Post by trashcanman on Dec 17, 2011 23:29:05 GMT 2
So the laws of my land are threatening to smash the civil rights of all Americans and cripple the internet through two bills. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The first will make even linking to copyrighted material a crime punishable by any conceivable method; millions in fines, jailtime, you name it. That means we are all criminals on this site by the new standards. The second takes the infamous Patriot Act (government can spy on own citizens) and expands it to make it legal for the government to treat it's own citizens as "enemy combatants", making any of us subject to Guantanamo-like treatment for any reason they can come up with. And the bills look likely to pass. Here are commentaries on the two bills by Paul Tassi of Forbes and Unreality and hacker collective Anonymous.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=btJ5jjhN3R8
www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2011/12/16/how-sopa-could-ruin-my-life/
So, having looked into this and seeing in abject horror that NDAA passed OVERWHELMINGLY in the Senate, leading Obama to declare he will sign it into law if it gets to his filthy desk, but needs to get past the House of Representatives to make it there, I've decided to do something I've never done. I'm writing my so-called "representatives". The odds of anybody making a difference is infinitesimal, but when the stakes are this high, I've got to take my shot. I know I talk a lot about people overreacting to political bullshit, but these two bills combined are the first to make me seriously consider fleeing my country. It may not happen in my lifetime, but these bills open the door to a level of potential fascist abuse that can't be ignored. It amounts to the government declaring war on it's own citizens and the rights given to them in the Constitution. So here's my letter to my "representatives" for your review. Will it do any good? Probably not. After all, the NDAA ship has nearly sailed. But in case you guys are interested in what I'd have to say if I were faced with one of the people I despise most in this world on this topic.
"I am writing as your constituent in the 20th Congressional district of California. I oppose H.R.3261 - Stop Online Piracy Act, and am tracking it using OpenCongress.org, the free public resource website for government transparency and accountability.
Everything about this bill screams corporate fascism. I know Congessional folk are evil almost by definition, but shutting down the internet like this will smash the economy in ways that nothing short of 30 years of Reaganomics could accomplish. Millions of people use the net to make a living, exchange information of all sorts, and test-drive potential products to buy. Crippling these capabilities is a deathblow to the American Dream at best, and a step towards Naziism at worst. Online pirates are not in the habit of buying things. Even if their capabilities are limited with this bill, they and theirs will not buy the products they previously pirated. There will be no economic upswing to this; only the death of a lot of people's small businesses. There may even be a dip in sales of the pirated material, I've bought A LOT of cd's, dvd's, and the like after having previewed them on the internet. A LOT. A lot of songs and film clips I wouldn't ever have heard of have been gifted to me over the internet by various sites (an act of piracy by SOPA standards) and I viewed them and then ran out to obtain them LEGALLY. This is how it normally works. I don't think you Congressional folk understand this. You've likely never tried it, and you should NEVER vote to limit something you know nothing about. This is how Chinese-style civil rights violations are born. This is where fascism lives. You want to act like an American instead of the corporate whores we know Congress is made up of? Vote "no" on this abomination that exists only so the rich can rob and/or imprison the poor for no reason.
I know you've seen the Occupy protests and while you may not understand them, I'm sure you can understand that this could easily escalate to the point where you lot aren't even going to be secure in your own homes. The villagers are grabbing their torches and pitchforks to confront the monster, and you are that monster. You've ignored us and after all the years of cutting off our options in favor of shilling for the richest in your pay-to-play schemes, folks are finally taking notice as to who is responsible. It's you. Your response has been the National Defense Authorization Act (already passed in the Senate; thanks, ladies), which puts the US government directly into SS territory by treating your own constituents as "enemy combatants" for exercising their First Amendment rights. Again, this may sound like a good idea to scare the people into submission, but all it will really do is create domestic terrorism as people realize that you are turning our country into a fascist state not seen in the first world since WWII. Don't do it. Come out of your ivory tower and speak to the people who know. The historians, the internet's large and small business owners, the civil rights supporters. You will see how wrong you and yours are to do this to your own people, and how history and the rest of the world will view you if you support these abominations of legislature.
You Democrats promised us hope and change in the last presidential election. But you forgot to mention the change was going to be for the worse and the hope was for a horrific dystopia on a scale previously only seen in bleak science fiction. The people have no voice anymore. The only light there is is the hope that a enough of our so-called "representatives" will refuse to pull the trigger on the gun aimed at the head of our constitutional rights when it comes time to vote on the SOPA and NDAA bills. Please do your research and think long and hard before you vote."
Sorry to get all political without bringing the usual humorous mockery, but I wonder if anybody is is as disturbed that absolutely nobody outside of the underground online community is paying significant attention to these bills that could change this country's landscape in potentially terrifying ways. Seriously, google "sopa" and "ndaa". Precious few of those results aside from wikipedia are mainstream media sites and motherfucking Info Wars is on the first page for ndaa! Info Wars! That's headed by the conspiracy nut that honestly thought the movie Machete would spark a race war. I throw a lot of conspiratory stuff around about our votes never being counted and the media and government deliberately limiting our education by pricing us out of college and cutting public education budgets while feeding us only enough information to keep us bickering amongst ourselves so that we are too busy picking sides and being contrary to notice what is happening outside of tv and radio, but stuff like this is not helping any paranoia that I may or may not have (depending on how you see it). So tell me the truth, am I overreacting to this by writing a letter to my Congress reps that will probably never be read outside of this forum or am I destined to be hauled off in the night by the CIA never to see the light of day again?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=btJ5jjhN3R8
www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2011/12/16/how-sopa-could-ruin-my-life/
So, having looked into this and seeing in abject horror that NDAA passed OVERWHELMINGLY in the Senate, leading Obama to declare he will sign it into law if it gets to his filthy desk, but needs to get past the House of Representatives to make it there, I've decided to do something I've never done. I'm writing my so-called "representatives". The odds of anybody making a difference is infinitesimal, but when the stakes are this high, I've got to take my shot. I know I talk a lot about people overreacting to political bullshit, but these two bills combined are the first to make me seriously consider fleeing my country. It may not happen in my lifetime, but these bills open the door to a level of potential fascist abuse that can't be ignored. It amounts to the government declaring war on it's own citizens and the rights given to them in the Constitution. So here's my letter to my "representatives" for your review. Will it do any good? Probably not. After all, the NDAA ship has nearly sailed. But in case you guys are interested in what I'd have to say if I were faced with one of the people I despise most in this world on this topic.
"I am writing as your constituent in the 20th Congressional district of California. I oppose H.R.3261 - Stop Online Piracy Act, and am tracking it using OpenCongress.org, the free public resource website for government transparency and accountability.
Everything about this bill screams corporate fascism. I know Congessional folk are evil almost by definition, but shutting down the internet like this will smash the economy in ways that nothing short of 30 years of Reaganomics could accomplish. Millions of people use the net to make a living, exchange information of all sorts, and test-drive potential products to buy. Crippling these capabilities is a deathblow to the American Dream at best, and a step towards Naziism at worst. Online pirates are not in the habit of buying things. Even if their capabilities are limited with this bill, they and theirs will not buy the products they previously pirated. There will be no economic upswing to this; only the death of a lot of people's small businesses. There may even be a dip in sales of the pirated material, I've bought A LOT of cd's, dvd's, and the like after having previewed them on the internet. A LOT. A lot of songs and film clips I wouldn't ever have heard of have been gifted to me over the internet by various sites (an act of piracy by SOPA standards) and I viewed them and then ran out to obtain them LEGALLY. This is how it normally works. I don't think you Congressional folk understand this. You've likely never tried it, and you should NEVER vote to limit something you know nothing about. This is how Chinese-style civil rights violations are born. This is where fascism lives. You want to act like an American instead of the corporate whores we know Congress is made up of? Vote "no" on this abomination that exists only so the rich can rob and/or imprison the poor for no reason.
I know you've seen the Occupy protests and while you may not understand them, I'm sure you can understand that this could easily escalate to the point where you lot aren't even going to be secure in your own homes. The villagers are grabbing their torches and pitchforks to confront the monster, and you are that monster. You've ignored us and after all the years of cutting off our options in favor of shilling for the richest in your pay-to-play schemes, folks are finally taking notice as to who is responsible. It's you. Your response has been the National Defense Authorization Act (already passed in the Senate; thanks, ladies), which puts the US government directly into SS territory by treating your own constituents as "enemy combatants" for exercising their First Amendment rights. Again, this may sound like a good idea to scare the people into submission, but all it will really do is create domestic terrorism as people realize that you are turning our country into a fascist state not seen in the first world since WWII. Don't do it. Come out of your ivory tower and speak to the people who know. The historians, the internet's large and small business owners, the civil rights supporters. You will see how wrong you and yours are to do this to your own people, and how history and the rest of the world will view you if you support these abominations of legislature.
You Democrats promised us hope and change in the last presidential election. But you forgot to mention the change was going to be for the worse and the hope was for a horrific dystopia on a scale previously only seen in bleak science fiction. The people have no voice anymore. The only light there is is the hope that a enough of our so-called "representatives" will refuse to pull the trigger on the gun aimed at the head of our constitutional rights when it comes time to vote on the SOPA and NDAA bills. Please do your research and think long and hard before you vote."
Sorry to get all political without bringing the usual humorous mockery, but I wonder if anybody is is as disturbed that absolutely nobody outside of the underground online community is paying significant attention to these bills that could change this country's landscape in potentially terrifying ways. Seriously, google "sopa" and "ndaa". Precious few of those results aside from wikipedia are mainstream media sites and motherfucking Info Wars is on the first page for ndaa! Info Wars! That's headed by the conspiracy nut that honestly thought the movie Machete would spark a race war. I throw a lot of conspiratory stuff around about our votes never being counted and the media and government deliberately limiting our education by pricing us out of college and cutting public education budgets while feeding us only enough information to keep us bickering amongst ourselves so that we are too busy picking sides and being contrary to notice what is happening outside of tv and radio, but stuff like this is not helping any paranoia that I may or may not have (depending on how you see it). So tell me the truth, am I overreacting to this by writing a letter to my Congress reps that will probably never be read outside of this forum or am I destined to be hauled off in the night by the CIA never to see the light of day again?
