (or someone else's) life away for nothing, but I would risk death to preserve freedom. My father did in WW2. His father did in WW1. When it comes right down to it, people willing to put their lives, their fortunes, and their honor on the line is the ONLY thing that keeps people free.
(Note to NSA spies reading this: yes, I know your filter was triggered by the phrase "blow up the Estonian Parliament", sorry about that, false alarm, nothing to see here)
NSA, are you actually going to fall for that old ploy? Parent post is probably a message to an Estonian sleeper-cell.
Listen, "michelcolman" (is that your code-name?) the NSA aren't your average morons!
That's all great and everything, but people coming and going in public spaces, in plain view, is not "Classified" or "Top Secret" information. At least outside some psychopathic, Kim Jong Il/Un style regime.
Strat
It's certainly going to be considered at least 'confidential'.
You propose spying on the spying agencies of a national power - and this is espionage.
No it's not. It would not be recording the content or purpose of a person entering or leaving, it's simply "metadata", which, as the US government has repeatedly stated, is not the same thing and has no expectation of privacy, as simply seeing someone in public is not against the law, just as who called who where and for how long does not viilate the 4th Amendment.
Collecting metadata is not spying. The POTUS said so publicly.
That's all great and everything, but people coming and going in public spaces, in plain view, is not "Classified" or "Top Secret" information. At least outside some psychopathic, Kim Jong Il/Un style regime.
I was and am aware that it's on behalf of foreign enemies. Once you start putting information out on untouchable foreign servers, it doesn't take a great leap to decide that's in fact who you're assisting.
Saying it does, even the US government saying it does, does not make it so. It's simply the authoritarian stance that anything that is kept out of the reach of the authorities is to be treated as treason or betrayal, as authoritarian regimes cannot tolerate citizens being able to communicate and exchange data securely.
And it's not like you'd be exposing information that's in the interests of citizens, you're simply playing tit for tat by gathering intel on employees.
Knowing who the people are that are personally responsible for massively violating the civil rights of hundreds of millions of US citizens is NOT in those citizen's interests?
My! You certainly have a...unique...view of what constitutes the interests of US citizens. To take a line from the character "Morpheus" in "Matrix Revolutions"; "...I am glad it is not up to you."
You would be screwed so fast, and I'm not sure anyone would support your cause. It really seems like a harebrained scheme to me, on par with demanding to take your weapons into NSA buildings.
I'm not advocating going toe-to-toe with armed agents, or being "in your face" with tactics, except that everything be done to the letter of the law, like not trespassing, harassing individuals, etc etc. Something more along the lines of having different random students on successive days doing homework in a park near some facility and quietly noting comings and goings, times, etc. Unless they want to try banning any and all people from being in line of sight of any and every single facility/building/site and/or arrest anyone with a cellphone-camera or pencil & paper within sight?
If you do find anyone crazy enough to do this with you, I suggest at least having a long hard think about it and doing a lot of research on every aspect, rather than jumping in head first while waving the flag around.
I didn't make it to being over a half-century in age by being rash or stupid. Well, except possibly in replying to some/. posts/replies that I should not have wasted my time with. Violence and armed revolt is not the way to battle the type of tyranny that is emerging in the US. It will only give the government an opening to clamp down. It will take a more Ghandi/MLK style approach. It is, after all, a matter of civil rights not much different from their struggles. I feel that simply shining light on the individuals responsible for massively violating the civil rights of the entire population is very Ghandi/MLK-esque in style.
Great idea. I'm sure this would not fall under espionage laws.
Since espionage involves gathering information on behalf of foreign enemies of the United States, then that would mean that the citizens of the United States would be now considered the same as foreign enemies of the United States.
If that's the case, I think everyone would benefit in having the government make clear that US citizens, rather than being free citizens, are actually domestic-but-foreign enemies of the United States. At least then, the necessary changes can start being made going forward.
Besides that, so what if they do arrest people? What, do you think standing up to a wildly out of control national government will be easy or not come with a price?
How much is freedom and civil rights worth to you?
They were worth much to a black lady that wouldn't sit at the back of the bus or others that faced riot police, fire hoses, and dogs. Were they crazy or stupid for making those stands against an oppressive government and taking those risks? This is just as much an issue of civil rights. It's just not race-specific this time, everyone's civil rights are at stake.
The answer is to turn the tables on them, "flip the script", as it were.
Set up rotating surveillance teams at NSA, DHS, CIA, TSA, and FISA facilities. If one person/group is caught recording video, etc have another person/team standing by to take their place when theyâ(TM)re ordered to move on. Create and build up lists of personnel and dossiers on those seen coming & going.
Track them to where they live. Note who they associate with and who their family members are and gather intelligence on them as well. Record addresses, vehicle make/model/year and license plate number(s), etc. Correlate against public information and databases, DMV/court records, property records, tax and political contribution records, etc etc.
Create a website to host and share this data publicly, and host it somewhere like Ecuador or Hong Kong that will tell the US government to go pound sand.
Put THEM and their activities, travel, and associations in the spotlight for a change. Cockroaches and similar vermin hate bright light.
It seems that the US government has chosen to fight terrorism not by addressing the root causes and the people actually at fault, but by simply becoming the biggest terrorists of them all and driving out the competition.
The US government is far and away a much larger threat, by orders of magnitude, to the citizens of the US (and the rest of the world as well) than all the terrorist groups, foreign & domestic, combined.
Fifteen years ago, I'd have been all for causing a disruption. Exercising my self-evident liberties and thwarting The Man, when he came down on me for it.
Now, I have a fucked up back from a car crash, a fucked up knee from wrestling, a mortgage, people depending on me, a professional career, and neighbors. The amount of ways they could absolutely obliterate my life at their slightest whim are uncountable. As much as I'm all about people doing something and not just playing "Reddit-pretend-rebel/protestor", we are beyond the time of, say, the 90s -- where civil disobedience and voicing your dissent or even just being a vocal weirdo just got you either a knock on the door or a two hour trip into and out of your local lockup. We're in a time where you become an instant "child molester" or you just disappear or your finances go all permanently wonky, or you get "investigated" and now your neighbors and employer and coworkers all wonder what you've been up to that has raised the interest of The Man.
You're right. You might just get an unpleasant visit and some unpleasant consequences for taking a stand.
One thing is for certain, however, and has been proven true repeatedly throughout history.
If you don't take a stand, odds approach unity that you and those you love absolutely *will* suffer far worse consequences.
Remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer?
"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, and straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?" - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
"First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I'd be happy to leave people who will not take a stand to their fate and keep my mouth shut, but unfortunately, everyone else including myself will be forced to share the horrific and certain consequences of their fear and inaction.
Those consequences also will not limit themselves to Americans or America. Imagine the full breadth of US economic & military reach and power in the hands of a Kim Jong Il/Un, or a Hitler or Ahmadinejad. It would be in the best interests of the rest of the world to help the people of the US however they can in taking back control of the wildly-out-of-control US Federal government. The alternative, as history has shown over and over, is not good for anyone anywhere in the long run.
"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana
... Look around at pop music and what's being created today. Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Justin Bieber style music is all that anyone can make money doing nowadays....
This is why you aren't taken serious. Only a few musicians actually get rich making music. Their record companies though get very rich off them and other musicians they sign. It has always been this way, and they are fighting hard as hell to keep it that way.
Musician here. Spot on, at least as to the record labels having historically horribly abused & cheated the artists.
To get some idea how this works and how bad it typically is for the majority of artists who are, or are trying to become, "signed" with a label, check out this piece by Steve Albini on negativeland.com
"This oft-referenced article is from the early â(TM)90s, and originally appeared in Maximum Rock ânâ(TM) Roll magazine. While some of the information and figures listed here are dated, it is still a useful and informative article."
One of the record labels' top priorities is controlling the means of distribution. That's the actual, underlying reason they are pushing DRM and copyright-related laws/regulations, particularly those that involve the internet and digital (copyable) media formats, streaming, etc. It's aimed ultimately at erecting barriers to entry for independent artists in both marketing & distribution channels using the internet as a vehicle.
Once it becomes commonplace for artists in the top-100 to be independents without a mainstream "label" contract, the old recording labels and their associated parasites will be truly doomed. They know this. That's the reason for the war on sharing, various forms of independent distribution/marketing channels, and internet radio.
Want to support artists? Go to shows. Buy CDs & merch. Share their music with those who haven't heard of them. Encourage those friends to do the same. Tell the bar/club/venue owner when you like the band, and that you'd come back and bring friends when they play there next time.
There are tons of amazingly-talented and hard-working artists & bands playing in bars/clubs/festivals/etc all over. Simply not buying cookie-cutter record-label music is not enough. You need to support the bands and artists you would rather see take their place.
Keep in mind that even the members in most above-average-talent bar/club bands could make more money working part-time at McD's or Walmart. A modest-but-decent used bar-gigging-quality guitar can easily cost over $500. Used modest-but-decent amp easily over $1,000. Let's not even talk drum sets.
That's also not counting the PA and lights that many small/medium bars/clubs do not provide, and then a vehicle/trailer to haul all that crap around with and all the costs associated with that.
Sorry, but the Soviets didn't invent that trick. If anything they copied it from the Nazis, but then the Nazis didn't originate it either. Perhaps they copied it from the Inquisition, or from any of many other prior "practitioners of the art". It's so old that one can't even say how old it is. It *probably* didn't predate language.
The amazing thing is that it still works.
Actually, if you count it as a subset of propaganda, then you need to go back to Edward Bernays and the Wilson administration's implementation of the first government propaganda agency, the Committee on Public Information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays ---- Bernays's public relations efforts helped to popularize Freud's theories in the United States. Bernays also pioneered the PR industry's use of psychology and other social sciences to design its public persuasion campaigns:
" If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits."
He called this scientific technique of opinion-molding the 'engineering of consent'.
Bernays began his career as press agent in 1913, counseling to theaters, concerts and the ballet. In 1917, US President Woodrow Wilson engaged George Creel and realizing one of his ideas, he founded the Committee on Public Information. Bernays, Carl Byoir and John Price Jones worked together to influence public opinion towards supporting American participation in World War I. ----
Goebbels owned a copy of Bernays's book on the subject IIRC, and acknowledged Bernays's and Wilson's achievements with the use of propaganda domestically and utilized many of their techniques and principals in Nazi propaganda programs. I believe Stalin is reported to have taken many propaganda ideas and concepts from Bernays's work as well..
Wilson was a real racist/segregationist, political/policy-opposition-arresting piece of work all on his own. People should read about the actions taken and policies enacted by Wilson domestically. In a lot of ways, like the Executive Branch/DoJ running wild, it resembles our current situation with a DoJ exceeding it's powers and deliberately inflicting illegal, un-Constitutional, and criminal injustice for political reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
The amount of energy currently used, if more properly distributed, may lift many people out of misery. Without any new, additional sources of energy. The US is of course a prime example of excessive energy use - 5% of the world's population using about 25% of the world's energy.
You're completely missing the forest for the trees.
When energy is cheap and plentiful, history shows that much wealth across society is created. With that abundance of wealth comes the ability to spend money on things like space programs and social safety-nets. If enough wealth and cheap energy is continued to be allowed to be created within sane and reasonable limits, then that allows space exploration/exploitation to continue to advance to the point that off-planet energy and resources can be efficiently-enough exploited to become practical, while simultaneously providing ever more wealth to help those who need it.
All this plentiful and cheap energy will also hugely reduce international tensions arising over access to oil and other resources as well as raise living standards for all.
Those continued advances in space exploration/exploitation then brings in orders of magnitude more wealth to society and provides even more and cheaper energy from off-planet sources. This eventually and naturally encourages polluting/energy-intensive activities and others nearer to their energy and material resources off-planet.
It ultimately results in a technologically advanced, space-faring and at least partially-space-residing (possibly multiple-planet and even star system,eventually) society so wealthy it can provide for all while creating a much cleaner and lower-pollution Earth.
A technological/industrial civilization runs on wealth-creation fueled by plentiful and cheap energy. Artificially and arbitrarily increasing energy costs by definition slows the advance of civilization in almost every way, and thus the ability to expend wealth, knowledge, and resources to create a better, cleaner world for all.
Again, that does not mean no sane and reasonable limits and regulations for reasons of health & safety. However. Having entire industries that each do nothing but deal with particular areas of government regulation and taxation for both businesses and individuals, is a *huge* clue it's far, far, past the 'having jumped the shark' point and is doing massive damage to the entire economy and nation, and doing the most damage to the poorest.
Strat
Nobody "needs" a longer and healthier life, adequate food, or any of the thousands and thousands of other benefits of affordable energy that makes modern civilization possible.
We didn't even "need" to pick up that jawbone as the black monolith "suggested".
Just a thought, though; Higher energy costs affect the poorest first and to the greatest degree in a negative way. The reverse is also true.
Want to see more people existing above poverty/starvation levels?
Lower energy costs.
Strat
You, sir, are an idiot.
The feeling is mutual.
The founding fathers viewed those rights as inherent to being a human being -- not coming from God
You mean those human beings "...endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights"?
Don't worry, I won't charge you for the schooling.
Yup, not only are you an idiot, but apparently an illiterate and ignorant one as well.
Good day, sir!
Strat
That FEMA camp meme is really persistent. Somebody is doing a really really god job of demonizing a government organization that actually helps people.
Gee, wonder who that could be...
Yeah, it's not like the US government has on more than one occasion seized the personal property of and rounded up large groups of innocent, law-abiding people, including US citizens, based on questionable logic/reasons and forced them into internment camps or anything without being convicted of any crimes.
Oh, wait...
Strat
Let's think about what groups might talk about "states' rights": neo-Confederates [wikipedia.org] and other white supremacists. In the context of an Air Force equal opportunity adviser's work, recognizing dog whistles like that is part of the job.
How about groups wanting to decriminalize marijuana in their state, for just one of many alternative reasons for talking about "states' rights", of which a good number, possibly a majority, being causes of the Left, not the Right?
Yeah, like those dangerous radical-extremist founding fathers believing in individual liberty, rights coming from God alone, and a very limited central government with few powers being the only sure way to minimize government abuse of power & corruption. Or those extremists that have a problem with secret blanket surveillance of the general population.
The US federal government has, over the last 100 years, come to more closely resemble the principals, politics, policies, and rule of King George III than that of George Washington.
Tell me, what is it that you find so compelling in the taste of jackboot leather? Or are you under the delusion that because you cheer on the Statists, you'll be left relatively alone if they take power? Those "useful idiots" that backed Stalin and who were "purged" after he assumed power thought the same thing.
"Those who fail to learn from history..."
Strat
Flying your jet into a building: Terrorism
Blowing up yourself in a marketplace: Terrorism
Leaking information about government crimes: Terrorism
Google "where to buy a pressure cooker": Terrorism
Picking your nose: Terrorism
You can now add to that list thanks to DoD training materials obtained through an FOIA request from Judicial Watch.
"The Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute training guide was obtained by Judicial Watch under a Freedom of Information Act Request. It was acquired from the Air Force but originated from the Pentagon.
"This document deserves a careful examination by military leadership," Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told Fox News. "Congress needs to conduct better oversight and figure out what the heck is going on in our military."
Included in the 133-pages of lesson plans is a student guide entitled "Extremism".
The DOD warns students to be aware that "Nowadays, instead of dressing in sheets or publically espousing hate messages, many extremists will talk of individual liberties, states' rights and how to make the world a better place."
Under a section titled "Extremist Ideologies," the document states, "In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements. The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule and the Confederate states who sought to secede from the Northern states are just two examples." (Bold added)
Makes it rather clear who the US government considers extremists/terrorists, doesn't it? All those empty FEMA camps and the US military's (Army/NG) recruitment push for "Internment Specialists" are sounding more and more ominous.
This isn't a (R) vs (D), Liberal/Conservative, or race issue, as just about all groups fight for their member's civil rights and individual liberties in one form or another. This would include the Southern Poverty Law Center and the NAACP just as much as True the Vote or the TEA Parties.
Stop allowing the power-elites to pit us against each other. Sure, there are differences among us, but I contend that most people agree on like 90-plus percent of the core individual freedom and privacy related issues that affect everyone.
Whether or not you think "the rich" should be taxed more or less, like or hate the ACA (Obamacare), you probably aren't in favor of secret courts making secret rulings about what private communications and data can be hoovered-up secretly with blanket warrants from the general population, and what the government can do to you secretly.
Is this water getting hot? Wait, Trayvon! Big Gulps! Rifles! Chik-Fil-A! Immigration/amnesty! Sleep! Sleeeeep!
Strat
Without regulation there will be no level playing field. Wealth attracts wealth. In the absence of counter forces, it will inevitably leave the less wealthy and accumulate in the most wealthy.
Do away with the lot of it is just as destructive as piling it on.
Nice strawman. You crushed it very well. Where did I say anything about removing all regulation and/or legal oversight? No sane system would or could exist without any framework. It's not a binary issue. Right now too much in the wrong places and doing the wrong things is a problem, along with plain non-enforcement of existing laws & regulations against political/financial "cronies", and you're trying to conflate a suggested reduction and re-evaluation/correction with complete elimination.
Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
Strat
Tyranny & corruption have graduated from the individual-nation level, to being a global/international level game. National leaders/power-brokers have realized the advantages to cooperation, at least on limited terms, with the leaders/power-brokers of other nations toward the goal of controlling ever more of people's lives, liberty, and wealth.
It's corruption and betrayal/treason/tyranny on a global, international scale. This is the non-tinfoil/black-helo, real-world "NWO". It isn't some wild super-secret conspiracy theory. It's just your everyday human corruption and lust for wealth and power that has evolved over time and with the opportunities that technology advances and mass media propaganda over time provide to operate across borders, political systems, and even sovereign interests.
It's things like TFA describes, and things like the US and UK or NZ each spying on the other's citizens and exchanging the data to avoid legal/constitutional proscriptions against domestic spying. Things like treaties that "force" a (or a set of) national laws to be changed/abolished to comply with treaty terms, when the whole aim was to get said changes made against popular wishes and/or to avoid/bypass legal/constitutional restrictions.
The fact that Snowden's and other's whistle-blower domestic surveillance revelations happened at all indicates that either the surveillance apparatus and infrastructure has grown so enormous and all-encompassing that it was bound to happen, or that things are so much under their control that it really doesn't matter that much any longer to those in power if the public finds out.
Or both.
None of which bodes any good for regular people anywhere, not just in the US, as TFA illustrates so well.
Strat
Your request for a sense of humor, humanity, and irony has been noted and is refused. Please file a 27b/6 form with the proper authority if you wish to appeal this decision. Just scratch out where the form lists "Domestic Assassination - Journalist" and write in "sense of humor, humanity, and irony".
FTFY, courtesy of the TV show MASH and the government's Michael Hastings "Death by OnStar" assassination.
Strat
Bitcoin is decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency. It's a protocol, not something controlled by someone. There's no bank that can say you've reached your transaction limit or surprise you with a new fee out of nowhere. There's no Paypal who can decide your account looks suspicious and freeze it. There's no game company that limits its trade and creates more on its whim. There's no group who have to trust to keep running vital servers out of the goodness of their hearts.
And that is the real problem goverments are having with bitcoin.
The FED doesn't have their say about it or get their cut. The IMF. Whatever the central agency of EU is..
Every country has that one group who is above the law because they control the money.
Bitcoin doesn't have that. Has no place for that. Thats why it'll end up being banned outright eventually. Unless they can figure out how to implant themselves into the bitchains and get their cut. keep control. monitor everything they want. and have their say about it's 'value'.
You gotta give the devil his due.
Exactly this. Governments, particularly the US, will demand a means to control, regulate, and trace Bitcoin the same way they control, regulate, and trace existing national currencies.
Since Bitcoin was designed from the start to prevent exactly this type of government regulation, control, and monitoring, I cannot see any way that the US government, for one, would ever tolerate anything like Bitcoin operating legally in any significant way anywhere they can exert influence and power. Not in Bitcoin's present form, at least.
Heck, just a week ago or so I read a news report that a current IRS agent stated the he is *still*, after months of IRS scandals, being directed to unlawfully/illegally target certain political groups that the IRS is already in hot water for unlawfully/illegally targeting. You think people like that, with that little regard for the rule of law, would allow something with the anonymity and privacy features of Bitcoin as it currently exists, that would frustrate their control & monitoring, to exist?
Not likely!
Heck, the US government is at the point that they need to effectively rob everyone by "printing" money and thereby devalue the worth of all USD, as they cannot now borrow enough to keep their fiat-currency Ponzi scheme afloat, and even running the money presses full speed won't hold off the crash of the USD much longer.
Those converting their USD wealth into Bitcoins then cannot be further robbed of that wealth in the same way because the US government cannot "print" Bitcoins like USD. They cannot allow that to occur in any significant way.
Strat
Make poor people richer, watch crime go away.
You can't "make" people richer, only hand them what someone else worked for. You have to make it so that it is possible to earn their own wealth by starting a business or working for some else who has with as little regulation and taxation and as few barriers to entry to the market for the individual and small business as practicable and reasonable.
History shows that the best way known so far to have the most poor people gain the most wealth the quickest is to ease the pressure of the boot of government regulation and taxation born by small S-Corp/LLC businesses and individual proprietors. It's an extremely expensive, complicated, and legally-dangerous nightmare to start and operate a small business in the US, particularly now in places where business and industry once thrived.
Capitalism, when allowed to operate within sane and reasonable rules with the aim to allow as much freedom as possible while maintaining a non-criminal, equitable, and level playing field for all, has raised more people out of poverty and raised their standards of living higher and faster than any other system ever tried on a national scale, while at the same time empowered them to be more independent of government and enjoy more individual freedom than any other system that has ever been tried. It has also allowed for the greatest leaps in scientific and technological advancements across the board and benefited more people worldwide as a result.
Basically, you have to look toward empowering and freeing the individual over the collective in order to benefit the individual (the poor).
Hell, how about we start by not having cops and city/county regulation-zealots threatening kids and their parents with a lemonade stand on a cardboard box the kids set up in their driveway for a couple days in the summer with infractions and fines, even arrest and jail? Think those kids will ever want to start a business? Will they listen more or less to these same people tell them to stay out of gangs and away from hard drugs? If they do recover from the lemonade-stand trauma and later start a business, how likely is it that they'll try to game the laws and rules of the system they experienced as "the man" growing up?
It's more a wonder to me these days that as many small businesses still survive, even start (though most won't survive), as there are currently, and that unemployment isn't twice as bad at minimum.
The US' major cities will come to resemble Detroit and Chicago if things don't change in major ways. Probably sooner than later. It may already be too late.
Strat
1. Blacks commit violent crimes four to eight times the white rate. Hispanic commit violent crimes at approximately three times the white rate, and Asians at one half to three quarters the white rate.
2. Blacks are as much more violent than whites (four to eight times) as men are more violent than women.
3. Of the approximately 1,700,000 interracial crimes of violence involving blacks and whites, 90 percent are committed by blacks against whites. Blacks are 50 times more likely than whites to commit individual acts of interracial violence. They are up to 250 times more likely than whites to engage in multiple-offender or group interracial violence.
4. There is more black-on-white than black-on-black violent crime. Fifty-six percent of violent crimes committed by blacks have white victims. Only two to three percent of violent crimes committed by whites have black victims.
5. Blacks are twice as likely to commit hate crimes.
*Sources
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States
Bureau of Justice Statistics, Criminal Victimization
Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hate Crime Statistics
----
An "inconvenient truth"?
Strat
Of course US citizens are considered the enemy by the US government. That's been true since at least the 1930s, if not earlier.
The nice thing about this MS/Fed deal is that the need for people like Snowden will be greatly reduced. If their shiny new system is made by MS, any script-kiddie with Wireshark, Backtrack, etc will be able to pwn it.
I'm just not looking forward to all the additional v14gr4 and stock spam that will come from places like the FBI, NSA, DoJ, CIA, etc.
Strat
How does searching work for this kind of tranport/storage?
If you have a bevy of beautiful, friendly, young scantily-clad Polynesian girls that you can sit and watch go through the envelopes searching, who cares how long a search takes?
Now *that's* what I call an upgraded mail service!
Strat
What I am saying is that if you or others intend to do as you advise then they should be prepared for the probable consequences of being thrown into a gitmo hole with no rights and quite probably not heard from again for a very long time, to say the least.
That is a real possibility. That type of government oppression has always occurred when citizens demand their too-large and too-corrupt governments give up power & ingrained criminal behaviors. Look at the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. This is another civil rights battle. Maybe the last one in the US for many, many generations, if this one is lost through fear and apathy.
Where would we be now if those 1960s civil rights activists had stayed home instead of risking everything including their lives? This is simply another set of civil rights issues that happens to include everyone of all ethnicities and political parties that value civil rights.
The way things are going, "internment camps" of one sort or another are a near-certainty if people do nothing and don't make waves. Anyone with even a very modest general knowledge of history could tell you that is what is coming. Heck, it's not even new for the US. Two past US Presidents have ordered large masses of people held in camps and their property seized based on racial ethnicity and/or a families' national origins generations back. Wilson was infamous for imprisoning anyone who spoke out against his policies.
It's always easier to halt a national nose-dive into insanity by an out-of-control government before the dissident-camps, neighborhood checkpoints, and mass grave sites are operational than after.
Strat
"Track them to where they live. Note who they associate with and who their family members are and gather intelligence on them as well."
You are talking about spying. The government is spying on the citizens yes - but if you do it to them you will be charged with espionage and will be tossed into a dark place with what's left of your rights taken away.
If it was just I and one or two friends, that might be a real possibility.
Thousands or tens of thousands all across the country?
Might present a problem. Narrows their choice of reactions down to just a few, all of them bad from their POV.
Besides, lots of people were jailed and even killed during the civil rights marches and protests in the 1960s. Why would this civil rights movement be any different?
How much does one actually value freedom if one is unwilling to take any risks to gain or preserve it?
You know, that whole "Freedom is not free" thing.
I'm not about to throw my (or someone else's) life away for nothing, but I would risk death to preserve freedom. My father did in WW2. His father did in WW1. When it comes right down to it, people willing to put their lives, their fortunes, and their honor on the line is the ONLY thing that keeps people free.
Strat
(Note to NSA spies reading this: yes, I know your filter was triggered by the phrase "blow up the Estonian Parliament", sorry about that, false alarm, nothing to see here)
NSA, are you actually going to fall for that old ploy? Parent post is probably a message to an Estonian sleeper-cell.
Listen, "michelcolman" (is that your code-name?) the NSA aren't your average morons!
Strat
No it's not. It would not be recording the content or purpose of a person entering or leaving, it's simply "metadata", which, as the US government has repeatedly stated, is not the same thing and has no expectation of privacy, as simply seeing someone in public is not against the law, just as who called who where and for how long does not viilate the 4th Amendment.
Collecting metadata is not spying. The POTUS said so publicly.
Strat
That's all great and everything, but people coming and going in public spaces, in plain view, is not "Classified" or "Top Secret" information. At least outside some psychopathic, Kim Jong Il/Un style regime.
Strat
I was and am aware that it's on behalf of foreign enemies. Once you start putting information out on untouchable foreign servers, it doesn't take a great leap to decide that's in fact who you're assisting.
Saying it does, even the US government saying it does, does not make it so. It's simply the authoritarian stance that anything that is kept out of the reach of the authorities is to be treated as treason or betrayal, as authoritarian regimes cannot tolerate citizens being able to communicate and exchange data securely.
And it's not like you'd be exposing information that's in the interests of citizens, you're simply playing tit for tat by gathering intel on employees.
Knowing who the people are that are personally responsible for massively violating the civil rights of hundreds of millions of US citizens is NOT in those citizen's interests?
My! You certainly have a...unique...view of what constitutes the interests of US citizens. To take a line from the character "Morpheus" in "Matrix Revolutions"; "...I am glad it is not up to you."
You would be screwed so fast, and I'm not sure anyone would support your cause. It really seems like a harebrained scheme to me, on par with demanding to take your weapons into NSA buildings.
I'm not advocating going toe-to-toe with armed agents, or being "in your face" with tactics, except that everything be done to the letter of the law, like not trespassing, harassing individuals, etc etc. Something more along the lines of having different random students on successive days doing homework in a park near some facility and quietly noting comings and goings, times, etc. Unless they want to try banning any and all people from being in line of sight of any and every single facility/building/site and/or arrest anyone with a cellphone-camera or pencil & paper within sight?
If you do find anyone crazy enough to do this with you, I suggest at least having a long hard think about it and doing a lot of research on every aspect, rather than jumping in head first while waving the flag around.
I didn't make it to being over a half-century in age by being rash or stupid. Well, except possibly in replying to some /. posts/replies that I should not have wasted my time with. Violence and armed revolt is not the way to battle the type of tyranny that is emerging in the US. It will only give the government an opening to clamp down. It will take a more Ghandi/MLK style approach. It is, after all, a matter of civil rights not much different from their struggles. I feel that simply shining light on the individuals responsible for massively violating the civil rights of the entire population is very Ghandi/MLK-esque in style.
Strat
Great idea. I'm sure this would not fall under espionage laws.
Since espionage involves gathering information on behalf of foreign enemies of the United States, then that would mean that the citizens of the United States would be now considered the same as foreign enemies of the United States.
If that's the case, I think everyone would benefit in having the government make clear that US citizens, rather than being free citizens, are actually domestic-but-foreign enemies of the United States. At least then, the necessary changes can start being made going forward.
Besides that, so what if they do arrest people? What, do you think standing up to a wildly out of control national government will be easy or not come with a price?
How much is freedom and civil rights worth to you?
They were worth much to a black lady that wouldn't sit at the back of the bus or others that faced riot police, fire hoses, and dogs. Were they crazy or stupid for making those stands against an oppressive government and taking those risks? This is just as much an issue of civil rights. It's just not race-specific this time, everyone's civil rights are at stake.
Strat
The answer is to turn the tables on them, "flip the script", as it were.
Set up rotating surveillance teams at NSA, DHS, CIA, TSA, and FISA facilities. If one person/group is caught recording video, etc have another person/team standing by to take their place when theyâ(TM)re ordered to move on. Create and build up lists of personnel and dossiers on those seen coming & going.
Track them to where they live. Note who they associate with and who their family members are and gather intelligence on them as well. Record addresses, vehicle make/model/year and license plate number(s), etc. Correlate against public information and databases, DMV/court records, property records, tax and political contribution records, etc etc.
Create a website to host and share this data publicly, and host it somewhere like Ecuador or Hong Kong that will tell the US government to go pound sand.
Put THEM and their activities, travel, and associations in the spotlight for a change. Cockroaches and similar vermin hate bright light.
It seems that the US government has chosen to fight terrorism not by addressing the root causes and the people actually at fault, but by simply becoming the biggest terrorists of them all and driving out the competition.
The US government is far and away a much larger threat, by orders of magnitude, to the citizens of the US (and the rest of the world as well) than all the terrorist groups, foreign & domestic, combined.
Strat
Fifteen years ago, I'd have been all for causing a disruption. Exercising my self-evident liberties and thwarting The Man, when he came down on me for it.
Now, I have a fucked up back from a car crash, a fucked up knee from wrestling, a mortgage, people depending on me, a professional career, and neighbors. The amount of ways they could absolutely obliterate my life at their slightest whim are uncountable. As much as I'm all about people doing something and not just playing "Reddit-pretend-rebel/protestor", we are beyond the time of, say, the 90s -- where civil disobedience and voicing your dissent or even just being a vocal weirdo just got you either a knock on the door or a two hour trip into and out of your local lockup. We're in a time where you become an instant "child molester" or you just disappear or your finances go all permanently wonky, or you get "investigated" and now your neighbors and employer and coworkers all wonder what you've been up to that has raised the interest of The Man.
You're right. You might just get an unpleasant visit and some unpleasant consequences for taking a stand.
One thing is for certain, however, and has been proven true repeatedly throughout history.
If you don't take a stand, odds approach unity that you and those you love absolutely *will* suffer far worse consequences.
Remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer?
"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, and straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?" - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
"First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I'd be happy to leave people who will not take a stand to their fate and keep my mouth shut, but unfortunately, everyone else including myself will be forced to share the horrific and certain consequences of their fear and inaction.
Those consequences also will not limit themselves to Americans or America. Imagine the full breadth of US economic & military reach and power in the hands of a Kim Jong Il/Un, or a Hitler or Ahmadinejad. It would be in the best interests of the rest of the world to help the people of the US however they can in taking back control of the wildly-out-of-control US Federal government. The alternative, as history has shown over and over, is not good for anyone anywhere in the long run.
"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana
Strat
Musician here. Spot on, at least as to the record labels having historically horribly abused & cheated the artists.
To get some idea how this works and how bad it typically is for the majority of artists who are, or are trying to become, "signed" with a label, check out this piece by Steve Albini on negativeland.com
"This oft-referenced article is from the early â(TM)90s, and originally appeared in Maximum Rock ânâ(TM) Roll magazine. While some of the information and figures listed here are dated, it is still a useful and informative article."
http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17.
One of the record labels' top priorities is controlling the means of distribution. That's the actual, underlying reason they are pushing DRM and copyright-related laws/regulations, particularly those that involve the internet and digital (copyable) media formats, streaming, etc. It's aimed ultimately at erecting barriers to entry for independent artists in both marketing & distribution channels using the internet as a vehicle.
Once it becomes commonplace for artists in the top-100 to be independents without a mainstream "label" contract, the old recording labels and their associated parasites will be truly doomed. They know this. That's the reason for the war on sharing, various forms of independent distribution/marketing channels, and internet radio.
Want to support artists? Go to shows. Buy CDs & merch. Share their music with those who haven't heard of them. Encourage those friends to do the same. Tell the bar/club/venue owner when you like the band, and that you'd come back and bring friends when they play there next time.
There are tons of amazingly-talented and hard-working artists & bands playing in bars/clubs/festivals/etc all over. Simply not buying cookie-cutter record-label music is not enough. You need to support the bands and artists you would rather see take their place.
Keep in mind that even the members in most above-average-talent bar/club bands could make more money working part-time at McD's or Walmart. A modest-but-decent used bar-gigging-quality guitar can easily cost over $500. Used modest-but-decent amp easily over $1,000. Let's not even talk drum sets.
That's also not counting the PA and lights that many small/medium bars/clubs do not provide, and then a vehicle/trailer to haul all that crap around with and all the costs associated with that.
Strat
Sorry, but the Soviets didn't invent that trick. If anything they copied it from the Nazis, but then the Nazis didn't originate it either. Perhaps they copied it from the Inquisition, or from any of many other prior "practitioners of the art". It's so old that one can't even say how old it is. It *probably* didn't predate language.
The amazing thing is that it still works.
Actually, if you count it as a subset of propaganda, then you need to go back to Edward Bernays and the Wilson administration's implementation of the first government propaganda agency, the Committee on Public Information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
----
Bernays's public relations efforts helped to popularize Freud's theories in the United States. Bernays also pioneered the PR industry's use of psychology and other social sciences to design its public persuasion campaigns:
" If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits."
He called this scientific technique of opinion-molding the 'engineering of consent'.
Bernays began his career as press agent in 1913, counseling to theaters, concerts and the ballet. In 1917, US President Woodrow Wilson engaged George Creel and realizing one of his ideas, he founded the Committee on Public Information. Bernays, Carl Byoir and John Price Jones worked together to influence public opinion towards supporting American participation in World War I.
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Goebbels owned a copy of Bernays's book on the subject IIRC, and acknowledged Bernays's and Wilson's achievements with the use of propaganda domestically and utilized many of their techniques and principals in Nazi propaganda programs. I believe Stalin is reported to have taken many propaganda ideas and concepts from Bernays's work as well..
Wilson was a real racist/segregationist, political/policy-opposition-arresting piece of work all on his own. People should read about the actions taken and policies enacted by Wilson domestically. In a lot of ways, like the Executive Branch/DoJ running wild, it resembles our current situation with a DoJ exceeding it's powers and deliberately inflicting illegal, un-Constitutional, and criminal injustice for political reasons.
Strat