(Source: atheistsblog, via darkface)
Obama And ISP’s To Launch Largest Digital Spying Scheme In History (Must Read)
If you download potentially copyrighted software, videos or music, your Internet service provider (ISP) has been watching, and they’re coming for you.
Specifically, they’re coming for you on Thursday, July 1.
That’s the date when the nation’s largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.
Word of the start date has been largely kept secret since ISPs announced their plans last June. The deal was brokered by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and coordinated by the Obama Administration. The same groups have weighed in heavily on controversial Internet policies around the world, with similar facilitation by the Obama’s Administration’s State Department.
The July 12 date was revealed by the RIAA’s CEO and top lobbyist, Cary Sherman, during a publishers’ conference on Wednesday in New York, according to technology publication CNet.
The content industries calls this scheme a “graduated response” plan, which will see
-Time Warner Cable
-Cablevision
-Comcast
-Verizon
-AT&T
and others spying on users’ Internet activities and watching for potential copyright infringement. Users who are “caught” infringing on a creator’s protected work can then be interrupted with a notice that piracy is forbidden by law and carries penalties of up to $150,000 per infringement, requiring the user to click through saying they understand the consequences before bandwidth is restored, and they could still be subject to copyright infringement lawsuits.
Response: This is much worse than SOPA/PIPA and ACTA. It doesn’t necessarily censor the internet but it spys on everything you do. Your ENTIRE web history will be watched and recorded and might even assist the government. This was coordinated by Obama and his administration with the help of the MPAA and RIAA.
What is so dangerous about this is that this is not a law it is a policy adopted by several companies. That means this will not be debated in Congress and you will agree to be spied on by signing a contract with the company.
Internet censorship is becoming a reality and now the corporate elite will legally be able to spy on you. If we spread this and cause an uproar like what we did with SOPA, maybe they will back down. Either way people NEED to know about this.
Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
(Source: eatingmyburger, via escapescape)
Vote Republican 2012
Quite honestly, I hate overly simplistic posters.
But this is completely true.
Which is scary.
It’s not scary. They are out in the open about all of this. Not pretending to be good and kindhearted individuals but greedy closed-minded sociopaths.
People are hearing it, seeing it and talking about it. This is a good thing.
(Source: christiantheatheist)
| United States: | How can we further manage our citizens without being too obvious? |
| People: | Don't manage us. |
| United States: | Oh, I know, let's militarize the police forces! |
| People: | We don't need that. We need jobs. We need food. We need housing. We need a good education system. |
| United States: | We simply don't have funding for that. We just militarized your police forces for your "safety" from, uh, er, "terrorists". |
| People: | ... |
| United States: | What? |
| People: | We voted you in. You work for us. |
| United States: | Of course we do! We just happen to have backroom deals where we take money from some of the biggest corporations and richest people in your interest. |
| People: | Fuck this shit. |
| United States: | THEY'RE REBELLING. THEY'RE ORGANIZING. LOOK, IT'S A PROTEST A UNIVERSITY! QUICKLY! PEPPER SPRAY AND BEAT THEM INTO THE GROUND BEFORE THEY HURT THEMSELVES. |
| Media: | We don't know what the fuck is happening, but here's your top 10 list for must-have summer items. |
Originally charged with murder, the charges were later reduced to involuntary manslaughter and aggravated assault, and on January 23, 2012 Wuterich pled guilty to a single count of negligent dereliction of duty as part of an agreement with military prosecutors. In exchange, all other charges were dropped.Wuterich was sentenced on January 24 and convicted to forfeiture of two-thirds of pay for three months and reduction in rank to private.
Loser Bowl
There is a very detestable side of American culture which acts to corrupt and dishearten anyone who drinks, in a manner of speaking, from its mephitic cultural reservoir. But without this noxious pool to drink from what would, otherwise, drive the average person to rise to the top of countless little heaps of success from being an Eagle Scout to being a celebrated real estate tycoon?
What am I talking about? I am talking about the tacit belief that you are a loser until you are a proven winner, which is variation of the maxim, you are guilty until proven innocent. Make no mistake about it, anyone who lives in America feels like a loser until they have some tangible proof of success. Such proof can be a cheap plastic trophy, a blue ribbon, a university diploma, or a lot of money.
Generally speaking, having a lot of money is the best proof that you are a solid winner in America after going through the long dark night of being a shamefaced loser. In light of this, should we care about the millions of losers, young and old, who still populate the great American winner empire? I think the answer is obvious. We need the losers—they help define the winners. But there is a dangerous price to pay for this.
From the statistics on the mental health of America, it looks like a great deal of pressure is being put on the losers to become winners who, apparently, can’t take it, and need psychiatric help or antidepressants just to get through the day. The majority of Americans, it is true, suffer from various kinds of mental disorders directly related to a sense of feeling inferior. Such a disorder might be depression or any number of personality disorders. To kill the pain of constantly feeling like a loser many Americans take antidepressants which can have harmful side effects such as suicide or mass murder.
Despite the huge amount of mental illness in America, nobody seems to want to change the loser/winner culture. Almost rising to the level of natural law, it is forbidden in America to make leisure one’s supreme goal which is the logical antidote to treat the loser/winner culture. Ironically, in America, enjoying leisure is synonymous with laziness which is the same as being a loser.
Here we arrive at the heart of America’s collective insanity which is built upon the order of losing and winning; propped up by its myth makers who believe America was founded as a game in which there are only losers and winners. But little do these cognitively challenged myth makers realize that many works of genius arise from a leisure culture, leisure being the traditional meaning of school—yes school—which comes from the Greek word scholê.
In a true leisure based society schooling is everything. But it isn’t the kind of schooling by which one is expected to go to the top of some abstract heap, trying to shed the image of a loser. This is the corporate model of schooling which is ruining traditional academic life as major universities are being run, more and more, like corporations. If anything schooling should build, above all, virtue, maturity, and sapience. It should also be a place where we encourage genius, giving people the time to muse. In the words of Gertrude Stein, “It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.”Without getting rid of the loser/winner dyad, which presupposes everyone is a loser until proven otherwise, there will be no respite from America’s mental problems and violence. In fact, we can except rising rates of mental illness with no end in sight. This may be good for the bottom line of pharmaceutical companies, who sell antidepressants, but it is not good for America in the long run.
So what is the price for valorizing stupid cultural values which only apply to games? It terminates in depression for the individual and nihilism for the society as a whole. Indeed, for anyone who has a favorite team which just lost a major game, depression always follows. Now multiply this to every young person in America who are reminded in subtle ways what losers they still are. Do you see what I mean? We are breeding depression. And what about our families, how does the loser/winner culture affect them? Any housewife must feel like a loser because she isn’t the ‘breadwinner’. The only thing she gets out of her marriage is security and low self-esteem. And what about the struggling workers with their families who will never make more than ten or fifteen dollars an hour? They must all feel like losers, too, who can only manage to live vicariously through their children pushing them to be winners; going in debt to do it.
I would rather see a leisure based society where doing good is more important than winning. I would rather see small towns built around universities where education is inexpensive; and education is life long. I would like to see so many changes which enable us to get rid of the loser/winner culture. Right now we have a whole culture dedicated to men on steroids whacking or throwing balls around, from little white balls to big brown balls. These moronic bastards do nothing for America except delude the public into believing something is gained by beating down another person.
In the meantime, the majority of people are suffering from psychological problems having to bear the burden of being treated like losers until they win at something.But American culture is not ready to use their brains; not when they can use brawn and cunning reason by making the majority the losers, and a few, the winners.
