Category: Etc
Politics, religion and everything else you aren’t supposed to be able to talk about.
An open letter to the ACLU
A quick overview of the destruction of our most basic liberties and environment
Understanding the banality of evil that destroys our habitat and ruins our politics and economy
Is the United States a Tyranny?
This of course depends on what tyranny means. The general definition is 'the arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power'. To me the key term is 'unrestrained'. In the United States we theoretically have three co-equal branches of government that are supposed to check each other. But those checks appear to have failed. As evidence just take a look at an article published in the Washington Post. What we see there is a well enumerated list of powers that are now held by the Presidency. Powers that explicitly allow for the unrestrained use of power by the President. Continue reading Is the United States a Tyranny?
Debt ceiling nonsense
In understanding the current debt 'crises' one needs to understand that it's all a show. A manufactured crises to enable both sides to push for radical changes that they otherwise didn't believe they could get through.
As FactCheck explains the debt ceiling has been regularly raised 78 times since the 1960s and in fact we have been close to default at least 3 times during the Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies. So there truly is nothing new here.
That doesn't mean, btw, that insanity on both sides couldn't actually result in a default. But if it does it's important to understand that we would be destroying our economy as a result of a manufactured crises that both sides decided to create in order to push their own agendas.
Understanding our post legal society
No Virginia, corporations are not people
In light of the Supreme Court's decision that corporations have first amendment rights it's worth addressing the question - do corporations have rights? Thankfully this is one of the more trivial legal questions (really). The answer is no.
Continue reading No Virginia, corporations are not peopleThe water is boiling – American Democracy
For a long time now I’ve been convinced that America democracy is dying, if not dead. Our will to be a great democracy got broken somewhere along the line. Instead, all the evidence shows me that this country works exclusively for the small ruling elite who run the world’s corporations.
Continue reading The water is boiling – American Democracy
The office of the privacy commissioner of Canada nails social network's business model
Thanks to the ACLU of Washington's blog I got a link to this outstanding video on the privacy commissioner of Canada's website. It absolutely nails what social networks are about from a business perspective and why users need to be concerned. This is just yet another argument for why we need open social networks that let users host and control their own data instead of being forced to live in other people's walled gardens. It's a pity that efforts like OpenSocial (which has absolutely nothing to do with freeing user's data) use the name "Open". Because we could really use a real OpenSocial. It wouldn't even be hard. Take a dollop of standardized data schemas, a side of REST and sprinkle some OpenID on top and you are basically there. For dessert we could even fix OAuth to enable true interoperability. [Ed. Note: I realize that my readership already understands what's in that video but maybe you can pass it on to your friends who haven't been quite clued in yet.]