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Mr. Mechanical
Mr. Cool Common Sense
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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 Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 2:07 pm |
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Y'all may recall me mentioning this story before, seems like there's some more development:
The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.
The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”
The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chatter, showing online “momentum” for any given event.
“The cool thing is, you can actually predict the curve, in many cases,” says company CEO Christopher Ahlberg, a former Swedish Army Ranger with a PhD in computer science.
Which naturally makes the 16-person Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm attractive to Google Ventures, the search giant’s investment division, and to In-Q-Tel, which handles similar duties for the CIA and the wider intelligence community.
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| internisus wrote: |
| You are a pretty fucked up guy. |
| | BLUE | BLACK | PURPLE | wrote: |
| Mr. Mechanical - Too liberal |
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Takashi
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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psiga
saudade
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 5:58 pm |
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| Toto wrote: |
| So all your renewable energy news is from Hacker News, psiga? |
Nope! A lot of that fringe stuff comes from another place entirely. I have been reluctant to link it for years, for reasons that will soon become obvious, but it's so fascinating that I really should now.
The guy who runs the site is kooky and I often do not agree with his personal views, but he dutifully collects links that you don't find anywhere else. He's been at it since ye olde BBS days, and has no RSS feed, so to get to the news you will have to go to his embarrassingly dumb and old looking web page, and manually scroll past the animated gifs, embedded twitter litterbox, pithy quotes, and so on.
At least he seems to have removed that one banner advertising an ebook which purports to teach people how to become invisible.
That's nice.
Eyes wide open? Bullshit detectors at the ready?
Welcome to motherfucking minus world:
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Mr. Mechanical
Mr. Cool Common Sense
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 6:19 pm |
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Man psiga this site is a gold mine! I can see why you've been reticent to associate yourself with it though.
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| internisus wrote: |
| You are a pretty fucked up guy. |
| | BLUE | BLACK | PURPLE | wrote: |
| Mr. Mechanical - Too liberal |
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psiga
saudade
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 6:53 pm |
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Next Big Future is also worth a look as well. I haven't been keeping up with this one as much as I probably should.
"Position and momentum can be predicted more precisely than Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Provide a Measurement of Entanglement"
"Progress in Reverse Engineering Brains with Detailed Macaque Monkey Brain Map"
Such good stuff.
Not enough hours in a day! Info overload = inevitable. Beware, beware.
OK, I'ma go to sleep. Everyone have fun.
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Shiren the Launderer
Joined: 25 Sep 2008
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Dracko
productive member of society
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Fri Jul 30, 2010 9:09 pm |
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lol?
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LandRoverAttack
Joined: 09 Oct 2007
Location: tn, usa
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| Posted: Fri Jul 30, 2010 9:54 pm |
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Before anyone gets the wrong idea, this Twitter and related blogs are satirical. It's not readily apparent, but there's no 54th district in Cali.
Pretty good stuff though. I'm partial to this one.
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Mr. Mechanical
Mr. Cool Common Sense
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Jul 31, 2010 12:28 pm |
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More politicians yelling!
House Republicans late Thursday were able to corral enough votes to defeat a bill that would have provided up to $7.4 billion in aid to those sickened by toxins resulting from the 9/11 attacks.
In the process, they set off a host of fiery speeches and denunciations from their Democratic colleagues and produced a veritable YouTube moment from Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y), whose district includes many of the affected.
Also:
NEW YORK – The Obama administration has repudiated some of the Bush administration's most egregious national security policies but is in danger of institutionalizing others permanently into law, thereby creating a troubling "new normal," according to a new report released today by the American Civil Liberties Union.
"Establishing a New Normal: National Security, Civil Liberties, and Human Rights Under the Obama Administration," an 18-month review of the Obama administration's record on national security issues affecting civil liberties, concludes that the current administration's record on issues of national security and civil liberties is decidedly mixed: President Obama has made great strides in some areas, such as his auspicious first steps to categorically prohibit torture, outlaw the CIA's use of secret overseas detention sites and release the Bush administration's torture memos, but he has failed to eliminate some of the worst policies put in place by President Bush, such as military commissions and indefinite detention. He has also expanded the Bush administration's "targeted killing" program.
The 22-page report, which was researched and written by staff in the ACLU's National Security Project and Washington Legislative Office, reviews the administration's record in the areas of transparency, torture and accountability, detention, targeted killing, military commissions, speech and surveillance and watchlists.
The 22 page report can be found here.
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| internisus wrote: |
| You are a pretty fucked up guy. |
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Adilegian
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Jul 31, 2010 4:15 pm |
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Whatcha think about the US media's reaction to the Wikileaks story, Mr. Mech?
| Julian Assange wrote: |
| But how the American press tends to deal with government agencies prior to publication and the standards that we have and the standards the European press has, we don’t see that an organization that is—we don’t see, in the case of a story where an organization has engaged in some kind of abusive conduct and that story is being revealed, that it has a right to know the story before the public, a right to know the story before the victims, because we know that what happens in practice is that that is just extra lead time to spin the story. And we see some sort of pathetic attempts by the White House to engage in a bit of spin about whether we contacted them or not. In fact, we did contact them through the New York Times as a coalition. |
EDIT: This seems representative of the general reactions of mis- and dis-information surrounding the leaks in both intent and impact: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/07/brooks-and-marcus-talk-tax-policy-and-wikileaks.html
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Mr. Mechanical
Mr. Cool Common Sense
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Jul 31, 2010 4:47 pm |
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Mainstream cable networks (and much of the blogosphere that feeds off of them) seem to be focusing less on the content of the leaks and more on how much it endangers the troops (and their Afghan informants) and shouldn't the leakers be prosecuted and isn't this treason or something etc. So, I guess so far I feel kind of disappointed but not that surprised? I think it's still too early to tell what impact the leaks will have on public perceptions and policy makers.
The media could be using them as an opportunity to have a national debate on the war and to turn the heat up on the political leadership to pull out since it's unwinnable, but that would be "taking sides" which is taboo in the ideology of today's journalists. Fourth Estate is a joke these days.
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| internisus wrote: |
| You are a pretty fucked up guy. |
| | BLUE | BLACK | PURPLE | wrote: |
| Mr. Mechanical - Too liberal |
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Adilegian
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Jul 31, 2010 7:17 pm |
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| taboo in the ideology of today's journalists wrote: |
In Meacham-land “center right” is the right place for politics to be played not because the center-rightists have the best answers to the nation’s problems but because “the reality [is] that America is a center-right nation.” Now we’re near to the beating heart of the ideology that holds our political press together. That is when journalists try to win the argument not by having better arguments but by standing closer to a reality they get to define as more real than your reality.
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Thanks for this! Picking up my day. I drove back from Austin the other day (about 3.5/4 hours each way), and (as my previous posts somewhat indicates) I listened to DemocracyNow's headline roundup and focused interviews immediately before listening to NPR's coverage of the same news. I've been trying to pinpoint what remains compelling to me about DN.ORG's news hours, and I think that the fact that it follows a news ideology spectrum other than that described in the linked article best, right now, explains the difference.
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Dracko
productive member of society
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2010 11:19 am |
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Tea Party in "Worse than you already thought" shocker.
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I have taken all TEA PARTY COMIX OFF of Ebay. I hope you are happy and I hope the world is a little bit better better place in which to live now. ….I do not understand the connection with “big ears” and “racism”, and I do not understand how a “dark face” implies racism…… The accusation of “Hate” is true, but it is the hate of an IDEOLGY, not a of race of people….. I understand that the ideology has captured 80 or 90% of the race(s) in question, but it is STILL a AN IDEOLOGY and NOT a “race” that this comic book attacks…. Cartoonists have historically drawn “the enemy” in a negative light… Please search cartoons of Reagan and Bush for instance ( and please see my caracature of Janet Napolatano in Tea Party Comix #2! )….. Think, and you will have to admit there was NO LIMIT placed upon these depictions…. But somehow, ANY negative drawing of Presient Obama is automatically “racist”… Be honest with yourself, if it is possible. ….Think. And maybe admit that you have an advantage that you are taking advantage OF….. In Tea Party Comix #1 there is a strip in which a person handing out Tea Party Comix #1 has an ALAN KEYES tee-shirt… Did you upload THAT strip?? Not that it would matter to people who think that RACE is more important than IDEOLOGY, but I would think that a fair-minded person might include that strip….
You can edit this and make me into any monster you like, that’s up to you. We’ll see what a moral person you are, and you can live with that. I’m sure you will be safer than I feel tonight, either way……
The undergrounds of the sixties WERE “allowed”. Apparently “Tea Party Comix” are NOT allowed…. To any reasonable man, well, this miight give him something to think about, about how far we have “come”….. Is it truely a BETTER world?? You tell ME! |
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Mr. Mechanical
Mr. Cool Common Sense
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2010 12:03 pm |
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New wrinkles to the Wikileaks informant case of Bradley Manning and a bombshell revelation about invasion of privacy.
First up, Stealthy Government Contractor Monitors U.S. Internet Providers, Worked With Wikileaks Informant
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| A semi-secret government contractor that calls itself Project Vigilant surfaced at the Defcon security conference Sunday with a series of revelations: that it monitors the traffic of 12 regional Internet service providers, hands much of that information to federal agencies, and encouraged one of its "volunteers," researcher Adrian Lamo, to inform the federal government about the alleged source of a controversial video of civilian deaths in Iraq leaked to whistle-blower site Wikileaks in April. |
From the San Francisco Examiner, Big names help run Project Vigilant
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It’s tempting to look at a secret group of cybercrime “monitors” and dismiss them as a group of lightweights trying to play cops and robbers in the Internet world. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
As referenced in this column yesterday, Project Vigilant has been operating in near total secrecy for over a decade, monitoring potential domestic terrorist activity and tracking various criminal activities on the Web. In a series of exclusive interviews with some of the group’s leaders, it’s clear that the people doing this work are among the most sophisticated and experienced experts in today’s rapidly moving world of Internet security.
Many of them are very recognizable names in technology circles, yet their public profiles, posted for all to see on sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and even their own webpages, omit any reference to Project Vigilant. As one source explained, “These are known names in the industry, but they have stayed under the radar to help their law enforcement clients.” |
Greenwald's take on it, Project Vigilant and the government/corporate destruction of privacy
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Uber revealed yesterday that Lamo, the hacker who turned in Manning to the federal government for allegedly confessing to being the WikiLeaks leaker, was a "volunteer analyst" for Project Vigilant; that it was Uber who directed Lamo to federal authorities to inform on Manning by using his contacts to put Lamo in touch with the "highest level people in the government" at "three letter agencies"; and, according to a Wired report this morning, it was Uber who strongly pressured Lamo to inform by telling him (falsely) that he'd likely be arrested if he failed to turn over to federal agents everything he received from Manning.
So, while Lamo has repeatedly denied (including in his interview with me) that he ever worked with federal authorities, it turns out that he was a "volunteer analyst" for an entity which collects private Internet data in order to process it and turn it over to the Federal Government. That makes the whole Manning case all the more strange: Manning not only abruptly contacted a disreputable hacker out of the blue and confessed to major crimes over the Interent, but the hacker he arbitrarily chose just happened to be an "analyst" for a group that monitors on a massive scale the private Internet activities of American citizens in order to inform on them to U.S. law enforcement agencies. |
| Quote: |
| In case you doubt the seriousness of this group, consider the list of its officials, which includes Mark Rasch, who headed the DOJ's Internet Crime Unit for 9 years; Kevin Manson, a retired Homeland Security official; George Johnson, who "develop[ed] secure tools for the exchange of sensitive information between federal agencies" for the Pentagon; Ira Winkler, a former NSA official; and Suzanne Gorman, former security chief of the New York Stock Exchange. These are people with extensive, sophisticated expertise in compiling highly invasive data about individuals' Internet activities, and more so -- given their background -- how to package it in a way that can be used by federal agencies. |
| Quote: |
Many people are indifferent to the disappearance of privacy -- even with regard to government officials -- because they don't perceive any real value to it. The ways in which the loss of privacy destroys a society are somewhat abstract and difficult to articulate, though very real. A society in which people know they are constantly being monitored is one that breeds conformism and submission, and which squashes innovation, deviation, and real dissent.
The old cliché is often mocked though basically true: there's no reason to worry about surveillance if you have nothing to hide. That mindset creates the incentive to be as compliant and inconspicuous as possible: those who think that way decide it's in their best interests to provide authorities with as little reason as possible to care about them. That's accomplished by never stepping out of line. Those willing to live their lives that way will be indifferent to the loss of privacy because they feel that they lose nothing from it. Above all else, that's what a Surveillance State does: it breeds fear of doing anything out of the ordinary by creating a class of meek citizens who know they are being constantly watched.
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But while these factions demand total secrecy for their actions, they simultaneously demand that you have none for yours. They want to know everything about what you do -- and are knowing all of that -- while you know nothing about what they do. The loss of privacy is entirely one-way. Government and corporate authorities have destroyed most vestiges of privacy for you, while ensuring that they have more and more for themselves. The extent to which you're monitored grows in direct proportion to the secrecy with which they operate. Sir Francis Bacon's now platitudinous observation that "knowledge itself is power" is as true as ever. That's why this severe and always-growing imbalance is so dangerous, even to those who are otherwise content to have themselves subjected to constant monitoring. |
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| internisus wrote: |
| You are a pretty fucked up guy. |
| | BLUE | BLACK | PURPLE | wrote: |
| Mr. Mechanical - Too liberal |
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Mr. Mechanical
Mr. Cool Common Sense
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2010 4:18 pm |
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During his primary campaign, Inglis repeatedly encountered enraged conservatives whom he couldn't—or wouldn't—satisfy. Shortly before the runoff primary election, Inglis met with about a dozen tea party activists at the modest ranch-style home of one of them. Here's what took place:
I sat down, and they said on the back of your Social Security card, there's a number. That number indicates the bank that bought you when you were born based on a projection of your life's earnings, and you are collateral. We are all collateral for the banks. I have this look like, "What the heck are you talking about?" I'm trying to hide that look and look clueless. I figured clueless was better than argumentative. So they said, "You don't know this?! You are a member of Congress, and you don't know this?!" And I said, "Please forgive me. I'm just ignorant of these things." And then of course, it turned into something about the Federal Reserve and the Bilderbergers and all that stuff. And now you have the feeling of anti-Semitism here coming in, mixing in. Wow.
Later, Inglis mentioned this meeting to another House member: "He said, 'You mean you sat there for more than 10 minutes?' I said, 'Well, I had to. We were between primary and runoff.' I had a two-week runoff. Oh my goodness. How do you..." Inglis trails off, shaking his head.
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| internisus wrote: |
| You are a pretty fucked up guy. |
| | BLUE | BLACK | PURPLE | wrote: |
| Mr. Mechanical - Too liberal |
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Mr. Mechanical
Mr. Cool Common Sense
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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Adilegian
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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Mr. Mechanical
Mr. Cool Common Sense
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 12:47 am |
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Yeah Wikileaks is exactly the sort of thing I've been wanting to see happen for a while now. Now that it's actually happening seems almost surreal to me and I wonder how much longer it can last. Assange doesn't seem like the type to cave in to pressure and stop what he's doing, and the government seems to only grow more hostile to whistleblowing in general. It feels like it's going to come to a head at some point. I just hope he doesn't get "neutralized".
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| internisus wrote: |
| You are a pretty fucked up guy. |
| | BLUE | BLACK | PURPLE | wrote: |
| Mr. Mechanical - Too liberal |
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Adilegian
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 5:22 am |
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| Mr. Mechanical wrote: |
| Yeah Wikileaks is exactly the sort of thing I've been wanting to see happen for a while now. |
You and me both. The fascinating thing about WikiLeaks -- and the truth of the organization that gets glossed over in the government's counter-narrative -- is that it has arisen as a collaboration between the organization's technical staff as well as the whistleblowers (civilian and government alike). It is, on all levels, an expression of conscience, and conscience always upsets the equilibrium of the nationalist (and economically exploitative) narrative.
| Mr. Mechanical wrote: |
| Assange doesn't seem like the type to cave in to pressure and stop what he's doing, and the government seems to only grow more hostile to whistleblowing in general. |
Absolutely. Obama's presidency has been atrocious for the protection of whistleblowers, and the measures taken against them are an aggressive claim on the consciences of individuals their communities.
| Mr. Mechanical wrote: |
| It feels like it's going to come to a head at some point. I just hope he doesn't get "neutralized". |
You and me both. I'm really glad to see that Europe and Australia have resisted the requests for extradition of Assange, and I'm also glad to see that they've refused to shut down his organization's servers.
EDIT: How do you folks feel about the possibility that SB might be being monitored by the internet surveillance and archiving industry that's received more public attention lately?
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| You can only learn less to know it. |
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Mr. Mechanical
Mr. Cool Common Sense
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 2:02 pm |
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| Adilegian wrote: |
| EDIT: How do you folks feel about the possibility that SB might be being monitored by the internet surveillance and archiving industry that's received more public attention lately? |
I'm not exactly pleased with it but for a while now I've taken it as a given that it might be happening. It seems like each day some new story crops up that just further confirms all my worst fears. I used to be freaked out by this sort of thing but I’ve come to realize that getting worked up over it does no good for anyone. A lot of people’s perception seems to be that it isn’t that big a deal because they see no direct effect. At best it’s a problem in the abstract because we assume we’d know censorship or whatever if we saw it.
I think it’s a great thing that more light is continually being shone in on what Greenwald calls the National Security and Surveillance State because I think people have a right to know about that sort of thing. An obvious and immediate downside to knowing about it though is that it might produce a chilling effect on speech and that sort of thing is nearly impossible to measure. Plus it can help foster destructive paranoia. Who among us is the hidden agent reporting back to NSA, for instance. It seems silly to think about it like that but knowing what I know now it seems unwise to write off the possibility completely. Who really knows how far these programs reach and what their ultimate purposes are.
It can also have long term consequences politically. A lot of this sort of paranoia is what is pushing the tea partiers to try and elect people to public office who are as extreme and paranoid as them. A free society can’t exist when people stop working together toward common ground and if we had an informed citizenry then I don’t think Sarah Palin would be as popular. I don’t really think anyone’s running this whole show we call America, not the government and not the corporations, but I’m pretty sure money has the most influence and for a good long while now there’s always been more money to be made in the defense sector.
It’s just a big vicious cycle, I think. Fear is capital. As long as people are afraid of Scary Terrorists coming to kill them or afraid of Big Brother trying to control them there’s going to be someone on the other side of the equation waiting to cash in on it somehow. As long as Big Brother is dropping bombs on Scary Terrorists and inadvertently killing the twenty innocent people unfortunate enough to be standing too close then there will always be more incentive for their family members to become the next wave of Scary Terrorists. Stock prices for companies that make bombs and fighter jets will go up or remain stable. The captains of industry will be sated until the next quarter draws near.
I think the Wikileaks thing is a positive indication though in the long run. People in government and industry the world over, individual people, are realizing they have some measure of power and ability to initiate change and are using the tools of the times to do so. I just hope it catches on before world war 3 pops off.
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| internisus wrote: |
| You are a pretty fucked up guy. |
| | BLUE | BLACK | PURPLE | wrote: |
| Mr. Mechanical - Too liberal |
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boojiboy7
narcissistic irony-laden twat
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: Nicholas Cage ensues.
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 2:40 pm |
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Mr. Mech, have you read Pynchon at all? You might like his take on paranoia in Gravity's Rainbow. Just because what you just wrote sounds pretty similar.
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Mr. Mechanical
Mr. Cool Common Sense
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 2:42 pm |
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No I haven't read any of Pynchon but I do remember you talking about Gravity's Rainbow on here before. I intend to check it out at some point. Going by the wikipedia page it seems right up my alley.
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| internisus wrote: |
| You are a pretty fucked up guy. |
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| Mr. Mechanical - Too liberal |
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boojiboy7
narcissistic irony-laden twat
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: Nicholas Cage ensues.
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 2:43 pm |
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Oh, entirely so. Just look up the Proverbs for Paranoids.
| Pynchon wrote: |
Proverbs for Paranoids:
1. You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures.
2. The innocence of the creatures is in inverse proportion to the immorality of the Master.
3. If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
4. You hide, they seek.
5. Paranoids are not paranoid because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations. |
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Mr. Mechanical
Mr. Cool Common Sense
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 2:47 pm |
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I love it already.
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| internisus wrote: |
| You are a pretty fucked up guy. |
| | BLUE | BLACK | PURPLE | wrote: |
| Mr. Mechanical - Too liberal |
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boojiboy7
narcissistic irony-laden twat
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: Nicholas Cage ensues.
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 2:57 pm |
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God, I want to reread that book right now and I think I will start when I get home.
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Mr. Mechanical
Mr. Cool Common Sense
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 3:09 pm |
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Another thing I love: This graduation speech by a valedictorian at Coxsackie-Athens High School.
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Some of you may be thinking, "Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn't you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.
I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer - not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition - a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I'm scared. |
Also this is neat: Thirty US billionaires pledge to give away half their fortunes to charity
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| internisus wrote: |
| You are a pretty fucked up guy. |
| | BLUE | BLACK | PURPLE | wrote: |
| Mr. Mechanical - Too liberal |
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Cocaine Socialist
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 5:32 pm |
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BIKES ARE A U.N. PLOT!!!
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the last-ditch spergin' of a madman |
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Tulpa
Joined: 31 Jul 2008
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 7:20 pm |
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| psiga wrote: |
At least he seems to have removed that one banner advertising an ebook which purports to teach people how to become invisible.
That's nice. |
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Joachim
Joined: 19 Mar 2010
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Mr. Mechanical
Mr. Cool Common Sense
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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evnvnv
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: the los angeles
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 9:37 pm |
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| Dracko wrote: |
Tea Party in "Worse than you already thought" shocker.
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I have taken all TEA PARTY COMIX OFF of Ebay. I hope you are happy and I hope the world is a little bit better better place in which to live now. ….I do not understand the connection with “big ears” and “racism”, and I do not understand how a “dark face” implies racism…… The accusation of “Hate” is true, but it is the hate of an IDEOLGY, not a of race of people….. I understand that the ideology has captured 80 or 90% of the race(s) in question, but it is STILL a AN IDEOLOGY and NOT a “race” that this comic book attacks…. Cartoonists have historically drawn “the enemy” in a negative light… Please search cartoons of Reagan and Bush for instance ( and please see my caracature of Janet Napolatano in Tea Party Comix #2! )….. Think, and you will have to admit there was NO LIMIT placed upon these depictions…. But somehow, ANY negative drawing of Presient Obama is automatically “racist”… Be honest with yourself, if it is possible. ….Think. And maybe admit that you have an advantage that you are taking advantage OF….. In Tea Party Comix #1 there is a strip in which a person handing out Tea Party Comix #1 has an ALAN KEYES tee-shirt… Did you upload THAT strip?? Not that it would matter to people who think that RACE is more important than IDEOLOGY, but I would think that a fair-minded person might include that strip….
You can edit this and make me into any monster you like, that’s up to you. We’ll see what a moral person you are, and you can live with that. I’m sure you will be safer than I feel tonight, either way……
The undergrounds of the sixties WERE “allowed”. Apparently “Tea Party Comix” are NOT allowed…. To any reasonable man, well, this miight give him something to think about, about how far we have “come”….. Is it truely a BETTER world?? You tell ME! |
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he is like a racist raymond pettibon! these drawings are sort of spectacular
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CubaLibre
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: The District
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 10:48 pm |
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| Mr. Mechanical wrote: |
| Technically I guess it's not over until the Supreme Court rules on it but this is one more step in that direction. |
It's nice to see but if I was a betting man I'd bet that the Supreme Court would rule that homosexuals are not a protected class (they never have before) and that the law does pass rational basis review (only crazy state courts ever say a law fails rational basis, the S.Ct. is too consistent for that).
EDIT: That is, assuming they take cert. Often on social issues they're content to let the states have it out until it really comes to a head.
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Mr. Mechanical
Mr. Cool Common Sense
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 1:14 am |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
| It's nice to see but if I was a betting man I'd bet that the Supreme Court would rule that homosexuals are not a protected class (they never have before) and that the law does pass rational basis review (only crazy state courts ever say a law fails rational basis, the S.Ct. is too consistent for that). |
Well then hopefully it won't get that far and the anti-gay crowd will back off the issue, but I don't really see that happening. They are a tenacious bunch.
Another really good TED talk I heard just now:
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| Laurie Santos looks for the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primate relatives make decisions. A clever series of experiments in "monkeynomics" shows that some of the silly choices we make, monkeys make too. |
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| internisus wrote: |
| You are a pretty fucked up guy. |
| | BLUE | BLACK | PURPLE | wrote: |
| Mr. Mechanical - Too liberal |
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Shiren the Launderer
Joined: 25 Sep 2008
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| Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 1:50 am |
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It's infuriating how many Americans don't know anything about the UN and build it up as some bogeyman shadow government. If anything, the UN is another forum the US to exert its influence over international affairs, but I don't think people can be talked down from their byzantine conspiracy theories. |
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CubaLibre
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: The District
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| Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 2:26 am |
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What's especially hilarious is that the same conservatives that paint the UN as the harbinger of a New World Order will turn around, when politically convenient, and accuse it of being completely impotent to deal with the world's problems (always in order to justify unilateral exercises of US power).
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Faithless
Wendy's Hole
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: World 1-1
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| Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 3:18 am |
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What does it mean that I get all my news from this thread? I need better places to read from.
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Talbain
Joined: 14 Jan 2007
Location: Look! A Moo Cow!
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Mr. Mechanical
Mr. Cool Common Sense
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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Adilegian
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 2:55 pm |
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I regularly check out DemocracyNow.Org and have lately been using The Huffington Post a bit less. HuPo throw the occasional sensationalist element into their work, which turns me off, and their use of dynamic stock photos as though they were attached to the stories that they present is also disconcerting. DN.ORG is fantastic though.
Found this on HuPo today.
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| analogos wrote: |
| You can only learn less to know it. |
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Dracko
productive member of society
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 3:02 pm |
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Reuters, man. 8|
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RobotRocker
C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!
Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Location: WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF
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| Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 4:18 pm |
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Just use a Reuters/AP wire on RSS myself. BBC and Al Jaz English as well.
I get my domestic stuff via Private Eye/The Phoenix as well (I know, lol purchasing media). |
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