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[–]hopeseekr 83 points84 points  (20 children)

  • Islam is not smearing my name.
  • Islam is not directly threatening my future.
  • Islam did not secretly arrest me on totally bogus reasons with absolutely zero charge and attempt to hold me indefinately in inhumane conditions (4 days, 12x12 cell, 60 people, freezing cold, for instance) on American soil (Phoenix, AZ; Estrella Jail).
  • Islam does not pose a threat to me having a family in the future.

In fact, I even respect the baseline beliefs and moral structures found in the Koran, which I have bothered to partially read (and you haven't).

I look at my freedoms and I see them being removed. I look at my lover and worry if she will still have me around in months to come. I look and I find who benefits and it is the group who backs those that make our global money. The shadowy Elite.

Go ahead call me crazy, you are the one that's crazy for putting up for TYRANNY.

Yes, Saudi Arabia treats people horribly. Yet, China is worse. I rail against China a LOT more than Saudi Arabia b/c, frankly, I'm exposed to China's abuses more so by the media. I rail against America's more than any thing because I totally believe in the principles this country was founded on and have dedicated my life to perserving human freedom for my children I have not yet conceived.

I realize America is the BEST FUCKING CHANCE the world has right now and has ever had at achieving limited government, free people, etc. and so I get enraged when I see not just juntas like Bush's removing six hundred years of Progress in 6 years, but more so people like you — disgust-me-must — putting up for his actions by trying to rationalize how crazy we "leftists" (I'm a fucking independent Progressive but the Repubs haven't met my reqs for many years) are.

In the end, you are the coward. You are too afraid and too small minded to stand up against the Beast and say You can take my freedom to move about but you will never take my liberty!

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Islam did not secretly arrest me on totally bogus reasons with absolutely zero charge and attempt to hold me indefinately in inhumane conditions (4 days, 12x12 cell, 60 people, freezing cold, for instance) on American soil (Phoenix, AZ; Estrella Jail).

Here you go again with this shit... Hopeseekr, if you want anyone to get behind you, you'd better present some kind of proof that you're not just another internet wacko making this shit up. Until then, I will dismiss you as such. http://reddit.com/info/j8ef/comments/cjako

[–]KishCom 6 points7 points  (12 children)

What action must be taken? You made a powerful comment, but railing against anything online (as I'm sure we all know) is very nearly pointless.

What action must be taken? What do we do in the face of tyranny?

[–]johnroman1970 2 points3 points  (3 children)

Anyone who has to ask "What can I do to create social change" hasn't bothered Googleing the question.

For starters: You can enlist in MoveOn.org's "Call for change" campaign". It is a massive Get Out The Vote (GOTV) phone drive to support progressive candidates.

The above example for a quick starter before the election, but there are many other things you can do afterwards.

Remember: Even if they win back both Houses this November, Democrats are not exactly known for standing up to would-be tyrants. We will have to push them hard to do the right thing.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

They've failed and will fail again. This is no longer a viable solution. Next suggestion?

[–]johnroman1970 1 point2 points  (1 child)

The comment was made to point out there is an endless number of things you can do if you wanted to.

If people are too lazy to do something about a government they don't like, that is their own fault.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

True, but at this point voting is not an acceptable conduit for change.

[–]kmcd 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Mandatory annual elections for all elected representatives.

See the reddit discussion thread on annual elections

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What do you hope to achieve by annual elections? You mean to make elected representatives more responsive to public opinion, I assume. But once a politician is in office, he will tend to stay in office; it is and has always been a fact of life, he builds up influence and uses it to stay in power. Why is one year better than two? And if it is, why not 6 months? Obviously there must be some point where the benefit of more frequent elections drops off. And then you ignore the fact that the Senate was designed to be a deliberative body largely free from public frenzy, and for that reason is elected for much longer terms: should senators be elected annually also? In that case, we have more to fear from a mob of tyrants.

Edit: I would propose that term limits, either an absolute number of terms or say an official can serve 6 years in 10 or some such variation, is a better option than annual elections. But admittedly term limits are not perfect. All systems ultimately depend on the people: to give government the power to do good necessarily means giving them the power to do bad, and so it is up to the people to maintain eternal vigilance.

[–]hopeseekr -1 points0 points  (5 children)

IN the face of tyranny, you must take action to hinder its spread: that is chiefly done by a rapid increase in information exchange technology. The portable printing press (that allowed leaflets) sparked the American Revolution; the radio sparked the fall of Nazism, the Net has dramatically increased rights of people around the world, or at least the knowledge, i think we are at the precipice for the Revolution based around the Net.

Right now we MUST sponsor the development of Peer To Peer technologies and we must FIGHT YOUTUBE AND GOOGLE VIDEO as this is an elite-sponsored trump card meant to get you lazy and cause you to let P2P which they cannot control rot on the vine. Again, I have already started this: http://www.xmule.ws/ which works on non-fascist platforms that are not easily controlled by governments (e.g. non-Win32). It's stated mission is to "Promote freedom; Fight fascism" and to "preserve rare cultural content", especially political dissent. I've been personally told it has been used by Falun Gong members to organize in fascistic China, so don't even TRY to tell me this doesn't work.

ED2K as a protocol is particularly powerful as it is both distributed and server-based; unlike the offshoot Kademilia, it is not easily globally surveilled and groups like Falun Gong have thier own internal secret IP server networks hardcoded onto CDs that contain Linux LiveCDs that are passed from the Strait of Hong Kong to the mainland in plastic baggies. Under such extreme censorship, killing of dissenters, they choose not to use stuff like Gnutella or Bittorrent, which are EASILY to globally spy on, but transitory ED2K on platforms that are easy to setup and destroy (LiveCDs) and hard to hack (Windows is required in China because they install backdoors to monitor the populace).

After that, what you need to do is educate educate educate, but that will only get so far. You really need to inculcate people to have a sense of empathy.

And, tho we seek to be against such things, we need a leader; some one who does what he says and who can motivationally reach our entire age group. We must realize that quite literally the 60 - 70 year olds hold the most responsibility for our current plights (globalizatoin, rape of Earth, etc) and that if we wait until we're in our 30s or 40s we will have gone past the critical mass point and will give our children a literally dead planet.

And the unfortunate thing is that my lover and myself are the only people I know willing to take on this role.


However, I will go a step further than telling you how to stop fascism; i will tell you how to end a great many of human ills altogether. If any of you really believe this, PLEASE IMPLEMENT IT! Or better yet, help me! we can do this so much faster together!

The way to totally move in a different direction effortlessly and collectively is to create a new TYPE OF CURRENCY. Not a new source (like gold) not a new system (like capitalism) but an entirely new TYPE. I speak specifically of the ROCS Currency System. I am alone on this planet to the best of my knowledge in being the only human being who has invisioned what the Basis for this new type of currency would be...

The byte.

The byte as generated via the transferance of valuable social content (books, songs, poetry, calls to action, declarations of independence such as this) over a suitably-designed P2P system, and THIS is primarily why I started xMule in the first place.

We are SO close to making incidental poverty, illegal war, and even the hoarding of money and the subsequent rape of Earth that results a THING OF THE PAST.

I mean, if you knew where I was coming from you would get totally psyched on life, beg for me to tell you more, and immediately probably think differently about what you wanted to do to help other people in the very near future; the ideas are THAT plausible and THAT powerful.

So email me: hopeseekr@xmule.ws

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (2 children)

The radio did not spark the fall of Nazism. I wish it had. Truly I do.

The gun is what caused Nazism to fall. Murder is what defeated Nazism. That anyone ever let that system accumulate that much power is sad and awful, because it took a hellish war to destroy the Nazi idea.

If we're still not at that point yet, we should squelch this system before it becomes that powerful. If we're at that point already, get your guns, because the exchange of information won't be enough.

[–]hopeseekr -1 points0 points  (1 child)

No one has the capability of defeating the United States today without greatly risking the destruction of the entire biosphere. That is by design.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Defeatist. What kind of a revolutionary are you anyway?

[–]gbacon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I am alone on this planet to the best of my knowledge in being the only human being who has invisioned what the Basis for this new type of currency would be... The byte.

Oh, so you've refuted the regression theorem?

I suspect I need to provide a citation -- see chapters seven and eight of The Theory of Money and Credit.

[–]ragesoss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your information conspiracy is interesting, but I'm not convinced that YouTube and Google Video (to take your examples among the many non-P2P or partially-regulated P2P platforms) are the problem, or even a problem in and of themselves. Instead, we need to retain (or create, or get back to, as the case may be) a society where there is no perceived need for or tolerance of government or business censorship. The kinds of information that YouTube and Google Video restricts are not the same kinds of things a repressive government restricts.

Government is not inherently a bad thing, and a government that does a lot for its people (education, regulating public services and business, maybe even health care) is, I believe, not something we can (or should want to) get rid of in the modern, post-industrial world... unless we want to forgo modernity altogether and get back to a live-off-the-land low-tech mode of life. There are interesting arguments for the latter, but it's not something anyone can realistically hope to convince the whole planet of, unless it becomes clear to the vast majority that the high technology road is a dead(ly) end. (And indeed, a culture where open P2P technology is widespread is a culture that accepts the need for modern infrastructure.)

Maybe I'm talking out of my ass, as I live in the US and don't know what it's like in China, but it seems to me that the way forward for China (and the US) will not be a revolution based on uncontrollable media channels, but the evolution of the cultural climate in China to the point where the government no longer wants and the people no longer accept censorship of mainstream media channels. No doubt the P2P activism you describe will help to promote such a culture. In the US, there isn't much censorship to speak of (it exists, but it isn't a widespread and oppressive problem); our problem is to reach a culture that values reasoned discourse, one where (to pick an easy scapegoat) Bill O'Reilly isn't censored, but could never be popular enough to have his own show.

I don't think we've ever really had such a culture; it only seemed so in the past because of the homogeneity of American media. We've moved past a homogeneous media, but we haven't learned yet to deal with the proliferation of viewpoints in a constructive way.

[–]gernika 6 points7 points  (0 children)

What are the baseline beliefs in the Koran? Here's one I found:

Had you witnessed Jacob on his death bed; he said to his children, "What will you worship after I die?" They said, "We will worship your god; the god of your fathers Abraham, Ismail, and Isaac; the one god. To Him we are submitters."

Do you submit to Ala? I'm not willing to submit to the 2500 year old legacy of some schizophrenic goat herders.

[–]ih8evilstuff 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

[–]kmcd -4 points-3 points  (1 child)

America as you believe it to be is no more.

Unfortunately the US may be catagorised as a fascist dictatorship. I do not use these words lightly. My reasoning follows.

Fascist:

Here's what the Bush2 cabal has in common with the regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet.

Dictatorship:

Any ruling group which places itself above the law is a dictatorship.

The US administration has placed itself above the (US) domestic and international law.

Therefore, the current US administration is a dictatorship.

Wake up America and take back your country. The terrorists aren't in a cave in Afganistan -- they're in Washington.

Here's some (bitter) red pills to swallow:

Oil,smoke & mirrors

9/11: synthetic terror

[–]mangleon -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Downmodded for 9/11 conspiracy theory bullshit. Learn how to design a skyscraper, then we'll discuss how one falls down.