SOPA & PIPA are the sort of Bullshit censorship models we can do without on the internet. That’s why I went dark on the 18th January and thankfully they were defeated this time. Have a read of some background to the well thought out arguments as why we need to oppose these types of measures now and most likely in the future too is easy to find.
Tag Archives: politics
Personal politics
Great article about the political divide in the USA and increasingly elsewhere, included below is a quote via that article
the war we can expect if the cold war will end. It is the war that will take life and power from the centre and give it over to left and to right, it is the war that will teach us our meaning -Norman Mailer
When living in a digital glasshouse
In essence, we have been provided not only the means to be more free, but also to become new, to create and project a more perfect self to the world. As we become more reliant on these tools, they become more a part of our daily routine, and so we become more entrenched in this illusion. As Jean Baudrillard might have put it, this alternative world is “more real than the real.” (via)
Astute article about the Weinergate affair and why people get caught out on the internet. Of course the ’perfect self’ is more akin to Baudrillards Hyperreal it may have more or less relationship to your true self (whatever that is).
Unsung Hero
And now MPs are feeling morose. Tough! They’ve had plenty of opportunities to do the right thing by parliament and by the people. At every juncture they behaved in the worst possible way. They refused legitimate requests, they wasted public money going to the high court, they delayed publication, they tried to exempt themselves from their own law, they succeeded in passing a law to keep secret their addresses from their constituents so as to hide the house flipping scandal … (via)
Remember a democratic society is an open society, so we’ve got to keep watching those bastards. Thanks to Heather and the other journalists who pursued this story.
Torture by another name
Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I’m not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn’t-somehow-torture – “enhanced interrogation techniques” – is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.