Super 'Dela

progressivefriends:

This is a critical point in history for our country. We are about to witness outrage from citizens against specific bills/policies switch to extreme outrage against our government itself. Occupy started the fight, but if this goes through, I fear we are going to see something much more intense.

Why won’t our representatives listen to their constituents or consider the advice of their predecessors? If America is a battlefield, then it most certainly is class warfare. The government will officially be going to war with it’s people and fighting for corporations- and using our own taxes against us.

Thank you New York Times for doing your job and printing this.

susie-c:

Fourteen Occupy Oakland protesters were arrested yesterday in a series of scuffles following police harassment at Occupy’s sustained vigil in Frank Ogawa/Oscar Grant plaza. Most of those people remain in jail as of this writing on a variety of heavy charges, including in at least one case: 405a….

lastwaltz:

666

If we all pray together, maybe some one will hear us.

socialistexan:

sinidentidades:

Tax dollars at work, folks.

‘Murica!

When I read shit like that article I think about how many people are homeless and hungry here and around the world… and then I hate our government even more…

We, the undersigned, have played various parts in building a network called the Internet. We wrote and debugged the software; we defined the standards and protocols that talk over that network. Many of us invented parts of it. We’re just a little proud of the social and economic benefits that our project, the Internet, has brought with it.

Last year, many of us wrote to you and your colleagues to warn about the proposed “COICA” copyright and censorship legislation. Today, we are writing again to reiterate our concerns about the SOPA and PIPA derivatives of last year’s bill, that are under consideration in the House and Senate. In many respects, these proposals are worse than the one we were alarmed to read last year.

If enacted, either of these bills will create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure. Regardless of recent amendments to SOPA, both bills will risk fragmenting the Internet’s global domain name system (DNS) and have other capricious technical consequences. In exchange for this, such legislation would engender censorship that will simultaneously be circumvented by deliberate infringers while hampering innocent parties’ right and ability to communicate and express themselves online.

All censorship schemes impact speech beyond the category they were intended to restrict, but these bills are particularly egregious in that regard because they cause entire domains to vanish from the Web, not just infringing pages or files. Worse, an incredible range of useful, law-abiding sites can be blacklisted under these proposals. In fact, it seems that this has already begun to happen under the nascent DHS/ICE seizures program.

Censorship of Internet infrastructure will inevitably cause network errors and security problems. This is true in China, Iran and other countries that censor the network today; it will be just as true of American censorship. It is also true regardless of whether censorship is implemented via the DNS, proxies, firewalls, or any other method. Types of network errors and insecurity that we wrestle with today will become more widespread, and will affect sites other than those blacklisted by the American government.

The current bills — SOPA explicitly and PIPA implicitly — also threaten engineers who build Internet systems or offer services that are not readily and automatically compliant with censorship actions by the U.S. government. When we designed the Internet the first time, our priorities were reliability, robustness and minimizing central points of failure or control. We are alarmed that Congress is so close to mandating censorship-compliance as a design requirement for new Internet innovations. This can only damage the security of the network, and give authoritarian governments more power over what their citizens can read and publish.

The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open Internet, both domestically and abroad. We cannot have a free and open Internet unless its naming and routing systems sit above the political concerns and objectives of any one government or industry. To date, the leading role the US has played in this infrastructure has been fairly uncontroversial because America is seen as a trustworthy arbiter and a neutral bastion of free expression. If the US begins to use its central position in the network for censorship that advances its political and economic agenda, the consequences will be far-reaching and destructive.

istellar:

Congressional staffers behind SOPA get shiny new jobs as entertainment industry lobbyists

Allison Halataei (former deputy chief of staff for House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas)) and Lauren Pastarnack (former senior aide on the Senate Judiciary Committee) have cool new jobs. Having written the Internet-destroying Stop Online Piracy Act for their bosses while drawing a salary at public expense, they’ve now accepted massive raises to go work for the entertainment companies who stand to benefit from the law they wrote. Their new job? Helping to run the campaign to push their law through.

Halataei recently joined the National Music Publishers’ Association, and Pastarnack is jumping to the Motion Pictures Association of America, two lobbying groups pressing Congress to pass the proposals…

“This is one of those mega-fights where there is a lot of money at stake and whenever it gets to that, it’s kind of ‘Katy bar the door’ as far as what they’ll pay for talent,” said McCormick Group headhunter Ivan Adler. “This fits into the perfect scenario of why senior-level people from well-placed committees get hired, and it’s because they really know the three p’s: people, policy and process. And that makes them very valuable in the Washington marketplace.”

The former aides will face one-year lobbying bans, which means they cannot lobby the respective committees where they previously worked. But those bans don’t render the former aides useless to their new employers.

“They can provide invaluable insight to people on the outside — even in the consultation mode,” one tech industry lobbyist said, noting that Halataei had been Smith’s secondhand person and knows how the Texas Republican thinks and what would be an effective lobbying strategy.

futurejournalismproject:

On Thursday the House Judiciary Committee will vote on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Meanwhile the Protect IP Act is making its way through the Senate.

As the Center for Democracy and Technology writes, “If passed, these bills would cripple online innovation, chill online free expression, subvert the inner workings of Internet security, and compromise user privacy.”

At 1WebDesign, they’ve put together the following list of resources for background on SOPA and PIPA:

• Stop Online Piracy(Scary Facts)
• Protect IP Act Breaks the Internet
• DNS Filtering In SOPA/PIPA Won’t Stop Piracy, But Will Hurt Online Security
• Tech Giants Back Off SOPA Support
• Mozilla Renews Call Against SOPA/PIPA
• An Alternative To Blacklist Bills SOPA and PIPA
• Why Americans Need a Civil Liberties Caucus
• What SOPA Means for Business and Innovation(Infographic)
• AmericanCensorship.org Infographic
• ‘SOPA’: Internet Piracy Bills in Congress Threaten Core Values
• SOPA visual petition riles up the ‘geek lobby’
• Wikipedia may blackout all articles to protest SOPA
• Reddit users organizing a global mesh network

Don’t Censor the Net has resources for signing petitions and contacting representatives here.

anonymissexpress:

1) Our Planet Saw the Largest Increase in Carbon Emissions Since the Industrial Revolution
2) Widespread Trafficking Of Iraqi Women And Girls Thanks To The Iraq War
3) More Iraq Veterans Committed Suicide Last Year Than Active-Duty Troops Died In Combat
4) Drone Strikes Kill Innocent Civilians, Not Just ‘Militants’
5) Record Number Of US Kids Face Hunger and Homelessness
6) Prisoners Are People Too
7) US Deports 46,000 Parents, Kids Left Behind In Foster Care
8) FBI Teaches Agents That Muslims Are Violent Radicals

Read more on AlterNet

politicsd00d:

andtheircomplicatedshoes:

creepy stuff

o-o What was I doing when this happened?!

anti-propaganda:

‘Biotech giant Monsanto has been declared the Worst Company of 2011 by NaturalSociety for threatening both human health and the environment.

The leader in genetically modified seeds and crops, Monsanto is currently responsible for 90 percent of the genetically engineered seed on the United States market.

Outside of GM seeds, Monsanto is also the creator of the best-selling herbicide Roundup, which has spawned over 120 million hectares of herbicide-resistant superweeds while damaging much of the soil. Despite hard evidence warning against the amplified usage of genetically modified crops, biopesticides, and herbicides, Monsanto continues to disregard all warning signs.

In a powerful review of 19 studies analyzing the dangers of GMO crops such as corn and soybeans, researchers revealed some shocking information regarding the safety of these popular food staples.

Researchers found that consumption of GMO corn or soybeans may lead to significant organ disruptions in rats and mice – particularly in the liver and kidneys.

This is particularly concerning due to the fact that 93 percent of U.S. soybeans are known to be genetically modified. Ignoring this evidence, Monsanto continues to expand their genetic manipulation.’ 

Yep, which is why they are hardly regulated. They didn’t ignore the problems, they paid the government to back them and hide it. Another way to experiment on and poison the populous. …and they’ve been doing it a long time.

…we’d let kids ask more questions and then give them support to find their own answers.

…we’d see dunking milk in cookies as a science opportunity, not just a snack.

…we’d only give kids giant test booklets if they needed to use the paper build a tower to explore force & motion.

…we’d label our kids with terms like “mostly visual learner, hilarious, excels in reading, struggles with addition, loves baseball” instead of “Proficient” or “Basic”

…we’d stop making copies of low-level worksheets and give more blank sheets of paper for brainstorming.

…we’d make it our goal to get kids to ask questions in class that we cannot answer, nor Google the answer to.

…we’d stop spending billions on textbooks.

…we’d celebrate mistakes far more than we celebrate earning “A’s”.

…success would be overcoming obstacles and embracing struggle, not “perfect papers”.

…we’d invite an engineer or scientist to class to answer questions and not just because it’s a grade level standard.

…we’d talk more about finding their passion than about Friday’s Spelling Test.

…we’d take the best theories of gifted education, special education, and everything in between, and make a school where ALL kids needs are met.

…our kids would never question “Why do I have to learn this?” because they’d be too busy investigating.

…inquiry would rule over lecture.

…professional development would be differentiated, meaningful, and steer clear of reading PowerPoint slides.

…every school would be filled with the type of collaboration happening on Twitter every single day.

…we wouldn’t hear things like “We don’t teach that since it’s not tested.”

Education might not be about learning right now.  But, that doesn’t mean your classroomcan’t be about learning.

SOUTH FULTON, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee couple has lost everything after their home burned to the ground as firefighters watched and did nothing.

Vicky Bell told WPSD-TV that she called 911 when her mobile home in Obion County caught fire. Firefighters responded but did not put out the blaze…

Arrrrrrrrrgh!!!! Fucking stupid system!!!!

theyoungradical:

inothernews:

I do believe that if any of the 99 Percenters in Zuccotti were in the same situation, they’d be in jail.  Or at least have the IRS kicking down their doors.

And hey, notice the quote from the Brookfield Properties spokeswoman in the article:

“We believe that we have paid all taxes due to the City of New York.  We are in discussion with the city’s Department of Finance, and we anticipate that this error will be resolved very shortly with Brookfield owing no additional funds.”  (Emphasis mine.)

So they acknowledge that they do owe those back taxes — which might normally go toward paying for those same cops that cleared the protesters out of the park, BTW.  Fucking assholes.

Long live the One Percent and the massive amounts of shit they get away with, and the Mayor Bloombergs of the world who let them get away with it.

there is no class war, these people have no class

Money is a means to control the masses. The corrupt government is a facade for those who would implement control over the population. The mass media is a tool to frighten people into submission. Though it pisses me off that the puppet government lets people get away with that kind of thing, I’m not surprised. It is a government on the behalf of lies and corruption, not our behalf.