SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the you-can-never-have-too-many-offsite-backups-eh dept.
The Internet Archive plans to create a backup of its data in Canada in response to the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States:
The Internet Archive, a nonprofit that saves copies of old web pages, is creating a backup of its database in Canada, in response to the election of Donald Trump. "On November 9th in America, we woke up to a new administration promising radical change," the organization wrote in a blogpost explaining the move. "It was a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for the long-term, need to design for change."
[...] The move will cost millions, according to the Internet Archive, which is soliciting donations. In their post, the Internet Archive justified its decision to backup its data in Canada, claiming that Trump could threaten an open internet. "For us, it means keeping our cultural materials safe, private and perpetually accessible. It means preparing for a Web that may face greater restrictions."
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 30 2016, @03:48PM
One thing I've learned about protest: It only works if either (A) there is a message that those with real power want to hear, or (B) the economic consequences of the protest really hurt those with power.
Some examples:
- The Montgomery Bus Boycott worked because the Montgomery bus system was losing far too much revenue to be able to ignore it.
- The Civil Rights Movement worked in a larger sense because the Kennedy and Johnson administrations were supportive of it.
- The really big labor strikes of the late 19th and early 20th century worked some of the time because they were crippling to the industry they targeted.
- Occupy Wall Street didn't work because they didn't really disrupt how Wall Street worked, and had hardly anybody in government sympathetic to their cause.
- The Clamshell Alliance and their related anti-nuclear plant protests failed in the short term and succeeded in the long term because they were so expensive to deal with that nobody else wanted to face that cost again. The NoDAPL protests may end up with a similar fate.
- The Tea Party protests worked because there was a substantial and well-funded group of both politicians and businessmen who have been pushing the same ideas for decades.
- The anti-Vietnam protests largely failed (despite mythology to the contrary, both from the protesters who think they won, and military folks who claim the US public stabbed them in the back). They didn't succeed in causing a real problem to those with power (not even after the Kent State and Jackson State shootings), nor did the Johnson or Nixon administrations have any intentions of ending the war based on the protesters' complaints.
Occupy Wall Street is a very interesting example, because it was a liberal protest against a Democratic presidential administration, which failed because the Democratic presidential administration in question helped coordinate efforts to put it down by force. The equivalent would have been if the Tea Party gatherings had been met by police batons, which they never were.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 30 2016, @04:28PM
It's less the success (at least initially) but the sustain. Marijuana policy is one you left out that has been decades in the making, and incrementally moves forward simply because those in support keep pushing for reform even though it is now legal in a few states.
Compare and contrast to let's say anti-war demonstrations that were going on with Bush, and how those died even though policies didn't change much under Obama.
Further consider the bizzaro world where the Republican elect is an anti-war candidate.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 30 2016, @05:49PM
I was talking specifically about protest movements where you have people at the barricades and such, not so much the more genteel political campaigns.
But pot really isn't an exception: It's become legal after the people of the generation that smoked dope became the political leaders (e.g. Bill "I did not inhale" Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama), and also when people recognized how much money was potentially in it.
Also, while it is entirely possible that some of the anti-Iraq War stuff was really anti-Bush or anti-Republican protests, I would have to think another major factor in the decline in anti-Iraq War protests was Obama withdrawing most of the troops from Iraq. It's hard to organize a protest to demand certain action from a politician when by all appearances that politician is already engaged in that action.
As far as this last election goes, my understanding of their war-and-peace stance was, in a nutshell: Donald Trump will likely start a war by accident. Hillary Clinton will likely start a war on purpose. There was at least one less war-mongering candidate, but he was knocked out in the Democratic primary.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 30 2016, @10:28PM
The prison numbers for marijuana arrests completely contradict any notion of a genteel protest, nor was there ever any indication of revenue to be had until after.At best, you would have a lessening of over-crowded prisons.
You'll also note both Clinton and Obama heavily resisted any attempts towards normalization, let alone legalization. Meanwhile Buckley was arguing for legalization back in the 70s. Nor did any of these changes originate with the legislators, but were compelled through ballot initiatives.
Iraq wasn't the only military action to happen in the past decade. There were operations in Georgia, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Uganda, Jordan, Turkey, Chad, Yemen, and Syria. There was very little, if any protests against.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 30 2016, @10:03PM
Good post, Thexalon. It seems right to me.
Part of the trouble with protesting now is that it is deceived by the mythology the Baby Boomers created about their anti-Vietnam protests. Successive generations have been led to believe that putting a lot of feet on the street can change the world. But that has produced exactly nothing in my experience. I've seen millions of people on the street in New York protesting, and it did nothing and wasn't even accurately reported on by the corporate media. Occupy Wall Street? What did that accomplish? Beyond the frame of "1% vs. the 99%," exactly nothing.
So your analysis hits home, and crystallizes my long-gestating conviction that if you want change, your actions must have real teeth.
Washington DC delenda est.