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At one of his campaign rallies, Republican Presidential Candidate Donald J. Trump advocated shutting down parts of the Internet as a response to radicalism:
As the video below shows, Trump told a rally that "We are losing a lot of people to the Internet. We have to do something. We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening."
"We have to talk to them [about], maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some way."
"Some people will say, 'Freedom of speech, Freedom of speech'," Trump added, before saying "These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."
[More after the Break]
In two tweets, Trump turned his attention to Jeff Bezos's taxes:
The @washingtonpost, which loses a fortune, is owned by @JeffBezos for purposes of keeping taxes down at his no profit company, @amazon.
The @washingtonpost loses money (a deduction) and gives owner @JeffBezos power to screw public on low taxation of @Amazon! Big tax shelter
Finally, a Trump campaign statement released on Monday calls for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on".
Trump is in good company when it comes to clamping down on free speech. In the wake of the San Bernardino attack, both President Obama and Hillary Clinton have hinted at renewing the war against encryption and denying "online space" to ISIS:
In his Oval Office speech on Sunday night about the fight against ISIS, President Obama devoted one line in his speech to the topic. "I will urge high-tech and law enforcement leaders to make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice," he said.
Meanwhile, Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, gave a talk at the Brookings Institution where she urged tech companies to deny ISIS "online space," and waved away concerns about First Amendment issues.
"We're going to have to have more support from our friends in the technology world to deny online space. Just as we have to destroy [ISIS's] would-be caliphate, we have to deny them online space," she said.
(Score: 5, Informative) by hash14 on Thursday December 10 2015, @04:07AM
So you're saying that it's not the voters' fault... and then say it's okay not to vote.
I have to say, that is OBJECTIVELY the STUPIDEST argument you can make.
It's not like you live in Russia, where opposition candidates are assassinated, or in North Korea where you get killed if you don't vote for the king, or any many African nations where many votes just happen to disappear. And even though your pluralistic voting system discourages voting for third-party candidates, since you're throwing your vote away by not using it you might as well at least go and do that. Even a 2-3% vote for an independent candidate/third party could be enough to scare your major party's officials into shape. And you still have other ways to influence your government as well - while it's harder to have an impact at the national level, you can still get involved in more local community gatherings and meetings. After all, a democracy is not just a place where you cast a vote every so often; it takes more involvement than that - getting to know the candidates, asking them questions, campaigning for them, and pressuring them to stay true to their promises once they are actually in office (this last one is true even if you didn't vote for them). Obviously it's not easy or trivial, but if you want nice things, you have to work for them.
So truth be told, proclaiming your electoral laziness and arguing that it doesn't even matter doesn't refute GP's statement at all - it completely confirms it. It's people like you and your lazy, apathetic, "I give up" attitude that make your country shit. That's why your rulers are able to get away with what they do. So if you're not going to get involved, then everything that Trump, and Hillary Clinton, and Obama and Bush say/do is as good as coming straight from yourself.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday December 10 2015, @04:42PM
. Even a 2-3% vote for an independent candidate/third party could be enough to scare your major party's officials into shape.
Elections these days are won by fractions of a percentage. 2-3% for a third party would be massive.