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"The Global Plutocracy Is Terrified of Dissent"
The Most Liberal Part of the Country Takes a Page from Dictator's Playbook
The most liberal part of the country - the San Francisco Bay Area - is taking a page from Egyptian dictator Mubarak's playbook.
As leading free speech organization Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:
This week, EFF has seen censorship stories move closer and closer to home — first Iran, then the UK, and now San Francisco, an early locus of the modern free speech movement. Operators of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) shut down cell phone service to four stations in downtown San Francisco yesterday in response to a planned protest.
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BART said today that it had instituted the following rules, including:
No person shall conduct or participate in assemblies or demonstrations or engage in other expressive activities in the paid areas of BART stations, including BART cars and trains and BART station platforms.
What does that mean? We can't talk?
One thing is clear, whether it’s BART or the cell phone carriers that were responsible for the shut-off, cutting off cell phone service in response to a planned protest is a shameful attack on free speech. BART officials are showing themselves to be of a mind with the former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, who ordered the shutdown of cell phone service in Tahrir Square in response to peaceful, democratic protests earlier this year.
U.S. and Britain Attack Social Media
It's not just cell phones.
For example, the Pentagon is trying to manipulate social media for propaganda purposes. And the government is trying to censor any suggestions on the web and other media that powerful people might actually be acting in their own interests (and not necessarily in the interests of the little guy).
And in Britain, the government is blaming the protests in that country on social media (here are the two real causes).
But as professor of media psychology Ann Rutletdge writes in a post entitled, "Social Media Did Not Cause the London Riots":
After four days of looting and rioting across the UK, people are looking for answers. The violence that started in London, spread rapidly across not only Greater London, but most of the country, not as single oozing mass, but more like an outbreak of the measles. Its speed and range is attributed to the rioters’ use of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Blackberry Messenger. Information and disinformation alike travel fast in social networks. As people try to make sense in the aftermath, an emerging theme is the culpability of social media. Focusing blame on social media is akin to killing the messenger and is both naïve and dangerous.
Social media is just a tool. It’s a powerful one, but a tool nonetheless. It can be used in good ways and bad ways, just like a hammer or a baseball bat.
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Social media is an easy target. When you’re a politician, it’s great to have something to blame that can’t vote. Prime Minister Cameron almost immediately offloaded the blame onto social networking sites for fueling the riots and hinted at intervention. “When people are using social media for violence, we need to stop them.”
UK Home Secretary, Theresa May, is scheduling meetings with Facebook, Twitter and Research In Motion (RIM) to “discuss their responsibilities in this area.” Suggestions have ranged from banning suspected rioters from social media networks to the wholesale shutdown of social media in times of unrest without regard to individual freedoms in order to “catch the bad guys.” The key unanswered question is who gets to decide who’s a ‘troublemaker’ or what’s ‘unrest.’
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We should learn from history, as well as from current societies that we do not want to emulate. Can anyone say “China” or “McCarthyism”?
Beyond rights violations, any government that thinks they can totally suppress information flows is kidding themselves. Even if it were possible, shutting down social media will not stop anything. In countries where people do not have easy Internet access or rights like freedom of speech, resourceful, persistent, and effective citizens continue to find ways around Great Fire Walls and information blackouts. Suppressing information these days is like holding a balloon under water. It will absolutely pop up somewhere else.
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Social media may have accelerated the pace of information travel, bringing groups together faster, but it did not put bricks and fire bombs into the hands of the looters. Social media did not create the anger or sense of powerlessness against authorities. It did not create the heightened emotions of the group, crowd leaders, the adrenalin that comes from a sense of danger and risk, the lack of empathy for others, or the sense of no consequences. Emotion may be contagious, but social media is not.
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The real danger from these events is ... the wholesale liquidation of personal freedoms as a solution to deal with fear. When people are scared, they are willing to surrender individual rights to whomever tells them they can “fix” the problem. Whenever we give away our power so that we no longer have access or due process, we are on a slippery slope indeed.
The Use of Heavy-Handed Tactics Is Actually a Sign That We're Winning
But the use by government's worldwide of the iron fist of repression is actually a sign that we are winning.
As Truthout's Matt Renner writes today:
Recently I sat down with two of the young adults who organized and led the Egyptian resistance movement that overthrew Hosni Mubarak. The media narrative said it took 18 days, when in fact, they had been organizing for over five years.
According to these young men, the moment they knew they had won was the day Mubarak’s government shut off the Internet and blocked cellphone communications. When people could no longer get updates about what was happening in Tahrir Square, they had to come out of their homes and see for themselves, tripling the size of the protests in one fell swoop.
The global plutocracy is terrified of dissent. In some places, the war on dissent is being fought with bullets. In others, the war on dissent targets social media and mobile communications, while repressing and deceiving communities of struggle. It’s already happening.
Our Voices Are More Important Than We've Realized
Renner is right: the plutocracy is terrified of dissent.
Indeed, the Asch Conformity Experiment showed that even one dissenting voice can give people permission to think for themselves.
And a new study shows that when only 10% of a population have strongly-held beliefs, their belief will be adopted by the majority of the society.
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Well, guess what ........... I'M DISSENTING BIGTIME.
Who owns the cell service?
This may be a good time for protesters to get Walkie Talkies instead. Use sign language or just go telepathic.
Good going BART: you just instructed protesters to go off the grid to communicate. Good luck with that.
Yep, they played their hand way, way too early.
why do you think the Goobermint is paying for HighSpeed Wireless across the ENTIRE! Country.. and the Goobermint is Demanding that ALL People have it!
Google Cloud on SSD's..
FaceBook Cloud on SSD's..
HighSpeed for ALL!
you guys need to figure out what the Cloud is all about and how many magnatudes faster could computing on SSD's really is..
think word search, nationaly in real time. EASILY.. that is easily accomplished, now think phrase, multi word and so on.. key-word for key-group + time ='s!
There will be two speeds... for the same reasons
Action conquers fear.
Try it.
and yes we are all slaves to our own biases and habits.
A certain action conquers fear completely. But to find out, you will have to come and get your thirty blows!
;-)
ORI
What exactly are "we" winning? a klatch of screenhead keyboard jockeys managing to whip up a flash mob or a cyber psuedo-revolution signifies only a media feeding frenzy designed and directed by the social media controllers at the behest of their intelligence agency handlers. the absurd suggestion that such an implacable and firmly entrenched matrix of geopolitical and social control is being challenged by effervescent and quixotic street mayhem is laughable and demeaning to any serious analysis. quite to the contrary, these manipulated, compromised and heavily infiltrated "movements" display the operant conditioning which has become the hallmark of the transparent subliminal techniques of modern advertising which have ensnared the gullible and uninformed in the passive,blind, and undiscerning acquiesence to their own enslavement. there are no people more enslaved then those who falsely believe they are "free".
N.A.Z.I.
Germany And France Announce Plans For Single European Government As Solution To Debt Crisis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZQVnRgmz3c&list=FLjAWptc6azYo&index=1
1 World Government on the way!!
1 World Government on the way?
Really? How so? It is been a while that I predicated Europeans would try to use the crisis to create their european people (as a political entity)
Claiming that it is a step toward a one world government is like claiming that when US citizens started the same social engineering, it was a step toward a one world government.
It is done for the same reason: insulation from the past, to shake off the burden of the past. No world government to happen here.
Meanwhile, all these people who want to increase their critical mass to avoid facing the consequences of the past are atomizing other political units elsewhere. They endorsed the creation of South Sudan, they might end splitting Libya, they want to pulverize China...
The one world government is cheap propaganda and US citizens should come with better.
You're kidding, right? If you've been paying attention to the course we're on toward a global currency, then you must know that any global currency will come with global governance - the other side of that 'coin'..
There is no "course", path, tendency, or trend towards a "global currency". This is a perfect example of internet wisdom. Three blog gurus that I "like", (ie they correspond accidentally to my emotional predjudice), said so; there fore it's now part of reality. When your "thinking" starts with, "they want this", and "they" are manipulating that; you've already got a big problem. Many powerful entities profit from the current system of FX; nobody can be identified who would profit from a single world currency. In addition, there is no "they". Everything you see is the result of errors and false theories on the part of "leaders"; they don't know anymore about what's going on than you do. The problems are the result of folly and ignorance, not conspiracy. People are far too stupid and talkative to do conspiracies.
nobody can be identified who would profit from a single world currency.
One word for you: Rothschilds. Google it.
Seriously! OMFG that was hysterical, and then the troll calls himself 'IQ 145'. On what page of your Intro to Psychology 101 did you copy this from?
Because you say so, it must be. lol! Look at the macro picture, 145. The formation of the Eurozone and where/what policy IS driving toward. Ignore history and the writing on the wall at your own expense.
Both are happening, at the same time. The pressure from our overlords for an ubergovernment grows, and at the same time, criminal gangs and seperatist movements challenge current nations. Should Ubergovernment gain "legitimacy" it will have "one thousand flowers" to trample, probably without sucess.
France & Germany: Save euro with one EU government
Reuters The Sun - 19 hours ago By VINCE SOODIN THE leaders of France and Germany tonight called on Eurozone nations to form a "collective government" to save the struggling currency. ...
4057 related articles
Germany, France Call for Common Eurozone Economic Government - Voice of America (blog)
European debt summit: Germany is using financial crisis to conquer ... - Daily Mail
More news for germany france one european government »
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France & Germany: Save euro with one EU government | The Sun |News
www.thesun.co.uk/.../France-Germany-Save-euro-with-one-EU-governmen...
19 hours ago – THE leaders of France and Germany tonight pressured Eurozone nations to form a ' collective government'
Get more results from the past 24 hours
France and Germany call for one 'European economic government ...
www.thesun.co.uk/.../France-and-Germany-call-for-one-European-econom...
4 hours ago – FRANCE and Germany last night called for one "European ...
No surprise, really. The big question is how the proles--citizens of both rich and poor EU nations--are going to take it. And, of course, whether their desires will be represented in the process.
I don't see it working out. This is way more than TARP was here. Civil war directed against the rich and their sycophants will be forthcoming, imo.
The german citizens never got to vote on the adoption of the Euro in the first place; believe it or not; look it up. There's never been any poll conducted in Germany that showed a simple majority would support the Euro, or any kind of loss of sovereignty for Germany. Any politicians making anouncements like this are just anouncing their retirement from politics; they'll be so un-elected nobody will even rebember how to spell their name.
The new definition of "rich" is anyone who has something you want.
It may reach that point. But the disparity in income distribution makes--in the absence of a coherent tax policy that addresses it--highly visible symbols of wealth natural targets. High end retailers, luxury cars, upper class neighborhoods, and so on.
See the link above about burning Mercedes in Germany.
If you're merely well-to-do, your likely profitable accommodation of the crony capitalists and their machine on the way up is gonna cost you dearly, imo.
Debates about "income redistribution" consume a lot of energy among bloggers, but the poor really don't give a shit for talk.
Those who have a problem with this prospect really should take it up with their "betters" who are laying the track for this train wreck.
Even Uncle Warren (Buffet) sees the writing on the wall.
I agree that there is an unhealthy financial disparity between the classes. Maintain a healthy balance, maintain social peace and order. But mobs draw poor lines of distinction. In fact, collectively they are stupid as nails and dangerous as hell. They won't differentiate between those who have fattened themselves on the debt train, and those who have lived frugally, worked hard and saved. It's the Debtors vs. the Savers, not the Rich vs. the Poor. Marx was wrong about that.
Ironically, this puts nanny state parasites on the same side as the crony capitalist parasites..
Marx saw it as capital v labor, iirc. That's a pretty good fit that becomes only more clear as crony capitalism evolves. I see how you could view it as debtors v savers, which certainly does capture some of the variance, but the savers would be more appropriately lumped--coarsely, without morally nuance--with crony capitalists or, what has now come to be regarded as just plain Capital at this point, imo.
w/o moral nuance, really? Isn't fairness based in a sense of morality, and you are talking about a sense of 'fairness'.
The major flaw with 'captital vs. labor' is it rules out how the capital was obtained. Hard work and saving is very different from looting - encourage the former, slit the throat of the latter. Punish the former and you can kiss all creativity/ingenuity goodbye, it will always leave for better environs..
Edit: From the CHS interview, I like this suggestion for captial... "the path to future prosperity in removing capital from the Wall Street machine and investing it into local enterprise within the community in which you live." Captial has the potential for good, if the kleptocrats' power over it is diminished/ended..
I couldn't agree more with removing wasted capital from the Wall Street casino and investing it in something REAL. But, as if banksters aren't enough, there's an entire industry of financial parasites which live off the system as is.
Sure, capital markets serve vital functions . . . until they destroy both host and parasites as one.
We're well down that road, imo. Take a look at tax policy favoring "investors" with low tax rates on capital gains. We've incentivized participation in financial waste and corruption by the nearly-common man.
And only those in the financial industry are deemed worthy to speak for Mr. Market. It's no surprise that it's where it is . . . and getting worse.
Yeah, no top down solution at this point. The system is built on Debt and large-scale participation, that's why mortgages were so effective for them. Imho, it will all have to collapse before captial gets directed to anything real. Won't happen before then. See you on the other side...
dupe
In the US we will call it the "SUPER GOVERNMENT" !
The masses have been so dumb down that a Super Gooberment seems like a marvel comics charatacter. It is all powerful, can tax tall building in a single leap, bullet proof, spend faster than a speeding train.
When does the movie come out ?
I love comics.
More popcorn !
Laugh until you cry !
In a move seen by some to support the important Right to Free Speech, the government thru its spokesman at Homeland Security, has announced the location of the Election 2012
FREE SPEECH ZONE. It will be located within a trailer located at a secret location. Concertina wire will be deployed to protect those in attendance. To protect privacy rights no
cameras will be allowed.
Bitch all you want. BART ownes the cell towers and can remove the service if they want. There is NO constitutional guarentee of 24 hr internet access. You are all a bunch of babies! Ghandi really needed the internet to get his movement going didn't he. Let's see, oh yea, the civil rights movement in the south depended on having WiFi access didn't it!
The real problem is, no one believes in their casue enough to put real work into the process. To plan ahead, to work for a gaol. It's all got to be done on the fly, without thought or consideration.
Perhaps you should re-examine your willingness to have corporate "rights" supersede those of humans.
Just perhaps the control and power exercised by corporations and those who head them is a big part of everyone's 'imprisonment'.
And just perhaps getting out of that "gaol" is one of the first goals.
Cry some more about “corporate” power! Why would you give them the power to stop your protest by planning it on cell phones? I forgot, it's a bit more difficult to whip up support without cell phones, text messages, twitter and Facebook. As an American, I am appalled at the lack of genuine involvement in our communities and neighborhoods. Regardless of your age, you are part of the "everything for free, becasue I want it that way" generation!
When people pay for cell phone service they have a right to that service; however, on the underground trains this is provided by BART and I would view this as a special benefit and not a right if the system wasn't owned by the state therefore paid for by taxpayers money. So when we pay for the train system and we also pay for the phone service (providing your carrier was one of the companies that has service inside BART) then it is our right to use it without interruption barring unforseen problems that may interrupt service.
If the citizens really want to stop this then they should boycott the system. This would bring change quickly. Without the revenue coming in they could not operate for very long.
How does boycotting a government service bring about change? The government doesn't care about profit. If BART fails to pay the bills, I'm sure the city will bail it out with an increase of some other tax. And when the public goes back to using BART, because the boycott made no difference, the increased tax WILL remain.
You have a valid point, but you have to look at the whole picture. Boycotting would cause major harm to the economy. Layoff of workers, no more expansion, no contracts for new railcars and tracks, less business conducted in the area. Now you have hit a lot of people in the revenue area, and those people will probably rally on your side because its their only option. Those in power will forsee this and things probably wouldn't get to that point. Also boycott those cell phone companies involved.
Shutting down the corrupt economically distorted criminal systems by not participating in them will be the only weapon that finally brings this down. See history
methinks it would be wise of everyone to start re-learning how to communicate without the use of cell phones, no matter what the reason for their possible sudden disappearance one day. just remember -- it was not too long ago that there was no such thing.
here's a challenge for everyone: keep your celly off for 24 hours and observe how your day changes, both internally & externally.
CB/Ham radio. You can transmit packets over ham radio these days. If enough people do it, it could be a makeshift internet. Oh, and don't forget to download all your emails out of the cloud before they pull the plug. You can get them all at once.
The protest was held in response to a BART cop shooting someone. You should direct your stupid remarks to : Bay Area Rapid Transit.
BTW your ignorance of the ownership of the cell infrasructure is showing.
Just because taxes paid for BART's ownership, doesn't mean they have to supply it at all times. Who cares what the protest was about? Please show me where your constitutional right to have cell service exists. PLEASE I AM SO ANXIOUS TO LEARN ABOUT MY NEW CONSTITUTINAL RIGHT!
Assuming my ignorance, and the pointing out of my misspelled word are the only points either of you have to argue; I will assume there is actually no constitutional right to 24/7 cell service. I will assume that we are not guaranteed the right to be able to ride a train underground and then be able to text others. I will assume that when you step on public property you are not guaranteed the right to instant messages.
You guys are the ignorant, uninformed masses that will fall away into nothingness when/if the shit really does hit the fan. Simply because you have forgotten what your true rights are, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Instead you will be clamoring for internet access and will stay home as long you can get the “feed” live and uninterrupted. Sheep need shearing, and you guys are about to be set out for "lambing" Enjoy!
if you do not see the 1st amendment issues tied up with manipulating the communication services of a large metropolitan transit system in response to protesting a potential illegal killing connected with that service then you can indeed assume your ignorance
The unkindest cut of them all inflicted by the NWO on its own people : Stifling debate, making access to factual evidence more difficult through bureaucratic and legal impediments. Using the FED, Congress and the US legal system to denature the workings of democracy and republican rule. Lastly but not least, instrumentalising MSM to spread propoganda and false flag smear campaigns to further their own oligarchy aims.
Well said FP. Truey a game that was rigged a long time ago. Exquisitely rigged at that.
ORI
Meanwhile in Germany 'social protest' is moving in a different direction...
Mercedes, BMW, VWs, etc, are being incinerated at double the rate of last year... Doubling anything is impressive ...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-16/luxury-cars-burned-in-berlin-protests.html
The guilty one ? http://mixbird.com/news/kanye_trashes_370k_car/
No person shall conduct or participate in assemblies or demonstrations or engage in other expressive activities in the paid areas of BART stations, including BART cars and trains and BART station platforms.
What does that mean? We can't talk?
Apparently no street mimes either, since that could be considered an expressive act. Hmmm, is BART privately owned or publicly owned? Are people required to enter into a legal contract that takes away their constitutional right to free speech and assembly before entering the premises or was the decision capricious and arbitrary?
A couple of paraphrased quotes (because I am too lazy to look up the actual wording), 2 of which are from the first Star Wars trilogy.
"Fear leads to Anger. Anger leads to Hate. That is the path to the Dark Side." (Yoda)
"The more your tighten your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers." (Leia)
"Unlike in the past, in these days, it is infinitely easier to kill a million people than to control a million people" (Zbignew Brzinski)
BARTanist.....ironic :-0
BART is a Federales operation.
bart.gov.
ORI