Reblogged from tumblr.com November 17th, 2011 3,998 notes #tumblr #politics #congress #internet #protest #SOPATumblr just put up this site warning people about the dangers of PROTECT-IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Read up, kids. This is important.
Your morning homework: Read this letter from AOL, eBay, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo!, & Zynga. Then visit Tumblr’s page and take action.
Some more links which might be useful:
- Avaaz launched an online petition yesterday - at 67k signatures and counting. They need 100k+ to get it in front of congress
- Site organising a censorship protest here
- Electronic Frontier Foundation also campaigning
Senator Wyden from Oregon threatens to filibuster SOPA and PIPA bills Link post
Exactly what it sounds like. Senator Wyden is going to read the names of every single person who opposes these bills on the Senate Floor, a process that can take hours. You can add your name to the list by clicking the above.
Please do. Show Republicans that they’re not the only ones who can filibuster the hell out of things.
SIGNAL BOOST
(via karnythia)
Reblogged from notzilon November 21st, 2011 2,004 notes #signal boost #sopa #congress“ The fact that there was any debate over whether to call in experts on such a matter should tell you something about the integrity of Congress. It’d be one thing if legitimate technical questions directed at the bill’s supporters weren’t met with either silence or veiled accusations that the other side was sympathetic to piracy. Yet here we are with a group of elected officials openly supporting a bill they can’t explain, and having the temerity to suggest there’s no need to “bring in the nerds” to suss out what’s actually on it… The chilling takeaway of this whole debacle was the irrefutable air of anti-intellectualism; that inescapable absurdity that we have members of Congress voting on a technical bill who do not posses any technical knowledge on the subject and do not find it imperative to recognize those who do.
This used to be funny, but now it’s really just terrifying. We’re dealing with legislation that will completely change the face of the internet and free speech for years to come. Yet here we are, still at the mercy of underachieving Congressional know-nothings that have more in common with the slacker students sitting in the back of math class than elected representatives. The fact that some of the people charged with representing us must be dragged kicking and screaming out of their complacency on such matters is no longer endearing — it’s just pathetic and sad.
Joshua Kopstein, Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works (via drinkyourjuice)
This friends, is the most important article you’ll read today. (via shortformblog)
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Reblogged from Vice Magazine December 17th, 2011 2,146 notes #Congress #Internet #Politics #Ignorance #Nerds #Representatives
2012 is coming.
I’m ready. Are you?
Reblogged from prosebeforehos.com December 20th, 2011 2,185 notes #REBLOG!!!!! #Congress #Vote #politics #reboot
Reblogged from shortformblog December 23rd, 2011 134 notes #sopa #congress #legislation #government #internet #anti-piracyThree ways Web sites and users have been protesting SOPA
People upset with the Stop Online Piracy Act have a small reason to cheer this morning. The anti-piracy bill, which many Internet users feel could have a chilling effect on the Web, got tabled until early next year, giving a brief respite and an opportunity for alternative bills (such as Rep. Darrell Issa’s OPEN act) to gain footing. Being a creative bunch, many users have taken to design tricks, boycotts, even music to protest what they feel is a dangerous bill. Here are just a few examples of SOPA protests online:
- one Scribd, taking a bit of a cue from Tumblr but even more ambitiously, made the articles on their site disappear yesterday, word by word.
- two A number of Reddit users have begun a movement to move domains away from GoDaddy en masse, in protest of their support of SOPA.
- three Leah Kauffman, the songwriter who wrote “I Got a Crush on Obama,” just released an anti-SOPA protest song titled “Firewall.”
Awesome!
“ Now a particularly ironic fact has come to light — it appears that IP addresses belonging to the offices of members of Congress have been downloading content illegally via BitTorrent. TorrentFreak used Hurricane Electric’s handy list of assigned IP blocks (found here) to track down which IP addresses belong to the offices of members of Congress. And lo and behold, when those addresses were compared to results on YouHaveDownloaded, a torrent tracking site, they yielded over 800 hits. Now to put this in context YouHaveDownloaded tracks only a tiny portion of torrent traffic, so it appears that Congress — even as they look to punish lesser mortals for file sharing — are themselves gleefully committing a “smash and grab” as Vice President Joe Biden (D) once put it.
DailyTech - Congress Plugs Anti-Piracy Legislation By Day, Pirates Porn by Night (via how-to-kiss-distinctly-american)
(via howto-kissdistinctly-american)
Reblogged from dailytech.com December 29th, 2011 103 notes #Congress #SOPA #BitTorrent
This Is Important, You Should Know About It of the Day: President Obama today quietly signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, which contains controversial provisions requiring military custody for any non-citizen suspected of terrorism and affirming the president’s authority to indefinitely detain any supporter of al-Qaeda “or associated forces, irrespective of citizenship.
In a signing statement, the President said he had “serious reservations” about the bill, and criticised lawmakers for interfering with the work of counterterrorism professionals.
“Moving forward, my administration will interpret and implement the provisions described below in a manner that best preserves the flexibility on which our safety depends and upholds the values on which this country was founded,” the statement said.
The Obama administration was successful in striking down a provision that would have removed the ability of the executive branch to override the military custody requirement. Additionally, US citizens and legal immigrants may not be subjected to military custody under the revised bill.
However, an amendment to explicitly exclude American citizens and lawful residents from indefinite detention was rejected by Congress.
“My administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens,” Obama said. “Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation.”
The President’s personal stance aside, in addition to creating myriad difficulties for counterterrorism agents working with suspected terrorists to gain information, the NDAA provisions leave the door wide open for future presidents to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial.
He does this knowing the racist history of this country and the first citizens, American citizens that this will be used and abused against are PoC.
What the fuck.
I don’t know. I just…
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Reblogged from thedailywhat December 31st, 2011 2,051 notes #NDAA #politics #president #congress #national #defense #authorization #act
Real
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/12/31/396018/breaking-obama-signs-defense-authorization-bill/
TL;DR The President’s opponents played the electorate like a fiddle and will get away with it because people don’t seem to realize they’ve been tricked into being angry at the wrong person.
He signed it because if he didn’t, defense spending including benefits to veterans and their families would not have been authorized. The sections of NDAA that many people here seem to have a problem with are sections that were added into the document by primarily Republican legislators and which the President adamantly opposes but was powerless to stop. I’ll repeat that: the parts of this bill that many people here hate were included against the President’s wishes and in a way that he is powerless to stop. The only way he could have stopped these sections from being included would have been to try to veto the bill in its entirety, a move that would have been both political suicide as well as being futile, as Congress would simply have overridden him. He is explicit in his opposition to exactly the parts of the bill everyone here hates, going so far as to detail exactly which sections he opposes and why.
You’ll notice that the bill also restricts his ability to close Guantanamo Bay; this isn’t coincidence. These sections are openly hostile to the President’s stated mandate - they are effectively a giant ‘fuck you’ to the President, as well as a nasty way of eroding the President’s support with his own base. Observe:
Draft legislation that is almost guaranteed to piss of the President but more importantly piss of his base.
Attach said legislation to another piece of larger, more important legislation like, say, the Defense Spending budget for the entire year so that any attempt to dislodge the offensive legislation will result in a political shitstorm, as well as place the larger legislation in jeopardy.
Once attached, begin a PR campaign that highlights the offending legislation and brings it to the attention of as many media outlets as possible - not just the traditional media, but alternative media outlets as well (Fox news, MSNBC, Media Matters, Huff-Po, Infowars, etc.)
Here’s where it gets tricky: Simultaneously, speak to both your party’s base and the opposition’s. To your base, argue that the legislation is necessary to ‘Keep America safe’ and that the President, by opposing it, is clearly soft of terrorism and endangering the military by trying to strip the legislation out. At the same time, sit back and watch your opponent’s liberal supporters tear into the offending legislation as being dangerous, anti-democratic, and a threat to civil liberties. You know they will; that’s what they care about most. You’ve designed legislation that will make them froth at the mouth. You don’t even have to keep flogging the message; one look at the legislation will be enough to convince most people that it is anathema to everything they hold dear. Because it is.
Pass the ‘parent’ legislation. Doing so forces the President to sign it or attempt to veto it. Since the legislation in question just so happens to be the military’s operating budget, a veto is out of the question. The President must sign the bill, you get the legislation you wanted, but you also practically guarantee that your opponent’s base will be furious at him for passing a bill they see as evil. Even if he tries to explain in detail why he had to sign it and what he hates about it, it won’t matter; ignorance of the American political process, coupled with an almost militant indifference to subtle explanations will almost ensure that most people will only remember that the President passed a bill they hate.
Profit. you get the legislation you want, while the President has to contend with a furious base that feels he betrayed them - even though he agrees with their position but simply lacked the legislative tools to stop this from happening. It’s a classic piece of misdirection that needs only two things to work: A lack of principles (or a partisan ideology that is willing to say anything - do anything - to win), and an electorate that is easy to fool.
This is pretty basic political maneuvering and the biggest problem is that it almost always works because most people either don’t know or don’t care how their political system actually functions. The President was saddled with a lose-lose situation where he either seriously harmed American defense policy (political suicide), or passed offensive legislation knowing that it would cost him political capital. To all of you here lamenting that you ever voted for this ‘corporate shill’, congratulations: you are the result the Republicans were hoping for. They get the law they want, they get the weakened Presidential candidate they want. And many of you just don’t seem to see that. You don’t have to like your country’s two-party system, but it pays to be able to understand it so that you can recognize when it’s being used like this.
EDIT: thanks to Reddit user Mauve_Cubedweller for this post
Agreed, that’s the thing with this whole bill, it’s way more complicated than what the alarmists are making it out to be. The NDAA is not a singular “indefinite detainment” bill, that single article is a huge thing that the Republicans got in to put the President’s back against the wall and ensure that he could never close Guantanamo (which is its own fuck off lose-lose situation).
It’s just one of those shitty things where you ask yourself what you would do? No answer you give is free from fucking over lots and lots of people.
-Joe
People are forgetting a Presidential campaign is around the corner. The GOP is going to do and use every little trick they can.
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Reblogged from jay-dot-universe January 3rd, 2012 9,922 notes #congress #games #gop #legislation #news #perspective #politics #president #obama #republicans #democrats #systemShortFormBlog: President Obama gives pay raises to Congress, VP Biden Link post
- $900 bump in Congressional pay has been authorized by President Obama, a move made in the midst of failed “fiscal cliff” negotiations. Congressional leaders will see slightly higher raises than their rank-and-file counterparts, with Senate leaders receiving a $1,000 boost and an extra $1,100…
IS HE ON DRUGS? DID THEY DRUG HIM?! THEY PUT IT IN HIS FOOD, DIDN’T THEY?
THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE RUN LIKE A CORPORATION! THE LAST TWO CONGRESSES WERE SHIT. THEY DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! THEY DON’T DESERVE PAY RAISES.
GET IT TOGETHER AND DO YOUR JOBS!
Reblogged from The Huffington Post December 31st, 2012 62 notes #Politics #United States #President Obama #Vice President Biden #Congress #WTF #numbers #sc #rage monster
