Posts tagged "politics"
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Notes: 29 / 1 week ago from mediapathic"
I’m standing in the basement of a tumbledown house somewhere in the uglier areas of Oakland. Up top, it’s a punk squat. The outside is decrepitly unnoticeable, the inside walls are thick with incomprehensible spraypaint and hand-drawn posters calling for General Strikes. A constantly shifting cast of people of all genders sporting strange haircuts and bad ink drifts endlessly through the space. But down here in the basement, it’s a different world. There’s an array of beige plastic machines, most about the size of a small washing machine, connected with a dense network of cables. There are several computers, one of which appears to be a laptop held together with duct tape. There’s arc lamps lighting a cluster of plants, and you think, ah, here’s something I can understand, but instead of the usual dense forest of marijuana, I’m looking at a tomato literally as big as my head.
A man with a shock of grey hair exploding back from thin framed glasses grins at me. “That could be enough tomato soup to feed a family of six. Hungry?”
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Notes: 3 / 1 month ago
the-impersonal-akigawa asked: I'm not really voting for him based on his personal beliefs. Rather, I'm voting for him based on what he does with said beliefs. He allows people the right to do what he doesn't like despite him not liking it, because it's constitutional. That's a presidential state of mind. By the way, could I get a linked source on that racist comment? I'd like to see context.
i mean just google “ron paul racism” and you’ll get slews of articles from all different kinds of outlets at all different points on the political spectrum. dude’s hardcore homophobic, racist, sexist, and anti-poor. voting for him means you endorse these positions.
the thing about ron paul is that if he really acted on his political beliefs (libertarian) he wouldn’t have voted anti-choice so much. since, y’know, personal liberties, right? he also denies global warming, meaning he’s an anti-science idiot, on top of everything else.
weirdly enough, despite his pretty good anti-war stance, he has some weird sort of colonial ideas about the panama canal.
sorry bro, i wish there were an easy solution to this mess we’re in! it would be especially cool if we could vote for the cute little weirdo uncle (let’s face it—ron paul is adorable) and get a good president but nope, he’s completely insane and has mostly bad policies.
on the other hand, “ron paul” is an amazing meme in of itself.
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Notes: 4 / 1 month ago
hubbyismyeverything asked: that's pretty unfortunate... OH WELL WE STILL HAVE OUR ABORTION, RIGHT? you should move to scotland. there are some dumb shits here too but at least healthcare is free
i’m going to go crash on your couch and use up ALL the free healthcare like the big fat welfare queen i am
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Notes: 1 / 1 month ago
hubbyismyeverything asked: you should start your own presidential campaign. thing is people don't seem to vote outside of republicans or democrats. i guess you could make your own demands, i dunno who would listen to em...politicians don't seem to care all that much. i'm just a dumb 16 year old who got out of this shit country long ago but somehow is surrounded by its politics
yo, you are the opposite of dumb.
and the whole process of presidential election, as it works now (lobbyists, campaign donations, etc) essentially ensures that “good” candidates are going to to find it impossible or nearly impossible to get anywhere near the white house.
the problem is less that the people who run for president aren’t going to make good presidents, and more that the entire structure is riddled with dry rot.
vermin supreme 2012
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Notes: 2 / 1 month ago
hubbyismyeverything asked: i think by process of elimination obama is the best option right now, sorry bro
how about we stop accepting the “lesser evil”, and using “well at least he’s not as bad as santorum” as a way to make ourselves feel good about lounging around in our liberal footie pajamas, and start making some demands of our own. just an idea.
edit: re: the whole “lesser evil” thing. obama is demonstrably worse than bush was in a lot of areas, including due process, constitutionality, etc. that’s fucking terrifying.
and i can’t tell you who should be voted for instead. because literally none of them aren’t like this.
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Notes: 5 / 1 month ago
Anonymous asked: are you serious that obama is a bad president
https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0Afip-LkMGTalZHJxY3I0dl8weGczemptZDg
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Notes: 6 / 1 month ago from bookmarklet"I personally and my administration’s position is that legalisation is not the answer."-
BBC News - Obama: ‘Drug legalisation not the answer to drug war’
EARLIER:
“My attitude is if the science and the doctors suggest that the best palliative care and the way to relieve pain and suffering is medical marijuana then that’s something I’m open to because there’s no difference between that and morphine when it comes to just giving people relief from pain. But I want to do it under strict guidelines. I want it prescribed in the same way that other painkillers or palliative drugs are prescribed.” — November 24, 2007 town hall meeting in Iowa
“I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users. It’s not a good use of our resources.” — August 21, 2007, event in Nashua, New Hampshire
“I don’t think that should be a top priority of us, raiding people who are using … medical marijuana. With all the things we’ve got to worry about, and our Justice Department should be doing, that probably shouldn’t be a high priority.” — June 2, 2007, town hall meeting in Laconia, New Hampshire
“You know, it’s really not a good use of Justice Department resources.” — responding to whether the federal government should stop medical marijuana raids, August 13, 2007, town hall meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire
“The Justice Department going after sick individuals using [marijuana] as a palliative instead of going after serious criminals makes no sense.” — July 21, 2007, town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire
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Notes: 197 / 1 month ago from occupyallstreets (originally from occupyallstreets)
Obama Indicts Sixth Whistleblower Under the Espionage Act
On April 3, 2012, the Obama administration indicted intelligence whistleblower John Kiriakou. Kiriakou is the sixth whistleblower that the Obama administration has charged under the Espionage Act for the alleged mishandling of classified information – more than all past administrations combined. In a rare move, the indictment was sealed until today.
Kiriakou is a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) veteran who headed counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after 9/11, organized the team operation that captured suspected al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, and refused to be trained in torture interrogation tactics.
In December 2007, Kiriakou gave an on-camera interview to ABC News in which he disclosed that Zubaydah was “waterboarded” and that “waterboarding” was torture. Kiriakou was one of the first CIA officers to label waterboarding as torture, and his interview helped expose the CIA’s torture program as policy, rather than the actions of a few rogue agents. Kiriakou further exposed the CIA’s torture program and the CIA’s deception about torture even to its own employees in his 2009 book, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror.
Government Accountability Project (GAP) National Security & Human Rights Director Jesselyn Radack, a Department of Justice (DOJ) whistleblower herself, represented National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Thomas Drake, the first individual indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act for disclosing massive waste, fraud, abuse and illegality at the NSA through proper channels. The DOJ case against Drake fell apart days before the trial was set to begin last summer, in what was widely seen as a bellwether case for future prosecutions, like that of Kiriakou.
disgusting
tldr obama is destroying a dude who called out CIA torture methods. reminder that obama is a bad president.
waaaaaait a second, did you just call obama //vermin supreme//?
because if you’re calling our black president vermin because you don’t like some of his policies, sorry but that’s super racist. if however you’re just trying to play the card that //all politicians// are equally bad, i call ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT on that.
let’s be real here. if you want to complain that obama hasn’t strong-armed the republican congress into a new new deal, that’s he’s compromised too much and failed to hold them accountable for their obstructionism, hey, i don’t disagree. but the gop frontrunners are a delusional billionaire who’s mocking obama for going to the exact same ivy league school he did, and a white supremacist christian soldier who just called obama a n***** ON CAMERA.
i’m not going to pretend obama hasn’t done some shit i disagree with, but do i really need to pull out a list of all the things he’s actually accomplished that were unequivocally good, THAT THE REPUBLICANS WOULDN’T HAVE EVEN CONSIDERED?! //listen to the gop rhetoric// and stop pretending that they aren’t relevant to this equation.
this is vermin supreme:
also yes lol go ahead and post that list of all the cool shit obama has done. to give you a head start, here is a complete list of campaign promises he’s kept:
1. repealed don’t ask don’t tell
2.stop the DoJ from wasting time and money persecuting legal marijuana operations:“I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users. It’s not a good use of our resources.” — August 21, 2007, event in Nashua, New Hampshire
3. hmmm4. Provided a stimulus package that prevented a modern day depression.
5. Passed National Healthcare to compete with large insurance monopolies.
6. KILLED MOTHERFUCKING OSAMA QUIT FUCKING CAMPLAINING7. Approved 30,000 drones to be used in America
8. Declared America a battlefield and allowed himself to indefinitely detain anyone without charge or trail. See NDAA.
9. Ordered an airstrike in Yemen which killed 14 women and 21 children then covered it up. When a journalist exposed Obama he then had him detained without charge in Yemen.
10.Illegally assassinated two American citizens.
11. Signed the NDRP which will allow him to seize control of all food, transportation, water supply, health service/supply, etc. in case of an ‘emergency’.
12. Planned the largest digital spying scheme in American history with the biggest ISP’s.
13. Funded the NYPD to spy on Muslims.
14. Armed Bahrain’s monarch which is killing pro-democracy protesters.
Should I go on?
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Notes: 81 / 3 months ago from facingreality
To Be Fair, He Is a Journalist: A Short Response to Chris Hedges on the Black Bloc
Read it all. You’ll thank yourself later when you’re the only person in the room who has any idea what a black bloc actually is or what it does. Just think of all the sweet fact-based ownage you’re going to be doling out. Doling out the harshness.
By Don Gato
It was a little weird to wake up today to an article by Chris Hedges on a website called “Truth-Out” when “truth” is in such short supply in the piece. Hedges was trained as a journalist and worked for years at such luminaries of lies like the New York Times, so it shouldn’t be a secret where he’s gotten his sensationalism, his tendency to lie, his hyperbole, and, most of all, his seeming inability to do rudimentary research. Nonetheless, when activist celebrities like Hedges (and his friend here, Derrick Jensen) write even complete nonsense like this, it tends to have a certain conceptual currency with people. And though I’d much rather be visiting with friends today (who promised me peanut butter cookies, no less!), I figured I’d take a few minutes to point out some of the more egregious distortions in Hedges’ terrible piece.
Definitions
First, we need to clear up some definitional problems. Now, as a journalist, I really don’t expect Hedges to be able to “research,”—it does seem to go against the prime directives of the profession, but let’s be clear: There’s no such thing as “The Black Bloc movement.” The black bloc is a tactic. It’s also not just a tactic used by anarchists, so “black bloc anarchists” is a bit of a misnomer—particularly because Hedges doesn’t know the identities of the people under those sexy, black masks. In fact, it was autonomists in the 80s who came up with the (often quite brilliant) idea in Germany. Protecting themselves against the repression of what Hedges calls “the security and surveillance state,” squatters, protesters, and other rabble rousers would dress in all black, covering up tattoos, their faces, and any other identifying features so they could act against this miserable world and, with some smarts and a sharp style, not get pinched by the pigs. This was true of resisters who were protecting marches (because the state never needs an excuse to incite violence and police are wont to riot and attack people), destroying property, or sometimes just marching en masse. That is, the black bloc has all kinds of uses. And in Oakland, where Hedges seems particularly upset by people actually having the gall to defend themselves against insane violent police thugs instead of just sit there idly by getting beaten, on Move-In Day the bloc looked mostly defensive—shielding themselves and other protesters from flash grenades and police mob violence with make-shift shields (and even one armchair). So, to be clear: The black bloc is a tactic used by lots of people, not just anarchists, and it has all kinds of uses. It’s not a “movement.”
Who Is This Straw Fankenstein?
And, importantly, people in black blocs don’t have “unity” with one another about politics. This is another bizarre part of Hedges’ hatchet job. He goes on this long diatribe about what “The Black Bloc Movement” (this weird straw Frankenstein he’s created) believes. We learn in his piece that this Frankenstein is “against organization” when members of the black bloc, anarchists included, have all kinds of ideas about organization (none of which are “against organization”). If Chris did a little research, he’d find that “The Black Bloc Papers,” for example, were edited and compiled by two members of a formal political organization. And while many anarchists do reject formal political organizations, no anarchists oppose “organization” as such. Rather, we have disagreements over organizational form, duration, formality, purpose, and so on. Not to state the obvious, but considering our collective failure to smash capitalism, the state, and all other manifestations of coercive power over others, uh, shouldn’t we be building those kinds of critiques? If Hedges were interested in honesty, he might know that’s also why many anarchists are critical of the Left (I imagine dishonest and divisive hatchet jobs by Leftist celebrities like this one is another reason why more and more anarchists reject the Left—among its many other shortcomings and failures).
He goes on to state that this Frankenstein he’s created is universally under the influence of John Zerzan, then attacks Zerzan. Again, this just shows how out of touch Hedges is and how he’s fooled himself into believing he knows what he’s talking about when he doesn’t (a very common trait for celebrity journalists). Apparently it needs repeating, the black bloc is not a unified “movement”—it’s a bunch of folks dressed similarly so they can’t be identified by the popo. There are all kinds of thoughts on Zerzan in such a grouping, some supportive, some not, some who, no doubt, have no idea who he is. But Zerzan doesn’t speak for the bloc—no one does. And so there’s this weird “guilt-by-association” in this piece which ends in blaming criticisms of the Zapatistas on this “Black Bloc Movement” that he’s created.
Gender Essentialism! It’s Not Just For the 70s Anymore!
Hedges also critiques the black bloc for its supposed “hypermasculinity,” engaging in a gender essentialism that belies his inability to keep up with contemporary radicalism. In Oakland, part of the militant march on Move-In Day was the “Feminist and Queer Bloc.” I’m sure they would be quite surprised to learn that self-defense against violent police thugs and petty vandalism is actually a man’s activity! Why, those poor, beleaguered women and queers are probably alienated from such militancy, along with the befuddled masses that Hedges seems to be writing for! Rather than a lengthy critique of this already-disposed-of pseudo objection, I’ll let Harsha Walia enlighten Hedges on the problems of wealthy white, men like himself attempting to speak for the alienated and frightened “victims” of such “masculine” activities as building a confrontational and militant movement against capitalism and the state. Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oesjegD1-Vg
The Personal Is Antipolitical
Some of this is personal to me, in the interest of full disclosure. I have friends in Oakland. They’re brave and awesome. Seeing them stand up to police repression and attempt to take an empty building while people sleep in the streets was exciting and invigorating for me. It was a welcome sight in today’s age of non-violent fundamentalism, where so many are beset with the crippling belief that if we just get beat up badly enough we’ll attract “the masses” with our moral superiority and somehow the wealthy and powerful will recognize the error of their ways and give us the world back that they’ve so successfully turned into their nightmarish, authoritarian, and wasted playground. My friends were gassed, beaten, given broken faces, broken dreams, and locked in cages for their bravery. And now they’re being denounced by a comfortable journalist who wasn’t there who refers to them as a “cancer”.
I don’t want to suggest that they shouldn’t be critiqued. Self-critique is important for any improvement of practice—if it’s honest.
But here I feel betrayed. When Hedges wrote about the Greeks, notorious for their black blocs, he praised them for “getting it.” Indeed, according to Hedges, they knew what to do. In Hedges own words:
They know what to do when they are told their pensions, benefits and jobs have to be cut to pay corporate banks, which screwed them in the first place. Call a general strike. Riot. Shut down the city centers. Toss the bastards out. Do not be afraid of the language of class warfare—the rich versus the poor, the oligarchs versus the citizens, the capitalists versus the proletariat. The Greeks, unlike most of us, get it.
Apparently for Hedges, that’s good enough for the Greeks. But, by God, don’t you dare bring this filthy resistance to his home! You might accidentally (horror of horrors!) break a window! Perhaps it might belong to Hedges! Well, I passed around his piece on Greece thinking that perhaps there was, in fact, a journalist that “gets it.” I was wrong and I feel betrayed.
So I am angry at Hedges. I know it shows and it will look ugly to some people, but at one point, I trusted his work. And now, I have broken and brave friends that he is denouncing in a movement that he is dividing and presuming to speak for.
After the Move-In Day, the Mayor of Oakland, Jean Quan, asked the Occupy movement to “disown” Oakland because they were militant, uncompromising, and because they were willing to engage in the kinds of “class warfare” that Hedges once praised in Greece. Occupy groups quickly dismissed this as a divisive tactic, but Hedges and Derrick Jensen seem all too eager to help Mayor Quan out. We live in interesting times, but we need to see these kinds of attacks for what they are—forms of recuperating needed and justified rage. When rigid ideologues who think they have some kind of special access to “Truth” come in swinging like this, particularly right after being politely asked to by liberal Mayors like Quan to do so, it’s time to do some quick disowning. We should reject the attempts to divide us by the likes of Quan, Jensen, and Hedges and, more importantly, reject the lies and distortions embedded in these facile “critiques.” Shame on you, Chris. If you want to denounce “violence,” you might use your time to target the police and Mayor Quan instead of doing the work they’ve asked Occupy “leaders” to do for them.
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Notes: 77 / 3 months ago from mrdominos (originally from fuckyescalifornia)
Occupy Oakland Saturday movement update
Occupy Oakland protestors vandalize City Hall and burn an American flag. Nearly up to 400 people were arrested, at least three officers and one protestor were injured. Apparently the occupiers are planning more actions.
Info and photos from:
- http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/01/oakland_leaders_assess_damage.html
- http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-738326?hpt=hp_bn1
- http://occupyoakland.org/2011/10/general-strike-mass-day-of-action/
- http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/30/us/california-occupy/?hpt=ibu_c2
(Sorry for the late update)
Your Occupy Oakland post is inaccurate and at best, a half-truth. OPD are on film agitating violence, beating unarmed protesters, firing rubber bullets, beanbags, CS gas and flashbangs. They arrested hundreds, after ordering them to disperse and then NOT ALLOWING THEM TO DO SO. They injured people, waited for medics to respond, then attacked the medics. Claims of police “injuries” are not backed up with records or evidence, while police-injured protesters number in the dozens, at least.
I saw this and all it said to me was:
“I’m an asshat who claims the original post is inaccurate despite them only stating recorded facts from respected news sources. Here is what really happened. Also, I am a hypocrite as I have no source.
Hahaha here’s your source, dipshit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFaviIoy4rg
In this video you get graphic closeups of unarmed protesters being held down and beaten by police, screaming for help or to be released: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNrCDDPrUcs
Also here: http://oakfosho.com/
And here: http://www.ustream.tv/occupysf
Note in the first video that the OPD injure a protester by shooting them unconscious with a headshot, wait for the medics to gather, then shoot the medics, just as they did with veteran Scott Olsen. This is OPD standard procedure now. Targeting medics, who are defined as non-combatants, is a war crime under the Geneva Convention.
The objects that you see the protesters throwing at police are grenade canisters that had been shot by police at the march. There are no records of police injury during the Occupy protests yet. Claims by the police departments to the contrary are never, ever backed up with records or evidence. Occupy, on the other hand, has dozens of photos from every event of police brutality injuries. Here are a few just from my own records. Hundreds of others can be found online (flickr, google images, picasa, etc).
Rubber bullet contusion on October 25th
Different rubber bullet contusion, same night.
CS gas (“tear gas”) victim, 10/25/11. OPD claimed they “did not use tear gas or rubber bullets” that night.
Flesh wound caused by baton to the face, 12/22/11, 1:57AM. This protester was injured, then lured into the Berkeley Police station with promises of medical treatment. They did not treat him, but instead detained him and attempted to book him, which ultimately they were unable to do. He was released without treatment and was treated on the street by Occupy medics.
1/28/12 - Serious burn to the hand, through protective gloves, by a tear gas canister. Why was this guy picking up a hot tear gas canister? Because the police had fired it into a crowd containing children and other vulnerable citizens, and this guy had the sack to toss it back where it belonged—with the people who’re wearing gas masks.The OPD told the press that protesters were “throwing flares and pipes” on Saturday, and also that several officers were “injured”. The police also claimed that they “did not use tear gas” and “did not use rubber bullets” and that “there were no injured protesters”. You can clearly see that they are lying, in both cases. The entire march, from start to finish, is on film from multiple angles and can be watched several times in its entirety on the live video channels of the streamers who were there, several of whom I linked to above.
The police also claimed that activists on Saturday were “throwing IEDs”, which echoes an earlier farcical claim that marchers in a different action were “arrested with sticks of dynamite”, dynamite which mysteriously vanished at the arraignment. Reminder that OPD has been under court supervision since 2003, when they were found to have planted evidence on a suspect.
Oh, and this happened:
One occupier known as Ali had become a clear target for repression due to his visibility, and even those arrested on the 30th had overheard officers discussing how the hoped to get their hands on him. On Wednesday the 4th, OPD seemed determined to do just that, chasing Ali across the street to arrest him. When they did so, he explained to me, officer Phan reached into his back pocket before feigning surprise and insisting that he was “going away for a long time” because they had found him to be in possession of ecstasy. Some in the Anti-Repression Committee believe that it was only the presence of the Livestream camera, and the fact that Ali immediately began to shout about the attempt to plant drugs, that prevented the charges from being successfully fabricated. Ali was later charged with misdemeanor obstruction.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/09/oakland%E2%80%99s-dirty-war/
As for your laughable little assertion that CNN—or any mainstream media outlet—only deals in “recorded facts”, I refer you to the sources of their “facts”: police press releases. All major media outlets are owned by the specific mega-corporations who are the target of these actions in the first place, mega-corporations that have every reason to paint Occupy as a bloodthirsty terrorist cell. There is also the little matter of the police refusing to play nice-nice with any mainstream news outlet that doesn’t make them look good to Joe Sixpacks like yourself.
Mainstream media also parroted—without investigation—the police claims that “Occupy camps had caused a severe increase in local crime”, an assertion that the police knew was false:
When Jordan received an update that crime was actually down 19 percent in the last week of October, he wrote an email to one of Mayor Jean Quan’s advisers. “Not sure how you want to share this good news,” he wrote. “It may be counter to our statement that the Occupy movement is negatively impacting crime in Oakland.”
[http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/14/1054602/-No-Surprise-Oakland-Police-Chief-Lied-to-Discredit-Occupy-Oakland]
Additionally, Oakland Police Department has been under court monitoring since 2003 due to “a civil suit over the Riders case, in which several officers were accused of planting drugs on suspects in East Oakland. As a result of the settlement agreement, the department agreed to implement a series of misconduct-related reforms, including an overhaul of disciplinary procedures and use-of-force reporting. But two missed deadlines later, the department has yet to complete the tasks.”The court monitoring is due to brutality and corruption, in other words. Brutality and corruption which has so far gone totally unaddressed, to the extent that on the 24th of January this year (four days before the protest on Saturday), a federal judge stripped even more power from OPD, bringing them even closer to being taken over by feds entirely.
The real shitter of your whole riposte, though, is that you’re taking the word of the Oakland Police Department over unedited eyewitness video, photographs, and written accounts of what actually happened.
EDIT: But I’m not writing this to engage you, o shirtless cretin. I’m using your dumb post as an effigy to burn, just so I can address all the same dumb arguments I see over and over, being drooled out by doughy goons who think they’d recognize politics or logic if it backed over them in a brand spanking new, Alameda County Sheriff Department, taxpayer-purchased, armored APC.
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Notes: 77 / 3 months ago from fuckyescalifornia
Occupy Oakland Saturday movement update
Occupy Oakland protestors vandalize City Hall and burn an American flag. Nearly up to 400 people were arrested, at least three officers and one protestor were injured. Apparently the occupiers are planning more actions.
Info and photos from:
- http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/01/oakland_leaders_assess_damage.html
- http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-738326?hpt=hp_bn1
- http://occupyoakland.org/2011/10/general-strike-mass-day-of-action/
- http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/30/us/california-occupy/?hpt=ibu_c2
(Sorry for the late update)
Your Occupy Oakland post is inaccurate and at best, a half-truth. OPD are on film agitating violence, beating unarmed protesters, firing rubber bullets, beanbags, CS gas and flashbangs. They arrested hundreds, after ordering them to disperse and then NOT ALLOWING THEM TO DO SO. They injured people, waited for medics to respond, then attacked the medics. Claims of police “injuries” are not backed up with records or evidence, while police-injured protesters number in the dozens, at least.
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Notes: 90 / 3 months ago from bookmarklet
EU ACTA Chief Resigns in Disgust
European Parliament’s rapporteur of the ACTA agreement, an agreement which is about as bad as SOPA and creates seriously repressive legislation - that rapporteur has just quit in disgust over how the whole process has been designed to keep citizens and lawmakers in the dark. From the website of La Quadrature, which quotes and translates Numerama interviewing Kader Arif, former rapporteur for ACTA:
“I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament’s demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly.”
“As rapporteur of this text, I have faced never-before-seen manoeuvres from the right wing of this Parliament to impose a rushed calendar before public opinion could be alerted, thus depriving the Parliament of its right to expression and of the tools at its disposal to convey citizens’ legitimate demands.”
“Everyone knows the ACTA agreement is problematic, whether it is its impact on civil liberties, the way it makes Internet access providers liable, its consequences on generic drugs manufacturing, or how little protection it gives to our geographical indications.”
“This agreement might have major consequences on citizens’ lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.”(Source: activepolitic.com)
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Notes: 12 / 3 months ago
Having worked as an astro-turfer I can tell you with authority that e-mailing/writing/calling your congressional rep is literally never going to go in front of anyone who gives a shit. 99% of the time, an unpaid teenage volunteer will glance at it long enough to grab the return address and send you an auto-generated reply. The only* way something you said as an individual constituent ends up on a congressperson’s mind is if literally EVERYONE has tried to contact them about it, and a senior staffer having dealt with a mountain of mail and gridlocked phones all day about SOPA is like “Ma’am or Sir, people are real angry about this.” Even that would probably be ignored if there weren’t industry lobbyists or major economic/donations players scheduling meetings with senior staffers about it. In a lot of ways, writing your rep is as pointless as voting, except even more pointless because there are no third-parties and instead of needing 50%+1 you need a super duper double secret majority for someone to even begin to consider considering whatever the fuck you’re concerned about.
*There is an exception if you have a particularly heart-breaking or uplifting story that is tangentially related to the congressperson’s pet issue that a staffer realizes they can use while stumping for donations.- another good post on online petitions/”writing your congressman”
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Notes: 15268 / 3 months ago from haveheartbeast-willtravel (originally from 3liza)
This is very true! They did their protesting online and got more support through the internet than they ever would have with any source outside of it. Thank you for pointing that out.
Strawman argument. The point is not that “online activism is ineffective”. Quite the opposite. Multi-million dollar corporations blacking out their sites is pretty effective. 4chan writing a script to sign a petition 40 times an hour isn’t.
(Source: 3liza)
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Notes: 15268 / 3 months ago from haveheartbeast-willtravel (originally from 3liza)
Okay, I like that Tor is being spread around, but this idea that online petitions do nothing and isn’t taken seriously needs to get out.
You are aware that without online petitions that SOPA would have been voted on and passed, aren’t you? You’re also aware that with enough pressure with online petitions governments have backed down on other things. Believe it or not politicians do pay attention to online petitions and emails sent to them, it’s just that you need the numbers behind them to have someone pay attention. And if you’re telling people that their voice doesn’t matter in a petition then of course less people are going to sign it and of course there’s going to be less power behind it. You are hurting your own cause by telling people that their petitioning doesn’t matter. Stop telling people that that doesn’t matter.
In fact this entire thing saying that stuff online doesn’t matter is ridiculous. When people sign petitions online they are still saying that if their representative is going to support something they will also pull their support from when they vote too and will vote for someone else. They are still fully capable of boycotting things when they say they will online.
Why are you acting like doing something on the internet is useless when we have evidence to the contrary?
I would LOVE to see some proof. If online petitions actually work I’m going to have a much better day.
This is the only support I’ve seen for online petitions that cites any examples, and it’s on a blog run by an online petition company who stands to gain or lose substantial amounts of ad revenue from whether or not people use online petitions. And all the examples there do not actually include data that cites the petitions as effective. EG, no policy-makers specifically pointing at the petitions as effective, etc.
Slacktivism is poisonous because it’s placebo activism.
EDIT: And the SOPA shit “worked” because it was backed by giant corporations and organizations who threw the weight of their money against it. Wikipedia leaving GoDaddy alone was insanely effective. Google putting shit on their front page was effective. Wikipedia and Tumblr blacking out was effective.
http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/09/21/slacktivism-defeats-lawful-access/
http://www.frogloop.com/care2blog/2010/4/28/slacktivism-why-snopes-got-it-wrong-about-internet-petitions.html
Tell me if the second link is working or not, but if it’s the link I think it is it should have cited sources on why slacktivism and online petitions in general do work.
This is also a good article http://mashable.com/2011/10/24/slactivism-cause-engagement/ however it doesn’t deal with online petitions being effective by themselves.
I also sadly cannot get the page you linked to to load, any idea why that might be happening? I ask because it doesn’t seem to be my internet, it might just be something wrong with the link.
Also, yes big organizations backed it up, but they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere as far as it did without the peoples’ support and most of the support was just online as far as I know.
Thanks for the links, I appreciate you going to the trouble to track them down and post them, but again, all of them rely on the “correlation = causation” argument to prove their points, an argument which just doesn’t hold up.
That online petitions exist for contentious issues is undebatable. They exist alongside the real forces, but I have never seen any proof that they affect the issue in the least, except maybe to “raise awareness”, which is a dubious claim in of itself.
As one forums poster put it, “is Veronica Mars still canceled? Is Pete Rose allowed to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame? Did I ever get to purchase a copy of Mother 3?”
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