Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 15 Dec 2021 @ 7:11am
Re: Re: Re: We need to have a talk with the First Amendment
"“But this could be abused by someone in the future!” is an excuse to do nothing, watch poll numbers for progressives shit themselves, and then the corrupt/fascist government takes the reigns and does all the abuse anyway, because they don’t need someone to do it first for them to do it."
It's somehow really disheartening to re-read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for the umpteenth time in a row and yet again be struck by the similarities between contemporary US and the last throes of the Weimar republic.
History is pretty clear though. It's too late to do anything. Liberals and progressives have suffered the alt-right to grow into the monster it currently is by simply not giving enough of a shit to stop them. Now it's too late. The crazy racist uncle should have been banished from the thanksgiving table ten years ago. The deplorable bigoted spouse divorced and cast aside. The swastika and odal-wearing patrons told to leave the premises and never come back years back. The authoritarian old granpa believing blindly in the righteousness of uniforms and symbols tossed into a home and left to rot.
The time to cast these monsters into the wilderness was decades ago.
Instead they've been encouraged and incentivized. Never told where the line in sand was drawn. Always invited back to the table to talk - which they no doubt found briefly amusing before they shat on said table and ran off to light a cross on someones lawn again.
An ounce of prevention being absent now you need a crapton of cure instead. And the only cure possible at this point is to keep playing within the rules until the fascists overreach and spark another civil war. Because that's where you're at right now.
"This is the biggest thing you don’t understand, or refuse to understand. The corrupt assholes do it anyway. They do it anyway. THEY FUCKING DO IT ANYWAY."
I think most of us do understand. What we also understand but you missed is that it's far too late to get to a point where they don't do it anyway. It's just that in one case you'll still have the moral ground to claim you're on the right side in the civil war or unending skirmish about to start among the fractured ruins of the union.
"Is it also that hard to believe that if progressive governments outlaw dangerous lies and punish people for spreading them, that the chance of a corrupt/fascist regime taking power would diminish?"
Well, Europe has managed to ban hate speech and we are notably still a lot more democratic than the US. But then again, we have another platform than the US does and fewer risks associated with introducing such a ban. Within the US...I doubt you have the social responsibility to survive such a breach of your own constitutional principles. You might have, in the times of FDR or Kennedy. But not today. Today, much thanks to Reagan, your nation revolves around Fuck You, Got Mine and All for One and More For Me. The concept that every individual must put in the work and pay the way for everyone else so all may prosper...is dead.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 15 Dec 2021 @ 6:53am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Because free-market capitalism has done such a good job at keeping corps like FB in check..."
By the rules of the free market what would keep FB in check would be the citizenry. Vox Populi, Vox Dei as it were.
FB is still occupying a vastly larger market share than most of its competitors - like Parler, for instance. The system obviously works as intended even if the majority of the market segment just flows towards what most consider the least revolting alternative.
In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king, goes the saying, and in the land where the options are between the shady self-serving platform using its clientele as product or the deranged cheerleading lobby for the people who shat on the rotunda floor while practicing insurrection I guess FB still comes out the winner every day of the week.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 15 Dec 2021 @ 6:44am
Re: Re: one person in Congress cares about 4th Amendment
"...we need congressmen who pick and choose which BillofRights amendments they support or ignore, although their solemn oath of office permits no such thing."
You do realize that the constitution expressly allows congress to craft and adjust of amendments? That this is, in fact, the job of congress?
If Wyden feels an amendment is no longer acceptable in its current form then a suggestion to reword it, striking it, or adjusting it is in fact well within his job description.
How come every american who claims the authority of the constitution somehow turns out never to have actually read the damn thing? C'mon, people, it really isn't that hard.
"My family will come by for the holidays. We’ll take half your ham. Half your Turkey. Half your pie. Half of everything you cooked. Half of all your furniture, and we’ll bring a chainsaw. We’ll be leaving with half your house. "
Stop and back up a few. You just ran yourself into a ditch there.
Assume that what we have is a good wage. Enough to live on, enough to feed your family. Enough for luxuries. Assume you have that wage after, say, 33% taxes. You don't need to worry about health care or the education of your kids.
By the time you need to start paying half in a progressive tax you're far beyond any reasonable personal loss. Do you really need a ham factory for thanksgiving? Do you need your Turkeys airlifted in, covered in gold foil? Do you need a three-star chef out of guide micheline doing the cooking? Is your furniture all antiques signed personally by Benjamin Franklin and JFK? Do you need to host that shindig in a building the size of Trump towers?
If I earn above a certain amount I rapidly run out of luxuries and creature comforts I could reasonably enjoy no matter what I do. If I can grab a few vacation weeks abroad I don't need to have them on a private island and go there with a private jet. Business class and two well-planned weeks in phuket or barcelona will do me just fine.
Your example simply isn't true. What progressive taxation means is that after you earn a certain treshold of income the overshoot gets taxed higher. Neither you nor anyone else will ever run out of money or find your living standards reduced - unless you believe a private jet and infinity pool penthouse in central LA is a must.
This is how Sweden's progressive tax rate looks (one of the higher among socialist countries, mind). Up to ~45k USD annually = 29-35%. Between 45k and 66k USD = 49-55% on the amount over 45k. Over 66k USD = 54-60% on the amount in excess of 66k.
Bear in mind that every cent above what you spend is money you don't have any other need for than gilding that Turkey. Above a certain level of income the money is scorekeeping and nothing else. You literally can't spend it all.
And let me head off any knee-jerk reaction by first reminding you...I live in that reality. Pretty well, in fact. Better, in fact, than most US middle class income takers would and with far fewer fears of some single costly accident or unplanned-for illness dropping me in the hole for the rest of my life when the insurance provider stops paying the medical bills.
Everything in life is a tradeoff. Having a cake and eating it is magical thinking. We may not be able to get to Star Trek any time soon, but eh, I'll settle for a life where I can live, work and grow without being persistently beholden to money first and foremost.
"And you miss the whole aspect of guaranteed income wiping out bad employment practices. When nobody needs your job they won’t be willing to suffer for it. "
That money does have to come from somewhere. Putting in a flat tax of 30% with no breaks might do it...but I think to some extent you will need, long-term, to tax high income and assets disproportionately from lower income and assets. Mainly because currency has the job to do of circulating. Any money hoarded isn't doing its job and if you sit on too big a pile of it actively impedes the economy as a result.
"It may be a Star Trek fantasy but there’s no reason to not try to get there. "
You realize that in the Star Trek paradigm - until JJ retconned the whole philosophy of it - money had been completely abandoned and within the federation billionaires and millionaires did not exist? The Ferengi are basically caricatures of western capitalism.
If we want Star Trek then we do indeed need to make sure not only to put a minimum cap on income. We need to start capping the upper level of income as well. Or we just end up with every incentive being to maintain the status quo.
"A society where nobody needs to work but most will do so willingly creates a safe, productive, and happy society."
That's a great dream. It'd be the proud top floor of a grand monument to human nobility and purpose.
But to get to that top floor you first need to lay the first brick of the foundation. And that brick is called "Remove money as the primary incentive". And to that effect you need to not just set up minimum income. You need to shrink the wage gap. Because the current system ensures the ones who get out on top won't be the happy worker aiming to do a good job. What you get in the current system is Michael Shkreli.
"We do that by bringing in teachers that want to teach. More teachers. More teaching."
...which is accomplished by making the job one people would want. A better support structure. Reasonable hours. The people entrusted to teach children shouldn't have worse conditions on the job than corporate janitors.
"My support for universal income base makes me far more socialist than most democrats. 25,000 per year untouchable and untaxable. A $1250 deposit per month to every citizen. "
Smells like Andrew Yang in here all of a sudden 😄. The "Citizen's Salary" is a bit rather than I would go - mainly because a conservative liberal like me is leery of untested changes with large ramifications. I think a base income will end up being the norm unless civilization collapses rather than progresses - but let's test it first before rolling it out at scale.
It's also not a possible. That step won't fly before the US rids itself of the "socialism bad" talking point.
"But by term yes. A centralised control of equal distribution. "
Not even then. Most current dictatorships get away with calling themselves an "intermediate phase". But even then they're about as communist as Adam Smith.
"It’s the difference between Clinton and her central control vs AOC or Sanders."
It really isn't. Communism is an extreme left ideology. Clinton would be centre-right. AOC and Bernie are centrist-left. The democrat mainstream aligns to the right.
"We can’t solve crime until the need for it is solved. Putting someone in jail for stealing bread and soup doesn’t help society. "
Lamentably the US has made jails a VERY profitable business. No better way to get 8 hours of daily labor out of people without paying them. The perfect logical replacement for the plantation. Hence yes, society benefits in the short-term and the fiscal aspect. what it loses is the foundation of a free society as factual slavery has come again as a viable option to use against its lower classes.
"You need to harden the base. When nobody needs to slave in 120• warehouses then the company has no choice but to upgrade and improve to bring in and retain workers. "
First step accomplishing all of that all on it's own - unionization. There's a reason there are, in the US, somewhere around 2000 consulting companies specializing in union busting. The individual will always lose against the boss. The worker's representative negotiating the conditions of ten million officer clerks in the state, though? He will be heard.
"You can do that by pulling taxation from the business, not the individual. Ad setting a reasonable high entry point where that kicks in. "
You do need to tax the wealthy. Everyone needs to chip in. But make it a flat rate and have it apply only on income above the minimum subsistence level. Around 25-30% would suffice to fund almost anything. And no exceptions, because a tax code like the current US one with a hundred thousand loopholes to every clause is just not going to work.
People get understandably upset when looking at the wealthiest americans - with billionaires paying 750$ in taxes on incomes of hundreds of millions annually it's no wonder "Eat the rich" has become a slogan. And then those rich wankers pay what amounts to maybe a tenth of the taxes they should have paid to a charity and come off as saints. Meh.
The knee-jerk defense in the US, against "punishing" people for being wealthy kind of misses the point that even under the US tax code those people use lobbied-for loopholes to evade the same taxes the average John/Jane Doe needs to fork over without complaint.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 15 Dec 2021 @ 3:17am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Two problems
"I remind you gently that it is the west as a whole, including Europe, that engaged in that religious crusade."
Trust me, not to that same extent. Not even close. You could walk the streets in Europe being a communist without becoming a registered terrorist or a subject of national interest. Case in point, we've had a communist party siting at roughly 5-7% in our parliament since forever, usually acting as a social conscience/counterweight to the ultra-right libertarians on the other side.
"I’m not sure what you would call ANTIFA and the New Black Panthers then. "
Antifa (literally; Anti-fascism) is a philosophy, not an organization.
There are right-wing militias which are fascist. Doesn't mean Fascism is a militia. And the conflation between Antifa and militant extremists is a pretty good indicator you've been buying snake oil from bad faith vendors. Antifa as a philosophy doesn't really lend itself to violent extremists bent on acting against the common good.
And the New Black Panthers, pegged as an actual hate group by liberals, isn't exactly a liberal militia. They're a nationalist movement firmly in the same pole as the neo-nazis, with the minor exception of who they want as a scapegoat.
"I’d be more concerned about those of the Watch Tower but yes. Nutz just the same!"
The one good thing about the Witnesses might just be they tend to annoy you individually more than nationally. Which is lamentably more than can be said about other, sadly far more popular doom cults, like the seventh day adventists still trying to fix the Great Disappointment.
"Targeting politicians appears to be a theme of late. I worry the judge just put a bullseye on people. "
I'm not sure if this calms you down or upsets you...but that judge only confirmed the status quo which has been established constitutional principle since the founders put pen to paper. Becoming a public figure, let alone a political one, has ample precedent on how their interaction with 1A must be handled.
The fact that politicians today need to worry about being targeted...I can only refer back to our previous debates around violence being an intrinsic part of the US cultural identity. It's just one more of those topics where the judge confirming that "Yes, 1A applies irrespective of medium" is only really an issue because there are so very many people around who think the proper response to dissenting opinion is a bullet.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 15 Dec 2021 @ 2:56am
Re:
"I am frequently frustrated with getting ebooks, which I prefer. Popular ebooks often have a LONG waiting list! "
Well, just don the tricorn, hoist the jolly roger, and set sail for The Bay then.
There is no honest reason why digital books should have become more expensive and cumbersome for libraries to supply than physical dead-tree editions. Hence if artificial scarcity is what keeps you from a work then just find a kind neighborhood seeder to provide you a torrented copy.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 15 Dec 2021 @ 2:51am
Re: Re: Re:
"That's the one of the reasons why I am advocating abolishing of copyright no matter how radical it sounds to other people..."
You won't hear any arguments from me. In my book there's exactly one item of "intellectual property" which isn't an actively harmful Red Flag Act. Trademark.
Trademark is certainly abusable - and has been, a lot. Unlike the right to determine who can make copies, though, Trademark is about who gets to exploit an identity which is VERY different and is naturally understood and respected by most people.
Abolish copyright. Make an author's work part of their trademark instead. What the author loses is the privilege of determining which copies are made - which they in reality never had in the first place - and what they gain is sole authority on who gets to use that part of their brand openly.
This rids a generation of an unfair stigma of unlawfulness over copying information while also providing the authors with control over what is actually important - the right to stand as sole author of a work and the right to cash in on anyone wanting to use said work for commercial or political reasons.
Also makes the laws surrounding it about 99% simpler.
Only casualties; Gatekeeper industries and an admittedly rather large lobby of lawyers specialized in IP rights.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 15 Dec 2021 @ 2:32am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Sounds unlikely and sounds lije not happening during my lifetime or my children's lifetime so it's S.E.P. -- future Someone's Else Problem to me..."
So it's a Fuck You, Got Mine problem. That at least is honest, unlike making wide assertions around science the experts won't back.
It might put things into perspective that because our grandparents also thought that way the next generation will grow up with the effects of global warming kicking in for real. Within our lifetimes we'll start seeing the first mass migrations and resource wars as the weather patterns keep changing fast.
"...and meanwhile we need internet service now. (And that doomday scenario sounds fantasy-like to me by the way.)"
It's not. The fossil records have been clear for a long time; Life has evolved more or less from scratch no less than five times on this rock. Every 50-100 million years all life beyond the most primitive is extinguished and has to start again.
We're very much overdue another such event, given the last extinction event was 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs died off courtesy of the asteroid whose remnants we find lining the yucatan today.
If NASA's infrared telescope works as designed and the DART then the pot odds are still that we'll get enough months of warning to make our peace with the world and leave behind some suitably indestructible tablet for whatever evolves into sapience next. Hopefully with a recounting of our errors.
If anything I'll tell you what is fantasy; That we're all sitting on a rock moving 66k mph in solar orbit, through space we know is riddled with falling rocks the size of manhattan, and we're still taking tomorrow for granted despite the fact that we have looked at the existing asteroid impacts, are circled by the remnants of the collision which created the moon, and have noted that we do, in fact, live in a target range with predictable firing intervals.
THAT is fantasy.
And the fact that sapient beings appears to value luxuries over actually preparing to survive might just be the reason why we keep finding no intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. It would be nice to buck the odds and try to survive as a species.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 14 Dec 2021 @ 7:57am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Two problems
"It wasn’t a “dog whistle”. It was a direct reply to ‘but Trump’."
The term some far left anti-white racist isn't a realistic one. Not by a mile. Take it from someone who actually knows what "far left" is - you hardly have any of those across the pond to begin with. And left-wing racist is a bit of an oxymoron as well.
See, it's a bit hard to commit to the philosophy where individualism takes a back step to the common good and simultaneously insist there's a demographic which is lesser.
Racism is inherently the natural domain of the far right and the centrists. The more left you go the less likely you are to be able to justify discrimination based on race or ethnicity. No, the left has other natural drawbacks, prejudices and flaws they fall for...but racism isn't one of them. Leftie bigotry is easy to discern - find whoever makes possession of wealth itself an automatic target of prejudice.
If the extreme right is predisposed to finding scapegoats in races, ethnicity, origin and religion, the extreme left is predisposed to finding their scapegoats among the wealthy.
And that's more ideological than it is the simple desire to look down on someone else, the way LBJ described it. No, with the extreme left it's pure Marx where they insist that any beneficiary of an unethical system is part of the problem and needs removal. But this can not justify prejudice based on ethnicity.
(That's also, incidentally, how you can tell China's never been communist. No actual communist can justify celebrating "the working class, the peasantry, the urban petite bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie" as China does on it's national flag.)
On a tangent here, one problem the US really has is the willingness to conflate words which have distinct meaning. Liberals, for instance, aren't by default leftist. THAT is a conflation conservatives lacking actual policy tried to make to nail progressives to the communist scare of Hoover and McCarthy. And then confuse the issue until the current situation, where the average MAGA hat wearer has no clue about anything except that, apparently, liberals are governed by lizard people who eat babies.
Your problem right here is that with your oft-stated belief republicans are the lesser evil compared to democrats people will read into your assertions statements which may or may not be there. The average Trump voter, after all, is exemplified by wilful ignorance, malicious hatred, fear of the other...and there will always be judgment based on the company you keep.
"I draw a line between official government service and using private service for government-related use. "
I honestly don't see why. I mean sure, there's an overlap. But as #45's day in court showed there's a problem when a government employee starts to primarily use unofficial channels to pound out their message to the voters. It may not be kind to deny a politician the same discretionary power people not in government service have but...there's literally no other way.
That all said the real idiocy by Massie here is that although the courts are clear blocking someone from his channel should be a no-go, no one said anything about muting.
"Both parties have small but militant extremes. Small groups of armed people bent of violence. "
They really don't. You're just tossing half a dozen very different factions into the pot there and calling it soup. At least take the boot and the rusty nails out before you serve it, kay? Those don't belong.
Liberals and progressives don't have militias. They, after all, are the ones who keep believing everything can be settled in debate. They don't have training camps, armed militias, or large groups of the confused, ignorant and angry fully convinced the illuminati and/or the elders of zion are running the nation.
The actual socialists in existence in the US? They do have armed people - look up the SRA (Socialists Rifle Association) or Redneck Revolt - but those are normally almost as hostile to liberals and progressives as they are to right-wingers. The people who took Marx's call for armed civilians to heart, as it were. What those do not have is political representation. You won't find them under even the democrat big tent.
And then you have the wingnuts - Nation Of Islam and similar organizations. I'll grant you, that one is as racist as racist gets. Which might be why civil rights organizations brand it a hate group. Those are, however, hard to take any more seriously than the scientologists. I mean, once they start talking about God descending on a UFO to wipe out the Big Bad and lift the Chosen to safety then you're just talking about another iteration of some abrahamic doomsday cult. I put their limits of organized action between rifles and water towers, honestly.
This leaves us with the far right. And looking at the FBI's repeated warnings about the far right being the single greatest internal threat...they're not saying that for no reason. Putting whatever armed leftist we can find on one side of the scale and right wing militants on the other the balance looks like you tried to weigh the Weisse Rose against the Wehrmacht. Just another way you really can't make a "both sides" argument - it's so lopsided it's ridiculous. Pee-wee doesn't belong in the ring with Mike Tyson.
"This ruling just gave them a safe-space of sorts to monitor and track with impunity. "
Fixed that for you. What the ruling referred to says is that blocking access to communications isn't allowed where said communications can be considered governmental. Twitter does, however, have a Mute button as well and I don't think the ruling covers that.
I mean, it shouldn't. Even in a public meeting there's ample precedent that the heckler or the disruptive can be ushered out. But barring them from attendance or quietly partaking? That's where I draw the line.
Which brings us to the TL;DR?
No, an injunction against a government entity blocking attendance is not really a problem. If the injunction referred to muting attendees I'd see a problem here. But there's a world of difference between those two options.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 14 Dec 2021 @ 6:40am
Re: Re: Re:
[Addendum]
And here you can google the details of the unedited event; 'All lies': how the US military covered up gunning down two journalists in Iraq.
Anyone trying to exculpate the two sociopaths in the chopper who decided to end it all by firing through a car with children in it to get to the last journalist is just pure evil.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 14 Dec 2021 @ 6:33am
Re: Re:
"Lol, you still think that the video as it was was real?"
What was real about it includes the record of firing a 30 mm vulcan at an obviously unarmed civilian on the ground.
After that it doesn't matter if the rest of the video had been doctored - which it hadn't. You can certainly skew a perspective by editing, cutting some sequences while leaving others in, but both the edited and the unedited version show the exact same thing - a pair of chopper pilots killing civilians for shitz'n'giggles.
So your argument becomes nothing but the sad exculpation that the US army can do no wrong and god help the infidel journo who dares imply otherwise.
The exact same argument was made about the ones reporting on My Lai during the vietnam war. Difference being that at that time the journalist got a pulitzer instead. Because the US at that time consisted of people unwilling to blind themselves to the wrongs of their own damn army.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 14 Dec 2021 @ 6:21am
Re: Re: Re:
"...he was never in any danger of being quietly whisked away had he gone back to Sweden."
That depends entirely on whether an american attache decides to strongly urge the swedish government to give him up. The last PM we had who was willing to stand up to the US was probably Olof Palme.
Swedish PM: "We are not extraditing Mr. Assange to the US under these circumstances." US Ambassador: "We'll treat him nice. No waterboarding. Cross my heart." Swedish PM: "The optics are really bad, you know" US Ambassador: "We'll get you a white house photo OP" Swedish PM: "Woof! 🐶" US Ambassador: "Good dog!" 😎
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 14 Dec 2021 @ 6:10am
Well, it doesn't exactly come as a surprise.
By now I'm slowly getting numb to the shenanigans coming out of the american south. A bit surprised to see texans of all people going for the taxation route in their grifting though.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 14 Dec 2021 @ 2:13am
Re: Re:
"It's insane that you somehow don't see the segmentation of the streaming market that involved yanking distribution agreements because they were pissed off at Netflix' success and creating their own services which made your total cost go up by about 400% as you being an object of revenue for the capitalists."
Well, there is a reason piracy is still going strong. The market fragmentation really is the clearest example that if the copyright cult ever finds a win-win solution they'll always choke it out of existence just to squeeze those few percent extra margin out of the current business model.
I'm putting my money on the copyright cult eventually managing to finally smear the public perception of copyright to the point that future generations will refer to it as the prohibition era of the 2000's.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 14 Dec 2021 @ 2:08am
"Editing footage and words in a video of an attack helicopter attacking terrorists to make it seem like a war crime was being committed when it really wasn’t..."
Two chopper pilots playing a game of taking potshots at a visibly unarmed fleeing civilian while laughing? The one multiple times proven unedited?
11 civilians killed because two chopper pilots decided that it was the hilarious thing to do.
"Let Assange suffer. He deserves it for inflicting upon us the death of democracy."
Nice try gaslighting. Assange may be an unpleasant asshole but what he deserves for publishing evidence of war crimes is a pulitzer.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 14 Dec 2021 @ 2:02am
Re:
"They'd be less likely to roll over and hand him to the Americans than either the UK or Australia, that's for sure."
Google the "bromma extraditions Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery". Suffice to say that Sweden has, in the past, on the mere request of the US attache, brought asylum seekers in handcuffs and blindfolds, to CIA-registered planes where in front of the swedish personnel the asylum seekers were fitted with adult diapers, trussed like chickens, and flown off to some hellhole egyptian prison.
All with neither trial nor investigation. Sweden was later sued by one of the survivors and as it turns out years of torture and permanent harm was caused to two innocent men because in the "war of terror" it proved expedient by "allied" nations less concerned with human rights to just hand a list of dissidents to the US ambassador and claim they were Al-Quaeda terrorists.
No, if Assange had gone to Sweden his feet wouldn't have touched the ground before he was shipped off to gitmo.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 14 Dec 2021 @ 1:34am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Japan IS dumb about copyright
"...the prevalence of "kid who does not have black hair gets bullied for it" in manga and anime is indicative of something going on."
Japan is basically governed by the desire to conform. Everything has to be harmonious. Conflicts must not exist. The philosophy where the boy crying that the emperor is naked is quickly and quietly locked away for disturbing the peace.
On the positive that makes the society a very polite and soft-spoken one. On the negative it means bullying and exploitation is quietly overlooked, because the waves revelation would make is considered worse.
Suicide in Japan, in all age groups, is disproportionately high as a result.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 14 Dec 2021 @ 1:26am
Re:
"I think today's copyright laws would actually be very reasonable if copyright only lasted 10 years."
Everyone keeps missing that it used to be they only lasted seven years. The thing is that when you write a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation enormously benefiting a gatekeeper industry you've more or less guaranteed that every presidential or congressional candidate to emerge ever after will be owing quite large sums of campaign funding to the lobby of that gatekeeper industry.
In short, copyright at all just means getting on a steep greased slope in a high-gravity environment. Where people behind you are trying to push you down it all the time.
Thus you can't fix copyright because every attempt to make it reasonable will be undone in very short order.
On the post: The Bipartisan Attacks On The Internet Are Easily Understood If You Realize They Just Want To Control Speech Online
Re: Re: Re: We need to have a talk with the First Amendment
"“But this could be abused by someone in the future!” is an excuse to do nothing, watch poll numbers for progressives shit themselves, and then the corrupt/fascist government takes the reigns and does all the abuse anyway, because they don’t need someone to do it first for them to do it."
It's somehow really disheartening to re-read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for the umpteenth time in a row and yet again be struck by the similarities between contemporary US and the last throes of the Weimar republic.
History is pretty clear though. It's too late to do anything. Liberals and progressives have suffered the alt-right to grow into the monster it currently is by simply not giving enough of a shit to stop them. Now it's too late. The crazy racist uncle should have been banished from the thanksgiving table ten years ago. The deplorable bigoted spouse divorced and cast aside. The swastika and odal-wearing patrons told to leave the premises and never come back years back. The authoritarian old granpa believing blindly in the righteousness of uniforms and symbols tossed into a home and left to rot.
The time to cast these monsters into the wilderness was decades ago.
Instead they've been encouraged and incentivized. Never told where the line in sand was drawn. Always invited back to the table to talk - which they no doubt found briefly amusing before they shat on said table and ran off to light a cross on someones lawn again.
An ounce of prevention being absent now you need a crapton of cure instead. And the only cure possible at this point is to keep playing within the rules until the fascists overreach and spark another civil war. Because that's where you're at right now.
"This is the biggest thing you don’t understand, or refuse to understand. The corrupt assholes do it anyway. They do it anyway. THEY FUCKING DO IT ANYWAY."
I think most of us do understand. What we also understand but you missed is that it's far too late to get to a point where they don't do it anyway. It's just that in one case you'll still have the moral ground to claim you're on the right side in the civil war or unending skirmish about to start among the fractured ruins of the union.
"Is it also that hard to believe that if progressive governments outlaw dangerous lies and punish people for spreading them, that the chance of a corrupt/fascist regime taking power would diminish?"
Well, Europe has managed to ban hate speech and we are notably still a lot more democratic than the US. But then again, we have another platform than the US does and fewer risks associated with introducing such a ban. Within the US...I doubt you have the social responsibility to survive such a breach of your own constitutional principles. You might have, in the times of FDR or Kennedy. But not today. Today, much thanks to Reagan, your nation revolves around Fuck You, Got Mine and All for One and More For Me. The concept that every individual must put in the work and pay the way for everyone else so all may prosper...is dead.
On the post: The Bipartisan Attacks On The Internet Are Easily Understood If You Realize They Just Want To Control Speech Online
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Because free-market capitalism has done such a good job at keeping corps like FB in check..."
By the rules of the free market what would keep FB in check would be the citizenry. Vox Populi, Vox Dei as it were.
FB is still occupying a vastly larger market share than most of its competitors - like Parler, for instance. The system obviously works as intended even if the majority of the market segment just flows towards what most consider the least revolting alternative.
In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king, goes the saying, and in the land where the options are between the shady self-serving platform using its clientele as product or the deranged cheerleading lobby for the people who shat on the rotunda floor while practicing insurrection I guess FB still comes out the winner every day of the week.
On the post: ICE Loses Access To Sensitive Utility Customer Records Following Pressure By Senator Ron Wyden
Re: Re: one person in Congress cares about 4th Amendment
"...we need congressmen who pick and choose which BillofRights amendments they support or ignore, although their solemn oath of office permits no such thing."
You do realize that the constitution expressly allows congress to craft and adjust of amendments? That this is, in fact, the job of congress?
If Wyden feels an amendment is no longer acceptable in its current form then a suggestion to reword it, striking it, or adjusting it is in fact well within his job description.
How come every american who claims the authority of the constitution somehow turns out never to have actually read the damn thing? C'mon, people, it really isn't that hard.
On the post: Federal Court Dismisses Another Negligence Suit Against Online Gun Marketplace Armslist But Says Section 230 Doesn't Protect It
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Totally
"My family will come by for the holidays. We’ll take half your ham. Half your Turkey. Half your pie. Half of everything you cooked. Half of all your furniture, and we’ll bring a chainsaw. We’ll be leaving with half your house. "
Stop and back up a few. You just ran yourself into a ditch there.
Assume that what we have is a good wage. Enough to live on, enough to feed your family. Enough for luxuries. Assume you have that wage after, say, 33% taxes. You don't need to worry about health care or the education of your kids.
By the time you need to start paying half in a progressive tax you're far beyond any reasonable personal loss. Do you really need a ham factory for thanksgiving? Do you need your Turkeys airlifted in, covered in gold foil? Do you need a three-star chef out of guide micheline doing the cooking? Is your furniture all antiques signed personally by Benjamin Franklin and JFK? Do you need to host that shindig in a building the size of Trump towers?
If I earn above a certain amount I rapidly run out of luxuries and creature comforts I could reasonably enjoy no matter what I do. If I can grab a few vacation weeks abroad I don't need to have them on a private island and go there with a private jet. Business class and two well-planned weeks in phuket or barcelona will do me just fine.
Your example simply isn't true. What progressive taxation means is that after you earn a certain treshold of income the overshoot gets taxed higher. Neither you nor anyone else will ever run out of money or find your living standards reduced - unless you believe a private jet and infinity pool penthouse in central LA is a must.
This is how Sweden's progressive tax rate looks (one of the higher among socialist countries, mind).
Up to ~45k USD annually = 29-35%.
Between 45k and 66k USD = 49-55% on the amount over 45k.
Over 66k USD = 54-60% on the amount in excess of 66k.
Bear in mind that every cent above what you spend is money you don't have any other need for than gilding that Turkey. Above a certain level of income the money is scorekeeping and nothing else. You literally can't spend it all.
And let me head off any knee-jerk reaction by first reminding you...I live in that reality. Pretty well, in fact. Better, in fact, than most US middle class income takers would and with far fewer fears of some single costly accident or unplanned-for illness dropping me in the hole for the rest of my life when the insurance provider stops paying the medical bills.
Everything in life is a tradeoff. Having a cake and eating it is magical thinking. We may not be able to get to Star Trek any time soon, but eh, I'll settle for a life where I can live, work and grow without being persistently beholden to money first and foremost.
On the post: Federal Court Dismisses Another Negligence Suit Against Online Gun Marketplace Armslist But Says Section 230 Doesn't Protect It
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Totally without
"And you miss the whole aspect of guaranteed income wiping out bad employment practices. When nobody needs your job they won’t be willing to suffer for it. "
That money does have to come from somewhere. Putting in a flat tax of 30% with no breaks might do it...but I think to some extent you will need, long-term, to tax high income and assets disproportionately from lower income and assets. Mainly because currency has the job to do of circulating. Any money hoarded isn't doing its job and if you sit on too big a pile of it actively impedes the economy as a result.
"It may be a Star Trek fantasy but there’s no reason to not try to get there. "
You realize that in the Star Trek paradigm - until JJ retconned the whole philosophy of it - money had been completely abandoned and within the federation billionaires and millionaires did not exist? The Ferengi are basically caricatures of western capitalism.
If we want Star Trek then we do indeed need to make sure not only to put a minimum cap on income. We need to start capping the upper level of income as well. Or we just end up with every incentive being to maintain the status quo.
"A society where nobody needs to work but most will do so willingly creates a safe, productive, and happy society."
That's a great dream. It'd be the proud top floor of a grand monument to human nobility and purpose.
But to get to that top floor you first need to lay the first brick of the foundation. And that brick is called "Remove money as the primary incentive". And to that effect you need to not just set up minimum income. You need to shrink the wage gap. Because the current system ensures the ones who get out on top won't be the happy worker aiming to do a good job. What you get in the current system is Michael Shkreli.
On the post: Federal Court Dismisses Another Negligence Suit Against Online Gun Marketplace Armslist But Says Section 230 Doesn't Protect It
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Totally without merit
"We do that by bringing in teachers that want to teach. More teachers. More teaching."
...which is accomplished by making the job one people would want. A better support structure. Reasonable hours. The people entrusted to teach children shouldn't have worse conditions on the job than corporate janitors.
"My support for universal income base makes me far more socialist than most democrats. 25,000 per year untouchable and untaxable. A $1250 deposit per month to every citizen. "
Smells like Andrew Yang in here all of a sudden 😄. The "Citizen's Salary" is a bit rather than I would go - mainly because a conservative liberal like me is leery of untested changes with large ramifications. I think a base income will end up being the norm unless civilization collapses rather than progresses - but let's test it first before rolling it out at scale.
It's also not a possible. That step won't fly before the US rids itself of the "socialism bad" talking point.
"But by term yes. A centralised control of equal distribution. "
Not even then. Most current dictatorships get away with calling themselves an "intermediate phase". But even then they're about as communist as Adam Smith.
"It’s the difference between Clinton and her central control vs AOC or Sanders."
It really isn't. Communism is an extreme left ideology. Clinton would be centre-right. AOC and Bernie are centrist-left. The democrat mainstream aligns to the right.
"We can’t solve crime until the need for it is solved. Putting someone in jail for stealing bread and soup doesn’t help society. "
Lamentably the US has made jails a VERY profitable business. No better way to get 8 hours of daily labor out of people without paying them. The perfect logical replacement for the plantation. Hence yes, society benefits in the short-term and the fiscal aspect. what it loses is the foundation of a free society as factual slavery has come again as a viable option to use against its lower classes.
"You need to harden the base. When nobody needs to slave in 120• warehouses then the company has no choice but to upgrade and improve to bring in and retain workers. "
First step accomplishing all of that all on it's own - unionization. There's a reason there are, in the US, somewhere around 2000 consulting companies specializing in union busting. The individual will always lose against the boss. The worker's representative negotiating the conditions of ten million officer clerks in the state, though? He will be heard.
"You can do that by pulling taxation from the business, not the individual. Ad setting a reasonable high entry point where that kicks in. "
You do need to tax the wealthy. Everyone needs to chip in. But make it a flat rate and have it apply only on income above the minimum subsistence level. Around 25-30% would suffice to fund almost anything. And no exceptions, because a tax code like the current US one with a hundred thousand loopholes to every clause is just not going to work.
People get understandably upset when looking at the wealthiest americans - with billionaires paying 750$ in taxes on incomes of hundreds of millions annually it's no wonder "Eat the rich" has become a slogan. And then those rich wankers pay what amounts to maybe a tenth of the taxes they should have paid to a charity and come off as saints. Meh.
The knee-jerk defense in the US, against "punishing" people for being wealthy kind of misses the point that even under the US tax code those people use lobbied-for loopholes to evade the same taxes the average John/Jane Doe needs to fork over without complaint.
On the post: Rep. Thomas Massie Seems To Have Skipped Over The 1st Amendment In His Rush To 'Defend' The 2nd
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Two problems
"I remind you gently that it is the west as a whole, including Europe, that engaged in that religious crusade."
Trust me, not to that same extent. Not even close. You could walk the streets in Europe being a communist without becoming a registered terrorist or a subject of national interest. Case in point, we've had a communist party siting at roughly 5-7% in our parliament since forever, usually acting as a social conscience/counterweight to the ultra-right libertarians on the other side.
"I’m not sure what you would call ANTIFA and the New Black Panthers then. "
Antifa (literally; Anti-fascism) is a philosophy, not an organization.
There are right-wing militias which are fascist. Doesn't mean Fascism is a militia. And the conflation between Antifa and militant extremists is a pretty good indicator you've been buying snake oil from bad faith vendors. Antifa as a philosophy doesn't really lend itself to violent extremists bent on acting against the common good.
And the New Black Panthers, pegged as an actual hate group by liberals, isn't exactly a liberal militia. They're a nationalist movement firmly in the same pole as the neo-nazis, with the minor exception of who they want as a scapegoat.
"I’d be more concerned about those of the Watch Tower but yes. Nutz just the same!"
The one good thing about the Witnesses might just be they tend to annoy you individually more than nationally. Which is lamentably more than can be said about other, sadly far more popular doom cults, like the seventh day adventists still trying to fix the Great Disappointment.
"Targeting politicians appears to be a theme of late. I worry the judge just put a bullseye on people. "
I'm not sure if this calms you down or upsets you...but that judge only confirmed the status quo which has been established constitutional principle since the founders put pen to paper. Becoming a public figure, let alone a political one, has ample precedent on how their interaction with 1A must be handled.
The fact that politicians today need to worry about being targeted...I can only refer back to our previous debates around violence being an intrinsic part of the US cultural identity. It's just one more of those topics where the judge confirming that "Yes, 1A applies irrespective of medium" is only really an issue because there are so very many people around who think the proper response to dissenting opinion is a bullet.
On the post: Book Publishers Sue Maryland Over Law That Would Require Them To Offer 'Reasonable' Prices On Ebooks To Libraries
Re:
"I am frequently frustrated with getting ebooks, which I prefer. Popular ebooks often have a LONG waiting list! "
Well, just don the tricorn, hoist the jolly roger, and set sail for The Bay then.
There is no honest reason why digital books should have become more expensive and cumbersome for libraries to supply than physical dead-tree editions. Hence if artificial scarcity is what keeps you from a work then just find a kind neighborhood seeder to provide you a torrented copy.
On the post: Book Publishers Sue Maryland Over Law That Would Require Them To Offer 'Reasonable' Prices On Ebooks To Libraries
Re: Re: Re:
"That's the one of the reasons why I am advocating abolishing of copyright no matter how radical it sounds to other people..."
You won't hear any arguments from me. In my book there's exactly one item of "intellectual property" which isn't an actively harmful Red Flag Act. Trademark.
Trademark is certainly abusable - and has been, a lot. Unlike the right to determine who can make copies, though, Trademark is about who gets to exploit an identity which is VERY different and is naturally understood and respected by most people.
Abolish copyright. Make an author's work part of their trademark instead. What the author loses is the privilege of determining which copies are made - which they in reality never had in the first place - and what they gain is sole authority on who gets to use that part of their brand openly.
This rids a generation of an unfair stigma of unlawfulness over copying information while also providing the authors with control over what is actually important - the right to stand as sole author of a work and the right to cash in on anyone wanting to use said work for commercial or political reasons.
Also makes the laws surrounding it about 99% simpler.
Only casualties; Gatekeeper industries and an admittedly rather large lobby of lawyers specialized in IP rights.
On the post: EU, US Start To Realize Letting Elon Musk Dictate Global Space Rules Might Not Be The Brightest Idea
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Sounds unlikely and sounds lije not happening during my lifetime or my children's lifetime so it's S.E.P. -- future Someone's Else Problem to me..."
So it's a Fuck You, Got Mine problem. That at least is honest, unlike making wide assertions around science the experts won't back.
It might put things into perspective that because our grandparents also thought that way the next generation will grow up with the effects of global warming kicking in for real. Within our lifetimes we'll start seeing the first mass migrations and resource wars as the weather patterns keep changing fast.
"...and meanwhile we need internet service now. (And that doomday scenario sounds fantasy-like to me by the way.)"
It's not. The fossil records have been clear for a long time; Life has evolved more or less from scratch no less than five times on this rock. Every 50-100 million years all life beyond the most primitive is extinguished and has to start again.
We're very much overdue another such event, given the last extinction event was 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs died off courtesy of the asteroid whose remnants we find lining the yucatan today.
If NASA's infrared telescope works as designed and the DART then the pot odds are still that we'll get enough months of warning to make our peace with the world and leave behind some suitably indestructible tablet for whatever evolves into sapience next. Hopefully with a recounting of our errors.
If anything I'll tell you what is fantasy; That we're all sitting on a rock moving 66k mph in solar orbit, through space we know is riddled with falling rocks the size of manhattan, and we're still taking tomorrow for granted despite the fact that we have looked at the existing asteroid impacts, are circled by the remnants of the collision which created the moon, and have noted that we do, in fact, live in a target range with predictable firing intervals.
THAT is fantasy.
And the fact that sapient beings appears to value luxuries over actually preparing to survive might just be the reason why we keep finding no intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. It would be nice to buck the odds and try to survive as a species.
On the post: Rep. Thomas Massie Seems To Have Skipped Over The 1st Amendment In His Rush To 'Defend' The 2nd
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Two problems
"It wasn’t a “dog whistle”. It was a direct reply to ‘but Trump’."
The term some far left anti-white racist isn't a realistic one. Not by a mile. Take it from someone who actually knows what "far left" is - you hardly have any of those across the pond to begin with. And left-wing racist is a bit of an oxymoron as well.
See, it's a bit hard to commit to the philosophy where individualism takes a back step to the common good and simultaneously insist there's a demographic which is lesser.
Racism is inherently the natural domain of the far right and the centrists. The more left you go the less likely you are to be able to justify discrimination based on race or ethnicity. No, the left has other natural drawbacks, prejudices and flaws they fall for...but racism isn't one of them. Leftie bigotry is easy to discern - find whoever makes possession of wealth itself an automatic target of prejudice.
If the extreme right is predisposed to finding scapegoats in races, ethnicity, origin and religion, the extreme left is predisposed to finding their scapegoats among the wealthy.
And that's more ideological than it is the simple desire to look down on someone else, the way LBJ described it. No, with the extreme left it's pure Marx where they insist that any beneficiary of an unethical system is part of the problem and needs removal. But this can not justify prejudice based on ethnicity.
(That's also, incidentally, how you can tell China's never been communist. No actual communist can justify celebrating "the working class, the peasantry, the urban petite bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie" as China does on it's national flag.)
On a tangent here, one problem the US really has is the willingness to conflate words which have distinct meaning. Liberals, for instance, aren't by default leftist. THAT is a conflation conservatives lacking actual policy tried to make to nail progressives to the communist scare of Hoover and McCarthy. And then confuse the issue until the current situation, where the average MAGA hat wearer has no clue about anything except that, apparently, liberals are governed by lizard people who eat babies.
Your problem right here is that with your oft-stated belief republicans are the lesser evil compared to democrats people will read into your assertions statements which may or may not be there. The average Trump voter, after all, is exemplified by wilful ignorance, malicious hatred, fear of the other...and there will always be judgment based on the company you keep.
"I draw a line between official government service and using private service for government-related use. "
I honestly don't see why. I mean sure, there's an overlap. But as #45's day in court showed there's a problem when a government employee starts to primarily use unofficial channels to pound out their message to the voters. It may not be kind to deny a politician the same discretionary power people not in government service have but...there's literally no other way.
That all said the real idiocy by Massie here is that although the courts are clear blocking someone from his channel should be a no-go, no one said anything about muting.
"Both parties have small but militant extremes. Small groups of armed people bent of violence. "
They really don't. You're just tossing half a dozen very different factions into the pot there and calling it soup. At least take the boot and the rusty nails out before you serve it, kay? Those don't belong.
Liberals and progressives don't have militias. They, after all, are the ones who keep believing everything can be settled in debate. They don't have training camps, armed militias, or large groups of the confused, ignorant and angry fully convinced the illuminati and/or the elders of zion are running the nation.
The actual socialists in existence in the US? They do have armed people - look up the SRA (Socialists Rifle Association) or Redneck Revolt - but those are normally almost as hostile to liberals and progressives as they are to right-wingers. The people who took Marx's call for armed civilians to heart, as it were. What those do not have is political representation. You won't find them under even the democrat big tent.
And then you have the wingnuts - Nation Of Islam and similar organizations. I'll grant you, that one is as racist as racist gets. Which might be why civil rights organizations brand it a hate group. Those are, however, hard to take any more seriously than the scientologists. I mean, once they start talking about God descending on a UFO to wipe out the Big Bad and lift the Chosen to safety then you're just talking about another iteration of some abrahamic doomsday cult. I put their limits of organized action between rifles and water towers, honestly.
This leaves us with the far right. And looking at the FBI's repeated warnings about the far right being the single greatest internal threat...they're not saying that for no reason. Putting whatever armed leftist we can find on one side of the scale and right wing militants on the other the balance looks like you tried to weigh the Weisse Rose against the Wehrmacht. Just another way you really can't make a "both sides" argument - it's so lopsided it's ridiculous. Pee-wee doesn't belong in the ring with Mike Tyson.
"This ruling just gave them a safe-space of sorts to monitor and track with impunity. "
Fixed that for you. What the ruling referred to says is that blocking access to communications isn't allowed where said communications can be considered governmental. Twitter does, however, have a Mute button as well and I don't think the ruling covers that.
I mean, it shouldn't. Even in a public meeting there's ample precedent that the heckler or the disruptive can be ushered out. But barring them from attendance or quietly partaking? That's where I draw the line.
Which brings us to the TL;DR?
No, an injunction against a government entity blocking attendance is not really a problem. If the injunction referred to muting attendees I'd see a problem here. But there's a world of difference between those two options.
On the post: UK Court Says US Can Extradite Julian Assange And Prosecute Him For Doing Things Journalists Do
Re: Re: Re:
[Addendum]
And here you can google the details of the unedited event; 'All lies': how the US military covered up gunning down two journalists in Iraq.
Anyone trying to exculpate the two sociopaths in the chopper who decided to end it all by firing through a car with children in it to get to the last journalist is just pure evil.
On the post: UK Court Says US Can Extradite Julian Assange And Prosecute Him For Doing Things Journalists Do
Re: Re:
"Lol, you still think that the video as it was was real?"
What was real about it includes the record of firing a 30 mm vulcan at an obviously unarmed civilian on the ground.
After that it doesn't matter if the rest of the video had been doctored - which it hadn't. You can certainly skew a perspective by editing, cutting some sequences while leaving others in, but both the edited and the unedited version show the exact same thing - a pair of chopper pilots killing civilians for shitz'n'giggles.
So your argument becomes nothing but the sad exculpation that the US army can do no wrong and god help the infidel journo who dares imply otherwise.
The exact same argument was made about the ones reporting on My Lai during the vietnam war. Difference being that at that time the journalist got a pulitzer instead. Because the US at that time consisted of people unwilling to blind themselves to the wrongs of their own damn army.
On the post: UK Court Says US Can Extradite Julian Assange And Prosecute Him For Doing Things Journalists Do
Re: Re: Re:
"...he was never in any danger of being quietly whisked away had he gone back to Sweden."
That depends entirely on whether an american attache decides to strongly urge the swedish government to give him up. The last PM we had who was willing to stand up to the US was probably Olof Palme.
Swedish PM: "We are not extraditing Mr. Assange to the US under these circumstances."
US Ambassador: "We'll treat him nice. No waterboarding. Cross my heart."
Swedish PM: "The optics are really bad, you know"
US Ambassador: "We'll get you a white house photo OP"
Swedish PM: "Woof! 🐶"
US Ambassador: "Good dog!" 😎
On the post: Austin The Latest City To Try And Impose A Netflix Tax
Well, it doesn't exactly come as a surprise.
By now I'm slowly getting numb to the shenanigans coming out of the american south. A bit surprised to see texans of all people going for the taxation route in their grifting though.
On the post: EUIPO Study Indicates It's Likely That Piracy Traffic Has Decreased Significantly, Even During The Pandemic
Re: Re:
"It's insane that you somehow don't see the segmentation of the streaming market that involved yanking distribution agreements because they were pissed off at Netflix' success and creating their own services which made your total cost go up by about 400% as you being an object of revenue for the capitalists."
Well, there is a reason piracy is still going strong. The market fragmentation really is the clearest example that if the copyright cult ever finds a win-win solution they'll always choke it out of existence just to squeeze those few percent extra margin out of the current business model.
I'm putting my money on the copyright cult eventually managing to finally smear the public perception of copyright to the point that future generations will refer to it as the prohibition era of the 2000's.
On the post: UK Court Says US Can Extradite Julian Assange And Prosecute Him For Doing Things Journalists Do
"Editing footage and words in a video of an attack helicopter attacking terrorists to make it seem like a war crime was being committed when it really wasn’t..."
Two chopper pilots playing a game of taking potshots at a visibly unarmed fleeing civilian while laughing? The one multiple times proven unedited?
11 civilians killed because two chopper pilots decided that it was the hilarious thing to do.
"Let Assange suffer. He deserves it for inflicting upon us the death of democracy."
Nice try gaslighting. Assange may be an unpleasant asshole but what he deserves for publishing evidence of war crimes is a pulitzer.
On the post: UK Court Says US Can Extradite Julian Assange And Prosecute Him For Doing Things Journalists Do
Re:
"They'd be less likely to roll over and hand him to the Americans than either the UK or Australia, that's for sure."
Google the "bromma extraditions Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery". Suffice to say that Sweden has, in the past, on the mere request of the US attache, brought asylum seekers in handcuffs and blindfolds, to CIA-registered planes where in front of the swedish personnel the asylum seekers were fitted with adult diapers, trussed like chickens, and flown off to some hellhole egyptian prison.
All with neither trial nor investigation. Sweden was later sued by one of the survivors and as it turns out years of torture and permanent harm was caused to two innocent men because in the "war of terror" it proved expedient by "allied" nations less concerned with human rights to just hand a list of dissidents to the US ambassador and claim they were Al-Quaeda terrorists.
No, if Assange had gone to Sweden his feet wouldn't have touched the ground before he was shipped off to gitmo.
On the post: PewDiePie Dives Into The Mark Fitzpatrick, Toei Animation Saga
Re: Re: Re: Re: Japan IS dumb about copyright
"...the prevalence of "kid who does not have black hair gets bullied for it" in manga and anime is indicative of something going on."
Japan is basically governed by the desire to conform. Everything has to be harmonious. Conflicts must not exist. The philosophy where the boy crying that the emperor is naked is quickly and quietly locked away for disturbing the peace.
On the positive that makes the society a very polite and soft-spoken one. On the negative it means bullying and exploitation is quietly overlooked, because the waves revelation would make is considered worse.
Suicide in Japan, in all age groups, is disproportionately high as a result.
On the post: Book Publishers Sue Maryland Over Law That Would Require Them To Offer 'Reasonable' Prices On Ebooks To Libraries
Re:
"I think today's copyright laws would actually be very reasonable if copyright only lasted 10 years."
Everyone keeps missing that it used to be they only lasted seven years. The thing is that when you write a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation enormously benefiting a gatekeeper industry you've more or less guaranteed that every presidential or congressional candidate to emerge ever after will be owing quite large sums of campaign funding to the lobby of that gatekeeper industry.
In short, copyright at all just means getting on a steep greased slope in a high-gravity environment. Where people behind you are trying to push you down it all the time.
Thus you can't fix copyright because every attempt to make it reasonable will be undone in very short order.
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