Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by CoolHand on Thursday December 10 2015, @01:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the political-genius dept.

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.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday December 10 2015, @08:36AM

    by PinkyGigglebrain (4458) on Thursday December 10 2015, @08:36AM (#274335)

    It is because of people like you, the ones who don't vote that the current leaders of the USA can claim a "Mandate of the majority" and do what they want because they got the more votes than the other party. Even though the "majority" that they claim is in fact only about 1/6th of the voters in the USA.

    It is because of apathetic people like you that the country is in the mess it is now.

    The only time you "Throw your vote away" is when you don't use it. Even if you only wrote in "Nobody" or "Cthulhu" it wouldn't matter, your vote would have been counted for something, even if it was just to show that you didn't think any of the offered candidates were worth your vote. And while a Democrat of Republican would probably still get enough of the majority of the cast votes to win the election both parties would be aware that they do NOT have the support of the majority of voting Americans.

    If you don't vote you not only end up with a rights grabbing warmongering bunch of assholes like the USA has now, but more importantly you lose you Bitching rights.

    You are in no position to complain about it since you have just sat by on your lazy ass and done nothing. Me? I can complain, I have voted in EVERY election since I became eligible, sometimes the candidate I voted for won, most times not, but that isn't what matters. What matters is I voted. My vote WAS counted. I can bitch about the government because I have tried to influence it.

    So to you, and all those who think like you I say this : GET OFF YOUR LAZY ASSES AND VOTE FOR SOMETHING, ANYTHING, OR SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GO KILL YOURSELVES SINCE YOU DON"T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS IN YOUR LIFE!!

    /rant

    Goddess help me, I'm starting to sound like my dad.

    --
    "Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +4  
       Insightful=4, Total=4
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday December 10 2015, @12:05PM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday December 10 2015, @12:05PM (#274383) Journal

    Voting, in formal elections, is not enough. Maybe not even the most important thing a person can do. We, the people, have the power to bring bad actors to heel, if only we can see through the propaganda, agree that they are indeed bad, and agree to act.

    For example, we could have squashed the War of Choice. If most of the soldiers had refused to fight, people had refused to enlist, to travel to Iraq, it could not have happened. We were played for fools by our own leaders, selling the world on this bogus story of Weapons of Mass Destruction. We trusted them, and they abused it. Why did Nixon have to resign? What Nixon did was a petty nothing next to the War of Choice, yet he had to go, because too many people were opposed to him staying on. Note also that Nixon's VP, Agnew, got the boot too. Then, W. and Cheney do far worse and both get to stay on. Why did the Vietnam War end? Hell no, we won't go! Ford was willing to go along with his party, who wanted to keep the fight going. It was the Democratic majority in Congress that finally shut it down.

    It's the same story with the banksters and the Great Recession. We could destroy them. Easily. If only we could find the will. Why does anyone still do business with Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, and Wells Fargo? Do you have credit cards with any of them? Maybe savings or checking accounts? Then you're part of the problem. I fired Bank of America and Chase. I never went to them in the first place, they bought the banks I patronized. There was a web site, moveyourmoney.org. I don't know what happened to it, but while it existed, I used it.

    But we can seldom muster the will to accomplish something trivial, like forcing theaters to allow us to bring our own food, by refusing to patronize ones that have the nerve to tell us we can't, it's not allowed. The debate over piracy would be so over, and the RIAA and MPAA so dead, if we willed it. Same with Big Pharma and Monsanto. The most we've managed is to get them to accept 99 cents as a fair price for a song, no bundling tolerated, and that only because Apple went to bat, for themselves, not us particularly. But pills? Heck, $1 per pill is unreasonably costly for most, but somehow they can push the price to the moon, and get away with asking $750 or more per pill. They are still scheming, trying to sucker and bully us into accepting their propaganda, their sick vision that has a name, the "ownership society". Which they themselves do not believe in, freely violating it when they find it inconvenient. Better if their propaganda campaign was utterly hopeless, and they knew not to try it, but sadly it is not, there are enough confused people to encourage them to keep trying, and so now we have this TPP crap with its horrible intellectual property grab.