I respect and admire your enthusiasm, because I too think that corruption in politics is one of the great crises of our society, and we need to fight it hard. But I think the attitude of "doing something is better than nothing" is dangerous. After all, in tzar-ruled Russia many people thought that some kind of change was better than nothing, and they ended up with the Soviet Union:) Yes, we need action, and it doesn't need to be perfect, but it does need to be at least in the right direction. I think establishing laws regulating what opinions people can express on the public airwaves is the opposite direction we should be moving.
It may sound cliche, but I think the solution to "bad speech" isn't censorship, but more "good speech". The reason campaign TV ads have become such a problem is because they're extremely propagandistic, and since they're so expensive they allow one person to tell a bunch of lies without being rebutted or forced to explain themselves. The solution to that isn't to shut that person up, it's to promote new media that allows everyone to participate. If ordinary people, or other politicians are able to produce relevant counterpoints and contradicting facts, then bullshit campaign commercials won't be as effective anymore.
I think we need some fairness in politics before we will see some fairness elsewhere.
It's kind of a chicken-and-egg scenario, isn't it? We need a fair government to have a fair society, and we need a fair society to produce a fair government. I support and participate in efforts on both fronts, because, honestly I think both fights are pretty much the same. As society becomes more organized and empowered to take care of itself, government is be forced to be less corrupt and obey the will of the people. As government is made to be more fair and equally accessible, society can more easily confront and solve problems of inequality and oppression.
How about this: No political advertising unless the money comes out of that shared pool, under the direction of one of the candidates.
Ok, but a rule like you're suggesting, in order to be effective, would need to effectively prevent anybody from expressing any opinions (or discussing any facts) in commercials which could have a significant impact on a particular political candidate. Because otherwise it's way too easy to just create a subtle commercial and claim "it's not a political ad!".
So Jimmy, a human rights activist, wants to raise awareness about atrocities in Iraq (which happen to be due to a war that the Republicans are outspokenly in favor of). He pays (from his own money) to air a commercial informing people about how severe the problems in Iraq are, and asking for support for his charity organization. Suddenly, he finds he's under investigation for illegal campaigning, because his commercial had distinct anti-Republican overtones!
Or conversely, a religious right organization wants to air an informational commercial about their Christian Adoption program, which provides an alternative to the "evils" of abortion. They just want to tell about the services they offer and why they provide them. Similarly, this organization could find itself in violation of such a strict anti-campaigning law.
The problem is that there are lots of people who are engaging in political speech outside of campaigns for politicians, but their speech can often have a direct and very influential effect on campaigns. For example, if an independent research body, like Amnesty International, or the American Heart Association, produced a report that happened to be seriously unfavorable to a particular candidate, would they be prohibited from talking about it in their commercials? I would hope not. But if not, how does the law distinguish between a legitimate independent party engaging in political speech, and an illegitimate independent party who is indirectly campaigning?
There's just too much gray area, and when it comes to censoring political messages - which, no mistaking, is what we're talking about - any ambiguity is far too easily turned to the advantage of whoever happens to be enforcing the laws (or filing the lawsuits).
No even saying a candidate's name in a paid advertisement, or in any show even partially funded by the candidate or any organization which exists specifically to support the candidate or their party.
Like I said before, it's trivial to make a subtle ad which shamelessly plugs one candidate without mentioning his/her name. Now all you're left with is outlawing vague things, like mentioning certain buzzwords associated with campaigns, or certain hot issues. To me, this is completely unacceptable, because the more vague the restrictions become, the easier they are to use to silence people engaging in legitimate speech.
I hate campaign commercials too, don't get me wrong. I hate the corrupting influence of money in politics, too, I just think the solution is a lot deeper than just passing some laws that say "Play nice and don't use your money to influence politics, mkay?". Obviously, these fuckers aren't playing nice, that's the name of the game in DC. They'll use whatever tricks they can to get around campaign regulations, and as long as they have vast amounts of money, they'll succeed.
It's not possible to have a radically unequal distribution of wealth and power in almost every sector of our society, but then set aside political campaigns and say "This shall be equal for all participants". We need equality and fairness across the board before we'll see equality and fairness in politics.
That's sketchy as hell. What constitutes a campaign commercial?
Do you have to explicitly say "Vote for Candidate A"? Because if so, I can make a commercial that never mentions Candidate A, and just smears Candidate B.
Are you prevented from mentioning any candidates? Because if so I can make a commercial that just talks about the issues, with the subtext of who to vote for being very obvious to anyone who pays attention to their positions.
What if I want to show a commercial that's genuinely unrelated to the campaign, but has implications for the race? Like what if I want to pay for an announcement about how global warming is a real danger, and we should all do our part to cut emissions? Am I suddenly guilty of a campaign contribution, because what I say implies that one of the candidates is a liar?
Legislating what political material can and can't be shown in the media is an extremely slippery slope, and it's guaranteed to be exploited one way or the other. If the legislation is weak people will just make their ads subtle enough to get through the loopholes, and if it's strong, it will make people afraid to air anything other than completely apolitical material for fear of breaking these campaign reform laws.
I guess I'm not seeing any glaringly obvious negatives to this, from a citizen's perspective, which may answer the question of "why don't we do this already?"
The major problem I see with regulating campaign finance is actually a free speech issue. Imagine that we have the system you suggested, and two candidates, Bob and Sue each receive $1 million to run their campaigns. Bob is poor, and represents the interests of lower-class people, while Sue is wealthy and represents rich individuals and corporations. Sue can't spend more than $1 mil on her campaign, but Jim, a wealthy oil tycoon really wants her to win, and so he personally finances a $30 million TV ad campaign saying all sorts of bad things about Bob.
This is a huge exploit, and I can't see a fair way to legislate around it. If I want to personally spend a lot of money to make a political statement about one or both candidates - or more abstractly, the issues that they're running on - who has the right to stop me? Nobody can, and nobody should be able to. You can stop official campaigns from taking bribes, but you can't avoid the informal wink-nudge of independent parties doing what is essentially unregulated campaign spending.
What this means to me is that there is no legislative quick fix to prevent rich entities from corrupting our political process. The central problem, even deeper than Lessig has gone, is the dramatic, extreme inequality within our society. I'm not going to claim that everyone should be soviet-style equal, but when you have a society where 10% of the people control 90% of the wealth, exploits like this are pretty much guaranteed.
An environment of extreme economic inequality cannot, unfortunately, create a functioning non-corrupt democratic system.
there are paid people in DC arguing on your behalf. They are ALL lobbyists. And that doesn't make them corrupt.
Maybe they aren't corrupt personally, but if our system of government is such that the more lobbyists you hire and fancy dinners you pay for the more influence you have, then our overall system of government is very corrupt. If having lots of money gives you lots of sway over legislation and government matters, then the currently successful can exploit the system to create laws and policies that keep them on top forever (see "patents").
I think I've been misunderstood. You're right that we ought to be able to depend on the government, seeing as how we're the ones who make it up, pay its bills, defend it, and do all the actual work in this country. You're right that the government is morally obligated to be dependable and supportive of the American populace.
But it's not. And in its current form, I don't think it ever will be dependable. Any institution with as much power as the US government is pretty much guaranteed to become corrupt. I think people need to stop pretending like the next election (always the next one) will change everything, and realize that the only way we'll get any peace is if we stop counting on a deadbeat government to solve our problems - 'cause it won't.
And with regard to the tax issue, I think people will be a lot more willing to cut off the government (stop paying taxes to support all those bad things, like the war and corrupt laws) when they realize that it's their community who is helping them out when they need it and sticking up for them when they're in trouble, not the government. The less needed the government is, the better behaved it has to be, lest we should decide to get rid of it entirely.
i hardly see how banning this game is going to keep you from being an informed adult who actively engages the government.
Sure, I can tell you can't. Then again, I don't see what the big deal is about banning the movie Apocalypse Now. it's a violent movie with disturbing themes, and I don't see how banning it will prevent anyone from being an informed adult who engages the government.
The reason we have freedom of speech across the board is because we know that sometimes someone has something important to say that nobody else gets - or worse, that everybody else hates. We know that even if a book, movie, or game seems stupid, tasteless, degrading, or pointless to us, it may actually be important in some way we can't appreciate. So we've created a standard that all speech should be free, regardless of our personal evaluation of its merit.
Waive all your rights for the privilege of living under a system that gives you free health care.
You're conflating two issues that have little, if anything, to do with each other. There's no reason we can't build a society that respects the absolute right of every individual to speak their mind freely and to be healthy. The dichotomy of economic security vs. personal freedom is a false one that was created by authoritarian communists ("We'll make sure everyone gets their fair share, but you have to give us total political power") and authoritarian capitalists ("We'll let you say whatever you like, but you have to put up with being constantly screwed by people richer than you").
Capitalist regimes want us to believe that the exploitation, poverty, and vast inequality that their system creates is a necessary evil that we must tolerate to enjoy personal freedom of speech, association, religion, etc.
Conversely, communist regimes want us to believe that the oppression, regimentation, and censorship that their system employs is a necessary evil that is required to provide everyone with free health care, housing, food, education, transportation, and fair compensation for our work.
These are both lies created by authoritarians to convince us to give up our power to them. We can have personal freedom AND economic justice if we demand it, and I'm pretty sure Michael Moore is doing just that.
Isn't this their job just as it is our job to remove them from power once they no longer serve the will of the people?
Yes, but we can't wait until the government has become completely corrupted and turned against the public, because by that time it will be too late. Our job as the public is to act as a check, to make sure the government can't claim for itself the powers that it could then use to destroy our democracy.
One of the most important tools to destroy democracy is censorship, and it must be opposed at all costs. If we vote to give the government the power to censor our information environment, we have effectively given up our ability to make informed, democratic decisions about all future issues. Censorship-empowered governments are fundamentally incompatible with democracy.
I wish I could say I've done more to change the system...
It's not too late! There's a lot yet to be done, and you don't have to be anyone special to do it. One word of advice: start small. Get involved now with local efforts that are already established/organized. For real, like today. Start doing research on the internet. Tell me whereabouts you are and what issues you're especially passionate about if you want some recommendations.
It doesn't have to be a group/organization that has the same position as you on every single issue, the important thing is to get involved with people who are already doing things to create positive change. You'll meet people with similar ideas, you'll learn strategies and tactics, and most importantly, you'll be inspired and motivated by the experience of fighting injustice (and sometimes winning!), which will give you the energy and dedication you need to launch your own efforts.
I favor a government with no central point of failure, but then trying to get a crowd to agree on anything important is near impossible. (see congress) And you would still have the probability that some of those people vote with their wallets and not with their hearts or heads.
You may be an anarchist. Or at least, you may find that an anarchist analysis is pretty close in line with your own concerns about large centralized government, and the corrupting influence of money and greed on government.
I think the biggest reason government (and business) is so fucked up right now is because as their supporters we allow them to be. We allow them to be fucked up not by voting for them, but by depending on them. We can't take care of ourselves or each other without the government. We can't have functional communities where people look out for each other and make sure we're all safe without the government's heavy hand over us, forcing us to behave. Hell, people won't even share their bounty when others are in need, so we get the government to take it from them, and "share" it how the government sees fit.
So in my mind, the biggest thing you can do now to be part of the solution is stop depending on the government. Many, many people in our society put up with the government's abuses of power because they believe that if we took that power away, we'd have mass chaos and "the law of the jungle" would reign. Prove them wrong. Get involved in non-governmental organizations. Help out the needy in your community voluntarily. Speak up for people who are being treated unfairly, and stand up against those who try to boss everyone else around. Support organizations that do things that the government won't, or do them better than the government can. Basically, stop thinking only about yourself, and start thinking about how to build a society that will be less and less dependent on the government as time goes on. Be a reasoning ethical person, and demand the same from others.
Your line of reasoning confuses me. It seems that you're saying:
A) The US is not facist or communist.
B) the only states where [routine suppression of free speech] happened, were either fascist or communist totalitarian regimes.
C) what he describes [in his work] is closer to a totalitarian secret police than to anything resembling even America.
Since A and B, therefore C is false, right? My dog bit a stranger, but let's use this same line of reasoning to explain why my dog could not have bitten him:
A) My dog is not a bad dog.
B) The only dogs that bite people are bad dogs.
C) He says he was bitten by my dog.
Since A and B, therefore C is false...only it's not, and this circular logic based on fairly arbitrary assumptions only serves to distract us from looking at the actual facts of what actually happened and what it means.
Yes, but the downside is that you'll have to spend the rest of your life with a known criminal: you. Personally I think that's too high a price to pay for a lousy Dell laptop.
Hyperbole (like metaphors, similes, and everything else) is like a condiment in food. If half your dish is salt or pepper, you probably overdid it.
If America was the kind of fascist oligarchy that he always describes
I don't think Moore ever called America a "facist oligarchy" - that must be your exaggerated representation of his perspective. A little hyperbolic, don't you think?
by the time you've described something as a totalitarian plot for the 1000'th time
1000 times? Really? Did you count them? Surely that's a bit of an exaggeration.
he's _not_ going to end up with the Gestapo on his doorstep and with the SS burning his movies and book, either.
Again, I can't recall Moore expressing any concern about the Gestapo or the SS doing these things. Perhaps you just brought up Nazis and book-burning as a sort of over-the-top caricature of the concerns Moore does express?
Stances basically saying "my version is by definition perfect, and everyone else is a fascist peddling crooked crap solutions" aren't really doing anyone any good.
I was worried that your interpretation of Moore's message is a bit extreme, and possibly borders on what's called "putting words in his mouth" (after all, he never said that, and you'd have to stretch quite a bit to interpret anything he has said into such a statement)...
But seeing how strongly you oppose hyperbole and exaggeration, I can see you'd never resort to such tactics.
but aspiring to present both arguments in as equal a light as possible.
Overall balance in the media is important. It's important for people to know all the facts, and be able to come to a decision themselves, instead of being brainwashed with only one side of the story.
However. Having a balanced media environment doesn't mean everything that comes out of everyone's mouth has to be "fair and balanced". In fact, your implied belief that documentaries - or any other media - ever did this is absurd. And your further assertion that if people can't live up to your standard of "objectivity", they shouldn't speak out at all is scary.
All people and organizations have a bias resulting from their cultural background, how they've been educated, their life experiences, political affiliations, etc. Just because we don't always notice it doesn't mean it's not there. The balance comes through allowing different viewpoints and critiques of the status quo to be heard. Sure, each newscast and each documentary may be slanted this way or that, but the overall effect of having a diverse range of perspectives and information on each issue is that every individual has access to a full set of facts.
So, applied to Michael Moore, I'd say that yes, his account is biased just like all other "factual coverage" of the health care issue in the press, by politicians and interest groups. However, since the perspective he's bringing to the issue hasn't been very well represented to the average person, his film plays a very important role in showing "the other side" of the debate. Obviously nobody should formulate an opinion on health care based only on the film, but they probably shouldn't form an opinion on health care without considering his arguments either.
Capitalism is the only viable system as it's a natural extension of the basic instincts and desires inherent in the human psyche
Capitalism is based centrally on respect for the sanctity of private property and the honoring of official contracts. Our basic instincts and desires are to take whatever we want (and are strong enough to take), and do whatever we feel like (and are strong enough to get away with). Neither contracts nor the concept of private property are "natural" in the way you're describing.
And what's more, you could argue that the tendency of people to gather together in tribes and share their resources collectively is natural, and therefore communism/collectivism is the proper "natural" system. I'm not making that argument because it's pointless. Trying to defend things on the basis that they're more "natural" is ridiculous and irrelevant. Do they work, or not? Do they create happiness and well-being for as many people as possible? I think capitalism fails at this, but it has little to do with it being natural or unnatural, it's simply a flawed system.
Do consumers REALLY need another 5,000 Coke commericals nationwide today, too? Are they afraid that we'll all of a sudden forget they exist?
It's a good question, it seems intuitive that those brands are so deeply entrenched in our collective awareness and habits that they've sort of transcended advertising. It seems like we could never see another ad for Nike, and we'd still remember them and buy their shoes just as much.
But it's not true. The reason we can tell it's not true is that companies like Nike universally continue to spend gobs upon gobs of money on advertising campaigns, which they could've otherwise kept in their pockets. I think the main reason mega-brands advertise is not because they're afraid we'll forget, but because they're afraid we'll start paying attention (or more attention) to their competitors, or even other industries we'd rather spend our money on. Nike doesn't care if we remember them in general, they care if they're the top brand on our minds when we walk into the shoe store, and that we associate them with all the cool things of today.
In this way, advertising is like an arms race. You may have enough advertising to let people know about your product, but another advertiser is just going to step up their campaign and draw even more attention to themselves (and consequently away from you). Keeping the attention on your brand is what keeps you alive as a corporation, so you have no choice but to increase your advertising campaign to even more intensity...they respond in kind, and the cycle continues.
Of course, the result of this marketing cold war is what we have today: an almost completely ad saturated environment. It's difficult to look anywhere in an urban environment without seeing a logo or advertisement - it's so universal that people start to tune it out as background noise, which simply means advertisers must come up with newer, more subtle or outrageous or manipulative ways of increasing their brand awareness and appeal.
Oh yeah, and we could use some actual candidates to vote for.
Not that I'm complaining about the bill, but the idea that my vote for either Corporate Tool A or Corporate Tool B will now be recorded accurately isn't quite enough to make me celebrate the return of American democracy:)
People organize themselves into a larger entity for self preservation, war is an extension of that organization.
That's a good summary of what I'm trying to say. People group themselves into organizations to create safety, peace, and stability in their environment, which is also probably inevitable. But when those organizations grow beyond a certain point, they become disassociated from the individuals who compose them, and become abstract "meta-entities" ruled - or at least steered - by a small minority of bureaucrats or elites. It's exactly because these entities are disassociated from the consequences that war has on the people who do the fighting that they're so willing to engage in it. Keep the institutions small, and directly controlled by and involved with their members, and war will stay at a minimum, if not disappear.
Iraq is a perfect example of decentralized institutions and parties fighting
It's true. I guess we're kind of talking definitions now, but I wouldn't really call a lot of the killing that occurs in Iraq a "war" for exactly that reason. Obviously, the US army and other institutions like crime syndicates or warlords can be said to be waging war in Iraq, and they're certainly killing a lot of people. I think we should keep in mind that religious institutions often exert an informal but very strong hierarchical control over people, so that when a religious leader commands "all faithful followers" to do something, that does count as an institution waging war in my book. But a significant part of the violence that's happening in Iraq is as you say, just some guys murdering some other guys because they're angry, scared, or just plain hate them, not because anyone ordered them to. They're not part of an army, they're not using coordinated violence to support some large institution, they're just murdering. So it's not really war as we know it.
The thing that makes Iraq so remarkable is of course, that these murders are happening constantly, in huge numbers. The reason is that both weapons and inflammatory propaganda are flowing readily in from both Islamists in places like Saudi Arabia and Iran, and also from places like US and Israel (usually via some more palatable third party). Washington DC is the murder capitol of the US largely because of gang warfare, and I'm pretty sure that if you started disseminating incendiary propaganda and rocket launchers to anyone ready to fight the opposing gang, DC too would start showing violence comparable to a war.
On second thought, perhaps you could consider those Iraqis part of a war, because although they aren't aware of it, they're playing a role created and supported by those governments and religious institutions who are funneling arms and hatred into the region. The conflict in Iraq is, on a large scale, still very much a conflict between huge institutions, but the people being enlisted or compelled to fight in it may be unaware of their allegiances.
The ultimate point I'm getting at is probably clear - if it weren't for the power struggle going on between governments and religious institutions in Iraq, the violence we see would not even approach the scale it's on now. There would certainly still be murders, probably as you suggested over things like difference in philosophy or religion, greed, or simply desperation, but nothing like what we're seeing now.
That being said its inevitable. Its like saying Hurricanes are bad, we should get rid of them.
Conflict? Inevitable. Violence? Inevitable. War? Not so fast. War isn't just a synonym for human conflict, it's organized, methodical conflict between hierarchical entities (or sometimes by one such entity against a more abstract foe. see "War on Terror" or "War on Drugs")
There is a dispassionate, premeditated aspect to war - soldiers kill and die not because they're angry, not because they're scared, not even because they want something the enemy has, but because they're ordered to. War exists because people allow themselves to become tools, components in a vastly larger entity called a State, or a religion, or some other organized body (maybe someday soon, a corporation). When individuals fight and kill each other, we call it murder or violence or crime - these things are inevitable. But when the institutions themselves clash, it is war.
So my point is that war will exist only to the extent that we allow our society to be organized into more and more centralized institutions. The bigger the institutions, the bigger the war, and the more "tools" that die unnoticed each time the titans clash. Conversely, the more decentralized and egalitarian we make our institutions, the less we depend on and support huge authority structures, the less likely those institutions will be to drag us into war.
I think it's a very interesting and probably a good idea, but it's a stretch to say that it'd encourage companies to prolong the life of their products through replacement parts, better workmanship, etc.
Manufacturers produce poorly made appliances for two reasons: 1) It saves them money in the manufacturing process, obviously, but also 2) It forces people to buy their appliance (or the latest model) multiple times. You may think that if someone's appliance broke, they'd immediately go to the competitor, but you'd be surprised how many people go out and buy the next-generation iPod because their old one broke after only a year and a half. Odds are if that original iPod had lasted for 5 years they wouldn't have upgraded, so whether it was deliberate or not, Apple's fragile manufacturing becomes profitable in cases like that.
The money they make by selling you a whole new product to replace your cheaply made, broken one is far more than they'd make in interest from their escrow account, so the most profitable choice is obvious.
Actually, landfills are the worst possible thing for organic material, and better suited for non-biodegradable materials like plastic and metal.
The stuff in landfills is very compressed, to the point that the critters and chemical processes which are usually responsible for biodegradation can't do their job. We essentially entomb our trash. Put a banana peel in the middle of a typical landfill, and it'll last for ages, permanently adding to the mountain of trash. Personally, I'd rather someone throw that peel into the bushes than into the garbage, since at least in the bushes it'll turn back to dirt.
There is a great method for recycling organic waste though, and it's been around way before we invented metal/glass/plastic/paper recycling: compost. It's easy, take your organic matter and put it in a pile of a bunch of other rotting organic matter. Wait a few weeks. Like magic, you have some nice, innocuous dirt in place of your gross smelly trash! Bonus: You can then grow plants to eat very well with said dirt, or if you have a lot, sell it to someone else who grows plants.
So enlighten me how context preservation applies to this situation whatsoever?
According to the core security policy, Apache is allowed (by SELinux) to read any files with type httpd_sys_content_t. The files under/var/www have this type, which is part of their context. When you copy files from there without preserving their context, they acquire the new type of wherever they were copied, which Apache probably isn't allowed to read.
Therefore, if you make sure to preserve the context so that the type remains httpd_sys_content_t, you should have no problems.
Of course, SELinux does not protect computers from the biggest hole, the wetware between the keyboard and chair.:)
Actually, when properly configured it does a pretty good job of that, too. One of the interesting features that's in the NSA spec is MLS (Multi Level Security), which is designed to grant very specific and strictly defined privileges to each user - for example in a government scenario where some people have "Secret" clearance, others "Top Secret", etc. This ensures that even if the person is a huge moron or being expertly scammed, they can still only fuck up the specific files and processes they've been given access to, which in SELinux can be very tightly limited without stepping on the legitimate user's toes too much.
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I would say it is better to try something
:) Yes, we need action, and it doesn't need to be perfect, but it does need to be at least in the right direction. I think establishing laws regulating what opinions people can express on the public airwaves is the opposite direction we should be moving.
I respect and admire your enthusiasm, because I too think that corruption in politics is one of the great crises of our society, and we need to fight it hard. But I think the attitude of "doing something is better than nothing" is dangerous. After all, in tzar-ruled Russia many people thought that some kind of change was better than nothing, and they ended up with the Soviet Union
It may sound cliche, but I think the solution to "bad speech" isn't censorship, but more "good speech". The reason campaign TV ads have become such a problem is because they're extremely propagandistic, and since they're so expensive they allow one person to tell a bunch of lies without being rebutted or forced to explain themselves. The solution to that isn't to shut that person up, it's to promote new media that allows everyone to participate. If ordinary people, or other politicians are able to produce relevant counterpoints and contradicting facts, then bullshit campaign commercials won't be as effective anymore.
I think we need some fairness in politics before we will see some fairness elsewhere.
It's kind of a chicken-and-egg scenario, isn't it? We need a fair government to have a fair society, and we need a fair society to produce a fair government. I support and participate in efforts on both fronts, because, honestly I think both fights are pretty much the same. As society becomes more organized and empowered to take care of itself, government is be forced to be less corrupt and obey the will of the people. As government is made to be more fair and equally accessible, society can more easily confront and solve problems of inequality and oppression.
How about this: No political advertising unless the money comes out of that shared pool, under the direction of one of the candidates.
Ok, but a rule like you're suggesting, in order to be effective, would need to effectively prevent anybody from expressing any opinions (or discussing any facts) in commercials which could have a significant impact on a particular political candidate. Because otherwise it's way too easy to just create a subtle commercial and claim "it's not a political ad!".
So Jimmy, a human rights activist, wants to raise awareness about atrocities in Iraq (which happen to be due to a war that the Republicans are outspokenly in favor of). He pays (from his own money) to air a commercial informing people about how severe the problems in Iraq are, and asking for support for his charity organization. Suddenly, he finds he's under investigation for illegal campaigning, because his commercial had distinct anti-Republican overtones!
Or conversely, a religious right organization wants to air an informational commercial about their Christian Adoption program, which provides an alternative to the "evils" of abortion. They just want to tell about the services they offer and why they provide them. Similarly, this organization could find itself in violation of such a strict anti-campaigning law.
The problem is that there are lots of people who are engaging in political speech outside of campaigns for politicians, but their speech can often have a direct and very influential effect on campaigns. For example, if an independent research body, like Amnesty International, or the American Heart Association, produced a report that happened to be seriously unfavorable to a particular candidate, would they be prohibited from talking about it in their commercials? I would hope not. But if not, how does the law distinguish between a legitimate independent party engaging in political speech, and an illegitimate independent party who is indirectly campaigning?
There's just too much gray area, and when it comes to censoring political messages - which, no mistaking, is what we're talking about - any ambiguity is far too easily turned to the advantage of whoever happens to be enforcing the laws (or filing the lawsuits).
No even saying a candidate's name in a paid advertisement, or in any show even partially funded by the candidate or any organization which exists specifically to support the candidate or their party.
Like I said before, it's trivial to make a subtle ad which shamelessly plugs one candidate without mentioning his/her name. Now all you're left with is outlawing vague things, like mentioning certain buzzwords associated with campaigns, or certain hot issues. To me, this is completely unacceptable, because the more vague the restrictions become, the easier they are to use to silence people engaging in legitimate speech.
I hate campaign commercials too, don't get me wrong. I hate the corrupting influence of money in politics, too, I just think the solution is a lot deeper than just passing some laws that say "Play nice and don't use your money to influence politics, mkay?". Obviously, these fuckers aren't playing nice, that's the name of the game in DC. They'll use whatever tricks they can to get around campaign regulations, and as long as they have vast amounts of money, they'll succeed.
It's not possible to have a radically unequal distribution of wealth and power in almost every sector of our society, but then set aside political campaigns and say "This shall be equal for all participants". We need equality and fairness across the board before we'll see equality and fairness in politics.
outlaw all campaign commercials
That's sketchy as hell. What constitutes a campaign commercial?
Do you have to explicitly say "Vote for Candidate A"? Because if so, I can make a commercial that never mentions Candidate A, and just smears Candidate B.
Are you prevented from mentioning any candidates? Because if so I can make a commercial that just talks about the issues, with the subtext of who to vote for being very obvious to anyone who pays attention to their positions.
What if I want to show a commercial that's genuinely unrelated to the campaign, but has implications for the race? Like what if I want to pay for an announcement about how global warming is a real danger, and we should all do our part to cut emissions? Am I suddenly guilty of a campaign contribution, because what I say implies that one of the candidates is a liar?
Legislating what political material can and can't be shown in the media is an extremely slippery slope, and it's guaranteed to be exploited one way or the other. If the legislation is weak people will just make their ads subtle enough to get through the loopholes, and if it's strong, it will make people afraid to air anything other than completely apolitical material for fear of breaking these campaign reform laws.
I guess I'm not seeing any glaringly obvious negatives to this, from a citizen's perspective, which may answer the question of "why don't we do this already?"
The major problem I see with regulating campaign finance is actually a free speech issue. Imagine that we have the system you suggested, and two candidates, Bob and Sue each receive $1 million to run their campaigns. Bob is poor, and represents the interests of lower-class people, while Sue is wealthy and represents rich individuals and corporations. Sue can't spend more than $1 mil on her campaign, but Jim, a wealthy oil tycoon really wants her to win, and so he personally finances a $30 million TV ad campaign saying all sorts of bad things about Bob.
This is a huge exploit, and I can't see a fair way to legislate around it. If I want to personally spend a lot of money to make a political statement about one or both candidates - or more abstractly, the issues that they're running on - who has the right to stop me? Nobody can, and nobody should be able to. You can stop official campaigns from taking bribes, but you can't avoid the informal wink-nudge of independent parties doing what is essentially unregulated campaign spending.
What this means to me is that there is no legislative quick fix to prevent rich entities from corrupting our political process. The central problem, even deeper than Lessig has gone, is the dramatic, extreme inequality within our society. I'm not going to claim that everyone should be soviet-style equal, but when you have a society where 10% of the people control 90% of the wealth, exploits like this are pretty much guaranteed.
An environment of extreme economic inequality cannot, unfortunately, create a functioning non-corrupt democratic system.
there are paid people in DC arguing on your behalf. They are ALL lobbyists. And that doesn't make them corrupt.
Maybe they aren't corrupt personally, but if our system of government is such that the more lobbyists you hire and fancy dinners you pay for the more influence you have, then our overall system of government is very corrupt. If having lots of money gives you lots of sway over legislation and government matters, then the currently successful can exploit the system to create laws and policies that keep them on top forever (see "patents").
I think I've been misunderstood. You're right that we ought to be able to depend on the government, seeing as how we're the ones who make it up, pay its bills, defend it, and do all the actual work in this country. You're right that the government is morally obligated to be dependable and supportive of the American populace.
But it's not. And in its current form, I don't think it ever will be dependable. Any institution with as much power as the US government is pretty much guaranteed to become corrupt. I think people need to stop pretending like the next election (always the next one) will change everything, and realize that the only way we'll get any peace is if we stop counting on a deadbeat government to solve our problems - 'cause it won't.
And with regard to the tax issue, I think people will be a lot more willing to cut off the government (stop paying taxes to support all those bad things, like the war and corrupt laws) when they realize that it's their community who is helping them out when they need it and sticking up for them when they're in trouble, not the government. The less needed the government is, the better behaved it has to be, lest we should decide to get rid of it entirely.
i hardly see how banning this game is going to keep you from being an informed adult who actively engages the government.
Sure, I can tell you can't. Then again, I don't see what the big deal is about banning the movie Apocalypse Now. it's a violent movie with disturbing themes, and I don't see how banning it will prevent anyone from being an informed adult who engages the government.
The reason we have freedom of speech across the board is because we know that sometimes someone has something important to say that nobody else gets - or worse, that everybody else hates. We know that even if a book, movie, or game seems stupid, tasteless, degrading, or pointless to us, it may actually be important in some way we can't appreciate. So we've created a standard that all speech should be free, regardless of our personal evaluation of its merit.
Waive all your rights for the privilege of living under a system that gives you free health care.
You're conflating two issues that have little, if anything, to do with each other. There's no reason we can't build a society that respects the absolute right of every individual to speak their mind freely and to be healthy. The dichotomy of economic security vs. personal freedom is a false one that was created by authoritarian communists ("We'll make sure everyone gets their fair share, but you have to give us total political power") and authoritarian capitalists ("We'll let you say whatever you like, but you have to put up with being constantly screwed by people richer than you").
Capitalist regimes want us to believe that the exploitation, poverty, and vast inequality that their system creates is a necessary evil that we must tolerate to enjoy personal freedom of speech, association, religion, etc.
Conversely, communist regimes want us to believe that the oppression, regimentation, and censorship that their system employs is a necessary evil that is required to provide everyone with free health care, housing, food, education, transportation, and fair compensation for our work.
These are both lies created by authoritarians to convince us to give up our power to them. We can have personal freedom AND economic justice if we demand it, and I'm pretty sure Michael Moore is doing just that.
Isn't this their job just as it is our job to remove them from power once they no longer serve the will of the people?
Yes, but we can't wait until the government has become completely corrupted and turned against the public, because by that time it will be too late. Our job as the public is to act as a check, to make sure the government can't claim for itself the powers that it could then use to destroy our democracy.
One of the most important tools to destroy democracy is censorship, and it must be opposed at all costs. If we vote to give the government the power to censor our information environment, we have effectively given up our ability to make informed, democratic decisions about all future issues. Censorship-empowered governments are fundamentally incompatible with democracy.
I wish I could say I've done more to change the system...
It's not too late! There's a lot yet to be done, and you don't have to be anyone special to do it. One word of advice: start small. Get involved now with local efforts that are already established/organized. For real, like today. Start doing research on the internet. Tell me whereabouts you are and what issues you're especially passionate about if you want some recommendations.
It doesn't have to be a group/organization that has the same position as you on every single issue, the important thing is to get involved with people who are already doing things to create positive change. You'll meet people with similar ideas, you'll learn strategies and tactics, and most importantly, you'll be inspired and motivated by the experience of fighting injustice (and sometimes winning!), which will give you the energy and dedication you need to launch your own efforts.
I favor a government with no central point of failure, but then trying to get a crowd to agree on anything important is near impossible. (see congress) And you would still have the probability that some of those people vote with their wallets and not with their hearts or heads.
You may be an anarchist. Or at least, you may find that an anarchist analysis is pretty close in line with your own concerns about large centralized government, and the corrupting influence of money and greed on government.
I think the biggest reason government (and business) is so fucked up right now is because as their supporters we allow them to be. We allow them to be fucked up not by voting for them, but by depending on them. We can't take care of ourselves or each other without the government. We can't have functional communities where people look out for each other and make sure we're all safe without the government's heavy hand over us, forcing us to behave. Hell, people won't even share their bounty when others are in need, so we get the government to take it from them, and "share" it how the government sees fit.
So in my mind, the biggest thing you can do now to be part of the solution is stop depending on the government. Many, many people in our society put up with the government's abuses of power because they believe that if we took that power away, we'd have mass chaos and "the law of the jungle" would reign. Prove them wrong. Get involved in non-governmental organizations. Help out the needy in your community voluntarily. Speak up for people who are being treated unfairly, and stand up against those who try to boss everyone else around. Support organizations that do things that the government won't, or do them better than the government can. Basically, stop thinking only about yourself, and start thinking about how to build a society that will be less and less dependent on the government as time goes on. Be a reasoning ethical person, and demand the same from others.
Your line of reasoning confuses me. It seems that you're saying:
A) The US is not facist or communist.
B) the only states where [routine suppression of free speech] happened, were either fascist or communist totalitarian regimes.
C) what he describes [in his work] is closer to a totalitarian secret police than to anything resembling even America.
Since A and B, therefore C is false, right? My dog bit a stranger, but let's use this same line of reasoning to explain why my dog could not have bitten him:
A) My dog is not a bad dog.
B) The only dogs that bite people are bad dogs.
C) He says he was bitten by my dog.
Since A and B, therefore C is false...only it's not, and this circular logic based on fairly arbitrary assumptions only serves to distract us from looking at the actual facts of what actually happened and what it means.
Yes, but the downside is that you'll have to spend the rest of your life with a known criminal: you. Personally I think that's too high a price to pay for a lousy Dell laptop.
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Hyperbole (like metaphors, similes, and everything else) is like a condiment in food. If half your dish is salt or pepper, you probably overdid it.
If America was the kind of fascist oligarchy that he always describes
I don't think Moore ever called America a "facist oligarchy" - that must be your exaggerated representation of his perspective. A little hyperbolic, don't you think?
by the time you've described something as a totalitarian plot for the 1000'th time
1000 times? Really? Did you count them? Surely that's a bit of an exaggeration.
he's _not_ going to end up with the Gestapo on his doorstep and with the SS burning his movies and book, either.
Again, I can't recall Moore expressing any concern about the Gestapo or the SS doing these things. Perhaps you just brought up Nazis and book-burning as a sort of over-the-top caricature of the concerns Moore does express?
Stances basically saying "my version is by definition perfect, and everyone else is a fascist peddling crooked crap solutions" aren't really doing anyone any good.
I was worried that your interpretation of Moore's message is a bit extreme, and possibly borders on what's called "putting words in his mouth" (after all, he never said that, and you'd have to stretch quite a bit to interpret anything he has said into such a statement)...
But seeing how strongly you oppose hyperbole and exaggeration, I can see you'd never resort to such tactics.
but aspiring to present both arguments in as equal a light as possible.
Overall balance in the media is important. It's important for people to know all the facts, and be able to come to a decision themselves, instead of being brainwashed with only one side of the story.
However. Having a balanced media environment doesn't mean everything that comes out of everyone's mouth has to be "fair and balanced". In fact, your implied belief that documentaries - or any other media - ever did this is absurd. And your further assertion that if people can't live up to your standard of "objectivity", they shouldn't speak out at all is scary.
All people and organizations have a bias resulting from their cultural background, how they've been educated, their life experiences, political affiliations, etc. Just because we don't always notice it doesn't mean it's not there. The balance comes through allowing different viewpoints and critiques of the status quo to be heard. Sure, each newscast and each documentary may be slanted this way or that, but the overall effect of having a diverse range of perspectives and information on each issue is that every individual has access to a full set of facts.
So, applied to Michael Moore, I'd say that yes, his account is biased just like all other "factual coverage" of the health care issue in the press, by politicians and interest groups. However, since the perspective he's bringing to the issue hasn't been very well represented to the average person, his film plays a very important role in showing "the other side" of the debate. Obviously nobody should formulate an opinion on health care based only on the film, but they probably shouldn't form an opinion on health care without considering his arguments either.
Capitalism is the only viable system as it's a natural extension of the basic instincts and desires inherent in the human psyche
Capitalism is based centrally on respect for the sanctity of private property and the honoring of official contracts. Our basic instincts and desires are to take whatever we want (and are strong enough to take), and do whatever we feel like (and are strong enough to get away with). Neither contracts nor the concept of private property are "natural" in the way you're describing.
And what's more, you could argue that the tendency of people to gather together in tribes and share their resources collectively is natural, and therefore communism/collectivism is the proper "natural" system. I'm not making that argument because it's pointless. Trying to defend things on the basis that they're more "natural" is ridiculous and irrelevant. Do they work, or not? Do they create happiness and well-being for as many people as possible? I think capitalism fails at this, but it has little to do with it being natural or unnatural, it's simply a flawed system.
Do consumers REALLY need another 5,000 Coke commericals nationwide today, too? Are they afraid that we'll all of a sudden forget they exist?
It's a good question, it seems intuitive that those brands are so deeply entrenched in our collective awareness and habits that they've sort of transcended advertising. It seems like we could never see another ad for Nike, and we'd still remember them and buy their shoes just as much.
But it's not true. The reason we can tell it's not true is that companies like Nike universally continue to spend gobs upon gobs of money on advertising campaigns, which they could've otherwise kept in their pockets. I think the main reason mega-brands advertise is not because they're afraid we'll forget, but because they're afraid we'll start paying attention (or more attention) to their competitors, or even other industries we'd rather spend our money on. Nike doesn't care if we remember them in general, they care if they're the top brand on our minds when we walk into the shoe store, and that we associate them with all the cool things of today.
In this way, advertising is like an arms race. You may have enough advertising to let people know about your product, but another advertiser is just going to step up their campaign and draw even more attention to themselves (and consequently away from you). Keeping the attention on your brand is what keeps you alive as a corporation, so you have no choice but to increase your advertising campaign to even more intensity...they respond in kind, and the cycle continues.
Of course, the result of this marketing cold war is what we have today: an almost completely ad saturated environment. It's difficult to look anywhere in an urban environment without seeing a logo or advertisement - it's so universal that people start to tune it out as background noise, which simply means advertisers must come up with newer, more subtle or outrageous or manipulative ways of increasing their brand awareness and appeal.
Oh yeah, and we could use some actual candidates to vote for.
:)
Not that I'm complaining about the bill, but the idea that my vote for either Corporate Tool A or Corporate Tool B will now be recorded accurately isn't quite enough to make me celebrate the return of American democracy
People organize themselves into a larger entity for self preservation, war is an extension of that organization.
That's a good summary of what I'm trying to say. People group themselves into organizations to create safety, peace, and stability in their environment, which is also probably inevitable. But when those organizations grow beyond a certain point, they become disassociated from the individuals who compose them, and become abstract "meta-entities" ruled - or at least steered - by a small minority of bureaucrats or elites. It's exactly because these entities are disassociated from the consequences that war has on the people who do the fighting that they're so willing to engage in it. Keep the institutions small, and directly controlled by and involved with their members, and war will stay at a minimum, if not disappear.
Iraq is a perfect example of decentralized institutions and parties fighting
It's true. I guess we're kind of talking definitions now, but I wouldn't really call a lot of the killing that occurs in Iraq a "war" for exactly that reason. Obviously, the US army and other institutions like crime syndicates or warlords can be said to be waging war in Iraq, and they're certainly killing a lot of people. I think we should keep in mind that religious institutions often exert an informal but very strong hierarchical control over people, so that when a religious leader commands "all faithful followers" to do something, that does count as an institution waging war in my book. But a significant part of the violence that's happening in Iraq is as you say, just some guys murdering some other guys because they're angry, scared, or just plain hate them, not because anyone ordered them to. They're not part of an army, they're not using coordinated violence to support some large institution, they're just murdering. So it's not really war as we know it.
The thing that makes Iraq so remarkable is of course, that these murders are happening constantly, in huge numbers. The reason is that both weapons and inflammatory propaganda are flowing readily in from both Islamists in places like Saudi Arabia and Iran, and also from places like US and Israel (usually via some more palatable third party). Washington DC is the murder capitol of the US largely because of gang warfare, and I'm pretty sure that if you started disseminating incendiary propaganda and rocket launchers to anyone ready to fight the opposing gang, DC too would start showing violence comparable to a war.
On second thought, perhaps you could consider those Iraqis part of a war, because although they aren't aware of it, they're playing a role created and supported by those governments and religious institutions who are funneling arms and hatred into the region. The conflict in Iraq is, on a large scale, still very much a conflict between huge institutions, but the people being enlisted or compelled to fight in it may be unaware of their allegiances.
The ultimate point I'm getting at is probably clear - if it weren't for the power struggle going on between governments and religious institutions in Iraq, the violence we see would not even approach the scale it's on now. There would certainly still be murders, probably as you suggested over things like difference in philosophy or religion, greed, or simply desperation, but nothing like what we're seeing now.
That being said its inevitable. Its like saying Hurricanes are bad, we should get rid of them.
Conflict? Inevitable. Violence? Inevitable. War? Not so fast. War isn't just a synonym for human conflict, it's organized, methodical conflict between hierarchical entities (or sometimes by one such entity against a more abstract foe. see "War on Terror" or "War on Drugs")
There is a dispassionate, premeditated aspect to war - soldiers kill and die not because they're angry, not because they're scared, not even because they want something the enemy has, but because they're ordered to. War exists because people allow themselves to become tools, components in a vastly larger entity called a State, or a religion, or some other organized body (maybe someday soon, a corporation). When individuals fight and kill each other, we call it murder or violence or crime - these things are inevitable. But when the institutions themselves clash, it is war.
So my point is that war will exist only to the extent that we allow our society to be organized into more and more centralized institutions. The bigger the institutions, the bigger the war, and the more "tools" that die unnoticed each time the titans clash. Conversely, the more decentralized and egalitarian we make our institutions, the less we depend on and support huge authority structures, the less likely those institutions will be to drag us into war.
I think it's a very interesting and probably a good idea, but it's a stretch to say that it'd encourage companies to prolong the life of their products through replacement parts, better workmanship, etc.
Manufacturers produce poorly made appliances for two reasons: 1) It saves them money in the manufacturing process, obviously, but also 2) It forces people to buy their appliance (or the latest model) multiple times. You may think that if someone's appliance broke, they'd immediately go to the competitor, but you'd be surprised how many people go out and buy the next-generation iPod because their old one broke after only a year and a half. Odds are if that original iPod had lasted for 5 years they wouldn't have upgraded, so whether it was deliberate or not, Apple's fragile manufacturing becomes profitable in cases like that.
The money they make by selling you a whole new product to replace your cheaply made, broken one is far more than they'd make in interest from their escrow account, so the most profitable choice is obvious.
Landfills are great for organic material
Actually, landfills are the worst possible thing for organic material, and better suited for non-biodegradable materials like plastic and metal.
The stuff in landfills is very compressed, to the point that the critters and chemical processes which are usually responsible for biodegradation can't do their job. We essentially entomb our trash. Put a banana peel in the middle of a typical landfill, and it'll last for ages, permanently adding to the mountain of trash. Personally, I'd rather someone throw that peel into the bushes than into the garbage, since at least in the bushes it'll turn back to dirt.
There is a great method for recycling organic waste though, and it's been around way before we invented metal/glass/plastic/paper recycling: compost. It's easy, take your organic matter and put it in a pile of a bunch of other rotting organic matter. Wait a few weeks. Like magic, you have some nice, innocuous dirt in place of your gross smelly trash! Bonus: You can then grow plants to eat very well with said dirt, or if you have a lot, sell it to someone else who grows plants.
So enlighten me how context preservation applies to this situation whatsoever?
/var/www have this type, which is part of their context. When you copy files from there without preserving their context, they acquire the new type of wherever they were copied, which Apache probably isn't allowed to read.
According to the core security policy, Apache is allowed (by SELinux) to read any files with type httpd_sys_content_t. The files under
Therefore, if you make sure to preserve the context so that the type remains httpd_sys_content_t, you should have no problems.
Of course, SELinux does not protect computers from the biggest hole, the wetware between the keyboard and chair. :)
Actually, when properly configured it does a pretty good job of that, too. One of the interesting features that's in the NSA spec is MLS (Multi Level Security), which is designed to grant very specific and strictly defined privileges to each user - for example in a government scenario where some people have "Secret" clearance, others "Top Secret", etc. This ensures that even if the person is a huge moron or being expertly scammed, they can still only fuck up the specific files and processes they've been given access to, which in SELinux can be very tightly limited without stepping on the legitimate user's toes too much.