Even More Occupy Wall Street and a Little Bit About The Internet

Things I Learn In History Class.

While I do support the Occupy protests wholeheartedly, I, like our other author here (awesomepurplepowdermonkey) believe that, well, ur doin it rong. 

So, we've reviewed your motives, your reasoning, and your ideas, and we respect them, but come on, guys. If you're going to have a reasonable protest, you have to look good to the public. You're a nuisance on businesses and police forces. You bastards in Oakland are being violent, destructive, and disruptive. I'm not saying that you should quit, I'm just saying that you should be a little more considerate of your surroundings, and think about whether your actions are the right way forward.

Now, I know that not all of you are behaving this way, and many of you are trying to do this the right way. You use democracy in your decision-making, and you respect the police force. If all of you did that, you could have one hell of a revolution on your hands, and the public would listen to you and respect you in a new way.

The Internet

How many of you believe that the internet should be a free, usable place for sharing ideas, art, and developments? I see a lot of hands raised high out there. Well, too bad, I guess. Congress is to vote soon on a new bill that would effectively strip the internet of so much of its wonderful content.

The bill would force ISPs to monitor and regulate their customers' activity online, and make themselves responsible for what these customers upload, post, or think. If ISPs don't want consequences, they'll have to police the internet, creating bias in what can and cannot be said. If you want to try to convince congress that this is a bad idea, head on over to demandprogress.org (currently undergoing a bit of technical difficulty, it seems) and send an e-mail to your state's congressman, share on facebook, and make it known that we do not want this.

In Conclusion

It's been fun as always, and I hope I caused many of you to think about these two important subjects. Good afternoon, all.

More on occupy Wall Street.

    Think of this as a kind of follow-up to unborn's post (probably below, but I don't know, he might be messing with things again).

    So, to summarize what unborn said, for those of you too lazy to scroll (I know, sometimes the resistance on that scroll wheel is pretty tough); the main point of the Occupy protests is to show popular discontent toward the fact that 5% of the population in this country hold 50% of the money. If you want more detailed numbers and proof and such, see unborn's post.

    This is my criticism of the protest.

    While I 101% agree with the message that the movement is trying to get out there, they are going about it completely wrong.

    These people, instead of telling people about there problems, being friendly, and talking about their problems; are alienating, confusing, and annoying people. The employees in the bathrooms in the many coffee shops on wall street might even support their movement, if the protesters walked in, bought a coffee, and chatted about why they were there and what they were doing. Instead, they walk in, use the bathroom, and walk out. This would probably lead the employees there to think that the protesters are just a bunch of inconsiderate jerks who are angry about something or other. 

    Now with Occupy Oakland, there is a completely different story. These protests are now a rallying call 'LOOK AT THIS POLICE BRUTALITY' people are saying, 'THE POLICE WERE UNPROVOKED BY THE INNOCENT PROTESTERS AND THEN THEY MOVED IN A TEAR GASSED THEM'. 

I'm sorry, moderately annoyed people, but you're quite mistaken.

    Sure, the original movement was about non-violence. But watch this video from the English newspaper, The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/nov/03/occupy-oakland-protest-port-video

     What we see here is protesters who are clearly a teensy bit angry smashing windows, lighting things on fire, looting, and throwing fireworks and the police. Now, if the police at this point were not willing to move in, then you might want to hire new law enforcement. 

    This is not the way to spread the message. The original idea of the occupy wall street movement is golden. Spend 100 days camping out on wall street, to show these big banks, the top 5%, how unhappy we are. But now, its become violent. People are not spreading the message, they are spreading fear. The protesters on wall street are alienating people who might want to join the movement. How can people join your cause if they have no idea who you are, whats going on, and why the hell you're so angry about it? Setting things on fire is not a protest. Looting stores is not a protest. What they have achieved is chaos, and chaos is never going to make anything better.

Great job guys.

You broke it.

Oh, America.

A Legitimate Post (Fully Rantomatic)

Today I'd like to touch on several subjects.

• The PATRIOT Act
• Occupy Wall Street
• Music Rights
• Software Rights
• Religion (I'm not trying to offend with this one.)
• Kinder Überraschung

The PATRIOT Act
The PATRIOT Act is an Act of the United States Congress signed into law in 2001. It is a disgrace. It is wrong. It is disgusting, and I'm here to tell you why.

The act claims to be a means of preventing terrorism through proactive means, and while I suspect it has been effective in detaining some legitimate terrorists, it also calls into play unfair and unjust means of finding them. It also can be applied to ANYONE even remotely suspected of terrorism.

The law allows for wiretaps, scouring records of transactions, both public and private, and even surveillance of any suspected terrorist, even those not believed to be linked to an organization or group. So, essentially, if you act like a terrorist, you can be monitored like one. This is a grotesque breach of rights. I bet HOMELAND SECURITY (yeah, I know you guys love to hear your name mentioned online) loves it, but we, as American citizens must bring it down. Hell, you might be on one of their lists. I might be on one of their lists. It could happen to anyone, based on a purchase, a public statement, a phone call.

I'm not sure what we're supposed to do about it, but we have to find a way to stop it.


Occupy Wall Street (and the injustices involved)
OK, look. I know a lot of people don't understand what it's all about, so I'll explain it in the simplest way I can.

In the United States of Capita- oops. In the United States of America, Half of our money, that's 50%, is controlled by 1/20th (5%) of the population. If the population of the United States is, as The Census Bureau's Clock states, 312,560,662 people, then 62,512,132.4 people control an equivalent amount of money as 250,048,529.6 people. Those are some big numbers, except that 5% of people. That seems relatively small to me... Is it fair that so few people control so much? Especially when those people can fund the government executives that they choose, and sway them to causes they like. Causes that usually result in them gaining, you guessed it, more money.

This is what the Occupy protests around the country are about. They just want economic equality for everyone. The argument is made by opponents of the movement that, if these people had worked harder, started their own businesses, or had their own ideas, they would be up there with the wealthy. Well, something I've learned by observation is that it most certainly takes money to make money. Making it in the world is a real Catch 22.

I urge all of you reading this to consider the economic equality of the nation, and evaluate for yourselves whether this is fair.

Music Rights
This is a bit of a change in topic, but it's an important subject.

We live in what is supposed to be a free market system, people buy and sell for what they think something is worth, but has the question ever been raised, "What exactly is music worth?" To some, the answer is obvious. Music is worth money. A few bucks for an album. To others, the answer is, "Nothing. Art should be free and public." But what about the middle ground? Those who say, "It's subjective" are rarely considered in debate.  I am one of these people.

Music purchases should be based on taste, and quality as defined by the listener. If you like something, but you don't like it enough that you want more, why on Earth should you pay for it? If you absolutely love something, and crave more of it, you should support the artist behind it. Doing this is currently illegal, but should it be? People that buy paintings only buy the ones they love, they simply admire or take a photograph of others. Why can't we apply the same theory to music?

Software Rights
On the subject of digital mediums, and the purchase thereof, let's talk software.

With hardware, there's no contention. It's a physical product, and you should have to pay for it, but what about software? Should the poor, migrant family have to pay large sums of money, just to have basic functionality of their computer? Should the College student, barely making ends meet, and piling up debt, have to pay five hundred dollars so that he can type a paper? No.

I'm not saying that all software should be free, but I am saying that basic software, that is not classified as art (as games now are) should not be something with a price tag. Those of us that can hardly pay for dinner are paying hundreds for simple things. Would you pay fifty dollars for a banana? I certainly would not.

Religion
Allow me to start off saying that I am, in fact, an Atheist, formerly a Lutheran.

Religion causes wars. Religion starts conflict and causes death, but this is not what I am going to attack. The one thing I truly dislike, is why it does so.

Any monotheist believes in the same thing, but has a different creation story, and their version of a deity is only slightly different from the next. Their customs may be different, but they all pray to the same god. They attack each other over small discrepancies in their descriptions of a deity. This is why I am pissed off. It's like starting a war because one person likes Burger Kind and the other likes McDonalds. Slight differences in the same product. It's sickening. Listen to those Coexist bumper stickers, assholes. They've got the right idea.

Kinder Überraschung
A dear friend of mine writes a food blog, in which he cooks, eats, and discusses food. One day he posted about a German candy called Kinder Überraschung (the title of this little section of post is a link to his post)

The candies have been banned in the United States due to some lawsuit or something. Rumor has it that if you bring these through an airport, HOMELAND SECURITY will seize them.

Anyway, he posts an innocent little piece showing pictures of one. He checks the stats of the post a couple days later, and HOMELAND SECURITY has been viewing this page at least once an hour. Can someone say PATRIOT Act?

In Conclusion
I hope this post hasn't earned a colossal tl;dr from you all. It's been fun. Goodnight, everybody.