When even the Dream…

Well I hope everyone has had a great Friday and is gearing up for a great weekend. Though part of me, the cynical part says… how great can it be.

I’m going to ramble for a while, I’m in a rambling mood. Those of you who don’t want to be rambled at… walk away, come back tomorrow. I’ll be nice and fluffy and kind to kittens and talk about movies or books or music or somesuch.

But today, I want to ramble….

The cynical part of me says that maybe, just maybe, in an America where every damn thing is made in China (and I say that having nothing against China, beyond the obvious common sense… that says a nation that does not employ its own or produce its own, is not long for being a Nation),

—in an America where wages are down, and gas prices are astronomical, and yet the untaxed gasoline companies such as Shell and Exxon are swimming in record profits,

— where American citizens are being taxed into poverty to pay for wars domestic (the unending drug war still being America’s most profitable domestic war) and foreign, and in an America where the profits of such land grabs are used toward faster and more automated ways for killing people and toppling nations,

—and in an America where those funds are further used to build middle east Dubai pleasure nations, for the rich and corrupt to vacation in when the streets of America flow in blood boot deep, and even the dream of liberty lies screaming, when even the dream lies screaming

—in an America where offshore concentration camps are alive and well, that in such an America….

my concern is that all our great days are behind us.

At least that’s what they are selling. They are selling hard the fall of the dream of America, our attorney generals, and congressional shills, and captains of industry, and paid CNN and Fox talking heads, all those who are feeding us the lie of liberty, and sending our children out in the world to enforce tyranny, to build empire, to give to the rich… more riches, to complete a new world order…of master and slave.

And all that stands in the way of it, is this dream, is this illusion, is this hope, is this promise, that America has feverishly failed to live up to, but has it in its bones…to rise to. All that stands in the way of it… is this America.

Not the America of the politicians, the Obamas and the Romneys who would sell the calcium from your children’s teeth to make 2 cents more for their billionaire masters, not the America of the conglomerates, the Disneys, and the Time Warners and the Sonys who want even your dream of dissent to go away, not the America of your lies, but an America that says no to FOX News, no to CNN, no to programming, no to propaganda, no to the MPAA, no to the RIAA, no to congress as an enforcement arm of movie studios, no to push button wars, no to easy enemies, and constant terrors, no to an end of liberty.

Every other nation is falling like dominoes. Embracing America’s mad cancer of corporate subservience. So ironic isn’t it that all that stands between a World’s worst hour and her finest… is the source of the madness, is the America that they have divided, lied to, poisoned, sold, raped, impoverished, and brutalized. They our congress, they our corporations. But we’re still here, you and I, and the dream.

And we scare them.

We scare them deeply.

Us nothings, us nobodys. And these billionaires cannot sleep for want of trying to silence every single voice, and close every single loophole, that reminds them of all the blood they’ve spilled.

It’s funny that no matter how high you build your fortress, how far into the clouds, how lavishly you ordain it, what is ever present in your mind, is that brick, allllllll the way at the bottom of this fortress, this pyramid you’ve built, and the fear that one of those ants, at the bottom of your glorious monument, your works, will notice all the blood on that brick, and will pull on it, and it shall all come crumbling down.

It’s a thought I take comfort in, the more they ramp up the oppression. Because it’s a sea-saw, the more they push down, the more they raise us up.

Case in point…

Thousands of websites went dark last year and stayed dark. Countless more blogs. For one bogus reason or another. They want the same relative media saturation and uniformity of opinion on the internet as they have in the mass media press. They want no more SOPA defeats. No more… ramblings from the edge.

No more American patriots.

They want to shut down dissent, but all they will do, in the fullness of time and by the grace of God, whatever God you bend your knee to, … is raise us all up.

Here endeth the lesson. 🙂 .

PODCAST OF THE DAY: Joseph Kony, Angelina Jolie, New World Orders and Wacky Podcasts! :)

PODCAST OF THE DAY: NO AGENDA

Stumbled across this podcast. These guys are nuts! More than half of what they say is questionable/ludicrous at best, but in between their humor and craziness is some interesting, and some informed, pokes at the traditional media/press that we are all getting… more than a little sick of.

This podcast is a bit too talk show and obnoxious for my liking, too much like the hate media they take shots at, but there is enough of a difference to give this particular episode a bit of a listen.

Particularly give a listen to around the hour thirty mark where they play clips of your congress people at work, and you see how utterly clueless your representatives are when dealing with these tech and software companies. They basically sign any ‘cyber-security’ legislation that gets put in front of them, and sign away your rights along with them, rather than admit they are not qualified to ask much less answer… these questions of a new digital age.

Listen Here

And if you like that, you can sign up for their show’s RSS feed here.

:)!

A SOPA Bullet and 29 Gunmen: Meeting your Destiny on the road you took to avoid it

“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against – then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
-from Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand

It’s not enough to defeat bills like HR 3261 (the Stop Online Piracy Act, which sounds like it might be a good thing, but is anything but. The full text can be found here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:h.r.3261:)aka SOPA; the bill would criminalize much of what you can do on the internet today, would allow big business to shut down sites and blogs with impunity. With no real burden of proof necessary.

Just an email or a call. And concepts such as free speech, or more to the point, anti-big business speech, can be shut down… as if they never existed.

So it is not enough to just defeat this Bill.

It’s not about this one bill. It’s about giving them reason to fear… drafting the next, and the next, and the next.

This is just one bullet you’re dodging in this bill. It is not enough to dodge this bullet, you have to take out the gunmen.

Remove them from positions, to be able to fire that gun at you again. Stop them from firing more bullets. Because what they know, what any good gunman knows, is… you can’t duck them all. They shoot enough bullets, and at least one is going to hit you. To take you down.

And what they are trying to take down is nothing more or less than your ability to resist… being owned, being controlled, being terrorized, being enslaved… to big business. They want to be able to do, whatever they want… unchecked.

And with enough bullets dressed as bills, they’re on the road to… turning back the clock.

To the killing of liberty, and the hard-fought dream… of America.

So you don’t try and just duck the bullets, you stop the shooter. You stop him hard.

You stop him so hard, that God himself will blink.

There are 29 gunmen, who signed the bullet called SOPA.

There are 29 assassins.

Assassins of liberty, at the onus of big business and big business dogs such as the RIAA and MPAA to be sure… but Assassins none the less.

You may want to look over the below names. See which ones come from your state or a surrounding state. Which ones are representing themselves rather than you. And do your part… in un-employing them.

Rep Smith, Lamar [TX-21]
Rep Amodei, Mark E. [NV-2] – 11/3/2011
Rep Baca, Joe [CA-43] – 12/7/2011
Rep Barrow, John [GA-12] – 11/14/2011
Rep Bass, Karen [CA-33] – 11/3/2011
Rep Berman, Howard L. [CA-28] – 10/26/2011
Rep Blackburn, Marsha [TN-7] – 10/26/2011
Rep Bono Mack, Mary [CA-45] – 10/26/2011
Rep Carter, John R. [TX-31] – 11/3/2011
Rep Chabot, Steve [OH-1] – 10/26/2011
Rep Chu, Judy [CA-32] – 11/30/2011
Rep Conyers, John, Jr. [MI-14] – 10/26/2011
Rep Cooper, Jim [TN-5] – 12/12/2011
Rep Deutch, Theodore E. [FL-19] – 10/26/2011
Rep Gallegly, Elton [CA-24] – 10/26/2011
Rep Goodlatte, Bob [VA-6] – 10/26/2011
Rep Griffin, Tim [AR-2] – 10/26/2011
Rep King, Peter T. [NY-3] – 11/3/2011
Rep Larson, John B. [CT-1] – 11/30/2011
Rep Lujan, Ben Ray [NM-3] – 11/14/2011
Rep Marino, Tom [PA-10] – 11/3/2011
Rep Nunnelee, Alan [MS-1] – 11/3/2011
Rep Owens, William L. [NY-23] – 11/14/2011
Rep Ross, Dennis [FL-12] – 10/26/2011
Rep Scalise, Steve [LA-1] – 11/14/2011
Rep Schiff, Adam B. [CA-29] – 10/26/2011
Rep Sherman, Brad [CA-27] – 12/7/2011
Rep Wasserman Schultz, Debbie [FL-20] – 11/3/2011
Rep Watt, Melvin L. [NC-12] – 11/3/2011
Rep Terry, Lee [NE-2] – 10/26/2011(withdrawn – 1/18/2012)
Rep Holden, Tim [PA-17] – 11/30/2011(withdrawn – 1/18/2012)
Rep Quayle, Benjamin [AZ-3] – 12/13/2011(withdrawn – 1/17/2012)

That is your mission, and your duty, and your calling if you choose to accept it. To say no, to all the people who would betray you.

To attack the Assassins of Liberty.

“Sometimes a man can meet his destiny, on the road he took to avoid it.”— The International

Google’s Android Tablets vs Apple’s IPAD2, Microsoft, Oracle, British Telecom, Ebay!

Who would have thought that I would be on Google’s side on anything, much less feeling sorry for them.

But true to the axiom the enemy of my enemy is my friend, that’s exactly where I am at with Google, at this point in time.

The Android platform came onto 2011 like a breath of fresh air, and its meteoric rise gave the mobile market something it hasn’t had in many a year… choice, and true competition, relief from the Apple Juggernaut.

But that choice came at a price… Namely a feeding frenzy of the most powerful companies in the world all deciding to destroy the Android Platform, Google, itself no lightweight, finds itself having to deal with no less than 6 Mega-Massive Lawsuits, from companies with revenues in excess of billions of dollars each.

The companies lined up to protect their entrenched, monopolistic and consumer enslaving business models and technologies are Oracle, Apple, Microsoft, Ebay, GeMalto and as of today British Telecom. And that’s just counting the ones suing that are valued over a billion dollars.

You add them all together and you have as stated… a bloody feeding frenzy.

With companies using flawed to the point of destructive Software Patents, to stifle innovation and destroy competition.

These Goliath’s don’t want to win customers through creating better products, heaven forbid, they want to sue, and legislate and license and otherwise utilize “Al Capone style” Protection racket schemes, to sell the American people and the world… only their product. Typically overpriced, often severely crippled products. Take the Ipad that is lacking basic design features such as USB and HDMI and SD ports, and it’s only the competition of Android (which does offer these ports) that is making Apple have to address these glaring omissions on their tablet in each successive new model.

So again I’ve had, and had my share of problems with Google, their search engine and email and pretty staggering abuses of privacy and personal freedoms, from digitizing and uploading massive amounts of books, to the detriment of authors and publishers, to extreme methods of uncovering and mapping public and private networks/wi-fi hotspots, to generally being one of the privacy problems on the Internet rather than one of the solutions.

So imagine my surprise that it is Google, for self serving needs to be sure, that through the android platform, offers us, the consumer, the best chance at real choice and real innovation to hit the technology scene in decades. Android isn’t perfect, it’s in its infancy, and as Carrier IQ and malwaqre scare show, it has growing yet to do. I’d like it to get the chance to grow.

And further, Google’s Android platform, in an economic environment that has been going from depression to depression, has actually been allowing businesses to flourish in a way we have never seen in the mobile market. That competition thing again, that is the first excitement, and first upswing in terms of substantial new products, and new players we’ve seen in the market, the first good sign in the economy.

And the Goliaths rather than wanting to compete, and win or lose based on product merit in a flourishing everybody makes money environment, seek instead to sue the Android Platform into a coma, and all the watershed business, and economies of scale, and diversity, and yes choice… that has built up around it… sue them out of business. And continue an economic outlook and policy, that further disenfranchises the bulk of people and companies, in favor of a very few companies and a very few people. Moving ever quicker to an unsupportable age of masters and slaves. And I tell you now, in that age… when the poor man has nothing left to lose… the fall for the rich…. shall be steep.

Apple particularly has been blatant and disgusting in their global attempt to monopolize the mobile market. To allow this monopolization and indeed chilling of innovation and competition is to sign the death warrant of liberties both subtle and gross in America and in the world. It is to Grandfather these six companies in… not as providers of services and technologies to customers, but as imposed entities, protection rackets, selling their products to the American people and the world at the barrel of a lawsuit.

It cannot stand.

And not only is Google the sole large capital company to defend open source, but they are also one of the few big cap companies to battle the media provider rape of the American people that is this horrendous SOPA Bill now, brokered by the same companies suing Google, winding it’s way into law in our congress. Which once done will make freedom of speech on the Internet, like competition, an endangered species.

Find out where your representative stands on this ‘Patriot Act level of wrong’ bill.

Tell them today to oppose the SOPA bill.

So as odd as this is for me to say, I’m rooting for Google, not just to win all six court cases and get to maintain a non-crippled Android, but further to deal a death blow to this horrible ‘its time is passed’ concept of Software Patents.

The enemy of my enemy being in this case… my friend.

All I had to say.

For more on all this go to Eff.

Now go… Defend something. While you’re able.